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One of the most appealing aspects of Tanglewood
– setting it apart from many other major summer music
Festivals, such as Hollywood Bowl and Ravinia – resides
in its emphasis on the young musicians attracted there each
year to learn from the major artists who perform the big concert
programs.
Such a close relationship between the emerging and the established
does exist elsewhere as well, albeit on a somewhat smaller
scale. Meet two excellent examples in this region: the InterHarmony
International Music Festival, which begins June 5, and continues
for 10 more days at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield,
and the Summer Portals program, now in its fifth summer, commencing
June 23 and running through July 13, at the Hotchkiss School
in Lakeville, Conn.
InterHarmony, which slipped into town rather quietly last
summer with about 40 students, expects to have between 50
and 60 this year, a combination of string players, pianists,
and for the first time, singers, according to the festival’s
founder and artistic director Misha Quint.
Quint, a noted Russian-born cellist, is joined by Sidney Harth,
the conductor and former concertmaster of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic Orchestra, and among the other faculty members
are three more violinists; Oleh Krysa, Misha Vitenson and
Zvi Zeitlin. Leading the keyboard contingent is Leslie Amper,
and Michael Klotz administers to viola students.
The American soprano Carmen Balthrop will head InterHarmony’s
vocal department, and Quint said that, in addition to exposure
to the customary repertory of art songs, these students will
be integrated into chamber music groups.
During the students’ two-week tenure here, they receive
private lessons, along with master classes, and perform with
various ensembles coached by faculty members.
“This is not a camp,” stressed Quint. “It’s
a real festival with really serious chamber music.”
He said the majority of the students range in age from 15
to 17. Each pays tuition and board of $2,350 in double occupancy,
$2,550 for private room lodging in the Hall dormitory for
the two-week period in the Berkshires Students have the options
of continuing on for two more two-week sessions, at similar
tuition rates, in Birklehof, Schwarzwald, Germany, in the
Black Forest region, July 23-Aug. 4, and in Sulzbach-Rosenberg
in Bavaria, Aug. 5-17. At each location, the young players
also have periods of recreation, which includes organized
exploration of the opportunities offered by each area.
Quint and the pianist Svetlana Gorokhovich will inaugurate
this year’s series of concerts in the Elizabeth Gatchell
Klein Arts Center at Miss Hall’s with a program of Debussy,
Bach, Schnittke and Granados. Another highlight is a 100th
anniversary tribute to the great Russian violinist David Oistrakh,
in a collaboration with Krysa and pianist Tatiana Tchekina
performing Beethoven, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich
and Paganini. Other concerts will display the talents of both
the students and the faculty, and, in the finale, Harth will
lead the InterHarmony Festival Orchestra, bringing together
students and faculty, with Quint as cello soloist in the Haydn
C-Major Concerto, along with works of Vivaldi, Sibelius and
Elgar in Centennial Hall.
Aside from what he calls his “three legged festival,”
Quint, a champion of contemporary music by both Russian and
American composers, continues a busy concert career. Prior
to the Berkshire events, he is performing Shostakovich in
Brasilia, with Brazil’s major orchestra, and in a Toronto
recital. But clearly, the festival is close to his heart:
“It’s all become such a part of my life,”
he declared.
Summer Portals is marking its fifth anniversary. “We
decided that Hotchkiss should be used for as much of the year
as possible,” explained Robert Barker, dean of the summer
program at the 115-year-old prep school. Beyond the practical
notions of Summer Portals, Barker suggests that the school
felt a need to provide opportunities for “the eager,
young, passionate and talented to explore some new worlds…hence
the term ‘portals.’”
The 20 instrumental students –including string players
and pianists - range from 12 to 15 years old; “With
the vocal students we stretch the ages, trying to get male
voices 12-16, maybe 17,” said Barker, acknowledges the
changes that occur in male voices during puberty. Summer Portals
will have 16 vocal students for this summer. Tuition runs
$3,750 for the entire three-week program.
Barker takes great pride in the professional side of Summer
Portals. Melvin Chen, the artistic director, enjoys a successful
keyboard career, and he is the associate director of the Bard
College Conservatory. The violinist Ida Kavafian is a member
of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and formerly
was with the Beaux Arts Trio, and the conductor Chris Shepard
is a specialist in the choral music of J. S. Bach.
Summer Portals has a special partnership with the Shanghai
Quartet, which in addition to mentoring the students, will
perform a concert June 27, at 7:30 p.m., and appear the following
evening with faculty artists. The Brentano String Quartet,
also sharing its wisdom with students, offering a concert
July 3, at 7:30 p.m., and with faculty artists, July 5.
In the program’s major event of the season, July 10,
the Orion String Quartet will be joined by Kavafian and three
of the best students for the world premiere of Libby Larsen’s
new Octet, a work commissioned especially for the Summer Portals
music program’s fifth anniversary.
Public performances, which are offered free of admission charge,
begin June 26, at 7:30 p.m. with an appearance by the California-based
a cappella group, Cantus, which also is working with the vocal
students. Concerts are presented in Hotchkiss’ Esther
Eastman Music Center, which Barker describes as “extraordinary”:
“A number of our visiting quartets have remarked that
the acoustics are as good as the best halls that they have
ever been in.” In similar fashion to Tanglewood, members
of the public are invited to enjoy picnics on the school’s
attractively landscaped grounds.
Audiences at Summer Portals occasionally have opportunities
to watch, and hear, the growth of the young artists in training.
“We invite our best students back for second summers,
and sometimes third summers. Some go on to other schools –
they might go to Tanglewood, Marlboro, Idyllwild or Interlaken,”
Barker said.
Students reside in the dormitories, according to Barker, mixing
with other students enrolled in the Summer Portals program
in environmental science that runs concurrently with the music
sessions.
“They’re housed together, they eat together and
they do other activities together,” observed Barker.
“Each of the programs is the same size. In part, it
builds on the Hotchkiss School’s strengths,” he
explained. “I think there is a great deal of compatibility
between the environmental sciences and music.” ¶
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