GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Mahler's Symphony No. 8, a work of incredible depth and proportion, was written in a sudden burst of inspi-ration in the summer of 1906. The composer offered the piece to renounce the pessimism of his earlier works and portray his confidence in the human spirit.

The Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) will perform the “Symphony of a Thousand,” as it is often called, at 4 pm this Sunday, August 19, in the Benedict Music Tent. Robert Spano, music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), will con-duct the orchestra in its final concert of the 2012 season.

The symphony’s nickname comes from Mahler's decision to employ expanded orchestral forces and three choruses.

“When we hear the opening chord of this work, the mam-moth, monolithic size of the gesture signals that we’re in for an incredible, transformative musical journey,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. "It’s very exciting to see the choruses arrayed beyond the choir loft, onto the stage, and the orchestral forces onstage filling every crevice and corner of the space."

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Kantorei, and the Colorado Children’s Chorale will join the AFO on Sunday and have been preparing for a year. Vocal soloists will include AMFS alumni Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, and Ryan McKinny, bass-baritone. Both re-cently made their debuts with the Metropolitan Opera.

The symphony is a work in two parts.“The first movement is this overwhelming experience

of sound,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “I’ve often said it’s like bodysurfing off the north coast of Hawaii. You are swept up, and the force of nature is so much bigger than yourself, it almost feels dangerous.”

Spano says he is looking forward to conducting the eighty-minute work not only for its excitement, but also for its beauty.

“There are moments in this piece that are gargantuan and epic in their scope and of course, the piece has that qual-ity on the whole, but to me, one of the extraordinary things about the Eighth Symphony and Mahler in general is the amount of chamber music that he writes within that context,” Spano says.

Mahler’s second movements are often lyrical and soloistic, Spano says.

“There’s actually incredible variety within the journey,” Spano says. “It’s like a kalei-doscopic turning of colors and possibilities.”

Toward the end of the symphony, the climax ap-proaches with a gradual crescendo and a return of the off-stage brass, in what Fletcher calls Mahler’s attempt to “encompass the human experience of the universe.”

The Symphony No. 8 has been performed at the AMFS before, but not since the remodeling of the Mu-sic Tent in 2000.

“It’s just one of those pieces that must be experi-enced live,” Fletcher says. “There is no way of recording it that gives you any sense of it.”

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Of all classic American literature, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the work that most eloquently cap-tures both the frivolity of the Jazz Age and the tragedy of a failed dream.

Fitting with the Aspen Music Festival and School’s (AMFS) “Made in America” season, the Aspen Opera Theater Cen-ter (AOTC) will perform John Harbison’s opera of this Great American Novel at 7 pm Thurs-day, August 16, and Saturday, August 18, in the Wheeler Op-era House.

In the story, protagonist Jay Gatsby has spent a lifetime gaining the wealth and stature he thinks will win back his first love, the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. But Daisy now has both a husband and a child to complicate their reunion, and the two do not ride off into the sunset.

Longtime AOTC director Edward Berkeley compares

the story to that of the Titanic.“You build something that’s fantastic that fails,”

Berkeley says. “It is this notion of a group of people, all of whom are chasing ultimate happiness and frivolity and escape, and ultimately it’s sort of undermined by

how difficult it is ever to achieve those dreams.”

Harbison’s libretto directly quotes the novel, and the mu-sic, too, has an element of trag-edy that Berkeley says is appro-priate for the plot.

“The romance of the charac-ters is so powerful, and that’s the thing that’s really in the score just brilliantly, both vocal-ly and orchestrally: the sense of romance and the sense of long-ing for a dream,” Berkeley says.

But the backdrop of Roaring Twenties prosperity and parties is a stark contrast to the characters’ sadness, and Harbison’s opera portrays

Supplement to The Aspen Times Vol 23, No. 9

To close his inaugural season as music director of the AMFS, Robert Spano will conduct Mahler's Symphony No. 8 at 4 pm Sunday, August 19, in the Benedict Music Tent.

