Quotes
Discovery Shows its Mettle
Fred Bouchard
The Boston Musical Intelligencer, November 7, 2011
“Young conductors on the rise locally have been a heartening sight and heartwarming earful. Sean Newhouse, summoned increasingly to the helm of the BSO, handled Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Britten with aplomb there a few weeks ago. Yesterday, Nov. 6, Courtney Lewis showed his mettle with Discovery Ensemble, both as music director, selecting a balanced live-wire span from Classical to World, and by wielding a deft baton with which he probed emotions in Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and unearthed magic from Haydn’s Symphony No. 90 in C.”
Discovery Ensemble shines at Sanders
Matthew Guerrieri
The Boston Globe, November 08, 2011
"CAMBRIDGE - Elegance and energy seemed posited as opposite poles for the Discovery Ensemble’s second concert of the season, at Sanders Theatre on Sunday. It’s a false dilemma - the group and their conductor, Courtney Lewis, have made their reputation on demonstrating that extravagance and youthful brashness can be wholly complementary. But even the staged debate was diverting entertainment.
The group started strong. Their performance of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Ma mère l’oye’ (the ‘Mother Goose’ suite) was uncannily sure and smooth, every phrase floating in with velvety precision. The style invited attention to detail, and detail was lovingly attended to.”
Discovering Classical Music, New Music
BMINT Staff
The Boston Musical Intelligencer, October 29, 2011
“Boston’s bright young Discovery Ensemble, a chamber orchestra of forty players, will be presenting, at its second concert of its fourth season on November 6 at Sanders Theatre, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite; Julian Anderson’s new Khorovod; Copland’s Clarinet Concerto with Boston Symphony Principal Clarinet William R. Hudgins; and Haydn’s Symphony No. 90. The programming bears the stamp ofDiscovery’s charismatic music director, Courtney Lewis, whose peripatetic existence also includes positions as Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Associate Conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra. BMInt recently interviewed him by phone.”
Full Interview
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Susan Davenny Wyner, and Courtney Lewis
Popularity contest
Lloyd Schwartz
The Boston Phoenix, October 6, 2011
“Next day [Sunday, October 2, 2011], one of my favorite groups had its first concert of the season: the Discovery Ensemble led by the charismatic 26-year-old Belfast-born Courtney Lewis. Good things have been happening to DE members. Last year Lewis was appointed assistant conductor of the Minneapolis Orchestra; this year he's been promoted to associate conductor, and was also appointed a Dudamel Fellow with the LA Philharmonic, working with Gustavo Dudamel and the students in the LA Phil's educational program. Meanwhile DE concertmaster Joshua Weilerstein, barely two years into his career as a conductor, has been appointed one of the two assistant conductors of the New York Philharmonic. These two brilliant young musicians, both dedicated to bringing classical music to young people who've never been exposed to it, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this impressive group, which has everything going for it.”
Probing Discoveries from Adept Ensemble
Jeremy Eichler
The Boston Globe, October 4, 2011
“CAMBRIDGE - The fringe players, the music schools, and the start-up ventures have taken on a new centrality this fall season. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra in transition and mainstream presenters like the Celebrity Series facing tough economic times by tilting conservative in their programming, it’s abundantly clear just how much Boston’s ‘other’ classical music scene matters. For instance, the most adventurous and distinctive recitals this month are almost without exception taking place at local music schools. Meanwhile, groups like the Discovery Ensemble - a chamber orchestra in its fourth season, made up of talented early-career players - continue to offer concerts of dependably fresh and visceral music-making.”
“That was certainly the case for Sunday’s Discovery Ensemble performance at Sanders Theatre, led by the fast-rising Irish conductor Courtney Lewis, the group’s music director. The program opened with Britten’s ‘Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge,’ a piece whose urbane musical wanderings demonstrate the young Britten’s wide command, and on this occasion, showcased the ensemble’s own range and virtuosity. Particularly appealing here was the Romance, delivered with a seductive rhythmic lilt, and the Aria Italiana, tossed off with bright frolicsome energy.”
Full Review
Full review on the Boston Globe website (requires log-in)
Discovery Ensemble Delivers Stunning Results
Brian Jones
The Boston Musical Intelligencer, October 4, 2011
“There is a great deal of talk these days about ‘mission statements,’ and such proclamations seem worthwhile when one encounters a musical organization which truly lives up to its stated ideals. Sunday afternoon, October 2, at Sanders Theatre, we were treated by the Discovery Ensemble to an energetic, informed, committed and altogether inspiring program that spoke eloquently to the goals of this group.
