Brittenpalooza, Lilac 94, and Why I Have Been So Lax About Writing In My Blog

I have been extremely lazy about writing in my blog. I apologize. But I promise, I have a good reason. I am going to try to catch up, in one post, on all of the things I have been meaning to write about. 

First off, the Brittenpalooza.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. Consequently there are LOTS of concerts of his music being performed. By crazy random happenstance, both Eastman and SUNY Potsdam, where I went to college, were performing their big spring choral/orchestra work on the same weekend. And surprise, surprise - both of them were doing the Britten War Requiem. I went to the Eastman performance on Friday night, and then traveled to Potsdam for the Crane School of Music’s performance on Saturday night. 

Britten’s War Requiem was commissioned for the opening of the Coventry Cathedral (the original was destroyed in WWII) and premiered in 1962. The piece employs huge forces, including a full orchestra, a chamber orchestra, a large chorus, children’s chorus, and three vocal soloists. Yikes. Britten intertwines the Latin of the Catholic mass with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a poet and soldier who fought and died in WWI. Britten was a lifelong pacifist, and this is one of his most important anti-war works. You can hear more about the piece from some of the Eastman performers here.

I asked both harpists, Hannah Chute (Eastman) and Mikaela Davis (Potsdam) what they thought of the harp part and the piece in general.

“The orchestra plays, and then it goes straight into chamber orchestra, so it’s kind of hard to make those transitions,” said Mikaela. She also compared it to Britten's Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, because “every instrument has a tiny solo.” A big harp part to watch out for, she says, is in the second movement. “It’s just triads in your left hand in weird meters. But the pedals are really crazy, it’s like, at least two pedals every beat. It gets kind of messy.” Mikaela also mentioned that the harp only plays with the chamber group, “Which is kind of nice, because then you can hear the harp." 

Hannah agreed that one of the most difficult parts is the triad section in the second movement. "There are some moments that are really difficult, and there’s a lot of enharmonic solutions. There are a few things that are rewritten, but it’s still very pedal-y.” Hannah also compared one glissando section to the fugue from the Young Person’s Guide. 

I also asked Hannah about some harp parts to listen for and she said, “I have a big solo part when the angel shows up. Which sort of irritates me. It’s really fun to play, I just really am annoyed that he thought ‘Oh, an angel! Let’s have a harp solo.’”

I asked both of them what they thought of Britten’s writing for the harp. “I really like the part for the War Requiem a lot,” said Mikaela. “It’s kind of easy, and when the harp is playing, usually the harp is heard." 

Hannah said, "The best part to play is the last three pages of the last movement. It’s very peaceful. It’s involved, but it’s not hard, so you just get to play, but you’re not really stressed.”

It was very interesting to hear the two different interpretations of the Requiem back to back. Both groups did an awesome job!

Second off, Lilac 94. 

I have been involved in a harp duo with my friend Christina for a couple of years now, and we recently decided to continue playing together after school. Our goal is to become a professional group and travel around performing together. One of our challenges has been to come up with a name. We wanted something that would reference Rochester, since that was where we got our start. After much deliberation, we came up with the name Lilac 94. Lilac is the flower of Rochester, and of course, we have 94 harp strings between the two of us. 

We gave a concert at my hometown church near Albany, and it was a blast. We played all our old favorites, including Bernard Andres’ Parvis and Dyades, Porgy and Bess and Ravel's Mother Goose, as well as several folk songs. Many of my friends and family members showed up, as well as members of the church and my first harp teacher and a few of her students. We asked for donations to help us get started, and we raised over $500! We are so lucky to have such generous supporters!

We also got pictures taken by the lovely Melissa Zgouridi, who is a vocalist at Eastman as well as an expert photographer. We will be posting those on our Facebook page. 

And lastly, Why I have been So Lax About Writing In My Blog…

I GRADUATED!!!

And have been in a basically vegetative state since then. But now I have to wake up from the I’m-finished-with-my-master’s-degree-coma because I am now in Ohio playing for the Ohio Light Opera! Summer of musical theatre, here I come!

April Harpist of the Month: Kristina Finch!

