Briefly Noted: Noseda's cycle of Walker sinfonias

George Walker, Five Sinfonias, National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (released on September 29, 2023) NSO0007D | 65'17"

Gianandrea Noseda had planned to lead a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The twist was that the NSO would perform all nine symphonies in just three weeks, beginning in late May of 2020, a plan wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic. Fate intervened further with the murder of George Floyd that month, igniting a national reaction that led the NSO and other classical music institutions into self-reflection about representative programming. The eventual cycle, led by Noseda from 2022 to 2023, was a pairing of Beethoven with symphonies by African-American composers George Walker and William Grant Still.

One of the benefits was this complete cycle of the five sinfonias of George Walker, all recorded live in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall under Noseda's fastidious baton. Remarkably, for all the effort and time involved in bringing this composite cycle to completion, this single disc clocks in at just over an hour. None of the Walker Sinfonias is longer than about fifteen minutes, and the most slender is the one the NSO itself commissioned in 2012, when the esteemed American composer was 90 years old, Sinfonia No. 4. Walker's subtitle, “Strands,” refers to the way he interwove two spiritual melodies (“There is a Balm in Gilead” and “Roll, Jordan, Roll”) almost imperceptibly into this one-movement piece, which the NSO took on its 2023 visit to Carnegie Hall. Sinfonia No. 2 stands out among the Walker symphonies for its originality, especially the short second movement (“Lamentoso e quasi senza misura”) where a mournful flute solo is accompanied by enigmatic clusters and melodic snippets from the cellos and even guitar.

Sinfonia No. 3 has a percussion-laden third movement bustling with rhythmic activity, reminscent at times of Stravinsky or Shostakovich. However, like Sinfonia No. 1 and portions of most of these pieces, a disappointing sameness and arid quality prevail. Sinfonia No. 5 ("Visions"), premiered after Walker's death in 2018, has the most overt programmatic elements of the five. While Walker was working on the piece, in 2015, a white supremacist shot and killed nine black parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina, after which the composer added words to the symphony, spoken by a soprano, a tenor, two baritones and a bass. The composer's last symphonic statement thus took up the ongoing struggle for racial equality in the United States, made more explicit by a video by Frank Schramm shown at the premiere, including ocean scenes and photographs documenting the slave trade in Charleston.


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Briefly Noted: Seong-Jin Cho adds to Chopin set

Chopin, 4 Scherzi / Piano Concerto No. 2, Seong-Jin Cho, London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (released on June 25, 2021) DG 00028948604395 | 76'56" [2016]

One of the best artists Deutsche Grammophon has in its catalogue these days is Seong-Jin Cho. Since winning the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015, the South Korean pianist has been releasing a series of impressive recordings on the Yellow Label. The second of these discs devoted to Chopin appeared in 2021. Like the first installment, which paired the first of Chopin's piano concertos with the four ballades, on this one the four scherzi introduce the second piano concerto. The digital version of the album, and not the CD, contains an Easter egg of three additional tracks: the “Revolutionary” Étude (Op. 10, no. 12), an impromptu (Op. 29, no. 1) and a nocturne (Op. 9, no. 2).

Cho has formed a devoted collaboration with Gianandrea Noseda in the last few years, and the Italian conductor led the London Symphony Orchestra in these recordings of the Chopin concertos. Sadly, Cho has not played either one in his appearances with the National Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven 5 in 2017, Ravel G Major in 2019). Cho's last slated appearance with the local band, for Shostakovich 1, was canceled in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The pianist finally returns to the nation's capital tomorrow, to play Brahms 1 with the NSO in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (January 12 to 14).

These recordings feature what likely rocketed Cho to the top of the Chopin Competition: a fierce technique, with strengths in speed and accuracy more than sheer power, and a poetic touch that captures the more tender and vulnerable sides of the Polish composer. His interpretation of the four scherzi emphasizes the remarkable fluidity of his fingers, and in the virtuosic demands of the concerto's outer movements he does not disappoint. To score the highest marks, however, the soloist has to give the slow movement the right expressive élan, and Cho glides through the many ornamented roulades in elegant legato, without tipping into gauzy sentimentality.

Mauer Silvester-Beethoven. Die Neunte mit den Wiener Symphonikern: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

Mauer Silvester-Beethoven

Die Neunte mit den Wiener Symphonikern.

Alle Jahre wieder. "Dinner For One" vor dem Fernseher, "Fledermaus" in der Oper, oder Beethovens "Neunte" im Konzerthaus: Das gutbürgerliche Wiener Traditionstriumvirat bevor es korkenknallend und raketenbestaunend in die Silvesternacht geht. Mag mancher mangelnde Abwechslung bemängeln, Tradition hat Wert an sich und verbindet. Nur gut gespielt und gesungen sollte es - in diesem Fall die Beethoven Neunte der Wiener Symphoniker - schon sein. War es leider nicht und darüber konnte der besondere Anlass nur bedingt hinweghelfen.... [weiterlesen]