Music Director Courtney Lewis has molded his players, some of the area’s finest young students/professionals, into a chamber orchestra of impressive accomplishment. He is also a very creative programmer, as Sunday’s concert proved, and he’s as at home with modern music as he is with a Beethoven Symphony.”
Audio Slideshow: Discovery Ensemble
Marisa Gjurgevich
BOSTON lowbrow, September 25, 2011
“Discovery Ensemble, a young chamber orchestra which divides its time between introducing Boston school children to classical music and putting on a regular concert season, begins its season on Sunday, October 2 at 3:00 in Sanders Theatre (tickets available at the Harvard Box Office). I stopped by their rehearsal in Old South Church on Saturday for a brief sit-down with founding Music Director Courtney Lewis to discuss their upcoming concert. AE Stelzer Photography joined to photograph it. The program consists of Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Martin’s Six Monologues from ‘Jedermann’ with baritone Christòpheren Nomura, and Beethoven’s Beethoven’s 7th.”
Ramping up the Romanticism
Harlow Robinson
Boston Globe, March 21, 2011
“Isn’t it Romantic? The Discovery Ensemble revealed just how spacious the concept of Romanticism can be in its “Three Faces of Romanticism’’ concert at Sanders Theatre on Thursday evening. Composed over a span of nearly 70 years between 1850 and 1917, the three works by Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Franz Schreker did share a certain emotional immediacy and warmth. But in other ways they were as dissimilar as Charles Dickens and James Joyce.
Courtney Lewis, the founding music director of Discovery Ensemble, led his poised orchestra of young musicians in exuberant, fresh, and for the most part polished performances of Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 (“Rhenish), Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,’’ and Schreker’s Chamber Symphony. His conducting style is brisk, precise, direct. This was a young man’s Romanticism, colored by hopeful confidence rather than nostalgic regret.”
A confident and dramatic Discovery performance
Matthew Guerrieri
Boston Globe, November 15, 2010
“CAMBRIDGE — Among Boston’s burgeoning ecosystem of younger, entrepreneurial classical music groups, the Discovery Ensemble and its director, Courtney Lewis, have carved out a niche by cultivating a certain brash suavity, an insistent flamboyance that pulls the listener into their dapper conspiracy. Their program at Sanders Theatre on Friday was an ideal vehicle — music regarding the grand tradition with casual confidence, and even a little insouciance. The result was smart, flattering tailoring.”
He’s a young musician on the move
David Weininger
Boston Globe, November 12, 2010
“When he was growing up in Belfast, Courtney Lewis thought he wanted to be a composer. He was an accomplished clarinetist in high school, and after graduation he went to Cambridge University with the intention of studying with its highly distinguished composition faculty.
Once there, though, he discovered that “when you’re a composer you spend all your time by yourself,’’ he said earlier this week over lunch. “You spend all your time with your own music. And I realized that I would much rather spend my time with other people and great music.’’ The school had four excellent orchestras, but “I got bored playing the clarinet in the orchestra. I hated counting rests while all this amazing music was passing me by.’’
WGBH Greater Boston profile of Courtney Lewis and Discovery Ensemble
November 11, 2010
A Thrilling Ride With Boston's Discovery Ensemble
Cathy Fuller
NPR, November 11, 2010
“Boston is fertile ground for exciting new orchestras, which is plain to hear in this concert of music by Beethoven and Martinu from our WGBH studio. There are so many extraordinary musicians in this city that powerful ensembles just keep appearing, evolving and making a difference.”
NECN Style Boston, Plugged In: Discovery Ensemble
November 7, 2010
“Meet the man who’s bringing classical music back to the classroom. Courtney Lewis’ Discovery Ensemble is a group of committed twenty-somethings who are passing on their love of classical music to a new generation. Get ‘Plugged In’ to a true renaissance with Tony Corey and local schoolchildren.”
Review: Beethoven with the Discovery Ensemble
By Lloyd Schwartz | October 27, 2010
We've had a good deal of Beethoven recently, with the high bar being set by young Courtney Lewis — a former Zander Fellow and the current assistant conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra — and his extraordinary young chamber orchestra, Discovery Ensemble (with Joshua Weilerstein as the exceptional concertmaster). In the past couple of years, they've presented some of the best concerts around, though they still haven't found the audience they deserve. People come back again and again, but Sanders Theatre still remains less than half full. This is particularly disheartening because their mid-October concert was one of their most thrilling. It began with Bohuslav Martinu's grim pre–World War II Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano, and Timpani, then proceeded to an insinuating and enchanting Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No. 1 (yes, enchanting Schoenberg! — and witty!), and then on to one of the most exciting and moving performances of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony I've ever heard. Absolutely riveting from beginning to end (and it's not short), with one insight, one revelation, after another (especially in the structural highlighting of Beethoven's underlying rhythmic patterns), yet unfussy, completely honest, unmannered, forward-moving yet not mechanical — all brilliantly performed and totally engaged, both emotionally and intellectually. Without wallowing in sentiment, the funeral march was about as piercing and powerful as I've ever heard it.
