McGegan's B Minor Mass

G. B. Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor (Yale University Press, 2003)

British early music conductor Nicholas McGegan has been guest conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra every year since 2012. He has made his name mostly in the United States, as music director of Philharmonia Baroque in California, although he is a frequent guest with other ensembles, including having led the NSO Messiah in 2014. His latest project with the band from Charm City is Bach's B Minor Mass, which he conducted on Thursday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, reportedly the first performance of the work by the ensemble in decades.

Washington certainly has no shortage of performances of the B Minor Mass, and in more historically informed versions. Although Joshua Rifkin's assertion that this work and others by Bach should be performed with one singer on each part has not been widely accepted, most scholars agree that the performing forces were modest. Bach specialist George B. Stauffer, who has published a fine book on the B Minor Mass, estimates that Bach destined the work for a chorus of ten to fifteen singers and an instrumental ensemble of twenty to twenty-five players, the forces used in most of our favorite recordings. McGegan compromised at about sixty singers (drawn from the Baltimore Choral Arts Society) and thirty-some instrumentalists, reduced forces certainly but with the acoustic demands of a larger hall in mind.

Tom Hall is stepping down this year after a distinguished career leading the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. That may be one reason why significant problems plagued the ensemble's accustomed clarity of intonation (especially in the soprano sections, who often trended flat) and well-aligned coordination, which may be due to some occasionally frenetic shifts of tempo from McGegan. Perhaps it was because the full ensemble was not present, perhaps it was because they sang in mixed formation: whatever the reason, the success of the B Minor Mass rests largely on the chorus, and this had some effective parts but was underwhelming as a whole. Masaaski Suzuki had greater success with the University of Maryland Concert Choir last year.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, A concert mass gets an intimate performance (Washington Post, May 28) Tim Smith, BSO offers Bach's B minor Mass in style (Baltimore Sun, May 28) David Rohde, Bach’s ‘Mass in B Minor’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Choral Arts Society (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, May 27)

The solo quartet featured especially fine work from bass-baritone Dashon Burton, who was outstanding in the "Quoniam tu solus" section of the Gloria, with a few minor struggles at the top in the "Et in spiritum sanctum" movement of the Credo. Soprano Yulia Van Doren melded well with light-voiced tenor Thomas Cooley, while generally overpowering countertenor Christopher Ainslie, who had the least satisfying sound of the quartet. The timbre of countertenor can work with a boy treble or a lighter soprano in this work, but with a full-bodied voice like Van Doren, it did not.

The playing from the selected members of the BSO was generally polished, with McGegan helping to keep the balance with the singers at the proper level. Excellent solos came from flute and horn principals, with Katherine Needleman standing out on both oboe and oboe d'amore. Although the instruments and pitch were all modern, including the electronic Allen organ for the continuo, McGegan included some aspects from historical research, such as using the articulation marks from the 1733 Dresden orchestral parts, partly written by Bach himself. Still it was hard not to miss the rougher edges of historical instruments, like the sometimes bumptious corno da caccia.

This concert repeats tonight, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

BSO Ends Up All Wet

We have been fans of John Storgårds, who recently concluded his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, since his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2011. The Finnish conductor's debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, was less auspicious. The fault was not with the conducting, which was incendiary in a house-crushing performance of Holst's The Planets, but with the programming, which opened with Tan Dun's pedestrian Water Concerto.

When the Chinese composer hit the big time, winning the Grawemeyer Award in 1998 for his opera Marco Polo, his use of Chinese instruments in works for European orchestra was revolutionary. Over the last twenty years, though, he has not had a great track record, often recycling similar ideas over and over. Christopher Lamb, principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, worked with the composer to create the range of water-based percussion used in the Water Concerto, premiered in 1998. Lamb returned to play it this week over a decade since his last BSO appearance, in 2003, when he also played -- you guessed it -- Tan Dun's Water Concerto. Lamb, assisted by two percussionists, bowed and splashed their way through the piece, using waterphones and a range of other objects splashed and submerged in big plastic bowls of water. (For long stretches, it was maddeningly repetitive, making me think of the gross Robot Chicken skit embedded below.) The woodwinds made duck calls with their mouthpieces, there was an erhu-like solo for the principal cellist, and largely heterophonic writing brought little of interest in harmony or orchestration. The effect could be achieved much more inexpensively with a small ensemble, rather than using up a symphony orchestra's time.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Storgards makes brilliant BSO debut (Baltimore Sun, May 21) Joan Reinthaler, ‘Water Concerto’ splashes eloquently onto the BSO stage (Washington Post, May 23)

The string of world premieres, commissioned by the BSO for its 100th anniversary season, continued with a new piece by Libby Larsen, Earth (Holst Trope). It was created to fill a misunderstood lacuna in Holst's The Planets, which is not about the planets as heavenly bodies, but about their influence on humanity through astrology, meaning that Earth is not really germane (nor is Pluto for that matter). A Space Age vocabulary of sounds in a triple-meter pulsating texture was pleasant enough, until Larsen wove a cantus firmus into the piece, the hymn tune usually sung to the words "For the Beauty of the Earth." It was a gesture that unfortunately recalled P.D.Q. Bach's use of the tune Jesus Loves Me, This I Know in Iphigenia in Brooklyn.

The last time that we heard the BSO play The Planets, in 2008, there was a similar confusion about the piece. Unlike Alsop's interpretation back then, Storgårds clearly saw his targets and helped the orchestra hit all of them: the col legno strikes in the strings and apocalyptic brass in the death march of Mars, but with plenty of quiet space in the Mercury movement for the delicate solos of celesta, piccolo, English horn bass oboe, and others. Holst's piece is a manual on devastating orchestration, imitated for decades by John Williams and other film composers, and the comparison to the Tan Dun Water Concerto on the same program was damning.

