On ClassicsToday: Josephine Knight in Lovely Piatti World Premieres

Self-Serving Schumann And Lovely Piatti World Premieres

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

This new release of the Schumann Cello Concerto purports to be the premiere recording of its absolute original version–a faithful reconstruction of the 1850 “Concertstück”. After cellist Josephine Knight found the autograph in Krakow, she set about to discern the differences from the modern version we know, which apparently include some alterations made or suggested by Robert Emil Bockmühl on whom Schumann relied for advice, and several subsequent performers’ changes. She found “hundreds of differences”, mostly accents, dynamic markings, bowings. The notes, but for a handful, are the same, though. She’s since made this her vehicle and this recording is meant to propel the original version–and presumably her–into the limelight. [continue reading]

The Diabelli Project - Buchbinder bringt Neues über Diabelli: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

Buchbinder bringt Neues über Diabelli

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder hob Variationen aus der Taufe.

Im Musikverein hob Rudolf Buchbinder das "Diabelli Projekt" aus der Taufe, das auf seine Initiative mit zehn Konzerthäusern von Wien bis Peking entstanden ist: Elf neue Variationen zeitgenössischer Komponisten über den Walzer von Anton Diabelli. Faszinierend, was dabei herausgekommen ist: Lera Auerbach versenkt den Ausgangswalzer in dunklem Klaviermorast; wie eine Ruine im Nebel ragt das Thema aus dem schwarzen Moor. Nach Brett Deans sich schnell verflüchtigendem Wirbelwind einer Variation wirkten die leichten, entschleunigten Pinselstriche eines Toshio Hosokawa berührend; bedrohlich tiefe Noten setzten dabei immer wieder Zäsuren. Christian Josts Beitrag klingt, als hätte sich ein experimentierfreudiger Jacques Loussier das Thema geschnappt. Philippe Manoury hat energetischen, kurz gehaltenen Pointillismus beigesteuert.... [weiterlesen]

Photo © Marco Borggreve

Dip Your Ears, No. 238 (Franz Schmidt Rarities and Delights)

Franz Schmidt, Variations on a Hussar’s Song, Piano Concerto, Chaconne Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Alexander Rumpf, Jasminka Stančul (piano) Capriccio

Franz Schmidt is one of those “Surprised by Beauty” romantics of the 20^th century whose (re-)discovery is still ongoing. Latest exhibit: This CD, unearthing a world-premiere in the form of the Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. Anyone familiar with Schmidt’s opera Notre Dame might think he pilfered the opera for this 20-minute, one-movement work. Au contraire, the Fantasy came first. What a humdinger! We may no longer know the once truly popular, famous tunes, but we can readily appreciate how they were popular in a Vienna where the cab drivers hummed operetta arias. Coupled with the nearly-as romantic Hussar’s Variations and the Chaconne (Schmidt’s orchestration of his own organ work), this is a perfect, quite well performed addition to the Schmidt-catalog and any romantic music lover’s library. The last hint of orchestral sheen is missing, but unless Manfred Honeck records this repertoire with the Vienna or Pittsburgh bands, you’re bound not to get any better any time soon. (You might remember Welser-Möst's fine recording of the Variations, coupled with the Fourth Symphony, but it obvioulsy lacks the Concerto and also the Chaconne and it's since been allowed to go out of print.)

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Johannes Maria Staud's Opera "Die Weiden" Premiered at the Vienna State Opera: A Commentary

Fremdschämen: Vienna World Premiere of Johannes Maria Staud’s New Opera “Die Weiden”

All pictures courtesy Wiener Staatsoper, © Michael Pöhn

Johannes Maria Staud is a local darling of the new music scene in Austria and when the Vienna State Opera commissioned a work to premiere on its stage (the first to do so in about a decade), they turned to him for the latest in music theater made in Austria.

