Classical Month in Washington (September)

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Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

September 2, 2012 (Sun)
5:30 pm
Annapolis Symphony: Pops in the Park [FREE]
Quiet Waters Park

September 2, 2012 (Sun)
8 pm
NSO Labor Day Concert [FREE]
U.S. Capitol, West Lawn

September 4, 2012 (Tue)
6:45 pm
Opening of John Cage Centennial Festival
Corcoran Gallery of Art

September 5, 2012 (Wed)
12:10 pm
NGA New Music Ensemble [FREE]
John Cage Centennial Festival
National Gallery of Art

September 5, 2012 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Screening of A Tribute to John Cage by Nam June Paik [FREE]
Smithsonian American Art Museum

September 5, 2012 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Alexis Descharmes (cello)
With Irvine Arditti, Steven Schick, and Jenny Lin
John Cage Centennial Festival
La Maison Française
[Review]

September 6, 2012 (Thu)
12 to 4:30 pm
A Cage Film Circus [FREE]
John Cage Centennial Festival
Library of Congress

September 6, 2012 (Thu)
6 pm
Irvine Arditti, violin
John Cage Centennial Festival
Phillips Collection
[Review]

September 7, 2012 (Fri)
5:30 to 11 pm
Percussion Event
John Cage Centennial Festival
Katzen Arts Center, American University

September 8, 2012 (Sat)
2 pm
Stephen Drury, piano
John Cage Centennial Festival
Kreeger Museum
[Review]

September 8, 2012 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Irene Kim, piano
Korean Concert Society
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

September 8, 2012 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Margaret Leng Tan, piano and voice [FREE]
John Cage Centennial Festival
Freer Gallery of Art
[Review]

September 8, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Paul Taylor Dance Company
Clarice Smith Center
[Review]

September 9, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
Roger Reynolds, composer
John Cage Centennial Festival
National Gallery of Art

September 9, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
Smithsonian Chamber Players [FREE]
Smithsonian American Art Museum

September 9, 2012 (Sun)
5:15 pm
Jeremy Filsell, organ [FREE]
Washington National Cathedral

September 9, 2012 (Sun)
6:30 pm
NGA New Music Ensemble [FREE]
John Cage Centennial Festival
National Gallery of Art
[Review]

September 9, 2012 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Stylus Phantasticus: Early German Baroque Chamber Music
Corda Nova
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill

September 10, 2012 (Mon)
6 pm
J'nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano [FREE]
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

September 11, 2012 (Tue)
6 pm
Washington National Opera Insights: Don Giovanni [FREE]
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

September 14, 2012 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater
[Review]

September 15, 2012 (Sat)
6 pm
Washington National Opera Insights: Anna Bolena [FREE]
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

September 15, 2012 (Sat)
7 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
[Review]

September 15, 2012 (Sat)
8:30 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Gala Celebration Concert with Renée Fleming
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)
[Review]

September 16, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
Bellini, La Sonnambula
With Eglise Gutiérrez, Maureen McKay
Washington Concert Opera
[Review]

September 16, 2012 (Sun)
4 pm
Amadeus Orchestra
Music by Mendelssohn, Mahler, Vaughan Williams
St. Luke Catholic Church (McLean, Va.)

September 16, 2012 (Sun)
5:15 pm
Stephen Hamilton, organ [FREE]
Washington National Cathedral

September 18, 2012 (Tue)
7:30 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 20, 2012 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
[Review]

September 20, 2012 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Gil Shaham, violin
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 21, 2012 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 21, 2012 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Korean Adopted Children's Choir
ASIA, Inc.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

September 21, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Gil Shaham, violin
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 22, 2012 (Sat)
7 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 22, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Gil Shaham, violin
Music Center at Strathmore
[Review]

September 22, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra
Music by Adams, Zwilich, Bernstein
GMU Center for the Arts
[Review]

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
Washington Bach Consort
Music by Bach, Blow, Boyce, Gibbons, Handel
National Presbyterian Church
[Review]

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
4 pm
Nathan Gunn, baritone
Music by Mozart, Rossini, Sondheim
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
[Review]

