Folger Consort's Spanish Renaissance Christmas

Adio España: Romances, Villancicos, and Improvisations from Spain, Circa 1500, Baltimore Consort

Charles T. Downey, Christmas in Renaissance Spain: The Folger Consort Presents “O Magnum Mysterium” (The Washingtonian, December 13):

Out of the burgeoning field of holiday concerts in Washington, the one offered by the Folger Consort seemed likely to be the best -- and not merely the least annoying. Having heard the group’s program of music from the Spanish Renaissance on Saturday night in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s garland-and-light-adorned Elizabethan theater, it’s official. If you’re tired of the same few carols assaulting your ears everywhere—on the radio, in store lobbies, from speakers while you put gas in your car—take an evening to go back four or five hundred years in time and listen to some old and less familiar music for Christmas. Most of it, except for a few pieces that are more widely known -- including the inevitable villancico Ríu Ríu Chíu, performed here in the best possible way -- you won’t have heard before.

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This concert was reviewed only at Washingtonian.com.

Eschenbach Glow Continues at the NSO

Charles T. Downey, Christoph Eschenbach conducts the NSO and Midori
The Washingtonian, December 2:

After being away from Washington most of the fall with other commitments, National Symphony Orchestra music director Christoph Eschenbach has been back at the podium the past two weeks. After kicking off this season’s celebration of the music of Beethoven last week -- an event far outdone by the revelatory all-Beethoven concert given by John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique the same weekend -- Eschenbach led the sort of program last night that has distinguished his tenure at the Kennedy Center. It combined youthful works by two titans of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich, a comparison that cast into relief the failure of a rather flimsy new work by American composer Osvaldo Golijov.

The NSO has not played Shostakovich’s first symphony since 1993, when Mstislav Rostropovich programmed it. It’s astounding that a student composer—Shostakovich began the symphony when he was 18 years old—could have penned such a fully formed work, with such freshness and variety of melody, harmony, and orchestral texture. Listening to it, one is struck by how precocious Shostakovich’s compositional voice was, and also how different music history might have been had the cultural open-mindedness that was enjoyed in Russia at this point, in the first several years after the 1917 revolution, endured. Of course, without the opposition of Stalin’s controlling cultural apparatus, Shostakovich might not have written the bitter, biting, grotesque music we love him for, but this first symphony seems to indicate that he would have done great things in any case.

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Fa La La La La, Fa La La La

Charles T. Downey, December Classical Music Preview
The Washingtonian, December 1:

’Tis the season to be jolly, and a seemingly endless round of holiday concerts is on tap to get you into the spirit. Whether you want to hear traditional carols, old favorites, or something more off the beaten path, you can find it. If you want to hear music that has nothing to do with Christmas, skip to the end for a few picks of the non–Ho Ho Ho variety.

Most Promising Christmas Concerts:
Historical music for Christmas is the best way to mark the season, at least for those whose teeth start grinding at the sound of “Jingle Bells.” The Washington Bach Consort offers a program of Christmas music from Leipzig (by Bach, Kuhnau, and Telemann) this Sunday, December 4, at National Presbyterian Church. Tickets are $38. Bach Consort musicians will also perform Bach’s cantata Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes (BWV 40, for St. Stephen’s Day, or December 26) as part of the free noontime cantata series (December 6), at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (1313 New York Ave., NW).

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SEE ALSO:
Where to Catch “Messiah” in the Washington Area This December (The Washingtonian, November 29)

It's Time for the M-Word Again

Charles T. Downey, Where to Catch “Messiah” in the Washington Area This December
The Washingtonian, November 29:

While Handel’s Messiah has become a Christmas tradition over the years, quite why it has is puzzling, since the oratorio, an assemblage of texts from the Bible, is focused primarily on the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, making it generally more appropriate for Easter. However, a holiday tradition it is, so here are your options if you wish to hear Messiah this December. You never know—you could witness something along the lines of the most epic mistake ever heard in the Hallelujah chorus for your trouble.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, December 2 and 3, Meyerhoff Hall, Baltimore
Edward Polochick conducts, with the Concert Artists of Baltimore Symphonic Chorale, and Karen Clift, Krisztina Szabó, Nicholas Phan, and Stephen Powell as soloists. It’s a fairly long trip from Washington, but the acoustics at the Meyerhoff are some of the best in the region. $20 to $65. [Continue reading]

Background on Messiah -- The King's College M-Word (Ionarts, December 26, 2009)

John Eliot Gardiner's Extraordinary Beethoven

Beethoven, Symphonies, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, J. E. Gardiner

Charles T. Downey, John Eliot Gardiner Rethinks Beethoven
The Washingtonian, November 21:

One of the highlights of the season of concerts sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society is the visits by some of the world’s best international orchestras. As expected, this season’s lineup of visiting orchestras has been particularly excellent. After a polished appearance by the Budapest Festival Orchestra last month, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique made its WPAS debut on Saturday afternoon. Founder-director John Eliot Gardiner led three pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, which one could be excused for thinking were very familiar but which, in these sterling performances, proved to be anything but.

