City Ballet marks diamond jubilee with resplendent "Jewels"

Sara Mearns in "Diamonds," from Balanchine's Jewels, New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano

New York City Ballet celebrated its 75th anniversary by opening the season last fall with its blockbuster staging of George Balanchine's Jewels. A full-length abstract ballet, composed of three rather different acts, it is often described as having no plot. Watching this choreography in the Kennedy Center Opera House Tuesday night, for the first time in a decade, brought home the purely visual stories the work presents, matched ideally with the pulse of the music.

"Emeralds," Balanchine's opening tribute to French Romanticism, remains a graceful but melancholy affair. Set to Gabriel Fauré's incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande and Shylock, the sense of profound tragedy pervaded the act, made more rueful by the lack of understanding of this unnamed pain from all those who see it. Indiana Woodward and Tyler Angle seemed graceful and settled in to the lead pairing in this part of Jewels, which they performed for the first time last fall. The delicate flute solo movement of the Pelléas music felt especially poignant, and the sadness of the group of men at the tableau's end, gazing up through the murky light to something unseen, felt funereal.

Balanchine's tribute to American dynamism in "Rubies" came across with delightful humor. Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley led the light-footed corps through the unorthodox steps and movements, timed with verve to Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, energized by the lively piano playing of Stephen Gosling. The red-costumed dancers flirted with all sorts of Americana: they were cowboys, they were flappers, they were the chorus line of the Rockettes. In the most openly sexual moment of the whole ballet, the tall, elegant Mira Nadon was moved about by four male dancers, positioning her like a doll.

After tragedy and mirth came a sense of Russian classicism that stopped time, in the concluding "Diamonds." Sara Mearns, one of the company's most celebrated dancers, brought a reserved nobility to the role that Balanchine created for his muse, Suzanne Farrell. Her partner, Chun Wai Chan, became City Ballet's first Chinese principal dancer two years ago, and he provided all of the athletic power of their scenes, lifting Mearns with effortless strength and leaping with remarkable balance and agility. Andrew Litton paced the movements (all but one) from Tchaikovsky's dance-infused Third Symphony ideally with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, bringing to an end a grand tribute to Balanchine and the company he helped create.

Jewels runs through June 9. kennedy-center.org

Ionarts-at-Large: Riccardo Chailly, Filarmonica della Scala, and Mao Fujita at the Konzertaus (@ Wiener Zeitung)

The expectations for the concert of the Filarmonica della Scala were high, what with Riccardo Chailly bringing Stravinsky's rather recently re-discovered Chant funèbre, op.5, to the Konzerthaus: the work he has given such a tantalizing premiere-recording with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. (Review on Forbes). To boot, the whole thing was embedded in a program of Russian gorgeousness: Rachmaninov's Third and Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony.

Mao Fujita, second-place winner at the last Tchaikovsky Competition, was the soloist – and he, too, has left a very fine recent memory on record, with his young, neatly considered cycle of Mozart Sonatas. His performance, replete with some curious rythmic accentuations, was met by roaring applause and localized Bravos – and perhaps for the sheer athleticism of that work and not being sidetracked during a minute-long rogue hearing-aid vaguely going along with the music, auto-tune-like, they deserved it. But the orchestra sounded muffled, with strange balances and instruments popping out of the mix unexpectedly. The short, tart little trumpet accents that blurted like an 1970s Fiat honking in brief anger, were a solitary delight amid a strange, massive, energized listlessness. Chailly seemed to do all the right things but the sound wanted to tell another story.

That was the problem with the Chant funèbre, too, where there was little left of that Wagner-goes-Tchaikovsky-reaches-Dukas magic, that his recording suggests. The strings seemed wooden, the cellos were scarcely audible, and while the double basses did their best, even they couldn’t push the greater apparatus into gear. The Prokofiev Seventh (with the coda-finale) – too nice a symphony to be taken seriously – was a little better in most regards, including balance, but still a brooding lump of sound. The Glockenspiel whinged and a lusty tuba brought smiles to faces. The two “3-Orange” encores, loud and fun, began to show some vigor – but still didn’t suggest that one had just heard a great orchestra on even a decent day.


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Robuste Romantik

Die Filarmonica della Scala gastierte im Konzerthaus..

Nach der Wiederauffindung des "Chant funèbre" war es Riccardo Chailly, der das atmosphärisch funkelnde Strawinsky-Frühwerk beeindruckend ersteingespielt hat. Zusammen mit der Filarmonica della Scala im Wiener Konzerthaus brachte er nun mittels eines kraftvoll warmen, jedoch nicht sonderlich differenzierten Klangteppichs immerhin etwas von dieser von Wagner zu Tschaikowski bis Paul Dukas reichenden Magie über die Bühne... [weiterlesen]

