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Philadelphia Harp Festival
Tom Purdom
The harp breaks the June silence
TOM PURDOM
When I first started reviewing music 20 years ago, the concert season started early in September and ended late in June with a busy two-week festival called Mozart on the Square. Today the season starts late in September, doesn’t really get going until October and winds up sometime in May.
For the last two years, a Philadelphia harpist, Saul Davis Zlatkovsky, has been pumping some life into the June doldrums by organizing a weekend harp festival. I missed Zlatkovsky’s Friday night recital this year but I hit the festival’s Saturday and Sunday concerts, and they were both welcome respites from a two-week music drought.
Philadelphia has its share of good harpists, starting with the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Elizabeth Hainen and Margaret Csonka Montanaro, but it’s nice to broaden one’s exposure now and then. The 2008 edition of Maestro Zlatkovsky’s brainchild spotlighted four talents from the world beyond the Schuylkill.
One authentic deep experience
Saturday night’s event featured Joan Holland, who teaches at the Interlochen Academy and the University of Michigan. Her recital presented a satisfactory series of enjoyments and an authentic deep experience.
The enjoyments included a transcription of a Loeillet harpsichord toccata that retained some of the lightness of the Baroque instrument and added the ripples and timbres of the modern harp. The deep experience was provided by a harp and piano arrangement of one of the most popular and widely recorded pieces composed in the 20th Century, Joaquin Rodrigo’s 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez. The concerto was originally scored for guitar and orchestra, and Rodrigo produced a harp version at the request of a noted harp virtuoso, Nicanor Zabaleta.
The harp and piano reduction may not include all the effects an orchestra can produce, but it contains some interesting blends of the two instruments, and the spareness imposed by the limited resources accentuates some of the concerto’s best qualities.
The concerto is supposed to celebrate the gardens of Aranjuez, but any piece composed by a Spanish artist in 1939 is inevitably going to be associated with the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War. Rodrigo’s wife is supposed to have said the slow movement was influenced by the bombing of Guernica. Whatever the composer’s intentions, Holland and her accompanist, Marja Kaisla, colored the harp and piano version with an epic nobility that transcended any specific referents.
Bach, elder and younger
The Sunday evening concert broadened the festival’s sonic pallet with several works for harp and strings. The opener was a Johan Christian Bach Sinfonia that melded some of the Baroque exuberance of the senior Bach with the more restrained elegance of his son’s era. The new principal harp of the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra, Helen Gerhold, soloed with a string trio composed of three of her colleagues. They didn’t look as relaxed as a group of seasoned pros would have, but they didn’t sound like callow novices, either.
Even though we were all sitting in an air-conditioned sanctuary, the first half ended with two pieces based on the great French tradition of the light, graceful Noel. Helen Gerhold’s teacher, Virginia Flanagan, joined with a string quartet for a series of ingenious and sometimes touching variations on a gentle, somewhat dark theme. The principal harp of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Jude Mollenhauer, followed with five movements for harp, violin and cello that included a shepherd’s dance and a magical evocation of the search of the magi.
Dueling harpists, digital gymnastics
The second half ended the evening with two works played by Harps Afire, a two-harp duo that pairs Flanagan with a Westminster Conservatory harpist, Allison Simpson. The two harpists faced each other, with their sides to the audience, when they played a Ravel duo, and the spectators got a full view of the digital gymnastics that constitute one of the special attractions of a harp concert.
The evening ended with Harps Afire and a string quartet performing Polish composer Macrej Malecki’s 1988 Concertino in an Old Style for Harp Duo and Orchestra. Malecki’s first movement is a whirling modern interpretation of the Baroque concerto, with a Baroque delight in the possibilities created by novel instrumental combinations. The slow movement starts with a lovely passage in which the two harps take turns playing solos, followed by some eerie effects that no Baroque composer would have thought of. The presto third movement closed the festival with an eminently satisfactory finale.
Much of the musical life of Philadelphia depends on the efforts of musicians who are willing to take on the fund-raising and organizational work that supports every note we hear. With two of these festivals under his belt, Saul Zlatkovsky has proved he is a worthy addition to that valuable band of part-time impresarios. He’s already planning next year’s festival, so it looks like he’s given us a permanent reason to look forward to June.