(First of all let me just say that playing for Street Scene was AMAZING.  It was so much fun and was absolutely the best way to spend my birthday weekend).  

Last Monday, I went to hear harpist Kristina Finch give a lecture recital.  Kristina is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and the intrepid leader and TA of the Eastman harp studio.  Before becoming a DMA student here, she attended Florida State University for her master’s degree, and was also at Eastman for her bachelor’s.  

First I asked Kristina how she got into the harp.  "I started playing when I was eight years old.  My elementary school music teacher was a harpist.  She chose a group of us - I don’t really know what criteria she used to choose us - but she chose six girls, and sent us home with little sheets to have our parents sign.  I don’t think my parents had any idea what they were getting into, but the school rented a harp and we all shared it… Honestly I don’t remember having a desire, before I was asked, to play the harp.  I don’t know that I even thought of it.“  

About six months after she started, an anonymous donor gave money for the school to buy the harp, and the program grew very quickly from there - Kristina recalls teaching beginning harp lessons to third graders when she herself was only in the fifth grade.  It was then that she began taking private lessons with Barbara Chapman, the principal harpist with the Virginia Symphony.  Barbara was a former student of Ms. Bride, our teacher at Eastman, and it was she who encouraged Kristina to come and study here with her.  Kristina describes the school as "magical.”  

Kristina loves to play chamber music, an interest she says goes back to her years in middle school and high school, when she played duets with her sister, who played the flute.  She currently plays in a harp/saxophone ensemble with her boyfriend, which they call the Mana Duo.  Because harp and sax ensembles are rare, they have built up a repertoire of transcriptions (like Ibert’s Entr'acte and Saint-Saens’ Fantaisie, originally for harp and violin) as well as commissioned works.  Kristina describes him as a brilliant musician and says they work very well together.  "It’s so separate from our personal relationship…. we communicate on a different level when we play together.“  One of their upcoming projects include a recital together at SUNY Fredonia.  This summer they will move together to Florida where, she says, they will continue to play together and build an audience for their group.  

Kristina gave her lecture recital on "Musical Exoticism in the Music of Marcel Tournier.”  In her lecture, she talked about a specific piece by Tournier called “Au Hasard des ondes,” which is rarely performed and, as far as we know, has never been recorded.  She calls the piece a musical tour around the world - it is a long, difficult work of nine movements, each of which depicts a different country (Japan, China, Africa, France, Scandinavia, Romania, and Italy).  In her recital, Kristina talked about the ways that Tournier does this, and told me in our discussion earlier how knowing so much about the piece really helped her in playing it.  I learned so much that I didn’t know about Marcel Tournier - like, for instance, that he taught students from all over the world at the Paris Conservatory.  These students would bring him folk songs and musical traditions from their homeland, which he would then use as inspiration for his music.  It was a fascinating lecture and Kristina’s playing was exquisite!!!

One of Kristina’s long-term goals is to become a harp professor at a university - a job which she feels she is not quite ready for yet.  "My plan is to teach privately for ten years, gig, freelance, hopefully build a pretty significant career wherever I am.  And then in ten, twenty, thirty years, apply for jobs at pretty significant places, and have the kind of experience to be able to give my students everything.“  

I asked Kristina what inspired her to be a teacher.  

"It’s about imparting knowledge.  Giving to others the experiences and the life lessons that you’ve learned - I feel like I have a lot to give, and teaching is such a wonderful outlet for that.  The saying "Those who can’t do, teach” is so wrong and backwards.  I feel like if you’re a musician and you don’t want to teach, you are not in the right field.  So much of what we do is about passing on to the next generation, and that’s something that really excites me.“  

I totally agree.  Thanks for talking to me, Kristina!  

It may have been cold outside, but the music was hot in Eastman Theatre!

Last night I played in the very last Eastman Wind Ensemble concert of my graduate school career (!!!!).  It was also the Eastman Wind Ensemble’s 60th Anniversary concert.  The performance featured music that was performed in one of the very first Eastman Wind Ensemble concerts (Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments”), music by Mozart and Gabrieli, and two world premieres, “Mambo Metallico” by Roberto Sierra, and “Wind Religion (which Sophie Rusnock and I played in),” by Douglas Lowry (who is also the dean of the Eastman School).  Professor Scatterday was joined on the podium by Michael Votta (who conducted the Mozart) and Donald Hunsberger (the Stravinsky).  