Much was made of the content of Die Weiden, which was – so the eager press reported – the stuff political scandals are made of: A controversial, daring, unflinching look at Austria’s current government in which the traditional right-of-center ÖVP coalesces with the notorious populist ‘right-of-right-of-center’ FPÖ. The first time the latter party was part of the government, Austria was on the verge of being boycotted by numerous countries – at this point, some twenty years later,  the world (though not the world of opera composers!) has gotten used to the general momentum towards illiberalism and hardly anyone raised an eyebrow. Perhaps Johannes Maria Staud wanted to change that, god bless his heart. Alas, he failed abjectly:

Firstly, to challenge right-wing attitudes, it makes no sense to write a piece like this, well hidden from all those it purports to criticize in an opera house.  Secondly, in that politically homogenous environment of an opera house and the classical music world (at best going from traditional, mild conservatism to well left of the political spectrum), the topic wasn’t in the least controversial, daring, unflinching. It was preaching to the converted; reinforcing already held attitudes: an act of primitive self-celebration in one’s superiority. Worse: It was so clumsily, patronizingly, naïvely made, it made a thinking person’s toenails curl. Naturally, the German language has a word for the result: Fremdschämen.

Fremdschämen {/ˈfʀɛmtˌʃɛːmən/}  noun, reflexive, informal}: the feeling of shame on someone else's behalf; the feeling of shame for someone else who has done sth. embarrassing.

The German Press Agency (dpa) concluded more or less: ‘If that’s all the left got, the right wing need fear nothing.’ And Vienna’s state owned Wiener Zeitung (the world’s oldest operating newspaper) commented dryly: “Is every voter of a populist party also necessarily an extremist? What motivates people to vote for right-of-traditional-conservative parties? [Librettist] Durs Grünbein can’t be bothered with such questions; within his brown-and-white scheme, there are only humans (noble, left) and carps (the animal that right-wingers symbolically metamorphose into, in this faux-cautionary tale; vile, right) – and he does not waste any time on depth of character.”

Part of the problem is that Staud doesn’t stand for liberalism in true opposition to the new populist right wing: As a sloganeering, focus-minded, and idealism-touting he is merely the educated feel-good illiberal (i.e. left) Ying to the great unwashed’s illiberal (i.e. right) Yang. Now if he had composed great music to this opera, all might have been forgiven. Except there, too, he came well short of any reasonably expected goal, with little to offer between banality and ham-handed burlesque irony, clumsily – hastily? – orchestrated at that. The staging and directly eagerly embraced the flat banality of it all.

Here’s my review for ClassicsToday: World-Premiere of Johannes Maria Staud’s Die Weiden: Opera from the Echo Chamber
More pictures below.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Read more »

[From the Archives] A Wonderland of Possibilities: Unsuk Chin’s First Opera Premiered in Munich

Originally published on WETA 90.9's blog,Sunday, 8.5.07

“If there’s no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we need not try to find any.”

This quote from the King in Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” might well describe the general listener’s absolution from the trouble of actively engaging with modern music.

Unsuk Chin, Alice in Wonderland K.Nagano / BStOp / Sally Matthews et al. Unitel DVD

Any music that is so dense, academic, or inaccessible that the listener cannot find to it without first reading a small book about the work becomes a remote and abstract art. Ultimately, that creates a sense of distance from the broader public and the art-form that leads to the ivory-tower syndrome: A certain music becomes the prerogative of musicologists and composers, a rarefied elitist pursuit, perhaps an intellectual feather in the cultural hat of a country, but not part of the substance that forms or defines its culture. Horrifying as it may seem to those who cherish and defend the “fine arts”, (even) the fine arts need to be popular to a significant degree if they are to remain meaningful in the cultural life of a society.

