Lansing Great Entertainment Bargain and MSU's Wind Symphony

Clearly, the greatest entertainment bargain in Lansing is the series of concerts presented by the Michigan State University School of Music. Throughout the year (yes, during the summer too) the school of music presents concerts by its talented student body in solo recitals, and in ensembles such as orchestras, choirs, bands, operas, new music groups and various jazz ensembles. Also, the school’s world class faculty presents many solo recitals and chamber ensemble concerts – and many of these folks perform solo gigs with orchestras and ensembles throughout the world for big-ticket prices.

Tickets for these concerts are a steal. Students get in for free, and general admission prices are $9 for regular concerts, and $18 for special events. A bargain indeed!

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I attended one the school’s finest large ensemble concerts recently, the Wind Symphony conducted by newcomer Kevin Sedatole. This is Sedatole’s second year as Director of Bands and Conductor of the Wind Ensemble at MSU, succeeding the retirement of the superb John Whitwell.

Many classical music lovers bypass band concerts – a big mistake. They usually line up for tickets for concerts by orchestras, operas, choirs and ballets but wrongly believe that band concerts will be loud, boisterous, and made up mostly of Sousa marches.

In fact, a concert by a highly skilled band (fancy alternative names are symphony band, wind ensemble, etc) will usually delight the listener with music that has great energy, beauty and freshness. Today’s top-rated college bands, along with the great service bands, will astound you with their technical facility and musical subtly.

But the best surprise from attending a band concert is hearing excellent and exciting music written IN OUR LIFETIME.

Orchestra concerts rarely feature current music. One of the most recently composed pieces to find its way into the basic orchestral repertoire is the Bartok Concerto For Orchestra and that was written some 60 years ago.

The Wind Symphony concert I attended (December 2, 2007), featured eight works, seven of which were composed by living composers.

Instead of sitting down to hear music that I’ve heard dozens of times (as I would in an orchestra concert), all this music was new, fresh and intellectually challenging.

Sedatole is a compact man who conducts with great intensity and focus. He attends to every detail in the music, and his young musicians are fixed on his every movement.

He began the program with a piece written in 2004 by Carter Penn called Slalom. Perfectly named, the piece seems to slide down the snowy hill with fury and fire. The woodwinds were brilliant and the energy of the music was exhilarating.

Another piece that demanded much from the listener, but even more from the performer was the Concert Suite for Alto Saxophone and Band by Pulitzer Prize winning Ann Arbor composer, William Bolcom. Joseph Lulloff, MSU professor of saxophone played this frightfully difficult piece with apparent ease. Each of the four movements was totally impendent from the others, giving the listener great variety of style and expression.

Lulloff, a world renowned saxophone soloist, demonstrated the full spectrum of the instrument. In the first movement, his fingers were a blur as he flew through bunches of notes ranging from the very top to the bottom of the instrument. However, in the sublime second movement Lulloff played with a sensitivy and nuance that you hear from the greatest violinist. With Lulloff’s artistry, the sax’s tone emerges from somewhere in the clouds and swells into a robust lyricism that fills the heart.

Another standout performance in this concert was the singing of tenor Richard Fracker, chair of MSU’s voice faculty and featured singer with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Fracker sang The Heart of the Morn by MSU composition professor, H Owen Reed. It was a lush and romantic interpretation of the tapestry Michigan’s beauty.

Sedatole, graciously, invited several guest conductors to the podium: Jim Barry, retired director of bands at Okemos High School, soon-to-retire director of bands at Grand Ledge High school Mike Kaufman, MSU graduate student Isaiah Odajima and assistant director of MSU bands, John Madden. Although they all did excellent work, the band sounded like a completely different, more responsive ensemble under Sedatole’s baton.

An interesting aspect to the concert: One of the pieces performed was Trauersinfonie by Richard Wagner - probably written about 1880 or so. Compared to the sparkling, rhythmic music of our current age that makes full use of modern woodwinds, percussion, and brass, the Wagner was really old school. A friend who came to the concert with me whispered in my ear, “It sounds so last millennium”. I couldn’t agree more.

One suggestion to the School Music: do a better job with the programs for these concerts. It would be more interesting and educational if some notes would be included about the soloists, guest conductors and the music itself.

Chamber Music In The Great Hall?

When Wharton Center was built back in 1982, a third theater was planned - a nice thousand seat hall. It would have been perfect for small operas and chamber music.

Sadly, budgets were cut (ah, if they only played basketball at Wharton it would have been different) and we are left with small 600 seat hall (Pasant) with brittle acoustics, and a very large 2500 seat hall (Great Hall) that is cavernous. Neither place seems to lend itself to chamber music.

Wharton's Mike Brand wants to bring small ensembles to Wharton but it never seems to work very well. This year MSU cello prof Suren Bagratuni has put together a new chamber series featuring MSU musicians and many other world class artists. He calls it the Michigan Chamber Music Society.

I have seen one of these concerts - the Bach program that took place Sunday January 28th in the Great Hall. There were about 300-400 audience members huddled together on the main floor Great Hall.

Bagratuni selected music that is familiar to all music lovers: three Brandenbureg concerti and the Concerto for Two Pianos in c minor. It was an excellent concert, absent the first work.

