The Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado opened its 36th season on June 22, and runs until August 3rd. Each of the four visiting orchestras offer a week of concerts in Vail beginning this year with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and continuing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. I was in Vail as part of an Institute organized by the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) and heard three concerts by the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as well as other events. Vail is a breathtaking (double entendre alert! More about that later) alpine village, and the music-making was glorious.
The artistic director of Bravo! Vail is pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. She has led the festival since 2011, and it has become world-class in every respect. I don’t know, for instance, of another festival either in North America or in Europe that entices major orchestras to commit an entire week in one season, let alone year after year. One can hardly imagine the cost of having so many great orchestras in residence. Vail must have some of most generous donors anywhere.
Photo: Tom Cohen
It is Anne-Marie who makes it all happen. Anyone who spends any time at all in Vail knows that she is not only running the show but that she is the show much of the time. At this year’s festival she has already played Bach and Beethoven concertos with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and she will soon play the Mozart D minor piano concerto with the New York Philharmonic. During my visit she also gave a lecture-demonstration on Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6. With remarkable clarity, she outlined the piece’s construction, and tossed off the difficult bits as if they were nothing at all. In a few days together with pianists Anna Geniushene and Ilya Shmukler, they will perform all nine Prokofiev Piano Sonatas. In her spare time, Anne-Marie appears on stage at nearly every concert to introduce the artists and the music: a true dynamo, energizing everything that happens at Bravo! Vail.
Speaking of dynamos, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin seems to be everywhere at once – this summer surpassing even himself. Before arriving in Vail, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in its annual outdoor concert at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and led the MET Orchestra on a European tour. Most recently, he spent two weeks in Baden-Baden in residency with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This year, Brahms was featured, and together they completed recordings of the symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon. Two days after he left Baden-Baden, he was in Vail with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducting a program that included the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Hilary Hahn, and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3.
Hilary and Yannick
It has been many years since I last heard Hilary Hahn live in concert. I had forgotten what a stellar artist she is. On this occasion, together with Yannick and a razor-sharp accompaniment from the Philadelphia Orchestra, she gave us a fresh and exciting performance of the Tchaikovsky with beautiful tone, thoughtful phrasing and technical command. Together, she and Yannick often threw caution to the winds with hairpin turns and daring accelerandi.
After intermission Yannick continued his advocacy for Florence Price (1887-1953) whose music had been all but forgotten until it was suddenly rediscovered a few years ago. Yannick and the Philadelphians have recorded her First and Third symphonies (DG) and her two violin concertos (Decca). In 1933 Price’s Symphony No. 1 was premiered by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony, the first symphonic work by an African-American woman ever performed by a major American orchestra. Her Symphony No. 3 dates from 1940 and is a more ambitious work. Like the First Symphony, it draws on African-American spirituals and dance music, but is more complex in its development of thematic ideas, while also incorporating elements of music from the Caribbean. All in all, it is a substantial and entertaining piece and Yannick and the Philadelphia Orchestra played it with total conviction, and the capacity audience seemed to enjoy it too.
Yannick and Rachmaninov
The Philadelphia Orchestra has long been associated with the music of Rachmaninov. As piano soloist, Rachmaninov recorded all his concertos with the orchestra between 1924 and 1941, as well as many of his orchestral works. His Symphonic Dances were premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra (to whom the work is dedicated) in 1941, conducted by Eugene Ormandy. In recent years, Yannick and the Philadelphians have made the music of Rachmaninov central to their repertoire. They have recorded all the piano concertos with Daniil Trifonov (DG) and just finished recording virtually all of his orchestral works (DG). The orchestra’s upcoming European tour will feature several all-Rachmaninov concerts. This past January, Yuja Wang played all four Rachmaninov piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in one concert at Carnegie Hall with Yannick and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Photo: Tom Cohen
At the Bravo! Vail concert on July 13, Yannick and the Philadelphians played two Rachmaninov works: the Symphonic Dances and the Piano Concerto No. 2, with 2021 Chopin Competition winner Bruce Liu. Also on the program was Jennifer Higdon’s brief Fanfare Ritmico, a rip-roaring, percussion-dominant opener. The Symphonic Dances were the meat of the concert, surely one of the composer’s greatest works. Yannick and the orchestra gave it the finest reading I have ever heard. The first movement contains one of the most beautiful melodies one could ever hope to hear, and Yannick shaped it with extraordinary sensitivity. The playing of the Philadelphia strings recalled the glory days of Stokowski and Ormandy, soaring to breathtaking heights. As the work unfolds, its melancholy prevails and the music grows darker. Both conductor and orchestra anticipated changes in mood perfectly and rendered the myriad orchestral colours with impeccable artistry.
