Aspen Music Festival (14): Fletcher world premiere; Apollo's Fire. 17.08.2006 (HS)



Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival, considers himself a composer first. In his first season in Aspen, he waited until the final week and the lightly attended Monday night artist faculty chamber music concert in the Tent to slip in one of his own compositions. He needn't be so shy. His piano trio, Dreams of Rain, made a strong impression. My guess is that this is one living composer who will be invited back for more, and deservedly so.

The piece, completed in 2000 while Fletcher was summering in Costa Rica, evokes the sound but even more the feeling of a lazy tropical mountain day of rain, sleep and memories of the recent past. The four movements are tinged with the colors if not the beat of Latin-American music. The musical language is tonal, dissonances tend to be soft, and Fletcher is not afraid to write a pretty sequence in contrast to something harsher. The delicately etched sounds of the scherzo and the finale invoke the strongest feelings, precisely because of their fragile qualities.

Pianist Antoinette Perry had the most to do, not surprisingly as Fletcher's instrument is piano. Violinist Herb Greenberg and cellist Anthony Elliott matched up beautifully in the soft duet writing.

Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland-based baroque ensemble, played two concerts in Harris Hall this week. The group of 14 musicians, mostly strings plus conductor Jeanette Sorel on harpsichord and two recorder and flute players, has been getting raves for its on-stage enthusiasm and period-instrument chops. In this they didn't disappoint, but the concert I heard was the more casual affair Wednesday titled "Music From Zimmerman's Coffee House," and there was little music for them to seek their teeth into. (I was at Albert Herring for Tuesday's concert featuring some of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos.)

In the 1720s, Bach organized programs of music by his favorites, including Telemann and Vivaldi, at the coffee house, and even wrote the parody "Coffee Cantata" for one of them. That vocal work proved to be the highlight of the evening. Soprano Rebekah Camm from the Opera Theater Center got into the spirit of things. With her accurate coloratura and bubbly stage presence, she stole the show portraying a young woman hooked on coffee. (And this was centuries before Starbuck's, Ink or Zele.) Tenor Thorsteinn Árbjörnsson and baritone Ted Huffman were only a step behind.

Jeanette Sorel is an active conductor, swaying and gesturing broadly from the harpsichord. Playing on baroque instruments, which produce less sound, the musicians could dig into their music without fear of overdoing it. The results had plenty of verve, especially David Greenberg's solos on violin and Michael Lynne's on transverse flute and recorder.

 

 

Harvey Steiman