GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

“Sweeney Todd:” The name sends shivers down the spines of those familiar with the story of the murderous barber, whose customers become meat pies sold just below his shop. But there is much more to the story of Sweeney Todd. There is horror, there is humor, and there is romance.

“All the characters in Sweeney are actually looking for love, and the way they try to find it becomes twisted be-cause of the world they live in,” says Edward Berkeley, long-time director for the Aspen Opera Theater Center (AOTC), which is part of the Aspen Mu-sic Festival and School (AMFS).

The AOTC will perform Ste-phen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Berkeley, on Thursday, July 26; Saturday, July 28; and Monday, July 30, at the Wheeler Opera House. The opening performance at 8 pm is part of the AMFS’s annual black-tie opera gala, and all other performances start at 7 pm.

Sweeney Todd tells the tale of Benjamin Barker, a wrong-ly imprisoned man who now returns to London. With the help of a besotted pie maker, Mrs. Lovett, Barker, now known as Sweeney Todd, opens a barbershop where his customers are killed and baked into pies. It is Barker’s way of seeking justice in a world that has wronged him, yet it leads him down a gruesome path he never imag-ined and eventually spirals out of control. The opera takes place during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nine-teenth century.

“There’s hunger; there’s unemployment; there are a lot

of people struggling just to survive and in the midst of that, a lot of them are looking to connect and find love with someone,” Berkeley says. “Because of how difficult it is to do that, they become demented and desperate as people. That is what leads the piece to becoming so dark.”

There is no character who better embodies this mental-ity than the desperate Mrs. Lovett, played by Stephanie Sadownik, who is currently pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Southern California. This is Sadownik's fourth summer with the AOTC.

Mrs. Lovett is a widowed pie maker who has harbored a love for Sweeney Todd since he was banished from London fifteen years before the opera takes place. Sadownik says Mrs. Lovett’s loneliness and unrequited love make her will-ing to do “literally anything.”

“Out of necessity and out of coincidence, Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett become mur-derers and promulgate canni-balism, but she really is some-

one who doesn’t have malice to start off with,” Sadownik says. “It just happens as a consequence of circumstances.”

Sadownik says the opera is more than a horror story, with themes that are relevant even today.

“What a man can do to another man in desperate times and when they have been downtrodden all their life—that is an overarching morality that can be seen in the story,” Sadownik says. “It’s harder to be an altruistic person at that point. When you have been treated unkindly your en-tire life, it’s much easier to be unkind, rather than turn the other cheek.”

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Brahms waited twenty years after writing his Piano Concerto No. 1 to start the second, and the composer himself premiered the tremendous work—four move-ments compared to the typical three of the Classical and Romantic periods—in 1881. It was an immediate success.

Israeli pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major at 4 pm this Sun-day, July 29, with the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) in the Benedict Music Tent.

Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is so difficult, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) vice-president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, Asadour Santourian, says that Bronfman is one of the few pia-nists he would even ask to play it.

“The Brahms Second, the work itself, is more sym-phonic than the traditional concerto relationship of solo instrument to orchestra,” Santourian says. “This obbli-gato, featured instrument is much more a part of the texture of the orchestra than in dialogue with the or-chestra, so in order to be heard, you need a titan to

really speak the part.”Santourian notes that Bronfman is capable of being

both audible and sensitive.“Yefim Bronfman can make a very, very big-boned

sound, and it is always warm, and it is always elegant, and it is always idiomatically correct, so regardless of the demands of this great, symphonic work, he’s able to be the protagonist of the piece and come through the orchestral sound,” Santourian says. “He dares to tread where angels fear to tread.”

Bronfman, an Avery Fisher Prize and Gram-my Award winner, has performed all over Europe, and he recently played Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the orchestras of Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. But even the virtuosic pianist says playing Brahms No. 2 is no small task.

“Everything is difficult about this piece,” he says. “It’s one of these monsters that are very difficult to contain, but I do the best I can. It’s like a journey. You go, but you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s full of surprises, but you hope to make it where you want to go.”

Supplement to The Aspen Times Vol 23, No. 6

Edward Berkeley, longtime director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center, is directing the AOTC's production of Sweeney Todd and has set it inside an insane asylum, as a play within a play. Performances are on July 26, 28, and 30 at the Wheeler Opera House.

AOTC Performs Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd

Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Yefim Bronfman will play Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 at 4 pm this Sunday, July 29, in the Benedict Music Tent.

PHOTO BY DARIO ACOSTA

All the characters in Sweeney are actually looking for love, and the way they try to find

it becomes twisted because of the world they live in.

Edward BerkeleyAOTC Director

FESTIVAL FOCUS

Bronfman Plays Brahms’s Concerto No. 2

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Monday, July 23, 2012

See BRONFMAN Festival Focus page 3

See SWEENEY TODD Festival Focus page 3

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Page 2 | Monday, July 23, 2012 FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide Supplement to The Aspen Times

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Joaquin Valdepeñas, the principal clarinetist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and an Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artist-faculty member since 1984, wanted to play the trumpet when it was time to select a band instrument in seventh grade. But the students were called alphabetically, and all the trumpets were gone by the time his name was called. He ended up holding a clarinet.

