Dip Your Ears: No. 265 (Muti’s 1981 Verdi Requiem)

G.Verdi, Missa da Requiem R.Muti / BRSO BR Klassik

Riccardo Muti’s Star-Studded 1981 Verdi Requiem

Bewildering Muti

Riccardo Muti is as Janus-faced a conductor as I know. His best is the best, his worst the worst. He can blow the roof off with one type of repertoire and he can bore the life out of every note with another. Groping through his discography and sitting through enough of his concerts, I’ve come up with the following theorems: Younger Muti is marginally more interesting than older Muti, but if that’s the case, it’s completely overshadowed by the differences in repertoire. Great repertoire includes: Anything post-romantic Russian is great. Think Prokofiev and Scriabin, where his symphonic recordings are still unsurpassed. Almost anything Italian, too, but especially these: Cherubini, which he lovingly tends to. Nino Rota, his mentor, whom he champions. Verdi, whom – softly and fiery – he knows inside out. And Respighi, where he over-the-tops it to jaw-dropping effect. So-so repertoire: Everything else. Atrocious: Bruckner, Schubert.

On-Paper Excellence

This view colors my expectations, which isn’t always aiding a reasonably objective opinion, but it’s not clear in which direction. Will I necessarily like that which I assume to be great and loathe what I expect to be junk? Or will I have too-high expectations disappointed in the former case and very low expectations exceeded in the latter? So much to think about and I haven’t even put BR Klassik’s new release of a 1981 live recording of Muti conducting the Verdi Requiem into the CD tray yet. Well, it really is the corker that it promises to be. The soloists Jessye Norman, Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, and Yevgeny Nesterenko promise and deliver. Baltsa isn’t the smokiest, haunting alto (as, say, Ekaterina Semenchuk), but gorgeous and at the height of her powers. José Carreras has the mellifluous lightness that lets him navigate his tricky part without the embarrassing slurs and wails that so often undo this work. Norman plows through the score with aplomb but also creamy finesse. And Nesterenko, who passed away last year, doesn’t rumble in the basement but adds a welcome lyrical quality to the proceedings. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra plays with the perfection that was already then its hallmark (delicate string whispers, turn-on-a-dime dynamic changes) but also lets itself be whipped into an absolute frenzy by Muti, as is true for the BR Chorus, who Muti audibly loves working with. His take is dramatic rather than sulfurous, deliberately powerful rather than violently thrusting but crucially: never Zeffirelli-harmless. I am in theory partial towards darker, brisker, more biting readings, but not only do I not know any half-way flawless recordings in that vein, Muti also just convinces on sheer quality and decibels. And there is nothing about the event being live that detracts from the sonic experience.

Compared to what?

The whole thing is a top-notch recording, every bit as good or – thanks to Norman – actually better than his 1979 EMI/Warner take (Scotto, Baltsa, Luchetti, Nesterenko) and much more moving than the grand, self-conscious, stilted 1987 effort (EMI, Studer, Zajic, Pavarotti, Ramey). His latest recording, from Chicago (CSO-Resound, Frittoli, Borodina, Zeffiri, Abdrazakov) packs a punch but is let down by the high voices. Most Verdi Requiem recordings have some flaw or another that one has to overlook for true enjoyment. This leaves some very old accounts still among my favorites, starting with bracing Leinsdorf (oop) and Fricsay by way of Solti II, Gardiner’s HIP take, and, most recently Barenboim: another good slow-burn reading but let down by the male soloists. (I haven’t listened to Noseda’s LSO discyet; his Verdi Requiems live, however, have been splendid.) In short: Listen to it!

10/9

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Riccardo Mutis Wiener Klangspektakel: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

Riccardo Mutis Wiener Klangspektakel

Tschaikowskis Klassiker ist an die Staatsoper zurückgekehrt.

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

Forbes Classical CD of the Week

…Riccardo Muti’s Otello, his first commercial audio recording of Verdi’s far-and-away greatest opera, hasn’t got an all-star cast by name but hand-picked singers instead, who contribute to one of the most wholly satisfying performances of the opera I’ve heard on record…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Serenading The Green Eyed Monster

Read more »

Notes from the 2014 Salzburg Festival ( 17 ) Anton Bruckner Cycle • Bruckner VI

Ricardo Muti • Wiener Philharmoniker

The Death of a Symphony

ABOVE PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Silvia Lelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

On paper, Riccardo Muti might be suited to Bruckner, with his tendencies to regal, broad and mellifluous textures. On record, that has not borne out: Muti doesn’t touch Bruckner often; his best—the Fourth with the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI-Warner)—is better than its reputation, but not by much. The cliché—which is to say: truth mixed with laziness—is that Muti simply isn’t a Brucknerian.

