On ClassicsToday: The Well-Trebled Christmas Oratorio

The Well-Trebled Christmas Oratorio

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

If you like trebles in Bach—and specifically in the Christmas Oratorio—why not opt for those that Bach, a few generations back, worked with himself? Certainly, this latest production has much going for it, whether on CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. (I worked with the DVD.) The new Thomaskantor Gotthold Schwarz, visibly enjoying every indefatigable minute, leads his boys and the Leipzig Gewandhaus in a rousing, big-boned, but lively performance. On the conventional end it is solid and safe and booming and performed on modern instruments. On the HIP end, it is full of spiritedness and lively musical enunciation. It’s not unlike Riccardo Chailly’s hybrid or “third-way” Bach, but with fewer interpretive eccentricities and the large Thomaner Boys Choir—replete with treble-solos from a shaggy-haired cherub... [continue reading]

On ClassicsToday: Knappertsbusch Conducts Wagner & Brahms at the Theater an der Wien

Slow Flow Beauty: A Tribute To Hans Knappertsbusch (Blu-ray)

by Jens F. Laurson

This Blu-ray titled “A Tribute to Hans Knappertsbusch” is a tribute by virtue of showing, not telling, what the conductor was about. There’s no documentary element, just two live broadcasts of concerts that Knappertsbusch gave with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna Festival-Week in the... Continue Reading

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On ClassicsToday: Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin from Bayreuth (Blu-ray)

Herr Tesla’s Adventures in Brabant—Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin (Blu-ray)

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

This is neither a Lohengrin to seek out for its direction, nor to avoid because of it. As drama, it can’t begin to touch the rats of Hans Neunefels that populated Bayreuth’s previous Lohengrin, already a modern classic. Arguably it’s even a bit lame, but it’s also very pretty and (perhaps involuntarily) traditional. This leaves plenty room to focus on the performances—which is a good thing, as I will elaborate below... [continue reading]

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These Are a Few of My Favorite Things - 2007, Part III "DVD" (Best Recordings of 2007)

For 2007 I wrote something similar to the "Best Recordings" list for WETA's blog: "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things", which ended up being divided into eleven parts:

I - Crossover
II - Concerto
III - DVD
IV - Keyboard
V - Choral/Vocal
VI - Orchestral
VII - Chamber
VIII - Obscure Composer/Work Rescued
IX - Bach
X - Opera
XI - Contemporary

The WETA column was shut down and the links were all dead until now, except for two. Now I have finally resurrected all of the posts, as embedded .pdf files. The links above are working again; here is the Part II - Concerto:





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Latest on Forbes: Making Music Visible: Peter Sellars' St John Passion From Berlin

The Bach Passion ceases to be a spectator sport, it becomes a passively participatory event…

…The St John Passion performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle (with a stellar cast) wouldn’t be an unusual thing, even in times where fewer and fewer big romantic orchestras perform early music that has become the provenance of Historically Informed Performance groups. But as the Berlin Radio Chorus assembles – then lies down – on the blank space of Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall (space the much reduced and original-instrument-studded baroque core of the Berlin Phil. does not need), one begins to suspect that something is different. Or, more likely, the watcher of this DVD/Blu-ray set already knows that they are watching Peter Sellars’ staging of the St John Passion…

->Making Music Visible: Peter Sellars' St John Passion From Berlin

Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Things I Liked This Year

For your Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping, here are some gift ideas from the CDs, DVDs, and books I enjoyed this year, in no particular order. Jens will also offer his thoughts on the best recordings of the year. When you buy through the links provided on these pages, Ionarts receives a cut at no extra cost to you -- so you are actually giving two gifts at once.

