“I feel torn on the one hand by a compelling quest for the absolute, and on the other I’m possessed by desire to play, to create and destroy. The two can come together more or less harmoniously. The most perfect resolution of this paradox is the music of Mozart.” -Piotr Anderszewski

On July 28, Medici Arts releases Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveller (Voyageur intranquille), a film portrait of the iconic Polish pianist by acclaimed French filmmaker and violinist Bruno Monsaingeon (Glenn Gould Hereafter; Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle; and David Oistrakh, Artist of the People?). Anderszewski, who will appear on New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival at the end of July and beginning of August, will be present with Mr. Monsaingeon for a special showing of this film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM.

In 1990, Piotr Anderszewski turned heads at the Leeds Competition with his performance of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations-a work he later recorded and Bruno Monsaingeon filmed. In 2002, this unusual musical thinker won the coveted Gilmore Award. For nearly two decades Piotr Anderszewski has been known for his insightful and skillful performances and recordings of music by J.S. Bach, Szymanowski (he was the winner of the Szymanowski Prize in 1999), Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, among others.

In this film, Monsaingeon sought to avoid the typical interview format common to so many documentary portraits. Instead, he found a less conventional method of portraying this complex artist, much as he had done with Glenn Gould in Glenn Gould Hereafter. “This would be a ‘frontier’ film, on the borderline between documentary and fiction,” he remarks. “It would be set against a backdrop of a winter journey across Poland, then to Hungary (the artist’s two home countries), before travelling to Germany, London, Paris and finally to Lisbon, where he has recently settled … Like a modern-day troubadour, Piotr would not travel by airplane or car but in a private railway carriage hired for the purpose, which would be attached to various trains according to an itinerary dictated by places he wished to visit and his concert schedule … Everything that Piotr Anderszewski chose to reveal about himself would be narrated in voice-overs that would punctuate the various scenes we had planned to shoot.”

Of course, it was very important to keep the music center stage, Monsaingeon explained: “We were making a film about a fascinating musician, an enigmatic and multifaceted man; it was inconceivable to consider sacrificing the music for the sake of aesthetic visuals. It was essential that music remained the central theme of this adventure. A skillful combination of all these ingredients would provide the film’s emotional tenor. The musical repertoire selected for the rehearsals and concerts held during this journey consists of essential and often unusual pages by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Szymanowski.”

On July 28, Naxos of America and Seattle Symphony release the world premiere recording of Deems Taylor’s 1931 opera Peter Ibbetson. Recorded live in Benaroya Hall, this concert performance features Music Director Gerard Schwarz conducting Seattle Symphony, and star tenor Anthony Dean Griffey in the title role, with soprano Lauren Flanigan as Mary, Duchess of Towers, and baritone Richard Zeller as Colonel Ibbetson.

Peter Ibbetson’s triumphant Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1931 featured an all-star cast that included American baritone (and movie actor) Lawrence Tibbett as Colonel Ibbetson; Canadian tenor-and later the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager-Edward Johnson in the title role; and Spanish soprano Lucrezia Bori as Duchess of Towers. Peter Ibbetson received 22 performances over four seasons from 1931 to 1936, a record for an American opera it held until Porgy and Bess entered the Metropolitan Opera’s repertory in 1985. Peter Ibbetson was such a commercial success in its day that Johnson, after becoming the Metropolitan Opera’s General Manager in May of 1935, commented that the money it generated during the Great Depression helped keep the company afloat.

The story, based on the novel by George Du Maurier, is of two star-crossed lovers who escape together to a mystical “dream world.” Immensely popular in the 1930s, the story inspired several a Broadway play starring John Barrymore and a Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper, in addition to Taylor’s successful opera.

Composer Deems Taylor was one of America’s most prominent musical figures in the 1920s-30s, and served as the president of ASCAP for six years; in 1967, ASCAP established the Deems Taylor award, which honors books, articles, broadcasts, and websites on the subject of music, in his memory. Taylor still is known to millions as the host of the original Disney Fantasia movie.

