Oregon Symphony concert with Kwak and Stenz in Oregon Arts Watch

 My review of a rewarding Oregon Symphony concert from last weekend has been published in OAW here.

Today's Birthdays

Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727-1799)
Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)
Hans Erich Apostel (1901-1972)
Robin Milford (1903-1959)
Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981)
Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)
William Warfield (1920-2002)
Leslie Bassett (1923-2016)
James Louis ("J.J.") Johnson (1924-2001)
Aurèle Nicolet (1926-2016)
Uto Ughi (1944)
Myung-whun Chung (1953)

and

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)
Howard Moss (1922-1987)
Joseph Wambaugh (1937-2025)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day, in 1907, the Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Strauss' opera "Salome," with soprano Olive Fremstad in the title role, creates a scandal. The opera is dropped after a single performance, and not staged at the Met again until the 1930s.

Review: Young Artists highlight Vancouver Symphony concert

It is very impressive to see accomplished, professionals solo with an orchestra, but when the featured artists are super-talented teenagers and even younger, it is pretty astounding. Such was the case at the Vancouver Symphony’s concert on January 18th at Skyview Concert Hall, when the three gold medalists from the orchestra’s Young Adult Competition took the stage. Violinist Hana Gottesman, saxophonist Jacob Peizner, and pianist Wilson Liu dazzled the audience with their artistry in performing difficult concertos with the orchestra under music director Salvador Brotons – all of which made a strong case for the arts in the education of our nation’s youth.

First in the program lineup was Gottesman, a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who started violin lessons when she was just six. She played Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane”, which opens with a long and treacherous cadenza, impeccably. She gave some notes a real zing, and collaborated deftly with the orchestra to convey the gypsy-inspired themes of the piece.

Next came Peizner, age 17, who is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School. He delivered a sparkling rendition of Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.” During the first part of the piece, he negotiated a seemingly endless series of runs with elan. He expressed the beginning of the second part with great sensitivity and conquered the cadenza to bring the piece to a joyful conclusion.

After intermission, Liu wowed concertgoers with a stellar performance of the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. Although he is only eleven years old, Liu showed an artistic level way, way above his age, expressing the piece with perfectly calibrated dynamics and technical precision. He handled delicate passages with the utmost care, but he could also spring into a passionate section with unbridled gusto. He demonstrated an innate musicality that was flat-out jaw dropping, and the audience rewarded him with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

For the purely orchestral portion of the concert, Brotons led his forces in a rousing interpretation of Richard Strauss’s “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.” Jeong Yoon Lee, who usually is the VSO’s principal second violinist, took over the concertmaster position and excelled with her solos. Principal hornist Daniel Partridge announced the prankster’s theme with panache, and Ricky Smith expertly handled all of the tricky passages for the E-flat clarinet, as if to channel the trickster directly.

Since the piece relates to several escapades, it would have been nice to have had some projected text to accompany the music. That would help American audiences, who don’t know the stories, understand the music more.

Brotons gave a very humorous introduction to the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” The horns sounded glorious as they launched the first volleys. Principal oboist Alan Juza contributed substantially with his playing. The performance – highlighted by its wistful waltz tune – had just the right sentiment to evoke scenes from the opera.

The concert began on a much different note – with the orchestra eliciting space travel in “Mothership” by Mason Bates. This piece blends electronic and acoustical sounds in a very effective way. A heavy, pulsating beat establishes a rhythmic drive that permeates much of the time, but there is a section – given over to the cellos – that was briefly soothing. The orchestra then gathers its forces to create a sound of a spaceship taking off and whirling into the sky.

