In Brief: All-Star Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• From the Grosser Saal of Vienna's Musikverein, violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Valentina Lisitsa play a recital of music by Tartini, Antheil, Ives, and others. [France Musique]


• Listen to performances of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Stravinsky's Persephone from the Teatro Real in Madrid. [France Musique]


• Christian Tetzlaff joins the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen for music by Bartók and Debussy, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique]


• The new director of the Château de Versailles, appointed last August, is Catherine Pégard, a former journalist and editor-in-chief of Le Point and also counselor of Nicolas Sarkozy. There were complaints about the appointment, which she spoke about in a recent interview with Harry Bellet and Florence Evin, saying among other things, "I have observed politics and power for twenty-five years as a journalist, I was at the heart of power for five years, and here I am in the symbolic seat of power." Pégard also announced that she would be writing a blog during her tenure, to be called Les Carnets de Versailles. We'll let you know if that actually happens. [Le Monde]


• Mme Pégard also spoke to Claire Bommelaer, giving the impression that she had plans to distance herself from the predilection of her predecessor, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, for hosting contemporary artists and their work at Versailles. [Le Figaro]


• Daniele Gatti conducts the Orchestre National de France in music of Schubert and Berg, with soprano Chen Reiss and clarinetist Patrick Messina, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique]


• From the Présences Festival, Oscar Strasnoy leads the Ensemble Zellig in new music by Strasnoy, Masakazu Natsuda, and Vincent Manac’h. [France Musique]


• More with Argentinian composer Oscar Strasnoy (b. 1970), from the Présences Festival. [France Musique]


• Yeah, about the Présences Festival and Oscar Strasnoy, Pierre Gervasoni was not exactly impressed, citing the festival's focus on Strasnoy, "a guest of honor of the least notoriety," as the reason for its demise. [Le Monde]


• Violist Antoine Tamestit and pianist Nicholas Angelich offer a recital of Brahms and Schumann, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique]


• Hear some of the rising musicians of tomorrow, with the concert of winners at the Révélations des Victoires de la Musique Classique earlier this month. [France Musique]


• Watch a performance of the Fauré Requiem, with the Orchestre National de Lyon, and Patricia Petibon and Matthias Goerne, under the baton of Josep Pons. [Medici.tv]


• Listen to a Puccini Festival from the Opéra de Lyon. [France Musique]


• The Quatuor Voce plays string quartets by Wolfgang Rihm and Maurice Ravel, at the 5ème Biennale de quatuors à cordes, in Paris. [France Musique]

Mark Morris's Fête Galante

Orpheus torn to pieces by the Maenads, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, Mark Morris Dance Group

We try to catch every visit by the Mark Morris Dance Group, as we have done in 2010, 2009, and 2008, but there were few of the American choreographer's works we more wanted to see than L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, experienced last night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. An exuberant translation into movement of Handel's oratorio L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, the work was one of the first successes of Morris's sometimes rocky tenure at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Handel's music, heard in concert from Opera Lafayette two years ago, is set to a libretto by Charles Jennens. Quite similar to his Messiah, it is a mash-up of existing poetry, bringing together two opposing poems by Milton, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, opposing the two characters of happiness and melancholy and reconciling them with a third allegorical voice, that of moderation, Il Moderato, with poetry written by Jennens.

The oratorio is strikingly beautiful on its own, but Morris has choreographed it with such effervescent joy that it becomes something new and different and even more rewarding to experience. As in so many of Morris's choreographies, Handel's musical motifs and formal structures are revealed by the dancers, not as some dull analytical exercise but with an enlightening visual pop. The sense of dance and movement underlying Baroque music -- heightened here by the addition of an introductory overture, Handel's G major concerto grosso (op. 6/1) -- is nowhere so clear as in the way Morris shows it. Morris tilts the scales obviously to the side of L'Allegro, making joy and happiness, rather than moderation as Jennens saw it, carry the day. There are little vignettes that illustrate the melancholy side, loves thwarted into tragedy, but this is not soul-crushing melancholy but the gloom of imagination that inspires artistic creativity (the role of that humor in Renaissance philosophy).

Morris's movement ideas often come directly from the text, sometimes naive like the udder-pulling movement that goes with the bucolic image of milkmaids singing, but still charming. The pastel colors of the costumes (designed by Christine Van Loon) and the moving scrims of the abstract set (Adrianne Lobel), that move and rearrange into different patterns and color schemes, the sense of leisure and fantasy, pastoral escapism reminded me of nothing more than a Rococo painting, a series of Watteau pastels come to life, part theater, part dream. Lifted dancers made some of the most memorable images, especially in bird-like flights in the arias Mirth, admit me of thy crew and Sweet bird, in imitation of the avian twitters of violin and flute solos. In one unforgettable tableau, a troupe of dancers flitted about like the flock of starlings in Dante's second circle. The horn calls of To listen how the hounds inspired a hunting scene, with dancers forming groves of trees and shrubs, while a hilarious group of dogs pursued its quarry. Courtly dance, like that of an English masque, and its assimilation of country folk dance pervaded many of Morris's gestures, as in the grand roundel that ends the first half.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Under Mark Morris, Handel oratorio becomes a visual feast (Washington Post, January 28) ---, Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro”: Imagination Unbound (Washington Post, January 21)

The second half has the more enigmatic moments. A feisty and whimsical male ensemble number -- all violence and sports-like butt-slapping, followed by dainty kisses and paired prancing -- is followed by an all-graceful female ensemble. The one tragic moment came from the mention of Orpheus, to which Morris responded with an episode from the legend of that hero. Not the more famous episode with the death of Eurydice, but Orpheus's death as told by Ovid, in which, despondent at the loss of his wife, Orpheus turns his attention to youths. In jealous anger the band of his female followers, the Maenads who practice the Orphic cult, tear him to shreds. The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, under the baton of Morris regular Jane Glover, played admirably, with Joseph Gascho (on organ and the slightly hokey celesta for the bell aria) and Adam Pearl (on harpsichord) rounding out the continuo. The fine chorus of the Washington Bach Consort, expertly prepared by J. Reilly Lewis (who was in the house), sang from the left side of the pit, with an able quartet of vocal soloists (sopranos Christine Brandes and Lisa Saffer, tenor John McVeigh, and baritone Thomas Meglioranza) on the right. The performance makes for a perfect cure for the winter doldrums.

