Critic’s Notebook: Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain visit Vienna

C.Saint-Saëns, Piano Concertos 1 & 2 Alexandre Kantorow, J.J.Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta BIS SACD

C.Saint-Saëns, Piano Concertos 3-5 Alexandre Kantorow, J.J.Kantorow, Tapiola Sinfonietta BIS SACD

Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain on European Tour, showing off its symbiosis with Yannick Nézet-Séguin

As the second orchestra in Montreal, the Orchestre Métropolitain hasn’t got it easy. Few North American cities have two prominent orchestras; fewer still have two fine concert orchestras. But the music director who started his grand career with this band has remained loyal to his first love – and now they get to punch above their weight and fill (with a little help from the presenters) large halls on their European tour, hitting Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Hamburg, and Baden-Baden. To put this into European terms: It’s as if Christian Thielemann had always also remained at the helm of the Nuremberg State Philharmonic and now took them on a grand pan-Asian Richard Strauss Tour.

It’s heartening, really, and it makes you want to root for that 25-year collaboration that resulted, some six years ago, in a lifetime contract for Yannick Nézet-Séguin. And with that quantum of kindness in your heart, you might find that the buttery phrasing and the lavish touch in Maurice Ravel’s La valse do have a certain appeal, making the music (including much of the rest) sound a bit like those orchestras you seem to remember from old black and white movies. Nothing is overly subtle with Nézet-Séguin – even, paradoxically, the many finer points he has the orchestra perform aren’t. And therein lies much of what makes performances with the compact, energetic little man – 70% torso and 90% charisma – so consistently compelling in concert. So if you can live with music-as-entertainment, heart-on-sleeve emoting, and signaling emotional turns like a semaphore on amphetamines, what’s not to love?!

Of course, you could always revert to sneering quietly: “That’s not how it’s supposed to go.” And even though it might be tough to coherently argue what “supposed to” means, in this context, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Certainly not when it comes to the Tchaikovsky Pathétique, which was programmed for the second half. Firstly, there’s something old-school brazen and populist to that sort of programming. Perhaps that makes it cool again; in any case, it’s certainly effective. A Charles Ives Symphony might have looked smarter on paper – but it wouldn’t have gotten as many asses into the seats of the Wiener Konzerthaus on Wednesday night, nor out of them, again, when it came to jubilation. Taking the symphony by its nickname, YNS conducted it as his red-soled, Swarovski-encrusted buckled loafers might have suggested he would: To the hilt. Slow was very slow, fast was very fast. Empathic and emphatic, the opening was Tristanesque to the hesitant max and the opening of the third movement filled with a nice, nervous energy (if a bit unclean). Along with the rest, it was a perfect cliché of the composer, for better or worse – much depending on how the listener responds to Tchaikovsky in the first place. The critic-colleague for Die Presse on duty that night had his grimmest face on, as he read along in the score, but he was betrayed by vigorously tapping his feet along to the rambunctious music. Incidentally, his review pulled most punches, focusing on the highlight.

That had occurred in the first half. It wasn’t, unsurprisingly, Barbara Assiginaak’s 2021 orchestral work, a percussion-heavy, endearing-sounding, whispering, hissing, howling work of nature-sounds in the broadest sense, filled with tonal connective tissue and prominent woodwinds. It comes with all the charming, ecologically correct and naïve messaging that you would expect from a piece titled Eko-Bmijwang – As Long in Time As the River Flows… and it amounts to something of a land acknowledgment manifest in music: A pleasant gesture and harmless.

It was, however, the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No.2, performed by the rising star pianist Alexandre Kantorow (most recently heard at the Konzerthaus in Chopin’s F minor concerto). The big, bold cadenza works its way from Bach to Mozart (when the Orchestra enters) to full-blown French romanticism. Saint-Saëns runs in Kantorow’s family (his father Jean-Jacques has recorded pretty much all Saint-Saëns there is for orchestra, as a conductor and as a violinist, plus chamber music, and later re-recorded the piano concertos with his son) and he knows how to navigate the part with panache, staying clear of the pitfalls that would have the work sound frivolous and frilly. You’ll still have forgotten everything about it a day later, but while it lasts, it’s a marvelous piece and great fun and the pleasantly unfussy way of Alexandre Kantorow’s with it, romantic but never emoting, had a lot to do with that. That the orchestra was in support-mode didn’t hurt, either.

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CD Reviews: Carolyn Sampson

Charles T. Downey, Recording reviews: A limpid soprano’s chance to soar
Washington Post, February 3

A Verlaine Songbook, C. Sampson, J. Middleton (released on November 18, 2016) BIS-2233 | 80'

Carolyn Sampson is known for her radiant performances of baroque music, having recorded widely with the world’s leading early-music ensembles. The British soprano’s voice combines limpid clarity with laser-focused precision, but with any possible harsh edges softened in a smooth finish. It is also beautifully suited to the corrupt delicacies of late Romantic French mélodie, as demonstrated in Sampson’s recent song recital recording on the BIS label, with the accomplished pianist Joseph Middleton.