Gardiner’s career as a conductor traces the trajectory of the early music movement, led by ensembles devoted to performing music on period-appropriate instruments and benefiting from knowledge about performance practice gleaned from musicological research. First, Gardiner helped lead a revival of Monteverdi and other composers from the 17th century with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. To widen his work into classical and romantic music, Gardiner formed the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in 1990. He proceeded along similar lines with this later music, using instruments from the appropriate era and applying the fruits of historical research. His recordings of the Beethoven symphonies, re-released as a complete set last year, may not be to everyone’s taste, but there is little doubt that listening to them will make you think about Beethoven’s music in new ways. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, November 21)

Steve Smith, Period Instruments Breathe New Life Into a Musical Hero (New York Times, November 17)

Fred Kirshnit, Orchestre Révolutionnaire at Romantique (MusicalCriticism.com, November 19)

Brian Wise, John Eliot Gardiner's Historical Beethoven At Carnegie Hall (NPR, November 15) -- includes online audio

Interview with Gabriela Lena Frank

Charles T. Downey, Gabriela Lena Frank Comes to Annapolis (The Washingtonian, November 15):

Gabriela Lena Frank, Hilos (inter alia), ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, Gabriela Lena Frank (piano) (2011)

The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and its future looks bright. It has released a debut CD on a new self-published label, and received a generous donation from Elizabeth Richebourg Rea (in honor of her father, Philip Richebourg), which has underwritten the anniversary festivities and then some. ASO music director José-Luis Novo has bravely made room in his programming for contemporary music, and this weekend’s concerts (November 18 and 19 in Annapolis’s Maryland Hall) will feature the local premiere of a recent piece by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank, who will be composer-in-residence in Annapolis for the next two seasons.

La Llorona, written in 2007 for the Houston Symphony and their principal violist, Wayne Brooks, is an evocative tone poem for viola and orchestra. Lasting about 20 minutes, it tells the story of a llorona, or “crying woman” spirit, a legend known in many Latin American countries that depicts the weeping ghost of a murdered woman, often by a river’s edge. The composer has summarized the story as a “portrait of the internal shift that happens as the llorona accepts her new existence.” In seven sections, played as one continuous movement, the music follows the spirit as she awakens from slumber, tries to escape, witnesses the dance of chullpas (Peruvian skeletal spirits), hears the comforting song of the moon, and ultimately accepts her fate and sinks into the shadows. [Continue reading]

A Dark and Twisted 'Lucia'

Lyubov Petrova (Lucia) and cast, Lucia di Lammermoor, Washington National Opera, 2011 (photo by Scott Suchman)

Charles T. Downey, Opera Review: “Lucia” at the Kennedy Center (The Washingtonian, November 14):

The Washington National Opera has opened a new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, the company’s first since 2002. Perhaps better known for champagne-sparkly comic operas, Donizetti excelled at writing gorgeous melodies and at finding astute musical characterizations for all kinds of situations, both comic and tragic. Lucia, with a libretto adapted by Salvatore Cammarano from the arch-romantic Walter Scott novel The Bride of Lammermoor, follows the story of a Scottish nobleman, Ashton (Enrico), who prevents his sister, Lucia, from loving his enemy, Ravenswood (Edgardo), in favor of a politically advantageous alliance with another man, Arturo. The already mentally fragile girl, confronted by Edgardo after signing the marriage contract, loses her senses, stabbing Arturo in their marriage bed. The subsequent mad scene, featuring the prima donna’s astounding feats of vocal derring-do, is one of the most celebrated in opera. As one murder apparently doesn’t shed enough blood for a tragic opera, Edgardo then kills himself on the tombs of his ancestors after learning that Lucia has died.