And of all the Bruckner symphonies, the one that one might expect to suit him least is the Sixth, the one Bruckner described as his sauciest. The result—to the extent I was able to hear it properly in the acoustically challenged, somewhat deadened space of the Paterre Logen in the Grosses Festspielhaus on Sunday, August 17^th at a treacherous 11am—sadly supported this prejudice. Dull, dull, dull.

A.Bruckner, Symphony No.6, B.Haitink / Dresden StaKap. Profil Hässler

The first movement was calm, broad, regal and very “Majestoso”, for sure. Tasteful perhaps, and with rounded corners, but really with the life and meaning insidiously sucked out of it: listless, boring, and with routine, repetitive melodic fragments that brought to mind all the accusations that Bruckner had to endure in his lifetime.

The standstill funereal Adagio—calming, beautiful—was effectively a barbiturate. The performance wasn’t helped by morning-woes in the playing of the Viennese—with a surprisingly brittle sound and occasional flubs (the kind that one would overlook or not even hear, in an enthralling performance), and a homogenous soup only intermittently lightened as, for example, by the lovely and lively pizzicatos in the Scherzo. Massive and threatening climaxes in the finale came, then ever so brief, far too brief moments of lightness—and still over all hung a feeling of either not quite getting it or not caring.

Fifty-five-some minutes earlier, the Sixth Symphony had been my favorite of Bruckner’s. Now it had become a chore. Bruckner was preceded by Schubert’s Fourth which truly became “Tragic”, and not in the good sense. Most of the audience raved and hollered and loved it. Such is the power of name-recognition. Music-loving, sensitive ears (mine were hardly the only ones to hear it that way) despair in such moments.

Ionarts-at-Large: A Blend of Riccardo Muti

Riccardo Muti gets bravos just for bowing before the concert. He does it so stylishly, granted. He bows, moves, even stands, certainly conducts with grace, aloof dignity. The crease of his trousers always seems to fall just right. It’s magical. Much like his hair. He’s the master of the gorgeously homogenized blend (vowel interchangeable, on occasion), and creates great nuance within that broad flowing, genteel sound he coaxes out of every orchestra and imposes on every composer. The concerts with Muti I’ve heard can be most economically described by how they deviate from that approach.

For completeness sake: On December 20^th it was the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony and Schubert’s A-flat Major Mass that he conducted. Usually the outcome of Muti’s doing, especially with this band, is CD-perfect stuff (though often not a CD I’d listen to after first encounter). Orchestras seem to follow him with eagerness second to none.

F.Mendelssohn-B., Symphony No.4, Andante con moto (excerpt) | H.v.Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic, DG

Riccardo Muti on ionarts: Notes from the 2012 Salzburg Festival • Vienna Philh. 3 (jfl, 23.8.12) Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival • Macbeth (jfl, 8.8.11) Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival • Orfeo ed Euridice (jfl, 5.8.10) Muti and the New York Philh. (RRR, 23.11.09) Ionarts-at-Large: Muti & Rota (jfl, 7.12.07)

In Mendelssohn’s case the horns and the less-accurate-than-usual violins made sure it wasn’t quite straight-t0-CD on this first of two nights. But that was more than made up for by the winds, most especially the flute interplay in the second movement, highlighted by Muti and executed beautifully by Henrik Wiese and Ivanna Ternay.

Whenever Muti conducts the BRSO, the BR chorus is scheduled to perform also. One might think that the latter musical body—along with the RIAS one of the best choirs in Germany—is the real reason he has Munich on his itinerary. The combined forces performed Schubert’s rambunctious Mass in A-flat Major to muscular, impressive results.

Mezzo soprano Alisa Kolosova did not show up; she sent her public persona instead, with a face like a mask and a smile of frozen syrup. Her stand-in did a fine job, though, with that strong and smooth, pleasant low voice of hers, not effortless, with a bright corona, an occasionally breathy vibrato, and just the right amount of animalistic quality. Veteran Ruth Ziesak—substituting on short notice for Julia Kleiter, which might explain a brief moment of timidity early in the Credo—showed all the accuracy that her voice, devoid of any comfort zone left and right of the ideal line, needs. The Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu had little opportunity to show off his mellow, slightly congested, instrument, with chorus and orchestra going full throttle. Baritone Michele Pertusi had nice moments of clarity, even elegance in the Gloria, and elsewhere sounded like a Verdi baritone slightly outside his comfort zone.