BSO Plays More World Premieres

A. Clyne, Night Ferry / M. Bates, Alternative Energy, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, R. Muti (CSO-Resound, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, World Premieres Spice Centennial Of Baltimore SO
Classical Voice North America, May 11

NORTH BETHESDA, Md. – One hundred years ago, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played its first public concert. It is remarkable enough that the ensemble pulled through the economic crisis in 2008 and even more that it continues to thrive in today’s climate of declining audiences. Marin Alsop, who became music director in 2007, and the BSO are celebrating the centennial with a series of new commissions. After debuting pieces by Kevin Puts and Christopher Rouse, the first of which the BSO played at Carnegie Hall in April, the orchestra gave two more world premieres in the Music Center at Strathmore.

The evening opened with Joan Tower’s Sixth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, adding to her most famous work, launched in 1987 and completed in five parts in 1993...

[Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
World Premieres by Joan Tower, Anna Clyne
With Alexandra Soumm, violin
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Robert Battey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debuts two works from two ‘uncommon’ women (Washington Post, May 9, 2016)

Charles T. Downey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra finds its rhythm in Thursday’s concert (Washington Post, September 19, 2015)

---, Slatkin and the NSO, As If He Never Left (Ionarts, November 12, 2011)

---, A Classical Makeover In Baltimore (Washington Post, September 11, 2008)

Hilary Hahn, Again

No season in Washington seems to go by without an appearance by violinist Hilary Hahn. She is a perennial favorite with area orchestras, and Washington Performing Arts presents her frequently in recital. It was not clear whether the empty parts of the Music Center at Strathmore, where WPA presented her on Tuesday night, were due to audience fatigue with Hahn or to an ongoing trend of declining audiences for the presenter.

There was nothing on the program that could be construed as ear candy for audiences: relatively obscure sonatas by Mozart and Copland, interspersed with half of a set of six new partitas by Spanish composer Antón García Abril (b. 1933). Abril was one of the composers commissioned by Hahn for her ill-fated — but Grammy award-winning — Encores project, and Washington Performing Arts ponied up the money to commission this further set of pieces from him for Hahn to play. (She will play the other three partitas in the set, again presented by WPA, on October 28, 2016.) The title of Partita is somewhat misleading, implying a set of dance movements, as in Bach's set of three. What Abril has created struck me more as fantasias, as each one consists of sections in various moods and characters; perhaps we are meant to understand an earlier meaning of the word partita, before it became associated with dance movements.

Abril emphasized double-stops in all three of the pieces heard in this concert, although he did not use them in the truly polyphonic way Bach did most memorably. For example, the meandering melody of the first partita had occasional double-stops providing a short of homophonic accompaniment, and in another section drones accompanied the tune. After a series of mostly unrelated sections, the first partita just faded away on a passage of repeating sixteenth notes. The second partita was more tart in harmonic flavor, with biting rhythms, and lasted only about half as long as the first one, not adding up to much. The third partita seemed closer in character to the first, with more introspective melodies and not all that polyphonic double-stops, leaving the impression of a set of possibly pretty but rather boring pieces. The less said about the composer's embarrassing, puerile program idea ("H-I-L-A-R-Y is for heart, immensity, love, art, reflexive, you," supposedly describing the six pieces), the better. This is one of those programmatic ideas that the composer, as Mahler did with some of his symphonic programs, should perhaps have kept to himself.

Other Reviews: Simon Chin, A lot riding on Hilary Hahn’s bow at Strathmore (Washington Post, April 21) Jesse Hamlin, Violinist Hilary Hahn to premiere Abril partita at Davies Hall (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20)

The Mozart sonata (G major, K. 379) was a showpiece for Hahn's partner at the keyboard, Cory Smythe, who had the most challenging music of the evening. He went for a super-delicate sound, so delicate that some of the filigree-thin notes did not really sound clearly. It is a fairly mediocre piece, and the response of both performers, to give it a more Romantic swooning sensibility, had mixed success. Copland's elegiac violin sonata, last heard live from James Ehnes, brought out the best of Hahn's tone, as she played it with an airy simplicity. Here at last, in the faster movements, was some of the dance that seemed lacking in the Abril pieces.

Joshua Bell's New Role

Bach, Violin Concertos (inter alia), Academy of St Martin in the Fields, J. Bell (Sony, 2014)

When I spoke to Joshua Bell for a 2012 interview, he said he was interested in composition, historically informed performance approaches to early Baroque music, and branching out into other musical areas. At that point, he had just taken up the position of music director for the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which he has held since 2011. Based on his performance with the group, heard on Friday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, he has settled quite nicely into his new role.

Bell is the first musician to hold the title of music director with the ensemble since it was founded by Neville Marriner in 1958. He conducts from the concertmaster's seat, playing some of the time and using his bow arm and head to establish tempos and adjust the pulse or give direction. The group moved as one in a crackling, dramatic performance of Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture to open the concert, showing all the advantages of a chamber orchestra. With all players considered as equals, including their leader, the agreed-upon articulations were especially crisp and unified and the balances ideally calibrated.