WNO is fielding two casts for this comparatively short performance run, and the good news is that both of them, heard at the Kennedy Center Opera House last Thursday (A cast) and Saturday night (B cast), are worth hearing. Both Lucias are impressive, but for different reasons. The A cast’s Sarah Coburn gave the more consistently beautiful performance, with especially clear fioriture (the intricate runs of fast notes in bel canto opera) and limpid, well-placed high notes. Her emphasis on flawless vocal execution reached its apogee in the cadenza at the end of the mad scene’s slow section, a place for the soprano to show off her technique. The B-cast Lucia, Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova, also sang the role here in 2002. While technically skilled and providing plenty of vocal thrill, she fell just shy of Coburn’s musical standard; the runs were a little less clear, and some of the high notes turned acidic and even faded out in the famous Act II sextet, where Lucia has to soar over the entire choral ensemble. Petrova sang a much simpler cadenza in the mad scene, but where Coburn was a little cold and sterile, even in the mad scene, Petrova was so dramatically compelling that when there was a pause in the music -- a point at which the audience naturally applauds, as they did during Coburn’s performance, for example -- the house remained in stunned silence. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Philip Kennicott, Washington National Opera’s rough ‘Lucia’ needs polishing (Washington Post, November 12)

Terry Ponick, Washington National Opera's 'Lucia': superb singing, shadowy staging (Washington Times, November 13)

November in Classical Music

Charles T. Downey, This Month in Classical Music (The Washingtonian, October 31):

Washington has a rich concert life for classical music aficionados, but how should fans prioritize? What should someone who wants to give classical music a try choose from so many options? These are our picks for the best in classical music in Washington this month.

VOCAL MUSIC: The Washington Bach Consort will perform a concert of Baroque music featuring solo voices at the National Presbyterian Church (November 6 at 3PM) with soprano Agnes Zsigovics and countertenor Daniel Taylor. Pergolesi’s gorgeous Stabat mater is the main course, with appetizers of J. S. Bach and Christoph Graupner. November 12 at Strathmore, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will introduce a concert by the National Philharmonic devoted to “women pioneers” and featuring a rarely heard performance of the Grand Mass in E-flat major by American composer Amy Beach.

OPERA: The Washington National Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is one of the most promising of the season. There are two potentially very good sopranos alternating in the title role (Sarah Coburn and Lyubov Petrova), the rest of the cast is pretty good, and the company’s excellent new music director will conduct. The story is as sensationally weird as it gets in opera—there’s a murder and a legendary mad scene—and the staging, by David Alden, promises to be bloody and psychologically disturbing. Runs November 10 through 19 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

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How Liszt Begat Bartók

Charles T. Downey, The Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Library of Congress
(The Washingtonian, October 27):

In celebration of the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt, Hungary’s most celebrated composer, the Library of Congress is hosting a festival of concerts devoted to music by him and those he influenced. On Tuesday night, the series continued with a program featuring the works of Béla Bartók, another celebrated son of Hungary. The musicians performing Bartók’s chamber music this evening had special significance, too, as they are all members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, whose North American tour was presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall last night.

Violinists János Pilz and Mária Gál-Tamási opened the program with a dozen or so of the duos, BB 104, pieces that were intended on one level for young violinists but that are also endlessly diverting miniatures, especially when played so well by musicians who have been educated in the folk-music-steeped system that Bartók helped put in place. Pilz and Gál-Tamási gave vigor and a bright tone to these pieces, some fresh, others melancholy, and most of them just the sort of sheer fun that is irresistible to young performers. In each piece, Bartók creates a tiny world with boundless melodic fecundity and rhythmic complexity. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Robert Battey, Bartok at Library of Congress festival a welcome, if incongruous, inclusion (Washington Post, October 27)

Louis Lortie Goes on Pilgrimage

Charles T. Downey, Review: Franz Liszt Bicentenary Project (The Washingtonian, October 21):

Liszt, Années de pèlerinage, Louis Lortie (released on March 29, 2011) CHAN 10662(2) | 161'20"

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birthday, which officially falls on Saturday, the Library of Congress is hosting a Franz Liszt Bicentenary Project. Canadian pianist Louis Lortie opened the festival on Wednesday night with a performance of the second and third volumes of Liszt’s autobiographical cycle Années de pèlerinage. The three “years” of the cycle recount various stages of Liszt’s travels through Europe; the lessons of his “apprenticeship” (a loving reference to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister); and, in particular, the artwork and cultural sites he saw, the literature he read, and the music he heard. That Liszt described himself as being on a “pilgrimage” is not just because he moved about so much, but also that he was, like Dante (who is given a major tribute in the second volume), on what ultimately became a spiritual journey back to God.