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
5:15 pm
Corrado Cavalli, organ [FREE]
Washington National Cathedral

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
6:30 pm
NGA Chamber Players [FREE]
With Paul Kosower, cello
Music of J. S. Bach
National Gallery of Art

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
7 pm
Keyboard Conversations with Jeffrey Siegel
GMU Center for the Arts

September 23, 2012 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Joseph Kalichstein, piano
JCCGW

September 24, 2012 (Mon)
7 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 24, 2012 (Mon)
8 pm
Stravinsky,
L'Histoire du Soldat
With U.S. Army Band, UMd Chorus
Clarice Smith Center

September 26, 2012 (Wed)
12:10 pm
Barbara Kolarova, violin [FREE]
Czech Mutual Inspirations Festival
National Gallery of Art

September 26, 2012 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 27, 2012 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 28, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music by Adams, Brubeck, Bernstein
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)
[Review]

September 28, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
London: Music from the City of Shakespeare
Folger Consort, with Aaron Sheehan (tenor)
Folger Shakespeare Library
[Review]

September 28, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Annapolis Symphony
With Michael Roll, piano
Music by Mackey, Beethoven, Prokofiev
Maryland Hall (Annapolis, Md.)

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
5 and 8 pm
London: Music from the City of Shakespeare
Folger Consort, with Aaron Sheehan (tenor)
Folger Shakespeare Library
[Review]

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
5 pm
Haydn, Creation
WNC Choirs and Orchestra
Washington National Cathedral
[Review]

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
6 pm
Brian Patterson (clarinet) and Audrey Andrist (piano) [FREE]
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
7 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
[Opera in the Outfield simulcast]

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music by Adams, Brubeck, Bernstein
Music Center at Strathmore

September 29, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Annapolis Symphony
With Michael Roll, piano
Music by Mackey, Beethoven, Prokofiev
Maryland Hall (Annapolis, Md.)

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
Donizetti, Anna Bolena
With Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
London: Music from the City of Shakespeare
Folger Consort, with Aaron Sheehan (tenor)
Folger Shakespeare Library

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music by Adams, Brubeck, Bernstein
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
4 pm
Ars Nova Chamber Orchestra
Music by Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven
Church of the Epiphany

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
5:15 pm
Christopher Betts, organ [FREE]
Washington National Cathedral

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
6:30 pm
CUA Orchestra and Chorus [FREE]
Music of Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov
National Gallery of Art

September 30, 2012 (Sun)
7 pm
NSO Season Opening Ball
With Anne-Sophie Mutter
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
[Review]

Briefly Noted: Frederick the Great

Friedrich der Grosse: Music for the Berlin Court, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (released on March 13, 2012) HMC 902132 | 73'58"

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin would be at or near the top of my list of active early music ensembles in the world, were I interested in such lists. The group, playing on often finicky early instruments, produces a uniformly beautiful sound and rhythmically coordinated and vivacious ensemble that is as pleasing live -- last heard in 2005 at the Library of Congress -- as on disc. Their newest disc marks the tercentenary of Friedrich II, King of Prussia (1712-1786), with a selection of music by composers who resided at Friedrich der Große's brilliant, musically rich, and enlightened court in Berlin. At the center of the recording is one of the flute sonatas (no. 190 in C minor, "pour Potsdam") by the monarch himself, who was trained as a flutist and composer by Johann Joachim Quantz, pieces that all flutists play, including Mrs. Ionarts, which is how I came to know them, as her accompanist. This rather gorgeous version features the willowy traverso playing of Christoph Huntgeburth, with the ensemble's keyboard player, Raphael Alpermann, on fortepiano. Although the instrument is not listed in the booklet, Alpermann seems to use a janissary stop that engages a very soft cymbal stop as a rhythmic accent in this piece. (The sound may just be an artifact of the instrument's slightly clanging tone, but it came across on my excellent headphones only in the Friedrich sonata.)

