Wyner resigns her post at New England String
Susan Davenny Wyner has resigned as music director of the New England String Ensemble, citing her wish to explore further the literature of the full symphony orchestra, oratorio, and opera. This weekend's concerts, at the Phillips Academy tomorrow and in Jordan Hall Sunday afternoon, mark her final appearances with the ensemble, which the soprano-turned-conductor has led with distinction for the past six seasons.
Executive director Peter Stickel said the group is ''looking at options for the future, what kind of season we'll have next year." Several fund-raising applications are still in, and Sunday's concert concludes with a benefit event in Symphony Hall honoring prominent musical friends of the ensemble including flutists Doriot Anthony Dwyer and Fenwick Smith, violinist Marylou Speaker Churchill and cellist/educator Mark Churchill. ''People feel better about contributing to something that has a future, and our mission hasn't lost its relevance," Stickel says.
Wyner said this week that she wanted to emphasize ''how much I have loved working with these musicians and doing the things we have done. But the resources are just not there at this time to sustain the number of concerts and to take the orchestra further in the direction I want to go in.
''As I move into the next chapter, I would like to find ways to keep working with these wonderful musicians," she said.
The group was founded 11 years ago by Stickel and John Bumstead. During Wyner's tenure as music director, the group added a Boston series to its traditional North Shore concerts and chalked up impressive performances and accomplishments. It earned a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for its New England Musical Heritage Initiative; in the 2003-'04 season it was one of seven orchestras nationwide to receive a grant from the Koussevitzky Foundation to commission a new work (Scott Wheeler's ''Wakefield Doubles"), and this season it appeared in the
A Mozart rediscovery
Mozart did not adapt his old music to new purposes as often as Handel did, but he did find himself doing it occasionally. The cantata ''Davidde Penitente" offers a particularly interesting example. For this setting of excerpts from the Psalms, Mozart composed two new arias, but for the rest he recycled music from his C-minor Mass.
The Mass is frequently programmed, but ''Davidde Penitente" is a rarity. In a concert Sunday afternoon, Donald Teeters, music director of the Boston Cecilia, saw the differences in the meanings and moods of the text as avenues toward experiencing the familiar music with different patterns of light and shadow. He is a discriminating musician, and he led a performance that was buoyantly and confidently sung by his chorus, and handsomely played by his orchestra.
(Amazingly, three excellent freelance professional orchestras were playing simultaneously Sunday, at the Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, and this event.)
The Boston Cecilia soloists were also strong. Tenor Steven Mello was clear and firm-toned, and mezzo Clea Nemetz sang with formidable virtuosity over a wide range, although she occasionally pushed for volume. Baritone Aaron Engebreth supplied a clean bass line in the ''Coronation" Mass, which opened the concert. In both works, soprano Jessica Cooper was outstanding for beauty of tone, technical accomplishment, and musical intelligence.
Díaz goes to the Curtis
It was a proud moment for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New England Conservatory when violist Roberto Díaz was named the next president of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Díaz will succeed pianist Gary Graffman at the end of the 2005-'06 academic year.
Díaz studied at NEC under Burton Fine, former BSO principal viola, before moving on to become principal viola of the National Symphony and, in 1996, of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