Judging from the smiles that I saw, it seemed that the orchestra really enjoyed cutting loose on the piece. The audience applauded the piece with vigor, and I think that I noticed Brotons smiling. Since Brotons is a composer, himself, I will have to find out if he has tried to write an orchestral piece that uses electronics. You never know…

Today's Birthdays

Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977)
Webster Booth (1902-1984)
Placido Domingo (1941)
Richie Havens (1941-2013)
Edwin Starr (1942-2003)
Suzanne Mentzer (1957)
Frank Ticheli (1958)

and

Louis Menand (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630)
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Julius Conus (1869-1942)
Józef Hofmann (1876-1957)
Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly) (1889-1949)
Walter Piston (1894-1976)
Eva Jessye (1895-1992)
Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010)
David Tudor (1926-1996)
Antonio de Almeida (1928-1997)
Iván Fischer (1951)

and

George Burns (1896-1996)
Alexandra Danilova (1903-1997)
Federico Fellini (1920-1993)
Edward Hirsch (1950)
Tami Hoag (1959)

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898)
Fritz Reiner (1888-1963)
Paul Dessau (1894-1979)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931-2019)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Marianne Faithfull (1946)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
Constance Garnett (1861-1946)

Today's Birthdays

César Cui (1835-1918)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
John Laurence Seymour (1893-1986)
Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996)
Anthony Galla-Rini (1904-2006)
John O'Conor (1947)
Anthony Pople (1955-2003)
Christoph Prégardien (1956)

and

Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
Rubén Darío (1867-1916)
A. A. Milne (1882-1956)
Oliver Hardy (1892-1957)

FYI: Roget's "Thesaurus" has never been out of print since it was first published in 1852.

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1958, "What Does Music Mean?", broadcast, the first of a series of televised New York Philharmonic "Young People's Concerts" on CBS-TV hosted by Leonard Bernstein. The series continued until 1972, with 53 different programs hosted by Bernstein.

Today's Birthdays

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
John Stanley (1712-1786)
Johann Gottfried Müthel (1728-1788)
François‑Joseph Gossec (1734-1829)
Henk Badings (1907-1987)
Oscar Morawetz (1917-2007)
Annie Delorie (1925-2009)
Donald Erb (1927-2008)
Jean Barraqué (1928-1973)
Sydney Hodkinson (1934-2021)
Dame Gillian Weir (1941)
Anne Queffélec (1948)
Augustin Dumay (1949)
Nancy Argenta (1957)
Gérard Pesson (1958)

and

Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
William Stafford (1914-1993)
Luis López Nieves (1950)
Sebastian Junger (1962)

Classical Voice North America - looking back on 2025

I wrote a short but sweet missive that looks back on the articles and authors who contributed to Classical Voice North America and have helped to boost it as a national magazine for classical music. The article provides a lot of links to all sorts of concerts and events that we covered. You can read all about it right here.

Today's Birthdays

Niccoló Piccinni (1728-1800)
Henri Büsser (1872-1973)
Daisy Kennedy (1893-1981)
Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989)
Ethel Merman (1908-1984)
Roger Wagner (1914-1992)
Ernesto Bonino (1922-2008)
Pilar Lorengar (1928-1996)
Marilyn Horne (1934)
Richard Wernick (1934-2015)
Gavin Bryars (1943)
Brian Ferneyhough (1943)
Katia Ricciarelli (1946)

and

Robert Service (1874-1958)
Anthony Hecht (1923-2004)
William Kennedy (1928)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1969)
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
Mary Karr (1955)
Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980)

Preview: Vancouver Symphony to present Young Artists Showcase

One of the most awesome concerts of the Vancouver Symphony’s season will take place this upcoming weekend (January 17 and 18) when three of the nation’s top young talents will perform with the orchestra. This is the 31st Young Artist Showcase, featuring the winners of VSO’s annual competition, which was held in October at First Presbyterian Church. An esteemed panel of judges (Zuill Bailey, Dr. Julia Hwakyu Lee, Philippe Quint, Dr. Ken Selden, and Dr. Igor Shakhman) determined the winners in the piano, brass/woodwind, and strings categories. The gold medalists were pianist Wilson Liu, violinist Hana Gottesman, and , alto saxophonist Jacob Peizner. Each of them received $5,000 and the opportunity to perform with the VSO.

