classical music

Eugene Symphony, City Team Up for Free Concert in the Park
July 18 concert at Cuthbert features new music director — and his wife

An email late this morning alerted me to the best classical news Eugene's had since ... well ... since the Eugene Symphony hired Danail Rachev to be the new music director:

Summer + sponsors + Symphony = free concert at the Cuthbert! The program includes several songs for Rachev's wife, soprano Elizabeth Racheva, and a familiar piece that Symphony Exec Director Paul Winberg said is "traditional for a summer concert," Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Here's Seiji Ozawa conducting the Berlin Philharmonic's summer outdoor 1812 Overture:

Outdoor concerts have been part of the Symphony's long-range planning effort for a while. I wrote about that back in September of 2007. Specifically, I wrote:

[The] presentation includes the idea for outdoor summer concerts; there's a cheer and pumping fists. Outdoor summer concerts are a winner! ("We don't know the venue yet, or how we'd do it, exactly, but we're going to work on it" is the message.)

The Symphony web page looks pretty excited about it too:

Winberg told me this morning that the board and staff had been working on outdoor concerts pretty hard last year but that the city had other things on its plate (you know, the Olympic Trials?). The Symphony secured funding for the free, did I mention FREE? concert last night and sent out the press release this morning, just a teeeeeeny bit too late for us to get it into this week's Summer Guide, but I can't imagine anything more exciting for this city's classical music scene (OK, a series of free outdoor concerts, like those in, ahem, New York, would be superb) this summer than the expansion of accessible classical music.

Winberg and Board President Mary Ann Hansen both mentioned in conversations today that the outdoor, free part was definitely a way to lower barriers that some people experience with other Symphony concerts. "Thursday night can be a barrier, the Hult Center itself can be a barrier," Winberg said. He added that the time of the full-season concerts doesn't necessarily work for families. The summer concert's time is the same, 8 pm, but it's a Saturday night in the summer outdoors with the kids, who can fall asleep on blankets as the concert goes on (yes, yes I did experience this early and often in my young life).

Then there's the price. Or rather, the lack of price. While the Symphony has regular-season tickets for, and I kid you not, FIFTEEN DOLLARS, that's still $15 more than free. Winberg and Hansen both sounded grateful to Ward Insurance for putting together the final piece of the puzzle and being the major sponsor for the event (there are other sponsors, of course; it's not cheap to fly in your music director and his wife from Philadelphia or to pay the musicians for practice and performance time).

I'd add that families can bring picnics or buy food and beverages at the newly revamped Cuthbert, and that helps make it a fun summer outing. Winberg said that he's hoping for around 4,600 people to attend the concert, which seems reasonable given that last fall's music director search concerts "sold out" of free tickets for the 2,500-seat Silva Performance Hall soon after they became available — for concerts at the Hult Center, on various nights of the week, with no kiddie-friendly area nearby.

Combined with the Bach Festival's July 4 concert at the Art and the Vineyard Festival and the splendid Washburne Park concert series, the Symphony's concert in the new, prettier Cuthbert should make July all the more fun.

The full program, copied and pasted from the Symphony's email:

Franz von Suppe Light Cavalry Overture
Dvořák Slavonic Dances, op. 46, no. 8
Mascagni Cavalleria rusticana: Intermezzo
Lehar Meine Lippen Sie Kuessen So Heiss from "Giuditta," featuring Elizabeth Racheva, soprano
Bizet L'Arlesienne Suite No. 2, Pastorale and Farandole
Styne Gypsy Overture
Leroy Anderson Fiddle Faddle
Leroy Anderson The Typewriter
Gershwin "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess, featuring Elizabeth Racheva, soprano
Bock/Harrick "When Did I Fall in Love" from Fiorello, featuring Elizabeth Racheva, soprano
Lerner/Loewe "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, featuring Elizabeth Racheva, soprano
Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture

Also, if I may just say? SQUEE! Jumping for joy here in the ol' office.