TOM PURDOM
When I first started reviewing music 20 years ago, the concert season started early in September and ended late in June with a busy two-week festival called Mozart on the Square. Today the season starts late in September, doesn’t really get going until October and winds up sometime in May.
For the last two years, a Philadelphia harpist, Saul Davis Zlatkovsky, has been pumping some life into the June doldrums by organizing a weekend harp festival. I missed Zlatkovsky’s Friday night recital this year but I hit the festival’s Saturday and Sunday concerts, and they were both welcome respites from a two-week music drought.
Philadelphia has its share of good harpists, starting with the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Elizabeth Hainen and Margaret Csonka Montanaro, but it’s nice to broaden one’s exposure now and then. The 2008 edition of Maestro Zlatkovsky’s brainchild spotlighted four talents from the world beyond the Schuylkill.
One authentic deep experience
Saturday night’s event featured Joan Holland, who teaches at the Interlochen Academy and the University of Michigan. Her recital presented a satisfactory series of enjoyments and an authentic deep experience.
The enjoyments included a transcription of a Loeillet harpsichord toccata that retained some of the lightness of the Baroque instrument and added the ripples and timbres of the modern harp. The deep experience was provided by a harp and piano arrangement of one of the most popular and widely recorded pieces composed in the 20th Century, Joaquin Rodrigo’s 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez. The concerto was originally scored for guitar and orchestra, and Rodrigo produced a harp version at the request of a noted harp virtuoso, Nicanor Zabaleta.
The harp and piano reduction may not include all the effects an orchestra can produce, but it contains some interesting blends of the two instruments, and the spareness imposed by the limited resources accentuates some of the concerto’s best qualities.
The concerto is supposed to celebrate the gardens of Aranjuez, but any piece composed by a Spanish artist in 1939 is inevitably going to be associated with the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War. Rodrigo’s wife is supposed to have said the slow movement was influenced by the bombing of Guernica. Whatever the composer’s intentions, Holland and her accompanist, Marja Kaisla, colored the harp and piano version with an epic nobility that transcended any specific referents.
Bach, elder and younger
The Sunday evening concert broadened the festival’s sonic pallet with several works for harp and strings. The opener was a Johan Christian Bach Sinfonia that melded some of the Baroque exuberance of the senior Bach with the more restrained elegance of his son’s era. The new principal harp of the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra, Helen Gerhold, soloed with a string trio composed of three of her colleagues. They didn’t look as relaxed as a group of seasoned pros would have, but they didn’t sound like callow novices, either.
Even though we were all sitting in an air-conditioned sanctuary, the first half ended with two pieces based on the great French tradition of the light, graceful Noel. Helen Gerhold’s teacher, Virginia Flanagan, joined with a string quartet for a series of ingenious and sometimes touching variations on a gentle, somewhat dark theme. The principal harp of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Jude Mollenhauer, followed with five movements for harp, violin and cello that included a shepherd’s dance and a magical evocation of the search of the magi.
Dueling harpists, digital gymnastics
The second half ended the evening with two works played by Harps Afire, a two-harp duo that pairs Flanagan with a Westminster Conservatory harpist, Allison Simpson. The two harpists faced each other, with their sides to the audience, when they played a Ravel duo, and the spectators got a full view of the digital gymnastics that constitute one of the special attractions of a harp concert.
The evening ended with Harps Afire and a string quartet performing Polish composer Macrej Malecki’s 1988 Concertino in an Old Style for Harp Duo and Orchestra. Malecki’s first movement is a whirling modern interpretation of the Baroque concerto, with a Baroque delight in the possibilities created by novel instrumental combinations. The slow movement starts with a lovely passage in which the two harps take turns playing solos, followed by some eerie effects that no Baroque composer would have thought of. The presto third movement closed the festival with an eminently satisfactory finale.
Much of the musical life of Philadelphia depends on the efforts of musicians who are willing to take on the fund-raising and organizational work that supports every note we hear. With two of these festivals under his belt, Saul Zlatkovsky has proved he is a worthy addition to that valuable band of part-time impresarios. He’s already planning next year’s festival, so it looks like he’s given us a permanent reason to look forward to June.
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