Dip Your Ears, No. 174 (Menahem Pressler Recital)

Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven Piano Sonata D.894, Rondo K.511, Bagatelles op.126 Menahem Presser La Dolce Volta

90, going on 91

I fondly remember Menahem Pressler’s 80^th Birthday recital at the Library of Congress, marveling then and since at his unquenchable musicality, wit and every effervescent key he pressed. His mistakes were more musical than most other pianists’ right notes. Now Pressler is past 90 and goes as strong as ever with recitals and CD releases putting joy in our ears. Not running on the fumes of a career and gratitude (à la Hilliard Ensemble or Kurt Masur) Pressler still delights with his skill, touch and the distilled insight of seven decades of music-making.

In these “Tales from Vienna”, Pressler turns to Schubert, Mozart, and Beethoven as a bouquet of high classical piano writing, starting with the massive, 45 minute Schubert Sonata No.18, that gets a delicate and artlessly simple treatment. The Mozart Rondo K.511 cleans the palate with its easily expressed geniality and generosity, its gentle elation and inward sorrow. All its complexities become understated means, not ostentatious ends. To round out the recital, Pressler turns to Beethoven with his beloved Hamburg Steinway—the late Bagatelles op.126. Pressler sparkles throughout.

First appeared in AUDITORIUM.

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Dip Your Ears, No. 173 (The Image of Melancholy)

Anthony Holborne, John Dowland, et al. The Image of Melancholy Bjarte Eike / Barokksolistene BIS

Creaking and Whispering

Modern and ancient, creaking and whispering, haunting and pleading, Irish, oriental, occidental and accidental: The atmospheric, contemplative album from Bjarte Eike and the Barokksolistene combines early music (Holborne, Dowland, Byrd, Buxtehude, Biber) with traditional Norwegian and Irish folk music in his arrangements, and a soupçon of suitable contemporary pieces. The way these works are picked and performed, you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends until you’re half way through a song. The result is a haunting and varied collection of miniatures that Eike describes as not belonging to any particular style, nationality or period in time; but rather being a string of tunes, songs and expressions that are of personal significance to him. The title “The Image of Melancholy” stems from the fact that those happen to be border- and time-transcending “sad tunes”. The result isn’t entirely genre-defying, but it is genre-overlapping in a way that is bound to involve, not scare off the lovers of each genre into which Eike crosses over: From amid a many tears and much lamenting, a musical entrée arises that causes the gently stringed music lover much rejoicing..

First appeared in AUDITORIUM.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Mozart-Woche 2014 (CPE Bach Oratorio)

In the current issue of AUDITORIUM:

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Ionarts-at-Large: A Special Place in Hell (Orfeo with Minkowski)

Picture (detail) courtesy Salzburg Mozart Woche, © Matthias Baus

Bejun Mehta will never be my favorite countertenor, but singing Orfeo as he does here in Salzburg, in Ivan Alexandre’s lame demi-production of Orfeo ed Euridice, he makes it impossible not to admire him. Relaxed and more naturally confident than his supercilious stage demeanour usually suggests, he is in splendid, show-stealing form throughout the evening. He is partnered with Camilla Tilling’s Euridice, who has a voice so very plain, so clean, so secure, with such lack of sensuality, that I feel guilty...

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Ionarts-at-Large: Sex, Drinks, and Leotards

The Bavarian State Opera’s David Alden production of La Calisto constitutes the three shortest hours I’ve enjoyed anywhere in an opera house. The wild story about Jupiter's lust for the nymph Calisto, who is eventually turned into a bear by his jealous wife, Juno (and then into the big dipper) is such a romp and such pure entertainment, it’s like going to the movies. All the signature items of an Alden production are there: loud colors, creative costumes, polished floors, zebra-striped walls and curved laminated wood paneling—courtesy Paul Steinberg’s set and Buki Shiff's wildly diverse costumes, which range from a Tin Woodman-business suit for Mercury to a beautifully realistic Chameleon-butler to a salaciously detailed faun costume for Satirino, a creature half goat, half counter tenor Domique Visse (who has played the part in every of the now four runs of La Calisto).

Only the plastic machine gun of Giove’s was new to this revival, and pathetic, as every

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