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      Jorja Fleezanis, Violinist and Pioneering Concertmaster, Dies at 70

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      “Being a concertmaster is terribly demanding,” she once said, “but women can handle the job as well as men can. I know that.”Jorja Fleezanis, a dynamic violinist and dedicated teacher who was one of the first women to serve as concertmaster of a major symphony orchestra in the United States, died on Sept. 9 at her home in Lake Leelanau, Mich. She was 70.The Minnesota Orchestra, in which Ms. Fleezanis played from the first chair for two decades, said the cause was “a cardiovascular event.”The concertmaster holds a key position with an orchestra, with considerable responsibility for defining its sound. Ms. Fleezanis was “a cornerstone player” in the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska, its music director from 2003 to 2022, said in a phone interview.“You need to be hearing the whole score and acting as second in command to the conductor,” Ms. Fleezanis explained to The Boston Globe this year. “You need to understand all the possible interpretive ways the conductor can go at that moment, so you’re prepared to make a sharp left, or a gentle left. And you create that unification, that sense of ensemble, almost instantaneously.”Concertmasters often take solo turns, too, playing concertos with their own orchestras. Ms. Fleezanis used those opportunities to advocate for works that audiences were otherwise unlikely to hear from guest violinists — by Benjamin Britten, say, or Roger Sessions — and to promote new scores. She gave the premiere of John Adams’s Violin Concerto, in St. Paul in 1994, collaborating on a pathbreaking piece that won the Grawemeyer Award for composition a year later.For much of the history of the professional orchestra, the post of concertmaster had been reserved for men. Ms. Fleezanis, a “rebel with a violin,” as The Pioneer Press of St. Paul called her, sought to change that from early in her career.“Being a concertmaster is terribly demanding,” she told The Cincinnati Post in 1976, “but women can handle the job as well as men can. I know that.”Ms. Fleezanis at first looked likely to break barriers at the San Francisco Symphony, which she joined as a second violinist in 1980, becoming its associate concertmaster in 1981. Sharing the first stand with Raymond Kobler, she played so “splendidly,” the critic Robert Commanday wrote in The San Francisco Examiner in 1988, that she struck observers “as the stronger of the two, and often the real leader of the section.”In a decision that Mr. Commanday described as “not very defensible,” the San Francisco Symphony’s music director, Herbert Blomstedt, stuck with his man, even after it became clear that the cost would be Ms. Fleezanis’s departure. She accepted the overtures of Mr. Blomstedt’s predecessor, Edo de Waart, who was eager to bring her to his new ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra.Hired as acting concertmaster in 1988, she was technically not the first woman to hold the full title of concertmaster at a major orchestra; by the time her position was made permanent early in 1989, Emmanuelle Boisvert had begun work as the concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony. But Ms. Fleezanis was a trailblazer at a time when the gender composition of American orchestras was starting to become more equitable.With her frank personality and her palpable intensity onstage, she was in large part responsible for the resurgence of the Minnesota Orchestra, which came to be widely regarded as one of the finest in the nation early in Mr. Vanska’s tenure, not least for the crisp precision and risk-taking sensibility of its strings. Like its concertmaster, the orchestra performed “with the kind of furious finesse that every composer prays for,” the critic Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker in 2005.“Early in my career I was told, ‘If you play like that in every concert, you’ll burn out,’ but I knew that wasn’t right,” Ms. Fleezanis said when she left the orchestra to become a professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2009. “Playing with full commitment gives back: It revitalizes me.”Ms. Fleezanis during a rehearsal for a weeklong Minnesota Orchestra program in 2006 presenting the work of then-emerging composers. Missy Mazzoli, left, was one of them. Greg Helgeson for The New York TimesJorja Kay Fleezanis was born on March 19, 1952, in Detroit. She was the younger of Parios and Kay Fleezanis’s two children. Her parents, who were Greek immigrants, were not musicians but loved music.She began learning violin at age 8, studying in Detroit with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff, the former concertmaster of Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony. She later attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she played for the young James Levine in his University Circle Orchestra, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.It was still rare for women to be admitted to major orchestras when Ms. Fleezanis finished her studies. The Chicago Symphony’s music director, Georg Solti, required her to win three separate auditions and to play concerts right under his eye before he was willing to hire a “girl,” as he called her, for his second violin section in 1975. Her kinetic style did not match the staid demeanor of her colleagues, though, and she was all but alone among men. She left after a single season.“A solid musician with a big sound and surprising reserves of energy,” as The Cincinnati Enquirer described her in 1976, Ms. Fleezanis returned to Ohio to lead the newly formed Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. There she founded the Trio d’Accordo, a string trio. She later started the FOG Trio with the cellist Michael Grebanier and the pianist Garrick Ohlsson. An inspirational pedagogue, she held posts at the San Francisco Conservatory, the University of Minnesota and a variety of other institutions. She retired from the Jacobs School in 2020.While at the San Francisco Symphony, Ms. Fleezanis met Michael Steinberg, a former critic for The Boston Globe who was that orchestra’s publications director and artistic adviser. They married in 1983; he died in 2009. She is survived by her brother, Nickolas.In a 2009 conversation with Sam Bergman, a Minnesota Orchestra violist, Ms. Fleezanis said her husband had stoked her interest in unusual and new works. She recorded Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas, but she also recorded pieces by Stefan Wolpe and Aaron Jay Kernis. Nicholas Maw wrote a sonata for her, and John Tavener made her the “Divine Eros” in his vast, mystical “Ikon of Eros,” written for the Minnesota Orchestra’s centennial in 2002. After her husband’s death, she started a commissioning fund in their joint names.“There is a huge body of genius out there,” Ms. Fleezanis told Mr. Bergman, reflecting on the repertoire as she found it. “It’s just a question of how limited you want to choose to be.” More

