Dip Your Ears: No. 272 (La Clemenza di Rolando Villazon)

W.A.Mozart La Clemenza di Tito Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Chamber Orchestra of Europe Joyce DiDonato, Tara Erraught, Regina Mühlemann, Adam Plachetka, Marina Rebeka, Rolando Villazon DG, 2018

The Nézet-Séguin Mozart opera project was doomed from the start.

It’d be easy to blame Deutsche Grammophon for having insisted on making their Nézet-Séguin Mozart operas a vehicle for Rolando Villazon, as a case-book study of marketing over musical sense. But these Baden-Baden performances were Villazon’s project and DG was stuck with their biggest star being the crassly weakest link—whether they care or not. It’s been rough-going with the releases so far (Don Giovanni fared best, the Entführung – review on Forbes – was pretty bad) and this La Clemenza di Tito is no better. After Villazon’s comeback from his vocal crisis, Mozart made sense. Except he still pushes it like French high-romanticism. Now the voice sounds strained, rudderless, devoid of nuance, ill at ease. The good-to-great supporting cast (Joyce DiDonato!) can’t salvage this, and neither can Nézet-Séguin’s splendid, traditional-but-energetic conducting of the responsive Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Shame.

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On ClassicsToday: Evan Johnson compositions on Kairos

CD From Hell: Evan Johnson’s Sound Installation (With Sadistic Toy Piano)

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Amid the sea of beautiful, intelligent, vigorous contemporary music, which has at long last recovered from the damage that ideologically charged academicism and anti-sensual strands had successfully inflicted on it, there are still plenty of exponents of yesteryear’s avant-garde music.... [continue reading + sound samples]

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Dip Your Ears, No. 258 (Bernd Klug's CD From Hell)

Bernd Klug, cold commodities Bernd Klug (electronics, editing) (Innova)

At the recent opening of the 2019 “Wien Modern” month-long contemporary music shenanigans, I sat through a piece that piped ear-splitting white noise into the hall behind which an orchestra, virtually unheard, went through the motions. It was an arrogant joke but at least it was something of a (juvenile) statement in the context of a live performance. Before me is a disc that hasn’t even got that excuse. “A male black wearing white, red and black stripes” (written for a noble cause, as you can gather) sounds like someone recorded a tool shop being operated by drunkards. Add microphone feedback and police radio transmission into the mix and you have the opening bullshit piece of Bernhard Klug’s “cold commodities”. In fact, this and all that follows are, to quote from the composer’s notes, “sonifications of a satellite dish, [a] recording device’s CPU [this would explain why I thought my computer had crashed, after putting the CD in],[a] wireless router […] and a cupreous donkey.” Enjoy!

It’s just – literally – an assemblage of noise. Put this into a museum’s art installation on some pretentious topic, and it might have found its niche. On CD, posturing as “music”, it’s got no place. Life is too short for being taken for a fool by experimental narcissists. The whole thing gives contemporary music a bad name. Shame. And yes, sure, “What Is This Thing Called Jazz” briefly sounds like a jazz bassist improvising for a minute out of 54. But you could also get those sounds simply by listening to a jazz bassist improvising on an album of, say, jazz. Unbelievable that this sort of thing still flies in 2019 (or 2013, the year of the recording) and even more unfathomable that anyone should listen to this for any sort of enjoyment. Unless I underestimate the masochist market.

1/6

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On ClassicsToday: John Elliot Gardiner's LSO Mendelssohn

CD From Hell: Gardiner’s Bloodless Mendelssohn Symphonies

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Mendelssohn is sometimes given short shrift for being a “nice” composer: Harmless, untroubled, and glib. That’s partly because the well-adjusted, prosperous, level-headed, and successful Mendelssohn doesn’t conform to our still ruling romantic ideal of the troubled, struggling, excess-driven, or mad genius. Mozart would have made the better Romantic composer; Mendelssohn the better Classical. On the Beethoven-Schumann-Liszt scale of romanticism, about the only thing Mendelssohn got right was dying young.... continue reading [insider content]

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On ClassicsToday: Peter Gregson Banalizes Bach (CD from Hell)

CD From Hell: Peter Gregson Banalizes Bach

by Jens F. Laurson

I like re-orchestrations, transcriptions, and re-compositions as much as the next guy. In fact, more than the next guy. Max Richter’s re-composed “4 Seasons” is terrific in its way; Hans Zender’s “composed interpretation” of Die Winterreise can be endlessly fascinating. Uri Caine’s Mahler is supremely... Continue Reading [Insider content]

On ClassicsToday: A Lady Macbeth From Hell

A Lady Macbeth From Hell

by Jens F. Laurson

The idea of Verdi’s Macbeth (in the original, dramatically taut 1847 version) performed by a period instrument ensemble is, generously viewed, intriguing–at least when Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi are involved, with all their creditable expertise in Italian music. Granted, Verdi is not Vivaldi and... Continue Reading [Insider Content]