CD Reviews: Gilbert Champions Rouse / Fairyland of Songs

C. Rouse, Symphonies 3-4 (inter alia), New York Philharmonic, A. Gilbert (released on May 13, 2016) Dacapo 8.226110 | 76'15" [NY Phil Watch & Listen] "Schöne Welt..." (Schubert / Schreker / Korngold), A. Schwanewilms, C. Spencer (released on May 13, 2016) Capriccio C5233 | 63'40"

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: A modern symphonic master
Washington Post, July 29

Next year, Alan Gilbert will step down as music director of the New York Philharmonic, which is a shame, not least for the way he has excelled at programming contemporary music. This disc features four new pieces by Christopher Rouse, three of which Gilbert premiered with the Philharmonic. These are high-quality live recordings, like those available on the orchestra’s “Watch & Listen” web streaming feature, which offers many of its recent concerts online.

Rouse composed his first two symphonies in 1986 and 1994, and didn’t return to the genre for more than 20 years. In 2011, he completed the Third Symphony, a “rewrite” of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony. Gilbert and his players dig into the first movement’s crisp rhythms and militaristic edge with biting attacks. The last minute of the movement is particularly thrilling, playing to the group’s forte, a crashing full-orchestra sound, while some of the smaller vignettes in the second movement’s theme and variations are less effective.

Rouse has said that he had “a particular meaning in mind” when he composed his Fourth Symphony, from 2013, but he prefers to keep it to himself. The titles of the two movements, “Felice” and “Doloroso,” point to something like mania and depression, borne out in the jaunty rollick of the first movement that collapses, without a pause, into the forlorn, weighted-down gestures of the second. Both of these symphonies constitute yet more examples of Rouse’s supremacy among living American composers in terms of melodic invention and calculated use of the orchestra. Happily, Rouse’s symphonic renaissance will continue, as Jaap van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra are set to premiere the Fifth Symphony in 2017.

In both of the one-movement works that round out the disc, Rouse broadens the sonic landscape with a large battery of instruments filled with more exotic colors. In “Odna Zhizn,” he overlays dissonant themes derived from names in a Russian friend’s life to chaotic and bewildering effect. “Prospero’s Rooms” contains some of the musical ideas Rouse sketched for an operatic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” Given this work’s musical and literary creepiness, reminiscent in some ways of Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle,” if Rouse still wants to write an opera, companies should be commissioning him.

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Modern Program from NYCB

New York City Ballet, Company in Justin Peck’s The Most Incredible Thing (photo by Paul Kolnik)
Ballet has a long history of divertissements that have no dramatic coherence. The flimsiest of excuses can justify a series of pretty entrées, going all the way back to the foundation of the genre in French courtly dance. That is essentially what Justin Peck has created in his new choreography, The Most Incredible Thing, given its local premiere by the New York City Ballet on Tuesday evening at the Kennedy Center Opera House. It is an act-length ballet driven more by its quirky, colorful costumes than by dancing or story-telling.

Peck drew the story of The Most Incredible Thing from the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name (Det Utroligste). It concerns a contest for the hand of a princess, won by an inventor, whom Peck calls (somewhat ponderously) the Creator. His invention is a miraculous clock that produces twelve automated scenes, one for each of the hours, providing the excuse for the twelve colorful entrées that dominate the ballet. A menacing figure, the Destroyer, challenges the Creator's victory by laying waste to the clock and claiming the princess for himself. Not to worry, because the figures from the clock come back to life and save the day. Peck has softened some of the religious overtones of the clock figures, changing Moses at One o'Clock into a Cuckoo Bird, danced by the energetic Tiler Peck (no relation to the choreographer), with movements recalling the Firebird at times, and changing the Three Kings (Three o'Clock) from the Biblical Magi into sword-wielding warrior-kings.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet injects incredible zing into new Peck ballet and other works (Washington Post, March 2) Joan Acocella, Stepping Up: The precocious rise of Justin Peck (The New Yorker, February 29) Alastair Macaulay, At New York City Ballet, Works That Tell Stories and Don’t (New York Times, February 22) ---, ‘The Most Incredible Thing’ Brings Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale to Life (New York Times, February 3) Brian Seibert, Justin Peck Calmly Creates a Kingdom at City Ballet (New York Times, January 29)