Born in Montreal, Lortie is a much-lauded virtuoso, although his performances have alternately thrilled me and left me disappointed. While his concert was one of my picks for the best in the Library of Congress’s current season, my enthusiasm was not as keen as it could have been, because of some mixed feelings about his playing. But this recital reestablished Lortie in my estimation as one of the most gifted colorists at the piano and placed him at the top of my list of the best interpreters of Liszt’s keyboard music. He took Liszt’s often over-the-top romanticism at face value, giving the music its full drama without letting it descend into vulgarity. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Robert Battey, Louis Lortie deftly plays Liszt on Library of Congress's new piano (Washington Post, October 21)

Colin Eatock, A feast of Liszt served up by Louis Lortie (Toronto Globe and Mail, October 17)

Gypsies Invade Dumbarton Oaks

Vivaldi: The Baroque Gypsies, Ensemble Caprice, M. Maute (2007) Telemann: The Baroque Gypsies, Ensemble Caprice, M. Maute (2009)

Dumbarton Oaks’ Friends of Music Series
(The Washingtonian, October 19)
[EXCLUSIVE]

In their home in Georgetown, Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss had a room dedicated to music performances. Now that their house -- better known as Dumbarton Oaks -- is a museum, it hosts a series of concerts in that room to continue the tradition. It’s one of the most intimate and beautifully appointed venues for chamber music in the city, a place where one can listen to historical music while surrounded by Renaissance tapestries, paintings by Jacques Daret and El Greco, a medieval altarpiece panel by Bernardo Daddi, and a wood Madonna by Tilman Riemenschneider.

The Friends of Music series opened its concert season this past weekend with a performance by the Montreal-based Ensemble Caprice, heard on Monday night. The program was selected to prove a minor point sometimes made by historians about the palette of musical sounds that influenced the compositional style of Antonio Vivaldi. Although based for much of his life in Venice, Vivaldi traveled widely in Europe, including trips to Prague and Vienna to oversee performances of his operas. In addition, his base of operations in Venice, the Ospedale della Pietà, was on the Riva degli Schiavi, the canal where visitors coming from Eastern Europe arrived in Venice. Both of these facts suggest that he was exposed to the playing of itinerant Romani (Gypsy) musicians; that as a talented violinist he may even have played with them; and that he imitated some of their folk idioms in his own compositions. Ensemble Caprice, a small group of musicians playing on historical instruments, tried to demonstrate that connection with selections from Vivaldi’s instrumental works, mostly concertos, alternated with arrangements of folk tunes from the extraordinary 18th-century collection of Romani music Uhrovská zbierka, a book found in a town in modern-day Slovakia.

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Virginia Opera Ascendant

See my review of the Virginia Opera's production of Aida:

Concert Review: Virginia Opera Performs “Aida” (The Washingtonian, October 17):

Verdi, Aida, P. Domingo, A. Millo, D. Zajick, S. Milnes, Metropolitan Opera, J. Levine [DVD]

Aida has some of the most recognizable strains of music composed by Giuseppe Verdi, and yet it remains one of the least staged of his most popular operas (not heard from the Washington National Opera, for example, in almost a decade). Aida is a grand opera, packed with big choral scenes, ballet, and other spectacle -- an Egyptian story made for the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo, with costumes and scenic ideas contributed by an Egyptologist. It is the sort of work that small, regional companies -- like the Virginia Opera, which brought its new production of the work to the GMU Center for the Arts on Friday night -- generally do well to avoid. The Virginia Opera, in fact, has just survived a schism in leadership, with board members, staff, and donors swarming from the hive to follow ousted music director Peter Mark -- but nonetheless, it chose Aida to open its new season. It was a gutsy choice, and one that paid off; the slightly camp yet savvy production is a success, minimalist in set design but meaningfully directed in all its scenic details, and with a solid cast. Combined with a season of three other equally palatable operas, it is a good indication that the Virginia Opera is headed for a bright future.

On the heels of a fine performance as Tosca with the Virginia Opera in 2009, and as Adriana Lecouvreur with the Washington Concert Opera last year, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams took on the title role. She sounded overall to be in good form, with a few scratches and strains that possibly indicated minor vocal fatigue. Williams’s voice rang out over the big choral numbers, but it was the softer moments where she shone brightest, kneeling to sing the Act I “Numi, pietà,” for example, in a serene pianissimo. In “Patria mia,” set against a plaintive oboe solo, and in the final scene with Radamès, she was equal parts musically expressive and dramatically affecting. Mezzo-soprano Jeniece Golbourne was every bit a match for Williams as Amneris, the Egyptian princess who holds Aida, the Ethiopian princess, as her slave. Golbourne has a photon-strength voice, with a viscous thickness in the chest and occasionally a little shrillness at its apex, giving her Act I duet with Williams the sound of a jealous, competitive edge. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Virginia Opera produces a wonderful ‘Aida’ (Washington Post, October 17)

