|
|
||||||
|
Aspen Music Festival & School |
||||||
     On the strength of colleague Basil Hyman’s powerful endorsement on these pages, my wife Alice and I, and friends Ray and Nancy Treiger, ventured to Aspen, Colorado last summer to avail ourselves of the pristine beauty which Basil so richly described, as well as the manifold musical events and master classes evidenced in its famed music festival. As a paid subscriber to the NY Philharmonic for more than 45 years, I admit, it’s discouraging to see audiences comprised in large part by graybeards like me. But before we sound the death knell of classical music, if you are as addictive to symphony and opera as I, please give yourselves a birthday or anniversary gift the summer of ‘05, save your frequent flyer mileage, head to Aspen, Colorado for a week. Here you will discover the present and future face of serious music and opera as exemplified by 20-year-old Lexi Preucil, a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music, whom we met on the campus of the Aspen Music School. Ms. Preucil’s DNA for violin-playing comes from her father William, Concertmaster for the fabled Cleveland Orchestra and a member of the faculty of CIM. From Aspen we would go on to Beaver Creek Colorado. Our five days in Aspen were so exhilarating, that at such time as we replicate the trip, which we fully intend doing, we would devote the entire stay to the Festival. Not even the triple whammy of a head cold, pink eye and clogged ear, coincident to our 2 ½ mile gondola ascent up the 11,200 ft. Aspen Mountain, could dampen my unabashed enthusiasm and highest “Travel Dependability” (TD) Rating. Thanks are in order to Laura Smith and Heather St. George of the Aspen Music Festival, Stefanie Powers of the Wheeler Opera House, Nancy Thorpe of The Aspen Institute, Connie Hamlin of Hotel Lenado, Mary Yuthas of Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort, Claire Segal of The Segal Company, and Dr. Karl Neumann, distinguished pediatrician and Executive Editor of the authoritative newsletter, Traveling Healthy who advised us on “Coping with Altitude.” Finally, gratitude to Doctors Gwen Korovin and Ken Barasch who provided TLC via cell phone. New York Philharmonic Hornmeister Jerome Ashby shows a young student how to get down to brass attacks with a challenging horn solo from Beethoven’s Seventh. “Great as the instrument is, there are two fears, out there,” he candidly acknowledged, “losing your lip and losing some of your hearing.” Horn Master Class
Scheherazade     American Academy of Conducting Orchestra Dress Rehearsal Music Director, David Zinman Guest Conductor-teacher Michael Stern The Benedict Music Tent Gillespie St., Betw. 4 th & 5 th Sts. There it was on the calendar, a 4 o’clock performance of Scheherazade, to be performed by Aspen Music School students and led by future music directors of who knows where? One of the Big Five or an exemplary regional orchestra like the Houston, the St. Louis, the Indianapolis? Unfortunately we expected to be half-way to Beaver Creek at that time. Lexi Preucil to the rescue. “Why not come to the dress rehearsal at 9 a.m.?,” she suggested. “You might even find it more interesting.” Indeed we did. What made this familiar orchestral suite so refreshingly innovative, was having four separate student conductors lead each of the four movements, with the distinguished, sought-after young American conductor Michael Stern, providing his counsel. To my untutored ears, the acoustics of the tent were resonant and true and the youthful performers were other-worldly in their impassioned playing.
Soloists and dramatic performers John Rubenstein and Michael York (center stage: fourth and fifth from the left) take a bow, as Murray Sidlin (extreme stage left) applauds with the “Standing O” audience. Shostakovich:Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 47 Aspen Festival Orchestra A Concert Drama From “Testimony,” This titanic symphony was given a bravura performance by the formidable 95-piece orchestra, comprised mostly of music students and sprinkled with such accomplished veterans as Eugene Levinson, Principal Bassist of the NY Philharmonic. Written in 1937, its beauty, integrity and unvarnished originality have helped propel the composer to ever-greater critical acclaim as we approach the centenary of his birth. Actor Michael York succeeded admirably as the enigmatic Shostakovich who is conflicted by his own chauvinism and Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical excesses. John Rubinstein (himself a composer) as Stalin was strident and indulged in unnecessary bits of stage business. The most priceless interval of the afternoon was York as Shostakovich describing Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s 1959 appearance in the Soviet Union. While rehearsing the fourth movement, Maestro Bernstein suddenly turned from the podium and had the chutzpah to say to the composer, “Dimitri, it’s much too slow. It needs a much faster tempo … like this.” Shostakovich describes his initial distaste for this brazen approach, given that the lingering passages were meant to parody the militancy of the Stalin regime. However, succumbing to the super salesman in Bernstein, the composer admitted, “You know, it’s not bad.” And that’s the way Bernstein recorded it. As for Conductor Sidlin, he finished the piece with a literal reading of Shostakovich’s slower paced notes and chords. The crowd stood on its feet, Sidlin turned to the audience, exhorted his players to stand, and exited the stage. Coming back to take a bow, Sidlin suddenly mounted to the podium, raised his baton and led the orchestra in a repeat of the Fourth Movement. Well, not exactly a repeat, it was the Bernstein version. The crowd erupted in cataclysms of applause. It was a memorable moment, akin to a triple play and no-hitter in the same ballgame.
