Sonia Wieder-Atherton Sings of the East

Chants d'Est, Sinfonia Varsovia, S. Wieder-Atherton (released on April 28, 2009) Naïve V 5178 | 61'37"

Cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has made a niche for herself by avoiding the well-trodden paths of celebrity cellists, although her credentials -- Russian conservatory studies, lessons with Mstislav Rostropovich, a Mention at the Third Rostropovich Competition in 1986 (the year that Gary Hoffman won the Grand Prize and Jean-Guihen Queyras won the Prix Jeanne Marx) -- could have set her on that trajectory. A perusal of her concert schedule shows that she plays a lot of interesting chamber music, programs a lot of contemporary music on her solo concerts, and plays the occasional concerto, mostly ones written in the 20th century, with orchestras here and there. A few years ago we wrote about one of her collaborations with filmmaker Chantal Akerman, providing music that went with a screening of Akerman's film D'Est, and one of the cellist's abiding interests has been in music of Russia and central Europe, especially with Jewish roots.

Wieder-Atherton has been performing music from her new CD of Slavic music, Chants d'Est, in Europe, but with an ensemble other than the Sinfonia Varsova heard on the disc. In a One on One interview for Playbill Arts, Wieder-Atherton said that she conceived the program as "a journey of 24 hours," beginning with an arrangement of the Nunc dimittis from Rachmaninov's Vespers (so, a journey that begins in the darkness of late evening, I guess). The regions and peoples visited in this nocturnal peregrination include Hungary (Dohnányi's Ruralia Hungarica), Russia and Ukraine (Tcherepnin's Tatar Dance and Prokofiev's devastating The Field of the Dead from Alexander Nevsky), and Czechoslovakia (Franck Krawczyk's adaptations of Janáček's Moravian Folksongs and Martinů's Variations on a Slovak Folksong). The predominating mood is somber, imbued with a depressive gloom, culminating in the contemplation of total separation from life, in a moving, tender adaptation of Mahler's song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. It is a gorgeous CD for quiet listening, with smooth, emotionally expansive playing from the Sinfonia Varsovia, conducted in some tracks by Christophe Mangou.

Sonia Wieder-Atherton and the Niguna Ensemble will perform selections from this disc on their program at Le Poisson Rouge in New York this Monday (November 23, 7:30 pm).

Reviewed, Not Necessarily Recommended: Symphonies by Rudolph Simonsen

R.H.Simonsen, Symphonies 1 & 2, Overture in g, Israel Ynon / Sønderjylands SO cpo 777229 (70:52) .com .co.uk .de .fr

Rudolph Hermann Simonsen was born in Denmark on April 30^th, 1889. After a career of composing and teaching—music history and piano at the Royal Danish Conservatory—he became the successor to Carl Nielsen as the Conservatory’s principal. He had an evangelical zeal for spreading classical music among the people, which he attempted with lectures throughout the country and on the radio, articles, and books.

Simonsen greatly admired German culture, so when the Nazi regime assumed power—which meant that the Jew Simonsen and his family had to flee to Sweeden—he suffered a blow from sheer disillusionment. A blow, we are told, from whcih he never recovered after returning to his native Denmark, where he died in 1947, aged 58.

Between 1920 and 1925 Simonsen wrote four symphonies, which are titled “Zion”, “Hellas”, “Roma”, and “Denmark”. The first three are tributes to Jewish, Greek, and Roman culture and form a triptych. “Zion” and “Hellas”, three movements each, are included on the present disc with the Søderjyllands Symfoniorkester (providing concerts throughout Jutland, the part of Denmark attached to the continent) and the 1910 Overture in g is thrown in, too. The unusually lucid liner notes (not van den Hoogen’s, CPO’s regular contributor, and thankfully not in their damnable translations) mention Nielsen, but also Sibelius and Wagner as the main inspirations. Carl Nielsen is an obvious influence for the “Zion” Symphony (which he conducted at its premiere) with its movements “Against Slavery”, “The Promise”, and Allegro con brio.

My initial enthusiasm—“a second Bruckner!”—has cooled a little since first hearing these discs. The “Promise” movement, for example, grinds down to a pretty dark, dull vision of the future before a more pastoral mood lifts it from gloom at around the 10-minute mark. There is some tedium and a few very put-on Jewish-ish colors that benefit from patience during the nearly 19 minutes the movement lasts. The following Allegro is a more engaging conclusion to the work that Artutro Toscanini once expressed interest in. (Can you imagine him in rehearsal: “Is-a not Moses, is-a not Ramses… Is ‘Allegro con brio’”)

The Hellas Symphony, a wonderfully curious aside, got Simonsen a bronze medal at the 1928 Olympic Game. In that neither a gold- nor silver-medalist nor even another bronze-medalist was named in the three composition categories “Song”, “One Instrument”, and “Orchestra”, he could be said to have came in first. Until 1948 Art was part of the Olympics, with medals given in categories (and subcategories) of Architecture, Literature, Painting/Graphic Art, Sculpture, and Music—so long as they were somehow related to the Olympics.

Silver sounds about right: that portentous work doesn’t strike me as a gold medalist, either. The symphony is motif-heavy (and the motifs heavy) and solidly constructed. It even has touching moments like the strings of the “Loneliness in front of the Temples” movement that sweeps up with the feel of a Mahler Adagio and continues with a cool lament of the woodwinds and flutes. But the moments in which I remain fully engaged around the 10^th time listening to the work continue to decrease, not increase. My sense why I remain unconvinced by these two symphonies is a vague one, and therefore my description remains vague, too. I only know that the performances cannot be faulted.

