At WCR: NSO, Benedetti

Charles T. Downey, Eschenbach, NSO present a contrasted program of Marsalis, Tchaikovsky
Washington Classical Review, October 28

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Yuja Wang's Polished Performance with the NSO (Ionarts, December 8, 2012)

---, Nicola Benedetti In Over Her Head (Ionarts, February 5, 2009)

CD Reviews: Goerne and Eschenbach's Brahms / 'Dinorah'

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: Eschenbach and Goerne take on somber Brahms
Washington Post, August 6

Brahms, Lieder und Gesänge, M. Goerne, C. Eschenbach (released on May 27, 2016) HMC 902174 | 55'49"

When the baritone Matthias Goerne has been a guest with the National Symphony Orchestra in recent years, he has performed fine lieder recitals with Christoph Eschenbach at the piano, a collaboration preserved on a series of recordings for Harmonia Mundi. The latest release is devoted to Johannes Brahms, and Goerne’s intense, almost overbearing approach works beautifully in these often gloomy songs.

Goerne’s voice, growling and dark-hued, fits aptly with the depressing and bitter “Lieder und Gesänge,” Op. 32, nine songs with poetry alternately by August von Platen and Georg Friedrich Daumer. Eschenbach doesn’t stint on the equally somber accompaniments, in which Brahms lingers often in the bass territory of the keyboard, as in the first track, “Wie rafft’ich mich auf,” and the poem’s repeated statements of “in der Nacht.” In the third song, von Platen’s narrator asks, “Und könnt’ich je / Zu düster sein?” (“And could I ever be too gloomy?”); one can imagine Brahms posing the same question, with a wry smile.

Five of Brahms’s Heinrich Heine songs, selected from the Op. 85 and Op. 96 sets, are something of a breath of fresh air, which is surprising given the ironic bitterness of much of Heine’s poetry. Goerne unfurls with unaffected tenderness the undulating phrases of “Sommerabend” and “Mondenschein,” songs Brahms paired through key choice and harmonic pattern. Eschenbach keeps pace with him at the keyboard, willing to stretch and pull the music wherever Goerne wants to go.

With the “Serious Songs” of Op. 121, composed the year before Brahms died, this disc becomes somber again. Brahms composed these songs on Bible texts with the approaching death of Clara Schumann, whom he had long secretly loved, weighing on his mind. In an informative booklet essay, Roman Hinke quotes a letter written by Brahms around this time: “The thought of losing her can terrify us no longer, not even me, the lonely man for whom there is all too little alive in the world.” The ineffable sweetness of the harmonies in the second stanza of “O Tod, wie bitter bist du” (“O death, how bitter you are”) and the tender sound Goerne coaxes from his top range in these phrases are a glorious, longing embrace of death. Brahms must have thought his own end could not be far off.

*****

Meyerbeer, Dinorah, ou le pardon de Ploërmel, P. Ciofi, E. Dupuis, P. Talbot, Deutsche Oper Berlin, E. Mazzola (released on May 13, 2016) cpo 555014-2 | 133'47"

If Giacomo Meyerbeer is remembered at all these days, it is for his grand operas, larger-than-life tragic works that profoundly influenced Richard Wagner. With this recent release on the CPO label, the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin has revived the most successful of Meyerbeer’s comic operas, “Dinorah, ou le pardon de Ploërmel,” premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1859.

The work’s three main roles are all cast well in this concert performance, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2014. Italian soprano Patrizia Ciofi sounds a little faded and not exactly effortless on the many vocal acrobatics, but she brings a dramatic differentiation of vocal colors to the innocent girl Dinorah. When disaster strikes her father’s farm in the Breton village of Ploërmel, Dinorah goes mad, dancing with her own shadow in a famous scene in Act II. When she makes her entrance in the first act, it is to sing a lullaby to her goat, Bellah, whose appearances are heralded by the ringing of a small bell, always on F sharp.

Baritone Etienne Dupuis has a broad, refined tone as Hoël, the goatherd who was supposed to marry Dinorah but, worried that her father’s loss will leave her destitute, follows a magician who has promised to teach him the secret of obtaining a hidden treasure from the fairies that haunt the local gorge. The best of the trio is tenor Philippe Talbot, who brings a light, airy sound to the comic role of Corentin, a superstitious and cowardly bagpiper. The three are combined beautifully at the end of the first act in the delightful “Terzettino of the Bell,” which also features the goat’s bell and a wind machine.

Enrique Mazzola leads a compact, sharply drawn performance that, with about 20 minutes cut from spoken dialogue and faster tempos, fits on two discs instead of the three in the version recorded by James Judd and the Philharmonia Orchestra two decades ago. Particularly fine playing comes from the horns in the hunting music that introduces Act III, where there is a charming pastoral interlude, mostly unaccompanied and featuring a strong supporting cast. Ciofi, having guarded her vocal resources up to this point, cashes in on the pianissimo high-flying writing in the final scene, when Dinorah’s memory is restored and she joins the prayer of the villagers.

PREVIOUSLY:
Goerne's Die schöne Müllerin
Goerne's Winterreise

NSO Ends Season with Bruckner 4, Mahler

Bruckner, Symphony No. 4 (1886 version, ed. L. Nowak), London Symphony Orchestra, B. Haitink (LSO Live, 2011) Mahler, Rückert-Lieder, V. Urmana, Vienna Philharmonic, P. Boulez (Deutsche Grammophon, 2005)

Christoph Eschenbach extended his unofficial Bruckner cycle with the National Symphony Orchestra last night, with a rousing, buzzer-beating rendition of the fourth symphony, dubbed by the composer the "Romantic" symphony. He did so by following the formula he used with Bruckner's seventh symphony in 2012, when he paired Bruckner with Nathalie Stutzmann singing Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder. The French contralto, who last visited as the conductor of Handel's Messiah last year, gave a musically sensitive but often covered performance of Mahler's sublime Rückert-Lieder.

