I was fortunate enough to attend the Aspen Music Festival again this year, and this time I was there for the last week of the two month long festival.
There are a lot of reasons why I was so excited to make my second trip to the festival. The first year I was at the festival, I have to admit, I was a little overwhelmed by how many events there were. My schedule last year was packed!
Opera House Music
Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra
Piano Master Class
Emerson String Quartet
Tour of the Benedict Music Tent
Tour of Harris Concert Hall
Aspen Chamber Symphony
Opera Scenes Master Class
Aspen Opera Theater Center performs Mozart’s The Magic Flute
Aspen Festival Orchestra
Since I attended so many performances last year that were related to opera, I wanted to diversify what I chose to go to this year. For the week that I was there my schedule looked something like this:
Chamber Music (Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Percussion, Piano)
Recital by Orli Shaham (Piano)
Aspen Festival Orchestra
Chamber Music at the Tent (String Quintet, Violin Sonata)
American Academy of Conducting at Aspen Orchestra
Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra
A Recital by Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Winner –
Aspen Chamber Symphony
Chamber Music
A Recital by Vladimir Feltsman
Prelude: Pre-Concert Talk
Aspen Festival Orchestra
Okay – so that doesn’t look any lighter, but considering that they have over 300 events over the span of 8 weeks – I was just scratching the surface.
The fun aspect about going to the music festival really is the diversity of the performances you can go to. Last year I focused more on the larger ensembles and the opera performances, but this year I got a chance to go to performances that were more string and piano-centric. The theme this year was Conscience and Beauty – seemingly abstract sounding, but the pieces that were chosen for each performance really did convey these two words. There were works, from solo to large ensemble, that were from composers of all eras, from Baroque to current living composer (some of those were VERY interesting/strange to sit through). The most exciting aspect though, was being able to hear the trend of classical music for the next season.
In the following weeks I’ll go into details for some of the performances – all extremely different but equally exciting. Stay tuned!
– Submitted by Janica Chang, Music Design