Aspen – Some music festivals are summer venues for major orchestras, such as the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass., serving for decades as the home away from home for the esteemed Boston Symphony.
But audiences will not hear a professional symphony at the Aspen Music Festival. It has always taken a different approach to orchestral offerings, choosing to emphasize education.
The festival has five orchestras, all composed of students of varying ages and skill levels. Members of its music faculty lead most sections of the two most prominent ensembles, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Symphony.
These orchestras give the students invaluable experience, allowing them to train with top-level conductors, this summer including James Conlon, Neville Marriner and Leonard Slatkin, and be front and center in high-profile performances.
Naturally these groups cannot play on the level of the Boston Symphony, but they rise to the occasion in nearly every case, often delivering amazingly compelling concerts in which the students seem to transcend their still-formative abilities.
It is important to remember that while these musicians might be young, many possess extraordinary talent. Some of today’s top professionals are alumni of Aspen’s orchestras, including celebrated violinist Cho-Liang Lin, who once served as concertmaster of the Aspen Concert Orchestra.
Add in the sheer enthusiasm and excitement these students exude in tackling some of these works for the first time in conjunction with star soloists ranging from up-and-comer Julia Fischer to veteran percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and these concerts have plenty to offer.
A good example was Friday evening’s standing-room-only performance by the Aspen Concert Orchestra in the Benedict Music Tent. Michael Stern, an Aspen regular who was recently appointed music director of the Kansas City (Mo.) Symphony, was guest conductor.
The main attraction was the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, “The Red Violin,” by John Corigliano. He ranks right behind John Adams and Philip Glass among this country’s most respected and popular classical composers.
Significantly boosting his international recognition, Corigliano received an Academy Award in 2000 for his score to “The Red Violin,” a movie chronicling the international changes of ownership of a violin built in 17th-century Italy.
He later reworked the score into a four-movement concerto, which the Baltimore Symphony premiered in 2003 with conductor Marin Alsop and Joshua Bell, who also performed the solo violin parts for the film’s soundtrack.
The concert orchestra was augmented to 110 players, including five percussionists, for this concerto, which is sure to become one of the composer’s most frequently performed works. It takes listeners through incredibly varied, always fascinating musical topography, especially the second movement, with its huge, shifting contrasts in mood and feel.
The section begins with dialogues between the lone violin and the clarinet and other solo instruments in the orchestra. Then come rumbling basses, ominous brass, odd slides and big orchestral blasts, all interspersed with imaginative instrumental combinations.
Perhaps because his father was the New York Philharmonic’s concertmaster for more than 25 years, Corigliano displays an extraordinary understanding of the violin. He lovingly shows off its many facets: plaintive, lyrical writing in the second movement; dizzying passagework in the fourth; scratchy, slightly screechy effects elsewhere.
Bell brought it all to life with nuanced artistry, determined authority and spot-on intonation, displaying a technical mastery few violinists in the world could equal. He displays a deep, moving affinity for this music, connecting with its soulful core.
Rounding out Friday’s program was Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, “Enigma,” and a spirited version of Hector Berlioz’s overture, “Le corsaire.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
Joshua Bell, violinist; Frederic Chiu, pianist, and others
CHAMBER MUSIC|Strings in the Mountains Music Festival, Steamboat Springs, 7 p.m. Wednesday; Aspen Music Festival, Benedict Music Tent, 6 p.m. Thursday|$30, Steamboat Springs; $48 Aspen|Steamboat Springs, 970-879-5056, ext. 105, or stringsinthemountains.com; Aspen, 970-925-9042 or aspenmusicfestival.com.
Aspen Concert Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor
SYMPHONIC MUSIC|Aspen Music Festival, Benedict Music Tent;6 p.m. Aug. 17|$20|970-925-9042 or aspenmusicfestival.com.