Other Reviews: Grace Jean, The master as leader and player: Joshua Bell dazzles at Strathmore (Washington Post, March 20) Charles Donelan, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (Santa Barbara Independent, March 14) Tim Sawyier, Joshua Bell leads ASMF in dynamic performances at Harris Theater (Chicago Classical Review, March 13) Bradley Zint, English chamber orchestra produces fine night of music (Los Angeles Times, March 10) Steven Winn, Joshua Bell Needs a Baton to Go with His Bow (San Francisco Classical Voice, March 9) Timothy Mangan, Joshua Bell and the Academy energize classic program (Orange County Register, March 8) ---, Joshua Bell, violinist, conductor ... (Orange County Register, March 4)

Bell stood in the center of the group to take the solo part in Mozart's fourth violin concerto, an interpretation distinguished principally by the fact that Bell has composed his own cadenzas for this tour, which happens to be the first time he has played the work. In the first movement, Bell seemed a little off his game, uncharacteristically uncertain of intonation and pacing, until he got to that cadenza. He put the themes into polyphonic double-stops, with some high flautando playing and ultra-fast passage work in between, for an extremely virtuosic effect, modeled on the great violin-composers of the past. The trademark Bell sweetness of tone served the second movement exceptionally well, with another short cadenza near the end that put the movement's primary melody against a trill in double-stops, capped by another high, sighing flautando section. All earlier doubts disappeared in the third movement, set at just the right grazioso tempo, again with a little cadenza moment -- a decorated transition that Mozart called an "Eingang" (entrance) -- before each return of the main theme. Before the last return, Bell played a longer cadenza with pieces of the themes wrapped around a continuous drone on one of the strings, a pleasing reference to the use of a drone in the movement.

Mendelssohn's fourth symphony ("Italian") is perhaps the composer's best, tilted as its movements are to quickness and lightness. It is daunting to attempt without a true conductor, but the group played it with perfectly executed coordination. Clean, tight articulation made the subject in the first movement's fugal section ultra-clear, and the timpani had room to thunder in the full, loud sections, a sound that had the booming shock it was meant to have. In the second movement, the viola and bassoon melody was warm and tender, with the flute countermelody standing out when the violins took over the tune. More tempo reserve in the first three movements usually pays off in the Presto finale, which here had to be Prestissimo to make it feel faster than what had come before. To the group's credit, they pulled it off, including some of the most polished horn playing heard in a long time, in both the third and fourth movements. Prolonged ovations earned a rousing encore, the galop-like Molto vivace finale of Prokofiev's "Classical" symphony.

Goethe and Beethoven's 'Egmont'

Beethoven, Piano Concertos No. 1 (cadenza by G. Gould), L. Vogt, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, S. Rattle (EMI, 2002)

After an excellent German Requiem last week, Markus Stenz returned to the podium of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. His all-Beethoven program was just as noteworthy for the range of sounds Stenz helped the orchestra create. Part of this success was likely due to Stenz's insistence that a pianissimo truly be a pianissimo, and part could be the result of his re-seating of the orchestra's string sections. The arrangement was similar to what Stenz used last week, although not noted in my review for lack of space: an antiphonal opposition of violins on either side, plus cellos in front of the violas in the center, with basses divided behind them on both sides. (Nothing in the music either last week or this week seemed to require an antiphonal sound.) This made the violas more hidden in sound, not exactly prominent even when they are in the front row, but it also likely forced the musicians to listen a little more carefully.

German pianist Lars Vogt last joined the BSO in 2002, before the foundation of this site. He had a star turn as soloist in Beethoven's first piano concerto, giving a pleasing weight in the keys but also beautifully shaped lines as he nestled comfortably in the sound envelope that Stenz helped the orchestra created around him. An early music crispness ran through Stenz's interpretation, light on vibrato and with a clean and short articulation on all three repeated notes of this most concise of head motifs in the first movement. A virtuosic handling of the first movement was capped by Vogt's choice of a long, contrapuntally complex, and at times truly weird cadenza: it sounded like Liszt or another 19th-century virtuoso, but it was actually written down by Beethoven himself, after the publication of this concerto. (Vogt has recorded an eccentric cadenza by Glenn Gould for this concert, over a decade ago.) The only drawback in the second movement, which was tender and musical, were occasional intonation disagreements between orchestra and piano, and the tempo choice, not too slow, was a nice twist. Vogt was rock solid in the parallel thirds, setting the third movement off at a brisk clip, and the left-hand crossings, giving each line crystalline clarity.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Guest conductor Markus Stenz pulls the BSO into an unknown but elite realm (Washington Post, March 14)

Beethoven's overture to Goethe's Egmont is plenty familiar; the rest of his score of incidental music, not so much. Of the nine pieces, the two songs for Clara, the woman loved by Egmont, are the most beautiful, sung here with a clear, measured tone by soprano Lauren Snouffer. Much of the orchestral music otherwise is fairly bland, adding up to not that much without the play it was meant to accompany. The narration read by British actor Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage, was only a summation of the action of Goethe's play, but it did the trick. Stenz crafted a crisp and military March movement, and the overlap of words and music in the Melodrama was stirring. As he waits to die in prison, Egmont dreams of Clara, who appears in the guise of Freedom, inspiring Egmont to meet death with resolve, personified by the off-stage drummer that arrived on stage before the triumphant finale.

The play has obvious parallels in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, where the rescue fantasy becomes reality. This made the choice of the second Leonore overture an apt one to open this concert. Stenz's one fault, if it is one, is his sometimes exaggerated gesture. Occasionally both last week and this week, he seemed to rush the beat in his enthusiasm, which disconcerted the ensemble's unity at times, like the dramatic pauses in the opening section of this overture, tricking one of the horns into an early entrance at one point. Going over the top as he did, however, also led to striking dramatic contrasts, and the best moments were not necessarily the loud ones. The offstage trumpet solo, played from a balcony toward the rear of the auditorium, was particularly effective.

Stenz Leads Excellent 'German Requiem'

Schoenberg, Gurrelieder, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, M. Stenz (Hyperion, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Chorus on high in Brahms work at Strathmore
Washington Post, March 7

As music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop’s greatest strength is not necessarily a certain swath of music from the classical and romantic core. The ensemble’s new principal guest conductor, Markus Stenz, has built a reputation in those areas. After a concert devoted to Mozart in October, Stenz led a vivid and moving account of the “German Requiem” of Johannes Brahms in the Music Center at Strathmore on Saturday evening.