Valdepeñas liked being involved in band from the start, sticking with it even after his two best friends quit. But every June, he would return the clarinet he borrowed from the school and not play until September. Valdepeñas did not have the luxury of private lessons. At the beginning of the year, he would relearn how to play and work his way up from the back of the section, but he was never principal chair in high school. He didn’t consider becoming a musician when he started college at California State University at Fullerton.

“I didn’t come from a musical family, so I didn’t know that you could have a life in music,” Valdepeñas says. “I was accepted to be in the music program as an undeclared major, so I was given a half hour lesson a week. I was just really blessed that I had, for five years, the most amazing clarinet teacher. It just happened that way, like the clarinet choosing me.”

His teacher was Kalman Bloch, the principal clarinetist

for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the inspiration Valdepeñas needed to drop the business classes—the only ones in which he got Ds instead of As—and become a music major.

“It became clear very quickly to me that I needed to play music,” Valdepeñas says. “I loved it, and my mother was very supportive, as long as I was doing what made me happy.”

Valdepeñas says he used to practice all day long during the summer, to catch up on starting lessons so late. Block encouraged Valdepeñas to come to the AMFS, where he auditioned with thirty-five clarinet students

from top conservatories around the country, and came out on top.

“That’s when my eyes opened up and I thought, you know, if I love doing this, I can do this,” Valdepeñas says. “That was a pivotal point for me.”

Valdepeñas attended the Festival again as a fellowship student in 1978 and 1979.

After his second year at Yale University for graduate school, he was offered the position he still holds at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as principal clarinetist. Valdepeñas plays in the Grammy-nominated Artists of the Royal Conservatory (ARC) Ensemble, and he is on faculty at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto.

Valdepeñas’s students frequently win auditions for major orchestras, and many come to the Festival to continue studying with him in the summer.

“The way he teaches his students to use the air, and give careful attention to the beauty of sound, has changed me as a player,” says Jae-Won Kim, an American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA) fellowship student who has been studying with Valdepeñas for three years at the Glenn Gould School.

Connecting with young people comes easily for Valdepeñas.

Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Artist-Faculty Valdepeñas Says the Clarinet Chose Him

It became clear very quickly to me that I

needed to play music.

Joaquin ValdepeñasAMFS Artist-Faculty

See VALDEPEÑAS Festival Focus page 3

Joaquin Valdepeñas is principal clarinetist with the Aspen Festival Orchestra, which performs at 4 pm Sundays in the Tent.

PHOTO BY SIAN RICHARDS

Monday, July 23, 2012 | Page 3Supplement to The Aspen Times FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Berkeley has set the opera as a play within a play, in which the cast of AOTC stu-dents act as inmates putting on a production of Sweeney Todd in their asylum. Sad-ownik says this adds an additional dimension to the work.

“These are people who’ve been tortured and mistreated and neglected, and the people coming to see the show have no idea,” Sadownik says. “It shines a spotlight on those who don’t have a voice for themselves.”

Sweeney Todd's music is full of the wit and humor that characterize American musi-cal theater, as is fitting for the AMFS 2012 season theme: "Made in America." But the work is also performed in opera houses all over Europe and the United States.

“It’s practically through-composed,” Berkeley says. “There is dialogue, but it’s more sung, and it’s a complex score. A lot of the roles require singing that is more opera than musical theater.”

Sadownik says her role in the opera is one of the most demanding she has played to date, but the challenge is how the Festival helps her grow.

“The great thing about Aspen is that people like Ed Berkeley and the music staff are incredibly supportive,” Sadownik says. “It’s a very cultivating environment, which is why I have come back for four years. That’s why a lot of people come back. They can take risks and be brave, and they know that they can step off the cliff and people will be there to support them.”

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Pianist Joyce Yang was nine years old and practicing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 when an extraordinary feeling came over her. She describes a sensation as if the music had begun to dance around her on its own, no longer the product of her hands.

“In the midst of the practice session, I stopped playing and suddenly felt like I heard something for the first time,” Yang says. “This is the piece that caught me. My hands could create something beautiful, and it connected with my ears. It was this incredibly ecstatic moment for me. It was my glimpse of beauty that I knew I could only get if I really put every filament of my energy into it.”

Yang, now twenty-six, still remembers the experience vividly. Though she moved on to other repertoire a few months later, she started relearning the piece last year and will perform the concerto at 6 pm Friday, July 27, in the Benedict Music Tent, with the Aspen Chamber Symphony (ACS). The concert is part of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS).

Yang was a student at the AMFS in 2004, at the age of eighteen, and she won the Silver Medal at the Van Cliburn International Competition in 2005. She has returned to the Festival as a guest artist every year since and maintains a constant performing schedule with orchestras around the world. She received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2010.