Ryan McKinny as Dr. Miracle and Marti Newland as Antonia in Act III Trio and Finale of Offenbach’s Les Contes D’Hoffman . Photographed in The Historic Wheeler Opera House. Built in 1889, Aspen, Colorado.
Norman Reinhardt as Alfredo and Jung-A Lee as Violetta in Act III Duet of Verdi’s La Traviata.
Andrew Whitfield (left) as Ferrando and Jake Alrich as Guglielmo, Angela Fout as Fiordiligi in Act I of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. Opera Scenes Master Class Director Edward Berkeley The Wheeler Opera House is an exquisitely-restored Victorian 489-seat theatre used for the Aspen Music Festival’s fully staged opera productions. The sightlines are remarkable and the acoustics first-rate. This was the first Opera Master Class I ever experienced and it was a joyous experience, given the vocal talents and dramatic execution of the young students, some of whom we bumped into waiting or bussing at Main Street restaurants during our stay. It took some doing, but I secured permission to take some unobtrusive photos (sans flash) from my seat. The bountiful feast of arias came from such treasures as The Marriage of Figaro, Tales of Hoffman, La Traviata and Massenet’s Cendrillon (another variation on the Cinderella story). The highlight for me was an overpoweringly gorgeous trio from Les Contes D’Hoffman, with Marti Newland as Antonia, Justyna DiBiaggio as Antonia’s deceased mother, and as the sinister Dr. Miracle, Basso Ryan McKinny, for whom I predict stardom. The engaging Edward Berkeley, long time faculty member of Juilliard, standing stage left and the erudite George Manahan, seated in the first row behind the orchestra pit were incisive, generous in their praise and gentle in their criticisms. Tickets are unreserved, so get on line at least an hour before the 10 A. M. start. You’ll count it among your most treasured memories. A Conversation with The Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor The Aspen Institute
In terms of her recent opinions, there was little revealing during the afternoon’s “conversation” about Associate Justice O'Connor’s philosophical posture on The Court, nor did Isaacson, president and CEO of The Aspen Institute (and author of a new biography on Benjamin Franklin) probe very hard. Clearly, O'Connor has emerged from the shadow of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the Court's conservative bloc as a coalition-builder with decisions that are pragmatic, centrist and refreshingly revealing in their logic (e.g. "It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren," she opined in a debate about school prayer.) Forbes Magazine regards her as the sixth most influential U. S. woman from among 100 leading lights. Anecdotally, she charmed an attentive audience with her winning recollections of life on her parents’ Lazy B cattle ranch in Arizona, meeting her future husband John Jay O’Connor, a fellow student at Stanford Law School, and despite graduating third in her class (Rehnquist was No. 1) her only offer was for a position as legal secretary. At the time, 2% of the students were women, vs. 55% today. Prior to being tapped by President Reagan to replace retiring Justice Potter Stewart, she became the first woman majority leader in a state senate in the country, and was on the Arizona Court of Appeals. Aspen Outdoor Arts
Painter/sculptor and arts patron Rita Blitt, peers out from behind one of her inventive abstract sculptures on the lawn of the home she shares with shopping center executive and philanthropist Irwin Blitt in the exclusive Red Mountain section of Aspen. Her works grace the grounds of the Aspen Music Festival and many museums (www.ritablitt.com) The Blitts underwrote the Scheherazade concert, which we heard in rehearsal and were consummate luncheon hosts to Nancy and Ray (a former business collaborator of Irwin) and Alice and me.