On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the Eugene Symphony announced that 38-year-old Bulgarian Danail Rachev had won the competition to become the symphony's seventh music director and conductor. I talked to Rachev the week before the news went public, and here's a short Q&A with him. (Hopefully, my longer article, for which I interviewed a number of folks, will be up later today or tomorrow. Swear it's a-comin' ... along with Gift Guide! By the way, this news is like the best possibly holiday or any day news for the Eugene Symphony. Rachev was superb with the musicians.)

Image of Rachev with the Eugene Symphony on Sept. 12, courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.

Danail Rachev on "A Very Good Car"
by Suzi Steffen
First of all, congratulations.
Thank you.

Tell me about your experiences with the musicians while you were here.
Well, I was very impressed with the way they are dedicated to playing great music, to playing an exciting performance. They seem absolutely devoted to playing well, and I felt that immediately, and once they understood that that’s what I wanted, the process was easy.

I watched you during rehearsals, and you seem flexible, interested in what the musicians have to say.
I think the time of the absolute dominators of a performance is [in the] past, and that’s the most important thing for me, that it’s a collaboration between a conductor and an orchestra. They watch me, see my instructions, and I listen to what they play and try to incorpoate it into my ideas about the piece.
It’s like we are chamber musicians, and we support each other.

Your wife has a good job with the Curtis Institute in Philly. I take it you’ll still live there.
Yeah, but I’m dedicated to spending as much time as possible in Eugene.

Can you tell me about the programming you have planned for the first season?
We started planning the season, with [Executive Director] Paul Winberg and [Operations and Education Director] Chris Collins, and we have created a draft of this season, but nothing is yet sure. I can’t tell you any details right now.

Do you plan to play more of a genre or composer, or do something different in a major way, than outgoing music director Giancarlo Guerrero?
No, no, one of the most important things for me is to continue this tradition of excellence in many ways — in the way the orchestra performs and connects with the community so that the concerts are well-attended and there’s a good connetion with the people and the patrons. I hope to continue the legacy of innovative programming that they had before. And of course I’m going to try to expand it, but I want this tradition to continue from the past. This orchestra, the Eugene Symphony, has a very good reputation within the musical community.

When you were here in September, you talked to me about how you’d had the experience of working with some of the best orchestras, and that was like driving a Maserati, and you didn’t want to go from that to driving a Saturn. So what car is the Eugene Symphony?
I think it’s one of the very good cars. In my career, I’ve had the opportunity of working with a variety of orchestras, not only Maseratis, I guess. I’ve worked with student orchestras as well as Dallas and the Philadelphia Orchestra. What I’m trying to do is use my experience with orchestras like Philadelphia to instill that sort of attitude that an orchestra like Philadelphia has. Of course, that orchestra has opportunities to recruit the best talent in the country, and there’s no way it’s the same in Eugene, but I hope to improve as much as I can in Eugene. My initial contract is for four years, and then we will see how things will continue, but hopefully more.

Anything else you want to say to Eugene?
I just want to thank everybody from the orchestra and the board and the staff and the guild, all these wonderful people I met in Eugene. Their passion for the orchestra is really something I felt immediately, and that attracted me to this position. I think that the interest of the people of the community makes the orchestra better. Their dedication to making their orchestra better is what makes this special.

Now he's serious, now he's happy. The weird facial expressions of Yo-Yo Ma.

• Given the astronomical ticket prices to Tuesday's special engagement with Yo-Yo Ma, I expected to see only the upper-crust of Eugene and Portland's art-o-cracy in attendance. I was surprised, then, to see so many young people in the audience, including a few couples who appeared to make it their "date night." After the show I attended a going-away party for a friend who lives in the Whiteaker. The twentysomethings at the party knew who Yo-Yo Ma was and were in awe that I could attend. This is why we, and performing arts companies, need superstar artists and athletes.

• Beethoven's Leonore Overture No.3, Op. 72b was a lovely prelude to the evening, but definitely sagged in spots. At one point the First Trumpet got up and left the stage in the middle of the piece. I figured he had to go to the bathroom, but a few minutes later a mournful battlefield trumpet sounded from off-stage. It was a brilliant move and reminded me how much I love this human invention called music. Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major had a few inspiring moments but didn't really showcase Ma's cello skill very well. After intermission, the Symphony came back for Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32, and had a few sleeper passages intermingled with bursts of energy, especially from Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, who likes to have precise "hang time" when he jumps up during emotive sweeps. But the real show-stopper was the final piece, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, when Ma rejoined the orchestra (and once again the brass had to exit) and proceeded to shred a seriously engaging evening to bits. Mind you, the string section of the ES deserve proper credit; especially Concertmaster Kathryn Lucktenberg, who had a few flirtatious back-and-forth with Ma going during the allegro and andante passages (for your dirty mind's information, it was all in the script).

• The most exciting aspect of Ma's performance (for those who are not close enough, or without binoculars, to see his myriad facial expressions) is his hand movements across the fretboard. Lightning quick and organically expressive, the movements directly correspond to the rich sound coming from Ma's hundreds-years-old cello.

• I love it how you can tell virtuoso performers from standard orchestral performers by how much their instrument seems to be an extension of their bodies. Last night, it was easy to see that Lucktenberg truly is one with her violin. Too, Yo-Yo Ma seemed to embrace his cello like it was the love of his life. This stood in contrast to other ES musicians, who have a bit of distance from their instruments, a bit of wariness and hosility, even. Well, I mean relative to Lucktenberg and Ma.

• Ma's cello performance was what you'd expect from one its masters — brilliant in his technique, unique in his execution — but did it deserve two standing ovations? It's now customary and polite to give visiting artists a standing ovation at the Hult Center. To do anything else would seem rude. The Hult Center is not exactly a coveted venue for soloists, so to give off the impression that Eugeneans are unthankful would probably be disasterous for company's like ES trying to secure the heavyweights. But still ... it's starting to feel ridiculous.

• Though thanks to one of those standing ovations, Ma returned to the stage with his cello to give a solo encore. I didn't recognize the piece, but it seemed like a facile one from Ma's repertoire. The audience was pleased.

A longer version of the article in the paper today, and with apologies to Nir Kabaretti, whose longer interview I'll put up later today:

Speed Dating at the Symphony
Second candidate comes to town
by Suzi Steffen

A mere week after the Eugene Symphony’s whirlwind courtship with Nir Kabaretti, the second of three candidates for the music director job arrived in town with a plan and a challenging program for the Symphony. Danail Rachev, originally from Bulgaria, spent three years with the Dallas Symphony as assistant conductor before moving this fall to Philadelphia, also as assistant conductor.

Rachev, like the other two candidates, will conduct the first movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and one movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. For his concert at 8 pm Friday, Sept.12, he also chose Schubert’s Overture to Rosamunde and Alexander Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 in B Minor.

EW chatted with Rachev about music, programming and Eugene’s glorious summer weather.

I heard that when you visited Eugene for an earlier interview, you liked it because it reminded you of Bulgaria.

Yeah. Yeah, I always liked green, and also, the weather is nice. After three years in Dallas, I feel like there is more air here. The smells of trees are different. I like it here. It’s a beautiful town, and the wine I had yesterday was great! The people are nice, and the weather is fantastic.

You were pretty successful in Dallas.

I had some great years in Dallas, conducted several concerts, and the orchestra is great. As assistant conductor, sometimes some of them don’t have many concerts, but Dallas actually gave me a lot of opportunities. Plus, I like the city, I like the people — I just don’t like the weather.

I know you started playing piano at age 5. Tell me how you got interested in music and in conducting.

It was my father, basically. I remember liking something about it. We didn’t have a piano at the beginning, and I had to go practice at some neighbors’ [house]. I remember that they checked my ears because my uncle and my father, they never were professional musicians, but they played instruments and studied the instruments. You have to make sure that the ears work OK; they were playing high or low on a guitar, can I reach it, can I hear it?

But I was never a prodigy, never, even though the playing was good and I started to play bigger music, sonatas and concertos. Then I started going to concerts, especially pianists, and then I started feeling other music is great besides piano music, and I decided to apply to the conservatory in Sofia. I started studying there when I was 20 because I had to go into the army [before]. I studied choral conducting. The musical life in Sofia is serious — three symphony orchestras, opera, operetta. Afterwards, I was working in Germany with choirs of Bulgarians and Russians; we’d have to do 80 concerts in 90 days, and every one in a different place. Then I saved up some money and came to study here [at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore]. And everything started after that.

How does your experience conducting choral music help you conduct orchestral music?

Choral practices are strong in Bulgaria; we have lots of choirs. Orchestral conducting, you have to be very organized from the point of putting a piece together. With a choir, it’s very different. With choirs, you can be a lot freer; there are four parts. Here [with an orchestra], you have 50. So it’s more free.

How does being an assistant conductor help your development?

It’s a difficult thing because you are not the music director, and yet you conduct almost as much as the music director does, and more than anybody else. And the type of music you have to conduct — children’s concerts, family concerts. I was lucky, as I told you, because they gave me a lot of other concerts to conduct. For instance, the summer season, they gave to me. But assistant conductor is great because you can try things, and most importantly, you conduct a first-level orchestra. That’s a different feeling.

Yes. So why Eugene?

I heard about the Eugene Symphony a long time ago, actually, in connection with Marin Alsop, and then I got to know [former Eugene Symphony Music Director] Miguel [Harth-Bedoya] and [current Eugene Symphony Music Director] Giancarlo [Guerrero]. Giancarlo, I met in Dallas when he came to work with the Dallas Symphony three years ago, and Miguel is in Fort Worth. And I really liked them both. Then the job appeared, and with conductors, you can’t wait until the job in New York is going to open; it doesn’t work that way.

Explain your program for the Eugene concert. Why more Schubert? Why Borodin?

When I saw the Schubert first movement, I was like, I really want to not leave it there with Schubert. I think this movement is incredibly powerful by itself, but I thought, why don’t I find a piece that can have the full range? This symphony is so dramatic, really incredibly sad music in a way, and that’s something that Schubert does, but there is the other side of Schubert, the sunny, beautiful, light side. So I thought of this overture [to Rosamunde], which is bright, the other Schubert. In this concert, you will get the two sides of Schubert.

Borodin, I was like, what should I do since there is part of a Russian piece, just one movement. I like to show the contrasts between things, and I was like, why don’t I move to another [Russian] piece, so I can really do the two styles with early German Romantic music and Russian music, which is different. I’m sure [the Borodin symphony] hasn’t been done here for a long time, and it will be interesting for the audience to hear it, and it is an absolutely great piece.

The most interesting programs are if some part of the program can illuminate the other parts of the program. It’s not that they have to be all German or all French, but in this case, I liked the way it happened.

What else do you look at when programming concerts?

You can’t control everything, especially with soloists, but once the soloist comes, you start from there. It’s usually a good piece, and then you think what you want to do yourself at this moment, and then you think about what you can do at this moment in time.

You do a symphony, and then if you do it in five years, it should be different. A piece should evolve for you, and that’s absolutely the great thing about music. The Schubert, I studied it 12 years ago for the first time, and I had to study it again for this concert. Believe me, the pleasure was immense and very different than before, looking at this piece and seeing what it means to me.

What about new music, contemporary composers?

Sure, great. I like Ligeti, I really like Ligeti. For Americans, I like John Adams, and there is the great British composer Thomas Adès, who should be played everywhere. You are looking for something that inspires you, in a certain voice. That’s why I like John Adams. [His music] might seem simple to you, but he has a strong voice, and you feel the knowledge of this person of the repertoire, the music that came before him. It’s coming from somewhere, and you also see the feeling behind it.

Some [music] can be too much about structure, too much of logic. Logic is a great thing, but it has to be connected to understanding and belief that the meaning makes the structure and the feeling behind it one. It is hard to do, very hard to do.

You were the first conducting fellow of the New World Symphony. What was it like working with Michael Tilson Thomas?

He’s an enormously knowledgeable person; he really does know a lot about a lot. On top of this, he’s a very skillful conductor and craftsman. You could listen now to his new recordings of Mahler, and the way he is able to mold the whole thing. While I was there, I spoke to him of many things, certain pieces and certain composers, and you see that this person really knows. He goes deep inside of a piece, what the piece actually means.

Tomorrow: An update on Rachev's rehearsal and an evaluation of Kabaretti's concert from last week. Saturday: An eval of Rachev's concert. If you want to give the Symphony some feedback, you can fill out online evaluation forms at the Symphony's website.

