CD Review: Saariaho and the Flute

K. Saariaho, Music for Flute, C. Hoitenga, Da Camera of Houston (released on November 13, 2015) Ondine ode1276-2 | 71'04"

Charles T. Downey, Kaija Saariaho: Let the Wind Speak
Washington Post, March 27

Kaija Saariaho searches exhaustively for new sounds in her music. The Finnish composer has used computers and electronic sounds and processes, but she has also worked with specific performers to explore the boundaries of the sounds traditional instruments can make. Saariaho’s partner in the creation of many of her new pieces for flute, including for her outstanding flute concerto “L’aile du songe” from 2001, has been the flutist Camilla Hoitenga. Born in Michigan but based part of the year in Germany, Hoitenga met Saariaho in 1982, at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and they have collaborated ever since. Now, Hoitenga has released an anthology of Saariaho’s flute work.

Other composers have explored this terrain before, but Saariaho makes these experimental effects part of an overall color scheme...

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Dip Your Ears, No. 203 (Jennifer Koh in Bach and Beyond)

J.S.Bach, E.Ysaÿe, K.Saariaho, M.Mazzoli, “Bach & Beyond Part 1”, Partitas Nos.2 & 3, Sonata op.27/2, Nocturne, Dissolve, O My Heart Jenifer Koh cedille

Bach and Just a Little Beyond

Jennifer Koh’s Bach’n’Beyond CD, the first of three steps toward a complete Sonatas & Partitas set, works best as a recital. The main ingredients, the E major and D minor Partitas and the Ysaÿe Sonata op.27/2, are part of great, greater musical sets that deserve dedicated recordings most collectors already own. If not: Milstein (DG) or Podger in Bach, Zehetmair or Kavakos in Ysaÿe. That said and skipping Koh’s rationalizing PR-babble (“connection to present world through historical journey…”), it’s a darkly enjoyable 80 minute program with obvious audible links between the Bach, the superbly played Ysaÿe (stunning bagpipe emulation in the Sarabande!), and Missy Mazzoli’s simplistic-lovely-harmless Bach-infused Dissolve, O My Heart. The pivot is Kaija Saariaho’s five-minute breathy-fragile Nocturne.

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Koh and Jokubaviciute

Composer Kaija Saariaho
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute (listen to her recital at the Freer Gallery of Art in 2004, and read Jens's review) may have played together before. The first time we heard them as a duo, in a concert last night at the Library of Congress, made it clear that, if they are not already, they should become regular collaborators. The revelation was made possible because of a last-minute substitution, as Jokubaviciute was filling in for indisposed pianist Benjamin Hochman, who happens to be Koh's husband. From the very start of Debussy's bittersweet violin sonata, the last piece the composer was able to complete before terminal cancer set in, the sound was set aside from the rest of the concert -- a dulcet, edge-free tone from Koh, supported by Jokubaviciute's evanescent touch on the lacy accompaniment figures in the keyboard part, with snippets of melody in the piano emerging seamlessly. The second movement abounded in playful energy, with a tender middle section and a gorgeous soft ending, unfortunately marred by thoughtless noise in the audience, and the finale, quite Romantic in its excesses, featured glowing low playing from Koh.

As explained by Susan Vita, the Chief of the institution's Music Division, the Library of Congress has been trying to secure a commission from Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, an Ionarts Favorite, for some time. This concert included two of her recent pieces, beginning with a new version of Aure, from 2011, for violin and piano. It is based on a melody from Henri Dutilleux's Shadows of Time, and in this version the two instruments trade fragments contrapuntally, amid clouds of harmonics and other intriguing effects (trills near the bridge, glissandi, among others). It was nicely paired with Ravel's sonata for the same, somewhat rare combination of instruments, from the 1920s, and the basic programming concept, to combine contemporary music with late, forward-sounding Ravel and Debussy made a salient connection.

Here, as throughout the program, intonation problems, leaning mostly toward flatness but also some imprecise attacks on high notes and harmonics, plagued the performance of the cellist, Anssi Karttunen. A longtime favorite collaborator of Saariaho's, Karttunen just had, for whatever reason, an off night, although with some strong moments in Debussy's other late masterpiece, the cello sonata, especially on that soaring melody that rises out of the texture a couple times in the last movement, the most memorable part of the piece.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Koh shines in luminous works by Ravel, Debussy and Saariaho (Washington Post, May 25)

The concert ended with local premiere of Saariaho's Light and Matter, first performed last year at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, a meditation on the effects of light for piano trio. Beginning on a rumble in the piano's bass register and on the cello's open C string, the piece builds toward and recedes from amassing of sound into static textures. Shrieks and howls from the strings were answered by the metallic strum of Jokubaviciute's hand directly on the piano's strings, a subtle, shivering sort of sound. Jokubaviciute sagely conducted the piece with the movements of her head and body, her nods occasionally wrongly interpreted by the page turner, requiring the pianist to turn back the page, all without missing anything perceptible. Keening sounds rose out of string bends in violin and cello, and the piano provided much of the driving force, harping on an oscillating figuration of octaves and fifths, until the sound slowly vanished.

NSO and Finland

K. Saariaho, Orion (inter alia), Orchestre de Paris, C. Eschenbach Sibelius / M. Lindberg, Violin Concertos, L. Batiashvili, Finnish RSO, S. Oramo Sibelius, Complete Symphonies, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, L. Segerstam

The opening concert of the Kennedy Center's Nordic Cool festival, given by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic last week, included music from all the major Nordic countries. For his first contribution to the festival, Christoph Eschenbach took a Finnish focus with the National Symphony Orchestra in a concert of music that had mostly not been performed by the orchestra in a long time, if at all, heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. It was the conclusion of my intensive, four-night critical stand covering all the major venues of the Kennedy Center.

