Guitar and piano duo find challenge and joy in their repertoire

LMTA will present a performance by a local guitar/piano duo at their next meeting, May 22, at Grace Lutheran Church (22nd and Washington Sts.). The meeting starts at 11:30am. The members of the duo, Ken Hoppmann, piano, and Antonio Forgione, guitar, shared some of their history, philosophy, and passion for the music they perform with LincolnCMN.

“When we first met,” Forgione said, “we got the impression that an experience as guitar and piano duo was a great addition to our experience as musicians.” They decided to explore original repertoire for guitar and piano, and Hoppmann said they have now “been working together for about a year and a half.”

When asked why this combination of instruments attracts them, Hoppmann, the pianist, replied:

“I enjoy the subtlety of the guitar, especially in the kind of literature we are playing on Wednesday. Even though the guitar’s sound can travel nicely and certainly carry the melody, it is inherently softer than a piano. The difference in sound capability between the instruments requires me to play with more elegance and understatement than I might if I were playing with a wind instrument, for instance. Also, the fact that both the piano and guitar are stringed instruments creates some special ensemble possibilities. Overall, I am learning to approach the music as though I were playing the guitar and not the piano. I’m learning to shape phrases, execute articulations, breathe, and shade within a guitaristic paradigm. Squarely placing yourself in the artistic place of your ensemble partner is one of the most beautiful and challenging aspects of playing chamber music! It is truly one of the greatest joys I know.”

Forgione, the guitarist, appreciates that, although the repertoire is limited, it gives them the task to “extract more from the music reading…to interpret more from an historical perspective.” He also spoke about the instrumental challenges arising between guitar and piano, “you have also the chance to continuously compare the technical and stylistic approaches of both instruments. I feel that our chamber music practice is an endless and joyful research.”

When compared with other ensembles in which the guitar is accustomed to play, Forgione said that rather than the guitar being “just the harmonic sustain,” with these two “fully polyphonic instruments,” there are more times when “the goal is to spell dialog between them, improving the clarity of the lines and carefully balancing the sound.” The challenges and the possibilities are the reason that Hoppmann and Forgione have put so much passion into their duo.

They know the history of their ensemble pieces very well. “Most of the music we’ve worked with so far is from the 19th and 20th centuries,” Hoppmann explained. “A good portion of that music falls under the category of ‘Hausmusik’ or salon music, and was performed primarily in home settings, often by amateur music makers.” Lute and guitar, Forgione pointed out, were favorites of the aristocracy for a long time. When big halls and stunning performances became the norm, “the guitar was almost completely neglected as a mainstream instrument.” But that’s why the majority of the repertoire they perform comes from the “Hausmusik” era. In the 21st century, they are exploring some of the “interesting input from other musical traditions, as from the South American music.”

On Wednesday, May 22, Hoppmann and Forgione will perform the following works:

Duo, op. 134 by Ferinando Carulli (1770-1841). Carulli was born in the same year as Beethoven. He spent most part of his life in Paris, where he served with the guitar the same wealthy Parisian demographic that Chopin served with the piano. Carulli often used the title “Duo” in favor of the equally-appropriate “Sonata”. In this work, though, he creates a beautiful and entertaining piece in two movements, Larghetto and Rondo, very typical of its brilliant style, based on the finest Italian tradition coming from Naples, where he was born.

Two Rondos op. 68 by Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829). Written in 1818, when he was at the height of his career, these two short but delightful Rondos have character and contain many of the stylistic touches of the master. Giuliani was the biggest virtuoso of his time, exercising excellent capabilities as composer, guitarist and cellist in Vienna. He was collegue and friend of people like Beethoven, Diabelli, Hummel, Moscheles, Mayseder, Paganini and Rossini.

Mazurka, op. 40 and Barcarole, op. 41 by Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856). Examples of the best Mertz’s works for piano and guitar, they were originally written in collaboration with his wife, the concert pianist Josephine Plantin. Recognized as one of the few leading virtuoso guitarist composers in the Romantic period, Mertz’s models were not Mozart, Beethoven and Rossini as for Carulli and Giuliani, but rather Schubert, Mendelsshon and Schumann.

Hear Lincoln’s Composition Contest winners perform this weekend

The Lincoln Music Teachers’ Association (LMTA) sponsors a composition concert open to various ages and levels from early elementary up through adult student entries and teacher entries. This year, the adjudicator for the contest was Kurt Knecht, and you can hear the winning pieces that he selected performed on a concert this weekend on Sunday, April 7 at 5pm. The performance will take place at Grace Lutheran Church (22^nd and Washington Streets). This recital is free and open to the public.

