Classical Liftoff!

The kids are back in school, and as summer continues to wind down and autumn approaches, the classical musicians are just about ready to return to the stage. Here’s a rundown of some of the upcoming classical music season highlights through the end of November.

BPO M&T Classics Series

Chee Yun

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening night gala concert is a very special event, with BPO Music Director JoAnn Falletta always including one of the masterworks of the classical music repertoire that allow her to showcase the talents of one of the true superstars of the international classical music scene. Recent gala guest artists have included cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Van Cliburn. This year’s star is violinist Itzhak Perlman, indisputably one of the finest violin virtuosos in the world. Born in Israel, Perlman made his US debut at the age of 13 in 1958 on the Ed Sullivan TV show. After studying at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay, two of the most prestigious violin teachers of the second half of the last century, Perlman won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1964, leading to an ever-burgeoning worldwide career. In the decades that followed, Perlman has appeared with every major orchestra and in recitals and festivals around the world, and he is a perennial audience favorite, both for his personal charm as well as his talent.

On opening night, Perlman will perform the much-loved, lyrically romantic Violin Concerto in G minor by the late nineteenth century composer Max Bruch. Falletta will begin the concert with performances of the hotly romantic Roman Carnival Overture by Hector Berlioz and the sonically spectacular Roman Festivals tone poem by Respighi. There is usually a certain electricity in the air on the BPO opening night, and with Perlman on the stage, the sparks should really fly.

Fall Harvest

On October 4 and 5, Falletta will again be on the podium for an Russian program featuring Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes and two works by Tchaikovsky. BPO principal cellist Roman Mekinulov will be the soloist in the elegant and irresistibly witty Rococo Variations. Mekinulov, a graduate of the Leningrad Music School, studied at Juilliard after he immigrated to the US in 1989, and has performed as a soloist to high acclaim throughout North America and Europe, in addition to his rock-solid leadership of the BPO cello section. The concerts conclude with performances of Tchaikovsky’s final symphony, the heart-wrenching Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique.” The pair of concerts on October 18 and 19 will feature BPO concertmaster Michael Ludwig playing John Corigliano’s Violin Concerto, which is based on his award-winning film score for the film The Red Violin, as well as Rossini’s delightful Barber of Seville Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2, a true classical gem, under the baton of Falletta. She will also lead the BPO for the November 1 and 2 pair of concerts featuring the rising new Italian piano virtuoso Enrica Ciccarelli in the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor. Two works by the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi, the Symphonic Minutes and the Suite in F-sharp minor, op.19, last performed by the BPO in 1937, complete the program.

The ever popular former BPO Music Director Max Valdes returns on November 15 and 16, to lead a pair of French masterpieces, the Symphony No. 3 “Organ” by Camille Saint-Saens and the much-loved Requiem by Gabriel Faure, featuring soprano Easter Heidman and baritone Grant Youngblood. BPO Resident Conductor Robert Franz takes the podium on November 29 for a concert featuring the two most popular works by George Gershwin, The Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. The American-French connection will also be highlighted by a performance on the same program of the Sinfonietta by Francois Poulenc and the Ravel Piano Concerto in G minor featuring the up and coming young American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott.

Bernadette Peters

BPO Pops

The BPO’s Pop series opens on Saturday, September 20, with Bernadette Peters, one of Broadway’s most critically acclaimed and distinguished superstars. Nominated for seven Tony Awards and the winner of two, Peters has starred in such hits as Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy, Song Dance, and Sunday in the Park with George. Grammy awards have gone to four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred. Peters has also been very active in television, where she has been nominated for three Emmy Awards, and in film, with three Golden Globe nominations, winning once. She has recorded six solo albums and several singles. BPO Resident Conductor Robert Franz will lead the orchestra in what should be a high-powered evening of entertainment.