Sadly, though, these entrées do not advance the story in any way, and they are effectively performed twice because the dancers all come back to life at the ballet's conclusion. In fact, one remembers neither the story nor the movements of the dancers, but the eclectic, brightly colored costumes (designed by Marcel Dzama, supervised by Marc Happel): the grey hoops of the Five Senses, the pointed hats of the Eight Monks, or the black-white spirals of the Nine Muses. Taylor Stanley was an earnest Creator, overshadowed by the skull-capped Destroyer of Andrew Veyette, who danced a tense pas de deux with the Princess of Sterling Hyltin. The pop-minimalist score by Bryce Dessner, guitarist of the indie rock band The National, is repetitive and, while it does not offend, it goes in one ear and out the other.

In the middle of the evening came Balanchine's classic choreography to Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto, rounding out the Balanchine-Tchaikovsky set from the company's 2013 visit. The cadenzas and solo moments played by soloist Susan Walters corresponded with beautiful solos and duets featuring the tall, lithe Teresa Reichlen. Her partner, Tyler Angle, had a charming scene in the slow movement with five women on either side, like fanned-out shadows, accompanied by a gorgeous duet of solo violin and cello.

The first act featured two short choreographies by Peter Martins, the company's Ballet Master-in-Chief. In The Infernal Machine, the movements of the dancers, Ashley Laracey and Amar Ramasar, on the darkened stage seemed to have little to do with the antic passage through countless sound worlds found in the score of the same name by Christopher Rouse. A snippet quoted from Beethoven's op. 130 string quartet flies by, half unnoticed near the piece's halfway point. Likewise in Ash, Michael Torke's often disjointed score inspired contrapuntal movements for the dancers, often separated only by a beat. It is a shame that we did not have the chance to hear the company's own orchestra, which conductor Andrew Litton now leads. His work here with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra left some details to be desired.

The highlight was an excerpt of Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain. The evening's best-matched couple, Tiler Peck and Jared Angle, took turns moving one another along, in a slow-moving, longing-drenched choreography that goes a long way to make Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, a piece I find hard to tolerate in concert performance, a more complete work. Violinist Arturo Delmoni and pianist Nancy McDill provided the steady pulse of the music, with the section-ending "ping" notes corresponding to flicks of arms or feet on the stage.

This program repeats Friday evening, with a second program centered on Bournonville's La Sylphide presented in the rest of the run.

Bells and Whistles from Mason Bates

Charles T. Downey, Kennedy Center’s New Music Series Is Bates’s Jukebox
Classical Voice North America, February 25

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The nation’s capital is not exactly a hotbed for contemporary music. A few series and ensembles devoted to new music have small but loyal followings, but others struggle to find an audience. The Kennedy Center regularly hosts some performances of new works, but as the venue that is arguably the city’s classical music flagship, is certainly not known for contemporary specialization.

Deborah F. Rutter, who left the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association to take the reins at the Kennedy Center in 2014, aimed to change that. Some of her initiatives so far were popular but a little silly, like building a large skateboard park in front of the building’s main entrance as part of a skateboard-themed festival last September...

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KC Jukebox
Members of National Symphony Orchestra
Mason Bates, composer
Kennedy Center Theater Lab

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, How one composer attempts to break the concert mold (Washington Post, February 23)

---, Composer throws the Kennedy Center a great party (Washington Post, November 10, 2015)

Simon Chin, Mason Bates’s Second ‘KC Jukebox’ Falls Short of Expectations (Chin Up, February 23)

---, Mason Bates Brings Lounge Music to the Kennedy Center (Chin Up, November 10, 2015)

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.

