Tag Archives: music

Armel Opera Competition and Festival 2015

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I feel really fortunate that I got to spend the last 10+ days in the U.S. It is always amazing to witness historic changes real time. No matter what your opinion is on the three decisions made by SCOTUS, I am sure you all agree that they qualify most definitely for a historic event.
When not following history in the making I spent my time writing Clarinet Symphony for the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and making sketches for a libretto for a possible new opera.

This week I am back in Hungary. I am honored to be on the Jury of the Final Competition of Armel Festival.
http://armelfestival.org/en/
Five performances from five countries with five you singers in competition roles. The festival starts with The Magic Flute directed by Robert Alfoldi.
http://wikipedia.org
The performance is officially sold out. You can all watch it live on MEZZO TV
http://concert.arte.tv/fr

and you can also vote on your favorite performance after watching all of them. You might be able to catch an interview with me in one of the intermissions.
Stay tuned for more posts on Armel 2015!

Dumb Art On Oaks

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First of all, let me apologize for the title of this post.
1) The more I post the more I recognize the difficulty of finding a title that draws attention and will make people read my blog entry. The more I post the more I understand the pressure on online journalists and the direction online media is going. Do I like it? Not really, but I do understand the inevitability of things going the “tabloid way”. You really don’t want to end up like “white noise”.
2) I could not resist. 🙂
3) Please, do google ‘Dumb Art’ and look at the pictures. There are awesome, great pictures there. You are going to be surprised how many amazing works of great artists you will find this way, let alone all the really great street art.

OK, now that this is out of the way, I just have to say there is nothing ‘dumb art like’ about the program I am doing with pianist Lilya Zilberstein http://lilyazilberstein.webs.com/
and the Columbus Symphony this weekend. CSO website calls this Masterworks program a “Concerto Festival” http://columbussymphony.com/
and indeed three out of the four pieces are concertos (and very different ones)

Beethoven: Leonore Overture #3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonore_Overture_No._3
Bach: Concerto for Piano and Strings in D major
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpsichord_concertos_(J._S._Bach)
Stravinsky: Concerto in Eb “Dumbarton Oaks”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto_in_E-flat_%22Dumbarton_Oaks%22
Shostakovich: Piano Concerto #1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._1_(Shostakovich)

There are two other elements that make this program exciting for me.

1) “Time Travel”
OK, so you can say that every classical concert is like taking a trip back in time, and you’d be right about that. However having one of the most famous neo-classical pieces on the program (Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks) is a true artistic time travel. This piece is like a 20th Century Brandenburg Concerto. Also I dare to say, that Shostakovich Piano Concerto #1 has many neo-classical moments in it as well. This makes the second half of the program a kind of ‘homage’ to the two composers in the first half. Then there is the fact, that we are playing a Harpsichord concerto with a modern piano as the solo instrument. J.S. Bach would have loved a Steinway if he could have possibly known one. I am afraid that the sound you’ll be hearing, as wonderful as it may be, is historically inappropriate. So there is another type of time travel for you, this time to an “alternate universe”. Bach’s music on the modern piano.
2) “The Trumpet Player’s Progress” (sorry, another Stravinsky reference)
In Beethoven’s Overture our principal trumpet player will leave the stage at a certain point then he’ll play two fanfares from back stage (he shall return to finish the first orchestral trumpet part). At the end of the concert the trumpet takes center stage as the secondary solo instrument of the Shostakovich Piano Concerto. Tom Battenberg, principal trumpet is doing an amazing job as he travels with ease between styles, genres and centuries.

Tax Day Concert

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Who does a concert on a Tuesday? Well actually I do with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (MR Symphony) and chorus and four wonderful soloists.
On the program:
Brahms: Song of Destiny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schicksalslied
Dvorak: Stabat Mater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabat_Mater_(Dvoƙák)

Two touching and deeply spiritual works, one is only 18 minutes long, the other one is about an hour and a half. Two works written by friends (one also being the mentor of the other). Both compositions are very personal and masterfully written. This year’s Easter falls late in the calendar year. This is why the day known as Tax Day in the US happens to be the Tuesday before Good Friday.
The concert program I designed is about preparation, soul searching and meditation with the help of vocal-orchestral music. I would like to invite our audience to a spiritual journey.
Faith Prayer. Doubt. Consolation.

I would like to invite You All to join us and listen to our concert LIVE at
http://www.mediaklikk.hu/bartok
You can also stream the concert later for another two weeks.

What’s Up With Sussmayr?

