Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Castellucci

Opera • Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Utopia Orchestra

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Don Giovanni“ bei den Salzburger Festspielen: Jubel für weiße Bilderkunst

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Monika Rittershaus. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

50 Shades of White: Currentzis’ and Castellucci’s Don Giovanni Triumpans/span>

Robert Castellucci’s Don Giovanniwas first performed at the 2021 Salzburg Festival. For the premiere of the revival, the production has changed only in some small details. It still begins with a professional crew of movers clearing out a church. By the time they get to taking down the renaissance crucifix from the wall, the overture bursts on the scene, courtesy Teodor Currentzis and his Utopia Orchestra, which is in essence his MusicAeterna Orchestra, but the West-European edition, to avoid unnecessary controversy about a Russian orchestra performing in Europe. (More about that, in a bit.)

Whether the pre-overture action means to suggest that art is replacing religion is up for speculation. But they must clean house. Perhaps to get rid of clichés and old-fashioned ideas about Don Giovanni. Or simply to make room for this production. Lots and lots of white room. So white, in fact, and in so many different warm and cool shades, sometimes draped with vast sheets of cloth, and brilliantly lit, one might have mistaken it for a Dieter Dorn production, except with a slew of animals making witty cameos: A goat, a poodle, and a rat!

The Dieter Dorn comparison might not even be so off the mark, because despite the overwhelming, wafting pictures that Castellucci painted unto the stage – set, costumes and lighting all being one homogenous one – his production is essentially a fairly conventional chamber play, which relies on the actor-singers to bring it to life. And that they did!

Homogenous Ensemble

The Singers were a very homogenous, very satisfying ensemble. No reasonable person would have attended this Don Giovanni for any one particularly singer – and yet, the vocal offering was excellent. Nadezhda Pavlova’s Donna Anna, for example, who got the loudest ovations: Strong-voiced and soaring above all, when necessary. Or the much appreciated Federica Lombardi’s Elvira, touching, half-motherly, half-seductive, with a nicely low timbre. Anna El-Khashem’s minx of a Zerlina was a little muted, but the way her voice betrayed experience-beyond-her-years worked nicely with her character, who is rather more worldly than her oaf of a husband-to-be, Masetto (Ruben Drole: smokey, sturdy, blunted – all befitting his character). This becomes deliciously obvious, when she rather enjoys being tied up with a bondage rope by Don Giovanni, whereas her encouraging “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto” is rather lost on the poor chap, who doesn’t, much to Zerlina’s resigned disappointment, get her drift.

The fact that Don Giovanni are just about doppelgängers reminds of Peter Sellars’ 80s production, where he cast the rôles with the Perry twins. Kyle Ketelsen’s Leporello, dark-hued and gruff, and Davide Luciano’s all-in Don G., steady and with a warm timbre, and never, never prone to barking, hit all the marks – and especially Luciano embodied the personified id. Superstars in the Pit None of this would have been as satisfactorily possible, had it not been for the support from the Orchestra. The Utopia Orchestra offered precision, force, and lots of bite – but also oodles of transparency – to a degree that you simply don’t get from an orchestra where, not a minute into their scheduled lunchbreak, the first trombone already raises their hand. From full-out attack to the height of tender reticence, even the smallest phrase was fully thought-out and shaped. Any sense of harmlessness is out of the question, in such a performance and if anyone could possibly niggle, it would be about this approach being a bit too much of a good thing. Except, not really. The fortepiano had inspired, free-wheeling passages, with ‘planned-improvisatory’ contributions that even included a bit of late Beethoven, to underline the seriousness of Act 2. The consequence was great enthusiasm for the music and near instant, unanimous standing ovations for Teodor Currentzis and his musicians.

If one only followed the “Currentzis Question” through social media, one might get the idea that he’s controversial. And yes, there are enough bigots out there – well, one, specifically – who make a point out of trolling Russian artists (not that Currentzis is Russian – but he works there) that don’t kowtow to their demands for explicit renunciation of all things Putin… and all consequences for their careers (and the livelihood of the musicians that rely on them) be damned… and some cowards who will immediately try to distance themselves from presumed controversy or Twitter-pressure.

In Salzburg, the audience couldn’t possibly care less about this one-man witch-hunt against Currentzis (who has, in any case, shown his true colors by immediately programming Ukrainian works in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, and the Britten War Requiem). What they want is great music-making. And that they get in spades from the weirdo-conductor and his supremely willing band of musical Nibelungs.

Dramma giocoso

For all the grandness of the production’s sets, populated with 150 choreographed women of all ages, shapes, and types – a none-too-subtle but perfectly effective manifestation of Don’s “catalogue” – Castellucci does not leave the “giocoso” part of Don Giovanni unattended to. (Unlike Glaus Guth, whose perfect Giovanni was all bleak and dark.) Of course, playing up the comedic element of the story rarely works well; least of all when the Don is played as a sort of oversexed Falstaff. This is something that Castellucci fastidiously avoids. The laughs come from other corners. Like Masetto’s hiding place, from which a (live!) rat scurries across stage, as he is discovered. His shriek might have been real, too. Chuckles also ripple through the Festspielhaus, when Donna Elvira’s two little kids are chasing Daddy Giovanni, who is distinctly put off by these two unintended consequences clinging to his legs.