It had been over a year since our last Bruckner, when we heard the eighth symphony from the BSO, and the withdrawal symptoms were in full force. The NSO last played the fourth symphony, supposedly the most popular of the composer's works, in 2005, when Roger Norrington conducted Bruckner's original 1874 version. Bruckner rarely let his works alone, making obsessive revisions, taking cuts, sometimes then restoring them, and even replacing entire movements. For those keeping score, Eschenbach chose the 1878/1880 version (ed. Leopold Nowak) of the fourth symphony, the one with the joyful, programmatic Jagd-Scherzo but rejecting the colorful Volksfest finale, which he substituted in 1878, for the first in a series of revisions of the original finale. In addition to some cuts in the slow movement (which were a mistake in my opinion), the thing Bruckner was most trying to get right in all those revisions was the finale, with which he was never quite satisfied. Hearing the 1880 revision of the finale, one can understand why, as it meanders and drags through some less pleasing turns.

The piece opens with an exposed horn solo, played with assured subtlety by the NSO's principal horn player Abel Pereira, a motif that focuses on perfect fifths in the home key (B-flat to E-flat, E-flat to A-flat) with an alluring turn toward the minor subdominant (A-flat, C-flat, E-flat) that is such an important part of the thrilling crescendo at the conclusion of the last movement. Bruckner calls for so much tremolo in the string section that one feared for the players' wrists, especially when Eschenbach allowed the brass, who were magnificent, to overpower the other sections so much. At that rare moment in the first movement where the second violins get the melody, Eschenbach did little to guide the rest of the orchestra to create a space for them to sound.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Eschenbach takes the NSO back to one of his favorites, Bruckner (Washington Post, June 10) Eschenbach's Bruckner: no. 8 (2014) | no. 7 (2012) no. 9 (2012) | no. 6 (2010)

Eschenbach's tempi were just slightly faster than those chosen by Bernard Haitink for his 2011 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, but with an impatience that unsettled the whole performance. This was most evident in the inner movements, as the Andante seemed to vary a lot in tempo (and not just in the ways Bruckner indicated), but with beautifully soft dynamics, especially in the introspective passages where the melody is in the viola section. There were some intonation issues in the woodwind sections, possibly due to balance problems in Eschenbach's interpretation, possibly because principal oboist Nicholas Stovall sat out.

The "hunting" Scherzo is exciting without having to be pushed as fast as Eschenbach pushed it, and by the end the initially rash tempo was mollified. The flute solo in the trio, which Bruckner said was "a dance melody which is played to the hunters during their repast," had a lovely, breathy sound, and the brass section, as throughout the symphony, was imperious from trumpets down to the tuba. Hard as it was to believe, an audience member was audibly snoring at the start of the fourth movement, in spite of all that loud brass in the scherzo. Perhaps Celibidache's expansive reading of this symphony with the Munich Philharmonic has spoiled me, with its luxurious renditions of the second and fourth movements, but Eschenbach's interpretation just seemed rushed (the fourth movement clocked in at 22 minutes), especially in that gigantic crescendo that ends the work.

Stutzmann's singing in the Rückert-Lieder was inspiring, as long as Mahler's orchestration was delicate enough that Eschenbach could keep the orchestra at pp, so as not to obliterate her tentative sound. If Stutzmann had to strain at all, her intonation, never quite on the head in the best of circumstances, suffered even more. In the third and fourth songs, where Mahler uses a larger orchestration, one just needs a larger voice than what Stutzmann could summon, and her relative lack of breath support meant that "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," performed last in a slight re-shuffling of the order of the songs, felt too rushed to disconnect from the world.

This concert repeats tonight and Saturday, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Salonen, Out of Nowhere

E.-P. Salonen, Violin Concerto / Nyx, L. Josefowicz, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, E.-P. Salonen (Deutsche Grammophon, 2012)

Attentive readers will recall that my last pick for the Top 25 concerts of this season was the National Symphony Orchestra's program slated for the first weekend of June. Along with symphonies by Haydn and Schumann, Leila Josefowicz was going to give the world premiere of a new violin concerto by Sean Shepherd. About five months ago it became apparent that Shepherd was not going to finish this commission in time, and the new concerto was postponed, replaced by Esa-Pekka Salonen's relatively new violin concerto, as noted in my June concert picks. Josefowicz reportedly offered to play a few options from her repertory instead of the Shepherd piece, and Christoph Eschenbach and the NSO wisely chose Salonen's violin concerto, one of the best new pieces of recent years, heard at the Friday performance. A little bird tells me that the Shepherd concerto, when finally completed, will get an NSO performance, not next season obviously but soon thereafter.

At some point along the way Salonen's violin concerto has lost its subtitle, "Out of Nowhere," referring to the way that the solo part begins in media res. The constant stream of notes, accompanied by celesta, glockenspiel, and vibraphone, gives the impression of a pixie flitting about spraying fairy dust everywhere, with Josefowicz's harmonic notes somehow imitating the metallic sounds around her. A marvelous part for contrabass clarinet reinforces the entrance of the bass instruments on long notes (marked "stagger breath"), sounding like a tidal surge but given the first movement's title ("Mirage") may refer to the visual waves produced by extreme heat. The first inner movement ("Pulse I") is framed by sections of artificial harmonics in the solo part, showcasing Josefowicz's impeccable E string technique, through which she produced a perfectly tuned sound that could cut through any texture but never be harsh.

In both the pulse movements, playful rhythmic patterns became the focus, with the timpani in "Pulse I" pounding on the beat and then, through a sleight of hand, off the beat, for example. Wooden percussion and brass provided the impulse in "Pulse II," eliciting more wooden, hollow sounds from Josefowicz's tremolos. Salonen uses the orchestra for subtle, coloristic purposes for much of the piece until, at the end of the third movement, the ensemble goes on a wild rampage, with the solo shrieking along in crazy glissandi. ("Something very Californian about this," Salonen noted, laconically, in his composer's note.) The composer's affecting farewell to his former band, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is heard in the fourth movement ("Adieu"), with the most tender, introspective music of the concerto, including a rising scalar motif, almost like a jet slowly taking off from LAX. Salonen, for his part that "this is not a specific farewell to anything in particular," although later he admitted that "it is not a coincidence that the last movement is called 'Adieu'."