All of the songs here are settings of poetry by Paul Verlaine. Some of the early works were inspired by Verlaine’s love for Mathilde Mauté, the young girl with the “Carolingian name,” as he put it in his collection “La Bonne Chanson,” set as a cycle by Gabriel Fauré. Verlaine married Mathilde, but not long after she had borne him a son, he ran off with a young poet named Arthur Rimbaud. Their scandalous love affair provided much of the material for his collection “Romances sans paroles,” including the poems set by Debussy in a set called “Ariettes oubliées.” After time in prison, Verlaine ran off again with Lucien Létinois, a 17-year-old student at the Jesuit school where Verlaine taught.

Multiple composers have composed songs on the same Verlaine poems, which makes for interesting comparison of musical settings. Sampson pairs Debussy's “Fêtes galantes” with songs on poems from the same collection by Poldowski, the nom de plume of Belgian-born pianist Régine Wieniawski. Individual songs by other composers, including Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Charles Bordes and Reynaldo Hahn, round out a most attractive program. Songs such as Déodat de Séverac's “Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit” and Josef Szulc's “Clair de Lune” are major discoveries.

Throughout, Sampson produces an elegant ribbon of sound, couched in refined French pronunciation, that can hang in the air — for instance, a long, exquisitely soft high G at the end of Chausson's “Apaisement.” The only minor setback is that when pushed to louder dynamics, Sampson’s voice loses some of its satiny quality, turning strident, but this is rare in the songs here.

***

Mozart, Great Mass in C Minor / Exsultate jubilate, Carolyn Sampson, Olivia Vermeulen, Makoto Sakurada, Christian Imler, Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki (released on December 9, 2016) BIS-2171 | 65'52"

When Masaaki Suzuki reached the end of his epic traversal of Bach’s sacred cantatas with Bach Collegium Japan, he turned to Mozart. The Japanese conductor's authoritative recording of Mozart's Requiem was one of my favorite discs of 2015, and opened up a new line of specialization for his ensemble beyond the music of its namesake. Shortly after its release, Suzuki conducted another Mozart Mass, the “Great” C minor, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in an astounding performance. Now, his recording of this work, with Bach Collegium Japan, is out on the BIS label.

It was hoped that Suzuki’s Requiem was the start of a recorded reexamination of Mozart’s music for the Catholic church. Mozart left the “Great” C minor Mass, like his Requiem, unfinished; he began it in Vienna as a complete setting of the Latin Ordinary but performed only parts of it on a honeymoon visit to Salzburg, Austria, with his wife, Constanze, in 1783. Suzuki has used the musicologist Franz Beyer’s careful reconstruction of the score, and the relevant historical details are laid out in a superlative booklet essay by Christoph Wolff.

Suzuki takes the opening “Kyrie” at a most satisfying, slow, grand tempo, like a dignified, crisply organized funeral march. The “Qui tollis” section of the “Gloria” has an equally cathedral-filling sound from both chorus and orchestra.

Mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen, tenor Makoto Sakurada and bass Christian Imler ably take their parts in the quartet of vocal soloists. The star of this score, though, is the first soprano, a part written for and premiered by Mozart’s wife. It seems tailor-made for Carolyn Sampson. In the extended showpiece “Et incarnatus est” in the “Credo,” she interweaves her immaculate soprano with the intricate woodwind lines, sweet and tender.

Rounding out the recording is Mozart’s famous cantata “Exsultate, jubilate,” from a decade earlier, although here Sampson’s fast runs are not quite pristine. As a lagniappe, Suzuki has added Mozart’s slightly revised version of the first movement — more a curiosity than an absolute necessity.

Phillips Camerata Marks the Phillips Terquasquigenary

Stravinsky, Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (inter alia), Orchestra of St. Luke's, R. Craft

Charles T. Downey, Phillips Collection reproduces 1941 inaugural concert of weekly series (Washington Post, May 31)

The Phillips Collection presented its first public concert in 1941. On Sunday afternoon, the museum marked the 75th anniversary of its weekly concert series by reproducing the music played at that first concert, a program of pieces for two pianos. The Phillips Camerata, the venue’s resident ensemble, performed some of the pieces in the same format and others in expanded arrangements.

Pianists Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser played the ­two-piano pieces, and previous partnerships together, for the 21st Century Consort, gave them a solid ensemble footing. The daunting technical challenges of Saint-Saëns’s “Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Op. 35,” were not exactly smooth in this performance, but the duo never played it safe, perhaps taking the funeral march variation a tad too fast to savor its harmonic vagaries... [Continue reading]

Phillips Camerata
With Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser, pianists
Phillips Collection

Dominique Labelle at Dumbarton Oaks

Moments of Love, D. Labelle, Y. Wyner (Bridge Records, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Dominique Labelle masters a subtle style at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, March 17)

Canadian-born soprano Dominique Labelle gave a recital of sometimes frustrating contrasts on Sunday evening at Dumbarton Oaks. Some of her selections, mostly on the second half, showed her voice in its best light, with limpid and floating high notes, while others revealed musical struggles.

