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What Fellini and John Williams knew about the harp
Harp Music Festival's third edition
Tom Purdom
When harpist Saul Davis Zlatkovski inaugurated the Harp Music Festival of Philadelphia two years ago, it looked like a great way to fill up the blank spot on the music calendar known as Memorial Day weekend. This year Zlatkovski had to compete with two other organizations that decided Philadelphians could use a little Memorial Day concertizing: Orchestra 2001 and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Consequently I got to only two of the Harp Festival's four concerts.
Zlatkovski has assembled performers from other areas who are comparable to the free-lancers and Philadelphia Orchestra members who keep our local musical schedules crowded with events. If you like the chamber concerts produced by our local musicians, the Harp Festival will probably strike you as a welcome addition to the final days of the music season.
The Saturday night program offered a solid evening for a classic musical pairing: flute and harp. The Monday afternoon concert ended the festival with a harp spectacular : works for harp duos and harp quartets.
A neglected black composer
The Saturday program opened, rather conventionally, with Washington flutist Adria Sternstein Foster delivering a performance of Debussy's Syrinx for unaccompanied flute, which included some beautifully measured pacing in the slower passages. From there, the evening advanced to less familiar work by composers like Persichetti, William Grant Still and John Williams.
Persichetti's Serenade No. 10 is a series of short takes that runs from swaying summer music to a finale in which a staccato flute chattered away over an excitable harp part. The William Grant Still work demonstrated, once again, that music organizations wouldn't be practicing affirmative action if they scheduled more work by an African-American composer who was a major figure in the first decades of the 20th Century.
When harpist Susan Robinson introduced a sonata for flute and harp by Fellini's favorite film composer, Nino Rota, she noted that many composers on the program had created movie scores. I suspect composers write movie scores for the same reason William Faulkner wrote movie scripts: to ward off starvation. But it's an honorable trade, with a long tradition, and it requires composers who know how to create atmospheres and provoke emotional responses. Roto's sonata employs a number of creative, individualistic touches to create its moods, and it stands on its own as music.
John Williams's gently moving "The Lanes of Limerick," from Angela's Ashes, proved Williams doesn't spend all his time glorifying interstellar mayhem.
A novelty
Concerts for multiple harps are even rarer than concerts for multiple keyboard instruments. The Monday concert would have been worth attending for its novelty value alone, but Zlatkovski and his performers picked music that made good use of the harp ensemble's potential. The section for four harps opened with the stateliest of Renaissance pavanes played in unison; it featured a piece by harp master Carlo Salzedo that created four sheets of virtuoso glissandos and a Rameau that turns simple tunes into pealing bells. The duet sections explored the possibilities in nursery charmers, Chinese folk songs, the adagio from Bizet's Symphony in C, three Spanish dances, and one rumba.
Maestro Zlatkovski is a performer and harp scholar who has put some impressive organizational work into this project, but he can use help with the administrative details. The festival program lacked texts for the concluding group of Spanish songs by Manuel de Falla, as well as a bio of mezzo-soprano Phyllis Rubin-Arnold. The bios for the harpists could have been clearer, too. They belonged to two duos, Harps Afire and the Lyric Harp Duo, and I had to locate the relevant clues and puzzle out which harpists belonged to which duo.
The missing texts were less important than the missing personal information. Falla's music communicated the general thrust of each song, even without the details, and I could follow the example of many sensible song enthusiasts and listen to the voice as if it was just one more instrumental line.â—†
To read a response, click here.
Zlatkovski has assembled performers from other areas who are comparable to the free-lancers and Philadelphia Orchestra members who keep our local musical schedules crowded with events. If you like the chamber concerts produced by our local musicians, the Harp Festival will probably strike you as a welcome addition to the final days of the music season.
The Saturday night program offered a solid evening for a classic musical pairing: flute and harp. The Monday afternoon concert ended the festival with a harp spectacular : works for harp duos and harp quartets.
A neglected black composer
The Saturday program opened, rather conventionally, with Washington flutist Adria Sternstein Foster delivering a performance of Debussy's Syrinx for unaccompanied flute, which included some beautifully measured pacing in the slower passages. From there, the evening advanced to less familiar work by composers like Persichetti, William Grant Still and John Williams.
Persichetti's Serenade No. 10 is a series of short takes that runs from swaying summer music to a finale in which a staccato flute chattered away over an excitable harp part. The William Grant Still work demonstrated, once again, that music organizations wouldn't be practicing affirmative action if they scheduled more work by an African-American composer who was a major figure in the first decades of the 20th Century.
When harpist Susan Robinson introduced a sonata for flute and harp by Fellini's favorite film composer, Nino Rota, she noted that many composers on the program had created movie scores. I suspect composers write movie scores for the same reason William Faulkner wrote movie scripts: to ward off starvation. But it's an honorable trade, with a long tradition, and it requires composers who know how to create atmospheres and provoke emotional responses. Roto's sonata employs a number of creative, individualistic touches to create its moods, and it stands on its own as music.
John Williams's gently moving "The Lanes of Limerick," from Angela's Ashes, proved Williams doesn't spend all his time glorifying interstellar mayhem.
A novelty
Concerts for multiple harps are even rarer than concerts for multiple keyboard instruments. The Monday concert would have been worth attending for its novelty value alone, but Zlatkovski and his performers picked music that made good use of the harp ensemble's potential. The section for four harps opened with the stateliest of Renaissance pavanes played in unison; it featured a piece by harp master Carlo Salzedo that created four sheets of virtuoso glissandos and a Rameau that turns simple tunes into pealing bells. The duet sections explored the possibilities in nursery charmers, Chinese folk songs, the adagio from Bizet's Symphony in C, three Spanish dances, and one rumba.
Maestro Zlatkovski is a performer and harp scholar who has put some impressive organizational work into this project, but he can use help with the administrative details. The festival program lacked texts for the concluding group of Spanish songs by Manuel de Falla, as well as a bio of mezzo-soprano Phyllis Rubin-Arnold. The bios for the harpists could have been clearer, too. They belonged to two duos, Harps Afire and the Lyric Harp Duo, and I had to locate the relevant clues and puzzle out which harpists belonged to which duo.
The missing texts were less important than the missing personal information. Falla's music communicated the general thrust of each song, even without the details, and I could follow the example of many sensible song enthusiasts and listen to the voice as if it was just one more instrumental line.â—†
To read a response, click here.
What, When, Where
Harp Music Festival of Philadelphia: Works for flute and harp by Debussy, Persichetti, Still et al. Adria Sternstein Foster, flute; Susan Robinson, harp.
Music for harp duo and harp quartet by Bizet, Rameau, de Falla et al. Jude Mollenhauer, Yan Ni, Virginia Flanagan, Alison Simpson, harpists. Phyllis Rubin-Arnold, mezzo-soprano. May 23 & 25, 2009, Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, 13th and Pine. (215) 563-4848 or www.harpmusicfest.com.
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