RECORDINGS
J. H. Hertel, Die Geburt Jesu Christi, B. Solset, A. Rawohl, M. Ullmann, W.-M. Friedrich, Die Kölner Akademie, M. A. Willens (cpo 777 809-2)

[Buy from Amazon]

If you have even heard of Johann Wilhelm Hertel (1727-1789), it is likely because of his trumpet or oboe concertos, already revived in the search for concertos for those instruments. He was the son of a viola da gamba player and violinist, who was a close friend of Johann Gottlieb Graun, and he served as court composer for the Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Like J. S. Bach and other composers in this period, his compositional output varied according to the tastes and interests of his employer. During the life of Duke Christian Ludwig II, Hertel wrote mostly instrumental music, but from 1777 to 1783, he composed a series of long cantatas or oratorios for the new Stadtkirche in Ludwigslust, where his employer Duke Frederick the Pious had retired from worldly life, a building of considerable architectural and artistic interest. This includes Hertel's Christmas cantata, Die Geburt Jesu Christi, here receiving its world premiere recording. [READ REVIEW]

Enescu, Isis / Symphony No. 5, M. Vlad, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, NDR Chor, P. Ruzicka (cpo 777823-2)

[Buy from Amazon]

We are avid fans of the music of George Enescu here at Ionarts. The Rumanian composer kept up a restless schedule of performing (he was a talented violinist), as well as being an educator and musicologist. At the time of his death, in Paris in 1955, he apparently left a large number of pieces incomplete. Some of these are still being brought to light, thanks to Pascal Bentoiu, a Romanian composer and also Enescu biographer, who has made performance versions of them according to Enescu's intentions. This new release from the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern and conductor Peter Ruzicka offers performances of two of them, beginning with the vocal symphonic poem Isis, which Bentoiu discovered only in 1996 in an archive in Bucharest. It is an atmospheric, languid, mostly static work for orchestra, wordless women's chorus, harp, and celesta, and Bentiou connects it, composed in 1923, to Enescu's mistress, eventually wife, Maruca Cantacuzini, whom Enescu called Isis. [READ REVIEW]

Bach, Academic Cantatas (BWV 205, 207), Bach Collegium Japan, M. Suzuki (BIS-2001)

[Buy from Amazon]

The completion of Masaaki Suzuki's complete cycle of Bach's sacred cantatas, undertaken from 1995 to 2013 with the Bach Collegium Japan for BIS, was one of the highlights of last year. Bach also composed secular cantatas, over a score of them that survive but likely more than twice that number actually composed, and Suzuki and his forces are releasing their fourth volume of those this month. The two cantatas brought together on this disc, BWV 205 and 207, are both academic cantatas, commissioned in honor of professors at the University of Leipzig, with texts that celebrate the honorees' achievements in allegorical and mythological terms. As we have come to expect of this series, all musical details in these sometimes surprising scores are lovingly tended. The quartet of vocal soloists is strong: forthright countertenor Robin Blaze and bass Roderick Williams, the sweet and light tenor of Wolfram Lattke, and the ethereal soprano of Joanne Lunn. [READ REVIEW]

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Briefly Noted: Mariinsky 'Romeo and Juliet'

Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet (chor. L. Lavrovsky), D. Vishneva, V. Shklyarov, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on October 14, 2014) MAR0552 | 152 min

The official premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet score Romeo and Juliet was in the Czech city of Brno in 1938. Since the Russian premiere in 1940 at the Mariinsky Theater, though, that St. Petersburg company has laid special claim to the ballet, which it still performs in Leonid Lavrovsky's menacing and heart-breaking choreography. The Russian troupe last brought this production to Washington in 2007, when Miss Ionarts was too young to have seen it. It is hardly surprising, though, that she has become fixated on the work since we received an advance copy of this new DVD/Blu-Ray disc from the Mariinsky's personal label.

That 2007 touring production at the Kennedy Center did not feature Diana Vishneva's Juliet, a reminder that the Mariinsky sometimes visits the U.S. without its best dancers. The reason for the disappointment is evident when one sees Vishneva, one of the great étoiles of our era, dance this role at her home theater, a dizzying mixture of girlish coquette and shy child, with an often breath-taking perfection of line in her movements. All of Vishneva's local appearances have become instant favorites: Kitri in 2009, Aurora in 2010, and especially Giselle in 2011. The Mariinsky took this production, with Vishneva and Vladimir Shklyarov in the title roles, to London this summer, so perhaps there is hope that it will come to the Kennedy Center at some point. Vishneva's younger counterpart, Shklyarov, is not yet in the same class, but he captures the character's youthful impetuosity, and his lifts of Vishneva, especially in the tomb scene when he carries Juliet's lifeless body, are uniformly strong.