To find out more about these extremely talented young musicians, I contacted each one by phone, starting with Wilson Liu. Although Liu is only eleven years old, he is already a veteran winner of competitions, including the 2025 International Young Artist Concerto Competition At age seven, Liu entered The Juilliard School Pre-College Division where he won the Bachauer Prize with full scholarship and Concerto Competition. He studies with Hung-Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone.

When he was four and a half years old, Liu started playing on a small electric piano and moved to an upright a year later. Although Wilson’s parents are not musical, he was encouraged by them.

“I don’t sing well, so I stayed with the piano, and that’s been a good choice,” said Liu. “I love the vast range of possibilities that I can get from the keyboard. If you experiment with color, every different way that you play a note comes out differently.”

During the weekdays Liu practices two to three hours, but over the weekend he dedicates more time. He will play the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with the VSO.

“One of the things that I find fascinating about this concerto,” said Liu, “is that it is one of the two concertos that he wrote in a minor key. The first one was in C minor, and this one is in D minor. So it has a sense of darkness that is a bit unusual for Mozart’s concertos. I always wonder if the people who heard it for the first time were scared by the music. It also has a four-note motif – a quick upward motion – that is so cool that Beethoven, Schubert and other composers stole the idea and used it in their music. For example, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 111 uses the same thing.”

Gold medalist Hana Gottesman is a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who has won top prizes at Royal Maas International, UK International, Coeur d’Alene National Young Artist, MTNA National, and Seattle Young Artist Music Festival competitions. She has appeared as a soloist with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, and SEEN Orchestra of Chicago.

Gottesman started when she was about six. She grew up in a musical household.

“My mom plays the piano and my dad is a violist,” said Gottesman. “I love classical music and the violin in particular. That has kept me focused.”

Gottesman, who attends schools in Bellevue, has studied violin with Jan Coleman and currently works with Simon James. With the Vancouver Symphony, she will play Ravel’s “Tzigane.”

“’Tzigane’ opens with an improvisational feeling – like gypsy fiddling – which relates to the title, which means gypsy,” said Gottesman. “It’s a piece that constantly shifts in mood and character, and that is fun to share with the audience. It opens with a long, challenging cadenza. The first page is all on the G string. I like to give the high G a lot of vibrato so that it sounds intense. I really enjoy the incredible variety of colors that this piece offers.”

“When the orchestra comes in,” said Gottesman, “and the main theme of the piece is finally exposed, it is fun to listen to how that that is repeated through the rest of the piece – with all of the variations. The music evolves into something else at the end.”

Jacob Peizner, age 17, is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School and a student of Phil Baldino and Kenneth Radnofsky. Peizner was one of ten saxophonists internationally selected for the 2024 Boston University’s Tanglewood Saxophone Workshop and was co-principal saxophone for the 2025 Tanglewood Young Artists Orchestra and Wind-Ensemble. He is the principal saxophonist in the Portland Youth Philharmonic and has soloed with the PYP Camerata ensemble.

Peizner started playing saxophone when he was a sixth grader.

“I chose it because I like jazz and saxophone is cool, said Peizner. “I grew up in a musical family. My mom plays flute, and my grandmother plays piano. I play clarinet and piano, also.”

With the VSO, he will play Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.”

“It was composed for Sigurd Raschèr, one of the pioneers of classical saxophone,” said Peizner. “He could play four octaves on the saxophone, which was very rare. Ibert’s composition has some really high notes that are very challenging to play. I am going to take them, using what we call ‘extended technique.’ It’s a very tricky piece. There’s a lot of fast passages with tricky keys. The piece is literally a ‘little chamber concerto.’ I like to keep that in mind. It shouldn’t be played heavily or taken to seriously. It has jazzy elements.”

In addition to the soloes by the gold medalists, the VSO, under Music Director Salvador Brotons, will play Mason Bates' "Mothership," and the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” as well as his symphonic poem “Till Eulenspeigel’s Merry Pranks.”