© apaweb/apa/afp/dpa/Soeren Stache

Ten Recordings to Remember Mariss Jansons By

Photo of Mariss Jansons by Astrid Ackermann

Mariss Jansons died last month, on November 30th. His passing, at 76, comes earlier than we somehow would expect from a great conductor - since we tend to perceive great conductors bathed in a gentle glow of immortality. (And because conductors, despite exceptions, tend to live long and active lives.) But it did not come entirely unexpected, either, after his past and recent health failings and his preternaturally frail appearance. Between my first Mariss Jansons concert with Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in 2006 (ionarts review) until my last review of a Jansons-concert (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at Munich's Gasteig) almost exactly ten years later (ionarts review here), he had been one of the conductors I had followed the most closely and heard the most often. I cannot say that I was always entirely enamored by the results, but often enough impressed and on some occasions blown away. Much the same goes for his recorded output which isn't very even but which contains much quality, some of which truly stands out. These are ten recordings that I think represent Jansons rather well and include the four bands with which he worked the most (Oslo, Pittsburgh, Amsterdam & Munich) the best. Failing that, they are those recordings I am most

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Riccardo Mutis Wiener Klangspektakel: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

Riccardo Mutis Wiener Klangspektakel

Tschaikowskis Klassiker ist an die Staatsoper zurückgekehrt.

Bei Beethovens fünftem Klavierkonzert weiß man immerhin, was man hat. Gekonnt und formschön spielt Rudolf Buchbinder Beethoven und immer wieder Beethoven, zu geschmeidig, groß und satt auftragenden, Riccardo-Muti-gesteuerten Philharmonikern. Davon kann man nicht genug bekommen. Oder? Wilhelm Backhaus klagte dem jungen Buchbinder einmal sein Leid, er würde nur noch für Beethoven - maximal Brahms - angefragt werden. Ob Buchbinder das Gleiche widerfahren ist? Falls Ihnen gedroht wird, Herr Buchbinder, falls Sie irgendjemand zwingt, blinzeln Sie bei der nächsten Beethovenkadenz dreimal mit den Augen. Wir retten Sie!... [weiterlesen]

On ClassicsToday: Classic Stravinsky-Bach Recording from Kavakos & Nagy

Under the Radar: Bach-Stravinsky From Kavakos

by Jens F. Laurson

Since his emergence at the 1985 International Sibelius Competition, Leonidas Kavakos has always been among the most promising violinists of his generation, capable of greatness (his Sibelius, most strikingly) but not always consistently so (his Mozart, which he insisted on also conducting). This 2002 recording... Continue Reading

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A Stunning Orchestral Surprise in Budapest

A Budapest Miracle? Concerto Budapest's "Wow" Moment

Budapest, March 27, 2019: Müpa: Ever since Budapest’s new concert hall—known as “Müpa” or “Palace of Arts”—with its combination of high-tech echo chambers and its traditional common-sense “shoebox” design opened in 2005, I’ve wanted to hear it in action. Located at the edge of downtown—alongside the Danube, right next to the comically hideous 2002 National Theater—it is not an imposing building from the outside, but welcoming and logically laid out on the inside. The main hall, the Bartók National Concert Hall, is a soft-curved wooden shoebox with a very sensible capacity of 1700. Its acoustic was overseen by Russell Johnson. The massive organ, built by the Pécs Organ Manufactory and Mühleisen Stuttgart, features an imposing prospect—including a battery of pipes protruding from the façade—and is one of the largest of its kind.

Along the walls above the upper tier—vaguely colored like a Scottish tartan—are the resonance boxes that can be closed or opened to give the desired length of reverb for the program at hand. Although closed on this occasion in late March, they are apparently in regular use—in contrast to fancy features like the Sala São Paulo’s adjustable ceiling, which is very cool in theory but hardly used in practice. Now: one visit to a concert hall cannot begin to give an adequate idea of its acoustic. But this one impression of hearing the Concerto Budapest, one of five symphony orchestras in Budapest, suggested that at its best, the acoustic is superb.

The Rambunctious Joy that is King Ubu’s Dinner Music

BAZi, 'Ubu Music', Symphony in One Movement, Giostra Genovese, Concerto for Strings P.Hirsch/WDR-SO Wergo

And what a concert it was. More specifically: What a first half! On the far side of intermission, a very finely played, generally soft-edged Rite of Spring awaited the listeners, full of well-shaped individual contributions, sexy contrabassoon notes, and fierce highlights. It didn’t have the ferocious bite I look for in the work, delivering—*de gustibus*—rather urbane suaveness instead. A bit like the Concertgebouw Orchestra might play that work. Indeed, like in Amsterdam, the perception may have been shaped by the acoustic which gave the impression of some orchestral energy dissipating upwards: even the greatest *fff* climaxes were not shrill or harsh or even particularly loud.

It would have been a more impressive performance, hadn’t that first half rocked as hard and delighted as much. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu—which incidentally throws out a quote from Le Sacre right off the bat on the organ—is a tumultuous, riotous, quintessential musical collage: None of the music is, *en détail*, original. But collectively the phrases as put together by Zimmermann, create a unique, decidedly original work.

It certainly sounds, in parts, like a “who’s that composer” guessing game. But more to the point, it is a riveting, compelling work all of its own which has, not in any individual incident but structurally, parallels in the music of Gustav Mahler and Charles Ives. And then there are four solo basses fiddling for their life up front in episodes that make Mahler’s “Frère Jacques” episode seem like child’s play. Perhaps most notably, instead of being doom-and-gloom as one would might reasonably expect from the composer of the *Ecclesiastical Action* (“I turned and beheld all the injustice perpetrated under the sun”), it is very often very funny. The classical bits (from plainchant to Stockhausen’s banging, repetitive chords of Klavierstück IX, and with plenty Wagner in the middle) are interrupted by Jazz-outbreaks that sound like someone turned the knob on the radio… eventually blending it with a medieval flute consort and then an ever-increasing amount of musical layers. E-guitars and basses are thrown into the mix, too. Altogether a bit like someone was taking Schnittke, Purcell, Monty Python and started juggling. What a joy!

Supple Pianism and a Lesson in Orchestral Alertness

J.Brahms, F.Liszt & W.Lutosławski, Paganini Variations & Paganini Rhapsody Tzimon Barto/Schleswig-Holstein FO/C.Eschenbach Ondine

The rest of the front-loaded first half of the concert consisted of the two piano-and-orchestra humdingers, the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. Andrei Korobeinikov played with rare feeling: short notes were still soft-edged. There was no incident of harsh banging, although banging is certainly required by at least Rachmaninov. What a *very* pleasant surprise in works where technical efficiency and accuracy, however necessary, would be so very much insufficient.

If that hadn’t been enough for enthusiasm, the Concerto Budapest—long established but revived and raised to new heights by its current music director András Keller (of Keller Quartet fame)—performed with absurd accuracy and sensitivity. The turn-on-a-dime-agile brass was secure; the strings warm and wispy-velvety in the true pianissimos; the woodwinds colorful. Moreover, the collective responded in such minute detail to Keller’s instructions that it just about took your breath away. Climaxes were approached not with a permanent swell but only quick peaks followed by an immediate and gentle receding of the strings. It’s just the way you think a string quartet player would want to make his orchestra play. You just don’t think he’d actually achieve it. Astonishing… just as it was impressive how the band could disappear into the background by becoming pure atmosphere—both in the pointillism of Lutosławski and the Delacroix-like tone painting of Rachmaninov. At one point I pinched myself: Is it really that good or am I hearing things?

After the concert an exhausted Keller said, with refreshingly level-headed pride: “They really are that good. And they play more than 40 programs – not concerts: programs! – a year. I think Concerto Budapest can claim to be the second best orchestra in Budapest [after Iván Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra].” A second-best—assuming this concert was not a positive outlier—that would be the very best in most cities. I know I’ll keep my ears peeled for them.

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Dip Your Ears, No. 229 (OK Stravinsky in the Cards for Gergiev)

I.Stravinsky, Petrushka (1911 Version), Jeu de Cartes Valery Gergiev, Mariinsky Orchestra Mariinksy

Valery Gergiev is as streaky a conductor as they come. Sensational, awful, and perfectly fine if eventless recordings follow in unpredictable order and ratio. This release of Petrushka (in the 1911 Version) and Jeu de Cartes feels like it was recorded on the go, rather than have love and labor poured into it. That approach, not foreign to Gergiev, can yield results that are exciting (usually with orchestras that haven’t already drunk too deeply from the Gergiev cup), but here especially Petrushka remains just that: A rather fine run-through that sounds good enough only until one encounters knock-out recordings conducted by, say, Boulez (either), Chailly, Dohnanyi, the composer himself, or, if it must be the 1911 version, Andrew Litton. If you are looking for Jeu de Cartes, there’s nothing to regret opting for this version, but you could also just go back to Chailly and be every bit as well served.

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Best Recordings of 2018

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2018 again! This lists the new releases with the best re-issues following below.

Preamble

It’s fair to say to say that such "Best-Of" lists are inherently daft if one clings too literally to the idea of "Best." Still, I have been making "Best of the Year" lists for classical music since 2004 (when working at Tower Records gave me a splendid oversight—occasionally insight—of the new releases and of the re-releases that hit the classical music market. Since then, I’ve kept tabs on the market as much as possible. Here are the links to the past iterations on ionarts and Forbes.com:

2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2008—"Almost" | 2009 | 2009—"Almost" | 2010 | 2010—"Almost" | 2011 | 2011—"Almost" | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017

Making these lists is a subjective affair, aided only by massive exposure and hopefully good ears and discriminating, if personal taste. But then "10 CDs that, all caveats duly noted, I consider to have been outstanding this year" does not make for a sexy headline. You get the point. The built-in hyperbole of the phrase is a tool to understand what this is about, not symbolic of illusions of grandeur on my part. As has been my tradition, there are two lists: One for new releases and one for re-issues.  And because there is a natural delay between the issuing date of a recording and my getting to listen to it, the cut-off date for inclusion in this list is roughly around September 2017. (In a way that’s good, because going back a little further softens the recency-bias that these lists can otherwise suffer from.) And here, without further ado, are "The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2018".