Alpermann plays the solo of a harpsichord concerto by Christoph Nichelmann (1717-1762), somewhat incongruously but beautifully, on (the same?) fortepiano. It is a fine, fleet performance, led with alacrity by violinist Stephen Mai, with fluttery cadenzas. Two pieces by the prolific Johann Gottlieb Graun (1703-1771) are featured, starting with a brilliant, full-blooded ouverture (D minor, GraunWV A:XI:2), showcasing the ensemble's excellent woodwinds. Jan Freiheit takes the solo in Graun's viola da gamba concerto (A minor, GraunWV A:XIII:14) -- the program's most substantial piece of music, centered on this instrument already regarded as antiquarian -- with results that are gutsy but not as polished as could be (matching our impressions of when we heard him play as cello soloist with Concerto Köln at the Library of Congress this past spring). Perhaps the most famous composer at the Berlin court (the only major name left off this disc is Franz Benda), C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788), concludes this diverting disc, with the first of the Wq. 183 sinfonies, actually composed after he had left Berlin. The C.P.E. Bach symphonies are always enigmatic and opinion-altering pieces, certainly the case here right from the start, with the syncopated, repeated-note main theme of the first movement. (For another interesting perspective on this recording, see the comments on the album by Erik Dorset, one of the ensemble's violinists.)

Briefly Noted: Richard Jones

R. Jones, Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord, M. Meyerson (released on August 23, 2010) Glossa GCD 921805 | 112'21" [Listen to Excerpts] R. Jones, Chamber Airs for a Violin (and Thorough Bass), K.-M. Kentala, L. Pulakka, M. Meyerson (released on August 3, 2012) Glossa GCD921806 | 66'12" [Amazon.uk]

While researching an article for the Washington Post earlier this month, previewing the Westfield Center International Harpsichord Competition, one of the highlights was getting to know harpsichordist Mitzi Meyerson. She said something that was quoted in the article, asking about the study of the harpsichord, "Why would anyone want to study this dinosaur art?" The comment caused quite a stir, and not really in the way that Meyerson intended it, which was simply a variation of the conversation responsible music teachers have been having with their students since time immemorial: you must be crazy to want to make a living in music. She also contrasted the 70s and 80s, when she began her career and many discoveries remained to be made, as quite different from the atmosphere now. Happily, Meyerson is demonstrating that indeed there are still discoveries to be made, in her series of recordings for the Glossa label, bringing to our ears the lost sounds of obscure corners of the harpsichord repertory, including Gottlieb Muffat, Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, and Georg Böhm. Her last two discs have featured world recording premieres of pieces by the London violinist Richard Jones (d. 1744), first the complete Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord and now the same composer's set of eight sonatas for violin and basso continuo.

The six keyboard suites were published in the French music edition Le Pupitre, so not exactly unknown, but Meyerson worked from a copy of the original 1732 print ("It was simply too good to leave silent," Meyerson said in an interview for the new CD booklet). The music is extraordinarily pleasing to the ear, which makes one wonder how he could have been so utterly forgotten. We do not know much about him, except that he played with the Drury Lane Theater Orchestra, becoming its leader in 1730, and was held in high enough esteem as a player and teacher to merit a couple brief mentions by John Hawkins in A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, where he is called Dicky Jones. It is somewhat unusual for a violinist to have written such high-quality harpsichord pieces, albeit in a style that often seems to recall violin writing, and the sonatas for his primary instrument confirm his melodic invention, harmonic daring, and originality. Meyerson has partnered with violinist Kreeta-Maria Kentala and cellist Lauri Pulakka, a trio they have taken to calling the Jones Band, and the playing is vivid in tone but with some nice variation in the harpsichord registration. One can only hope that more of his music -- he is known to have composed masques and ballad operas for the stage -- will be recovered by some lucky musicologist toiling away in an obscure archive somewhere.

