In the early summer of 1958, composer Gian Carlo Menotti launched the Festival dei Due Mondi (festival of the two worlds) in Spoleto, Italy. He is best known for the one-act Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to be broadcast live on television on December 24, 1951. For the better part of my secondary school years, I would watch that performance annually. In 1977 Menotti launched a second festival in Charleston, South Carolina, naming it, appropriately, Spoleto Festival USA.
Over the course of my life, I have known about these festivals in name only. I had written a term paper about Menotti in secondary school; but, by the time I began my freshman year (1963) at the Massachusetts Instutue of Technology, he had pretty much faded into a figure of the past, making Charleston an effort to revive attention. Nevertheless, the festival has outlived its founder, who died on February 1, 2007. While I knew about the festival from time to time by leafing through magazines, I never encountered any specifics about the music being performed.
Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)
A little over a month ago, I learned that Phenotypic Recordings would release a series of albums documenting performances at last year’s Spoleto Festival USA. The first of these albums will be released tomorrow with two more releases to follow in April and May, respectively. The title of tomorrow’s release is Live from Spoleto 2025: Orchestra. The Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra is conducted by Timothy Myers, and the concerto soloist is violinist Alexi Kenney.
The concerto is Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 in D minor, first composed in 1904 and revised in 1905. The “overture” for the program is the world premiere recording of “Stellar,” composed by Nigerian-American Shawn Okpebholo. The “symphony” is the suite of music extracted from Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier. The origin of this suite is somewhat uncertain, but the Wikipedia page for the opera suggests that it was probably arranged by conductor Artur Rodziński, who first performed it with the New York Philharmonic in October of 1944.
“Stellar” is a vigorous burst of energy lasting less than three minutes. Sadly, it is the only track on the album that does not overstay its welcome. Mind you, the Rosenkavalier music was given a fair shake; but, for anyone that has experienced and enjoyed the entire opera, it does little more than revive pleasant memories. Similarly, there is no arguing with Kenney’s violin skills; but, under Myers’ baton, the performance comes across as just another visit to the Sibelius concerto.
Whether the April and May albums of chamber music performances from Spoleto will make a more lasting impression remains to be seen.
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