This piece is driven by the chorus, which sings in all seven movements, and Stenz took advantage of the fine University of Maryland Concert Choir that he had seated above the stage... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
University of Maryland Concert Choir
With Markus Stenz, conductor
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Markus Stenz leads BSO, UM Concert Choir, stellar soloists in 'German Requiem' (Baltimore Sun, March 8)

Schiff's Last Sonatas

Schubert, Piano Sonata D. 960 (inter alia), A. Schiff (fortepiano) (ECM, 2015) Schubert, Piano Sonatas, A. Schiff (piano) (Decca, 2011)

There is something special about music composed at the end of a composer's life, whether he or she is aware of the approach of death or not. András Schiff has attempted to explore that autumnal quality, in a journey of three concerts begun last year, devoted to the last three piano sonatas of the four great Viennese composers, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. While I was forced to miss the second of these concerts, the final installment was presented by Washington Performing Arts on Wednesday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore, and cyclonic winds and flooding could not keep me away.

Each half of the program paired a less substantial last sonata (Haydn and Mozart) with two incomparable masterworks of the genre, Beethoven's op. 111 and Schubert's D. 960. Schiff's sometimes fussy manipulation of touch at the keyboard was ideally suited to the two smaller works, especially the filigree details of Haydn's Hob. XVI:52, sober wit enlivening themes like the grace-note-inflected bridge theme of the first movement, which can be too cute in other hands. Velvety runs and a puckish rapidity in the finale balanced a less successful slow movement, an overly slow tempo turning the piece to the soporific side. The slow movement of Mozart's K. 576 had the opposite effect, given a more transparent simplicity, surrounded by sweet-toned outer movements, full of carefully groomed sounds.

Scholar Lewis Lockwood noted that Beethoven, around the time he was composing the op. 111 sonata, wrote in his Conversation Book, "The moral law within us, and the starry heavens above us. Kant!!!" Lockwood goes on to observe, "It is just this spirit, of the mortal, vulnerable human being striving against the odds to hold his moral being steady in order to gather strength as an artist to strive toward the heavens -- it is this conjoining that we feel at the end of Opus 111 and in a few other moments in Beethoven's last works."

While Evgeny Kissin's performance of this sonata impressed me by the strength and daring of the fugal sections of the first movement and the polish of the trills section, Schiff went for angelic delicacy, growing softer and softer toward the sonata's conclusion. Schiff has rightly described the tendency to hear the dotted variation of the second movement as something akin to "boogie-woogie" as a banality, an anachronistic equation of the score with a style of music that would not be invented for another century. If Schiff's interpretation does not sound jazzy, as it did not, it is to his credit.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, A venerated pianist puts sonatas on a pedestal at Strathmore (Washington Post, February 26) Zachary Woolfe, Andras Schiff Deconstructs Sonatas (New York Times, November 1, 2015) Mark Swed, Pianist Andras Schiff mesmerizes with last sonatas of 4 composers (Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2015) Melinda Bargreen, Light as a feather, mighty as Beethoven — András Schiff enchants with piano sonatas (Seattle Times, October 13, 2015)

At the end of the piece, Schiff attempted to hold the audience in silence for a moment of reflection, but a listener somewhere in the hall, determined to show everyone that he knew what the end of op. 111 was, insisted on applauding. It was a rude gesture, to which Schiff responded testily, but performers sometimes go too far in trying to create these moments of profundity after the music has ended. (Christoph Eschenbach tends to to do this a lot with the National Symphony Orchestra, and it feels affected.) If a performance is that profound, the audience will hold itself silent.

There is likely a reason for Schiff's softer, darker approach to the Beethoven and to Schubert's D. 960. Two years ago, Schiff recorded this Schubert sonata and other music by Schubert on a fortepiano built by Franz Brodmann in Vienna in 1820 (a nice companion disc to Decca's re-released set of Schiff's earlier Schubert sonata cycle), as well as Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and Bagatelles on the same instrument before that. Schiff, in his program notes on the Schubert ECM disc, described the fortepiano's "tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità," and it is just these qualities that he brought out most from the Bösendorfer on the Strathmore stage. He took all of Schubert's gradations of piano seriously, with playing that was exceedingly delicate and a little too mannered, but with exquisite layering of voices in the slow movement. An encore, the Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations, finished off the evening.

Daniil Trifonov joins the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (March 14) for Prokofiev's third piano concerto, presented by Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Venzago, Watts with the BSO

O. Schoeck, Sommernacht (inter alia), Berner Symphonieorchester, M. Venzago (Musiques Suisses, 2015)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is approaching the celebration of its 100th anniversary this Thursday. For the last program before that event, conductor Mario Venzago returned to the podium, with a pleasing selection of music that was full of surprises, heard on Thursday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. Opening with Gluck, some odd selections from the marvelous opera Armide, was an inspired choice, music that few BSO listeners are likely to have heard, at least from the BSO.

The Gluck set included the overture and several dances, plus a chaconne and finale, with a concentrated number of players, including a harpsichord for the continuo part and, somewhat mysteriously, a part for harp. The modern brass instruments had to play in a rather contained way, so as not to overwhelm the ensemble, revealing many delightful sounds, especially the hypnotic Elysium number and an ornately beautiful flute solo in the Siciliana. Gluck premiered this opera in Paris in 1777, the same year that Mozart composed his ninth piano concerto, K. 27, in Salzburg for Victoire Jenamy, the daughter of dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre. It is a jewel of a piece, given a pretty if not always easily flowing account by pianist André Watts. Venzago kept the orchestra at just the right levels to allow his soloist to come to the fore, making many little adjustments to realign the ensemble. Watts performed the cadenzas and other solo moments with some panache, but this was not exactly a rendition to be remembered, although the third movement had a daring spirit.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO welcomes back Andre Watts, Mario Venzago (Baltimore Sun, February 6)

Schumann's symphonies often bore me, but good conductors know how to fix balances to make the best of the composer's sometimes dull orchestration. Venzago did just that in this performance of Schumann's fourth symphony, in D minor, reigning in the string and brass sound to reveal the winds more and applying generous rubato to bring out the Romantic nature of Schumann's phrases. The second movement was delicate and wistful, with some tuning issues when the oboe and cello section shared a melody (not a good combination), but a lovely violin solo in the middle section. The scherzo felt plenty fast but was limber and lively than just forceful, and a trio of charming, murmuring sounds that Venzago's rubato touch brought to life. Venzago's earlier restraint of the brass now paid off, as he finally gave that section its head, driving an exciting finale to its conclusion.

