Critic’s Notebook: New Production of the Rosenkavalier in Graz

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Rosenkavalier“ in Graz: Wo die Frauen hauen und stechen

Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier C.Kleiber, Bavarian State Opera Watson, Fassbaender Popp, Ridderbusch (Orfeo, 2008) US | UK | DE

Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier C.Thielemann, Munich Phil Fleming, Koch, Damrau, Hawlata (DVD, Decca, 2011) US | UK | DE

Marschallin across Generations: New Rosenkavalier in Graz

Philipp M. Krenn’s new Rosenkavalier in Graz is a production brimming with ideas, gently nudged toward the present. In the way it succeeds at explaining itself, it comes startlingly close to a directorial ideal.

Strauss and Hofmannsthal are always about human relationships. In the new Graz Rosenkavalier that’s literally true, so liberally do director Philipp M. Krenn and set designer Momme Hinrichs deploy the revolving stage. We move seamlessly from foyer to antechamber, to servants’ quarters, to billiard room, bedroom, and kitchen. This way, Krenn manages to stage the Marschallin and Octavian’s early-morning dalliance during the overture already, while revealing – in an Upstairs/Downstairs type scenario – how the staff sorts laundry, stocks shelves, listens at doors, whispers and gossips. There are fewer secrets in this household than you’d think. Small wonder that the Marschallin (Polina Pastirchak) and Octavian (Anna Brull) are so surprisingly indiscreet.

Hinrichs’ sets and Eva Maria Dessecker’s costumes span a parallel palette from early 20th century (the aristocratic society, dueling type student fraternities) through the 1970s (replete with Bubble Chair and large-floral wallpaper) to a subtle present-day — expressed, among other things, in the kitchen where the Marschallin makes her morning coffee and where Ochs and the ever-present Leopold (Arthur Haas) brazenly help themselves to anything in sight. Whether the “carnal offspring”, as Leopold is referred to in the libretto, is Ochs’ illegitimate son or on-and-off lover... with this sexually insatiable opportunist Ochs, anything is possible.

Apropos. Wilfried Zelinka’s Ochs was magnificent: He nails the greasy vulgarian who thinks far too highly – and all the more imperturbably – of himself with fearsome ease. Someone for whom women are mainly status symbol; sunglasses casually cocked in his hair that’s a good deal longer than advisable and thinner than desired, dress shirt stretched across the paunch, lordly manner, and shoes without socks. Whether petty nobility or Mittelstand nouveau-riche – if you’ve been to Austria long enough, you know the type. That his lowest notes weren’t quite there was irrelevant amid such a vivid display of character.

In Act II Zelinka also becomes a hybrid of Ochs and the Feldmarschall, who still rightly rankles the sensitives of Sophie, even as he’s a bit more dashing, kept keep in check by his manners where his morals wouldn’t, and displaying the debonair cool of a man not used to being flustered. This whole act is the coup de théâtre Krenn has been preparing since Act I, when a Super-8-movie flashback takes us to the Marschallin’s own wedding. At the very end of the act, she finds herself face to face with her younger self in the bridal gown: This is simultaneously the young Maria Theres’ and Sophie (Tetiana Miyus). It’s a passing-of-the-torch moment. And this is also how the second act, throughout which the Marschallin is silently present – begins. She is there to support Sophie and, by extension, herself – in her struggle for marital self-determination. Sophie’s marriage is actually the memory of her own. The Marschallin’s fate (none-too-bad, if sprinkled with regrets) was not hers to decide; Sophie’s, at least, should be. It is Sophie, too, who settles the matter of the Ochs-Octavian duel when she takes a carving knife to Ochs’ calf, to make sure worse does not befall young, out-fenced Octavian.

You can like this sort of thing or not (at the premiere it was unabated applause for the directorial team), but for Krenn to pull off this act of doubling – past and present; amending the past to cure the future – in a way that explains itself with such self-evidence, brings the production startlingly close to a directorial ideal.