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      Review: Julia Wolfe’s ‘Her Story’ Looks Back on Women’s Suffrage

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      Julia Wolfe’s “Her Story,” a commemoration with an eye toward the future, premieres in the state where the 19th Amendment achieved ratification.NASHVILLE — It was here, a little more than a hundred years ago, that the 19th Amendment crossed the threshold into ratification and granted millions of women the right to vote.That wasn’t so assured. Ratification was needed from at least 36 states. By summer 1920, that number had reached 35, and Tennessee provided the decisive tipping point — but only narrowly, passing by a single vote in its House of Representatives.Such fragility has been borne out in the decades that followed: The Equal Rights Amendment, which was introduced in 1923, has yet to be adopted. Some see women’s rights as again coming under assault from restrictive abortion laws across the country, and hear casual misogyny continuing to course through politics, up to the level of presidential elections.So you can understand the muted celebration in Julia Wolfe’s “Her Story,” an oratorio-like work that originated as a commemoration of the 19th Amendment yet sobers as much as it rouses. It has a ferocity that is literally written into the score, but also an absence of resolution as it looks back to suffrage with one wary eye toward the future steps this country still needs to take for something resembling true equality.“Her Story” premiered here on Thursday — fittingly, given its subject, at the Nashville Symphony, alongside works by Joan Tower and Florence Price — with a notice that suggested it would be recorded for future release, as well as a list of heavyweight co-commissioners that promises coming performances in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington.It joins Wolfe’s body of large-scale, historically minded works that lean toward oratorios — what the National Public Radio journalist Tom Huizenga recently called, to Wolfe’s delight, “docu-torios.” First came “Steel Hammer,” about the legend of John Henry, in 2009; then “Anthracite Fields,” a 2015 meditation on Pennsylvania’s coal mines that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, “Fire in my mouth,” which premiered at the New York Philharmonic in 2019 with a sweeping account of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.Like those, “Her Story” resists a heavy hand but is smaller by comparison — in scale, with 10 members of the Lorelei Ensemble in lieu of, say, a 100-plus-person chorus, and in length, with a running time of about a half-hour. Its two movements, though, are just as concentrated, and if anything more poetic and thus haunting in their ambiguity.It arrived on the second half of what the Nashville Symphony’s music director, Giancarlo Guerrero, declared, with a bit of extravagance (if a whiff of paternalism), would be one of the most historic nights in classical music, featuring what had been billed as “trailblazing women.” In the field’s own progress toward gender equality — programming, while slowly evolving, still overwhelmingly favors white men, preferably dead — a better concert might one day present three female composers without so much fanfare.But the Nashville Symphony, to its credit, played each work with absolute commitment and passion. The Tower — her “1920/2019,” which premiered in New York as part of Project 19 at the Philharmonic — was lent a monumental grandeur; the Price, her Piano Concerto in One Movement, featuring a warmly expressive Karen Walwyn, an infectious pleasure. And “Her Story,” with tension, crashing swells and dramatic momentum, was given more than the dutiful reading often heard in premiere performances.The first movement, “Foment,” is a drawn-out setting of a letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, in 1776, that reads, in part: “I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and more favorable than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.” Wolfe borrows isolated phrases for the final lines, “We will foment a rebellion” and “We have no voice.”The oratorio included theatrical touches by a team including the director Anne Kauffman and the designers Jeff Sugg and Márion Talán de la Rosa.Kurt HeineckeWolfe’s other recent oratorios have been busy, multimedia presentations. On Thursday, “Her Story,” directed by Anne Kauffman, featured subtle lighting and scenic design by Jeff Sugg, and deceptively demure costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa; but it was all analog, a modest complement to the music rather than a competitor as in “Anthracite Fields” and “Fire in my mouth.”Here, then, Wolfe’s style of clear, direct vocal expression landed with unmissable impact. Her orchestral writing, meanwhile, pulsed with Minimalist gestures — phrases that repeatedly swirled upward, steady rhythmic support in the strings — while also nodding to grooving rock in drum kits and electric guitars.And when the score swerves from its Minimalist influences, it’s to arresting, moving effect. Violins deliver harmonic glissandos that echo in the vocal treatment of the word “husband,” which warps, melting downward. Wolfe shatters the rhythmic unison of her singers with dense, overwhelming fogs of phrases that return to unity with new focus and force.Motion is baked into the score; the Lorelei singers gasp and cover their mouths. In the second movement, “Raise” — a triptych of texts taken from antagonistic labels used against women agitating for the right to vote, a political cartoon and a speech by Sojourner Truth — orchestra members accusingly point at the vocalists at the mention of labels like “bolshevik,” “communist” or “anarchist.”During the opening section of “Raise,” the labels are almost entirely accompanied with the prefix “un,” which is isolated in both the score — highlighting its “wrongness” relative to convention — and signs held up by the singers: “unstable,” “uncivil” and, ultimately “un-American.” Later mentions of “screaming” and “hysterical” aren’t too far from “nasty woman.” Like much of the staging, those signs don’t interfere but could just as easily be excluded. Then again, Handel’s oratorios are today presented both staged and not; and Thursday was hopefully far from the last dramatic interpretation of “Her Story.”As the second movement continues, it becomes more stylistically volatile, and engrossing. An interlude plays off a cartoon, which in turn played off a pacifist song, that says “I didn’t raise my girl to be a voter,” in a gruff musical treatment that gives way to a galvanizing setting of Sojourner Truth’s words.That final stretch has the makings of a triumphant finale. The orchestra crests and retreats under a unified front of female voices with a fortissimo, accented “I am strong.” And yet they are virtually alone in the closing measures, joined only by the lingering ring of percussion. Isolated, perhaps, but determined nevertheless.Her StoryThrough Saturday at the Nashville Symphony Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville; nashvillesymphony.org. More

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      Review: Outshining a Premiere, a Group Announces Its Arrival

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      The ensemble Orlando Furioso was the highlight of a concert featuring Kate Soper’s new but brief work “HEX.”Kate Soper’s work, like that of so many other artists, was disrupted by the pandemic. But she weathered the moment with the same creative ingenuity she has brought to her music and dramatic projects in the past.When her hotly anticipated opera “The Romance of the Rose,” originally scheduled for April 2020, was canceled, Soper began to post spare yet smartly filmed excerpts online. And though the world premiere date for “Rose” still isn’t known, she has pressed forward on multiple fronts. Soper released an excellent album — “The Understanding of All Things” — while also sharing selections from “HARK,” a new play, on YouTube.She also contributed a work of short fiction, “ClearVoice,” to McSweeney’s for an “audio issue” of the literary journal last year. (That’s also available as a series of videos online, though fans should spring for the deluxe, print-plus-audio version that better suits her story’s witty-then-philosophical sendup of software installation manuals and commercial uses of classical music.)But now it’s 2022, and live performance is again the norm. What about a return to ambitious dramatic works onstage for Soper? The program for the season-opening concert from Wet Ink Ensemble — the pathbreaking group in which Soper plays a crucial role — held out precisely this promise. Presented by the ensemble at Roulette on Wednesday, the evening included the world premiere of Soper’s “HEX,” advertised as a “dramatic satire in which a new music ensemble inadvertently opens the gates of Hell.”“HEX,” though, ultimately proved to be a trifle. The 19-minute piece — really just an extended comedic sketch — starts in media res, with multiple classical pianists taking turns in the execution of a conceptual-art stunt. They must repeat a single, foreboding (and supposedly medieval) musical figure some 78,000 times, after which, it’s said, the Devil will be summoned.But this enticing setup drags on with little musical development. Eventually, the Devil — played with subtle menace by Rick Burkhardt — duly makes his appearance. He takes his turn at the piano, bringing with him some welcome musical embellishment of the oft-repeated material. But just as things are getting interesting, the curtain falls.In Soper’s script, the mortal musicians’ conceit is presented as a lazy effort from a group of busy artists who are having trouble making their schedules align. (They also need something suitably “flashy” yet easy to produce for a grant proposal.) This was self-awareness that sliced close to the bone, and that seemed to explain why Soper was the only member of Wet Ink performing on Wednesday.Supporting her, instead, was the chamber group Orlando Furioso, led by the Chilean drummer-composer Vicente H. Atria. These virtuosic musicians were the (ghostly) players onstage who were charged with responding vividly — if too briefly — to impromptu variations on the repetitive pianistic motif.In addition to bringing stray sparks of vibrancy to “HEX,” Atria’s group also helped to save the concert — and to make it, on balance, a success — with its own 40-minute set, which marked the release of its new, self-titled album on the Aguirre label.Making liberal use of microtonal harmony and hypnotic, ostinato rhythms — as well as the occasional stylistic smash-cut, reminiscent of John Zorn — Orlando Furioso announced itself on Wednesday as a punchy, creative force on the New York scene. The high point of its set was “Raso, Sarga, Tafetán,” an 11-minute composition by Atria. After the performance, he described it from the stage as a study in layered patterns; that was hardly necessary, however, since the piece’s swinging, sinuous interplay had spoken for itself.

      Orlando Furioso by Orlando FuriosoIn the early going, this work provided a delirious blend of material for the keyboardist Andrew Boudreau, the cellist Daniel Hass, the trumpeter David Acevedo and the woodwind specialist David Leon (who doubled on clarinet and saxophones throughout the concert).Atria’s rhythms had a welcoming, social propulsion, and the microtonality of his writing for keyboard proposed an individual — even insular — language. (Boudreau played on a synth setup that mimicked an atypically tuned harpsichord.) Atria’s other works on the program hit with a similar specificity, including the driving “Bootstrap Bernie”; and Soper guested with the group, too, lending crisply beaming vocals to the piece “En Tornasol.”Give credit where it’s due to Wet Ink Ensemble. Even when it couldn’t assemble for a focused display of its own prowess, the group was able to help shine a light on up-and-coming artists. On Wednesday, that was plenty — even revelatory.Kate Soper and Orlando FuriosoPerformed on Wednesday at Roulette, Brooklyn. More

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      What Music to Expect at Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral

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      For centuries, the format of British royal funerals has largely stayed the same, with a history that tells the story of both the monarchy and music.What is the sound of a monarch’s death — the music and noise that commemorates the end of one regal life in preparation for the one to come?Music plays an enormous role in British royal ceremonies, particularly funerals, like Queen Elizabeth II’s on Sept. 19, which function as both state and religious rituals. Because the British monarch is also head of the Church of England, the sounds of these events are often tied to the Anglican musical tradition, springing out of the post-English Reformation Church.Since 1603, much of the royal funeral’s format has stayed the same, while some aspects shift to reflect the time and the monarch. The result is a striking combination of diverse works that tell both the story of the British monarchy and British music.The rites performed in the Church of England service come from the Order of the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer. First published in 1549, it provided services and ways of daily worship in Anglican churches. The musical portions of the liturgy offered the text that has been set by composers for funerals — royal and otherwise.Those texts are called Funeral Sentences, collectively called the Burial Service, and are broken up into three parts: Opening Sentences, sung when the priests meet the body at the church; Graveside Sentences, for when the body is buried or interred; and the Last Sentence, sung after the priest throws earth onto the body.During the funeral, Sentences are separated by psalms, which are read or sung, and anthems (choral works accompanied by instruments, another musical element of the Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy). In addition, royal funerals have featured outdoor processions, including wind, brass and percussion instruments in the 17th century and, in the 20th, imperial military bands.Here is an overview of significant moments in the history of such music, from Elizabeth I to Princess Diana and the present.Elton John played a version of his song “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.Paul Hackett/Associated PressElizabeth I, 1603Elizabeth I’s funeral, at Westminster Abbey, began the tradition of grand royal services. It was the first such ceremony to use the Anglican rites and feature its associated musical liturgy. While we do not know conclusively what was performed, illustrations and surviving accounts from musicians mention the outdoor procession featuring trumpeters and the combined choirs of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey. The setting most likely used for the burial service is by Thomas Morley (1557-1602), possibly written in anticipation of the occasion and often considered the first of its kind. Morley’s setting reflects the solemnity of both the text and the occasion, and it became standard for royal funerals until the 18th century.Mary II, 1695Musical innovations made to the royal funeral began with Mary II and the inclusion of new music by Henry Purcell (1659-95), including one Graveside Sentence: “Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.” Referred to as “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary” (Z. 860), including the march and canzona also performed, Purcell’s setting of “Thou knowest, Lord” might have been composed to match Morley’s Sentences, accompanied by “flatt, mournful Trumpets” mirroring the vocal parts. Purcell’s “Funeral March” was a new, thunderous addition, opening with deep, heavy drums before the trumpets enter, both mournful and heraldic.Anne, 1714Anne’s funeral, at Westminster Abbey, showcases the royal funeral integrating new music into already existing settings of the Burial Service. Alongside Morley’s Opening Sentences were Funeral Sentences from the Chapel Royal organist William Croft (1678-1727). Croft’s Burial Service became the choice for royal funerals to come, and though it was written for Anne’s funeral, it was most likely not completed until 1722. He would use Purcell’s “Thou knowest, Lord” as one of the Sentences within his Burial Service, writing in his “Musica Sacra” (1724) that he “endeavoured, as near as possibly I could, to imitate that great Master and celebrated Composer.” Anne’s funeral also included a new anthem by Croft, “The Souls of the Righteous.”Caroline, 1737The death of Caroline, the wife of George II, brought about a musical addition to the royal funeral befitting the Hanoverian queen. George commissioned a funeral anthem from George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) who had known Caroline as a child. Handel’s anthem, “The Ways of Zion Do Mourn” (HWV 264), is a monumental work that at the Westminster Abbey funeral “took up three quarter of an hour of the time,” The Grub-Street Journal described, and employed almost 200 performers. While an anthem, the various parts of the work recall the Lutheranism of Caroline and Handel, featuring quotations of that faith’s music. Notably, Mozart would use the melody of the anthem’s first chorus for his Requiem (1791).Victoria, 1901Like so much about Victoria’s reign, her funeral was exceptionally different from that of her predecessors. Unlike previous monarchs, she requested a royal public funeral at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and a private burial next to Prince Albert at Frogmore House, near Windsor. Because the public service prioritized the funeral as state function over the utility of burial, Croft’s Burial Service here is more an appeal to tradition rather than a liturgical and religious need. Accordingly, Purcell’s “Thou knowest, Lord” and “Man that is born of woman,” by S.S. Wesley (1810-1876), are referred to as anthems instead of Funeral Sentences, rationalizing their inclusion in the service. The end of the ceremony featured music by Gounod, Tchaikovsky, Spohr and Beethoven, wresting the funeral music from the hands of British composers.RECENT ROYAL FUNERALS may offer insight into this tradition’s future. Princess Diana’s funeral, in 1997, featured Croft, but the anthem and procession choices embodied Diana the person: John Tavener’s “Song for Athene,” Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,” and the second half of the “Libera me, Domine” from Verdi’s Requiem. With Tavener and Verdi, non-Protestant music and liturgy were included for the first time in a royal or state funeral; and all three works evoke a solemnity and majesty both timely and timeless.Similarly, Prince Philip’s participation in his own funeral’s planning shows through in his choice of musical selections. Along with Croft were the hymn “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” a nod to his naval roots, and two pieces commissioned by him: Benjamin Britten’s “Jubilate Deo,” written for St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and a setting of Psalm 104 by William Lovelady, arranged for four voices and organ. This musical flexibility shows another shift in the royal funeral tradition as it continues into the 21st century.So, what can we expect for Elizabeth II? It has been 70 years since Britain has witnessed the sovereign’s funeral, and so much has changed in that time. Britain has entered a new era, post-Brexit, in which there may be a call to return to the music of old. But many composers have thrived in the second Elizabethan Age — as wide-ranging as Britten and Errollyn Wallen — with her coronation as a testament to musical innovation similar to Elizabeth I.Britain’s future is unknown, and the end of Elizabeth II’s reign may be a turning point. Her funeral will sound like so many that came before. But it may also sound like the music of a new age.Imani Danielle Mosley is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida. She specializes in the music and culture of postwar Britain, Benjamin Britten, English modernism and 20th-century opera. More

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      Lars Vogt, Acclaimed Pianist and Conductor, Is Dead at 51

