In the News: A New Home For Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra

Previously, when the musicians of “The World’s Best Orchestra” – a.k.a. Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – wanted to practice outside the scheduled orchestral rehearsals at the actual Concertgebouw (Amsterdam’s famous shoe-box 1888 concert hall), they had to find their own place to do it; often renting space nearby... [read the full item over on ClassicsToday]

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Mahler Cycle | Concertgebouw | Boulez | M7

Amsterdam, with your crooked and badly isolated houses, legions of second hand and used-anything stores, restaurants that close at nine, grimy-wet winter days, awful hotels, dirty canals, expensive and rickety public transportation, pervading sense of dilapidation, your grossly exaggerated focus on secondary and tertiary pleasures and cheap ticky-tacky-selling tourist gift shops, be still my beating heart as long as you contain in your midst one of the world’s most lovely concert halls and in it “The World’s Best Orchestra”.

The opportunities to hear Pierre Boulez conduct are, let’s be honest, acutely limited. So the chance to witness him in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony was an obvious and welcome excuse to go to Amsterdam, even in the uninviting month of January. And what better cast—at least on paper—than Boulez and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra could one get for hearing that elusive Mahler Seventh for the first time in concert? After all, the RCO’s Mahler credentials are nonpareil and Boulez’ recording with Cleveland is one of the outstanding contributions to the discography.

In rehearsal, unaware of the program apart from Mahler and assuming—rather than paying attention—that Boulez was mixing things up with one of his compositions, I thought to myself: “Oh, Pierre, you just pretend to be so avant-garde but you’re really a bleeding heart romantic at heart.” Egg on my face, seeing how he was rehearsing Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, op.6. Then again, an unabashed romantic is of course exactly what Webern is. And the reaction might go to show that this romantic mooring of the Second Viennese schoolboys would be so more obvious to the listener if he or she came expecting Boulez, rather than romantic standards set by Der Rosenkavalier or the ‘Rhenish’ Symphony.

In concert, Six Pieces (in the original 1909 version) flit by in no time at all—rousing and enchanting en route, riveting and challenging to the ears. Piercing woodwinds, heralding trumpets, and distilled genius (if you’ve got the taste for it) made this—despite rampant coughing—in the very literal sense uncommonly beautiful.

G.Mahler, Symphony No.7, Boulez / Cleveland - DG

A.Webern, 6 Pieces et al., Boulez / BPh - DG

In a way, the works is the perfect introduction to the inner movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, except that Pierre Boulez doesn’t go for shades of night or spookiness in this work. I struggle in vain to grasp that symphony as it is, but I get closest to having a grip when the Nachtmusik is actually nocturne-like, moonlit and mysterious, a nervously flittering intermezzo with Ligeti-String-Quartet-like crawling bugs and shadows amidst. Boulez chooses a route that strikes me more like a Haydn Andante, bright and chirpy, with gay dances and Schuhplattlering cows. That’s a difference in perception, but nothing that made any of these three movements less excellent. The timpanist’s clipped end of the Scherzo was full of wit, the first Nachtmusik soft-hued, not unlike a battalion of men marching from evening into night—determined rather than sentimental. Only the cowbells didn’t fit the picture, sounding more like some arthritic bovine stumbling through an ironmongery than ringing of musical cow paraphernalia wafting up down from alpine pastures. Boulez would have been justified to take a page from the Bruce Dickinson’s playbook and ask the percussionist(s) to “really explore the space”.

In the first movement Boulez didn’t linger—he got right into the gritty business and led the orchestra like a little metronome, steady, subtle, and with small clockwork movements. If and when he wants a triple fortissimo orchestral crash, he doesn’t fling his limbs about, he tells the players beforehand. Boulez doesn’t emote for the orchestra, he just provides the pulse. But that doesn’t make his interpretations any less emotional. Amid superb contributions from trombones, trumpets, and Wagner tuba, the first movement was a scorcher. The finale was a massive, a wonderful noise, jocular witch clenched teeth… Mahler’s ambiguously jubilant Meistersinger send-up (and the finale of Tristan & Isolde’s first act) ever obvious. In short: an evening befitting the great Mahler moments that must have taken place in the Grote Zaal of the Concertgebouw. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that the best seats in the hall—Balcony Front, Row 1, Seat Sixties-something—are the ones right above the plaque that bears Mahler’s name.