This performance repeats tonight (January 28, 8 pm), in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Ionarts-at-Large: Alex Ross' Belmont Prize and an Evening of Americana

When Douglas Boyd spoke passionately—in his beautiful melodic Scottish—about Charles Ives as one of the most enigmatic 20^th century composer to the audience of the Munich Chamber Orchestra’s audience, the introductory excerpts of the hymn tunes took on a slight melancholic Scottish twang. His preparatory remarks fell on fertile ground, as a good part of the audience had already been readied to appreciate an evening exploring a century of American (East-Coast) music by the preceding prize ceremony where Alex Ross received the Forberg-Schneider Foundation’s Belmont Prize and chatted with the MKO artistic director Alexander Liebreich about music in general and “The Rest is Noise” in particular: A charming, if none-too profound conversation, spiced-up and in turn defused by Liebreich’s narcissism and Ross’ near-diffident modesty.

Programming American music (with the possible exception of Carter who appeals to European modernist-seeking audiences) is usually a recipe for empty halls. It speaks to the intelligent programming and meticulous audience-building of the MKO that the beautiful Prinzregententheater was full. And once audiences turn out to hear it, whether prepared to accept the music or not, they do embrace American classics.

C.Ives, Symphonies 2 & 3, A.Litton / Dallas SO Hyperion E.Carter, Sound Fields etc., O.Knussen / BBC SO Bridge A.Copland, Clarinet Concerto et al., S.Drucker / L.Bernstein / NYPhil DG

They certainly appreciated Aaron Copland’s snappy Clarinet Concerto and particularly the snake-charming contortions of Martin Fröst. The Swedish instrumentalist appreciates the physicality of playing the clarinet to the point of distraction, but never at the expense of unrivaled gorgeous playing. The bold white borders of his black suit (with equal hints of Wild West, Pan Am 70s revival, and Barnum & Bailey’s) picked up the Americana-theme of the evening. It also enhanced how Fröst associates every phrase with a motion or position. That, in turn, suited the stereotype that Copland created; a kind of resounding Americanism that never was, but that hit—literally—a chord with its audiences. It reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse’s characters that created a world of their own; real shadows of an invented reality. Until the cadenza finally penetrates this soppy world of would-be concord, it is a simple, calm beauty that pervades the Copland concerto. Especially compared to Ives’ Third Symphony which preceded it.

Charles Ives begins his Symphony with deceptively harmonious pleasantries that glide upward with the grace of imaginary young ladies on their way from Sunday school to the debutant ball. The honest, sturdy chorales and hymns seem innocent on their arrival in the brass. But Ives gently breaks each tune’s spine and bends them into a new construction of his own—a fluid musical cubism that reminds superficially of Mahler-episodes, except without the vulgarity. Humorous sometimes, sometimes clamorous, but the original grace—morphed manifold—remains the red thread that leads through it. When chords of Ives’ don’t go into the conventional direction they don’t melt subversively or rebelliously as they are prone to do in, say, Schnittke. Instead they strike as a wholly novel, brilliant solution to a new kind of beautiful. A marvelous composition that rewards keen ears on every new listening.

Listening to Elliot Carter, two things usually come to mind: “Boulez, but with a smile” and “Haydn”. Not that Carter and Haydn have any cursory commonalities, but the geniality of Carter, his humor (not in the ‘comic’ sense, but the mood and its underlying wit) seems to rhyme with Haydn. It is as if Carter was so secure in his pared-down, formally sound sophistication that he doesn’t also need to be unnecessarily serious about it. In that spirit, I found that the ears seemed to nod as they listened to his 2007 “Sound Fields”, as though the offering were optional, not didactic. The underlying pulse is undeniable—all the way to its stolen last sentence in B-flat-major.

Fitting, that the finale was a Haydn Symphony: The peckish Symphony N0.83 (‘La Poule’), which got a terrific performance that underlined the violent surprised and boldness throughout and kept the Minuet from becoming sonic duty with a jazzy bend. Avant-guard from 1785.

Picture © David Michalek

Side Notes: Paavo Berglund & Sibelius Meet Again

Paavo Allan Engelbert Berglund was the vanguard of a virtual army of Finnish conductors that would follow him. Unlike the his younger colleagues, he was not yet a product of Jorma Panula’s conducting school but started out as a violinist at the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. To see if he couldn’t conduct better than the maestros he played under, he founded his own chamber orchestra. Seven years later he became its Associate Conductor of the Finnish RSO and another six years later, in 1962, their chief conductor—a post he held for nine years. He was what would now be euphemized as an ‘old school’ conductor; a ‘rigidtarian’ to whom detail, accuracy, and excellence came decidedly ahead of airs of happy-family or team-building.

The foundation of his lasting fame was achieved during his time at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, which he headed from 1972 until 1979 and which saw a good amount of recording activity, including his first of three cycles of Sibelius’ Symphonies (Royal Classics). Sibelius had encouraged Berglund early in his conducting career and it was to this composer that Berglund would always return in his life. Berglund was instrumental in a corrected new edition of the Sibelius Seventh Symphony being published.

The Bournemouth recordings of Sibelius’ tone poems—Kullervo, Tapiola, Finlandia, Karelia, and the Oceanides—have become a staple in record collections around the world. Just as many LP and CD collectors must have grown up with his Sibelius Symphonies on EMI which he re-recorded in the 80s with the Helsinki Philharmonic, returning to the orchestra of which he was Music Director from 1975 until 1979. From 1987-91 he was the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic’s Principal Conductor. And, making his working-tour of the Nordic countries nearly complete, he became the Chief Conductor of the Royal Danish Orchestra (1993-98) shortly after recording a Nielsen Symphony cycle (RCA) with them.