It's rare for me to get excited about a Beethoven symphony these days. After the BSO's disappointing complete cycle last season, without the central presence of James Levine, I wasn't eager to hear any more Beethoven symphonies for a while. But I left Sanders Theatre wanting to hear them all. The Pastorale is on Discovery Ensemble's November 12 program at Sanders. Being there might make you even happier than reading about it.
Discover This: Martinu, Schoenberg, Beethoven
by Vance R. Koven
The Boston Musical Intelligencer, October 18, 2010
Boston concert audiences have been blessed over the past few years with the appearance of two entrants in the somewhat amorphous category of “chamber orchestra.” One of them, the Discovery Ensemble, began its third season on October 17, under the leadership of its Northern-Irish conductor Courtney Lewis, at Harvard’s Sanders Theater in a commendably mixed program of works by Bohuslav Martinu, Arnold Schoenberg, and a fellow named Beethoven.
Apart from its three-program public concert season, Discovery spends its time bringing classical programming to area public schools otherwise devoid of it. We wish them great success in this endeavor, and if their school performances are as well thought out and executed as what we heard Sunday afternoon, no concerns of performance quality need impede that success.
We cannot recall a previous live performance of Martinu’s Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano and tympani. (His work in fact should be programmed more often.) The Concerto dates from 1938, in the tense days of Germany’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia, and the music’s virtually unrelieved chromatic tension well conveys Central Europe’s anxieties. (We were reminded of one of our favorite New Yorker cartoons of the era, wherein a concert-going matron whispers to her companion, “I had no idea conditions in Europe were so bad!”) In this piece, Martinu eschews overt expressionism for a synthesis of neoclassicism and Bartók whose Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of 1936 seems influential here. The Martinu, though, is far from a copycat piece.
The division of the strings into two equal and facing units seemed more visually than aurally effective, as the ensembles were less antiphonal than one might expect. The piano part, admirably played by Aaron Likness (without solo billing, likewise tympanist Jeffrey Means), is percussive and, except in the slow movement, generally integrated into the orchestral texture. That slow movement, by the way, with its haunted-cathedral opening employing swirling strings, and its air of quiet unease — its main melody re-emerges at the end of the febrile and martial finale — was to us the compositional high-point. Lewis kept a clear beat and tossed off an impressive display of body English (Irish?), as his crack band of young performers (not a gray hair onstage) responded with immaculate articulation and dynamic precision.
The first half of the program ended with Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, one of the last works he wrote before taking expressionism past the bounds of classical tonality (the symphony is nominally in E major). This work, for fourteen solo instruments, famously provoked Gustav Mahler to question the viability of so intense a chromaticism. Its four linked movements all use the same musical materials and so are best regarded as constituting a single, articulated musical event, especially when there are not great changes in tempo or meter.
The greatest challenge to a conductor of this piece, apart from keeping everybody together through Schoenberg’s elaborate counterpoint, is to preserve some semblance of balance; with only one player to a part it is obvious that the strings are disadvantaged, and indeed, in the first two movements especially, the violins and viola had some trouble making themselves heard. The slow movement and finale saw a distinct improvement. Like almost any Schoenberg score, this one placed enormous demands on the players because of the compact form in which it imposes extreme expressive requirements, and resulting difficulty of the parts. Here both the audience and Lewis expressed their approbation for the nearly total success of the enterprise.
It raises an eyebrow, perhaps, to think of a chamber orchestra rendition of Beethoven’s revolutionary and overwhelming Eroica symphony, and yet a band of forty-some was probably about right for 1803. Discovery Ensemble makes no pretense to “original instruments” or “historically informed” status, so with modern instruments it can produce the volume this work needs to succeed. And succeed it did, after its fashion. Let’s say at once what everyone wants to know about an Eroica performance: the horns (Whitacre Hill, David Vaughan, and Sarah Sutherland) were just fantastic in their sectional solo in the scherzo.