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      Piano technique for Mr. Vogt was a means to expression, not an end in itself. He avoided repertoire that called for mere virtuosity.Lars Vogt, a sensitive, communicative pianist whose warmth as a collaborator made him an outstanding chamber musician and a conductor of growing stature, died on Monday at a clinic in Erlangen, Germany. He was 51.His manager, Celia Willis, said the cause was esophageal cancer, which Mr. Vogt had learned he had in March 2021. He had spoken frankly about his prospects while continuing to perform, up until a few weeks before his death.“Music is just such an amazing thing. I find that even more in these times, when I spend a lot of time in hospitals and with doctors, and of course wondering how things are going to go,” Mr. Vogt said in an online interview with the pianist Zsolt Bognar in July, “and yet in music you get transported into this world where you forget everything.”Mr. Vogt created and shared those worlds in sublimely free, quite personal detail, and he had little interest in show for the sake of show. His was a “loving” approach to the piano, he told Pianist magazine in 2016, one that tried “to get the sound out of the keyboard, rather than into it.”If the results could sometimes seem idiosyncratic, at his best he played with “a sense of perfect equilibrium, a balance of lines that sounded simple and natural, but could only have been the result of thoughtful calibration,” as Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote in a review of a recital in 2006.Technique for Mr. Vogt was a means to expression, not an end in itself. He avoided repertoire that called for mere virtuosity — he once recorded an album of pieces written for children — and he eventually unburdened himself of the pressure placed on pianists to memorize the works they learn, so he could perform without the nervousness he had long felt onstage.He took the time to involve himself deeply in the works he played solo, which came mostly from the high Germanic tradition — ranging from Bach, whose “Goldberg” Variations he recorded to acclaim, to contemporary composers like Thomas Larcher. It was the music of Brahms, however, that was always closest to Mr. Vogt, for the solace of its melancholy.Mr. Vogt’s last public appearances, in which he played Brahms, were in June at Spannungen, a chamber music festival that he founded in 1998 that takes place in an Art Nouveau hydroelectric power plant in Heimbach, Germany. (Its name translates to “Voltages” as well as “Tensions.”) And it was in chamber music that he excelled, especially with the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his sister, the cellist Tanya Tetzlaff.Mr. Vogt recorded Brahms and Dvorak with the Tetzlaffs as a trio and, with Mr. Tetzlaff, set down fervently expressive accounts of violin sonatas by Mozart, Schumann and Brahms. Those exquisite recordings, made for the Ondine label, were widely judged worthy of reference status not because they aimed to be a final word on the works involved, or even appeared to be, but because the audible generosity of their partnership made for a unique focus and intensity.“This is chamber-playing at its most humane,” the critic Richard Bratby wrote of their recording of Beethoven’s Opus 30 sonatas in Gramophone last year, “impossible to hear without feeling a renewed love and admiration for music and performers alike.”It was also as an avowed collaborator, rather than as a more forceful leader, that Mr. Vogt took on conducting, which he decided to explore after stepping in at short notice to lead Beethoven from the keyboard with the Camerata Salzburg early in the 2010s.“There was no conductor, just a very good concertmaster, and it was so much fun, so easy,” he recalled of that concert in an interview with Gramophone magazine in 2017. “I rang my agent afterwards from the taxi to the airport and said, ‘I need to know how far I can go with this. It doesn’t matter which orchestra it’s with, I just love it so much.’”Hired after a single concert, Mr. Vogt became the music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, based in Newcastle, England, in 2015; together, they recorded the Beethoven concertos with a sparkling pliancy and the Brahms with an unusual tenderness of touch. He took the same post with the Chamber Orchestra of Paris in 2020 and remained there until his death.Conducting is “like chamber music,” Mr. Vogt told Gramophone. “I want to encourage the character of the music, encourage people to go to their limits of expression, and ideally get them to the state that they want to do that, enjoy searching to the depths.”Mr. Vogt performing a program of Mozart, Schubert and Brahms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesLars Vogt was born on Sept. 8, 1970, in Düren, near Cologne, the third child of Marie-Luise Vogt, a secretary, and Paul Vogt, an engineer who also played soccer to a high standard. He and his siblings learned music as just one of many youthful activities, soccer included.But Mr. Vogt’s first piano teacher saw promise soon after he had started at age 6. He won a national competition for young musicians at 14, and at the same time began studying with the renowned pedagogue Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Hanover University of Music and Drama (now the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media). Their lessons continued informally until Mr. Kämmerling died in 2012, when Mr. Vogt succeeded his teacher as professor of piano at that university.Suitably firmed up technically under Mr. Kämmerling’s demanding tutelage, Mr. Vogt took second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990. That experience proved as important for the personal relationships it brought as for the international tours that followed.On the podium during the Leeds final for Mr. Vogt’s intelligent if introverted reading of the Schumann Piano Concerto was the English maestro Simon Rattle; their partnership became one of the many friendships through which the pianist thrived musically, not least during a stint in the 2003-4 season as the pianist in residence at the Berlin Philharmonic, which Mr. Rattle then led.Mr. Rattle also planted the seeds that bloomed into Mr. Vogt’s podium career. He told him after a joint appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1991 — an American debut in which the pianist “exercised his command with personality and poise” in Beethoven, John Henken wrote in The Los Angeles Times — that he would be a conductor within a decade.That comment “hit me like a lightning bolt, because I’d never thought of it,” Mr. Vogt told The Scotsman in 2015. “I guess he noticed how curiously I observed what he was doing. I was fascinated at what miracles can be achieved by something that doesn’t — ideally — produce any sound.”Mr. Vogt’s first marriage, to the composer Tatjana Komarova, ended in divorce. He married the violinist Anna Reszniak, the concertmaster of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, in 2017. She survives him, as do his parents; his siblings, Karsten Vogt and Ilka Fischboeck; and his daughters, Emma Vogt, Charlotte Kuehn and Isabelle Vogt, an actress with whom he recorded melodramas by Schumann and Strauss.“He was at once the wildest and most sensitive musician I know,” Mr. Tetzlaff, who performed with Mr. Vogt for 26 years and considered him his “closest comrade,” said of the pianist in an interview with Van magazine shortly after Mr. Vogt’s death.“I’ve met a lot of musicians who have become very successful by talking about themselves, presenting themselves well, and who seem to have no experience with doubt,” Mr. Tetzlaff went on. “But I learned that music can only speak fully in freedom and love. It’s a thing you only experience with very few musicians, artists like Lars.” More