Seeing this production is, once again, so important for understanding Prokofiev's wonderful score. Lavrovsky's movements do not always reflect a strong ear for music, but the choreography reflects the bitter details of the version of the story Prokofiev had in mind. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the disturbing portrayal of Juliet's family, beginning with the fiery, red-headed Tybalt, whom Juliet's mother mourns just a little too excessively to escape suspicion, straddling her nephew on his funeral bier as he is carried away. The Dance of the Capulets, so heavy-handed musically, is a corrupt courtly affair, with Juliet's father dancing simultaneously with his wife and another woman, about which Juliet's mother is none too happy. The demeaning gesture of men holding women by their wrists hints at the violence and depravity that lurks under the household's surface.

Best Recordings of 2013 (#1 - 10)

High time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2013. My lists for the previous years: 2012, 2011, (2011 – “Almost”), 2010, (2010 – “Almost”), 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 1 - New Release

Johann Sebastian Bach, Original transcriptions, Ensemble Contraste, La Dolce Volta #004

J.S.Bach, Original transcriptions Ensemble Contraste La Dolce Volta

Bach—and especially Bach transcriptions—are a favorite musical category of mine, and I acknowledge positive bias. I don’t mean the latest marimba-Cello Suites, or Goldberg Variations on the harp, although I’ll have those, too, and like them. But more typically The Art of the Fugue for Viol Consort or the like. Bach on the accordion. Flute sonatas with guitar continuo. Busoni-Bach-Anything. The Italian Concerto on the organ. A Sonatina transcribed by György Kurtág. Souped-up Goldberg Variations for Four Hands. Jazzed. Webernized.

The French La Dolce Volta label’s releases are like candy, with their colorful, meticulously designed packaging and original artwork covers. Actually, make that “Belgian pralines”, because it only gets better on the inside. Performances to match the outer craftsmanship come—in this case—from the Ensemble Contraste, whose original transcriptions for piano quintet and string trio of Bach works are sublime in conception and execution. It’s like hearing old favorites as new friends: The intertwining lines of the Passacaglia are more transparent than ever; the organ chorale “Ich ruf zu dir” ineffably sensitive and touching. Busoni-like boldness and baroque strings meet with a degree of delicacy that simply needs to be heard to be believed.

# 1 – Reissue

Schöne Wiege Meiner Leiden, Johannes Brahms, Clara & Robert Schumann, Werner Güra (tenor), Christoph Berner (piano), Harmonia Mundi 501842

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Best Recordings of 2013 (#2)

High time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2013. My lists for the previous years: 2012, 2011, (2011 – “Almost”), 2010, (2010 – “Almost”), 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 2 - New Release

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Kasper Holten, Juan, Lars Ulrik Mortensen (conductor), Concerto Copenhagen et al., axiom|FILMS AXM044

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Black Friday: Twelve Things I Liked This Year

For your Black Friday or Cyber Monday needs, here are some gift ideas from the CDs, DVDs, and movies I enjoyed this year, in no particular order. Jens will also offer his thoughts on the best recordings of the year. When you buy through the links provided on these pages, Ionarts receives a cut at no extra cost to you -- so you are actually giving two gifts at once.

CLASSICAL
Bach, Orchestral Suites (Ouvertures), Freiburger Barockorchester, P. Müllejans, G. von der Goltz (HMC 902154)

[Buy from Amazon]

This new version of Bach's orchestral suites from the Freiburger Barockorchester takes the Leipzig sources more or less at face value, with the usual corrections, reflecting Bach's (possibly hasty) recycling of these older pieces later in his career. Although the string playing is bright and unified, as one expects of the Freiburg musicians, it is the woodwind performances that stand out here, including several delightful bassoon solos (Javier Zafra) and bubbly oboes (Katharina Arfken, Andreas Helm, and Thomas Meraner), recorded with key clicks and all. Flutist Karl Kaiser absolutely dazzles in the chatty Badinerie of the second suite, paced as quickly as the breathless version from Concerto Köln (Berlin Classics) but trumps it by adding the most ornate embellishments ever witnessed by these ears in this piece, probably the most famous in the four suites. [READ REVIEW]

Schubert, Symphonies 3/4, Freiburger Barockorchester, P. Heras-Casado (HMC 902154)

[Buy from Amazon]

