Critic’s Notebook: Alexandre Tharaud's Debut in Vienna

Also reviewed for DiePresse: Ein Oktopus hätte das nicht besser spielen können

A naughty-but-fitting local bon-mot in Austria's capital goes like this: “World famous in Vienna”. But because the arts scene in Vienna can tend to be complacent and enough unto itself, an inversion of it can be true, too, which is more frustrating still: "World famous outside Vienna". This recital might just have changed that for at least one artist, hitherto ignored at the local music-lovers’ peril.

It’s been entirely too long since I last heard Alexandre Tharaud in recital. 13 years, apparently. Alas, the long time ionarts-favorite, while enjoying a major career in most of the rest of the world, is still a neglected, little-known entity in German-speaking countries. It was telling that his recital at the Wiener Konzerthaus last Sunday was his solo-recital premiere in Vienna.

On the upside, that way it was still possible to hear the undisputed grandmaster of the small form in the Konzerthaus’ gorgeous, ideally suited mid-size Mozart Hall (when they get too popular, economics eventually dictate a move to the Great Hall), where he performed a program ideally suited to show off his skills. A selection of all-French miniatures, from Couperin to Ravel by way of Debussy and Satie. It is especially in the baroque works, be it Bach, Rameau, Couperin, or Scarlatti, where Tharaud has always been an incomparable interpreter, combining incredible playfulness with wonderful pianism, spark and wit with an air of liberation – but without expressing the extreme wilfulness of, say, a Tzimon Barto or Anton Batagov. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) If “Les Barricades mysérieuses” was a study in fluidity and clever, almost disorienting agogics, yet as crystal clear as a mountain brook, his attack elsewhere was like that of a starved hen picking at a particularly fat worm. “Carillon de Cythère” rang brightly from the Steinway, with the left hand steady as the clapper of a bell while a carillon accompanied its big sister in the right hand. All that drollery and cheek was enough to cause involuntary smiles.

tic toc choc F.Couperin Alexandre Tharaud Harmonia Mundi

M.Ravel Piano Concertos Alexandre Tharaud ONF, Louis Langrée Erato

His Debussy, six preludes from Book 1, was at least as varied, from nervous frippery to thunderous exclamations, hectic here, pensive there. Everything – except the pastel-colored impressionist cliché. When the first notes of the second half rang out, a lady behind exclaimed excitedly to her friend: “I know that one!”. The friend replied: “Me, too!”. It was established: They knew that one – the popular and memorable first of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. They probably also had heard some of the Gnossiennes before, those semi-precious jewels that so charmingly straddle the realm of Muzak and genius, minimalism and all-out romanticism, lowbrow and highbrow. That’s exactly how Tharaud makes them sound, too, with his supreme care, phrasing, and ever-present dash of irreverence.

Ravel to bring the curtain down: First À la manière de Chabrier, a little throw-away curtain raiser for the Pavane, which is – at least as per the later, self-disapproving Ravel, also, but involuntarily, “à la manière de Chabrier”... though really just a sweetly charming treat. Twenty years later, Ravel was more in the mood for sweet poison than honey – and accordingly laced his Viennese-esque La Valse just so. Tharaud performed his own transcription (as had Ravel himself, Glenn Gould, and probably several others) and it was a hoot. A few bitter, dark notes early on showed that this wasn’t going to end well, waltz-wise, but as far as the recital was concerned, it brought the house down. Hands were flying about, lusty glissandosi slid up and down, crashing exclamation marks exploded, deliciously hesitant grace notes rang out. All that was missing at the end, for a flourish, was for Tharaud to smash the piano shut. Bach & Piaf as encores rewarded an excited, sizeable crowd, which will all turn out again when Tharaud comes back to town.

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Photo © Manuel Chemineau

Ionarts-at-Large: The 2018 Pärnu Music Festival

Pärnu Music Festival

Paavo Järvi & EFO At Pärnu Music Festival 2018 – © IMZ Media

In sunny-summery Pärnu, on Estonia’s south western coast, it is possible to wade through the Baltic Sea one moment, and thirty minutes later sit in the concert hall with sand still between your toes, and enough time left to crane your neck to get a better look at Estonia’s Who’s-Who, all present among the audience assuming they aren’t conducting the concert in question. In this case, on August 8^th, at the Estonian Festival Orchestra’s concert under Paavo Järvi, those included Neeme Järvi, paterfamilias of the conducting clan, Arvo Pärt (at a sprightly 82 years still hopping – well, clambering – up the stage after his Third Symphony), and the splendid Erkki-Sven Tüür.[1] Also present: the slightly less well known Jüri Reinvere, whose And tired from Happiness… (“Und müde vom Glück”) received its premiere, and Tõnu Kõrvits, who was handed the Lepo Sumera Award for Composition before Järvi gave that night’s first upbeat at Pärnu Concert Hall.

