Runnicles leads French music with the NSO

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

On Thursday evening, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, visiting British conductor Donald Runnicles led the National Symphony Orchestra and the University of Maryland Concert Choir in performances of the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Duruflé. It was a delectable French-flavored evening before a very sparse audience.

The first half of the concert was dedicated to Debussy. It may be helpful to recall its genesis. Erik Satie wrote, “I explained to Debussy that a Frenchman had to free himself from the Wagnerian adventure, which wasn’t the answer to our national aspirations. I also pointed out that I was in no way anti-Wagnerian, but that we should have a music of our own — if possible, without any sauerkraut.” Ingeniously, Satie suggested that the way out for French music was French painting. Why not look to “the means that Claude Monet, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others had made known? Why could we not transpose these means into music?” It is a measure of French musical genius that it was able to do so, as so brilliantly exemplified in the works of Debussy.

The concert began with four of Debussy’s piano Préludes, arranged for orchestra by English composer Colin Matthews. Matthews is no stranger to this kind of thing as he, along with his brother David, assisted Deryck Cooke in Cooke’s revised performing version of Gustav Mahler’s 10th Symphony. While I am an avid fan of David Matthews’ music, I cannot say the same for what little of Colin Matthews’ music I have heard. Regardless, his Debussy orchestrations reveal a very fine ear for color and are so well done that they sound completely natural to the music. But does it still sound like Debussy? Whether you think so or not makes the music nonetheless enjoyable, particularly in the NSO’s subtle, mellow, finely articulated performances.

In Debussy’s Three Nocturnes, his inspiration may not have been so much French painting, as it was the American paintings of James McNeill Whistler. In any case, Runnicles' finely shaded, diaphanous traversal of them also earned the same adjectives applied to the performances of the Préludes. Debussy’s Nuages (Clouds) floated by in an appropriately delicious, dreamy way, capturing “the slow motion of the clouds,” just as Fêtes was suitably bracing and festive. Orchestra and chorus were quite excellent in elucidating a broad range of dynamic range in Sirènes, from the lapping of the waves, to the first gentle and then strengthening wordless song of the Sirens.

Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem from 1947 originated in a suite of organ pieces based on plainsong from the Mass for the Dead. When he received a commission from Durand Publishers, he expanded them into the Requiem. The Requiem is listed as Op. 9, which would normally indicate an early work. In his lifetime, however, the meticulous Duruflé was to publish only a dozen works, mostly for organ. The Requiem is the chef d’oeuvre of his maturity. Add to plainchant the sensuous harmonies of Debussy and Ravel, which Duruflé had learned so well, and you have a mesmerizing combination, simultaneously modern and archaic. As Duruflé wrote, “In general, I have attempted to penetrate to the essence of Gregorian style and have tried to reconcile, as far as possible, the very flexible Gregorian rhythms as established by the Benedictines of Solesmes with the exigencies of modern notation.”

The Requiem opens very dreamily. Gentle orchestral undulations underlie the smoothly flowing plainchant of the Introit. Runnicles took this rather too briskly. The cushion of sound was invitingly there, but not the leisure to lie upon it. If we are dying, what’s the rush? I know Duruflé makes death relatively attractive but this displayed too much alacrity. There was certainly nothing imploring about the Kyrie, but Runnicles effectively conveyed its sense of celebration as in mercy received. In the Offertorium, one glimpses the inferno from which the soul has been saved. Dissonances depict the “punishments of hell,” but even the request for deliverance from them is almost triumphant. The vigor with which Runnicles approached this scene guaranteed an effective rescue from the “lion’s mouth.” Baritone Christian Bowers was fine at the Hostias et preces tibi, but not notably expressive.

The Sanctus slowly builds with cushioned strings to a triple-forte climax at “Hosanna in excelsis,” then subsides peacefully back into the rippling moto perpetuo with which it began. This was very well done. The Pie Jesu is a very poignant, gentle supplication, the point of repose at the heart of the work. It was delivered with both strength and nuance by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, with a fine supporting contribution from cellist David Hardy. The Agnus Dei restores a sense of motion and confidence that the “requiem sempiternam” has been granted. Lux Aeterna evokes what the eternal rest might be like, and In Paradisum represents the trip there, what Duruflé called “the ultimate answer of Faith to all the questions, by the flight of the soul to Paradise.”

In the first part of the Requiem’s performance, I was given to wonder if Runnicles simply considered it another exquisitely beautiful piece of music, much like the Debussy, because of what I detected as the missing ardency of faith, the core of what Duruflé was trying to express. That impression, along with my reservations concerning the pace that he was taking early on, completely vanished from the Lux Aeterna onwards.

Anyone with a taste for secular or religious Impressionism, should enjoy this French feast.

This program repeats tonight and tomorrow.

Prokofiev’s 'Romeo and Juliet'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Traditional 'Marriage of Figaro'

Joshua Hopkins and Lisette Oropesa in The Marriage of Figaro, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)
Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

On Saturday night, September 24, 2016, the Washington National Opera’s performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was simulcast to Nationals Park for the annual Opera in the Outfield. In addition to a full opera house at the Kennedy Center, there were some 8,000 people in the ballpark pitching for Mozart. The evening began with the playing of the National Anthem.

Then came something unique in my many years of opera experience. After an overture played with punchy rhythms, conductor James Gaffigan led the WNO Orchestra in the opening orchestral measures to the duettino between Figaro and Susanna. Then the music stopped, and Gaffigan turned to the audience and exclaimed, “There’s supposed to be singing here.” But there wasn’t, because there was no Figaro or Susanna in sight. In fact, there was nothing in sight because the lights were down and the curtain had not been drawn. The culprit turned out to be a glitch with the automated curtain apparatus. The problem was soon resolved and Gaffigan and his forces began again – this time with Figaro and Susanna present on a stunningly handsome set of a neoclassical palace room.

The affair was handled with good humor, and thus began an evening filled with hilarity. The Marriage of Figaro was the musical Marx Brothers of its time. Da Ponte’s libretto, taken from Beaumarchais’s play of the same name, is a precursor to a French bedroom farce. The love spats, the impersonations, the cross-dressing, the endless conniving to entrap unfaithful lovers, the near-escapes, and the bald-faced lies combine to great comic effect. Part of the fun – the main part – is taking the terrible silliness of it all seriously, which is exactly what Mozart’s music does, though it is hardly lacking in effervescence. And it is what this excellent production does, as well. As Buster Keaton once said, comedy is a serious business. Only the audience should know that it’s funny. That was the case here, with hardly any moments of self-consciousness within the production to spoil the fun.

It is clear that director Peter Kazaras trusts that Mozart and Da Ponte knew what they were doing and so he played it straight, which is why it worked so well. (Why fight 230 years of success?) The sets and costumes are contemporaneous with the time in which the opera is set. Perhaps this is thought to be unoriginal today, but I was relieved to see a traditional production – particularly when done as attractively as this – because I am tired of seeing operas set anachronistically by directors for whom this substitutes as imagination. I’m not suggesting that there is only one way to do an opera, but do we really learn anything worthwhile from seeing Don Giovanni set in fascist Spain (as I recently experienced)? Or is Richard Wagner more correctly understood as an environmentalist who would wish us to recycle, as was suggested in the WNO’s superbly sung but sadly misconceived toxic-dump setting of the Ring Cycle this spring? Please, spare us! So often, productions such as these are calling attention away from the operas and toward the producers and directors – “Look at me!”

