PUTNEY — As Yellow Barn's Summer Season began its 46th season in Putney, the chamber music school and festival took a moment to look back.
In a birthday concert with what Executive Director Catherine Stephan called the “octogenarians” at Yellow Barn, three veteran Yellow Barn faculty members to whom the current season is dedicated - pianists Peter Frankl and Gilbert Kalish and cellist Bonnie Hampton - joined young Yellow Barn artists for a sold-out concert celebrating the classical era of chamber music.
Seth Knopp, Yellow Barn's artistic director, came up with the rather whimsical way to decide what to schedule for that concert.
It only took a little math.
If you take this year, 2015, subtract the combined ages of the three birthday artists, 240, you end up in 1775, at the beginning of the classical era. The concert began with a piano concerto by Mozart piano sonata, dating from that year, and included other works from the classic era.
Even in what may seem a familiar chamber concert such as this, Knopp manages to find something fresh and innovative in programming.
Thus, it was not surprising that, for the second year in a row, Yellow Barn won the Award for Adventurous Programming from Chamber Music America. This award is given to the music festival that best represents both excellence and creativity in chamber music programming. In addition, last summer's Yellow Barn Season Finale made the “Top Ten of 2014” list in The Boston Globe.
Stephan says that a programmer has to try to please all audiences.
“While some people only want classical-era works, others who consider themselves more avant garde don't want to waste their time with Mozart and his sort,” she points out.
Yellow Barn tries to attract both groups.
An international center for chamber music, Yellow Barn explores the craft of musical interpretation in the studio, classroom, and concert hall.
Its core program is a five-week intensive summer chamber music program for outstanding students and young professionals where participants explore chamber music repertoire with an internationally renowned faculty, rehearsing and performing together in 20 concerts at the “Big Barn,” Yellow Barn's intimate concert hall in Putney.
This program is open to 36 musicians in the early stages of their professional careers. Most participants in this program are currently enrolled in, or have graduated from conservatory, or graduate school.
“This year we had a record number of applicants, 540, for only 36 slots” says Stephan. “We remain highly competitive because musicians know that Yellow Barn is an experience like no other. It is a place where they can leave behind at the door all the other pressures from the outside world.”
Yellow Barn alumni have founded and joined major chamber ensembles, are members of the world's finest orchestras, and are respected educators in the music world. Yellow Barn alumni ensembles include eighth blackbird, So Percussion, Due East, and the Ariel, Chiara, Jupiter, and Parker Quartets.
“We may be almost halfway through the season,” says Stephan, “but there will be many more concerts to look forward to. In particular, the last week of the festival is when we will host composer Jörg Widmann, who will spend his only summer residency in the U.S. at Yellow Barn.
“More than a dozen of his works will appear on performances during the first week of August. Also an acclaimed clarinetist, he will be performing both his work and the Mozart Clarinet Quintet.
“Widmann who is quite the phenom in Europe, and as with all our faculty he will be truly woven into the community, going to rehearsals, performing with young artists and going to every concert.”
When Stephen says Widmann is “in residence,” she means that quite literally.
“Widmann will be living in the community, and sharing all Yellow Barn experiences with the rest of us on campus and in the concert hall,” she adds. “Of course, he will give insight into his work for both musicians and audiences, but at Yellow Barn interactions and conversations percolate beyond any one person's musical assignments for the summer.”
Looking more immediately at what will be presented next week, Stephan says Yellow Barn is offering “something for everyone,” with events ranging from master classes to three wildly different concert programs and the annual Children's Concert.
On Wednesday, July 22, from 5 to 6 p.m., the annual Children's Concert will be “a unique chance for listeners of all ages to have an up-close experience with Yellow Barn's international community of musicians while spending valuable time learning with their families, free of charge,” says Stephan.
“The Children's Concert was a longstanding tradition during the early years of Yellow Barn. Last year, we revived this special event on our campus at The Greenwood School, and we had a wonderful showing of families, including young children who had their first experiences with classical music and with classical musicians from all over the world.”
The evening performance in the Big Barn on Thursday features work by Shostakovich; Mieczysl‚aw Weinberg, a Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin; Zemlinsky; and Samuel Barber.
The Germanic greats make up Friday's program, with works by Schubert, Beethoven, and Weber. Rounding out the evening concert is a work by Wisconsin native Fred Lerdahl for modified string quartet and Nigel Osborne's “Journey into the End of the Night” for oboe and percussion.
Saturday is host to a range of Yellow Barn events, beginning with a morning masterclass by Donald Weilerstein, member of the Weilerstein Duo and Trio and founding member of the Cleveland Quartet.
The other half of the Weilerstein Duo, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, will perform in the concert Saturday evening with music by Salvatore Sciarrino and Beethoven.
Also on Saturday from 1:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. Yellow Barn will host its annual Open House at the Greenwood School. Here audience members will get the chance to spend an afternoon attending open rehearsals and attend, at the Putney Library at 7 p.m., a free pre-concert discussion about some of the music being performed at the evening Big Barn concert.
Moving beyond the summer season, Stephan is excited about an event this fall that is not even taking place at Yellow Barn.
“The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book,” a new composition developed in residence at Yellow Barn, will travel to Sarajevo in September for the historic re-opening of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The production, with an original accordion-and-piano score by Bosnian-born composer and accordionist (as well as former Yellow Barn artist) Merima Kljuco, draws on the staggeringly eventful history of the eponymous liturgical volume, whose origins may date as far back as the mid-14th century.
Commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture's New Jewish Culture Network, “The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book” had its world premiere at Yellow Barn in March. It also has been seen in Dallas, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
Celia Wren writes for The Washington Post, “A Haggadah, the order of service used at the Passover Seder, includes a recounting of the Jews' exodus from Egypt. The richly illustrated and ornamented volume that became known as the Sarajevo Haggadah originated in medieval Spain at a time of relative harmony for that country's Jewish, Christian and Muslim citizens.
“After surviving Spain's expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the book turned up in Venice, where, in 1609, a Catholic censor's inscription seems to have preserved it from destruction in the Inquisition.
“By 1894, the Haggadah was in Sarajevo. During World War II, a Muslim librarian at Sarajevo's national museum hid the book from the Nazis, and during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, another Muslim librarian saved the priceless volume by moving it to a bank vault during fierce shelling.”
The Sarajevo Haggadah is “a symbol of survival, and a symbol that inspires respect and tolerance toward different traditions and cultures,” says Kljuco, who grew up in Sarajevo.
She remembers the time before the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s when her country reveled in diversity with the multiple heritage of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim neighbors.
Kljuco worked on the piece during a residency at Yellow Barn. Yellow Barn's Seth Knopp became the pianist for the work, which grew to incorporate Bart Woodstrup's video imagery. Woodstrup digitally animated the Haggadah illustrations and other features in such a way as to evoke the book's historical experience.
As in other performances of this piece, Knopp will be joining Kljuco for the Sarajevo premiere.