This concert repeats this evening, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

Brahms 4 from the BSO

Sibelius / Khachaturian, Violin Concertos, S. Khachatryan, Sinfonia Varsovia, E. Krivine (Naïve, 2004)

After the Brahms first symphony from the National Symphony Orchestra on Friday, it was time for more Brahms from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The fourth symphony was the centerpiece of the program led by Czech guest conductor Jakub Hrůša, heard on Saturday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore. Hrůša, who last appeared with the BSO in 2014 and with the NSO the year before that, led a Brahms 4 that was more my kind of Brahms playing, with the emotions rarely on the sleeve. The orchestra was returned to its normal seating, after Marin Alsop's experiments earlier in the month, and the first movement was tight and clean, from the first beats of the first movement's melancholy first theme, crowned by a big, forceful ending.

After a heroic horn introduction, the second movement had just the right tempo, not too fast, to put that forlorn clarinet theme in the best light, ambling along at its own pace. Only the third movement seemed not quite right, too harried, although it settled into a slightly slower place later. It is already jolly enough with all those triangle rolls, the only time that a percussion instrument other than timpani appears in a Brahms symphony, and the comic metric shifts and hammered accents. The concluding passacaglia had a pleasing solemnity, with intensity more than speed, especially in the slower middle part.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO makes dynamic music with conductor Jakub Hrusa, violinist Sergey Khachatryan (Baltimore Sun, February 1)

Sergey Khachatryan was the soloist in Sibelius's violin concerto, the same piece the Armenian violinist played the last time he appeared with the BSO, a decade ago. The opening of the first movement plays right into Khachatryan's strength, weaving a soft and delicate legato line over those shimmering D minor chords in the divisi violins, playing with mutes. In passages like this he tended to minimize his vibrato, which in louder passages could become a liability, at least for the clarity of tone. The E string playing was generally fine, especially the flautando notes in the third movement, but there was an unfortunate tendency toward flatness in the second movement, where the horns also had trouble staying in tune.

We are big fans of the music of Leoš Janáček here at Ionarts, but his brief orchestral piece known as Jealousy did not convince. This was both because the piece is odd, not really a curtain-raiser as it was offered here, and because Hrůša, who is a specialist in this composer's music, was at his most frantic and hard to understand, at least from the house. It was difficult to hear what either the composer or the conductor was after. One would have preferred something like the Sinfonietta instead.

Guest conductor Mario Venzago and pianist André Watts join the BSO this week, for music by Gluck, Mozart, and Schumann (February 4 to 6).

BSO Takes Up Magnificent Rouse Oboe Concerto

C. Rouse, Oboe Concerto, L. Wang, New York Philharmonic, A. Gilbert (NYP, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, BSO debut of ‘Oboe Concerto’ bursts with trills and colors (Washington Post, January 16)

Next month, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra marks the 100th anniversary of its first public concert. This season and last, music director Marin Alsop has given both her programming and her musicians an energy-boosting shake-up. That happy trend continued Thursday night with the BSO’s concert in the Music Center at Strathmore, anchored on a recent work by Baltimore-born composer Christopher Rouse.

The Minnesota Orchestra gave the world premiere of Rouse’s “Oboe Concerto” in 2005. The BSO’s outstanding principal oboist, Katherine Needleman, advocated for its BSO debut after playing it at the Peabody Conservatory... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Katherine Needleman, oboe
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, BSO principal oboist Katherine Needleman soars through Rouse concerto (Baltimore Sun, January 16)

Philadelphia Orchestra's Fabulous 'Firebird' at Strathmore

Rachmaninoff, Variations, D. Trifonov, Philadelphia Orchestra, Y. Nézet-Séguin (Deutsche Grammophon, 2015) Vieuxtemps, Violin Concerto No. 4, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, P. Järvi (Deutsche Grammophon, 2015)

Perhaps it was the news that just hours before Monday evening’s concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra at Strathmore -- presented by Washington Performing Arts -- the ensemble, its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Daniil Trifonov had been nominated for a Grammy for best classical solo performance. (Actually, it was just one of two Grammy nods for Nézet-Séguin and Trifonov.) Or maybe it was the thrill of performing to a sold-out house on the road. Either way, the Philadelphians and Nézet-Séguin leapt into an energetic rendition of Georges Bizet’s Suite No. 1 from Carmen (arr. Hoffman), the conductor gesticulating wildly on the podium, the players providing lots of volume and music flying by, ending with the Toreadors moving so quickly they’d have had little trouble outrunning their bulls. Yet even at that speed the orchestra, particularly its famed string sections, moved as one marvelous, precise instrument. This aspect of Nézet-Séguin’s group would return repeatedly during a night that featured much more satisfying interpretations than the bustling Bizet.

Next, all eyes turned to violin soloist Hillary Hahn. By the end of the four-movement Violin Concerto No. 4 in D minor, op. 31, of Henri Vieuxtemps, a contemporary of Bizet, it was clear that Hahn remains a virtuoso performer and Nézet-Séguin’s reputation as an excellent collaborator is warranted. Less clear, though, is why the Vieuxtemps, written in 1849-50, isn’t better known. The concerto, which Berlioz called “a magnificent symphony with principal violin,” contains large orchestral passages without soloist and extended room for the soloist to shine unaccompanied. Its Scherzo is a playful vivace that Hahn and Nézet-Séguin clearly enjoyed, and the Finale marziale is similarly spirited. While there were a few rough patches for the orchestra, Hahn’s technique and tone were flawless throughout. Best, of course, was the sense that soloist, orchestra and conductor were completely in synch interpretively.