Ionarts-at-Large: Birmingham in Amsterdam

Neither the opportunity to hear Andris Nelsons—that very excellent and even more promising conductor of the 30+ generation, nor the chance to hear Nikolai Lugansky—among the most sensitive and least flashy of current Russian pianists should be missed. Nor would it be wise to pass on the City of Birmingham Orchestra—ever since the days of Simon Rattle one of England’s finest—stopping by the Concertgebouw. It was a welcome opportunity to spend an otherwise unoccupied night in the city I’ll never be friends with: icky, sticky Amsterdam.

On the bill were Mahler’s First Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto; a program that seems to announce: “Subtleties are kindly asked to wait outside the hall for the duration of this concert.” Lugansky, alas, did not quite play along: the unfazed mellifluousness of his opening bars, with casual elegance and introspection, suggested an alternative take to this hollering barnstormer of a concerto.

Rachmaninoff / Tchaik., PCs 3 & 1, M.Argerich / Chailly, Kondrashin / Berlin RSO, BRSO Philips

G.Mahler, Symphony No.1, S.Rattle / CoBSO EMI

The impression didn’t last long, though, as the orchestral colors became garish and the players ever louder. Not that there weren’t fine moments amid the wild and sloppy performance, just not enough to overcome a numbing sameness and an occasionally drowned out soloist. The immediate and unanimous standing ovations, I was told, are every bit as meaningless with a Concertgebouw crowd as they are in the Kennedy Center. Only that instead of people reaching for their car-keys, it’s audience members eyeing the (limited) free drinks at intermission.

The Mahler, rigorous, rough-hewn, and middle-of-the-road, went along similar lines. Enjoyable under different circumstances (especially the fact that the double bass solo on Frere Jacques was, for once, not pitch-perfect but suitably off-color), I found it baffling why this performance needed to be aired in Amsterdam of all places, a city possibly more saturated with high quality Mahler in this anniversary year than any other. With neither technical brilliance nor any discernable interpretive stance, it was devoid of statement and devoid of wonder. Not that bringing owls to Athens hasn’t some merit. But if so, they must be spectacular eagle owls. This one was a burrowing owl. Not a concert that could possibly dent Nelsons’ or Lugansky’s reputation, but a considerable disappointment given the top-notch ingredients.

Mahler Cycle | Concertgebouw | Gatti | M5

You don’t have to go to Amsterdam to hear great Mahler—but it helps. When I heard Daniele Gatti’s beyond-stunning Mahler Fourth Symphony with the Munich Philharmonic in February this year, I knew that there would be no excuse to miss his Mahler in Amsterdam. That was going to be the Fifth Symphony, with the Concertgebouw this June as part of the Concertgebouw’s two-year Mahler cycle (where I had heard Mariss Jansons’ Third, just weeks before the Gatti Munich performance). The allure is great not the least because the Concertgebouw Orchestra is one of the four orchestras with the greatest Mahler tradition—and among them the most devoted to Mahler. (The other three are the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic [even if their Mahler-tradition is a bit reluctant], and the Munich Philharmonic [which never bothered treating their heritage professionally and can’t currently be considered Mahler-specialists, despite that above mentioned Fourth].) And hearing the Concertgebouw is also a chance to meet some of their fabulously musical players for a beer (or two, or three – girlfriend permitting), so a trip to Amsterdam is always something to look forward to, despite the faint attraction the city otherwise exerts on me.

High hopes can be the perfect setup for dull disappointment, but fortunately that’s not what happened this time. Sure, Gatti’s Fifth wasn’t the ear-opening experience of his Munich Fourth, but it was so refreshing to hear Mahler that is the polar opposite of Mariss Jansons’ carefully calibrated approach. At least with Gatti I heard everything that contributed to making the Fourth great—which in one word is: Risk. Gatti takes risks everywhere, is unpredictable (to the orchestra, too, by all appearances). This Fifth lacked greater lines and coherence—the 10 minute Adagietto especially didn’t gel—and it offered several really messy spots where Gatti, seemingly out of nowhere, took insanely brisk tempi next to large leisurely patches. At the same time, there was a palpable level of excitement present at all times which kept Mahler more exciting than a more scrupulously detailed version could ever have managed.

