Critic’s Notebook: A Flying Dutchman from the Budapest Opera

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer F.Fricsay, RIAS SOB DG/Eloquence

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer F.Konwitschny, StaKap Berlin Berlin Classics

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer D.Barenboim, StaKap Berlin Teldec/Warner

A Pleasing-Enough Dutchman

The point was to come to Budapest and witness the Hungarian Premiere of Nixon in China, but en passant it only seemed fitting to stop by the opera house proper (Nixon took place in a different venue) for a Flying Dutchman. It was celebrating its 140th birthday and, owing to it having been shut down for several years for comprehensive renovation work until its re-opening in 2022, I had never actually been. High time to change that, after all, it’s one of the finest examples of the neo-Renaissance style, a jewel among opera houses, perfectly sized (unless you want to make money with it), and now glowing again in its new-old splendour that had (allegedly) elicited the congratulatory grumble from Emperor Franz Joseph I at its opening that he “prescribed it to be smaller than the opera house in Vienna” but should also have “decreed that it not be more beautiful”. And indeed, it’s a truly grand opera house, all gilded, marbled, satined, and candelabraed. And yet just small enough to be intimate. (Far away enough to be ignored by the Western press, you’d think it’s the ideal stage for trying out new rôles for ambitious singers.)

So the Flying Dutchman it was. Earlier that day, a matinee of Carmen had already been produced… and apparently exhausted the Budapestian’s hunger for opera that day: The attendance was somewhere between “low” and “pitiful”, but certainly below 50% capacity of the roughly 1000 comfortable seats (fitted with subtitle screens) that the new post-renovation arrangement provides. What the hardy Wagnerians got was a fine Dutchman with some good singing in a production by János Szikora that means to offend no one or maybe just doesn’t mean much at all. The costumes (Kriszta Berzsenyi) are toned down, except for the slightly more elaborate getups of Senta and the Dutchman (a red dress and coat, respectively, with matching concentric yellow and orange circles painted on them) and a brief appearance of the Dutch sailor’s chorus as clunky papier-mâché zombies. Incidentally, that was the production’s only veritable failure. When the Norwegians call on, invite, and tease the Dutchman’s crew, their delayed, eventual response is supposed to be positively overwhelming. Various directors have come up with variously successful means of creating that effect. Amplification of the voices, as done here, is often among them. But then it should really be overwhelming. Here, it was an electronically distorted whimper that never got particularly loud and certainly never intimidating. A damp squib. The cowering visible chorus on stage was shivering for no reason.

Everywhere else, the production did not stand in the way of the music or the singing, which some more conservative audiences (for whatever that’s worth) might consider a good quality. The set by Éva Szendrényi is highly economical; two, three props (large ropes, a large frame, a loom) and otherwise it’s an empty stage, framed by frames with fabric stretched across them, doubling as a projection screen and revolving doors for getting all the seamen on and off the stage.

The singing had a few positive surprises in store. András Palerdi’s was a very pleasantly understated Daland, subtle, with good pronunciation. A bit on the soft side but never trying to overcompensate. Like his Steersman, István Horváth, who seems a fine all-purpose character tenor, à la Kevin Conners, he could be easily found on any international stage in that rôle. Anna Kissjudit’s Mary with a huge, natural, controlled voice that easily rang throughout the round was quite

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Critic’s Notebook: Schoenberg’s Birthday Gift at the Musikverein

A.Schoenberg, Gurre-Lieder E.P.Salonen, Philharmonia Signum

The Big 150: Arnold Goes Romantic

Schoenberg’s Birthday, on September 13th, was celebrated in style at the Musikverein with a performance – two performances, to be precise – of his Gurre-Lieder. If, somehow, you have not heard this grand romantic cantata, imagine a mature Mahler to have written a sequel to Das klagende Lied. The only problems with it are that it’s expensive to mount, what with a massive orchestra of some 150 musicians, four (!) choruses, and six soloists… and that Schoenberg’s name is attached to it, which keeps people away, no matter what’s actually being played. Someone has got to have a birthday, for a presenter or venue to bother with Gurre-Lieder.

