REMINISCENCES OF THE BREVARD MUSIC CENTER’S 2009 FESTIVAL

After the Brevard Music Festival closes, it takes a week for me to come down from Cloud Nine and make a summary assessment of the season. The seven weeks are a supercharged time period, during which wandering the campus brings me into contact with many starry-eyed young musicians, some experiencing for the first time a community of like-minded and like-talented peers. Before discussing some trends at Brevard that are harbingers of things to come, I want to recall the high points of my season:

• The all-student Brevard Sinfonia nailing its performance of Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” under the baton of Grant Llewellyn.

• Brandon Garbot playing Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.” Garbot, a fifteen-year-old violinist from Portland, Oregon, was one of five winners of the Jan & Beattie Wood Concerto Competition for the second year in a row.

• Keith Lockhart conducting Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #5 with the Brevard Sinfonia and Symphony #6 with the BMC Orchestra.

• A concert in which the three living BMC musical directors (Henry Janiec, David Effron and Keith Lockhart) each conducted one work.

• A pair of chamber music performances at the Porter Center: William Preucil and Bruce Murray playing Beethoven’s "Kreutzer Sonata" and five days later Andrés Díaz playing Zoltán Kodály’s "Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello."

Olga Kern was spectacular at the sold-out season finale playing the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, but a leading soloist playing her signature repertoire with a first-rate orchestra is not unique to the Brevard Music Center. Unique to a first-rate training music festival are the sort of events listed above, and the emotions surrounding them. Following the Elgar performance, the student orchestral musicians swarmed their conductor, exultant in knowledge of how well they had performed and feeling a connection with Maestro Llewellyn. During the two faculty chamber music recitals mentioned above, you were aware of the rapt attention paid by the many students in the audience.

I heard Brandon Garbot not only in the concerto competition but also sharing concerto honors with Annie Bender in front of the string group I Musici di Brevard. Fourteen youth from thirteen states and China comprised I Musici this year. That geographic diversity was testimony to how this formerly regional teaching festival has become a national and international destination of the highest caliber.

I regret having missed hearing Tchaikovsky's Symphony #4 with the Transylvania Symphony Orchestra. Scheduling the three most important Tchaikovsky symphonies with the three orchestras at BMC is a sign of the individual stamp Maestro Lockhart is putting on his tenure as Music Advisor. This integrated planning provides his personal direction to both the high school program and the conservatory/university program.

The “three music directors” concert was the first time in history that a Brevard Music Center concert was broadcast live on radio. WDAV 89.9 Classical Public Radio (affiliated with Davidson College) set up broadcast facilities for that week. Recently appointed WDAV General Manager Benjamin K. Roe assured me that they would be back in the future. This station shows signs of evolving into a regional powerhouse. In addition to its round-the-clock broadcasting of classical music, WDAV provides real-time “Internet streaming” and on-demand stored program material. Archival material, including the BMC concert and interviews with the three maestros, can be found at www.wdav.org.

My Classical Voice of North Carolina colleague Laura McDowell and I each reviewed seven events during the 45 days that the Brevard Music Festival lasted. You may find all these reviews at cvnc.org/calendar/BMC-2009reviews.html.

© 2009 Edward C. McIrvine

Arts Spectrum column #446

August 14, 2009