Both Labelle and her talented accompanist, the composer Yehudi Wyner, were at their best in Ravel’s enigmatic “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.” Here Wyner gave just enough sound to the rustling, often static harmonies of the keyboard part so that Labelle did not have to force her sound. The result was just the right amount of suggestive... [Continue reading]

Dominique Labelle (soprano) and Yehudi Wyner (piano)
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Gluck Sells out the Concert Hall (Ionarts, February 3, 2010)

Mariinsky Ballet's 'Rite of Spring'

Everyone knows about the debacle caused by The Rite of Spring. In spite of having caused a riot, the score quickly became not only accepted but beloved, with a section even used by Walt Disney in Fantasia less than thirty years after the controversial Paris premiere. The uproar was caused not only by the music, which was hard for the musicians to understand and reportedly not played very well, but by the daring choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky. Although we have the score, we do not have the choreography, which was performed as Nijinsky created it for fewer than ten performances and then lost. What we do have is a scholarly reconstruction, by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, premiered by the Joffrey Ballet back in 1987. True, this version is far from perfect: dance historian Jennifer Homans, in her book Apollo's Angels, dismisses it as "American postmodern dance masquerading as a seminal modernist work." Even so, the Mariinsky Ballet leads off its current program at the Kennedy Center Opera House, seen on Tuesday night, with it.

Vaslav Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose, 1911

While the reconstruction may be a "travesty," as Homans put it, "a radical and shocking dance rendered tame and kitschy, a souvenir from an exotic past," it is the closest we are going to get to one of the most significant artistic achievements of the 20th century. (The choreography for Debussy's Jeux is also on my wishlist.) The experience of watching it live, with the music performed by an expanded Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, brought home the raw power of the work -- dance, music, artistic designs -- in a way that was not clear to me before. The music, conducted here by Gavriel Heine, was not always in top form and neither was the dancing, but when you see the movements -- or, at least, Hodson and Archer's most educated guess at the movements -- line up with the music, it makes sense in a way it did not before. A few striking moments will suffice as explanation. The stillness and then ecstatic writhing of the tribesmen incited by the music that accompanies the Cortège du Sage is followed by the agonized lowering of the Sage's body to the ground as he kisses the earth (L'Adoration de la Terre). The night vigil of the Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes reveals the selection of the Chosen One, standing in the center as if planted in the ground, danced here in the final scenes with crazed agitation, all flying braids and anguished shudders, by Daria Pavlenko.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Mariinsky Ballet’s lush, bright and visually spectacular ‘Rite of Spring’ (Washington Post, January 29) ---, Mariinsky Ballet’s ‘Rite of Spring’: Ode to the human savage, still untamed (Washington Post, January 23) Alastair Macaulay, Tweaking an Illustrious Tradition to Incorporate Western Notions (New York Times, January 26) ---, An Age-Old Romantic Introduction, With Revitalizing Touches (New York Times, January 19) Gia Kourlas, Young Performers Spreading Their Wings (New York Times, January 23)

It was hard to imagine anything following such a performance, but the Mariinsky pulled some surprises out of their bag of tricks, with a middle act of two short but celebrated Michel Fokine choreographies. The first, Le spectre de la rose, was created by Vaslav Nijinsky, as the spirit of a rose brought home by a young woman returning from her first ball, made memorable by the bepetaled dancer's triumphant entrance and exit (costumes designed by Léon Bakst), both made by leaps through large windows. Vladimir Shklyarov, last seen in the Mariinsky Romeo and Juliet, was androgynous in the title role, both strong and delicate as, unseen but smelled and remembered by the girl, he wafted the lovely Kristina Shapran around the stage, to Berlioz's orchestration of Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Dance. This paired elegantly with Fokine's solo choreography The Swan, set to Saint-Saëns's Le Cygne, with Ulyana Lopatkina, trembling en pointe and with undulating, graceful arms, taking the role created by Anna Pavlova.

The final act was given over to Paquita Grand Pas, a lengthy divertissement by Marius Petipa inserted into Paquita. Set to largely undistinguished music by Ludwig Minkus, it ran the risk of anticlimax, and indeed many empty seats were left after second intermission. For the energetic Pas de Trois, the variation of Kristina Shapran (a dancer to watch), and the lovely return of Ulyana Lopatkina, it was worth the wait.

This program repeats all week at the Kennedy Center Opera House, through February 1, but with different casts.

National Symphony Season Opening Ball Concert

Bach, Violin Concertos, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, J. Bell (Sony, 2014)

The National Symphony Orchestra opened their 84th season -- the ensemble's 44th in the Kennedy Center -- Sunday evening with violinist Joshua Bell and soprano Kelli O’Hara as guest artists. Following a performance of the National Anthem, under Music Director Christoph Eschenbach’s vivacious baton, the orchestra was hustled through Bernstein’s overture to Candide, which allowed opportunities galore for solos from the principal chairs. Much like the glitter and sparkling of sequins and jewels adorning many in the audience and onstage (the ladies of the orchestra wore ball gowns), the concert was largely without focus. In other words, musical flash was on the menu, and delivered in great quantity.

Joshua Bell joined the orchestra for Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for Violin and Orchestra, a showpiece that put the audience on the edge of their seats rather than sitting back in their chairs to absorb longer musical thoughts. Bell’s clear, sweet sound was breathtaking and contrasted nicely to the darker tone drawn out of his violin in Ravel’s Tzigane for Violin and Orchestra, which followed. Ravel demands that the violinist play quite high notes on the fatter of their strings to help create this effect. The orchestra musicians, through Ravel’s imaginative orchestration, reinforced Bell’s earthy interpretation of the gypsy “hoedown” roots of the piece. Bell’s lyrical encore from the Nigel Hess’ film score Ladies in Lavender helped smooth the transition to the Pops selections comprising the second half of the program.

