Critic’s Notebook: When Alban Berg is the Sweetener: Great Programming with Metzmacher

K. Weill, Der neue Orpheus et al. Carole Farley, M.Guttman, J.Serebrier (ASV, 1997) US | UK | DE

A. Berg, Lulu Suite, 3 Pieces D.Gatti, Concertgebouw (RCO Live, SACD, 2008) US | UK | DE

A Successful 20th-Century Miscellany

Ingo Metzmacher and the RSO Vienna deliver a colorful evening in which Alban Berg formed the romantic high point

Good programming is an art. It should be interesting, ideally challenging too, somehow hang together... and alienate as few audience members as possible. At the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, the audience-alienation factor plays a somewhat less important role. First, the orchestra a mandate to go exploring – and second, the audience is battle-hardened. Still, there’s always the temptation to jazz up "difficult" fare with a crowd-pleaser – to almost invariably unsatisfying results. Anyone who rushes to a concert for Tōru Takemitsu, or – as on Saturday evening, February 21st, at the Konzerthaus – for Friedrich Cerha or Kurt Weill, doesn’t want or need a Tchaikovsky piano concerto... and vice versa. Ingo Metzmacher has mastered the art of programming – which is why the evening's highlight was Alban Berg’s Lulu Suite.

A rather obvious bracket is Cerha and Lulu, since his orchestration of the third act established Cerha’s fame in the first place. Less obvious, however, is a cultural-historical factoid that might prove useful at the next pub quiz: Kurt Weill’s cantata Der neue Orpheus and Berg’s Lulu Suite were both brought into the world by Erich Kleiber. But before we got there, the other hundredth composer birthday of recent days was celebrated: Monumentum für Karl Prantl (1988) – in turn written by Cerha for Prantl’s 65th – rises up as a loud, brass-heavy cacophony that sweeps over you like a summer storm. There follows an orchestral whirring and swaying, Messiaen-esque meditations with grand string gestures and dabs of color from the organ. It has a certain sculptural quality but without the danger of therefore drifting towards populism or, for that matter, wider popularity.

Kurt Weill, in his cantata for soprano and violin written over 60 years earlier, isn’t really that either. You will certainly hear little from chameleon-composer Weill’s studies with Engelbert Humperdinck. But the soloists Alina Wunderlin and concertmaster Maighréad McCrann were able to distinguish themselves in this mixture of vaudeville, comedy, and "serious music." That just about proved irrelevant, though, because the Lulu Suite after intermission outshone everything. Once again Alina Wunderlin was allowed to step up, now in a glitter-black Lulu look, and she sang beguilingly agile, more intelligible than in the Weill, and with the right mixture of sensuality and edge, so that one didn’t think about tone rows but the protagonist’s fate instead. Metzmacher also drew remarkable things from the RSO: Whether the tavern atmosphere in the variations, the Tristan und Isolde-moments in the Adagio, or the death cry that bites into the Più lento like the nine-note chords in Mahler’s Tenth, everything was played with fervor and grand gesture.

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Critic’s Notebook: Evgeny Titov’s New Wozzeck in Graz

A. Berg, Wozzeck, Dohnanyi, WPh Silja, Waechter et al. (Decca, 1981) US | UK | DE

H. Berlioz, Les Troyens, Böhm, Deutsche Oper Berlin Lear, Fischer-Dieskau et al. (DG, 1965) US | UK | DE

The Naked Truth About Graz’s Wozzeck

Every aspect of the new Wozzeck in Graz is better than average. Even if (with one exception) nothing is quite superlative, the result is an enormously successful evening.

Is it actually possible to ruin Alban Berg’s Wozzeck? Musically, it may be “difficult” fare for the more occasional opera-goer, but the drama is so goshdarn concentrated and Berg’s setting so atmospheric that one often feels closer to witnessing spoken theater with music than an opera proper. That was certainly the case in Graz, where Evgeny Titov’s new production – the same director responsible for the dark-romantic Vienna Iolanta – opened to deserved applause on Friday evening.