This was clearly a young person’s Eroica: brisk tempi, dramatic dynamic shifts, theatrical body language — not your deeply reflective mitteleuropäische exegesis. Lewis is a master of dynamic control and pacing, although, especially in the first movement, his rapid beat left some phrase endings gasping for air. The funeral march left nothing to be desired to our ears, and the finale overcame the biggest issue we have always had with this symphony, which is that in the majestic restatement of the theme just before the coda, Beethoven may have exceeded the capacity of his instrumental forces to sustain a full sound when his simple melody was stretched out. We don’t know how he did it, but Lewis achieved here a glowing, rounded sonority that has eluded many of his elders. Bravo.
Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.
A Young Conductor Leads a Noble Experiment
Andrea Shea/WBUR | April 9, 2010
Courtney Lewis is not your typical conductor. For starters, he’s only 25-years-old.
Lewis heads up a chamber orchestra of his peers — mostly 20-somethings — and Discovery Ensemble is bringing classical music to Boston schoolchildren.
Discovery Ensemble Journeys from Bach to Stravinsky
Jeremy Eichler
Boston Globe, January 19, 2010
“In the last couple of years, the city’s classical music scene has been receiving shots of adrenaline from what might appear to be unlikely sources…
Full review
Don Aucoin interviews Courtney Lewis
Boston Globe, January 16, 2010
“At 25, Courtney Lewis has already had a pronounced impact on the Boston classical music scene. In 2008, he founded Discovery Ensemble, a chamber orchestra that has become known for concerts that mix in challenging new pieces amid the more familiar repertoire…”
The roar of the crowd
Lloyd Schwartz | Boston Phoenix, September 29, 2009
A shamefully sparse crowd roared for another magnificent concert: the Discovery Ensemble’s superb program September 20 at Sanders Theatre. (Would more people come if this marvelous outfit had a more memorable or seductive name?) Belfast-born Courtney Lewis, DE’s 25-year-old music director, is both an inspired conductor — every moment seems to be on its way to or from someplace — and an inspired programmer. This one began with the spiky suite from Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat, with outstanding contributions by violinist Julia Hunter (as the fiddling Devil) and the rhythmically scintillating clarinettist Denexxel Domingo. Then another supreme but infrequent 20th-century masterpiece, Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, with Owen Young going beyond Britten’s technical challenges to create new worlds of atmosphere and color, and young tenor Matthew Anderson (so good in DE’s complete Stravinsky Pulcinella last spring) more than competent in his vocal technique (an achievement in itself) but perhaps too interpretively reticent for this diverse anthology of poems. The concert ended with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in a sensitive, witty, utterly engaging reading that Julian Kuerti will have a hard time matching with the BSO this Saturday.) Lewis has an orchestra of young masters whose hearts are in the right place in their practice of giving free outreach concerts in the inner city, where school music programs have virtually disappeared. One thousand Dorchester kids heard selections from this program at Dorchester’s Strand Theatre. Lucky kids. Lewis is now the Minnesota Orchestra’s new assistant conductor. I hope he doesn’t abandon his mission — or us. He’s our future.
Boston Phoenix, June 10, 2009
Lloyd Schwartz
I was pretty excited about a Discovery Ensemble concert last January conducted by Belfast-born Zander Fellow Courtney Lewis, who just turned 25. Their May concert at Sanders Theatre impressed me — no, excited me — even more. A brilliant Ligeti Romanian Concerto was followed by Stravinsky's scintillating, witty, seductive ballet Pulcinella (complete — not the short Suite, which gets done much more often), in a scintillating, witty, and irresistibly seductive performance, with soprano Kendra Colton (at her most alluring), tenor Matthew Anderson, and baritone Sumner Thompson adding their own considerable charm to the already charming orchestra. Lewis kept me dangling like trout from his swinging line. He ended with a breathtaking Beethoven Eighth that embraced Haydn and Gilbert & Sullivan yet still sounded like Beethoven. The Minnesota Orchestra is about to confirm Boston's enthusiasm by appointing him assistant conductor. I hope that doesn't keep him too great a distance from Boston.
Ensemble Shows Exuberance from the Start
Matthew Guerrieri
Boston Globe, January 27, 2009
“Even in a recession, music demands to be made, and, only three months into its existence, the Discovery Ensemble hasn't let pessimistic conditions stay it from its self-appointed rounds…
Full review
Harbison “Bout of Un-relatedness” Between Two Chestnuts
Mark DeVoto
Boston Musical Intelligencer, January 24, 2009
Discovery Ensemble is a new orchestra made up of young local professional players. It is expertly directed by Courtney Lewis, an Englishman and one of their own, who founded the ensemble. Addressing the audience, he explained that earlier in the week, and in accordance with their stated mission, members of the group had been playing in the Boston Public Schools, including in Dorchester, where hundreds of children had never before heard an orchestra or been to a concert of any kind. The performance on January 24 at Emmanuel Church in Boston was an exciting demonstration of what this vigorous group can do.
Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring (1944), originally a ballet score for Martha Graham, is best known in its version for full orchestra, but the original version for 13 instruments (flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, strings) turns up from time to time. This performance, with a clear and luminous sound, was ideally suited to the opulent acoustics of the church. One could not have imagined a more loving performance of this melodically rich and harmonically transparent score. Those who remember the performance at the presidential inauguration last Tuesday know that John Williams was inspired by “The Gift to Be Simple,” the Shaker “Quick Dance” that Copland included in the penultimate variations in this very popular score.
In our ordinary concert experience, a concerto is a dialogue, the soloist or solo group exchanging musical information with the accompanying orchestra; but etymologically, from its Latin roots, a concerto is really a struggle, or at least a contest. John Harbison’s Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet, and Strings, composed in 1985, answers to the second description, a “bout of un-relatedness” as he put it, between the two solo instruments individually, and between the paired instruments and the “unwelcoming” strings. The result, at least to this listener hearing the work for the first time, was a work in which individual instrumental sound was de-emphasized in favor of an overall texture in which the blend is inescapably spicy.
One could not call this an expressive work; indeed, and by contrast, the most expressive and richly melodic writing was in the orchestral accompaniment during the Larghetto, while the oboe and clarinet were silent bystanders. In the outer movements there was plenty of activity for soloists playing together, and much of this was in the high register, pushing even higher; the middle register of both instruments was heard less often, and the overtone-rich low registers hardly at all. The orchestra for its part offered a variety of supporting textures: an alla marcia-like dotted pattern in the first movement that became a steady beat of single notes, like an impending crisis, in the second; then, a succession of fortissimo chordal shouts from the first movement reappeared with greater vigor in the third, with the rapid passagework of the solo instruments fighting at every step. What organized the total sound was harmony: though this music is intensely chromatic at nearly every moment, one never totally lost a background sense of diatonic C major at important junctures. In the slow movement, there was even a welcoming G pedal as in a classical concerto, introducing a cadenza for the two soloists; and at the end of the work, the cadenza formula expanded to include a bluesy dominant chord on G with B flat and B together, before the final dissonant tonic on C.
There are established repertories, not large ones, of concerti for oboe or clarinet, but very few concerti for two different woodwinds. Right now I think of Richard Strauss’s Duet Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon, a thoroughly 19th-century piece written in 1947. Harbison’s double concerto is of an entirely different stripe, a well-balanced and exciting misalliance that symbolizes the heterogeneity of our concert life today — and that works very well indeed.
Peggy Pearson has been one of Boston’s most beloved oboists for many years, and she met the challenge of not-always-grateful partnership in this concerto with fleet fingers and brilliant tone. It was a pleasure to be introduced to an outstanding clarinetist, Denexxel Domingo, who played his demanding part fearlessly and with matchless skill.
The concert concluded with Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, KV 551, the “Jupiter,” and there were problems, above all in tempi. The first movement, though marked Allegro vivace, was nevertheless too fast, acoustically speaking, to override the echo in the hall; so much articulation was lost that might have been more effectively heard at a slower but still lively pace. Some of the dynamics as well appeared too sudden and abrupt at the hurried tempo. It’s not that the orchestra couldn’t play the notes at high speed, because digital accuracy was never in doubt; but it would have been better to focus more on what the players had to offer. Much more successful was the expressive slow movement, with muted strings, and all of the orchestra’s cohesion and sensitivity to the complete sound were well realized. This movement has some fine drama, after all, in the unexpected twists and turns of chromatic harmony, and these were well outlined. The minuet is something we are also used to hearing somewhat slower; one wonders whether Mozart had the spirit of some of his later German dances in mind while writing this waltz-like movement. In the famous alla breve finale, the excessively fast tempo again hindered coherence of sound. (I remember hearing this finale at Tanglewood conducted at insane speed by Charles Munch; at the time, it was said that Munch’s beat was “one to the page.”) This Allegro molto is a tour de force of intense counterpoint with no less than five fugato motives tossed around the orchestra in different combinations and stretti. But at excessive speed the listener cannot concentrate on the rapidly-changing events, especially in a resonant setting where reverberation inevitably blurs the texture. But there was no mistaking the excitement of this performance, and the orchestra and audience enjoyed it to the full.
It is satisfying to welcome this new group to the ranks of Boston’s mature orchestras. We look forward with confidence to more discoveries, and many performances of high caliber.