# 10 - New Release

L.v.Beethoven, Symphony No.3 (+ R.Strauss, Horn Concerto), Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony, Reference Recordings FR-728SACD

L.v.Beethoven, Symphony No.3 (+ R.Strauss, Horn Concerto), Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony, Reference Recordings

Manfred Honeck just about has a subscription to these lists: After Shostakovich in 2017, Richard Strauss in 2016, Johann Strauss in 2014 and his Bruckner Fourth getting an honorable mention in 2015, it’s no surprised that he shows up again this year. This time with Beethoven, continuing his series of riveting, superbly played, and grandly recorded symphonies. We have had many great Beethoven cycles turn up over the last years (Järvi, Vänskä, Dausgaard), always showing that new things can be said just when we thought that there couldn’t possibly be anything new left to squeeze out of old Ludwig Van. But the combination of modern pluck and luscious brawn that makes the Honeck-Pittsburgh combo unique successfully pushes on all our sensualities’ buttons at once. Point-in-case this Eroica, which knocks you over and lifts you back up. Honeck is no literalist and he knows where effect merits a gentle adjustment to the score, yet the aesthetic is one that still fully appeals in a time dominated by historically informed performances.

# 9 - New Release

R.Schumann, "Frage" – select Lieder, Christian Gerhaher & Gerold Huber, Sony 19075889192

R.Schumann, "Frage" – select Lieder, Christian Gerhaher & Gerold Huber, Sony

Like Honeck, the Christian Gerhaher/Gerold Huber combination, too, is a regular in these lists. That’s not – or so I’d like to think – because I am unduly partial towards them, but simply because they are the best Lied-Duo there is and very likely (pointless though such an argument would be) also ever was. After last year’s Die Schöne Müllerin, GerhaherHuber-one word™ have undertaken a recording of the complete songs of Schumann. I didn’t have Gerhaher down for an intégrale of any composer’s, given his highly discriminating pick-and-choose approach to anything he will perform, but yes: if there’s any composer he should want to sing all the output of, it would have to be Robert Schumann. "Frage" – "Question" is the apt title of the first volume, since Gerhaher would be the type to question, probe everything. The recital, full of lesser known, miniature song cycles – Six Songs op.107, 12 Kerner Poems op.35 (highlight among highlights), Four Late Songs op.142 et al. – is—as expected and hoped—all that one could wish from GerhaherHuber. Supremely touching, chilling, text-hugging Lied of unparalleled quality. (A more detailed review here on ClassicsToday.)

# 8 - New Release

J.S.Bach, Cantatas BWV 56, 95, 161, Rudolf Lutz, soloists, Bach Stiftung Orchestra & Chorus, Bach Stiftung B667

J.S.Bach, Cantatas BWV 56, 95, 161, Rudolf Lutz, soloists, Bach Stiftung Orchestra & Chorus, Bach Stiftung

When the Bach Cantata cycle of the St. Gallen Bach Stiftung got underway, I experienced patronizing thoughts: What can this outfit, of whom no one outside northern Switzerland had ever heard, could possibly bring to the table that the greats of Bach performance of the last decades haven’t already done and much better? I’ve since repented and recanted. Rudolf Lutz and his Bach Stiftung chorus and orchestra not only offer extraordinary execution that, on average, begins to surpass the Gardiner cycle, but his cantatas also have a communal feel to them, something engaging, something that makes you feel as though you are almost a part of it, not just an outside observer. Volume 22 in this survey – with the three masterpiece cantatas BWV 56 "Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen", BWV 95 "Christus, der ist mein leben" and BWV 161 "Komm, du süße Todesstunde" – is a supreme example of all these qualities. (Forbes CD of the Week review here)

# 7 - New Release

Kenneth Fuchs, Piano Concerto, Saxophone Concerto, E-Guitar Concerto, Poems of Life, JoAnn Faletta, London Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Biegel (piano), T.McAllister (sax), D.J.Spar (guitar) et al., Naxos 8.559824

Kenneth Fuchs, Concertos & Songs, JoAnn Faletta, London Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Biegel (piano), T.McAllister (sax), D.J.Spar (guitar) et al., Naxos

The chapter on Kenneth Fuchs is one of the additions to the Second Edition of Surprised by Beauty that didn’t stick in my memory at first. I want to listen to every CD recommendation that Robert Reilly makes in that book, and I’ve been reasonably successful at it, too, but sometimes life gets in the way. A disc, a thought, a composer gets put on the back burner and simmers along at the mind’s edge, sometimes for years. Fortunately I’ve been awoken from my bubbling slumber by the most recent disc with the music of Kenneth Fuchs’. Surprised by beauty, indeed!

The lede is the Piano Concerto (Jeffrey Biegel on the ivories), which covers several pleasant universes of sound in its three movements: From Ravel via "Lady Macbeth trombone" glissandi to Coplandesque moments and well beyond, it never quite lets you drift and always makes your ears perk. Glacier, the serenata-like Concerto for Electric guitar (D.J.Sparr) and Orchestra, is every bit as interesting as the Piano concerto – with moments that remind, successively, of John Scofield and Terje Rypdal. This is in turn followed by the easy listening (in the best sense) Concerto for Alto saxophone (Timothy McAllister) and Orchestra with a hint, almost inevitably, of Gershwin. The orchestral songs Poems of Life for countertenor (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen) and orchestra take a little longer to get used to in the surrounding context of the concertos, but eventually they, too, fit into the mold of harmonious tanginess that Fuchs casts for his works.