Anyone who saw said Iolanta, with its sugar-coated mountain of flowers, can imagine Titov’s Wozzeck as its inversion. The “Upside Down” (cf. Stranger Things), so to speak. Low dunes of sand where yonder a green knoll rises high. Arid, wispy brown brambles instead of flowers blooming in technicolor, gloom instead of brightness. This natural landscape rotates – sometimes faster, sometimes slower – on the revolving stage. Behind it, occasionally kitschy, occasionally strikingly effective, projections: a blood moon, a forest (turning in perspective with the stage), ominous clouds. Titov plays – consciously or not – with dark kitsch and realism, kept in productive tension.

The costumes (Sebastian Alphons) move in a similar direction. The protagonist, thrown butt naked into the first act (dramaturgically unnecessary, though undeniably efficient in underscoring Wozzeck’s humiliation at the hands of his superiors), wanders about in a shabby blazer and socks, while the figures around him appear in black latex costumes, grotesque and abstract, ghoulishly made up so that they faintly resemble figures from a George Grosz drawing. The latter appears to be a popular device for visualizing Büchner; the wildly outstanding productions by Kriegenburg (Munich) and Andreas Homoki (Zurich) went in a roughly similar direction. Does one need a mute black angel silently overseeing the action? Probably not. It’s directorial bric-a-brac – tasteful enough, and not much of a distraction –but bric-a-brac nonetheless.

For all its dramatic and visual appeal, a Wozzeck still wants be sung and played – and here, too, Graz delivered handsomely. First and foremost, with the Wozzeck himself. Unexpectedly, perhaps: Daniel Schmutzhard. A perennial Papageno elsewhere, here unmistakably tragic on a smaller, more human scale – and all the more touching for it. That he does not possess the most powerful voice proves dramaturgically apt; one might even bemoan the fact (not seriously, though) that his voice proved almost too beautiful! Annette Dasch, by contrast, could not be accused of too much beauty at this stage in her career: her Marie occasionally sounded strained, slightly worn – but again entirely in keeping with the character (a spent, run-down prostitute), and dramatically persuasive throughout.

The vocal high point (in more ways than one), and perhaps the evening’s most gratifying surprise, was Thomas Ebenstein’s Captain: penetrating, incisive, clear, and more secure in the upper register than is often the case in this role. A pleasure to hear… if only he weren’t such a scoundrel. (The Captain, not Ebenstein.)

The orchestra did itself proud, too. Properly brutal when needed, and mostly precise; a few off-moments in the interludes were the exception rather than the rule. This came as little surprise, given how impressively Les Troyens had fared in Graz under Vassilis Christopoulos. Could it have sounded even rounder from the pit? More lush? Sure thing. But Wozzeck does not necessarily benefit from polish for polish’s sake. An impressive overall package then, this Graz Wozzeck.

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Briefly Noted: Kissin plays Salzburg

Evgeny Kissin, Salzburg Recital (Berg, Chopin, Gershwin, Khrennikov) (released on September 2, 2022) DG 00028948629947 | 97'32"

Evgeny Kissin's most recent recital in Washington was scheduled for May of 2020. Because that was obviously canceled, it has been a long drought since the celebrated Russian pianist last appeared here. To fight the withdrawal symptoms, your critic has turned to Kissin's newest recording, captured live at the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg in August of 2021.

The last several years have brought significant changes to Kissin's life. In 2017, during a break from performing, he married a childhood friend and wrote a memoir. In July of 2021, just before Kissin played this recital, his piano teacher, Anna Pavlovna Kantor, died at the age of 98. She was much more than a teacher to Kissin, becoming a member of his family and living with them for the last thirty years. "She was my only piano teacher, and everything I am able to do on the piano I owe to her," Kissin has written, dedicating this recital to her memory.

