GTMF: Color me French

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

By Alan J. Benson

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - Time heals all wounds, but with great artists, heartbreak can remain a fertile source of inspiration. In Susan Graham’s case, she brings the memory of her past heartbreaks, joys and sufferings on to the concert stage.
“The older I get, the better it gets … the more pain you are forced to endure, the better your art is,” she said during a recent public interview in Manhattan.

An innate understanding of the timelessness of music also informs this Texas native’s performances, who realizes it isn’t just about her. When asked about her recent appearance at the funeral mass of Senator Edward Kennedy, Graham recalled that it was something beyond just another day at the office: “It wasn’t a performance. It was a service to help a grieving family.”

As part of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s week of French music, Graham will be the featured soloist with the festival orchestra and music director Maestro Donald Runnicles. Graham will be singing Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’ete, an exquisite song cycle of love and its many forms and tribulations: romanticism, sexual desire, the long-distance relationship, with erotic innuendo peppered throughout. It is one of Berlioz’s best-known works, and Graham is one of its best-known interpreters.
Tuesday night and Thursday night chamber music programs highlight Festival musicians performing Poulenc, Milhaud, Debussy and Ravel, and the weekend concerts also feature two masterworks by the latter two. These composers (and the French in general) are experts of musical color and its varying shades and blends.  You’ll want to sit back and allow yourself to be swept along the sounds and textures that flow through their music, at times lush, other times sparse.

Many of the works this week are “programmatic,” that is, they tell a story or are descriptive in some way. In addition to Berlioz’s song cycle of love, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is based on the famous fairytale, and Milhaud’s Creation of the World was written to accompany a ballet about, you guessed it, the creation of the world. Ravel’s La Valse works on a couple of different levels: the music is a play on the waltz as a dance form, but is also a commentary on post-World War I Europe’s excesses. And Debussy’s lush and rolling La Mer is a fantastic depiction of the sea.

Inside the Music: Pardon our French is, 8 p.m., Tuesday. Free, but tickets required. Musician’s Choice: French Chamber Music, is 8 p.m., Thursday. $25 / $10 students.
French Music for a Summer Evening with Maestro Donald Runnicles and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is, 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday. $52 / $10 students. All concerts at Walk Festival Hall. 733-1128.

PERMALINK:
GTMF: Color me French | Planet JH News Article: Music Box

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