Venue and orchestra have form. When the work was premiered 101 years ago, that took place in the Musikverein. (The Konzerthaus was still being built.) And the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, performing their first, but somehow not their official inaugural, concert with Petr Popelka as their reigning chief conductor, was the performing body (under a different name). Fitting then, but not necessarily suitable. The Musikverein is too small for the Gurre-Lieder. While it is still possible – and only just– to squeeze all the participating musicians on stage and balcony, it is not possible to keep the acoustic from collapsing unto itself. It’s understandable that the Musikverein wished to celebrate Schoenberg with the one romantic “event composition” his oeuvre has to offer, but it’s a musically selfish move; the work demands to be performed across the street, in the essentially purpose-built Great Hall of the Konzerthaus.

Perhaps the grumbling over the location would have been less pronounced, had the performance been more successful. Yes, the cast was great. Only Michael Weinius (already stepping in for a colleague and announced as under the weather) was not entirely convincing in this fiendishly difficult part – but early on he still did very well, starting out relaxed rather than belting (perhaps because the announcement freed him of proving a point?) and sounding rather pleasant. The rest, was what you might wish for, in such a hyper-late-romantic banger… assuming you heard them over the creaking and screeching orchestra: The highly pregnant Vera-Lotte Boecker was a radiant, soaring, rich Tove (Waldemar’s love); Sasha Cooke a controlled, sonorous Wood dove, fresh and with beauty of timbre that easily flattering any of the pigeons in my neighborhood. In the second half, Gerhard Siegel (as Klaus the Jester), a character-tenor that screams “Mime” the second he opens his mouth, was able to get above the orchestra surprisingly often, ditto Florian Boesch, whose Peasant had the easiest time being heard, given the reduced orchestral passages that he sings along to. And Angela Denoke, as the (amped) speaker, did a whole lot more than just speaking in this part: She gave voice to the lyrical element of her Sprechgesang.

So yes, the VSO, under Popelka (who has impressed me on the occasions I have heard him previously), did well but also did not have their finest hour. If the constantly excessive noise levels, right from the beginning, can still be blamed on Schoenberg, the slew of wobbly entries, off-kilter harmonics, shrill woodwinds, the nervous energy… all that was less than ideal. Most of it was lost in the general sense of euphoria, such a grand work can elicit live, but not entirely. And come the entry of the choruses, the music became something more akin to white noise. Musically pointless, but perhaps emotionally still of value. The Gurre-Lieder being a work that overpromises and underdelivers, needs more of a performance to truly thrill – and most of all a different venue^*.

^*Apparently, that is where the performance had been planned to take place, until the VSO changed its mind (not to say reneged on a done deal) and went for the pre-inaugural concert at the Gurre-Lieder’s birthplace.

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STC recasts "Comedy of Errors" as even goofier musical

Alex Brightman and David Fynn as the Dromios in The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo: Teresa Castracane Photography

The Comedy of Errors is the slenderest of Shakespeare plays, and it is generally a good idea to give its convoluted plot and mostly physical jokes a boost. Simon Godwin, artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, has turned to popular music again for his new production of this early play, an approach tried before, at least since the 18th century. Scottish composer Michael Bruce has supplied music, complete with some antic full-cast dance numbers, this in a script that originally, unlike last season's As You Like It, actually has no songs in it. A note to those who like to dash out of shows early -- this staging is like Mamma Mia, which came back to the Kennedy Center this summer, with one more groovy dance bit tacked on to the end of the play that you won't want to miss.

The action takes place in Ephesus, where an aged man from Siracusa in Sicily has run afoul of the local police. He explains to the Duke that he lost two of his four children -- two twin sons, both named Antipholus, and two twin orphan boys he adopted as their servants, both named Dromio -- years ago in a shipwreck and seeks them in Ephesus. The son and his servant from Siracusa have just arrived separately to search for their lost siblings, but little do they know that the other Antipholus and Dromio are living in Ephesus. In a long and rather improbable series of mishaps, they happen to cross paths with their doppelgangers and, since neither servant can tell the master from his twin and vice-versa, hilarity ensues.