Final Concert: Mahler's 'Symphony of a Thousand'

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

The iconic book cover of The Great Gatsy: Celestial Eyes (1925) by Francis Cugat. Courtesy of the Princeton University Library.

FESTIVAL FOCUS

AOTC Presents Harbison's The Great Gatsby

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Monday, August 13, 2012

See GATSBY Festival Focus page 3

The romance of the characters is so powerful, and that's the thing that's

really in the score just brilliantly ... the sense of

longing for a dream.

Edward BerkeleyAOTC Director

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

[The first movement of Mahler 8] is like bodysurfing

off the north coast of Hawaii. ... the force of nature is so

much bigger than yourself, it almost feels dangerous.

Alan FletcherAMFS President and CEO

Page 2 | Monday, August 13, 2012 FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide Supplement to The Aspen Times

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Year after year, pianists in Yoheved Kaplinsky’s studio win prizes in the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) piano competitions. This year, two of her former summer students have returned as guest artists: Joyce Yang and Conrad Tao. For Kaplinsky, nothing compares to seeing her students perform at the Festival.

“Meaningful is an understatement,” Kaplinsky says. “It’s the most rewarding thing there is. I sit there and have to pinch myself. I feel so lucky that I could guide them into this position.”

This is Kaplinsky’s ninth summer as a member of the AMFS artist-faculty, and she says she fell in love with Aspen on her first drive here from Denver.

“I’ve always had a very soft spot for Aspen,” she says. "It’s the ideal environment for musicians in the summer, and it’s the ideal blend of nature and art."

Kaplinsky, who goes by “Veda," was born in Israel and put on a track to become a musician at the age of five. She did not make the personal decision to pursue music until the age of sixteen, when she was offered a scholarship to the Juilliard School.

“I can’t remember at this point if the big draw was Juilliard or New York, but I was just so excited that I became a musician and never looked back,” Kaplinsky says. “It’s always been a part of my life, and what I loved best, and what I loved the most.”

Kaplinsky originally planned to return to Israel to teach after receiving her degree.

“From the very beginning, I felt that teaching was the thing I loved doing the most,” Kaplinsky says. “I love interacting with people; I love interacting with young, talented people; I love having a positive impact on young people’s lives.”

Kaplinsky stayed in the United States and has had a prolific teaching career here, serving on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory and the Manhattan School

of Music. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School and joined its faculty in 1993. She is now chair of the Piano Division and artistic director of the Pre-College Division there.

Many of Kaplinsky's year-round students come to the AMFS to continue their lessons in the summer, such as the winner and runner-up of the recent American Academy of

Conducting at Aspen (AACA) Piano Competition: Colton Peltier and Sarina Zhang, respectively.

This is both Peltier's and Zhang's sixth summer at the Festival. Peltier will be a sophomore at the Juilliard School this fall, and Zhang is enrolled in the Pre-College Division. Zhang is also a cello fellowship student and won the AACA Low Strings Competition in 2010.

"Veda has helped me not just in my piano playing, but in my daily life," Zhang says. "She is not just a piano pedagogue, but also an inspiring role model to me."

Peltier says that when he first came to Kaplinsky at the age of ten, he did not have the ability to express his many musical ideas. Through her commitment to his learning, though, he says his playing "transformed."

"I have never seen anyone so dedicated and passionate about teaching as Veda," he says. "Through her passion in her teaching, my love for piano has intensified, as I want to be my best and give her the respect she deserves."

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

'Veda' Kaplinsky: Legacy of Teaching at AMFS

PHOTO COURTESY OF VEDA KAPLINSKY

From the very beginning, I felt that

teaching was the thing I loved doing the most.

Yoheved KaplinskyAMFS Artist-Faculty

Monday, August 13, 2012 | Page 3Supplement to The Aspen Times FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Gil Shaham violinAkira Eguchi piano

February 5Shaham and Eguchi return to Aspen for a winter evening's concert.

Takács Quartet

February 28Don't miss the always wonderful Takács Quartet, returning after a year away.