Korean born composer Unsuk Chin from Berlin, to where she moved 1988 after studies with György Ligeti in Hamburg, says that she does not want music that needs to be explained. At least not for her first opera “Alice in Wonderland” that received its world premiere in Munich under Kent Nagano on Saturday, June 30th after more than a year of preparations. For a composer who had started out as a Darmstadt-school serialist, thoroughly influenced by Stockhausen & Co., that’s a bold statement and comes in part due to Ligeti’s thorough re-poling of her compositional outlook.

These moments of recognizability and comfort (even plain C-major makes an appearance in this opera, well possibly a novelty in 21st-century opera) are kept together by Chin’s sound world that placed near-impossible demands on the Staatsoper’s pit. Large enough to hold any Meistersinger and Elektra orchestra, for Alice the seating plan had to be arranged anew and re-arranged again to squeeze in every player. And still, the percussion batteries overflowed into the director’s boxes to both sides of the stage. It is not the least of achievements that Chin’s music, despite the quantity of exotic instruments used, never calls attention to these instrumental ‘special effects’ like the rather more crass works of Ramírez, Sierra, Goljiov, and even Higdon or Schwantner. Harmonica and harpsichord, celesta and glockenspiel, Jew’s harp and little toy-pipes make their appearances, but to fine, never gratuitous effect; always appropriately in context to the extent that can be said at all about such an absurdist piece of work as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.And sure enough, there are moments in Ms. Chin’s music that need little explanation and are enjoyable to the broadest selection of ears. For one, Ms. Chin is fond of quoting, half mockingly, traditional opera in Alice, or, during the caterpillar‘s bass clarinet solo, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or baroque elements during the tea ceremony.

Chin’s music, a tapestry of influences and ideas, is difficult to describe – not the least because it is difficult to remember much of it in precise ways. There were, however, a few moments where I thought: “This sure is better than Nicholas Maw’sSophie’s Choice“. It reminded of Sophie, which had its US premiere in Washington last season, while proving far less monotonous and same-ish, not pushing on ever so hard, and less tiring. Maybe the libretto lends itself to greater frivolousness or variety when you compose for words like “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you’re at…” than Holocaust, barbed wire, and “massive intakes of iron”.

The music of Alice remains a fairly difficult music, but it’s also imaginative, witty, well crafted, and – beyond the quotations – with moments of unsuspected beauty, never tiring, rarely taxing. And it certainly scores on every account against a recent Western-Asian Operatic premiere, namely The First Emperor, Tan Dun’s unbearable kitschy mix of second-rate Puccini with (in-and-of-itself interesting) Chinese percussion and string sounds.

But if the music was not as memorable as expected or desired, it was in some part the fault – or rather: achievement – of the staging. Brecht-student, painter, set-, costume designer, and stage director Achim Freyer, who staged the first performance of the Philip Glass trilogySatyagraha in Stuttgart (1981) and Salvatore Sciarrino’s Macbeth in New York, concocted a bizarre, fantastical set that dominated the performance to a degree that may have made Unsuk Chin feel uncomfortable. (Her support for the staging was – mildly put – shy of enthusiastic in several interviews given prior to the premiere.)

In front of steep stage, raked at 51 degrees (!) and nearly reaching the top of the visible part of the 90 feet high stage of the Staatsoper, stood lined up the eight singers (only their heads visible) who, in addition to Alice and the Queen, made up the cast’s different figures. All in the same makeup and wigs, operating detached white hands from behind a little barrier in front of them, they sang the parts that were then acted out by performance artists on the stage – floating (suspended from above), jumping, and gesticulating about in their oversized and colorful costumes. The croquet game (with rules resembling Calvinball), for example, was like a vast underwater ping-pong game with a likeness of Alice’s head serving as the ball. Frog and Dormouse (“You might just as well say that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”), March Hare and White Rabbit, and of course the ever-present, ever metamorphizing Cheshire Cat pop up and do their wily things on stage.