The G minor overture, finally, is a wholly enticing 14 minutes of grandeur; probably the reason for my Bruckner analogy in the first place… melodic and sweeping bombast of the finest order and nothing to be vague, only enthusiastic, about.

To Hear Tonight: Vogler Quartet

Zimro: A Broken Concert Tour, Vogler Quartet, C. Halevi, J. Nemtsov

Berlin's Vogler Quartet will perform some of the compositions revived for its Zimro Project in a concert this evening in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Zimro, a Hebrew word that means singing, is taken from the name of a St. Petersburg clarinet sextet, devoted to the performance of works by the New Jewish School in Russia, all with connections to Jewish folk music (and touted, therefore, by Jens Laurson at WETA for its Mahler-illumining possibilities). Sergei Prokofiev, taken with one of the Zimro sextet's performances he heard, wrote his melody-rich Overture on Hebrew Themes for them, and the Vogler Quartet's concert will open with it. It is the first work on the group's excellent Zimro CD, released last year on Hänssler Classic's SWR label, and the concert will include two other pieces from the album, Grigori Krejn's moody Prelude and selected movements from Joseph Achron's Children's Suite, a series of evocative, delightful scenes from the lives of children. The concert tonight is not an exact copy of the CD, however, as Alexander Fiterstein is the scheduled clarinetist (the pianist will be the same, Jascha Nemtsov), and the evening will conclude with Julius Chajes' Hebrew Suite and Osvaldo Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, for klezmer clarinet and string quartet.

Tickets are available for this evening's concert (7:30 pm) at the Terrace Theater. Qualify for a slight discount ($25 instead of $32) if you mention Promotion Code 45484 when you order your tickets, either online or at the box office.

Alfred Brendel Speaks

This article is an Ionarts exclusive.

Alfred Brendel, On Music: Collected Essays Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas, A. Brendel Alfred Brendel: The Farewell Concerts

Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel may have retired from performing last year, but he continues to share his thoughts about music. Already known during his performing years as an intelligent commentator on music, Brendel has been touring the United States this month, presenting a lecture version of his essay On Character in Music, focusing mostly on the sonatas of Beethoven, with the support of Washington Performing Arts Society. After a brief delay to allow the capacity crowd to filter through the security check at the door, Brendel appeared on the dais of the Austrian Embassy on Monday night, turning periodically from his text, read with the aid of the embassy's not always reliable amplification system, to the Bösendorfer to play some brilliantly chosen musical examples. The excerpts were from a wide range of Beethoven's sonatas, bookended by selections from the work of a composer much closer to Beethoven than some listeners might think, Arnold Schoenberg.

Several complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas are being performed in Washington at the moment, from Till Fellner and François-Frédéric Guy (a marathon nine-day performance, concluding this Sunday), as well as local versions by Yuliya Gorenman (ongoing at American University) and Anne Koscielny (ongoing at Howard Community College), leading Anne Midgette to ask the question, What do the Beethoven sonatas mean? in the Washington Post. So, it was a helpful way to organize one's thoughts about the Beethoven sonatas to hear Brendel, who has performed the complete cycle himself, quite famously, speak about how he views the contrasts of the sonatas. He spoke of various attempts -- by historians, aesthetic philosophers, and musicians -- to analyze how Beethoven used the different aspects of music (more than just tempo) to tell a story, some more plausible than others. How can one reliably understand what Beethoven's various gestures might mean, especially in so many cases when the composer left no indication of his intentions?

As Brendel sees it, the clues are mostly right there in the scores themselves. He referred to some sources, mostly writings by or attributed to Beethoven, but he also went so far as to dismiss some extra-musical information often treated as reliable, most famously Anton Schindler's recollection that sonata no. 17 (op. 31, no. 2) was best understood in reference to Shakespeare's The Tempest (Tovey and many other historians and later writers led the way in this dismissal of Schindler's interpretations). Brendel spoke of many of the characters he identified in his own interpretation of the sonatas: dancing, singing, speaking, as well as four that he identified with the four elements of fire, water, air, and earth.

Other Reviews: Jeffrey Johnson, Pianist Alfred Brendel Gives Master Class On The 'Character In Music' — And His Own (Hartford Courant, November 13) Timothy Mangan, What makes music beautiful? Alfred Brendel knows (Orange County Register, October 27)

If there were any musician whose intuition about Beethoven I would probably trust, it would be Alfred Brendel, and it is a shame that the event conflicted with François-Frédéric Guy's ongoing performance of the Beethoven sonata cycle at La Maison Française, because Brendel's lecture was an excellent sort of road map to the monumental journey Guy is on at the moment. Ultimately though, as with all abstract instrumental music, the search for this kind of meaning in the absence of words or more concrete information is highly subjective and speculative. One is not obliged to hear the sonatas in the same way as Alfred Brendel, but one could certainly do a lot worse.

