The Classical Grammy Winners, Class of 2020

The winners of this year's Grammy Awards were announced yesterday, Sunday, January 26th, 2020, and while little attention, as usual, is paid to the Classical Music division, I thought I'd post the list of nominees in each category for any Classical Music fan who happens to stop by: the winners are highlighted in red. 

For those of us in Harrisburg, PA, my home town, there's special news in these awards because the winner of "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" was Jennifer Higdon's Harp Concerto -- recorded for the Naxos label with Yolanda Kondanassis for whom the work was composed, and the Rochester Philharmonic conducted by Ward Stare. It received its second performance shortly after its premiere in Rochester with Ms. Kondonassis and the Harrisburg Symphony conducted by Stuart Malina in May, 2018.

Jennifer Higdon's "Harp Concerto" with Yolanda Kondonassis and the Rochester Philharmonic on the stage of Eastman Theater

And while Third Coast Percussion, appearing earlier this month with Market Square Concerts at Harrisburg's Whitaker Center did not, unfortunately, win their second Grammy for the album featured in their program here, Perpetulum, nominated in the category "Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance," the award did go to the recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Caroline Shaw' "Orange" by the Attaca Quartet. Her "Plan & Elevation: the Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks" was performed by the Dover Quartet at Temple Ohev Sholom in February, 2017.

Congratulations to all the winning performers and composers, as well as to all those who'd been nominated!

75. Best Orchestral Performance - Award to the Conductor and to the Orchestra.
BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO. 9 – Manfred Honeck, conductor (Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)
COPLAND: BILLY THE KID; GROHG – Leonard Slatkin, conductor (Detroit Symphony Orchestra)
NORMAN: SUSTAIN – WINNER – Gustavo Dudamel, conductor (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
TRANSATLANTIC – Louis Langrée, conductor (Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra)
WEINBERG: SYMPHONIES NOS. 2 & 21 – Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, conductor (City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Kremerata Baltica)

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76. Best Opera Recording - Award to the Conductor, Album Producer(s) and Principal Soloists.
BENJAMIN: LESSONS IN LOVE & VIOLENCE – George Benjamin, conductor; Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Peter Hoare & Gyula Orendt; Raphaël Mouterde & James Whitbourn, producers (Orchestra Of The Royal Opera House)
BERG: WOZZECK – Marc Albrecht, conductor; Christopher Maltman & Eva-Maria Westbroek; François Roussillon, producer (Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra; Chorus Of Dutch National Opera)
CHARPENTIER: LES ARTS FLORISSANTS; LES PLAISIRS DE VERSAILLES – Paul O'Dette & Stephen Stubbs, conductors; Jesse Blumberg, Teresa Wakim & Virginia Warnken; Renate Wolter-Seevers, producer (Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble; Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble)
PICKER: FANTASTIC MR. FOX – WINNER – Gil Rose, conductor; John Brancy, Andrew Craig Brown, Gabriel Preisser, Krista River & Edwin Vega; Gil Rose, producer (Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Boston Children's Chorus)
WAGNER: LOHENGRIN – Christian Thielemann, conductor; Piotr Beczała, Anja Harteros, Tomasz Konieczny, Waltraud Meier & Georg Zeppenfeld; Eckhard Glauche, producer (Festspielorchester Bayreuth; Festspielchor Bayreuth)

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77. Best Choral Performance - Award to the Conductor, and to the Choral Director and/or Chorus Master where applicable and to the Choral Organization/Ensemble.
BOYLE: VOYAGES – Donald Nally, conductor (The Crossing)
DURUFLÉ: COMPLETE CHORAL WORKS – WINNER – Robert Simpson, conductor (Ken Cowan; Houston Chamber Choir)
THE HOPE OF LOVING – Craig Hella Johnson, conductor (Conspirare)
SANDER: THE DIVINE LITURGY OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM – Peter Jermihov, conductor (Evan Bravos, Vadim Gan, Kevin Keys, Glenn Miller & Daniel Shirley; PaTRAM Institute Singers)
SMITH, K.: THE ARC IN THE SKY – Donald Nally, conductor (The Crossing)

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78. Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance – For new recordings of works with chamber or small ensemble (twenty-four or fewer members, not including the conductor). One Award to the ensemble and one Award to the conductor, if applicable.
CERRONE: THE PIECES THAT FALL TO EARTH – Christopher Rountree & Wild Up
FREEDOM & FAITH – PUBLIQuartet
PERPETULUM – Third Coast Percussion
RACHMANINOFF - HERMITAGE PIANO TRIO – Hermitage Piano Trio
SHAW: ORANGE – WINNER – Attacca Quartet 