Colorful strings divide the stage into sections that are at times filled out with color (depicting the house in which Alice grows to enormous size) or sheer light, as in the final dream sequence that, like the sequence that serves as the prelude to the opera, are not actually from Lewis Carrol’s book but represent reoccurring dreams of Unsuk Chin about fatalism and faith. When Alice grows after eating the cake and cries herself a lake of tears, the 20-some feet tall Alice’s tears (one performer lifted into the air with the upper part, another at the bottom for the feet) are blue strips of fabric that endlessly gush from her eyes and fill the lower stage along with superimposed splatter of rain.

Regular Alice runs around in an oversized mask that has her appear childlike and surreal at once – to take that mask off only at the very end when she has put an end to the hokus-pokus of Wonderland by calling the shenanigans of the Queen of Hearts by their name. The Mock Turtle (“It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from”) appears in a big Campell’s Soup can, except it’s “Caroll’s [false] Turtle Soup” and plays the harmonica hauntingly – in between weeping helplessly. When Dame Gwyneth Jones appears as the Queen of Hearts, she is piercingly perfect, shrill and deliciously wacky, wobble-free – and, of course, a much-beloved favorite of the Munich audience, many of which still remember her legendary Marschallin.

Alice in Wonderland had originally been planned for the LA opera (where Kent Nagano has turned down Plácido Domingo’s offer for the role as Music Directorship but did agree to become Principal Conductor), but financial concerns scuppered the plans. Financial concerns are not much of a problem for Munich (one of the most generously subsidized opera houses in the world) where Nagano succeeded Zubin Mehta as Music Director in 2006. Alice became a Munich project and more ambitious in scope still.

The audience, conservative but open-minded, seemed to be plenty excited about the world premiere of Alice. Well over 100 audience members of all ages stood in line to secure a seat for an introductory talk, an hour before the second performance. But if Alice, sung in English and shown with German subtitles, was more than just a curiously interesting example of high art – gladly suffered in the name of being an audience that appreciates high art – remains questionable. The German audience, for one, has little experience with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And to the extent the story is known, it’s through Walt Disney’s film, not the original book – a book that could easily be seen in a line with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Luis Buñuel films like La Voie lactée and Le fantôme de la liberté. The translation, shown as sub- and supertitles, tried its best, but was invariably cut and left to choose between a literal translation and finding its own plays on words that didn’t always relate to the scene. Even an innocent pun like the Doormouse’s “Long tale, indeed”, while proudly wiggling around its long tail, remained obscure to most. That (lack of) perception presumably allowed for the staging to overpower music and story in the way it did… though whether that was good or bad can’t quite be said with a staging so imaginative and wonder-full as Achim Freyer.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Latest on Forbes: Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie Opens. A Soundcheck of its Recital Hall and G.F.Haas' "Release" reviewed.

Hamburger Elbphilharmonie, view coming into the Harbor
Photo courtesy Elbphilharmonie, © Thies Rätzke (2016)

Review: Hamburg Elbphilharmonie Opening And G.F.Haas World Premiere

This review over on Forbes focuses on the easily neglected, smaller "Recital Hall" and the Haas premiere that took place therein. A review of the 'main event' and Great Hall will be forthcoming.

...At about the same time, the same wandering sensation struck my seat neighbor, a dignified elder(ly) lady. She realized, coincidentally with me, that the electronic sounds raining down on us were in fact created by string players that huddled, in small groups, on the outer walking path above the wooden shell. Darkness-shrouded, blending in with the black ceiling. This discovery prompted a whispered remark and question to her husband, while being absorbed by the going-ons.

“Shut your trap now, if you will!”, snarled the person sitting in front of us at her, in a tone distinctively south of civil and audible to every other audience member.

The lady had just gotten upbraided by the composer himself...