Ati Metwaly, Egyptian bass-baritone in Virginia Opera's production of Aida (Ahram Online, October 2)

Teresa Annas, Dressing up 'Aida' at the Harrison Opera House (Virginian-Pilot, September 30)

David Nicholson, Virginia Opera season opens with 'Aida' (Daily Press, September 28)

Mariinsky Orchestra and Daniil Trifonov

See my review of the concert by the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra:

Valery Gergiev Leads Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in Reinvigorating Tchaikovsky (The Washingtonian, October 10):

Winners of the 4th Scriabin International Piano Competition (Daniil Trifonov, inter alii)

The indefatigable conductor Valery Gergiev is leading his Mariinsky Theater Orchestra on a U.S. tour this month, centered on a series of performances celebrating the 120th anniversary of the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York. Because Andrew Carnegie invited composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky to conduct at the hall’s opening festival in 1891 Gergiev is conducting all of the composer’s symphonies this week.

On Saturday night, the orchestra from St. Petersburg made a stop in Fairfax, at a strangely undersold George Mason University Center for the Arts, in a very short interval between concerts in New York. This is enough Tchaikovsky to stun a small cat, but the way that Gergiev conducts it, especially with the astounding young Russian virtuoso Daniil Trifonov (and child prodigy, of course) at the keyboard for the composer’s first piano concerto, makes even a cynical critic sit up and pay attention.

Trifonov showed the exceptional virtuosity that presumably made it possible for him to win awards at most of the big piano competitions in the last couple years. He won a bronze medal at the Chopin competition in 2010 and the gold medal at this summer’s grand-daddy of all competitions, the Tchaikovsky Competition. It was Gergiev who chaired the Tchaikovsky jury this year, promising to rid that competition of favoritism, but it ended up being a year when the judges chose a Russian pianist, a selection that in previous years might have raised eyebrows. From the beginning of his performance of Tchaikovsky’s first concerto -- which he also played at the Tchaikovsky competition -- Trifonov made clear that he had defined ideas about the piece, slicing into the slightly sluggish orchestra with the famous hammered chords that open the solo part. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Pianist Daniil Trifonov’s playing is freakishly brilliant (Washington Post, October 10)

Brian Wise, Live Tuesday Night: The Mariinsky Orchestra Plays Tchaikovsky (NPR, October 7) -- the October 11 Carnegie Hall performance (8 pm) will be broadcast live on NPR's Web site

Anthony Tommasini, From Russia, Authentic Tchaikovsky, With Love (New York Times, October 7)

Ronni Reich, Hearing the Mariinsky magic live is a must (Newark Star-Ledger, October 6)

James D. Watts, Jr., Signature Symphony excels in evening of Tchaikovsky gems (Tulsa World, October 3)

Andrew Clark, Tchaikovsky Competition Winners, Barbican, London (Financial Times, September 26)

NSO Plays More Nielsen

John Storgårds, the Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, made his debut at the podium of the National Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night, with an absorbing program of descriptive music set in northern climes. Suggestions by some to swap parts of the program with pieces planned for later in the month, to make more homogeneous nationalistic programs, would have destroyed the opportunity to compare Scandinavian and Russian composers, and particularly their orchestration, in varying degrees of crudeness and refinement. Storgårds brought incisive ideas and a driven, impelling beat to a program that, with the exception of yet another performance of Sibelius's violin concerto, combined pieces not heard from the NSO in a decade or so. Hopefully, with some more time to adjust to some brisk tempo choices by Storgårds, the NSO will sound more polished and united in the remaining performances this weekend.

Storgårds opened each half with a coloristic tone poem, beginning with Musorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, not the more refined arrangement by Rimsky-Korsakov, familiar from countless Halloween concerts, but the composer's original orchestration -- last played by the NSO under Osmo Vänskä in 2002. Musorgsky had nothing like Rimsky's skills as an orchestrator, but this version is more barbaric, folksy, and rustic (Rimsky and others made the work so cinematic), and Storgårds lashed the piece forward, in spite of struggles in the violins with the masses of notes (and for not always great effect, because of the weakness of the orchestration). Anatoly Lyadov's The Enchanted Lake, op. 62, had not been heard from the NSO since the 1990s: Storgårds led the NSO in a diaphanous performance, giving a sort of Debussy-esque transparency to the work's lush Wagnerian harmonies. David Hardy's cello solos warmed the opening sections, but the work was allowed to seethe gently, when it did stir, providing lots of watercolor washes of pale color.