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79. Best Classical Instrumental Solo – Award to the Instrumental Soloist(s) and to the Conductor when applicable.
THE BERLIN RECITAL – Yuja Wang
HIGDON: HARP CONCERTO – Yolanda Kondonassis; Ward Stare, conductor (The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra)
MARSALIS: VIOLIN CONCERTO; FIDDLE DANCE SUITE – WINNER – Nicola Benedetti; Cristian Măcelaru, conductor (Philadelphia Orchestra)
THE ORCHESTRAL ORGAN – Jan Kraybill
TORKE: SKY, CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN – Tessa Lark; David Alan Miller, conductor (Albany Symphony)

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80. Best Classical Solo Vocal Album – Award to: Vocalist(s), Collaborative Artist(s) (Ex: pianists, conductors, chamber groups) Producer(s), Recording Engineers/Mixers with 51% or more playing time of new material.
THE EDGE OF SILENCE - WORKS FOR VOICE BY GYÖRGY KURTÁG – Susan Narucki (Donald Berman, Curtis Macomber, Kathryn Schulmeister & Nicholas Tolle)
HIMMELSMUSIK – Philippe Jaroussky & Céline Scheen; Christina Pluhar, conductor; L’Arpeggiata, ensemble (Jesús Rodil & Dingle Yandell)
SCHUMANN: LIEDERKREIS OP. 24, KERNER-LIEDER OP. 35 – Matthias Goerne; Leif Ove Andsnes, accompanist [sic]
SONGPLAY – WINNER – Joyce DiDonato; Chuck Israels, Jimmy Madison, Charlie Porter & Craig Terry, accompanists (Steve Barnett & Lautaro Greco)
A TE, O CARA
Stephen Costello; Constantine Orbelian, conductor (Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra)

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81. Best Classical Compendium - Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s) and Engineer(s) of over 51% playing time of the album, if other than the artist.
AMERICAN ORIGINALS 1918 – John Morris Russell, conductor; Elaine Martone, producer
LESHNOFF: SYMPHONY NO. 4 'HEICHALOS'; GUITAR CONCERTO; STARBURST – Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Tim Handley, producer
MELTZER: SONGS AND STRUCTURES – Paul Appleby & Natalia Katyukova; Silas Brown & Harold Meltzer, producers
THE POETRY OF PLACES – WINNER – Nadia Shpachenko; Marina A. Ledin & Victor Ledin, producers
SAARIAHO: TRUE FIRE; TRANS; CIEL D'HIVER – Hannu Lintu, conductor; Laura Heikinheimo, producer

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Ward Stare, Jennifer Higdon, Yolanda Kondonassis

82. Best Contemporary Classical Composition – A Composer's Award. (For a contemporary classical composition composed within the last 25 years, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year.) Award to the librettist, if applicable.
BERMEL: MIGRATION SERIES FOR JAZZ ENSEMBLE & ORCHESTRA – Derek Bermel, composer (Derek Bermel, Ted Nash, David Alan Miller, Juilliard Jazz Orchestra & Albany Symphony Orchestra)
HIGDON: HARP CONCERTO – WINNER – Jennifer Higdon, composer (Yolanda Kondonassis, Ward Stare & The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra)
MARSALIS: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR – Wynton Marsalis, composer (Nicola Benedetti, Cristian Măcelaru & Philadelphia Orchestra
NORMAN: SUSTAIN – Andrew Norman, composer (Gustavo Dudamel & Los Angeles Philharmonic)
SHAW: ORANGE – Caroline Shaw, composer (Attacca Quartet)
WOLFE: FIRE IN MY MOUTH – Julia Wolfe, composer (Jaap Van Zweden, Francisco J. Núñez, Donald Nally, The Crossing, Young People's Chorus Of NY City & New York Philharmonic)

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73. Best Engineered Album, Classical An Engineer's Award. (Artist names appear in parentheses.)
AEQUA - ANNA THORVALDSDÓTTIR – Daniel Shores, engineer; Daniel Shores, mastering engineer (International Contemporary Ensemble)
BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO. 9 – Mark Donahue, engineer; Mark Donahue, mastering engineer (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)
RACHMANINOFF - HERMITAGE PIANO TRIO – Keith O. Johnson & Sean Royce Martin, engineers; Keith O. Johnson, mastering engineer (Hermitage Piano Trio)
RILEY: SUN RINGS – WINNER – Leslie Ann Jones, engineer; John Kilgore, Judith Sherman & David Harrington, engineers/mixers; Robert C. Ludwig, mastering engineer (Kronos Quartet)
WOLFE: FIRE IN MY MOUTH – Bob Hanlon & Lawrence Rock, engineers; Ian Good & Lawrence Rock, mastering engineers (Jaap Van Zweden, Francisco J. Núñez, Donald Nally, The Crossing, Young People's Chorus Of NY City & New York Philharmonic)

