Two music luminaries in town: Pressler, Venzago
The Pressler agenda: Concerts with friends, overseas trips, ‘brief’ Beaux Arts engagement
By Peter Jacobi
July 19, 2009
Two distinguished musical personalities appear in Bloomington venues this week but with colleagues different from those we’ve come to associate them with.
It will be “Menahem Pressler and Friends” that we will hear Tuesday and Wednesday evenings in Auer Hall, not Menahem Pressler as pianist for the Beaux Arts Trio. It will be Mario Venzago with the IU Festival Orchestra when he steps upon the podium in the Musical Arts Center on Thursday, not Mario Venzago with the Indianapolis Symphony.
New configurations, new situations these may be, but for those of us who cherish classical music, the good news is that Pressler and Venzago will be here to regale with their prodigious talents.
The Pressler report
Since his work as judge in the Van Cliburn Piano Competition ended on June 7, the amazing Menahem Pressler, 85 but seemingly getting younger, has been to Holland to accept the Edison Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the now-disbanded Beaux Arts Trio, came home to Bloomington, traveled to France for a chamber concert and an appearance with the National Orchestra of France, returned again to Bloomington, and then headed for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and a week of teaching chamber music performance there.
After his concerts here, he journeys to Toronto with the “and Friends” contingent to repeat the Bloomington repertoire. And so it goes for this amazingly active gentleman: There’ll be the Menlo Festival in San Francisco in early August, and later that month, he’s off to Leipzig and Mendelssohn bicentennial birthday festivities there. “Yes,” he announces, “for that, the Beaux Arts will come together once again, briefly,” to play one of the Mendelssohn piano trios.
“I go across the ocean like others go across Bloomington,” he tells me with a chuckle.
“Not bad for an old fellow,” he adds. “But you know, I need it. Music gives me a reason to be alive. I’ve wanted that since I was a boy, and I still have the hunger.”
Pressler’s “Friends” for this week’s concerts will be violinist Alexander Kerr, the former concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and now faculty colleague in the Jacobs School (“he’s an amazing and wonderful musician”); Lawrence Dutton, violist of the renowned Emerson String Quartet (“there is no one who plays his instrument more beautifully”), and Paul Watkins, cellist in England’s Nash Ensemble and newly-named conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra (“he’s a terrific musician”).
“My biggest problem and achievement was to get them to join me,” says Pressler. “They’re all at the height of their careers. I caught them on the fly. It’s a privilege to play with them.”
The four will play a pair of piano quartets. The Mozart E-Flat Major, K.493, Pressler describes as “an absolutely lovely piece with a great deal of humor.” The Dvorak E-Flat Major, Opus 87, is “Dvorak in his best mood and at his best. There are glorious themes, and there is beautiful writing for each instrument. The music goes from harmony to harmony. Wonderful music in wonderful Auer Hall: That makes me happy.”
As for Venzago ...
I caught the maestro by phone in Heidelberg, Germany, where the Swiss-born conductor now maintains a family residence; his wife is a viola soloist in the city’s orchestra and his sons have had their schooling there.
“This is my holiday month,” he tells me, “time for studying, cooking for the family, doing wonderful things like training to lose weight. I look forward to these moments each year. They keep me fresh.”
Venzago has made a couple of trips to Bloomington with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, which has given us a chance to evaluate his artistic contributions. I’ve found the relationship positive, both in concerts at the MAC and when I’ve journeyed up to the Hilbert Circle Theatre, the orchestra’s home base.
He rates his tenure with the ISO, which began in 2002, as having been “a great experience for me. I like being an American music director, to build programs, to build style, to deal with American composers like your Claude Baker at IU, to bring the musicians my repertoire for which they were hungry, and even to help with fundraising. I have found friends and a new style of life.”
To guest conduct as he will here is nothing new for Venzago. His list of credits is lengthy, including the Berlin and Dresden Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra. “I look forward to working with the Festival Orchestra. Technically, I’ve selected a difficult program, and I’m curious to see how well we can handle the music and bring out all the colors.
“The program consists of symphonic poems,” says Venzago. “They’re connected by an incredible musical energy, a human aspect, and also a tinge of the tragic.” Ravel’s “La Valse,” he explains, “expresses a world that goes under.” Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel” “is humorous but the hero fails.” Debussy’s “La Mer” “suggests dark colors and mist,” and Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” is “brooding and menacing.”
The rehearsal period of four days, Venzago says, “doesn’t give us much time. When I conduct the German Youth Orchestra, with musicians age 14 to 20, we have 14 days together, but I’m sure the Indiana students will work hard, and I know they are talented. I love working with young people. We should have a good time.”
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.