Gidon Kremer, last heard in this area with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2005 (and not with the NSO since 1982), gave an odd but still satisfying rendition of Sibelius's ever-present violin concerto. Known for his idiosyncratic interpretative style and outspoken views, Kremer is unlikely to give a performance that does not defy expectations. In spite of some minor technical shortcomings -- Kremer rather consciously used sheet music as he played, and barely scraped his way past some of the more demanding passages, especially the virtuosic codas of the outer movements -- there was much to admire in his Sibelius. Kremer gave a gypsy flavor to some of the themes, adding little slides and unusual tone color, and the sound of his low playing on the G string of his gorgeous and full-throated Amati violin, made in 1641, was vibrant and elemental, at times more like a viola (in a good way, of course). For the most part, Storgårds was sensitive to keeping the orchestral level out of the way of his soloist, allowing them to surge volcanically at one point in the second movement.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Storgårds at NSO: A mixed performance (Washington Post, October 7) Robert R. Reilly, NSO Succeeds North by Northeast (Ionarts, October 11)

One of the highlights of the last season from the NSO was a performance of Carl Nielsen's fourth symphony, led by Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard. How fortunate then to hear, so soon after, an equally rare and equally inspiring performance of the Danish composer's fifth symphony -- Leonard Slatkin was the last to conduct it, in 1998. Where the "Inextinguishable" features a pair of dueling timpani players, the un-subtitled fifth symphony is driven by the martial beat of snare drums, one of which is heard from off stage. It is an austere work, its pulse animated by minimalistic ostinati: for example, the violas harp on a very Philip Glass-like minor third through much of the first movement, which passes briefly into the woodwinds, part of a cranking up of tension. The blast of the snare drum, which crashes into the movement more than once and with little subtlety, heralds a shift into a sardonic march, with the grotesque flavor of Shostakovich. The uneasiness abates only momentarily, amid avian swirling in the woodwinds, as the horns and trombones call to one another, echoing off cliff sides. Another anxious theme, all repeated notes like the chirping of a cricket, unsettles the conclusion of the first movement. Although the work is unfamiliar, the NSO players played with cohesion and precision, giving an almost Mahlerian surge of shining Romantic strings to the fugal passages of the transcendent second movement. After these performances of the fourth and fifth symphonies, one can only hope that the NSO follows through with a complete Nielsen symphony cycle in the coming seasons.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday night (October 8, 8 PM) and Sunday afternoon (October 9, 3 PM), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

UPDATE:
Charles T. Downey, Concert Review: John Storgårds’s National Symphony Orchestra Debut (The Washingtonian, October 10)

Philip Glass at the Phillips

See my review of the first concert of the season at the Phillips Collection:

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

P. Glass, Metamorphosis / Mad Rush, P. Glass

Let’s just say this up front: Philip Glass is not a virtuoso pianist. Technical ability was not the reason he drew a full audience to the Music Room at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon, to kick off a new season of concerts. Glass was there to play his own compositions, in the simplified, repetitive style—call it minimalism, although Glass does not like the term—that has made him famous. This style can be found in his film scores (Koyaanisqatsi and Notes on a Scandal, among others) and his ground-breaking operas (Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, for example). Glass also spoke about the pieces he played during the course of the recital and in a post-concert talkback session with the audience. The Q&A was led by Caroline Mousset, the director of the museum’s music program. Somewhere between what he said and what he played, in spite of the uneven technique and sometimes halting rhythm, the performance became quite compelling. Glass will turn 75 this January, and one had the sense of being in the presence of someone who had made an immense mark on the course of music history.

All of Glass’s music is essentially the same: He begins with the pulse of a repeated pattern, then layers on other patterns that add rhythmic complexity, creating a harmonic pattern that is the basis for variation, not unlike the chacona and passacaglia ostinati used in earlier music. It has struck me many times before that Glass did his best work in the 1970s and ’80s, the heyday of his creative energy, and that was also the case here. The best piece on the program, Mad Rush, dates from 1979. The piece was first performed on organ the organ for the Dalai Lama’s visit to New York in 1981. As adapted for piano, it features a simple Alberti bass sort of pattern in the left hand, contrasted with sextuplets in the right, with the thumb of the right hand jabbing out a jazzy, syncopated rhythm. The tumult of faster notes in the B section, which returns a couple times, gives the piece its name. The opposition of energy and stasis in the two musical ideas was compelling. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Philip J. Kennicott, Philip Glass opens Phillips Collection concert series (Washington Post, October 4)

Stephen Brookes, Hands of stone: Composer Glass jars in playing his work (Washington Times, October 4)