NSO Pops Conductor Steven Reineke and soprano Kelli O’Hara, singing with heavy amplification, offered a number of songs. Most memorable was Bernstein's Glitter and be Gay, from Candide, which includes the material from the boisterous coda in the overture heard at the beginning of the concert. Autumn Leaves, en français, and La Vie en Rose of Edith Piaf fame were quite fun. Maestro Eschenbach retook the podium to close the concert with Ravel’s La Valse, a surreal neo-Romantic Viennese waltz full of intoxicated impulses that the orchestra relished.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Josh Bell meets Kelli O’Hara: NSO shows pops side in season-opening gala (Washington Post September 23)

Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein spoke to the audience following intermission. In addition to graciously introducing the new Kennedy Center President, Deborah Rutter, Rubenstein announced the December 4th groundbreaking of the Kennedy Center Expansion Project on the south grounds and jutting over the river. Rubenstein proudly stated that the groundbreaking will be done using the shovel used by President Lyndon Johnson at the Kennedy Center’s groundbreaking fifty years ago, and that the new facility will be dedicated on May 29, 2017, John F. Kennedy’s one-hundredth birthday. Due to a successful capital campaign, no federal funds will be used for the Expansion Project, thus making it a “gift to the federal government.”

NGA Vocal Ensemble

Debussy, Music for the Prix de Rome (Le Gladiateur, La damoiselle élue, L'enfant prodigue), Flemish Radio Choir, Brussels Phil., H. Niquet (Glossa, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble provides some pleasant surprises in concert
Washington Post, June 10, 2014

Composers and painters have influenced one another in many eras, and in France at the end of the 19th century, the ties were strong. In a concert Sunday evening, the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble explored the atmosphere of that period, offering music that complemented the museum’s exhibit of works by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt.

The selection featured many unexpected choices, and the performance was generally good, despite a few... [Continue reading]

NGA Vocal Ensemble
Music in honor of Degas/Cassatt
National Gallery of Art

Briefly Noted: Helmchen and d'Indy

V. d'Indy, Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (inter alia), M. Helmchen, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, M. Janowski (PentaTone, 2011)

All too often, soloists play the same concertos over and over again. Every time that a performer makes a recording of a forgotten full-length work with orchestra, an angel gets its wings. Not coincidentally, these performers tend to rank high in my estimation for other reasons, too, like Bertrand Chamayou, who brought César Franck's Les Djinns to my attention a couple years ago. It comes as no surprise that Martin Helmchen, whose debut recital last week was one of the highlights of my year so far, has done the same thing. When I finally got around to listening to the German pianist's recording of Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français, a fine bit of listening, if not a masterpiece by any stretch of the definition, was waiting for me. (Not that it has never been recorded before: Aldo Ciccolini, Robert Casadesus, and even Jean-Yves Thibaudet have done it.) The "French mountain song" in question is a real one, collected by the composer in the Cévennes mountain range in the Massif Central, where d'Indy's family hailed from (although he was born in Paris), and it is given first to the English horn. Andrew Deruchie, in his recent book The French Symphony at the Fin de Siècle: Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition, cites Berlioz's Harold en Italie as the most important model for d'Indy in this work, "replacing the exotic Abruzzi with his native Cévennes." Rather than thinking of the choice of the melody as a nationalistic gesture, Deruchie situates it as a parallel to peasant imagery in paintings by realists like Millet, Pissarro, and Van Gogh. Although he dedicated the piece to his first piano soloist, d'Indy took pains to maintain that the work should be thought of as a symphony, not as a piano concerto. Helmchen and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande embrace the piece's Romantic qualities, both delicate and over the top. Marek Janowski throws in two other lesser-known works of the same period, Saint-Saëns's second symphony and Chausson's Soir de fête.

Paul Jacobs @ Kennedy Center

Charles T. Downey, Organist Paul Jacobs offers refined performance at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, February 7, 2014)

Messiaen, Le Livre du Saint-Sacrement, P. Jacobs (Naxos, 2010)

Whatever happened to those good, old head-to-head competitions between composers or performers? Scarlatti once competed against Handel in Rome, ending in a draw on the harpsichord but Handel having the upper hand on the organ. Bach was scheduled to do musical battle with Louis Marchand, but the French organist fled before the meeting could take place. Mozart vied with Muzio Clementi before the emperor of Austria, who declared the match a tie.

A virtuoso contest of this sort would have been a great way to celebrate the installation of the new Rubenstein Family Organ in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. In our less competitive age, a recital series will have to do, and the inaugural version continued on Wednesday night with a concert by American organist Paul Jacobs. If the first concert in the series, back in October and featuring Cameron Carpenter, was about flamboyance, Jacobs offered a program, on the theme of “Music in Paris,” that was about refinement. Seeing these two artists, who represent opposite temperaments in many ways, compete with one another, rather than in series, would be interesting to say the least. [Continue reading]

Paul Jacobs, organ
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Cameron Carpenter (October 18, 2013)

national symphony ORCHESTRA in World Premiere

With the superficial season-opening festivities out of the way, the National Symphony Orchestra opened its season properly with its first subscription program last night. Two good programming trends from Christoph Eschenbach's first three seasons continued into his first: presenting pieces for their NSO debuts, and playing new contemporary works. Here, a Haydn symphony never before played by the NSO was paired with a world premiere, followed unfortunately by something far too familiar, the Saint-Saëns "Organ-Symphony." Again.

