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Violinist Jesse Mills incredible with Denver Phil

Contributed by: Robin McNeil on 5/12/2008

Saturday evening, May 10, the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra gave their last performance of the season. It was a remarkable program in at least two ways.

First, a young and remarkable violin virtuoso who has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Jesse Mills, performed the Mozart Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219. Second, Dr. Horst Buchholz, the Music Director and Conductor of the Denver Philharmonic chose to program a 12 tone piece by Anton von Webern, the Six Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 6. Webern, along with his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, and fellow student, Alban Berg, had a profound impact on 20th-century music, and it is a shame that the music of these three composers is not performed more often.

It seems that the Denver Philharmonic entered another new phase in performance. They have steadily improved over the last year and a half, but this performance sounded truly strong. All of the works had an element of genuine confidence.

Dr. Buchholz opened the program with the Webern. Twelve tone music derives its name from the use of all 12 notes in a one octave chromatic scale. Major and minor scales, which have been with us since about 1580, use only eight notes of the octave. The chords built on those eight notes have certain functions and produce harmonies that everyone is familiar with. Webern's teacher, Schoenberg, thought that all 12 tones should be used, and do not have to appear in consecutive order.

In that way, he produced a row of 12 notes that can be inverted, run backwards, that is to say, placed in retrograde, or broken into different sections. The resultant music sounds very different from traditional music, but it is incredibly expressive and very beautiful in a different way. It is very finely crafted, and there are so many things to hear if one only listens.

I have often wondered what kind of music Webern would have written if he had lived longer, but he was shot to death about two weeks after the end of the WW II. He had gone to the suburbs of Salzburg to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and a new grandchild. What he did not know at the time, was that his son-in-law was involved in the black market.

The American MPs did know, and had surrounded the house in order to make an arrest. Webern liked cigars, and he did not want to disturb the grandchildren by smoking in the house. He stepped out on the front porch and lit his cigar. At this moment in time, the MPs thought that this was a signal for reinforcements, and they shot him instantly. Tragically, they did not believe his wife or his daughter when they told the MPs that he was a prominent conductor and composer, and the MPs allowed him to bleed to death on the porch.

Webern's compositions are always very economical and very short. These Six Pieces for Large Orchestra, Opus 6, were written in 1909, and really marked a halfway point in his creative output. There is little repetition or melodic extension, and although the orchestra is large, the tuttis (an orchestral passage in which every member of the orchestra is playing at once) are very short in duration. Webern's description of one of his teacher's pieces readily applies to these six short pieces for orchestra: "No motive is developed; at most, a brief progression is immediately repeated. Once stated, the theme expresses all it has to say; it must be followed by something fresh." Only the second piece in this set is fast, and the third is so short, at only 11 measures, and so quiet, that it sometimes is hard to hear. Really, this piece encompasses huge sound to the near absence of sound.

The Denver Philharmonic performed the Webern in a very authoritative manner. The range of dynamics were exactly what the score calls for - the violas and woodwinds were particularly good. But truly, the entire orchestra did very well with the opening work. And how refreshing it was to hear such an important 20th Century work, let alone hear it done well. This piece can be particularly difficult for an orchestra that doesn't play 12 tone music often, because it takes a lot of practice for each member of the orchestra to play in tune when there are so many new kinds of dissonance. One has to listen constantly and be very attentive to attacks and releases. However, the DPO did extremely well with this piece. Dr. Buchholz is to be congratulated for performing this piece of music.

Next on the program was the Mozart Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219. The first movement of this Concerto is marked aperto. This is unusual as Mozart uses this term very rarely, but he is simply giving the instruction that this should be played in a more majestic way than a simple allegro marking. The concerto was written in 1775 and was probably premiered by Mozart himself playing violin. Mozart later composed the Adagio for violin and orchestra K. 261 as a substitute slow movement for this concerto. This came about due to the Italian violinist named Antonio Brunetti. He was well-known and he was hired by the Archbishop to succeed Mozart as concertmaster. He did not like the fact that this Concerto is fairly serious and complained to Mozart that there should be a different slow movement. So Mozart, in spite of the fact that he did not like Brunetti, wrote another slow movement for him. This is now known as the Adagio in E Major, K. 261. This Adagio is now performed as an independent movement, but never as part of the Concerto.

Grammy-nominated violinist Jesse Mills enjoys performing music of many genres, from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own invention. In 2004, Mills made his professional concerto debut with the Ravinia Festival Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan in a unique partnership with Salsa trombonist, Jimmy Bosch. This project combined a classical performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, with Mills as violin soloist, and a Salsa band arrangement of the same piece, fronted by Bosch and Mills as improvising soloists. A successful performance at Ravinia led to bookings with the Phoenix, Colorado and Green Bay Symphonies for the 2005-2006 season. In past years Mills has performed as soloist with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the New Jersey Symphony, the Sarah Lawrence College Symphony, the Plainfield Symphony, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Aspen Music Festival's Sinfonia Orchestra as winner of the Festival's E. Nakamichi Violin Concerto Competition.

As a chamber musician Jesse Mills has performed at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, New York City's Merkin Concert Hall and Bargemusic, Carnegie's Weill Hall, Columbia University's Miller Theater, Boston's Gardener Museum, the Cooper Arts Series at Cooper Union, the Rising Stars series at Caramoor, the Ravinia Festival's Bennett-Gordon Hall, and at the Marlboro Music Festival. He performed on the opening night of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "A Great Day in New York" series with pianist/composer Peter Schickele, and this concert was broadcast live on WNYC 93.9 FM in New York.

Mr. Mills is an avid performer of contemporary works. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, he played in many concert halls around the world, performing music composed during the last 50 years. Among these concerts were 3 performances of Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 3, a six-hour-long work of immense beauty. Mills has played extensively with renowned cellist, Fred Sherry, in works by Reich, Wuorinen, Schoenberg, and avant-garde composer and saxophonist, John Zorn. In 2004-2005, they recorded Schoenberg's String Quartet Concerto and various chamber works of Anton Webern for NAXOS, as well as Zorn's String Quartet, Necronomicon, on Tzadik.

Mills is co-founder of Duo Prism, a violin-piano duo with his wife, Rieko Aizawa. He is also a member of Nurse Kaya, an ensemble comprised of string quartet plus bass and drums which exclusively plays compositions written by its members; much of this music involves improvisation. Mills was an integral part of New Spirit - a new recording on the Verve label by jazz pianist, Makoto Ozone. Several performances of this project will be presented next year.

Jesse Mills began violin studies at the age of four. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School as a student of Robert Mann in 2001. He has previously studied with Christiane Pors, Naoko Tanaka and Itzhak Perlman.

Jesse Mills' performance of this Mozart concerto was absolutely stunning. He has phenomenal technique and is truly a profound musician. His phrasing was absolutely pure Mozart, his portato notes were exactly the same length, but not at all pedantic, and as if this weren't enough, he played the concerto from memory. Pianists always play from memory, but string players whether they are doing a concerto, or a chamber piece, are not really required by convention to play without the music. Certainly there are those who do, for example, Hillary Hahn. And I assure you that Mills looked as comfortable as any of them without the music. In the first and second movement, Mills used the cadenzas by Joseph Joachim who was one of the greatest violinists of the 19th century. These cadenzas fit the Mozart beautifully of course, but they are definitely more romantic and than the cadenzas normally associated with this Concerto. They are also more difficult, particularly because they have some very thorny double stops. The third movement contains some very small cadenzas, and Mills improvised his own in this movement. They were perfect. The last movement of this concerto has a section that shows the influence of the Turkish population in Salzburg when this concerto was written. As a matter of fact, this concerto is often called the "Turkish Concerto." Jesse Mills played this last movement with amazing vigor and spirit, and everything remained crystal clear and always very precisely in tune. He very much deserved standing ovation that he received, and there is no doubt that he has a long career ahead of him. Anyone can hear more of Jesse Mills every August, as he plays in the Alpenglow Festival in Silverthorne.

Dr. Buchholz ended the program with the much loved and well known Symphony Nr. 4 by Johannes Brahms. So much has been written about this outstanding piece of work that, really, little needs to be said here. However, it may serve general interest to remind the listener that the theme of the final movement was inspired by the Chaconne from J. S. Bach's Cantata Nr. 150. Brahms, himself, was reminded of this Cantata in a discussion with the conductor Hans von Bulow. It seems that von Bulow had boasted to Brahms that he knew the cantatas of Bach very well. This is the kind of statement that the acerbic Brahms really enjoyed, and he proved to von Bulow that not only did von Bulow not know them, but Brahms certainly did. From that conversation, which was recorded by another great conductor, Siegfried Ochs at Brahms' house, came the idea to use Bach's theme as the seed for the final movement of the fourth Symphony.

The opening movement of this symphony has to soar, and I have never heard the Denver Philharmonic soar the way they did Saturday night. They gave the opening theme so much grace and flow that I began to wonder just what orchestra I was listening to. The oboe, and indeed all of the woodwinds, were magnificent. The second movement was just as astonishingly lyrical as the first. The only problem came in the third movement when the horns simply played some wrong notes. But in the fourth movement, where the horns have such an important part, they hit the notes squarely with fine attacks. Because this symphony is so well known, it is easy to forget how difficult it is. As I said at the beginning of this review, the Denver Phil has really improved over the last two years. Last year they ended the season with a fine performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, and at that performance they're playing was excellent. This year they ended the season with another Brahms work and were better than ever. But then, of course, they have Horst Buchholz for their conductor.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Robin McNeil

Littleton , CO

Robin McNeil has posted 698 stories and 0 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Robin McNeil 's average story rating is 5.
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