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, A maverick soloist offers a classic new work (Washington Post, June 3)

Eschenbach, who was laser-focused while conducting the Salonen, returned to his over-expressive gestural mode in both of the more familiar symphonies. Schumann's fourth symphony had a welcome return, not played by the NSO since 2003. (The program notes, for some reason, were on the topic of the second symphony.) The differentiation of sound through attention to balances seemed to show careful reflection, but Eschenbach could not seem to settle on one tempo, shifting the speed in different sections of the first movement, for example. Schumann's heavier re-orchestration, in the revised version of the symphony played here, gives a lugubrious quality to the slow introductions of first and last movements. The composer still made missteps, like giving the slow movement's main theme to the solo cello and oboe together, a combination that is not easy to keep in tune, although Nurit Bar-Josef was in excellent form in the solo triplets of the B section. The famous scherzo was the high point, set at just the right tempo and beautifully shaped, with some oozing rubato in the trio section, while the warlike finale, with its martial dotted rhythms, was heroic.

Sadly, Haydn's Symphony No. 104, the last of the series of twelve for the London visit, where he was when he composed it, seemed like an afterthought at the start of the concert. Eschenbach took the greatest number of liberties, often seeming to work against the score's best interests, stretching out the slow introduction of the first movement and then pushing the fast section to the edge, not seeming to have convinced the musicians of what he wanted to do. The second movement felt over-mannered, every articulation exaggerated but without the necessary precision in attacks or in the ends of sounds. The trio of the third movement had the best results, with a relaxed tempo and approach to dynamics producing an elegant sound, while the finale was spirited but not really witty.

This concert repeats this evening, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Latest on Forbes: NSO, Eschenbach & Lang Lang hit Vienna

Backstage w/@NSOtweets in Vienna. Trunk for music if royalty or octogenarians come?#over… https://t.co/vphYO3EqVM pic.twitter.com/aX0JNDALWR

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) February 10, 2016

Washington's National Symphony And Lang Lang In Vienna

...BA-Dam!! Christopher Rouse rips the score of his 1986 8- or 9-minute symphonic overture open with a loud, butts-from-seats-jolting chord before plinking and plonging away, harp-supported, and moving on with great gaiety in the woodwind section. The tuba engages in sounds that would make juveniles giggle; the neglected strings are allowed a word in, edgewise, here and there. Eventually the music works up an appetite and goes through more notes than the Cookie Monster through Oreos. Me want demisemiquaver!...

The full article on Forbes.com.

CD Review: Eschenbach's Hindemith

Hindemith, Symphonie 'Mathis der Maler' / Symphonie in Es, NDR Sinfonieorchester, C. Eschenbach (released on October 9, 2015) ODE 1275-2 | 67'32"

Charles T. Downey, Hindemith, Symphonies, NDR Symphony Orchestra
Washington Post, February 5

When Christoph Eschenbach began his tenure with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2010, he arrived with a recording contract with the Finnish recording label Ondine. He has recorded only one disc with the NSO to date, in 2011 — the orchestra’s first recording since 2001 — which inauspiciously paired some slightly sloppy Gershwin and Bernstein with the premiere of the instantly forgettable “Remembering JFK” by Peter Lieberson.

Eschenbach may not have released any more recordings with the NSO since then, but he has done so with two of his former bands: the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra and the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg. With the latter orchestra, he made two Hindemith discs, both recorded live around the 50th anniversary of Hindemith’s death in 2013, slightly after which the NSO programmed the composer’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"... [Continue reading]

Hindemith, Symphonie 'Mathis der Maler' / Symphonie in Es
NDR Sinfonieorchester, Christoph Eschenbach

NSO Tour Prep, Part 2

The historic snowfall last weekend paralyzed Washington, and it has thrown a wrench into Christoph Eschenbach's preparation of the National Symphony Orchestra for its upcoming European tour. Last week's program of Rouse, Dvořák, and Brahms as orchestrated by Schoenberg ended up receiving only a single performance on Thursday instead of the expected three. The prolonged snow clean-up also forced the NSO to cancel its rehearsal on Monday, which they are making up today, but the uncertainty had an impact on the orchestra's sound and sense of security in its second of three tour programs, heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

The main course of each concert will be a chestnut symphony: the Brahms first symphony (heard on tonight's program) or Beethoven's seventh symphony (heard on Thursday and again tonight), with Schoenberg's slightly odd orchestration of the Brahms first piano quartet as an alternative in some cases. The Beethoven was in decidedly rough shape last night, especially the outer movements, with some uncertainty of tempo and some sloppy coordination in the violin sections. (My kingdom for a unified pizzicato chord.) Eschenbach seemed to want the most brash, raw sound possible at points, and the strings, especially the violins, responded with outright hacking attacks. The winds were often pushed into quite dicey intonation, and the horns were like bulls in the proverbial china shop, and not in a good way. The inner movements felt the most secure, the funeral march kept in strict military step and an ultra-tight Presto in the third movement.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach, NSO prepare European repertory for European tour (Washington Post, January 29)

Most of the concerts on the NSO tour will feature cellist Daniel Müller-Schott or pianist Lang Lang in a beloved concerto (Dvořák for cello, Grieg for piano). In only the first concert of the tour, Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony (B minor, D. 759) takes the concerto slot and is never heard again. This is a shame based on how the musicians played it last night. The cello section gave the first movement's famous second theme -- the one that music students remember for their "Drop the Needle" tests as sung to the words "This is the symphony that Schu-u-ubert never finished" -- a character so subdued and unaffected that it was instantly winning. Again, Eschenbach brought out oddities, emphasizing swells in accompanying figures in ways that seemed unnecessary. His tempo choice for the second movement seemed a little sluggish, the gestures dipped in molasses, making those mystery modulations toward the end hard to pull off, little more than just soft. Traffic nightmares made me too late for the overture to Weber's Der Freischütz, a rather middling alternative to Rouse's concert-opening corker Phaethon.

Two other versions of the NSO European tour repertory will be performed tonight and Saturday, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Quatuor Thymos @ KC

Schubert, String Quartet No. 13 ("Rosamunde") / Lieder, S. Haller, Quatuor Thymos, C. Eschenbach (Calliope, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, After blizzard, Thymos Quartet creates warm concert atmosphere (Washington Post, January 27)

After four days in blizzard seclusion, a few people were ready to hear some live music. While most of Washington remained closed Monday, the Kennedy Center opened its doors for a few performances, including an evening concert by France’s Thymos Quartet. The house manager of the Terrace Theater asked listeners to feel free to take empty seats closer to the stage, creating an atmosphere even more like a home concert.