In the first half of the program, Gatti led the orchestra through Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll with results that exhibited to perfection the band’s tender, sonorous side and the ‘soft accuracy’ of the RCO. At the same time it should be admitted that even woodwinds that sound like butter, and the most beautiful orchestral sound, can’t hide the fact—at least not in a leisurely performance such as this—that 20 minutes is more than enough time to thoroughly exhaust the meager musical material of the Siegfried Idyll. Between the acts, there was communal watching of Germany vs. Ghana—the Dutch faction of the Concertgebouw probably rooting for Germany so that their team might defeat them in the finale for the most delicious possible victory.

Mahler Cycle | Concertgebouw | Jansons | M3

Every orchestra worth its salt seems to do a Mahler cycle—especially as we approach the centenary of Mahler’s death. And adding to an already burgeoning amount of Mahler performances, just doing a Mahler cycle is hardly a special event anymore. But when the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam—one of the four foremost Mahler-orchestras—puts on a Mahler cycle, over three years, with eight different conductors, it is something special. Special enough, in any case, to go to Amsterdam and hear their recent performance of the infrequently played Third Symphony under Mariss Jansons which was on the program from February 3^rd to the 5^th.

The Third Symphony is the strange pinnacle of Mahler’s early triumvirate of “bigger-is-better” symphonies. Written in the summers of 1895/96, it was premiered in 1902 in Krefeld—after Berlin critics had called him a lunatic on the strength of three excerpted movements’ showing a few years before. True to some extent is the fact that genius and musical megalomania come awfully close here. Because of its length (about 90 minutes) and demands on man and material—just a bit less than the Eighth Symphony—it isn’t particularly often performed. With the popularity of the long eschewed Sixth and Ninths symphonies sharp on the rise, it’s quickly being bumped off to the spot of third-least performed Mahler symphony, just ahead of the expensive Eights and the hard-to-sell Seventh.*

The level of anticipation and expectations accordingly high and the musicians still excited about their Friday performance (carried live on the pan-European/French classical music TV channel “MEZZO”), the stage was set for a high-quality letdown. That is unfortunately exactly what it ended up being, as the band that suffers the moniker “World’s Best Orchestra” (try living up to that every week!), delivered something perfectly admirable, a performances that players were happy with, but one that failed to fully please these ears.

The second movement is exempted from all criticism; surprisingly zippy flowers on a zesty meadow, the movement was nicely together and dashed off with refreshing expedience. Trombonist Bart Claessens also has to be singled out for his staggering, splendiferous performance of the first movement solo. The percussion group—centered around Marinus Kornst who bears an uncanny, disquieting resemblance to Andy Dick—should be thrown in among the highlights; ditto the off-stage post horn player and the piccolo’s pearly excellence. The rest was hit and miss; great in the climaxes but incoherent elsewhere.

The woodwinds around dominating clarinets consistently took half a note before deciding to play in unison. The horns and trumpets had more flubs than necessary and were distinctively limpid in the labored Midnight Song (mezzo Bernarda Fink blending in to attractive indistinction). If the underlying pulse is lacking in these movements’ many longueurs, it nixes any feeling of true flow or an arch reaching across the episodic music from beginning to end. The exciting thing about this is that it purveys the befuddlement listeners must have experienced when the work was first performed.

But this string of quibbles can’t take away from the sixth movement’s beginning, perhaps the most beautiful moment in all of Mahler… at least when played like Jansons had his orchestra play here. This is not a movement to launch, but to gingerly get onto its way as if placing a floating candle in water, gently sending it off to drift on. All the varnished glory of the Concertgebouw—orchestra and hall—came out in its trademark mellow sound, surpassed only by the climax that drove home the point that this night the orchestra did best with, well, climaxes and anything loud.


* Based on a cursory analysis of all the Mahler performances in the history of the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Ionarts at Large: Bach in Naarden

J.S.Bach, St.Matthew Passion (II), J.v.Veldhoven et al. Channel Classics J.S.Bach, St.Matthew Passion (I), J.v.Veldhoven et al. Channel Classics J.S.Bach, Christmas Oratorio, J.v.Veldhoven et al. Channel Classics J.S.Bach, St.John Passion, J.v.Veldhoven et al. Channel Classics J.S.Bach, Mass in B-minor, J.v.Veldhoven et al. Channel Classics

The little Dutch medieval fortress town of Naarden, completely surrounded by a wall and moat, was the first stop of my Easter Pilgrimage of St.Matthew Passions and Parsifals and it was a highlight unlikely to be topped by successive Matthew Passions this year or, perhaps, any year.