Pablo Heras-Casado is a known quantity in New York, due to his conducting position with the Orchestra of St. Luke's and appearances with the outstanding Freiburger Barockorchester at the Mostly Mozart festival. With the latter ensemble Heras-Casado has recorded two of the lesser-known Schubert symphonies, in performances that put these two slender, even lightweight works in the best possible light. Neither of these symphonies, composed in 1815 and 1816 when Schubert had just turned 18, is what one might call a masterpiece: the menuetto third movements are in Schubert's almost-empty salon style, dances that escaped from suites somewhere and burrowed their way into a symphony. The fast section of the first movement of no. 3, with its swelling crescendo and frenetic rhythms, would not be out of place in a Rossini opera overture. The similarity between the two composers is not by chance: they were near contemporaries, born within five years of one another, and in this period both were mass-producing music at an alarming rate -- Schubert in symphonies, Singspiels, string quartets, piano sonatas, and songs; Rossini in Italian operas -- when Beethoven still had a decade to live but, for part of that time, was not producing any music. [READ REVIEW]

Bartók, Violin Concertos 1/2, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, D. Harding (HMC 902146)

[Buy from Amazon]

You can throw another top-notch recording of Bartók's two violin concertos on the pile. Why would so many of the leading violinists of our time make recordings of the Bartók concertos? The answer is in the music, two pieces that feature some exquisite writing for the violin as well as head-spinning technical challenges. Isabelle Faust's rendition of the first concerto, from the first decade of the 20th century, stands out for her sheer gorgeousness of tone in the radiant soft passages. The same is true of the shimmering flautando sound in the much more raucous second concerto, from the 1930s, overall the more dissonant and barbaric of the two. No. 2's menacing middle movement, with some dazzingly inventive orchestration, sounds vaguely like haunted Britten in some ways. These qualities distinguished her recording of the Berg concerto, too. [READ REVIEW]

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Dip Your Ears, No. 153 (Věc Makropulos from Salzburg)

L.Janáček, Věc Makropulos, E.-P.Salonen / WPh & Vienna State Opera Chorus A.Denoke, R.Very, P.Hoare, J.Adamonytė, J.Reuter, et al. C Major Blu-ray / DVD

Ferocious Energy

The 2011 Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival was in rare form, which paid dividends, too, in Janáček. Their Makropulous Case has sweep and drama and ferocious energy, sometimes sardonic wit, then chilling severity. (Review of the performance here: Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 17 ) - Věc Makropulos Fantabulous) Salonen creates an arch from beginning to the harshly cackling, then Puccini-esque lyrical, brassy finale. Angela Denoke as Emilia Marty a.k.a. Elina Makropulos is outstanding in every way. Christoph Marthaler’s direction, Anna Viebrock’s sets, and the period costumes are full of apt ambiance (as if straight out of a Kafka play) and succeed in making Janáček’s magnificent music work on the audience in its direct way.

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

Opera on DVD: Branagh's 'Magic Flute'

Mozart, The Magic Flute, J. Kaiser, A. Carson, R. Pape, L. Petrova (film directed by K. Branagh), Chamber Orchestra of Europe, J. Conlon (released on June 11, 2013) Idéale Audience REVA1047 | 134'

Attentive readers may recall me mentioning a new film version of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, directed by Kenneth Branagh, back in 2006 when it was first seen in limited release (in Canada, France, and a few other places). I had long assumed that the movie was going nowhere in the United States, but a DVD of the film arrived in the mail recently, in advance of a special screening scheduled for this Sunday at participating theaters. That screening will be introduced by a live Q&A session with Branagh, and later in the week the DVD will be released for sale in this country. (No theater in Washington is showing the screening on June 9 -- the nearest is in Delaware -- but the West End Cinema is supposedly showing the film on June July 7 and 12.)

Branagh used an English translation made by Stephen Fry, which updates the story to the trenches of World War I. This makes more sense than may seem likely, but anyone looking for a traditional performance on DVD will be disappointed. James Conlon conducted the studio recording that provides the soundtrack, with the fine Chamber Orchestra of Europe, a clean and delightful performance. The vocal cast varies widely, topped by tenor Joseph Kaiser in superlative form as Tamino and seconded by René Pape as his usual excellent Sarastro, just in oddly accented English. Although the Queen of the Night of Lyubov Petrova is quite fine, if slightly shrill, with Pamina (pretty but not always accurate Amy Carson), the Three Ladies, Papageno (rough-hewn Benjamin Jay Davis), and Papagena (Silvia Moi), there is the sense of casting more for looks and acting than for singing, which is important after all in this kind of film-hybrid project. Tom Randle makes a slimy Monostatos, and the three boys (William Dutton, Luke Lampard, and Jamie Manton) are adorable in their small soldier outfits.

