Edgard Varèse (1883/Paris-1965/New York City) with Frank Zappa
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Klein Music Tent, Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen, Pitkin County, Colorado
Brave New Worlds: Aspen’s “beautiful” (Robert Spano) environment meets the harsher realities of Amériques, Edgard Varèse’s sonic blockbuster (1918-21/29), the first piece he composed on arrival in the United States, to become his New World, the score a behemoth integrating West Side sounds, including sirens, into a huge orchestra (even on revision, Stokowski had premiered the original in Philadelphia), a musical diary of New York noise, sophisticatedly notated. There are picturesque moments, such as the opening flute solo, and some ephemeral exotica; otherwise Amériques is about pounding rhythms and decibels into the red (ten percussionists plus two timpanists, and a substantial brass contingent, were a significant part of the Aspen Festival Orchestra), finally unrelieved as the onslaughts dominate with unstoppable force. Amériques is a thriller, impressively performed by open-minded students led by the clear-sighted Dima Slobodeniouk.
The concert opened with Copland’s mysterious Quiet City, at-odds with the 4 p.m. start there (11 p.m. for me), despite much sensitivity from the AFO strings and secure/expressive contributions by J. D. Uchal (English horn) and Anthony Limoncelli (trumpet). It would have made a poetic contrast to Amériques to open the second half, leaving the spectacular Varèse to end the programme; the ubiquitous Ravel La valse – 1920, the Viennese Waltz strangulated and trod upon violently, if not so much on this occasion – would not have been missed, and then Aspen in its seventy-fifth year could have started this event (one of many) with something American-celebratory; suitable pieces by Elliott Carter and William Schuman come to mind. As for Glazunov’s Second Piano Concerto, his Opus 100, from 1917 if without any sense of revolution, a compact twenty-minute movement, elegant and romantic, easy-peasy for Daniil Trifonov, who announced his encore out of my hearing; given its jazziness, if also by a Russian, I’ll suggest it was something by Kapustin, requiring sizzling virtuosity from Trifonov.