One good reason to have made the effort to get across a city still only partly dug out from the weekend’s historic snowfall was the chamber music of Franz Schubert... [Continue reading]

Quatuor Thymos (with Anne-Sophie Le Rol and Delphine Biron at second violin and cello)
With Yann Dubost (double bass) and Christoph Eschenbach (piano)
Fortas Chamber Music Series
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Quatuor Thymos (Ionarts, January 25, 2016)

Stephen Brookes, Thymos Quartet at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, March 13, 2012)

Briefly Noted: Quatuor Thymos

Dvořák, Piano Quintet (inter alia), A. Kučerová, Quatuor Thymos, C. Eschenbach (Avie, 2011)

In the midst of the National Symphony Orchestra's preparations for their European tour next month, Christoph Eschenbach is bringing back one of his regular chamber collaborators, the Paris-based Quatuor Thymos. In a concert on the Fortas series this evening, the quartet will perform Schubert's Rosamunde Quartet, recorded on their 2009 disc for the Calliope label, the same composer's Trout Quintet, with Eschenbach and double bassist Yann Dubost, plus a recent string quartet by Olivier Dejours (no. 17, "A Winter's Tale"). Having missed the group's last appearance here, in 2012 at the Kennedy Center, I am glad that the snow from this weekend's blizzard will be cleared away in time. (Their performance of the same program in North Carolina last night was canceled because of the weather.)

The group's second disc, released on the Avie label in 2011, is devoted to the music of Antonín Dvořák. Eschenbach accompanies Slovak soprano Adriana Kučerová in the composer's Love Songs, op. 83, a rendition of some charms but not likely to displace Bernarda Fink (Harmonia Mundi) or Martina Jankova (Supraphon). This selection goes nicely with five movements from Cypresses, Dvořák's arrangement for string quartet of two-thirds of his song set of that name, a piece that is quite pretty played by string quartet. The Thymos Quartet shows off its expressive capabilities in them, but its real mettle is revealed in the A major piano quintet, op. 81, with Eschenbach on the stormy piano part. The piece is one of the gems of the chamber music repertory, and not only just piano quintets, recorded in several excellent versions. Again, the expressive parts of the piece are quite lovely in this rendition, like the mournful "Dumka" second movement, but the playing loses some of its polish in accuracy and intonation at the more strident parts, like the conclusion of the first movement and the intervening sections of the slow movement. Eschenbach, much as he does at the podium of the NSO, looks for extremes of dynamics and expressive rubato, glossing over some of the details in the Furiant movement, and the Thymos musicians are happy enough to go along with him.

Latest on Forbes: National Symphony Orchestra's New Conductor Ideal—But Audience Quality Has To Match Him

National Symphony Orchestra's New Conductor Ideal -- But Audience Quality Has To Match Him

[It] is good to be ambitious, it is also unhelpful to be deluded. To strive for name recognition above all is a great recipe for orchestral regression… as any big name who might come wouldn’t likely be in it with his heart... Barring unforeseen downturns in chemistry, appointing Noseda might be the NSO’s best shot yet at getting a foothold in musical relevance in Washington and beyond, [but he, in conjunction with the NSO leadership, has to overcome stodgy programming to win an interested, intrigued, active audience.]

The full article on Forbes.com.

Second Opinion: NSO's Mahler Third

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. S. von Otter, Vienna Philharmonic, P. Boulez (DG, 2003) Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. Larsson, Berlin Philharmonic, C. Abbado (DG, 2002) [Other Recordings]

Mahler's Third Symphony, a gargantuan affirmation of life is, I believe, his longest symphonic journey. He wrote that it "begins with inanimate nature and ascends to the love of God," and, I might add, puts in just about everything in between. The Third Symphony declares in its closing choral section a "Joy, deeper still than heartache!" This is, in fact, "heavenly joy." Yearning is not insatiable; it is fulfilled in "a blessed city." Music can hardly aim higher than to express these things. Mahler fascinates endlessly because he attempted the ineffable.

When I heard the National Symphony Orchestra under Iván Fischer perform this work in 2008 at the Kennedy Center, I experienced an interpretation that aimed at a jewel-like, refined beauty. It toned things down a bit to achieve this. On the other hand, a few years later in London (October, 2010), I heard Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra give the Third a more full-throated, rambunctious approach that may be closer to the heart of this phantasmagoric music.

On Friday evening, November 6, 2015, in the second of three performances by the NSO at the Kennedy Center, I expected Christoph Eschenbach’s Third to come somewhere in the middle of these two interpretive stances, with most likely a lean in the Jurowski direction. I am not sure what I ended up getting. In the first and longest movement, Eschenbach kept the line, which is an accomplishment in itself with this sometimes fragmentary music, but it was as an unbroken succession of often delectable moments, beautifully played by the NSO. However, Eschenbach’s signature sense of concentration seemed to be missing. It’s not that anything was out of place, but that the inner spring – that tension which holds together even the most slowly played music – was absent. This is not simply a matter of tempos, which in this case were very broad. For example, the slowest Mahler Second Symphony I’ve ever listened to was by Klaus Tennstedt. He froze the music and achieved a suspension of time, which was not only breathtaking, but extraordinarily tense. I missed the tension in Eschenbach’s first movement. About 25 minutes in, it seemed to jump to life, but then slackened. I was similarly disappointed by the second movement.

Then, in the third movement, everything seemed to come together. Eschenbach and the NSO players achieved a kind of Mendelssohnian charm and magic. The post-horn music, played over deliciously pianissimo violins, was mesmerizing and made for the most enthralling moments of the evening so far. The double basses achieved something similar in their extraordinarily soft and delicate introduction to the fourth movement. Eschenbach’s tempos continued to be slow but, no matter, his sense of concentration had returned. This level of engagement continued through Anne Sofie von Otter’s beautiful singing of the Nietzsche text and the chorus’s lovely delivery of the angelic message.

Other Reviews: Charles T. Downey, Eschenbach and NSO find coherence elusive in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Washington Post, November 6)

The giant extended adagio of the sixth movement is a challenge for any conductor to pull off. Eschenbach was fully in his element here and I thought he rendered it more beautifully than he had the Adagietto in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which he played with the NSO in early May of this year.

Since Mahler embraced and tried to fit the entire world into this symphony, every first desk player gets a chance to shine -- in fact, every section of the orchestra does. The NSO excelled in this respect. The brass were outstanding; the strings were very strong; the winds were delectable; and the timpanists spot on.

