This year marks the seventh season of really good music presented by the Three Bridges International Chamber Music Festival.  Executive/artistic director Sam Martin continues to add variety to his programming. Beginning with strings and piano from around the world, he quickly added woodwinds played by Duluth artists. In June, 2014, lutenist/singer Joel Fredericksen added Renaissance vocal music to the offerings. This year is focusing on woodwinds and singers with even more music from earlier centuries.

Upcoming programs

Programs on Thursday evening, June 25 (at Sacred Heart), and Sunday afternoon, June 28(at Weber/UMD), will be completely devoted to Early Music by French, English, and Italian composers. The delicate vocal artistry of Dame Emma Kirkby will highlight these events, along with several other singers and instrumentalists. The program on Saturday evening, June 27(at Weber/UMD) will focus more on German songs - lieder - still relatively intimate in the way the poetry gets expressed in the tunes.

Vocal power part one

These concerts will offer contrast to the vocal and woodwind energies displayed this past week. Tuesday night at Sacred Heart featured a program of powerful and emotional arias and songs, some of which were shared again at Weber on Thursday. Two woodwind pieces were particularly enticing. A trio by eighteenth-century composer Francois Devienne was played by Melanie Sever (flute), Ted Schoen (clarinet) and Jeff Campbell (bassoon). A very perky first movement was followed by a polka-sounding second movement. This sense of humor persisted right to the finish. A bit later in the program, Sever and Schoen offered the ‘Choro’ #2 for flute and clarinet by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. This was rhythmically very intense with the two instruments teasing and imitating each other at a rapid pace, before ending on a very lovely moment.

The rest of the evening featured four singers and three pianists rotating on and off the stage with never an intermission. Listening to Alice Pierce lightly toss off the dancing high notes from the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute was breathtaking. And listening to the vibrating power of Joel Fredericksen’s deep bass voice sharing the wisdom of Zorastro (also from Magic Flute) and the emotional fatigue of Simon Boccanegra’s lacerated spirit totally filled the space at Sacred Heart.

Elation and Despair on Thursday

The Heights of Elation - The Depths of Despair was the title Thursday night at Weber Music Hall. Fredericksen sang Banquo’s final aria from Verdi’s Macbeth, sensing that he was going to be murdered rather soon. The other amazing moments of the evening came from the pen of Richard Wagner. Pianist Mikhail Berlin was dazzling with piano accompaniments reduced from the massive orchestral scores of Tristan und Isolde and Die Walkure. Baritone Gustavo Jimenez shared Wotan’s farewell to his daughter Brunnhilde as he cast the spell encircling her with an impenetrable wall of fire. The powerful god and sensitive father were all wonderfully communicated by Jimenez.

Then soprano Bettina von Hindte shared Brangane’s night watch aria as she attempted to protect Isolde and Tristan from being discovered. A few moments later, von Hindte returned as Isolde, singing the very emotional Liebestod (love’s death) just before Isolde joins her lover Tristan in death. This was complete elation, even though wrapped in the despair of the lovers’ deaths. These were definitely powerful arias, sung very convincingly by this young artist.

June will go out with even more music, as noted above. At the same time, forty-two chamber musicians from all across the USA will gather in Tofte for five days of making music together by the shores of Lake Superior. This is the eighth convening of the Woodland Chamber Music Workshop at Surfside Resort; music will flow from sunrise to sunset each day. The excitement of performing music never stands still in northeastern MN.