Briefly Noted: 'Tune Thy Musicke'

Tune Thy Musicke to Thy Hart, Stile Antico, Fretwork (released on February 14, 2012) HMU 807554 | 64'45"

We have been fans of the relatively new British choral ensemble Stile Antico for some time. Their recordings have all had the two qualities we cherish in early music recordings, unusual repertoire choices in top-notch performances. The group made a noteworthy Washington debut last year and, as noted in my Season Preview, will return next spring, this time in the superior acoustic of the Library of Congress. Their new recording stays with the sort of music that is their specialty, early English polyphony, sung here with a group of just twelve voices. The ensemble's harmonious balance and immaculate vowel unity and intonation are heard in many of these pieces, many of them well worth discovering -- Robert Ramsey's How Are the Mighty Fall'n, Thomas Tallis's Purge Me, O Lord, John Amner's A Stranger Here, Giovanni Croce's From Profound Centre of my Heart (an English-language adaptation of his six-part penitential psalm setting), John Dowland's I Shame at My Unworthiness, even Thomas Campion's simple part-song Never Weather-Beaten Sail. The two selections by Thomas Tomkins, O Praise the Lord and the heart-rending When David Heard, suffer just slightly from a slight stridency of tone that pushes the group's delicate balance off-kilter. The most substantial selection, John Browne's Jesu, Mercy, How May This Be?, is a little austere and monochromatic for its length, although it sets a rather lovely rhymed devotional text.

Stile Antico, quite admirably, goes a little off its well-beaten track by partnering here with the fine viol consort Fretwork, whose recordings we have also admired. This makes possible the inclusion of some verse anthems that combine instrumental parts for viols with solo lines -- John Amner's tender Christmas scene O Ye Little Flock, William Byrd's impassioned lament Why Do I Use My Paper, Ink and Pen? (a setting of Henry Walpole's response to having saintly blood spattered on his white doublet at the brutal execution of Catholic martyr Edmund Campion), and Orlando Gibbons's See, See, the Word Is Incarnate -- as well as three settings of the In Nomine counterpoint, for viols alone. These pieces are rarely enough heard, especially the anthems with viols, that these performances are well worth hearing. As sometimes happens with choral groups who are so perfectly balanced, the solo contributions are not necessarily as beautiful, with the exception of the gorgeous high tenor voice of Benedict Hymas in the Byrd piece, one of the more exceptional works in that extraordinary composer's catalog. With such beautiful music, one hardly needs a reason to program it, but the premise presented here is as good as any. These pieces were all composed for private devotion, that is, for groups of regular Christians in their homes -- !!!! -- rather than professional choristers in chapels. Have a listen and weep for the death of musical literacy.

In Brief: Back to School Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)

• Ivor Bolton conducts a rare revival of Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen, an opera by Peter Winter from 1798, at the Salzburg Festival. [France Musique]


• Listen to a recital by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at the Festival of La Roque d’Anthéron, with music by Beethoven and Chopin. [France Musique]


• Nicholas Angelich and Bertrand Chamayou join forces with the Sinfonia Varsovia for Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos, at the Festival of La Roque d’Anthéron. [France Musique]


• Another recital from the Festival of La Roque d’Anthéron features pianist Yuri Favorin playing Liszt and Schubert. [France Musique]


• Baritone Simon Keenlyside teams up with pianist Malcolm Martineau for a recital of Mahler, Duparc, Debussy, and more at the Edinburgh Festival. [France Musique]


• Live from the Proms, Marin Alsop conducts the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and pianist Nelson Freire, in music by Ginastera, Villa-Lobos, Copland, and others. [France Musique]


• Also from the Proms, Charles Dutoit conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with Benjamin Grosvenor as soloist. [France Musique]


• Violist Lawrence Power joins the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the baton of Susanna Mälkki, for music of Bartók and Prokofiev, from the Proms. [France Musique]


• At the Styriarte Festival in Graz, clarinetist Sharon Kam and pianist Stephan Kiefer perform a recital of music by Poulenc, Niels Gade, Berg, Brahms, and Bernstein. [France Musique]


• Ilan Volkov joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra to mark the John Cage centenary. [BBC Proms]


• Andrew Manze conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in symphonies by Ralph Vaughan Williams. [BBC Proms]


• The London Sinfonietta plays music by Ligeti, Berio, Xenakis, Harvey, Andriessen, and Cage. [BBC Proms]


• If you missed John Eliot Gardiner's performance of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Proms, listen to it now via Austrian radio. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to Riccardo Muti conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival, in music by Liszt and Berlioz's Messe Solennelle. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Alessandro de Marchi conducts a performance of Francesco Provenzale's opera La Stellidaura vendicante, at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Hear what Pinchas Zukerman sounds like these days, with his recital from the Salzburg Festival, playing violin in Brahms, Franck, and Schumann. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Some very good music by John Cage, the Sonatas and Interludes with pianist Markus Hinterhäuser. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The winners of the Westfield Center International Harpsichord Competition have been announced: Ignacio Prego, 1st prize ($7,500); Julia Ageyeva Hess, 2nd prize ($3,500); Stephen Gamboa, 3rd prize ($2,500); Sabina Chukurova and Ronan Khalil, Runners-up ($500 each); Audience prize: Ronan Khalil ($1,000). Congratulations to all involved! [Westfield Center]

For Your Consideration: 'Farewell, My Queen'

Benoît Jacquot's new film Farewell, My Queen came up last March, when it was released in France. Although it was released in the United States last month, I just managed to catch a screening of it, and it is as polished and beautiful as it seemed from what I had read in the French dailies and weeklies. On a screenplay adapted by Jacquot and Gilles Taurand from Chantal Thomas's novel Les adieux à la reine, winner of the Prix Femina in 2002, the film covers a few world-altering days at the court of Versailles on and after July 14, 1789. Within the space of a few hours, the most impressive edifice of architecture, autocratic power, and the false idol of custom is about to crumble. We see it mostly through the eyes of someone who matters very little, Sidonie Laborde, the mysterious young woman who is summoned periodically to share her love of books by reading to distract the Queen of France.

Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) stars as Marie-Antoinette, a casting so perfect that it is impossible to believe that Kruger never thought, as she claimed in an interview, that she would ever portray her. Speaking French immaculately but with just a hint of her German upbringing, a gentle reminder that Marie-Antoinette was Austrian by birth, Kruger is both an extraordinary beauty but also has the distracted, out-of-touch quality that made Marie-Antoinette so hated by the French populace. (Sadly, the Queen's hameau, the Disney-like peasant village where Marie-Antoinette pretended to be a milkmaid, does not make an appearance in the film.) The Queen's attachment to the Duchesse de Polignac, played as a rather empty but gorgeous face (and more) by Virginie Ledoyen, created resentment among the nobility and vicious lies about the sexual nature of her relationship with Marie-Antoinette, most likely false, caused scandal. In a sense, Jacquot and Kruger's Marie-Antoinette takes up from where Sofia Coppola's frivolous Marie-Antoinette left off, with a flawed but sympathetic character. For all of her follies, and they were many, no one deserved to go through what she and her children endured at the hands of bloodthirsty revolutionaries hellbent on revenge.

Other Reviews: New York Times | Los Angeles Times | Roger Ebert | Washington Post Wall Street Journal | NPR | Village Voice | Movie Review Intelligence

Léa Seydoux, who plays the Queen's lectrice, has had minor roles in Inglourious Basterds and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. As Sidonie, she proves that she is more than a pretty face -- and more than the scion of French cinema royalty (her grandfather and great-uncle are leaders of Pathé and Gaumont) -- bringing a sort of impenetrable enigma to the character, about whom little is revealed. Through Sidonie's interactions with the different social levels in the château, the other starring character, Versailles itself, is revealed -- in all of its restored glory. Sidonie runs through vast empty corridors to the Queen's apartments (on your next visit, time yourself walking from one end of the building to the other to understand the scope of the structure), wanders among the crowds of fawning nobles (most of whom have abandoned their own magnificent châteaux to live in small apartments, just for the chance to be near the king), visits the magnificent library (staffed by the kindly M. Moreau, played by Michel Robin in a Jean-Pierre Jeunet kind of casting), and makes the trek out to the Petit-Trianon, where Marie-Antoinette often stayed to get away from it all.

In the women-centered world where the film mostly resides -- with access scrupulously controlled by the Queen's maid (the deliciously supercilious Noémie Lvovsky), whose best one-liner sums up the social treachery of the place ("I have never had friends at Versailles") -- King Louis XVI (played laconically by Xavier Beauvois) and the levers of actual power seem far away. So much more so in the servants' kitchen and tiny room that Sidonie normally inhabits, a social order that becomes almost comically inverted over the space of a few days, as grand ladies begin to envy their chamber maids.