The performances easily do enough to reveal the music’s beauty and clever fun. Conductor JoAnn Faletta navigates the hired London Symphony Orchestra through the music without accidents. We don’t have Manfred Honeck, Teodor Currentzis and Kyrill Petrenko standing in line to make Kenneth Fuchs recordings any time soon (not that we should want to rule it out), so we’ll take what we get and am grateful it’s as good as it is. 

# 6 - New Release

R.Schumann & J.Widmann, "Es war einmal…" – Märchenerzählungen op.132, Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano op.73, Märchenbilder for piano and viola op.113 & "Once Upon A Time… Five Pieces in Fairy Tale Mood for clarinet, viola and piano, Dénes Várjon (piano), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Jörg Widmann (clarinet), Myros Classics MYR020

R.Schumann & J.Widmann, "Es war einmal…", Dénes Várjon (piano), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Jörg Widmann (clarinet), Myros

This disc, its concept-album title and cover, makes you think it is something other than it is. Or at least something other than it also is. If you are a Jörg Widmann fan (not inconceivable, granted), you will find the composer’s recording of his mouthfully-titled Once Upon a Time… Five Pieces in Fairy Tale Fashion for Clarinet, Viola and Piano on there. Apart from the famously clarinet playing composer, Dénes Varjon is on piano, Tabea Zimmermann on viola. The Widmann riffs heavily off the Schumann, takes musical phrases, folds them over, starts anew… he’s making a croissant of the music, with hard edges and glassy flakes. It can be jarring, it can be strangely beautiful, and it’s without question to be categorized as "good Widmann", which still means you have to be into it, but at least then it’s very good indeed. (Whereas bad Widmann – especially large format works like Arche and Babylon – is totally unredeemable.)

If you are an inveterate Schumann lover, however, (or well on your way thereto), this is actually the continuation of the thrilling Schumann Violin Sonata recording of Varjon’s with Carolin Widmann that appeared on ECM and should have been high in my Best of 2009. The deliciously near-late Schumann, a dream of hazy, woven textures, was written between 1849 and 1851 and is here performed with sensitivity, intimacy (especially thanks to Várjon and Zimmermann), and expressive richness that gives the lightly forlorn music a haptic, certainly sensual quality: A winner of a disc, either – depending on your musical leanings – with a caveat or a bonus. 

# 5 - New Release

P.I.Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.6 ("Pathétique"), MusicAeterna, Teodor Currentzis, Sony 88985404352

P.I.Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.6 ("Pathétique"), MusicAeterna, Teodor Currentzis, Sony

My first exposure to current faux-goth / conductor-hotshot Teodor Currentzis came at the hands of the Vienna Symphony’s performance of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera The Passenger where I was involuntarily impressed by that young, hitherto unknown, unkempt young man on the podium. (Best of 2011) Then came a couple of concerts with the Munich Philharmonic in 2012 and 2013.

The impression he left was certainly visceral: "All smiles, with long bobbed hair, and India-rubber limbs, Currentzis looks like a master of ceremonies at MIT’s Harry Potter convention. An enthusiastic image, and a slightly ridiculous one." But it was also musically positive: "Under his hands, the side-by-side of Prokofiev’s children-like naïveté [in the Seventh Symphony], his veteran assuredness and deft rhythmic handling sounded perfectly organic. And the orchestra went along well enough, especially considering this was the first night of the run. As a little treat, Currentzis played the symphony with both alternate endings: the quiet original first, and then, after a little pause, the few bars of upbeat compromise that Prokofiev grudgingly added." (ionarts: The Currentzis Dances) Since then, I’ve seen and heard him blow the roof off the Vienna Konzerthaus… a conductor that has fully grown into the hype around him – and capable of achieving novel, intriguing, insightful results with guest orchestras just the same, not just his own band where he has unrivaled, dictatorial-in-the-service-of-music conditions that no other place could offer him. He’s controversial – but the real deal.

Point in case his Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony released late last year. (You could almost equally insert his new Mahler Sixth in this spot; it might well hop onto next year’s list.) This is a recording at once stunningly superficial and stunningly absorbing. The attention to detail, the obsession, the fine-tuning – even the overproducing – are all audible… but unlike many a micro-managing conductor, the whole does not descend into technically impressive boredom. It remains visceral, exciting. Currentzis’ Pathetique is the exact opposite of the liquid, golden honey that flows from the baton of Semyon Bychkov and his Czech Philharmonic in the same work (released around the same time – and superb in its own way!) This is a self-propelling nano-technology-beast, shimmering—ever-moving—in the sun in ever-changing colors. A thrill not to be missed, unless one is positively cemented into a purist/traditionalist position.

