Lintu, Hewitt return to the BSO

Conductor Hannu Lintu

Hannu Lintu is not concerned much with subtlety. The Finnish conductor, who last appeared with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2013, tends toward out-sized, expressive gestures. In his latest program with the band from Charm City, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, broad strokes most suited him, especially in a hard-lined performance of Dvořák's eighth symphony.

The high point of the evening was a performance of Cantus Arcticus by the late Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. The piece was composed in the 1970s, and it feels like it, in an Age of Aquarius kind of way. Its principal gesture, incorporating slightly manipulated recordings of birds taken by the composer in the Arctic Circle, was nothing new, going back to Respighi's Pines of Rome and to countless compositions before the advent of recording. Most bird calls are atonal, of course, and consist essentially of clusters, which Rautavaara captures in the instrumental writing for paired flutes and paired trumpets. Nothing much happens over the course of twenty minutes, but the atmospheric effect of the piece is quite pleasing.

Angela Hewitt's last concerto appearance in the area was an underwhelming Mozart concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2014. Results were better this time around in Beethoven's first concerto, heard just earlier this month from Emanuel Ax and the NSO. Hewitt dialed back the tempo of the first movement especially, creating a mellow feel, even in the extended cadenza, conceived more as gentle spirals than violent zig-zags. The second movement was expressive and the best coordinated of the three between Lintu and Hewitt, with a peppy finale to tie things up. The staid crowd did not cheer loudly enough to warrant the encore Hewitt reportedly played at other performances.

Lintu's Sibelius has been much to my liking over the years, and the Rautavaara had many of the same qualities. His Dvořák, by contrast, felt strident and forced, especially the berserk drive of the finale. It was crack ensemble playing, held together by Lintu's fastidious and severe pacing, but it felt breathless and harried, and not in a good way. Impressive, certainly, but somehow too impatient.

At Washington Classical Review: Petrenko returns to Baltimore, brings Shostakovich

Shostakovich, Complete Symphonies, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, V. Petrenko (2015)

Charles T. Downey, Petrenko leads Baltimore Symphony in incendiary Shostakovich
Washington Classical Review, October 15

SEE ALSO:
Charlotte Higgins, Male conductors are better for orchestras, says Vasily Petrenko (The Guardian, September 2, 2013)

Hannah Levintova, Here's Why You Seldom See Women Leading a Symphony (Mother Jones, September 23, 2013)

Adam Sweeting, Petrenko: I don't believe women conductors are a distraction (The Telegraph, May 8, 2014)

At Washington Classical Review: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Charles T. Downey, Alsop, BSO have uneven night with Orff and Stravinsky
Washington Classical Review, September 30

In the Post: BSO, Thibaudet play Gershwin

Gershwin, Concerto in F / Rhapsody in Blue, J.-Y. Thibaudet, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, M. Alsop (Decca, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, With new members in BSO, striving for a cohesive sound in season opener at Strathmore (Washington Post, September 26)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s season at its second home, the Music Center at Strathmore, opened Saturday evening. Before the second half, music director Marin Alsop introduced the 10 new musicians who have joined her ensemble’s roster since the second half of last season. This includes new principal clarinetist Yao Guang Zhai, who comes to Charm City from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

For the traditional playing of the national anthem, Alsop turned not to the newly commissioned arrangements of recent years, but one made by Igor Stravinsky as a gift to the country that adopted him during the Second World War. A few harmonic oddities, restrained for Stravinsky, enlivened the familiar tune. It complemented the bonbon that followed it, “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5,” by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Julia Bullock’s clear soprano had a subtle intensity, beauty behind a veil. The eight cellists on the accompaniment, though, did not always agree in intonation.

With the adjustment in membership, it may take some time for the BSO to regain its most cohesive sound. The orchestral passages of Gershwin’s Concerto in F were a little uncoordinated rhythmically. The beat must be absolutely clean so that the jazz-infused rhythm can swing against it. It was not quite. The high point was the solo playing of pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, smoky insouciance that felt like improvisation, as well as the bluesy trumpet solos in the slow movement. Thibaudet’s tendency to rush to the downbeat in challenging passages further unsettled the piece.