The Kennedy Center Concert Hall audience was on its feet to give Eschenbach and the NSO a standing ovation. I can only presume it was for the last four movements.

This concert repeats this evening.

What the NSO Told Me

Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. S. von Otter, Vienna Philharmonic, P. Boulez (DG, 2003) Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. Larsson, Berlin Philharmonic, C. Abbado (DG, 2002) [Other Recordings]

Charles T. Downey, Eschenbach and NSO find coherence elusive in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Washington Post, November 6)

Christoph Eschenbach’s tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra is drawing to a close, with his term as music director set to end at the close of next season. The German conductor’s time in Washington has produced several significant achievements, but a great Mahler symphony cycle has eluded him. The season’s major opportunity in this area came Thursday night, with Eschenbach’s first performance of Mahler’s gigantic Symphony No. 3, heard in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Mahler’s Third is a behemoth under the best of circumstances, a work of evening-filling length and often intractable proportions... [Continue reading]

National Symphony Orchestra
Mahler, Symphony No. 3
With Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Anne Sofie von Otter set to perform in D.C. in November (Washington Post, October 30)

Eschenbach's Mahler Symphonies:
No. 5 | No. 9 | Blumine | No. 4 | No. 5

Mahler 3:
Marin Alsop (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 2015)
Gustavo Dudamel (Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, 2013)
Iván Fischer (Munich Philharmonic, 2012)
Esa-Pekka Salonen (Dresden Staatskapelle, 2011) | Mariss Jansons (Royal Concertgebouw, 2010)
Mariss Jansons (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, 2010) | Iván Fischer (NSO, 2008)
Claudio Abbado (Lucerne Festival, 2007) | James Conlon (Juilliard Orchestra, 2005)

Pop Star Pianist: Lang Lang with the NSO

Chopin, Scherzos / Tchaikovsky, The Seasons, Lang Lang (Sony, 2015)

The excitement was palpable at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Thursday, with throngs of concertgoers crowding the stairs and lobbies leading to the Concert Hall. This sort of pre-concert commotion is an unusual occurrence for a National Symphony Orchestra subscription concert on a weeknight. Yet pianist Lang Lang, the evening’s featured guest, is not your usual piano soloist. Perhaps the closest thing classical music has to a pop star, the Chinese pianist has a loyal following, a social media presence, and all the trappings associated with stardom. In Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16, he delivered a muscular performance filled with moments of incredible speed, technique, and more than a bit of musical style.

It was fortunate that Lang Lang had Christoph Eschenbach on the podium. Eschenbach's sensitive accompaniment seemed to owe something to his experience as a keyboard soloist. The NSO was a willing partner for most of the concerto, allowing Lang Lang to plumb the piano's dynamic range, from a barely perceptible pianissimo in the third movement to a thunderous fortissimo that ended the concerto. The NSO and Eschenbach get credit also for carefully following Lang Lang during his frequent rubatos, which allowed the pianist to let loose his dazzling technique, particularly in the first movement's cadenza and later in a short cadenza in the finale, where Lang Lang's lightning-fast cross-hand work elicited gasps from the audience. It was in the first cadenza, though, that Lang Lang demonstrated that he can use his prodigious technique to create stylish interpretations. His coloring and voicing in the cadenza, allowing him to imitate the sound of a harp at times, displayed a depth of interpretation heard far less during earlier appearances in Washington.

As expected, the finale featured Lang Lang pushing the speed limit, displaying energy and feats of extreme pianism, culminating in a raucous ovation, which was rewarded with a memorable encore. Without having to concern himself with an orchestra, Lang Lang raced through Ernesto Lecuona’s Cuban Dance. That he played it faster than any dancer could manage to move mattered little. His hands seemed to go three times as quickly as they did in the Grieg.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, NSO offers chestnuts, and Lang Lang, in enjoyable evening (Washington Post, October 30)

With its copious exposed solo parts the Grieg highlighted the state of the NSO. In the second movement, for example, newly appointed principal horn Abel Pereira joined the ethereal string introduction midway, resulting in some of the most gorgeous orchestral playing of the evening. When the theme transferred to the flutes and clarinets, however, the sound quality diminished. Pereira’s gorgeous playing was on display in the night’s opening work, Wagner’s Overture to Tannhäuser and again in the closing work, the Symphony No. 8 in G major, op. 88, of Dvořák. While both pieces were dispatched with more precision than we're used to hearing from the NSO, neither compared to the musicality the orchestra and Eschenbach showed in the Grieg.

This concert repeats tonight and Saturday night, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Eschenbach and the NSO – Sibelius and Mahler

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

Sibelius, Violin Concerto, L. Kavakos, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, O. Vänskä (BIS, 1992)

On Thursday evening at the Kennedy Center, May 7, 2015, the National Symphony Orchestra, under Christoph Eschenbach, essayed two masterpieces – Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. This was done under the rubric of “Mahler Explored,” which is the motto the NSO is using in its traversal of the Mahler symphonies.

However, anyone who came for the Sibelius would not have been disappointed. It was played by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who is a master at his craft. I first heard him play in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he undertook the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto. Coincidentally, that concert also included Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Not only did Kavakos play the Prokofiev brilliantly, but he offered as an encore the Andante from Bach's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin. It was one of the most beautiful and spiritually moving performances of Bach, or anything else, that I have ever heard. Since then (9/2007), my radar has been on for this great artist.

Without being self-consciously virtuosic, Kavakos performed the Sibelius Concerto at the highest level. Some violinists play the Sibelius as if it, or they, were Paganini. Kavakos eschewed histrionics. The passion was in the music, not in his deportment. He played with strength, refinement, and clarity of line. The same intense concentration I had experienced in the Bach Andante was present in the cadenza of the opening movement, along with great beauty and purity of tone. Only for a split-second did Kavakos lose concentration as he cast a censorious glance toward the coughers in the audience who seemed to think of clearing their lungs as a kind of ostinato. Nonetheless, he perdured and produced playing of extraordinary subtlety in the Adagio, closing it with a breathtaking diminuendo. Eschenbach and the NSO provided firm support throughout, perhaps a bit too firm at the end of the closing Allegro, which threatened to swamp the violinist. The response of the audience was deservedly enthusiastic, but no more so than that of the NSO musicians who know how to show their appreciation for a great artist’s playing.