In 2003, this giant chrome buffalo took up residence in Rio Grande Park, across from the John Denver Sanctuary. "Chrome on the Range," by 87-year-old Aspenite Lou Wille, is made entirely of bumpers from Cadillacs built between 1955 and 1965. It stands nine feet high at the shoulder and weighs more than a ton. Aspen Outdoor Artistry
Lest you think, we devoted ourselves entirely to the performing and visual arts, here is evidence to the contrary. We took the Silver Queen Gondola to the top of Ajax Mountain at 11,212 feet which I would heartily recommend to each of you – unless you can handle the altitude OR unless you have a head cold (which I had, and which affected my Eustachian Tubes, rendering me grounded at 8,000-plus feet for the remainder of the trip). The Treigers diligently followed the counsel outlined by Basil Hyman in his engrossing “Welcome to Aspen” write-up on these pages. Click here: From the Golden Gate to the Aspens Review. I came this close to giving this “find” of a hotel five TD’s instead of four. The only thing it lacks is a swimming pool, an amenity our aquatic friend Nancy Treiger generally regards as de rigueur. But even that omission did not curb our enthusiasm for a bed-and-breakfast (with but 19 rooms) that truly has everything including location (just one block from Main Street) and a free shuttle bus stop, walking distance to most restaurants, spanking clean and charmingly decorated rooms, an attentive multi-talented young staff – and by Aspen standards - moderate daily rates that include a full breakfast. Each room is appointed with a four-poster hickory or carved applewood bed, Bose Wave Radio/CD player, TV, down comforter, terry robes and private balcony. It also has a communal hot tub. Kudos to my sister Claire Segal (an Aspen Music Festival regular), who touted us on the place, just as we were temperamentally willing to pay nearly twice as much at the heralded Hotel Jerome. Special praise to Concierge Allina C. Robertson, an eloquent young bibliophile, who personally picked up two copies of the New York Times for us each morning, Chef Kyle McClernon who made the most delectable pancakes we ever tasted. After threatening to accuse him of watering the ketchup, he grudgingly admitted that this was not a recipe he invented, it was Krusteaz© Buttermilk Pancake Mix to which he did indeed add “a little extra water.” A product of Seattle, for some unfathomable reason you cannot find it at retail in the entire Metropolitan Area, but after some sleuthing I found you can order it directly from My Brands, Inc. at https://www.mybrandsinc.com/shoponline/ShoppingCart.asp?t=1. Alice Drucker (left) and Nancy and Ray Treiger started off each morning with breakfast on the Hotel Lenado outdoor deck. Dining in Aspen Cache Cache
Main Street Bakery With a tinge of regret that we had left Aspen perhaps a day or two too soon, but with the delights of the Scheherazade rehearsal lingering in our psyche, we headed in our Hertz rental car on Route 82 west – with a brief stop at Snowmass (tacky town) and on to I-70 east a bi-level highway that snakes through Glenwood Canyon, criss-crosses over the Colorado River, tunneling through massive rock formations. The jagged Rocky Mountains shoot upward almost engulfing you as you drive along . It is an astonishing feat of architecture through imposing terrain. After 86 miles on the odometer, we arrived at the Avon Colorado exit where the Beaver Creek complex awaited us. Beaver Creek Village Beaver Creek has neither the charm nor gravitas of Aspen. Serious hiking or casual nature walking is all but non-existent, save for eyeballing the architectural excesses of the various ski resorts, lodges and condos proliferating this faux village.
Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa VAIL
A funny thing happened while I was in the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek steam room. A gentleman from Nebraska told me that Sweet Basil, a restaurant in Vail was so good, he’d been there three times. “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “What does a guy from Omaha know about good food? Well I’ve been to New York’s top restaurants, and this one is as good as it gets.” The only Sweet Basil I’d ever heard of, was a Manhattan jazz club that closed a few years ago. But I thought, what the heck. Let’s give it a try. We liked it so much we tried it the very next night.
Sweet Basil
Betty Ford Alpine Gardens Would I make a special trip to Vail to view these gardens which are vest-pocket sized compared to the Brooklyn or New York Botanical Gardens or Delaware’s magnificent Longwood Gardens? Well, no – but if you’re heading to Vail anyway, for dinner or to catch a ballet or symphony at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater. It’s a pleasant and tolerable interlude. |