Said hall has a pill-shaped layout, slightly raked orchestra seating and a balcony that goes 370° round all the way – except for a spot stage-right, where two immense 20-foot doors loom over the orchestra. Judging from a third back among the orchestra seats, it has a fine, accurate acoustic, not conducive to loud volumes and a little on the dry side. That proved a good environment to hear finely articulated strings and the clear woodwinds in Arvo Pärt’s Third Symphony, “his most popular to date, [which] makes a charismatic point of [the composer’s] then-newly won melodiously religious sentiment by quoting Gregorian chant amid all the other well-known Pärt contraptions”[2]. It also made the music appear as blocks of music (somewhere between Gabrieli and Bruckner), only reasonably seamlessly fused to form a gratifying whole. Strangely dampened, the Symphony ended up very much a low-octane affair for a concert opener.

The contrast was made more overt by Jüri Reinvere’s wham-bam And tired from Happiness… that opened the second half. The stage filled up to the brim with musicians, instigating the immediate thought: ‘Good luck getting that performed again!’ Then again, he may be onto something: Subsidized orchestra-musicians all over Europe need to work to satisfy the politicians that judge an orchestra’s success by how efficiently the total amount of players were used throughout the year. Never mind that this amounts to a penalty on performing Haydn and Mozart or anything else benefiting from a smaller ensemble – and skews the game in favor of the big romantics and beyond. If you have a harp and tuba and contra-bassoonist on your payroll, you have better use ‘em! Well, Jüri Reinvere does.

Pretty neatly, too: The faintly Wagner-ish “Schatten im Spiegel” movement glides and swells along pleasantly, fully harmonic (you’d scarcely expect anything else from an Estonian composer these days), with transitions that veered between Brucknerian and awkward. The long rising accumulative energy generated the thrill that the Pärt had denied. The mildly pretentious German movement titles can’t distract from that. The clusters are harmless. The string pizzicatos, accentuated by the [continue reading]

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Peter Donohoe, Ravel, and his Spellchecker

Spell check is happy to accept Gaspard de la Nuit, but the 3 movements become:
1. Online
2. Les Giblets
3. Scarborough

— Peter Donohoe CBE (@PeterHDonohoe) November 8, 2017

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CD Reviews: Carolyn Sampson

Charles T. Downey, Recording reviews: A limpid soprano’s chance to soar
Washington Post, February 3

A Verlaine Songbook, C. Sampson, J. Middleton (released on November 18, 2016) BIS-2233 | 80'

Carolyn Sampson is known for her radiant performances of baroque music, having recorded widely with the world’s leading early-music ensembles. The British soprano’s voice combines limpid clarity with laser-focused precision, but with any possible harsh edges softened in a smooth finish. It is also beautifully suited to the corrupt delicacies of late Romantic French mélodie, as demonstrated in Sampson’s recent song recital recording on the BIS label, with the accomplished pianist Joseph Middleton.

All of the songs here are settings of poetry by Paul Verlaine. Some of the early works were inspired by Verlaine’s love for Mathilde Mauté, the young girl with the “Carolingian name,” as he put it in his collection “La Bonne Chanson,” set as a cycle by Gabriel Fauré. Verlaine married Mathilde, but not long after she had borne him a son, he ran off with a young poet named Arthur Rimbaud. Their scandalous love affair provided much of the material for his collection “Romances sans paroles,” including the poems set by Debussy in a set called “Ariettes oubliées.” After time in prison, Verlaine ran off again with Lucien Létinois, a 17-year-old student at the Jesuit school where Verlaine taught.

Multiple composers have composed songs on the same Verlaine poems, which makes for interesting comparison of musical settings. Sampson pairs Debussy's “Fêtes galantes” with songs on poems from the same collection by Poldowski, the nom de plume of Belgian-born pianist Régine Wieniawski. Individual songs by other composers, including Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Charles Bordes and Reynaldo Hahn, round out a most attractive program. Songs such as Déodat de Séverac's “Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit” and Josef Szulc's “Clair de Lune” are major discoveries.

Throughout, Sampson produces an elegant ribbon of sound, couched in refined French pronunciation, that can hang in the air — for instance, a long, exquisitely soft high G at the end of Chausson's “Apaisement.” The only minor setback is that when pushed to louder dynamics, Sampson’s voice loses some of its satiny quality, turning strident, but this is rare in the songs here.

***

Mozart, Great Mass in C Minor / Exsultate jubilate, Carolyn Sampson, Olivia Vermeulen, Makoto Sakurada, Christian Imler, Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki (released on December 9, 2016) BIS-2171 | 65'52"

When Masaaki Suzuki reached the end of his epic traversal of Bach’s sacred cantatas with Bach Collegium Japan, he turned to Mozart. The Japanese conductor's authoritative recording of Mozart's Requiem was one of my favorite discs of 2015, and opened up a new line of specialization for his ensemble beyond the music of its namesake. Shortly after its release, Suzuki conducted another Mozart Mass, the “Great” C minor, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in an astounding performance. Now, his recording of this work, with Bach Collegium Japan, is out on the BIS label.

It was hoped that Suzuki’s Requiem was the start of a recorded reexamination of Mozart’s music for the Catholic church. Mozart left the “Great” C minor Mass, like his Requiem, unfinished; he began it in Vienna as a complete setting of the Latin Ordinary but performed only parts of it on a honeymoon visit to Salzburg, Austria, with his wife, Constanze, in 1783. Suzuki has used the musicologist Franz Beyer’s careful reconstruction of the score, and the relevant historical details are laid out in a superlative booklet essay by Christoph Wolff.

Suzuki takes the opening “Kyrie” at a most satisfying, slow, grand tempo, like a dignified, crisply organized funeral march. The “Qui tollis” section of the “Gloria” has an equally cathedral-filling sound from both chorus and orchestra.

Mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen, tenor Makoto Sakurada and bass Christian Imler ably take their parts in the quartet of vocal soloists. The star of this score, though, is the first soprano, a part written for and premiered by Mozart’s wife. It seems tailor-made for Carolyn Sampson. In the extended showpiece “Et incarnatus est” in the “Credo,” she interweaves her immaculate soprano with the intricate woodwind lines, sweet and tender.

Rounding out the recording is Mozart’s famous cantata “Exsultate, jubilate,” from a decade earlier, although here Sampson’s fast runs are not quite pristine. As a lagniappe, Suzuki has added Mozart’s slightly revised version of the first movement — more a curiosity than an absolute necessity.

Quirky, Failed 'Firebird' with NSO

Firebird, directed by Janni Younge (photo by Luke Younge, Lucid Pictures)
The so-called "heat dome" that has settled over most of the country made the prospect of an outdoor concert on Saturday night not so pleasant. Fans and programs fluttered furiously at the Filene Center, but few breezes came to cool the air at Wolf Trap for the latest concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. Featuring the much-anticipated return of Handspring Puppet Company, last in Washington for a slightly weird Midsummer Night's Dream with the Bristol Old Vic and for Warhorse before that, this concert was a disappointment for many reasons, the main one being the poorly amplified sound.

This adaptation of Stravinsky's Firebird, on the second half, required a large space at the front of the stage. As a result, in both halves the NSO was crammed into the extreme rear of the stage. For most NSO concerts in this admittedly dreadful acoustic, inside the theater one hears mostly natural sound. In this arrangement the only sound that really came out to the house was through the speakers, and it was like listening to an ancient transistor radio in the garage. Neither conductor Cristian Măcelaru nor the musicians, even if they had monitors to hear the sound produced by the speakers, could calibrate balances in the same way they do with live sound. In the first movement of Prokofiev's first symphony ("Classical"), that lightly tripping second theme in the violins was so delicate as to be almost inaudible, while the bassoon theme that accompanied it, more closely miked, was far more prominent. The finale, with its panoply of moving parts, was reduced to mush by amplification best suited to loud, not particularly nuanced types of music. The suite from Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye, although beautifully played (I would guess), fared no better.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, “Firebird” at Wolf Trap proves long on statement, short on puppets (Washington Post, July 25) Peter Dobrin, At the Mann Center, a Firebird that soars (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 21)

Abstract music can be adapted to a ballet for which it was not created, as choreographer Mark Morris has shown again and again. When the music was created specifically to tell a different story, the challenges are much greater. This was the problem faced by this new South African Firebird, directed by Janni Younge and with choreography by Jay Pather. It could have succeeded in the way that the South African Magic Flute by Isango Ensemble, seen in 2014 at the Shakespeare Theater, did. Unfortunately, rather than gently pull Stravinsky and Fokine's story into a new shape, the director substituted a completely different one, not really having anything to do with the contours of Stravinsky's music.

The previous times we have seen Handspring creations, the troupe has augmented a story already fully developed by others. Here, the burden of narrating fell entirely to them, and it was overburdened and ineffective. Mostly, the director was trying to tell too many stories simultaneously, with dancing, not always seeming related to the music, competing with the puppets, mostly in the last ten minutes or so, and busy animations (created by Michael Clark). The video was projected on an object hanging over the stage, which looked something like a dirigible but turned out to be the largest puppet of them all, and a rather unwieldy one at that. Ballet is in many ways the total art form (pace Richard Wagner), with a visual element merged with an auditory one. My eyes focused almost entirely on the dancers, ignoring the video projection, so much of the story, reportedly about the history of post-Apartheid South Africa, passed me by. The NSO played well, through the veil of amplification, giving a sense of mystery to the additions to the score by Daniel Eppel.

This article has been edited to make a necessary correction.

Briefly Noted: Grimaud's 'Water'

Water, H. Grimaud (released on January 29, 2016) DG 0289 4793426-4 | 57'03"

Hélène Grimaud was last in Washington in 2008, to play Beethoven's fourth piano concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra. This recent release is partially a live recital program on the theme of water in music, which she played in several places, captured here at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in 2014. In between these tracks -- by Berio, Takemitsu, Fauré, Albéniz, Ravel, Liszt, Janáček, and Debussy -- are ethereal "transition" pieces, recorded last summer by Nitin Sawhney. In these brief, mostly electronic pieces, Sawhney creates soundscapes on keyboard, guitar, and computer, including some pre-recorded sounds of water.

The live version of this recital, reviewed in the New York Times, sounds much more interesting than the result on disc. A collaboration with artist Douglas Gordon and lighting designer Brian Scott, the concert was staged in a pool that slowly filled with water over the course of 20 minutes: "Then, the lights darkened until the hall was almost completely dark. You heard the subdued sloshing of someone walking on the flooded space: Ms. Grimaud, of course." Some of the repertoire choices are perhaps too obvious (Ravel's Jeux d'eau, Liszt's Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este, Debussy's La Cathédrale Engloutie), making Grimaud's renditions of Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II and Berio's Wasserklavier stand out from the crowd. A Fauré barcarolle and Janáček's In the Mists seem like stretches thematically, especially when there are choices like Ravel's Ondine, Scriabin's second sonata, and Debussy's Poissons d'Or. That last one was reportedly Grimaud's encore at some performances.

NSO Semi-Pops

Weill, Die Sieben Todsünden (inter alia), L. Lenya

Charles T. Downey, From the NSO, a pops concert that fizzled
Washington Post, April 29

Pops concerts can be a lot of fun, but it is best to market them clearly as such. Thursday night’s concert by the National Symphony Orchestra was a pops concert in all but name, provoking a few grumbles at intermission and afterward about programming that was decidedly lightweight. It fell to American conductor James Gaffigan, last at the podium of the NSO in 2012, to conduct this somewhat underwhelming evening, and he did so capably but without distinction.

Ravel’s “La Valse” was the climax, a work that seemed overplayed and indeed was last heard from the NSO in 2014... [Continue reading]

National Symphony Orchestra
With Storm Large, Hudson Shad
Kennedy Center Concert House

SEE ALSO:
jfl, Ionarts at Large: Two Concertos for the Price of One!

Charles T. Downey, BSO and Lise de la Salle (Ionarts, February 18, 2012)

---, Gaffigan Keeps It Nice (Ionarts, January 20, 2012)

Michael Lodico, Weill and Ravel at the Castleton Festival (Ionarts, July 18, 2011)

CD Review: Slatkin's Ravel Double-Bill

Ravel, L'heure espagnole / Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, L. Lombardo, I. Druet, F. Antoun, Orchestre National de Lyon, L. Slatkin (released on February 12, 2016) Naxos 8.660337 | 55'40"

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: Slatkin turns to France
Washington Post, April 15

When Leonard Slatkin’s tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra came to an end in 2008, he became music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; in 2011-12, he also assumed the leadership position at the Orchestre National de Lyon. Almost immediately, he inaugurated a series of live recordings with his French ensemble, focused on music by French composers, for the Naxos label. The latest discs in his Ravel set are devoted to the composer’s two one-act operas, most recently his charming but rarely heard 1911 comedy “L’heure espagnole.”

The rich-toned mezzo-soprano Isabelle Druet is a seductive, sometimes acidic Concepción, the cheating wife of the clockmaker Torquemada, played by the light-voiced tenor Luca Lombardo. She schemes with Don Iñigo Gomez, sung with oily smoothness by the bass Nicolas Courjal, to get her husband the job of winding the municipal clocks, which gets him out of the house regularly...

[Continue reading]

Julia Bullock @ Vocal Arts

L. Bernstein, West Side Story, J. Bullock (inter alii), San Francisco Symphony, M. Tilson Thomas (Chandos, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Julia Bullock shows almost any song can soar in her capable vocal cords (Washington Post, April 20)

The recital by Julia Bullock, presented by Vocal Arts D.C. in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Monday evening, had many things going for it. The American soprano had a winning stage presence, a diverse and eclectic program, and a crackerjack musical partner in pianist Renate Rohlfing. It was easy to see why she has become the darling of many critics.

Bullock’s sparkly persona went a long way in selling experimental songs by Henry Cowell and John Cage. The former’s “How Old Is Song?” had Rohlfing directly strumming and plucking the piano strings like the harp of Orpheus, and in the latter’s “She is Asleep,” Bullock’s primordial, wordless vocalise was accompanied by the unexpected percussive sounds of Rohlfing’s piano. Bullock excelled when she had a character to incarnate, most vividly in a set of half-spoken cabaret songs by Kurt Weill and when she felt a connection to music “that is authentic to me,” as she put it. William Grant Still’s “Breath of a Rose” was gorgeous, as were two prayerful arrangements of spirituals by Hall Johnson and Harry T. Burleigh. She could even charm when singing texts that were basically nonsensical, like Cowell’s “Because the Cat” and Samuel Barber’s “Nuvoletta.”

In the other art songs on the program, her voice sounded less natural, heavy at the bottom and slightly strained at the top, with an intensely fluttering vibrato that sometimes caused the intonation to sag flat. In Ravel’s charming “Cinq melodies populaires grecques,” her swagger in the male-voiced songs “Quel galant m’est comparable” and “Tout gai!” was a hoot, but her voice did not lift effortlessly off the ground in the others, nor in a set of Scandinavian songs by Wilhelm Stenhammar and Edvard Grieg.

Julia Bullock, soprano
Renate Rohlfing, piano
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Sarah Bryan Miller, Soprano Julia Bullock gives a virtuoso recital (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31)

---, Soprano Julia Bullock returns to her hometown with a recital (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 27)

Shanghai Quartet @ Fortas

Ravel / Bridge, String Quartets, Shanghai Quartet (Delos, 2001)

Charles T. Downey, Shanghai Quartet brings an esoteric piece to life
Washington Post, November 13

At the margins of the chamber music repertory are a few esoteric pieces, rarely heard because they call for strange combinations of instruments. One such work, Ernest Chausson’s Concert in D for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, was the climax of a performance featuring the Shanghai String Quartet on Wednesday evening in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. It’s the sort of programming that the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series, representing a niche within a niche, should be doing.

Pianist Joseph Kalichstein and violinist Jaime Laredo, members of the Fortas resident chamber ensemble trio, opened the concert... [Continue reading]

Shanghai String Quartet
With Jaime Laredo (violin) and Joseph Kalichstein (piano)
Fortas Chamber Music Concerts
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Shanghai Quartet shows dedication to new music in Freer Gallery of Art concert (Washington Post, March 1, 2014)

Beauty Over Power: Herbert Schuch at the Kennedy Center

We welcome this review from Ionarts guest contributor Seth Arenstein.

Invocation (Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, Murail), H. Schuch (Naïve, 2014)

Washington Performing Arts President and CEO Jenny Bilfield rang in the 49th season of the Hayes Piano Series with a Saturday afternoon recital at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater centered on musical evocations of bells. While compositions from Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, and Murail provided bell-like sounds, as did Busoni and Bauer arrangements for piano of J.S. Bach vocal works, it was the young pianist Herbert Schuch whose sensitive touch and gorgeously subdued playing rang out this day. Yet Schuch’s playing was anything but loud. During this recital, the Romanian-born Schuch brought forth subtle colors from the piano, without the quicksilver technique and sheer power that seem to be hallmarks of many of today’s most popular young pianists.

From the opening of the program, Tristan Murail’s Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire, Murail's homage to his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, Schuch began building a quiet, mesmerizing line of music that lasted nearly one hour, through two more works: selections from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S. 173, and Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale prelude Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639. The subtle wave lasted in part because Schuch played with barely a pause between the compositions, never leaving the piano bench.

By failing to announce that the works were to be performed en masse, Schuch and WPA took a risk that the Hayes audience would appreciate this uncommon practice and be able to follow along. While some audience members undoubtedly were puzzled, weaving the pieces together worked beautifully in an artistic sense. Schuch’s lyricism, displayed best during the Liszt, and his gorgeous control created a continuous, compelling tension until the Bach-Busoni’s final notes brought the first half to an end. It was as if Schuch had created a single, soft musical statement, despite playing pieces from various historical periods.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Herbert Schuch is a good pianist, but he inspires more questions than answers (Washington Post, October 19)

The second half was only slightly different. Again, Schuch performed his selections without a break, and the vast majority of his playing rarely rose above mezzo-piano. There was a moment of great contrast, however, as the dramatic Funerailles selection from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses began with loud, clanging bells and later depicted a battle, with trumpet calls and horses’ hooves pounding. Schuch had little trouble transitioning from an afternoon of subtle, pianissimo playing, sitting calmly erect on the piano bench, to moments in the Liszt, where he hunched over the keyboard to produce fortissimo chords. He did so with power and executed several fast glissandi runs with impressive accuracy.

Shortly after that, though, Schuch returned to the contemplative, soft playing that dominated the recital. He concluded with La vallée des cloches, a selection from Ravel’s Miroirs. A tone painting written on three staves, it depicts a variety of ringing bells, from heavy Parisian church bells to sweet, hand-held bells. At one point Schuch crossed his left hand over his right, to flick two small bells.

The piano recitals continue later this month, when Washington Performing Arts presents András Schiff (October 26) and Evgeny Kissin (October 28).

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.

Ionarts-at-Large: End-of-the-World-Music in Vienna

Within a few days, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian State Orchestra (the opera’s orchestra) pitched their tents at the Musikverein in Vienna. I caught the second of those two concerts, with the Opera’s orchestra under their music director Kirill Petrenko, because I had to! It featured Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique, but that wasn’t the reason. It opened with Ravel’s La Valse (Poème chorégraphique pour Orchestre), but that wasn’t the reason either. But in the middle lured a tremendous work: Gesangsszene to words from “Sodom and Gomorrha” by Jean Giraudoux for Baritone and Orchestra by Karl Amadeus Hartmann. (More Hartmann on ionarts here.) Not only that, but with the best possible baritone in that repertoire, too: namely Christian Gerhaher (More Gerhaher on ionarts here). That’s unmissable in my book – and everything else is mere bonus.

La Valse was a fine such bonus to start with: As the first low notes emerged, the upper strings just barely broke through to the surface, which made the work—buzzing, droning, pulsating—all the more strange than it already is. It was woodwind eeriness, and the harmlessness of the waltz theme was hard to trust. When the strings finally got there, and came to the fore at last, along with the battery of four harps, they didn’t revert to a pastoral naïveté, either: With transparency  and foreshadowing and every timpani burst ever more threatening, the orchestra inexorably waltzed along to the ensuing final, perplexing stage… fooling no one along the way. Typical Kirill Petrenko, one might say, and a nicely disturbing opening.

Hartmann was the student of Anton Webern, an admirer of Arnold Schoenberg, and a liberal quoter from Alban Berg, but he was anything but a mindless disciple of the 12-tone cult: “Those who compose slavishly in acquiescent dependency on tone rows can certainly crank their bits out at a nice clip. But… you cannot just skirt the burden of tradition by replacing old forms with new ones. We have to accept that our path has become more difficult than that of our great idols before us.” Hartmann consequently developed a musical voice that makes him one of great if lamentably unsung composers of the 20th century.

K.A.Hartmann, Gesangsszene et al., K.A.Rickenbacher, Bamberger Symphoniker, S.Nimsgern Koch H.Berlioz et al., Symphonie Fantastique, M.Jansons, BRSO BR Klassik

Hartmann wrote his very last, unfinished work—the deeply pessimistic, apocalyptic Gesangsszene—for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. It was premiered a year after Hartmann died in 1963. It is uncomfortable listening, disturbing and stirring, relentless, but with glimpses even of conventional beauty amid the ruins. Fischer-Dieskau remained loyal to Hartman’s swansong and, between the premiere and 1987, performed it twenty times all over Europe. The premiere performance under Dean Dixon never made it from LP to CD, but recordings with the Bavarian and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestras led by Rafael Kubelik (Wergo) and Lothar Zagrosek (Orfeo) respectively let us eavesdrop on this bitter parting gift of Hartmann’s for which Fischer-Dieskau’s controlled urgency is apt.

If the performance with Petrenko and Gerhaher sounded very, very different from Dieskau’s attempt (especially with Kubelik), it’s because Gerhaher, unlike the albeit poignant Dieskau, opted to sing the work as written, not just an approximation thereof. The review of the concert in Munich promised much. In fact, Egbert Tholl of the Süddeutsche Zeitung was so destroyed afterwards, he had to leave at intermission (and communicated this in the review). The clarinet and flute pre-lament, to get us set up properly. Then one becomes witness to the colorfully illustrated Sprechgesang/singing, always at the edge of what is either just still or already no longer comfortable Sew-saw, sew-saw… as through bone with a surgeons’ saw... followed by impotent exclamation marks. Silence. Gerhaher amidst this like a pale horse. And then the flute again, piping up as if to see if things might not have turned around. They have not. This is End-of-the-World-Music! It even says so. The last words are: “It is the End of the World. The saddest possible of them all!” Indeed. Tholl called Gerhaher’s role in this that of the “Evangelist of Doom”, and it’s right-on. Then Tholl went out into the night, alone. As I might have, even though I was missing a bit of that solemn focus I had expected and hoped for… either a product of my lacking concentration or the less than perfectly concentrated, incomprehensive surroundings in the Goldener Saal.

I stayed. But what can you play, after hearing Hartmann? Nothing, if you take it seriously… if you really took it in, if you made it your own. Anything, of course, if it was just music… more or less impressive, to be listened to, more or less, and then dutifully applauded; a prosecco at intermission, a chat with the Feldhubingers and, oh look, Dr. Waldner is here; we haven’t seen the Gugler’s in weeks, and Hello Herr Professor Doktor Geigerl, Frau Professor Doktor Geigerl. How was the week at Lake Hallstatt? Why, then it’s no problem at all continuing with Berlioz’ self-indulgent tone poem of many ownders… the showy, effective, and not universally loved Symphonie fantastique.

The performance: Amazing details, finely traced and with great dynamic control and dramatic execution thereof and playing that you’d expect from an AAA concert-orchestra on a good day, but not not necessarily from an A opera-orchestra like the Bavarian State Orchestra, Munich’s nominal No.3 (after the obvious No.1 BRSO and the fluctuation our-concerts-are-like-a-box-of-chocolate No.2 Munich Philharmonic). So far, so good. But the performance was also detailed to the point of disconnect and incoherence. Maybe “AAA”, but not my cup of tea. In any case, it was entirely nixed by a squeaking double-bass chair that would not stop adding its gruesome, unwanted sound to the mix. Strange that Petrenko didn’t stop after the first movement, to remedy the ill. But disconnect and squeak aside, the Symphonie fantastique is also a frightfully self-important work (even if Petrenko wanted to downplay exactly that aspect), and the contrast to the earnest humility of the Hartmann reveals this mercilessly. It’s not my favorite work to begin with (although the BRSO recording from last year got me very excited), and once one isn’t in the mood for this Symphony, it gets annoying and tedious really fast, however impressive the circumstances. No matter: No one can take the gloomy delight of Hartmann away from me. 

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Martin Kasík at Czech Embassy

Martin Kasík had his Washington debut in 2000, garnering a fine review for his Young Concert Artists-sponsored recital at the Kennedy Center, the same year he also played at 92nd Street Y in New York. The Czech pianist came back for a recital at the Strathmore Mansion in 2006, which I am sorry to have missed, based on the beauty of his playing on Wednesday night at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, presented by the Embassy Series. In the intervening years, Kasík has become an exceptional musician and, judging by this video, a talented teacher, even though I do not understand a word of Czech.

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Dominique Labelle at Dumbarton Oaks

Moments of Love, D. Labelle, Y. Wyner (Bridge Records, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Dominique Labelle masters a subtle style at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, March 17)

Canadian-born soprano Dominique Labelle gave a recital of sometimes frustrating contrasts on Sunday evening at Dumbarton Oaks. Some of her selections, mostly on the second half, showed her voice in its best light, with limpid and floating high notes, while others revealed musical struggles.

Both Labelle and her talented accompanist, the composer Yehudi Wyner, were at their best in Ravel’s enigmatic “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.” Here Wyner gave just enough sound to the rustling, often static harmonies of the keyboard part so that Labelle did not have to force her sound. The result was just the right amount of suggestive... [Continue reading]

Dominique Labelle (soprano) and Yehudi Wyner (piano)
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Gluck Sells out the Concert Hall (Ionarts, February 3, 2010)

Dutoit and the Suisse Romande

V. d'Indy, Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (inter alia), M. Helmchen, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, M. Janowski (PentaTone, 2011) [Review]

Charles T. Downey, Geneva orchestra at Kennedy Center shines with Debussy, Stravinsky (Washington Post, February 23)

When Charles Dutoit filled the leadership void at the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2008, he came to Washington for four consecutive years with that ensemble, always to great acclaim. On Saturday afternoon, Washington Performing Arts presented him again, this time with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, in a blockbuster concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

The orchestra from Geneva, which last visited Washington in 1989, shone immediately in Debussy’s “Ibéria”... [Continue reading]

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
With Charles Dutoit (conductor) and Nikolai Lugansky (piano)
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

PREVIOUSLY
Charles Dutoit: NSO 2009
With Philadelphia Orchestra: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Pintscher Debuts at NSO

To no one's surprise, the National Symphony Orchestra will not renew Christoph Eschenbach's contract as Music Director after the 2016-2017 season. The announcement came on the heels of more shocking podium news, principally that the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert are parting ways at the same time as Eschenbach and the NSO. Speculation ran rampant on Twitter as to what conductors around the world might be on New York's short list, and many of the same names might be on the wish list of Deborah Rutter, the new president of the Kennedy Center since last September. Such speculation, as entertaining as it can be, is nothing more than that, but one can peruse the list of guest conductors who have appeared with the NSO in recent years, and those will appear in the near future, to form a possible list.

With that in mind, the NSO debut of young conductor Matthias Pintscher was thrown into sharp relief last night. The relatively young German is also a composer, whose works have been heard in Washington a fair amount in recent years and who was introduced to the NSO by none other than Christoph Eschenbach. Pintscher's music, to my ears, is hit and miss, with fine and interesting efforts like the Hérodiade-Fragmente, heard from the NSO in 2010, alongside the rather dull violin concerto, Mar'eh, given its North American premiere last night. Pintscher is a first-rate orchestrator, and the new piece teems with unexpected sounds, but a half-hour of scratches and wisps of sound, no matter how intriguing, is a burden to most ears. It is the sort of writing that can be a slog for orchestral musicians: as a musician friend once said, it is "the kind of piece where you rest for 57 bars and then click your key pads on an offbeat." Violinist Karen Gomyo, heard with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra a few years ago, is not on the same level as Julia Fischer, for whom the work was created, but was up to the challenges of the solo part.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, At NSO, German composer leads French music — and his own (Washington Post, February 20) Kate Molleson, BBCSSO/Pintscher review – ardour at arm’s length (The Guardian, December 5, 2014) Anthony Tommasini, Philharmonic’s Contemporary Foray Ends, With a Promise of More (New York Times, June 8, 2014)

The rest of the program was devoted to late Romantic French music, a style that is a major influence on Pintscher's compositional voice. Pintscher serves as music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the band that Pierre Boulez built, and has made his name as a contemporary specialist. At the podium in Fauré's suite of incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande and Ravel's complete ballet score for Daphnis et Chloé, Pintscher helped to make some pretty, especially soft sounds but fell short of what one would hope for a music director in the canonical repertory.

In both pieces, different sections of the orchestra seemed at odds with each other here and there, especially in the irregular-meter sections of the Ravel, an ensemble deficiency that has to be attributed to Pintscher's beat, not always clear. (To hear music of this period at its best, go hear Charles Dutoit conduct examples by Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande tomorrow.) Individual contributions showed off the NSO's new-found strengths: silvery, low-set flute solos (including alto flute); strong oboe playing from both principal and associate principal players; the tremor-free sound of the horn in the Ravel. About sixty singers from the Washington Master Chorale did well with the thankless job of singing the wordless chorus parts, heard from offstage in the ballet as first choreographed by Michel Fokine (later also choreographed by Frederick Ashton).

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Matthew Polenzani Brightens My Day

Liszt, Songs, Vol. 1, M. Polenzani, J. Drake (Hyperion, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Polenzani’s singing and Drake’s piano playing create engaging performance (Washington Post, January 16, 2015)

At the end of a bad day, the combination of music and poetry in a well-executed song recital can lift one’s spirits like few other experiences.

The performance by Matthew Polenzani, presented on Wednesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater by Vocal Arts DC, was one such event. The American tenor, most familiar from his many appearances with the Metropolitan Opera, may not have the most innately beautiful voice, but his striking program with English pianist Julius Drake tickled both mind and ear... [Continue reading]

Matthew Polenzani (tenor) and Julius Drake (piano)
Vocal Arts D.C.
Music by Beethoven, Liszt, Ravel, Satie, and Barber
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Best Recordings of 2014 (#1)

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2014 (published in whole on Forbes.com). My lists for the previous years: 2013, 2012, 2011, (2011 – “Almost”), 2010, (2010 – “Almost”), 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 1 - New Release

Maurice Ravel / Modest Musorgsky, Ma Mère L’Oye / Pictures at an Exhibition, Anima Eterna Brugge, Jos van Immerseel (conductor), Zig Zag Territories 343

M.Ravel / M.Musorgsky, Ma Mère L’Oye / Pictures at an Exhibition, J.v.Immerseel / Anima Eterna Brugge Zig Zag Territories

Goose-Wonder, Picture-Revelation

Jos van Immerseel and his period performance band Anima Eterna Brugge (on Twitter) have never confined themselves to a specific period: Renaissance, baroque, classical and all kinds of romantic strands can be found in their concerts and discography. Their reputation as cobweb-annihilators is well deserved. Here they turn their attention to the romantic 20^th century with Ravel and Musorgsky. And how! The bird calls of violin and flute in Ravel’s Ma Mère L’Oye are so life-like, so outstanding that, sitting outside a Salzburg Café on first listening, I looked about me in astonishment before realizing the feathery friend’s chirp came out of my headphones.

Ravel’s instrumentation, fantastical and imaginative, comes to the fore like I have rarely heard on record, both here and in the accompanying Pictures at an Exhibition, which are light and colorful in a hitherto-unheard-of way and all the more smashing for it, when it counts. The woodwind work throughout is astounding; the delicacy and transparency of brass and strings overwhelming. The CD is worth, perhaps even necessary, to hear with quality equipment to let the recording work to this breathtaking effect. This Mother Goose is a wonder, the Pictures, now my co-favorite Pictures alongside the completely different Celibidache (Warner [on Twitter]), a revelation.

# 1 – Reissue

Maria Callas Remastered, Maria Callas, various artists, Warner Classics 633991

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