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      Galileo Forgery’s Trail Leads to Web of Mistresses and Manuscripts

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      The unmasking of a fake Galileo manuscript this summer brought renewed attention to a colorful, prolific early-20th-century forger named Tobia Nicotra.When the University of Michigan Library announced last month that one of its most prized possessions, a manuscript said to have been written by Galileo around 1610, was in fact a 20th-century fake, it brought renewed attention to the checkered, colorful career of the man named as the likely culprit: Tobia Nicotra, a notorious forger from Milan.Nicotra hoodwinked the U.S. Library of Congress into buying a fake Mozart manuscript in 1928. He wrote an early biography of the conductor Arturo Toscanini that became better known for its fictions than its facts. He traveled under the name of another famous conductor who had recently died. And in 1934 he was convicted of forgery in Milan after the police were tipped off by Toscanini’s son Walter, who had bought a fake Mozart from him.His explanation of what had motivated his many forgeries, which were said to number in the hundreds, was somewhat unusual, at least according to an account of his trial that appeared in The American Weekly, a Hearst publication, in early 1935.“I did it,” the article quoted him as saying, “to support my seven loves.”When the police raided Nicotra’s apartment in Milan, several news outlets reported, they found a virtual forgery factory, strewn with counterfeit documents that appeared to bear the signatures of Columbus, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Warren G. Harding and other famous figures.Investigators had also found a sort of shrine to his seven mistresses, at least according to The American Weekly. The article described a room with black velvet-covered walls, with seven panels featuring paintings, sketches and photographs of the women — one of whom was said to be a “novelty dancer,” and another an “expert swimmer” — with fresh flowers in front of each. “The pictures in some cases displayed their physical attractions with startling frankness, but they were in general highly artistic,” the article noted.“Incidentally,” the publication added, “he had a wife.”Over the years Nicotra’s counterfeits have fooled collectors and institutions, sown confusion, and been denounced by the esteemed Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who collected musical manuscripts and who wrote an article in 1931 naming Nicotra as a forger. Now Nicotra is back in the news, thanks to the Galileo forgery in Michigan, which was unmasked by Nick Wilding, a historian at Georgia State University who showed that the paper it had been written on had a watermark dating from the late 18th century, more than 150 years after Galileo supposedly wrote it. He also linked it to several other Nicotra forgeries.“Either he thought he was just invincible, or he was maybe just incredibly desperate,” Wilding, who is working on a biography of Galileo, said of Nicotra. While other forgers have been more prolific, Wilding said, few have been as daring — or as talented.“Everything Nicotra does is plausible; there are no jarring anachronisms,” he said. “He knows enough to try and get it right.”This manuscript was one of the University of Michigan Library’s most prized possessions when it was thought to be by Galileo. It was unmasked this summer as a 20th-century forgery, most likely by Nicotra.via University of Michigan LibraryThere is relatively little concrete information about Nicotra, and, given that he was a professional forger, the existing documentary evidence must be taken with a grain of salt. “The facts just seem to slip away from him,” Wilding said. While some accounts say he was 53 at the time of his trial, a birth certificate suggests he may have been 44. Contemporary news accounts, and interviews with several scholars who have studied him, however, begin to give some sense of the man and his prolific career.A courtroom sketch of Nicotra that appeared in The American Weekly portrays him as a balding, thin-faced man with glasses perched on a pointy nose, sporting a mustache and goatee, and wearing either a thick scarf or some kind of furry, Astrakhan-like collar on his coat.Nicotra cast a wide net in the types of documents he counterfeited, and seems to have possessed real talent and learning. He forged a poem he claimed was by the Italian Renaissance poet Tasso, musical manuscripts by leading composers, and was even said to have started a minor international incident by creating a fake Columbus letter identifying his birthplace as Spain, not Italy, prompting the mayor of Genoa to write a lengthy rebuttal reaffirming Columbus’ Italian ancestry.An account of his 1934 conviction by The Associated Press, which ran in The New York Times under the headline “Autograph Faker Gets Prison Term,” described how Nicotra operated: “His method was to visit the Milan Library and tear out the fly leaves of old books or steal pages of manuscript and write on them the ‘autographs’ of famed musicians. The librarians of Milan testified that he had ruined scores of their books.”In 1928, he sold what appeared to be a signed Mozart aria called “Baci amorosi e cari,” supposedly written by the composer at age 14, to the Library of Congress.“It was so special because first of all it was unknown, so it wasn’t reported in any of the thematic catalogs of Mozart at that time,” Paul Allen Sommerfeld, a music reference specialist at the Library of Congress, said in an interview. “He claimed that he found this manuscript and then published the song.”The library paid $60 for the document, which was later believed to have been composed by Nicotra himself.Nicotra said he was the son of a botany professor, and he wrote in one letter that he had graduated with a music degree from a conservatory in Naples in 1909. “We don’t know whether that’s a true fact or not,” Wilding said.When he published his biography of Toscanini in 1929, early critics noted that it contained a number of errors. It is seen as even more unreliable today.“It’s mostly invented conversations and so on,” said Harvey Sachs, the author of a definitive 2017 biography, “Toscanini: Musician of Conscience.” “Just made-up stuff.”His conviction in 1934 made headlines around the world, including in The New York Times.In 1932, Nicotra toured the United States while masquerading as Riccardo Drigo, an Italian conductor and composer who had been the conductor of the Imperial Ballet in Russia and who may be best remembered for the arrangement of “Swan Lake” he created after Tchaikovsky’s death. (The Associated Press reported that Nicotra had been “feted widely in the United States as the former orchestra conductor of the Czar of Russia.”) Apparently no one realized that Drigo had died two years earlier, in 1930.“My main way of characterizing him would be ‘bold,’” said Erin Smith, who wrote her master’s thesis on Nicotra at the University of Maryland in 2014. “He was able to carry on with this for a good number of years.”Nicotra was also known for forging works by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an early-18th-century composer who died at the age of 26 and whose posthumous fame attracted forgers. One Pergolesi forgery wound up in the collection of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. When Christie’s auctioned it in 2017, it described it as an “intriguing forgery, once thought to belong to the hotly debated Pergolesi canon” and cited authorities who list it as “created by the prolific forger Tobia Nicotra.” It fetched $375.The discovery of the Galileo leaves open the question of what happened to the many other forgeries Nicotra created, which he was quoted as saying could number as many as 600.“I don’t know if he did 600, but I’m sure he did more than the little we’ve found so far,” said Richard G. King, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Music, who has been researching Nicotra. “I don’t think people are willfully hiding these things, but it’s just hard to find them.”Unless an institution has a record of buying documents from Nicotra, Wilding said, it may be hard to identify other forgeries. He suggested that documents by figures Nicotra habitually forged that lack clear provenance before the 20th century “are probably really worth looking at very, very closely.”Nicotra eventually ran afoul of the law after selling the fake Mozart manuscript to Walter Toscanini, who persuaded detectives in Milan to investigate the case. Nicotra was convicted, fined 2,400 lire and sentenced to two years in prison.Some accounts suggest that Nicotra was let out of prison early, because the Fascist government wanted his help forging signatures. That story, notes Wilding, “is just too good to be ignored, and maybe too good to be true.” More