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“He was born in Schwanenstadt, Upper Austria, the son of a sacristan and teacher (who spelled the name Seissmayr, reflecting the Austrian pronunciation). His mother died when he was 6, and he left home at 13. He was a student and cantor in a Benedictine monastery (from 1779 to 1787) in KremsmĂŒnster. When his voice changed, he became a member of the orchestra as a violinist.
The abbey performed operas and Singspiele, so he had the opportunity to study the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck and Antonio Salieri. He composed a number of stage works and a good deal of church music for the abbey.
He became (after 1787) a student of Salieri in Vienna. In 1791 he assisted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a copyist with La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte and is presumed to have written the secco recitatives in the first. Their relationship was close and playful, to judge by surviving letters to Constanze, whom SĂŒssmayr accompanied to Baden.
For many years he was also thought to have been a student of Mozart, but there is reason to think that the notion of such a relationship was concocted by Mozart’s wife Constanze in order to legitimize his completion of Mozart’s Requiem. During Mozart’s last days, it is possible that they discussed his Requiem, and SĂŒssmayr took on the task of completing the piece upon his death and did so, turning it over to Constanze within 100 days of Mozart’s death. SĂŒssmayr’s version of the score is still the most often played, although several alternative versions have been written.”
[from Wikipedia]

Yeah, what’s up with this whole Sussmayr thing? According to Harnoncourt in no circumstances could he complete Mozart’s work. (Who did it then?) As far as I am concerned there are more “Mozart Requiems” and the one under the name of Sussmayr has its own life and has been proven to engage musicians and audiences despite its flaws. This is the version I have played many times as a young clarinet player (Oh, those cold churches in Hungary around Christmas time!) and this is the version we performed yesterday with the Huntsville Symphony in front of a full house at the Von Braun Center. The concert started with Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music (another gorgeous piece using Basset horns) and we performed Haydn Symphony #93 before intermission. Our trumpet and horn players –as adventurous as they are– decided to use natural horns for the entire show. It sounded great and added an extra layer of artistry to the show.
Fun fact: I am traveling to Hungary today where I am doing a new music show next week. One of the pieces is going to be “Into The Little Hill”, a mesmerizing chamber opera by British composer George Benjamin. Guess what, he uses not one but two Basset horns (and Contrabass Clarinet among other “unusual” instruments) just like Mozart in his Masonic Funeral Music and Requiem. I love the sound of the Basset horns!

Kodaly in The Cold

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When 10 ys ago I first conducted the Calgary Philharmonic we played an unusual program: Arvo Part: If Bach Were a Beekeper, Poulenc: Gloria, Gorecki: Third Symphony. I remember all of it. It is interesting to me, too how much I remember of musicians, the hall, downtown restaurants and many more things. A brief interruption aside (got rerouted by Delta which enabled me to get here on time but left my luggage in Minneapolis) I had a nice trip from Huntsville, AL. First time ever I used the on board internet service and got a lot of work done (mostly planning next season and working on programming, answering interview questions via email and other fun stuff), so overall it was good.
This time I get to conduct an entire “Hungarian” program, including Brahms Hungarian Dances, Liszt Rhapsody #2 and Totentanz, Weber: Introduction and Hungarian Rondo (Yes, I have two soloists for this concert, one on the piano, one on the bassoon), Kodaly Galanta Dances and Dohnanyi Symphonic Minutes. Great orchestra, fun program and we are expecting a good size audience.
But here is the thing with Canadian orchestras
 For some reason Toronto Symphony, Montreal Opera, the orchestras of Edmonton, Winnipeg and Kitchener Waterloo almost always invite me in the beginning, middle or the end of the coldest Canadian winter. Not complaining, just saying! â˜ș

See the website of the Calgary Philharmonic here with details about the upcoming concerts:
http://www.cpo-live.com

PS: OK, just to be fair, the sun came out this morning, the weather is sunny and fresh, Weatherman says the temperature will rise as high as 9 Degrees Celsius by tomorrow

Threepenny Concert

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If you subscribed to one of our concert series (3 concerts each) in the 2013-14 season you got a concert for free. The “free” concert of one of the series’ is happening tomorrow at the newly renovated Franz Liszt Academy of Music.
I designed the program to let every section of the Hungarian Radio Symphony and individual players to shine.

Kurt Weill: Little Threepenny Music
(for woodwinds, brass, banjo, piano, accordion and percussion)
Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
(the title says it all â˜ș)
Hindemith: Concert Music for Brass and Strings Op. 50
(this one is a great showpiece orchestrated for 12 brass instruments and strings [no 2nd violin!] in the duration of 20 some minutes)
Ravel: Bolero
(no explanation needed I hope, this is definitely the piece to prove that you are the master of your own instrument)

These four pieces were written between 1928 and 1936. By this time or soon three of the four composers were living in the United States. Europe was marching towards WWII dragging the entire world along. As almost always in the time of massive changes art was thriving. I wanted to put together a program with 4 completely different yet equally energetic and powerful compositions from this era. As usual you can listen to the concert live at
http://www.radio.hu
at 1:30PM EST tomorrow (Friday) or stream it later for another two weeks.
On Saturday afternoon my orchestra and I will be spending a couple of hours in Studio 6 of the Hungarian Radio to present the Bartok piece with some entertaining and informative talk by musicologist Sandor Kovacs in front of a live audience. This episode of the series “Musically Speaking” will be aired at a later time on Radio Bartok (all in Hungarian of course â˜ș)

Radio Christmas

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Two more concerts left for this year. Tonight I am conducting part of the now traditional year end Christmas Concert of the musical groups of the Hungarian Radio. Here is the program with some links:
Miklos Kocsar: Hungarian Christmas
http://info.bmc.hu
I studied with Mr. Kocsar for a year as a composer student back in the 90s. He is 80yo this year and his Birthday is just two days after the concert. This piece is a wonderful arrangement of traditional Hungarian Christmas songs.
Respighi: Lauda per la NativitĂ  del Signore
http://www.osscs.org/notes
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
Bruckner: Scherzo from Symphony #1
Bruckner: Te Deum
http://en.wikipedia.org

The first and the third pieces are sung by the MR Children’s Choir and conducted by its two choral masters. I get to conduct the charming Respighi and the celebratory, joyous Bruckner compositions. The entire concert is part of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Christmas broadcast. As always you can listen to the concert at
http://www.mr3-bartok.hu/
live [19:30 local time] or stream it on your computer for two more weeks.

On December 23 I will conduct my first concert at the newly remodeled Franz Liszt Academy of Music. On the program three brand new Christmas Cantatas by young Hungarian composers. Just like earlier this season I am the member of the jury for a composers’ competition and the conductor of the final round. Two Christmas themed texts by Hungarian writer Geza Gardonyi was selected for the competitors to put into music. Three finalists were selected by the pre-screening committee and my orchestra and the MR Symphonic Choir will perform their compositions in front of a live audience. This concert can also be heard on the radio.

Let me wish Merry Christmas, a Wonderful Holiday Season and a Very Happy New Year to all my blog readers and music lovers out there! Come back and visit my site in 2014, too!

Eine Kleine Stravinsky

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Symphony Silicon Valley invited me to conduct an interesting “pasticcio”-program this week at the beautiful California Theater in San Jose, CA.
Two concerts, one on Saturday evening and one on Sunday afternoon start with Mozart’s “way-too-well-known” Serenade in G K.525 nicknamed ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’. It is a challenge to do music that is always on the “Your Favorite Classical Music” selection at your local radio station or can be found on a Holiday CD for $2 each at Walmart. The only thing a conductor can do is to read the score with fresh eyes and concentrate purely on the musical information on the sheet music. Knowing and loving Mozart’s genius and work also helps. I spent a long hour rethinking phrasing, articulation, tempi and ornaments for this lively piece of string orchestra music. As always I am having fun with the challenge.
The second piece on the program is Symphony in C (Symphonie en ut as the score says in French) by Igor Stravinsky (or Strawinsky according to Edition Schott). This is a 28 minute long so called “neo-classical” composition written in 1940 for a medium size Beethoven orchestra. I don’t want to go into details here about the intricacies of orchestration, chord-engineering or thematic development. Let me just say one thing. There is no 20th Century composer who can dress up a seemingly simple chord or motive like Stravinsky can. This piece shows great mastery of pretend-simplicity and gives us a captivating musical portrait of the “Key C” in all its glory.
Read the program notes by Phillip Huscher here:
https://cso.org
In the second half of the program I get to be the musical partner of Mayuko Kamio
http://www.dispeker.com
in her colorful and imaginative interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.