The transposition to 1918 is an ingenious one, a time when devastating warfare had transformed the countryside of northern France into a moonscape, munitions-blasted hell, but also a time when the yearning for peace, an end to the war, was strong. The film's opening sequence shows the preparations for a British assault, the famous Allegro contrapuntal section of the overture accompanying furious activity, even a full marching orchestra that intones the mystical three chords. Tamino, a British officer, is wounded and incapacitated by gas -- a fiery, smoky substitute for the dragon in the libretto. He is rescued by the Three Ladies, who appear first as buxom nurses in nuns' habits, and awakens in a sort of dream world. Papageno features as a soldier who provides gas-detecting birds in the trenches; the Queen of the Night appears on a rolling tank, of course; René Pape also sings the role of the Speaker of the Temple, who first greets Tamino at the door of some sort of outpost for the German forces, a sort of hospital for the wounded, with Sarastro as head surgeon. What Branagh does very well is to evoke the fairy tale spirit of the story, accomplished here with some head-spinning and whimsical CGI effects, a realm of magical realism that opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities for opera. The moral messages dotted throughout the opera are beautifully captured: the best example, Papageno's lesson about not telling lies, is played out in the famous Christmas Eve during which German and British soldiers came together in No Man's Land, an episode that provides a convenient excuse for the gifts of magic flute and bells to Tamino and Papageno. Some parts of the film are probably not appropriate for younger audiences, one of several reasons why Ingmar Bergman's film version (see brief review here) remains superior.

Gift Ideas for Cyber Monday

Here at Ionarts Central December is Advent -- and not Christmas -- until the evening of December 24. One does need to think about presents at this time of year, however, and for that culture-loving person in your life, here are some gift ideas, a few discs and films I most enjoyed over the past year. A gentle reminder: if you buy something we recommend by clicking on the Amazon link provided, a part of the proceeds goes to support Ionarts. Happy shopping!

Pianomania: In Search of the Perfect Sound (directed by Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck)

Buy from Amazon

This Austrian documentary, from 2009, received a very limited release in the United States. It has had mostly tepid reviews, generally by film critics who are not really classical music-heads, and the gross has been low, even for a documentary about something that is fairly esoteric. Directed by Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck, the film follows the nerve-wracking work of Steinway piano technician Stefan Knüpfer, as he fine-tunes his company's finest concert grand pianos for some of the best pianists in the world to play in the concert halls of Vienna. Like Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, from 2007, it is something that anyone with a love of the piano must see.
[READ REVIEW]

Massenet, Don Quichotte (dir. Laurent Pelly), J. van Dam, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, M. Minkowski (Naïve DR 2147)

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The appeal of this DVD is in the interwoven layers of the perfect twilight moment: an opera about Don Quixote, an old man living with regret; composed with great skill by a composer at the end of a long career; sung by baritone José van Dam, who had made the title role a specialty, returning to it in a grand gesture as he retired from the stage. To celebrate van Dam's career, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels mounted this intriguing new production of the opera, directed by Laurent Pelly. Everything the French director has touched has impressed me. It was no surprise that Pelly created something that seemed to go against the content of the libretto but ultimately ended up enhancing one's understanding of the work.
[READ REVIEW]

A Separation (directed by Asghar Farhadi)

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Iran, of course, is regularly in the headlines, but how much do you know about Iran and its people? One gets a profound glimpse in the latest film by director Asghar Farhadi, again using his own screenplay. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Tehran, the film follows the struggles of a couple, Simin and Nader, who are trying to work out the details of their divorce. The wife wants to leave Iran, but the husband will not give permission for their daughter to go with her, feeling he has to stay in Iran because he is taking care of his father, who has Alzheimer's. When his wife moves out, the stressed-out Nader hires a poor woman, Razieh, to make the long commute from her home to his to take care of his father. An altercation, caused by the many frustrating details of the families' situations, lands Nader and Razieh in the Islamic courts, where a judge tries to sort out their complaints.
[READ REVIEW]