The next event sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society is the keenly anticipated multimedia concert by Leif Ove Andsnes (November 20, 7:30 pm), combining a performance of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition with projected images by South African visual artist Robin Rhode, at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Kennedy Center Chamber Players

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The Kennedy Center Chamber Players never disappoint, and Sunday afternoon in their first appearance this season at the Terrace Theater, they presented an exceedingly fine concert of music by Fauré and Tchaikovsky. The group strikes a balance between collective musical ownership and the guidance of a single leader -- the ever graceful, but strong Nurit Bar-Josef. The opening theme of the first piece, Fauré’s Quartet No. 1 in C minor, is declared right away in unison by the strings -- an immediate pronouncement of the Chamber Players’ tight ensemble playing -- offset by thick chords in the piano on the offbeats. Pianist Lambert Orkis, in his extended solo parts, showed his ability to create strikingly long phrases and not give in to the seasick back and forth style of phrasing (which is certainly appropriate in some instances). He was truly unaffected, and for this style of late 19th-century French music, it was perfect. However, notes were dropped in many of the technically demanding spots that required flitting back and forth and spanning of the whole keyboard (although it certainly did not help that he was turning his own pages).

The second movement was brilliant: a showcasing of the pianist, whose part is ever quick and nymph-like in its devilish delicacy. Orkis handled the part beautifully, and the accompanying pizzicatos in the strings were in tune and together. The false ending in the scherzo is a delightful quirk that is immediately followed by similar music in the piano, but the strings at this moment are different. Subdued and again in an accompanying role, the strings were unadorned and without vibrato, which created an ethereal sound since the players tuned so well. The opening of the third movement highlighted the group’s dynamic as an ensemble: the movement starts with a single line in the cello, seamlessly joined by the other strings, sounding all the while as one voice that is simply growing in strength.

Without their violist, Daniel Foster, the ensemble went on to something different in the second half of the program, Tchaikovsky’s Trio in A minor. The opening piano starts from nothing and sets the stage for the cello, played by the formidable David Hardy, who then passed his theme without effort to Josef. The first movement, Pezzo elegiaco, a broad sonata form, is almost rhapsodic in the ground it covers and in a seemingly irregular form. At one point, the first violin trailed off hauntingly before a slow middle theme, which was stunning in its mournful temperament. The second movement is a gigantic theme and variations, whose theme is a pastoral, simple melody begun in the piano. Imitated by the violin and cello, the music’s breadth then encompasses everything from that rich Russian fire to more folk-like sounds. The ensemble easily went from one thematic material to the next and, pulling out all the stops, summoned that overly Romantic, Russian tugging-of-heartstrings sound to bring the piece to an exciting close.

The next concert by the Kennedy Center Chamber Players (January 10, 2010, 2 pm) will feature a program of three Brahms sonatas (violin, viola, and cello) with piano.

François-Frédéric Guy Ascends the Mountain

Read my review today in the actual Washington Post, the thing printed on paper:

François-Frédéric Guy (photo by Guy Vivien) -- extra credit for anyone who can identify the location

Charles T. Downey, François-Frédéric Guy
Washington Post, November 16, 2009

François-Frédéric Guy began a complete traversal of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas on Friday night at La Maison Française. The schedule of nine concerts over nine days, with a two-day break in the middle, is an epic feat of concentration and endurance, and that is just for the listener. Guy played the Beethoven cycle twice last year, in Monaco and Paris, in the same, mostly chronological sequence. That ordering creates, in his words, an "immense crescendo," a stylistically driven motor that powers him through the exhausting task.

In keeping with that idea of developmental accretion, Guy began the cycle with a soft, understated performance of the three sonatas of Op. 2. It was Beethoven imbued with many subtle colors and lyric phrasing, drawn from the pianist's poetic fantasy, often with a quiet rumbling of inner melancholy. In the mixing of his color palette, Guy relied perhaps too much on the sustaining pedal, blurring the trio of the rather fast third movement in No. 1, for example, into a cloud. [Continue reading]

François-Frédéric Guy, piano
Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Complete Cycle, Concert 1
La Maison Française

FFG Beethoven: Piano Sonatas 8/19/29 Naïve V 5023 Piano Concertos 1/5 Naïve V 5084 Piano Concerto 4 / Piano-Wind Quintet Naïve V 5148 Piano Concerto 2/3 Naïve V 5179

François-Frédéric Guy’s more or less numerically ordered cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas is intended to reach its apogee at the end of the “crescendo,” the last two concerts this coming Friday and Saturday. Guy’s acclaimed 2006 recording of some of the later Beethoven sonatas gives an idea of what to expect, a much more explosive approach than the restrained, delicate sounds heard on Friday night. The infamous op. 106 (‘Hammerklavier’), which will conclude the November 21 concert, is one of Guy’s obsessions: he made his first recording of the work a decade earlier and does not deny that he will likely record it again later in life. Guy’s interpretation foams at the mouth more than Till Fellner’s graceful take on the ‘Hammerklavier’ at the Austrian Embassy last May, but without devolving into a performance merely about forceful attack as heard from Valentina Lisitsa at the National Museum of Women in the Arts around the same time.