Till Fellner at the Kennedy Center

See my review of the first concert of the season from WPAS:

Washington Performing Arts Society Hosts Till Fellner at the Kennedy Center (The Washingtonian, October 3):

Bach, Inventions / French Suite No. 5, T. Fellner

Austrian pianist Till Fellner is a familiar quantity by now to Washington audiences, after his performance of an excellent near-complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle here. Enough, in any case, to have earned a spot on the Hayes Piano Series on Saturday afternoon, in which Washington Performing Arts Society hosts up-and-coming pianists for a recital in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. It was exactly the sort of concert one has come to expect from this intelligent musician: reflective, understated, and meticulously shaped—with just the right hint of extremely dry wit.

Fellner appeared briefly in the recent documentary Pianomania, which follows a high-level piano tuner in Vienna, as a finicky customer searching for a new Steinway piano with just the right sound. That fastidious attention to the details of sound comes across in the way that Fellner touches the piano, beginning with the pertness of the short-note theme that opened the C major Haydn sonata (XVI:50). The tempo of the first movement was fast and the articulation crisp, based on a consistent pulse that was still not merely like a metronome, including impeccably clean details in the little turns and passages in thirds. The second movement had a guileless lyrical simplicity, making for blissful listening. Fellner never crossed the line into oozy emotion, with even the extravagant right-hand flourishes all part of an overall calm performance. The wry third movement brought back memories of the last time I heard this sonata performed by Fellner’s mentor, Alfred Brendel, in 2006. Like Brendel—but not exactly like him—Fellner gave this comic movement a sly, winking quality. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Robert Battey, Pianist Till Fellner at the Kennedy Center: Well-received but somewhat prosaic (Washington Post, October 3)

NSO Opens Season with a Bang

See my review of the first subscription concert from the National Symphony Orchestra:

National Symphony Orchestra Season Opener (The Washingtonian, September 30):

Orff, Carmina Burana (inter alia), L. Popp, New Philharmonia Orchestra, R. Frühbeck de Burgos [MP3]

After a gala celebration with music director Christoph Eschenbach on Sunday night, the National Symphony Orchestra went back to work this week. The first subscription concert reunited the orchestra with an old friend, frequent guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, returning to the podium of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall for the first time since 2010. The Spanish conductor has had a journeyman sort of career, distinguishing himself with guest appearances and chief conductor stints with many orchestras around the world: Musical America recognized his accomplishments this year by naming him conductor of the year. The NSO musicians always seem at ease under his baton (Frühbeck de Burgos was principal guest conductor of the NSO in the 1980s and has been a regular ever since), and he led interpretations of two orchestral staples -- Beethoven’s slender, vivacious eighth symphony and Carl Orff’s salacious, bubbly Carmina Burana -- that were polished and full of surprises.

Of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the modest eighth is low on the totem pole in terms of popularity, and this was the NSO’s first performance of the work since 2002. Frühbeck de Burgos led an assured performance that highlighted much of the work’s appeal, especially in the first movement, with well-paced rallentandi helping to elucidate the formal structure, and the timpani and brass adding brash highlights in loud passages. The second movement, Allegro scherzando, had a pleasing, relaxed tempo, but always with a solid internal pulse and elegant dynamic shaping. Only in the third movement did the impetus droop slightly, with some strident sounds from the high woodwinds; and some unsettled tempo disagreements across the orchestra addled the slightly manic fourth movement. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Philip L. Kennicott, NSO review: Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana,’ Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 (Washington Post, September 30)

NSO Opens Its New Season

See my review of the season opening gala concert from the National Symphony Orchestra:

National Symphony Orchestra’s Season-Opening Gala Performance (The Washingtonian, September 27):

Bruch / Mendelssohn / Mozart, Violin Concertos, J. Bell, ASMF, N. Marriner / English Chamber Orchestra, P. Maag

In cultural terms, the bad economic climate has spared Washington, which has lost neither its opera company nor its most important local orchestra, both now permanently associated with the Kennedy Center. The National Symphony Orchestra, in fact, ended up with a new music director, Christoph Eschenbach, who led a remarkably good debut season last year. The continued generosity of local patrons of the arts has made possible the extension of Eschenbach’s contract with the NSO, for two more years, at least through the 2014-15 season. David Rubinstein, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, has also donated a large sum of money to purchase and install a new theater organ in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The old organ, one of the most notoriously bad and unreliable instruments in the city, will be replaced some time next year. Both of these announcements were the centerpiece of Sunday night's NSO season-opening gala performance, in celebration of both the NSO’s 80th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy Center.