In the second half of the concert, Eschenbach and the NSO brought Mahler’s incredibly rich sonic world to brimming life in their performance of the Fifth Symphony. I thought the beginning of the first movement might have been a bit too measured, but Eschenbach soon displayed his usual talent for building large symphonic movements to powerful climaxes. The opening of the second movement snarled and snapped with plenty of bite. When the cellos took over the main melodic line about a third of the way through, they played with heart and poignancy, with just a whisper of timpani audible under them. Eschenbach then subtly layered in the winds, the brass, and the other orchestral sections. Everything was in place – the straining, the yearning, the huge heaving orchestral sighs, and the giant cataclysms.

Mahler famously insisted to Sibelius that the symphony must include the whole world. Well, it seems as if he tried to stuff the entire thing into the giant third-movement scherzo. Mahler called it “a very devil of a movement,” in which “each note is endowed with supreme life and everything in it revolves as though in a whirlwind or the tail of a comet.” No higher compliment could be paid to the NSO than that this is exactly how they made it sound. The “whirlwind” designation, however, should not slight the exquisitely delicate pizzicato playing in the strings or the marvelous piano achieved by the winds.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Kavakos, Eschenbach offer ragged emotional truth in NSO concert (Washington Post, March 8) Jens F. Laurson, Too Few Witness Sibelius Greatness (Ionarts, March 9, 2007)

It is usually hard to keep the tears back during the famous Adagietto, but I was curiously unmoved – perhaps too exhausted from the scherzo. In any case, it did not affect me as powerfully as did the Adagio in the Mahler Ninth Symphony, which I heard the NSO perform so well in March (though I otherwise prefer the consistency of Eschenbach’s interpretation of the Fifth to what I heard in his Ninth). The closing rondo-finale was another rousing triumph of all-the-stops-out playing. I thought Eschenbach and the NSO might take the roof off the Kennedy Center. I’ve neglected to mention the timpani and brass, which is a crime, since they played as well as the other departments in this stirring performance.

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night.

Second Opinion: Mahler's 9th Symphony

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

On the evening of Friday, March 20, 2015 at the Kennedy Center, I was able to attend the National Symphony Orchestra's second of three performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, under conductor Christoph Eschenbach. (See Charles's review of the first performance.)

Eschenbach and the NSO played the first movement with great clarity and precision – not to the point of pointillism, but not exactly a performance of passion either. It was like looking at a disturbed dream through an X-ray; you could see everything inside without being inside. The music was pretty much left to speak for itself, which it did quite well since it was played so beautifully by all departments. Nevertheless, this was an exterior view of it, slightly on the antiseptic side. Also, I never quite noticed before how many false endings there are in the first movement, which made it seem a bit interminable.

The second movement was also played with precision; there was never a doubt as to who was answering whom in the busy orchestral conversations. Eschenbach seemed to delight in pinpointing these. The third movement, called by Mahler “the brutal whirlpool of life,” was played with snap and alacrity. The blistering pace by itself made for sheer excitement in this highly spirited tour de force. It struck me that one might not hear anything this crazed and frantic till Shostakovich some 20 to 30 years later.

In the closing Adagio, the NSO moved from the exhilarating to the mesmerizing. It was as if Eschenbach and his players chose to relocate to the other side of the X-ray plate. They entered into and were now very much inside the music. In fact, to witness musical concentration at this level of intensity was worth the price of the evening by itself. As dazzling as the Rondo–Burleske was, the half-hour Adagio was the triumph of the evening. The dying of the music left a profound stillness in the hall that some brave soul finally broke after more than a minute of stunned silence with a shout of “bravi.” It was earned.

This concert repeats tonight.

Lebe[wohl], Edward Cabarga: NSO's Mahler Tribute

Other Videos: Leonard Bernstein (Vienna Philharmonic) Bernard Haitink (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) Roger Norrington (Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra) Live Reviews: Lorin Maazel (Munich Philharmonic, 2012) Christoph Eschenbach (Munich Philharmonic, 2011) Marin Alsop (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 2009) Daniel Barenboim (Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 2005) Leonard Slatkin (National Symphony Orchestra, 2005)

The National Symphony Orchestra lost one of its own earlier this week: bass clarinetist Edward Cabarga, who joined the ensemble in 2000, passed away on Sunday. The orchestra offered its performance of Mahler's ninth symphony (see the program notes by Thomas May), heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, in memory of their colleague. As mentioned in my preview article yesterday, it is a piece about farewells, in some ways about not wanting to say farewell just yet. It was also a piece, so we hear, that Edward Cabarga enjoyed playing, and every time that the bass clarinet poked its head out of the texture, one thought of him.

Christoph Eschenbach plans to use a good part of his remaining years with the NSO to focus on Mahler's works. Judging by his Mahler performances with the orchestra so far -- No. 4 (2011), No. 5 (2010), and Blumine (2013) -- it will be a rather idiosyncratic cycle (the third symphony and the Rückert-Lieder are planned for next season). What with Marin Alsop in the midst of an ever-improving Mahler cycle with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, it is a good time to be a Mahlerian in the Washington area. Eschenbach avoided Marin Alsop's mistake with the ninth symphony by not pairing it with anything else. This also meant that he could wallow a bit in the score, stretching it out to about 85 minutes, not the longest noted in Jens's overview for this work, but getting up there.

One of Eschenbach's interesting choices was to take the second movement not so fast, so that it had a weighty sort of feel to the Ländler, with some fun rustic touches, although the waltz rollicked more but never seemed out of control. Here and in a few other places the second violins sounded a little leaderless, with some ragged attacks, and were indeed playing without their principal musician. Not surprisingly for Eschenbach, the third movement was brash and rapid, at a tempo for which at times the musicians seemed a little unprepared, which gave this attack on Mahler's critics the feel of parody more than savagery. After these diversions, the finale did not seem to rise to where it should have: the tempo was slow but Eschenbach did not seem to leave a lot of room to set down phrases and stretch time. The crescendi were marshaled skilfully, although that magical transposition moment, where D-flat becomes C-sharp in the new key, seemed maybe a little rushed.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach and the NSO go almost modernist with Mahler (Washington Post, March 20)

Where most of the transcendent magic occurred in this performance was in the first movement, where the undulating, molasses-slow tempo was stretched and caressed even further. All contributions, down to the many solo moments, were outstanding, with particularly ebullient and solid playing from the horns, who placed their bells in the air at the appointed times with almost military precision. Each time that the "Lebewohl" motif, that incomplete reference to Beethoven's "Les adieux" piano sonata, sounded in the orchestral fabric, it was lovingly stated, down to the very end, where the last syllable was reluctantly, almost silently intoned (in piccolo, plus harp and cellos on flageolet-tone harmonics).

