Estes Park summer music festival starts July 14

Posted: 07/09/2014 02:54:56 PM MDT

The first concert of this summer's Estes Park Music Festival will be Monday night July 14 at 7:30 p.m. at the Stanley Hotel Concert Hall. The concert features the Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra based at Chautauqua in Boulder. The orchestra is in their 38th season of bringing the best in orchestral music to Estes Park.

Each concert this summer will feature and different conductor and soloist. The first conductor is Larry Rachleff who is conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic and also holds the Walter Kris Hubert Chair at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music in Houston where he is director of orchestras.

The concert will begin with Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin or The Tomb of Couperin. This is an engaging, tuneful tribute to the 18th century composer Francois Couperin. Originally a piano suite, Ravel has orchestrated four of the six movements. All of the melodies are original with Ravel, and he has recreated the sound and forms of Couperin's era in this suite. After the opening Prelude movement, the other three movements are all dances: the Forlane, Minuet and Rigaudon. In this orchestration Ravel has created a tour de force of instrumental color and mood. Written in 1917, this is considered a neoclassical tribute to an earlier composer. As a 20th century piece harking back to the 18th century this is an accessible and delightful beginning to the concert and the whole summer series.

Next, the conductor's wife, Susan Lorette Dunn, sings Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne. Dunn is an internationally known soprano originally from Australia. She has performed with many American orchestras and summer music festivals. Dunn will sing six pastoral folk songs from France's Auvergne region collected and arranged by Auvergne composer Joseph Canteloube and sung in the obscure Auvergnat dialect. The texts explore the beauty of nature and the romances between shepherds and shepherdesses, with their love songs echoing between mountainsides. The music is derived from folk songs but is elevated to a higher level by Canteloube's masterful painting with orchestral colors.

Finally, after all this French music, the concert concludes with Beethoven's mighty 5th Symphony. Everyone knows the first four notes of this famous symphony. But how many know what Beethoven does with this simple four note theme of which three notes are on the same pitch? Arguably the greatest or one of the greatest symphonies ever composed, you will be amazed at the power that Beethoven unleashes in this work. After the first famous movement, where the three repeated notes are rarely absent, follows the serene beauty of the second movement. Then the third movement, Scherzo, in which Beethoven again uses the four note theme in the horns leads without pause into the triumphant final movement which ends in a blaze of glory.

New this season will be the pre-concert overtures. These informal dialogues and informative talks with the guest conductors are free to all ticket holders. They will take place in the lodge adjacent to the Stanley Concert Hall beginning at 6 p.m. on the night of the concert. The guest conductor will be present between 6:30 and 6:45 p.m.

Tickets: Individual concert tickets: $30 each. Save by subscription: $75 for all three concerts. Tickets available at the door or in advance at Macdonald Book Shop, 152 E. Elkhorn Ave., or at the festival business office located at Hobert Office Services, 1140 Manford Ave., Suite A, Estes Park (970) 586-9519.

Watch for a preview of the music to be performed at each concert in this paper the week before the concert.

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