Conrad Tao piano

March 16AMFS alumnus and 2012 Avery Fisher Career Grant Winner makes his Winter Music debut.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing under the direction of AMFS Music Director Robert Spano in 2011. Thibaudet will play an all-Debussy recital for the Festival at 8 pm this Tuesday, August 14, in Harris Concert Hall.

this with dance scenes and a pastiche of jazz music, says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

“The way he incorporates jazz into a modern score is re-ally brilliant,” Fletcher says. “It works so well, many people are convinced they’re listening to period 1920s jazz, when every single note was original.”

The Metropolitan Opera performed the world premiere of The Great Gatsby in 1999, and the work has been per-formed only a few times since, in part because the score calls for such a large orchestra. The AMFS co-commis-sioned a reduced orchestration for this summer.

The music remains unpublished, though, and there are few available recordings, so most of the AOTC performers did not know the work when they were cast last winter.

“You get assigned a role and you want to take a look at it, to sing some of it, and see if it’s healthy and a good fit, and I couldn’t do that,” says Meredith Lustig, who is playing the principal role of Daisy. “All I could do was ask people and coaches who might have heard it when it pre-miered.”

Lustig returns to the AMFS for the first time since 2008 as a recipient of the Edward Berkeley Endowed Fellow-ship. She is now in the midst of a professional opera ca-reer. When she graduated from the Juilliard School with a master’s degree in 2011, she had already made her debut with the New York City Opera, and she will enter the Pitts-burgh Opera's Resident Artist program this fall.

Lustig says she often ends up singing operas that are “off the beaten path,” such as The Great Gatsby, and she likes it that way. The first opera she saw was Mark Ada-mo’s Little Women, another English-language work, and its familiarity was the reason she caught the “opera bug.”

“Seeing that opera in English and being able to relate to it and understand, it felt so close to me. That was really what got me interested in opera in the first place, so to be doing this American piece feels pretty natural,” Lustig says. “When the words are your own language, that’s re-ally something special, because you just connect to it that much more closely.”

Jean-Yves Thibaudet Salutes Debussy

Gatsby: Last AOTCContinued from Festival Focus page 1

Pro Arte Quartet: Celebrating 100 Years

The world-renowned Pro Arte Quartet, founded in 1912 at the Brussels Conservatory, will perform a recital at 8:30 pm Wednesday, August 15, in Harris Concert Hall. The program will include Barber's Adagio for Strings and Schubert's String Quartet in C major, op. 163, D. 956, as well as works by Bloch and John Harbison. Harbison's String Quartet No. 5 was commissioned by the ensemble, and this will be its second performance.

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who performed Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) last Sunday, will perform again for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) at 8 pm Tuesday, August 14, in an all-Debussy recital at Harris Concert Hall.

The recital is a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The exact date for this anniversary is six days after the recital, on August 22.

Thibaudet will play the second book of Préludes, as well as Suite bergamasque, Estampes, and L’isle joyeuse, in a program that represents Debussy’s early, middle, and late composition periods. The composer was a pianist himself and wrote for the instrument throughout his short life.

Born in Lyon, France, Thibaudet has been a champion of

French music in his thirty-year performing career. His forty albums include works by Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Satie, and Saint-Saëns.

“This music I think is in his DNA,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic ad-visor. “He immediately offered us an all-Debussy program in honor of the composer’s anniversary.”

Debussy did not refer to himself as “Impressionist,” but mu-sical scholars concur that the colors of his music were unlike any before him and that his disregard for rule-driven harmo-nies influenced countless composers after.

“He was an original voice that informed many composers, both those who have respected his work but not followed in his track and others who have emulated him,” Santourian says. “He’s definitely a milepost in the musical evolution of compo-sitional language.”

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

PHOTO BY RICK LANGER

An Evening With Performance Today!

The nation's top classical radio show, Performance Today, returns to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) for an evening of conversation and music with Festival talent at 8 pm Monday, August 13, in Harris Concert Hall. Performers will include violinist Robert McDuffie, pianist John O'Conor, composer John Harbison, nine-year-old violinist Elizabeth Aoki, and AMFS Music Director Robert Spano on piano.

Fred Child, hostALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Join us this winter for more music: