FESTIVAL FINALE: Celestial Virtuosity
The stars align for the final concert of our Summer Festival celebrating Beethoven’s profound influence on the evolution of music. Messiaen’s transcendent Interstellar Call and Ravel’s heroic and nearly orchestral Piano Trio capture both the grace and power he brought to music. Beethoven’s masterfully entertaining Septet in E-flat Major—arguably, the greatest septet ever written—expresses his exquisite wit and joy. Don’t miss this exciting Summer Festival finale!
This concert is sponsored by Karen & Cliff Deveney.
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Sunday, 7/28 • 4:00 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- OLIVIER MESSIAEN “Interstellar Call” from “From the Canyons to the Stars” (1974)
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908–1992) Interstellar Call from From the Canyons to the Stars (1974) (7’)
In 1971, arts philanthropist Alice Tully asked Olivier Messiaen to compose a work commemorating America’s bicentennial. The following year, Messiaen and his wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod, visited Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, and Zion National Park in Utah and Arizona. Messiaen was overwhelmed by the geologic colors and rock formations, as well as “the beauties of the physical sky and the spiritual sky.” Inspired, Messiaen began writing From the Canyons to the Stars, a large-scale multimovement work in fulfillment of Tully’s commission. “[This] is above all a religious work, a work of praise and contemplation,” Messiaen, a devout Catholic, explained. “It is also a geological and astronomical work.”
Interstellar Call for solo horn is Messiaen’s musical response to two Biblical quotations: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and gives to all of them their names.” (Psalm 147:3) and “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place!” (Job 16:18). The horn, representing humanity, seeks to find a meaningful purpose in suffering. The soloist uses stopped trills and flutter-tonguing (the player rolls an “R” while playing a note) and glissandi to create unusual timbres. Midway through, Messiaen tells the soloist to use “the fingering of the horn in D, going back to its original nature: the hunting horn. Its calls become more and more hoarse and heart-rending: no answer! The calls are lost in the silence.”
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
- MAURICE RAVEL Piano Trio in A Minor, M. 67
MAURICE RAVEL (1875 - 1937) Piano Trio in A Minor, M. 67 (25’)
I. Modéré
II. Pantoum. Assez vif
III. Passacaille. Très large
IV. Final. AniméUnlike much of Maurice Ravel’s music, known for its beauty and craftsmanship rather than personal revelations, the Piano Trio in A Minor, M. 67 brims with intimacy. Ravel wrote the Trio over a six-month period beginning in March 1914, just months before WWI began. “Yes, I am working with the certainty, the lucidity of a madman,” Ravel confided to a friend that summer, “but sometimes depression is at work as well and suddenly there I am sobbing over my sharps and flats.”
After war broke out in August 1914, Ravel was devastated. In addition to not knowing the fate of his friends who had gone to war, Ravel was obsessed by “this nightmare…the horror of this fighting which never stops for a second.” In March 1915, after repeated attempts to enlist, the 40-year-old Ravel became a private, driving a truck in the Thirteenth Army Regiment.
Ravel’s affinity for Javanese music is clearly audible in the Trio, which uses a pentatonic (five-note) scale found in Indonesian gamelan music as its foundation. Ravel combines this non-Western scale with rhythms commonly found in the Basque music of his heritage. The Modéré, which Ravel characterized as “Basque in color” features 8/8 time (eighth notes in 3+3+2 groupings). As a result, the phrases float through the modal harmonies in a liquid manner, even when rhythmically intense. In the Passacaille, Ravel pays homage to J. S. Bach. The austere repeating bass line anchors some of the Trio’s most personal, impassioned music—we can indeed hear Ravel “sobbing over his sharps and flats.”
—© Elizabeth Schwartz- BEETHOVEN Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (40’)I. Adagio – Allegro con brio
II. Adagio cantabile
III. Tempo di menuetto
IV. Tema con variazioni: Andante
V. Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace
VI. Andante con moto alla marcia - PrestoLudwig van Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20—for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and bass—was first performed on April 2, 1800 at a concert in Vienna that included Beethoven’s First Symphony. The audience loved it, and soon the Septet was performed throughout Europe. It is easy to understand this music’s popularity. Working with a fairly even balance between winds and strings, Beethoven writes attractive music full of energy and high spirits. In six movements, the Septet is an instrumental suite somewhat in the manner of Mozart’s serenades.
The Septet opens with an elegant Adagio introduction that slowly gathers energy. The Allegro con brio rockets along on its opening violin theme; in sonata form, this movement features a vigorous development. The Adagio cantabile offers a gracious tune for clarinet over slowly-rocking strings; the melody moves easily between instruments as the movement progresses. The cheerfully bubbling minuet—with its athletic trio—leads to a theme and variations movement. Beethoven’s theme here is poised: strings have the first four bars, winds the second four, and there follow five brisk variations and a coda that is itself a further variation. The Scherzo is one of the finest movements in the Septet. Full of power and dancing rhythms, it looks ahead to the scherzos of Beethoven’s symphonies. The final movement opens with an ominous march and then blasts loose happily at the Presto. This finale, which makes virtuoso demands on the players (particularly the violinist), is shot through with a happiness rare in Beethoven’s music. A cadenza for violin leads to a return of the opening material, and the Septet races to its close.
—© Eric Bromberger
Artists
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Jordan Bak
Viola
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Award-winning, Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak has achieved international acclaim as a trailblazing artist, praised for his radiant stage presence, dynamic interpretations, and fearless power. Critics have described him as “an exciting new voice in Classical performance” (I Care If You Listen), “a powerhouse musician, with a strong voice and compelling sound” (The Whole Note) and lauded his “haunting lyrical grace” (Gramophone). A top prizewinner in many competitions such as the Sphinx Competition, Tertis International Viola Competition, and Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, Bak was recently named one of ClassicFM’s “30 Under 30” Rising Stars, Musical America’s New Artist of the Month, and was a featured artist for WQXR’s inaugural Artist Propulsion Lab. Bak’s enthusiastically-received debut album IMPULSE has garnered over two million streams on major digital media platforms, featuring new compositions by Tyson Gholston Davis, Toshio Hosokawa, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Quinn Mason, Jeffrey Mumford, and Joan Tower.
Bak has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, New York Classical Players, London Mozart Players, and Juilliard Orchestra among others, and as a chamber musician, has performed at numerous festivals such as Marlboro Music Festival, Tippet Rise, Chamber Music Northwest, and Newport Classical. Recent recital debuts include Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Concertgebouw, and at the Schleswig-Holstein and Lichfield music festivals. Bak currently serves as Assistant Professor of Viola at University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) and has given masterclasses at Peabody Institute, Oberlin Conservatory, NYU Steinhardt, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Conservatorio del Tolima.
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Gloria Chien
Piano & Artistic Director
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Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.
In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic.
Most recently, Gloria was named Advisor of the newly launched Institute for Concert Artists at the New England Conservatory of Music. Gloria released two albums—her Gloria Chien LIVE from the Music@Menlo LIVE label and Here With You with acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill on Cedille Records.
Gloria received her bachelor, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Braizahn Jones
Bass
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Braizahn Jones is the Assistant Principal Bassist of the Oregon Symphony and a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, he began his studies with Paul Firak before attending The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University under Jeffrey Weisner, later transferring to Curtis in 2014.
Braizahn has performed and toured with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony and is an active freelance musician, appearing at Chamber Music Northwest, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Bellingham Music Festival, and the Jackson Hole Chamber Music Festival.
A dedicated educator, he serves on the faculty of the National Orchestral Institute and Reed College, maintains a full private studio, and has taught at the Pacific Music Institute in Honolulu as well as various international double bass workshops.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Soovin Kim
2025 YAI Faculty, Violin & Artistic Director
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Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.
Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.
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Carin Miller
Bassoon
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Carin Miller is Principal Bassoon with the Oregon Symphony, and she previously held principal bassoon positions with the Jacksonville and Shreveport Symphonies. Ms. Miller has performed frequently as Guest Principal Bassoon with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Portland Opera and Oregon Ballet Theater. She recently toured as Guest Principal Bassoon with the Galilee Chamber Orchestra performing in Tel Aviv, Toronto, and New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Ms. Miller enjoys collaborating in Seattle with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and Orca Concert series, as well as locally with Chamber Music Northwest, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Third Angle New Music Ensemble, Classical Up Close, and 45th Parallel Universe.
Under the umbrella of the Oregon Symphony Sounds of Home series, she curated and performed in a chamber music program with commissions from local composers and in conjunction with the Audubon Society of Portland to raise awareness of the impact of climate change. Ms. Miller has had the immense pleasure of performing duets with jazz sensation Wycliffe Gordon as part of her residency coaching with the National Youth Orchestra of Carnegie Hall.
