ROll MAGAZINE/June 2008	by Peter Aaron

Built just outside of the village of Woodstock in 1916 by Maverick Art Colony founder Hervey White, Maverick Concert Hall is a beautiful, hand-hewn wooden “music chapel” in a fairy-tale forest setting; similar, perhaps, to the rural “composing huts” used by Gustav Mahler, who, along with Franz Schubert, is the focus of the hall’s 2008 season. While the Maverick’s towering, barn-like scale would certainly have dwarfed Mahler’s more intimately designed sheds, the Austrian composer, famous for his ambitious, large-scoped works, would very well likely have found it most agreeable.

“Oh, Mahler would have absolutely loved the Maverick,” says conductor Alexander Platt, now entering his sixth year as the music director of the event, which is the oldest continuously running summer chamber music festival in America. “And being a modernist he would’ve also approved of what we’re doing with our Woodstock Legends series, which presents concerts by jazz and other, for lack of a better term, ‘non-classical’ artists throughout the season.”

Der Mahler, as he was known around his native Vienna, and Platt actually go back a ways. The conductor became the toast of the classical world in 1991 when he reconstructed conductor Erwin Stein’s “lost” 1921 chamber arrangement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony using only the vague notes Stein had made in the margins of the full symphonic score. “[Arranging the piece] was a very mysterious story,” recalls Platt, 45, who worked with Stein’s daughter to decipher her late father’s handwritten instructions. “The parts that Stein had prepared for the individual players were lost. So making the chamber version was painstaking work, far more complex than I’d imagined it would be.” Platt’s arrangement of the composition has since been picked up and performed and recorded by leading orchestras around the world. Platt, who also conducts Wisconsin’s Waukesha Symphony and Indiana’s Marion Philharmonic Orchestra and has led numerous prestigious orchestras around the world, first conducted the Fourth himself at Maverick in 2003 and will reprise the work as the penultimate performance of this year’s festival.

But as lengthy a history Mahler has with Platt, the composer’s ties to America of course go back even farther, 100 years to be exact. 2008 marks the centennial of Mahler’s historic and influential arrival in New York to lead the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. So what better way for Maverick to celebrate than with a full season honoring Mahler, his milieu, and his fellow Romantic-era pacesetter, Schubert? The festival, which runs from June 29 through August 31, promises Viennese chamber music by Mahler contemporaries like Brahms, Bruckner, Korngold, Ives, Debussy, and the masters of the Second Viennese School as played by pianists Frederic Chiu, James Tocco, Babette Hierholzer, and the Miro, Daedalus, Borromeo, and Pacifica string quartets.

Much of Schubert’s greatest chamber music will also be performed by such artists as the Tokyo, Shanghai, Amernet and American string quartets, Trio Solisti, and the cello-and-piano duo of Zuill Bailey and Simone Dinnerstein; Schubert’s cello quintet will be played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet with the Ying Quartet’s cellist, David Ying. Two intimate “Schubertiade” evenings will be given by New York City Opera soprano and Dutchess County resident Nancy Allen Lundy and pianist Marc Peloquin; in a program titled A Modern Schubertiade, Peloquin will combine the piano music of Schubert and the music of David Del Tredici. (Previously at Maverick, Platt famously premiered a chamber version of Del Tredici’s renowned 1970s masterpiece Final Alice, earning raves from The New York Times and the composer himself.)

One of the top musicians set to appear at Maverick’s eclectic, local artist-oriented Saturday-night Woodstock Legends series is Woodstock master guitarist and lutist Frederic Hand, whose music blurs the lines between classical, folk, and jazz. “Playing at Maverick is a very unique experience,” says Hand, a returning performer. “It’s almost like an outdoor concert, because the far end of the hall is completely open. But the all-wood construction makes the acoustics just extraordinary’Äîeven though there’s absolutely no amplification whatsoever, you can still hear every single nuance. It’s a beautiful space.” Also booked for the Woodstock Legends series are reed player Steve Gorn, the long-running String Trio of New York, and jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell. (Hand, Crispell, violinist Maria Bachmann and cellist Zuill Bailey will each also offer solo performances for Maverick’s series of Young People’s Concerts on Saturday mornings.)

As he speaks on the phone from New York, where he’s about to conduct a performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, it’s clear that Platt is excitedly looking forward to returning to the region for another exceptional run.

“I work in other places throughout the year, but Maverick has become central to my existence, both personally and professionally. Anyone who attends one of the concerts at Maverick can look forward to the most authentic musical experience possible. It’s a chance to hear the world’s greatest music in the absolute purest setting.”

 

www.rollmagazine.com

 

From the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times:

What a Curious Feeling! Making a Big Idea Small

By Steve Smith
Published September 3, 2007

WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Sept. 1 — Chamber music could be described as the art of expressing big ideas in small packages. Occasionally it also denotes the necessity of conveying big pieces with limited means. That definition came to mind on Saturday night at Maverick Concerts, a long-running summer series housed in a handsome, rough-hewn wooden shed here, set among stately trees.

Maverick, like many rural chamber-music festivals, presents a steady stream of soloists, string quartets and chamber ensembles; recurring themes and repeated composers provide a sense of unity to its offerings. But the season’s penultimate program brought an ambitious undertaking: David Del Tredici’s “Final Alice,” described by the composer as a “grand concerto for voice and orchestra” and an “opera written in concert form.” Saturday’s presentation was a new chamber version by Alexander Platt, a conductor and the Music Director of Maverick Concerts.