But the comedic coup de théâtre is the treatment of that big fat zero of the opera, Don Ottavio, that ineffectual bloviator, who sings much and does absolutely nothing, except stand on the sidelines making helpful comments like an acquaintance telling you that you’re putting the Ikea closet together all wrong. Every time Castellucci and his Theresa Wilson, his costume-assistant, send Ottavio – who starts out looking like a posh hobby dictator in his silky mess uniform – out on stage, they stuff him into a yet-still-more ridiculous costume: A Pierrot with a coiffed (real) poodle. The King of Jerusalem. As a nun. And the more earnestly Ottavio sings, the more pathetic – and hilarious – it becomes. Julian Prégardien does this with total commitment, great lyrical stretches, and just a brief, intermittent stretch where the intonation softened. Once scene, with him and Donna Anna, features two artist’s mannequins who, as graphically as is within their abstract ability, act out what really happened between her and Giovanni, earlier that night, before the overture. A wink, a nod, and a reminder, as if it was needed, that a point of view, one’s reality, and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. A move, reminiscent of what Kasper Holten’s does in during the overture of his film version of the opera, Juan.

There is probably no production that will be liked by everyone. And a small group in the audience, evidently less impressed by things falling and crashing onto the stage at irregular intervals (still basketballs and a grand piano; the car and the carriage now only dangle and don’t fall, in this updated production), hollered “Boos” at the production team. But those were immediately drowned by contra “Bravos” from an audience that wouldn’t have its good time spoiled.

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Photo descriptions:


Above
Picture No.1: Don Giovanni 2024: Extras of the Salzburg Festival (Pre-Overture)

Picture No.2: Don Giovanni 2024: Anna El-Khashem (Zerlina), Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.3: Don Giovanni 2024: Julian Prégardien (Don Ottavio), Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna)




Below
Picture No.4: Don Giovanni 2024: Ensemble

Picture No.5: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Federica Lombardi (Donna Elvira), Ensemble

Picture No.6: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.7: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.8: Don Giovanni 2024: Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna), Ensemble

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 4 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Lobgesang • Vienna Philharmonic

Lobgesang • Mendelssohn • Vienna Philharmonic • Blomstedt

Also reviewed for Die Presse: In Salzburg feiert Herbert Blomstedt Geburtstag

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

A Hymn of Praise to Old Age

On July 11th, Herbert Blomstedt turned 97 – ninety-seven (!) – years old. And when you turn 97, you get to celebrate your birthday twice, no problem! First with a Bruckner Ninth and the Bamberg Orchestra (see also “ The Subtle Miracle Herbert Blomstedt And Bamberg's Cathedral Tour Of Bruckner”) and a good fortnight later with Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony – the “Hymn of Praise” – and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival.

Of course, age takes its toll, at this advanced hour of one’s life – and the stiffly moving but self-propelled Blomsted looks a bit like a marionette. His physical conducting is reduced in expressiveness and breadth of motion. But the key to an inspired performance is not forcing one’s will onto 190 musicians (counting the 111 singers of the Vienna Singverein), but to make them want to dance attendance on his every musical wish. And this, Blomstedt manages with ease, thanks to his charisma, earnestness, reputation, quiet enthusiasm, and devout charm, and that’s why his concerts are still such musically miraculous moments.

The Compleat Mendelssohn

Brahms’ Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), op.54, with the disciplined, restrained choir, was a masterclass in matters gentility, sensitively performed by the Philharmonic for Blomstedt. This was the overture to Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, long considered something of a problem child among Mendelssohn’s symphonies, with three short instrumental movements that are then – supposedly – squashed by the vast Cantata that follows. It’s an unfortunate, perhaps finally waning reputation, given that the work contains everything that makes Mendelssohn. The earnest, imposing music of the oratorios. Some of the fairy-dust music he is best known for. And even some of the tragedy and dissonance we can find in the F minor String Quartet.

The quick pace of the opening was invigorating for not trying to artificially impose more weight on the movement in search of some elusive balance but simply content in praising God – a concrete matter for Blomstedt and not just some abstract concept. The calm pianissimos that Blomstedt got from the orchestra (“Nun danket alle Gott”) were particularly touching.

The quick pace of the opening was invigorating for not trying to artificially impose more weight on the movement in search of some elusive balance but simply content in praising God – a concrete matter for Blomstedt and not just some abstract concept. The calm pianissimos that Blomstedt got from the orchestra (“Nun danket alle Gott”) were particularly touching.

F. Mendelssohn-B The Symphonies C.v.Dohnányi, Vienna Philharmonic Decca, 2010

Save Thyself!

Not everything went as smoothly. Towards the end, the performance lacked the crucial impulse, that would have imbued this “Hymn of Praise” with the needed pulse. Nor were the ‘almost-dissonant’, which can add a welcome bitter-sweet fragrance, particularly tended to. When the chorus nearly threw a fugato passage (“Die Nacht ist vergangen”), there was no help to be gotten from Blomstedt. The Singverein managed to rescue itself splendidly.

The soloists were right in line with the high quality and character of the performance – namely the level-headed, narrative, perfectly singing of tenor Tilman Lichidi (despite a weaker, flat moment later in the duet) and the effective, nicely enunciating Christina Landshamer, with a tastefully increasing but never overly dramatic vibrato on the held notes – and contributed to this wholly untroubled, Lord-praising eleven-AM performance. Grateful ovations when Blomstedt was led off and back on the stage, by concertmaster Rainer Honeck.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Wiener Philharmoniker · Blomstedt 2024: Herbert Blomstedt (Dirigent), Wiener Philharmoniker

Picture No.2: Wiener Philharmoniker · Blomstedt 2024: Elsa Benoit (Sopran II), Christina Landshamer (Sopran I), Herbert Blomstedt (Dirigent), Tilman Lichdi (Tenor), Wiener Philharmoniker, Wiener Singverein

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 3 ) Time with Schoenberg • The City Without Jews

The City Without Jews • PHACE • Olga Neuwirth

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Olga Neuwirths Musik hat zu „Die Stadt ohne Juden“ nichts zu sagen

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

The Good Austrian

The City Without Jews, a 1924 Austrian Expressionist film by Hans Karl Breslauer based on the novel of the same title by Hugo Bettauer, was first shown 100 years ago. For many years it was deemed lost, but after an intact copy was unexpectedly found some years ago, the Austrian Film Institute has stitched the film back together and made digital copies of it. While it’s good to have this rare film available and while it feels good (for Austrians, particularly, one reckons) to know that there were “good people” out there, who stood up against antisemitism, the quality of the film and the print – and its copies – is variable and dodgy.

Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain

Hugo Bettauer , The City without Jews

The Salzburg Festival screened the film as part of their “Time with Schoenberg” series – although there was little (none, in fact) Schoenberg involved in this project. The new soundtrack was composed by Olga Neuwirth and a little prelude came courtesy of Hanns Eisler. Very apropos for Salzburg, that work was the Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain. Well, as far as Salzburg is concerned, there are the impotent fat drops, that lazily plop from above, announcing an impending storm. There are middle-sized ones, that offer half trepidation, half hope, with a thunderstorm already or still being stuck behind one of the surrounding mountains. And then there are mean little needles of drops, that shoots down your neck from behind – themselves a prelude to the specific drizzle the locals call “ Schnürlregen”, a straight, light put consistent pour that has a dispiriting, it-will-never-end quality about it.

A Dearth of Ideas

Led by Nacho de Paz, the PHACE Ensemble performed the Eissler excellently (especially violist Petra Ackermann gave her best to make music out of Eisler’s quickly tiresome note salad) and the film music properly, along to their click-track. But the music was not particularly rewarding. Neuwirth's apparent dearth of ideas for the music to this film was baffling. At least half of it was smeared with a monotonously ominous, reverberant droning sound – quite regardless to what the film shows: Love scene: Droning. Singing in the synagogue: Droning. The only notable deviations are the interlacing of Austrian clichés (jodling, zither-music, and voice fragments of Hans Moser, a famous Austrian actor who had one of his first starring rôles in this film and whose apt physical comedy is already on display) into the soundtrack – and one telephone, that actually rings. The film’s banal depiction of the reasons for the economic and financial crisis in Austria is close to being an antisemitic trope itself; the actual antisemitism that the film ridicules is so over-the-top, it’s a bit too easy to be against it. And the “good Jew” of the film, Johannes Riemann might be a sympathetic proto-Mr. Bean, but nine years later, he became Nazi Party member No. 2641955. Well, we can’t all be on the right side of history, I suppose.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Zeit mit SCHÖNBERG – Die Stadt ohne Juden 2024: PHACE

Picture No.2: Zeit mit SCHÖNBERG – Die Stadt ohne Juden 2024: Nacho de Paz (Dirigent), PHACE

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Te Deum & Mozart Matinee

Te Deum — La Capella Reial • Le Concert des Nations • Savall

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Strahlende Trauermusik mit Jordi Savall und Adám Fischer

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

Evening and Mourning: De Profundis for Wolfgang Rihm

No one knew Friday evening, when Jordi Savall performed Michel-Richard Delalande’s (and Arvo Pärt’s) De Profundis. And When Adám Fischer conducted Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music at the Saturday Mozart Matinee, news had just reached Salzburg that Wolfgang Rihm had died that night. In retrospect, those two concerts took on the character of a musical leave-taking from arguably the most respected living German composer and a dear human being.

Charpentier Te Deum Ensemble Les Surprises Alpha, 2024

The sun was just laying last bands of warm yellows across the battlements, church towers, and roofs of Salzburg when the sounds of early French baroque filled the Collegiate Church, courtesy of Le Concert des Nations and Jordi Savall, who made his way to stage with a crutch and his face that looks like an apostle carved from wood. The center of this Tootsie Pop, between Delalande and the timeless minimalism of Pärt, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s grand Te Deum, which Europeans of a certain age invariably associate with childhood moments in front of the TV, maybe for the Four Hills ski jumping tournament or the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing that the opening prelude is the signal of the “Eurovision” pan-European broadcasts. Only that that version is rather more stately than the tempestuous trumpets and snappy timpani were, that Savall & Co. hurled at the enthused audience – eliciting early Bravos after the “In te, Domine, speravi” faded away into the generous acoustic of the ideally suited (and carefully prepared) church space.

Throughout the evening, the young La Capella Reial de Catalunya choir radiated with musical joy, like a big family in a choral outing. The soloists from its own ranks pleased with fresh and clear interpretations – above all the positively glowing (it may partly have been the advanced state of pregnancy) soprano of Elionor Martínez. Mezzo Kristin Mulders added her incisive, blazing instrument into the mix, although the tight, pronounced vibrato did not quite gel with the other, purer voices.

The short encore, Pärt’s Da pacem Domine (written for Savall and inspired by the 2004 Madrid train bombings), opened like a Gregorian chorale before the typical Pärt-isms chimed in: The chords that drift apart, the shifting long vocal lines, the regular time signature of the timpani, all resting on a subtle, almost unnoticeable bed of gently buzzing strings.