One imagines that the pandemic shutdowns were difficult for Kissin, who has always seemed to be most at ease while playing on stage, as if music were in a way his first language. "I’m simply more inspired in front of an audience," he is quoted saying in the liner notes of this two-disc set. He played this recital to a full house, something he said was very important to him, even in the face of coronavirus restrictions. Although he once told me backstage at the Kennedy Center that he had no interest in composing his own music, one of the Salzburg encores is his own Dodecaphonic Tango. Composition is now an interest of his: Kissin, who has been vocally critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is also composing a piano trio in response to this unprovoked war.

Among other curiosities, the program opens with a prickly performance of Berg's Piano Sonata, op. 1. A decidedly idiosyncratic rendition of Gershwin's Preludes follows a set of short pieces by Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007), a Russian composer and Soviet functionary. The choice is definitely odd for political reasons, given Khrennikov's consistent holding of the party line during the darkest years of the USSR and even after its dissolution. Listeners are then treated to the palate cleansing of Kissin's inimitable Chopin. Unable to let go of the audience, Kissin offered four encores, as usual some of the most exhilirating moments.

Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: Alexei Lubimov Supreme In Ives, Webern, Berg

...The main ingredient of this recital is the grand Charles Ives “Concord” Sonata, which has been well recorded in the last decade or so. This 40 to 55-minute masterpiece is brimming with Ivesian imagination and techniques, and it is one of the Ives compositions that works best on the ultimately limited format that is recorded music. (See also: Classical CD Of The Week: Charles Ives Down Under) Like most anything of Ives’, the sophistication is in the composition’s construction and its thousands of musical references (Beethoven, hymns, folk songs etc.), but the proof is in the listening. You could turn it into a “guess-the-quoted-composer” game, but I greatly prefer to listen to Ives with an element of benevolent naiveté. To me, it’s a quilt – which, incidentally, is a most American way of composing...

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Alexei Lubimov Supreme In Ives, Webern, Berg

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Fleming and Emerson Quartet's Austrian Evening

A. Berg, Lyric Suite / E. Wellesz, Five Sonnets, R. Fleming, Emerson Quartet (Decca, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Renée Fleming, Emerson String Quartet present a rapturous recital of Austrian songs (Washington Post, June 3)

Renée Fleming will soon draw the curtain on her mainstream operatic career, as productions of “Der Rosenkavalier” at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera next season will be the American soprano’s last. On Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Fleming teamed up with the Emerson String Quartet to reprise pieces by Austrian composers Alban Berg and Egon Wellesz they recently recorded for Decca.

A musicologist and composition student of Arnold Schoenberg, Wellesz composed his “Five Sonnets” for soprano and string quartet in 1934, before the Nazi annexation of Austria forced him to flee to England. Set to selections from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets From the Portuguese,” these songs are strikingly dissonant and violent... [Continue reading]

Renée Fleming, soprano
Emerson String Quartet
Fortas Chamber Music Concerts
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Sumi Hwang Incandescent at Phillips

Queen Elisabeth Competition: Voice 2014, S. Hwang (inter alii) (MP3, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Sumi Hwang soars at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, November 4, 2014

In 2012, Sumi Hwang won second prize at the ARD Music Competition in Munich, followed this year by the Grand Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. The Korean soprano showed why at her American debut recital, a knockout hour-long program presented on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

Hwang’s lyric soprano voice has a pearly clarity, the intonation just, and the tone even and pretty across its range. She had a pleasing simplicity in a set of three songs from Schumann’s “Myrthen,” Op. 25, giving a sense of excitement to... [Continue reading]

Sumi Hwang, soprano
Jonas Vitaud, piano
Phillips Collection

Notes from the 2014 Salzburg Festival ( 11 ) Philharmonia Orchestra 2 • Esa-Pekka Salonen

Berg • Strauss • Ravel • Esa-Pekka Salonen • Lawrence Power • Max Hornung

Power-ful, Wonderful, Versatile

ABOVE AND BELOW PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © SILVIA LELLI. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

After attending the very, very fine Philharmonia concert with Chirstoph Dohnányi, the orchestra’s appearance two days later, Saturday August 9^th, with their other main conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, was just about mandatory. Getting in wouldn’t have been a problem in any case: there was Alban Berg on the program and therefore tickets available. Don Quixote, the tone poem-cum-one-and-a-half-concerto (as opposed to “Double”) for cello and viola of Richard Strauss’ isn’t a big pull, either… nor its primary soloist that morning—very fine a musician though he is—Maximilian Hornung.

