At TCR: Favorite Recordings of 2016

Charles T. Downey, Top Ten Recordings of 2016
The Classical Review, December 31, 2016

At TCR: The Weekly Stream

Get your Internet streaming music fix for the week:

Charles T. Downey, The Weekly Stream (The Classical Review, September 21)

Announcing Washington Classical Review

Ionarts quietly celebrated its 13th anniversary last month. This site was born in the heyday of the blog, a form that has come and gone in the last decade. Most bloggers, including those who made Ionarts happen, have moved into other areas of the new media. You may have noticed that the daily posting here at Ionarts has lapsed in the last few weeks, as I have devoted a good part of my summer writing hours to a couple book projects (more about those, hopefully, at a later date). Furthermore, it has not escaped our notice that fewer and fewer people actually come to this Web site — any Web site, for that matter — every day to read a regular post.

At the end of this month, most of the regular features of this site will be transferred to a new publication called Washington Classical Review. It is the most recent addition to The Classical Review network, led by Lawrence A. Johnson, and I will serve as Associate Editor and critic. WCR will cover all major classical events in Washington, D.C., as well as selected events in Baltimore and Virginia. Prominent Ionarts features such as the concert calendar, season and monthly concert picks, the Sunday streaming audio and video roundup (Perchance to Stream), and concert and dance reviews will instead appear at WCR starting in September.

Ionarts will not disappear. The archived posts from the last 13 years will remain exactly where they are. Jens and I will likely continue cross-posting our work published by other outlets. Occasional posts on art, theater, film, and recordings will appear here from time to time.

The alchemy of how any writing accrues hits online relies on a mysterious and apparently random series of events, as people link to it on various social media. If there are ways you think that classical music coverage might reach you more conveniently or if there are ways to improve your digital access to our content, please send me a message: ionarts (at) gmail dot com.

Alyson Cambridge at the Kennedy Center

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Travels Adventurous Road During D.C. Recital
Classical Voice North America, January 23

W. Bolcom, From the Diary of Sally Hemings, A. Cambridge, L. Brown (White Pine Music, 2010)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Soprano Alyson Cambridge is testing the boundaries of classical music. The Washington-born singer’s breakthrough role at Washington National Opera was in the musical Show Boat, and her second recording, combining jazz, crossover, and pop music, was released on Naxos’ new Suite 28 Records label. Her recital on Jan. 20 in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, presented by Washington Performing Arts under the title “In Her Voice,” brought together three new song cycles by American composers, two of them world premieres.

The concert opened with the most substantial work, William Bolcom’s From the Diary of Sally Hemings, which Cambridge recorded for a disc released in 2010. Bolcom used a literary text by playwright Sandra Seaton — eighteen entries in an imagined diary as it might have been written by Hemings, the slave of American president Thomas Jefferson...

[Continue reading]

Alyson Cambridge (soprano)
William Bolcom, From the Diary of Sally Hemings
Music by Jeffrey Mumford, Adam Schoenberg
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Noah Mlotek, Jeffrey Mumford Portrait at the National Gallery (Ionarts, February 12, 2013)

Barbara Jepson, New Music With a Tonal Twist (Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2010)

Glass's New 'Appomattox' a Long Battle

Charles T. Downey, Glass’s revised “Appomattox” proves even more unwieldy at Washington National Opera (The Classical Review, November 15)

In some ways, the United States is still fighting the Civil War. Political divides, even now, often fall along similar fault lines, and the wounds caused by the conflict, Tristan-like, refuse to heal.

This was the premise of Philip Glass’s opera Appomattox, premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2007, which connects the Civil War to the Civil Rights era. Although critics hailed it as unwieldy...