The title of the October 11 Pops concert is “Play Ball! The Music of Sports,” with the BPO and guest conductor Carl Topilow celebrating the music of sports, including local sports heroes and a video montage of some of Buffalo’s greatest moments in sports. A tribute to Billy Joel takes place on October 20, with Michael Cavanaugh, the acclaimed star of Billy Joel’s Broadway musical Movin’ Out, performing the Piano Man’s hits, as well as favorites from other piano rockers such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Elton John. Saturday November 8, finds special guest conductor and longtime BPO audience favorite Marvin Hamlisch offering a tribute to the American songwriting legend Irving Berlin, performing great classics such as “Blue Skies,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” On November 22, Robert Franz will again be on the podium when the Cirque de la Symphonie takes over the stage in a thrilling extravaganza that will bring the incredible magic of cirque to Kleinhans Music Hall. Some of the best cirque artists in the world—aerial flyers, acrobats, contortionists, dancers, jugglers, balancers, and strongmen—will be showcased in a performance choreographed to live music that is uniquely adapted to the stage of Kleinhans.

For more information, visit bpo.org.

Buffalo Chamber Music Society

Clementina Fleshler retired from her decades-long stint as a stalwart member of the BPO first violin section last season, to return to the sunny climes of her native southern California. Despite Fleshler’s return to Los Angeles, she continues to have close ties to the Buffalo area, visiting often, occasionally sitting in with the BPO, and most luckily, for area classical music lovers, she remains executive director of the Buffalo Chamber Society. The BCMS, one of the oldest such organizations in the country, has consistently offered season after season of concerts by the finest chamber musicians in the world. For this season, its 85th, the BCMS once again offers a series of seven Tuesday concerts in the Mary Seaton Room of Kleinhans Music Hall for the bargain basement price of $95 for adults and $40 for students. Additionally, the BCMS’ Gift to the Community Series of three Sunday afternoon concerts featuring young and upcoming artists is free to the public.

The opening night on October 7 will feature the area debut of the English early music group Fretwork. The group debuted in London in 1986, and rapidly gained a reputation as one of the very finest consort of viols in the world, releasing many critically acclaimed albums of music by English composers such as Orlando Gibbons, William Byrd, and Thomas Tomkins. Fretwork has also released unique arrangements of works by J.S. Bach for viol consort, an instrument ensemble that Bach did not have available to him. Their Buffalo concert, to be followed by the usual fine gala opening night reception, will feature the work of Venetian Jewish musicians who played a prominent role in the musical life of the Tudor court and whose works form the basis of the recently released Birds on Fire CD by Fretwork. Buffalo is a great place to hear high-caliber live performances of most types of classical music, the only exception being early music, so it especially gratifying that Fretwork will be opening the BCMS season.

On November 7, the exciting young Danish group Trio Con Brio Copenhagen will take the stage of the Mary Seaton Room. The piano trio made both their Carnegie Hall debut and their London Wigmore Hall debut this past spring, and their initial CD of works by Ravel, Dvorak, and Bloch is listed in the Critics Choice section of the American Record Guide magazine. The program includes the Beethoven Opus 70/1 “Ghost,” Smetana’s Trio in G minor, and Phantasmagoria, a work commissioned by the group from Danish composer Bent Sorneson that a London reviewer of the Wigmore Hall concert described as “sensational” and “a sensitively constructed collection of gorgeous little morsels.”

Later concerts feature the Jupiter String Quartet, Musicians From Marlboro, the Muir String Quartet with pianist Menahem Pressler, and the Borealis String Quartet. The series final concert on May 12 will feature the incomparable Guarneri Quartet as part of their final tour. The Guarneri Quartet will be retiring after the end of the 2008-2009 season, capping an unprecedented 45 years of touring as one of the finest string quartets in the world. The ninth and final appearance by the Guarneri String Quartet on the BCMS series is reason enough to buy a season ticket.

For more information, visit bflochambermusic.

Robert Levin

Ramsi P. Tick Concert Series

The basis for the Ramsi P Tick Concert Series is unique in Western New York and perhaps elsewhere. In order to be financially able to book world-class soloists and small ensembles, the organizers of the five concert series made the decision to sell tickets by subscription only. With neither government nor corporate sponsorship, the expenses of advertising, promoting, and administrating the concert series had to be strictly controlled, so single ticket sales were eliminated.