Godwin's decision to cast Alex Brightman and David Fynn as the two Dromios made it hard even for the audience to distinguish them from one another. Both men played Dewey Finn (the role created by Jack Black in the film version of School of Rock) in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation of the movie, one on Broadway and the other in London's West End. Both men brought some of that character's nerdy zaniness to their roles, often adding off-the-cuff spoken or sung lines. The two Antipholi, Ralph Adriel Johnson and Christian Thompson, did not resemble one another in the same uncanny way, but the play does not suffer for this lack of realism.

The other high point was the lead actresses, Shayvawn Webster as the sharp-tongued Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, and Cloteal L. Horne as her sister Luciana, who brought a modern edge to the disappointment of the women in the behavior of the men around them. Amanda Naughton made an over-the-top Abbess in the closing scenes, and Eric Hissom had his best moments as the absurd Doctor Pinch (he was also Duke Solinus). The supporting cast had some roles changed slightly, like the goldsmith Angela (Pearl Rhein) instead of Angelo, and the Courtesan of Kimberly Dodson now named Thaisa. Most of these actors doubled as a walking pit band, led by music director Paige Rammelkamp and associate music director Jacob Brandt.

Sets and costumes (designed by Ceci Calf and Alejo Vietti, respectively) evoke the updated setting of a Mediterranean city in the 1990s, "before the invention of the cell phone," as the program synopsis notes -- something like a mix of Miami Vice and Clueless. The manic pace of the show is amplified by its physicality: several dance numbers (choreography by Nancy Renee Braun) and one hilarious sword fight (fight choreography by Robb Hunter) keep things fairly breathless.

The Comedy of Errors has been extended through October 20, at the Klein Theatre. shakespearetheatre.org

Cast in The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo: Teresa Castracane Photography

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Castellucci

Opera • Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Utopia Orchestra

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Don Giovanni“ bei den Salzburger Festspielen: Jubel für weiße Bilderkunst

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Monika Rittershaus. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

50 Shades of White: Currentzis’ and Castellucci’s Don Giovanni Triumpans/span>

Robert Castellucci’s Don Giovanniwas first performed at the 2021 Salzburg Festival. For the premiere of the revival, the production has changed only in some small details. It still begins with a professional crew of movers clearing out a church. By the time they get to taking down the renaissance crucifix from the wall, the overture bursts on the scene, courtesy Teodor Currentzis and his Utopia Orchestra, which is in essence his MusicAeterna Orchestra, but the West-European edition, to avoid unnecessary controversy about a Russian orchestra performing in Europe. (More about that, in a bit.)

Whether the pre-overture action means to suggest that art is replacing religion is up for speculation. But they must clean house. Perhaps to get rid of clichés and old-fashioned ideas about Don Giovanni. Or simply to make room for this production. Lots and lots of white room. So white, in fact, and in so many different warm and cool shades, sometimes draped with vast sheets of cloth, and brilliantly lit, one might have mistaken it for a Dieter Dorn production, except with a slew of animals making witty cameos: A goat, a poodle, and a rat!

The Dieter Dorn comparison might not even be so off the mark, because despite the overwhelming, wafting pictures that Castellucci painted unto the stage – set, costumes and lighting all being one homogenous one – his production is essentially a fairly conventional chamber play, which relies on the actor-singers to bring it to life. And that they did!

Homogenous Ensemble

The Singers were a very homogenous, very satisfying ensemble. No reasonable person would have attended this Don Giovanni for any one particularly singer – and yet, the vocal offering was excellent. Nadezhda Pavlova’s Donna Anna, for example, who got the loudest ovations: Strong-voiced and soaring above all, when necessary. Or the much appreciated Federica Lombardi’s Elvira, touching, half-motherly, half-seductive, with a nicely low timbre. Anna El-Khashem’s minx of a Zerlina was a little muted, but the way her voice betrayed experience-beyond-her-years worked nicely with her character, who is rather more worldly than her oaf of a husband-to-be, Masetto (Ruben Drole: smokey, sturdy, blunted – all befitting his character). This becomes deliciously obvious, when she rather enjoys being tied up with a bondage rope by Don Giovanni, whereas her encouraging “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto” is rather lost on the poor chap, who doesn’t, much to Zerlina’s resigned disappointment, get her drift.