Funereal and Rocking Mozart from A.Fischer

W.A.Mozart 45 Symphonies Danish National CO Dacapo, 2013

Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, which Adám Fischer and the Mozarteum Orchestra performed, is not his best work – but it’s one of the more distinct ones in his output. The earthy, dark, woodwind-centered piece made for a most memorable curtain raiser, followed by a far less memorable D-minor Piano Concerto (K.466) in which the young Lukas Sternath, who won just about every prize at the 2022 ARD Music Competition, played flawless and lovely enough (“achingly sincere” is Tim Page’s suggestion for a put-down on such an occasion), but never achieved lift-off.

As if to prove that neither orchestra nor the conductor were to blame, Fischer and the Salzburgers went for a zany “Linz” Symphony that sparkled and crackled from start to end. With a smile across its collective face, the Mozarteum Orchestra delivered drive instead of legato, short but never choppy phrasing, and their joy transferred unto the audience’s – reminding us, why it is Adám Fischer, who currently has the best Mozart Symphony Cycle to his name.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Te Deum – La Capella Reial · Le Concert des Nations · Savall 2024: Jordi Savall (Dirigent), Le Concert des Nations, Solisten

Picture No.2: Mozart-Matinee · A. Fischer 2024: Adam Fischer (Dirigent), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg

Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) Overture Spirituelle • Koma & Le noir de l'étoile

Koma • Georg Friedrich Haas • Klangforum Wien

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Haas und Grisey: Hier spielen kollabierte Sterne die Musik

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

Blackout

As my colleague was stuck somewhere in northern Franconia, trying to experience opera in the dark, with only the German Railway between him and Bayreuth, I had made my way to the Salzburg Festival – back after ten years – to experience opera in the-even-darker. Because what Wagner achieved with Tristan 140 years ago, Georg Friedrich Haas has managed now with Koma, his opera that premiered 2016 in Schwetzingen. And pitch-black it really was, in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum, because the bureaucracy played ball and, in exchange for personal at every door, allowed the Festival to tape over the emergency exit signs. You could see the faintest outlines of light ions creeping through the cracks around some of the doors, but not your own hand before your face. You could turn to your seat neighbor and poke your tongue out and no one would have been the wiser for it. Barring a bad case of halitosis, that is, because with the visual sense gone, all other senses were heightened. That said, you wouldn’t need Haas’ music to attain that effect – I reckon that a Mozart Requiem, Gesualdo Madrigals, or something by Philip Glass might work as well and better.

There was a sensual element to the music as it rose, gently at first: metallic clouds, pierced by piano and brass, a whaling accordion. The music sounded positively amplified, but nothing was – it all came from the way the timbres were mixed and the voices resonated in the fine acoustic. The brass would occasionally throw fanfares against the string clusters, that sounded like elephants in heat. The piano – and its out of tune upright companion – were prominent… and responsible for much of the beauty of the score, because Haas, while modern and complex enough to be on the good side of the journalist, musicologist, and academic coteries, is also non-ideological enough to step off the avant-garde pedal every so often, letting glimmers of humanity and consonance shimmer through.

He was much helped by the excellent performance of the Klangforum Wien which was led – during the brief lit and semi-lit moments, anyway, by Bas Wiegers. Not that you can strictly tell, but they sounded on point, sharp, and certainly good, as they played their way through the score – and most of it by heart. The same goes for the singers, who all somehow sounded uncommonly good, notably trading words between each other, even for simple, single sentences. Only Daniel Gloger couldn’t go for all-beauty, because his role as “Mother” (apart from “Alexander”) demanded a more grotesque take. Outstanding amid the general excellence were Pia Davila’s Jasmine (sister of the comatose protagonist, Michaela) and Peter Schöne’s Michael (husband of Michaela).

As for the story by Klaus Händl, Haas’ go-to librettist, there’s a Michaela and she’s in a coma. Given the constant darkness, you had better read the libretto before or after, because there was little to follow during the performance. She’s taken care of, it seems, every once in a while, she or her memory wails away from above in the back (Sarah Aristidou), hospital procedures are described, and there is a good deal of good old German Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Her mother is revealed to have been a Kostelnička-type (except cartoonish wicked, unlike the tortured and deeply moral original) – which gave intermittent cause if you can actually come to terms with your past, if you just make it out to have been evil, rather than trying to understand the “others’” point of view. But that might be perhaps asking for more than the libretto was ever willing to give, getting stuck on a reasonably harmless and superficial level.

By the time the creaking trombones announce the end of the opera, which drags itself from line to line to its end, it has overstayed its welcome by maybe half an hour. The lights-off-lights-on back and forth, which even if following a libretto had been possible, did not make obvious dramatic sense, was no longer as novel at this point, nor was the music. Still: the experience as such was one that is bound to stay with every attendee.

Le noir de l’étoile • Gérard Grisey • Motus Percussion

Messages from the Past

G.Grisey, Le noir de l’étoile Percussions de Strasbourg Harmonia Mundi

Having awoken from the coma, the schedule beckoned to the Collegiate Church for a 10PM performance of Gérard Grisey’s 1990 Le noir de l’étoile for six percussionists, tape, and electronics. Darkness reigned again, but since the emergency exit signs were not covered, this time, the white interior of the Kollegienkirche shone in eerie mint green. The six percussion sets, distributed equally around the church, were spotlit. The audience, facing the center, sat in the middle of all this.