Josquin Des Prez, Masses, Tallis Scholars (Gimell CDGIM 044)

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Josquin Des Prez (c. 1440-1521) was the equal of Leonardo or Michelangelo in composition. He composed secular and sacred music, but for any composer worth his salt, the cyclic Mass was the symphony, the magnum opus of the day, and Josquin's polyphonic settings of the Latin Mass are the summa of the art. Every possible manner of unifying the movements of the Ordinary is explored -- canon, parody of chanson and motet, cantus firmus, chant paraphrase -- but this music is enjoyable first and foremost just as music because of the beauty of his melodic writing and the variation of textures. The Tallis Scholars have undertaken a complete recorded survey of Josquin's Masses, begun in 2006 with the re-release of a 2-CD set of their older discs devoted to this composer. The new recordings in the series continue to be just as valuable as those older ones, which introduced many eager young graduate students like myself to the complexity of this music in the best way possible.
[READ REVIEW]

Beethoven, Diabelli Variations, Andreas Staier (HMC 902091)

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Andreas Staier made this disc on a reconstruction of a Graf fortepiano, an instrument that still has a thunderous forte side, albeit not as strong as a modern piano, but also a beautifully nuanced soft side. Playing on historical instruments, especially when they are actually instruments the composer may have known, can help illumine our understanding of the sounds and effects the composer was after in a piece. The modern piano can just do some of the demanding things better and more easily -- the trills all sound a little clunky and wooden -- but anyone who has an interest in this piece, either player or listener, should listen to this recording. The use of the moderator (forerunner of the una corda pedal) and shift pedal (Verschiebung) in Variation 20 creates an almost otherworldly soft sound, and the bassoon stop (touches of reedy buzz adding a sung quality) in the comic Variation 22 and the janissary stop (a crash of percussion on big chords) in Variation 23 are not to be missed.
[READ REVIEW]

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Der Frosch

This article was first published at The Classical Review on September 7, 2012.

R. Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten, S. Gould, A. Schwanewilms, M. Schuster, W. Koch, E. Herlitzius, Vienna Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival, C. Thielemann (released on May 29, 2012) Opus Arte OA 1072 D | 220'

The story of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, of course, does not make any sense. As some of the characters themselves admit near the end of the second act, with an air of befuddled mystery akin to that experienced in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, “Something is happening, but we do not know what it is.”

An Empress, captured like an animal by an Emperor on the hunt, has no shadow, a metaphor for childlessness — or is it? If Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto, as it is often described, is the 20th-century counterpart of Mozart’s Magic Flute, something has gone wrong with the fairy tale’s “happily ever after.” The spirit-world Emperor and Empress (an extension of Tamino and Pamina?) cannot have children, and the altogether human Dyer and his caustic wife (Papageno and Papagena) do not have a whole brood of little children either, mostly through the wife’s stubbornness. The Empress’s nurse, a spirit herself, tempts the Dyer’s wife to give up her shadow (fecundity) to the empress. The voices of unborn children moan woefully within the crackling of a frying pan in the fire, but in the end the Empress cannot bring herself to steal the humanity of the Dyer’s wife, and all are saved. It’s not really a spoiler — you will still be surprised when you hear the music.

In this inventive but strange staging from last year’s Salzburg Festival, director Christof Loy gets around the problem of von Hofmannsthal’s oddest libretto — and that is saying something — by ignoring it more or less completely. No need here to worry about how to stage a broom turning into the youth who tempts the Dyer’s wife, a sword magically appearing in the Dyer’s hand, the earth opening up and swallowing up the Dyer and his wife, a river overflowing its banks, or a boat carrying the Empress into Keikobad’s temple on the moon mountains.

In its place Loy creates a mise en abyme, a set of stories taking place during the first complete recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten, led by Karl Böhm in the 1950s, in the Sofiensaal in Vienna. Loy says the idea came to him when he read about the recording, for which Böhm convinced his singers to tolerate spartan recording conditions in an unheated hall in mid-winter. On a platform, with chorus risers behind it, the singers stand in 1950s attire, while supernumeraries create the sense of interaction between the singers and the engineering staff, in a booth above the stage. An assistant moves the principals around, searching for the right placement at the right music stand.