NSO Prepares for European Tour

Rouse, Phaeton, Houston Symphony, C. Eschenbach (Telarc, 2006)

Since Christoph Eschenbach came to the National Symphony Orchestra, he has made only one recording, a disappointment. The thing that has panned out is that Eschenbach has led the ensemble on two international tours, with another European tour planned for next month. They will be playing twelve concerts in eleven cities, with stops in Spain, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and Poland. The programs include more music than they can possibly play on two programs this week and next week, but the first glimpse on Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall was encouraging.

Some of the tour cities will be treated to Christopher Rouse's barnstorming mini-tone poem Phaethon, which makes quite an arc across the sky as a concert opener. This is the first time the NSO has played the piece, and it did not sound yet quite as rhythmically tight across the ensemble as it needs to be. The musicians played it with great verve and attention to its vivid details: burbling woodwinds (what sounded like a slide whistle may have been the flexatone?), kooky muted brass, the dull bark of an ostinato tuba line. A berserk French horn call, played with exceptional force, signaled the high-flying disaster that befalls the title character, with the full complement of six percussionists all walloping something, the climaxes marked by enormous hammer strikes (think Mahler's sixth symphony) and the swinging of a gigantic racket. It is a piece that should raise some eyebrows on the tour, just as it is meant to do.

Cellist Daniel Müller-Schott serves half the solo duties of the tour, with Lang Lang reprising his rendition of Grieg's piano concerto, heard in Washington in October. Müller-Schott, last heard here with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, did not do much with Dvořák's cello concerto. He had an ardent, never overbearing tone, lovely on the second theme of the first movement, although not as beautiful as the way it was introduced by the French horn solo in the orchestral exposition. His intonation was not always on target, in the development of the first movement, for example, but better in the second movement after he retuned his strings. In the slow movement, the interlude with the horns was excellent, and Müller-Schott had a lovely cadenza moment with the solo flute. He was freer with rubato in the third movement, alternately mischievous and soupy, but the overall effect was oddly underwhelming especially by comparison to the last time the NSO performed it, with Yo-Yo Ma in 2014.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, NSO anticipates upcoming tour with Central European program (Washington Post, January 22)

The choice of Arnold Schoenberg's vast orchestration of the first piano quartet (G minor, op. 25 -- last heard in 2014) seemed weird for a tour, but it has the virtue of putting to work at least some of the percussion crew you are hauling along for the Rouse piece. Schoenberg orchestrated in ways that probably would make Brahms roll over in his grave but are really fun: in the development section of the first movement, the little motifs traded back and forth appear in every conceivable instrument. Eschenbach took the second movement, where the Brahms magic really has to happen, a little too fast, but the tempo settled down a bit afterward, and the fairy-dust coda, with its healthy dose of triangle, was magical. The march section of the third movement is hilarious in Schoenberg's orchestration, not to mention the use of marimba -- in Brahms! -- and other absurd percussion in the finale.

This concert would have been repeated tonight and Saturday night, but the arrival of a blizzard in Washington has closed the Kennedy Center along with everything else.

BSO Takes Up Magnificent Rouse Oboe Concerto

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

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

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

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

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

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

BSO Blisses Out

Scriabin, Complete Symphonies / Le Poeme de l'extase, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, V. Ashkenazy (Decca, 2003)

This weekend's program from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was tops on my list for the month, and it did not disappoint in the hearing on Thursday night. Considering that the evening's three works called for a massive orchestra, something that is rarer and rarer in these financially strapped times for the BSO, it was a shame that they are scheduled to perform the entire program only twice, with two nights given over to lecture-concerts on only one of them, Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. It was even more of a shame that Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall was not more full than it was. The three pieces together produced an overwhelming effect, sating the ears with a riotous palette of tonal color, with two rarely heard works by Christopher Rouse and Alexander Scriabin as lead-ins to Strauss.