...Also well played was the even more obvious physical reference to a particular historical model in creating here, with Release, a reverse Farewell Symphony. Instead of Joseph Haydn (Haas-compatriot and patron saint of chamber music) having his desk-by-desk disappearing musicians symbolize their desire to go home, Haas here writes a music that is calling for a new beginning with musicians joining and wanting to come to work and to get started already. A very charming touch.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2017/01/14/review-hamburg-elbphilharmonie-opening-and-g-f-haas-world-premiere/



Follow @ClassicalCritic

Hilary Hahn and Robert Levin

Charles T. Downey, Hahn and Levin strike sparks from Bach to Türk
Washington Classical Review, October 29

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Hilary Hahn, Again (Ionarts, April 21, 2016)

At Washington Classical Review: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Charles T. Downey, Alsop, BSO have uneven night with Orff and Stravinsky
Washington Classical Review, September 30

Latest on Forbes: World Premiere of A. Schreier's Hamlet at Theater-an-der-Wien

The Shakespeare Quadricentennial is upon us, hard, and Shakespeare music content is sprouting up wherever we look. If it is just rehashing the regularly played Verdi operas, then that is not much. Better to have something unknown revived, like the Bregenz Festival did with Amleto by Franco Faccio and with a libretto by Arrigo Boito (REVIEW) or commission a new work altogether. That is what the Theater-an-der-Wien did, with Hamlet, set to music by Arno Schreier and Thomas Jonigk writing an almost Shakespeare-free libretto to it. The result, premiered last week, was good, even if good (or OK) is not good enough, for an opera to leave a notable mark. In addition I briefly recap some of the performances that I have seen at the Theater-an-der-Wien in the last two years, which were not always satisfying but never made me waver in my admiration for this little stagione house that could; that bright spot on the cultural scene in Vienna. Full review here:

To Succeed Or Not To Succeed: Theater-An-Der-Wien World Premiere Of "Hamlet"

Follow @ClassicalCritic

BSO Ends Up All Wet

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

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

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

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

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

BSO Plays More World Premieres

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

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

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

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

[Continue reading]

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

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

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

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

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

Baltimore Symphony's New Music

Charles T. Downey, BSO continues centennial celebration with two new pieces (Washington Post, April 18)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra marked the 100th anniversary of its first public concert in February. The celebration continued this week, as music director Marin Alsop led the orchestra in two new pieces commissioned for the centennial season. The program, heard on Friday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, was repeated at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.

Christopher Rouse’s “Processional” was the more successful of the two premieres, one of 10 five-minute anniversary works commissioned by the BSO... [Continue reading]

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Music by Rouse, Puts, Mahler
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Baltimore Symphony premieres musically, visually intriguing 'City' (Baltimore Sun, April 15)

James Oestreich, A Mahler Mini-Festival in New York (New York Times, April 18)

George Grella, Baltimore Symphony offers compelling Puts, uninspired Mahler (New York Classical Review, April 18)

Harry Rolnick, The City First, The Universe Later (Concerto.net, April 16)

NSO Back from Europe

Liszt, Piano Concertos, J.-Y. Thibaudet, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, C. Dutoit (Decca, 1992)

The National Symphony Orchestra is back from a grueling European tour last month, although they may not have recovered yet. The group actually played its first post-tour program last week, but this week's program is the first to reach my ears since the ensemble's return. Heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Christoph Eschenbach conducted a truly puzzling program that opened with the world premiere of Tobias Picker's Opera without Words, commissioned by the NSO and given its world premiere at this performance.

I have not had the chance to hear much of Picker's music live, but I think of Picker more as an opera composer. This work, ostensibly a concerto for orchestra, did not do much to advance him in my estimation as an orchestral composer. One goes into such a piece expecting innovative orchestration, surprising uses of the instruments, and a range of styles and textures. In most of these expectations, it disappointed. There were solos for the string instruments, none all that remarkable, an extended one for the trombone; in the second movement, along with an odd bit for solo horn, there was a baffling passage for a single melodic line on the piano; the percussion was perhaps overly present, but aside from some lush moments in the fifth and final movement, little stood out in terms of orchestral color or form.

Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet gave a generally fine performance of the solo part in Liszt's second piano concerto. The orchestra did not seem quite on the same intonation page with the piano at the opening of the piece, with its interwoven woodwind solos, but Thibaudet took all the work's flowing runs and thundering octaves in stride, with a few minor exceptions. The work feels like such a hodgepodge: hints of a Tchaikovsky ballet score in the first big orchestral interlude; harmonic and melodic turns that nuzzle up to the edge of jazzy Gershwin; a devilish scherzo that morphs into a pompous march; an elfin dance finale. In the second movement, we suddenly wake up and find ourselves in a cello sonata for a short time, which was a particularly lovely moment in this performance.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Picker premiere leads NSO’s packed program (Washington Post, March 11)

It has been a very Brahms year so far, with recent reviews of the composer's fourth symphony, first symphony, and German Requiem. Christoph Eschenbach's way with the first symphony did not give me much hope that his interpretation of the third symphony would be my cup of tea. Indeed, right from the opening bars, with an affected swell of a crescendo, it seemed overblown. The orchestra, following his lead, blasted (brass) and oozed (strings) their way through this most charming of symphonies, a piece easily marred by most kinds of excess. Much of the first movement felt rushed, leading to clipped endings of phrases, and parts of it were mannered, with sudden changes in tempo or dynamic that did not seem justified. The second movement was schmaltzy and overly slow, and the third movement, with its ardent opening cello melody, was overdone by stretching and overplaying, although the return of that main melody, now in the horn, was gorgeous. More distortions of tempo filled the finale, on top of which three of the composer's Hungarian Dances was just overkill.

This concert repeats on Saturday night only.

Quatuor Thymos @ KC

Schubert, String Quartet No. 13 ("Rosamunde") / Lieder, S. Haller, Quatuor Thymos, C. Eschenbach (Calliope, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, After blizzard, Thymos Quartet creates warm concert atmosphere (Washington Post, January 27)

After four days in blizzard seclusion, a few people were ready to hear some live music. While most of Washington remained closed Monday, the Kennedy Center opened its doors for a few performances, including an evening concert by France’s Thymos Quartet. The house manager of the Terrace Theater asked listeners to feel free to take empty seats closer to the stage, creating an atmosphere even more like a home concert.

One good reason to have made the effort to get across a city still only partly dug out from the weekend’s historic snowfall was the chamber music of Franz Schubert... [Continue reading]

Quatuor Thymos (with Anne-Sophie Le Rol and Delphine Biron at second violin and cello)
With Yann Dubost (double bass) and Christoph Eschenbach (piano)
Fortas Chamber Music Series
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Quatuor Thymos (Ionarts, January 25, 2016)

Stephen Brookes, Thymos Quartet at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, March 13, 2012)

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)

American Opera Initiative: Snoozy 'Better Gods'

Rexford Tester (Lorrin Thurston), Timothy J. Bruno (Judge Albert Judd), Daryl Freedman (Queen Liliʻuokalani), Ariana Wehr (Kahua), and Hunter Enoch (James Miller) in Better Gods (photo by Scott Suchman for Washington National Opera)
Many Americans likely do not know the ugly details of how Hawaii became our 50th state. Part of the world's shameful history of colonialism, the annexation began with the forced abdication of the islands' last monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani, the ancestor of the family in Alexander Payne's film The Descendants. This is the subject of Better Gods, the latest new opera presented by Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, which has been guiding new works by developing American composers to the stage since 2012, an hour-long work by composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent. This is the first contribution to the program by Woolf, who is married to cellist Matt Haimovitz, while Vincent wrote the libretto to Joshua Bornfield's Uncle Alex in 2013, sadly not reviewed by Ionarts.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Deposed queen leads valiant but flawed ‘Better Gods’ at WNO (Washington Post, January 11) Alex Baker, Throne away (Parterre, January 11) Jeanette Kelly, Montreal composer Luna Pearl Woolf writes first opera, Better Gods (CBC, January 7) Steven Mark, Washington opera brings Liliuokalani’s story to stage (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, American Opera Initiative: 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