The fact that Don Giovanni are just about doppelgängers reminds of Peter Sellars’ 80s production, where he cast the rôles with the Perry twins. Kyle Ketelsen’s Leporello, dark-hued and gruff, and Davide Luciano’s all-in Don G., steady and with a warm timbre, and never, never prone to barking, hit all the marks – and especially Luciano embodied the personified id. Superstars in the Pit None of this would have been as satisfactorily possible, had it not been for the support from the Orchestra. The Utopia Orchestra offered precision, force, and lots of bite – but also oodles of transparency – to a degree that you simply don’t get from an orchestra where, not a minute into their scheduled lunchbreak, the first trombone already raises their hand. From full-out attack to the height of tender reticence, even the smallest phrase was fully thought-out and shaped. Any sense of harmlessness is out of the question, in such a performance and if anyone could possibly niggle, it would be about this approach being a bit too much of a good thing. Except, not really. The fortepiano had inspired, free-wheeling passages, with ‘planned-improvisatory’ contributions that even included a bit of late Beethoven, to underline the seriousness of Act 2. The consequence was great enthusiasm for the music and near instant, unanimous standing ovations for Teodor Currentzis and his musicians.

If one only followed the “Currentzis Question” through social media, one might get the idea that he’s controversial. And yes, there are enough bigots out there – well, one, specifically – who make a point out of trolling Russian artists (not that Currentzis is Russian – but he works there) that don’t kowtow to their demands for explicit renunciation of all things Putin… and all consequences for their careers (and the livelihood of the musicians that rely on them) be damned… and some cowards who will immediately try to distance themselves from presumed controversy or Twitter-pressure.

In Salzburg, the audience couldn’t possibly care less about this one-man witch-hunt against Currentzis (who has, in any case, shown his true colors by immediately programming Ukrainian works in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, and the Britten War Requiem). What they want is great music-making. And that they get in spades from the weirdo-conductor and his supremely willing band of musical Nibelungs.

Dramma giocoso

For all the grandness of the production’s sets, populated with 150 choreographed women of all ages, shapes, and types – a none-too-subtle but perfectly effective manifestation of Don’s “catalogue” – Castellucci does not leave the “giocoso” part of Don Giovanni unattended to. (Unlike Glaus Guth, whose perfect Giovanni was all bleak and dark.) Of course, playing up the comedic element of the story rarely works well; least of all when the Don is played as a sort of oversexed Falstaff. This is something that Castellucci fastidiously avoids. The laughs come from other corners. Like Masetto’s hiding place, from which a (live!) rat scurries across stage, as he is discovered. His shriek might have been real, too. Chuckles also ripple through the Festspielhaus, when Donna Elvira’s two little kids are chasing Daddy Giovanni, who is distinctly put off by these two unintended consequences clinging to his legs.

But the comedic coup de théâtre is the treatment of that big fat zero of the opera, Don Ottavio, that ineffectual bloviator, who sings much and does absolutely nothing, except stand on the sidelines making helpful comments like an acquaintance telling you that you’re putting the Ikea closet together all wrong. Every time Castellucci and his Theresa Wilson, his costume-assistant, send Ottavio – who starts out looking like a posh hobby dictator in his silky mess uniform – out on stage, they stuff him into a yet-still-more ridiculous costume: A Pierrot with a coiffed (real) poodle. The King of Jerusalem. As a nun. And the more earnestly Ottavio sings, the more pathetic – and hilarious – it becomes. Julian Prégardien does this with total commitment, great lyrical stretches, and just a brief, intermittent stretch where the intonation softened. Once scene, with him and Donna Anna, features two artist’s mannequins who, as graphically as is within their abstract ability, act out what really happened between her and Giovanni, earlier that night, before the overture. A wink, a nod, and a reminder, as if it was needed, that a point of view, one’s reality, and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. A move, reminiscent of what Kasper Holten’s does in during the overture of his film version of the opera, Juan.

There is probably no production that will be liked by everyone. And a small group in the audience, evidently less impressed by things falling and crashing onto the stage at irregular intervals (still basketballs and a grand piano; the car and the carriage now only dangle and don’t fall, in this updated production), hollered “Boos” at the production team. But those were immediately drowned by contra “Bravos” from an audience that wouldn’t have its good time spoiled.