The first half concluded with the NSO's first performance of Magnus Lindberg's recent violin concerto, from 2006. It would have been all too easy to program the Sibelius violin concerto for this kind of concert, but Eschenbach chose instead to highlight one of Finland's most successful living composers. In my review of the recording of the Lindberg concerto, with its dedicatee, Lisa Batiashvili, as soloist, I asked, "Which brave conductor and orchestra will bring her to the Washington region to play this enigmatic and spectrally beautiful piece?" My wish almost came true, although the soloist here was Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto, who brought a brash, garrulous touch to the demanding violin part, but not the same purity on all the high E string writing as Batiashvili. Kuusisto tended more to growl than float, and his intonation was not always where it should have been. Neither was the NSO always on top of the piece, although there were some beautifully lush moments in the slow sections. Kuusisto took a folk music-like approach to the solo, stamping his feet and bending and twisting the tone, a connection that was made further in his choice of encore, a Finnish folk dance ("Devil's Polska") transcribed by Samuel Rinda-Nickola (1763-1818), which was a rollicking good time. Kuusisto offered it proudly in honor of Kalevala Day (February 28), the annual day of Finnish culture.

The other NSO debut was Orion, a three-movement tone poem (not quite long enough perhaps to be a symphony) by Kaija Saariaho, who was just in town last week and whose music Eschenbach championed while music director of the Orchestre de Paris. Hynotic, oscillating patterns, with crinkles of percussion, especially the shamanistic shiver of shell chimes, set the mythological tone in the first movement ("Memento mori"), with Eschenbach helping to shape the murmuring mass of sound, string glissandi and other soft colors, a turbulent texture that exploded in cacophony. The second movement began with a lovely, folk-inflected piccolo solo, echoed by microtonal bends downward in a recurring wind motif, followed by a treble piano ostinato like a music box. Orion's earth-depleting hunt is depicted in the third movement, active squalls of sound (bird squeal of piccolo, animal baying of the horns) punctuated by halos of starlight in soft interludes.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, NSO struggles with cold material from Finland (Washington Post, March 1)

Music of Jean Sibelius bookended these contemporary pieces, beginning with the tone poem Night Ride and Sunrise, op. 55, not heard from the NSO since 1982. It does not refer to the Kalevala or have folk music influences, beginning with an obsessive dotted-rhythm motif evoking a jagged, jarring sleigh ride once experienced by the composer, dotted by loud brass and percussion accents. As the rhythm is evened out, impassioned string chords impart a tone of tragic realization, over tense timpani rolls, with the musicians giving plenty of time to the crescendo swells in the score. The sunrise appeared in a beautiful bloom of brass, with a glinting flute solo, expanding with the support of strings and woodwinds under the brass. The coloristic repetition was quite similar to Saariaho's approach in Orion, just more tonal. The NSO had not played Sibelius's seventh symphony, op. 105, since Vladimir Ashkenazy conducted it in 2008, and it still sounded in good form. Eschenbach's ideas were not as much to my liking, since he often seemed to push the piece too fast to allow it to blossom as it could. (Following the recommendations of our Jens Laurson in his Ionarts survey of Sibelius cycles, the Leif Segerstam cycle with the Helsinki Philharmonic is my new favorite, with a seventh symphony that thrills and soars with each vast crescendo.) The chamber string soli section was a highlight, but the fast section seemed a little helter-skelter in its lack of unity. Eschenbach did not quite draw out the calming trombone theme, which Sibelius at one point marked in the score with his wife's name ("Aino"), although it was allowed to grow and become more present.

This program repeats tonight and tomorrow night (March 1 and 2, 8 pm) in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Kaija Saariaho @ Phillips

The Leading European Composers series at the Phillips Collection hosted a composer truly worthy of the name on Thursday evening. We have been admirers of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's music for some years, particularly the operas L'Amour de Loin and Adriana Mater but also the instrumental music we have heard. Prizes have been coming her way, and when rewards line up with merit, it is heartening news. She came to Washington with a group of young musicians from the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio, with whom she had worked on a program of her music in Toronto last year.

The program brought together mostly vocal music, much of it connected in some way with L'Amour de Loin, beginning with Lonh (From Afar, 1996), set to texts by the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, the opera's main character. Soprano Jacqueline Woodley was incandescent in this stately cantillation, the mystical sounds of her voice echoed in the electronics (assisted by Darren Copeland), a combination of recorded sounds that gave the feel of temple bells in a sort of garden. One of the highlights of the Phillips series is hearing the composer speak about the music being performed, and Saariaho spoke about the musical influence she took from the modal melodies of Rudel, which she noted down from a manuscript of his poetry in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Woodley brought many of the same strengths -- flexibility, surety of intonation, impassioned tone -- to Quatre Instants, a song cycle Saariaho composed for Karita Mattila in 2002 (the same performer for whom she wrote her most recent opera, Émilie). The poetry, in a French text by Amin Maalouf, Saariaho's regular collaborator, is a semi-operatic monologue by a woman tormented by memories of a doomed but ineluctable union. The opening song's image of the woman as a boat adrift is echoed in the piano accompaniment, with an obsessively rocking half-step that pervades the piece. The second song introduces the line "Le remords me brûle" (I burn with remorse), repeated obsessively in a half-spoken ostinato, itself answered by sighs on an open "Ah!" vowel. The piano bristles with repeated motifs, like anxious trills, repeated notes, flurrying patterns, and (perhaps too many) disorienting glissandi. It is a sound world unlike any other.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, At Phillips, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho exposes the human psyche (Washington Post, February 23)