Knecht, who has been featured on previous articles, spoke with Examiner.com again regarding this composition contest. As far as the works he saw entered in this contest, Knecht said that “they were mostly piano compositions” that featured a wide range of harmonic vocabularies. Everything from tonal to atonal, pentatonic, whole tone...really the whole range. And they were generally of high quality. It was fairly easy to pick the winner in each category, but picking 2^nd, 3^rd, and honorable mention was tricky.”

In selecting the winners, Knecht would look for a few things. He shared some of the questions that he had going through his mind during the process:

“1. Is there a clear formal structure?

2. Does the music have some sort of emotional direction and flow?

3. Is there enough variation to prevent monotony, and is there enough similarity to create unity?

4. Is the texture appropriate for the musical idea being conveyed?

5. Is the score clean and clearly marked?”

Of course, the performance on Sunday will give everyone a chance to hear the pieces that best exhibited these qualities, and the audience will also have a chance to hear Knecht perform one of his own compositions: “I'm going to be performing my Nocturne in memoriam Robert Helps.” Knecht has come a long way since his first attempts at composing: “my development was fairly typical. I wrote a few things that aren’t worth mentioning when I was young. Then, by middle school, I started improvising on my piano pieces.” By high school, Knecht had committed to writing fairly serious music and has spent the years since studying music and writing some wonderful pieces.

His advice for students who are trying their hand at composing is that “everyone should write because everyone has something to say.” But, “That doesn't mean that everyone is going to become a successful composer. It does mean that you will create something that is very unique, and putting that something into the world is a great and courageous act. It may be that lots of other people want to hear the way that you organize sound. Even if they don't, you will certainly gain insight into yourself and the compositions of the great masters. If you really enjoy it, you should get lessons with someone.”

Hear Knecht and some of Lincoln’s beginning composers on Sunday!

Beatrice Regional Orchestra: Providing a bridge between small communities and the arts

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Lincoln and Omaha are Nebraska’s largest cities and have numerous Classical music events. But what about the smaller cities and towns in the state?

Beatrice, Nebraska, is a relatively short 40-minute drive down Hwy 77 from Lincoln, and people are working hard to bring Classical music to the community there. Kevin Boesiger has been conducting and managing the Beatrice Regional Orchestra since 2010, and wants to invite you to come out and hear the concert put on entirely by local musicians of Beatrice and nearby communities.

“Around the World” will take place this coming Friday, March 22, at 7pm in the Hevelone Center at the Beatrice High School, 600 Orange Blvd. in Beatrice. Tickets are $5 at the door and students get in free! You can visit the Beatrice Regional Orchestra facebook page for more information. Enjoy a nice drive down Hwy 77 in the (hopefully) spring weather, and see what Beatrice has to offer.

Boesiger sat down to explain why and how he’s working so hard to put together events like this one:

“We have to work really hard to get all the players we need but we have been able to sustain this orchestra by stretching beyond just Beatrice. We have players that come from about a 40-mile range, but all the musicians come from smaller towns in our area. We work with what we have. This does create a challenge, but we have been able to make things work quite well and have continued to present quality concerts. We also range in age from 15 to 85 years of age. We have some of the really good high school players involved and it is a great mix of young and old playing along side each other. Our more experienced musicians do a great job of helping out the ones with less experience. It is really a cool thing to see!”

At this point, Boesiger explained, there is no audition to join the orchestra. “Our biggest hurdle has been having more winds than we need and not enough strings. We do ask people to contact me first because if we have a section already full and don't need another player we have to work around that. I have had to tell some players occasionally that we don't have an open spot. This does change some from year to year depending on who is able to play, so I encourage people to check back... We try to include as many people as possible since we are a community orchestra not a professional symphony.”

The orchestra rehearses every Tuesday evening from September to May and performs four concerts in their season. Boesiger includes area highschool choirs on one of the concerts. The goal in this, just as it is with the choir itself is to “do things to encourage our student musicians”—in this way, the Beatrice Regional Orchestra is giving many of the schools in the area a chance to sing with an orchestra. They also sponsor a Senior Soloist Competition in the spring and choose one vocalist and instrumentalist to perform on the final concert in May.

Boesiger feels that they are doing an important task for the community. “Many communities are feeling cuts in the school system when it comes to music and Beatrice is one of those communities. We are able to provide a great experience for some of those serious players in high school. We are also able to provide a great concert at a VERY reasonable rate to many people in our area who might not be able to afford getting to Lincoln or Omaha. People come knowing they are going to enjoy whatever is on the program for the evening."

Boesiger described it as being “a bridge to get people more interested in other programs in the arts.” At the concerts, he always highlights what is going on in other communities and encourages audiences that “if you enjoyed the performance to consider checking out the Lincoln Symphony.”

