Ravinia 2019, Issue 2, Week 3

Songfest represents the lone artistic collabo- ration between Bernstein and Cothran, who mutually selected 13 historically and topically diverse poems for Bernstein’s dozen stylistical- ly eclectic songs—a depiction of America past and present, as well as a poignant emotional self-portrait of the composer. Frank O’Hara’s (1926–66) “To the Poem” pro- vides text for the opening fanfare and ode to America. A youth’s first experience of love oc- curs in “The Pennycandy Store beyond the El” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919). The Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos (1914–53) grappled with the traditional and liberated roles of wom- en in “A Julia de Burgos,” a struggle the Costa Rica–born Felicia Montealegre would have un- derstood well. “To What You Said” represented Walt Whitman’s (1819–92) tender homosexual confession, which remained unpublished and undiscovered until after his death. Bernstein juxtaposed poems by two Afri- can American writers—Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902–67; “I, Too, Sing America”) and the modern activist June Jordan (1932–2002; “Okay, ‘Negroes’ ”)—in a dispute over the nature of black identity in America. The 17th-century Puritan Anne Bradstreet—“Ameri- ca’s first poet”—contemplated her dual identities as woman and poet in “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” “Storyette H.M.” by Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) depicts the French painter Henri Matisse’s stream-of-consciousness manipulation of his wife. “if you can’t eat you got to” by e.e. cummings (1894–1962) portrays the deprivations and de- spair of poverty—no food, no smoke, no song, no sleep, no death, no dream. Conrad Aiken’s (1889–1973) “Music I Heard with You” affectionately describes a feast of love. Mel- ancholy pervades Gregory Corso’s (1930–2001) “Zizi’s Lament” over the absence of joyfulness (“the laughing sickness”) that Zizi may never experience. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) despaired over lost and forgotten loves in her sonnet “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed.” “Israfel” is Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809–49) paean to the Islamic archangel of the trumpet—herald of the Day of Resurrection—whose singing and lute playing charm the immortal heavens but fail to conquer the bittersweet world of mortals. The chamber orchestra version of Bernstein’s Songfest presented on this occasion is the col- laborative work of Alexander Platt and Robert Osborne. Platt currently serves as music direc- tor of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, Wis- consin Philharmonic, and the summer Maver- ick Concerts in Woodstock, NY. He also curates the Westport Arts Center Concert Series in his hometown of Westport, CT. Osborne is a New York–based bass-baritone known for operatic/ musical theater roles such as King George III in Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King , Old Prudence in George Rochberg’s The Confidence Man , Sam in Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti , and the bass in Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach , as well as solo perfor- mances with orchestra. In addition, he serves on the music faculty at Vassar College. Platt described his decades-long relationship with Bernstein’s Songfest : “Like many aspiring young American musicians of a certain age, I grew up with Leonard Bernstein’s Songfest in the 1980s, where the work was often mentioned with a combination of shrugged shoulders and vague embarrassment—looking back, this was certainly due to the inclusion of the ‘outward- ly gay’ number, Bernstein’s hauntingly beautiful setting of Walt Whitman’s ‘To What You Said.’ … This probably also scandalized me a bit, growing up in a tortured gay-adolescent atmo- sphere in those last pre-liberation days … but what really affected and fascinated me was the music: how, yes, LB seemed to be exposing to all and sundry the complications of his personal life, but how gloriously and diversely beautiful the music was, a crazy quilt of great American poetry and song. And now, of course, in our current age of deliberations over gay marriage, the Bernstein/Whitman evocation of gay life— one of the artist, the loner, the odd-man-out, who exults in a cycle of friendships rather than striving to adopt straight, bourgeois ideals of conjugal existence, comes off as rather melan- choly, old-fashioned … but to me personally, it is all the more poignant.” Platt and Osborne originally created their re- orchestration for the 2011 Maverick Concerts, a summer music festival in the Catskills, but Hurricane Irene thwarted those plans. The most recent performance of Bernstein’s Songfest at the Ravinia Festival on July 4, 2013, marked its de- layed world premiere. –Program notes © 2019 Todd E. Sullivan CAROGA ARTS ENSEMBLE Caroga Arts Ensemble, directed by cellist Kyle Price, comprises top young professional musi- cians from around the country who have been part of the Caroga Lake Music Festival. Per- formers include top competition prizewinners, music school faculty, and members of Ameri- ca’s leading orchestras and chamber groups. In 2012, At the age of 19, Price founded the Caroga Lake Music Festival at his grandmother’s home in the Adirondacks of New York. After five suc- cessful seasons, Caroga Arts Collective, its non- profit parent organization, was formed in 2016. This season, Caroga Arts Collective presents the National Summer Cello Institute, InterArts Symposium, MyHil Film Series, year-round artist residencies, and the eighth annual Caro- ga Lake Music Festival, which will feature over 100 accomplished musicians at more than 40 events over five weeks. Caroga Arts Ensemble recently presented a weeklong educational res- idency at Saratoga Performing Arts Center and performed at Chicago’s Symphony Center, Mav- erick Concert Series, L.L. Bean’s Summer in the Park Series, Proctors Theater, and TEDxOak- Lawn. Future engagements for Caroga Arts En- semble include a return to the Maverick Concert Series in August. Andy Liang, violin 1 Aaron Schwartz, violin 2 Stephanie Price-Wong, viola Kyle Price, cello Kit Polen, bass Iva Ugrčić, flute Tamara Winston, oboe Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet Midori Samson, bassoon Joanna Schulz, horn 1 Dan Hively, horn 2 Matthew Onstad, trumpet Chris Brosius, trombone Esther Park, piano Michael Tsang, electric keyboard Dylan Moffitt, percussion 1 Mark Stein, percussion 2 Tom Cothran and Leonard Bernstein RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 17 – JUNE 23, 2019 96