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'Rienzi' at Strathmore

Wagner, Rienzi, R. Kollo, S. Wennberg, Staatskapelle Dresden, H. Hollreiser (Warner Classics)

Wagner's Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen, Hans von Bülow reportedly quipped, is Meyerbeer's best opera. Wagner completed it, his third opera, when he was still in his late 20s, before he disavowed his one-time admiration of French grand opera. Meyerbeer, who was so instrumental in getting the young Wagner's early operas to the stage, ended up with Wagner's scorn as thanks, when Wagner targeted Meyerbeer in his anti-Semitic tract Das Judenthum in der Musik. Wanting to bury that part of his development as a composer, Wagner banned Rienzi from performance at Bayreuth. Kudos to the National Philharmonic and conductor Piotr Gajewski for bringing an all too rare concert performance of the work to the Music Center at Strathmore on Saturday evening. Sadly, ambition in programming, as happens all too often, was rewarded with a small audience, but a loudly appreciative one.

The title character was a Roman politician, risen from humble beginnings to become the city's tribune in the mid-14th century. Rienzi tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the hazardous terrain between the papacy, then removed to Avignon, and the Holy Roman Emperor. Although lifted up for a time by the admiration of everyday Romans, Rienzi runs afoul of the Colonnas and other powerful aristocratic families and ends his days, in the opera, burned alive in a fire set by a mob on the Capitoline Hill. The story of the rise to power of a common man on the shoulders of the populace was a favorite of Adolf Hitler's, for obvious reasons, and the leader of the Nazi party came to own Wagner's manuscript of the opera, still in his possession when he died and so now lost.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, ‘Rienzi,’ a Wagner work rarely performed, pleases at Strathmore (Washington Post, October 5) David Rohde, The National Philharmonic’s ‘Rienzi, A Concert Opera’ at Strathmore (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, October 5) Alex Baker, Rienzi with the National Philharmonic (Wellsung, October 6)

Mercifully, this performance featured a heavily cut version of the opera, excising far more music than just the half-hour ballet in the second act. Tenor Issachah Savage, whom we have been following since his student days at Catholic University, gave a heroic rendition of the title role, with enough power and beauty at the top of his voice to carry the evening, especially in the moving Act V prayer scene. Mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Stewart was equally strong as Adriano, Colonna's son (en travesti), beautifully matched with the more slender sound of Eudora Brown as Irene, Rienzi's sister and beloved of Adriano. Kevin Thompson, with a vast and brutish tone, and Jason Stearns made a potent pair of villains as Colonna and Orsini, respectively. Things were not always optimal, starting from the somewhat raspy trumpet solos in the overture and continuing with some hesitant entrances in the orchestra and especially the chorus. Gajewski not only held the whole thing together but found many moments in this over-packed score worth discovering.

BSO Off the Cuff

Lecture-concerts -- with that losing combination of half the music and twice the talk -- are generally not my thing. So the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's decision to double down on its "Off the Cuff" concerts, to which two of its four performances are devoted this week, seemed mysterious to me. Best not to judge such things without experiencing them, however, so Friday evening found me braving the monsoon rains to get to Strathmore for the latest concert in the series. If the chatty format is meant to make newcomers to classical music feel more comfortable, all while charging the same ticket price without having to play the week's entire program, one would hope there are more seats filled at the Music Center in weeks without a hurricane looming off the east coast.

The rest of my weekend review schedule meant that this performance of Markus Stenz's first concert as the BSO's Principal Guest Conductor, focused on excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni, was my only option. Stenz was charming and generally informative in the half-hour lecture, an introduction of the opera's music and story with live orchestra examples, complete with Tcherman accent and amusing minor grammatical errors. His ideas about the opera seemed influenced by the René Jacobs recording, with some rather fast tempo choices, strings light on vibrato, crisp articulation over legato phrasing, and timpani and brass allowed to push into the foreground at loud moments.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO offers kinetic Mozart program with Stenz, Meade (Baltimore Sun, October 2)

Another reason to brave the weather was the chance to hear soprano Angela Meade, who made a powerhouse Donna Anna, albeit without the most suave floating tone at the top, so crucial for the musical characterization of Anna's innocence. Likewise, soprano Jennifer Black, who sang Donna Elvira at the Castleton Festival last year, did not really have the vocal force for that character's vengeful harshness. (Not for the first time, I wondered what the opera would sound like if you switched these voice types around in casting.) Pureum Jo made a noteworthy BSO debut as Zerlina, a role that did not come off as mousy at all with her voice, and Thomas Richards was a strong Leporello, outshining the Don Giovanni of Morgan Smith in the Act II finale.

Juanjo Mena and the BSO

Conductor Juanjo Mena
A talented conductor puts an orchestra at ease in the most natural way, taking the musicians and the listener alike along for the ride. This was the case with Juanjo Mena's latest appearance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore. Last heard with the BSO in 2012, the Spanish conductor currently serves as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, and they are lucky to have him.

Prokofiev's first symphony, a neoclassical bagatelle that shows off the young composer's bona fides, made a sweet opener. With the first movement set at a genial tempo, the musicians seemed comfortable right from the start, giving a cute, lopsided quality to the charming second theme, especially when it returned off the beat. Mena had ensured that the balances were all optimal, so that no other gestures were required during performance, revealing delicate, pearly sounds at the soft end of the dynamic spectrum. The Gavotte had a slightly exaggerated, pompous feel, followed by a finale with Offenbach zing.

