August 14, 2021
Walk Festival Hall
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Grand Teton Festival Orchestra. Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor; Julia Bullock, soprano; Yefim Bronfman, piano.
Richard STRAUSS: Don Juan, Op. 20
Jessie MONTGOMERY: Five Freedom Songs
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor
MARK GRESHAM | 20 AUG 2021
The Grand Teton Music Festival has been celebrating its 60th anniversary season this summer. Rooted in humble beginnings, the Festival is now considered a top “destination experience” for both classical musicians and audiences.
Sir Donald Runnicles, concurrently the general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is music director of the Festival, which takes place in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Like other festivals of its status, Grand Teton draws top orchestral talent from across the country, many of them having performed together each summer for over 25 years.
Given Runnicles’ presence in Atlanta with the ASO, its not surprising that there are strong professional connections between the city and the Festival, and a number of prominent Atlanta musicians are members of the Festival Orchestra, as was observable in the live video stream of the Festival’s penultimate orchestra concert this past Saturday, which was also made available on-demand between Sunday evening and Wednesday evening of this week. Many familiar faces.
Runnicles and the Festival Orchestra opened the program with a late 19th-century favorite, Don Juan, Op. 20, by Richard Strauss. The 18-minute tone poem for large orchestra portrays the libertine Don Juan as ill-destined but heroic in character (perhaps anti-heroic by 21st century standards). With or without the extra-musical trappings associated with the idealized rake, the music did its work to kick off the concert with freewheeling energy.
Between 2017 and 2018 composer Jessie Montgomery conceived Five Freedom Songs in collaboration with soprano Julia Bullock, who performed them in this concert. The song cycle for soprano with a small orchestra of strings and percussion was co-commissioned by the Festival, and was completed earlier this year. Ms. Bullock delivered the vocal part splendidly.
“We wanted to create a song cycle that honors our shared African-American heritage and the tradition of the Negro spiritual, while also experimenting with nontraditional stylistic contexts.” writes Montgomery in her program notes.
Soprano Julia Bullock sings “Five Freedom Songs” by Jessie Montgomery. (GTMF)
Each of the five songs were sourced from an historical anthology, Slave Songs of the United States, first published in 1867, in which songs were categorized by origin and social context.
The cycle opens with “My Lord, What a Morning (When the Stars Begin to Fall)” which takes its key imagery from Revelation 6:13:
Composer Jessie Montgomery (credit: Jiyang Chen)
“I Want to Go Home” is presented in what the composer calls a hybrid Gregorian chant/spiritual style. “Lay dis Body Down” is set in an improvised style, wherein each part of the ensemble chooses their own pacing of the line, giving it a fluid, meditative atmosphere.
The final two songs are increasingly assertive and defiant: “My Father, How Long?” reflects the link between the ideas of spiritual salvation and legal freedom from oppression. Percussive sounds evoke the labor of a chain gang. “The Day of Judgment” is an uneasy celebration underscored by a traditional West African drumming pattern.
The Five Freedom Songs make for a powerful emotional arc that the listener likely doesn’t anticipate in advance, we are so accustomed to the mid-20th-century practice of overly romanticized, nostalgic presentations of African-American spirituals pushed by Hollywood and many choral arrangements of that era. Here, Montgomery gives these materials a fresh voice, artistically attractive and well-suited to our current times.
After intermission, pianist Yefim Bronfman, a long-time member of the GTMF musical family, performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 37. There was much ease of technique and assurance in Bronfman’s performance of this concerto, which he has played countless times.
Yefim Bronfman and Donald Runnicles perform Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5” as an encore. (GTMF)
After the concerto, Bronfman and Runnicles returned to the stage for a joint piano four hand encore. Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 which was a perfect end-tag for the concert.
The final concert of the Grand Teton season will also be live-streamed, this Saturday (August 21), then made available on demand for 72 hours from Sunday evening through Wednesday. For more information: gtmf.org ■
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