[Continue reading]

Philip Glass, Appomattox
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

SEE ALSO:
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Review: ‘Appomattox’ at the Kennedy Center (New York Times, November 15)

Anne Midgette, ‘Appomattox’: A superb night at the opera (The Washington Post, November 15)

---, The war that would not end: Race relations take the opera stage (Washington Post, November 14)

Alex Baker, Glass Warfare (Parterre Box, November 16)

Seth Colter Walls, Appomattox review – Philip Glass's revised opera considers race in America (The Guardian, November 15)

Tim Smith, Philip Glass opera 'Appomattox' addresses Civil War, civil rights (Baltimore Sun, November 12)

Michael Cooper, Seeing Voting Rights Under Siege, Philip Glass Rewrites an Opera (New York Times, November 10)

Charles T. Downey, Virginia Opera Does It Again (Glass, Orphée) (Ionarts, February 11, 2012)

---, Philip Glass at the Phillips Collection (The Washingtonian, October 4, 2011)

---, Nothing but Dance (Ionarts, April 25, 2011)

---, Ionarts at Large: Satyagraha at the Met (Ionarts, April 21, 2008)

Joshua Kosman, Philip Glass opera 'Appomattox' both impressive and inconsistent (San Francisco Chronicle, October 6, 2007)

Steve Jobs Opera for Santa Fe

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe company commissions an iOpera: Should there be an app for that?
The Classical Review, August 7

Santa Fe Opera celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2016, when the season will focus on three great operas of the 20th century: Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Strauss’s Capriccio, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa.

Although next summer will not feature a world premiere, the company announced Wednesday that American composer Mason Bates will create a new opera in Santa Fe, in collaboration with librettist Mark Campbell for the 2017 season...

[Continue reading]

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Cold Mountain'

Ensemble in Cold Mountain, 2015, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)

C. Frazier, Cold Mountain (Grove Press, 1997)

Charles T. Downey, “Cold Mountain” is a long, bleak night in Santa Fe Opera premiere (The Classical Review, August 6)

Few moments equal the excitement of the world premiere of a new opera. The theater darkens, and music that very few people have heard before unfolds before you.

This crucial tradition continued at Santa Fe Opera this year with the world premiere of Cold Mountain, the first opera by American composer Jennifer Higdon...

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, ‘Cold Mountain,’ at Santa Fe Opera, Recounts a Separated Lover’s Arduous Journey (New York Times, August 6)

Jeffrey Brown, Civil War tragedy ‘Cold Mountain’ inspires opera (PBS NewsHour, August 5)

George Loomis, Cold Mountain, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe, New Mexico — review (Financial Times, August 5)

Paul Ingles, 'Cold Mountain' Takes Civil War Odyssey To The Opera Stage (NPR, August 5)

Thomas May, Cold Mountain Almost Reaches the Top (Musical America, August 5)

Gregory Sullivan Isaacs, Miguel Harth-Bedoya brings Jennifer Higdon’s music to life in ‘Cold Mountain’ (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 5)

John Stege, A Magic Mountain (Santa Fe Reporter, August 5)

Ray Mark Rinaldi, Santa Fe Opera ascends with Jennifer Higdon's "Cold Mountain" (Denver Post, August 4)

Rodney Punt, Jennifer Higdon’s ‘Cold Mountain’ Has World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera

David Patrick Stearns, Higdon's 'Cold Mountain' premieres in Santa Fe (Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3)

James M. Keller, ‘Cold Mountain’ opera review: Long-lost love among the ruins (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 2)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Dr. Sun Yat-sen'

Joseph Dennis and Corinne Winters in Dr. Sun Yat-sen, 2014 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s leaden “Dr. Sun Yat-sen” leaves one hungry for more musical substance (The Classical Review, August 9)

When Santa Fe Opera decided to pull the plug on the world premiere of Judith Weir’s new opera Miss Fortune this year, the company settled instead on an American premiere. For the final production of the season, it has presented Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the first opera by Huang Ruo, a little-known China-born American composer. The results...