This is the first-ever commercial release for Peter Ibbetson, recorded in Benaroya Hall in 1999. Additional cast members on this disc include bass Charles Robert Austin, sopranos Terri Richter and Erin Clark, mezzo-sopranos Lori Summers, Emily Lunde, and Carolyn Gronlund, tenor Paul Gudas, baritone Barry Johnson, and bass Eugene Buchholz.

“No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.”
-Marian Anderson

“I felt from this voice-sunshine,” said soprano Grace Bumbry of the great contralto Marian Anderson; she was “the most unpolitical person I know of,” commented the late mezzo-soprano Betty Allen. But it was Marian Anderson who paved the way for Leontyne Price to sing at the 1982 Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR) convention, a performance which she dedicated to Ms. Anderson. Yet despite the progress made in acceptance of opera singers of color since Anderson, Shirley Verrett presciently noted in 1999 “We’re going backward.”

Aida’s Brothers & Sisters: Black Voices in Concert and Opera tells the story of classic black singing against the background of black emancipation in politics and society. This story stretches from the first successes of singers such as contralto Marian Anderson and bass Paul Robeson- who all his life regarded his voice as an instrument of liberation- to the young singing pupils of the Harlem School of Arts, an institution which was founded by black soprano Dorothy Maynor in 1963.

Beginning with Marian Anderson singing “My Country T’is of Thee” on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 at the famous Lincoln Memorial performance after Ms. Anderson was denied access to Constitution Hall by the DAR, Aida’s Brothers & Sisters: Black Voices in Concert and Opera traces the struggle of African Americans to gain acceptance on the concert and opera stages of the United States and of the world. Featuring archival footage of legends such as Ms. Anderson, bass Paul Robeson, and soprano Camilla Williams, who in 1946 became the first black singer to appear in a non-black role, the film also includes interviews and musical footage of many great African American singers including Grace Bumbry, Leontyne Price, Betty Allen, Martina Arroyo, Jessye Norman, Reri Grist, George Shirley, Simon Estes, Barbara Hendricks and others; as well commentary by author and historian Roslyn Story, whose book And So I Sang, recounted the rise of black singers.

The film examines many aspects of the black experience in singing from the role of the spiritual, which Leontyne Price called “the black heartbeat” to operas-old and new-which portray the African American experience such as Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which Ms. Bumbry deemed an “insult” but pianist-conductor Bobby McFerrin, son of baritone Robert McFerrin, the first African American male to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, thought “should be applauded in trying to understand the black experience”; and Anthony Davis’ 1986 opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, the first opera really about the African American experience and tradition. The film also explores the different struggles faced by black male singers in gaining acceptance on the opera stages and the role of “race” in casting.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was one of the most prolific composers of all time. Along the way he wrote 17 string quartets. This podcast is an introduction to these quartets, and to a Dorian box set featuring the complete string quartets with Cuarteto Latinoamericano.

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On June 30, Opus Arte releases Marco Polo, Tan Dun’s first full-length opera, for which the composer won the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 1998. Recorded live at Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, in November 2008, the production is directed by Pierre Audi, and features Charles Workman, Sarah Castle, Stephen Richardson, Nancy Allen Lundy, Zhang Jun, Tania Kross, Stephen Bryant, and Mu Na. The composer himself leads the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and Cappella Amsterdam. Bonus material includes a documentary entitled The Music of Tomorrow, which includes interviews with the creative team and principal cast members.

Marco Polo premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1996, with subsequent performances at the Holland Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, New York City Opera, and Settembre Musica in Turin. When questioned about his choice of subject, Tan Dun replied: “It’s a ripe subject for the times and global culture … My personal experience as a traveler from East to West is similar to Polo’s from West to East. I thought the best thing was to draw on my own experience, on my feelings about culture and about the idea of journey. Marco Polo is a symbol of journey, of travel from past to the future, from external space to internal space, from one medium to another. All crossover journeys excite me, and Polo is a great excuse to explore them.”

Tan Dun and librettist Paul Griffiths designed their opera in many layers and have divided the figure of the Traveler into two parts, Marco and Polo; Marco represents the external figure of the Venetian explorer, whereas Polo is his inner being, his memory. They are united only at the end of their journey, when they fuse together into one person. The opera comprises three parallel journeys: one physical, one spiritual, one musical.