On ClassicsToday: LSO Shostakovich 8 Remake Succeeds With Noseda

LSO Shostakovich 8 Remake Succeeds With Noseda

by Jens F. Laurson

Snidely put, Gianandrea Noseda only conducts Italian and Russian works. (He’s musically and linguistically fluent in Russian after having lived and worked in St. Petersburg for years.) It’s a pretty limited repertoire, but one that he often does well. And when he does it well... Continue Reading

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At WCR: Noseda takes the helm

Charles T. Downey, Noseda, NSO bring out the steel and serenity of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”
Washington Classical Review, November 4

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Noseda Brings the Casella (Ionarts, November 13, 2015)

---, Noseda Pumps up the Volume with the NSO (Ionarts, February 12, 2011)

Prokofiev’s 'Romeo and Juliet'

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

On Thursday evening, November 3, 2016, the National Symphony Orchestra essayed Sergei Prokofiev’s great ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Kennedy Center. It did so under the direction of Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, who will assume his full duties as replacement for NSO music director Christoph Eschenbach in the fall of 2017.

On the evening’s evidence, this is good news for Washington, D.C. Noseda galvanized the NSO to give a thoroughly compelling performance of this masterpiece. It was a concert performance of the (almost) complete ballet music, but I am tempted to say that, even without dancers, we saw a ballet nevertheless. It is astonishing to realize that Prokofiev’s score was turned down by the Bolshoi in 1935 as “unsuitable for dancing.” Since it contains waltzes, minuets, gavottes, and tarantellas, what’s not to dance to? I have difficulty remaining still in my seat when I listen to it. The music demands movement. Noseda did not resist the impulse. He conducts with more than his baton; his body is his baton. He moved expressively with the music in a balletic way that was neither gratuitous nor histrionic (though his few deep knee bends startled). He clearly communicated. The NSO responded with glorious playing. I think that Romeo and Juliet was not the only love story transpiring on stage.

Noseda’s strong emotional commitment did not compromise orchestral discipline (which is what I sometimes thought was occasionally the problem with the conducting of Mstislav Rostropovich, to whose memory the performance was dedicated). To extend the ballet analogy, the players were on their toes the entire time. They needed to be as Prokofiev’s score has frequent, often abrupt changes of rhythm and pace. To break with the ballet analogy, they turned on a dime. It was a breathtaking level of execution (though there were a few minor flubs, which is to be expected in an opening night performance of a score this demanding, but not once in the many opening or closing cues). The discipline of the playing added to the drama and never subverted the warmth. In other words, technical excellence was never the point.

Thus one was able to appreciate the broad range of expression Noseda and the NSO players captured in the mercurial character of this music. The big moments, such as Tybalt and Mercutio’s fight, Romeo’s reaction to Mercutio’s death (great staccato chords hammered home), the killing of Tybalt, and Romeo’s exile by the Prince, were shockingly visceral and harrowing in their impact. The gentle and gloriously lyrical love music, including the “parting is such sweet sorrow” moment at the end of Act I, the Act II marriage music, and the Act III scene in Juliet’s chamber, were delivered with delicacy and refinement. The music shimmered in all the right places. The Juliet funeral music at the opening of Act IV was a lesson in how searingly sorrowful pianissimo, tremolo string playing can be when done as well as the NSO violins did it.

One hardly knows where to begin in complementing the other members and sections of the orchestra. I never knew how good the tuba music was in depicting Juliet’s growing stupor under the influence of the sleeping potion until I heard it tonight. Kudos to Stephen Dumaine. Perhaps that’s unfair, because I would have to single out so many other individuals. The flute is Juliet’s instrument, and Aaron Goldman played it so well in, so to speak, singing her song. But what of the rest of the brass, the clarinets, the oboes, the bassoons, the saxophone – to say nothing of the outstanding timpani? They were all generally excellent. The undergirding provided by the cellos and double basses was formidable, as were the violas when given their chance to sing.

Anyone who has the faintest appreciation for one of the greatest ballet scores of the 20th century, or who may be curious as to what Maestro Noseda is bringing to our fair city, should not tarry seeing one of the remaining performances.

Romeo and Juliet repeat on Friday and Saturday nights, November 4 and 5. I want to go again.

CD Review: Noseda's Casella

A. Casella, Orchestral Works, Vol. 4, G. Keith, BBC Philharmonic, G. Noseda (released on November 13, 2015) CHAN10880 | 77'14"

Charles T. Downey, Noseda makes case for neglected Italian master
Washington Post, February 27

In 2017, Gianandrea Noseda will take over as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. One of the Italian conductor’s pet projects over the last five years is a set devoted to the little-known orchestral works of Alfredo Casella, recorded with his former band, the BBC Philharmonic. Although Casella is known better as a pianist and teacher, these four discs can change your mind about his merits as a composer.

The latest disc opens with Casella’s “Symphonic Fragments” from “Le couvent sur l’eau,” the ballet score he composed with writer Jean-Louis Vaudoyer. The work did not find favor with its intended patron, Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes, but these excerpts reveal a sparkling mastery of orchestral color... [Continue reading]

Alfredo Casella, Orchestral Works, Vol. 4
Gillian Keith, BBC Philharmonic, Gianandrea Noseda

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

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

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

The full article on Forbes.com.

Dip Your Ears, No. 154 (Trebbie’s Verdi)

G.Verdi, Hits'n'Pieces, G.Noseda / A.Netrebko (+ R.Villazon) DG

Nocturnal Verdi Toffee

There is certainly a market for Anna Netrebko recording a Verdi hits’n’pieces, especially since she’s now left Mozart behind her and aims for rôles that demand a darker, larger voice than, say, Figaro’s agile Susanna. After her successful traveling operatic circus with Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Verdi’s Giovanna D’Arco—successfully launched it in Salzburg—will receive that treatment next. Two arias are wisely included as teasers of things to come.

Macbeth is the focus of this album and she is a gorgeously, focused singing Lady Macbeth, though strangely without as much as an inkling of demented wickedness. The sleepwalking-scene takes place under a self conscious limelight, not on the crepuscular edge between two worlds. Her Munich premiere of the rôle in 2014 should yield a bit more, dramatically… benefiting from her stage talent that is naturally lost on a CD.

Rolando Villazon, her erstwhile partner in fame, is on hand to help out for the duet among the Trovatore scenes. This, along with the other Act IV Trovatore scenes (“Miserere”) is of the lavish beauty that makes the attraction of Netrebko’s “Verdi”. The same goes for Elisabetta’s aria “Tu che le vanità” from Don Carlo. Callas-disciples will scoff of course, Netrebko-fans will sigh, and anyone who isn’t much into Verdi—snore.

It’s not why anyone will listen to this disc, but Gianandrea Noseda’s conducting of the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino is outstanding and plugs in the musical excitement where it might otherwise be missing.

Motivated by AUDITORIUM Magazine.

Ionarts-at-Large: Noseda's Stereofantastic Verdi-Vienna Requiem

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Outgrowing its inaugural home of Munich, the classical music recording industry fair “Classical:NEXT” took place in Vienna this year… as good an excuse to travel east to the Austrian capital as there is. Once there, however, it was a decision between attending the opening ceremony with a chat by Daniel Hope or a Verdi Requiem in the Konzerthaus, featuring the Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra in its Austrian debut under their music director Gianandrea Noseda. (Gianandrea Noseda, it might as well be mentioned, is the least Italian looking of all Italian conductors: he really looks like he should be called Anker Magnus Oswaldson, or Lothar von Haukmannsthal, instead.)

G.Verdi, Missa da Requiem, F.Fricsay DG A.Casella, Cto. for Orchestra, A Notte Alta et al., G.Noseda / BBC Phil. / M.Roscoe Chandos

Needless to say that I opted for music over chatter. But the music, inauspiciously, began (before it began) with an annoying high pitch hum—perhaps lighting or AC… louder than the gorgeous pianissimo to piano entry of orchestra and chorus. A particularly pity, because Noseda’s opening was as gentle as lowering a rubber ducky into the bathtub without disturbing the water… wholly peaceful as if to sweeten expiry and subsequence descent (or ascent) to the afterlife of (lack of) choice. The hum subsided, although when exactly was impossible to tell, because for a good while the ear-splitting choral fortissimos drowned everything out, anyway. The orchestral entries of the Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra (disciplined strings, colorful woodwinds, secure brass) were soft as butter and precise like some other clichéd metaphor (your pick). With ferocious and furious fervor, the musicians easily violated a handful of EU directions of workplace decibel-exposure in the overwhelmingly direct acoustic of the Konzerthaus with its distinct stereo sound-imagery. Trumpets from the left and right behind the orchestra buzzed in like angry, proletarian Vespas in Napoli.

Rather than perfumed and operatic, of darkly-sulfurous (as my hitherto favorite live performance with Gergiev), Noseda’s Missa da Requiem was theatrical and direct, and overwhelming—full of choral excellence but with an orchestral performance that now makes me reconsider my carefully constructed and dearly held stereotypes about Italian Orchestras all being a bit rubbish. He didn’t even need the singers to make a special impression for this night to have become one of most impressive music performances of the year. That was good, because certainly mezzo Sonia Ganassi (fully engaged and very  sincere…), Francesco Meli (sounding, like almost every tenor in this part, like nothing so much as a vuvuzela), and Ildar Abdrazakov (oddly drained of color and meatless) didn’t contribute much beyond whatever was needed not to distract from the overall quality. (The tricky unaccompanied vocal quartets usually sound more approximated than exacting, and so they did here.) For the very cheap pun, I should have liked to add that the soprano Kirstin Lewis, jumping in at short notice for Barbara Frittoli, paled in comparison to her colleagues… but she ruined this by inconveniently excelling—particularly in her exposed closing sections. No surprise, really, because she did impress me much the same when she took on Munich’s Aida (also replacing Frittoli) in 2009.

Almost two hours and a short diagonal skip through Vienna’s Stadtpark to the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) later, the opening speakers at Classical:NEXT were still talking heavily accented English to the poor delegates who looked seriously under-wined and over-spoken-to. My ensuing Schadenfreude only further heightened the joy of the preceding Verdi experience.

Edited to reflect that Noseda is not leaving the Teatro Regio Torino any time soon.