Musical stars were on hand to mark the event and dazzle the high-powered audience. The evening started with violinist Joshua Bell, who played the latest of umpteen performances of Max Bruch’s jewel-like first violin concerto. (This past week alone, he has performed the piece at season openers and gala performances in Colorado and Dallas, all part of the jet-setting schedule of a performer at Bell’s level.) It’s a piece of angelic sweetness, Bell’s specialty. He excelled at the tender themes of the first and second movements, drawing them out with an attention to arching line and purity of intonation and tone color. At the podium, Eschenbach kept the level of the orchestra carefully calibrated to Bell’s sound, never covering him, but also giving a much-needed energy boost to the fast concluding movement. Gasps of excitement filled the auditorium when Bell announced that he would play one of his most famous encores, the “Meditation” from Massenet’s Thaïs. The piece is a syrupy concoction that is played so often and so poorly -- not here. Bell gave a performance that was light on the sugar but filled with a tender nostalgia. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, With much to celebrate, NSO does just that (Washington Post, September 27)

Final Thoughts on 'Tosca'

See my review of the second cast in Washington National Opera's production of Tosca:

Final Thoughts on Washington National Opera’s “Tosca” (The Washingtonian, September 26):

Puccini’s Tosca, the first production of the new Washington National Opera, now under the auspices of the Kennedy Center, was something of a dud. It would be unfair to expect that the merger with the Kennedy Center would instantly solve the struggling company’s problems, however, and the next three productions, all firmly under the more expert baton of WNO’s excellent new music director, Philippe Auguin, hold greater promise. The one encouraging note from this Tosca came in an unexpected place, the second-cast Cavaradossi of Gwyn Hughes Jones, heard late in the run on Friday night. The Welsh tenor made a brilliant Washington debut, singing this demanding role with far greater grace, beauty, and dramatic appeal than his first-cast counterpart.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the ease and power of the top of his voice, Hughes Jones started singing as a baritone. The placement of the voice is forward, producing a slightly nasal tone that was sometimes exacerbated by the decidedly Welsh color of some of Hughes Jones’s vowels as he sang in Italian. He sang Cavaradossi, a role that is often rendered with little nuance, with vigor and solidity but also with pleasing sensitivity. His rendition of the big aria, E lucevan le stelle, was melancholy and anguished in gestures both vocal and physical, with an exquisite decrescendo on one critical high note that was artful and affecting. He may not be quite the body type favored by more and more opera directors, in an opera world now so regrettably obsessed with film simulcast and camera closeups, but that is easily overlooked in an art form where vocal concerns should drive casting (but, sadly, often do not). [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Patricia Racette shines in Washington National Opera's 'Tosca' (Baltimore Sun, September 15)

Baroque Music from Four Nations at the Freer

See my review of the Four Nations Ensemble at the Freer Gallery of Art:

Music from Four Nations at the Freer (The Washingtonian, September 20):

Leclair, Violin Sonatas, First Book, F. Biondi, R. Alessandrini

Once in a while, music finds its way to a near-ideal performer. This is exactly what happened last night with the pieces performed by soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, in a free concert with the Four Nations Ensemble at the Freer Gallery of Art. The local soprano sounded at her best, with a silvery tone of faultless intonation and slender accuracy, beautifully suited to the museum’s small Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Auditorium. The purity of the voice was featured most simply, and beautifully, in an unaccompanied performance of Dividido el Corazon, a solo chant-like song composed in the New Mexican missions in the 18th century that is an impassioned lament by the Virgin Mary over the death of her son.

The programming concept was to bring together music of European-trained composers in the 17th and 18th centuries, from four different parts of the world—Europe, Latin America, the American colonies, and China. Lamoreaux also gave a light-footed dancing quality to the South American villancico by Alonso Torices, Toca la flauta, a charming little piece accompanied somewhat rustically by cello, flute, and violin. Plus the director of the Freer’s concert series, Michael Wilpers, pressed into service to beat the tambourine (unfortunately not always in sync with the often complicated beat). The Arcadian cantata O Daliso, by Domenico Zipoli, an Italian composer transplanted late in life to Argentina as a Jesuit missionary, was enlivened especially by Lamoreaux’s impeccable theatrical sense. However, the first aria in the piece, Per pietade, seemed to be paced too quickly for the sighing motifs to sound much like sighs. Three songs of Philadelphia-based composer Benjamin Carr were likewise saved from insipid sentimentality by Lamoreaux’s wry but also sincere approach. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Cecelia H. Porter, Going for baroque at the Freer (Washington Post, September 24)