The orchestra under Vassilis Christopoulos supported the proceedings well, often superb; the winds especially; the violins at times rather less so. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt throughout most of the performance, if the orchestra could have played a touch more quietly throughout. The acting meanwhile was superb: the deeply moving, full-voiced Marschallin, the nuanced Ochs, the adorable, feisty Sophie. Even the torn-and-striving Octavian hardly lagged behind, and the cast as a whole delivered very decent (and better) vocal performances without, admittedly, threatening to redefine the standards for excellence. Noteworthy, however, among smaller roles were Leitmetzerin Corina Koller and Neira Muhič’s Annina. The social-media-addicted Italian singer (Iurie Ciobanu), meanwhile, had a small message for young Mr. Chalamet ready: He took selfies with a “#WECARE, Timothée” sign.

At the close, the Feldmarschall wanders past Sophie and Octavian’s embrace and finds Faninal’s “Sind halt aso, die jungen Leut’!” put in his mouth. When he watches with rather too much interest, his wife gives him a tender-but-firm tap – “Come along now, darling” – and leads him away, back to their reality.

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Critic’s Notebook: Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee

Olivier Latry & Shin-Young Lee, Stravinsky, Heller, Alain Trois danses (BNL, 2013) US | UK | DE

Olivier Latry, Transcriptions Midnight at Notre-Dame (DG SACD, 2004) US | UK | DE

Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee Dance the Night Away

Organ Dances at the Konzerthaus's Rieger instrument

While early music is otherwise running riot at the Konzerthaus – it is, after all, “Resonanzen” time – one might intuitively expect an organ recital to be part of the baroque proceedings. For a good two minutes, that was indeed the case on Tuesday evening in the Great Hall, when Olivier Latry, titular organist of Notre-Dame, and Shin-Young Lee brought the Rieger organ to life with an arrangement of Rameau’s Les Sauvages. But the Rieger organ is anything but a baroque instrument, and so the remainder of the evening was devoted to (ballet) music that, while not written for the organ, was at least composed at roughly the same time as the instrument itself came into life.

The programme ranged from Béla Bartók via Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla and Alexander Borodin to the main course and undisputed high point: an arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps. Not such a far-fetched idea, given that The Rite of Spring also exists in a wildly percussive four-hand piano version by the composer himself. But everything before the Stravinsky amounted to little more than preliminaries – with the Rameau (surprisingly) perhaps the least satisfying of the lot: The organ sounded thick and dense in the Les Sauvages (recycled in Les Indes galantes and inspired by Reameau observering six Mitchigamea chiefs dance before King Louis XV. in the Théâtre-Italien in 1725) and in this arrangement – or rather in Latry’s and Lee’s registration – it clattered like a fairground carousel.

The Bartók miniatures, small musical playthings from the Romanian Dances, were never intended by the composer to court broad appeal and were unlikely to have acquired it in Latry’s arrangement either. Interesting, at least, was how the “Bagpipe Players” sonatina recalled 16-bit computer music. Cleanly and securely played, but at times somewhat laborious and monochrome in sound – whether for four hands or two – Lever du jour, Danza ritual and the Polovtsian Dances were hardly more invigorating.

But then! Almost from the very first note, Lee and her husband made it clear in the Stravinsky where all that effort in selecting organ stops had gone. The work gleamed, lively and colourful. The impudent little figures Stravinsky scatters throughout were wonderfully realised by four hands – as was, with two, three or even four feet, the underlying, driving rhythm. Altogether, this sounded far more natural, more organic, than, say, a Bruckner symphony on the organ and it kind-of salvaged the evening.