Yannick and the orchestra were also outstanding in the Piano Concerto No. 2. Although Bruce Liu played the notes with impressive accuracy, his performance was stiff and dispassionate. His sound seemed lightweight for the piece. I wondered if this is really his repertoire, and whether perhaps he is either more at home in Chopin, or he was simply getting to know the piece. He is scheduled for two more performances of the concerto with Yannick conducting later this summer and fall.
The Mozart Requiem in Vail
On Friday evening, the orchestra and its music director made their final appearances at Bravo! Vail with a program that featured the Mozart Requiem. The Mozart was preceded by a new work by Anna Clyne, a composer born in Scotland who has spent most of her career in the United States. The piece is called This Moment and was inspired by the words of the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh: “This moment is full of wonders.” The piece draws on musical ideas from the Mozart Requiem, making it, perhaps, a suitable companion piece on a program featuring the Requiem. While Clyne has shown considerable mastery in previous works, I did not get much out of this one. The Mozart quotations would have been all but undetectable to a general audience and therefore did little to connect the piece to the Requiem. What’s more, the banality of the quotation which apparently inspired the piece hardly lends itself to meaningful expression in music. What sounded like five minutes of rumbling and dark orchestral colours failed to convey much of anything to this listener.
Photo: Tom Cohen
With his interpretation of the Mozart Requiem, Yannick called to mind his early days in Montreal, spent conducting choirs and small orchestras in baroque and classical works. He does it all now, but still has a great affinity for this musical style. Using the Beyer Edition – similar to the traditional Süssmayr edition – Yannick conducted a deeply-felt and precisely-executed performance. There were some historically informed elements – limited use of string vibrato, for example – but Karajan, Böhm or Giulini would have recognized his approach as not unlike their own. The soloists were almost ideal: soprano Rosa Feola, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, Issachah Savage, tenor, and Kyle Ketelson, bass baritone. I heard Mr. Ketelson just a few weeks ago in Chicago, in equally fine form in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis conducted by Riccardo Muti. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus prepared by Duain Wolfe was impressive too with firm tone, good balance and precise entries.
Next season, Yannick and the Philadelphia Orchestra will return to Vail and present – among other things – two performances of Puccini’s La Bohème in a fully-staged version.
Chamber Music in Vail
While orchestral concerts dominate Bravo! Vail there are other musical attractions, ranging from programs for children – “Little Concerts” – to chamber music. During my visit, I heard a terrific concert by the Dalí Quartet and clarinetist Ricardo Morales, principal clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The centerpiece was Weber’s Clarinet Quintet, presented in a virtuoso performance. Morales offered remarkable technical dexterity. and a level of control over tone and dynamics that was a veritable master class on his instrument. The Dalí Quartet matched him every step of the way – perhaps it helped that his brother Jesús Morales was the cellist of the quartet. As part of its mission, the quartet champions Latin American music. On the program were String Quartet No. 2 by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, Tango Ballet by Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola, and Preludio y Merengue by Cuban composer Paquito D’Rivera. The Dalí Quartet opened the concert with Haydn’s Op. 20 No. 5. It was a challenging but entertaining program, played superbly.
Vail is not the easiest place in the world to get to: it’s a 2-hour car or bus ride from Denver Airport, and at an altitude of 2,445 meters (8,000 ft) the geography risks causing breathing and sleeping problems for new arrivals. With spectacular mountain vistas, an ersatz alpine village, an ideal climate – warm in the daytime and cool at night – and a festival that achieves musical excellence night in and night out, though, this should not be a deterrent. Although hotels and restaurants are pricey, as one might expect in such an affluent destination, ticket prices are fairly reasonable, unlike at Salzburg or Bayreuth.
Yannick will be bringing the Philadelphia Orchestra to both Montreal (April 19) and Toronto (April 17) next season with a program to include Florence Price’s Symphony No. 4 and Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2. Not to be missed. If you can get to Vail next summer to hear them in even more performances, though, even better!