People often ask Yang when she knew she wanted to be a musician, and she says her experience with Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto is part of the answer.

“This moment, discovering I could turn what I’m doing into something beautiful, it was a big realization,” she says. “It was a moment where music became something I could not be without. It was the instant high for that few seconds I remember, and it’s been a love affair since then.”

Though published second, the Concerto No. 2 was the first piano concerto Beethoven wrote, and it reflects the orderly and elegant style of the Classical Era more than his later concertos, says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor.

Yang says the piece sounds like chamber music and works well with a smaller ensemble such as the ACS. She recently played the work in Budapest with an orchestra of twenty and no conductor. But Yang says that amidst its light-hearted charm, the work still has “all the extraordinary elements of Beethoven.”

“This piece is playful in many ways, but only a great composition like this can portray playfulness with a sense

of inevitability,” Yang says.Yang says she tries hundreds of interpretations in the

practice room, but she never knows what will arise in performance.

“I walk onto the stage knowing my hands are able to sketch it exactly the way my mind, my head, my heart is inspired to go in that exact moment,” Yang says. “People think I practice it and get it perfect and then go onstage. For me, I’m going on stage with a paintbrush and a blank

piece of paper. Ludovic Morlot will conduct

the program, which also includes Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and Mother Goose Suite, and Roussel’s Symphonic Fragments from Le festin de l’araignée (The Spider’s Feast), op. 17.

Santourian says Morlot, who is French, excels with this repertoire.

“Ludovic’s sensibilities lie with the beauty of his country, so he offered us a beautiful French program,” Santourian says. “Like all French music, it’s always these intangible sounds that are more

cloud and perfume than symphonic. This music is elusive, and it requires an interpreter who can illuminate the score from within.”

Yang will collaborate with Morlot for the first time at the July 27 concert, and she says opportunities such as this are what she loves most about the Festival.

“In Aspen, I am exposed to the greatest minds year after year,” Yang says. “Every year in Aspen, there is this wealth of diverse musicians and the greatest artists all just melting together on stage. It’s extraordinary for me.”

Bronfman:Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Sweeney Todd: A Love StoryContinued from Festival Focus page 1

People think I practice it and get it perfect and then go onstage. For me, I'm going on stage with a paintbrush and a blank

piece of paper.

Joyce Yang

Joyce Yang Performs Beethoven No. 2Bronfman says that Brahms was at his most

mature composing stage when he wrote the concerto. The piece opens with a French horn solo, which the piano answers, and the work continues in this way, with the piano part mim-icking or shadowing lines played by soloists in the orchestra, almost like chamber music. This creates a challenge not only for the pianist, but also the ensemble.

“What’s hard about it is to make it a unified experience,” Bronfman says. “You should hear them blend into each other. Piano is some-times part of the orchestra, and the orchestra somehow should fit into the piano, as well.”

The celebrated music director of the Pitts-burgh Symphony, Manfred Honeck, will con-duct the July 29 program, which also includes R. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), op. 40. A Hero’s Life is an autobiographical work. Santourian calls the piece a “self-portrait” in which the hero-composer “takes on and slays his naysayers,” that is, the critics of his music.

Strauss is depicted in virtuosic violin solos throughout the work, which will be played by AFO concertmaster and AMFS artist-faculty member Robert Chen.

“It is the envy of all concertmasters to play those violin solos,” Santourian says.

“I think it’s something natural, that they feel comfortable with me,” Valdepeñas says. “I think I’m good at it, and I don’t mean to say that in a narcissistic way. But when I look back at my teaching career, I feel like I have touched so many lives.”

His students agree.“I couldn't be more grateful to have his

guidance and support,” says AMFS student Afendi Yusuf, who has a Vincent Wilkinson Foundation Fellowship. “He is a profound artist and an infinite source of inspiration.”

Valdepeñas is married to violinist Mi Hyon Kim, and they have two sons, who are now twenty-one and seventeen. Josué and Alejandro play the cello and violin, respectively, and are studying at the Festival this year. But the boys have come to Aspen “all their lives, even as babies in diapers,” Valdepeñas says.

“This is where the bottle went. This is where the pacifier went. This is where they got potty-trained. This is where it all happened for them, too.”

Valdepeñas:Continued from Festival Focus page 2

Joyce Yang will perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, the piece that made her fall in love with music, at 6 pm this Friday, July 27, in the Benedict Music Tent.

PHOTO BY OH SEUK HOON

Violinist Gil Shaham (above), pianist Orli Shaham, and violinist Stefan Jackiw will present an evening of string chamber music at 8 pm on Tuesday, July 24, in Harris Concert Hall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Aspen Center for Physics (ACP). The three alumni of the Aspen Music Festival and School came to Aspen while their parents participated at the ACP.

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Special Event: Celebrating 50 Years,Aspen Center for Physics, July 24