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Critic’s Vault: Shipwrecked in Ireland

eX presents:, Music from "Shipwrecked", De Cabez, De Morales, De Victor, Byrd et al (Heresy Records, 2012) US | UK | DE

The Dublin Drag Orchestra, Music from "Motion of the Heart" & "Viva Frida!" Dowland, Lawes, Coperario, Ward et al. (Heresy Records, 2012) US | UK | DE

A musical journey with Francisco de Cuéllar

In 2009, a fascinating, even prescient production marrying theater to early music was mounted at Dublin's Royal Hopsital

Queen Elizabeth and Philip II are goofing around behind chairs to the left and right of the U-shaped stage before both break out in a dash through the marvelous Great Hall of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin. What are Elizabeth and Philip doing in Dublin, and why is the former wearing ankle-high silver sneakers and a blue dress, and the latter waving a feather and making silly faces?

Abbey and Robert are actually eight years old, and they play their royal parts in “Shipwrecked”, a production of the early music ensemble eX which took place in the (truly) Great Hall of what is now the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The two are impossibly cute child actors who patiently sit through the long rehearsals—almost until midnight the day before the premiere – and they have quickly become the mascots of the production.

Later during the final rehearsal, Queen Elizabeth, who barely reaches up to Caitríona O’Leary’s belt, pipes the tune of Greensleeves in duet with O’Leary, which sounds absolutely adorable – and moderately musical. Then the little Queen gets her wig affixed while rummaging through her Hello Kitty bag and Philip II chats with Kate, the make-up artist, and crinkles his nose as her brush applies white powder to his face.

Shipwrecked is an early music jamboree, a soundtrack of the (literally) incredible journey of a Spanish captain of the Armada who strands in hostile 16th-century-Ireland, and is then chased, maltreated, and occasionally helped by murderous Englishmen and local savages until he – barely – makes it back to safety in the Spanish Netherlands. If only half of his account, a twenty-page letter, is true, Francisco de Cuellar is a mixture between Voltaire’s Candide and George McDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman. Music directors Caitríona O’Leary (an expert researcher on – and performer of – early Irish music) and Lee Santana (lutist extraordinaire and Los Otros-founder) cobbled together the musical tapestry from lute books, 16th century Spanish composers, traditional songs, and improvisations.

Members of Los Otros, Sequentia, and the Harp Consort, fortified with Irish music experts, provided the music, breaking out into an early music jam session for the finale that had the pint-sized Queen and the King waving their hands in rhythmic excitement. Director Eric Fraad, meanwhile, had the performers – all in full costume – work out the semi-staged element of the performance which included actor Keith Dunphy, as one of three incarnations of Captain Francisco reading out (and sometimes shouting) excerpts of the actual letter, thus providing the story line upon which the pieces of music are hung.

The battle of the percussionists Mel Mercier and Francesco Turrisi and Steve Player*’s Renaissance tap-dance (a combination of brute force and Fred Astaire) rang in the conclusion of an early music spectacle that emerged, seemingly out of buzzing chaos just a few hours earlier, into something akin to perfection, delighting the 150 attendees who had found their way up to the Royal Hospital on a mild Dublin Sunday night. While the music was passionately played and the singers delighted – especially O’Leary’s early music soprano and genre-defying vocalist/guitarist Clara Sanabras – the costumes

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Critic’s Notebook: Barokksolistene and their Alehouse Sessions at the Konzerthaus

Bjarte Eike, Barokksolistene The Alehouse Sessions (Rubicon, 2017) US | UK | DE

Bjarte Eike, Barokksolistene The Image of Melancholie (BIS SACD, 2014) US | UK | DE

Jolly Musicke Till You Drop

Hip vibes at the Norwegian baroque hoedown

For the most part, the crowds pouring into the Konzerthaus on Thursday evening surged up the grand staircase straight into the Great Hall: Mahler’s Ninth, Rattle conducting! The high temple of music was calling. Those who took a turn a little further down the foyer, meanwhile, found considerably lighter fare waiting behind the doors of the Mozart-Saal. Nothing lowbrwo, mind you—Bjarte Eike and his Norwegian Barokksolistene are a superb early music outfit. But their motto (“It’s just old pop music”) already hints at the fact that the promised Alehouse Sessions probably aren't too darn serious.