# 4 - New Release

I.Stravinsky, Chant funèbre, Le Faune et al Bergère, The Rite of Spring, Scherzo fantastique, Feu d’artifice, Riccardo Chailly, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Decca 483 2563

I.Stravinsky, Chant funèbre, Le Sacre et al., Riccardo Chailly, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Decca

Happily, Riccardo Chailly is interested in repertoire just off the beaten path in a way that many mainstream conductors can’t be bothered with… and instead of tacking a Firebird or some such warhorse onto his lusciously magnificent recording of the Rite of the Spring, he added the orchestral works Scherzo fantastique op.3, Feu d’artifice op.4, the Chant funebre op.5 (a world premiere recording), and the orchestral song Le Faune et al Bergère op.2 to the mix. That novel Chant funebre – composed to memorialize Rimsky-Korsakov – starts out of a hovering, dark mist… much like something that Wagner might have composed. A flame licks through the brooding brass. Probably some Niebelungs just died. The ten-minute work eventually turns to a more lyrical, even Tchaikovsky-esque vein. Despite (or not?) more Wagner quotations to greet us in the subsequent works, this is really Stravinsky at his most French phase; much of the music resembles – vaguely in a literal sense; more strongly in mood – that of Paul Dukas or even Albert Roussel. The gorgeous, pastoral central section of the Scherzo fantastique, op.3, is of poetic and elegiac grace that any composer interested in sheer beauty would be proud to have penned. (Complete CD of the Week review on Forbes.com)

# 3 - New Release

J.S.Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, Gottfried von der Goltz, Aparté AP176

J.S.Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, Gottfried von der Goltz, Aparté

Gottfried von der Goltz is best known as one of the leaders of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. That’s all well and good, but here he is, sans orchestra, in the Bach Sonatas and Partitas. Do we really need concertmasters entertaining notions of soloist careers? Yikes. That’s an old attitude, actually, from when those two jobs really were very different and the skillset not overlapping all that much. Even good concert masters, harnessed into a solo rôle for reasons of morale or economy, could sound like floundering amateurs. But there's a new generation, with all the skills for soloist positions but opting for the orchestral rôle anyway, and they certainly have what it takes. The Berlin Philharmonic’s Daishin Kashimoto comes to mind… and it turns out to be no different with von der Goltz, either. His recording, far from being a superfluous stuffer of the catalogue, is full of elegance and lightness, effortless perfection and joy.  My review on ClassicsToday will be up eventually, but until then take my word for it: Amid the glut of Sonata and Partita recordings, this one is special!

# 2 - New Release

B.Martinů, Bouquet of Flowers (+ Jan Novák, Philharmonic Dances), Tomáš Netopil, Prague RSO, Supraphon SU 4220

B.Martinů, Bouquet of Flowers (+ Jan Novák, Philharmonic Dances), Tomáš Netopil, Prague RSO, Supraphon

Bohuslav Martinů’s relatively obscure Bouquet of Flowers with its full-on Bohemian neo-classicism evokes hints of Orff’s Carmina Burana or might make one perceive touches of Janáček (perhaps from the Glagolitic Mass) or even Dvořák’s The Spectre’s Bride. But none of those hints come through with any strength; Martinů retains his own voice, even as he was able to change musico-linguistic tack even more often than he had to switch languages, what with having lived for extended periods of his life in Czecheslovakia, France, the US, and Switzerland.

A collection of seven vignettes and an overture, Bouquet of Flowers is a highly effective drama (or series of mini-dramas) written for orchestra, soloists, and choruses and intended for radio broadcast. It is constantly enchanting and entrancing music, even if the words of Karel Jaromír Erben’s poems – the famous collection "A Bouquet of Folk Legends" – remain foreign to your ear. The singers and the orchestra – the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under the youngish Tomáš Netopil – indulge in this music with something that sounds like total conviction. This is the ‘lesser’ among the established orchestras in Prague – and you’d never guess it.
(Full review on SurprisedByBeauty.org)

# 1 - New Release

F.Martin, Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, Fabio Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich, Okka von der Damerau, Philharmonia PHR 0108

F.Martin, Die Weise von Liebe und Tod, Fabio Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich, Okka von der Damerau, PHR

Rainer Maria Rilke’s youthful poem-cum-epic "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" about a soldier who, reminiscing heavily, is moved to the front in Hungary in 1663, being promoted to flag bearer and then misses the battle after a love-filled night with a countess (so far it’s pure Flashman!) only to find heroic death wildly storming into the enemy (decidedly not Flashman), was a favorite read of German soldiers in the World Wars. There’s also something to the subject that brings out the best in early 20^th century composers: it was set to music (among yet others) by Danish Paul von Klenau, Austrian-Czech Viktor Ullmann, and Swiss Frank Martin… and each came up with one of their masterpieces.

Frank Martin’s entrancing tone poem for contralto and orchestra was written while the war raged outside Switzerland – and perhaps therefore has a decidedly unheroic, melancholy touch to it. There’s a bittersweet beauty to the music, a bit like the sour and bitter but satisfying lingering of pure chocolate. Fabio Luisi, who seems never to have been more at home in a post than at the Zurich Opera and with its Philharmonia Zurich, provides the keenly felt, sensitive musical painting for the backdrop upon which Okka von der Damerau gives one of the most striking vocal performances I have heard on disc in a long time. With calm radiance she makes you take every step with the protagonist. The result is, in a word, ravishing.

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Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: Some Like It Plush; Riccardo Chailly In Early And Rediscovered Stravinsky

...with so much unsuspected Stravinsky-goodness, it made me go and pull out my beloved Stravinsky-conducts-Stravinsky box (see also: The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2015) from the shelf. Why had I missed these works before? Did Stravinsky ever conduct them himself? Apart from the above-mentioned world premiere, yes. The Faun and the Shepherdess with Mary Simmons – in Russian! – and the CBC Symphony Orchestra in 1964 in Toronto ; Fireworks and the Scherzo Fantastique a year or two earlier – with the CBC Symphony the latter and with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra the former. Fireworks even got another, earlier, recording, in New York in 1946 with the New York Philharmonic. Sound quite different, there; the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is a far more luxurious-sounding body of sound; the CBC and Columbia outfits sound – comparatively – like the soundtrack to like a Turner Classic Movies film music special generally and more flitting, modern in the case of Feu d’artifice, especially. The box remains the go-to source to white-balance any expectations – but for these works, Chailly is the obvious go-to recording…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Some Like It Plush; Riccardo Chailly In Early And Rediscovered Stravinsky

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New York City Ballet returns with Balanchine and Peck masterpieces

New York City Ballet in George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements (photo by Paul Kolnik)
The New York City Ballet is back in town, bringing an Easter feast of modern choreography to the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. The first of their two programs, seen on Tuesday night, brings together works of choreographers representing three eras: George Balanchine, Peter Martins, and Justin Peck.

Chase Finlay in George Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15 (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Two Balanchine jewels bookend the evening, beginning with Divertimento No. 15, from 1956. It is a banquet for the eyes, with costumes by Karinska evoking vaguely military-style dress uniforms for the men and graceful gestures that recall the social and courtly dance of Mozart's gorgeous music. Chase Finlay was a tall, chiseled presence among the three male soloists, gracefully partnering especially with Ashley Laracey in the exquisite "Andante" movement, with its extended cadenza for two violins. The strings of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra struggled, especially the violins in high passages and runs, giving the impression that conductor Daniel Capps had spent the lion's share of rehearsal time on the more complex Stravinsky scores later in the program.

At the end of the evening came Balanchine's striking Symphony in Three Movements, made in 1945 after Stravinsky suggested the title piece to Balanchine as suitable for a ballet. The last company to present it at the Kennedy Center was the Boston Ballet in 2013, and direct from the source, as it were, it was an even more bracing thing to see. The curtain rises to reveal a striking scene, the corps of women in white, belted leotards arranged in a diagonal row, one arm raised. Jagged movements that go with Stravinsky's accented, zig-zagging music were crisply defined, the dancers' hair in long ponytails fanning out at times. The solo pairing of Sterling Hyltin and Adrian Danchig-Waring, featured beautifully in the central slow movement, was a highlight.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet: After the fall (Washington Post, March 28, 2018) Alastair Macaulay, Kaleidoscopes of Patterns Against Backdrop of Mozart’s Chivalry (New York Times, February 16, 2011) ---, City Ballet’s Greatest-Hit Makers Get Help From Some Old Masters (New York Times, January 5, 2008) ---, The Unstuffy Gala: City Ballet Delivers Youth and Style (New York Times, September 29, 2017) ---, One Week’s Journey Through a Whole Century in Ballet (New York Times, May 6, 2012) ---, Taking Flight: A Season of Revival (New York Times, January 28, 2011)

At the heart of the program is a brand-new choreography by Justin Peck, Pulcinella Variations, premiered by the company just last fall. Peck, whose taste in music has sometimes seemed questionable, chose brilliantly here, with the suite from Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Stravinsky's delightful neoclassical reworking of music by Pergolesi, revived after a long absence by the National Symphony Orchestra a few years ago.

Kooky costumes by Japanese fashion designer Tsumori Chisato, half commedia dell'arte by way of Watteau and half manga fantasy, highlighted the inventive movements of the dancers. Red stripes glinted on one costume with each pirouette, and a flesh-colored strip and tutu of only partial circumference made another costume seem to cover only two-thirds of a dancer's body. Breaking from the otherwise bare stage favored in the Balanchine pieces, billowy gray curtains hung above and in the wings, giving the impression of a department store window or fashion show runway.

Sarah Mearns and Jared Angle were a sensual pairing in the "Serenata" movement, but the most beautiful moments of the ballet came from the extended pas de deux of the "Gavotta" with its two variations, featuring the outstanding Tiler Peck and Joseph Gordon. Anthony Huxley proved a dynamo of energy in the "Tarantella," costumed in bright yellow stripes with streamers, reminding Miss Ionarts of an overactive cartoon bee darting among the flowers incorporated into the other costumes.

Two shorter duet pieces filled in the gaps less memorably. Tiler Peck again stood out in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, made in 1960 to music drawn from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Here partnered with Jared Angle, she showed remarkable poise and calm, frozen into extensions like a statuette, often accompanied by ardent violin solos from concertmaster Oleg Rylatko.