Rouse, who has a long association with Baltimore and now lives there, was on hand to hear this performance of his tone poem Rapture, one of his "most unabashedly tonal" works. A slow-burning crescendo, of tempo and orchestration as well as dynamics, and mostly in triple meter, it recalls Ravel's La Valse and Bolero in profile, a gorgeous slow opening tinted by a bloom of Wagnerian brass, the addition of a percussion-heavy pulse, and pastoral woodwind solos, including striking bird calls in the flutes. A particularly nice touch was the violin solos, given not to the concertmaster but to players in the back seats of the second violin section, where hidden from view, they produced an unexpected effect. Overall it remains smooth and meditative in quality until a swath of metallic percussion signals greater movement, leading to a wild rumpus of a conclusion, with sudden crescendo swells of sound, meter-unsettling syncopation, and thunderous percussion. Following on the works of Rouse's Death Cycle in the 1990s, this piece, premiered in 2000, "inhabits a world devoid of darkness," as Rouse put it in his program note.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, A feast of sonic showpieces brings out the best in Marin Alsop, Baltimore Symphony (Baltimore Sun, October 24)

Rouse was paired beautifully with Scriabin's Le Poème de l'extase, premiered in 1908, a lushly chromatic fever-dream equal parts cheesy theosophy and Tristan-esque Love-Death. It also opens in a slow, amorphous way, with single celesta notes topping harp arpeggios in a delicate web of sound, with lots of moaning and sighing motifs. The music turns more dark and stormy, tinged with minor harmonies, toward the middle but inexorably mounts toward a climactic conclusion, marked by bell strokes and the clangor of a large battery. After that first half, the heroic charge of the opening of Ein Heldenleben was bracing. The sound of the violin section soared, especially in the conclusion of the Strauss, while the woodwinds carped stridently as the voices of the music critics. Concertmaster Jonathan Carney seduced and cajoled playfully in the violin solos, representing Strauss's soprano wife, Pauline, bringing the orchestra back to life with her raucous laughs after the hero seemed to succumb to the ever-present critics. As one listens to Strauss quote some of his own compositional successes in the victory section of this tone poem -- themes for Don Quixote and Sancho, Till Eulenspiegel, the opening of Also sprach Zarathustra woven into the ending -- it is remarkable to realize that at this point in his life, in 1899, Strauss had not yet even composed his greatest operatic triumphs.

This program repeats on Sunday afternoon (October 26, 3 pm) at Strathmore.

Alsop Leads Rouse's Flute Concerto

Christopher Rouse, composer

On Saturday evening in Baltimore's Meyerhoff Hall, Marin Alsop, in her spotlight on “living Beethovens,” led the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Christopher Rouse’s 1993 Flute Concerto. Alsop, in her remarks to the audience, labeled the work “one of the last century’s greats” and spoke of Rouse’s use of dissonance and consonance interspersed with clips played by the orchestra. In particular, Alsop “finds the consonant more painful than the prior dissonant” material found in the Elegia third movement -- a memorial to two-year-old James Bugler, murdered in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys in England. The outer Ànhran (Gaelic for ‘song’) movements featured BSO principal flutist Emily Skala playing a wistful tune over plaintive strings.

Remarkably, Rouse made sure that the flute soloist soared above the orchestra at all times, and the BSO was careful never to overwhelm the soloist. The energetic second and contemporary jig fourth movements balanced the concerto perfectly, creating truly unique textures between the fluttering winds and flute soloist, among others combinations. Skala’s simply beautiful playing was exquisitely reinforced by the close coordination of her BSO colleagues. Rouse’s virtuosic music is remarkably listenable for modern audiences, who were highly receptive at both the National Symphony’s performance of his Second Symphony last January (some friends purchased a subscription because of the Rouse), and Saturday evening in Baltimore where the composer received a generous ovation.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, The BSO barrels through Beethoven (Baltimore Sun, March 8) Mark J. Estren, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Washington Post, March 8) BSO sells Rouse's flute (Washington Times, March 8)

The program began with the Leonore Overture No. 3. Later in the Fifth Symphony Alsop, who was seemingly attempting to fuse the first two motifs as one gesture, began at a vigorous clip, leaving the orchestra stuck in the notes and at times scrambling to keep up with her. Glorious music making followed, once issues of tempo were resolved, with the cello section providing supple lines in the second movement, and brilliant statements with the basses in the third movement fughettta. The fourth movement was grand, though Alsop did not give sufficient bite to certain dissonant chords near the coda. It was pleasing to experience a program pairing a "living Beethoven" with the real thing.

The BSO’s new Dvořák CD is now for sale (review forthcoming), and the 2008-2009 season has just been announced.

NSO Plays Rouse, Loudly

Leonard Slatkin has done well this week in programming Christopher Rouse's second symphony. Premiered in Houston in 1995, it was the most successful work on the National Symphony Orchestra's Friday concert, garnering a warm ovation for the Baltimore composer. This comes two years after the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's most recent performance of Rouse's first symphony, under Marin Alsop. (Rouse will be featured later this winter in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Composers in Conversation series -- March 5, 7:30 pm -- the week that Marin Alsop will conduct his flute concerto -- March 6 to 9.) Slatkin's brief introduction, in a cold-deepened voice assisted by a microphone, attempted to explain the element of color in Rouse's thick, sometimes dissonant, sometimes neo-Romantic style. Whatever you might think, this music "will provoke a response," Slatkin promised, provoking the sniggering of the reactionary and dubious.

It was the NSO, however, that really made a case for Rouse's second symphony, playing with commitment and weighty bombast in this dramatic and appealing work. The outer movements are metrically complicated, with shifting downbeats underpinning the bubbling of mechanistic motifs, with the bass instruments often repeating a driving Stravinskyesque pattern. The percussion play a crucial role, often announcing the transition between sections and at times crashing into the texture with machine-gun or jackhammer pounding. The slow movement, dedicated to the memory of composer Stephen Albert, opens with lush string sound. Poignant oboe and horn moments and a melancholy bass clarinet solo were all played beautifully, as was the forlorn duet of bassoon and violas. All in all, it was an athletic workout for the NSO, not all grace and virtuosity, but well worth the extended applause.

Available at Amazon: Rouse, Sy. 2, Houston SO Liszt, Piano Concerti, Thibaudet, Montréal SO

One of the points in Tim Page's assessment of Slatkin's tenure in the Post concerned unadventurous programming ("we've heard two renditions of Franz Liszt's meretricious Piano Concerto No. 1 only a few months apart"). Actually, the first Liszt piano concerto is alright by me, maybe not that many times in a year, but the second one seems even less worth my time. Jean-Yves Thibaudet gave a stylish and more than solid performance of the alternately booming and rhapsodic solo part, and the NSO played competently if somewhat unimaginatively. The players can be excused for being uninspired: the work is hardly one for the ages (especially since it was Thibaudet who played it with the NSO the last time, in 2003). A quick glance over Thibaudet's concerto discography indicates several other options, although no more Ravel, Grieg, or Saint-Saëns, please. While one of the Mendelssohn concerti would have been welcome but probably too long for the Thibaudet slot, Richard Strauss's seldom heard Burleske would have filled the time quite pleasantly, thank you.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, For the NSO, Newer Is Improved (Washington Post, January 25)

The concert closed with another crowd-pleaser, Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Although the NSO performed it as recently as last February, this was the group's premiere of Slatkin's adaptation of Ravel's orchestration, premiered this summer at the Hollywood Bowl. Slatkin pushed many of the tempos forward, occasionally leading to a sense of harried misalignment among the players (as in the Bydlo movement, with its fast-moving oxcart, and Limoges). The saxophone solo in the Vecchio Castello movement was suave and mysterious, earning the player a bow, and the winds bickered quite effectively in the Tuileries movement. The best ensemble playing came at the end of the piece, with an ominous Catacombs, a breath-taking tour of orchestral color in Baba Yaga, and a clanging, sonorous Gate of Kiev. The only change apparent in the Slatkin adaptation is the restoration of the the Promenade movement left out by Ravel (between the Samuel and Limoges movements). The ingenuity of the promenade sections is that they take on the character of the paintings around them. Slatkin adapted his arrangement from the opening Promenade, which created an association with the work's opening, somewhat destroying Mussorgsky's intention.

This concert will be repeated this evening (January 26, 8 pm). Next week's all-Mahler program (January 31 to February 2) should be one of the season's best, featuring the sixth symphony and Thomas Hampson singing the Kindertotenlieder.