After a well-deserved day of rest, we began the second week of the Sunriver Music Festival. Just two concerts in this “week” – really just Sunday through Wednesday – but quite a bit less to do than the previous rehearsal and performance period!
Our fourth concert was entitled ‘Hungarian Spice’, largely (in fact entirely) due to the presence of Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta on the program. It made an effective opener, featuring all the sections of the orchestra to great effect, and in particular the solo clarinet of Ben Lulich, whose instrument takes the role of story teller in this collection of local dances of the small Hungarian town of Galanta.
The middle of the concert was given over to two trumpet pieces, both featuring principal trumpeter Jeffrey Work. First up was the “Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto of trumpet concerti”, the Concerto in D E-flat major by Franz Joseph Haydn. Played on a Franken-trumpet which featured many lead pipe extensions and a coronet cornet mouthpiece (I’ll let Jeff explain in the comments if he wishes), Work gave a performance of ease and brilliance. After the intermission, Work returned to perform Georg Friedrich Händel’s Suite in D major for Trumpet and Strings, this time on a piccolo trumpet with 30 percent more valves. Again, Work proved his mettle in what could be a treacherous piece in the wrong hands. Sadly, Work did not provide the opening solo from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony either as part of his cadenza or as an encore. Perhaps next time.
The final work on the program was Stravinsky’s Suite from his ballet Pulcinella. A delightful work, which I’d only performed once before (and longer ago than I care to admit), it was a joy to perform. We were performing from Oregon Symphony parts, and it was a shock to note that the piece had not be performed by the OSO in Portland since 1982. Disgraceful! Highlights were members of the solo string quintet, particularly concertmaster Steven Moeckel and acting principal bass Jason Scholler; and trumpeter Charles Butler.
The closing concert of the 2013 Sunriver Festival featured Gold Medalist of the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Vadym Kholodenko. He performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, K. 467. Clearly, he has chops for days, but his sound tended to be strident and a bit dry. His self-composed cadenzas proved to be very imaginative, but verged on the overly long, and had some ill-considered modulations that, to my ears, sounded a bit anachronistic. His extended improvised encore began as Chopin, veered into Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, and did not know quite when to end. The age of the competition as a career maker is perhaps on the wane, if these are the results that come from major competitions these days.
Colin Jacobsen’s composition “Ascending Bird” opened the program with a bit of Eastern mysticism and loads of propulsive dance rhythms, and featured extended solos by concertmaster Steven Moeckel, principal second violin Corine Brouwer, and acting principal cellist Nadine Hall.
The closer to the entire festival was Beethoven’s sprawling Third Symphony ‘Eroica’. Lots of good things happened, and it was rapturously received by the audience. I can hardly wait to return next year!