In this superior company, Zakouski, made by Peter Martins in 1992, felt a little like a drab cousin, not least for the uncomfortable overtones recently revealed about the Martins era at NYCB. (In January, Martins was forced to resign from his position leading the company, due to allegations of sexual harassment and physical abuse from former dancers; somewhat confusingly, the company announced in February that its two-month investigation did not corroborate any of the allegations.)

Indiana Woodward stepped in on short notice to replace Megan Fairchild and did so with warmth and energy, matched with the somewhat heavy-handed folk dance gestures of the excellent Joaquin de Luz. Violinist Arturo Delmoni and pianist Susan Walters performed the music, all short pieces by Rachmaninoff (including the famous Vocalise), Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, admirably from a corner of the pit.

This program will be repeated tonight and Thursday, with a second program, devoted to choreographer Jerome Robbins, performed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Various casts will dance in these performances in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Forbes Classical CD of the Week: Stravinsky and Scandals for Two

…an insightful lack of relentlessness in Stravinsky and two more original two-hand piano versions of ballet classics: Ravel’s La Valse and the Kalendar Prince from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade compelling-propelling wit…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Scandals Once Upon A Time

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Suzanne Farrell Ballet preserves more Balanchine

Elisabeth Holowchuk and Kirk Henning in Danses Concertantes, Suzanne Farrell Ballet (photo by Rosalie O'Connor)
The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, we learned last month, will disband next year. The Kennedy Center's resident ballet company has never come under review before at Ionarts. As critic Sarah Kaufman put it, it is a company composed of different members for each performance, who do not work together for more than a few weeks. The first program of their fifteenth season, seen on Friday evening at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, was devoted to three choreographies by George Balanchine.

Farrell was Balanchine's "muse" at New York City Ballet in the 1960s and early 1970s, known especially known as the Dulcinea in his Don Quixote. For the last decade and a half she has led the Balanchine Preservation Initiative, attempting to use her own knowledge of the choreographer's work, among other resources, to ensure that Balanchine's work can be appreciated by future generations. This installment brings together three works that were new to me live, two of them extraordinary and well worth saving. The third one, Stars and Stripes, seems hopelessly outdated, especially in the current political climate.

Balanchine was the first to choreograph Stravinsky's Danses Concertantes, composed in 1942 for the Werner Janssen Orchestra of Los Angeles. In the composer's neoclassical style, it was one of the projects done entirely during Stravinsky's time in California. Although it was conceived as a ballet score, the music was not made for any particular choreography. Balanchine began with the central part of the score, a theme with four variations, each one given to a set of three dancers costumed in bright costumes of green, blue, violet, and red -- "like a box of crayons," as Miss Ionarts described it (costumes designed by Holly Hynes, inspired by the work of Eugene Bermann).

Associations from the commedia dell'arte (à la Pulcinella) permeate the costumes and the comic movements of the dancers, with more serious counterparts in the paired principal dancers, costumed in bright yellow. In the opening Marche, the whole company moved across the stage, shortened by a colorful backdrop, which was raised to reveal a larger space for the main action. The violet variation, here danced by Jane Morgan, the tall and graceful Leah Slavens, and Ted Seymore, was especially beautiful, as the three wove intricate patterns of interlaced arms and extended poses, the latter especially during the lush string coda that ends this section of music. Valerie Tellmann-Henning had light, skittish movements to go with the flute solo in the Pas de Deux.

Charles Gounod's first symphony (D major, 1855) was rediscovered in the 1950s and is still largely unknown, except perhaps as the basis of study for Gounod's student Georges Bizet as he prepared his own Symphony in C. Balanchine, who more famously set that Bizet work to choreography, premiered his Gounod Symphony with the New York City Ballet in 1958, and it has not been revived by a professional company since 1993. It features a large corps, twenty women alternately paired with ten men, lit in silhouette as the curtain is raised. The black and white costumes (Holly Hynes) enhance the sense of an abstract painting set in motion: tea dresses for the women, black for ten dancers and white for the other ten, with the men in white tops and black leggings. The company's corps work is not its strength, as evidenced by the lack of unity among the dancers here and elsewhere, but Natalia Magnicaballi stood out in the gold-costumed principal pair, tall but seeming weightless in the air. Balanchine gave the second movement to the soloists, with the little fugato passage played out by pairs of women.

The evening closed with Balanchine's Stars and Stripes, a display of American patriotism that borders on the grotesque in the era of "Make America Great Again." Premiered in 1958, at the end of the McCarthy era, the work has enough military salutes, baton twirling, and drill corps marching to turn my stomach. Hershy Kay's adaptation of Sousa marches is bombastic, large enough in scoring that the orchestra's percussion and brass had to be piped onto the stage from another location. (A bizarre cadenza for French horn at the end of the "Fourth Campaign" was only the tip of iceberg when it came to strange orchestration.) Conductor Nathan Fifield, who had struggled keeping the Stravinsky score together earlier, could not always coordinate the two halves of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, as the sound from the speakers and from the pit did not always line up.

This program repeats today, in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater.