By Anne W. Semmes
Arpeggio Festival Director Bill Bonnell is happy to be returning his Festival to the auditorium of First Congregational Church the first two weekends in June. And he has an intriguing concept for this Festival he titles, “New Perspectives.”
“So, the theme last year was American music and American composers,” he shares, “And this year, I just had this idea that there’s a lot of different ways of hearing music. So, each of the six concerts presents music in a new perspective from the way that it was normally heard.”
Bonnell knows his music having played the French horn in many a concert and is a former Greenwich resident. He gives an example of that new perspective with Mahler’s Ninth Symphony which kicks off Weekend Two on Friday night, June 9. That Symphony entails “a huge orchestra,” he tells but, “in this case it’s played by a piano. And the unique thing is when you hear it with four hands on a piano, you hear the distinct musical lines more clearly. And the reality is that when Mahler wrote the symphony, it was essentially a piano score…although he probably wrote it for two hands, not four.”
The Festival begins with a concert of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” on Friday, June 2. “Typically,” he tells, “people hear one of the Seasons, but we’re going to do all four, spring, summer, fall, winter.” And what may be new to listeners he tells is that each of the four seasons is a concerto “and it’s written for basically four strings and a soloist. So, Vivaldi didn’t just write for one instrument, he’s broken it up between four instruments.” Add too Bonnell’s discovery of what had inspired Vivaldi’s music – poetry. “Each of the four season concertos has a small poem that inspired it,” he says, “So, we’re going to have the poems recited as well.”
Five piano pieces of Richard Strauss, a favorite composer of Bonnell’s, star the next night in the Saturday concert, June 3. “We’re going to juxtapose a piece that Strauss wrote when he was 18, Opus 3 that showed this guy’s a real talent…and then the last composition he wrote age 86 called ‘The Four Last Songs.’ It has become very famous over time, but he never heard it played before he died.”
Wrapping up the first weekend, on Sunday evening, June 4 will be a new piece of music called “Unshielded” adapted from Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, featuring a pianist and a soprano. “One of the ways you can look at the Ring Cycle, which is 15 hours of music overall,” Bonnell tells, “is that it’s a story between a father and a daughter that sort of undergirds the whole thing. Wotan is the father, and Brunhild is his daughter. And their interaction forms one of the core aspects of the Ring Cycle.” Having heard “Unshielded” at the Vermont Festival, he’d met the Festival director who composed the music. “He told me it was created to basically train the singers in their parts.”
A familiar Greenwich musician and jazz man Bennie Wallace will be featured with two other musicians in a “Total Improv” night, on Saturday, June 10 of Weekend Two. “If you typically go to one of Bennie’s Backcountry Jazz concerts,” tells Bonnell, “you presume they’ve rehearsed, they’ve memorized something, or they might improvise a few little things here and there.” But Bonnell has learned lately “how much improvisation goes into jazz. So, Bennie and the two musicians are going to take a given tune and play it, and then they’ll play it again completely differently so people can really understand that they are improvising.”
The finale to Bonnell’s Arpeggio Music Festival will be “Concert Band and Organ” offering “big sound” on Sunday, June 11. “First Congregational Church has a great organ and a great organist, Craig Simons,” tells Bonnell. “And we’re going to perform major pieces originally written for orchestra and organ.” Such as “Festival Prelude” by Richard Strauss. “And one of the most famous works is the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony which is played quite often, and people know that theme.” There to help with that big sound will be the Connecticut Symphonic Winds conducted by Charles de Paul.
Tickets for each of the six concerts of Arpeggio Music Festival June 2-11 are $20. Under 17 are free. Tickets are available at the door and also in advance on the website arpeggiofestival.org.