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Photo descriptions:


Above
Picture No.1: Don Giovanni 2024: Extras of the Salzburg Festival (Pre-Overture)

Picture No.2: Don Giovanni 2024: Anna El-Khashem (Zerlina), Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.3: Don Giovanni 2024: Julian Prégardien (Don Ottavio), Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna)




Below
Picture No.4: Don Giovanni 2024: Ensemble

Picture No.5: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Federica Lombardi (Donna Elvira), Ensemble

Picture No.6: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.7: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.8: Don Giovanni 2024: Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna), Ensemble

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 4 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Lobgesang • Vienna Philharmonic

Lobgesang • Mendelssohn • Vienna Philharmonic • Blomstedt

Also reviewed for Die Presse: In Salzburg feiert Herbert Blomstedt Geburtstag

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

A Hymn of Praise to Old Age

On July 11th, Herbert Blomstedt turned 97 – ninety-seven (!) – years old. And when you turn 97, you get to celebrate your birthday twice, no problem! First with a Bruckner Ninth and the Bamberg Orchestra (see also “ The Subtle Miracle Herbert Blomstedt And Bamberg's Cathedral Tour Of Bruckner”) and a good fortnight later with Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony – the “Hymn of Praise” – and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival.

Of course, age takes its toll, at this advanced hour of one’s life – and the stiffly moving but self-propelled Blomsted looks a bit like a marionette. His physical conducting is reduced in expressiveness and breadth of motion. But the key to an inspired performance is not forcing one’s will onto 190 musicians (counting the 111 singers of the Vienna Singverein), but to make them want to dance attendance on his every musical wish. And this, Blomstedt manages with ease, thanks to his charisma, earnestness, reputation, quiet enthusiasm, and devout charm, and that’s why his concerts are still such musically miraculous moments.

The Compleat Mendelssohn

Brahms’ Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), op.54, with the disciplined, restrained choir, was a masterclass in matters gentility, sensitively performed by the Philharmonic for Blomstedt. This was the overture to Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, long considered something of a problem child among Mendelssohn’s symphonies, with three short instrumental movements that are then – supposedly – squashed by the vast Cantata that follows. It’s an unfortunate, perhaps finally waning reputation, given that the work contains everything that makes Mendelssohn. The earnest, imposing music of the oratorios. Some of the fairy-dust music he is best known for. And even some of the tragedy and dissonance we can find in the F minor String Quartet.

The quick pace of the opening was invigorating for not trying to artificially impose more weight on the movement in search of some elusive balance but simply content in praising God – a concrete matter for Blomstedt and not just some abstract concept. The calm pianissimos that Blomstedt got from the orchestra (“Nun danket alle Gott”) were particularly touching.

The quick pace of the opening was invigorating for not trying to artificially impose more weight on the movement in search of some elusive balance but simply content in praising God – a concrete matter for Blomstedt and not just some abstract concept. The calm pianissimos that Blomstedt got from the orchestra (“Nun danket alle Gott”) were particularly touching.

F. Mendelssohn-B The Symphonies C.v.Dohnányi, Vienna Philharmonic Decca, 2010

Save Thyself!

Not everything went as smoothly. Towards the end, the performance lacked the crucial impulse, that would have imbued this “Hymn of Praise” with the needed pulse. Nor were the ‘almost-dissonant’, which can add a welcome bitter-sweet fragrance, particularly tended to. When the chorus nearly threw a fugato passage (“Die Nacht ist vergangen”), there was no help to be gotten from Blomstedt. The Singverein managed to rescue itself splendidly.

The soloists were right in line with the high quality and character of the performance – namely the level-headed, narrative, perfectly singing of tenor Tilman Lichidi (despite a weaker, flat moment later in the duet) and the effective, nicely enunciating Christina Landshamer, with a tastefully increasing but never overly dramatic vibrato on the held notes – and contributed to this wholly untroubled, Lord-praising eleven-AM performance. Grateful ovations when Blomstedt was led off and back on the stage, by concertmaster Rainer Honeck.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Wiener Philharmoniker · Blomstedt 2024: Herbert Blomstedt (Dirigent), Wiener Philharmoniker

Picture No.2: Wiener Philharmoniker · Blomstedt 2024: Elsa Benoit (Sopran II), Christina Landshamer (Sopran I), Herbert Blomstedt (Dirigent), Tilman Lichdi (Tenor), Wiener Philharmoniker, Wiener Singverein