This film is still screening at the West End Cinema.

Westfield Competition, Final Round Set

Harpsichordist Sabina Chukurova

The final round is set for today's conclusion to the Westfield Center International Harpsichord Competition. At the end of the semifinal round on Thursday, the jury selected five competitors to play in the final round. There will be two sessions at the Clarice Smith Center today (2 to 5 pm, 7 to 9 pm). Audience members who attend both of them will be able to cast a vote to select the recipient of the $1,000 Audience Prize. The jury will award a First Prize ($7,500), Second Prize ($3,500), and Third Prize ($2,500).

I heard only two harpsichordists play in the competition so far, and only in the semifinal round. Both of them, heard on Thursday morning, have made it to the final round: Julia Ageyeva Hess (8 pm) from Estonia, and Sabina Chukurova (2 pm), born in Tajikistan but living in Berlin -- an excellent musician and a student of Mitzi Meyerson. Between them will be the only remaining American, Stephen Gamboa (3 pm), French harpsichordist Ronan Khalil (4 pm), and the Spaniard Ignacio Prego (7 pm). In the third round, all competitors are expected to play Frescobaldi's “Toccata Undecima” from the second book of toccatas, J. S. Bach's B-flat major partita (No. 1, BWV 825), and a selection of pieces from one of the Ordres in François Couperin's third or fourth book. For the final work, each must play specific works either by C. P. E. Bach or by Joseph Haydn. See the Westfield Competition site for more details. Especially because we cannot be there for the final round, we invite readers who hear the performances to add their comments here.

Notes from the 2012 Salzburg Festival ( 7 )

Salzburg contemporary 9

Amid the grumbling discontent about Alexander Pereira’s Salzburg commercial Culture-Olympics, several major and minor starry moments pop up. That’s hardly surprising: any festival so bent on presenting the biggest names and piling up sheer quality has got to register its share of hits.

Monday at the Mozarteum such a minor starry moment took place when the Zehetmair Quartet and Heinz Holliger (as oboist, composer, and concert programmer) performed the “Salzburg contemporary 9” concert. A program of Elliot Carter, Mozart, Holliger himself, his onetime student Gustav Friedrichsohn, and Robert Schumann took place before a meagerly filled hall. Good thing the “Youth! Arts! Science!” program of the pharmaceutical company Roche channeled exactly one-hundred students into the stalls which made them look filled; the balcony remained entirely empty.

E.Carter, Oboe Quartet, Figments 1 & 2 et al., H.Holliger, Zehetmair Quartet ECM

Mozart’s Oboe Quartet proved a lovely, lightly croaking amuse-gueule, incisively performed: a warm-up for the Elliot Carter’s in every way more challenging Oboe Quartet, which scrapes and cackles on stage in syncopated rhythms. It’s a coy, hectic work that Carter has written eleven years ago—at the sprightly age of 93—and dedicated to Holliger.

While Ruth Killius tuned her instrument for “Three Sketches for Violin and Viola”, Holliger took a chair, sat down at the edge of the stage and gave an impromptu Austrian premiere of Carter’s latest piece for oboe, the brief, lyric and melodic “Figment No.6”. “Because”, Holliger told the audience with an impish waggle of his head and his ingratiating Swiss accent, “it’s been written that contemporary music is taking such a back seat at this year’s Festival.”

Following the suggestive simplicity of Friedrichsohn’s “From Darkness on a Shadowed Path”, equally written for Thomas Zehetmair’s violin and Killius’ viola, came the Zehetmair Quartet’s specialty: Schumann. If only the First Quartet in A minor, or either of the other two quartets, were always performed with such panache and empathy, they wouldn’t suffer want from performers’ and listeners’ attention. Zehetmair & Co. moved Heinz Holliger’s Second String Quartet to the end of the evening, to give it pride of place. Dedicated to Carter, and riddled with very well hidden references to the great quartet composers that have become before Holliger (not that I discerned any, myself) it is an insistent work. The last movement, using double stops and humming on part of all four players, musters a blend of 12 musical lines that bring it to its otherworldly end.