Sancho and the Sheep

The violist isn’t going to make a difference when it comes to selling tickets, either, but the choice of having a dedicated soloist for the tricky viola part, rather than letting the first violist of the orchestra scrape by (no offense) is huge, can’t have been easy (considering orchestra politicking), and was most warmly welcomed! Getting Lawrence Power, one of the more scrupulously musical string players—never mind violists!—around, sent waves of sweet anticipation through me, the same which could not be said about

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On Forbes: In Memoriam Claudio Abbado: A Discography

Claudio Abbado at Wien Modern in 1992. Photo courtesy Wiener Konzerthaus, © Christof Krumpel

The 13 Best (??) Recordings of Claudio Abbado on Forbes.com:

When a fine artist dies, we hear that it is a major loss to art. This is usually gross exaggeration: when Mozart died short of 36 years age, just as his career was really taking off, that was a great loss to art. Ditto for Schubert’s demise at 31 or when Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga died days short of his 20th birthday, with so much promise of future greatness.

But when an accomplished and celebrated artist dies in the autumn of their years, with great accomplishments behind them, not that much ahead of them, and often after they have retired or passed their artistic peak, it isn’t in any meaningful way a loss to the greater community. (Though it certainly is one to friends and family). Instead, one should react with gratitude and joy for having been given so much by the artist, and amazement at how much these women and men were allowed to touch our lives—living on in the memories and legacies, recollections of ours and influences on us.

Claudio Abbado, who died on January 20th, aged 80, falls right between the tragic loss and life-fulfilled templates...

Continue reading here, at Forbes.com

Ionarts-at-Large: Cerha, Lush Romantic at Work

Friedrich Cerha—who looks like something the Grimm brothers might have invented and placed in the deep woods to ask riddles of passing maidens in distress—is bound to be reduced to his association with Alban Berg by way of completing Berg’s opera Lulu. That’s not a bad association to have, but if you are a composer very much in your own right, it might be nice to leave the shadow of mighty Berg every so often. If that hasn’t quite worked by the time you hit 88, you might go the other way.

P.G. Wodehouse, accused of writing about ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’ in his last novels, answered the criticism in the preface to one of his “Blandings Castle” novels thus: “With my superior intelligence I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make [the critics] feel, I rather fancy”. Perhaps Cerha did something along the same lines when

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Dip Your Ears, No. 146 (Christine Schäfer Sings SchoenBerg)

Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, String Quartet no.2, Langsamer Satz, Largo desolato, Petersen Quartett & Christine Schäfer Capriccio

This is a CD that elicits raves and frustration. The excellent Petersen Quartet teams up with the sublime Christine Schäfer and present us Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet op.10 (for two violins, viola, cello and soprano), Anton Webern’s heavenly Langsamer Satz, and Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite with the “secret part for voice” that was found out to exist some time in the late 70s. It’d be a dream of a CD if you appreciate the tamer, romantic reaches of the Second Viennese School. Except that for some reason Phoenix Edition (the unofficial successor to Capriccio) decided that they would not record the complete Lyric Suite, but only the “Largo desolato” that contains the vocal part.

Normally I’d try to view this not as an incomplete CD with the first five movements of the Lyric Suite missing, but as a CD which throws that last movement in as a bonus. But with a running time of 47 minutes, that’s a little difficult. I don’t usually mind CDs with a short run-time, either. There is no point in squeezing extra material onto a finished product for the sake of playing-time. But the two issues in combination, and seeing how the rest of the Lyric Suite would have brought this recording up to a good hour of music, it’s difficult not to feel a little cheated. Especially since the playing and especially the singing is so excellent throughout, that the CD really ought to be heard by anyone who loves the Berg and Schoenberg pieces.