The opening piece was the interesting Brandenburg No 6, that features no violins, simply violas, cellos, bass and harpsichord. The ensemble lacked cohesion and Hsin-Yun Huang as principal viola played as if she were the soloist. That's too bad since the second violist, Randolph Kelly is the lead violist with the Pittsburgh Symphony and has had a distinguished career. Maybe some more rehearsing together would have produced better results.

After the lackluster first piece, Deborah Moriarty and fellow MSU faculty member George Vatchnadze soloed in an exciting reading of the Bach Concerto for Two pianos. The soloists sat in the back of the orchestra, which was odd at first but then seemed to improve the ensemble feeling of the entire work. Moriarty is always a wonderful performer, and she didn't disappoint. The orchestra was billed as "The MSU String Ensemble" but there was no listing telling us who the players were.

Things continued to look up during the second half of the program. The ensemble performed the very popular Bradenburg No4 featuring U of M violin prof Aaron Berofsky (and Ralph Votapek's son-in-law) along with flutists Richard Sherman and Lorna McGhee.

Almost immediately the audience realized that this was going to be a very special performance. Sherman and McGhee played some of the finest flute duets I have every heard. They blended perfectly and matched their style with the wonderful Berofsky to make a stunning performance. Not to be overlooked, harpsichordist Charlotte Mattax was also superb. She accompanied the ensemble with subtlety, but surprised the Wharton audience with spectacular, and very difficult solos when the opportunity arose.

Mattax's outstanding playing continued in the final piece of the afternoon, the Brandenburg No 5. But, alas, she was overshadowed by the gorgeous and musical flute playing of Lorna McGhee. She was heard in the previous work with Sherman, but here McGhee got to shine on her own, and shine she did. Her tone was full, rich, and lush and her phrasing was eloquent. McGhee displayed a talent that places here at the very highest level of flute players in the world. It was a genuine pleasure to hear her.

Chamber music at Wharton Center? It's not the perfect venue, but great musicians will make the music come alive no matter where it's played.

Muffit and the LSO: Getting to Know Each Other

January 27th was the third concert that Timothy Muffitt has led the Lansing Symphony as their Music Director, and it's clear that they are getting to know each other.

For each concert, Muffitt seems to be stretching the ensemble to embrace new repertoire and to feel comfortable with more difficult music.

For this concert. Muffit programmed three pieces - all very different from each other. But put together in one concert, Faure (French), Prokofiev (Russian) and Schubert (Viennese) made for a wonderful mix of music.

The contrast of the music was not only because of the nationality of the composers. The first two works, "Suite from Pelleas et Melisande" and "Suite from Lieutanant Kije" were relatively short (18-20 minutes) and had many short movements: four for the Faure and five for the Prokofiev. The music was theatrical, programmatic and filled the stage with many instruments and sounds.

With all those short, snappy movements, it's almost like Muffitt was preparing his audience to sit through the grandiosely long (55 minutes) Schubert Great C Major symphony with a limited romantic orchestra (more about that later).

The Faure was lush and sensuous, with lovely solos by flutist Richard Sherman in the second movement and bassoonist Michael Kroth in the third. These extended solos are some of the most famous in the repertoire and they were both superb. Muffitt brought a ravishing sound from his strings, which has been developing throughout his short tenure with the LSO.

The joyful Prokofiev uses the orchestral pallet to it fullest. The stage is filled with a full orchestra plus tenor saxophone, off-stage trumpet, piano, celesta, harp and a plethora of percussion instruments. It all made for music that sounded like a Russian celebration. The star of Kije was the consistantly beautiful trumpet playing by Richard Illman. I think Muffitt had him take three bows.

This was a particularly difficult concert, and there were moments in both of these works in which inner details of the ensemble were missing - low string sections, woodwind clarity and the correct balances between woodwinds and strings. However the overall impression of these two works was pure enjoyment.

But after all this delightful music, the orchestra then performed on the great symphonies ever written, the Schubert C major, No 9. Some people feel that the piece is too long and too repetitive, but it has always been very dear to my heart. For sure, it is one of the most difficult violin parts ever written. After the treacherous fourth movement, many violinists were seen stretching and getting their hands out of a cramping position.

All in all, Muffitt and his new ensemble played this masterpiece with the respect it deserved. It has been many years since the LSO played the Schubert, and it was clearly not "under their fingers". Muffittt was working hard, pulling the music out of them. But the orchestra response to his urgings was positive. Musicians and conductor appear to have great respect for each other.

Although the Schubert is a big sprawling work, it is interesting that the instrumentation is quite small - almost like an orchestra of the classical era. The orchestra included only a timpanist in the percussion section, a section of two horns (usually four), 2 trumpets - but a full section of three trombones. And the trombones played a significant role with beautiful chords backing up the strings and woodwinds.

After the long and gracious first movement, Muffitt changed the mood totally with a second movement that was elegant, crisp with terrific oboe solos by Jan Eberle. The third movement was the weakest with an uneven tempo and missing harmonies in the brass, overbalanced by other instruments.

By the fourth movement, it was clear that the orchestra was waning. But they came up to the challenge. The repetitive violin vamp was effective, clean and light. Muffitt paid close attention to the cellos and they responded with big luscious chords.

The audience gave the Lansing musicians warm applause, appreciating the variety of music they heard that night and the new energy the orchestra is producing.