Alsop has decided to focus much of the season on the music of Beethoven. Again. Her urgent, overly fast tempo made the first movement of the composer’s Fifth Symphony a nervous blur, but the second movement felt bracing in its lack of sentimentality. In the third movement, she emphasized strong contrasts of loud and soft, a good setup for the surprise eruption of the finale. Incisive piccolo solos helped give the conclusion a martial edge.

SEE ALSO:
Julia Bullock shows almost any song can soar in her capable vocal cords (Washington Post, April 20, 2016)

McGegan's B Minor Mass

G. B. Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor (Yale University Press, 2003)

British early music conductor Nicholas McGegan has been guest conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra every year since 2012. He has made his name mostly in the United States, as music director of Philharmonia Baroque in California, although he is a frequent guest with other ensembles, including having led the NSO Messiah in 2014. His latest project with the band from Charm City is Bach's B Minor Mass, which he conducted on Thursday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, reportedly the first performance of the work by the ensemble in decades.

Washington certainly has no shortage of performances of the B Minor Mass, and in more historically informed versions. Although Joshua Rifkin's assertion that this work and others by Bach should be performed with one singer on each part has not been widely accepted, most scholars agree that the performing forces were modest. Bach specialist George B. Stauffer, who has published a fine book on the B Minor Mass, estimates that Bach destined the work for a chorus of ten to fifteen singers and an instrumental ensemble of twenty to twenty-five players, the forces used in most of our favorite recordings. McGegan compromised at about sixty singers (drawn from the Baltimore Choral Arts Society) and thirty-some instrumentalists, reduced forces certainly but with the acoustic demands of a larger hall in mind.

Tom Hall is stepping down this year after a distinguished career leading the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. That may be one reason why significant problems plagued the ensemble's accustomed clarity of intonation (especially in the soprano sections, who often trended flat) and well-aligned coordination, which may be due to some occasionally frenetic shifts of tempo from McGegan. Perhaps it was because the full ensemble was not present, perhaps it was because they sang in mixed formation: whatever the reason, the success of the B Minor Mass rests largely on the chorus, and this had some effective parts but was underwhelming as a whole. Masaaski Suzuki had greater success with the University of Maryland Concert Choir last year.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, A concert mass gets an intimate performance (Washington Post, May 28) Tim Smith, BSO offers Bach's B minor Mass in style (Baltimore Sun, May 28) David Rohde, Bach’s ‘Mass in B Minor’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Choral Arts Society (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, May 27)

The solo quartet featured especially fine work from bass-baritone Dashon Burton, who was outstanding in the "Quoniam tu solus" section of the Gloria, with a few minor struggles at the top in the "Et in spiritum sanctum" movement of the Credo. Soprano Yulia Van Doren melded well with light-voiced tenor Thomas Cooley, while generally overpowering countertenor Christopher Ainslie, who had the least satisfying sound of the quartet. The timbre of countertenor can work with a boy treble or a lighter soprano in this work, but with a full-bodied voice like Van Doren, it did not.

The playing from the selected members of the BSO was generally polished, with McGegan helping to keep the balance with the singers at the proper level. Excellent solos came from flute and horn principals, with Katherine Needleman standing out on both oboe and oboe d'amore. Although the instruments and pitch were all modern, including the electronic Allen organ for the continuo, McGegan included some aspects from historical research, such as using the articulation marks from the 1733 Dresden orchestral parts, partly written by Bach himself. Still it was hard not to miss the rougher edges of historical instruments, like the sometimes bumptious corno da caccia.

This concert repeats tonight, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

BSO Ends Up All Wet

We have been fans of John Storgårds, who recently concluded his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, since his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2011. The Finnish conductor's debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, was less auspicious. The fault was not with the conducting, which was incendiary in a house-crushing performance of Holst's The Planets, but with the programming, which opened with Tan Dun's pedestrian Water Concerto.