Huang Ruo, Dr. Sun Yat-sen
Santa Fe Opera

See Also:
Nick Frisch, Opera Ends; Some Cite Censorship (New York Times, October 11, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, 'An American Soldier' Gets Its Premiere (Ionarts, June 14, 2014)

Lindsley Cameron Miyoshi, An Epic Life Sings (Opera News, June 2014)

James M. Keller, East meets West in ‘Dr. Sun Yat-sen’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 27)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A Revolutionary Who Cannot Be Silenced (New York Times, July 28)

Scott Cantrell, ‘Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’ dramatic, but not entirely convincing (Dallas Morning News, July 31)

Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Anne Midgette, Santa Fe Opera’s sustained high note (Washington Post, August 8)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'The Impresario' / 'Le rossignol'

Erin Morley (Nightingale), Anthony Michaels-Moore (Emperor of China),
and cast in Le Rossignol, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Stravinsky and Mozart make colorful music together in Santa Fe Opera double bill
The Classical Review, August 8

Santa Fe Opera had a special connection to Igor Stravinsky in the last fifteen years of his life. So it was fitting that the company revived the composer’s Le Rossignol this season, especially since Stravinsky himself once conducted it in Santa Fe. The company’s first production of this unusual opera-ballet in over forty years...

Stravinsky, Le rossignol / Renard, N. Dessay, Orchestre et Choeurs de l'Opéra National de Paris, J. Conlon

Stravinsky, Le Rossignol
Mozart, The Impresario
Santa Fe Opera

See Also:
Natalie Dessay's 'Le Rossignol' (2005), truly bizarre film directed by Christian Chaudet (YouTube)

Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale (1844)

The interpolated music in The Impresario includes one of my favorite minor Mozart works, the four-part scatological canon Bona nox, K. 561, whose final lines should not be reproduced in a family publication

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Scott Cantrell, A befuddling Mozart-Stravinsky double bill in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

Ray Mark Rinaldi, Santa Fe Opera upsets Mozart, and Chinese history, to keep things fresh (Denver Post, July 30)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Carmen'

Chorus in Act IV, Carmen, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, The personal is political in Santa Fe’s incendiary border-crisis “Carmen”
The Classical Review, August 7

Santa Fe Opera’s new production of Carmen is the third staging I have seen this year alone. An opera that is mounted this often invariably receives a lot of mediocre performances, but when a director does something new with his staging, and when there is a major vocal discovery to be made...

Previously:
Last Carmen at Santa Fe Opera (2006)

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A Film-Noirish Carmen, Down Mexico Way (New York Times, July 30)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Don Pasquale' and 'Fidelio'

Prisoners' Chorus in Fidelio, 2014, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Updated Donizetti and Beethoven offer mixed results at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 6

It is an odd summer at the Santa Fe Opera, considering the festival’s repertorial specialties. The season offers only a sliver of Mozart, no Strauss, and no early opera — and this in the first season of historically informed performance specialist Harry Bicket’s tenure as music director...

Previously:
Brenda Rae in La Traviata last year

Alek Schrader sang Ernesto last summer at Glyndebourne

Zachary Nelson in last year's Figaro

Don Pasquale at Washington Opera (2011)

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

John Stege, Absurdly Entertaining (Santa Fe Reporter, July 8)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Holocaust Grafted to Beethoven (New York Times, August 4)

Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera Nazifies ‘Fidelio’ (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

John Stege, Heil Dir, Ludwig! (Santa Fe Reporter, July 14)

James M. Keller, ‘Fidelio’ under the Führer: SFO presents Beethoven’s only opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 13)

TCR: 'A Coffin in Egypt' in Philadelphia

R. I. Gordon, A Coffin in Egypt, F. von Stade, Houston Grand Opera, T. Myers (New Albany Records, May 1, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Even with von Stade, Gordon’s inert “Coffin” is a deadly night in Philadelphia (The Classical Review, June 7)

Opera singers sometimes have had second careers in music theater or other lighter genres, from Ezio Pinza to Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. We might add to that list the beloved American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who has returned to the stage this spring in a new music theater piece composed for her...