The musical contributions were excellent, led by conductor Timothy Myers, who has impressed us over the years at the Castleton Festival and Wolf Trap Opera. Impressive mezzo-soprano Daryl Freedman was dignified and regal as Queen Lili'uokalani, with the sneering Lorrin Thurston of tenor Rexford Tester, who leads the coup against the queen, as a foil. Baritone Hunter Enoch was strong as a journalist who covers the events in Hawaii, although his role seemed largely superfluous to the story. Fine supporting performances came from bass Timothy J. Bruno (the judge who decides the queen's fate), bass Wei Wu (the royalist general who leads a rebellion in support of the queen), and soprano Ariana Wehr (the queen's ward).

Even with so much going for it, the opera was a disappointment. Vincent's libretto had its ponderous moments, saying a lot of things more than once that could have been left unsaid. Woolf's score had some appeal, tarted up with the sounds of traditional Hawaiian flutes and percussion, the latter played by Greg Akagi, one of the orchestra's percussionists, on stage. Queen Lili'uokalani was also a musician and composer, known for the song Aloha 'Oe, among many others, and Woolf weaves her melodies in with her own, as well as an ill-advised use of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Ethan McSweeny's production was functional if somewhat plain (sets by Daniel Conway, costumes by Lynly A. Saunders), with a static quality that drew attention to the static qualities of the opera.

This performance will be repeated this evening, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Best Recordings of 2015 (#10)

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2014 . My lists for the previous years: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, (2011 – “Almost”), 2010, (2010 – “Almost”), 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 10 - New Release

Wartime Consolations, Linus Roth (violin), José Gallardo (piano), Ruben Gazarian, Württemberg CO Heilbronn, Challenge SACD

K.A.Hartmann, M.Weinberg, D.Shostakovich Concerto funebre, Moldavian Rhapsody, Concertino, Unfinished Violin Sonata Ruben Gazarian / Württemberg CO Heilbronn L.Roth, J.Gallardo (piano) (Challenge SACD)

Linus Roth has fared well with Mieczysław Weinberg. After a notable recording of the Violin Sonatas his recording of the Violin Concerto (coupled with Britten’s) was a hit that received glowing reviews from dozens of magazines, including an always coveted “Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice”. He’s done it again, as far as quality of performance and quality of incoming reviews are concerned. This time he has coupled the Karl Amadeus Hartmann concerto (a dark, war-anticipating masterpiece among 20^th century concertos) with two relatively lighter works by Weinberg, the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes op.47 and the Concertino for Violin and Strings which displays lyrical sweep (subtly guarded by a wistful air against any joyous excess) and tender gracefulness. The purely orchestral Rhapsody was such a success that Weinberg also set it for violin and piano (included on Roth’s recording of the Sonatas) and for violin orchestra. That version (presumed to exist) is lost, so Roth performs Ewelina Nowicka’s re-arrangement from the chamber version. The “Moldavian” themes of this Rhapsody are of course decidedly Jewish themes from Moldavia… but Weinberg knew better than to advertise that openly, after the still recent attacks on his “cosmopolitanism” and imprisonment and state-murders of Jews around the USSR, including that of his father-in-law’s.

The disc is again a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice (“an eminently collectable disc”) that arts editors took turns lauding as “a strikingly rewarding programme” (The Telegraph) and commending Roth for unearthing the “fascinating find” (The Observer) of the unfinished first movement of a Shostakovich Violin-Sonata-to-be. (Of which this is the world premiere recording.) I would pipe up to suggest that the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn plays nearly as well as the DSO Berlin did on the last disc, or that the soloist finds just the right balance between dark and light, sorrow and twisted joy. But I must recuse myself, having written the liner notes for this release. 