Berglund’s recorded output is not vast, but studded with gems beyond his Sibelius. His Má vlast with the Dresden Staatskapelle is uncommonly gorgeous (EMI). Strauss’ Oboe Concerto with Douglas Boyd and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is, like the Mozart coupling, one of unhurried, polished beauty (COE Records). Shostakovich was another constant in his conducting life; from early, excellent recordings of the 6^th, 7^th, 10^th, and 11^th with Bournemouth (EMI) to his participation in the multi-conductor cycle of the Russian National Orchestra (Pentatone), a deliberate-then-overwhelming 8^th. Berglund recorded Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto early in the career of Leif Ove Andsnes (Virgin/EMI) and accompanied the marvelous Ida Handel in the Britten and Walton Violin Concertos (EMI). In 1996 he set out to record the Sibelius Symphonies for a third and last time – with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Finlandia). A different take on Sibelius emerged in these recordings: Sparse and clear, disembodied to a degree, and lacking—superficially—the “gravy” that Sibelius once recommended a conductor to “swim in”. The somber, touching quality of the performances make them especially worth seeking out.

Paavo Berglund died at his home in Helsinki on January 25th, at the age of 82.

Select CD recommendations after the break:

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Cunning Little Vixen at the Kennedy Center

Monument of Bystrouška, from Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, in Hukvaldy, the composer's hometown

Sharp-Ears, otherwise known as the Cunning Little Vixen, has taken up residence with her mate at the Kennedy Center. Not, unfortunately, because Washington National Opera is staging Janáček's brilliant, loveable opera of that title (last produced there in 1993), but because an actual pair of foxes has set up house somewhere near the north end of the Kennedy Center in the last few weeks. On Saturday night, on my walk from the Terrace Theater toward Virginia Avenue, the female of the pair was running about in the gardens around the statue of Don Quixote. She came directly toward me, apparently looking for the right time to cross the street and head down into the man-made canyon where I-66 joins with the Whitehurst Freeway in front of the Kennedy Center. There was a brief moment of panic, between determining that the animal was not a stray dog and watching her cross the street, when it was very clear that the fox had no fear about coming right up to me.

On most nights a security guard is standing in or near the little station at the corner of F and 25th Streets NW. When I pointed out the vixen to the man there on Saturday night, he told me about the other fox, a much larger male, who has also been spotted in the area. He reported having had a close run-in with the male fox, which came up onto the steps and terrace around the north end of the Kennedy Center. Some families with teenagers and younger children came dangerously close to the fox, who was not at all afraid of humans, reportedly almost causing the guard's lieutenant, who carries a sidearm, to take aim at the fox and shoot. Fortunately, the fox decided to move along on its own. The guard also reported that Animal Control had been called to the Kennedy Center to assess the situation, but that the foxes -- true to their reputation in folklore -- were too sly to be seen, let alone get caught. D.C. Animal Control would not confirm any complaints having been received about foxes near the Kennedy Center.

Urban foxes are posing a problem in cities in many countries, including right here in Washington, because the animals flourish -- and grow to sizes larger than their counterparts in the wild -- on left-over scraps from humans and have no predators or dangers other than being hit by cars. Reached for comment this week, officials at the Kennedy Center were surprised to learn of the foxes, as there had been no complaints from patrons yet about the animals. John Dow, Vice President of Press, said that no one in patron services and facilities at the Kennedy Center had seen a fox. "We are inspecting the grounds for any signs of a fox den," Dow stated, joking that he would be "paying closer attention" when arriving at work in the morning.

For Your Consideration: 'The Artist'

One of my Christmas presents was Brian Kellow's biography of movie critic Pauline Kael, an enjoyable read. If Kael's critical voice represents the beginning of modern film reviewing, it is significant that she cut her critical teeth on the first talkies as a young woman in the 1930s. Kellow notes that

Pauline was most taken with the independent spirit of the smart, fast-talking heroines of screwball comedies and progressive dramas. She later observed that in the 1930s, "The girls we in the audience loved were delivering wisecracks. They were funny and lovely because they were funny. A whole group of them with wonderful frogs in their throats. They could be serious, too. There was a period in the early 30s when Claudette Colbert, Ann Harding, Irene Dunne, and other actresses were running prisons, campaigning for governor, or being doctors and lawyers." Many of these were made prior to the 1934 establishment of the Production Code, devised by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America to ensure that the screen presented a safe and sanitized view of American life (p. 12).

This is the period re-imagined in the sentimental, somewhat sappy story of The Artist, the new French film written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. It begins with a star of the silent movies, George Valentin, in the 1920s -- the prehistoric era of cinema -- played by Jean Dujardin with the slicked-back hair and broad, toothy smile of Gene Kelly. He runs across a young woman, played by Bérénice Bejo (the Argentinian-born actress who has two young children with Hazanavicius), whom he helps to become Peppy Miller, a sassy star of the new talking movies, exactly the type that Pauline Kael would have admired.

The first part of The Artist is a hokey, tongue-in-cheek evocation of the silent era, cribbed quite intentionally from Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain, down to Valentin's platinum-haired dingbat co-star (the crab-faced Missi Pyle, a spot-on simulacrum of Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont, just without the voice, mercifully), and full of references to Sunset Boulevard and A Star Is Born. The conceit of silence, and the fear of or inability to talk, is spoofed in sometimes glib ways, as The Artist is a (mostly) silent film, shot in black and white. The Gene Kelly aping is not the movie's only borrowing, not least in a score that is one long, clever bit of mimicry: Kim Novak took out a full-page advertisement in Variety accusing The Artist of "rape" for its use of some of Bernard Herrmann's music for Vertigo. (Herrmann's widow, for her part, confirmed that the film's creators did not even seek her approval for the borrowing, but she feels that her husband would have approved.) Not that there is anything wrong with such tributes, whether you think of it as borrowing or stealing, but both Singin' in the Rain and Vertigo are vastly superior movies compared to The Artist. If the rumors that The Artist is the front-runner for the Academy's Best Picture award are true -- it did receive a nomination, as expected -- it must have been a lean year for movies, indeed.

