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May 3, 2007
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Musical know-how One of the great things about classical music is the personal connection between musicians of the past and those with us today. Generation after generation, musical craft and technique and skill have been passed on from teacher to pupil. Thus a composer such as Beethoven, who revolutionized music during his heyday in the early 19th century but shuffled off this mortal coil in 1827, is not entirely dead today. No indeed ?he taught people, who taught people, who taught people, right up to the present. So music is a cumulative art. A life in music never really ends, but rather gives off its own echoes through the people who continue to make it afterward. To mix metaphors horribly, it?s like a great flowing river in which the torch is passed from teacher to pupil. (Careful?don?t drop that torch in the water!) And in a classical version of ?Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,? you can find connections to many of music?s immortals right here in southern New Hampshire, making music all the time at area concerts. Violinist Elliott Markow, who is concertmaster for several local ensembles (including the New Hampshire Philharmonic), was a pupil of Jascha Heifitz, one of the great virtuosos of the 20th century, who himself was so good he used to play with Jack Benny. And one of the most direct of those connections is at the heart of this weekend?s spring concert of the New Hampshire Philharmonic, set for Saturday, May 5, at 8 p.m. at Manchester?s Palace Theatre. As a conducting student, Anthony Princiotti? was taught by Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood, where Princiotti observed the legendary musician?s charisma, energy, knowledge and technique at close range. Because of this, Princiotti carries a little bit of Bernstein with him every time he steps on the podium. And this weekend, Princiotti honors his teacher (who died in 1990) more directly with a program that includes an orchestral suite from Bernstein?s ?West Side Story? and a rarely heard work by American composer Edward MacDowell, the founder of the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, where Bernstein once was a fellow. The MacDowell work is his Piano Concerto No. 2, a tuneful and romantic score from the 1880s that?s emerged as some of the composer?s most lasting music. Soloist in the three-movement work is Boston-based pianist Virginia Eskin. I?ve heard it and it?s good stuff. If you?re tired of the same Romantic-era piano concertos being played all the time (Schumann, Grieg, etc.), the MacDowell piece is a breath of fresh American air?and as a bonus, it?s best heard in the spring. The concert also honors Bernstein in its eclecticism. Consider: also on the program is Prokofiev?s ?Lieutenant Kij?? Suite, with its very unspringlike musical depiction of a tiroka sleigh ride through the frozen Russian countryside. Maybe it?s only a partial tribute to Bernstein, as in brrrrrrrrr. And our old friend Beethoven makes an appearance, too, with the ?Egmont? overture, a short but explosive piece written as part of incidental music for a play. It?s classic stuff?music filled with the drama and excitement that Bernstein came to embody, and a tradition that Priniciotti and the New Hampshire Philharmonic carry on this weekend. Tickets for Saturday?s 8 p.m. concert are $10 to $45; for more info, call The Palace box office at 668-5588 or visit www.nhphil.org. ? Further ahead: On Sunday, May 13, Granite State Opera will present two one-act operas, ?Cavalleria Rusticana? and ?I Pagliacci? in a matinee performance at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord. Fully staged and sung in Italian with English subtitles, the two operas are both full-blooded works of the ?verismo? school, meaning they?re about the passions of real life, not gods and kings and such. If nothing else, ?Pagliacci? has iconic status even among non-opera fans because it?s the one with the ?sad clown? aria. For tickets and info, call 225-1000 or visit www.granitestateopera.org. |
4/26/2007 21 years in the making 4/19/2007 A showman to the end
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