Today's Birthdays

Ivor Novello (1893-1951)
Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991)
Malcolm Frager (1935-1991)
Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet (1941-2010)
Aaron Jay Kernis (1960)

and

Molière (1622-1673)
Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)
Andreas William Heinesen (1900-1991)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Frank Conroy (1936-2005)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1941 Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" was premiered at Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner of war camp in Görlitz (Silesia), with the composer at the piano and fellow-prisoners Jean Le Boulaure (violin), Henri Akoka (clarinet), and Etienne Pasquier (cello).

Today's Birthdays

Ludwig von Köchel (1800-1877)
Jean de Reszke (1850-1925)
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Louis Quilico (1925-2000)
Zuzana Ruzickova (1927-2017)
Siegmund Nimsgern (1940)
Mariss Jansons (1943-2019)
Kees Bakels (1945)
Nicholas McGegan (1950)
Ben Heppner (1956)
Andrew Manze (1965)

and

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
Emily Hahn (1905-1997)
John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)
Maureen Dowd (1952)

Review of Christine Goerke singing Wagner with the Oregon Symphony

 My review of last Saturday's concert of Wagner hits with Christine Goerke and the Oregon Symphony has been posted on Classical Voice North America here.

Today's Birthdays

Christoph Graupner (1683-1760)
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690-1749)
Vassili Kalinnikov (1866-1901)
Richard Addinsell (1904-1977)
Daniil Shafran (1923-1997)
Renato Bruson (1936)
Paavo Heininen (1938-2022)
William Duckworth (1943-2012)
Richard Blackford (1954)
Wayne Marshall (1961)
Juan Diego Flórez (1973)

and

Horatio Alger (1832-1899)
Lorrie Moore (1957)

Today's Birthdays

Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739)
Jacques Duphly (1715-1789)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948)
Pierre Bernac (1899-1979)
William Pleeth (1916-1999)
Leo Smit (1921-1999)
Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
Salvatore Martirano (1927-1995)
Anne Howells (1941)
Viktoria Postnikova (1944)
Lori Laitman (1955)

and

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Jack London (1876-1916)
Haruki Murakami (1949)

Today's Birthdays

Christian Sinding (1856-1941)
Reihold Glière (1875-1956)
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Mark DeVoto (1940)
York Höller (1944)
Drew Minter (1955)
Alex Shapiro (1962)

and

William James (1842-1910)
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
Alan Paton (1903-1988)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1925, Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City by the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch, with Nadia Boulanger the soloist.

Today's Birthdays

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)
Sidney Griller (1911-1993)
Dean Dixon (1915-1976)
Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)
Max Roach (1924-2007)
Sherrill Milnes (1935)
Rod Stewart (1945)
James Morris (1947)
Mischa Maisky (1948)
Rockwell Blake (1951)
Charles Norman Mason (1955)
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1961)

and

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Philip Levine (1928-2015)
Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002)

Today's Birthdays

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906)
Rudolf Bing (1902-1997)
Herva Nelli (1909-1994)
Henriette Puig‑Roget (1910-1992)
Pierre Pierlot (1921-2007)
Joan Baez (1941)
Scott Walker (1944)
Jimmy Page (1944)
Waltraud Meier (1956)
Hillevi Martinpelto (1958)
Nicholas Daniel (1962)

and

Karel Čapek (1890-1938
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935)
Richard Halliburton (1901-1939)
Brian Friel (1929-2015)
Michiko Kakutani (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Jean Gilles (1668-1705)
Lowell Mason (1792-1872)
Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871)
Hans von Bülow (1830-1894)
Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967)
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Giorgio Tozzi (1923-2011)
Robert Starer (1924-2001)
Benjamin Lees (1924-2010)
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
Zdeněk Mácal (1936-2023)
Robert Moran (1937)
Evgeny Nesterenko (1938-2021)
Elijah Moshinsky (1946)
Paul Dresher (1951)
Vladimir Feltsman (1952)

and

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972)
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1923, the first broadcast in England of an opera direct from a concert hall took place, Mozart's "The Magic Flute" via the BBC from London.

