Manchester Music Festival turns 50: Emerson String Quartet's Philip Setzer takes the helm
RUTLAND HERALD By Jim Lowe Staff Writer Jan 13, 2024
Manchester Music Festival’s 50th anniversary year coincides with the first for its new artistic director, violinist Philip Setzer, a founding member of the revered Emerson String Quartet.
“The theme of our 2024 festival is called ‘The Romantic Journey,’” Setzer said. “I have always thought of a series of thematically-linked concerts and events, as a journey — one that both increases our knowledge and deepens our enjoyment of these great works of art.”
Manchester Music Festival is one of the finest in a state renowned for its summer chamber music festivals. The five-week season runs July 11-Aug. 8 at Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester.
“The Romantic” journey will include more than 30 events: concerts, master classes, lectures and outreach programs. Collectively, they will explore the definition and roots of Romanticism, traveling a musical odyssey from Beethoven to Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms and onward to Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and even today.
“It will be interesting to look at Romanticism,” Setzer said. “Music before that was written usually for the church, for the royalty, for the opera, but this whole idea of looking inward, and the individual, the hero Beethoven — that element is going to be the key component to the Romantic era.
“It’s not always just a question of being dramatic,” Setzer said. “It’s something where this element of turning inward — of course you see that, especially with late Beethoven and Schubert toward the end — it becomes so personal, it’s just a different impetus, a different inspiration.”
A new career
For nearly 50 years, the Emerson String Quartet was one of, if not the best, American string quartet, touring worldwide and winning nine Grammy Awards. Formed at the Juilliard School of Music in 1976, it was often heard at the Vermont Mozart Festival, as the artistic director, Melvin Kaplan, was also the quartet’s first manager. Setzer was there from the first and, unusually, alternated as first violinist with Eugene Drucker, also a founding member who performed many times for Capital City Concerts.
The Emerson String Quartet disbanded last year and opened last year’s Manchester Music Festival with one of its final concerts. Setzer remained as a festival participant and when pianist and then artistic director Adam Neimann decided to step down, was asked to take over.
“It’s interesting that this came about when it did,” Setzer said. “I saw friends and colleagues running different festivals, but I honestly couldn’t see how I’d do it — with the quartet and my commitment to teaching full-time at Stonybrook, taking on Cleveland (Institute of Music) part-time. I just didn’t want to stretch myself too thin, so I always said no and gave them other people’s names.
“This was a year ago and I knew the quartet was going to stop,” Setzer said. “And, as my wife said, it’s the one thing you haven’t tried in the business. I decided to give it a shot.”
The violinist saw it as an opportunity for himself — and perhaps for the festival as well.
“It’s the festival’s 50th anniversary, which is something,” Setzer said. “It hasn’t been publicized and become well-known like some places like Marlboro (Music Festival), which gets a huge amount of press and attention, and it deserves it. I had been surprised that that this is Manchester’s golden anniversary. So that intrigued me even more.”
Setzer already had been responsible for the Emerson’s programming.
“I don’t mean just picking the programs for tours,” he said, “but also the bigger concept ideas that we’ve done, like the theater collaborations, the Bartók marathon that we referred to when we did all six quartets in one concert in 1981, the first time that anybody had done that.
“Looking ahead, I wanted to put my stamp on the programming and what the festival would be like — not only what the music would be like but how things would work in terms of interweaving ideas that I talked about,” he said. “Just thinking outside the box: I’ve always loved doing the programs.”
Setzer said he felt the festival’s programming needed to to be a journey.
“I wanted it to feel like something that people would really find interesting,” he said. “Also, to be honest, it would be something where they might buy a subscription to see all of the concerts.
“I wanted to bring the Young Artists in, and bring the older more established musicians to perform with the Young Artists on their concerts — so that there’s a feeling of community, and a theme that runs through it.”
Exploring Romanticism
“I thought a lot about what to do with this first summer and I kept coming back to the Romantic era — but looking at it maybe through a slightly different lens,” Setzer said. “I really wanted look at what Romanticism means, because I think a lot of people have a very narrow idea of what that means — like you go out to dinner with a romantic partner.
“The whole movement of Romanticism that happened across the turn into the 19th century is a fascinating subject, and that’s something we’ll talk about during the festival,” he said. “We’ll have some panel discussions. I was able to get wonderful musicians to come up and we will also bring in the Young Artists here and there to fill in the roster.”