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 3 ) Time with Schoenberg • The City Without Jews

The City Without Jews • PHACE • Olga Neuwirth

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Olga Neuwirths Musik hat zu „Die Stadt ohne Juden“ nichts zu sagen

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

The Good Austrian

The City Without Jews, a 1924 Austrian Expressionist film by Hans Karl Breslauer based on the novel of the same title by Hugo Bettauer, was first shown 100 years ago. For many years it was deemed lost, but after an intact copy was unexpectedly found some years ago, the Austrian Film Institute has stitched the film back together and made digital copies of it. While it’s good to have this rare film available and while it feels good (for Austrians, particularly, one reckons) to know that there were “good people” out there, who stood up against antisemitism, the quality of the film and the print – and its copies – is variable and dodgy.

Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain

Hugo Bettauer , The City without Jews

The Salzburg Festival screened the film as part of their “Time with Schoenberg” series – although there was little (none, in fact) Schoenberg involved in this project. The new soundtrack was composed by Olga Neuwirth and a little prelude came courtesy of Hanns Eisler. Very apropos for Salzburg, that work was the Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain. Well, as far as Salzburg is concerned, there are the impotent fat drops, that lazily plop from above, announcing an impending storm. There are middle-sized ones, that offer half trepidation, half hope, with a thunderstorm already or still being stuck behind one of the surrounding mountains. And then there are mean little needles of drops, that shoots down your neck from behind – themselves a prelude to the specific drizzle the locals call “ Schnürlregen”, a straight, light put consistent pour that has a dispiriting, it-will-never-end quality about it.

A Dearth of Ideas

Led by Nacho de Paz, the PHACE Ensemble performed the Eissler excellently (especially violist Petra Ackermann gave her best to make music out of Eisler’s quickly tiresome note salad) and the film music properly, along to their click-track. But the music was not particularly rewarding. Neuwirth's apparent dearth of ideas for the music to this film was baffling. At least half of it was smeared with a monotonously ominous, reverberant droning sound – quite regardless to what the film shows: Love scene: Droning. Singing in the synagogue: Droning. The only notable deviations are the interlacing of Austrian clichés (jodling, zither-music, and voice fragments of Hans Moser, a famous Austrian actor who had one of his first starring rôles in this film and whose apt physical comedy is already on display) into the soundtrack – and one telephone, that actually rings. The film’s banal depiction of the reasons for the economic and financial crisis in Austria is close to being an antisemitic trope itself; the actual antisemitism that the film ridicules is so over-the-top, it’s a bit too easy to be against it. And the “good Jew” of the film, Johannes Riemann might be a sympathetic proto-Mr. Bean, but nine years later, he became Nazi Party member No. 2641955. Well, we can’t all be on the right side of history, I suppose.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Zeit mit SCHÖNBERG – Die Stadt ohne Juden 2024: PHACE

Picture No.2: Zeit mit SCHÖNBERG – Die Stadt ohne Juden 2024: Nacho de Paz (Dirigent), PHACE

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Te Deum & Mozart Matinee

Te Deum — La Capella Reial • Le Concert des Nations • Savall

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Strahlende Trauermusik mit Jordi Savall und Adám Fischer

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

Evening and Mourning: De Profundis for Wolfgang Rihm

No one knew Friday evening, when Jordi Savall performed Michel-Richard Delalande’s (and Arvo Pärt’s) De Profundis. And When Adám Fischer conducted Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music at the Saturday Mozart Matinee, news had just reached Salzburg that Wolfgang Rihm had died that night. In retrospect, those two concerts took on the character of a musical leave-taking from arguably the most respected living German composer and a dear human being.

Charpentier Te Deum Ensemble Les Surprises Alpha, 2024

The sun was just laying last bands of warm yellows across the battlements, church towers, and roofs of Salzburg when the sounds of early French baroque filled the Collegiate Church, courtesy of Le Concert des Nations and Jordi Savall, who made his way to stage with a crutch and his face that looks like an apostle carved from wood. The center of this Tootsie Pop, between Delalande and the timeless minimalism of Pärt, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s grand Te Deum, which Europeans of a certain age invariably associate with childhood moments in front of the TV, maybe for the Four Hills ski jumping tournament or the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing that the opening prelude is the signal of the “Eurovision” pan-European broadcasts. Only that that version is rather more stately than the tempestuous trumpets and snappy timpani were, that Savall & Co. hurled at the enthused audience – eliciting early Bravos after the “In te, Domine, speravi” faded away into the generous acoustic of the ideally suited (and carefully prepared) church space.

