Maurice André, the great French trumpeter who introduced generations of listeners to the repertory for the instrument through his many recordings, has died at 78.
An obituary and appreciation by Tom Huizenga, plus a video of André at work, on NPR’s classical-music blog, Deceptive Cadence:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/02/27/147497910/virtuoso-trumpeter-maurice-andr-dies-at-78
with soloists & Richmond Symphony Chorus
Steven Smith conducting
Feb. 25, Richmond CenterStage
The 19th-century romantic literature has been plumbed deeply and systematically by classical musicians. It takes some digging to find a work 
both obscure and deserving enough to be called a “neglected masterpiece,” as Richmond Symphony Music Director Steven Smith terms Felix Mendelssohn’s “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”).
This cantata, introduced in 1832 by the 23-year-old Mendelssohn, setting a text by Goethe for orchestra, chorus and (in these performances) three solo voices, deserves Smith’s encomium. Well-crafted, brilliantly orchestrated for both instruments and massed voices, boasting several memorable tunes, the piece is as atmospheric as the “Hebrides” Overture, written around the same time; both stylistically and structurally, it pre-echoes the “Scottish” Symphony (No. 3), finished a decade after the cantata.
After a few tries in teen-age, Mendelssohn never composed an opera. Had he done so in maturity, it likely would have sounded like “Die erste Walpurgisnacht.”
Goethe’s poem begs for scenery and lighting: a witches’ sabbath under what sounds to be a threatening sky, an epic confrontation of forces (Druids vs. Christians), a warmly radiant outcome in a “Hymn of Light.” (Imagine a Germanic version of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” stirring if a bit earnest.) Goethe aimed high philosophically: The poem, he said, is about the “old, established, tested and reassuring [being] probed, harrassed and oppressed by the emergence of new ideas, and if not destroyed . . . at least entirely hemmed in and immobilized.” Mendelssohn pulled out most all of the stops in crafting a piece lofty and dramatic enough to do Goethe’s work justice.
The solo vocal parts are borderline-Wagnerian (Wagner would cringe – let him) in their tonal character and declamatory quality. The trio singing in these performances – bass-baritone Seth Mease Carico, tenor Jorge Prego and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Leemhuis – did not sound very comfortable with the work in the first of two weekend performances. I don’t know whether “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” is new to them; that wouldn’t be surprising, given its obscurity.
It’s certainly new to the Richmond Symphony Chorus, and the choristers, prepared by Erin R. Freeman, went at it with gusto and theatricality. I’ve never heard these singers sound as much like a good opera chorus as they did here.
The Mendelssohn is bracketed in this program by two apotheoses of the dance. That was how Wagner characterized Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The characterization applies just as well, in a later, differently motivated century, to John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances.”
Adams’ “foxtrot for orchestra,” an outtake from his opera “Nixon in China” reworked as a symphonic poem, strikes the listener as pretty steadily pulsing, but in fact the piece is a thicket of shifting time signatures, syncopations within syncopations, and its musical figures are often repeated at length, challenging players to remember where they are. “You can go crazy counting in Adams,” a young musician (coming to listen, not perform) remarked on her way to the Carpenter Theatre.
Smith and the symphony musicians, in this second go at an Adams score in the new year (they played his even trickier “Chamber Symphony” in January), quickly got into the groove of “The Chairman Dances,” rode its jittery energy securely and subtly played up its “oriental” touches.
Their Beethoven Seventh was a straightforward reading, rhythmically crisp, with solid bass lines and distinguished work from the woodwinds (paced by oboist Gustav Highstein and flutist Mary Boodell) and French horns. Smith’s tempos were brisk: The allegretto was not an andante in disguise, so not as funereal as it often sounds; the whirlwind finale was not so fast as to smear string figures, but speedy enough to rob the movement of some of its tension and dynamism.
The concert opened with a tribute to Jonathan Friedman, retiring after 38 years as the symphony’s principal bassoonist, and as one of the musicians’ most articulate spokesmen.