Naxos announces a new partnership to distribute North/South Recordings, an innovative, nonprofit classical concert and recording organization based in New York City. The partnership launches with two new releases from the label, largely dedicated to supporting and promoting works by living composers: Moods: Piano Music by American Women Composers, featuring North/South founder Max Lifchitz at the piano, and Harold Schiffman: Orchestral Works, featuring The Győr Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mátyás Antal, and guitarist Katalin Koltai.Founded by pianist and conductor Max Lifchitz, North/South Recordings is dedicated to new music, particularly derived from the concert activities of its parent organization, North/South Consonance, Inc., which supports the performance of works by living composers. Founded in 1980, North/South Consonance has sponsored annual concerts both in New York City and abroad, premiering over 850 works by composers from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. The recording division, inaugurated in 1992, brings the music of composers and performers championed by North/South to the attention of listeners worldwide.

The first new release, Moods, features five piano works by four diverse American women composers performed by Max Lifchitz. The recording takes its title from Marilyn J. Ziffrin’s piano suite of the same name, composed in 2005, and also includes her Sonata for Piano (2006). Also featured is Arecibo Sonata by Elizabeth Bell, deemed “one of our country’s leading composers” by American Record Guide. Ms. Bell composed the sonata in 1968 and revised it in 2005; Mr. Lifchitz premiered it in 2006 and performs it here in honor of Ms. Bell on the occasion of her 80^th birthday. Next, Mr. Lifchitz performs Rami Levin’s short work, Passages (2002), on which the composer remarks: “The music describes the joy of bringing a new life into being, and the mixed emotions of a parent watching an offspring gain independence and go off into the world.” The release concludes with four short melodic works by Rain Worthington: Hourglass, Tangents, Dark Dreams, and Always Almost (1991-2001).

Regarding the highly varied repertoire on this disc, Mr. Lifchitz comments, “The featured works approach the keyboard in diverse ways. Ziffrin combines stylish rhythms and harmonies with easy-to-understand formal structures. Bell’s striking harmonic choices and undulating melodic lines create arresting tension and drama. Levin’s work is an impressive tour-de-force for both performer and listener. Worthington’s musical language—simple and direct—rewards the listener with a seemingly endless chain of surprising melodic discoveries.”

The second release from North/South Recordings features a collection of orchestral works by composer Harold Schiffman (b 1928). In addition to performances in the United States, ensembles have presented Mr. Schiffman’s music in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Mr. Schiffman studied composition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of California at Berkeley, and Florida State University. His principal composition teacher was Roger Sessions, and he later found an influential mentor in Ernst von Dohnányi. Appointed to the faculty of Florida State University College of Music in 1959, Mr. Schiffman served in this capacity until 1983 and was designated Professor Emeritus two years later. He also was founding director of Florida State University’s Festival of New Music in 1981.

This release features two of Mr. Schiffman’s most recent compositions: Symphony No. 2: “Music for Győr” (2008), inspired by the composer’s decade-long love affair with the Hungarian city and its orchestra, and Blood Mountain Suite (2008), the transcription of an earlier song cycle for soprano and piano or orchestra. The disc also includes three earlier orchestral works: Ninerella Variata (Varied Lullaby) (1956); Variations on Branchwater for Guitar and Orchestra (1987), whose namesake is a Schiffman tune inspired by the Southern custom of drinking Bourbon whiskey with water; and Overture to a Comedy (1983), from a planned comic opera project that the composer never completed. Variations on Branchwater features Hungarian guitarist Katalin Koltai. The recording includes comprehensive program notes by the composer himself.

Pianist, composer, conductor, and North/South founder Max Lifchitz was awarded first prize in the 1976 International Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Twentieth Century Music, held in Holland. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as “a young composer of brilliant imagination and a stunning, ultra-sensitive pianist.” A graduate of The Juilliard School and Harvard University, Mr. Lifchitz has appeared in concerts and recitals throughout the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. In 1994, New York Women Composers, Inc. bestowed upon him its Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his activities on behalf of concert music written by women.