The most straightforward piece was a ballade for piano, composed for Emanuel Ax in 2005, in a style that seemed in line with Chopin's take on the genre, with a melancholy melody spun out of murmuring accompaniment figures and spectral pedal effects, performed effectively by pianist Elizabeth Upchurch. The final piece on the program took us back to what sounded like an earlier style for Saariaho, a section of Grammaire des rêves, from 1988, in which two interlaced voices alternately sing and speak overlapping excerpts of poetry by Sylvia Plath. Soprano Mireille Asselin and mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb took Saariaho's description of the piece -- as a depiction of a person split in two, with interlocking thoughts jumbled together -- to heart, adding movements that made them come together at one music stand, clasp one another as they gasped for breath, and move apart again.

We will be back at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon for the recital by pianist Alexander Melnikov (February 24, 4 pm) playing music by Schumann, Scriabin, and Prokofiev.

Bach and Violinists

The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould, G. Kremer, Kremerata Baltica (released on September 25, 2012) Nonesuch 528982-2 | 57'49" The Music I Love, R. Podger (compilation) (released on October 9, 2012) CCS SEL 6212 | 2 CDs Bach and Beyond, Part 1, J. Koh (released on October 30, 2012) Cedille CDR 90000 134 | 78'35"

Gidon Kremer once described the works of Bach for unaccompanied violin as the "Bible of music," a phrase that still sticks with me. These three new releases from three prominent violinists -- all of whom have radically different approaches to the instrument and to the same music -- offer a kaleidoscope of thoughts about the music of J. S. Bach, the “supreme arbiter and lawgiver of music,” as Nicolas Slonimsky once memorably put it. Leave it to Kremer to take the idea of connecting Bach and early music with contemporary music and run with it. His new CD records a program created for the Chamber Music Connects the World Festival in Kronberg, Germany, in 2010 -- coinciding with the 15th anniversary of Kremerata Baltica, Kremer's chamber orchestra, and the festival's 10th anniversary. New works were commissioned, either literal arrangements of Bach's music or tributes to them, around the theme especially of pieces played by Glenn Gould. The result is one of the more sublimely weird experiences of my listening life, especially since its bizarre aspects -- Kremer's violin shadowed by Andrew Pushkarev's vibraphone (!), the atavistic wisps of percussion in Alexander Wustin's bizarre arrangement of the three-part invention in F minor, Carl Vine's Las Vegas-kooky arrangement of the slow movement of the F minor harpischord concerto (it really goes off the rails only at about 2:40) -- remain so fresh after many listenings. Definitely not for everyone, but never boring.

Rachel Podger's new compilation, The Music I Love, is not for the serious collector, who likely has some or all of the recordings that are excerpted and stitched together here. (Indeed, we have reviewed some of them before.) The packaging has faults, including the fact that each excerpt is included as a single track (all three movements of a Vivaldi concerto or all movements of a Bach sonata, for example) and a booklet consisting of a few trite sentences (signed "Rachel") for each piece. There is not really any reason for the combination of pieces, other than that they are all pieces that Podger considers her favorites. Two Bach solo sonatas (nos. 3 and 6 -- Podger's are some of my preferred versions of these works) are the foundation for traditions of virtuosity extending into the classical period. Podger, as a historical-instrument specialist, is concerned only with meeting this music as close as possible to its own terms, with refreshing results.

Jennifer Koh has embarked on a three-program concept intended to draw connections between Bach's six works for unaccompanied violin and more recent music -- the related concert tour came to Strathmore earlier this fall. Koh's personal statement about this concept, published in the booklet of her new CD, says that the inspiration came from wanting to understand why she was so committed to classical music in an age when some people are convinced that it is a dying art form. If it helps you to think of Bach as relevant by connecting it to the music of Missy Mazzoli (Dissolve, O My Heart), good for you, but as long as at least one person can play the violin, the "Bible of music" will endure without anyone's help. Eugène Ysaÿe's pieces for unaccompanied violin are a natural match for Bach, so there is nothing particularly striking about the choice of that composer's second sonata. Of two more recent pieces placed between Bach's third and second partitas, Kaija Saariaho's Nocturne is the more alluring. Koh gives a meaty, intense reading of the Bach pieces, especially the second sonata's concluding Ciaccona. This music was comforting listening on this dark day.

Interview with Kaija Saariaho

Video and transcript/translation of Johannes Baumann’s interview with Kaija Saariaho in Istanbul at the Borusan Arts & Culture Foundation’s Music House on the day of the world premiere of her piece for violin and electronics, Frises. (Review here.) Because Mme. Saariaho didn’t feel comfortable with an interview being conducted solely in German, I happily volunteered to facilitate or translate where necessary. In return I got to sneak in a few questions of my own. Johannes Baumann runs VioWorld, a Germany-based employment website for culture and especially orchestra jobs all around the world.