Notes from the 2012 Salzburg Festival ( 9, 10, 11 )

Three Concerts • August 15th

Wiener Philharmoniker 3 • Riccardo Muti

It’s no good putting together orchestral programs a year or two in advance, as if they were regular symphonic concerts in the evening when two out of two (or sometimes two out of three) are matinees. What the ear may happily digest at eight or nine in the evening is not the same it wants to hear at 11 in the morning. (Nor an orchestra play.) A double bill of Liszt and his buddy Berlioz, in any case, is decidedly not suitable AM-fare.

Still, it is Riccardo Muti at the helm of the Vienna Philharmonic—quality musicianship I can appreciate, even if more in theory than the mildly anemic reality of the opera or concert programs I’ve encountered with the Neapolitan maestro. And a work by Liszt was on the bill thatI had not only never heard, but never heard of: His 13^th and last symphonic poem Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (“From the Cradle to the Grave”), composed in Rome in the early 1880s; a three-partite depiction of a drawing by Michály Zichy.

F.Liszt, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, Three Funeral Odes, et al., I.Volkov / BBC Scottish SO hyperion

The first movement, “The Cradle – Andante”, is economical with its instrumentation to the extreme—the violas and second violins set a simplistic, dark tone; the first violins add sparse, melodies that vaguely intimate an awakening. Aggressively bored coughs from the audience, unwilling to follow the long, patient musical line, interrupted that movement, much to the irritation of the twitching maestro who tried as best he could to work that elegiac episode as smoothly as possible. Then comes the nervous, tense “Struggle for Existence”, at various times aggressive and loud, with fierce trumpets and a storm of timpani salvos. After that it’s back to “The Grave, Cradle of Future Life”, which is almost an inversion of the first third… upon which the work, to this listener’s piqued befuddlement, was over.

Gratefulness was still sloshing within me for having heard a real novelty as part of a mainstream-appeal Festival concert, when the Franz Liszt-Joachim J. Raff co-production Les Préludes blurted into that appreciation. Muti’s performance was smooth and homogenous, subtle and delicate (this being the conductor’s finest contribution), but robust and heroic as needed. The well known but rarely performed orchestral work seemed a little self-satisfied, and content just with itself. If only: Les Préludes has suffered considerably after the War from its association with the weekly news reels from the Wehrmacht’s latest exploits on the Soviet front. Thus the little excerpted bit towards the very end of Les Préludes became known as the “Russia Fanfare”. And how well it was received at the Grosses Festspielhaus, this Wednesday morning! It would have taken a less cynical soul than mine not to think: “Boy, aren’t they liking that… they haven’t been allowed to cheer after that music for such a long time.”

With enough Liszt under my belt, knowing what a third rate work Berlioz’ Messe solennelle is (Muti performed the work that Berlioz burnt in embarrassment in 2007 with the BRSO), and with the prospect of two more concerts on my agenda that day, I took my marching orders and retreated from the Festspielhaus.

Salzburg contemporary 10 • Family Concert

Read more »

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 5 )

Giuseppe Verdi • Macbeth

Macbeth—perhaps the most sought-after ticket at the Festival this year for being the first-ever Muti-Stein collaboration and the last Muti opera performance at the Festival—was, in all truth, not high on my list of priorities for performances to see in Salzburg. When I had to choose between a concert with Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Fourth Symphony, a Mozart Piano Concerto with Maria João Pires, and a few other little goodies (conducted by Kent Nagano) and Macbeth, I hesitated at first, but really knew all along that I had to follow my heart and take personal interest over prestigiousness. I admire Klaus Amadeus Hartmann’s too rarely heard music, and I very much cherish Pires’ playing (last heard live in Beethoven’s Second Concerto). With Verdi, however, I have some (documented) problems. A production by Peter Stein (“I don’t do ‘interpretation”) is not at all my idea of what theater should be. And I find it difficult to develop more than reserved respect for the art of Riccardo Muti.