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74. Producer Of The Year, ClassicalA Producer's Award. (Artist names appear in parentheses.)
BLANTON ALSPAUGH – WINNER
• Artifacts - The Music Of Michael McGlynn (Charles Bruffy & Kansas City Chorale)
• Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique; Fantaisie Sur La Tempête De Shakespeare (Andrew Davis & Toronto Symphony Orchestra)
• Copland: Billy The Kid; Grohg (Leonard Slatkin & Detroit Symphony Orchestra)
• Duruflé: Complete Choral Works (Robert Simpson & Houston Chamber Choir)
• Glass: Symphony No. 5 (Julian Wachner, The Choir Of Trinity Wall Street, Trinity Youth Chorus, Downtown Voices & Novus NY)
• Sander: The Divine Liturgy Of St. John Chrysostom (Peter Jermihov & PaTRAM Institute Singers)
• Smith, K.: Canticle (Craig Hella Johnson & Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble)
• Visions Take Flight (Mei-Ann Chen & ROCO)

JAMES GINSBURG
• Project W - Works By Diverse Women Composers (Mei-Ann Chen & Chicago Sinfonietta)
• Silenced Voices (Black Oak Ensemble)
• 20th Century Harpsichord Concertos (Jory Vinikour, Scott Speck & Chicago Philharmonic)
• Twentieth Century Oboe Sonatas (Alex Klein & Phillip Bush)
• Winged Creatures & Other Works For Flute, Clarinet, And Orchestra (Anthony McGill, Demarre McGill, Allen Tinkham & Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra)

MARINA A. LEDIN, VICTOR LEDIN
• Bates: Children Of Adam; Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem (Steven Smith, Erin R. Freeman, Richmond Symphony & Chorus)
• The Orchestral Organ (Jan Kraybill)
• The Poetry Of Places (Nadia Shpachenko)
• Rachmaninoff - Hermitage Piano Trio (Hermitage Piano Trio)

MORTEN LINDBERG
• Himmelborgen (Elisabeth Holte, Kåre Nordstoga & Uranienborg Vokalensemble)
• Kleiberg: Do You Believe In Heather? (Various Artists)
• Ljos (Fauna Vokalkvintett)
• LUX (Anita Brevik, Trondheimsolistene & Nidarosdomens Jentekor)
• Trachea (Tone Bianca Sparre Dahl & Schola Cantorum)
• Veneliti (Håkon Daniel Nystedt & Oslo Kammerkor)

DIRK SOBOTKA
• Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)

When Jennifer Higdon's Percussion Concerto was New (2005)

Jennifer Higdon's life has been a busy one - not just composing tons of music that's been performed just about everywhere you can imagine - but attending premieres and performances all over the place. And she's been able to find the time in her schedule to come to Harrisburg for at least the Saturday night performance of her Percussion Concerto with the Harrisburg Symphony this weekend at the Forum. The concert's at 8pm but Stuart Malina will be giving the pre-concert talk an hour before. The Sunday performance will be at 3:00 again with the pre-concert talk at 2pm.

You can read more about this concert in Ellen Hughes' article in the Patriot-News and listen to John Clare's video-interview from Composing Thoughts Live, recorded at the time of 2008's Harrisburg performance of her Percussion Concerto, posted on the symphony's blog, here (TBA).

It was the day after Thanksgiving Day in 2005 when I celebrated the future of Classical Music by going to Philadelphia to hear their orchestra play at Kimmel Center. My first visit there had been in June 2002 to hear the world premiere of a work by a composer then unknown to me. It was an exciting experience: not only was it an impressive, enjoyable new work I wanted to hear again, it was gratifying to hear the audience’s loud and vociferous acclamation of her and her music! It was basically a performance and a response that put Jennifer Higdon on the map.

This time, a road-trip with my friend and former colleague John Clare, we heard the world premiere of her latest work, a Percussion Concerto played by Colin Currie, one of the stars of a, granted, fairly small firmament but still an astounding artist I’d not had a chance to hear before.

This was only one of six premieres she’d had in the past two weeks – !!! – some songs, a work for string orchestra, some chamber music and the Percussion Concerto. Ms. Higdon has recently completed three new concertos: the Oboe Concerto premiered in September with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota; this Percussion Concerto written for Colin Currie which will also be performed with the Dallas and Indianapolis symphonies who’d jointly commissioned the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and the Trombone Concerto that will be premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony in February 2006. The day after she completed the Trombone Concerto, she began writing a commission for the Tokyo String Quartet! Among other commissions, she had two more concertos in the near future: a violin concerto for Hilary Hahn and a piano concerto. 

Since then, this Percussion Concerto, having gone out into the wider world, won a Grammy and in 2010 Higdon won both a Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto and a Grammy for the recording of her Percussion Concerto. Her recently completed opera, Cold Mountain, will receive its world premiere in Santa Fe in August 2015 and will then be performed in Philadelphia in February of 2016.

But this post is about attending the world premiere of her Percussion Concerto in November, 2005.

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We arrived for the pre-concert talk – I recognized composer Chris Theofanidis sitting at the end of our row (his “Rainbow Body,” another beautiful new work, is on that same Telarc CD you should have with Higdon’s “blue cathedral”). Ms. Higdon gave us some insights into how she wrote the piece, how she collaborated with the soloist.