This baroque watering hole promised Henry Purcell, English shanties, dance, ballads, and traditional tunes. You’d need to have known your Purcell pretty well, though, to pick him out from the charming tangle of virtuosity, comedy, and kitsch. The dramatically—even theatrically—conceived program, about ten years old now, cheerfully plops Purcell’s "Virgin Queen" next to a sea shanty with a Bach riff rising suddenly from the hand harmonica. Bass, percussion, and guitar solos are handled the way they’d be in a jazz club.

The result is less "classical" than when Berlin’s Lautten Compagney tackles similar material, and not as relentlessly dramatized as comparable projects from Ireland’s Heresy Records. It’s just a bunch of cool old dads in mildly hipster=casual carb, noticeably graying hair, beers in hand, having fun with the music and goofing around a good deal. Who could possibly be curmudgeon enough to hold that against them—even if the slow-motion fight scene staged at the end finally tipped this early-baroque hoedown definitively into slapstick territory. Well, if clap-alongs and audience participation were not your thing, then you might have felt a sense of mild vicarious embarrassement. As it was, everyone got the right turn at the Konzerthaus; the crowd in the reasonably well-filled Mozart-Saal positivley lapped it up and responded with enthusiasm to everything that was on offer. So much so, Barokksolistene could almost have forgone the plants in the audience, that goated the audience into the right responses.

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Critic’s Notebook: Force Majeure! Marianne Crebassa at the Musikverein

M. Crebassa / F. Say, "Secrets", French Songs (Erato, 2017) US | UK | DE

M. Crebassa / Glassberg, Orch. Ntl. du Capit. de Toulouse "Seguedilles", Spanish Songs (Erato, 2022) US | UK | DE

Force Majeure! A MET-voice in a MINI-space.

The French mezzo-soprano bewitched and trumpeted in her song recital – more impressively than moving

Anyone who experienced the young Marianne Crebassa – for instance at the Salzburg Festival, as Irene in Tamerlano (2012), Cecilio in Lucio Silla (2013), or in Marc-André Dalbavie’s Charlotte Salomon (2014), where she basically carried the entire opera single-handedly – knows her as a French mezzo starlet on the operatic firmament and one of the postively most charming stage presences around. On Wednesday evening, the Béziers-born singer made her way to the Musikverein with some mélodies, some Mahler, and pianist Alphonse Cemin.

She still has the presence – but the evening would have been more successful had she traded in her operatic voice for a more Lieder-suitable instrument. With her rather expansive vibrato, her darkly timbred tone was penetrating and mightily focused, occassionally even harsh. She was loud enough, for sure and sometimes almost overwhelming - and not in the best sense. On “¡Sereno!” in Jesús Guridi’s “Seis canciones Castellanas” it pressed you right back into your Brahms Hall seats. At the same time, those passages from Guridi where things got heated (esp. bullfight-related matters) and could thus absorb the vocal muscle-flexing thematically (“Llámale con el pañuelo” and for the last stanza of “Como quieres que adivine”) were also the best, indeed the outstandingly good moments of the evening. Damn, she has got character in that voice! But that evening she only brought one. Ravel, Debussy, and Mahler, however, suffered under the primordial force, the wooden-trumpet sound, and the none-too-distinct intelligibility.

Wholly enriching was Cemin’s contribution at the Bösendorfer: a beautifully gently drawn tempo in the transition of one of the Kindertotenlieder here; there, sensitive in tone and phrasing behind Crebassa’s steely onslaught; “pitter-pattering” in the introduction to “In diesem Wetter” and bell-like at the close of it. His “let’s-let-the-soloist-rest-a-bit” solistic contribution, usually more chore than pleasure in such evenings, was Ravel’s “La Puerta del vino”. Not only was it actually welcome, it also neatly set the mood for the Guridi.