The centerpiece of the evening was the world premiere of a new multimedia work by Roger Reynolds, george WASHINGTON, a sort of environmental soundtrack for a three-narrator text cobbled together from the letters and journals of the first American president. The commission came from the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who specified the subject, with the NSO joining in the commission and providing the first performances. Reynolds tries to take the listener into Washington's world, with a harpsichord piece of the sort he liked to hear his step-granddaugher play, tracks of bird song and other noises recorded at Mount Vernon, and some video imagery of Washington's home, recorded through all four seasons, which was displayed on three large screens over the stage, each divided into panels as if one is looking through large-paned windows. The recorded sounds are sent around the room through surround-sound speakers, requiring the three actors to be amplified. It was a relief, at least, that a work by Reynolds was not grating or vexing, but it was one of the more dull and monotonous experiences, at over twenty minutes, in recent memory.

Read more »

NSO Opens Fourth Season with Eschenbach

A gala performance, like the National Symphony Orchestra's annual Season Opening Ball concert, is often dangerously close to a pops concert. Christoph Eschenbach, at the start of his fourth season as the NSO's Music Director, has mostly avoided that pitfall in his first three seasons. His fourth season opener, heard on Sunday evening in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, veered dangerously close to that edge, especially in the second half, but remained an event just as much about the ears -- as well as a big social event that raised $1.3 million for the NSO. The smell of paint, a new coat of cream color that has lightened the room considerably, was still discernible, from work finished over the summer -- fortunately, as Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein joked in his post-intermission remarks, completed before the Federal government was shut down.

The NSO musicians were featured in a couple of blockbuster showpieces, neither of them performances with much to remember. Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet is far from the sort of trivial overture often used to open such concerts, but with enough famous tunes to please a crowd. As required, the fast bits were thrilling, with climactic sweeps of sound, and Eschenbach kept the slow parts from wallowing in syrup. On the second half, Bizet's second suite from Carmen served much the same purpose, with the added benefit of featuring some principals in beautiful solos: especially trumpeter Steven Hendrickson, bold of tone in the Habanera and Toreador Song, a fine piccolo duet in the children's chorus from Act I, and concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, surprisingly demure in Micaëla's aria from Act II.

Read more »

Collard with the BSO

Charles T. Downey, Guest BSO conductor Carlos Kalmar provides expert leadership
Washington Post, May 27, 2013

Saint-Saëns, Piano Concertos, J.-P. Collard, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, A. Previn

In the battle of the area’s major orchestras, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra often outplays the National Symphony Orchestra, section for section. In the past few years, however, the BSO’s programming and leadership at the podium have sometimes been disappointing. When given a strong conductor and some meaty music to play, as it had on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, the orchestra can be a wondrous thing to hear, especially since both its regular venues have superior acoustics.
[Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Carlos Kalmar (conductor) and Jean-Philippe Collard (piano)
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Carlos Kalmar makes welcome return to BSO podium (Baltimore Sun, May 24)

Andrew Lindemann Malone, Saint-Saëns Sings: Jean-Philippe Collard and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Music Center at Strathmore (DMV Classical, May 25)

Frédéric Trudel, Know your strengths and weaknesses -- Interview with Jean-Philippe Collard (La Scena Musicale, May 10, 2004)

Anne-Sophie Mutter @ Strathmore

Mozart, Violin Sonatas, A.-S. Mutter, L. Orkis W. Lutosławski, Partita (inter alia), A.-S. Mutter, BBC Symphony Orchestra, W. Lutosławski

German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter always puts on a good show, and she has a big enough profile to anchor season openers, for the NSO this season and for Washington Performing Arts Society in 2008. So it was a pleasure indeed to hear her in a more intimate program on Tuesday night, if not necessarily a more intimate venue, presented by WPAS in the Music Center at Strathmore. She chose a first half that was curiously small for her, but musically flattering, followed by a blockbuster second half that reminded us that she is a powerhouse on the instrument.

Mutter began with a slender Mozart sonata (G Major, K. 379), not even one that particularly stood out on her recording. As on her disc it was the delicate touch of her partner at the piano, Lambert Orkis, principal keyboard player of the National Symphony Orchestra, that stood out, pressing the tempo ahead in the first movement while Mutter seemed to take her time. It is an odd little piece, with an opening Adagio, an arching cantilena in G major, that ends abruptly in D major and sets up an Allegro in G minor, given a more meaty, big-boned sound by both players. In the closing Theme and Variations, Orkis again showed a light handling of the piano-only first variation, with Mutter not quite suited to the filigree fine points of the violin part, giving too much pluck to the harp-like accompaniment of the slow fifth variation, for example. The results were better with Schubert's Fantaisie in C Major (D. 934), with Mutter shining on her E string in the Allegretto section. The variations, based on Schubert's song Sei mir gegrüßt (with that signature harmonic progression from vi to V/vi to V), were the highlight for both musicians, although some syncopated in the piano part -- in one variation that can sound almost like a tango when those accents are emphasized -- seemed tame.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Anne-Sophie Mutter has a semi-great night (Washington Post, March 14)