Today's Birthdays

Clara Haskil (1895-1960)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
John Brownlee (1900-1969)
Nicanor Zabaleta (1907-1993)
Günter Wand (1912-2002)
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)
John Lanigan (1921-1996)
Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922-2000)
Tommy Johnson (1935-2006)
Iona Brown (1941-2004)
Richard Armstrong (1943)
Janine Jansen (1978)

and

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Hugh Kenner (1923-2003)
Nicholson Baker (1957)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1955, Marian Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Ulrica in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Mascera" (A Masked Ball). She was the first African-American singer to perform as an opera soloist on the Met stage. Subsequent distinguished African-American singers who performed as members of the Met company included Robert McFerrin, Sr. (Bobby McFerrin Jr.’s father), Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Kahtleen Battle and Jessye Norman.

Article about chamber music in Hong Kong published in The Strad

I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago for some concerts by the Musicus Society. I learned a lot about the group and how it started fifteen years ago after interviewing Artistic Director and cellist, Trey Lee and President Chui-Inn Lee. I think that you'll enjoy reading my article which has been published in The Strad here.  

Today's Birthdays

Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Georges Martin Witkowski (1867-1943)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Karl Straube (1873-1950)
Earl Kim (1920-1998)
Alexander Baillie (1956)

and

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1733, this notice appears in the Leipzig newspaper Nachtricht auch Frag u. Anzeiger: "Tonight at 8 o'clock there will be a Bach Concert at the Zimmermann Coffeehouse on Catharine Street". This presumably featured secular vocal works, chamber music and concertos performed by the Leipzig Collegium, an ensemble directed by J.S. Bach.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755)
Constanza Mozart (1762-1842)
Peter Wolle (1792-1871)
Frederick Converse (1871-1940)
Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951)
Nicolai Roslavets (1881-1944)
Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)
Laszlo Heltay (1930-2019)
Alfred Brendel (1931-2025)
Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024)

and

Stella Gibbons(1902-1989)
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990)
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)
Umberto Eco (1932-2016)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938)
Charlie Rose (1942)

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)
Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720-1774)
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Frank Wess (1922-2013)
Grace Bumbry (1937-2023)
Joseph Turrin (1947)
Margaret Marshall (1949)
Ronald Corp (1951)
Peter Seiffert (1954)
Boris Berezovsky (1969)

and

Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863)
Louis Braille (1809-1852)
Augustus John (1878-1961)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1950, RCA announces it will produce long play records as Columbia did two years earlier (RCA had unsuccessfully attempted to compete with Columbia's new 33.3-rpm LPs by issuing some of their classical catalog as multiple disc 45-rpm sets).

Today's Birthdays

Victor Borge (1909-2000)
Ronald Smith (1922-2004)
Sir George Martin (1926-2016)
H. K. Gruber (1943)
David Atherton (1944)

and

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

and from the Composers Datebook

On this date in the year 1843 in Paris, the comic opera “Don Pasquale” by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti received its first performance.
also:

On this day in 1925, German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler made his American debut, conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.

Today's Birthdays

Frantisek Xaver Brixi (1732-1771)
Mily Balakirev (1837-1910)
Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Barbara Pentland (1912-2000)
Gardner Read (1913-2005)
Irina Arkhipova (1925-2010)
Alberto Zedda (1928-2017)
Peter Eötvös (1944)
Janet Hilton (1945)
Vladimir Ovchinnikov (1958)
Tzimon Barto (1963)
Robert Fertitta (1970)
Eric Whitacre (1970)

and

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Christopher Durang (1949)
Lynda Barry (1956)

Today's Birthdays - Happy New Year!

Charles Racquet (1598-1664)
Frederick William Gaisberg (1873-1951)
Edwin Franko Goldman (1878-1956)
Artur Rodzinski (1892-1958)
Erich Schmid (1907-2001)
Trude Rittmann (1908-2005)
Milt Jackson (1923-1999)
Richard Verreau (1926-2005)
Maurice Béjart (1927-2007)
Bernard Greenhouse (1916-2011)
Alberto Portugheis (1941)

And

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)
J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1585, composer Giovanni Gabrieli became the second organist at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. His uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli, was the first organist.

On this day in 1908, Gustav Mahler made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."