Essentially, Le noir de l’étoile is an hour of drumming. If six drummers banging on for about an hour sounds eerily much like the final part of Rihm’s Tutuguri—Poème dansé (review of the 2010 Salzburg performance here), worry not. There are limits as to how far that sort of thing can go, granted. And the presumed idea of a pulse traveling around the listener, from one percussion station to another – a b it à la Gesang der Jünglinge, I imagine – didn’t quite work out, either, perhaps because the principally gorgeous acoustic of the church made matters a bit too diffuse for that. But there was a communal quality to the proceedings, listening to the acoustic soundprints of pulsars PSR B0329+54 and Velar flutter in through the speakers, as interludes. Cosmic signals from thousands of years ago; messages from collapsed stars, on which we can eavesdrop on earth and which can lead to our contemplation of human existence, the futility of our micro-second in this universe, unnoticed and utterly irrelevant, except to us.

These kinds of existential thoughts, fortunately, can be wiped away easy enough, with a sausage and a beer, courtesy “Heiße Kiste”, the much appreciated mobile late-night sausage stand on the other and of the “State Bridge” that will assist putting the humans at the proper center of their universe again.


Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Koma — Klangforum Wien · Wiegers 2024: Peter Schöne (Michael), Daniel Gloger (Alexander/Mutter), Pia Davila (Jasmin), Bas Wiegers (Musikalische Leitung), Susanne Gritschneder (Dr. Auer), Henriette Gödde (Dr. Schönbühl), Karl Huml (Pfleger Jonas), Benjamin Chamandy (Pfleger Nikos), Raphael Sigling (Pfleger Zdravko), Klangforum Wien

Picture No.2: Le Noir de l’Étoile — Sietzen & Motus Percussion 2024: Christoph Sietzen (Schlagwerk), Motus Percussion

Tanglewood Fellows Take on Weighty Subjects with Aplomb

TMC Vocal Fellow Fleur Barron and Dominik Belavy perform in Seven Deadly Sins in Ozawa Hall (photo by Hilary Scott)
It is a rare night when one can experience as varied a program as Shostakovich’s fourteenth symphony and Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, described by the composer as a ballet with song. The occasion was an evening concert by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the TMC Vocal Fellows, some of the world’s most talented college-age and graduate-student musicians and singers.

Weill had recently escaped Germany, and arrest by the Gestapo, in 1933 when he collaborated in Paris with his former partner Bertolt Brecht on The Seven Deadly Sins, a commission from George Balanchine’s new dance company, Les Ballets. Brecht disliked ballet but proposed a hybrid: a cantata with dance. It tells the story of a girl named Anna from Louisiana. Anna’s dual sides were to be assumed by two women: Anna I, played by a singer, is practical; Anna II, a dancer, is beautiful but careless. Weill’s estranged wife, Lotte Lenya, was the original Anna I. Backing Anna is a quartet of male singers, a Greek chorus of sorts, representing her family.

Anna leaves her family in Louisiana to seek her destiny on a seven-year, seven-city U.S. trip. Her orders are to to make money and send it home so the family can build “a cozy house” on the banks of the Mississippi. At each stop along Anna’s journey another deadly sin is encountered, beginning with sloth, moving to pride, anger, gluttony, lust, avarice, and ending with envy. In reality, the work is a critique of capitalism and world politics, understandable given the ordeal Weill and Brecht, both of whom had to flee Germany, had undergone.

Other Articles: Jeremy Eichler, Illuminating darkness in Weill and Shostakovich (Boston Globe, August 10) Andrew L. Pincus, Two howls of protest in TMCO double bill of works from the dark days of the 20th century (Berkshire Eagle, August 9) Charles T. Downey, From the NSO, a pops concert that fizzled (Washington Post, April 29)

The TMC performance altered things slightly, with both sides of Anna played by the English mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, who was asked to sing and dance. Barron’s voice was clear and pleasant, and at times the brass of the large orchestra drowned her out, but this is a quibble. Where she excelled was crafting a character, using her voice, stage presence and just enough dance movement. It was a dazzling performance. Kudos, too, to her ‘family’ of Daveed Buzaglo, Christopher Sokolski, Ryne Cherry, and T. Hastings Reeves, whose ensemble and solo singing were highlights. The stage director and designer Nic Muni, a TMC faculty member, used a sparse stage well. Portuguese conducting fellow Nuno Coelho was an appropriate choice to lead the orchestra, which he did expertly. Recently appointed assistant conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Coelho is attending Tanglewood on a Maurice Abravanel Scholarship. Abravenel was the conductor for Seven Deadly Sins’ first performance in 1933.

While Seven Deadly Sins contained flecks of humor, nothing approaching a laugh enters Shostakovich’s fourteenth symphony, which centers on death. Concerned for his health after a massive heart attack in 1966, Shostakovich composed this non-symphony-like symphony, in 10 movements, for 19 strings, 10 percussion instruments, soprano and bass. Despite its singular subject matter, the work was a revelation, if a sobering one. Led with great sensitivity and skill by Christian Reif, recently appointed resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, the soprano and bass solos were handled by five TMC Vocal Fellows and two TMC Vocal Fellow alums/faculty members: Dawn Upshaw and Sanford Sylvan. The variety of voices was a welcome update to the work, which has the vocalists singing death poems by four different authors.

The acoustics and intimacy of Seiji Ozawa Hall helped highlight Shostakovich’s orchestration. Featuring some of the most difficult string parts in the repertoire, the symphony evokes the somber tone of death with a series of solos for principal players of the lower strings: violas, celli, and basses, eschewing the sweeter sound of the violin. In addition, Shostakovich frequently has section members join the principal after a solo. Accompanied mostly by a solo cello, played gorgeously by Andrew Laven, Ms. Upshaw was in splendid voice during the spare fourth movement. Later, in the ninth movement, a gorgeous cello trio accompanied Sylvan to poignant effect. While the symphony’s texts are depressing, the performance of them was masterful.

The seats in the hall for this Monday evening performance seemed about 80% full, but the lawn attendance, on a beautiful, cool, clear night was sparse. For the 2nd half, when many in the Deadly Sins orchestra were able to sit in the audience to hear the Shostakovich, the room filled up to about 90%. The lawn and Shed crowds on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were noticeably smaller than in the past. Sunday especially was generally a near sell-out in the Shed in most years. Not so this past Sunday where wide swaths of empty seats could be seen up front and in the back. In previous years to make your way through the lawn you literally had to step on peoples' picnic blankets. That was not the case this weekend. There was plenty of room to walk between picnic parties. Hopefully, this dip in attendance was only a momentary blip and not an indication of a general trend.

At Tanglewood: A Young Conductor's Marvelous Mahler

Moritz Gnann debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, August 7, 2016 (photo by Hilary Scott)
One thing is certain when you hear a world-class orchestra in concerts back to back to back with different conductors on the podium: you can hear when the players and the conductor are especially motivated to make music, as opposed to getting through a work. That was the case this weekend at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s bucolic summer home. Performances earlier in the weekend were executed with precision, but were not memorable. That changed Sunday afternoon when Moritz Gnann, the orchestra’s assistant conductor, took the podium. Although not unknown to the orchestra, he had never led it in a public performance.

Gnann’s first BSO effort as a collaborator showed promise. An experienced opera conductor, the lanky German followed Nelson Freire nicely in Mozart’s ninth piano concerto number, K. 271. The 71-year-old Brazilian’s playing was stiff at times, although he cemented his reputation for avoiding overt showmanship. Pianist, orchestra, and conductor were at their best in the operatic middle movement. Freire took the role of singer, playing lightly, with the modest orchestra — strings joined by oboes and horns — never overpowering him. The third movement, marked Presto, begins with the solo piano. Freire’s tempo was brisk indeed, maybe a bit too fast as his technique was a touch muddy at times.

The concluding work, Mahler’s youthful first symphony, was where Gnann’s interpretative talents and energy shone. It was also apparent that he has been influenced by one of his mentors, Andris Nelsons, the orchestra’s music director, whom he has assisted since 2010, beginning with Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival. From the first bars, where Gnann had urged the orchestra in rehearsal the day before to play the opening dominant A pitch as softly as possible, there was promise that this performance might be special. It was that and more.

Gnann had complete control over the shape and color of the opening movement, the softness of the A helping to evoke the quiet of the forest, which Mahler augmented with bird calls, offstage trumpet fanfares, and horn melodies. That the concert venue, the Koussevitsky Music Shed, essentially is located in a semi-cleared forest made Mahler’s music seem that much more appropriate. As the work progressed, Gnann’s attention to detail became apparent. He masterfully weaved the threads of Mahler’s music, allowing parts rarely heard clearly, such as those from the harp and bass drum, albeit played softly, to contribute to the sonority.

Other Reviews: Andrew Pincus, BSO: Into the harmony machine (Berkshire Eagle, August 8)

Gnann’s tempi were on the slow side, reminiscent of, but not quite as slow as those Otto Klemperer used when conducting Mahler. A slightly slower Mahler allowed Gnann to bring out the layered nature of the music. Indeed, Mahler urges the first movement to be “slow” and “dragging” (Langsam. Schleppend) and the second to have “powerful motion, but not too fast.” Movement two begins with a peasant-like Austrian Ländler. A trio in F follows it. In a lifetime of listening to Mahler performances, I’ve never heard it played more beautifully or sound more Austrian.

After the well-controlled third movement, featuring Frère Jacques in a minor key, Gnann led a final movement that was filled with tempestuous passion, and yet individual parts still were audible. The final climax called for the brass players to deplete their reserves, playing as loudly as they could. They did so in tune and, believe or not, with beauty. It was a moment of white heat. That the conductor and players had modulated their sound beautifully throughout the work made the final, boisterous climax much more effective. It was a fantastic ending to a rousing performance and the audience recalled the young conductor to the stage thrice. Gnann is an animated conductor and he was spent by the symphony's end, as were his players. It was a triumphant exhaustion that reminded one of Mahler's assessment that a symphony "must be like the world. It must embrace everything." For nearly one hour at Tanglewood, it did.

Why Do We Love 'La Bohème' So Much?

D'Ana Lombard (Mimi) and Yongzhao Yu (Rodolfo) in La Bohème, Act I, Wolf Trap Opera, August 2016
(photo by Scott Suchman for Wolf Trap Opera)
Henry Mürger was a working-class writer born in Paris, the son of a tailor and a shop-worker. In his youth Mürger was so poor that his group of friends, who included the photographer Nadar, called themselves the Buveurs d'Eau (Water Drinkers) because they could not afford to buy a drink when they went out. Most of us have been there.

Mürger wrote about the desperate poverty he and his friends endured while trying to pursue their artistic interests in a book called Scènes de la vie de bohème. It was first read as a self-published serial, a feuilleton included as a literary supplement in another publication. Mürger eventually gathered the stories into a book published in 1851, when he was not yet 30 years old. For Mürger it was the combination of poverty and artistic drive that made the life of a bohemian, as he defined it, "any man who enters into the arts without any other means of existence except the art itself." The book made Mürger's name, and he went on to have some success as a poet and playwright.