Throughout the evening, the young La Capella Reial de Catalunya choir radiated with musical joy, like a big family in a choral outing. The soloists from its own ranks pleased with fresh and clear interpretations – above all the positively glowing (it may partly have been the advanced state of pregnancy) soprano of Elionor Martínez. Mezzo Kristin Mulders added her incisive, blazing instrument into the mix, although the tight, pronounced vibrato did not quite gel with the other, purer voices.

The short encore, Pärt’s Da pacem Domine (written for Savall and inspired by the 2004 Madrid train bombings), opened like a Gregorian chorale before the typical Pärt-isms chimed in: The chords that drift apart, the shifting long vocal lines, the regular time signature of the timpani, all resting on a subtle, almost unnoticeable bed of gently buzzing strings.

Funereal and Rocking Mozart from A.Fischer

W.A.Mozart 45 Symphonies Danish National CO Dacapo, 2013

Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, which Adám Fischer and the Mozarteum Orchestra performed, is not his best work – but it’s one of the more distinct ones in his output. The earthy, dark, woodwind-centered piece made for a most memorable curtain raiser, followed by a far less memorable D-minor Piano Concerto (K.466) in which the young Lukas Sternath, who won just about every prize at the 2022 ARD Music Competition, played flawless and lovely enough (“achingly sincere” is Tim Page’s suggestion for a put-down on such an occasion), but never achieved lift-off.

As if to prove that neither orchestra nor the conductor were to blame, Fischer and the Salzburgers went for a zany “Linz” Symphony that sparkled and crackled from start to end. With a smile across its collective face, the Mozarteum Orchestra delivered drive instead of legato, short but never choppy phrasing, and their joy transferred unto the audience’s – reminding us, why it is Adám Fischer, who currently has the best Mozart Symphony Cycle to his name.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Te Deum – La Capella Reial · Le Concert des Nations · Savall 2024: Jordi Savall (Dirigent), Le Concert des Nations, Solisten

Picture No.2: Mozart-Matinee · A. Fischer 2024: Adam Fischer (Dirigent), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) Overture Spirituelle • Koma & Le noir de l'étoile

Koma • Georg Friedrich Haas • Klangforum Wien

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Haas und Grisey: Hier spielen kollabierte Sterne die Musik

ABOVE PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

Blackout

As my colleague was stuck somewhere in northern Franconia, trying to experience opera in the dark, with only the German Railway between him and Bayreuth, I had made my way to the Salzburg Festival – back after ten years – to experience opera in the-even-darker. Because what Wagner achieved with Tristan 140 years ago, Georg Friedrich Haas has managed now with Koma, his opera that premiered 2016 in Schwetzingen. And pitch-black it really was, in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum, because the bureaucracy played ball and, in exchange for personal at every door, allowed the Festival to tape over the emergency exit signs. You could see the faintest outlines of light ions creeping through the cracks around some of the doors, but not your own hand before your face. You could turn to your seat neighbor and poke your tongue out and no one would have been the wiser for it. Barring a bad case of halitosis, that is, because with the visual sense gone, all other senses were heightened. That said, you wouldn’t need Haas’ music to attain that effect – I reckon that a Mozart Requiem, Gesualdo Madrigals, or something by Philip Glass might work as well and better.

There was a sensual element to the music as it rose, gently at first: metallic clouds, pierced by piano and brass, a whaling accordion. The music sounded positively amplified, but nothing was – it all came from the way the timbres were mixed and the voices resonated in the fine acoustic. The brass would occasionally throw fanfares against the string clusters, that sounded like elephants in heat. The piano – and its out of tune upright companion – were prominent… and responsible for much of the beauty of the score, because Haas, while modern and complex enough to be on the good side of the journalist, musicologist, and academic coteries, is also non-ideological enough to step off the avant-garde pedal every so often, letting glimmers of humanity and consonance shimmer through.