Ricky Ian Gordon, A Coffin in Egypt
With Frederica von Stade
Opera Philadelphia

SEE ALSO:

• David Patrick Stearns, For 'A Coffin in Egypt,' von Stade goes deep into the heart of Texas (Philadelphia Inquirer, June 4, 2014)
  
• Bryan Butler, Interview: Frederica Von Stade Comes to Opera Philadelphia (Philadelphia Magazine, May 29)
  
• Mark Swed, Frederica von Stade is regal in 'A Coffin in Egypt' (Los Angeles Times, April 25)
  
• Timothy Mangan, Frederica von Stade not enough to lift 'A Coffin in Egypt' (Orange County Register, April 25)
  
• George Loomis, A Coffin in Egypt, Houston Grand Opera (Financial Times, March 19)
  
• Mike Greenberg, Cryptic Actors Drive Final Nail Into Coffin Opera (Classical Voice North America, March 18)
  
• Charles T. Downey, Ricky Ian Gordon's Green Sneakers (Washington Post, April 4, 2011)
  
• ---, Dead Man Walking (Ionarts, March 6, 2006)

'Svadba' at Opera Philadelphia

Charles T. Downey, Opera Philadelphia presents American premiere of mesmerizing “Svadba”
The Classical Review, November 3

Opera companies should be presenting new operas. The risk is enormous, because many new works turn out to be duds and because a company’s most reliable audience often wants to hear the same ten operas over and over again. Enterprising organizations find ways to make it financially viable, often by bringing new works to smaller, less expensive venues.

One such success is Opera Philadelphia’s new Opera in the City series, inaugurated on Saturday night with Svadba (Wedding), an opera by Ana Sokolović. It is the company’s first presentation at FringeArts, a gritty venue along the Delaware River, in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. [Continue reading]

Ana Sokolović, Svadba (Wedding)
Presented by Opera Philadelphia and FringeArts
Production from Queen of Puddings Music Theatre

SEE ALSO:
David Patrick Stearns, 'Svadba,' a singing Serbian celebration (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5)

Heidi Waleson, It’s Ladies’ Night at the Opera (Wall Street Journal, November 5)

Peter Crimmins, Opera Philadelphia extends wedding invitation with 'Svadba' (WHYY Newsworks, November 4 -- includes a rehearsal excerpt)

John Adams' New Saxophone Concerto

Charles T. Downey, John Adams’ new concerto shows sax appeal in American premiere (The Classical Review, September 21)

By composing a saxophone concerto, John Adams has elevated the saxophone from its second-class status in the classical world. At least such were the hopes of some people, including perhaps the composer, for this new half-hour work. It is a heavy burden for a concerto, indeed just one of a growing number of concertos to feature the saxophone, to bear.

[Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Tim McAllister, saxophone
Adams, Saxophone Concerto (inter alia)

Some thoughts that did not make it into the review:

The saxophone has actually fared far better than other instruments invented in the 19th and 20th centuries: where are the concertos for the heckelphone, the sarrusophone, the Ondes Martenot, the electric guitar, the synthesizer, the Holztrompete? The saxophone seems to be doing just fine, and in any case, one new saxophone concerto is not going to cause saxophone parts to be added to all of those orchestral scores completed before the instrument’s invention in 1846 and its widespread acceptance. Because orchestras play so much music that predates or otherwise excludes the saxophone, it is naïve to expect that the instrument should be a part of every concert.

A live broadcast of the St. Louis Symphony's performance of the Saxophone Concerto will be available online on October 5, and Nonesuch will release a recording of the work in 2014.

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, BSO opens season with U.S. premiere of John Adams' Saxophone Concerto (Baltimore Sun, September 21)

William Robin, Classical Saxophone, an Outlier, Is Anointed by John Adams Concerto (New York Times, September 17)

Harriet Cunningham, Restless riffs and delicacy in Adams' saxophone concerto (Sydney Morning Herald, August 25)

Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Joyce DiDonato (Elena) in La Donna del Lago, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s thrilling “Donna del Lago” proves the highlight of the summer
The Classical Review, August 2

It had to happen eventually, and it did.

After some disappointments earlier in the week, Thursday was a very good night to be at the Santa Fe Opera. The company’s debut production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago turned out to be the high point of this summer’s season. In a charming, rustic production, directed by Paul Curran and shared with the Metropolitan Opera, a top-notch cast blew the roof off Crosby Theater with performances that were vocally and musically thrilling and dramatically compelling. The magnificent purple-hued vista of a stormy night in the New Mexico desert, complete with lightning flashes, is the sort of thing that only Santa Fe can offer.