The program repeats at 3 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Carpenter Theatre of Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets. Tickets: $9-36.50. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://www.richmondsymphony.com/
UPDATE (MARCH 7): It turns out that this was not the first time the Richmond Symphony has performed “Die erste Walpurgisnacht.” Jacques Houtmann, the orchestra’s second music director (1971-86), obtained the score “just to read it, and I was so surprised that I decided to [program] it,” the conductor e-mails from his home in France. Houtmann led the symphony and Richmond Choral Society in the Mendelssohn cantata in April 1973.
Virginia Opera
Steven Jarvi conducting
Feb. 17, Richmond CenterStage
People who dislike the music of Philip Glass (as I have, consistently, since the 1970s) should know three things about Glass’ “Orphée,” 
currently being staged by Virginia Opera:
(1) Unlike Glass’ best-known operas, “Einstein on the Beach” and “Satyagraha,” “Orphée” is not especially long. It clocks in at a fast-paced two hours.
(2) It is scored for traditional orchestral strings and winds, rather than Glass’ once-usual ensemble of electronic keyboards. The composer’s “repetitive structures” are passed unrepetitively among instruments with different tonal characteristics and timbres and more varied dynamics and articulation; and the score is liberally spiced with moody or atmospheric qualities. (Plus, in Act 1, a vivid orchestral echo of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice.”)
(3) It is sung by traditionally operatic voices; and while it has no free-standing arias, its vocal lines are no more angularly modernistic, let alone avant-garde, than those that one might encounter in Debussy or Poulenc.
Those aren’t random comparisons. “Orphée,” based on Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film adaptation of the mythological tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, is sung in French, and in a vocal style that’s modeled on post-romantic French art-song and opera.
This production uses the scenery (by Andrew Lieberman) and costumes (by Kay Voyce) designed in 2007 for Glimmerglass Opera, and employs the stage director of the Glimmerglass production, Sam Helfrich. The set is sleek 1960s modern, with costumes of roughly similar vintage.
Stage movements are often a stylized “glide,” not unlike that of the ceremonial guards at Arlington National Cemetery – an overworked choreographic technique in modern and post-modern opera, but effective and appropriate here, as much of the story, whether set in this world or the underworld, unfolds in dream, or dreamily surreal, scenes.
The cast, from the principals – Matthew Worth (Orpheus), Sara Jakubiak (Eurydice), Heather Buck (the Princess) and Jeffrey Lentz (Heurtebise, the princess’ chauffeur) – to those singing the briefest supporting roles, is uniformly strong and gratifyingly nuanced in both voice and character.
Worth, the University of Richmond alumnus last seen and heard here in the title role of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” proves to be as commanding a presence and as idiomatic a voice in this very different work. Jakubiak and Buck are just as riveting, as both singers and actors.
Conductor Steven Jarvi draws colorful and dramatically charged playing from the orchestra, drawn from Hampton Roads’ Virginia Symphony.
In sum, this production is a winner. You can take that from one who’s usually Glass-averse.
The final performance of Virginia Opera’s “Orphée” begins at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at the Carpenter Theatre of Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets. Tickets: $29-$111. Details: (866) 673-7282; http://www.vaopera.org/
with Stephen Prutsman, piano & composer
Feb. 15, University of Richmond
Some chamber groups perform certain pieces so often and so well that they’re thought to “own” them. That’s the case with the Shanghai Quartet and Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. The Shanghai has played the Brahms with a number of pianists – most memorably, the late Ruth Laredo – and has consistently given performances of high intensity and expressiveness.
With their latest collaborator, pianist Stephen Prutsman, the foursome lived up to their reputation in this music, and in at least one way improved upon past renditions. I cannot recall a live performance of the Brahms by this ensemble – or, for that matter, any other – that brought out its inner voices with as much clarity, yet without any loss of the music’s passion or forward momentum.
The Brahms was the highlight of a program whose centerpiece was music composed and arranged by Prutsman, who is at least as active creatively as he is re-creatively.