In the 1890s, Giacomo Puccini and his librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, adapted the story into an opera, La Bohème. It premiered in 1896 in Turin, followed just one year later by an alternate version composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. This opera has become intensely popular with audiences. As proof, we have reviewed a never-ending stream of productions over the years, including from Washington National Opera (in 2007 and 2014), the Castleton Festival in 2011, and Santa Fe Opera (2011 and 2007). Wolf Trap Opera turned to it again this summer, having taken this long to recuperate after Jens vivisected both the work and a performance there in 2004. It returned to the stage of the Filene Center on Friday night in a staging that was not so successful.

La Bohème may not be for everyone, but it was one of the first operas that made a major impression on me as a teenager, so I have a weak spot for it to this day. The opera keeps to a few scenes from the book, focusing on the characters of Rodolfo (who represents Mürger himself, the struggling poet), Schaunard (the musician Alexandre Schanne), Marcello (the painter François Tabar), and Colline (the philosopher Jean Wallon), whose coat of many pockets is always heavy with books. The Café Momus, where the second act is set, was a favorite haunt for writers on the Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, near the Louvre. Rodolfo's garret is on the Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, near Montmartre, the same street where Mürger lived. It is an intensely nostalgic work, and it makes just about everyone who hears it think fondly of their student days when they did not have two dimes to rub together after the rent was paid.

Other Reviews: Grace Jean, Strong ‘La Bohème’ at Wolf Trap makes a good case for more opera there (Washington Post, August 8)

The awkward body-mike amplification at the outdoor Filene Center made it difficult to judge the quality of the voices in this production. Soprano D’Ana Lombard, who was Rosina in Ghosts of Versailles last summer, had the range for Mimi, if not the floating vocal quality that makes her seem most innocent. Reginald Smith, Jr., who was an exceptionally strong Count in last summer's Le Nozze di Figaro, was equally powerful here as Marcello, with the same kinds of comic gifts that lightened his presence on stage. The Rodolfo of tenor Yongzhao Yu, new to my ears, seemed strong, but it is impossible to know how the voice would fill a hall when not amplified. Summer Hassan had the sass for Musetta, if not necessarily the laser-focused vocal goods. Shea Owens, who stepped into the role of Junius in The Rape of Lucretia in June at only a week's notice, and Timothy Bruno had capable turns as Schaunard and Colline, respectively.

Paul Curran updated the setting to the end of World War I. This made one question why Mimi was bothering with lighting her candle in the hallway, as well as why young men were still in Paris writing plays and painting canvases. (Even worse, it's been done before.) Erhard Rom designed one large set piece, Rodolfo's garret, that was somewhat cumbersome to roll on and off. A few small backdrop objects suggested the other scenes, as well as several large video screens (designed by S. Katy Tucker) that set the tone of Paris in the winter. The National Symphony Orchestra was again placed at the rear of the stage, with the same problems in amplification noticed last month. In particular, Grant Gershon had almost no way to control the rushing of the singers from behind the set, judging by the number of bad misalignments between the cast and the orchestra, not to mention the balance problems. A truly great production of this opera has eluded Ionarts up to this point, but the best one so far indicates that you need a straightforward production, not too heavy on the sentimentality, and a first-rate conductor who can actually conduct the singers.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'La Fanciulla del West'

Ensemble in The Girl of the Golden West (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, R. Tebaldi, M. del Monaco, C. MacNeil, Orchestra of Accademia di Santa Cecilia, F. Capuana (Decca)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Puccini's La Fanciulla del West may not be a rarity in some parts of the world, but Santa Fe Opera had not produced this work since 1995 when it revived it for this year's 60th anniversary season. The company bet on the draw of Puccini's name, even though this opera is perhaps the composer's most unwieldy, and its regular Mozart to fill the house for ten performances each. By comparison Roméo et Juliette was given seven performances, and Capriccio and Vanessa, the latter arguably the best production of the season, just five each.

Other Reviews: John Stege, Pistol-Packin’ Minnie (Santa Fe Reporter, July 6) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe scene: A British stage director and a French conductor take on Puccini's Western opera (Dallas Morning News, August 3) Heidi Waleson, The 2016 Festival Season at the Santa Fe Opera (Wall Street Journal, August 9)

Emmanuel Villaume and the Santa Fe Opera orchestra turned in a compelling reading of this most accomplished score. It was not in the same class as Lorin Maazel's poised conducting of the work, the only other time it has come under review on this side of the Atlantic, at the Castleton Festival in 2013. Still, Villaume and especially the male chorus gave the work the nostalgic warmth needed to soften some of the less believable twists of the story.

If we do not find credible the homesickness of the miners in the first act, in their need to believe, as in the psalm taught to them by Minnie, in the possibility that every one of them can be saved by God, then their decision not to hang Dick Johnson at the end of the third act will seem doubly ridiculous. Probably, the opera likely would work better, would seem less silly, if it ended tragically. If Johnson got hanged and the boys shot their beloved Minnie as she tried to save him, the dying heroine would have found, as suffering women always do, her perfect complement in the music of Puccini.

Ionarts at Large: BSO Tackles Difficult Work at Tanglewood

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero leads the BSO and pianist Ingrid Fliter (photo by Hilary Scott)
It was reasonable to leave the Friday evening concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in a relaxed mood. A cool breeze blanketed the Koussevitzky Music Shed as the orchestra finished a symphony-free program with soft, melodic works: Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the Blumine movement from Mahler's third first symphony, and Brahms’ Second Serenade in A. Nashville Symphony Orchestra Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero led both works ably, with strong control over sound and phrasing. Skip ahead 24 hours to Saturday night and anyone still feeling the calming effects of those works was shaken out of their relaxed state by the pounding E minor chords for percussion and brass of John Adams’s massive Harmonielehre.