I was afraid that the snowstorm outside would mean that we wouldn’t get much of a crowd, but we did have a fair number of people show up (thanks, hardcore EWE fans!  Or auditionees trapped by the storm, whichever). All of the music was great, but I think my favorites were the two world premieres.  Sierra’s “Mambo Metallico” was a lot of fun to listen to, and “Wind Religion” was great fun to play.  It was also great to have the EWE’s last conductor, Donald Hunsberger, perform a piece.  I played a piece for last semester’s Debussy concert with him and I really enjoyed having him as a conductor.  Although the only piece I played for him in this concert was our supersecret surprise encore (Shostakovich’s “Folk Festival”) I sat in on a couple of his rehearsals for the Stravinsky.  

I always forget that the Eastman Wind Ensemble was THE first wind ensemble.  Its founder and first conductor, Frederick Fennell, intended it to be different from a wind band in the sense that there is only one player per part - essentially an orchestral wind section, plus saxophones and percussion (and occasionally harp and piano).  He wanted to encourage composers to write for this type of instrumentation and to see it as a serious ensemble.  Although it may have taken awhile for his ideas to be accepted, eventually they were, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble is probably the reason a lot of the wind ensemble repertoire exists.  

We’re famous!  We even have a Wikipedia page, which I think is pretty cool.  

Being a fan of playing in orchestra, I never thought I’d say this but I’m so glad that I’ve played in so many Eastman Wind Ensemble concerts with Professor Scatterday.  I think I’ve learned more about ensemble playing in this group than in any other.  It’s been a privilege, and I will miss it!

Here’s to you, Eastman Wind Ensemble.  Happy 60th!

I love Mahler

I love Gustav Mahler.  Playing all of his symphonies (including Das Lied von der Erde) is on my bucket list, and so far I have played Nos. 1 and 3.  If I see Mahler programmed on a symphony concert somewhere near me, I will probably be there. 

So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw Mahler’s fourth symphony programmed for the Eastman Philharmonia’s first concert of the semester.  Mahler 4 is one of his smaller symphonies, calling for a moderately sized orchestra and only one vocal soloist, as opposed to his usual gargantuan orchestra and a chorus or two.  It’s also one of his shortest, a mere 54 minutes in length.  Despite its “smaller” size, it’s still pure Mahler, with an amazing depth of emotion and beauty - one of the main reasons I love his music (I think Mahler is the only composer that has ever actually made me cry - Mahler 9, Boston Symphony). 

The Eastman Philharmonia played a wonderful Mahler 4.  The drama before the concert was that the vocal soloist the school had hired cancelled a few days before the performance, I think because of illness.  Luckily they had an understudy, a vocal major at the school who is in her junior year.  Despite having to be miked, she delivered a beautiful performance and saved the day! 

My duo partner, Christina Brier, was on the harp part and she ROCKED!  Her playing was extremely clear and perfectly audible.  I always find Mahler harp parts to be deceptively tricky.  They usually look quite simple, almost sight readable, on the page.  And then you get into rehearsal and realize that you REALLY have to know that part in order to play it well.  I really like Mahler’s harp writing and I find it to be very effective.  Although you often have to count long blocks of empty measures, I prefer that to playing parts that are very difficult but covered by the rest of the orchestra *cough* RICHARD STRAUSS *cough cough*. 

So, kudos to the Eastman Philharmonia for a great Mahler 4.  Love those sleigh bells. 

I will be playing in a concert this Friday, a celebration of the Eastman Wind Ensemble’s 60th anniversary.  This performance will include a piece that was played for one of the Wind Ensemble’s very first concerts (Stravinsky, “Symphony for Wind Instruments”), as well as two world premieres!  Sophie Rusnock and I will be on the harp parts for one of the premieres, as well as a possible top secret surprise encore (if y'all clap long enough)!!!!!!!!!