The transitional phase of the cycle, the beginning of the crescendo, has likely already begun, judging by Guy’s chiaroscuro recording of no. 8 (op. 13, ‘Pathétique’), an almost violent opposition of light and darkness in terms of dynamic choices. A performance of no. 7 at the Corcoran in 2006 showed a similar unpredictability in choice of tempo especially. The piano brought in for these concerts at La Maison Française, a brightly voiced but versatile Yamaha, plays right to this kind of interpretation. In any case, it is not too late to hear the majority of this extraordinary pianistic undertaking, and what remains will likely be the most noteworthy parts of the experience, beginning this evening:

November 16, 7 pm (Nos. 16-18, includes ‘The Tempest’)
November 17, 7 pm (Nos. 15, 19-21, includes ‘Pastorale’ and ‘Waldstein’)
November 20, 7 pm (Nos. 22-26, includes ‘Appassionata’ and ‘Les Adieux’)
November 21, 7 pm (Nos. 27-29, includes ‘Hammerklavier’)
November 22, 4 pm (Nos. 30-32)

Guy has also made a complete recording of the Beethoven piano concertos, in three discs released over the past couple years: Naïve has announced plans to release a box set this coming January. For these releases he has partnered with Philippe Jordan (one of each of their hands is shown on the covers of the three discs) and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and they have been performing the entire cycle at Paris's Salle Pleyel, beginning last February and set to conclude next June. Jordan, a Zurich-trained pianist and conductor, got his start as assistant conductor to some big names like Jeffrey Tate and Daniel Barenboim, and he has appeared as a guest conductor with many orchestras around the world and with the Berlin Staatsoper.

Starting this season Jordan is the new music director of the Opéra national de Paris, "replacing" Sylvain Cambreling, the (heavily criticized) favorite of Gerard Mortier, who was never actually appointed to the position (it had remained vacant since the departure of James Conlon in 2004). Philippe, now 35 years old, is the son of Armin Jordan, one-time conductor of Geneva's Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Their Beethoven concertos are worthy, in spite of fierce competition both present and past (a longer series of posts to consider the full field is in the offing), made more attractive by the inclusion of a little-known quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon (E-flat major, op. 16) on the second disc, where it is paired with the fourth concerto.

In Brief: We Love Proust Edition

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

• Ha ha, Germaine Greer is ignorant and wants you to be, too. Actually, by the end of her diatribe, it sounds like she actually does want you to read Proust. [The Guardian]


• With hat tip to Bookslut, this online round table about The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky's novel and Janacek's opera, coinciding with the Met's first production of the opera. (I have been listening to the premiere, from Thursday night, recorded on my Sirius Stiletto radio. It was by all reports the resounding success it deserved to be.) [New York Times]


• Via Maud Newton, the word on some new English translations of Maupassant. [London Review of Books]


• The importance of gay couples as potential arts and classical music donors. [Boston Globe]


• Gidon Saks was one of the best parts of the Washington National Opera's recent performance of Götterdämmerung: don't miss his interesting interview with Anne Midgette this week. [Washington Post]


• Trying to predict, as some are doing, what living composers will be most widely played in 50 years' time is folly. Would anyone in Vienna in 1900 have been able to predict how often the symphonies of Gustav Mahler would be played in that city fifty or one hundred years later? Norman Lebrecht and lots of other people give it a shot. [Slipped Disc]


• Blogger Alex Baker appears to be in Washington for the long term? Welcome to the District! [Wellsung]

Ionarts-at-Large: Sibelius in San Francisco

Robert R. Reilly was out West and reports from San Francisco.

On Friday evening, November 13th, there was good news and bad news at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s concert, led by the able guest conductor Semyon Bychkov at Davies Symphony Hall. The bad news was that the rare opportunity to hear the seldom-programmed Schumann Cello Concerto was lost because French cellist Gautier Capucon was indisposed. The good news—assuming you like Ravel—was that Pavane pour une infante defunte and La Valse were the substitutes.

The concert began with Henri Dutilleux’s Metaboles. If Dutilleux (b. 1916) was, as the program notes claim, attempting “to escape the influence of Ravel,” whose music he loves, we can be grateful that he did not entirely succeed. Metaboles still sounds impressionistic in its refined, transparent textures and sound world. One is simply less sure of what the music is an impression of: A series of floating gestures and textures, untethered from any specific thing, only occasionally melding together into something (thematically) recognizable. Bychkov notably detected the long line in this music, even where I didn’t and that made the piece far more arresting in this concert than it has been for me from my familiarity with it on Yan Pascal Tortelier’s Chandos CD. Bychkov was rhythmically astute; the orchestra was completely on point in all departments; and together they achieved a superb crescendo at the conclusion.

Next came a lovely rendition of the Pavane, and then La Valse. The various orchestral sections underneath the evolving waltz in La Valse bubbled delectably. Bychkov and the SFO, imbued with a sense of fun, toyed with waltz rhythms in a way that caused smiles throughout the audience. The playing was suitably nuanced and the build to the apotheosis at the conclusion brilliantly done. Not just considering what must have been minimal rehearsal time, this was a crowd pleaser from a virtuoso orchestra that clearly enjoyed what it was doing so well with a conductor with whom it was in complete rapport. Now if only they had played the Ravel before the Dutilleux to help put in perspective what Dutilleux was trying to do in his attempt to escape Ravel’s influence.

Carl Nielsen, Symphony No.5 & Concertos et al., Blomstedt / SFS Decca .com .co.uk .de .fr

The second half of the program was the Sibelius Fifth Symphony. It is the main reason I came, since this is the composition that ignited my rampage through classical music several decades ago. The SFO earned a reputation for Sibelius when Herbert Blomstedt was its conductor, and my expectations were high. Their recordings of the 7 Symphonies for Decca had achieved near-mythical status, going for triple digits on Amazon before they were finally re-issued in a convenient box set. My concert experiences with the Fifth—notably with Sir Alexander Gibson in the 1980s and Lorin Maazel in the 1990s— have generally been good, too. Among more recordings than I care to admit to my wife, my favorite remains the one that first riveted me—Leonard Bernstein’s with the New York Philharmonic (Sony).