Other Reviews: Roger Ebert | NPR | Wall Street Journal | Washington Post | Maureen Dowd TIME | New York Magazine | New York Times | Los Angeles Times Christian Science Monitor | Village Voice | The New Yorker | Movie Review Intelligence

Both Dujardin and Bejo give glowing performances as the leads, a mismatched pair who help one another to weather the cruelties of Hollywood. The streets of that city are paved with the trampled dreams of countless actors, those crushed by the ever-turning Fortunae Rota in their fall from stardom, the fate that befalls George Valentin as talkies displace silent films, as well as the unnumbered masses who never made it to the top. There are numerous admirable supporting turns, from John Goodman's cigar-smoking producer, Malcolm MacDowell's cameo as a butler, James Cromwell (Babe, The Queen) as Valentin's devoted chauffeur, and Penelope Ann Miller (The Freshman, Carlito's Way) as his disaffected wife, but it is unfortunately the case in The Artist that the entire show is stolen by a dog. The adorable Jack Russell terrier named Uggie is irrepressibly cute as Valentin's canine sidekick, a performance so beloved that it has inaugurated an award called the Golden Collar. It all adds up to a film that is certainly likeable but also far from being a great or even particularly original contribution.

Joshua Bell Does It Again

French Impressions, J. Bell, J. Denk (released on January 10, 2012) Sony 88697820262 | 66'58"

Joshua Bell is one of the regulars on the Washington Performing Arts Society roster, a celebrity performer virtually guaranteed to fill the hall every other year. The American violinist's popularity with Washington audiences continues unabated, even though his recitals here are remarkably similar from year to year. This recital, on Monday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, followed the same basic formula as his WPAS appearances in 2008 and 2009: lots of ardent Romantic music from the 19th century, with some forays into the early 20th century and perhaps backward into the 18th. In my recent interview with Bell, he took issue with a question about whether he ever tired of playing the same kind of music all the time, but Bell has made a career out of his lyrical tone, as well as astounding technique. He may be interested in studying historically informed performance practice or even composing his own music, but he obviously knows on which side his bread is buttered.

The highlight of the evening was an extraordinary reading of Eugène Ysaÿe's "Sonata-Ballada," or D minor solo violin sonata (op. 27/3). Bell gave the piece a compelling narrative scope, telling a melancholy story while he mastered the daunting double-stops with flawless intonation and sure-fingered speed in the fast passages. Ysaÿe dedicated the third sonata in the set of six to violinist and composer George Enescu, but it was Bell's teacher at Indiana University, Josef Gingold, who gave the first performance, and Bell clearly understands the piece so well because of that connection. One hopes that Bell has plans to record the entire set soon.

Ravel's G major violin sonata, last admired in these pages from Dmitry Sitkovetsky in 2004, has found a fine champion in Bell, who has recorded it on his new CD with pianist Jeremy Denk. It is an aimless, enigmatic piece in many ways, the first movement content to wander through a smoky atmosphere, with a few blue notes here and there and long melodies for Bell to spin out his silvery thread of soft legato, ending on a seemingly eternal held high note that in Bell's hands took one's breath away. The second movement was a nod to the story, too good to be anything but apocryphal but repeated by Bell with good reason, that Ravel, learning of how much money Gershwin made, said perhaps he should be studying with Gershwin and not the reverse. Ravel called the second movemnt "Blues," but it is little more than a slightly bland mimicking of the jazz sounds that Gershwin used to much greater effect (although harder to appreciate in Heifetz's arrangement of Gershwin's preludes for piano, given a somewhat clunky performance by Bell after the Ravel). The third movement's "Perpetuum mobile" was a constant, buzzing stream of notes. In the piano part of this piece, completed in 1927, are the building blocks of Olivier Messiaen's mature vocabulary, in complex harmonic clusters made of extended-triad structures and even in hints of birdsong.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Music review: Joshua Bell at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, January 25) Olivia Flores, Joshua Bell Was Great; Houston's Audience Not So Much (Houston Press, January 23) Violinist Joshua Bell: 'French Impressions,' Yesterday And Today (All Things Considered, January 16) Julie Amacher, Why Is Ravel's Violin Sonata like a Croissandwich? (Minnesota Public Radio, January 11)

The rest of the program was well played and all of it beautiful listening, but one often felt that Bell was not quite getting to the bottom of it. Mendelssohn's F major violin sonata had more of Bell's plush legato, especially in the slow movement, and there was no lack of pizzazz in the outrageous third movement's many cascades of notes, but one had the sense that the piece did not always engage Bell's attention. In the ferocious piano part, one wished for a fuller partnership from pianist Sam Haywood, who was not always able to keep up with Bell's sometimes capricious movement. (More than once through the evening, one regretted the absence of Bell's regular partner, Jeremy Denk, who can be even more mercurial than the violinist.) The third violin sonata of Brahms (op. 108) had smoldering intensity, that Brahmsian sense of emotion being held inside, and plenty more of Bell's radiant tone, but the memory of the exquisite Brahms first sonata played by Augustin Hadelich last month kept coming to mind. So did Hadelich's just as virtuosic but much more poetic rendering of the piece Bell offered as an encore, Pablo de Sarasate's blistering showpiece Zigeunerweisen.

The next concert in the WPAS series is a recital by pianist Simone Dinnerstein (January 29, 7 pm), in the Music Center at Strathmore.

Reviving Monsigny

P.-A. Monsigny, Le Déserteur, Opera Lafayette, R. Brown (Naxos, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Monsigny’s “Le Roi” receives admirable revival from Opera Lafayette (The Classical Review, January 24)

Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729-1817) was a primary force in creating the genre of the opéra comique, in partnership with librettist Michel-Jean Sedaine. Monsigny did this in spite of deficits in his musical education and compositional technique. Critics of the 18th century often found his harmonic and contrapuntal skills wanting while generally admiring the freshness of his melodic imagination. After enjoying world-wide success, including export to the newly constructed stages of the New World, Monsigny’s operas were eclipsed by works in other styles and almost completely forgotten.