He was much helped by the excellent performance of the Klangforum Wien which was led – during the brief lit and semi-lit moments, anyway, by Bas Wiegers. Not that you can strictly tell, but they sounded on point, sharp, and certainly good, as they played their way through the score – and most of it by heart. The same goes for the singers, who all somehow sounded uncommonly good, notably trading words between each other, even for simple, single sentences. Only Daniel Gloger couldn’t go for all-beauty, because his role as “Mother” (apart from “Alexander”) demanded a more grotesque take. Outstanding amid the general excellence were Pia Davila’s Jasmine (sister of the comatose protagonist, Michaela) and Peter Schöne’s Michael (husband of Michaela).

As for the story by Klaus Händl, Haas’ go-to librettist, there’s a Michaela and she’s in a coma. Given the constant darkness, you had better read the libretto before or after, because there was little to follow during the performance. She’s taken care of, it seems, every once in a while, she or her memory wails away from above in the back (Sarah Aristidou), hospital procedures are described, and there is a good deal of good old German Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Her mother is revealed to have been a Kostelnička-type (except cartoonish wicked, unlike the tortured and deeply moral original) – which gave intermittent cause if you can actually come to terms with your past, if you just make it out to have been evil, rather than trying to understand the “others’” point of view. But that might be perhaps asking for more than the libretto was ever willing to give, getting stuck on a reasonably harmless and superficial level.

By the time the creaking trombones announce the end of the opera, which drags itself from line to line to its end, it has overstayed its welcome by maybe half an hour. The lights-off-lights-on back and forth, which even if following a libretto had been possible, did not make obvious dramatic sense, was no longer as novel at this point, nor was the music. Still: the experience as such was one that is bound to stay with every attendee.

Le noir de l’étoile • Gérard Grisey • Motus Percussion

Messages from the Past

G.Grisey, Le noir de l’étoile Percussions de Strasbourg Harmonia Mundi

Having awoken from the coma, the schedule beckoned to the Collegiate Church for a 10PM performance of Gérard Grisey’s 1990 Le noir de l’étoile for six percussionists, tape, and electronics. Darkness reigned again, but since the emergency exit signs were not covered, this time, the white interior of the Kollegienkirche shone in eerie mint green. The six percussion sets, distributed equally around the church, were spotlit. The audience, facing the center, sat in the middle of all this.

Essentially, Le noir de l’étoile is an hour of drumming. If six drummers banging on for about an hour sounds eerily much like the final part of Rihm’s Tutuguri—Poème dansé (review of the 2010 Salzburg performance here), worry not. There are limits as to how far that sort of thing can go, granted. And the presumed idea of a pulse traveling around the listener, from one percussion station to another – a b it à la Gesang der Jünglinge, I imagine – didn’t quite work out, either, perhaps because the principally gorgeous acoustic of the church made matters a bit too diffuse for that. But there was a communal quality to the proceedings, listening to the acoustic soundprints of pulsars PSR B0329+54 and Velar flutter in through the speakers, as interludes. Cosmic signals from thousands of years ago; messages from collapsed stars, on which we can eavesdrop on earth and which can lead to our contemplation of human existence, the futility of our micro-second in this universe, unnoticed and utterly irrelevant, except to us.

These kinds of existential thoughts, fortunately, can be wiped away easy enough, with a sausage and a beer, courtesy “Heiße Kiste”, the much appreciated mobile late-night sausage stand on the other and of the “State Bridge” that will assist putting the humans at the proper center of their universe again.


Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Koma — Klangforum Wien · Wiegers 2024: Peter Schöne (Michael), Daniel Gloger (Alexander/Mutter), Pia Davila (Jasmin), Bas Wiegers (Musikalische Leitung), Susanne Gritschneder (Dr. Auer), Henriette Gödde (Dr. Schönbühl), Karl Huml (Pfleger Jonas), Benjamin Chamandy (Pfleger Nikos), Raphael Sigling (Pfleger Zdravko), Klangforum Wien

Picture No.2: Le Noir de l’Étoile — Sietzen & Motus Percussion 2024: Christoph Sietzen (Schlagwerk), Motus Percussion