Mr. Platt is an experienced hand at this kind of reduction. In 1993 he reconstructed a version of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 scored for soprano and 12 players, created in 1920 by Erwin Stein for Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. Mr. Platt’s arrangement has been widely performed and recorded.

“Mahlerian” is an apt description of the forces for which Mr. Del Tredici originally wrote “Final Alice,” commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; it had its premiere in 1976. The piece, a setting of passages from the last two chapters of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” lasting more than an hour, required a gargantuan orchestra, an amplified soprano and a “folk group” of two saxophones, accordion, mandolin and banjo.

For his orchestra Mr. Platt made do with a string quartet and double bass, one apiece on flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet and French horn, pairs of percussionists and pianists, and a harmonium part played on synthesizer. The saxophonist Rob Scheps did the work of two in the folk group, which also featured impressive contributions from the accordionist William Schimmel. Patrice Michaels provided a vivid account of the high-flying vocal part, secure in pitch and with careful delineation of multiple characters.

What emerged was a vision of “Final Alice” that underscored aspects overshadowed by the voluptuousness of the original work: in particular, its jarring juxtapositions of disparate melodies, harmonies and rhythms. Where Mr. Del Tredici’s work once heralded a bold return to tonality via melodies so luscious they verged on parody, Mr. Platt’s offered a muscular, sometimes discordant edginess, in tune with contemporary parsings of Carroll’s tales for the forbidden passions they contained!

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And More praise from our neighbor in Albany

A  landmark piece, well played

  By  JAMES HENNERTY, Special to the Times Union
First published: Monday,  September 3, 2007

Maverick Concerts in Woodstock scored quite a coup on Saturday with a special program of works by American  composer David del Tredici.

In the early 1970s, the National Endowment for the Arts commissioned del Tredici to write a work for the  American bicentennial. "Final Alice" was the result. It is best described as a dramatic cantata using texts from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in  Wonderland." The composer had already used the same work as inspiration for earlier pieces, and this was intended as a grand finale.

Not exactly a salute to the red, white and blue—but “Final Alice” became important for purely musical reasons.

For one thing, it used a familiar story together with a huge orchestra of 120 or so players. It was a serious work which used traditional tonality, not the 12-tone system invented by Schoenberg and accepted at that time as the only musical language fit for important  statements in classical music. It had its premiere in Chicago in 1976 and was  performed all over the nation. A recording boosted its popularity even further.

Now, 12-tone music is on the outs, and traditional tonality is more or less the accepted norm. Del Tredici can take a lot of the credit for that change.

The problem is that the work is rarely performed. Only the largest orchestras can afford the players and provide the space to re-create  the original. Maverick's music director, Alexander Platt, has arranged "Final Alice" for chamber music proportions, with the composer's blessing. Would such a pared-down version put the important points of the piece across?

At least in this performance, the answer was a resounding yes. Maverick Concerts uses a small wooden hall built early in the 20th century. In that resonant setting, the five strings, several brass instruments and various percussion pieces easily recalled the sounds of the work when this reviewer heard it in Boston's Symphony Hall several months after its premiere.

Soprano soloist Patrice Michaels has a sizable voice, but even so she was occasionally drowned out by the chamber ensemble. That didn't detract much from her expert recitation of the text and singing. The writing calls for her to sing at ever higher pitch, which never fazed her. Best of all was her depiction of Alice herself.

The Maverick Chamber Players, a small folk group (playing  saxophones, accordion, mandolin and so on), and pianist Stephen Hargreaves were all led by Platt. Hargreaves opened the concert with a small piano piece by del Tredici on the same subject. The smaller "Final Alice" packed just as much punch as the original, as the reactions of the audience and the composer, who was on hand for the event, showed.

James Hennerty is a freelance writer from Albany and a regular contributor to the Times Union.

Music  review: Maverick Concerts, When: Saturday, Sept. 1, Where: Woodstock , New York, The crowd: About 250 enthusiastic listeners of various ages!

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From the May 30 issue of
Time Out New York
 issue 608

In the 2007 CONCERTS issue of Time Out, New York, music editor
and critic Steve Smith wrote: “Plan ahead of the season’s choicest
Classical-music outings.”

Steve went on to list only four venues outside of New York City
that were “Notable Outings.”

Foremost among these destinations was our own Maverick Concert series and he
generously devoted a quarter of a page to our wonderful season and made special note of Alexander Platt’s world-premiere re-orchestration of David Del Tredici’s evening length work for soprano and Chamber Orchestra, FINAL ALICE on September 1.

For your further information, Steve Smith only listed three
other festivals of note out of the City: Bard, Glimmerglass Opera, and the Caramoor International Music Festival. We know that those other venues are in very good company!

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Woodstock Times

July 26, 2007 
MUSIC / Leslie Gerber

"The program opened with Beethoven's String Quartet in G, Op. 18, No. 2, the most conservative and Haydnesque of Beethoven's quartets. But this was no routine performance; the Pacifica's playing was alert, well-balanced and very expressive, every passage played with real attention to detail and content. The Pacificas really let loose in Gyorgy Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, "Metamorphoses Nocturnes." This very post-Bartokian music is full of amazing invention, and although it's still recognizable as folk-influenced music, Ligeti uses many sonic tricks and devices which point the way towards his unique music of the 1960s and later. The amazingly well-coordinated and detailed performance was full of drama and imagination, and it will stay in my memory for a long time. ... Theirs was as expressive and moving a performance of the music as I've heard from contemporary performers, and it was a real treat. I don't mind admitting the conclusion left me with a tear or two."