Almost, were it not (in part) for the work of Opera Lafayette, the historically informed performance ensemble based in Washington, D.C. The group revived Monsigny’s Le Déserteur in 2009, with a recording of the work joining the live series released by Opera Lafayette on the Naxos label. Director Ryan Brown has now turned to another of this neglected composer’s most successful works, Le Roi et le Fermier, heard Sunday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:

• Libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine
• A costume sketch for Richard
• Joe Banno, Opera Lafayette presents ‘Le Roi et le Fermier’ (Washington Post, January 23)
• Tim Smith, Opera Lafayette uncovers Monsigny work once sung by Marie-Antoinette (Baltimore Sun, January 24)

More Than Just Bassoonery

Mozart / Rossini / Kreutzer / Crusell, K. Geoghegan, BBC Philharmonic, G. Noseda (Chandos, 2010) French Bassoon Works, K. Geoghegan, P. Fisher (Chandos, 2009) Wolf-Ferrari, Orchestral Works, K. Geoghegan, BBC Philharmonic, G. Noseda (Chandos, 2009)

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Scottish bassoonist Karen Geoghegan had quite a time just getting to the Music Room of the Phillips Collection, for her recital on Sunday afternoon. Problems obtaining a U.S. visa and flight cancellations almost scuttled the event, but she eventually made it to Washington earlier that morning. It is not an easy thing for a bassoonist to make a career as a soloist, and Geoghegan owes her notoriety to an uneasy association. When she appeared, in 2007, on the BBC reality show Classical Star, someone at Chandos Records took notice and signed her to a recording deal. The intersection of popular culture and classical music may raise some eyebrows at first, but as this innovative, well-played recital showed, there is no question that Geoghegan has chops. The mechanisms that launch a talented musician into a larger career are almost always fickle, so what makes a showcase competition that much more legitimate than a trashy television show? Well, besides the obvious.

You might think that not much has been written for the solo bassoon, and in a way you would be right. Bassoonists have to be more resourceful when selecting repertoire for a recital than, say, a violinist. Bassoonists likely know all or most of the works on this recital -- and there are more on Geoghegan's recent CD of French bassoon works -- but the general listener may be surprised just how well some recent composers have written for the instrument. Interferences, by Roger Boutry, is an ingenious but also fun piece that sets the piano and bassoon in opposition, with some sections in different tempos, but also with jazzy extended harmony and some Stravinsky-esque barbaric passages. The longest piece was a full-fledged sonata by Gustav Schreck (E♭ major, op. 9), with a first movement shot through Romantic yearning and a flexible sense of rubato. In the second movement Geoghegan spun out a lovely legato line, with British pianist Timothy End, playing sensitive accompaniment, providing a tango-like background for some sections.

Schreck's third movement plays on the comic nature often ascribed to the bassoon, also featured in an even more virtuosic light in the Introduction and Polonaise, op. 9, by bassoonist and composer Carl Jacobi. While that piece impressed more by its fireworks than anything else, a few other miniatures showed the bassoon's tuneful, exotic, and even sensuous side. Elgar's Romance, op. 62, originally accompanied by orchestra but played here in a piano reduction, was a moody little bonbon, with turbulent and soaring writing for the bassoon and whiffs of cocktail piano. Henri Dutilleux has disowned his Sarabande et Cortège for bassoon and piano, from 1942, because its early style is too tonal: its delightful melodies and the absurd grotesquerie of the conclusion could be Poulenc and no less enjoyable for their lack of modernist rigor. Most surprising of all was the success of a new arrangement of Gershwin's song Summertime, published by David Arnold in 2008. Most of the tune was set in the bassoon's dulcet high register, with a surprise modulation into the middle section in which the piano takes the melody and the bassoon is given freedom to riff. The bassoon is much more than just a clown.

Fretwork's Anachronistic Goldberg Variations

J. S. Bach, Goldberg Variations, Fretwork (released on November 8, 2011) HMU 907560 | 1h30

Charles T. Downey, Bach, Goldberg Variations
The Classical Review, January 23

The sheer ingenuity of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations has led to an incalculable number of adaptations of the work for other instruments. Music this good can certainly withstand the pulling and bending of transcription, something that Bach himself did with the music of other composers.

The best of these transcriptions – the re-thinking for two pianos by Joseph Rheinberger adapted by Max Reger (recorded by Tal and Groethuysen for Sony); Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s pioneering version for string trio (Julian Rachlin, Mischa Maisky, and Nobuko Imai, Deutsche Grammophon), later enlarged, even more strikingly, for chamber orchestra (NES Chamber Orchestra, Nonesuch); the expansion for full Romantic organ by Wilhelm Middelschulte (Jürgen Sonnentheil, cpo); and even the cool-cat reworking for jazz trio by Jacques Loussier (Telarc) – update the work for more recent instrumental possibilities.

This new recording by the viol consort Fretwork, an ensemble of six viola da gamba players, does the reverse by arranging the piece for instruments that antedate the score. Bach was, of course, familiar with the viola da gamba – he wrote three sonatas for the instrument with harpsichord accompaniment (BWV 1027-1029) – but his treatment of it in the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto shows that he regarded it as an antique curiosity, one primarily included for the enjoyment of his princely employer in Köthen, who played it.

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In Brief: Taste of Snow Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Tune in today for the live Internet streaming of Verdi's Don Carlo, from Munich, with René Pape, Jonas Kaufmann, and Anja Harteros in the cast. [Bayerische Staatsoper]


• One of the greats, Gustav Leonhardt, passed away this week. Listen to a compilation of some of his performances as harpsichordist and conductor, mostly music by Bach but also by Francisco Valls, put together by France Musique. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Listen to William Christie conduct Les Arts Florissants in Handel's oratorio Jephtha, from the Salle Pleyel in Paris. [France Musique]


• Watch Andris Nelsons takes the helm of the Orchestre de Paris, performing Strauss and Beethoven's violin concerto with Sergey Khachatryan as soloist. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Have a listen to the winners of the 2011 ARD Competition in Munich and the Révélations Lyriques des Victoires musique classique 2012. [France Musique]


• As mentioned last week, it is time for the 5e Biennale du quatuor à cordes in Paris. Watch the Takàcs Quartet, joined by cellist Marc Coppey, in a concert with music by Haydn, Britten, and Schubert. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• More from the Biennale, with the Quatuor Ysaÿe playing Robert Schumann, Wolfgang Rihm, and Beethoven. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Susanna Mälkki conducts the Chœur de Radio France and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in a concert of contemporary music by Oscar Strasnoy, Berio, and Bartók from the Festival Présences 2012 at the Théâtre du Châtelet. [France Musique]