Whether this production irritates or intrigues will depend on the viewer’s tolerance for dissonance between the story being told by the words and the different one actually unfolding on stage. The latter sometimes recasts the former in an edifying light, as the story of the singers in the recording session is revealed: the escapades of the Dyer’s wife as the excesses of a star singer, the lonesome neurosis of the Emperor as the insecurities of a tenor burdened with a voice-crushing role, the isolated sadness of the Empress as a young singer’s estrangement amid a crowd of veterans.

In a bonus video about the production, Loy explains some of his ideas — “The shadow is a metaphor for the responsibility that you take on in life as a rational being. To me that is the only possible meaning,” he says, for example — but it is not always clear how they made it into the staging. (The boos lobbed at the production team at the end of the curtain calls indicate that some in the audience were left unconvinced.)

Loy’s direction helped Anne Schwanewilms capture the fragility of the Empress, central to his approach (“I always see her as a precious, privileged daughter who is driven around by a chauffeur all the time”) — the Empress’s longing for children, heightened by her awareness that her father, Keikobad, will turn her husband into stone if she does not bear any, is evoked when the supernumeraries are all replaced by child versions of themselves, and again when the chorus of unborn children appears in sailor costumes in the final scene, made into a Vienna Boys Choir Christmas concert. Michaela Schuster creates a fleering, almost vicious Nurse (according to Loy, “a Mephistophelean character: I think of her as a fallen archangel”). The group of cabaret revue girls with large feathers, added to the argument between the Dyer and his wife, was perhaps a bit much.

None of it matters, anyway, when the Vienna Philharmonic renders this most luscious of Straussian marvels with extraordinary sounds coaxed forth lovingly by the hands of Christian Thielemann. Strauss puts the elephantine orchestration of over 160 instruments — the Vienna Philharmonic is packed cheek to jowl into the Salzburg pit — to startling use, like the knot of avian woodwinds and solo strings that accompanies the entrance of the Empress in Act I. Otherworldly sounds go with her reference to the loss of her talisman shortly after, with muted low brass and low strings, celesta, and harp harmonics (the combination sounding almost like a gong). Plaintive solo cello and evanescent strings accompany the Emperor’s melancholy scene listening to his red falcon in Act II, while the clamor of the catastrophe at the end of Act II sounds like it will unmake the world. The whole score is full of moments like this, when one tries to guess what bizarre combination of instruments Strauss has called for and finds out it is something completely unexpected, like a wind-machine. The most pleasing part of the bonus video is the chance to watch Thielemann in rehearsal, a conductor who knows so clearly what he wants: he can get it from just smiling boyishly in the direction of the clarinetist.

This is only the third staging of the opera to make it to DVD, alongside the 1992 Salzburg production with Cheryl Studer, Thomas Moser, Bryn Terfel, and Eva Marton, conducted by Sir Georg Solti (Decca), and a version with Wolfgang Sawallisch at the helm (Arthaus Musik), filmed in Japan (with some regrettable cuts in the score, it features a different cast from his uncut studio recording, which remains at the top of my list). The unusual staging may dissuade some viewers, even die-hard Strauss fans, not to mention the fact that the vocal casting, while certainly good and capable, is a little strained by the score’s demands. Stephen Gould’s Emperor and Anne Schwanewilms’ Empress have a clarion sound, until they reach the highest notes, which shred just a bit. As the Dyer’s wife, Evelyn Herlitzius throws herself at the role with a wailed abandon, lacking some of the gorgeous soaring quality that Strauss, somewhat cruelly, also requires.

Schwanewilms, by contrast, has this in spades, even in the final scenes as she sings to Keikobad, against radiant strings and tender violin solo, followed by the magical deployment of both celestas and both harps with percussion. Michaela Schuster is a malevolent presence as the nurse, both vocally (blazing at the top) and dramatically, and Wolfgang Koch’s Dyer is, quite appropriately, a rather sad sack. The contributions of the supporting cast and the choruses, both the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Salzburger Festspiele Kinderchor, are excellent.