# 10 – Reissue

D.Shostakovich, A.Glazunov, Violin Concertos, Itzhak Perlman (violin), Z.Mehta, Israel PO, Warner

Read more »

American Opera Initiative: Three More Miniatures

Leah Hawkins in Alexandra (photo by Scott Suchman for Washington National Opera)
One of the best things that the folks at Washington National Opera did after the merger with the Kennedy Center was to create the American Opera Initiative. With access to the other spaces of the Kennedy Center, the company has commissioned three composers each year to produce 20-minute operas, with the latest installment offered on Wednesday evening in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Some of these composer-librettist pairs go on to create an hour-long opera in the second part of the program, all with coaching from more established composers and librettists. It is important work, providing the pleasure of hearing new operas with some regularity.

An operatic miniature, if anything, is more difficult to create than something in a longer format. It is a specialized undertaking with only a few successful examples to study, and it should be no surprise that most of the 20-minute operas presented by the program are duds. Fortunately, a failure in this genre likely has little to do with ultimate success: Douglas Pew and Dara Weinberg left me underwhelmed with their contribution to the first such 20-minute program, in 2012, but their one-hour opera, Penny was more effective.

The work that was most successful at creating a dramatic arc within compact restrictions was the middle opera, Alexandra. Librettist Joshua McGuire drew a sharply defined story, involving a young woman who has just lost her husband. Alexandra takes a book that her husband stole back into their university library; following an inscription in its pages into other books, she unravels a mystery about her husband, who kept the book because it contained communications from a man with whom he was in love. In a short space, composer David Clay Mettens weaves together Alexandra's present with the forbidden past of her husband, Ray, and another student, Alex, making the voices overlap in duets and a trio. His use of the small orchestra -- three woodwinds, three brass, strings, piano, and percussion -- was by far the most inventive, too, abounding in unusual colors. Mezzo-soprano Leah Hawkins offered an instrument of rich tone, especially at the bottom, in the title role.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Opera as bourgeois drama: 20-minute pieces at WNO (Washington Post, December 4) Alex Baker, Slice of life (Parterre Box, December 4) Sadie Dingfelder, A triumphant return across the pond (Washington Post, November 25) American Opera Initiative: 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

Sarah Hutchings and Mark Sonnenblick went for cheap laughs and doggerel rhymes in Twenty Minutes or Less, about three neurotic workers in a pizza shop. Its jazzy score, complete with two back-up singers billed as the Pizza Queens, had hints of Puccini, but not much more than the fine mezzo-soprano of Daryl Freedman, with spot-on intonation and expressive line in her aria "I wake up, put on my mother," to recommend it.

Freedman was also matched nicely with baritone Hunter Enoch in Service Provider, with music by Christopher Weiss and libretto by John de los Santos. This last piece also had a somewhat glib, music-theater sensibility to it, about a truly annoying couple having dinner out for their anniversary. The score is littered with the sounds of text notifications and cell phone rings, to symbolize the obsession that makes this annoying couple even more annoying. Tenor Rexford Tester took the best role, a snarky waiter named Dallas, and ran with it, especially in the patter song about the pork belly.

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)

Susan Graham Celebrates Vocal Arts D.C.

Berlioz, Les nuits d’été, S. Graham, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, J. Nelson (1997)

Charles T. Downey, With lissome French and a premier, Susan Graham sings a fine program (Washington Post, September 13)

Gerald Perman founded the Vocal Arts Society in 1990, and it is still going strong under the name Vocal Arts D.C. American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who gave her first Vocal Arts recital in the organization’s first decade, was back Saturday night to celebrate the start of its 25th-anniversary season. Her sold-out recital in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater featured a world premiere, by American composer Jake Heggie, and some of Graham’s signature French repertoire.

A switch of the program put the French half first... [Continue reading]

Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano) and Jake Heggie (piano)
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater