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Going with the flow
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The DaPonte String Quartet makes its third Winter Sun Music Festival appearance with a program anchored by Mendelssohn and Schubert.
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By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 26, 2002
Water-inspired music is the focal point of the Winter Sun Music Festival, featuring a diverse lineup of arrangements and performers.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- When organizers of the Winter Sun Music Festival were thinking about a theme, they came up with one that not only relates to the Tampa Bay area but also inspired much great music.
"It's a water theme," said Joan Epstein, the festival director. "We thought it was something central to the identity of the Tampa Bay area. And there's lots of music about water, much more than I would have guessed. There was plenty to choose from without ever having to play a note of Handel's Water Music."
Indeed, from The Mermaid Song by Haydn to Debussy's orchestral tone poem La Mer to Bernstein's Oscar-winning score for On the Waterfront, the festival explores virtually all things watery in three concerts. There's also a performance by the DaPonte String Quartet that departs from the theme in its program anchored by Mendelssohn and Schubert.
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| Mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna will be featured in Night of the Four Moons. |
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| Soprano Lisa Holsberg will perform songs of Debussy and Gershwin. |
[Publicity photos]
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"We wanted a tremendous amount of variety, but we also wanted some cohesion," said conductor Paul Hostetter, artistic director of the festival. "There are some nice sonic connections between selections by Debussy and Wagner, for example, in the orchestra concert."
The festival, now in its fifth year, is centered at Eckerd College, where Epstein is music professor. The 80 or so musicians are a mix of adult amateurs and students from colleges and high schools. Some of the adult string players are attending a string quartet camp coached by the DaPonte. The students are attracted by the chance to play interesting repertoire.
"We try to have music on the docket that people don't get a chance to play very often," Epstein said. "There really aren't too many college orchestras that can pull off La Mer, and at schools where they can do it, like Indiana University, there are eight times as many flutists on campus as can ever play the piece in the orchestra. For most of these people, it's an opportunity to do repertoire that they're really eager to do with other good players and a good conductor."
The festival's opening concert Sunday is a dual recital by mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna and soprano Lisa Holsberg. "We decided to make the program classical and then include some things that would be considered cabaret or pop," Tonna said. "It runs the gamut stylistically. Every selection has some reference to water, whether it's the sea, whether it's rain, whether it's a river."
Tonna will sing excerpts from Elgar's Sea Pictures. Holsberg will perform Debussy songs as well as cabaret and musical theater selections like Lorelei from Pardon My English by the Gershwins. The two will collaborate on water-inspired duets by Haydn, Rossini and Bernstein.
Tonna, an Eckerd College graduate now living in New York and building an opera career, will also sing in Crumb's setting of Lorca poems, Night of the Four Moons, in a chamber orchestra concert Monday. Milhaud's La Creation du Monde is also on the program. Rounding out the concert are new works by Epstein, David Manson and Kari Juusela for instruments made by ceramic sculptor Brian Ransom.
"About half his instruments are based on traditional models from around the world like flute, drums, harp and trumpet," Epstein said. "He also has some wildly original works, and most of them incorporate water in the sound they produce."
The Jan. 2 orchestra concert includes La Mer, a suite from On the Waterfront, Gliere's Russian Sailors' Dance and Wagner's Siegfried's Rhine Journey. Hostetter, who grew up in Winter Park, went to Florida State University and the Juilliard School of Music and now lives in New York, relishes the challenge of pulling together an ambitious program with limited rehearsal time.
"We have college performance majors sitting next to professional musicians sitting next to talented high school students," he said. "It makes for an exciting dynamic."
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PREVIEW: The Winter Sun Music Festival has concerts Sunday through Jan. 2. A festival pass to all events is $35. Single tickets are $5-$15. For information, call (727) 864-8471 or see www.eckerd.edu/wintersunfestival. Concerts are at Dendy-McNair Auditorium on the Eckerd College campus in St. Petersburg, except for the orchestra finale at the Palladium Theater, 253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg. Here's the schedule:
-- "At the Water's Edge: An Evening of Art Song & Cabaret," Lisa Holberg, soprano, and Anna Tonna, mezzo soprano, with pianist Manabu Takasawa, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dendy-McNair.
-- Chamber orchestra concert of Milhaud's La Creation du Monde and other works, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dendy-McNair.
-- DaPonte String Quartet plays Mendelssohn, Turina, Schubert and Tom Myron, 3 p.m. Wednesday, Dendy-McNair.
-- Paul Hostetter conducts festival orchestra in works of Gliere, Bernstein, Wagner and Debussy, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 2, Palladium.
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