Critic’s Notebook: Eötvös meets Krasznahorkai — Valuska at the Budapest Opera

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Oper „Valuska“ in Budapest: Lautmalerei der leisen Töne

P. Eötvös Three Sisters Nagano, O.d.Lyon (DG, 1999) US | UK | DE

P. Eötvös Love and Other Demons V.Jurowski, LPO (Glyndeborne, 2013) US | UK | DE

P. Eötvös Atlantis Eötvös, WDRSO (BMC, 2018) US | UK | DE

A Nobel Effort from Budapest

The revival of the Eötvös-Krasznahorkai opera Valuska got a deserving boost.

When the Hungarian State Opera decided to revive Peter Eötvös's final opera, Valuska, this season, following its December 2023 premiere, no one could have known that László Krasznahorkai, on whose novel Melancholy of Resistance the libretto is based, would win the Nobel Prize. Ticket sales for the small alternative venue — the Eiffel Art Studios — moved sluggishly at first. But what a difference a Nobel Prize makes! After the Swedish Academy's announcement earlier this month, all three performances sold out in no time.

It was worth attending, too — provided you can accommodate yourself with Eötvös's brand of music theater. He's written 14 operas in total, which makes him arguably Hungary's foremost opera composer (although I reckon most listeners would trade it just for Bartók's Bluebeard in a heartbeat); and ever since his fourth, Tri sestri, he is one of the most frequently performed opera composers of the last few decades. One thing his works have going for them, although they're never easy listening, is that they're usually compelling drama.

Valuska, named after the novel's (anti-)hero, is his first setting of a Hungarian text (precisely to avoid comparison with Bartók). And what an instinct Eötvös showed in choosing it. Not that Krasznahorkai's novel is an obvious choice to adapt for the stage: without paragraph — let alone chapter — breaks, Krasznahorkai unfolds his story slowly, relentlessly, with immense, whimsical detail, yet remains compelling to the willing reader, manages even to be humorous at times, in the portrayal of his all-too-human protagonists. Only gradually does one realise what is happening in the anonymous little town the book's characters inhabit: the slow undermining of society by the twin forces of anarchy and oppression.

But the selection of text by Kinga Keszthelyi and Mari Mezei (Eötvös's wife), the choices made by Bence Varga's direction, Botond Devich's creative set, Kató Huszár's bold costumes, and Sándor Baumgartner's dramatic lighting, together with Eötvös's atmospheric score, combine to create a theatrical experience that does not reproduce the novel but conveys its sense of pity, melancholy, desolation, and quiet dread. One senses a (presumably unintentional) spiritual kinship with John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

To call it a "theatrical" rather than an "operatic" experience is to make a point, because Eötvös's music — for all its proven quality over the years — is not so much the reason why anyone would enjoy the work. Rather, it is a layer of supporting sound, suggesting moods, or making scenes aurally explicit. Valuska thus becomes "music theatre" in the most literal sense, with the emphasis on theatre. No one will be humming arias on their way home from the out-of-the-way multi-purpose theatre — a converted railway depot that doubles as the opera's costume- and prop-depot, and rehearsal facility.

But everyone will have understood the hissing, puffing, and pounding, the chattering and rattling of the train in the first of the twelve tableaux. Likewise, the refuge that Bach's music represents — played by the reclusive Professor (András Hábetler, a retired music-school director in the novel) on the record player for himself and his friend Valuska (Zsolt Haja), who is the innocently-naïve village-idiot with strong overtones of the "holy fool" archetype. Similarly literal is the chirping of the "Prince," who is – unseen, unfathomable, never directly heard – a constant, menacing presence in the travelling circus. Eötvös pulls all manner of onomatopoeia like stops on an organ: The squeaking toilet door in the train is vocalized by the ensemble. If that was one of Eötvös' ways of giving a nod to the humor in the original, it's darn effective.