This concert repeats tonight and Saturday night.

Bruckner’s Boa (Second Opinion)

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

Anton Bruckner is a difficult composer and, in a way, an acquired taste. Brahms called Bruckner’s symphonies “boa-constrictors”. Bruckner wrote them with such a sense of vastness and in a time scale so extended and at times seemingly suspended, that the listener needs very large ears to take it all in. They are almost impossible to grasp on first hearing. The symphonies can seem like elephantine meanderings that make Mahler look like a model of concision. Mahler gives you more to fix your attention on in the moment, in case you miss the big picture. Bruckner—not so often. If your attention flags, you are lost. These features made Bruckner’s symphonies very controversial. To one person who informed him that his symphonies were too long, Bruckner retorted, “No sir, you are too short.” Most of us are.

See also: A Survey of Bruckner Cycles | Bruckner: The Divine and the Beautiful

A.Bruckner, Symphony No.8, G.Wand / BPh RCA

On Thursday night, June 12, 2014, the National Symphony Orchestra, under Christoph Eschenbach, essayed Bruckner’s biggest boa constrictor, Symphony No.8, at the Kennedy Center. If this nearly hour-and-a-half work is not kept tightly coiled, it can unravel in a mess. This has nothing to do with speed, but with maintaining inner tension. Let it go and the work can degenerate into stop/start music. Bruckner’s famous pauses will not then be, in composer Robert Simpson’s phrase “the open spaces in the cathedral”, but dead space. I wondered if Eschenbach could keep this monster in his grip. I recall being completely taken by his performance of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony in February of 2012. (ionarts review here.) At that time I wrote, that Eschenbach “never surrendered the long line in the music to the abundant beauty”, but the following October I wrote that he did the opposite with the Bruckner Seventh. (See ionarts review.) He surrendered to

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Bruckner 8 @ NSO

Bruckner, Symphony No. 8, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, B. Haitink (RCO, 2005) Bruckner, Motets, Choir of St. Bride's Church (London), R. Jones (Naxos, 1995)

The National Symphony Orchestra is dedicating this week's concerts, the last of this season's subscription series, to the memory of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, the ensemble's one-time Principal Guest Conductor, who died earlier this week, after not being able to make it through his last appearance here a couple months ago. Bruckner's eighth symphony, the meat of the program, grasps at ideas of eternity, and the introduction, four of Bruckner's liturgical motets, served beautifully as a memorial to a beloved colleague. This was certainly the first time that Bruckner's motets have been performed on an NSO program, and it is always good to break down the instrumental-vocal divide in classical music, along which those who love singing and those who love playing know next to nothing about the other side.

Bruckner's training as a choirboy and organist, after the death of his father, shaped him as a person and a musician, and listening only to the symphonies, as glorious as they are, gives an incomplete picture of the composer. Bruckner composed motets for liturgical use, almost continuously, between 1835 (Pange lingua) and 1892 (Vexilla regis), as noted by scholar John Williamson: "In the motets written during these fifty-seven years we are presented with a fascinating microcosm of Bruckner's development as a musician, from the first tentative steps to the confident strides of a fully mature composer." In them we see Bruckner drawing from Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, and the chromatic harmony he was absorbing from Wagner and other composers. The University of Maryland Chamber Singers, arranged in the chorister seats above the stage, and thus far away from Christoph Eschenbach, gave nuanced and generally fine performances of the four best-known examples of these motets, with well-phrased Latin, equal balances, broad dynamic range, and clean intonation, with the exception of loud textures, where the sopranos were not always in line (although the women were angelic in Ave Maria). Choral conducting is a different animal, and it may have been better to let the group's director, Edward Maclary, conduct this part of the concert, since Eschenbach seemed at times unclear about what he was doing, as in the Alleluia section of Virga Jesse. He tried to cut the choir off a measure early at the end of the "mortem autem crucis" section of Christus factus est, before the final resolution, and the choir wisely just ignored him.

Since taking the helm of the NSO, Christoph Eschenbach has been leading an informal cycle of the Bruckner symphonies, and this performance of the eighth symphony, the only one since the orchestra's first in 1983, is added to those of no. 7, no. 9, and no. 6. It features the largest orchestra Bruckner ever called for, although oddly here there was only one harp instead of the three harps in the score, meaning that the single player had to have a microphone on her instrument and still often was not heard. Eschenbach worked from the Novak edition of the 1890 revision of the score, considered to be more scholarly than the Haas edition, in which the editor put back in some of the sections of music excised by Bruckner. The NSO musicians gave an appropriately vast sound at full bore, with a regal brass section, including the four Wagner tubas, with Eschenbach helping to sculpt some massive crescendi. While the first movement's tempo seemed just about right, with only a slightly unclear beat making the sixteenth-note pickups a little uncertain, Eschenbach's tempo for the scherzo seemed a hair too fast, with an air that was more mischievous than simple-minded. Whatever faith you may put in the programmatic descriptions Bruckner gave for this symphony, the composer's association of the figure of "Der deutsche Michel" with the scherzo says something about what he wanted.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach, NSO offer mammoth but gentle Bruckner in season’s final program (Washington Post, June 13)

The cellos were gorgeous in the third movement, the emotional high point of the symphony, at a luxuriant but not overdone tempo, and the finale opened with an exultant awakening of vast sound, if with occasional ragged ensemble that seemed to show some fatigue on the part of the musicians. Clocking in at about 85 minutes, with timings quite similar to those recorded by Bernard Haitink in his recent recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Eschenbach gave the work a sense of urgency, while allowing the slow movement to expand and breathe as it needed. One of the changes that Bruckner made in the 1890 revision was to alter the coda of the first movement, so that some of its harmonic resolution would be saved for the end of the finale, where finally, the home key is established after 80 minutes of music. Michael Steinberg called this symphony, "among other things, a great study in long-range harmonic evasion," meaning that in the last section of the work, when the overall trajectory, a struggle that ends in triumphant C major, is achieved, should be a revelation and it was.

This concert also marked the departure of seven long-serving NSO musicians, who were given warm ovations. The concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night.

Eschenbach to Stay at NSO through 2016-2017

The National Symphony Orchestra has extended Christoph Eschenbach's contract, meaning that he will remain in the position of Music Director at least through the 2016-17 season. At that point, Eschenbach would be 77 years old, and given the generous salary he has received since taking the NSO podium in 2010, likely ready to retire into a life of mostly guest conducting. It is true that Eschenbach would not have been my first choice to lead the NSO -- the names of James Conlon and Osmo Vänskä were on my wish list -- and given how much money the orchestra has been able to spend on its music director, thanks to generous private donations, the organization should be able to aim higher as it prepares to hire Eschenbach's successor. Still, it is important to remember just how rudderless and at sea the NSO was in the wake of Leonard Slatkin's departure. In that context, the hiring of Eschenbach was a smart move that helped to stabilize the ensemble's position in what is, all agree, a perilous time for symphony orchestras.

To be sure, all has not been rosy under Eschenbach, and complaints from some of the musicians about an imperious leadership style have wafted to my ears. He has turned to the same pet soloists in Washington as has been his practice in previous positions -- some good, and some very, very bad (noted here even before he officially took his position). As a conductor he makes exasperating, even capricious choices from time to time, and his preference for spontaneity over predictability from rehearsal to performance or from performance to performance has caused trouble sometimes. Even so, the vitriol that appears, mostly anonymously, on Web sites about Eschenbach seems misplaced given the positives that have come with his tenure. The orchestra has recorded again, thanks to Eschenbach's relationship with Ondine, and it has gone on two international tours, to Europe and South America. Most importantly, the menu changes have been excellent: week after week, music is programmed that the NSO has never played before, or not for more than ten years, and often much more than that.

Eschenbach has conducted around ten or twelve programs in each of the four seasons he has led the NSO. I have not managed to hear all of them, but I went back over the reviews I have written of concerts actually conducted by Eschenbach (see the results after the jump). Giving three stars to concerts I thought were excellent, two stars to concerts that were basically good, and only one star to those I found unsatisfactory or truly bad, we find that the good and the excellent far outweigh the bad. At the same time, you will see that the greatest number of one-star concerts has been in the current season (in fact, there were none in the first season), which may explain some of the sour grapes. (The other thing that surprised me a bit was that most of the three-star concerts were concert performances of operas or other vocal works.) This leaves out the concerts led by guest conductors, which is a more complicated part of a music director's tenure, and there are other issues that come into play as far as the happiness and morale of the players in the orchestra, but from this listener's point of view, it has been far from a disaster.

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NSO Fêtes Strauss with Stellar 'Rosenkavalier'

R. Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier, R. Fleming, F. Hawlata, S. Koch, D. Damrau, J. Kaufmann, Munich Philharmonic, C. Thielemann (Decca, 2009)

Der Rosenkavalier is an opera we love here at Ionarts, but we have reviewed it so far only in Munich. While hopes for a production from Washington National Opera were delayed by another season, the National Symphony Orchestra is marking the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss, which falls this coming June, with two programs devoted largely or entirely to Strauss's operas. The first of those, given in a single performance on Saturday night to a sold-out house in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, was a concert performance of perhaps his most beloved opera, Der Rosenkavalier. With a score that sparkles and wallows in nostalgia, it is a perpetual favorite, but no less wondrous for its popularity.

The cast was led by two veterans in the roles of the conniving old Viennese nobles, who are parallel in many ways to the calculating Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont in Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses. Renée Fleming made a savvy and puissant Marschallin, a role that fits her like a glove, like much Strauss, including her historic interpretation of the Countess in Capriccio. Franz Hawlata was an absolute hoot as the lecherous Baron Ochs -- a role he has sung so many times and in so many places, including Chicago -- like a bull crashing through every china shop on stage. If there were vocal limitations in both of these voices, there was enough expertise to disguise them and enough dramatic mojo to make one overlook these defects.

The title role was to have been sung by Sarah Connolly, who withdrew for health reasons. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel, already familiar to Washington audiences from several performances with Opera Lafayette, stepped in to save the day. She has sung Octavian at the Wiener Staatsopera, Paris, and Graz, and although it was reportedly a role that did not suit her at first, she was captivating dramatically and a vocal force in it in this format. So we had two-thirds of the luminous trio that comes at the end of the third act, where the Marschallin (Fleming) removes herself as the obstacle stopping her young lover, Octavian (Houtzeel), from taking up with the younger Sophie. (The Verdi opera, Il Corsaro, heard on Sunday night from Washington Concert Opera, ends with a similar gesture, with music that is banal by comparison.) What we did not have was a Sophie with all the vocal requirements. Soprano Marisol Montalvo showed pretty much the same strengths displayed in her 2010 NSO appearance, some very pretty and pure-toned high notes (if occasionally soured by intonation concerns), but also the same weaknesses, meaning that she was easily overpowered at many moments. Once again, Christoph Eschenbach's devotion to a favorite musician seemed to have taken precedence over the demands of the work.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Delightful NSO ‘Rosenkavalier’ features Fleming, Montsalvo and newcomer Houtzeel (Washington Post, March 10) Tim Smith, Eschenbach leads National Symphony in semistaged Rosenkavalier with Renée Fleming (Baltimore Sun, March 10)

Happily, strengths grew further down the cast list, with outstanding contributions from Austrian baritone Adrian Eröd, making a fine NSO debut as Herr von Faninal, mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin's Annina (a voice becoming quite familiar to Washington National Opera audiences), and bass Soloman Howard, another WNO favorite, as both the notary and police inspector. Tenor Steve Davislim had to withdraw, that morning, from the brief, thankless, but crucial role of the Italian singer, part of the Marschallin's morning levée à la Hogarth, but Mario Chang, who sang the role in the Metropolitan Opera's production, made an excellent last-minute substitution. At the top of the supporting cast, however, was Irmgard Vilsmaier, a German dramatic soprano who blew the roof off the place as Marianne Leitmetzerin, Sophie's governess. Hopefully, she is on the radar of the folks at Washington National Opera as a possible Brünnhilde for their upcoming Ring cycle.

The second part of the NSO's Strauss celebration will feature soprano Iréne Theorin in excerpts from Elektra and Salome (March 20 to 22).