Eighth Notes

On February 23rd, the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra will present the world premiere of Green Bay composer Gordon Parmentier’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Sad to say, the composer’s death January 8 will have denied him the chance to hear his final work in full orchestral form. After suffering a heart attack in December, Parmentier heard the piano portion of the piece played for him in the chapel at St. Vincent’s Hospital. In 2000, the much-missed Pamiro Opera Company presented the premiere of Parmentier’s The Lost Dauphin at Green Bay’s Weidner Center in a production taped by Wisconsin Public Television and subsequently broadcast on several occasions. The opera, which might have emerged as an over-long pageant, proved a worthy enterprise, buoyed by an effective and appealing score that betrayed the composer’s French training.

The soloist for the GBSO premiere will be, appropriately enough, Parmentier’s nephew Stephen Hargreaves.

Anyone driving east of Egg Harbor on County Road E has surely observed the impressive group of new buildings east of the Birch Creek Music Performance Center Dutton Concert Barn. This expansion of facilities exemplifies the fore-sightedness displayed by Birch Creek’s management, board and associates and will greatly enhance the institution’s ability to serve the talented students who come here each summer to partake of an incomparable experience, one available no where else. Bravissimi to all involved.

“What’s it All About, Alfie?” When pianist Alfred Brendel announced some months ago that he would end his concert touring at the end of this season, many were taken aback, but most who knew his work and understood his abiding integrity viewed the news as simply the beginning of a new phase in the artist’s life. At seventy-six, Brendel surely has additional years in which he could play at top-level, but his endless curiosity and devotion to the Classical/Romantic age composers he has served so well will likely lead to master classes and sharing of wisdom gained from his teacher Edwin Fischer and compounded by his own musical experiences. That he is able to share this bounty meaningfully is evident in the rising career of English pianist Paul Lewis now midway through a clear-headed and absorbing traversal of the Beethoven piano sonatas for Harmonia Mundi. Brendel’s first recording of that composer’s complete sonatas has long been a part of our record library; even with subsequent re-recordings, this set still compels respect and affection.

Yes, Brendel has commanded our respect and won our hearts. Not a bad legacy.

Last Saturday’s Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast of Wagner’s Die Walkure was led by Lorin Maazel, back at the Met after forty-five year’s absence. The New York Philharmonic Music Director proved again what a fine opera conductor he is, drawing glowing sound and rich sonorities from the Met orchestra. Extraordinary.