Transcript below the jump

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Notes from Istanbul: Saariaho World Premiere

The Borusan Culture & Arts Foundation, the artistic and charitable offshoot of the Borusan Holding Company has a “Music House” on İstanbul’s İstiklal Avenue, the downtown pedestrian zone in the Pera district, custom built to show off its modern art collection, but also the home to contemporary classical music. Artists and ensembles are invited to fill the six storey building with roof top terrace with sounds, and works are commissioned to make them unique sounds. The latest such work was penned by Kaija Saariaho: Frises for violin and electronics, inspired by Odilon Redon’s painted friezes

Richard Schmoucler, violinist in the Orchestre de Paris, first came in touch with Saariaho’s music during the Paris performances of L’Amour de loin. That led to a greater immersion in her sound world and finally, through the Borusan commission, to Frises, which Schmoucler specifically envisioned as part of a program including Bach’s Chaconne and Ysaÿe’s Second Sonata. On Friday, November 2^nd, he finally got to play it, with Mme. Saariaho at the mixing board pushing buttons and sliding sliders with fierce concentration.

K.Saariaho, Orchestral Works, various Ondine

After a long, mono-tonous [sic], quiet first movement, Frises develops and blooms into something quite beautiful, with long glassy marimba-like harmonies, echoes and halos. Schmoucler is asked to engage in self-recording himself at set intervals, then re-playing with himself, after his recorded alter ego's sound has been sent back with more or less manipulation along the way. The third of four movements, Pavage, is the most engaged, frantically chasing little echo-y runs up and down the instrument, and dotted with violent pizzicatos. It thrashes onward and forward until it finally runs out of steam and disemboguing into the Frise grise, which concludes this aural immersion with something akin to whale-song. If Saariaho’s works are often monochrome and austere; this is a joyously lively and colorful, thoroughly engaging treat.

The earlier works—Ysaÿe’s Sonata and the whole Second Partita of Bach, were a nice setup, very decently performed. In the Ysaÿe I wasn’t keen on the pauses or the terraced dynamics that make so much of the work’s Prelude. It wasn’t the cleanest performance, either, but then the Sonata (which Schmoucler finished with an uncommonly excellent Les furies) is a tough cookie to open the concert with. Even more so in a concert consisting entirely of difficult, unforgiving works that keep the performer out on a limb at all times. Schmoucler’s instrument shone in the Bach with a character-rich, dark, viola-like tone and resonance, even if the inherent necessity to play the work at hand, which Schmoucler had spoken about passionately just the night before, sadly eluded me. Until the Saariaho piece, at least.

See also Johannes Baumann's interview with Kaija Saariaho (video & transcript)

Jennifer Koh at Strathmore

Bach and Beyond, Part 1, J. Koh (released on October 30, 2012)

Jennifer Koh gave a commanding solo performance Wednesday night in a program that honored the enduring relevance of J. S. Bach, both as a touchstone for composers after him and as a voice that directly appeals to audiences now. Filling the Strathmore Mansion's cozy music room with an electrifying sound, Koh used two Bach partitas, pinnacles of the violin repertoire, to bookend a selection of later pieces that were in some way inspired by them. The concept, titled Bach and Beyond, has generated a series of recitals and a new recording. Unfortunately, program notes to elucidate the connections between pieces were not provided, though they should have been readily available since the concert had already been performed elsewhere.

Koh opened with Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major. She summoned a vigorous tone for the suite’s sunny, expansive Preludio. In the intimate Loure that followed, Koh set up an elegant rhythm but could have quieted her sound more; it was loud and a bit harsh even toward the back of the small room. From the partita Koh moved without pause into Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2 in A minor. This was an obvious pairing, since the sonata begins by quoting the partita’s opening phrase. But Ysaÿe soon turns away from Bach in frustration to brood over the medieval Dies Irae tune. What follows is not a particularly profound engagement with Bach but rather an undistinguished hodgepodge of overwrought late-Romantic sounds bites. Nonetheless, it served as a vehicle for Koh’s virtuosity, from the bleak strains of the second movement, played with a haunting, vibrato-free tone, to the third movement’s meaty pizzicatos.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, ‘Bach and Beyond’: Jennifer Koh’s unsentimental guide to the composer’s legacy (Washington Post, November 16)

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne was the night's shortest but perhaps most intriguing work. It was a hushed exploration of the violin’s different timbres, ranging from percussive scratches to spectral harmonics. The subtle adjustments of bow position and pressure that Saariaho called for allowed Koh to reveal the richness of overtones contained within each note. Next was the fidgety, angular Fantasy by American composer Elliott Carter, who died two weeks ago, followed by Lachen verlernt (“Laughter unlearnt”) by Saariaho’s countryman Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). This anguished, cathartic work was written in Bach-inspired chaconne form, which tied it to the evening’s final piece. Koh closed with Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor, crowned by its monumental last movement, an emotionally and intellectually intense chaconne that is a violinist’s Everest. Koh’s fiery technique was a perfect match for the work’s challenges, and she gave it a memorable performance.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Adriana Mater

For more background information on this opera, see my preview article on Adriana Mater.

Monica Groop (Adriana, below) and Pia Freund (Refka, above) in Adriana Mater, directed by Peter Sellars, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

On Saturday night, the Santa Fe Opera extended its distinguished history of presenting new operas to American audiences, with the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's second opera, Adriana Mater. Earlier that morning, at a symposium on the opera, the composer, librettist Amin Maalouf, and director Peter Sellars spoke about the opera and its third production (after the world premiere in Paris and a production at the Finnish National Opera this spring). The Santa Fe theater required some adjustments, to George Tsypin's luminous sets, to the casting, and especially to the orchestration, which had to be reduced in numbers of strings and other instruments. Even so, the opera lost little of its emotional punch, unfolding in a steady, purling flow, tidal, glacial, pulsatingly quiescent. There will be more to say about the work itself after a second hearing tonight [see my Final Thoughts on the 2008 Season].