When the Chinese composer hit the big time, winning the Grawemeyer Award in 1998 for his opera Marco Polo, his use of Chinese instruments in works for European orchestra was revolutionary. Over the last twenty years, though, he has not had a great track record, often recycling similar ideas over and over. Christopher Lamb, principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, worked with the composer to create the range of water-based percussion used in the Water Concerto, premiered in 1998. Lamb returned to play it this week over a decade since his last BSO appearance, in 2003, when he also played -- you guessed it -- Tan Dun's Water Concerto. Lamb, assisted by two percussionists, bowed and splashed their way through the piece, using waterphones and a range of other objects splashed and submerged in big plastic bowls of water. (For long stretches, it was maddeningly repetitive, making me think of the gross Robot Chicken skit embedded below.) The woodwinds made duck calls with their mouthpieces, there was an erhu-like solo for the principal cellist, and largely heterophonic writing brought little of interest in harmony or orchestration. The effect could be achieved much more inexpensively with a small ensemble, rather than using up a symphony orchestra's time.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Storgards makes brilliant BSO debut (Baltimore Sun, May 21) Joan Reinthaler, ‘Water Concerto’ splashes eloquently onto the BSO stage (Washington Post, May 23)

The string of world premieres, commissioned by the BSO for its 100th anniversary season, continued with a new piece by Libby Larsen, Earth (Holst Trope). It was created to fill a misunderstood lacuna in Holst's The Planets, which is not about the planets as heavenly bodies, but about their influence on humanity through astrology, meaning that Earth is not really germane (nor is Pluto for that matter). A Space Age vocabulary of sounds in a triple-meter pulsating texture was pleasant enough, until Larsen wove a cantus firmus into the piece, the hymn tune usually sung to the words "For the Beauty of the Earth." It was a gesture that unfortunately recalled P.D.Q. Bach's use of the tune Jesus Loves Me, This I Know in Iphigenia in Brooklyn.

The last time that we heard the BSO play The Planets, in 2008, there was a similar confusion about the piece. Unlike Alsop's interpretation back then, Storgårds clearly saw his targets and helped the orchestra hit all of them: the col legno strikes in the strings and apocalyptic brass in the death march of Mars, but with plenty of quiet space in the Mercury movement for the delicate solos of celesta, piccolo, English horn bass oboe, and others. Holst's piece is a manual on devastating orchestration, imitated for decades by John Williams and other film composers, and the comparison to the Tan Dun Water Concerto on the same program was damning.

BSO Plays More World Premieres

A. Clyne, Night Ferry / M. Bates, Alternative Energy, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, R. Muti (CSO-Resound, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, World Premieres Spice Centennial Of Baltimore SO
Classical Voice North America, May 11

NORTH BETHESDA, Md. – One hundred years ago, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played its first public concert. It is remarkable enough that the ensemble pulled through the economic crisis in 2008 and even more that it continues to thrive in today’s climate of declining audiences. Marin Alsop, who became music director in 2007, and the BSO are celebrating the centennial with a series of new commissions. After debuting pieces by Kevin Puts and Christopher Rouse, the first of which the BSO played at Carnegie Hall in April, the orchestra gave two more world premieres in the Music Center at Strathmore.

The evening opened with Joan Tower’s Sixth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, adding to her most famous work, launched in 1987 and completed in five parts in 1993...

[Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
World Premieres by Joan Tower, Anna Clyne
With Alexandra Soumm, violin
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Robert Battey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debuts two works from two ‘uncommon’ women (Washington Post, May 9, 2016)

Charles T. Downey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra finds its rhythm in Thursday’s concert (Washington Post, September 19, 2015)

---, Slatkin and the NSO, As If He Never Left (Ionarts, November 12, 2011)

---, A Classical Makeover In Baltimore (Washington Post, September 11, 2008)

Baltimore Symphony's New Music

Charles T. Downey, BSO continues centennial celebration with two new pieces (Washington Post, April 18)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra marked the 100th anniversary of its first public concert in February. The celebration continued this week, as music director Marin Alsop led the orchestra in two new pieces commissioned for the centennial season. The program, heard on Friday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, was repeated at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.

Christopher Rouse’s “Processional” was the more successful of the two premieres, one of 10 five-minute anniversary works commissioned by the BSO... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music by Rouse, Puts, Mahler
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Baltimore Symphony premieres musically, visually intriguing 'City' (Baltimore Sun, April 15)

James Oestreich, A Mahler Mini-Festival in New York (New York Times, April 18)

George Grella, Baltimore Symphony offers compelling Puts, uninspired Mahler (New York Classical Review, April 18)

Harry Rolnick, The City First, The Universe Later (Concerto.net, April 16)

More Russians Play More Russians

Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No. 3, D. Matsuev, Mariinsky Orchestra, V. Gergiev (Mariinsky, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Denis Matsuev in a fierce performance with Baltimore Symphony (Washington Post, March 18)

A trifecta of Russian piano virtuosos hit the Washington area this week. Daniil Trifonov played a wild Prokofiev concerto with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal on Monday night. On the same Thursday night that Nikolai Lugansky performed as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, Denis Matsuev appeared with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the Music Center at Strathmore. That program also featured the BSO’s former music director, Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov, and two Russian orchestral warhorses.

The last time Matsuev was soloist with the BSO, in 2004, he played Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto; this time he branched out by playing the composer’s Third Piano Concerto... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Yuri Temirkanov (conductor) and Denis Matsuev (piano)
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Temirkanov produces electric results in BSO return (Baltimore Sun, March 18)

---, Yuri Temirkanov on his BSO return and, yes, still disliking the idea of female conductors (Baltimore Sun, March 18)

Goethe and Beethoven's 'Egmont'

Beethoven, Piano Concertos No. 1 (cadenza by G. Gould), L. Vogt, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, S. Rattle (EMI, 2002)

After an excellent German Requiem last week, Markus Stenz returned to the podium of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. His all-Beethoven program was just as noteworthy for the range of sounds Stenz helped the orchestra create. Part of this success was likely due to Stenz's insistence that a pianissimo truly be a pianissimo, and part could be the result of his re-seating of the orchestra's string sections. The arrangement was similar to what Stenz used last week, although not noted in my review for lack of space: an antiphonal opposition of violins on either side, plus cellos in front of the violas in the center, with basses divided behind them on both sides. (Nothing in the music either last week or this week seemed to require an antiphonal sound.) This made the violas more hidden in sound, not exactly prominent even when they are in the front row, but it also likely forced the musicians to listen a little more carefully.

German pianist Lars Vogt last joined the BSO in 2002, before the foundation of this site. He had a star turn as soloist in Beethoven's first piano concerto, giving a pleasing weight in the keys but also beautifully shaped lines as he nestled comfortably in the sound envelope that Stenz helped the orchestra created around him. An early music crispness ran through Stenz's interpretation, light on vibrato and with a clean and short articulation on all three repeated notes of this most concise of head motifs in the first movement. A virtuosic handling of the first movement was capped by Vogt's choice of a long, contrapuntally complex, and at times truly weird cadenza: it sounded like Liszt or another 19th-century virtuoso, but it was actually written down by Beethoven himself, after the publication of this concerto. (Vogt has recorded an eccentric cadenza by Glenn Gould for this concert, over a decade ago.) The only drawback in the second movement, which was tender and musical, were occasional intonation disagreements between orchestra and piano, and the tempo choice, not too slow, was a nice twist. Vogt was rock solid in the parallel thirds, setting the third movement off at a brisk clip, and the left-hand crossings, giving each line crystalline clarity.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Guest conductor Markus Stenz pulls the BSO into an unknown but elite realm (Washington Post, March 14)

Beethoven's overture to Goethe's Egmont is plenty familiar; the rest of his score of incidental music, not so much. Of the nine pieces, the two songs for Clara, the woman loved by Egmont, are the most beautiful, sung here with a clear, measured tone by soprano Lauren Snouffer. Much of the orchestral music otherwise is fairly bland, adding up to not that much without the play it was meant to accompany. The narration read by British actor Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage, was only a summation of the action of Goethe's play, but it did the trick. Stenz crafted a crisp and military March movement, and the overlap of words and music in the Melodrama was stirring. As he waits to die in prison, Egmont dreams of Clara, who appears in the guise of Freedom, inspiring Egmont to meet death with resolve, personified by the off-stage drummer that arrived on stage before the triumphant finale.

The play has obvious parallels in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, where the rescue fantasy becomes reality. This made the choice of the second Leonore overture an apt one to open this concert. Stenz's one fault, if it is one, is his sometimes exaggerated gesture. Occasionally both last week and this week, he seemed to rush the beat in his enthusiasm, which disconcerted the ensemble's unity at times, like the dramatic pauses in the opening section of this overture, tricking one of the horns into an early entrance at one point. Going over the top as he did, however, also led to striking dramatic contrasts, and the best moments were not necessarily the loud ones. The offstage trumpet solo, played from a balcony toward the rear of the auditorium, was particularly effective.

Stenz Leads Excellent 'German Requiem'

Schoenberg, Gurrelieder, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, M. Stenz (Hyperion, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Chorus on high in Brahms work at Strathmore
Washington Post, March 7

As music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop’s greatest strength is not necessarily a certain swath of music from the classical and romantic core. The ensemble’s new principal guest conductor, Markus Stenz, has built a reputation in those areas. After a concert devoted to Mozart in October, Stenz led a vivid and moving account of the “German Requiem” of Johannes Brahms in the Music Center at Strathmore on Saturday evening.

This piece is driven by the chorus, which sings in all seven movements, and Stenz took advantage of the fine University of Maryland Concert Choir that he had seated above the stage... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
University of Maryland Concert Choir
With Markus Stenz, conductor
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Markus Stenz leads BSO, UM Concert Choir, stellar soloists in 'German Requiem' (Baltimore Sun, March 8)

Venzago, Watts with the BSO

O. Schoeck, Sommernacht (inter alia), Berner Symphonieorchester, M. Venzago (Musiques Suisses, 2015)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is approaching the celebration of its 100th anniversary this Thursday. For the last program before that event, conductor Mario Venzago returned to the podium, with a pleasing selection of music that was full of surprises, heard on Thursday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. Opening with Gluck, some odd selections from the marvelous opera Armide, was an inspired choice, music that few BSO listeners are likely to have heard, at least from the BSO.

The Gluck set included the overture and several dances, plus a chaconne and finale, with a concentrated number of players, including a harpsichord for the continuo part and, somewhat mysteriously, a part for harp. The modern brass instruments had to play in a rather contained way, so as not to overwhelm the ensemble, revealing many delightful sounds, especially the hypnotic Elysium number and an ornately beautiful flute solo in the Siciliana. Gluck premiered this opera in Paris in 1777, the same year that Mozart composed his ninth piano concerto, K. 27, in Salzburg for Victoire Jenamy, the daughter of dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre. It is a jewel of a piece, given a pretty if not always easily flowing account by pianist André Watts. Venzago kept the orchestra at just the right levels to allow his soloist to come to the fore, making many little adjustments to realign the ensemble. Watts performed the cadenzas and other solo moments with some panache, but this was not exactly a rendition to be remembered, although the third movement had a daring spirit.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO welcomes back Andre Watts, Mario Venzago (Baltimore Sun, February 6)

Schumann's symphonies often bore me, but good conductors know how to fix balances to make the best of the composer's sometimes dull orchestration. Venzago did just that in this performance of Schumann's fourth symphony, in D minor, reigning in the string and brass sound to reveal the winds more and applying generous rubato to bring out the Romantic nature of Schumann's phrases. The second movement was delicate and wistful, with some tuning issues when the oboe and cello section shared a melody (not a good combination), but a lovely violin solo in the middle section. The scherzo felt plenty fast but was limber and lively than just forceful, and a trio of charming, murmuring sounds that Venzago's rubato touch brought to life. Venzago's earlier restraint of the brass now paid off, as he finally gave that section its head, driving an exciting finale to its conclusion.

This concert repeats this evening, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

Brahms 4 from the BSO

Sibelius / Khachaturian, Violin Concertos, S. Khachatryan, Sinfonia Varsovia, E. Krivine (Naïve, 2004)

After the Brahms first symphony from the National Symphony Orchestra on Friday, it was time for more Brahms from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The fourth symphony was the centerpiece of the program led by Czech guest conductor Jakub Hrůša, heard on Saturday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore. Hrůša, who last appeared with the BSO in 2014 and with the NSO the year before that, led a Brahms 4 that was more my kind of Brahms playing, with the emotions rarely on the sleeve. The orchestra was returned to its normal seating, after Marin Alsop's experiments earlier in the month, and the first movement was tight and clean, from the first beats of the first movement's melancholy first theme, crowned by a big, forceful ending.

After a heroic horn introduction, the second movement had just the right tempo, not too fast, to put that forlorn clarinet theme in the best light, ambling along at its own pace. Only the third movement seemed not quite right, too harried, although it settled into a slightly slower place later. It is already jolly enough with all those triangle rolls, the only time that a percussion instrument other than timpani appears in a Brahms symphony, and the comic metric shifts and hammered accents. The concluding passacaglia had a pleasing solemnity, with intensity more than speed, especially in the slower middle part.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO makes dynamic music with conductor Jakub Hrusa, violinist Sergey Khachatryan (Baltimore Sun, February 1)

Sergey Khachatryan was the soloist in Sibelius's violin concerto, the same piece the Armenian violinist played the last time he appeared with the BSO, a decade ago. The opening of the first movement plays right into Khachatryan's strength, weaving a soft and delicate legato line over those shimmering D minor chords in the divisi violins, playing with mutes. In passages like this he tended to minimize his vibrato, which in louder passages could become a liability, at least for the clarity of tone. The E string playing was generally fine, especially the flautando notes in the third movement, but there was an unfortunate tendency toward flatness in the second movement, where the horns also had trouble staying in tune.

We are big fans of the music of Leoš Janáček here at Ionarts, but his brief orchestral piece known as Jealousy did not convince. This was both because the piece is odd, not really a curtain-raiser as it was offered here, and because Hrůša, who is a specialist in this composer's music, was at his most frantic and hard to understand, at least from the house. It was difficult to hear what either the composer or the conductor was after. One would have preferred something like the Sinfonietta instead.

Guest conductor Mario Venzago and pianist André Watts join the BSO this week, for music by Gluck, Mozart, and Schumann (February 4 to 6).

BSO Takes Up Magnificent Rouse Oboe Concerto

C. Rouse, Oboe Concerto, L. Wang, New York Philharmonic, A. Gilbert (NYP, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, BSO debut of ‘Oboe Concerto’ bursts with trills and colors (Washington Post, January 16)

Next month, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra marks the 100th anniversary of its first public concert. This season and last, music director Marin Alsop has given both her programming and her musicians an energy-boosting shake-up. That happy trend continued Thursday night with the BSO’s concert in the Music Center at Strathmore, anchored on a recent work by Baltimore-born composer Christopher Rouse.

The Minnesota Orchestra gave the world premiere of Rouse’s “Oboe Concerto” in 2005. The BSO’s outstanding principal oboist, Katherine Needleman, advocated for its BSO debut after playing it at the Peabody Conservatory... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Katherine Needleman, oboe
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, BSO principal oboist Katherine Needleman soars through Rouse concerto (Baltimore Sun, January 16)

BSO and Folger, Star-Crossed

Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet (chor. L. Lavrovsky), D. Vishneva, V. Shklyarov, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on October 14, 2014) MAR0552 | 152 min

Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet was last seen in Washington from the Mariinsky Ballet in 2007. Orchestras play the score more regularly in concert form, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has now used the score to extend its quasi-concert offerings: in the vein of its film screenings with live music, this performance, heard on Friday night at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore, combined the complete orchestral score of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet with excerpts from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

This sounds like a good idea, but it is actually a bad one. Prokofiev's music was not made to accompany Shakespeare's play. It lines up with the choreography of the ballet's streamlined story, adapted in Soviet Russia, and has little to do with Shakespeare. Worse, rather than having a few excerpts between sections of the score, which would have allowed the listener to focus on one or the other, actors performed their lines, with powerful amplification, at the same time as the BSO was playing. The cacophony that this created was most unpleasant, taking two beautiful works of art and forcing them to annihilate each other. There were a few effective moments, when one or the other work took a pause, or when the dynamics of the orchestra lined up briefly with a scene. By and large, though, it was rather hard, perhaps not surprisingly, to take in two simultaneous performances.

Some of the score was cut, to keep the run time down to around two hours with an intermission, but Marin Alsop managed to keep the numbers with mandolins, which are often cut in ballet versions. In spite of the circumstances, some of the actors made favorable impressions, including the noble but venomous Lady Capulet of Kelley Curran and the dignified/ridiculous Friar Lawrence/Nurse of Louis Butelli, who was so memorable in the Folger's production of Henry VIII in 2010. The orchestra seemed out of sorts, with one of the players even plugging his ears during one of the actor's louder speeches, and the performance of the Prokofiev suffered, although there were some pretty moments, too.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, A frustrating fusion of Shakespeare, Prokofiev from the BSO (Baltimore Sun, October 17)

Better to stick to the model of last year's Midsummer Night's Dream, by combining scores of incidental music and the plays they were meant to accompany. Helpfully, I drew up a list of such works to consider, which I publish again: Goethe's Egmont (Beethoven), Shakespeare's The Tempest (Sibelius), Ibsen's Peer Gynt (Grieg), Alphonse Daudet's L'Arlésienne (Bizet), Hugo's Ruy Blas (Mendelssohn), Helmina von Chézy's Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (Schubert), Racine's Phèdre and Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (Massenet), and Aristophanes' The Wasps (Vaughan Williams). These are just the ones I would most like to hear: there are many more, including several scores by Darius Milhaud.

This performance repeats this evening at Strathmore and Sunday afternoon at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore.

BSO Off the Cuff

Lecture-concerts -- with that losing combination of half the music and twice the talk -- are generally not my thing. So the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's decision to double down on its "Off the Cuff" concerts, to which two of its four performances are devoted this week, seemed mysterious to me. Best not to judge such things without experiencing them, however, so Friday evening found me braving the monsoon rains to get to Strathmore for the latest concert in the series. If the chatty format is meant to make newcomers to classical music feel more comfortable, all while charging the same ticket price without having to play the week's entire program, one would hope there are more seats filled at the Music Center in weeks without a hurricane looming off the east coast.

The rest of my weekend review schedule meant that this performance of Markus Stenz's first concert as the BSO's Principal Guest Conductor, focused on excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni, was my only option. Stenz was charming and generally informative in the half-hour lecture, an introduction of the opera's music and story with live orchestra examples, complete with Tcherman accent and amusing minor grammatical errors. His ideas about the opera seemed influenced by the René Jacobs recording, with some rather fast tempo choices, strings light on vibrato, crisp articulation over legato phrasing, and timpani and brass allowed to push into the foreground at loud moments.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO offers kinetic Mozart program with Stenz, Meade (Baltimore Sun, October 2)

Another reason to brave the weather was the chance to hear soprano Angela Meade, who made a powerhouse Donna Anna, albeit without the most suave floating tone at the top, so crucial for the musical characterization of Anna's innocence. Likewise, soprano Jennifer Black, who sang Donna Elvira at the Castleton Festival last year, did not really have the vocal force for that character's vengeful harshness. (Not for the first time, I wondered what the opera would sound like if you switched these voice types around in casting.) Pureum Jo made a noteworthy BSO debut as Zerlina, a role that did not come off as mousy at all with her voice, and Thomas Richards was a strong Leporello, outshining the Don Giovanni of Morgan Smith in the Act II finale.

Juanjo Mena and the BSO

Conductor Juanjo Mena
A talented conductor puts an orchestra at ease in the most natural way, taking the musicians and the listener alike along for the ride. This was the case with Juanjo Mena's latest appearance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore. Last heard with the BSO in 2012, the Spanish conductor currently serves as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, and they are lucky to have him.

Prokofiev's first symphony, a neoclassical bagatelle that shows off the young composer's bona fides, made a sweet opener. With the first movement set at a genial tempo, the musicians seemed comfortable right from the start, giving a cute, lopsided quality to the charming second theme, especially when it returned off the beat. Mena had ensured that the balances were all optimal, so that no other gestures were required during performance, revealing delicate, pearly sounds at the soft end of the dynamic spectrum. The Gavotte had a slightly exaggerated, pompous feel, followed by a finale with Offenbach zing.

Glazunov's violin concerto provided some Romantic meat in the middle of the program, with BSO concertmaster Jonathan Carney giving a rich, loamy sound on the opening theme. Intonation issues cropped up again and again, perhaps from a lack of agreement between orchestra and soloist. Carney is a first-rate soloist, and he had some beautiful moments, like the flautando introduction to the big cadenza, but the more daring spiccato and double-stop stuff in the third movement was not always as clean as it could have been.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, BSO at Strathmore: A confident, open-hearted guest conductor (Washington Post, September 28) Tim Smith, Juanjo Mena, BSO and eloquent music-making; Carney shines in concerto (Washington Post, September 27)

Mena's approach to the main course, Beethoven's sixth symphony, was refreshingly old school -- big string sections, tempos on the moderate to slow side, much of the possible roughness smoothed out in undulating legato phrasing. In such familiar music, he could often set the tempo and then allow the orchestra to regulate itself, using his arms and body to show the long lines he wanted, although with some of the slow tempos he seemed to reconsider midway through, moving the pace ahead slightly.

With the emphasis on somewhat leisurely speeds, the third movement felt especially reserved, the horn fanfares less like boisterous intrusions. On the other hand, Beethoven's additive orchestration -- trumpets joining in the third movement; trombones, thunderous timpani, and fife-bright piccolo in the fourth -- stood out. Only in the especially drawn out fifth movement did the musicians not quite seem all to agree, causing some ensemble uncertainty, further muting the sense of climax to the somewhat odd conclusion to this symphony.

Next week Markus Stenz returns to the podium of the BSO, for the first time as Principal Guest Conductor, with an all-Mozart program including scenes from Don Giovanni with Jennifer Black and Angela Meade (October 1 and 4).

BSO, Now with More Cowbell

Strauss, Eine Alpensinfonie, London Symphony Orchestra, B. Haitink (LSO Live, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra finds its rhythm in Thursday’s concert (Washington Post, September 19)

After lackluster season openers last week, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra season truly got under way with its first subscription concert Thursday night at Strathmore. Music director Marin Alsopm fresh from conducting last weekend's Last Night at the Proms, finally returned to the podium, along with the news that she will step down as music director of California’s Cabrillo Festival next summer.

British-born composer Anna Clyne’s introduction to her piece, “Masquerade,” was even more concise than the work, a five-minute wild rumpus... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Anna Clyne: Masquerade
Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (with Olga Kern)
R. Strauss, Eine Alpensinfonie
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Alsop opens BSO subscription season with return to 'Alpine Symphony' (Baltimore Sun, September 19)

David Rohde, Pianist Olga Kern and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, September 18)

Charles T. Downey, Renée Fleming in Recital (Ionarts, February 25)

---, Philippe Jordan's Strauss (Ionarts, June 26, 2010)

BSO Season Preview

Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagioni, Concerto Italiano, R. Alessandrini (2003)

Charles T. Downey, BSO at Strathmore skips the uncommon music in season preview (Washington Post, September 11)

Ensembles and concert series around the Washington area are coming back to life. On Thursday night at Strathmore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra offered a preview of the season to come.

The musical tasting menu was a hodgepodge of mostly single movements from a range of pieces. The first movement of Debussy’s “Ibéria” featured castanets and some Spanish flavor, with the mood remaining on the sedate side throughout the first half... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Jonathan Carney (violin) and Christopher Seaman (conductor)
Music Center at Strathmore

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, BSO skillfully illuminates familiar terrain of Vivaldi, Handel and Bach (Washington Post, July 25)

BSO Four Seasons

Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagioni, Concerto Italiano, R. Alessandrini (2003)

Charles T. Downey, BSO skillfully illuminates familiar terrain of Vivaldi, Handel and Bach (Washington Post, July 25)

When ensembles perform chestnuts like Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” it is easy to fall into a routine. In the latest performance of this perennial favorite, heard at Strathmore on Thursday night, members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra by contrast sounded like they had made the piece their own.

Concertmaster Jonathan Carney played the solo parts with panache, adding many small embellishments, especially in the slow movements, and some folk-fiddle-like twists and extra virtuosic flash.... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Jonathan Carney (violin) and Grant Youngblood (baritone)
Vivaldi, Four Seasons
Handel, Water Music
Bach, Ich habe genug
Music Center at Strathmore