With few but telling means, the production sketches the drab, disorderly world of a neglected provincial town on the small black stage. The whale — "the largest stuffed of its kind", the circuses' great draw, and catalyst of the action — is only seen after the mob has struck. Mayor Tünde (sung, aptly enough, by Tünde Szabóki) provides a garish pink splash of color amid the greyness. With her little dog-in-handbag (the costume department combined the two hilariously) she is clip-clopping toward totalitarianism. Since the music is not very conventional, conventional means to judge the singers hardly apply; only Haja's Valuska gets aria-like, dissonant-sweet moments in which he sounds bright and lovely — a plausible holy fool, indeed. The rest act, often delightfully quirky, supporting the drama with their vocal resources and acting as effectively as the small but alert State Opera Orchestra under Kálmán Szennai's direction.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Critic’s Notebook: An Orgy of Musicality with Ollikainen, Larcher, Strauss, Widmann

Also published in Die Presse: Unbekanntes von Großen – und Großes von einem lebenden Komponisten

T.Larcher Kenotaph H.Lintu, Finnish RSO (Ondine, 2021) US | UK | DE

R.Strauss Violin Concerto / Aus Italien M.Poschner, R.Kowalski, O.d.Svizzera Italiana (CPO, 2017) US | UK | DE

New Wine in Old Wineskins

The Bruckner Orchestra shone, from filigreed to ferocious, under Eva Ollikainen in Larcher and Strauss

Welcome back! Almost ten years have passed since Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony, Kenotaph, was premiered in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein to mark the Austrian National Bank’s 200th anniversary. (My Forbes.com review of the premiere.) On Sunday afternoon the Bruckner Orchestra Linz brought it back to the same spot. It’s a grand piece (and not only es regards length); an “extraordinary coup”, as Wilhelm Sinkovicz put it at the time, or (as I put it) "a brilliantly entertaining symphonic tour de force". Larcher pours new wine into old skins – and although it occasionally rattles and strains at the seams, nothing bursts. The classical symphonic shape, unabashedly modern yet consistently consonant and traceable in its musical narrative. And that refers not to the lament over drowned refugees embedded in Kenotaph, but to music written for the listeners rather than against them. Even when the ten-armed percussion squad bangs its way through the punchiest moments with all tentacles flailing, none of the numerous sonic effects feels overused or gratuitous. Kenotaph never turns into a percussion orgy, and no glissando-flood washes over the – at times quite rough, inventive, and varied – music.

A few walkouts after the first movement, and again in the third – somehow fitting, seeing how the movmeent is about refugees – there were anyway. Even in the slow movement, which could be called conciliatory lyrical… although there's also a threatening element to that lyricism, no doubt. The pizzicato-bubbles of the violins that foamed up in the spray of sound were not enough for some. Under Eva Ollikainen, the work sounded swifter, more propulsive, with more energy drawn from motion than from the sheer piling-up of sonorities – than under Bychkov, assuming memory serves. Back then the ensuing Heldenleben that was also on the program became a footnote. This time, thanks to Ollikainen – one of the most heartening podium presences of the year (she has come to our attention at ionarts in 2016 already!) – and Carolin Widmann, neither the accompanying Strauss nor Bruckner became an afterthought – even though both pieces were early works, and are not counted among the finest either composer produced.

Bruckner’s rather Wagnerian "youthful" ouverture, written at 38, came across almost cheekily; it surprised with flashes of playful lightness and the occasional Weberian moment (Carl Maria von, not Anton). The whole thing was played with the kind of cleanliness, color, commitment, and precision one hopes for from an orchestra bearing the composer’s name.

Strauss’ Violin Concerto – likewise a rarity but a welcome guest on any program – is another of those pieces: not a masterpiece, but fascinating, and absolutely dependent on being played outstandingly well if it’s going to make any impression. No problem for these artists. Widmann’s rich, velvety, yet pointed, even sharp-edged tone brought exactly the intensity this post-pubescent work – Strauss was sixteen – needs. Anyone who had filed Widmann (despite a reference recording of the Schumann sonatas) into the “modern music” drawer was, at long last, corrected.