Oftentimes, the Beatrice Regional Orchestra is introducing people to the arts for the first time: “Since we are a small town you would be amazed at the number of people who have not experienced orchestral music and assume it would be a long night of boring music. We are working hard to break down that conception and give people something we know they will enjoy.” 

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Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Brahms meets Beethoven’ concert: A triumph

Despite another wintry evening, the cold was not enough to deter a sizeable audience from coming out to hear Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra last night. Anton Miller and Maestro Polochick were both stars of the evening.

Anton Miller had shared some of the emotions he felt about the music on the concert in his interview last week. Miller, concertmaster and soloist during last night’s performance, loves music especially because it continues to communicate when words and language fail.

Last night, his music went far beyond words.

Miller’s performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D made the audience almost forget about the technical virtuosity that it took to perform as listeners were swept up and carried up and down with the emotions of the great Beethoven work.

Polochick led the orchestra in an equally emotionally charged performance—you could hear the excitement and joy at times and, at other times, the almost palpable sorrow, or the joviality heard in the third movement.

The only complaint about the evening would be the order of the pieces. Despite the fact that both pieces were beautifully performed, the Brahms Symphony in F wasn’t really able to follow the incredible performance of the Beethoven concerto in the first half of the concert.

Bravo, once again, Anton Miller and Maestro Polochick!

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Anton Miller to communicate things 'only expressible through music'

On Saturday, March 16, at 7:30pm, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra will perform a program entitled “Brahms Meets Beethoven” at the Lied Center. This concert is the first of two remaining concerts in the 2012-2013 season. Tickets are still available by visiting the LSO website.
Anton Miller, longtime concertmaster in the LSO, sat down with this Examiner to talk about Brahms and Beethoven. First off, Miller explained what the title “concertmaster” entails. The concertmaster is “basically the leader of the orchestra—in the history of orchestras, the concertmaster acted as the conductor or could step in to direct the orchestra for the conductor. In short, the concertmaster is a leader, certainly the leader of the strings, making sure all the bowing goes the same way for instance.” Other ways that the concertmaster leads the orchestra today include “translating” and “serving as a conduit” between orchestra and conductor; “in performance,” Miller shared, “my job is to do everything I can to help the conductor get everyone playing together.”
How does Miller accomplish all of this the LSO when he lives in New York and has a busy performing schedule?

“I’ve been doing this for about 25 years now. I come out for rehearsals the week before the performance, and I spend the entire week out in Lincoln. I travel to all kinds of different places, but I’m always there in Lincoln for a week of rehearsals. I always love coming out, and it’s a wonderful place.”

Miller is not only concertmaster but also soloist at this week’s performance. He will be performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major. He has played this concerto about three times before: “The first time was about 20 years ago with the Westfield Symphony in New Jersey, and I’ve played it again a couple times with various smaller orchestras in New York.”
When asked if he had a favorite between Brahms and Beethoven, Miller laughed, and then groaned. “If you held my feet to the fire and MADE me choose, my two favorite composers would be Brahms and Beethoven. If I had kids, it’d be like trying to make me say which of my two kids I liked better.” In the end, he admitted, he would choose Beethoven, who “came first and is probably the greatest composer... If I had to live without one of them (which I would hate to have to do!), it would be Brahms; I just couldn’t do without Beethoven.”
Miller also shared what his goal is when performing. He wants the audience to be “inspired, and that the concert communicates emotions and feelings to the audience. Music is it’s own language. Certain things are only expressible through music.” Miller admitted that he loves performances where he can talk to the audience and tell them what the music is about. In a way, of course, that opens up the doors for the audience to understand what the music is communicating.
To that end, Miller explained a little of what to listen for in the Beethoven work on Saturday:

“This concerto is incredibly beautiful. The first movement is incredibly lyrical and filled with an immense amount of emotion. What I want to do is show that...and get the audience to feel those different types of emotions. Many emotions, a lot of joy and sorrow, come to a head at the end of the first movement.
The slow movement is like a recitation, so soft, and it almost dies away—you feel like the music could last forever in a beautiful way. The last movement is like a dance that’s fun and joyous and a little tongue in cheek. This music lends itself to knowing the feelings.”

Miller has one experience of communicating with music that stands out especially. “I played a concert many years ago in Switzerland for an audience of mentally handicapped people. It was very noisy as I came out on stage, not applause, just chaos. I started playing—and I played for an hour and a half—and there was dead silence the entire time. I knew I was communicating at a high emotional level.”
That memory helped to inspire Miller to always “find something that touches people” as he performs.
“Something that’s beyond what would normally be talked about or communicated.”
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