Since 1921 the Matthew Passion is performed at the Grote Kerk (“Great”, or “Large Church”) in Naarden. The Nederlandse Bachvereniging is responsible for the performance. That name and their current director Jos van Veldhoven are familiar to me from their recordings on Channel Classics. Their Mass in B-minor from last year not only made it onto my best-of-2007 list but has quickly become a favorite version.

High expectations were hardly disappointed. While I was not as moved and grabbed as I always hoped for, that might have been due to recent overexposure. It was in any case so good – so exceptionally good – that the delight it brought made up fully for this.

From the first notes on, Veldhoven and his forces (two orchestras with altogether ten violins, each, a viola, one cello, one double bass, two traverse flutes, two oboes, a recorder, continuo organ, and assoon each, and a theorbo, viola da gamba, and harpsichord) established this rendition as superior. The ensemble work was perfect with all six violins of the first orchestra playing, breathing, and living the music as one. The tone of this HIP (Historically Informed Performance) group sweet and sonorous like one could hardly expect from an indulgently romantic Viennese group, much less an original instrument band.

Johannes Leertouwer’s violin solo (“Erbarme Dich…”) was filled with warmth, a light vibrato on held notes, perfectly in tune and proved altogether better and more accurate than anything I have ever heard, say: Pinchas Zukerman do lately. The following duo with alto Matthew White (pleasantly masculine sounding, near his limits in the upper register but never of that whiney, namby-pamby quality that turns so many ears off counter tenors) had me in awe of the musical excellence. Antoinette Lohman’s solo for the opposing camp of violins was a study in contrast to Leertouwer’s mellifluous, sweet sound: Very engaged, wiry, agile, and energetic.

The boys’ choir employed for the chorals consisted of but three trebles. They may have been nervous, but either need not have been – or perhaps that nervousness actually aided their pinpoint accuracy. I have had my share of exposure to boys’ choir singing – active and passively – and I don’t think I heard three voices so together and accurate. In the generous but appropriately dry acoustic of the Grote Kerk they produced a sonorous, even voluptuous sound that I would not have thought possible. The fact that even the tiniest inaccuracies in their presentation were immediately audible only assured that the achievement was all theirs, not due to some unique acoustic phenomenon of the venue or their placement in front of conductor and orchestra, vis-à-vis the pulpit.

There were three, four very minor quibbles with the whole performance not worth the time or space to mention, since the overall excellence of Veldhoven’s and the Netherlands Bach Association’s achievement cannot be overstated. Of course the soloists had their part in this too: All were at least good, but next to Gerd Türk’s evangelist, Dorthee Mileds and Maria Keohane (sopranos), Matthew White and Williams Towers (countertenors), Julian Podger and Charles Daniels (tenors), and Wolf Matthias Friedrich (bass), it was Andrew Foster-Williams whose Jesus stood out for his very impressive, indeed: ideal rendition.

Towers could not quite match White’s performance, but he came close in the unrestrained and unconstrained, beautifully shaped aria “Können Tränen meiner Wangen…”. Türk had a few rough patches, his singing somewhere between lovely and routine, maybe both. Charles Daniels, recently heard in Koopman’s Mass in B-minor, was at the same high level of accomplishment without going beyond it – his colleague Podger rather excitedly sang the recitative “O Schmerz!” and found himself near his limits before the absolutely phenomenal, pitch-perfect oboe solo interrupted him. Dorothee Mields’ vibrato was a little heavier than I would have expected, but it was still clear and uncommonly beautiful, strong, and secure.

Ripienist Marjon Strijk’s Uxor Pilati, with an angelic ring to her strong soprano, proved on behalf of her colleagues the high quality of the choir which sang the chorales together with the soloists. The resultant group of 24 singers sounded very sizable in this venue and yet retained the clarity and precision rightly cherished in good HIP performances. Gerd Türk joined in as the finale chorale – “Wir setzten uns mit Tränen nieder” (“We sit down with tears…“) let us back out into the clear night in Naarden, journeying back to nearby Amsterdam.

This concert was attended as part of my WETA Easter Pilgrimage.