As he was composing his Fifth Symphony, Sibelius wrote, “I begin to see the mountain that I shall surely ascend. God opens his door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” Without knowing that Sibelius had said this, that is what I heard and experienced in my first encounter with this work. It shook me. Sibelius is dealing with the forces of Nature and of Nature’s God from which they come. He grasped the harmony of the spheres, and played it for us. The right reaction is one of awe, if not something approximating terror, at the approach of the transcendent. The interpretive danger is to humanize this music, to succumb to its beauties. Beauty should be a by-product of this work, not its center. Sir John Barbirolli had an occasional tendency to get swamped by Sibelius’s beauty, while Bernstein captured its glacial remoteness and complete majesty.

Bychkov and the SFO delved into the deep sense of mystery and excitement in the first movement. The strings were breathtakingly good in their runs. The main theme got precisely the heft it needed. Though Bychkov leaned a bit in the Barbirolli direction of beautification, the work can withstand a less than Nordic approach. In fact, it glowed under Bychkov’s baton and skirted any sense of softness. My lofty expectations were met—except in the last movement where Bychkov sacrificed some grandeur for beauty... not an advantageous exchange in my book. Nonetheless, it was Bychkov’s clear interpretive choice, and it was interesting to see how well it worked on its own terms, even as I missed the frisson. In the magnificent climax, Bychkov and the SFO reached from a terrestrial plane to a celestial one. The playing got there but the interpretation not quite. Still: Next time I hear Sibelius’ Fifth, I will think of Bychkov alongside Maazel and Gibson. RRR

(Gautier Capucon had recovered in time for the Saturday evening performance of the Schumann.)

Lang Lang and NSO

Beethoven, Piano Concertos 1/4, Lang Lang, Orchestre de l'Opéra de Paris

Lang Lang, that famed piano superstar, is at the ripe age of 27 now, and over the hill, so to speak, in Wunderkind years. Friday night, in a one-night-only concert with the National Symphony Orchestra, An Evening with Lang Lang, he performed Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3. It goes without saying that his playing was beautiful and immaculately clean, but unfortunately, he still has not managed to evolve beyond the teenage breakout star that he once was, both in image and sound, and Friday night was no exception.

Guest conductor Andrew Litton, of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic, shone just as brightly as the advertised star of the program. Litton's style was big and almost harried at times, but in the most exciting moments of the program, the orchestra’s sound was truly energized in a way that one doesn’t always hear with the NSO. At the same time, Litton managed to infuse the occasionally overblown with an amount of precision that, though it may not have kept the orchestra perfectly together, came admirably close. The opening work, Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila, was from the onset an exciting barrage of sound. When the entire string section of an orchestra plays rushing passage scales at a frenetic tempo, there are bound to be ensemble issues, but Litton worthily held the orchestra together in these moments. The listener was sufficiently primed for the main event at this point that it was unnecessary to present another introductory work, Weber’s Overture to Euryanthe, on the second half, pleasant though it was.

Lang Lang is the kind of performer whom musicians often love to hate, but during the first movement of the Beethoven, I was prepared to dispel this collective prejudice. The first movement was a very fine performance indeed: crisp and clean with the early Beethovenian hints of fire to come. The middle section was especially beautiful, in part because of his use of the pedal, which through delicate fluttering paid a clean, modern tribute to the classical style. Come the second movement, however, what should have been the Lang Lang of yesteryear reared his head. He is famous for his showmanship, of course, and during the second movement it was as if the rapture had descended upon him. True, the music was absolutely gorgeous, but it was also over-Romanticized to the point where it could have easily been confused with a work by Chopin and wholly inappropriate for early Beethoven.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Lang Lang and the NSO, trying to look beyond Beethoven's sunny phrases (Washington Post, November 16) Charles T. Downey, BSO Kicks Off the Season in Style (Washington Post, September 14) Jens F. Laurson, Ionarts at Large: Falla, Bartók and Tan Dun—Lang Lang enriched (Ionarts, April 12) Charles T. Downey, Lang Lang @ Kennedy Center (Ionarts, March 13, 2008)

The Prokofiev concerto was indeed an exciting close, but due mostly to the orchestra’s excellent playing and Lang Lang’s excessive movement at the bench. From the pianist’s first entrance, which consists of devilishly fast winding runs, his sound was immediately swallowed by the orchestra. This was obviously a combination of the writing itself and the orchestra’s sound, but also because Lang Lang’s playing simply didn’t have any bite. Prokofiev demands a sharp edge in his rhythmic sections, and Lang was perfectly round. His vertical technique also didn’t help, which is constantly up and up and up -- every note an upward exaggerated flourish instead of a rich downward sound. However, the second movement was truly beautiful; here, Lang’s skyward gazes of rapture, raised shoulders, and backward-leaning posture seemed less out of place. In the final movement, as expected, Litton led the ensemble to a rousing finish, which thrust the audience instantaneously to its feet. Lang Lang is certainly a thrilling pianist to watch, but is there anything underneath the bravado? It is always hard to tell.