The libretto by Amin Maalouf is set in a village before and after a devastating war. No nationality or location is specified, and the enemy force that threatens is identified only as les autres, the others. The character names and other minor details make the Serbian-Bosnian conflict the likely background (something confirmed by Maalouf), but the idea is that the story could easily be imagined in any number of wartorn areas. (Maalouf, raised in French Catholic schools in his native Lebanon, has lived in France since the 1970s and writes in French: so the themes of homelessness and civil strife have a background in Lebanon, too.) George Tsypin's sets, made of sculpted resin, glow with light like burning embers or reflect it like dull metal or stone, recalling the domes of mosques or Eastern Orthodox churches. In the second act, most of the village walls have been reduced to rubble, the only real reference to the warfare that has occurred in the time elapsed between the rape of the central character, Adriana, and the birth of her son, Yonas.

Monica Groop (Adriana) and Pia Freund (Refka) in Adriana Mater, sets by George Tsypin, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

War and violence are told only through the interactions of four characters: a soldier, Tsargo, rapes a woman, Adriana, who confides in her sister, Refka, and gives birth to the soldier's son, Yonas. The son discovers that his father is not a war hero, as his mother told him when he was growing up, but a rapist and murderer. When the rapist returns to the village at the end of his life, the son confronts him and threatens to kill him. (The question of paternal identity is also at the center of the recent film set in Sarajevo, Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams.) A faceless chorus comments from the pit, amplified at Santa Fe, as are all the principal singers, mostly repeating words or phrases sung by the characters, as well as singing on neutral syllables and occasionally introducing their own words. At the symposium, Saariaho said definitively about the chorus, "They are not persons. They color the orchestra, continuing some of the lines." As Peter Sellars sees them, she added, "they are like spirits in the village."

Monica Groop (Adriana), Matthew Best (Tsargo), Pia Freund (Refka), and Joseph Kaiser (Yonas) in Adriana Mater, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

As Adriana, mezzo-soprano Monica Groop was eloquent, still, and richly voiced, although many of the lowest parts of the role trailed off into shouted speech. As Adriana's sister, Refka, soprano Pia Freund, struggling with a cold, was less beautiful in sound, but just as dramatically convincing. Both women, who are Finnish, sounded less than idiomatic in French, although the sense of alienation from language is not necessarily inappropriate, and both were occasionally covered in louder orchestral passages, despite the amplification. Matthew Best's Tsargo had a growly menace, both pathetic and threatening, although in the first scene he did not appear as a young man (as Peter Sellars put it at the symposium and the libretto indicates). The young Canadian tenor, Joseph Kaiser, was also suffering from a cold but recovered on opening night to give a dramatic and heroic rendition of the high-lying part of Yonas, Adriana's son. Their embrace of reconciliation at the end of the opera, beginning with just putting their heads on the other's shoulder, was a striking, emblematic moment.

Monica Groop (Adriana) and Joseph Kaiser (Yonas) in Adriana Mater, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

It was difficult not to regret that Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducted the opera's premiere, had been replaced by Ernest Martinez Izquierdo at the podium, first in Finland and now at Santa Fe. In his entertaining comments at the symposium, Peter Sellars made a point of stating that Izquierdo loves the score of Adriana and conducts with that love, adding wryly that love is not a word associated with what most conductors do (unless it has "self-" in front of it). Izquierdo certainly knows the score well and shaped it with delicacy and scope, keeping the extremely complicated structures aligned, allowing masses of sound to blossom and evaporate. The pace of the opera is slow and deliberate, mixing dream and reality in an almost indistinguishable way. More than once at the symposium, Peter Sellars used the image of a Byzantine altarpiece to describe how the libretto and music worked, with the characters removed from time and space, against a golden background.

Other Reviews: Craig Smith, ‘Adriana’ has plenty of depth, heft (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 28) Anthony Tommasini, Compassion, Not Revenge, After a Rape in a War Zone (New York Times, August 1) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera premieres arresting war story, 'Adriana Mater' (Dallas Morning News, August 1) Anne Midgette, Promising 'Adriana' Could Use a Drama Lesson (Washington Post, August 4) George Loomis, Adriana Mater, Santa Fe Opera (Financial Times, August 4)

Saariaho's compositional inclinations have included electronics and spectralism, the unfolding of dissonances around the central organizing principle of the overtone series. Some themes stood out over several hearings, especially a downward microtonal glissando, perhaps a sighing motif, that is repeated throughout the score. Downward half-steps, set sharply on the beat, also pervade the music, ultimately associated with the repeated singing of "J'aurais dû" (I should have), as the four characters all express regrets in the final scene. The rocking semitone pulses through the score until the final tableau, as mother and son embrace, and then resolves. Saariaho's sound is distinctive, although she turns to more or less standard atonal clusters, amassed in huge waves, to set the rape scene. Much more memorable are the softer washes of sound, especially as larger orchestral tutti passages vanish, to reveal the ping of a triangle, the rumble of contrabassoon or low brass, or the stray raindrops of celesta or the extensive battery of percussion.

For all of Saariaho's association with IRCAM and the French spectralists, it is the orchestral music of Sibelius that seems the most important influence. At more than a few points, as magisterial brass spiked their heads through the texture, similar moments in Sibelius's symphonies came to mind. The comparison puts me in mind of what Saariaho said about Adriana during the symposium, that it was the dream sequences she most relished, as they allowed her to turn her ear from the horrors of the story's oppressive reality. Noting that she has a complex dream life herself, Saariaho said that no matter how long she has lived in Paris, her dreams are always set in Finland.

Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater will be repeated at Santa Fe Opera on July 30 (tonight) and August 8 and 12.

Santa Fe Preview: Adriana Mater

By far, the most exciting event of the Santa Fe Opera season is the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's new opera, Adriana Mater. Santa Fe introduced American audiences to the extraordinary L'amour de loin, the Finnish composer's first opera, and it was naturally expected that she would return to New Mexico with her second. Saariaho was reunited with the "dream team" of L'amour de loin, librettist Amin Maalouf and director Peter Sellars, for a story that is as unlike that medieval romance as possible. Set in an unspecified country at war, the parallels with the Bosnian-Serbian conflict are overpowering, but its story of a woman being raped, giving birth to a child, and the inevitable chain of violence that follows that child is found, unfortunately, in many places.

The premiere of the opera at the Bastille was nearly scuttled, but fortunately only delayed by strikes. The critical reception of the premiere was mixed, with some very harsh criticism directed at the naive simplicity of the libretto, in particular. Alex Ross's review was generally positive, although he did note that Adriana "lacks the enveloping mystery that distinguishes L’Amour de Loin," noting especially the "standard" use of dissonance that "makes for a sullen first act, short on contrast." By happy circumstance, I was able to hear the Paris performance on a Canadian radio broadcast, which I wish I had been able to record.

You can learn more about Kaija Saariaho in this interview with David Patrick Stearns. In the last few years, she has received a staggering amount of prize money from American compositional awards: the 2008 Nemmers Prize ($100,000) -- she will be in a residency at Northwestern in January 2009 -- and the Grawemeyer Award in 2003 ($200,000). Most recently, she was named composer in residence at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, where she will be next month; a CD will be released in September. Musical America also named her Composer of the Year in 2008, and the Emerson Quartet has been playing her new piece for string quartet, Terra Memoria. It is likely that American audiences will be hearing more of her music in the coming years.

Happily, some of the Santa Fe cast comes from the Finnish National Opera production earlier this winter, including Monica Groop (Adriana) and Pia Freund (Refka). It will also feature the conductor from that performance, Ernest Martinez Izquierdo, although it is hard not to miss Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was at the podium in Paris. More thoughts on Adriana in the coming days.

Kaija Saariaho on Adriana Mater

TRANSLATION
I have a memory from when I was very little: it was in the evening, when I had gone to bed. I put my head down on the pillow, and I started to hear music. I thought it was coming from the pillow, and it was keeping me from going to sleep, so I asked my mother if she could turn off the pillow. It took a while for me to realize that I had music in my head, to express the need to learn how to write it down on paper.

A composition can begin in so many different ways. It can be a formal idea, it can be an atmosphere, but whatever it is, that very first idea, afterward I try to imagine the music. I imagine its atmosphere, I imagine its orchestration, and when I have something really sonorous in my mind, then I try to write it down.

The first thing about Adriana Mater came by chance, when I saw a performance with Amin Maalouf, who is the librettist, and in this performance, they were talking about motherhood. And that's when I said to Amin, if we ever make a second opera, I want us to make it about motherhood. You know, for me, when I was expecting my first child, when I understood in my heart -- in my body, that there were two hearts beating at the same time, that was for me an idea that really struck me.

I go through a lot in my music. I have been happy for a long time now because I found a way to express myself with music. Before that I was really miserable, and I don't know how my life will go from here. I have no other projects, except to try to make sure that I have enough time to write my music.

You can also hear Saariaho speaking English in this interview with The Guardian.

Emerson Quartet Plays Saariaho

The Emerson String Quartet presented a concert of their trademark high quality at the National Museum of Natural History Saturday night (reviewed exclusively by Ionarts), as part of the Smithsonian Resident Associates series. Back to a more standard programming format than last season’s Shostakovich half-cycle, the quartet offered works of Haydn, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952), and Beethoven. Saariaho’s Terra Memoria, dedicated to “those departed,” was premiered by the Emerson Quartet just last June at Carnegie Hall.

The one-movement work contains persuasive writing for string quartet. One heard the quartet performing mostly as one musical unit in this work, which is a testament to both the quartet’s vast experience as an ensemble and Saariaho’s precise compositional approach. Making one long phrase – perhaps a life-cycle – Terra Memoria held the interest of the audience by keeping a very delicate textural balance; its own musical eco-system, if you will. Often the four instruments would play in a kind of heterophony, when each player would begin on different notes and move in similar rhythmic and intervallic direction. One wonders if the National Museum of Natural History specifically requested the programming of this work, or if it was a striking coincidence. Place Nymphea (1987), Saariaho’s first work for string quartet, and her two operas -- L’Amour de loin (2000) and Adriana Mater (2006) -- on your listening lists.

Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major (op. 20, no. 2) came off blandly due to a lack of strong downbeat and the quartet’s regretful approach of emphasizing characterless long lines over interesting musical figures. Considering the intonation issues in the slower bits, perhaps only the more complex material was fully rehearsed. Beethoven’s first Rasumovsky string quartet (op. 59, no. 1) was full of character, optimism, and cunning. With seemingly perfect tempi, lots of punctuation, and even gradation of dynamics, the Beethoven was nothing but pleasing.

The next concert in the Emerson Quartet series at the National Museum of Natural History (December 9, 6 pm) features Beethoven's fourth quartet (op. 18, no. 4), a new quartet by Bright Sheng, and the third Brahms quartet. The latter features on their latest recording, of the Brahms quartets and the op. 34 piano quintet.

