FESTIVALFOCUS YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
SUPPLEMENT TO THE ASPEN TIMES
MONDAY, JULY 15, 2024
VOL. 34, NO. 4
Collaboration Brings Fiddler on the Roof to the Tent Stage BY CINDY HIRSCHFELD
Each year, when Aspen Music Festival and School President and CEO Alan Fletcher and Theatre Aspen Producing Director Jed Bernstein discuss their organizations’ annual collaboration, “we think big Broadway classic fun,” says Fletcher. Plus, adds Fletcher, “I’m thinking orchestrations that are worthwhile for our students to play.” This year’s performance—Fiddler on the Roof in Concert, on Tuesday, July 23, at the Klein Music Tent—uniquely hits both marks, as Aspen audiences will have a rare opportunity to hear John Williams’s orchestral score of the beloved musical, written for the 1971 film version. “This is John Williams at his best,” says Shuler Hensley, the Tony-winning actor (for Oklahoma!) who will star as Tevye as well as direct the production. Indeed, Williams won his first Academy Award for the
Broadway music director Andy Einhorn, who helped resurrect John Williams’s original film score for Fiddler, will conduct the orchestra for the AMFS–Theatre Aspen production.
score—the only Broadway musical he’s adapted for the screen. An orchestra of more than 60 AMFS students (and one faculty concertmaster), conducted by leading Broadway music director Andy Einhorn, will accompany the cast, which includes local youth from Theatre Aspen’s education program.
“It’s a show that reminds us about the importance of family and the tradition of standing up to oppression. I think of it as a story about humanity.” Jed Bernstein Producing Director, Theatre Aspen
“You don’t get a chance to see this kind of performance anymore with that size orchestra,” says Hensley, who calls the difference between the usual Broadway pit orchestra of 20 or so musicians and this one “extraordinary.” Additionally, this is Fiddler at its essence, with no sets or costume changes. “It’s a real chance to emphasize the music,” Hensley notes. About three years ago, Einhorn helped resurrect Williams’s score, which had not been played in full since the film’s release, as part of a project with the Philadelphia
Orchestra and the University of Michigan. “A music service in Los Angeles went back to almost hand sketches of Williams’s material and painstakingly built this version,” explains Einhorn, Tony winner and AMFS who then had to alumnus Shuler Hensley integrate it with stars as Tevye and will the Broadway direct the production. script (a few musical tweaks were necessary). The new production was performed in Philadelphia and in Ann Arbor in 2022, and then again by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra last February (Hensley’s debut as Tevye), making Aspen only the fourth venue for it. “It gives people a new sonic landscape to hear a score they know and love but in a slightly different arrangement,” says Einhorn, who notes that Williams had to adapt the music for the cinematography of a film, which included underscoring some of the dialogue, as well as adding transitions and a noteworthy violin solo played by Isaac Stern. “The songs sometimes feel different than on the Broadway album,” Einhorn says. He adds that Williams’s arrangement hints at the composer’s now-signature style in his scores for movies like E.T. and the Harry Potter series. A fortunate twist for the Aspen performance: Hensley returns to Aspen for the
Bruce Liu piano In Recital: July 20, 7:30 PM With the Aspen Festival Orchestra: July 21, 4 PM The first Canadian to ever win a gold medal at the prestigious International Chopin Competition, at 26 Liu has already achieved rock star status in the classical music world. In Aspen he will play a solo recital of works by Haydn, Chopin, and Rameau before joining the Festival Orchestra under the baton of AMFS alumnus Leonard Slatkin for Prokofiev’s highvoltage, virtuosic Third Piano Concerto.
first time since he was an AMFS opera student for two summers in the early 1990s, before launching his career as a musical See A Timeless Story, Festival Focus page 3
Hansel and Gretel: A (Literally) Delicious Opera BY KIMBERLY NICOLETTI
The 1812 Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel tells a dark tale, in which parents pushed to the edge by starvation abandon their two children in the woods. Yet, Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera conveys a lighter version of the classic yarn, while still subtly maintaining its commentary on poverty. On July 19, the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program presents Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, accompanied by a 74-piece orchestra. In Humperdinck’s rendering, the pressure of trying to feed a family has exhausted Hansel and Gretel’s mother, who sends the children into the woods to
gather strawberries. The playful children “(It underscores) putting some faith in yourultimately get lost in the forest, where a self—that you can figure things out.” sandman guides them to sleep, and angels Patrick Summers, AOTVA co-artistic diwatch over them. They awake to find a gin- rector and Houston Grand Opera artistic gerbread house with a resident witch who and music director, conducts the opera, aims to eat them. Though terrified, the which he says is “filled with musical invenchildren outsmart the witch, and in killing tion.” her, liberate other captive children. After “Hansel and Gretel is one of the greatsearching all night for Hansel and Gretel, est masterpieces ever written. One never the children’s parents finally find them, re- tires of hearing it or performing it; it is an minding themselves that evil never wins, opera I could very happily conduct or and no one receives a burden heavier than listen to every day,” he says. “It is one of they can bear. the greatest operas in the repertoire, and “It’s about navigating adolescence and it benefits anyone who immerses in it. It learning how to take care of ourselves, is also justifiably popular throughout the which they do,” says stage director and world, so there is a great benefit to knowaward-winning actress Joanna Gleason. ing it at the cellular level . . . one would be
hard-pressed to find a more exquisite opera score anywhere.” Quiet, nearly sacred music opens the opera and builds into “a blazing musical radiance,” as a wordless chorus of angels accompanied by gleaming brass chords arise. “Of all of the spiritual transformations music can provide, this moment of Hansel and Gretel is one of the most moving,” says Summers. The Colorado Children’s Chorale adds yet another dimension to the performance. “This is a work that is largely about the innocence of youth, so their sound and presence is essential,” he says. Gleason, who won a Tony Award for Best See Surrender, Festival Focus page 3
CELEBRATE THE AMFS’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON, JUNE 26 –AUGUST 18