Mutter's flawless ear for pitch and impressive memory make her a natural fit for more dissonant modern music, and as is often the case she made the biggest impression with just such a piece, Witold Lutosławski's rather fascinating Partita. The composer made an orchestral version of the piece in 1988 for Mutter, dedicating it to her, and she made a recording of that arrangement with the composer conducting. Rarely have microtonal bends sounded as sensual as rendered by Mutter, quite like human moans, and in this piece, where the violin part really is the dominant one, she finally took the spotlight and held it, her tone multichromatic, with moments shining, raspy, bird-like, muffled, syrupy, shrill. The final work, Camille Saint-Saëns' Sonata No. 1 in D minor, op. 75, left no doubt of Mutter's technical credentials. It is a high Romantic piece, sometimes thought to be the model for the Vinteuil sonata and its famous "petite phrase" in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, and Mutter gave the opening movement a restive agitation and rhapsodic dreaminess to the second. The piece is just as challenging for the pianist (if anything, Saint-Saëns just did not know when to stop sometimes), and Orkis did a good job of keeping up with his soloist, keeping the third movement light and fluffy and not falling behind in the hell-bent-for-leather finale. Loud ovations warranted three fine encores: Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera, Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 2, and the chestnut Meditation from Massenet’s Thaïs.

If you can still see straight by late afternoon on St. Patrick's Day, the next WPAS concert is a recital by flutist James Galway (March 17, 4 pm), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Hilary Hahn, Again with the Encores

Charles T. Downey, Violinist Hilary Hahn’s new encores served as musical dessert at Kennedy Center
Washington Post, February 18, 2013

Bach, Solo Violin Partitas, H. Hahn

Encores come in a few standard shapes and sizes: the ardent, lyrical cantilena; the short, vapid bit of pure virtuosity; something more enigmatic or contrapuntal. Violinist Hilary Hahn wanted to expand her range of encore choices, so she commissioned a set of new encore pieces from composers around the world. Her recital on Saturday night, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, featured the Washington premieres of some of them.

The encore has a special place, offered by the performer as a gift to the listener and sometimes mentioned but generally not reviewed by critics. It is often a way for musicians to play music they normally would not include in a serious program, as a guilty pleasure. It is not necessarily something one associates with new music that might not sit well with all listeners, and that is the challenge facing Hahn’s project. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Lawrence Budman, Hilary Hahn mixes old and new with supreme artistry (South Florida Classical Review, February 15)

Joshua Kosman, Hahn at the Herbst, Shaham at Davies (San Francisco Chronicle, February 10)

Jeff Dunn, Hilary Hahn Shines Light on Delicacies (San Francisco Classical Voice, February 9)

Joshua Bell @ Strathmore

French Impressions (Franck, Saint-Saëns, Ravel) (2012)

Joshua Bell is a regular on the Washington Performing Arts Society season, a big name that fills a big hall. The American violinist, one of the few classical musicians whom most people would recognize by name -- if not by sight, at least not in a baseball cap at L'Enfant Plaza -- was just here in January, at the Kennedy Center. He was back with another program on Thursday night, this time in the Music Center at Strathmore, once again with pianist Sam Haywood. Not surprisingly, he stuck to the Romantic music that is his bread and butter, the music that spotlights his uncanny ability to draw forth a sweet, glowing tone from his 1713 Stradivarius violin, the Gibson ex-Huberman.

This was certainly true of the two major works at the heart of this concert. Few violinists play Franck's A major violin sonata like Bell, with such radiance in the soft passages and a mercurial sense of rubato. He took the final movement at quite a clip, and Haywood, who is a sensitive partner at the piano (if not all that strikingly individual a player), did a fine job of staying with him. Although Prokofiev's second violin sonata (D major, op. 94bis, originally composed for the flute) was composed in the 1940s, it paired quite naturally with the Franck, especially the way that Bell played it, emphasizing its blithe and limpid qualities, as in the main theme of the first movement. Bell gave the second movement, taken very fast, some folksy rhythmic verve and bluesy touches, and a suave softness in the third, but the fourth movement lacked the fortissimo zing it needed, something like what the stronger arm of a Vadim Repin provides, to give the grotesquerie an uglier edge.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, At Strathmore, Joshua Bell puts on a trademark, moving performance (Washington Post, November 3) David Patrick Stearns, Orchestra rises to music of the Americas (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28) Ivan Hewett, Academy of St Martin in the Fields / Joshua Bell, Cadogan Hall (The Telegraph, October 19)

Least successful was Schubert's Rondo Brillant in B Minor, which headed the program. This is a composer one does not associate with Bell (he has recorded at least one short piece, the Serenade), although there was much free and rhapsodic playing from both musicians. The fast sections sounded a little helter-skelter in terms of ensemble alignment, which brought to mind just how packed Bell's schedule is these days, since having added the directorship of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to his already busy life. The unannounced last part of the program served also as encores, with Bell padding out the 19th-century part of the concert by playing Tchaikovsky's Melody and the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A Minor, op. 28, by Camille Saint-Saëns.