[Continue reading]

Rossini, La Donna del Lago (critical edition of the score edited by H. Colin Slim)
Libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, premiered 24 October 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples
Based on Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Scott Cantrell, Vocal virtuosity in Santa Fe “La donna del lago” (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, La donna del lago, Santa Fe, New Mexico – review (Financial Times, August 1)

James M. Keller, Joyce DiDonato dazzles in La donna del lago (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 14)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Oscar'

David Daniels (Oscar Wilde, center) and cast in Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Morrison’s “Oscar” premiere proves a trial at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 1

One of the best things about coming to the Santa Fe Opera each summer is the chance to hear new or at least recent operas. The company has a decorated history of world and U.S. premieres, an admirable devotion to contemporary composition to which it has stuck through thick and thin. This year’s season was anchored on the world premiere of Oscar, heard Wednesday night, the first opera by American composer Theodore Morrison and the result of a co-commision with Opera Philadelphia, which will mount it in 2015.

[Continue reading]

Theodore Morrison, Oscar
With David Daniels, Heidi Stober, William Burden
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Ray Mark Rinaldi, First openly gay opera a fitting tribute to Oscar Wilde (Denver Post, July 15)

James M. Keller, 'Oscar' unveiled at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 28)

John Stege, Oscar’s Fatal Attraction: A messy night at the Opera (Santa Fe Reporter, July 30)

[Batty Masetto], Walk on the Wilde Side (Parterre.com, July 31)

Philip Campbell, Operatic Oscar (Albuquerque Journal, August 1)

James R. Oestreich, When a Poet’s Life and the Law Are at Odds (New York Times, August 2)

Scott Cantrell, A strong, if imperfect, new Oscar Wilde opera in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico (Financial Times, August 4)

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein'

Kevin Burdette (General Boum, center) and cast in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Fizz is off the champagne in Santa Fe Opera’s “Duchess of Gerolstein” (The Classical Review, July 31)

Listening to three hours of an Offenbach operetta will likely cause a hangover, not unlike the one caused by all the champagne that is guzzled by the operetta’s characters. This was the lesson learned at the Santa Fe Opera’s new production of Offenbach’s La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, heard Tuesday night.

[Continue reading]

Offenbach, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein
Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
With Susan Graham, Emmanuel Villaume
Santa Fe Opera

Offenbach, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, F. Lott, S. Piau, Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, M. Minkowski (production directed by Laurent Pelly) [CD]

[DVD]

SEE ALSO:
Mike Silverman, Actress makes royal return home at the Santa Fe Opera (Associated Press, July 27)

Scott Cantrell, A hyperactive Santa Fe ‘Grand Duchess of Gerolstein’ (Dallas Morning News, July 31)

Verdi Celebrated at Caramoor

Charles T. Downey, Angela Meade sizzles in Verdi’s “Vêpres” at Caramoor (The Classical Review, July 7)

Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, J. Brumaire, J. Bonhomme, BBC Concert Orchestra, M. Rossi (Opera Rara)

Don’t look now, but it’s time for another annoying composer anniversary. Worse, the Verdi bicentenary this year is the most irritating kind of composer anniversary, requiring us to commemorate a composer whose operas are already quite familiar, even too much so. Will Crutchfield’s ingenious solution, for his summer of Verdi on the Bel Canto at Caramoor series, is to examine the Italian composer’s French works. This approach has the double advantage of avoiding any of the chestnuts in the Verdi canon, while actually drawing attention to some quite neglected works. [Continue reading]

Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes
Libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier
Orchestra of St. Luke's, Will Crutchfield (conductor)
Caramoor

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, An Italian in Paris: How a New Stage Lifted Verdi (New York Times, July 8)

John Yohalem, Les Vêpres de Westchester (Parterre.com, July 7)

Verdi’s ‘missing link’ opera ‘Les vepres siciliennes’ getting bicentennial lift (Associated Press, July 5)

Nick Clark, Turmoil at the Royal Opera House as choreographer pulls out of Giuseppe Verdi's Les Vêpres Siciliennes (The Independent, June 7)

Krenek Symphonies

This article was originally published at The Classical Review on October 7, 2012.

