Review: ‘Participating in the ritual: Central Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival’
Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra in Aug. 2025 at the Tower Theatre in Bend, Ore. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
SUNRIVER, Ore. — Oregon ArtsWatch has published an extensive review of the final three concerts of the 2025 Sunriver Music Festival, Brett Mitchell’s fourth as Artistic Director & Conductor.
Participating in the ritual: Central Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival
The joys and miracles of live music in the rustic Great Hall, with SRMF director Brett Mitchell, concertmaster Yi Zhao, pianist and Cliburn medalist Vitaly Starikov, and an orchestra full of stars.
The heat wave that baked much of the Pacific Northwest for a few days last week was in full force as the final concerts of the 48th annual Sunriver Music Festival began. Taking place in the rustic charm of the Sunriver Great Hall, which was once the officer’s HQ at Camp Abbott during the Second World War, the festival took us from Leipzig to Vienna with some strange stops in between…
Monday the 11th was “The Leipzig Connection,” and opened with Schumann’s Manfred Overture; an interesting factoid was that Robert and Clara’s great-great granddaughter was in the audience that night. There was plenty of sturm und drang during the Manfred, and I did my best to hear over the oft-featured horns and woodwinds. The strings were rich and woody, somehow appropriate to this venue as if in a strange “like to like” principle…
Yi Zhao, concertmaster, was the soloist [in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto], and her cantabile portions were fantastic… She leaned into the sentimentality of the opening movement, and her scalar passages were well-constructed as she was ably supported by the orchestra. The attacca bassoon into the second movement was a delight, and being delighted by the first bassoonist Anthony Georgeson was to become a regular feature of my time here. Zhao wrung the pathos out of the lower registers, sounding very viola-like. The tutti serenade was beautiful… The finale was appropriately spritely and dancing, and Zhao really shone here, as her rapid-fire sautillé toward the end positively sparkled. I’m not sure what the classical music scene as a whole is like in Central Oregon these days, but since the demise of the Cascade Festival of Music, I imagine there are not many other chances to hear tremendously important works of this caliber in the region.
Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra Concertmaster Yi Zhao and Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
Earlier in the first half, conductor and Artistic Director Brett Mitchell (read his interview with Matthew Neil Andrews, and get more detail on the festival and venue here) mentioned that anyone who achieved a certain level of piano aptitude likely learned some of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words at some point in their playing career. Those ones escaped me, but us little Baroque boys instead sometimes learned a piano transcription of the work that opened the second half, the now-(though not always)-famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 by good old Uncle Bach, the great Johann Sebastian. Originally composed for the organ (though there is apparently some argument as to whether Bach himself actually composed it), the work languished in relative obscurity until Leopold Stokowski’s famous orchestral transcription appeared in Walt Disney’s Fantasia about the time the Sunriver Great Hall was being built. Mitchell pointed out that the number of musicians required to play that particular transcription might be almost equal to that night’s orchestra plus all the members of the audience, so the rendition played here was Australian composer Luke Styles’ brilliantly scaled-down version for percussion, strings, and a small wind section.
A startling simultaneous trill on tambourine and triangle underpinned an abrupt and almost comical exposition of the famous toccata theme by the winds at the opening. The huge, menacing chords built from the ground up by the winds were fantastic, and the woodblock chattered behind arpeggiating strings. Gently the strings carried the majority of the fugal opening, and the descending scales were parted out to various instruments in clever salvos. The percussion accents were various and vital, and all in all this work with its light touch and deft instrumentation was a breath of fresh air for those (like me) who consider Stokowski’s version weighted and a bit stodgy.