The next concert presented by WPAS will feature pianist Lukáš Vondráček (December 1, 2 pm), at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Gregorian Chant Supreme

Charles T. Downey, Cathedral Choral Society opens 71st season
Washington Post, October 23, 2012

Duruflé, Complete Choral Works, Choir of Trinity College Cambridge

The Cathedral Choral Society opened its 71st season with a tribute to the flowering of late romantic music in France. This grand program, at Washington National Cathedral on Sunday afternoon, combined the cathedral’s imposing organ, multiple choruses and a vast orchestra, which are not always suited to the cavernous space.

In Maurice Durufle’s evanescent setting of the Latin Requiem Mass, a lush rethinking of the Gregorian chant melodies for the Mass of the Dead, the combined forces murmured and undulated. Durufle was perhaps the most skilled composer of the 20th century at setting Gregorian chant, a body of music that he revered; late in life, he railed against its removal from the Catholic liturgy in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The composer’s original large orchestration sometimes came close to smothering the chorus, kept intentionally soft, but it made for transporting climaxes in the “Domine Jesu Christe” and “Osanna” sections. [Continue reading]

Cathedral Choral Society
Duruflé, Requiem
Saint-Saëns, Symphony No. 3
Washington National Cathedral

À mon chevet: 'Bel-Ami'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Suddenly, the Swiss guard struck the pavement three times with the wooden part of his halberd. All those assembled turned with a long swish of skirts and a scraping of chairs. The young woman appeared, on her father's arm, in the bright light of the opened portal. She still looked like a child's doll, a white toy with orange flowers in her hair. She stayed for a few moments at the entrance, and then when she took her first step into the nave, the great organ pushed forth a powerful cry, announcing the entrance of the bride with its great metal voice. [...] All the while, the great organ was singing, pushing through the enormous edifice the purring rhythmic accents of its shining throats, crying out to heaven the joy and the pain of mankind. [...]

The bishop ended his oration. A priest clothed in a golden stole climbed to the high altar, and the great organ began again to celebrate the glory of the newlyweds. Soon it was shooting forth a prolonged clamor, enormous, swelling like waves, so sonorous and so powerful that it seemed it must be raising up the vault and making it jump to expand into the blue sky. Its vibrant noise filled the entire church, made flesh and soul shiver. Then all of a sudden it calmed; fine notes, alert, ran through the air, tickling the ear like soft breaths; these were little, gracious songs, tiny, bouncing, that fluttered like birds; and suddenly, this coquettish music broadened anew, again becoming terrifying in strength and breadth, as if a grain of sand was being transformed into a whole world.

Then human voices rose up, passing over their bowed heads. Vauri and Landeck, from the Opéra, were singing. Incense spread a fine odor of benzoin, and on the altar the divine sacrifice was accomplished; the God-Man, at the call of his priest, came down to earth to consecrate the triumph of the Baron Georges du Roy. Bel-Ami, on his knees next to Suzanne, had lowered his head. He felt at that moment almost like a believer, almost religious, full of thanks for the divinity that had thus favored him, that had treated him with such respect. And without knowing exactly whom he was addressing, he thanked it for his success.

-- Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, pp. 565, 567, 570-71 / (my translation)

These passages come from Georges Du Roy's final wedding, which takes place in the Église de la Madeleine in Paris. At the time when this wedding was taking place, the grand organ in that church was rather new, completed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1846. Although it does not quite fit with the time frame of the story, it seems likely that Maupassant, in describing the music at this most magnificent wedding, had in mind the playing of none other than Camille Saint-Saëns, who was organist at La Madeleine from 1857 to 1877. What the characters are hearing, in fact, sounds like one of Saint-Saëns' epic improvisations, which were the talk of Paris. Liszt, who enjoyed a life-long friendship of mutual admiration with Saint-Saëns, wrote to him, "You use the organ as an orchestra in an incredible way. The most proficient organists in all countries have only to take their hats off to you." When Maupassant moved to Paris as a young man, working as an impoverished clerk (much as Georges Duroy first appears in Bel-Ami), it was at the tail end of Saint-Saëns' tenure at La Madeleine.

Michelle DeYoung's Seductive 'Dalila'

On Saturday, it was Washington National Opera taking up an opera performed by Washington Concert Opera, Massenet's Werther. On Sunday, the reverse happened, with Washington Concert Opera taking up an opera that has not exactly been rare around these parts, Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns, last seen in a 2005 production at WNO, itself a rehash of the company's 1998 staging. The opera is a good choice for WCO, since the composer described it as a "dramatic oratorio," a series of often static tableaux, which makes it a little tedious in a full staging. It is not exactly a rarity, however, especially in Washington in the last decade or so, which squanders one of the advantages of concert performance of opera.