Follow @ClassicalCritic

Critic’s Notebook: RSO & Poschner - The Harmonists Strike Back

Also published in Die Presse: Poschners Gebet für die Seejungfrau: Das RSO im Musikverein

E-S.Tüür, Piano Concerto, Sy.#7, P.Järvi / Frankfurt RSO, NDR Chorus / L.Mikkola ECM

Erkki-Sven Tüür Symphony No.5, Prophecy (Accordion Concerto) Nguyên Lê, Mika Väyrynen Olari Elts, Helsinki PO (Ondine, 2007) US | UK | DE

Moussa and Tüür, Wagner & Strauss: An ear-friendly Vienna RSO Concert of the New and the Old

Ear-friendly modernism and Romantic staples with the RSO under Poschner

Having a premiere is easy; getting three performances in four years (in Vienna alone) is decidedly not. Yet that’s the trick Samy Moussa pulled off with Elysium, now played by the RSO in the Konzerthaus under Markus Poschner after being premiered by the Montréal Symphony Orchestra in ’22 and included on a program of the Vienna Philharmonic under Thielemann last year. From its first catchy chords—with glissandi floating back and forth so thickly, they acted like opulent portamenti—Moussa’s work wants to please. Not a lot actually happens within the dense sonic surface, but that hardly matters—no more than the fact that one often feels reminded of very good film music.

More substance is found in the more demanding Lux Stellarum by Erkki-Sven Tüür, one of the most interesting composers of the last several decades: a genuinely individual voice, ideology-free and fully his own. The flute concerto crackles and rattles; its solo part, played by dedicatee Emmanuel Pahud, shifts between acrobatic whistling and lyrical introspection. Here, too, sound-plates slide over one another, but of a smaller, more varied sort—broken up by rhythms that, time and again, provide little jolts of surprise.

Tüür the symphonist (he’s written ten so far; Nos. Five and Seven are essential listening) never panders. The modernity of his music is never concealed or coyly muffled, yet it remains consistently consonant. That this aspect, in this 14th of now 16 RSO-commission concerts, falls largely to the orchestra may be due to the solo instrument: it doesn’t wander far from the conventional contemporary flute vocabulary, even though Tüür is himself a flutist. (Checking it out for yourself will be possible soon enough: together with his newest concerto, the Oboe Concerto, Lux Stellarum will be released before long with the Tonhalle-Orchester under Paavo Järvi on Alpha.) Both works do the RSO’s mission proud and reflect the orchestra’s heartening tendency not to cede the terrain of ear-friendly modernism to the ivory-tower avant-garde. For that, Poschner is just the right man—there’s so much beautiful music to un- and rediscover that other orchestras rarely, if ever, touch. (Is it too much to hope now, for an RSO Hartmann-Symphony Cycle and a Karl Höller Focus?)

The more conventional second half offered Wagner’s Parsifal Prelude and Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. The Wagner—apparently the fourth-place finisher when it came to rehearsal time but not much more often played by this orchestra than either new piece —was, despite largely lovely string sound, not quite as polished as aimed-for. But in the seamlessly ensuing Strauss everything snapped back into place. The way early Strauss rises from stillness and quiet into a gloriously Straussian racket, only to come to rest in nostalgic sweetness, was wonderfully shaped and admirably delivered by the orchestra—both as a collective and in its individual contributions.


Follow @ClassicalCritic

Dip Your Ears: No. 282 (Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Indelibly Interesting Symphonies)

Erkki-Sven Tüür Symphony No.5, Prophecy (Accordion Concerto) Nguyên Lê, Mika Väyrynen Olari Elts, Helsinki PO (Ondine, 2007) US | UK | DE

Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Fifth for Orchestra, Big Band and Electric Guitar

Erkki-Sven Tüür’s ongoing cycle of interesting symphonies (in 2017 he arrived at No. 9) makes him – by quality more significantly than quantity – the premiere symphonist of our time. Always good for the inclusion of seemingly eclectic instruments (electric guitar, accordion, big band, percussion, tape, synthesizer) in his orchestral works, he expands the tonal palate much the same way a Gustav Mahler did when the latter threw the mandolin or guitar or castanets or xylophones or a hammer into his symphonies, all before perfectly unsuspecting audiences. (Happily, this is much easier on the ears than when other composers stick with the traditional instrumental apparatus only to then make these instruments generate every sound except those they were meant to produce in the first place.)

In this Fifth Symphony, premiered in 2005 at the Stuttgart Eclat New Music Festival, the electric guitar has some particularly lyrical quasi-cadenzas in the second movement. The fact that we might find it curious is only a consequence of our aural associations and expectations with and of an electric guitar. But all the rest of the symphony is pretty classical, down to the four-movements and their structure, which goes to show that there’s still much left in the old form and ‘old’ – i.e. tonal – modes, if only a composer can muster sufficient imagination.

Erkki-Sven Tüür does. In fact, his works are bursting with originality and phantasy, freed of all academicism and perceived “ought-to’s”. Not all of them as successful as this Fifth (or the Seventh) Symphony, perhaps, but always full throttle and never displaying originality for its own sake. The groove of the third movement is befitting any classical Scherzo; the Big band gets its moment in the spotlight, backed by a percussive, happy but firmly embedded, organic beat (sound clip) – not as artificially superimposed and faddish as large percussion sections can sound in too many contemporary works (Higdon, Sierra, Widmann, Golijov et al.).

It’s possible that connoisseurs of conventional symphonies wrinkle their brow in disapproval of these allegedly foreign ingredients. This brings to mind a beverage-related spoonerism of composer and linguistic genius Franz Mittler: “I would rather have a boot in my rear / Than a root in my beer.” But Tüür’s symphonies are not symphonies-in-name only, they are decidedly real beer; just a modern variant of the classic original. Maybe something Dogfish Head Brewery would concoct.

Rounding out a fabulous disc is the accordion concerto Prophecy, a substantial concerto in four continuous movements, which often ends up a swarm of sound with intermittent, hallmark Tüür moments (dry timpani before a canvas of dark quiet, for example). In it, the accordion is less folksy than it is grave; the whole thing more redolent of an organ concerto than a polka. As a card-carrying accordion-lover, I dig it muchly.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

This review had been previously published on Classics Today.

Critic’s Notebook: Manfred Honeck Scintillating with the VSO; Kavakos brooding in Korngold

Also published in Die Presse: Dirigent Manfred Honeck ließ im Musikverein die Funken sprühen

E.W.Korngold (& Barber) Violin Concerto(s) Gil Shaham / A.Previn / LSO DG (1994) US | UK | DE

L.v.Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 7 M.Honeck / Pittsburg SO Reference SACD (2015) US | UK | DE

Exuberance and Musical Joy with Manfred Honeck

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, inspired-sounding, under the West-Austrian maestro from Pittsburgh

There aren’t many conductors who make you think: No matter what, where, or with whom – I need to be there and hear them. Manfred Honeck – who, over the past 17 years, has turned the fine Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra into one of the world’s most interesting ensembles – is one of them. Saturday night’s concert with the Vienna Symphony at the Musikverein offered ample reasons why.

Perhaps not quite yet in the Austrian premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Frozen Dreams, a joint commission by Pittsburgh, the Vienna Symphony, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (alias dictus Musikverein) – where one’s ears were primarily busy just taking in the new music. Soundscapes (a bowed gong, singing glasses, eventually the string sections) gently crept forward, pushing against the rustling restlessness of the hall. A wry smile, recalling Alfred Schnittke, underlies the piece when Auerbach lets familiar-sounding tunes dart through the abstract tectonics of her musical landscape – or when she just brusquely wipes away those friendly gestures with a broad orchestral swipe.

Perhaps also still not quite in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto: Not here, simply because the soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, was squarely at the center of it all. It’s pretty safe to say that this concerto has arrived in the repertoire: this was already the fourth time it’s been heard in Vienna this season, and thrice with major performers. In February with the Tonkünstler and Simone Lamsma and in May with the VSO (!) and Renaud Capuçon.

Kavakos, by nature not a grandstanding, overwrought kind of soloist, is perfectly suited to this music that straddles the concert hall and Hollywood. Full-bodied and penetrating, charged with inner tension, and – despite a surprisingly broad and heavy vibrato – never soupy, he set the tone for the performance. That even an intonation-animal like him brushes up against the limits of ambiguity in the tricky Andante shows that Korngold offers his performers beauty, but not ease. (Capuçon and Lamsma were cleaner, more distict here, though neither brought anything like his expressiveness to the work.) The finale buzzed and hummed with energy. After that, his encore – the Bach "Loure" from Partita No.3 in E major, abstract and played right at the edge – felt like a glass of ice water.

Finally, in the Beethoven, Honeck’s influence came into focus. There was so much to discover and enjoy in this Seventh Symphony, for all its familiarity. It started with the fundamentals: articulation, phrasing. The crescendos were organic. Even at breakneck speed, there was never haste; never panic over bungled notes. Never lost in minutiae, he kept the momentum flowing just right. Sparks flew with intensity.

P.S.: This merits a little rant: The VSO is bloody lucky to have Honeck return to them regularly (he will be back in October with Anne-Sofie Mutter!); the Vienna Phil insane for not trying to tie him to the orchestra of which he was a violist-member for ten years. Is it, because his brother Rainer is their concert-master? Something is decidedly amiss when the Vienna Phil evidently avoids a conductor who, on paper, would be a perfect fit, one who is among the best regarded, most exciting maestros of our time, and who has such ample feeling for the 'Viennese style'. He should have been conducting the bloody New Year's concert oodles of times by now, instead the orchestras he has conducted at the Musikverein include the Pittsburgh and Munich Philharmonics, the Vienna Symphony, the Webern SO, a bloody student orchestra, the Jeunesse Youth Orchestra, the Swedish RSO, the MDRSO, and the ORF-RSO... but not the Vienna Phil. Anyone suggesting that anything but politicking and shady Viennese machinations are the reson for this, does not know this snake-put of a town well enough, methinks.
Follow @ClassicalCritic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow @ClassicalCritic

From the House of the Mad: Klangforum puts on a "concertante-performative Meta-Opera"

AMOPERA - a dystopian ballad

In a dead-serious context, even the dumbest joke is funny. Klangforum Wien combined high-concept avant-garde with a staging that makes the Hangover-films look like Schiller tragedies.


On Sunday evening, Klangforum lured audiences into the Great Hall for an ambitious season finale. A “concertante-performative meta-opera” was on the program. Already the descriptor “Amoper” (opera for the evening) came with a warning: words like “meta” and “performative” are often codes—either promising an audience something detached from the subject and physically involving in its own peculiar way, or, to the less inclined, something pseudo-intellectual and embarrassing. One must decide for oneself which camp one belongs to when exposed to the Belgian Needcompany.

A musician enters. He stands at the front of the stage. Silence. He dies—loudly, like Hamlet in provincial theater. No, he lives; puts on a clown nose. The rest of the musicians and two “performers” join him. They start running around the stage in circles, all of them oozing significance and wearing colorful socks. It reeks of amateur improv class at the local community center. Still no music. This goes on for what feels like five minutes, until some musicians finally dare touch their instruments and begin to intone Salvatore Sciarrino: “I begin to breathe again” from Luci mie traditrici—delicate, breathy, skewed whistling. Sciarrino in purified avant-garde form. The rest of the group keeps jogging. Theatrical garnish: musicians occasionally stand up, pull faces, and sit down again. The “performers” gradually shed their upper garments. In the background, two musicians do jumping jacks. When the musicians just pretend to play their instruments for a while, or exchange instruments among each other (to predictably modest effect), much laughter ensues. Because this is funny.

Beat Furrer’s soundscapes from die helle nacht rise from the central group of ridiculously, admirably dedicated musicians. More facial contortions. Holger Falk sounds stunning—whether miked, half-naked, or wrapped in a purple cloak. No matter how difficult or abstract the music, he delivers. A velvet brushstroke amid all the sonic thorns. Then: loosening-up exercises. Barefoot. Heavy breathing. Screaming. Percussion outbursts. The music comes from the ash-heap of the avant-garde (Xenakis) and its modern epigones (Sara Glojnarić, Michael Wertmüller, Rebecca Saunders, Bernhard Lang). At least Berio is enjoyable—because he mocks himself (For Cathy). A bass flute comes running. But only breathes through the thing. Wait, it is turning into Saunders' "O Yes & I". One of the pieces sounds like Sepultura-goes-Bohemian-Rhapsodie.

Soprano Sarah Maria Sun is no less impressive than Falk and hurls herself admirably into every role. Around her: more group contortions. Buttocks rubbing against one another. Finally, a cut: Zemlinsky—glorious. Lulu fragments—brilliant. Sciarrino (via Gesualdo)—touching. Britten—tender. A telling contrast.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

© Carlos Suarez/Wiener Konzerthaus