“I e-mailed Colin and asked him what he knew about the Peking Opera Gong and he said ‘I just bought one today!’ so I guess it was meant to be”; in the same food court where conductor Marin Alsop suggested a couple years ago she should write a concerto for Colin Currie, she and Colin were having lunch before Wednesday’s one-and-only rehearsal before their premiere, making slight last-minute revisions in his part.

And there were certain things she pointed out to listen for. Imagine what it might have been like to have had Beethoven there to find out some of the inner thoughts and creative highlights about his Third Symphony which we’d also hear later that evening?!

She wanted to begin the concerto quietly – “you have to have somewhere to start from, because if you begin flat out - bam! - it has nowhere to go and after 25 minutes, you’d just run screaming out of the hall” – so it begins tentatively with a few isolated four-note chords in the marimba’s lowest register (“Colin is primarily a marimbist so I really wanted to feature that instrument” – plus he was playing a five-octave instrument that had one of the most incredible sounds I’d ever heard on a marimba, the equivalent of Bosendorfer concert grand piano).

In addition to interacting with the orchestra in typical concerto fashion, she also wanted the soloist to interact with the percussion section, so there was a good deal of back-and-forth interplay there as well. Since she’s writing for the Philadelphia Orchestra, she could also dream, something she can’t always do if she’s writing for a more practical purpose (like the middle school band piece she just wrote: “they told me the trumpets can only play whole notes and we have no oboes or bassoons and 16 flutes”).

She wondered, for instance – taking off from the all-percussion movement of her Concerto for Orchestra – what it would be like to have four percussionists all just playing wood blocks. So she wrote a passage that begins with wood blocks in the soloist being answered by different sizes and types of wood blocks and temple blocks from the orchestra (“and it just sounded like this gigantic attack of woodpeckers”).

There was one special effect played by the timpanist (who was moderating the pre-concert talk) where he places a cymbal on top of the timpani, then while playing a “roll” on the cymbal moves the pitch-adjusting pedal of the drum to produce an eerie kind of wah-wah-wah undulation, something she’d borrowed from her teacher, George Crumb who wrote a great deal of unexpected colorful special effects into his music.

Whether it’s borrowing or stealing (“I think it was Stravinsky who said ‘bad composers borrow, good composers steal’...”), as a composer, she’s always listening to music and squirreling away sounds in her brain that will pop up when she’s looking for something she can do here or there: the point is, of course, to make it work in your own language whether you borrow (or steal) it from Beethoven or Bartok. She also explained how she wrote the cadenza, the section of any traditional concerto where the soloist gets a chance to ‘show off’ by himself and which, in the old days, was supposed to be improvised.

The practicality here was how to work in and out of it, not just for the integrity of the music’s flow, but also to bring the orchestra back into it. She notated a beginning and a closing accompanied by the percussion section of the orchestra, but in between the soloist had the complete liberty of making it up as he went along. With all of these thoughts in our heads, we then proceeded into Verizon Hall to hear the world premiere.

Our seats were in the third tier’s front row (not high enough to cause nose-bleeds) so we had a commanding view, if you’re not afraid of heights. There, across the front of the stage, were little groupings of lots and lots of percussion instruments. On the right, the vibraphone (with antique cymbals), the marimba to end all marimbas (beautifully rich looking even before you heard the richness of its sounds). On the other side of the podium, a set-up of stands and tables littered with brake drums (yes, taken right out of an automobile), wood blocks, the Peking Opera Gong, a bowl and a variety of other odds-and-ends to produce a whole rainbow of colorful sounds; and then on the far left, a raft of drums from tom-toms to a bass drum with at least four suspended cymbals. The Four Stations of the Soloist (we were told at the pre-concert talk, Currie wasn’t wearing black dress shoes, but black sneakers).

The opening of the concerto, with its tentative chords in the marimba’s lowest register, was a mesmerizing hook: you can open a work with an attention-grabbing event like Beethoven did in his “Eroica,” two crashing chords, or you can do something quiet and subtle that draws you into the piece by creating a sound-world that makes you think “wow, what’s this?” Gradually, the percussionists from the orchestra blend in, augmenting the soloist – Chris Theofanidis, sitting in the lower level, told us at intermission he missed a lot of the interplay between the soloist and the back of the orchestra where the other percussionists were spread out, so it must have been amusing to see the soloist walk from the marimba over to the vibraphone and yet still hear the marimba playing – man, is he good! It’s one of the tricks a composer can use to bridge the sounds into a better flow and also, on a more pragmatic side, give the soloist a chance to reposition himself at these different stations on the stage without pointing out “okay, I’m moving, now,” and without getting out-of-breath in the process. When the full orchestra came in and turned everything up several notches, the soloist was now wailing away at the vibraphone – rapid-fire passages up and down the instrument which, perhaps by the accident of our seats, I was unable to hear well through the texture. Then it was back to the marimba and eventually back-and-forth from station to station to explore first this sound, then that one.

At no point did my interest flag; nowhere was I thinking “oh, that one, again.” It was always a new moment, and often, as Newman put it, “a magical moment.” The woodpeckers came and went (a smile of recognition, there) and by the time we got to the cadenza it occurred to me this was a 25-minute piece but did this mean it was going to be over already? (I would have guessed maybe only 10 minutes had flown by).

Currie playing the cadenza

The cadenza itself would have done Gene Krupa proud, an all-out big-band explosion (this is, after all, a concussion concerto) that came to a rapid boil: when it was over, several people in the audience started to applaud before they realized the piece ain’t over yet! The orchestra came back in and wrapped things up by driving it even further: I can’t even remember how it ended except with a collective whoop from the audience, a prolonged burst of applause and many people standing and cheering – for the orchestra, for the soloist but especially for the composer!

My immediate response was “PLAY IT AGAIN!” There was so much I wanted to hear that would need a second and third time to discover, magical moments to savor again, new ones that may have been overlooked in the excitement the first time around.

The orchestra never seemed a bit tentative as one might expect in a new work: you could tell they loved playing this music! Colin Currie owned the piece (figuratively speaking), an equally passionate advocate for just one of three new concertos he’s premiering this season (does he have favorites? probably the one he’s playing at the moment). And it only reinforced my initial reaction to the concerto the orchestra played three years ago: here’s a composer who really knows what she’s doing!

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While the light-speed classical music moves at doesn't compare to the popular world's (by the time a new contemporary classical piece gets premiered, heard round-the-world, recorded, and ends up in the repertoire can span life-times for some pop stars), the Percussion Concerto has been taken up by numerous soloists - the Harrisburg Symphony's Chris Rose was the second performer to play it after Colin Currie's exclusivity ran its course - and been performed in numerous venues around the world.

The Harrisburg Symphony first performed it here in 2008. "The crowd exploded," Malina said, [quoted in Ellen Hughes' recent article with the Patriot-News]. "It's the single most requested work for a second performance I've ever had - a compelling piece, played by a gifted performer," he said.

And so it returns as the final concert of the 2013-14 Season, called "Out with a Bang" not just because of the array of percussion instruments lining the front of the stage, but also for the triumphant (and noisy) finale of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that ends the concert.

It's rare to have a recent work repeated at all in most orchestra's programs, so it's amazing to get a chance to hear this exciting work a second time in Harrisburg in six years (has it been that long?). And especially rare for it's having been so frequently requested by members of our audience!

So excited!!!


- Dick Strawser

Listening to Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto

“ShaZAAM!"

Which actually sounds like it could be a title of one of Jennifer Higdon’s works but it was my initial reaction to hearing her Violin Concerto when it was first broadcast on-line from the BBC with the performance by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. The soloist was Hilary Hahn, the violinist for whom the work was composed, and that performance – officially the European premiere, as I recall – was recorded for Deutsche Grammophon and is scheduled to be released in September 2010, paired with the Tchaikovsky concerto.

Earlier today, it was announced that Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2010!

You can read her own thoughts on winning a Pulitzer, posted at the New Music Box, here.

Going through some old files in my computer, I came across this unfinished post about the Violin Concerto which I'd started last June. I had blogged about it when it was announced the concert in England would be broadcast on-line - you can read it here - and it includes a video clip of violinist Hilary Hahn interviewing composer Jennifer Higdon about the piece.

Though I was unable to make the performance in Baltimore, I did get a chance to hear the British performance twice while it was available on-line at the BBC. And the following observations describe some of the most memorable passages of the work. Without a score, I'm guessing how things might be scored: she has a knack for finding ingenious sound-combinations and ways of writing something that blossoms (or explodes, depending on the tempo) from something that might seem “easy to figure out.”

The opening of the Percussion Concerto is a case in point. Low tremulous chords on the marimba gradually expand as other similar percussion instruments are introduced – without seeing the score or watching the performers, you might think “how is he DOING that?!” when in reality, it's part of an artful ruse. But it also incorporates the soloist into the orchestra – and vice versa – in ways that traditional concertos didn't always seek to explore. Traditionally the idea has been more often one of a “contest in sound between the soloist and the orchestra.”

The Violin Concerto is another such approach from its magical opening to the expansion of the soloist's cadenza back into the full orchestra before the first movement ends, through a gorgeous slow movement before ending with a driving finale that must be as close as a violinist can get to riding a racehorse to the finish line.

Here are my observations from last June's broadcast of Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto with Hilary Hahn and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by Vasily Petrenko:

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... the toy-shop opening with the soloist’s harmonics and the (I’m guessing) glockenspiel (sounds like it’s being played with knitting needles, a very delicate wind-chimey sound, something I definitely wanna crib)

... I love how she creates a sound-world that draws you in without being adamant or narcissistic about it. The Percussion Concerto opened up in a similar way, with a low tremolo in the lowest register of the solo marimba – just the kind of sound to make you sit and go “what? How’d she do that?”

... under this, a long flowing line in the solo violin (so who’s playing the harmonics?) emerges and expands rhapsodically as more instruments join the texture – more with lines and sustained notes, but then the opening harmonic pattern becomes a backdrop in the woodwinds and percussion

... this being a concerto and one by Jennifer Higdon (whom one early critic described as “Bartok on speed”), it soon becomes rhythmic and lively, but still growing out of that opening sound and fabric, building gradually and taking you with it. She may alternate between these two moods, but however she Her timing is impeccable.

... However you view modern tonality versus modern non-tonality, one of the things I love about her style is not being afraid of spiky dissonance but always conscious of what makes standard classical music (whether it’s 18th Century classicism or 19th Century romanticism) move forward – the presentation of tension (the dissonance) and its resolution, a release that could be a seemingly normal major chord or maybe not but always moving further ahead under its own innate logic.

… there’s a passage at the end of the cadenza I’m wondering if it’s all in the solo violin part – playing over a sustained drone on a low string, I hear what would have to be left-hand pizzicatos alternating with an occasional bowed artificial harmonic, all set up in a rhythmic pattern that could be played by one person but sounds like 3 lines of different sonorities. Just when I thought “maybe it is possible – after all it’s part of a cadenza,” the solo violin extends into a long rhapsodic line with the sustained drone, the harmonics and the pizzicato notes all, clearly, played by other players and instruments, leading into a nocturnal rumination that brings the movement, for all its virtuosity, into a peaceful rhapsodic close, not unlike its opening.

...first movement is almost 15 minutes long. It's given a subtitle, “1726,” which seems like it must be commemorating some event in that year but in reality refers to the address of the Curtis School of Music on Rittenhause Square in Philadelphia where Ms. Higdon teaches and Ms. Hahn was a student.

…the ending of the slow movement is another of those moments: after long lyric lines surge to a climax as different strands begin to build a linearly dense texture, its resolution begins with an ascending line in the violin against descending block chords in the winds. This eventually settles on a sustained mid-range A Major triad while the violin pulls slowly higher through an A Minor scale to cadence on a high E, another jaw-dropping bit of magic worthy of a composer as sensitive as Schubert.

... the second movement, subtitled “Chaconnie,” is about 13 minutes long. The finale, subtitled “Fly Forward,” goes by quickly in slightly under 5 minutes.

(You can hear a 3-minute excerpt on NPR's web-site, here.)

As it turned out, I originally put this post aside to come back to it again the next day and listen to the music again, but between some mild computer trouble and then being unable to get the BBC clip to play the next day, the file was no longer available to listen to, so I was unable to finish writing about the concerto... Bummer! I am certainly looking forward to hearing the recording when it comes out this fall.

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It's no secret I'm a big fan of Higdon's music, ever since I first heard her Concerto for Orchestra back in 2002 when it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra during their Centennial Celebration. When she got the call asking her if she'd consider writing such a piece, she at first thought this was a joke: but it was very real and they were very serious about it. To add more pressure, it was scheduled for a concert that was to be attended by representatives from orchestras all over the country who were in town for the American Symphony Orchestra League conference (at some point, perhaps even before then, it changed its name to its current name, the League of American Orchestras).

Noting the passionately supportive audience response (long standing and cheering ovations at each performance) and the dazzling critical acclaim it was met with, many members at the conference took this news back to their orchestras and within the year, seven other orchestras were scheduled to perform Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Orchestra, something very rare in the life of a new work, even by a major composer.

She quickly went from being a respected teacher at Curtis not well known outside the area to becoming the closest thing to a Superstar new music has had in decades.

I have since attended additional Philadelphia premieres of her Percussion Concerto and a concerto for violin, chorus and orchestra called “The Singing Rooms.” However, I was unable to make it Baltimore to hear the Violin Concerto when it was given its East Coast Premiere last June, nor could I make it to Washington to hear her Piano Concerto when it was premiered, either.

In Central Pennsylvania, the Harrisburg Symphony has played three works by her, most recently 'SkyLine' from “CityScape,” the Percussion Concerto and, before that, “Blue Cathedral.” The Lancaster Symphony gave her their Composers Award in March of 2008 and performed the middle movement from “CityScape,” called “river sings a song to trees.” This past January with Market Square Concerts, Harrisburg heard the Cypress Quartet play the string quartet she'd written for them called “Impressions.”

From her website, you can tell – just by looking at these three commissions – she is not resting on any laurels. She's certainly one of the busiest composers on the planet.

“Jennifer Higdon is writing a concerto for the group eighth blackbird and orchestra. The work, On a Wire will be premiered in June by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano, conducting, and will also be featured by the ASO during the 2010 National Conference of the League of American Orchestras. Other commissioning groups will be announced soon.