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Critic’s Notebook: Marin Alsop, the RSO and Bruce Liu in "Program vs. Performance"

F. Chopin, "Winner of the 2021 Chopin Competition", Bruce Liu (DG, 2022) US | UK | DE

S. Prokofiev, The Symphonies Marin Alsop, OSESP (Naxos, 6CDs, 2021) US | UK | DE

Insipid Program, Inspired Orchestra

Under Marin Alsop's baton the proof of the music is in the listening.

On paper, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra’s program under Marin Alsop on Friday, February 27th, at the Musikverein was a rather incoherent hodgepodge, especially compared to the orchestra’s concert a week earlier under Ingo Metzmacher: A bit of Friedrich Cerha, honoring his 100th birthday. A Chopin concerto to showcase the second-most recent Chopin Competition winner, Bruce Liu (not to be mistaken for the most recent winner, U.S.American Eric Lu). And Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, because, presumably, returning chief conductor Marin Alsop wanted to present the suite she’d (very effectively!) assembled herself.

But what looks uninspired and conventional doesn’t necessarily have to sound that way — and after the aforementioned Prokofiev, no one will have been asking anymore whether the concert might not have been put together more elegantly or freshly, so rousing was this second half. Right from the opening, the suite convinced with exaggerated loud-soft contrasts. Even more: the RSO played passionately and with visible motivation, edgy (in the best sense) and with tension. It hummed and buzzed at such a tempo that no ballet dancer could have kept up, but to the ears it positively glittered and glistened.

The Chopin E-minor Concerto couldn’t, alas, compete with that, even though Canadian Liu played it classically and sensitively, with a calm, even touch. Nothing was romanticized – and neither was there an air of ostentatious cool. It was a sort-of middle-of-the-road-excellence, very fine in the moment, forgotten soon thereafter. As an encore, Liu chose something modern, witty, Hungarian. You’d think György Kurtág, given his hundredth birthday. Wrong: It was György Ligeti instead; a case of “close enough” perhaps – though it might be said that the latter’s Fanfares: Etude no.4 is rather more substantial than most Kurtág pieces for piano – and includes welcome hints of Rzewski, apart from light abstraction. Neither (to the surprise of no one) could the scraping and lyrical creaking of Cerha’s late work Three Movements for Orchestra that opened the concert compete with the Prokofiev. But! Those who stayed in the Golden Hall after the lengthy applause could still experience a programmatic bracket of sorts: Cerha's Six Postludes, played on the organ by Wolfgang Koger which (despite a few escape attempts on the part of some remainders who got cold feet) turned out a surprisingly sizeable amount from the curious crowd and a surprisingly gratifying experience.

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Critic’s Notebook: When Alban Berg is the Sweetener: Great Programming with Metzmacher

K. Weill, Der neue Orpheus et al. Carole Farley, M.Guttman, J.Serebrier (ASV, 1997) US | UK | DE

A. Berg, Lulu Suite, 3 Pieces D.Gatti, Concertgebouw (RCO Live, SACD, 2008) US | UK | DE

A Successful 20th-Century Miscellany

Ingo Metzmacher and the RSO Vienna deliver a colorful evening in which Alban Berg formed the romantic high point

Good programming is an art. It should be interesting, ideally challenging too, somehow hang together... and alienate as few audience members as possible. At the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, the audience-alienation factor plays a somewhat less important role. First, the orchestra a mandate to go exploring – and second, the audience is battle-hardened. Still, there’s always the temptation to jazz up "difficult" fare with a crowd-pleaser – to almost invariably unsatisfying results. Anyone who rushes to a concert for Tōru Takemitsu, or – as on Saturday evening, February 21st, at the Konzerthaus – for Friedrich Cerha or Kurt Weill, doesn’t want or need a Tchaikovsky piano concerto... and vice versa. Ingo Metzmacher has mastered the art of programming – which is why the evening's highlight was Alban Berg’s Lulu Suite.

A rather obvious bracket is Cerha and Lulu, since his orchestration of the third act established Cerha’s fame in the first place. Less obvious, however, is a cultural-historical factoid that might prove useful at the next pub quiz: Kurt Weill’s cantata Der neue Orpheus and Berg’s Lulu Suite were both brought into the world by Erich Kleiber. But before we got there, the other hundredth composer birthday of recent days was celebrated: Monumentum für Karl Prantl (1988) – in turn written by Cerha for Prantl’s 65th – rises up as a loud, brass-heavy cacophony that sweeps over you like a summer storm. There follows an orchestral whirring and swaying, Messiaen-esque meditations with grand string gestures and dabs of color from the organ. It has a certain sculptural quality but without the danger of therefore drifting towards populism or, for that matter, wider popularity.

Kurt Weill, in his cantata for soprano and violin written over 60 years earlier, isn’t really that either. You will certainly hear little from chameleon-composer Weill’s studies with Engelbert Humperdinck. But the soloists Alina Wunderlin and concertmaster Maighréad McCrann were able to distinguish themselves in this mixture of vaudeville, comedy, and "serious music." That just about proved irrelevant, though, because the Lulu Suite after intermission outshone everything. Once again Alina Wunderlin was allowed to step up, now in a glitter-black Lulu look, and she sang beguilingly agile, more intelligible than in the Weill, and with the right mixture of sensuality and edge, so that one didn’t think about tone rows but the protagonist’s fate instead. Metzmacher also drew remarkable things from the RSO: Whether the tavern atmosphere in the variations, the Tristan und Isolde-moments in the Adagio, or the death cry that bites into the Più lento like the nine-note chords in Mahler’s Tenth, everything was played with fervor and grand gesture.

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Critic’s Notebook: The Quinteto Astor Piazzolla in Vienna

A. Piazzolla, "The Late Masterpieces", Quinteto Tango Nuevo (American Clavé, 3CDs, 1993) US | UK | DE

A. Piazzolla, "Mi Buenos Aires Querido", Barenboim, Mederors, Console (Warner, 1996) US | UK | DE

Piazzolla by the Book

Music to fall in love with – but also a distinct lack of flair – characterized the Quinteto Astor Piazzolla's appearance

The first time you hear Astor Piazzolla's music – perhaps from recordings with his New Tango Quintet like "Tango: Zero Hour" or "Live in Vienna" – is a moment you are not likely to forget. (I remember mine, picking up the 3-CD box on American Clavé in the 2000 Penn Tower Record's world music section with its fancy, since deteriorated, foil cover.) The music imprints itself, opens worlds, becomes shorthand for "Argentina" and everything one associates with it. No wonder, then, that the Konzerthaus was packed for the Quinteto Astor Piazzolla on Sunday evening. After all, the ensemble, founded six years after Piazzolla's death, claims to "reproduce the old master's music as he would sound today." And what exactly does that sound like?

The five marched onto the stage of the Großer Saal, punctual, all in their tango-uniform: Prussian blue suits, light blue shirts, steel blue ties - with a hint of fashion-savvy civil servants about them. Without much ado, lickety-split, the knocked out one terrific Piazzolla piece after another with surprising mechanical precision – working their way from the lesser to the better known ("Oblivion", "Libertango"). Was this Argentine understatement? Nor was there any trace of communication at first; only about two thirds in, after "Contrabajísimo" (with a wobbly double bass solo) were the members of the band introduced, just with their names mumbled, apart from a generic "what a pleasure to play in this beautiful hall". Then it was briskly back to business and onward with the music.

The electric guitar got somewhat lost in the quintet. The piano was the driving force and occasionally a bit muddy. The violin mostly drew attention only through its characteristic rasping sounds. The bandoneon dominated, as might have been expected. Nothing was bad - but all told, everything remained pallid. Was it supposed to sound like this? Not that there wasn't some steam generated here and there – but it dissipated immediately. Was it the too-large room? The Viennese audience even, which though enthusiastic, listened very well-behaved and politely? A hint of rankinling disappointed appeared to be lingering, even after three encores. Then again: one cannot not let oneself be thrilled by this music.

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