The opening concert, “Lighting the Torch,” July 11, will feature Setzer’s piano trio with cellist David Finkel and pianist Wu Han, co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Finkel was also the Emerson cellist 1979-2013.
“The opening concert will be the trio in these huge monuments of music, the ‘Archduke’ Trio of Beethoven and the Schubert E-flat Trio (Op. 100),” Setzer said. “So you have this huge step into the Romantic era, from Beethoven to Schubert to beyond.”
(Factoid: Setzer and Finkel played their first string quartet together, Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 1, as members of Vermont’s Craftsbury Chamber Players in the early 1970s.)
The second program, “Passing the Torch,” July 18, will feature cellist Edward Arron and pianist Jeewon Park, husband and wife who regularly perform in Vermont, and the Young Artists.
“We’re going to do a Mendelssohn trio (C minor), and we’re going to do some Schumann (Fantasy Pieces, Op. 73 for cello and piano), and we’re ending the program with (Tchaikovsky’s) “Souvenir de Florence,” which will be with Ed and me and four of the young artists.
The third program, “Brahms, The Schumanns and Strauss,” July 25, will include songs of Clara Weick Schumann.
“Sara Couden, who’s a wonderful contralto, is also doing a series of songs by Robert Schumann, Brahms, and Strauss’ ‘Morgen’ with (Emerson Quartet) violist Larry Dutton. David Shifrin’s going to play with me and one of the Young Artists in the Brahms Clarinet Quintet. That takes us from Beethoven and Schubert to Brahms, Schumann.”
The fourth program, “France, England and Some Things New,” Aug. 1, moves into the late 19th century and further — with a new piece — but again with a theme of Romanticism.
“We’re very lucky to get Nancy Allen, the principal harpist at the New York Philharmonic — we were schoolmates, old, old friends,” Setzer said. “She’s going to come up and play Debussy’s “Danses Sacrée et profane” with the Young Artists and “Elegy,” a piece that I actually wrote in Vermont back in 1976 for violin and piano. She heard the piece and liked it a lot. It has a lot of rolled chords in the piano part and she said, you, know that would work very nicely on the harp so she made an arrangement of it.”
Sarah Kirkland Snider was the last composer commissioned by the Emerson for a piece included in its final programs including Manchester. Setzer asked her to arrange another piece, “Drink the Wild Ayre,” from her new opera for harp and strings.
“It is a Romantic piece even though it is in a more modern ‘costume’ or style,” Setzer said. “On the second part of that program will be the Elgar Piano Quintet.’ It brings us to the end of the 19th century.”
The final program, “The Grand Finale,” Aug. 8, features Metropolitan Opera soprano Christine Goerke.
“She’s a friend from Detroit, the Great Lakes Festival — we performed together there,” Setzer said. “She’s going to do the Brahms songs with (violist) Matt Lippman and (pianist) Gilles Vonsattel. We’re also doing (Respighi’s) ‘Il Tramonto.’ These are mezzo pieces. I guess as she’s growing older she’s doing more mezzo parts.”
The second part of the program includes Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81.
Looking forward
Although not artistic director at the time, Setzer actually directed and programmed last year’s Young Artist program.
“I got to choose the 10 young artists who came that year, and rather than start another application process, why not ask the 10 back, they were so wonderful?” he said. “Nine of them are coming back. The one who’s not is getting married in July.”
So, it’s now a two-year program.
“They’re a year older,” Setzer said. “They’ve proven themselves the first year — it’ll be interesting to see how they’ve grown over the year,” Setzer said. “The other thing that I changed, and this will be the first time, I will have them involved on the main concerts, not every piece. On a few of the concerts they will be involved. For example, there will be an Elgar quintet which I’ll be playing, but the other four people will be Young Artists. And we’ll actually have a small string orchestra situation, so we’ll be able to play the Barber Adagio together.
“So I’m trying to interweave the events a bit more than they were done,” Setzer said. “It’s something that interests me so hopefully it will the public as well.’
As to next summer …
“We’re looking at a different kind of theme,” Setzer said. “Each summer will be a journey of some sort I think, not just for publicity, but I want to bring people in for something they’re really going to look forward to — not just experiencing but educating themselves, learning to listen to the music a little differently.”