[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the first podcast exclusive of Solan Era's fifth season. This is Hannah Dupriest and today's special episode in Harmony focuses on Moonlit Mozart, Les Elise's 2024-2025 concert season opener Harmonie Music was the name given to the wildly popular wind band ensembles that filled the streets of 18th century Europe with.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Dance music, tunes from symphonies, and arrangements.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Of arias and overtures from popular operas. It turns out an ensemble of eight woodwinds can cover most, if not all basses.
Soaring melodies were often split between first oboe and first clarinet. Inner parts were covered by other winds and horns. Bassoons would alternate between tenor solos and bustling basslines, and a double bass often provided reinforcement on the low end.
Described as a real bucket list project for Les de Lys artistic director and oboist debrange, Moonlit Mozart brought together eight of North America's best historical wind players to create an epic Harmonie Musik. Performing an all Mozart program featuring his sublime serenades, plus instrumental arrangements of arias from the Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, these concerts featured the musical talents of oboists Deborah Nagy and Katherine Montoya, clarinetists Eric Hoprich and Madison Vienna horn players Nathaniel Udel and Sadie Glass, bassoonists Stephanie Corwin and Clay Zeller Townsend, and double bassist Sue Yolandian.
Today we'll hear recorded highlights from the concert and insights from Deborah and from clarinetist Eric Hoprich. First, for the perfect beginning, an overture. Please enjoy the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute, arranged for wind octet by 18th century composer Joseph Heydenreich.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Sa sa.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Sa Deborah, it's great to talk to you about this fantastic program. We're in the afterglow here after a really successful opening weekend for us and Moonlit Mozart.
I'd love to talk to you today a little bit about how you went about programming this and how I'd like to start is I know that the Les Delys board of directors recently issued a mandate, shall we say, to you, for you to program more dream projects. And I would say that Moonlit Mozart, which is a concert for historical wind octet, would definitely fall into that category. Can you tell us, you know, talk us through what makes this program special to you and for our listeners?
[00:07:32] Speaker C: In a nutshell, I had never gotten to play wind octets on period instruments, instruments I.e. the long and short of it, but it was such a well known and common ensemble at the end of the 18th, early 19th century, particularly in Vienna and Central Europe.
And one of our musicians, Eric Hoprich, who you'll hear from in this podcast also likened, you know, this ensemble and the repertoire that it performed, which could include dance music, you know, serenades, opera excerpts, whatever. He likened it to playing the radio. And it's really, you know, one of the core wonderful things that classical instruments or classical woodwinds should get to do, and yet I had never done it.
I love the C minor serenade of Mozart, which is one of two big, important serenades that Mozart wrote specifically for this instrumentation, and yet I had personally never gotten to be involved in it in that way. It's something you almost only do as a student.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: These are substantial parts of the repertoire going back to the 18th and 19th centuries. A lot of these things were getting written. You might experience them as a student. You definitely know about them if you play a wind instrument. But it's not something that you got to do ever before.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Why do you think, if it's so.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Portable, if it's so.
If it was at one point so convenient, why is it so rare now for audiences?
[00:09:13] Speaker C: One thing is that, you know, it's usually, for instance, larger organizations that are going to hire all those WIN players, and by the time they bring them together, they are you know, basically constituting the WIN section for a symphony.
And the other thing, honestly, is that it's really difficult.
It's really difficult to play this repertoire at a very high level, and this is compounded kind of exponentially by doing it on period instruments. We are exotic birds, honestly. And it was also a dream to bring together this particular configuration of artists, literally from all across North America. And in the case of Eric, who happens to be American from London, can.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: You talk to us a little bit about what makes period wind instruments so challenging? You're an oboist, but you've spent the week with people playing bassoon and clarinet and horn. What is it, first of all, what.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Is it that makes it so hard?
[00:10:16] Speaker B: And second of all, what makes it so enticing still for these instrumentalists?
[00:10:20] Speaker C: Well, I think we are all seeking how to be expressive. That's, for me, the enticing part on these instruments that are ultimately so challenging. And what makes them challenging?