Guerrero again was leading the Boston players, providing relative consistency after five weekends of guest conductors as well as one weekend where Music Director Andris Nelsons was on the podium. With a schedule at Tanglewood that asks the orchestra to mount three different programs each weekend with minimal rehearsal, programming Harmonielehre was somewhat risky. Mixing elements of minimalism — pulsating rhythms, repetition and quicksilver ornamentation — with more traditional harmonies, the dense, three-part work is loaded with constant movement and is a heavy lift on few rehearsals. Perhaps this explains why it was the orchestra’s first performance of what has become one of the most successful post-WWII compositions.

Fortunately the BSO had several factors in its favor. A technically sound conductor with a clear beat, Guerrero is very comfortable with contemporary music. Second was the orchestra’s world-class skill and musicianship. The combination yielded an accurate first performance, although one that seemed to sacrifice speed and interpretation for safety, particularly in the first movement, whose lack of energy negated many of Adams’s musical effects.

The slower Part II, “The Anfortas Wound,” named for the legendary Fisher King, yielded a far better result. The somber movement’s second climax, quoting the screaming chords of the Adagio of Mahler’s tenth symphony, was appropriately vexing. Ditto an extended piccolo trumpet solo, performed with a gorgeous, otherworldly sound by Thomas Rolfs. The contrasting third part, “Meister Eckhardt and Quackie,” emanates from a dream Adams had of the German theologian (1260-1328) flying with Adams’ daughter, Emily, on his shoulders. Accordingly it’s a swirling, uplifting movement. Toward the end of it, Guerrero increased the tempo and energy level, leading to a triumphant conclusion on an E-flat major chord.

Other Reviews: Ken Ross, Soloist-turned-conductor impresses with NSO’s Mahler (Mass Live, August 7)

The Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter had the unenviable task of being a late replacement for Daniil Trifonov, one of classical music’s current “It” pianists, whose ear malady prevented him from traveling. A Chopin specialist, Fliter was more than up to the task of dispatching Chopin’s second piano concerto. Her light touch and fine technique were well suited to this composition, completed when Chopin was just 20. It made one wonder how a more demonstrative player, like Trifonov, would have handled the concerto. Again for Guerrero and the BSO, though, it was more a matter of keeping soloist and orchestra together throughout the piece than making bold interpretive statements. Fliter cooperated, keeping tempi steady and eschewing rubato, allowing the music, rather than her technical prowess, to take the lead. To his credit, Guerrero proved a sensitive collaborator, following Fliter expertly. As was the case in the Adams, Guerrero was most effective in the middle slow movement, said to be a paean to Chopin’s boyhood amours, as he correctly highlighted the interplay between Fliter and bassoonist Richard Svoboda.

Guerrero’s comfort with slow movements gave your reviewer concern about the final work, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks of Richard Strauss. There was little need to worry. The orchestra bounded through the Strauss, a Boston Symphony staple, alternating between loud and soft passages, climaxing with a raucous gallows scene. Hornist James Sommerville handled the solo horn parts with style and William R. Hudgins was appropriately irreverent on clarinet. Indeed Guerrero proved adept in both quiet moments and boisterous ones.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Don Giovanni'

Leah Crocetto (Donna Anna) in Don Giovanni (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Mozart, Don Giovanni, J. Weisser, L. Regazzo, A. Pendatchanska, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2007)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
In Strauss's "Capriccio," heard last week at Santa Fe Opera, the Countess settles on Gluck as setting the highest standard for opera. If only Santa Fe Opera had heeded her advice and replaced its annual Mozart opera with one by Gluck, as I suggested to Charles MacKay a few years ago. Mozart may be a staple at Santa Fe Opera, but Mozart is rarely the highlight of any season here. For the last truly extraordinary Mozart production at Santa Fe Opera, you would have to go back to "Lucio Silla" in 2005. This year's "Don Giovanni," last heard here in 2009, had that same feeling of routine Santa Fe Opera Mozart, mostly pleasant but with some inevitable disappointment. A nice staging of Gluck's "Iphigénie en Aulide" would have been just the thing to lift the season into something extraordinary.

The piece came to life a bit more in the recitatives, when Glenn Lewis took over on the fortepiano, seated at the left corner of the pit so he could see and interact with the singers. The superlative recording led by René Jacobs showed how the fortepiano, played with improvisational fancy, can enliven the recitatives in this opera. Lewis was not quite on the level of that recording, but he worked in witty allusions to other arias, for example, when some characters were mentioned.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 60th Anniversary Season (Part 2 of 2)

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, N. Stemme, J. Kaufmann, Wiener Staatsoper, F. Welser-Möst (Sony, 2016)

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items (Washington Post, August 4)

The big-ticket items on the 60th anniversary season at Santa Fe Opera are Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which got ten performances each. And Richard Jones’s new production of “Fanciulla” (heard on August 2) could make viewers agree with Puccini, who called this unwieldy work his favorite.

Periodic titters in the Crosby Theater confirmed that the absurdities of the libretto — like “Madame Butterfly,” based on a work by David Belasco — remain problematic. The title figure, Minnie, runs a saloon in a California Gold Rush town; rebuffs the attentions of the local sheriff, Jack Rance; and falls for a stranger calling himself Dick Johnson, who turns out to be the highway bandit everyone in town is hunting. Somehow the town’s residents decide not to hang Johnson, and Minnie runs off with him. Characters include “Red Indians” named Billy Jackrabbit and Wowkle, described as “his squaw.”

Patricia Racette had the vocal power and the dramatic presence to make Minnie almost believable...

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