• Also from the Festival Présences 2012, a performance of Oscar Strasnoy's Ecos, 14 pièces solos, from 2009, with the Ensemble 2e2m. [France Musique]


• More music by Oscar Strasnoy (b. 1970), from the Festival Pr, with Dima Slobodeniouk conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. [France Musique]


• Conductor Igor Markevitch celebrates a centenary this year, observed by France Musique with some classic performances, including Haydn's Creation and music by Dallapiccola, Milhaud, and others. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• More string quartet goodness from Paris, with the Pražák Quartet playing more Beethoven and Rihm, with violist Vladimir Bukač. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• From Prague last spring, hear Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in music by Beethoven and Brahms, plus Henry Cowell's Synchrony, from 1929-1930, and Berg's violin concerto with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist. [France Musique]


• Listen to Paul Lewis's Schubert recital from last summer's Festival des Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg. [France Musique]


• Hear some highlights from the centennial tribute disc to French high baritone Camille Maurane. [France Musique]

The 18th Street Singers

Friday evening at Washington's First Trinity Lutheran Church, the 18th Street Singers offered a program called “In These, Our Darkest Hours” to a full house. Founded in 2004 by choral guru and Sen. Al Franken’s Legislative Director Benjamin Olinsky, the 44-voice choral ensemble brings many fresh faces to the Washington choral scene. Before plunging into the desolate wintry themes promised by the program’s title, the group sang Poulenc’s mysterious and challenging Quatre Motets Pour Le Temps de Noel. The choir held their pitch perfectly through the harmonically adventurous textures that ended merrily with “Gloria in excelsis Deo, alleluia.”

Overall the choir, singing unaccompanied, had a remarkably warm, resonant, and supported sound. The tenor and bass sections particularly had a rich, wide tone with neither edgy tension nor wobble. Their support in Mendelssohn’s Richte mich, Gott was most generous. The sound of the lower voices was so good that anything less than beautiful from the soprano and altos sections was most unfortunate, specifically scratched entrances here and there, and a general timidity in expressiveness. It was as if the soprano and alto sections' focus was weighted more toward sound production and technical considerations than musical goals beyond blending perfectly. This hindered the outcome of Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, a choral version of his Adagio for Strings, which plodded shapelessly from note to note. One must have sympathy for the physical requirements of singers in a work such as this, when most listeners are used to hearing this piece performed by the orchestral forces of the Philadelphia Orchestra string section or eternal wind of a pipe organ.

Poulenc’s Un Soir de Neige was musically fluent, with treacherous intervals depicting “frozen feet” and “dead branches.” The alto section reinforced the chill with dark tonal hues that were most fitting, although it might have been more persuasive had the text been handled in a more meaningful way. It did not help the flow of the concert that the music was interrupted by absolutely incessant verbal program notes by no fewer than four people.

The rest of the program consisted of English language spirituals, folk songs, and most interestingly, the U2 song MLK ("Sleep, sleep tonight / And may your dreams be realized / If the thundercloud passes rain / So let it rain / Rain down on him / So let it be"). The clean-cut look of the musicians, all seemingly in their 20s and 30s, makes one assume that their membership cut their teeth singing a cappella in their Ivy days. MLK, with poetic soloists, inspired a tenderness from the chorus that was most moving. Keep your eye out for the 18th Street Singers as they continue to make a name for themselves.

This concert will be repeated tonight (January 21, 7:30 pm), at First Trinity Lutheran Church (501 4th St. NW).

Gaffigan Keeps It Nice

Beethoven, Sonatas 8, 17, 23, I. Fliter S. Lindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto

It is possible to enjoy a concert with no superlatives, a concert that is good, pleasing, entertaining -- just not extraordinary. Such was my reaction to last night's concert by the National Symphony Orchestra, a mostly solid performance that had little to challenge or excite and equally little to dislike. Perhaps it was having to follow a very exciting concert, last week's zinger with Hannu Lintu and Leila Josefowicz, and perhaps it was lackluster programming.

James Gaffigan is a promising young conductor who made a promising NSO debut in 2010. He bookended this program with Mozart, a crisp and chirpy Divertimento in D major, K. 136, and the fallback Mozart symphony, the "Jupiter" (C major, K. 551). Working with reduced numbers of strings, Gaffigan helped the NSO produce carefully shaped lines and a pleasing range of dynamics and colors. Motifs, especially as they piled up in the last movement of the "Jupiter," were all carefully etched in place. His tempos were often pulse-racing, causing more than a few out-of-focus moments in violin runs but also giving an edge to the often-soporific slow movement of the "Jupiter." It may have been a little polite, but it was also perky, mostly polished, and elegant Mozart -- nice enough but nothing to write home about.

Washingtonians hear a lot from Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter, who appears in the area regularly in recitals, the last one just this past fall, and with orchestras, most recently with the NSO in 2010. She returned to the NSO with Schumann's A minor piano concerto, op. 54, a piece whose popularity seems greater than it deserves (although I was surprised to learn that it was last heard from the NSO way back in 2001). Schumann composed the work for his wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, a formidable virtuoso who encouraged him to compose pieces for orchestra, although orchestration was never his forte. As scholar Stephan Lindeman has pointed out, Schumann's work as a critic and music journalist informed this tackling of an old genre: prior to writing his own concerto, Schumann had listened to and critiqued -- and found wanting -- a vast number of other composers' attempts at this kind of piece. He had also spent years beginning and abandoning his own concertos in various forms, all carefully catalogued by Lindeman.