E. Krenek, Complete Symphonies, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, T. Ukigaya, A. Francis (released on May 29, 2012) cpo 777 695-2 | 229'39"

It took a while, but the last installment in the cycle of Ernst Krenek’s symphonies, recorded by the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, has finally appeared. For those who had acquired the earlier three discs, under conductor Takao Ukigaya, the fourth came out last year, almost two decades later, under new conductor Alun Francis. Listeners who are new to these recordings can buy the box set from CPO, which brings all four CDs together.

Born in Vienna in 1900, Krenek is best known for his jazz-infused opera Jonny spielt auf, if anything, while the CPO set remains the only available recording of most of his symphonies. There have been some earlier recordings of the first and second, both composed in 1921 and 1922, shortly after Krenek had completed his studies under Franz Schreker and just before a short-lived marriage to Gustav Mahler’s daughter Anna (he was the second of her five husbands, and she the first of his three wives). Krenek, a prolific polystylist, produced an extensive body of music that was a compendium of 20th-century composition, embracing at various times neo-romanticism, atonality, neoclassicism, jazz, serialism, imitation of medieval counterpoint (the complex contrapuntal music of Johannes Ockeghem was a particular fascination for him — Stravinsky and Webern, among others, had similar interests in early music), electronics, and aleatory techniques. Not much of it made its way into the five symphonies recorded here, which hover somewhere between late Romantic harmony and vociferous atonality.

In Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music, scholar John L. Stewart published excerpts from many interviews he conducted with Krenek during the composer’s years in the United States. Krenek produced the first three symphonies in a burst of youthful activity, about which he said: “I am unable to figure out how it was possible even mechanically to write down so many notes in so short a time, not to mention the creative effort that had to go with it or before it.” They are bombastic pieces, seemingly full of the excess of youth and admiration for the rhythmic savagery of Bartók, especially the first, with all of its spiky, hammered qualities played to the hilt by conductor Takao Ukigaya. Krenek wrote of the experience of learning on his feet about orchestration in the 1920s, how to write for the different instruments and combine them, showing progress in the second symphony — at nearly an hour in length, by far the most substantial work Krenek ever completed for orchestra — but both of these pieces often sound like a young man taking a fast car for a joyride. In the same year, 1922, Krenek took a detour through a smaller-scale symphony (for nine solo instruments, op. 11, not included in the set), too, and the lessons learned seem to have played out in the third symphony, which Stewart rightly called “more ingratiating than challenging.”

The change in direction occupied more of Krenek’s time in the next several years, as he avoided full-scale symphonies for smaller works: two concerti grossi (no. 2, from 1924, is included in this set), a symphony for winds and percussion (op. 34, 1924-25), a Kleine Symphonie (op. 58, 1928), and a fluffy, neoclassical Potpourri for Orchestra in 1927, with only the last one making an appearance in this actually incomplete set. Krenek’s world was turned upside down in the 1930s, when the Nazis pilloried his atonal music as “degenerate art” (especially the black hero of Jonny spielt auf), pressuring the Vienna State Opera to take back its commission of his opera Karl V. In 1938, Krenek emigrated to the United States, teaching at a number of American universities and becoming a naturalized citizen in 1945. It is by this chance of history that Krenek wrote his memoirs in English, although they were never published, except in a hard-to-find German translation. The composer’s typescript remains, largely forgotten and unread, in the collection of the Library in Congress in Washington, D.C.

Up to this point in the set, none of the works really stands out as all that compelling — worth discovering, yes, but not the sort of piece one hears and wonders where it has been all one’s life. Upon arriving in the United States, Krenek went through the heartbreak of discovering that he was a virtual unknown in his new country, and times were often lean. Fortunately, Krenek found a champion in the Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, then at the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (known today as the Minnesota Orchestra, which has tragically announced plans to cut player salaries by up to 50%), who encouraged Krenek to take up the symphonic genre again in the 1940s, urging him to go in a different direction. In response, Krenek renounced serialism in his fourth and fifth symphonies, premiered in 1947 and 1949 by Mitropoulos. (A final symphony in 1954, nicknamed “Pallas Athene” because it is a symphonic distillation of his later opera Pallas Athene weint, is not included in the CPO set; neither is the Symphonic Elegy for Strings, a serial work dedicated to Anton Webern in 1946.)