“The Grand Tetons Music Festival, Donald Runnicles, Music Director, has commissioned Higdon to write a work to be premiered during the 2011 Festival.

“The San Francisco Opera has commissioned Higdon to write an opera to be premiered in Fall of 2013.”

And those are just a few of the pieces on her desk for the near future...

- Dr. Dick

Photo credit: Candace DiCarlo

Jennifer Higdon Wins a PULITZER PRIZE

It was just announced today that Jennifer Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for Music this year for her Violin Concerto which had been premiered by Hilary Hahn last season!

You can read about it here at New Music Box! I'll post more about it later.

The London performance had been broadcast on-line and I had a couple of chances to listen to it during the week it was available “on-demand.” It's a wonderful piece and I'm very much looking forward to the recording being released sometime late this year – hopefully sooner than later!

(So excited!)

- Dick Strawser 


Photo credit: Candace DiCarlo

Classical Grammys: The Winners

The winners of the GRAMMY Awards in the Classical Music Division were announced tonight along with everybody else: I am delighted to announce that Jennifer Higdon won the Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her Percussion Concerto, a work I had heard live at its world premiere in Philadelphia and which had been performed by the Harrisburg Symphony in March, 2008, with conductor Stuart Malina and the orchestra's principal percussionist Chris Rose, the soloist.

For a complete list of all the nominees in the various categories of the Classical Music Division, click here.

Here is the complete list of winners in the Classical Division:

Best Classical Producer:
Steve Epstein - for Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony (David Robertson and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra) - Bernstein: Mass (Marin Alsop, Jubilant Sykes, Asher Edward Wulfman, Morgan State University Choir, Peabody Children's Chorus and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) - Corigliano: A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Leonard Slatkin, George Mabry, Sir Thomas Allen, Nashville Symphony Chorus and Nashville Symphony Orchestra) - Fauré: Piano Quintets (Fine Arts Quartet and Cristina Oritz) - Yo-Yo Ma and Friends: Songs Of Joy And Peace (Yo-Yo Ma and Various Artists)
- - - - - - -
Best Classical Album (Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s) if other than the Artist.) and also Best Engineered Album:

Mahler: Symphony No. 8; Adagio From Symphony No. 10 - Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Ragnar Bohlin, Kevin Fox and Susan McMane, choir directors; Andreas Neubronner, producer; Peter Laenger, engineer/mixer; Andreas Neubronner, mastering engineer (Laura Claycomb, Anthony Dean Griffey, Katarina Karnéus, Quinn Kelsey, James Morris, Yvonne Naef, Elza van den Heever and Erin Wall; San Francisco Symphony; Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Girls Chorus and San Francisco Symphony Chorus) [SFS Media]
- - - - - - -
Best Orchestral Performance (Award to the Conductor and to the Orchestra.)

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé - James Levine, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra; Tanglewood Festival Chorus) [BSO Classics]
- - - - - - -
Best Opera Recording (Award to the Conductor, Album Producer(s) and Principal Soloists.)

Britten: Billy Budd - Daniel Harding, conductor; Ian Bostridge, Neal Davies, Nathan Gunn, Jonathan Lemalu, Matthew Rose and Gidon Saks; John Fraser, producer (London Symphony Orchestra; Gentlemen Of The London Symphony Chorus) [Virgin Classics]
- - - - - - -
Best Choral Performance (Award to the Choral Conductor, and to the Orchestra Conductor if an Orchestra is on the recording, and to the Choral Director or Chorus Master if applicable.)

Mahler: Symphony No. 8 - Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Ragnar Bohlin, Kevin Fox and Susan McMane, choir directors (Laura Claycomb, Anthony Dean Griffey, Elza van den Heever, Katarina Karnéus, Quinn Kelsey, James Morris, Yvonne Naef and Erin Wall; San Francisco Symphony; Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Symphony Chorus and San Francisco Girls Chorus) [SFS Media]
- - - - - - -
Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) (Award to the Instrumental Soloist(s) and to the Conductor.)

Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 - Evgeny Kissin, piano; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor (Philharmonia Orchestra) [EMI Classics]
- - - - - - -
Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra) (Award to the Instrumental Soloist.)

Journey To The New World - Sharon Isbin (Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor) [Sony Classical]
- - - - - - -
Best Chamber Music Performance (Award to the Artists.)

Intimate Letters - Emerson String Quartet [Deutsche Grammophon]
- - - - - - -
Best Small Ensemble Performance (Award to the Ensemble (and to the Conductor.)

Lang, David: The Little Match Girl Passion - Paul Hillier, conductor; Ars Nova Copenhagen and Theatre Of Voices [Harmonia Mundi]
- - - - - - -
Best Classical Vocal Performance (Award to the Vocal Soloist(s).)