Neither Fliter nor Gaffigan did much to improve my opinion of the piece, although Fliter gave Romantic poignancy to each thought in the solo part, with a sense of rubato that, typical of her performances, wandered to its own individual pulse. There were few technical shortcomings, but the interpretative edge of a fiery, virtuosic daring was mostly lacking. Gaffigan, in keeping with his well-mannered approach to Mozart, kept the orchestra below Fliter's often introspective dynamic level. In the second movement, the longing melodies in the cellos and other parts of the orchestra seemed to pass largely unnoticed by Fliter, who played much of the solo like an interior monologue. Here, as in the Mozart, there were shortcomings of intonation (principally in the winds) and in rhythmic ensemble in the orchestra. Gaffigan gives the impression of a collaborative sort of conductor, which can either inspire solidarity and ownership of collective sound in an ensemble or encourage individual or sectional waywardness. The latter seemed the case during most of this performance.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, James Gaffigan leads National Symphony in odd, unsatisfying program (Washington Post, January 20)

The only unexpected departure was the U.S. premiere of Fluss ohne Ufer (River without shore), a piece by German composer Detlev Glanert co-commissioned by the NSO. It recycles evocative marine-oriented music from Glanert's opera Das Holzschiff (The Wooden Ship), premiered in 2010. The work flows and ebbs from the distant tolling of tubular bells, and its operatic origin give the work a natural narrative quality, growing and receding through a range of evocative orchestral textures. The style is alternatively expressionistic and dissonant, showing the influence of Glanert's most important teacher, Hans Werner Henze, and more tonal, with the oboes flirting chromatically with Wagner's Tristan theme, for example, and some more impressionistic sections recalling Debussy and Ravel. It is an atmospheric work with some evocative qualities that appeal but that ultimately does not add up to much.

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow evening (January 20 and 21, 8 pm), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Latest from Trio Settecento

A French Soirée, Trio Settecento (released on November 15, 2011) Cedille CDR 90000 129 | 78'55"

Charles T. Downey, Trio Settecento: A French Soirée
The Classical Review, January 20

Rachel Barton Pine has made a name for herself as a soloist in the big Romantic violin concertos, in concert and on disc, but she stands out from other violinists of her generation for her willingness to play music off the beaten path.

She has made recordings of lesser-known concertos by Franz Clément and Joseph Joachim, for example, pairing them with more famous contemporaneous repertoire warhorses by Beethoven and Brahms respectively. Her latest solo disc, Capricho Latino, is a recital of Spanish and Latin American music for unaccompanied violin, some of it adapted from pieces originally created for other instruments, including the guitar. She also plays in a heavy metal band, of all things.

At a concert of French music from the grand siècle, in Washington last year, I learned of Barton Pine’s interest in Baroque music. With John Mark Rozendaal on viola da gamba and David Schrader on harpsichord, she formed Trio Settecento in 1996, an ensemble devoted to 17th- and 18th-century music. That concert program informed this third recording by the group and follows earlier discs of Italian and German music, all on the Cedille Records label.

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Graham Johnson, Not Lost in Translation

Leave it to the veteran pianist and vocal accompanist Graham Johnson, author of a brilliant lecture-performance of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin last year, to create yet another alluring recital of songs. As part of a Vocal Arts D.C. recital next Thursday, bringing together songs by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, and Strauss with German soprano Lydia Teuscher in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (January 26, 7:30 pm -- see below for a half-priced ticket offer), Johnson will lead a brief guided tour of the ways that 19th-century German song was inspired by English literature. Known for his savant and appealing song recordings, devoted to many composers, as well as worthy recital-lecture programs here in Washington, the urbane Johnson rarely disappoints. He kindly responded by e-mail this week, to share his thoughts on the subject of his newest program and how it came about in his mind.

When coming up with programming concepts, Johnson said, "It is always best to start with a core of repertoire already learnt and build outwards from there." He continued: "When I was discussing repertoire with Lydia Teuscher and she mentioned her fondness for Haydn and Mendelssohn I immediately remembered these were two composers with strong English links. We went from there." Shakespeare, of course, was widely known in Europe in the 19th century, and Germany was no exception (Haydn's She never told her love, taken from Twelfth Night, and Schubert's Ständchen (Horch, horch die Lerch), based on Cymbeline are on the program), but beyond that? "I think it is sometimes forgotten what an important part English literature played in influencing German writers, and this is inevitably also reflected in Lieder texts," Johnson replied. "A number of German poets, like Hölty, for example, were proficient in English because they had gone to university in German towns ruled by the Hanoverian English kings, like George III, who was simultaneously King of England and Elector of Hanover. These universities offered bilingual courses in literature." After the American revolution was past and Napoleon had fallen, he added, "the sense of the English ascendancy became even stronger and Britain seemed very glamorous to smaller countries, perhaps similar to the cultural and political sway of the United States in the present-day world."

Songs of Robert Schumann I, Christine Schäfer, Graham Johnson Songs of Johannes Brahms I, Angelika Kirchschlager, Graham Johnson Hyperion Schubert Edition 1, Janet Baker, Graham Johnson

"Shakespeare was already counted a world figure in the German-speaking world of Haydn's time thanks to Herder and the younger Goethe," Johnson pointed out. "The amazingly faithful translations by August von Schelgel (and then completed by Ludwig Tieck) of all the plays were to set the seal on this reputation. Schubert's interest was aroused by the participation of his close friend Eduard von Bauerneld in the Wiener Shalkespeare Ausgabe, another edition in 1826." Beyond Shakespeare, there are songs, in English or translated into German, by other English poets on this concert, among them the lesser-known poet Anne Hunter, represented in two songs by Haydn on the program, A Pastoral Song and The Mermaid's Song. "She was the wife of the famous surgeon Sir John Hunter," Johnson informed me, "whom Haydn allowed to operate on his nasal polyp before wisely backing out at the last minute." Anne Hunter was one of Haydn's hostesses in London during his visit in 1795-96, and "the composer's settings of her poems are a kind of gallantry and repayment of hospitality.

Finally, there was Sir Walter Scott, whose works were "simply a world craze," notes Johnson. Schubert set three songs sung by Ellen in Scott's The Lady of the Lake, as well as a setting of the Lied der Anne Lyle (a poem by Andrew MacDonald that was quoted Scott). Two of the Ellen songs (Ellens zweiter Gesang (Jäger ruhe von der Jagd) and Ellens dritter Gesang (Ave Maria) will be heard on this recital. Schubert may have taken his interest in Scott from his most famous interpreter, the retired opera singer Johann Michael Vogl, who "delighted to read these works in the English original," Johnson wrote. "In my mind," he continued, "there is no doubt that Schubert's decision to set poems from Scott'e epic poem The Lady of the Lake was due to the huge success in Vienna at the time of Rossini's opera based on the same poem, La Donna del Lago."