Glazunov's violin concerto provided some Romantic meat in the middle of the program, with BSO concertmaster Jonathan Carney giving a rich, loamy sound on the opening theme. Intonation issues cropped up again and again, perhaps from a lack of agreement between orchestra and soloist. Carney is a first-rate soloist, and he had some beautiful moments, like the flautando introduction to the big cadenza, but the more daring spiccato and double-stop stuff in the third movement was not always as clean as it could have been.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, BSO at Strathmore: A confident, open-hearted guest conductor (Washington Post, September 28) Tim Smith, Juanjo Mena, BSO and eloquent music-making; Carney shines in concerto (Washington Post, September 27)

Mena's approach to the main course, Beethoven's sixth symphony, was refreshingly old school -- big string sections, tempos on the moderate to slow side, much of the possible roughness smoothed out in undulating legato phrasing. In such familiar music, he could often set the tempo and then allow the orchestra to regulate itself, using his arms and body to show the long lines he wanted, although with some of the slow tempos he seemed to reconsider midway through, moving the pace ahead slightly.

With the emphasis on somewhat leisurely speeds, the third movement felt especially reserved, the horn fanfares less like boisterous intrusions. On the other hand, Beethoven's additive orchestration -- trumpets joining in the third movement; trombones, thunderous timpani, and fife-bright piccolo in the fourth -- stood out. Only in the especially drawn out fifth movement did the musicians not quite seem all to agree, causing some ensemble uncertainty, further muting the sense of climax to the somewhat odd conclusion to this symphony.

Next week Markus Stenz returns to the podium of the BSO, for the first time as Principal Guest Conductor, with an all-Mozart program including scenes from Don Giovanni with Jennifer Black and Angela Meade (October 1 and 4).

BSO, Now with More Cowbell

Strauss, Eine Alpensinfonie, London Symphony Orchestra, B. Haitink (LSO Live, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra finds its rhythm in Thursday’s concert (Washington Post, September 19)

After lackluster season openers last week, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra season truly got under way with its first subscription concert Thursday night at Strathmore. Music director Marin Alsopm fresh from conducting last weekend's Last Night at the Proms, finally returned to the podium, along with the news that she will step down as music director of California’s Cabrillo Festival next summer.

British-born composer Anna Clyne’s introduction to her piece, “Masquerade,” was even more concise than the work, a five-minute wild rumpus... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Anna Clyne: Masquerade
Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (with Olga Kern)
R. Strauss, Eine Alpensinfonie
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Alsop opens BSO subscription season with return to 'Alpine Symphony' (Baltimore Sun, September 19)

David Rohde, Pianist Olga Kern and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, September 18)

Charles T. Downey, Renée Fleming in Recital (Ionarts, February 25)

---, Philippe Jordan's Strauss (Ionarts, June 26, 2010)

BSO Season Preview

Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagioni, Concerto Italiano, R. Alessandrini (2003)

Charles T. Downey, BSO at Strathmore skips the uncommon music in season preview (Washington Post, September 11)

Ensembles and concert series around the Washington area are coming back to life. On Thursday night at Strathmore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra offered a preview of the season to come.

The musical tasting menu was a hodgepodge of mostly single movements from a range of pieces. The first movement of Debussy’s “Ibéria” featured castanets and some Spanish flavor, with the mood remaining on the sedate side throughout the first half... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Jonathan Carney (violin) and Christopher Seaman (conductor)
Music Center at Strathmore

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, BSO skillfully illuminates familiar terrain of Vivaldi, Handel and Bach (Washington Post, July 25)

BSO Four Seasons

Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagioni, Concerto Italiano, R. Alessandrini (2003)

Charles T. Downey, BSO skillfully illuminates familiar terrain of Vivaldi, Handel and Bach (Washington Post, July 25)

When ensembles perform chestnuts like Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” it is easy to fall into a routine. In the latest performance of this perennial favorite, heard at Strathmore on Thursday night, members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra by contrast sounded like they had made the piece their own.

Concertmaster Jonathan Carney played the solo parts with panache, adding many small embellishments, especially in the slow movements, and some folk-fiddle-like twists and extra virtuosic flash.... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Jonathan Carney (violin) and Grant Youngblood (baritone)
Vivaldi, Four Seasons
Handel, Water Music
Bach, Ich habe genug
Music Center at Strathmore

C Major Is C Major Is C Major?

H. Vieuxtemps, Cello Concertos, A. Gerhardt, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, J. Caballé-Domenech (Hyperion, 2015) U. Chin, Cello Concerto, A. Gerhardt, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, M.-W. Chung (DG, 2014)

It was a June evening, which justified dressing down for an orchestra concert. Happily, there was no musical equivalent of casual attire on the fine program from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra led by Christoph König on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. The imposing but young German conductor, who debuted with the BSO in 2013, paired two symphonies that end, as he pointed out in brief comments at the concert's opening, in C major: Sibelius's seventh and Beethoven's fifth. The effect of the same tonal area could not be more different: Sibelius has the orchestra arrive reluctantly at the key, with the violins straining to resolve the leading tone to the tonic, while Beethoven hammers the resolution of dominant to tonic chords triumphantly.

Sibelius's final symphony, last heard from the National Symphony Orchestra in 2013 (although they played it better under Vladimir Ashkenazy in 2008), is in some ways more like a tone poem than a symphony, with themes that are transformed slowly over time, a sort of exercise in nostalgia and remembering. König spoke with enthusiasm about the piece, as if he had to defend it, and he elicited a strong performance from the musicians, especially in the undulating opening slow section, churning with molten but hidden heat. The faster parts did not perhaps quite hold together across the ensemble as they should, but that calming trombone theme, which Sibelius at one point marked with the name of his wife ("Aino"), was given room to soar, especially effective at the ecstatic build-up to its last appearances. If you have ever used the Sibelius music notation software, that program used to open with a little swirling bit of music, which comes from the first minutes of this symphony, always bringing a smile to my face when I hear the piece performed live.

