With its 22nd season underway, the Southeastern Piano Festival is once again drawing a range of acclaimed performers and up-and-coming teenage competitors to the University of South Carolina for a week of concerts, master classes, and other events.
With the death of Karl Berger on Easter Sunday at the age of 88, Woodstock and the world lost not only a master musician but a prolific, ground-breaking, internationally renowned composer and educator whose pioneering concepts based in the commonality of all music changed the way music can be taught, heard and learned.
Like most, I came to the Aspen Music Festival this year not knowing quite what to expect. . What we heard was as good as, and in some ways better, than usual.
Special to the Aspen Times
Aspen audiences got their first tastes in years of classical recitals in the vast spaces of the Benedict Music Tent this week. The music was top-notch. For this more intimate concert form the venue is going to take some getting accustomed to.
With the 500-seat Harris Hall off limits due to COVID protocols, something gets lost in translation in the vast spaces of the 2,050-seat tent. There was a time when the festival presented chamber music in the tent occasionally. I can recall some extraordinary Dvořák quintets in the old days. But not recently. Harris Hall’s cozy environment lets an audience hear nuances not always audible in a space like the tent. Besides, an audience that would fill Harris Hall looks disappointingly spread-out in the tent.