The Piano Quintet by Prutsman that was to be premiered in this concert turned out to be two movements from “Sweet Suite,” a kind of homage to the dance-inspired suites of Bach and other baroque composers. “Sara’s Band,” a sarabande (what else?), is a pleasantly meandering lyrical miniature, while “Her Pet Chatterbox (A Gigue)” stutters merrily through a succession of rhythmic permutations.
Prutsman and the Shanghai also played his “Three Jazz Standards for piano and string quartet,” treatments of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia,” John Coltrane’s “Naima” and Joe Zawinal’s “Birdland” – none from the canon of piano jazz, which may be a surprise considering that the arranger is a pianist. Prutsman’s arrangements are eventful, especially harmonically, and generally faithful to the originals. The dynamism of “Birdland” makes it a real crowd-pleaser.
The program opened with the Shanghai playing Mozart’s Quartet in B flat major, K. 458, known as the “Hunt” Quartet. The four musicians – violinists Weigang Li and Yi-Wen Jiang, violist Honggang Li and cellist Nicholas Tzavaras – produced a full-bodied, almost plummy, sonority rather at odds with the lean, low-vibrato string sound lately favored for Mozart. This paid dividends in a richly expressive adagio, at the cost of some aural congestion in louder passages of the opening and closing allegros.
The contemporary music sextet eighth blackbird, ensemble-in-residence at the University 
of Richmond, has won its second Grammy Award for “Lonely Motel – Music from Slide” (Cedille Records), recorded with composer-guitarist Steven Mackey and librettist, singer and actor Rinde Eckert. The disc won in the best small ensemble performance category.
Mackey, Eckert and eighth blackbird premiered “Slide” at the 2009 Ojai Music Festival in California, and presented the piece in March 2010 in Richmond.
The ’birds won their first Grammy in 2008 for their Cedille album “Strange Imaginary Animals,” a collection of short pieces by Mackey, Jennifer Higdon, Gordon Fitzell, David M. Gordon and Dennis DeSantis.
The next Richmond program by eighth blackbird is “Less Is More,” including works by David Lang, Alvin Lucier, Philippe Hurel, Morton Feldman, Matthias Pintscher and György Ligeti, at 7:30 p.m. March 14 at UR’s Modlin Arts Center. Tickets are $20. Details: (804) 289-8980; http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
The Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, organized last year by members of the Richmond Symphony and other performers and teachers in Central Virginia and Hampton Roads, has been named ensemble-in-residence 
for this summer’s Lake George Music Festival in the Adirondacks of New York.
ACE, whose members include violinists Susanna Klein and Ross Monroe Winter, violist Kimberly Sparr, cellist Jason McComb, double-bassist Fred Dole, flutist Ann Choomack, oboist Shawn Welk, clarinetist Ralph Skiano, bassoonist Martin Gordon, French horn player Deb Fialek and pianist Maria Yefimova, will stage its own concerts and mentor and perform with students, who come to the festival from some of the leading American conservatories. Alexander Lombard, the festival’s executive director, said the ensemble’s “talent, ambition, and innovation” made the coming residency “exactly the association we were looking for.”
The group next performs locally with Amaranth Arts Dance and guest violinist Jeanine Wynton at 4 p.m. Feb. 19 at First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1000 Blanton Ave. at the Carillon. Tickets are $15. For more information, call (917) 414-3112 or visit http://www.acensemble.org/
The Richmond Symphony Chorus will hold auditions for sopranos, tenors and basses on Feb. 25 at Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets.
The chorus, directed by Erin R. Freeman, is seeking singers able to participate in rehearsals and performances for Memorial Day weekend performances of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the “Symphony of a Thousand,” by the Virginia and Richmond symphonies, their choruses and other vocal ensembles, conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Some 400 choristers are expected to participate in the concerts, May 26 at William and Mary Hall in Williamsburg and May 27 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk.
Those interested in auditioning should visit http://www.richmondsymphony.com/ and click “Meet the Chorus” to learn about the audition process.
The chorus’ manager, Barbara Baker, should be contacted at bbaker@richmondsymphony.com by Feb. 20.