Verismo - Renée Fleming (Marco Armiliato; Jonas Kaufmann; Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppi Verdi; Coro Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppi Verdi) [Decca]
- - - - - - -
Best Classical Contemporary Composition - (A Composer's Award. (For a contemporary classical composition composed within the last 25 years, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year.) Award to the librettist, if applicable.)

Higdon, Jennifer: Percussion Concerto - Jennifer Higdon (Marin Alsop)
Track from: Alsop Conducts MacMillan, Adès, and Higdon [London Philharmonic Orchestra]
- - - - - - -
Best Classical Crossover Album - (Award to the Artist(s) and/or to the Conductor.)

Yo-Yo Ma and Friends: Songs Of Joy And Peace - Yo-Yo Ma (Odair Assad, Sergio Assad, Chris Botti, Dave Brubeck, Matt Brubeck, John Clayton, Paquito d'Rivera, Renée Fleming, Diana Krall, Alison Krauss, Natalie McMaster, Edgar Meyer, Cristina Pato, Joshua Redman, Jake Shimabukuro, Silk Road Ensemble, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Wu Tong, Alon Yavnai and Amelia Zirin-Brown)
[Sony Classical]
 - - - - - - -
Best Surround Sound Disc (not necessarily a Classical category but the winner is an album of classical music!):

Transmigration - Michael Bishop, surround mix engineer; Michael Bishop, surround mastering engineer; Elaine Martone, surround producer (Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Choruses) with John Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls," Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" and "Agnus Dei,"  John Corigliano's "Elegy," and Jennifer Higdon's "Dooryard Bloom" for voice and orchestra. [Telarc]

- Dr. Dick

Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto - in Baltimore & On-Line

When scouting around for a Philadelphia Orchestra concert to include in a tour to see the new Kimmel Center some years ago, one program that season jumped out at me – Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, a tried-and-true war-horse that was a specialty of the orchestra’s conductor, Woflgang Sawallisch; and a Concerto for Orchestra being given its world premiere by a composer I’d never heard of before, Jennifer Higdon. Familiarity & Curiosity on one program. So we chose this concert.

The glowing review in the Philadelphia Inquirer ecstatically detailed highlight after highlight in Ms. Higdon’s Concerto – in fact, the headline was “Concerto for Orchestra Debut Shimmers.” At the end, the critic, David Patrick Stearns, added as almost an afterthought, “The orchestra also played Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.”

Since then, her works have been performed, commissioned and recorded far more quickly than is typical of most living composers.

For those concert-goers in the mid-state region who remember fairly recent performances of Jennifer Higdon’s music – “Blue Cathedral” and her Percussion Concerto with the Harrisburg Symphony and “river sings a song to trees” from CityScape with the Lancaster Symphony when she received the orchestra’s Composer’s Award in 2008 – there’s a special opportunity to hear one of her latest works, given its world premiere five months ago in February (read about it here). The Violin Concerto was written for Hilary Hahn who’ll be playing it with her hometown orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, this week with performances Thursday & Friday nights and Sunday afternoon at the Meyerhoff Concert Hall and on Saturday night at the Strathmore Center.

For those (like me) unable to make any of these performances, this past week’s concerts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (its European premiere) will be broadcast on-line today on BBC-3. The broadcast is scheduled at 19:00 GMT which I presume translates into 3:00pm EDT (GMT does not believe in saving daylight). [added later: SO I WAS MIGHTILY SURPRISED, not to mention annoyed, to go to the BBC website and discover that it had actually begun at 2:00pm EDT after all -- aaargh...]

After today’s broadcast, the recording of the concert will still be available on-demand for the next 7 days.

Further good news: the Liverpool performance was recorded the next day for eventual release on the Deutsche Gramophone label!

Jennifer Higdon’s music is back on mid-state programs for at least two performances, both in January 2010. She’ll be here with the Cypress Quartet when they play her “Impressions” on January 23rd for Market Square Concerts. The Harrisburg Symphony will perform “SkyLine” from CityScape on their concert a week later, January 30th-31st. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (with soloist Augustin Hadelich returning to Harrisburg) will be on that program as well.

Imagine if you had a chance to hear Beethoven talking (or even writing) about how he wrote his Violin Concerto for Franz Clement who gave it its premiere (preferably recorded before the concert which was something of a disaster: it took another generation before this concerto became anything near the staple in the repertoire it is today). Hilary Hahn, who was a student of Jennifer Higdon’s at Curtis and who commissioned the concerto, interviewed her in this video available on (where else?) YouTube:



You can also listen to an NPR interview from Weekend Edition on May 23rd with conductor Marin Alsop talking with Jennifer about this week’s concerts in Baltimore.

Here are some other reviews and comments about the new concerto following its premiere: Mary Ellen Hutton blogging in Cincinnati and James Tobin at Classical.net, including this Portland OR interview by James Bash for The Gathering Note with Jennifer about creativity in general and this segment from a PBS documentary called “Being Creative in Philadelphia.”



- Dr. Dick