A native of Queens, New York, Ms. Miller holds a BM from The Juilliard School, an MM from Rice University, and an Advanced Certificate from the University of Southern California. Her teachers include Whitney Crockett, Frank Morelli, Stephen Maxym, and Benjamin Kamins.
Ms. Miller is the Founder and Director of the online symposium, Bassoons Without Borders, and continues to connect communities across the globe and improve access to high-quality education for all through this work. As an educator, she has served on the faculty of the Sarasota Music Festival and has presented masterclasses for the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory, as well as being the featured guest for McGill University’s Bassoon Day. She coaches for the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, and Wallowa Lake Woodwind Camp. Ms. Miller had the great privilege of serving for a year as visiting Adjunct Associate Professor of Bassoon at Indiana University in 2021-2022, and has served on the board of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Ms. Miller is currently Adjunct Professor at Portland State University, Pacific University, Lewis and Clark College, and Reed College, as well as curating a private teaching studio from her home in Portland, Oregon.
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Radovan Vlatković
Horn
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Born in Zagreb in 1962, Radovan Vlatković completed his studies with Professor Prerad Detiček at the Zagreb Academy of Music and Professor Michael Höltzel at the Music Academy in Detmold, Germany. He is the recipient of many first prizes in national and international competitions, including the Premio Ancona in 1979 and the ARD Competition in Munich in 1983—the first to be awarded to a horn player in fourteen years. This led to numerous invitations to music festivals throughout Europe including Salzburg, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Dubrovnik to name but a few, the Americas, Australia, Israel, and Korea, as well as regular appearances in Japan.
In 1998, he became Horn Professor at the renowned Mozarteum in Salzburg. Since 2000, he holds the Horn Chair “Canon” at the “Queen Sofia” School in Madrid.
Radovan Vlatković has appeared as soloist with many distinguished symphony and chamber orchestras including the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Munich Chamber Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, Mozarteum Orchestra, Camerata Academica Salzburg, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra Rome, Rotterdam Philharmonie, the orchestras of Berne, Basel, and Zürich, the Lyon and Strassbourg Orchestras, NHK Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan and Yomiuri Orchestras, and Adelaide and Melbourne Orchestras.
Very much in demand as a chamber musician, he has performed at Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus, Svyatoslav Richter’s December Evenings in Moscow, Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman’s Kreuth, Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro, András Schiff’s Mondsee, Vicenza and Ittingen Festivals, as well as Kuhmo, Prussia Cove, and Casals Festival in Prades.
In 2014, Vlatković was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music (Hon RAM), an honor bestowed upon only 300 distinguished musicians worldwide.
Radovan Vlatković plays a full double horn Model 20 M by Paxman of London.
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Paul Watkins
Cello
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Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician and conductor.
He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit (since 2014), the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023) and Visiting Professor of Cello at Yale School of Music (since 2018). He took first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, and has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra.
As a cellist, Watkins has given regular concerto performances with prestigious orchestras across the globe. Also, a dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble (1997-2013) and the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023). After 44 successful seasons, the quartet decided to retire, and undertook an extensive series farewell tours, culminating in their final performances in New York Lincoln Center in October 2023. This concert was filmed for a documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook, and the release of their final recording of Berg, Chausson, Schoenberg, and Hindemith with prestigious guests soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Bertrand Chamayou.
As a conductor, Watkins has conducted all the major British orchestras and a wide range of international orchestras. In 2006 he made his opera debut conducting a critically praised new production of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for Opera North.
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Jörg Widmann
Composer & Clarinet
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Jörg Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation. The 2023/24 season sees him appear in all facets of his work, as a clarinetist, conductor, and composer, including as Composer in Residence of Berliner Philharmoniker and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, as Principal Guest Conductor of NDR Radiophilharmonie, Guest Conductor of Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Associated Conductor of Münchener Kammerorchester, Creative Partner of Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Artistic Partner of Riga Sinfonietta, and Artist in Focus at Alte Oper Frankfurt.
Jörg Widmann studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in Munich and Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York and later became Professor of Clarinet and Composition, first at University of Music Freiburg and since 2017 as Chair Professor for Composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy Berlin. He is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg (2007), German Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (2016), and received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Limerick, Ireland in February 2023.
This season sees the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Schumannliebe für Bariton und Ensemble with Matthias Goerne, Peter Rundel, and the Remix Ensemble at Casa da Música. Currently, he is writing a Horn Concerto, commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker, to be premiered by Stefan Dohr and the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle at Philharmonie Berlin in May 2024.