Last night, I attended dress rehearsal for the Eugene Symphony's first free concert to show the public the three candidates in its conductor search. (Photo courtesy Santa Barbara Symphony.)

OK, its MUSIC DIRECTOR search. But the concerts are about musicianship, so I found it interesting to watch the first candidate, Nir Kabaretti, conducting a rehearsal. I believe this was the third rehearsal for the concert; the music director usually gets ... let me see ... three and a dress, so this was one fewer than usual. Also, as Kabaretti told me during our Q&A this week (more from the Q&A coming soon, after various EW-related dog crises are settled), he feels quite strongly about getting Mozart "right." Or, rather, Mozart in a Viennese style.

So the casually dressed orchestra, led by concertmaster Katherine Lucktenberg in a tie-dye T-shirt and sandals, began with the Mozart piece Kabaretti picked — Impresario overture. Kabaretti, in dressy casual clothes, seemed completely at ease on the podium and with the musicians. He stopped them often to make sure certain bits sounded the way he wanted them to, pushing the strings especially to modulate their sound and "be more elegant." He often sang the lines to them to explain what he was looking for, and that seemed to help. Lucktenberg appeared to respect him but not be afraid to challenge him or instruct her violins in bowing or emphasis. I was surprised to see so much talking among the musicians during rehearsal, but maybe I don't go to enough rehearsals.

I loved the Mozart, and I could hear the improvements as the orchestra responded to Kabaretti's direction. Though I didn't sit on stage with the major donors and board (some others sat in the audience), I could see Kabaretti's baton work from the side, and he seemed to be right on, very clear beat without being martial, clear indications to the musicians when they should come in (enough ahead of time to give them warning), controlling the sound with his left arm and his body movement. Smooth and in control.

That remained the case through the so-often played (and used in many movie soundtracks) first movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Unfortunately for me, a music theory prof once told us that we would never forget the symphony if we just remembered to sing "This is the symphony that Schubert wrote but never finished" to one of the dominant themes of the first movement. Well, thanks, Dr. Brown, I never did forget and never will, and that made me giggle during rehearsal.

Anyway, it's tough for a conductor to draw a fresh sound out of an orchestra with chestnuts like this (even if they're the most gorgeous chestnuts, they're still played all of the time, and the musicians and conductor grow tired of them). This is one of two pieces that each candidate must conduct, so it will be interesting to see the contrasts. Kabaretti has worked in many countries and learned many languages, and again, he's smooth as butter up there. He dances on the podium, but lightly, and he seems in control, calm and determined that the orchestra understand his directions and work hard. He didn't seem to stint on praise, but only if he thought it was deserved.

I'm excited about the concert tonight. I couldn't hang out for the entire rehearsal, so I didn't get to hear the Tchaikovsky or Rimsky-Korsakov that's on the program, but I can't wait!

I look forward to seeing the next two candidates! And OMG, the Symphony this month — three candidates, the opening concert on the 18th AND YO-YO MA! Wow.

Here's a video with a bit of Kabaretti speaking and conducting (I assure you that he is more attractive than this interview lighting shows).

The Shanghai Quartet

First sellout of the Oregon Bach Festival season!

Did you wait to get your tix to the Shanghai Quartet + OBF string principals Mendelssohn Octet?

Well, sucker, you're too late!

So! Be sure to secure tix to the Quartet's China Song with the group on its own; Le Salon Français, with Heidi Krutzen, harp; David Riley, piano; and the OBF wind principals; and the Schubertiade, with "Sibylla Rubens, soprano; Ingeborg Danz, alto; Lothar Odinius, tenor; Michael Nagy, bass; Carey Bell, clarinet; Rick Todd, horn; Alexandre Dossin, David Riley, piano; Schubert Singers of the OBF Men's Chorus."

Gonna be a great fest. I feel it in my bones. Now let's make them feel it at the box office ...

The UO School of Music and Dance sponsors a boatload, and I do mean a ton, of events in the acoustically glorious Beall Hall. Many are student concerts; many are faculty recitals; some are from the faculty artist groups like the fabulous Trio Pacifica and the Oregon Brass Quintet, which I went to see last night.

Read more.