All of Krenek’s symphonies are spined with dissonance, but in many ways his forays into atonality, inspired certainly by the trends in European music in the 1920s and 30s, also are refracted through the lens of the composer’s study of Renaissance and Baroque music. The fifth symphony’s final movement, for example, is a compact fugue that sort of limps to a quiet end, punctuated by thwacks of percussion. In Horizons Circled: Reflections on My Music, Krenek wrote that his “main interest was devoted to the form of the symphony, and in this I can see a certain symptom of being conscious of historical continuity.” While seeking, as he remembered writing in his diary, “to become the successor of Mahler in the field of the symphony,” he brought together both atonal and traditional elements, incorporating in a rigorous way his study of counterpoint and historical forms. “Such encapsulated remnants of another age evoke frequently a feeling of nostalgia and melancholy,” he concluded. “The procedure as such is related to the principles of surrealism, of which at that time I had not the slightest idea.” Sadly for Krenek, in spite of Mitropoulos’s help, he did not become part of the symphonic mainstream, something that this set of recordings could help to remedy.

SEE ALSO:
Will Robin, Sounds Heard: Ernst Krenek—Complete Symphonies (NewMusicBox, September 4)

John L. Stewart, Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music (1991)

Ernst Krenek, Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music, with contributions by Will Ogdon and John L. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)

Der Frosch

This article was first published at The Classical Review on September 7, 2012.

R. Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten, S. Gould, A. Schwanewilms, M. Schuster, W. Koch, E. Herlitzius, Vienna Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival, C. Thielemann (released on May 29, 2012) Opus Arte OA 1072 D | 220'

The story of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, of course, does not make any sense. As some of the characters themselves admit near the end of the second act, with an air of befuddled mystery akin to that experienced in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, “Something is happening, but we do not know what it is.”

An Empress, captured like an animal by an Emperor on the hunt, has no shadow, a metaphor for childlessness — or is it? If Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto, as it is often described, is the 20th-century counterpart of Mozart’s Magic Flute, something has gone wrong with the fairy tale’s “happily ever after.” The spirit-world Emperor and Empress (an extension of Tamino and Pamina?) cannot have children, and the altogether human Dyer and his caustic wife (Papageno and Papagena) do not have a whole brood of little children either, mostly through the wife’s stubbornness. The Empress’s nurse, a spirit herself, tempts the Dyer’s wife to give up her shadow (fecundity) to the empress. The voices of unborn children moan woefully within the crackling of a frying pan in the fire, but in the end the Empress cannot bring herself to steal the humanity of the Dyer’s wife, and all are saved. It’s not really a spoiler — you will still be surprised when you hear the music.

In this inventive but strange staging from last year’s Salzburg Festival, director Christof Loy gets around the problem of von Hofmannsthal’s oddest libretto — and that is saying something — by ignoring it more or less completely. No need here to worry about how to stage a broom turning into the youth who tempts the Dyer’s wife, a sword magically appearing in the Dyer’s hand, the earth opening up and swallowing up the Dyer and his wife, a river overflowing its banks, or a boat carrying the Empress into Keikobad’s temple on the moon mountains.

In its place Loy creates a mise en abyme, a set of stories taking place during the first complete recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten, led by Karl Böhm in the 1950s, in the Sofiensaal in Vienna. Loy says the idea came to him when he read about the recording, for which Böhm convinced his singers to tolerate spartan recording conditions in an unheated hall in mid-winter. On a platform, with chorus risers behind it, the singers stand in 1950s attire, while supernumeraries create the sense of interaction between the singers and the engineering staff, in a booth above the stage. An assistant moves the principals around, searching for the right placement at the right music stand.