The finale of the evening was Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068, the perfect piece for a summer music festival, right up there with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks or his Water Music suite. Mitchell led the orchestra deftly in a marvelous rendition of the “Overture,” this gem of stylized Baroque grandeur at its finest with its succinct trumpet fanfares set one after another in a filigree of majestic fortissimo timpani rolls. In the second movement, whose main theme is sometimes known as the Air on the G String, the strings played this timeless melody in a broad, handsome largo. In the Gavottes the interpolations from the principal trumpet Jeffrey Work ended with breathtakingly gentle terminal trills, in opposition to the wide, bold cadential trills he delivered later in the Gigue. The evening left me excited for more of the festival, and ready for whatever peregrinations would lead us to Vienna for the final evening…
Brett Mitchell leads the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra at the Great Hall in Sunriver, Ore. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)
Miracles
The final night of the festival took us as promised to Vienna, after the ethereal and mystical stops of the previous evening. The evening opened, appropriately enough, with a work by Haydn, Symphony No. 96 in D Major, Hob. I:96, also nicknamed the “Miracle.” The opening was appropriate because the other great Viennese masters Mozart and Beethoven were also programmed this evening, and Haydn was at one point Beethoven’s teacher, and was a friend and mentor to Mozart for most of the latter’s life, with Mozart even dedicating six of his string quartets to “Papa Haydn”…
The SRMF’s performance featured some magical moments. Principal oboe Lindabeth Brinkley was absolutely top-notch: her delicacy of phrasing, her ability to combine the sweet with the powerful during the opening “Adagio” made me wish that movement would never end. The winds generally were fantastic while I was there; the little trios and quartets that manifested themselves here and there were constantly among the highlights of any performance. The fine tutti sections in the finale were strong, punctuated without being overblown, and the finesse required from the brass and winds to deliver a first-rate performance was everywhere in evidence.
Much as it had been at The Cliburn earlier in the summer, it was a true pleasure to hear Vitaly [Starikov] play multiple concerts in one week, and his back-to-back performances at SRMF were a highlight of my year. He chose the Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453 to play at the SRMF…
In the “Andante” the woodwinds again showed their caliber: the very highest. They displayed unity and precision in an almost uncannily unified timbre to come from such disparate instruments; if I have ever heard a more dulcet bassoon than Georgeson playing the Mozart that evening, I can’t remember when it was. The soloist played misterioso, giving this movement everything we love about a Mozart andante; it was soulful and hauntingly melodic. He has a sensitivity to his attack, a way of leaning into the instrument and bringing his hands down in such a way that it feels like he is going to disgorge some frightfully loud chord – and then he puts all that tremendous energy into the softest cantabile imaginable…
My friend Jon was with me for both the Leipzig and Vienna concerts. He is a musician himself, and we shared our insights with one another throughout the week. He commented that he thought a really great soloist can raise the level of the orchestra, and I agreed with him, and in this case, I thought that two things were going on; that is to say there was a feedback loop between soloist and orchestra, as though each kept upping their game, as if each were daring the other to do better. The orchestra was spectacular in this work, and I was as impressed with Starikov’s Mozart as I was with his solo work, which is about the highest praise I can think of.
Pianist Vitaly Starikov and conductor Brett Mitchell after performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 with the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra. (Photo by Jimena Shepherd)
Talk about your all-time festival favorites, what better way than to round off the festival than by playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op 67…
The opening four notes are maybe the most famous four notes in music history, and their execution is something of a matter of personal choice by the conductor. Mitchell chose here to launch straight into it with no fanfare, no ritardando or undue accenting: he simply played them as they were written: the opening bit of an “Allegro con brio,” and this worked really well. Let’s not milk it, I thought, there is so much other great stuff here, and we will get to hear this motive many more times tonight. The brisk tempo was also a great choice, and the strings were obviously having great fun – this was their chance to shine, and the phrasing was nuanced and intelligent, with sensitive piannisimi, giving the music plenty of room to grow dynamically.
I began to note various things live that I maybe don’t pay as much attention to when I listen to a recording. Things like the bitter battles between strings and winds, the importance of the bassoon as an anchor to the harmonies, the small but vital horn entrances on which the ensuing parts hang. In the “Andante con moto” I noticed just how difficult the contrabass parts were, and how much fun the double bassists Jason Schooler and Clinton O’Brien had on their fortissimo cadential endings, the one-note whomps! they got to play at the end of a phrase… I heard how the cellos and violas sounded at times delightfully like a collection of woodwinds; their ability to change color, chameleon-like in this fashion is something I don’t note unless I’m sitting there, reveling in the glory. The sudden and surprising crescendi, the tootling piccolo hits in the “Scherzo” – the list goes on and on.
As the Beethoven ended, I pondered the incredible possibilities and synergies that develop when performers and audience gather at the same time, to participate in the ritual, the very real magic known as live music. Though this was my first time attending, the Sunriver Music Festival, in its 48th year, feels like the gift that just keeps on giving. Here’s to 48 more.
Brett Mitchell and the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra after performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. (Photo by David Young-Wolff)