The National Symphony Orchestra goes from superstar to superstar this coming week, with violinist Joshua Bell as the featured soloist, in a program of Lalo, Mendelssohn, and James Macmillan conducted by Hugh Wolff (November 19, 21, and 22).

Opera Fit for a King

The Opéra royal de Versailles was closed in 2006, the beginning of a three-year process to secure the architectural structure of the building and restore the stage to its original 18th-century state. The largest theater in Europe until the Palais Garnier was opened in 1875, it is a wonderful place to see and hear music (Ionarts was last there in 2003), not only for its historic importance but the quality of the acoustic. The theater was reopened in September, but this month's staging there of Grétry's L'Amant jaloux provided the first opportunity to appreciate what the completed work means. Marie-Aude Roux attended some of the rehearsals (Visite à l'Opéra royal de Versailles, après travaux et avant "L'Amant jaloux", November 10) for Le Monde (my translation):

It was again time for rehearsal on November 3, which saw the Cercle de l'harmonie, directed by Jérémie Rohrer, for the first time in the orchestra pit. "This is exactly what one heard at the moment when this opera was premiered, in 1778," says the technical director, Jean-Paul Gousset, entering the Salle des Colonnades, on the third level of box seats. The magnificent sounds of the trio of women in Act I suspended time and made visitors stop in their tracks. On the stage, poor Isabelle, prisoner of her aged tutor, who wants to marry her, has managed to escape with the help of the seductive Florival, taking refuge with her friend Léonore and her servant, Jacinte. Music of revolt and compassion with pre-Mozartian accents (unless it be the reverse, Mozart having been in Paris in 1778, after all), a libretto worthy of Beaumarchais: it is no surprise that L'Amant jaloux was the most performed opera in the French court.

The visit continues with the architect Jean-Paul Gousset. From the clothes-hangers to the fifth cellar, this passionate admirer of the theater -- conceived by Ange-Jacques Gabriel (1698-1782) for the wedding festivities of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette, in May 1770 -- knows every corner, every detail of ornamentation. So much so that the new stage, that he himself conceived, designed, and had built, seems to have always been here. "It has not been seen like this since 1778," he explains, referring to the premiere of L'Amant jaloux, but especially to the dubious additions made in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Nicolas d'Estienne d'Orves had a review of the production («L'Amant jaloux» à Versailles : charmant mais trop sage, November 12) for Le Figaro. A name to watch? Canadian tenor Frédéric Antoun, who was announced as ill but who sang with force and had one of the most beautiful moments of the evening, the serenade D'abord, amants soumis et doux.

A Breath of Baroque Air

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The Zephyrus Ensemble performed an outstanding program of music from the French Baroque period at the National Gallery of Art for their free Wednesday series at midday. In conjunction with the exhibit Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800, some works of art were strategically placed outside of the lecture hall, including the life-size, highly ornate 1756 Group Portrait by François-Hubert Drouais. It contained outlandish clothing, pitchers, jewels, and a clock that would make any still life envious, and gentle faces beside a leftward Vermeer-style window.

The Zephyrus Ensemble, boasting five of the most outstanding early music musicians in North America, led the audience through a seventy-minute survey of the French Baroque. François Couperin’s Second Concert from the Concerts Royaux (1722) had an ornate gentleness reminiscent of the Drouais hanging outside. At times, the level of stylish ornamentation was so intricate that it was difficult to decipher the principal notes played by violinist Ingrid Matthews (current Music Director of Seattle Baroque). The gentle continuo of gamba, theorbo, and harpsichord created their own acoustic, filling the acoustically challenged lecture hall as attacks and releases were often sumptuous flourishes. It is important to note that this abundantly florid style was more or less in tempo; also, Zephyrus’s approach to notes inégales is seemingly more creative than what was recently heard from Opera Lafayette.

Jean-Phillipe Rameau’s movements from Pièces de clavecin en concert (1741) featured harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree. A student of Dutch master Gustav Leonhardt, she was able to shine given that instead of expecting the keyboardist to create harmonies from figured bass, Rameau wrote out a virtuosic keyboard part. Dupree’s expressiveness in the Coulicam, Livri, and Vézinet movements derived from her sensitive touch and careful awareness of dissonance: the work contained the contrapuntal sophistication of a Brandenburg Concerto, yet with French flair.

Theorbo player John Lenti intimately performed Logistille by Lully, and viola da gamba player Josh Lee offered lovely high notes and triple stops in Marin Marais’s Les voix humaines (1701). During an emotional performance of Jean-Féry Rebel’s Chaconne from the Suite in G Major (1705), Matthews held the standing-room-only audience in the palm of her hand. All joined in for Telemann’s Quartet No. 6 in E minor (“Paris,” 1736). A francophile at heart, like our dear moderator here at Ionarts, Telemann ended his six-movement Quartet with a lush passacaglia that intermingled upward chromatic figures with circular shapes, performed here by exceptional musicians blissfully in love with their craft.

The next free concert at the National Gallery of Art is in connection with the same exhibit: the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble and Chamber Ensemble in a program of music by Gevaert, Janequin, Rameau, Sermisy, Tessier, and other French composers this Sunday (November 15, 6:30 pm) in the West Building's West Garden Court.

Berlin Philharmonic's Twelve Cellists

We welcome the following review from guest contributor Sophia Vastek, another Ionarts exclusive.