Pleåsure Nøise: Kaija Saariaho's Cello Works

K.Saariaho, Cello Works, A.Descharmes æon AECD 0637

The latest CD with the music of Kaija Saariaho features her complete works for cello, ranging from the 1988 Petals (on the Contemporary Music Forum concert next Sunday at the Corcoran) to the 2000 Sept Papillons. The best of modern classical music appeals immediately (on some level) while offering enough complexity and novelty to intrigue on any number of hearings. The litmus test to figure out if a new work meets this standard is successfully passed if the idea of giving the recording another, second or third, spin is not met with a cringe. Even when there is other music eagerly awaiting to be listened to. I’ve listened four times to the Saariaho disc – and duty was not the compelling force.

Categorization in contemporary classical music will more likely confuse than illuminate. But it is tempting to distinguish between the very different approaches of composers like Golijov, whose ambitious ethno-flavored classical popsicles have plenty of appeal (Ramírez and Sierra are less successful exemplars of that craft), and the explorative Romantics who dare to be authentic 21st-century composers (Benjamin C. S. Boyle, Nicholas Maw, Ned Rorem, Kaija Saariaho, David Del Tredici might be counted among those) without getting stuck in the trappings of austere academia (Milton Babbitt, Brian Ferneyhough, Lee Hoiby… name your favorites). Any of these, no matter the quality, will compare favorably to the type of schlock that masquerades as “classical music” and flows from the – miraculously unembarrassed – pens of Karl Jenkins, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Paul McCartney, John Rutter, Roger Waters… no better than an off-Broadway musical soundtrack, most of it.

The best approach to this heap of contemporary classical music is akin to the “Sister Wendy Museum touring method”: glance at it all but only stop at what intrigues (not necessarily pleases) you. Then spend time with that particular work, enter into a dialogue with it. Learn about the many different appeals of contemporary music. Like in painting or photography, it is often not the subject per se that is the attraction, not necessarily melody or harmony or even rhythms, but light and shade, texture, structure, vague evocations, games with time and sound (or silence) itself.

Modern music succeeds as an art for the public to the extent that the listener, not just the composer, his fellow composers, and that odd subset of the human species, musicologists, can follow these themes. One might go so far as to pin-point success in composition being a work that appeals through its aims, experiments, mood, and expression thereof: appeals because it employs a language that communicates its intent. If the intent is appeal itself, its success is at best that of a consumer product, not art. If the work is all intent, but unable to communicate, the composer ends up with something still-born, enjoyable only to him. Like a scientist who marvels at his latest creation – a flying, egg-laying, and fire-resistant hamster – may be proud studying his project’s superior genetic code but conveniently ignores the minor snag that these critters are invariably dead before hatching.

Dead, flying hamsters are admittedly a long way from Kaija Saariaho’s cello works. Take the excursion as a way of saying that this recording is no such chimera; that it contains music of the kind that makes you listen up, willingly joining for the journey, even if you can’t necessarily discern where the journey goes. Elsewhere I have described the impression as "grinding through stone, ageless sounds, crumpled paper, blown glass sculptures (some of them broken)." It isn’t important that beauty, in any conventional sense, is in short supply. (“Beauty,” as my favorite Celibidache quote goes, “is not the goal itself; it is the lure.”) Nor is it of consequence if you go away from “Près” (1992) noting the diligently coy development of “a trill between the cello’s B-flat and its 4th natural harmonic” or merely a curious “uh-huu.” Comprehension of underlying theory and techniques can help you appreciate modern music – but for the music’s ‘success’ it is not necessary that you do. Watch some of Fellini’s films and see if understanding necessitates enjoyment.

Join Saariaho’s Petals by not expecting anything in particular, and allow yourself to be enveloped and poked by strange, strangely familiar sounds of Alexis Descharmes’s cello receiving imaginative use and abuse, conventional manipulations like sul ponticello and sul tasto, which are then (optionally) modified by the electronic-musician/technician from IRCAM, David Poissonnier. Jérémie Fèvre adds his flute to Mirrors (1997) and Nicolas Baldeyrou his bass clarinet to Oi Kuu (1990).

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New York Vignettes

Taking the bus – any bus – from Washington, D.C., to New York is not the most dignifying experience, and it’s one of those things that just never get any better for trying it more often. That said, the slew of ‘Chinatown Buses’ that make this trip less expensive than a cab ride from D.C. to Alexandria have become fairly reliable, moderately punctual, and offer vehicles that meet all the basic hygiene standards that one could reasonably expect. A perennial drawback, however, is the unfortunate combination of opened lavatory doors and air-freshener, which invariably ends up smelling like someone fouled into a peach basket.

For years now I have been too lazy to fix my watch, so my time measures in units other than hours and minutes. From Downtown D.C. to the Holland Tunnel it takes two Shostakovich Symphonies No. 14 (Jansons, Rattle), one DSCH First (Rattle), one DSCH Third (Jansons), one complete Mahler Tenth (Inbal, Cooke II), and the Adagio of the same symphony (Gielen, Cooke III). By the time I seek timely shelter from the rain at the 24-hour Bagel Café on 87th and Broadway, the Gielen Tenth has whispered its last chords, too. A slice of mushroom pizza is of moderate quality by New York standards, but a delicacy compared to any and all such gustatory offerings available in D.C. after midnight. I only wish the drum beats were more muffled in Gielen’s last movement. Even if he and Inbal don’t exaggerate as much as Rattle or Sanderling (not even blunted, there), does anyone, apart from Barshai, get them quite right?

K.Saariaho, Cello Music Aeon UK | DE | FR

The gritty cello music of Kaija Saariaho – grinding through stone, ageless sounds, crumpled paper, blown glass sculptures (some of them broken) – befits a grey and misty day in New York and keeps my interest from 97th/Broadway all the way to Lincoln Center. Once there, a trip to Tower’s classical department is de rigueur. Even a quick visit would convince the most ardent apostles of Internet shopping that “store vs. Net” is not an either/or proposition but that the two are completely different experiences, both with advantages. The former, at its best, is a near-sensual event. Seeing and holding a CD, glancing (you can’t “glance” on the Internet - and even skimming through a few hundred titles would take hours) at a thousand different titles just strolling through the aisles. Getting into spontaneous discussions about Ferenc Fricsay and Clifford Curzon or the merits of Strauss’s Intermezzo and then eyeing a disc never seen in a store before... All those are experiences that underline the importance of good record stores in markets that can sustain them.

Boulez, Parsifal DG UK | DE | FR Lohengrin, Kubelik DG UK | DE | FR

Sure enough, a few gems not available in any other store in the U.S. – nor easily gotten, much less ‘stumbled upon’ on-line – caught my eye. Since I can’t resist a new Wagner recording any better than Christopher Lowell fabulous-exotic window-dressings, I had to satisfy my urges on the spot: either with Kubelik’s studio Lohengrin with James King, Gwyneth Jones, Karl Ridderbusch, and Thomast Stewart on DG (made at the same time as his never-officially-released-on-DG Meistersinger and Parsifal) or Pierre Boulez’s 1970 Parsifal (also on DG, also with James King, Gwyneth Jones, Karl Ridderbusch, and Thomas Stewart). In part because I’d rather hear the composer’s than the armor-clad Heldentenor’s swansong after two recent Lohengrin DVD releases (review forthcoming) I opted for Parsifal. Gladly so: Gwyneth Jones in ’70 is a most pleasant surprise as Kundry. Franz Crass – he also booms himself into the unsuspected spotlight as Kubelik’s Pogner – is even more impressive (i.e., loud), if not as nuanced, than Hotter and Moll. The music glitters away moonlit rather than sun-drenched, and the pacing is so natural that only the best Knappertsbusch recordings rival it (despite a 40- to 50-minute difference between the two conductors’ interpretations). It is the perfect antidote to those who had to suffer through the cloyingly sweet and uncomprehending Gergiev performance in D.C. last year, or the elongated professional stickiness that is Levine’s Parsifal at every outing.

“Making more of Me – that’s why I go to NYU” can be read on the ads on the subway. For anyone in the New York region who wishes to engage in “Continuing and Professional studies,” this must be tempting. Except, well... one wonders about the strength of their English department.

Wolf Songs, Bostridge / Pappano EMI UK | DE | FR Wolf Songs, Güra / Schultsz Harmonia Mundi UK | DE | FR

I can’t think of a work any less “New York” than Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. Espresso-fueled and with the 57 Street Station exit spitting out and swallowing up people right in front of my nose, Gerontius’s melancholic, confident, consoling, beautiful, and utterly lukewarm oratorio is something for greener pastures. I’ll gladly watch a lonely cow lick her brown spots and swat flies with her tail. But city buzz is alien to it. David Rendall, the tenor on the new Colin Davis recording (LSO Live 0083) isn’t doing anything that might overcome a tame, indifferent feeling to it all.

Dream of Gerontius, Sir Colin Davis LSO Live UK | DE | FR

Of Davis’s only advantage over the stalwart Boult and Barbirolli recordings (EMI, both) – Anne Sofie von Otter’s immeasurably pleasing voice – there is too little to merit getting excited about this release. Expulsion from the CD player is the consequence. Enter Ian Bostridge in Wolf songs with Antonio Pappano earning his keep on the piano. Wolf / Mörike (add a little Goethe and Eichendorff) befit the city better than Elgar. In Wolf Bostridge is his typical self: if you know his Schumann and Schubert, you know what you get and you know whether you will like it or not. I do, but prefer Werner Güra. Off to Mostly Mozart’s curtain call… and then Louis Langrée’s symphonies washed down with an (overpriced) Kronenbourg 1664 at L’Express at Gramercy.

The nature and character of New York more than any other town I know is its constant change. Still, we bemoan the loss of favorite places or the character of a neighborhood as we once knew it fading. Columbus Circle has for some time been a glitzy affair, and the grit of the surrounding blocks is fast giving way to a clean, kempt, tourist- and business-friendly environment. The dark ‘piano seller’ cross-streets are still there, but I am dismayed at the exodus of a small, un-noteworthy Café-Restaurant-Bar half a block from the circle: “Cosmic.” A stone’s throw from the polished chrome and glass of the Times Warner Center sat this near-dingy hangout with mediocre espresso, decent burgers, cheap coffee, and cheaper soup. I have spent (and killed) many budget-friendly hours in one of its little wooden booths waiting for a performance at Lincoln Center or Merkin Hall or the Times Warner Center’s performance spaces – scribbling away wildly into little notebooks and emerging, caffeine-buzzed, with that slightly wily determination that besets out-of-towners when they start feeling like a “real New Yorker.” You can still read the faint letters “Cosmic” on the black façade where its sign once was. Next year it might be a bustling Starbucks. A Venti Java Chip Frappucino^© Blended Coffee ($4.75) just around the corner.

See also "New York Soundtrack"
or "Paris in Passing"