Beethoven's fifth symphony requires a special interpretation to stand out, something unexpected like that heard from Mario Venzago in 2011. König's ideas were forceful, seemingly influenced by historically informed performance practice, so that the whole symphony was taken at no-nonsense tempi with crisp articulations and little distortion of the pace, even in the slow movement. As in the Sibelius, this created some ensemble tensions and lack of cohesion in the faster spots, in particular in the third and fourth movements, which König elided together with almost no modification of the tempo, taking his lead from Beethoven's ingenious blending of the scherzo and finale. When the scherzo returns later, there was almost the impression of the orchestra remarking, "Oh, yeah, we forgot to finish the scherzo!" As compelling as it was in some ways, the tempo demands in the finale had breathless results, and more than one musician could be seen shaking his or head about the unrelenting speed König imposed.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, A well-structured program from BSO, Konig, Gerhardt (Baltimore Sun, June 6)

In between the two symphonies came the welcome return of Alban Gerhardt to the area, as soloist in Shostakovich's first cello concerto, last heard from Sol Gabetta with the NSO in 2013. The German cellist played with the NSO in 2008 and 2006, and he was last with the BSO even longer ago. He has grown into this obsessive, disturbing work, an impressive performance that turned aside my initial wishes that Gerhardt would have brought one of the lesser-heard works, by Henri Vieuxtemps or Unsuk Chin, that he has recorded recently. Gerhardt's consistent and manic sound high on the A string was savagely single-minded in the opening movement but also soft and ardent in the slow movement. At the end of the second movement, one could have used a bit more heart-searing tone, à la Slava, and the double-stop section of the cadenza was a little off, but the ghostly harmonics, in duet with the celesta, were haunting. Gerhardt did have a tendency to rush and elide some of the more complicated passages, but König's perceptive ear and clean stick technique quickly put the train back on the rails.

Ionarts extends thanks to the professionals who are stepping down from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, recognized at this concert: librarian Mary Plaine, principal clarinetist Steven Barta and assistant principal clarinetist Christopher Wolfe, and cellist Paula Skolnik-Childress. Critics are paid to gripe, but the devotion of these talented people to the folly that is classical music receives only our admiration.

Evgeny Kissin, Master of Prokofiev

Chopin, Sonatas (inter alia), E. Kissin (Sony re-releases, 2014)

One of the highlights of any Ionarts season is a concert by Evgeny Kissin. The latest opportunity to hear the Russian virtuoso came on Wednesday night, in an uncompromising program presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Music Center at Strathmore. An inner core of deeply felt emotional masterpieces -- Prokofiev's fourth sonata and sets of Chopin nocturnes and mazurkas -- bolstered by showier Beethoven and Liszt on the ends. Those more profound pieces at the heart of the program were the high point, while Kissin left no doubt as to his near-unassailable technique in the outer ones.

Kissin remains at the top of my list among living interpreters of the music of Chopin, an impression maintained by this performance. In his hands, these pieces had an extemporaneous feel to them, beginning with the gesture of beginning the first nocturne on the program (B-flat minor, op. 9/1) with the right hand almost from nothing, hesitant even to start the piece. Kissin has a fluidity of rubato that sounds like improvisation, not rushed or dragged out sentimentally, but hesitating and impetuous in equal measure, with even the embellishments to the melody sounding not practiced but added on the fly. In all the nocturnes, there were degrees of exquisite softness and exceptional freedom in the runs of the right hand. Six mazurkas, even more intimate pieces, were exquisitely pondered, to the point of almost ignoring the audience: the blue notes savored in op. 6/1, the hurdy-gurdy sections of op. 6/2 and op. 7/3 dark and creaking, the middle section of op. 7/2 more martial.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Kissin slightly less than telling at Strathmore recital (Washington Post, April 24) John von Rhein, Evgeny Kissin regales fans with masterful Chopin and more (Chicago Tribune, April 20) Lawrence A. Johnson, Kissin’s distinctive mastery brings illumination on a rainy afternoon (Chicago Classical Review, April 20) Tim Ashley, Evgeny Kissin review – reflection and severity from former prodigy (The Guardian, March 23)

After the masterful rendition of Prokofiev's eighth sonata heard at his 2009 recital, as well as his recording of the composer's concertos, one expected great things of the fourth sonata (C minor, op. 29). Prokofiev built this sonata from themes of earlier pieces in his old notebooks, and the piece feels heavily layered, strands on top of strands that Kissin teased apart with careful patience, the first two movements steeped in melancholy but also wistful tenderness. The finale provided all of the fireworks Kissin needed to end the first half, at times cantankerous, heavy-handed, even clownish, all around extraordinary.

The only minor disappointment was a somewhat willful performance of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (C major, op. 53), with the first movement bouncing around in tempo, many of the runs just slightly mushed together and the second theme weighty, maybe a little clunky. Little changes and hesitations here and there seemed over-thought, which made the slow movement viscous and oozing. Then there was the third movement, taken at a moderate pace, the bell-like main theme's first note played as if it were an anacrusis. Kissin's trills were immaculate as they buzzed around the trill-laden statement of the theme. The counterpart of this display was Liszt's outrageous Hungarian Rhapsody no. 15 ("Rákóczi March") at the recital's end, which whipped the audience into a frenzy satisfied only by three encores: Chopin's Nocturne in F# minor (op. 48/2), Liszt's arrangement of Paganini's "La Chasse" caprice, and the march from Prokofiev's opera Love for Three Oranges. So much the better that Washington Performing Arts will not make us wait two years for the next concert by Evgeny Kissin, who will return to the Kennedy Center on October 28.

As a postscript, it bears saying, on this official 100th anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey, that Evgeny Kissin has spoken out for the recognition of this tragedy as a genocide. After the speech by Pope Francis to the Synod of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Church earlier this month, more governments may be willing to say the same.