Whether this production irritates or intrigues will depend on the viewer’s tolerance for dissonance between the story being told by the words and the different one actually unfolding on stage. The latter sometimes recasts the former in an edifying light, as the story of the singers in the recording session is revealed: the escapades of the Dyer’s wife as the excesses of a star singer, the lonesome neurosis of the Emperor as the insecurities of a tenor burdened with a voice-crushing role, the isolated sadness of the Empress as a young singer’s estrangement amid a crowd of veterans.

In a bonus video about the production, Loy explains some of his ideas — “The shadow is a metaphor for the responsibility that you take on in life as a rational being. To me that is the only possible meaning,” he says, for example — but it is not always clear how they made it into the staging. (The boos lobbed at the production team at the end of the curtain calls indicate that some in the audience were left unconvinced.)

Loy’s direction helped Anne Schwanewilms capture the fragility of the Empress, central to his approach (“I always see her as a precious, privileged daughter who is driven around by a chauffeur all the time”) — the Empress’s longing for children, heightened by her awareness that her father, Keikobad, will turn her husband into stone if she does not bear any, is evoked when the supernumeraries are all replaced by child versions of themselves, and again when the chorus of unborn children appears in sailor costumes in the final scene, made into a Vienna Boys Choir Christmas concert. Michaela Schuster creates a fleering, almost vicious Nurse (according to Loy, “a Mephistophelean character: I think of her as a fallen archangel”). The group of cabaret revue girls with large feathers, added to the argument between the Dyer and his wife, was perhaps a bit much.

None of it matters, anyway, when the Vienna Philharmonic renders this most luscious of Straussian marvels with extraordinary sounds coaxed forth lovingly by the hands of Christian Thielemann. Strauss puts the elephantine orchestration of over 160 instruments — the Vienna Philharmonic is packed cheek to jowl into the Salzburg pit — to startling use, like the knot of avian woodwinds and solo strings that accompanies the entrance of the Empress in Act I. Otherworldly sounds go with her reference to the loss of her talisman shortly after, with muted low brass and low strings, celesta, and harp harmonics (the combination sounding almost like a gong). Plaintive solo cello and evanescent strings accompany the Emperor’s melancholy scene listening to his red falcon in Act II, while the clamor of the catastrophe at the end of Act II sounds like it will unmake the world. The whole score is full of moments like this, when one tries to guess what bizarre combination of instruments Strauss has called for and finds out it is something completely unexpected, like a wind-machine. The most pleasing part of the bonus video is the chance to watch Thielemann in rehearsal, a conductor who knows so clearly what he wants: he can get it from just smiling boyishly in the direction of the clarinetist.

This is only the third staging of the opera to make it to DVD, alongside the 1992 Salzburg production with Cheryl Studer, Thomas Moser, Bryn Terfel, and Eva Marton, conducted by Sir Georg Solti (Decca), and a version with Wolfgang Sawallisch at the helm (Arthaus Musik), filmed in Japan (with some regrettable cuts in the score, it features a different cast from his uncut studio recording, which remains at the top of my list). The unusual staging may dissuade some viewers, even die-hard Strauss fans, not to mention the fact that the vocal casting, while certainly good and capable, is a little strained by the score’s demands. Stephen Gould’s Emperor and Anne Schwanewilms’ Empress have a clarion sound, until they reach the highest notes, which shred just a bit. As the Dyer’s wife, Evelyn Herlitzius throws herself at the role with a wailed abandon, lacking some of the gorgeous soaring quality that Strauss, somewhat cruelly, also requires.

Schwanewilms, by contrast, has this in spades, even in the final scenes as she sings to Keikobad, against radiant strings and tender violin solo, followed by the magical deployment of both celestas and both harps with percussion. Michaela Schuster is a malevolent presence as the nurse, both vocally (blazing at the top) and dramatically, and Wolfgang Koch’s Dyer is, quite appropriately, a rather sad sack. The contributions of the supporting cast and the choruses, both the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Salzburger Festspiele Kinderchor, are excellent.

SEE ALSO:
Jens F. Laurson, Phantasmorgastic, but with Shadows: FrOSch @ Salzburg — Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival (16) (Ionarts, August 30, 2011)