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      Hobart Earle Leads the Odesa Philharmonic to Berlin

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      “I certainly never planned on being a music director in a time of war,” says Hobart Earle, who has conducted this Ukrainian orchestra for 30 years.BERLIN — There was a warm ovation as the musicians of the Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra came onstage here on Tuesday evening, and cheers when the ensemble played the Ukrainian anthem. Applause greeted the conductor Hobart Earle’s spoken introduction in German.But none of that was as loud as the roar from the crowd at the Philharmonie when Earle switched to Ukrainian. To hear that language spoken in front of dozens of Ukrainian musicians in a Western European capital was a stirring sign of the defiant survival of Ukraine — and its culture — in the face of Russia’s war of aggression. (The concert can be viewed at mediathek.berlinerfestspiele.de through Sept. 17.)That defiance was particularly powerful coming from an orchestra from Odesa, whose port holds the key to the Black Sea and the global grain trade. The city may be the most strategically and symbolically crucial prize of the war as it drags on.The Philharmonic, which dates its modern history to the 1930s, was performing in Berlin for the first time, but it was led by an old friend: Earle, born in Venezuela to American parents, has been the orchestra’s conductor for 30 years, an unusually long tenure these days.“I never imagined that I would be a long-term music director,” Earle said in an interview the day before the concert. “And I certainly never planned on being a music director in a time of war.”The program of works by Myroslav Skoryk, Mykola Lysenko, Alemdar Karamanov and Sibelius came together rapidly after Winrich Hopp, the artistic director of Musikfest Berlin (part of the Berliner Festspiele), contacted the orchestra in early July. Earle, who had left Ukraine in February, flew back to Odesa to rehearse an ensemble that had been largely silenced for six months by the war.“How could I not go back to try and put this orchestra together again?” he said.With the Ukrainian government granting permission for male players to travel, even though men of military age are now barred from leaving the country, the performance could go forward. Even a double bass broken in transit could not dim the high spirits of the occasion, and what Earle called “the indomitable Odesa humor.”“Any orchestra is a mirror of its city,” he said. “Odesa is very well known in the former Soviet Union as a capital of humor. It’s a city where it’s so important during hard times, this ability to be flexible in the face of problems and to live life with a smile.”Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.Earle conducting the Odesa ensemble in Berlin in a program of works by Myroslav Skoryk, Mykola Lysenko, Alemdar Karamanov and Sibelius.Fabian SchellhornWhat has happened to the orchestra and the players during the past six months?My last concert was on Feb. 12, and the mood was going downhill really fast: “Maybe the American intelligence has something here; why are they sounding such an alarm; maybe this is really going to happen.” And we played — unplanned — the overture to Lysenko’s great Ukrainian opera “Taras Bulba,” one of our old war horses.After the war broke out, we didn’t know what was going to happen next. After the invasion of Crimea, in 2014, we had done a flash mob playing “Ode to Joy” in the fish market, and we tried to get permission to do that again, at sites around Odesa. But we couldn’t get permission. So we decided [to release online] the audio of the last movement of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s 21st Symphony, the last big piece we played before the pandemic. It’s a kaddish he dedicated to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto. We took the music and added images from the concert hall and the war, but also images of Ukrainian life — to try and make it not terribly bleak, like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and we released that at the end of March.Had everyone stayed in Odesa?Some people had gone abroad, and some went to villages in western Ukraine. We have a lot of split families now — that’s very common, with wives and children abroad. But as people came back, the orchestra started playing weekly chamber concerts in May.Several of the players were in civilian defense units. One of our stagehands was actually in the army — he would be here except he had concussions and high blood pressure and got some time off, but he was on the front. Our principal clarinet is also in the armed forces, but his function right now is not fighting; he’s helping the wounded and driving ambulances. But they let him have time off to come with us.What was it like for you to return to Ukraine?It was rather sad, because the city is historically one of the great cosmopolitan cities of Europe. During the summer it’s usually bursting, and it’s empty now. But you can feel some life coming back on the streets, and in the restaurants and cafes.How did you initially connect with this orchestra?I came to the Soviet Union with a chamber orchestra from Vienna in 1990. With this orchestra, we had been doing rarely performed American music in Austria, and rarely performed Austrian music in America. And someone said we should take our American program to the Soviet Union. Almost none of us had ever been there before.One of the cities was Odesa, and I was then invited to come guest-conduct the Philharmonic. I came in April 1991, not speaking a word of Russian. I speak some Western European languages and English, but there wasn’t any ability to communicate. This was terra incognita, the Iron Curtain. And through an amazing turn of fate, there was one viola player from Cuba, and I could speak Spanish with him, and he was my translator. And it all grew out of that. If not for that, I wouldn’t have had any real chance of continuing. “Any orchestra is a mirror of its city,” Earle said. “Odesa is very well known in the former Soviet Union as a capital of humor.”Fabian SchellhornCan you tell me about program you’ve brought to Berlin?The basic idea was to focus on three composers. We start with Skoryk — part of his 1965 score for a classic of Soviet film called “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.” This piece is called “Childhood”; it’s happy children’s music, very folkloric, and there’s so much folklore in Ukrainian culture and history. The idea was to go directly from this children’s music into an elegy by Lysenko — a piano piece, in a new orchestral version. And we’re dedicating this pairing to the children who are suffering so badly in this war.And Karamonov’s Third Piano Concerto?Nobody wrote music like this in 1968, not in the Soviet Union, not in Western Europe. He was a Crimean Tatar Muslim, and his father was exiled to Siberia, so in 1944 Karamanov wasn’t in Crimea but in Moscow with his mother, or else he would have been sent there as well.He went away from avant-garde music and came back to Crimea and this is one of the first pieces he wrote there. It’s a very religious piece: He was Muslim, but he had an experience that turned him totally toward Christianity, which was remarkable in the Soviet Union. He was very interested in jazz and all these forbidden things. It’s very reflective music; you can feel in some places the influence of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, but that’s just fleeting moments. Other times you can feel these blues harmonies — with a deep religious underpinning. And a fascinating ending, totally unexpected: His words were that this is a rain, a spiritual rain.And the Sibelius?Winrich Hopp said we should play something in which the orchestra can really shine. And I came to Sibelius’s Second Symphony, which has the whole underpinning of patriotism. And we wanted to end with something upbeat. This music, the sort of narrative of this symphony, is something which now, during this war, we feel differently. This piece has a lot of dark moments, but that last movement …Has the issue of playing Russian music with the orchestra come up?I did a Shostakovich Five in Poland at the beginning of February, and that music fit the atmosphere so precisely. I’ve been asked a lot about Russian music. But Ukrainians just do not want to hear it now, and I think we need to respect that.Have you been able to explore Berlin during your stay?I realized that I haven’t been here since the fall of the Wall! So I’m exploring it. I found the site of the old Philharmonie, where the Berlin Philharmonic played. But there’s a sadness to being in Berlin now. It’s still a construction site. And it makes you wonder how many years it is going to take to rebuild Ukraine. More

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      After New York, Jaap van Zweden Will Lead Seoul Philharmonic

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      He will begin a five-year contract as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in 2024, after stepping down from the New York Philharmonic.Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, surprised cultural leaders and audiences last year when he announced he would leave his post in 2024, saying the pandemic had made him rethink his priorities.Now he has started outlining his post-New York plans: He will begin a five-year contract as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2024, the ensemble announced on Sunday.Sohn Eun-kyung, the Seoul Philharmonic’s chief executive, said in a statement that van Zweden would help “upgrade” the quality of the ensemble and turn it into a “world-class orchestra,” according to South Korean news media reports.Van Zweden, who was in Hong Kong where he serves as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, could not be immediately reached for comment.His publicist, Mary Lou Falcone, said: “This is about building something — the building of an orchestra, as he did in Hong Kong. That’s what he does.”The move is another unconventional choice by van Zweden, 61, an intense and meticulous maestro from the Netherlands who came to New York in 2018, only to have his tenure interrupted by the pandemic, which forced the Philharmonic to cancel more than 100 concerts and impose painful budget cuts.While the Seoul Philharmonic is among Asia’s most prominent ensembles, it has struggled in recent years with financial problems and management woes. The current music director, the Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, recently announced he would not renew his three-year contract when it expires later this year.Van Zweden, who served as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra before coming to New York, was at one point, while leading the Dallas ensemble, America’s best-paid conductor, earning more than $5 million in a single season.Van Zweden agreed to step down from his post in New York after the 2023-24 season, a year later than he had initially planned, to give the orchestra time to settle into David Geffen Hall, scheduled to open in October after a $550 million renovation, and to search for a successor. His six-year tenure will be the shortest of any Philharmonic music director since Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who led the orchestra for six seasons in the 1970s.He will leave his post in Hong Kong in the spring of 2024, after 12 years, and assume the title of conductor laureate.In an interview last year, van Zweden said the pandemic had prompted him to reconsider his relationship with the New York Philharmonic, as well as with his family, which he rarely got to see during his time on the road. He said he felt it would be the right moment to move on, with the orchestra set to move into its new home.“It is not out of frustration, it’s not out of anger, it’s not out of a difficult situation,” he said at the time. “It’s just out of freedom.” More