BSO Plays More World Premieres

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRSO Brings Mahler 5

Charles T. Downey, Kennedy Center’s New Music Series Is Bates’s Jukebox
Classical Voice North America, April 14

WASHINGTON, D.C. – One day, Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will play in the hall it deserves. When it does, a statue of conductor Mariss Jansons in or in front of the hall would not be out of place. The Riga-born conductor doubled down on his commitment to the Bavarians, whom he has led since 2003, and their quest for a new venue, by resigning from his other music directorship, at Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, last year. He even pledged $270,000 of his own money, the proceeds of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, as starter cash for the fund to build the orchestra a new auditorium.

The news came earlier this year that Munich will indeed build the BRSO a new home in time for Jansons and his orchestra to take a victory lap on its North American tour...

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Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
North American Tour
With Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

SEE ALSO:
Christophe Huss, Mariss Jansons, l’affiche tombée du ciel (Le Devoir, April 14)

Anne Midgette, How a great orchestra started its U.S. tour: Carefully. (Washington Post, April 13)

Robert R. Reilly, Bavarian RSO Opens North American Tour (Ionarts, April 13)

Charles T. Downey, Concertgebouw Returns, This Time with Mahler (Ionarts, February 5, 2008)

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)

Ghosts at Versailles and in the Supreme Court

Corigliano, The Ghosts of Versailles, T. Stratas, H. Hagegård, R. Fleming, M. Horne, Metropolitan Opera (1992)

Charles T. Downey, Ghosts, Ginsburg Given Justice As Summer Delights
Classical Voice North America, July 22

WASHINGTON, D.C. – For opera to thrive, companies must be willing to commission new works and, just as important, to revive recent operas so they can be heard more than once. Two summer festivals near Washington did their part, premiering a new comedy and reviving one of the great operatic successes of the late 20th century.

Wolf Trap Opera, a young artist training program based in a national park in a far Virginia suburb of the District, aimed high with its first production of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, heard at its final performance on July 18. A “grand opera buffa” (Corigliano’s term) commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for its centennial celebration, Ghosts was sized in every way to the cavernous proportions of the Met, where it received its premiere in 1991....

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Corigliano, The Ghosts of Versailles
Wolf Trap Opera

Wang, Scalia/Ginsburg
Castleton Festival

SEE ALSO:
Robert R. Reilly, 'Ghosts of Versailles' at Wolf Trap (Ionarts, July 12)

Robert Battey, A return to grand style for Wolf Trap Opera with ‘Ghosts of Versailles’ (Washington Post, July 13)

Mark Swed, 'Scalia/Ginsburg' opera underscores how opposites can be in harmony (Los Angeles Times, July 13)

Philip Kennicott, ‘Scalia/Ginsburg’: An affectionate comic opera look at the high court (Washington Post, July 12)

Geoff Edgers, From ‘rage aria’ to ‘lovely duet,’ opera does justice to court, Ginsburg says (Washington Post, July 8)

Nina Totenberg, Judicial Differences Take Center Stage In 'Scalia V. Ginsburg' (NPR, July 10, 2013)

Tara Erraught's U.S. Debut

Rossini, La Cenerentola, C. Bartoli, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, R. Chailly (Decca, 1993)

Charles T. Downey, D.C. Cenerentola Weighs In With Splendid Singing
Classical Voice North America, May 13

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A decade after Deborah Voigt lost a role because of how she would look in a revealing black dress, have popular culture’s obsessions with youth and body image become the norm in the world of opera? The reaction of British critics to Tara Erraught’s performance a year ago, as Octavian in the Glyndebourne Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, struck a chord around the world as taking the trend a step too far. The Irish-born mezzo-soprano’s American stage debut, in the second cast of Washington National Opera’s production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola on May 11, offered the chance to hear — and see — her for ourselves.

The fat-shaming critics, all men, were uncomfortably ad hominem — or ad mulierem — in their assessment of Erraught’s body...

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Rossini, La Cenerentola
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

SEE ALSO:
Robert R. Reilly, Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO (Ionarts, May 13)

'Penny' from American Opera Project

Deborah Nansteel in Penny, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)
Charles T. Downey, In New Opera, Music Pries Open A Sealed Mind
Classical Voice North America, January 28

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What goes on in the minds of people who have been diagnosed with autism? How do they perceive the world and those around them? Penny, a one-hour opera premiered by Washington National Opera on Jan. 23 in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, attempts to delve into this mystery through the medium of music. This surprising new work, reuniting composer Douglas Pew and librettist Dara Weinberg, is the most recent presentation from the company’s American Opera Initiative, a project to nurture new works by rising American composers.

Weinberg based her libretto on her own original story about an autistic adult who...

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Douglas Pew, Penny
Libretto by Dara Weinberg
American Opera Project
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, With ‘Penny,’ WNO shows merits of American Opera Initiative (Washington Post, January 26)

Tim Smith, A new opera, early Tchaikovsky symphony at the Kennedy Center (Baltimore Sun, January 28)

AMERICAN OPERA PROJECT:
2012 | 2013 | 2014