We often think of the German Lied as a genre in which English-speaking singers work so hard to achieve the right diction and pronunciation, but Johnson also sees it as something that has important connections to the English-speaking world. "The difference today perhaps is that whereas all young Germans must learn English as an obligatory subject in their schools and study the language for many years," Johnson observes, "there is a large decrease in British and American schools of the teaching of foreign languages. At the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries the study of the German language was a favorite subject" in the United States, even more so than in Great Britain. "Longfellow's translations of poems into English from German and other languages were once one of the glories of American literature," Johnson continued. The two World Wars, he added, did "immense damage" to Germany's cultural reputation in the U.S. although the reverse is not necessarily true. "Huge numbers of translations of living English and American authors are still made for the German market, which is famously open to the literature of other countries," Johnson observed. By contrast, he went on, "as a German you have to be a Mann, Hesse, Böll or Grass to get similar attention from the English and American market, or a huge best-seller like the German Patrick Susskind with his novel Perfume."

Vocal Arts D.C. presents this recital by Lydia Teuscher and Graham Johnson next Thursday (January 26, 7:30 pm) in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (January 26, 7:30 pm). Ionarts readers are encouraged to take advantage of an offer of half-priced tickets, available for $20 instead of the normal $45, to this concert. Use the code "VADC20" when you order tickets by phone or in person from the Kennedy Center Box Office, at (202) 467-4600.

Mariinsky Ballet Samples Fokine

Chopiniana, choreography by Michel Fokine, Mariinsky Ballet

The Mariinsky Ballet's annual visits to the Kennedy Center Opera House always warm up the winter months. The St. Petersburg company is in town again this week, sadly without its outstanding étoile Diana Vishneva, but with a sampler of one-act choreographies by Michel Fokine. Called Les Saisons Russes, the trilogy evokes the season of new works presented by Diaghilev in Paris with his company Les Ballets Russes, as Fokine worked both at the Mariinsky and for Diaghilev in Paris. It made for a long evening in the theater, about three hours with two intermissions, but the productions are all lovely and the dancing very good, if without any individual performance to make it extraordinary.

The first work, Chopiniana, was created in 1908 to Alexander Glazunov's suite of orchestrations of piano pieces by Chopin, and it comes as near as one likely could to the perfect classical ballet, all of the beauty of a ballet blanc, with some astounding solos, but abstract and plot-less, without any of the character development and pantomime one would normally need to get through to reach the good stuff. Fokine reworked the piece for Diaghilev's company, under the title Les Sylphides, in 1909. The women of the corps de ballet form a graceful backdrop to the main action, which involves a poet's contemplation of beauty in the form of three female solos. The Mariinsky corps was up to its fine standards, if not quite as absolutely unified as we have seen in previous appearances. They stood in place for long periods of time, frozen like statues or trees in arranged copses or groves, their outstretched arms, like branches, sometimes fluttering or bending in the wind (lots of graceful port de bras), then coming to life as women. As the poet, Igor Kolb lived up to his name as one of only three principal dancers on this tour, graceful and so strong in the many lifts, executed with precision and unflagging confidence.

Ekaterina Kondaurova as the Firebird, Mariinsky Ballet

Fokine's extraordinary choreography for Stravinsky's The Firebird, premiered by Diaghilev in 1910 in Paris, forms the centerpiece, and with the delectable bon-bon of Chopiniana it is more than enough reason to see this production. In a reconstruction by Isabelle Fokine and Andris Liepa, it has a gorgeous, colorful set lit by black light and other colors, and delightful costumes (sets and costumes by Anna and Anatoly Nezhny). First soloist Ekaterina Kondaurova was charming as the Firebird, all avian jerks and twitches of head and arms, spotlit in her prismatic, feathered costume (Miss Ionarts spent a lot of time staring at the version on display at the entrance to the theater) by an orange-red bloom of light. Fokine included many delightful folk elements in the choreography, not least in the scene with the witches and monsters summoned by Kashchei to fight the Tsarevich, a bristling rampage of hunched figures that scared Miss Ionarts to death, as did the loping, skull-masked Kashchei of character dancer Soslan Kulaiev. Alexander Romanchikov was forthright and handsome as the Tsarevich, and there were many bewitching special effects, including rolling fog, a flashing firebird that shot across the back of the stage before Kondaurova's first entrance, and lightning flashes.

Fokine's Schéhérazade, premiered by the Ballets Russes in 1910, is not in the same category as the other two selections, although it is a pleasing, sultry evocation of a fantasy of the oriental harem. While the Sultan Shahriyar is away hunting, Zobeide and his other slaves and concubines get up to no good, leading to quite a slaughter when he returns to find them mid-orgy. Not much of the choreography is all that memorable, full of so many cliches that it approaches the level of parody, but here the star pair was definitely worth watching, principal dancers Uliana Lopatkina and Daniil Korsuntsev as Zobeide and her slave, who gave the choreography all of the erotic longing and fulfillment it needed. Fokine selected from and rearranged, somewhat clumsily, the symphonic score by Rimsky-Korsakov, to make it fit the somewhat soap-operatic story, and the seams show. In the pit, the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra sounded a little disorganized and under-rehearsed (the hand of conductor Alexey Repnikov not always so clear), especially in the many rubato slow-downs and speed-ups of Chopiniana, with the strongest, most unified sound in what is probably the most familiar score, The Firebird. Concertmaster Oleg Rylatko had a passionate, if not always perfectly tuned sound on the iconic violin solos of the Rimsky-Korsakov score.

This production continues through January 22, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Casting changes with each performance and is always subject to last-minute changes. You can compare the dancers listed by the Kennedy Center Web site with this roster from the Mariinsky Ballet.

SVILUPPO:
Jacqueline Trescott, Reston’s Keenan Kampa to join Mariinksy Ballet (Washington Post, January 19)

Sarah Kaufman, Mariinsky Ballet shines in Fokine program (Washington Ballet, January 19)

---, Mariinsky Ballet’s Fokine works: History revisited (Washington Post, January 14)