You know, if you think about what, you know, an oboe does or what its role is in a, say, Mozart or Haydn symphony or even Beethoven, often the oboe is, like, at the top of the wind section, unless there's a flute, you know, playing some really high note forever, you know, just, you know, it's a little bit like threading a needle. And honestly, that is the sort of physical experience of playing certainly Classical oboe. And in talking to my colleagues, you know, also on the clarinet, it's just that the physical production of sound and the voicing of every note to be perfectly in tune, which is really so paramount in the classical repertoire, is so much more specific. I think of playing baroque oboe like walking a balance beam, you know, which is I think, five or six inches wide. But playing classical oboe is not a balance beam. It is a tightrope. And you might have some keys that help here or there, but in my opinion, those keys just constitute a net below you. You could still fall off and do some very serious damage. So it's been a beautiful and very rewarding journey to find the expression, you know, within some of those boundaries and kind of open out, you know, what is possible, you know, as I've developed.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: With the instrument, I think that's such a relatable experience for any kind of musician. I think finding freedom within technical or aesthetic restraints is really like part of the joy of being a musician, especially working within a specific repertoire. So this is high stakes woodwind playing.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So, Deborah, our concert, moonlit Mozart got.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Its title from the next piece we'll.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Hear, which is the Andante from Mozart's.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Serenade in C minor, nicknamed Nacht Musik or Night Music.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: What should we be listening for in this piece?
[00:12:51] Speaker C: I love this slow movement from the Serenade in C minor and, you know, like a lot of Mozart, I think what is so beautiful is the delicacy and these, you know, beautiful, you know, high soaring lines. And it feels incredibly intimate. And yet there's also these, like, there's, I think, two moments where like the whole band comes in and it's kind of rocking. You go from something that is like, absolutely kind of like Mozartian transcendent, beautiful, intimate, kind of like aria style, to something that just rocks a bit. And it's, it's super, super fun. A very, very gratifying movement to play. And also because it's an E flat major in what is otherwise this sea of super intense C minor. And I think that the E flat major andante is a super beautiful palette cleanser.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of Salon Era, which features excerpts from a live performance by les Delys from October 2024. In a moment, we'll return to our conversation with Artistic director Deborah Nagy. But in the meantime, I hope you'll consider making a tax deductible donation to support Selanira. With your help, we can continue to collaborate with engaging guests from across the country and around the world. You can support Salonira by subscribing to this podcast and or by
[email protected] your donations make every episode possible. Thanks again for supporting Les Elyse and Solanira by listening and subscribing.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: We're back with Deborah Nagy now. So, Deborah, at the beginning of this.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Podcast, we heard the familiar overture to.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Mozart's the Magic Flute arranged for wind.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Band by Joseph Heidenreich.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: And we're about to hear an arrangement of La Cidare m La Mano or.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: They will give each other their hands.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: From Don Giovanni by a different Joseph, Joseph Tribunzi. And so audiences are very used to seeing arranged by Deborah Nagy on our concert program books. But these arrangements are themselves historical artifacts, having been created in the 18th century.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Can you talk us through the history.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Of these wind arrangements for popular operatic tunes?
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. This was very common and a real central part of the repertoire of the Viennese wind band. In fact, almost all of Mozart's operas were arranged in this way. And there's even a letter from Mozart to his father after the premiere of Abduction from the Seraglio, which was the first opera that he wrote or that was of his, that was performed in Vienna that, you know, despite the fact that the premiere had just happened, he had to pull an all nighter in order to, you know, make the arrangements for wind band because if he didn't do it, then someone else would get to it first and they would get all the money.
So it was a real kind of commercial enterprise to make these arrangements.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: So these were entrepreneurs as well as musicians and composers. They were jumping on the latest trend.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And there wasn't, of course, the same kind of like copyright protections that we have now at all. So it was really like, who can get here first? And this is, you know, this is an enterprise that has value and people want to hear this music and want to experience it in different ways. And this La C? Ren Lamano actually has a huge bassoon solo and becomes sort of like a bassoon and oboe to it. And so Stephanie Corwin, who's playing first bassoon in this case, sounds absolutely fabulous. And I enjoyed this so much. And that's why I wanted to share it on the podcast.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: If you're listening to this episode in early fall 2024, I've got great news for you. A fully mastered, beautifully filmed version of the complete moonlit Mozart concert is coming to Vimeo, an online video platform, November 8th through 25th, 2024. Visit ldmusic.org to learn more and to purchase access or you can subscribe there to Les Delisa's entire virtual season.
Now let's listen to that highlight, an arrangement by Joseph Tribunse of the charming duet La Cidarem La Mano or There we will give each other our hands from Mozart's Don Giovanni.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Have you listened to Lease's other podcast, Music Meditations?
Music Meditations combines poetry and music to bring soul soothing and lifeless affirming art into your day. Featuring classic and contemporary poetry by Northeast Ohio writers along with curated performances from Les DeLisa's live performance archives, each bite sized episode concludes with prompts for mindfulness or guided listening.
To listen Search Music Meditations wherever you found this podcast.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: I'm really delighted to be speaking with Eric Hoprich, who is a pioneer in the historical clarinet movement. And that word pioneer I think gets thrown around quite a lot in our little niche of the musical space, but it definitely does apply to you and your career. It's hard to overstate how fundamental your work has been as a performer, instrument builder, researcher, and now teacher. We were so thrilled to have you join us for Moonlit Mozart. I know that Deborah considered you a linchpin in the whole program, so can you tell us? I would love to start actually at the beginning for you. Do you remember how you first got involved with historical clarinet?
[00:25:45] Speaker D: It's kind of a broad question because it has to do with so many aspects of it.
I think at least a key part to the answer to this question is just where I went where and when and how I became interested in baroque music and in historical instruments to get all together. Because as you can imagine, when I was a teenager and I first heard recordings of Franz Bruggen playing the recorder and thought that this was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard and I, I just wanted to do that. I wanted to make that sound and play that music the way he did. And that was rather accessible to me. Even though I was, I was a clarinetist. I also played a little recorder just because there's basically no baroque music for clarinet, or at least at the time that's what everyone thought. So that left me with the recorder and all the baroque repertoire, and he was playing Vivaldi and Telamon and, you know, Bach and everything super fast and impressive, but also very beautifully. I mean, it was. He was a technical wizard, but also an amazing musician. So then I actually had this strange thing happened in my life, which is I left California and moved to Boston to go to college, and my first semester he was there as a visiting professor So I went over and found him and knocked on his door and asked him if I could have lessons. And he said yes. And so I had lessons with him. Him. And then one thing led to the next and my law career was abandoned for playing in the. Playing a recorder in Holland because he said, if you want to do this early music stuff, you really need to come to Europe, and Holland is a really good place for this. So I followed him.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Were you. Were you still playing the clarinet as your primary instrument?
[00:27:30] Speaker D: That's. That's a good question. Anybody listening to this driver would think, oh, so you're over there playing the recorder. You're involved in the early music movement, and you can see that probably something could happen with the clarinet at some point. And that's. That's what I thought. And I was just, you know, I was. I had. I had a big. I spent a lot of time and effort studying historical performance style with a recorder. So I knew I had the 18th century underpinnings as far as performance was concerned. And the next thing that happened, I laugh about it now because it's just like what the conservatory in the Hague turned out to hire. Have hired someone to teach a class in woodwind instrument making.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Any woodwind player spends a lot of time making reeds. But going to make instruments, that is like another level. And I also wanted to say I feel like you are not the only early music musician who was felled by the siren song of the recorder, which is just, I agree with you, is such a special and incredible instrument. With this move toward building instruments yourself, was that something that you had a background in, too, like woodworking or an interest in building things with your hands?
[00:28:45] Speaker D: Yeah, to be honest. Yeah. I remember in the eighth grade in California, you had to take class on. You had to sort of take a woodworking class, and they had all the machines and you learned how to use under. Among others, you learned how to use the lathe and how to use the drill press and a band saw and stuff like that. The first instrument that actually was sort of vaguely usable was a flute. And flutes are. If you got the reamers for the conical bore, which we. Which we did have, then it's not. It's just a tube. A clarinet, a sort of a classical period clarinet for, you know, Mozart has to have at least five keys. And so you need to know about how to make keys, how to mount them on the instrument. And so I did learn those rudiments, but really, it's. It's all the same.
You know, one Woodwind is really basically just a wooden tube. And there's the same, I mean, they, you know, they have different types of conicity. In the case of the clarinet, they don't have any conicity, it's just cylindrical. And the tricky things, I think at first were making the mouthpiece and then, you know, just making an instrument that functioned pretty well.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: So as you began to build clarinet, historical clarinets, you were also kind of in the right place at the right time, maybe, or you were also kind of fomenting opportunities to perform on historical clarinet. Can you talk about what that was like?
[00:30:07] Speaker D: Right place, right time, right interests, Right. And at time, indeed, what you said is opportunities were just. It was. Everyone was so open for this. And so I got. This was in the late 70s that I got to Holland, and then in the 80s, I think it was 82. Rugen started his orchestra and started conducting. And so I was there.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: You know, this is the orchestra of the 18th century. Exactly.
[00:30:31] Speaker D: Orchestra of the 18th century. Yeah. And that was, I mean, I tell. Sometimes I tell my students, I feel embarrassed, but I say, you know, you, the, the interest is out there. It's just hard to reach the people.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Well, you know, listening to you talk about your early life as a kind of a young musician myself, or, well, youngish, I feel like the lesson that I take from it is, you know, go with your enthusiasm and opportunities kind of reveal themselves through that. I mean, through industriousness. I'm sure you are downplaying the level of commitment. I mean, you kind of describe it like moving to a totally new country, throwing yourself into pretty out there experiences like instrument building. And that's how this sort of tumbleweed sort of started collecting momentum. Maybe not to compare your very storied career with a tumbleweed, but you know what I'm saying.
[00:31:36] Speaker D: Yeah. I don't want to make it sound like it was easy and it was obvious.
And I think you're absolutely right in saying that. You just, you know, I know it's an overused trope, but following your passion will lead to happiness and, you know, a way of occupying yourself that's fruitful.
I think that's absolutely true. And it worked. It worked for me. And I, and I really try. I've tried over the years with my students to get them to see it the same way.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: I wonder if you had a favorite moment from this concert experience, the moonlit Mozart, which was a wind octet, also pretty rare, I understand, for when players to get to together like that.
[00:32:21] Speaker D: Yeah, it is rare. It's a combination of factors to try and get pretty you've got to get people of a reasonable level for this thing to work, because by its nature it's kind of slightly unstable ensemble in terms of playing together and playing in tune, blending, balance, all that kind of stuff. And you, you, you need, you need people who are pretty sensitive in order to play it, so to find eight of them and that they're all available at the same time and so on. It's not, it's not really not easy, but I think it really came together nicely for this. And yeah, indeed, all Mozart. There were so Mozart compositions that are original compositions for the ensemble and then we did these arrangements. So you got, you got a real of life in terms of harmony Musique.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: I loved getting to chat with Eric Hoprich. I hope you also enjoyed that interview. Now for one last excerpt from Moonlit Mozart to send you on your way. Please enjoy the allegro from Mozart's Serenade in C Minor.
[00:34:03] Speaker C: Damage Sa Sa Ra.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Solan Era. This episode was created by Executive producer Deborah Nagy, Associate producer Shelby Yaman, and me, Hannah DePriest, scriptwriter and special Projects manager. Our guests were Les Delyse, founder and Artistic Director Deborah Nagy, and historical clarinet legend Eric Hoprich. Support for Selanera is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Ohio Arts Council, and audience members like you. Special thanks to our Moonlit Mozart program and recording sponsors Michael Frank and Pat Snyder and Astri Seidenfeld, who was the artist sponsor for Eric Hoprich and Stephanie Corwin. Thanks too to our Salon Era season sponsors Deborah Malamud, Tom and Marilyn McLaughlin, and Greg Nosen and Brandon Rood.
This episode featured musical performances by Les Delys. A film of this concert is available to watch on Vimeo from November 8th through 25th, 2024. See ldmusic.org for more information and to purchase access, Please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show. Thanks for listening.