Scarlatti and The Musical Robots

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On Saturday, November 30 at 5PM local time I get to conduct a concert at the helm of the Budapest Strings
http://www.budapestivonosok.hu
at the Palace of The Arts in Budapest, Hungary. The concert includes two world premieres, one by the world famous composer, Peter Eotvos. It is a composition for French Horn and string orchestra, a very elegant and sensitive piece of music. It is an honor to be able to do the World Premiere of a new composition by Eotvos, who is turning 70 in January 2014 and whom I can call my teacher and mentor in both composition and conducting.
See the composer’s webpage about this new composition entitled Hommage a Domenico Scarlatti:
http://www.eotvospeter.com

More compositions by Eotvos will be included in my 13-14 season.
As part of the so called “Mini Festival” at the end of January in cooperation with Neue Oper Wien and Palace Of The Arts I get to conduct the Hungarian premiere and the studio recording of Eotvos’ latest opera: Paradise Reloaded (Lilith).
In February Huntsville Symphony is presenting an orchestral composition of his entitled “The Gliding of The Eagle in The Skies”, and also a very interesting action-piece called “Brass The Metal Space”.
Watch my blog posts about these performances in the next few months!

The other world premiere this Saturday is that of my “Gulliver Suite” for Tubular Bells and Strings, an 11 minute long composition based on “Gulliver in Faremido”, a piece of mine for narrator and 5 players. You can buy the commercial recording of the latter piece by going on iTunes or to this website:
http://www.bmcrecords.hu
The story behind the music is based on a Gulliver-sequel by 20th Century Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy. In this modern voyage Gulliver ends up on a planet where robot-like beings communicate by music instead of speech. More program notes and the story itself can be found on the Budapest Music Center link above. The movements of “Gulliver Suite” are: 1) Gulliver in Faremido 2) Robot Concert 3) Story Of The Two Headed Monster 4) Be That As It May

Since the performance is part of the “Master and Student” conversation-concert series Mr. Eotvos and I will be joined by musicologist Prof. Imre Foldes. I am hoping for an interesting and stimulating conversation about the new pieces and the two Baroque compositions by Georg Philipp Telemann.
http://en.wikipedia.org

I picked Telemann’s Gulliver Suite (originally for two solo violins, but we play it with 5+4 players in a stereo setting) and one of his Horn Concertos to compliment the modern music performed. This will be my first time to work with the great, young horn player, Szabolcs Zempleni.
http://www.zempleni.com

To The Moaning And The Groaning Of The Bells

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Last Friday I conducted the concert version of Puccini’s La Boheme with the Huntsville Symphony, the Community and Children’s Chorus and a wonderful cast at the Von Braun Center. This was the first time ever in my life when I started a dress rehearsal with not all the principals present. Due to an unforeseen illness we needed to hire a replacement Mimi. She drove 4 hours from Atlanta and was just pulling into the parking lot as I started Act One (5 minutes late). She just walked on stage about 10 minutes into the act (Mimi’s first appearance) and did a wonderful job. See names and more read more details in FaceBook posts by Huntsville Symphony and myself. No matter in what format you are doing opera, the usual “operatic excitements” always do occur.
From the happy morning bells of Act 3 in La Boheme I have arrived to some very different bells in Budapest, Hungary. As part of the Hungarian Radio Symphony’s (MR Symphony) 70th Anniversary season concert series I am conducting a concert at the Palace of the Arts (MUPA) this Saturday. On the program:
Andras Szollosy (a great composer, often remembered as “The Great Third Master” with Gyorgy Ligeti and Gyorgy Kurtag): TRASFIGURAZIONI
Stravinsky: SYMPHONY OF PSALMS
Rachmaninov: THE BELLS

Fro the lyrics of the latter composition (a great symphony for orchestra, chorus and solo voices) see the following link
http://www.recmusic.org

I designed the entire concert program around “The Bells” theme. Andras Szollosy (FYI the letter “SZ” next to Bartok’s compositions refers to his name, since he was the one -a composer AND a musicologist- who put together the chronological order of Bela Bartok’s works) was obsessed with the sound of the bells. In this energetic and very much “Rite of Spring”-like piece (16 minutes of music) has a lot of great bell-effects masterfully orchestrated for a group of triple woodwinds, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 3 (!) violin sections, violas, celli and basses (note that the lack of percussion instruments including any type of bells here!) Szollosy was a big fan of Igor Stravinsky and his music. Needless to say, that the unmistakable Russian bell sound plays a big part in this unique and captivating composition entitled Symphony of Psalms. Here is the unusual orchestration of this piece:
5 flutes (incl. piccolo), 5 oboes (incl. English Horn), 4 bassoons (incl. Contrabassoon) 4 horns, 5 trumpets (incl. Piccolo Trumpet), 3 trombones, tuba, timpani + percussion, two pianos, celli and basses. Yes, you read it right, while the Szollosy piece has three violin sections this piece has NO violins or violas whatsoever.
The Psalms used by Stravinsky for the three movements are:
Psalm 38, verses 13&14
Psalm 39, verses 2,3 & 4
Psalm 150 (complete)

Here are the words for Psalm 150

1 Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4 praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.