Schoenberg’s Second Quartet (op.10) is easily digestible stuff when compared to his Third – its chromatic intensity veering much more towards the romantic idiom than the modernist. Little wonder then, that it’s the most commonly recorded of Schoenberg’s five string quartets. Born out domestic crisis (Gustav Mahler had left for America and Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde associated all-too closely with their common friend, the painter Richard Gerstl, who consequently killed himself), he composed the four movements between March 1907 and July 1908. The strained tonality (f-sharp minor, C-major, a-minor, d-minor, e-flat minor) makes for a feeling of faint harmonic familiarity throughout, even as the tonal relationships begin to dissolve. That’s particularly notable when Schoenberg adds the voice to his string quartet, the first time that the traditional boundaries of the string quartet had been thus expanded. Two poems by Stefan George – “Litany” and “Rapture” – form movements three and four.

Previously published on WETA. See also "Second Viennoiserie (12.7.11)

Ionarts-at-Large: Berg is Best with Metzmacher

When the schedule dictates, compromises might include attending a matinée orchestral performance. No musician I know does AM particularly well, but with a program of Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina Preludes, and Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre, the last of the Munich Philharmonic’s three concerts in that series was unmissable.

For the Wagner and Mahler, baritone Michael Volle was won to perform alongside Ingo Metzmacher. After eight successful years in Zurich, Michael Volle became a cast member of the Bavarian State Opera in 2007 and in his five years there, he rose to locally acknowledged fame for reliable, even excellent performances. But fame at home is a tricky thing. Many talented footballers that make their way through the ranks of one team, from junior to Pro, find that they hit a ceiling beyond which they won’t be appreciated. Familiarity—and a decided lack of exoticism—has led to being taken for granted. They often hire elsewhere, with transfer fee and new salary indicative of their newfound respect away from home.

A.Berg, Three Pieces for Orchestra et al., I.Metzmacher / Bamberg SO EMI H.Pfitzner, Palestrina Preludes et al., C.Thielemann / O.d.Deutschen Oper Berlin DG

Pfitzner on ionarts: Best Recordings of 2012 (Palestrina, K.Petrenko) Best Recordings of 2008 (Von Deutscher Seele, Metzmacher) Pfitzner and Schumann's Requiem (C.Thielemann / MPhil) Palestrina (S.Young / Bavarian State Opera)

It’s perhaps a little similar with singers. Volle was appreciated as stalwart, not admired as extraordinary. He left the State Opera and now he is fêted as a soloist around all the renowned opera houses in the world. A little more at this all-too-early hour, in Mahler but especially in Wagner as Wotan would have gone some way in underscoring how extraordinary he is. But for all the difficulties of making oneself heard in Munich’s Philharmonic Hall, with an Wagnerian orchestra whirring behind him, Wotan’s Abschied could have been a good deal more poised, clearer, and audible. As it was, it fit in with a surprisingly slack, if largely accident-free performance from the less-than-sanguine strings & Co.

In Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Volle’s softness of hue on this occasion fit much better: There is no point heroically trumpeting about dead children with stentorian precision. And so he sang with a gentle transparency instead, which gave these Songs on the Death of Children touching nuance, occasional raspy notes and uneasy heights notwithstanding. The orchestra was more eager, too, in Mahler just before intermission, diving into “In diesem Wetter” with rare gusto.