In any case, there was no solipsism in sight during this delightful evening of Figaro. All the principals sang and acted well. At first, bass-baritone Ryan McKinny seemed to lack the ultimate energy and ease with which to put over the role of Figaro, but he was simply warming up. He quickly grew in these departments until he clearly took command of the role and much of the opera. Soprano Lisette Oropesa’s Susanna sparked right from the beginning. Her singing was as fine as her lively characterization of the maid.

Baritone Joshua Hopkins as Count Almaviva and soprano Amanda Majeski as Countess Almaviva were paired well in the troubled marital relationship that drives the whole opera. With a good sense of stage presence, he was lecherous without being ridiculous, which made his repentance real. He was vocally strong. Majeski, in terms the Nationals Park audience would understand, hit her arias, particularly Dove sono, out of the ballpark. (I shall forgo saying it was pitch-perfect.) She was an affecting Countess. Mezzo-soprano Aleksandra Romano’s portrayal of the erotically eager pageboy Cherubino was fun and deft, though there seemed at times a slight wobble in her voice.

Keith Jameson’s tenor voice, deployed in the character role of Basilio, was one of the few able to slice through the orchestra when conductor Gaffigan swamped his singers, as he tended too often to do, particularly in the first act. Jameson’s acting captured the delicious superciliousness of Basilio. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop as Marcellina and bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas, who also sang Dr. Bartolo in the May 2010 WNO Marriage, made for another wonderful pairing. They were spot on as character actors with perfect voices for their roles. Lanchas, however, struggled in a few spots when the pace of the parlando singing quickened to warp speed.

I have already praised set designer Benoit Dugardyn’s stunning neo-classical conception, forested with handsome Doric columns. Costume designer Myung Hee Cho’s costumes splashed the stage with strong colors against the off-white stone columns. The effect was striking and helped project the characters forward.

If the four acts of The Marriage of Figaro have demonstrated anything it is the universal human fallibility of its characters. Mozart, however, does not simply laugh at them. Rather, he expresses a touching compassion that ends things with an act of forgiveness that provides the basis for the restoration of the broken relationships he portrays. Marriage not only presents the problem; it presents the solution.

In short, this is a good production of a great opera. There is no reason not to go see The Marriage of Figaro when it repeats on September 26, 28, 30, and October 2.

Second Opinion: Bruckner and Mahler at the NSO

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

I can now lay claim to being a Christoph Eschenbach Bruckner veteran. This is because I have heard his prior NSO performances of Bruckner’s Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Symphonies, and now I have heard his Fourth. In these pages (or on this site), I praised the performances of the Eighth and Ninth, and gave the Seventh a mixed review. I shall engage in almost unadulterated praise of the Fourth, which I heard on Friday evening, in the second of its three performances.

But I must speak of the first item on Friday’s itinerary – Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder. It is not at all odd to pair Mahler and Bruckner together on a program. At least Mahler would not have thought so. One of the things I most admire in him is his having had all the scores of Bruckner’s symphonies printed in Vienna, at his personal expense. I take that as the tribute of one great artist to another.

I am a neophyte when it comes to the Rückert-Lieder. I have never heard them performed live and know them only from the famous John Barbirolli/Janet Baker recording. In any case, they are gems set with marvelous delicacy in Mahler’s inimitable orchestral language. They were sung by contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, who seems to be an Eschenbach favorite. In past NSO appearances, I have heard her in the Wesendonck Lieder by Richard Wagner, as orchestrated by Hans Werner Henze, and in Dvořák's Stabat Mater. She has a rich, caramel voice, which she deploys was a good deal of nuance and expressivity. But, as I noted in the past, she occasionally has trouble projecting. This seemed to be the case on Friday evening, though it was hard to tell whether this was her fault or the orchestra’s. At times, it seemed as if Eschenbach had turned up the volume behind her.

In the first song, the orchestra appeared to be playing altogether too loudly. It seemed to settle down in the second. However, in another instance, when Stutzmann was singing piano, she got swamped by an oboe playing forte. I can’t imagine this having happened when the NSO first performed the Rückert-Lieder because Jessye Norman was the soloist. She would’ve blown that oboe all the way back into the dressing room. However, I don’t want to make too much of this because Stutzmann was very expressive and particularly moving in the last two songs, with especially exquisite shading on the phrase “ich sei gestorben.” The orchestra also did its part in the last song by relaying the music’s connection to the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony, on which Mahler was apparently working at the same time. Eschenbach distilled its diaphanous beauty.

With the Fourth Symphony, Bruckner’s greatness comes clearly into view. All the baby fat, galumphing, and ungainliness are gone (well, nearly, depending on which of the four versions you’re listening to, which in this evening’s case was the 1878/80 edition, edited by Leopold Nowak). One does not normally associate the term diaphanous with Bruckner, but Eschenbach and the NSO delivered a performance of this work that nearly earned this appellation. The orchestra softly whispered the opening string tremolo before the horn calls summoned the main theme. This was the first exhibition of extremely fine pianissimo playing, at one edge of the tremendous range of expression that the orchestra had on display, which was just as exhilarating as the pounding fortississimos of the magnificent climaxes.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Eschenbach takes the NSO back to one of his favorites, Bruckner (Washington Post, June 10) Charles T. Downey, NSO Ends Season with Bruckner 4, Mahler (Ionarts, June 10) Eschenbach's Bruckner: no. 8 (2014) | no. 7 (2012) no. 9 (2012) | no. 6 (2010)

And in between, one could hear everything. This was a performance of tremendous transparency, never gained at the expense of a slackening tempo. As finely molded as this music was with every delicious lilt in it expressed, Eschenbach kept everything within a fairly tight grip. This is not to say that he rushed the fences; he terraced up to the climaxes very nicely, in a well-shaded and well-paced manner. This was nowhere more evident than in the way in which he built the string tremolos in the Finale to its majestic culmination. The one movement in which one might say that Eschenbach did rush the fences was the Scherzo, which he took at a blistering pace. The fact that the NSO took the breakneck tempi fully in stride provided a great deal of excitement. This was an orchestra at the top of its game in the Scherzo and throughout.

With the Symphony performed in this way, we experience the exultation of one of the mountain peaks Bruckner ascended. From its top, we can almost see the Matterhorn of the Eighth Symphony above us. I cannot imagine anyone not being thrilled with having been given this view. Anyone who hasn’t should rush for tickets for Saturday night. In fact, the only thing wrong with Friday evening was the pitiably small audience, which nonetheless proved capable of coughing above its weight class during the Rückert-Lieder. Bruckner proved to be a giant cough drop.

I close by applauding the Playbill “Notes on the Program,” written by Dr. Richard E. Rodda. A lot of space is often wasted in program notes by musicologists who try to give a technical blow-by-blow of what is happening in the music – which leaves most readers in the state of incomprehension. Dr. Rodda’s notes, on the other hand, go to the most important thing – the spirit of the music, which he eloquently captures. More of this, please.

This concert repeats this evening, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Second Opinion: WNO Re-Cycle of 'The Ring of the Nibelung'

Gordon Hawkins (Alberich, center), David Cangelosi (Mime, right), and Nibelungs in Das Rheingold,
Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman for WNO)
Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

Until now, I have never seen Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle straight through. I’ve only experienced some of the individual operas. I decided to approach the production of The Ring of the Nibelung by the Washington National Opera (cycle II: May 10, May 11, May 13, and May 15) cold turkey. I did not want to carry in any preconceptions, though I had heard it has a modern setting. I was hoping that this production, ten years in the works, would not be as misguided as the one I partially experienced back in the late 1980s when Deutsche Oper Berlin brought its Ring to the Kennedy Center as part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. (How nice that the GDR did not live long enough to celebrate its 50th.) Its Ring was set in an underground subway station. Go figure, though the gray drabness comported with my experiences in East Germany.

I did not emerge from the experience of this Ring unscathed. First, I should generally state what went exceptionally well: the splendid singing and the superb orchestral playing, under conductor Philippe Auguin. That’s a lot; it puts us two-thirds of the way to a big success. One could’ve shut one’s eyes and been perfectly happy throughout (as I would be with a live recording of what I heard). The problem with the final one-third of the formula was the overall conception of the production. Famously, George Bernard Shaw argued that the Ring was Wagner’s attack on capitalism. His thesis gained at least some plausibility from the fact that Wagner was a socialist, though we may be grateful that Shaw did not mount a production of the Ring based upon his interpretation (though others have).

But was Wagner an environmentalist? Would he have recycled? This may seem an exceedingly silly question, and it is. However, Francesca Zambello's production posed it, and answered in the affirmative. Kip Cranna writes in the program notes, the “theme of mankind’s devastation of nature is of course extraordinarily relevant to our own time, and the Washington National Opera production vividly reflects that.” The problem is whether it was relevant to Wagner. Had it been so, Wagner could have cast his conception in its terms, but he did not. (In fact, it is non-humans who cause the destruction in the Ring, not humans.) Is that because Wagner was limited to and by his own times? Any good German historicist would say that this was so and suggest that this is why Wagner needs to be made “relevant” to us, who, after all, live in our own times. In other words, to buy fully the premise of this production one should be an historicist. Wagner cannot be understood on his own terms, but only on ours. I find this approach condescending both to Wagner and to ourselves.

I think it has also shaped a somewhat schizophrenic production that is occasionally painful in its inappropriateness and in its obviousness. Why schizophrenic? Because when the production is not straining against the mythical quality that Wagner strove so hard to give the Ring (including with his deliberately archaic German, rendered in completely prosaic English in the super titles), the production works very well, indeed. When it insists upon superimposing its modern environmental relevance upon it, it comes up a stinker. It takes us from the mythic to the mundane. The scenes or acts least affected by the production’s misconceptions go best because they have nothing to distract from the singing and the music. In fact, they often enhance them. I hope to make this clearer as I briefly give some examples through the four operas, without recounting much in the way of plot, which can be easily found elsewhere.

For instance, the opening scene of The Rheingold is very successful. It does not try to locate itself in America (where apparently this Ring takes place) or anywhere else for that matter – its ambiguity allows for the mythical. The back projections of falling water are majestic and the river is imaginatively rendered. The Rhine maidens are well portrayed, and the fact that Alberich shows up in a vaguely modern miner’s outfit needn’t cause any disquiet.

The next scene is a disaster. Wotan, ruler of the gods, is introduced lying on a lawn-furniture chaise lounge on a terrace somewhere in the mountains. He is wearing riding jodhpurs and a double-breasted jacket – what looks like a late 1920s movie director’s outfit. In fact, his stock gestures seem to be out of a silent movie. The rest of the gods and goddesses are also in 1920s garb. The theatrical body language of Wotan’s introduction leaves him so diminished that I thought his character would never recover sufficient stature to carry off his role in the remaining operas. (He did, but not till The Valkyrie.)

Read more »

Bavarian RSO Opens North American Tour

PICTURE OF MARISS JANSONS © ASTRID ACKERMANN

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

According to the Playbill program notes for the April 12, 2016, concert at the Kennedy Center, the Washington Performing Arts organization has not sponsored the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra here since 2003. From the caliber of playing on display in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto and Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, that has been our substantial loss. Under conductor Mariss Jansons, the level of orchestral execution in all departments was superlative. They are welcome in my town anytime.

First, a side note on concert programming. I sometimes wonder if there is not a secret, worldwide, Spectre-like organization of programmers who meet to plot the frequent repetition of repertory. Less than a year ago, I heard the Mahler Fifth with the NSO, and less than two years ago I heard the Korngold Violin Concerto, also with the NSO. I’m not complaining in either case, as violinist Gil Shaham gave the Korngold a beautiful performance and Christoph Eschenbach’s Mahler is always worth hearing. It makes you wonder though, doesn’t it?

In fact, last year’s Mahler Fifth was paired with the Sibelius Violin Concerto, played by tonight’s soloist in the Korngold, Leonidas Kavakos. The time I had heard Kavakos before that was in a program in Ljubljana with the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto, which was coupled with (guess what?) Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Are you beginning to see the global dimensions of this? If it happens again, I’m calling Interpol.

And now a note on the program. I think it makes good sense to put the Korngold and Mahler together because they both come from the same Viennese milieu – albeit one via Hollywood, the other not. Both inhabit the First Viennese School, though from Korngold one could not imagine the Second Viennese School, while from Mahler, one could. Also, it was interesting to hear the Korngold first because, listening to the Mahler afterwards, I exclaimed to myself several times, “aha, Korngold had obviously heard that.” Then there is the historical association: Korngold, who as a youth had met Mahler, dedicated his Violin Concerto to Mahler’s widow, Alma.

Be that as it may, it was a pleasure to hear Kavakos in the Korngold, though my first impression — one of warmth rather than brilliance — was that his razor sharpness and intonation were slightly off from what I had heard before. The tone soon improved, however, and by the last movement he was blazing away with complete confidence. He had great partners in Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which played with crystal clarity, precision, and energy. Though most of the themes in the concerto came from Korngold’s brilliant movie scores, no one indulged in any Hollywood sentimentality. This is not to say there was any beauty lacking — the glorious sound of the orchestra was like walking into the Golden Screen. The enthusiasm of the audience impelled Kavakos to offer a charming encore, Recuerdos de la Alhambra, composed by Francisco Tárrega for guitar, transcribed for violin by Ruggiero Ricci. You can hear a much younger Kavakos playing it here.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, How a great orchestra started its U.S. tour: Carefully. (Washington Post, April 13)

The performance of the Mahler Fifth Symphony was blistering. Let me put it this way: if Mahler were Beethoven, this is exactly how he should be played. And further, I mean Beethoven not as Bruno Walter would play him, but more like Arturo Toscanini or René Leibowitz would. It was thrilling, but was it Mahler? There were no emotional or psychological epiphanies provided, but there were musical ones aplenty. Jansons’ attitude toward this work seems to be to take it simply as a tremendously exciting piece of music and not as an emotional freight train. I have heard this work so often that there is very little that can make me sit up and take notice. Because of Jansons’ highly energized approach and the brilliant playing of the BRSO, I was on high alert for most of the evening. Jansons did not stop to smell the daisies; he propelled the performance up and down the mountainsides, and had his massive orchestra turning on a pin, like Alpine chamois. It was breathtaking. The Adagietto was the movement that benefited least from Jansons’ approach. Anyone expecting to take a warm bath in it would have been disappointed. It had beauty, yes, but warmth, not much.

While not terribly emotive, the performance was nonetheless visceral in its impact. If you wonder what Mahler meant when he marked the score “like a whirlwind” or “Moving Stormily, With the Greatest Vehemence,” Jansons provided a very compelling answer. Of course, there are many ways of doing this symphony, as Klaus Tennstedt and others have brilliantly shown. But Jansons has clearly demonstrated that this is one of them.

It hardly need be said that every department of the BRSO covered itself in glory — what a deep, gorgeous sound! The strings were exceptional, the brass outstanding, but so were the winds, and the timpani…

I have decided not to call Interpol after all.

NSO, Neeme Järvi, and Baiba Skride

Prokofiev, Violin Concertos, L. Mordkovitch, Scottish National Orchestra, N. Järvi (Chandos, 2009) Sibelius, Symphony No. 2, Royal Philharmonic, J. Barbirolli (Chesky, 1990)

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

On Friday evening, January 15, 2016, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, famed Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi and the National Symphony Orchestra offered the second of its three performances of a highly attractive program, consisting in the 5 Pieces for String Orchestra by Heino Eller, Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and Jean Sibelius’s Second Symphony.

As a Sibelius fanatic, I was impelled to attend to hear the third item on the program but was surprised to find that the major treat of the evening was the Prokofiev and the exquisite playing by Latvian violinist Baiba Skride in her NSO debut.

However, first things first. The opening, brief 5 Pieces by Eller is a charming, lovely string composition that, while apparently redolent of Estonian folk tunes, could easily keep company with comparable string works by English composers like Frank Bridge, Ralph Vaughan Williams, or Benjamin Britten. Its plush string writing has the warmth of musical mahogany, and it was appropriately upholstered by the sound of the NSO strings.

Prokofiev wanted the violinist to play the beginning of his Violin Concerto No. 1 “as if in a dream.” That is exactly how Skride softly entered with the Stradivarius she was playing. It was with a feminine softness, and also a purity of line and crystalline clarity. This concerto does not have a cadenza for its soloist, properly speaking. But since the soloist plays almost nonstop throughout all three movements, it is almost more appropriate to think of the concerto as a giant cadenza with orchestral accompaniment. In any case, it was magic time. Skride played with unfailing eloquence, energy and refinement (and spot-on accuracy) through all the various complexities that Prokofiev packed in for the soloist, cadenza or not. It was a joy to hear someone playing at this level on an instrument this beautiful.

At the work’s 1923 premiere in Paris, Prokofiev reported of the critics that “some of them commented not without malice on its ‘Mendelssohnisms.’” What those disappointed critics were referring to are the parts of the work that capture the kind of crepuscular, murmuring enchantment that Mendelssohn was so expert at distilling. Unless you are looking for a catastrophe in a boiler factory, this is one of the work’s highly attractive assets. Not only did Skride play these with tremendous delicacy and charm, but so did the orchestral accompaniment. And here one must applaud Järvi, a Prokofiev expert, for keeping everything in perfect balance throughout the three movements. The chimerical fleetness with which all departments in the NSO played deserves huzzahs.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Jarvi’s insouciance gets results from the NSO (Washington Post, January 15)

Järvi began the Sibelius Second briskly enough that, were he a less expert conductor, I might’ve worried that he was going to rush the fence, to use an equestrian expression. Of course, he didn’t. However, this was an interpretation based more on the power of the piece, than its passion. It was more like a cold splash of Nordic water, which can be very bracing, than it was nature mysticism. To catch the sense of my meaning listen, if you can, to John Barbirolli’s 1962 performance with the Royal Philharmonic (Chesky label). Barbirolli catches a sense of what the music is coming out of so that when there is an orchestral pause, it is a silence pregnant with sound. In Järvi’s performance, it was just a pause, period. It was not as expressive because the underlying mysticism was not there. However, the comparison with Barbirolli is not meant as a criticism, but a contrast. There is more than one way to do the Second Symphony. Järvi was consistent in his, which produced a lot of excitement. I should add that, in the finale, he combined power with passion. Overall, I was impressed but not moved. The NSO effectively draped the great sheets of brass and string sound across the Concert Hall to thrilling effect.

The only dismaying feature of the evening was the sparse audience attendance. With this much ear candy on offer, where were they?

This concert repeats this evening.

Jiří Bělohlávek and the NSO

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

Martinů, Symphonies, BBC Symphony Orchestra, J. Bělohlávek (Onyx, 2011)

I came for the Bohuslav Martinů, heard it, and was conquered. I apologize for the campy gloss on Julius Caesar’s famous "Veni, vidi, vici," but I needed to say something special about what turns out to be the National Symphony Orchestra's debut of Martinů’s Sixth Symphony, Fantaisies symphoniques. I like to think that Washington, D.C., is not a provincial place, but then how is it that the NSO had not played this 1955 composition until the evening of November 19, 2015, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall? No matter, it was worth the 60-year wait, because this is a brilliantly fantastical piece of music.

World War II drove Martinů from Europe to America, where he undertook, after the age of 50, the composition of his six symphonies. He largely shed the Baroque forms and sewing machine music that he had indulged in earlier, and let his inspiration find its own unique shape from the Moravian melodies he used and the extraordinary kaleidoscopic colors he drew from the orchestra. In the mid-1940s, Martinů told his biographer, “From now on, I’m going in for fantasy.” And he did. It is quite difficult to describe exactly how Martinů’s best music from this period, like the Sixth, works. Not even he knew. Concerning the Fantaisies Symphoniques, he said: “Something holds it together, I don’t know what, but it has a single line and I have expressed something in it -- the future will show.”

Like his countrymen Leos Janáček’s, Martinů’s music seems to function by building up large mosaics of fragmentary, repetitive motifs. Short motivic phrases are relentlessly repeated out of sheer excitement or to create tension. Martinů uses accelerating rhythms and rising volume of sound to propel his abbreviated motifs in a scalar ascent, at the top of which a melody erupts and sweeps all before it. Out of the swirling strings and gurgling winds, a broader theme invariably arises. These melodic moments provide both relief from the tense buildups and exhilaration at their resolution. One perceptive critic noted that “no matter how rhythmic Martinů tries to be, lyricism keeps breaking through.”

Making up for lost time, the NSO engaged Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, an acclaimed specialist in Martinů’s music (Complete Symphonies, BBC Symphony Orchestra -- Onyx 4061), to bring us the Sixth. This symphony must snap, crackle, and soar to work. It did under Bělohlávek’s direction. Martinů created what sounds at times like the musical equivalent of a beehive -- the music swarms and buzzes with great excitement, and then gets whacked, usually by the timpani. These alarming moments were perfectly captured, but so was the singing lyricism. Because this music is so inimitably idiosyncratic, I was delighted to hear how well the NSO was able to play it in its first time out. It admirably met the challenge, and I’m sure will only improve in the next two performances. All sections of the orchestra did well in this kaleidoscopic music, with special moments for the first violin and principal clarinet. I also have to say the timpanists did an excellent job in contributing to Martinů’s shimmering sound.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Czech guest conductor leads pianist Igor Levit in strong debut at NSO (Washington Post, November 20) David Rohde, The National Symphony Orchestra with Guest Conductor Jiri Belohlavek and Pianist Igor Levit (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, November 20)

Suitably enough for a conductor born in Prague, Bělohlávek began the evening with Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony No. 38. Bělohlávek took a relaxed approach to the music. On an interpretive scale going from the jittery, driven approach of Charles Mackerras to the mellow operatic approach of Josef Krips, Bělohlávek clearly favored the latter. Some might have found it a bit lacking in spirit, but it did give the opportunity to savor the inner voices.

After intermission, pianist Igor Levit joined the NSO to play Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. I cannot say I was thrilled with this programming. Couldn’t we have heard more Prague music, for instance, one of Martinů’s sadly neglected piano concertos? I admit that only the greatest playing could’ve captured my attention for another Fifth. There is nothing wrong with what I heard, except for the soloist and orchestra occasionally being out of sync with each other, but I was not mesmerized until halfway through the second movement, and then suitably energized. However, the combination of power and poetry that characterizes the very greatest performances of this great music was not quite there, notwithstanding the standing ovation.

In any case, go for the Martinů. By itself, it’s very much worth it, and it might be another 60 years before you get another chance.

This program repeats tonight and tomorrow.

Second Opinion: NSO's Mahler Third

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

Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. S. von Otter, Vienna Philharmonic, P. Boulez (DG, 2003) Mahler, Symphony No. 3, A. Larsson, Berlin Philharmonic, C. Abbado (DG, 2002) [Other Recordings]

Mahler's Third Symphony, a gargantuan affirmation of life is, I believe, his longest symphonic journey. He wrote that it "begins with inanimate nature and ascends to the love of God," and, I might add, puts in just about everything in between. The Third Symphony declares in its closing choral section a "Joy, deeper still than heartache!" This is, in fact, "heavenly joy." Yearning is not insatiable; it is fulfilled in "a blessed city." Music can hardly aim higher than to express these things. Mahler fascinates endlessly because he attempted the ineffable.

When I heard the National Symphony Orchestra under Iván Fischer perform this work in 2008 at the Kennedy Center, I experienced an interpretation that aimed at a jewel-like, refined beauty. It toned things down a bit to achieve this. On the other hand, a few years later in London (October, 2010), I heard Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra give the Third a more full-throated, rambunctious approach that may be closer to the heart of this phantasmagoric music.

On Friday evening, November 6, 2015, in the second of three performances by the NSO at the Kennedy Center, I expected Christoph Eschenbach’s Third to come somewhere in the middle of these two interpretive stances, with most likely a lean in the Jurowski direction. I am not sure what I ended up getting. In the first and longest movement, Eschenbach kept the line, which is an accomplishment in itself with this sometimes fragmentary music, but it was as an unbroken succession of often delectable moments, beautifully played by the NSO. However, Eschenbach’s signature sense of concentration seemed to be missing. It’s not that anything was out of place, but that the inner spring – that tension which holds together even the most slowly played music – was absent. This is not simply a matter of tempos, which in this case were very broad. For example, the slowest Mahler Second Symphony I’ve ever listened to was by Klaus Tennstedt. He froze the music and achieved a suspension of time, which was not only breathtaking, but extraordinarily tense. I missed the tension in Eschenbach’s first movement. About 25 minutes in, it seemed to jump to life, but then slackened. I was similarly disappointed by the second movement.

Then, in the third movement, everything seemed to come together. Eschenbach and the NSO players achieved a kind of Mendelssohnian charm and magic. The post-horn music, played over deliciously pianissimo violins, was mesmerizing and made for the most enthralling moments of the evening so far. The double basses achieved something similar in their extraordinarily soft and delicate introduction to the fourth movement. Eschenbach’s tempos continued to be slow but, no matter, his sense of concentration had returned. This level of engagement continued through Anne Sofie von Otter’s beautiful singing of the Nietzsche text and the chorus’s lovely delivery of the angelic message.

Other Reviews: Charles T. Downey, Eschenbach and NSO find coherence elusive in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Washington Post, November 6)

The giant extended adagio of the sixth movement is a challenge for any conductor to pull off. Eschenbach was fully in his element here and I thought he rendered it more beautifully than he had the Adagietto in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which he played with the NSO in early May of this year.

Since Mahler embraced and tried to fit the entire world into this symphony, every first desk player gets a chance to shine -- in fact, every section of the orchestra does. The NSO excelled in this respect. The brass were outstanding; the strings were very strong; the winds were delectable; and the timpanists spot on.

The Kennedy Center Concert Hall audience was on its feet to give Eschenbach and the NSO a standing ovation. I can only presume it was for the last four movements.

This concert repeats this evening.

'Ghosts of Versailles' at Wolf Trap

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from Wolf Trap.

After nearly a quarter-century delay, the Washington D.C. area has finally gotten the chance to see and hear John Corigliano’s opera The Ghosts of Versailles, composed for the Metropolitan Opera and premiered in 1991. It was worth the wait.

On Friday evening, July 10, 2015, Wolf Trap Opera opened its four-performance run (ending July 18) with an exhilarating performance. It was a coup de théâtre and a jeu d’esprit, performed with joie de vivre. I choose my French words advisedly as the opera is based on the works of Pierre-Austin Caron de Beaumarchais, the renowned French author of The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Guilty Mother; the first two works of which provided the librettos for Rossini’s and Mozart’s famous operas.

Corigliano, Phantasmagoria, Fantasia, et al., E.Klas/Tampere PO Ondine Guilty Pleasures, Moments for self-indulging and a little Corigliano exerpt, R.Fleming/Philharmonia/W.Cares Decca

William M. Hoffman provided the libretto for Corigliano, meanwhile, and he did a brilliant job of assimilating Beaumarchais’s characters and creating a fascinating, wholly original work that melds a world of ghosts from the eighteenth century, the theatrical world of opera, and the real, tragic world of the French Revolution. Here is how Corigliano describes it: “My opera The Ghosts of Versailles takes place on three different planes of reality: (1) the world of eternity, inhabited by the ghosts of Versailles, including the playwright Beaumarchais and Marie Antoinette; (2) the world of the stage, inhabited by eighteenth century characters of Beaumarchais (Figaro, Susanna, the Count and Countess, etc.); and (3) the world of historic reality, primarily the reality of the French Revolution itself, populated by the characters of (1) and (2). Thus The Ghosts of Versailles represents a journey from the most fantastic to the most realistic.” The action is driven by Beaumarchais’s love of Marie Antoinette and his desire to reach back into history to change it in order to save her.

My only acquaintance with Corigliano’s music for this opera is from Phantasmagoria—Suite from ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ (Naxos). Musically, Corigliano captures the three worlds within the opera with idiomatic ease and he portrays their occasional disorienting intersections with an attractive eeriness and spectral glow. The occasional uneasiness during his excursions into aleatory music is dramatically apt and perfectly expressive of the disorientation that occurs when ghosts, theatrical figures, and real people confusedly intermix. So there’s no reason to be scared by this aspect of the work. For most of the almost three-hour work, Corigliano musically inhabits the imagined worlds into which the action travels. And it travels fast. By this I mean the madcap pace that propels the characters forwards (or backwards) depending on which world they are traveling to or from. We hear snatches of Mozart and Rossini, and music that is both a parody and an apotheosis of their styles.

What we witness in the first act—after the harrowing scene of Marie Antoinette recalling her execution—is certainly opera buffa, full of mayhem and hilarious pranks that reminded me strongly of a Marx Brothers production. From Figaro’s aria to the section at the ambassador’s residence with Turkish singer Samira—mezzo-soprano Jenni Bank in the comic performance of a lifetime—one scene after another was hilariously funny. Ms. Bank has a wonderfully supple voice and she is first-class comedienne. One of the “you-had-to-have-been-there” moments was a singer in

Read more »

Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO

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

Tara Erraught (Angelina), David Portillo (Don Ramiro), and Cast in La Cenerentola, Washington National Opera, 2015 (photo by Scott Suchman)

I seldom go to operas “cold turkey,” i.e., without having seen a prior production or without even having heard the music, but one certainly gets a fresh look by doing so. I went to the Washington National Opera’s production of Rossini’s Cinderella, on the evening of May 11, 2015, on the strength of my great love for The Barber of Seville, perhaps the greatest comic opera ever written. I went expecting to be disappointed since nothing could be as great as The Barber, which Rossini wrote the year before Cinderella, which he dashed off in a matter of weeks. However, I was not disappointed. In fact, I was generally delighted. This opera is almost as musically funny as The Barber and, while the humor in it is very broad (and this production makes it even broader), it makes for a delightfully amusing evening. (This was the first performance of the company's second cast; see Charles's review of the first cast from opening night.)

The production actually looks more like Alice in Wonderland than Cinderella. The vivid costume designs are almost cartoonish, and the acting style is, at times, out of the silent movies, with a lot of mugging. That is not necessarily a criticism, but a description. The whole thing is done in such a lighthearted style, it is difficult to criticize. However, that is what critics do; so I shall express several reservations, along with lavish praise.

First of all, I should say that the singing was uniformly fine. As Cinderella, Tara Erraught was vocally strong (especially in the closing scene), but needed to show more fragility and vulnerability in her characterization of the role. She comes off as too tough, not one to be bossed around by the mean sisters or anyone else. She seemed to give as well as she got. This was a partial misstep that somewhat undermined the drama. She should at least seem to be needing rescue. As the Prince, David Portillo was spot on vocally and dramatically. His performance was stirring. The two wicked sisters, Deborah Nansteel and Jacqueline Echols, both gave robust performances, Echols particularly so.

In the key role of the stepfather, Don Magnifico, Italian baritone Paolo Bordogna gave a very flavorful, nearly histrionic rendition of his part, which was generally hilarious, especially the scene in the wine cellar, which he played to the hilt. Playing things over the top is not a problem in a production this broad, but Bordogna let us know once too often that he knew he was playing it over the top – which is a problem. It distracts and detracts to let the audience know that you know you are funny. In any case, he was a guilty pleasure.

Italian bass-baritone Simone Alberghini got the balance just right in his portrayal of the valet Dandini, who trades places with the Prince in order to deceive the mean sisters. Both his singing and comic timing were excellent. He was very funny, but not self-consciously so. He knew how to keep the humor within his character. He played very well with the Prince. A welcome note of gravitas, both in terms of singing and dramatic stage presence, was provided by bass-baritone Shenyang as Alidoro. He knows how to be still, and still command attention. He perfectly portrayed the overseeing providential presence that restores the place of goodness and steers all things to their desired consummation.

The ensemble singing was a particular pleasure throughout the evening. I cannot think of a vocal quartet, quintet, sextet or septet that was not delightfully done. The sextet with the Prince, Dandini, Don Magnifico, Cinderella and the two sisters early in the second act after the Prince’s carriage accident was a particular delight – like listening to a vocal version of popcorn.

The septet at the Prince’s banquet table was also well done, but the singers should not have had to compete with the downstage mice, who, in front of the banquet table, engaged in various gymnastics. By the way, these half-dozen rodent characters were close to omnipresent throughout the opera. They were charming and made sense in the baron’s rundown château, where it was logical that mice should be, but what were they doing in the Prince’s palace other than helping to move the props? For director Joan Font to have allowed for such a major distraction in the banquet scene tells us that he did not trust the material Rossini had given him for it. Regarding the mice, if the prince really loves Cinderella, the first thing he should do is call an exterminator.

Font, however, did a generally fine job of keeping things moving and lively. One minor error was his staging of Cinderella’s entrance at the ball, which should have been grander – probably through the large upstage doors. Instead, we see her sidestepping along an upper catwalk to get to the stage-right staircase, which she then descends. It was a bit anticlimactic. Also, I think the closing touch of presenting the opera as if it had been in a dream with poor Cinderella still sweeping the floor was gratuitous and an unnecessary downer. After all, the opera’s subtitle is Goodness Triumphant (a fact that goes unmentioned in any of the WNO program notes), not Cinderella’s escapist daydream and her return to serfdom. My reaction to the director’s note as to why he did this is: it is a mistake to over-interpret a soufflé.

Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci and the Washington National Opera Orchestra were on point throughout the performance, delivering very deft orchestral support. They played the overture with nuance and sparkle.

I noticed that there was a large group of young people (I would guess in the later stages of grade school) up in the third balcony. I cannot think of a better introduction for them to opera – except, of course, The Barber of Seville. I know that my 15-year-old son enjoyed it as much as I did.

This production runs through May 21, with next Saturday's performance (May 16, 7 pm) shown in simulcast at Nationals Park.

Eschenbach and the NSO – Sibelius and Mahler

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

Sibelius, Violin Concerto, L. Kavakos, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, O. Vänskä (BIS, 1992)

On Thursday evening at the Kennedy Center, May 7, 2015, the National Symphony Orchestra, under Christoph Eschenbach, essayed two masterpieces – Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. This was done under the rubric of “Mahler Explored,” which is the motto the NSO is using in its traversal of the Mahler symphonies.

However, anyone who came for the Sibelius would not have been disappointed. It was played by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who is a master at his craft. I first heard him play in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he undertook the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto. Coincidentally, that concert also included Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Not only did Kavakos play the Prokofiev brilliantly, but he offered as an encore the Andante from Bach's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin. It was one of the most beautiful and spiritually moving performances of Bach, or anything else, that I have ever heard. Since then (9/2007), my radar has been on for this great artist.

Without being self-consciously virtuosic, Kavakos performed the Sibelius Concerto at the highest level. Some violinists play the Sibelius as if it, or they, were Paganini. Kavakos eschewed histrionics. The passion was in the music, not in his deportment. He played with strength, refinement, and clarity of line. The same intense concentration I had experienced in the Bach Andante was present in the cadenza of the opening movement, along with great beauty and purity of tone. Only for a split-second did Kavakos lose concentration as he cast a censorious glance toward the coughers in the audience who seemed to think of clearing their lungs as a kind of ostinato. Nonetheless, he perdured and produced playing of extraordinary subtlety in the Adagio, closing it with a breathtaking diminuendo. Eschenbach and the NSO provided firm support throughout, perhaps a bit too firm at the end of the closing Allegro, which threatened to swamp the violinist. The response of the audience was deservedly enthusiastic, but no more so than that of the NSO musicians who know how to show their appreciation for a great artist’s playing.

In the second half of the concert, Eschenbach and the NSO brought Mahler’s incredibly rich sonic world to brimming life in their performance of the Fifth Symphony. I thought the beginning of the first movement might have been a bit too measured, but Eschenbach soon displayed his usual talent for building large symphonic movements to powerful climaxes. The opening of the second movement snarled and snapped with plenty of bite. When the cellos took over the main melodic line about a third of the way through, they played with heart and poignancy, with just a whisper of timpani audible under them. Eschenbach then subtly layered in the winds, the brass, and the other orchestral sections. Everything was in place – the straining, the yearning, the huge heaving orchestral sighs, and the giant cataclysms.

Mahler famously insisted to Sibelius that the symphony must include the whole world. Well, it seems as if he tried to stuff the entire thing into the giant third-movement scherzo. Mahler called it “a very devil of a movement,” in which “each note is endowed with supreme life and everything in it revolves as though in a whirlwind or the tail of a comet.” No higher compliment could be paid to the NSO than that this is exactly how they made it sound. The “whirlwind” designation, however, should not slight the exquisitely delicate pizzicato playing in the strings or the marvelous piano achieved by the winds.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Kavakos, Eschenbach offer ragged emotional truth in NSO concert (Washington Post, March 8) Jens F. Laurson, Too Few Witness Sibelius Greatness (Ionarts, March 9, 2007)

It is usually hard to keep the tears back during the famous Adagietto, but I was curiously unmoved – perhaps too exhausted from the scherzo. In any case, it did not affect me as powerfully as did the Adagio in the Mahler Ninth Symphony, which I heard the NSO perform so well in March (though I otherwise prefer the consistency of Eschenbach’s interpretation of the Fifth to what I heard in his Ninth). The closing rondo-finale was another rousing triumph of all-the-stops-out playing. I thought Eschenbach and the NSO might take the roof off the Kennedy Center. I’ve neglected to mention the timpani and brass, which is a crime, since they played as well as the other departments in this stirring performance.

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night.

Second Opinion: Mahler's 9th Symphony

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

On the evening of Friday, March 20, 2015 at the Kennedy Center, I was able to attend the National Symphony Orchestra's second of three performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, under conductor Christoph Eschenbach. (See Charles's review of the first performance.)

Eschenbach and the NSO played the first movement with great clarity and precision – not to the point of pointillism, but not exactly a performance of passion either. It was like looking at a disturbed dream through an X-ray; you could see everything inside without being inside. The music was pretty much left to speak for itself, which it did quite well since it was played so beautifully by all departments. Nevertheless, this was an exterior view of it, slightly on the antiseptic side. Also, I never quite noticed before how many false endings there are in the first movement, which made it seem a bit interminable.

The second movement was also played with precision; there was never a doubt as to who was answering whom in the busy orchestral conversations. Eschenbach seemed to delight in pinpointing these. The third movement, called by Mahler “the brutal whirlpool of life,” was played with snap and alacrity. The blistering pace by itself made for sheer excitement in this highly spirited tour de force. It struck me that one might not hear anything this crazed and frantic till Shostakovich some 20 to 30 years later.

In the closing Adagio, the NSO moved from the exhilarating to the mesmerizing. It was as if Eschenbach and his players chose to relocate to the other side of the X-ray plate. They entered into and were now very much inside the music. In fact, to witness musical concentration at this level of intensity was worth the price of the evening by itself. As dazzling as the Rondo–Burleske was, the half-hour Adagio was the triumph of the evening. The dying of the music left a profound stillness in the hall that some brave soul finally broke after more than a minute of stunned silence with a shout of “bravi.” It was earned.

This concert repeats tonight.

Second Opinion: 'Dialogues of the Carmelites'

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

Dialogues of the Carmelites, Washington National Opera, 2015 (photo by Scott Suchman)
On the evening of Monday, February 23, I attended the second performance of Washington National Opera's production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Kennedy Center. This is an opera I have long loved, but never seen on stage. My expectations were high, and they were largely met. (See Charles's review of the production's opening night.)

First of all, one must explain the challenge of this somewhat difficult work. Most of the action is interior in a spiritual sense. It is very difficult to dramatize an inner struggle of the soul, but this is what Poulenc attempted and succeeded at portraying.

It’s not as if the context of the story lacks drama. It is all the more gripping because it is based upon the true history of the French Revolution. In 1794, the revolutionary prayer police caught a group of Carmelite nuns from Compiègne still secretly practicing their vows. They had been expelled from their convent two years earlier. Declared enemies of the state, the sisters were marched to the scaffold and guillotined on July 17, 1794. Upon this episode, George Bernanos, the famous French novelist, based his only screenplay. After his death, Bernanos’s literary executor fashioned it into a successful play. Poulenc took a version of the text as the libretto for his opera.

Bernanos and Poulenc avoid the melodrama and typical verismo hysterics that normally would be associated with an opera on a subject such as this. This translates into a relatively conservative, though rich operatic style that is part recitative and part lyrical. The opera is set without arias or “big numbers.” Poulenc does not deploy his full orchestral resources, familiar to those who know the Stabat Mater or the Gloria, until the very end, at the scaffold scene, when he does so to glorious effect. At whatever volume, the music is charged with the same level of energy as its spiritual subject.

Bernanos and Poulenc seek neither to sensationalize nor sentimentalize the events of the Revolution. Those events are depicted only insofar as they impinge on the lives of the nuns and serve only as background to their interior spiritual drama, which is the real subject of the opera. One must praise the direction of Francesca Zambello for staying true to their intentions. The stage direction remained focused and never distracted from the inner action. In fact, it enhanced it. I was particularly impressed at how restrained Zambello kept the crowd scenes, when a more indulgent director would have succumbed to the opportunity for raucous spectacle.

The opera aims at a high level of spiritual realism and achieves it with profound psychological and spiritual complexity. Fear, faith, death, and providence are the subjects of this opera. The story revolves around Blanche de la Force, who, out of her fears of both life and death, enters the convent with an idealized notion of the joys of detachment. The prioress warns her: “What does it avail a nun to be detached from everything if she is not also set free from herself — that is to say, from her own detachment?” Sister Blanche soon witnesses the agonizing death of the prioress, who exclaims: “God has become a shadow.... I have been thinking of death each day of my life, and now it does not help me at all.” Moments before death, she foresees the desecration of the chapel and cries out, “God has abandoned us!” The shocked Sister Marie, who attends her, keeps the other sisters out of range so they will not be scandalized.

The prioress’s difficult death disturbs the community, except for young Sister Constance, who suggests, somewhat blithely, “At 59, is it not high time to die?” Yet it is also Sister Constance who grasps how providential the difficult death may be. She proposes to the puzzled Blanche that the troubled death of the prioress belonged to someone else: “One would say that in giving her this kind of death, our good Lord had made an error; as in a cloakroom they give you one coat for another.” She suggests that, because of this, someone who least expects it will be surprised by how easy death is. Constance further upsets Blanche by telling her that they will die young together. Blanche spends the rest of the opera resisting this notion. When her own death approaches in the last act, after the nuns have taken the vow of martyrdom, Blanche flees in terror. Only at the last moment, when the guillotine has begun to fall, does Blanche reappear “incredibly calm” to take her place by her sisters. They die singing the Salve Regina. Blanche joyfully sings the four last verses from the Veni Creator Spiritus as she submits to the blade.

One could easily argue that Blanche’s last-minute arrival at the scaffold, composed and ready to die, is, dramaturgically speaking, a deus ex machina. How is it that she suddenly receives the grace for her peaceful, though violent, death? It is not a development we observe. It simply happens. Yet, in this case, the deus ex machina adds to, rather than detracts from, the drama of the work because it operates on the same plane of grace that is the premise of the whole work. The prioress’s deathbed cry that God had abandoned her echoed Christ’s cry from the cross. Yet, mysteriously, Christ’s cry was salvific. What of the prioress’s ugly death? Did it share in that salvific work? How? The working out of this mystery and the spiritual tensions within it drive the opera. Providentially, the prioress’s agonizing death in a peaceful setting makes possible Blanche’s peaceful death in an agonized setting.

From this brief summary, one can easily see that the key roles are those of Madame de Croissy, the Old Prioress, and Blanche de la Force. American mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, who actually sings the Divine Office with the Carmelite Sisters of Reno when she is at home, did an excellent job vocally and dramatically as the prioress. Her agonizing death scene was every bit as disturbing and repugnant as it needed to be to give force to the rest of the opera. As Blanche, Canadian soprano Layla Claire had exactly the right kind of fragility and vulnerability to make Blanche’s struggle real, with a warm and tender voice suited to the part. American soprano Ashley Emerson was suitably impish and impulsive as Sister Constance, and played the perfect foil to Blanche. Leah Crocetto as Madame Lidoine and Elizabeth Bishop as Mother Marie were both convincing. The two main male roles were sung with distinction by American bass-baritone Alan Held as the Marquis de la Force, Blanche’s father, and tenor Shawn Mathey as the Chevalier de la Force, Blanche’s brother.

Mr. Mathey was also the only singer who sang with sufficient diction that his words could be understood without looking at the supertitles. I am not sure that the other singers are entirely at fault in this matter. Poulenc wrote the opera to a French libretto, and the English translation does not scan musically as well as the French. My bet would be that there is at least a slight expansion factor – that the English libretto has more words in it than the French – thus requiring the singers to get through the words faster. In any case, Mr. Mathey was crystal-clear. Overall, I would have preferred to hear the opera in French, though that would have been against the wishes of Poulenc, who thought audiences should be able to hear it in their own language.

The large curved-wall sets were economical and I thought, at first, crude. But as things proceeded, I saw how much set designer Hildegard Bechtler was able to get out of a little. For instance, in the nuns’ chapel against a somewhat bland curved wall, what looks like a wooden bas-relief of Virgin and Child, with two pairs of candles below it, is lowered. That was just enough to break the austerity of the setting and communicate the purpose of the space. The only other visual reference I have for this opera is from a DVD of the Netherlands Opera Amsterdam production at La Scala, under Riccardo Muti. In it, the huge dark space of the stage was certainly menacing, but it was allowed to swallow the intimate drama. The WNO production, sets, and staging avoided this potential pitfall, and attention remained where it needed to be. I was also very grateful for the traditional costumes, so capably rendered by Claudie Gastine. One’s attention was never diverted by trying to figure out what the anachronisms were supposed to mean, because there weren’t any.

The Washington National Opera Orchestra, under Canadian conductor Antony Walker, gave a spirited performance, but was too often out of balance with the singers, who were more than occasionally swamped. This will, no doubt, be ironed out in future performances.

The otherwise excellent notes in the Playbill program failed to mention that the 16 good sisters of Compiègne were beatified by Pope Pius X in 1907.

This production continues through March 10. One ought not to miss this opportunity to see a production so close to the intentions of its composer and librettist.

Czech Philharmonic Comes to Fairfax

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the GMU Center for the Arts.

Dvořák, Complete Symphonies and Concertos, Czech Philharmonic, J. Bělohlávek (Decca, 2014)

At the George Mason University Center for the Arts on Friday evening, November 14, 2014, the Czech Philharmonic, under conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, offered an almost all-Czech program of music during the Washington-area leg of its American tour. The first half of the evening consisted of Leos Janáček’s rhapsody Taras Bulba and Franz Liszt’s second piano concerto (A Major, S. 125), with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. The second half was taken up with Antonin Dvořák’s ninth symphony (E minor, op. 95, B. 178, "From the New World").

This orchestra has been my gold standard in Czech music for many years. I think the last time I heard them live was in a volcanic performance of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass back in the 1980s in Carnegie Hall. My very favorite recordings of Janáček and Martinů remain those of the Czech Philharmonic, under the late, great conductor Karel Ančerl. I wondered how well served my memories would be by the current iteration of this orchestra, under a conductor who brought with him great expectations, having just been awarded this year’s Antonín Dvořák Prize (and last heard here with the Prague Philharmonia in 2012).

The answer is well served, indeed. From the beginning of the Janáček, it was clear that Bělohlávek deserves his fine reputation in the Czech repertory, particularly with the works of Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, Suk, and Martinů. He and the Czech Philharmonic are native to the wildness of Janáček’s eccentric music, its orchestral brilliance, and its use of punchy motifs and dramatic abbreviation. Together, they brought Taras Bulba vividly to life, with all its wild swagger, clashing swords, pounding hooves, swirling dances, and poignant melodies. The piece was pulsing with life, with finely articulated playing from the winds and brass, and a very strong, surging string section. An early entry of the chimes seemed to stick out a little too far from the orchestral fabric, but that could be due to the acoustics of the room. In any case, every instrument is answering every other instrument in this vital portrayal of its subject matter, and these forces caught the urgent sense of communication.

I confess that Franz Liszt is not one of my favorite composers, except for his magnificent oratorio Christus. In any case, it was a great pleasure to hear Thibaudet’s superb pianism in the second concerto. I could not imagine a more limpid touch in the opening Adagio or a stronger forte in the soon-to-follow Allegro. The work itself has a wild, almost improvisatory character that, to me, verges on hodgepodge. It certainly contains a lot of ear candy and has dazzling moments in the mercurial flow of marches, dances, and whatever else Liszt chooses to throw in. Because of the quality of playing by both the orchestra and soloist, this display piece made for an enjoyable romp.

Other Articles: James R. Oestreich, Regardless of Offstage Worries, Onstage It’s All Artistry (New York Times, November 17) Eric C. Simpson, Home dishes prove ideal menu for Czech Philharmonic (New York Classical Review, November 17) Tom Huizenga, Played by Czech Philharmonic, 1890s Dvorak sounds fresh as ever (Washington Post, November 17) Zachary Woolfe, A Maestro Returns, First There, Now Here (New York Times, November 14)

I admit that it was the Janáček that I principally came to hear. I am not sure I would have struggled out on a cold night to listen to another performance of the hugely popular Dvořák ninth. However, the Czech Philharmonic played with such warmth, power, and precision that my reservations at hearing this piece again were soon swept away.

The reaction of the audience was so enthusiastic that Bělohlávek offered two encores -- a scintillating rendition of Smetana’s overture to The Bartered Bride, and then a sweet Valse Triste by Oskar Nedbal (1874–1930), a Dvořák student, who later became conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Bělohlávek conducted effectively with an economy of motion -- no histrionics for him. Whatever he is feeling he lets the music express. He and his forces produced a wonderfully rich sound without sacrificing clarity.

Bělohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic will perform Smetana’s Vltava, a symphonic poem from Ma Vlast, and Dvořák’s ninth symphony this evening at Washington National Cathedral (November 17, 7 pm) in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and the legacy of Václav Havel.