That latter stance is not arrogance, nor an affected attempt to avoid or chide the consensus*, nor in any way an ideological issue (all of which can and do affect reviews, no matter who the critic). In Munich I have the opportunity to hear Muti reasonably regularly, and the concerts are usually very fine, but there’s not yet been a moment of ‘Wow’. And Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at last year’s Salzburg Festival (review here) was by some measure the biggest disappointment of all the concerts I had seen; thick, homogenous, pasteurized, tedious, boring, and with a staging (nominally Dieter Dorn, but Muti demands total blandness and usually interferes with the director’s work) deserving of the same adjectives. Even believing enthusiastic reports from recent Chicago concert performances of Otello (a different thing from conducting from the pit with Muti, and the CSO being a snappier of band than the Vienna Phil), I couldn’t muster enthusiasm for this production. It was meant for a different kind of audience and I knew it perfectly well.


This prelude to the review is by way of fairness, because the cause for complaining about the production (and there will be some complaining) is—essentially—my having had the last-minute opportunity to slip into the second performance of this hopelessly sold-out Macbeth last Saturday, August 6^th. Had I spent money on a ticket that night, it would have been one for the (not sold-out) “Liederabend/Mahler Scenes” concert next door, with András Schiff performing Schubert (D 894) and in the second half the piano version of Das Lied von der Erde with Piotr Beczala and Christian Gerhaher (returning to Das Lied after protracted illness) …and (according to hearsay critical consensus) gotten what I wanted and more. Instead I sat in the damp Felsenreitschule, anticipating Macbeth as little more than a visual spectacle, and half hoping for an insightful musical direction.

During the four hours and fifteen minutes (including two intermissions) of the uncut (!) Macbeth, I experienced a disappointment that was very considerably mitigated by my low expectations. A Canadian and a German colleague, inexplicably going into this Macbeth with considerably higher expectations, were appalled during both intermissions and afterwards, almost relishing in their disapproval. I found myself more bemused, able to enjoy the very competent singing, and the strangely casual-flexible music-making that Muti prescribed the orchestra, including some genuinely soft and quiet parts and delicate woodwinds from the Vienna Philharmonic. It’s all about expectation-management. The production, meanwhile, went from cute (the chorus rushing about in tree-costumes that made them look like Ewoks on the run) to incredibly literal (three pale and naked witches around a steaming cauldron) to pathetic. It went something like this:


Positioning. Hand gesture. Sing. Exit stage right. In various combinations, for 155 minutes net. Protagonists in colorful costumes and chain mail strutting about with realistic swords and deliberate theatrical (read: stiff, figurative) acting. Enter the knights (chorus!), ten in number. Stop at mid stage, sing required bit, remain standing, turn on the heel, exit stage right. Soloist(s) walk up to spot marked X, wide stance, place sword in front of themselves, and go at it, straight at the audience, come aria or duet. Use young boy (Banquo’s child) as you would a stage prop. Drag it around, send it off stage, have it brought back. Be sure it does not make any movement not indicated by the singer (Dmitry Belosselskiy) manhandling it. Introduce a costume parade with a crowned, white-bearded king in the lead, solemnly walking between orchestra seats and stage from left-to-right; later the same thing right-to-left but with the procession of the oh-so-suffering masses, downtrodden men and women with big, vacuous-horrified eyes, tipple-tapple with desolate children carefully sprinkled among them, wearing sparkling clean, home-knitted poverty-wear, and easily recyclable for next year’s Nabucco.

Perfumed Naphthalene

Peter Stein’s medieval times are hygienic meticulously clean and neat, aseptic even in its depiction of depravity. Every scene looks as though designed to look great on a still photograph ten years from now in the commemorative 10 year retrospective coffee-table book. “Ah, yes! Muti and Stein Macbeth. I was there! What an occasion!” And for all the money spent on sticking five dozen men into chainmail, and carrying lit torches about, Stein couldn’t be bothered to fill the beakers during the dinner scene. Filling empty beakers with nonexistent liquids from empty vessels is the kind of amateurish, ridiculous-looking prop-sloppiness that I hate with a passion. Never mind that even the best actors hold and handle empty cups very differently than full ones, it contributed to that ultimately maddening bloodlessness of the production. A production with clatter-a-dang swordfights that no local amateur theater company could have been proud of. A production where no wine can ever spill, where the poor have perfect teeth, death smells like lilacs and Kensington Gore, where every smile or grimace is fake, and where bronze-creamed maids (the, acting-wise, massively untalented Anna Malavasi) give lessons in phony stage behavior, with the shallowest type of replica-emotions on ostentatious display. The post-collapse ballet scene was kept moving by hoisting a bunch of adorable children onto stage who hopped about, doing the ring-a-ring-o’ roses, and eventually hopped off again. The prelude to Act III was where Muti and Stein dumped the unnecessarily uncut Paris ballet music, and was illuminated (literally, but not metaphorically speaking) by lighting so random and even pathetic (a little red from the left, a little white from the center; thrice repeated), it seemed an exercise in the absurd. Appearing ghosts came from holes in the ground via creaky elevation that occasionally got stuck. Spooky theater action circa 1893.

All this suggests a lack of detail and intelligent blocking that made this Peter Stein production a failure even on his terms. The dramatic highlight turned out the perfect coincidence of real thunder outside the Felsenreitschule and the murder scene on the inside, and involuntarily humor was inserted courtesy of a melodically ringing cell phone right at Macbeth's exclamation of "Qual concento!..." - "What music!"


The singers’ collective lack of acting can’t be blamed on them; I have seen many of them in superb action. Željko Lučić (astonishing in Martin Kušej’s Macbeth) still made the most of his lack of direction, from start to (original version) finish. Giuseppe Filianoti (Macduff), in green-orange tunic, with his perfect black hair (like the illegitimate son of Muti), very blonde dead stage-children, and a blank stare, did not bother—though his dramatic capability and willingness is second to none, as proven (for example) with his Nemorino in David Bösch’s fabulous L’Elisir D’Amore. Their singing—excellent amid a cast notable for its evenness—was not affected. Tatiana Serjan too, stood out with her full blooded voice and—given the limitations—surprisingly three dimensional Lady Macbeth. Antonio Poli (Malcolm) meanwhile managed to look so stiff and ridiculous that it took pressure off other secondary characters to perform with particular credibility.

For all the beauty of the conducting and orchestra (even the ballet music, which the Vienna Philharmonic had probably not played in decades and which was said to have been sloppy at the premiere, was well handled), it was all-too genteel for Macbeth. One of Verdi’s more brutal operas as a Sunday-stroll-in-the-park was an odd interpretive choice, as it lacked any and all urgency, violence, or truly dramatic quality.

The success and failure, depending on who you ask, of the Muti-Stein Macbeth hinges on the fact that there’s absolutely nothing that marks this production as 2011. It could pass, as is, as a 1972 or 1959 production, which is one reason why it is such an uncritical success. It offends not, it challenges not, nor does it confuse. Peter Stein doesn’t present facts instead of ‘interpretation’ (as he claims in the accompanying interview), he presents nothing, but with a ribbon around it. But an audience almost conditioned to having directors piss into their faces (very nearly literally so in Munich’s Martin Kušej production of Macbeth), can readily appreciate nothingness, left to celebrating itself and the ‘historic’ occasion. The reoccurring strange smell that crept through the Felsenreitschule every so often, somehow like perfumed naphthalene, was emblematic of the entire production.

All pictures courtesy of the Salzburg Festival, © Silvia Lelli

* Incidentally I don’t think there is a critical consensus on the infallibility of Riccardo Muti. That his EMI Philadelphia recordings always went straight to EMI's bargain basement imprints within just a few years says at least something about public perception. Many of them are of a homogenized, bold beauty that leaves little of a mark and rarely excites, even when it impresses. As always there are exceptions in all kinds of directions; the most impressive for me being Muti’s Philips recordings of Prokofiev. His “The Fiery Angel”, Symphony No. 3, is in fact so fiery that at the end of it, there’s only blood and broken bones on the floor; the toughest, most uncompromising, and certainly most thrilling recordings made of this work. Unfathomably that Third (coupled with the First) and his Fifth (also worth seeking out) have been and still are out of print… but Arkiv Music’s splendid CD-on-Demand service (“ArkivCDs”) makes CDR copies with complete booklets available and keeps the price of used copies on Amazon down to a reasonable level.

What Might Have Been: Riccardo Muti and the New York Philharmonic

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for contributing to ionarts again with this review of the New York Philharmonic's DC appearance. You can read his latest column for InsideCatholic here.

Truth to tell, I would not hurry to a concert hall to hear the Wagner-lite bombast of Liszt’s Les Preludes or even the rarely performed Elgar concert overture, In the South, which is not his best work. Excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet are another matter, as it is my favorite ballet. However, I would prefer to hear the whole thing or the Suites from it, rather than a Reader’s Digest-like selection of high points.

My predilections are quite beside the point because the purpose of the matinee concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall at 4:00 PM on Saturday, November 21^st, was to showcase the New York Philharmonic under its guest conductor Riccardo Muti. This was simply an afternoon to enjoy the merits of a first-rate orchestra and Muti displaying their prowess; a window into what-could-have-been, had the Chicago Symphony Orchestra not snatched Muti from the New York Philharmonic where he was supposed to become the new Principal Guest Conductor.

At that level of appreciation even I, who loath most of Liszt’s music, can enjoy Les Preludes. Muti tried hard to make this sound like serious music rather the dated period potboiler (with toothbrush mustache overtones) that it is. He was helped by the gorgeous playing of the string sections and the superb brass. The Elgar, a far more sophisticated work with multiple crosscurrents, also received virtuoso treatment, with Muti keeping myriad details clear within the welter of sounds. In the South contains many of the components that went into Elgar’s music to make it great, but does not quite achieve his signature sound or the surging sense of nobility for which he became so noted.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Muti coaxes pleasing glow from N.Y. Philharmonic (Washington Post, November 23) Tim Smith, Riccardo Muti leads New York Philharmonic in DC concert (Baltimore Sun, November 23) Peter Dobrin, They're still mad for Muti (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 23) Anthony Tommasini, Maestro Who Said No Returns to Philharmonic (New York Times, November 20)

The selections from Romeo and Juliet were
brilliantly performed. The music shimmered with great refinement. Muti and the New York Philharmonic caught the mystery, the ache, and the passion of this fabulous score. Muti hammered home “The Death of Tybalt” with extraordinary force and conviction.

Throughout, Muti combined litheness, energy and exactitude in his conducting, to which the New York Philharmonic responded in kind. (This makes one wonder what might-have-been had Muti not chosen the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for his next post, after refusing an offer from the NY Philharmonic.) Although I weary of Washington audiences awarding standing ovations to nearly everyone, Muti and the orchestra deserved it. RRR

Ionarts at Large: Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival

The first four of the Vienna Philharmonic’s five concerts at this year’s Salzburg Festival were conducted by Pierre Boulez, Jonathan Nott, Riccardo Muti, and Mariss Jansons, featured works by Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók (Boulez), Bach, Mahler, Ives, Schubert (Nott), Brahms (Muti), Webern, Berlioz, and Brahms again (Jansons). The fifth program on the prepenultimate and penultimate days of the festival was conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and featured Mahler’s most Mahlerian Symphony – the overstuffed, intense, and exhilarating Third Symphony.


--> Full article on ClassicalWETA.org

Ionarts-at-Large: Muti & Rota

Just seven weeks after Riccardo Muti had presented choral rarities of Schubert, Petrassi, and Berlioz in Munich, he was back with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert of the music of Nino Rota and César Franck -- intermittently the BRSO had toured Japan with Mariss Jansons and Richard Strauss – and judging from the reviews with the usual, extraordinary success.

With Arcadi Volodos occupying the Herkulessaal on Thursday, the BRSO played in their second home, the Philharmonie at the Gasteig. (This choice between the smallish 1300 seat Herkulessaal and the too-big, acoustically challenged 2400 seat Gasteig is the reason why Mariss Jansons is so engaged in the BRSO getting a new, dedicated 1800 seat concert hall which is tentatively planned at the former royal stables, right behind the opera.)

Despite the draw that is Riccardo Muti’s name and likely because of the lack of familiarity with the name Nino Rota or the association of him with film music (e.g. The Godfather, 8½, La Strada), the BRSO played to a less than sold out house.

A shame, because those who stayed away missed a spectacularly bold concert of music that only the most hardened music-snobs would not have embraced wholeheartedly. Perhaps it is part of the irony of the concert business that people stay away when the fare is too difficult and when it is not ‘serious’ enough. Even Claudio Abbado can’t fill the Gasteig in Munich when he adds as harmless a piece as Pelleas et Mllisande onto a Mahler program, just because the name “Schoenberg” is astutely avoided. Similarly, if it isn’t “Beethoven” or “Strauss” or “Mozart” that’s on the program but ‘only a film composer’, large swaths of the audience won’t think it classy enough.

Il Gattopardo, Luchino Visconti’s 1966 melancholic film about the decline and fall of Italian aristocracy and noblesse with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon, got Nino Rota’s most romantic and wistful music. The story is a throwback to a bygone, allegedly better, time – full of romantic melancholy and reminiscences. That’s exactly how the music sounds, too. And listening to it, the argument that Nino Rota was only to happy to compose this music under the guise of making it suitable for the film, while really yearning to write exactly that kind of music, anyway, sounds unassailable. Here he did not need to hide behind irony or hints of a modern idiom – he could brazenly wallow in all the schmaltzy, lush, thundering, glory-touting, somber, introverted, and pensive instincts that came to him and that he was not able to put into the abandoned symphony upon the sketches of which the music to Il Gattopardo is based.

There was not a moment in which it did not sound like a matter of luxury to have this music played by the BRSO under Riccardo Muti’s caring leadership. That Muti, not known for frivolities of any kind, thus champions Rota not only has to do with the better-than-suspected music of the Milan-born composer who taught at the South Italian conservatory in Bari, but also with Rota having been Muti’s teacher whose recommendation got the then 17-year old conductor-to-be into the conservatory in Naples.

C.Franck, Symphony in d-minor, Muti/Philadelphia Rota, La Strada, Gattopardo Dances, Cto. for Strings, Muti/La Scala Phil Rota, Piano Concertos, Muti/Tomassi/La Scala Phil Rota, Music for Film, Muti/La Scala Phil Rota, La Strada, Il Gattopardo, Concerto Soirée, Pons/Granada City Orchestra

Muti seems to pay back his dues with enthusiasm and passion: Swelling and moving, the orchestra dug into this score, as well as the following Piano Concerto’s, with fury. The brass boomed, the timpani thumped, and the strings swooned. There’s little I find more tiring than the typical conductor’s platitude of every piece of music, no matter its inherent worth, having to be played like it is the “best piece ever written”. On Thursday with the BRSO, the statement finally came true. It shows the respect that Muti wields from the players – and his ability to share his passion – that both of the Rota works were played as if they were the finest music that Beethoven has to offer.

They are not, mind you, but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t hear the symphonic suite or either concerto much more often in concert! The more archaic and romantic is clearly the Piano Concerto E-major ”Piccolo mondo antico”. A pianistic showpiece that starts out like Rachmaninov, then moves through a slow movement of clouded joy and longing smiles that sounds more like Ravel than anything else, and ends with a flashy bang after much of its third movement reminded of the Prokofiev of ”Romeo & Juliet” and ”The Love for Three Oranges” (as well as more Ravel), it seems to travel though all the more harmless romantic styles of the 20th century. There is obscene deliciousness here, and more swells and climaxes while the irony in it is scarcely noticeable. At least not in the confident rendition of Muti who seems to think that this music needs no irony for its self-defense.

The young French pianist David Fray, whose recent album of Bach and Boulez on Virgin found the warm praise of Anthony Tommasini, played along with Muti, milked the concerto to the hilt, and his perfectly placed last chord coincided with the thundering applause of the audience.

The second half of the concert was reserved for a dominating, all-stops-pulled, Symphony in d-minor by Franck. I don’t blame the audience of the work's premiere for not having quite understood the work. After founding the Société Nationale de Musique with Fauré, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, etc. to open a new, decidedly French front against the dominance of Wagnerian music, to champion a music that breathed the spirit of ”ars gallica”, and after being a teacher to d’Indy, Chausson, Pierné, Dukas, and the brilliant, mad Duparc (to whom the symphony is dedicated), it should seem odd to present a symphony that could not be any less French. In fact, it’s a work that seems to combine ideas and themes of Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Liszt, and even Beethoven, just not an ounce of French idiom. A few very simple motifs are turned into a grand symphony of three movements that sounds to me like the very rejection of everything he had worked and faught for... but instead like..., well, like Bruckner vacationing on the Côte d'Azur.

No complaints from me. And Muti, too, did not seem to be interested in adding anything dainty or croissant-flavored to the symphony. This was a militaristic and swift performance of complete cohesion and sonority, impressive at every point, though driven too hard in some places. Not only bold and muscular, but blaring and not bothering much with subtleties, either. A particular delight amid all this was the pizzicato-burdened Allegretto with its famous cor anglais-solo where the soloist gets to snarl like depressed, moaning duck to the harp’s diligent plucking.