The gamble has paid off, and for the last six years RPT has managed to bring some of the most high profile classical talent to Buffalo for ticket prices that fall far below those charged in other major cities. The series takes place in the generously donated venue of the architecturally interesting Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Main Street in downtown Buffalo. Of course, Buffalo weather being what it is, the organizers decided this season to make the series even more user friendly by eliminating winter concerts and also moving the starting time for events up a half hour to 7:30pm.

The series kicks off on October 1 with a recital by Korean violin star Chee-Yun, who will be playing the Stradivarius “Ex-Strauss” that is on loan to her from the Samsung Corporation. BPO concertgoers may remember Chee-Yun’s dazzling performances of the Saint-Saens Concerto No.3 in B minor for Violin, op.61 in the fall of 2005 under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, where her huge tone and brilliant clarity of articulation won her a genuinely spontaneous standing ovation.

On October 28, pianist Jeremy Denk, who had previously appeared on the series as the accompanist to violinist Joshua Bell in a much-praised performance, returns for a solo recital. The action in the series then takes a break, before resuming in the spring on April 22, with a performance by the period instrument ensemble known as the Chatham Baroque. Their “lively interpretations, stylistic innovation and dazzling technique transport audiences from the elegant French court of Louis XIV to the taverns of England, from the Scottish highlands to the exquisite palaces of Peru.” On May 1, Emmanuel Pahud, the principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, joins Trevor Pinnock, founder of the much-recorded English Consort and one of the finest harpsichord players in the world, for a recital that should not be missed. USSR born Yefim Bronfman, making his first Buffalo appearance in over 15 years, is one of the piano giants of the late 20th century, and his recital on May 29 brings the series to an appropriately fitting close.

For more information, call 886-2400 or 866-6883.

University at Buffalo

Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall on the UB Amherst campus is the site for UB Department of Music’s consistently strong schedule of musical events, featuring both faculty members and guest artists. This season’s events begin with the residency of pianists Robert Levin and his wife Ya-Fei Chuang, September 6-11. Robert Levin has performed and recorded with the leading orchestras of Europe and America and is renowned for his restoration of the classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas, with his performances garnering praise high for their active mastery of the classical musical idiom. A professor at Harvard, he is also a noted Mozart scholar, whose completion of the Mozart Requiem has been performed worldwide and recorded several times. Ya-Fei Chuang won first prize at the age of 11 at the Taiwan National Competition and has appeared in major concert halls both as a soloist and in chamber music performances. On September 6, Levin and Chuang perform a duo piano recital that includes Debussy’s En Blanc et Noir for two pianos, two Schubert works for piano four hands, Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Variations. On Tuesday, September 9, Jesse Levine will lead the Slee Sinfonietta in a performance that features Levin as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, along with Henryk Górecki’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, with Jessica Osborne as soloist, and works by David Felder and Morton Feldman. A piano master class by Chuang on Sunday, September 7 and a lecture by Levin on “Improvisation and Embellishment in Mozart” on Thursday, September 11, both in Baird Recital Hall, are open to the public.

On September 24 pianist Stephen Mannes returns for an emeritus faculty recital titled “Fantasy World” featuring works by Mozart, Schumann, Nowak, and Schubert that all have some variation of the word “fantasy” in their titles. Roland Martin is featured on both the organ and the piano on October 10, along with violist Janz Castelo, soprano Cristin Gregory, and tenor Jeffrey Porter in a program of Liszt and Bruckner transcriptions as well as the premiere of Martin’s collaborative new work with painter Catharine Parker. The Slee Sinfonietta returns October 21 in a program of new and recent music by Charles Wuorinen, David Felder and others. The Ying Quartet, one of Buffalo’s favorite string quartets, returns to kickoff the annual six concert Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle on Friday, October 24, with the Lydian String Quartet offering the second installment in the series on Friday, November 14. The Slee/Visiting Artist Series welcomes avant-garde flute player Roberto Fabbriciani for a program of works for solo flute and electronics on Tuesday, November 18. The innovative European ensemble known as Norrbotten NEO also makes an appearance in the Slee/Visiting Artist Series on Thursday, December 4 with the kind of modernist program more often found in a June in Buffalo concert, while the Ives Quartet offers the third installment in the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle on Friday, December 5.

For more information, visit slee.buffalo.edu