Tuesday evening at the Music Center at Strathmore, the German Embassy presented an incredibly powerful concert in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The musicians were the Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the finest orchestras in the world (scheduled to play tonight at Carnegie Hall), and their cello section only exceeded the high-bar expectations of their parent ensemble. Touted as an “orchestra within an orchestra,” the cellists started with Bach and ended with Duke Ellington, running the gamut of sacred and secular in between and purveying comfortable ease with all. Even without a clear leader, the musicians were so perfectly unified in every aspect that they seemed to transcend their numbers and were truly of one mind.

The opening of the Bach, a selection from The Art of Fugue, was so transparent and utterly simple that it did not sound like three instruments were playing (which they were). The piece was exactly as Bach should be, without the added weight of interpretation and what could have been heaviness through sheer numbers. In an arrangement of the Trio from Mendelssohn's Elijah, the musicians showcased the ability of their instrument to imitate the human voice, in the range of the cello and warmth of its sound. Again, in the Poulenc cantata, the Romantic and thick harmonies were hauntingly pastoral, but sung simplicity in typical Poulenc fashion was most important. Even amid the most complex textures, the ensemble never became merely a wash of sound. A Verdi selection was especially multi-faceted: each layer a different idea and quality all together, despite being comprised of the same instruments. In Casals’ arrangement of Song of the Birds, a Catalan folksong, compounded by the thick droning accompaniment, the first cellist’s solo (which comprises the bulk of the piece) was utterly hair-raising.

Other Reviews: Andrew Lindemann Malone, Playing the Dozen: The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic at the Music Center at Strathmore (DMV Classical, November 12)

The second half, of a more popular and secular ilk, juxtaposed Gershwin, Elvis Presley, and Duke Ellington with more jarringly modern music by Berlin composer Boris Blacher and the downright schmaltzy sounds of Hildegard Knef. Blacher’s set of three pieces, written specifically for the ensemble, used many of the tricks possible for the cello and number of musicians. The espagnola was the first and only time that the first cellist emerged as a true leader, beating time as the rest of the musicians forged ahead on a demanding piece written solely in pizzicatos. The concert ended with two standards, Clap Yo’ Hands by George Gershwin and Caravan by Duke Ellington. Not only was the ensemble capable of having fun, they showed they were good at it, as the players deftly handled the rhythmic and harmonic complexity and occasional improvisatory nature of these pieces, propelling the evening to an exciting close.

This concert, part of a series of events hosted by the German Embassy entitled “Freedom Without Walls,” was introduced by German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth, who expressed his country’s gratitude to the United States for supporting them in their time of rebuilding. The program was a powerful argument that all things are possible, especially if there is music such as this in the world.

Apollo's Fire Has Fuel, Does Not Ignite

Violinist Veronika Skuplik-Hein

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Members of Apollo's Fire, the early music ensemble based in Cleveland, came to Dumbarton Oaks this past weekend for a concert on the Friends of Music series. Their program, Mediterranean Nights, recycled from 2005, surveys examples of Baroque music based on ground bass patterns. Unlike a similar program, American Opera Theater's Ground, this concert seemed to shoehorn much of its music into its supposed theme, "Sultry Songs and Passionate Dances from Italy and Spain." Guest guitarist Steve Player, who also specializes in the speculative recreation of Baroque dance, tried to provide the sultry and passionate part, but in a way that struck me as kind of silly, clogging and spinning on the little platform at one end of the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room.

The music itself was often lovely, if not all that daring in terms of pacing or virtuosity, with the exception of the two violinists, the group's own Johanna Novom and guest star Veronika Skuplik-Hein, who dueled in the program's best piece, Marco Uccellini's Duo Bergamasca. Skuplik-Hein, generally on the upper of the two violin parts, provided the most exciting playing of the evening, albeit with an oddly passion-less efficiency, a thrill that was more intellectual than visceral. The first half would have ended more aptly if yet another performance of Riu riu chiu had been omitted, mingling somewhat uneasily with this decidedly secular program. Director Jeannette Sorrell, who was responsible for most of the arrangements, made a desperate attempt to exaggerate this dance-like, popular sacred song's secular qualities in her spoken comments, which mistook the work's piety and ultimately diminished it.

Other Reviews: Donald Rosenberg, Apollo's Fire revels in sunlit Baroque repertoire (Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 1) Gary Budzak, Baroque group's improvisations a delight (Columbus Dispatch, November 7) Andrew Druckenbrod, Cohesive Apollo's Fire brims with passion and precision (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 9) Mark Kanny, Apollo's Fire 'jams' into 'Mediterranean Nights (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 9)

Guest soprano Nell Snaidas, as noted of her appearance in the area with another ensemble in 2007, does not have the strongest voice: an angular vibrato that mucks up some of the clarity, some constriction at the top, an excess of point. What she does have in spades is a charming stage presence and the ability to act, surely a help in her past dalliances with musical theater. Two of her better performances demonstrate this duality, a fine rendition of Luigi Rossi's Lamento di Euridice, which nonetheless left some musical and virtuosic possibilities unexplored, versus a semi-staged and charming performance of Luis de Briceno's Romance Biejo, about a woman confessing her breaking of the ten commandments to a shocked priest. While one could have imagined a more interesting musical result for this program, the group's delight in improvisation on these repeating bass patterns and especially in rhythmic shifts was pleasing, if not captivating.

The Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks makes a bid for the city's best holiday concert this year with its next offering, a program by the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 called The Cherry Tree. Get an early start on the Christmas season with these concerts for the First Sunday of Advent (November 29 and 30).

Fine Arts Quartet Plays It Close to the Chest

We welcome this review from guest contributor Sophia Vastek (with apologies for omitting this acknowledgment at the time of publication!).

Sunday afternoon, the Fine Arts Quartet presented a program as part of the National Academy of Sciences concert series. It seemed altogether fitting for a group whose members appeared to wear the same exact black suit, however sharp, and never smiled. The program matched Haydn’s Quartet in B flat (op. 76, no. 4, “Sunrise”) with Bruckner’s Quartet in C minor and Schumann’s Quartet in A minor (op. 41, no. 1). Of a completely Austro-German bent, the Fine Arts Quartet was a perfect vessel of austere 19th-century emotion. Incredibly proficient in every technical aspect, the group exemplified the single mindset mantra of the string quartet idiom, and they played beautifully together. Even so, for such a talented group of musicians, the concert was entirely lackluster.

Beginning with the first movement of the Haydn, the Fine Arts Quartet immediately showcased their ability to communicate effortlessly with one another. The melodic lines moved as one voice from instrument to instrument with buoyancy and an ever-careful, light touch. As appropriate as their style was to the classical work, upon reaching the Menuetto, the sound had already gone stale. It is Haydn after all, and the work demands its performers to have fun, but the third movement had no audible or visual traces of being a dance. The music was square. One wanted the performers to loosen up in the slightest and move their bodies to prove to the audience that they were feeling at least some enjoyment, but without avail. The piece altogether lacked any trace of Haydn’s ubiquitous wit.

Other Reviews: Alex Baker, Fine Arts Quartet at NAS (Wellsung, November 9)

Following the Haydn, Bruckner’s string quartet seemed but an extension of the previous work. It is not a piece one hears very often, and for good reason. It is as if Bruckner took a page out of every previous study-worthy composer’s book on quartets and form and style, and then simply laid out those pages. On top of that, the Fine Arts Quartet did not even attempt to differentiate it from the Haydn stylistically, however difficult that may have been given the music. It was not until the scherzo of the Schumann that the musicians finally proved that they were capable of something other than a filigreed, classical sound. The scherzo was fueled by rhythmic energy, and the embedded intermezzo had true lyric beauty. Sadly, this spark of life was a one-time occurrence. Even the closing presto was calculated and lacked the kind of abandon that would make for an exciting finish.

According to its Web site, the National Academy of Sciences will not be hosting concerts for the rest of the season in its own auditorium. Its planned schedule is now going to be moved to the National Gallery of Art's concert series, with the next concert by the Ritz Chamber Players planned for February 14, 2010, at 6:30 pm.

A Foundation with Art and Soul

Most often I write about exhibits of art on the white walls of galleries or museums. But can art also help a community to prepare itself for the future? Should artists play a role in a community as fundamental as an elected official would or a city planner? Why not?

That's a question that Lyman Orton is asking. Better known as the heir to the Vermont Country Store empire and later forming the Orton Family Foundation, Orton has long been a supporter of the arts and artists in Vermont, searching for fresh and creative ideas to encourage local communities as they re-think their futures. This past weekend I traveled to the village of Starksboro, Vermont, for a barn dance and dinner, prepared from the local community garden (yumm), to celebrate the successful completion of an Orton Foundation, Art and Soul project conceived by Orton Fellow and my friend, the artist Matthew Perry. (Matthew also runs the Vermont Arts Exchangeand its fabulous Basement Music Series, which I've written about previously.) After a challenging vetting process, Matthew's proposal was chosen over two others for an Orton grant working with the Starksboro community.

Matt has a renovated school bus, turned into a mobile art studio, that he uses to bring art classes and programs to schools and the veterans' hospital in the Bennington, Vermont area. Recently he took the art bus on a road trip north to Starksboro, which began what he called his Roadside Conversations. The first stop was the Volunteer Fire Hall to ask the fire crew what they liked best about their community or what wasn't working. Slowly they warmed to this outsider -- an artist no less -- and had some solid responses and ideas, like how do we protect out town when we can't find local employment and have to travel long distances. Much story telling ensued.

Another engagement was at the town meeting, where Matt got attendees to air their dirty laundry. He then painted the issues on shirts and towels, issues including how the youth are moving away and lack of jobs; then Matt strung them on a clothes line literally to blow in the wind. It was brilliant and a very effective way for the citizens of the community to start a discussion, visualize their thoughts, and take ownership of them.

Of the many projects undertaken over the past summer, one of my favorites was a discussion of safety with local school kids. Each child was given a generic "Slow Children" street sign, but on these signs they drew self-portraits in place of the generic stick figures. The results personalized the importance of public safety: the child you save may be someone very familiar. The signage is also very cool and quite noticeable: this a definite keeper for a national program.

Is there a place for artists in community planning, an official designation? My response is a resounding Yes! And it's about time. In this perilous time of tanking art markets it's also an opportunity for some artists to rethink their own value to the community: are you missing something in your current career path? Can your talent as a musician, poet, or dancer have a tangible benefit for your community beyond the traditional formats? The Orton Foundation believes so. More images on Flickr.