SEE ALSO:
Jens F. Laurson, Phantasmorgastic, but with Shadows: FrOSch @ Salzburg — Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival (16) (Ionarts, August 30, 2011)

Dip Your Ears, No. 123 (Frau ohne Schatten)

J.S.Bach, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Christian Thielemann WPh, Vienna State Opera Chorus S.Gould, A.Schwanewilms, M.Schuster, W.Koch, E.Herlitzius et al. (Opus Arte DVD 7104)

Phantasmorgastic, but with shadows: On the downside, Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten is boring. On the upside it’s a great opera with music unlike anywhere else in Strauss. Especially thanks to Christian Thielemann’s conducting; succulent and lean in turns, modern yet intransigently sumptuous. And uncut, which turns the Nurse (Michaela Schuster) into a principal character! Evelyn Herlitzius, the Dyer’s wife, also stands out, the other singers performs between convincingly and admirably. The staging by Christof Loy—the story of the first studio recording of Die Frau as re-told through the opera itself—is too clever by half, but at least it’s clever.

Review from the Salzburg production here.

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Adieu, José van Dam

Massenet, Don Quichotte (dir. Laurent Pelly), J. van Dam, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, M. Minkowski (released on May 29, 2012) Naïve DR 2147 | 1h51 Massenet, Don Quichotte, F. Furlanetto, A. Kiknadze, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on March 13, 2012) Mariinsky MAR0523 | 111'34" Massenet, Don Quichotte, J. van Dam, T. Berganza, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (1992, re-released in 2010)

The appeal of this new DVD is in the interwoven layers of the perfect twilight moment: an opera about Don Quixote, an old man living with regret; composed with great skill by a composer at the end of a long career; sung by baritone José van Dam, who had made the title role a specialty, returning to it in a grand gesture as he retired from the stage. To celebrate van Dam's career, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, where the Belgian bass-baritone was trained and educated, mounted this intriguing new production of the opera two years ago, directed by Laurent Pelly. Everything the French director has touched has impressed me, either in person or through the reviews of other critics: Cendrillon, Platée, and La Traviata in Santa Fe; Offenbach's La Belle Hélène at the Théâtre du Châtelet; Les Contes d'Hoffmann and just about every other work by Offenbach for the Opéra de Lyon; Love for Three Oranges in Amsterdam. It was no surprise that Pelly created something that seemed to go against the content of the libretto but ultimately ended up enhancing one's understanding of the work.

Pelly has recast the action of Don Quichotte as the jumbled thoughts of Don Quixote, alone in his study with his books, much as he is described at the end of Cervantes' novel. After his final adventure, bruised and taken with a delirious fever, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is brought home on a hay cart. His niece and old servant "lay him down in his ancient bed," writes Cervantes. "He looked upon them very earnestly, and could not conjecture where he was." The women, again horrified at the personal harm brought to the old man by his love of novels of chivalry, rail against "all books of knighthood," beseeching "Heaven to throw down, into the very center of the bottomless pit, the authors of so many lies and ravings." Don Quixote dies in his bed, and Cervantes records the epitaph on his tomb.

Pelly's Don Quichotte first appears seated in a room with a single reading lamp, a book in his hands and a stack of volumes at his side. He is costumed in a suit that looks more or less of the era of the opera's composition, in the late 19th century (costumes designed by Pelly). The sounds of the opening choral scene resonate in his ears, as if imagined. The floor is covered with scattered papers, and as the light expands we see that he is a sort of hoarder, in a barren room next to a pile of books and papers that grows and grows throughout the opera, threatening to engulf the whole stage (sets by Barbara de Limburg). As he reads, his memories seem to flood into the actual space around him, a jumble of episodes mixed together by the librettist, Henri Cain, who took some of the scenes from the play by Jacques Le Lorrain and others directly from the Cervantes novel.

In his brief note on the production, Pelly says that the reading figure could be anyone moved by the story, or by any story -- Don Quixote, the elderly Massenet, the spectator, the author, the director, a character. The conceit allows van Dam to be on stage while the entrance of his character is prepared, until the chorus bursts through the door and he is lost in -- becomes part of -- the memory himself. Although the action never returns to that cluttered study, death is never far from Don Quichotte in this staging -- even the group of bandits, from whom he seeks the return of Dulcinée's stolen necklace, are costumed like undertakers. If you are expecting to see Spanish settings, you will be largely disappointed, although the immense arms of a windmill do make an appearance.

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