Musical Musings

As orchestras everywhere honor the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in their 2019-2020 seasons, Sarasota Orchestra has infused this year’s concert series with the composer’s ingenious musical creations. Audiences will experience the might of his symphonies and piano concertos in the Orchestra’s Masterworks and Discover Beethoven series, as well as the innovative brilliance of his chamber works in Chamber Soirees. Even in the Orchestra’s crowd-pleasing Pops and Great Escapes, concert-goers will feel the sense of eternal hope that defines Beethoven’s staying power.

As the 2019 Sarasota Music Festival draws to a close on Saturday, the four Fellows of this year’s oboe studio share their most treasured experiences from their time at the Festival. Read on to hear about their memorable Festival moments and how these talented young women plan to spend the rest of their summer.

Beethoven looms larger than life in the collective imagination—take it from the title of Saturday’s concert, Three Titans, which features an early Beethoven work, the Octet in E-flat Major for winds. We spoke with two members of the octet who prepare to share the work with Festival audiences this week: oboe faculty Nancy Ambrose King and horn Fellow Austin Ruff.

The Sarasota Orchestra today announced that Jeffrey Kahane signed a three-year contract renewal as Music Director of the Sarasota Music Festival. Kahane was also appointed as Artistic Advisor for Sarasota Orchestra while a search is underway for a new music director.

The theme of this week’s Festival Concert on Friday, June 14, centers around large-ensemble chamber works. The program opens aptly with Dixtuor by Jean Françaix, a prolific composer of the 20th century. Dixtour is the French word for the decet—an ensemble of 10 musicians! Françaix’s example masterfully balances a wind quintet against a string quintet. Between their first and second rehearsals of this remarkable work, we sat down with flutist and longtime Festival faculty artist Carol Wincenc and viola Fellow Mark Liu to talk about the process of bringing 10 different instruments together in perfect harmony.

This weekend’s Saturday Symphony holds a rare treat for Festival fans as four Fellows team up on the solo violin parts of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in B Minor from L’Estro Armonico (which translates rather poetically to “the harmonic inspiration”). We were lucky enough to gather all four of them together to chat about festival life, as well as the particular challenges and sheer fun coming up for them in Saturday’s concert. 

Nathan Hughes is principal oboe of the Metropolitan Opera and faculty member of The Juilliard School. He joins Sarasota Music Festival’s faculty artists this year for the first time and will be showcased on SMF’s first Friday Festival Concert in a performance of Mozart’s Oboe Concerto in C Major. When we caught up with Nathan on the Festival’s second day, however, we found out his connections to Sarasota Music Festival go back 22 years when he was a Festival Fellow!

“As always, it’s extremely difficult to talk about ‘highlights’ when there are so many of them in a very short space of time. But these concerts are a great guide as to what I think are the outstanding moments of this year’s Festival.”