So far so decent, but the bonbons were clearly Pfitzner’s Palestrina Overtures, tailored by the composer to better fit the concert setting, and Berg. Pfitzner—the composer, not the music—needs advocates like Ingo Metzmacher. There are enough politically charged music critics in Germany just waiting for Christian Thielemann to tackle Pfitzer on a more regular basis in order to insinuate—with words in hues of insidious brown—that “CT” is, gasp!, a conservative. Wink-wink-nudge-nudge.Metzmacher, with his solid background in championing “Degenerate Art” that the Third Reich had shunned, exiled, or gassed, is politically above suspicion to any left-leaning journalist. Since he has discovered Pfitzner a few years ago (resulting in terrific recording of Pfitzner’s Eichendorff Cantata) the responses are enthusiastic and fawning, and questionable motives aside, rightly so. The music is wonderful and the performances justify any enthusiasm. The Munich Philharmonic was one of Pfitzner’s favorite orchestras with whom he performed plenty, but that legacy has been long felt a poisoned endowment more than opportunity. Understandable, but musically a shame, because the tendency for a deep and darkly romantic sound makes the orchestra very suitable for Pfitzner’s music. That’s true even for the delicate Prelude to the First Act (where Pfitzner plays with a music at once wholly new yet harking back to the 16^th century of his opera’s protagonist) and certainly for the wham-bang intensity of the second Prelude. It’s such satisfactory music that even a Pfitzner-friendly colleague suggested: “If you can have that, why bother with the whole thing in the first place.” (In our defense, we both last saw the opera in the drab Munich production; not in the superior Frankfurt outing.)

Saving the best for first, the concert-opening Berg Three Pieces op.6 was unlike any I have heard before: Rich, dedicated, and muscular, with plenty and raw meat especially in the Preludium, where a proximity to Wagner’s Walküre came to the fore that I had never picked up on quite like that. Transparency and lean textures are all well and good and appreciated in Berg, but this was a case in point that sumptuousness is also a most viable option. And still there was plenty room for delicacy amid

Whenever I lean back, wholeheartedly enjoying this glorious, ultimately romantic work, I also enjoy the smug, self-satisfied glow that comes from knowing that my musical tastes are merely 100 years behind. That’s good to know: by the time Beethoven died, I would have appreciated Johann Heinrich Buttstett and François Couperin.

Ionarts-at-Large: Youthful Bruckner With James Gaffigan

James Gaffigan is a young conductor (*1979) with a bright future. Well possibly a future in Munich at some point, where his performances with the Munich Philharmonic have been well received on both sides of the podium. He continued that streak when he was back in town December 16^th through the 18^th. A neat and clean program comprised Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto played by Sergey Khachatryan and Anton Bruckner’s ‘saucy’ but rarely played Sixth Symphony—my secret favorite of the bunch.

Khachatryan’s take on the concerto left me stranded in a way that reminded me of a wonderful comment by Stefan Vladar over lunch in Salzburg a couple years back. In response to the staid criticism that ‘the soloist lost the long line’ in some concerto, he dead-panned back: “No, actually. I didn’t lose the line. You lost the line. I was just fine myself, thank you.”

Khachatryan probably connected with the music of the Berg concerto, but I didn’t manage to connect along with him. Instead I felt a strange tunnel vision, as though he played notes, steadfastly, rather than trying to communicate a greater image. There was no teasing along those long romantic arches of the work, nor was the performance a study in transparent precision and so I sat in my chair in the Philharmonic Hall of the Gasteig, a little lost, a little disappointed, and wondering if I might not best blame myself on this occasion. Amid the business of the second movement at least, the sense of strandedness was easier to ignore… the precision, sentimental vacuity, and determination easier to appreciate. And along with Bach entered the air of lyricism I had probably longed for. That a multitude of responsive off-key hearing aids uncomfortably mixed with the ethereal opening didn’t help. The Bach encore made sense, admittedly, and it was a thing of beauty… but sometimes the best option can be silence, i.e. no encore. After the Berg Concerto, that’s an option to consider.

Getting to conduct Bruckner with the Munich Philharmonic, which lives off its Bruckner-tradition like a vine off a dying tree, is a sign of respect from the side of orchestra and management. James Gaffigan got to work on the Sixth, not the most performed, but the loveliest

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