With another chance to hear mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung -- after a volcanic Judith in the National Symphony Orchestra's performance of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle -- that shortcoming was easy to overlook. This was DeYoung's debut as Dalila, and she brought a luscious, seductive tone to the role, purring her way through the Act I aria "Printemps qui commence," and producing a soaring tone covering the full compass from high G down to low B♭ in the big cadenza moment of "Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse." The richness of sound made the slow pieces like "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" delightfully round, buttery, sultry, and the high B♭ near the end of the second act ("Lâche!) was like a lightning bolt. DeYoung was well matched by the High Priest of bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, last heard as the best part of a Santa Fe Salome in 2006. Grimsley sang with a rousing snarl, the tone slightly nasal but with an intense edge, making his duets with Dalila the most exciting moments of the evening. Tenor Frank Porretta, stepping in for an indisposed Brandon Jovanovich, sang honorably if without much to recommend the performance beyond having made it through it. As in his undistinguished appearances in recent productions at Washington National Opera -- Un Ballo in Maschera in 2010, Tosca last fall -- Porretta started off fairly strong, struggled audibly through the second act, and revived a bit, at least on the big notes like the final high B♭, of the third. The intonation was not always good, and a shouted kind of vocal production produced took quite a toll on his voice.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Opera review: ‘Samson et Dalila,’ by the Washington Concert Opera (Washington Post, May 15)

In the supporting cast, bass Liam Moran was strongest as the Old Hebrew, a broad sound with a slightly overactive vibrato. Conductor Antony Walker, ever resourceful, added to his repertoire of ancillary functions on the podium: after a well-publicized performance-saving stunt in which he sang one of the roles to cover an ailing singer in Aida while still conducting, he served in the first act as prompter, whispering the starts of lines to one of his singers, Kenneth Kellogg. The orchestra he assembled -- often with different personnel for the company's different performances (only two per season) -- did not sound quite as solid and well rehearsed as they have in the past. The violins had too many lapses of ensemble unity, and the oboe was troubled by rough attacks much of the night. That being said, it was impressive that Walker had at his disposal almost the full complement of instruments called for in the score: two cornets as well as two trumpets, two harps, albeit with just one tuba to cover the two ophicleide parts. The exotic parts of the score -- the many harem numbers shimmying with metallic percussion and augmented seconds, or that annoyingly long passage for glockenspiel in the third act -- lumbered and zipped with an impressive clatter. The chorus sang valiantly on the often tiresome choral numbers, complete with lots of dutiful counterpoint and vaguely liturgical modal flavors. They contributed a thrilling noise to the loudest moments.

The two operas on the next season of Washington Concert Opera will be Bellini's La Sonnambula (September 16, 2012) and Donizetti's Maria Stuarda (April 7, 2013), at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium.

Pittsburgh's New Emperor in Washington: Manfred Honeck's DC-Debut with his new Orchestra

The National Symphony Orchestra’s series of concerts this week might have gone even more unnoticed with its nameless protagonists and unexciting programming. Verdi’s La forza del destino overture, Saint-Saëns’ Third Violin Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony are not exactly barnstormers; not the kind of programming that kindles fervor in regular concert-goers.

Chee-Yun, the violinist, is just another pretty face / face-less Asian fiddler (as a visiting professor at the University of Indiana there is a Slatkin-link, though); Manfred Honeck would be completely unknown in these parts of town had he not just been named the new music director at Pittsburgh, one of the best orchestras of the country.

This ends the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s misguided and expectedly failed experiment of having three roving conductors at the helm… as if three B-list conductors together might amount to the name recognition, status, or quality musical leadership that one A-list maestro might. (The overrated Artistic Advisor Andrew “Not Colin” Davis, the steady, reliable, reliably unexciting Principal Guest Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, and the underrated, insider-beloved and unfortunately titled “Endowed Guest Conductor Chair” Marek Janowski made up this troika that was allowed to waste precious years of distinct musical direction after one of the best conductors in the world, Mariss Jansons, stepped down in 2004.)

Now Manfred Honeck, who immediately reminds of Franz Welser-Möst (Cleveland’s mildly controversial custodian of quality music-making) in nationality, background, and even looks, will hopefully continue where the sublime Latvian left off. His performance in Washington on Thursday was not as telling about where he might take the bigger orchestra to the north… Verdi’s overture was driven, muscular, determined, and compact but surely not overly polished.

P.I.Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.5, M.Honeck / Pittsburgh Exton

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, A Lasting First Impression (Washington Post, February 3)

Saint-Saëns’ Third Violin Concerto meanwhile is the kind of piece that allows you to judge soloist or conductor no more than the merits of a great chef who serves you grits. And sure enough, it was all good, as good as grits can presumably be. On a violin that produced a huge, whiskey-roughed tone (not very clean when she tried very hard) she applied extraordinary energy to a concerto that you need not (or cannot) say much in, musically, and can therefore use all the energy it gets. She showed a studied intensity, possessing wonderful harmonics, and a showy, indiscriminate vibrato that served the concerto well enough to make it sugary, pleasant, if entirely indistinct.

A musical shot of insulin would have been appropriate for the second half. Instead: Tchaikovsky “Five”; itself sufficient to induce symphony-diabetes. As it was, the Tchaikovsky turned out to be the finest performance: Deliberate, heaving like a dying beast, with dark clouds before the musical story-telling picks up with brighter, more animated rhythms. Slowly awaking was the second movement, much like film music, in the best sense. The finale, finally, was not too weighty, not choked by its own portentousness and even light and foot-tappingly moving forward during the Allegro vivace.

Today's performance will take place at 1.30PM, the performance on Saturday at 8PM.

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