Ionarts-at-Large: Koopman and the Munich Philharmonic's Surprising Haydn

Ton Koopman led the last concert of the Munich Philharmonic’s season, and true to his repertoire and reputation, he brought Haydn, Mozart, and Bach—exactly those composers I want the Munich Philharmonic (any and every symphonic orchestra, actually) to play more of… so much that one day even non-specialists will pick up classical and pre-classical music again with these musical bodies.

J.Haydn, London Symphonies, M.Minkowski / Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble naïve W.G.Mozart, Coronation Mass, Ave verum corpus et al., Koopman / ABO & Choir Erato

Haydn’s Symphony No.98 is among the most beautiful and least over-played “London” Symphonies, almost a shame that it started the concert in the ‘overture slot’, usually the throwaway joke*, the warm-up exercise of a musical evening. Koopman and the reduced Philharmonic (8-7-5-4-2 the distribution among the string instruments) never allowed that perception to creep in. Lithe but bold, flexibly chugging along the opening Adagio – Allegro. Kicking its legs somewhere between majestic and impetuous in the Presto; stomping its foot like a pouty little princess who has been denied her daily pink pony. For the coda in the finale Koopman, otherwise conducting from the rostrum, jumps to the harpsichord next to him to perform the long runs Haydn threw in to entertain his London audience at the Hannover Square Rooms—back then a little joke between Haydn and the orchestra leader and concertmaster Salomon who had organized the concerts in the first place. The whole performance was unqualifiedly terrific, which is to say: not just considering it was the ‘heavy’ Munich Philharmonic performing, but it would have been terrific even for, say, Les Musiciens du Louvre.

Bach’s “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” is a Cantata especially magnificent even if you think they’re all quite magnificent. Bass-baritone Klaus Mertens sang with gentlemanly, veteran assurance, in wonderful conversation with the basso continuo of tenor-oboe and bassoon and again with the oboe in his second aria, “Endlich, endlich wird mein Joch”. The closing chorus, “Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder”, is among the most popular; heavy with sweetened sadness and often adopted; by Knudt Nystedt (“Immortal Bach”) for example, or by Hubert von Goisern for the film “Brother of Sleep”.

The second half was given over to Mozart, first the Ave verum corpus K.618, 46 bars of simplicity, calm serenity, and sheer beauty—sonorously gorgeously sung by the Philharmonic Chorus Munich (Andreas Herrmann, dir.). Last came the comparatively tumultuous, viola-less Coronation Mass (Missa in C, K.317) with soprano Lisa Larsson (treble-like, attacking notes from below), tenor Tilman Lichdi (charming-sacred restraint), and the nicely blending Bogna Bartosz (mezzo) and Mertens. The mass was very capably performed by the Munich Philharmonic, but couldn’t supplant the more detailed and outstanding Haydn as the concert’s highlight.

* The first two panels of a Sunday Cartoon in American papers, which are generally three rows high, instead of one, and in full color, not black and white. The first few panels making up the top line usually contains a large version of the cartoon’s insignia and a two-line joke related to, but independent of the rest of the cartoon. The reason for this is that papers syndicating a cartoon and unwilling to print the full three line version could simply cut the entire first line without the cartoon no longer making sense.

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'Griselda'

Austin Pederson (supernumerary), Amanda Majeski (Ottone), Paul Groves (Gualtiero), and Joaquin Gonzalez (supernumerary) in Griselda, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

Baroque opera was such a fluid thing, with aria substitutions, recycling of music, and florid improvisation, that there is often no such thing as an authoritative version of the score for such works. So one can hardly complain that Peter Sellars changed Vivaldi's Griselda so much in his goofy production at Santa Fe Opera, the first major staging of this beautiful work in the United States. One can certainly complain, however, that Sellars, indulging yet again his regrettable proclivity toward over-heated philosophizing, makes such a hash of the opera, both musically and dramatically. The derisive laughter that rippled through the house on Thursday night, reaching the ears of Sellars a few rows in front of me, spoke volumes about the results. (For much more background on Griselda, see my preview article and CD review.)

What a double shame that the direction detracted from some first-rate musical performances, beginning with the elegant, polished Costanza of mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, whom we have admired before in recital and on stage. Her knockout performance of the opera's biggest aria, Agitata da due venti, was both sure and appropriately rapid-fire, albeit at a slightly slower tempo than one hears from other singers, while there were a few problems with sustaining pitch in Ombre vane. David Daniels brought a sharp, slightly nasal edge to Roberto, and a rising countertenor, Yuri Minenko, was a graceful Corrado. Tenor Paul Groves had the right rage-filled tone as Gualtiero, but the demanding melismas of some of the arias, especially his first one (Se ria procella sorge dall'onde), were not in the voice. Conductor Grant Gershon led an ensemble of modern instruments (nice work by the horns in their couple of arias) plus two harpischords (one used by Gershon to accompany recitatives) and a theorbo, with generally fine results, in spite of a tendency to slow down the ends of B sections almost to a dead stop. All of the singers added beautifully conceived and sometimes thrilling embellishments to the da capo repeats, although it did little to assuage cranky audience members who thought it was only about repeating the same texts over and over again.

Isabel Leonard (Costanza) in Griselda, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

Contralto Meredith Arwady was a vocal knockout in the title role, her brilliant fioriture and viscous chest voice channeling the unpredictable nature of the role's creator, Anna Girò. Unfortunately, Sellars directed her in all sorts of ridiculous gestures, rolling on the floor, waving and wrenching her arms, running about, which for a woman of her size was less than dignified. Hopefully, singers will eventually turn against this sort of direction from Sellars, who has too often made singers look silly (just ask Drew Minter). This was lamentably true of soprano Amanda Majeski, whose Ottone was costumed as some sort of hipster gang-banger, waving around a revolver and doing some corny dance moves in her moment of triumph (Dopo un'orrida procella). Worse, she did not really have the vocal goods for this difficult music, either (listen to Simone Kermes on the Naïve recording for a comparison).

Other Reviews: Anthony Tommasini, One Cruel King, by Way of Vivaldi (New York Times, August 10) George Loomis, Griselda, Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico (Financial Times, August 8) Kyle MacMillan, Santa Fe's adventuresome operas include "Griselda" and "Wozzeck" (Denver Post, August 7) Lawrence A. Johnson, Vivaldi’s music and inspired cast trump bewildering plot in Santa Fe Opera’s “Griselda” (The Classical Review, August 5) Mark Swed, Vivaldi's 'Griselda' revived in Santa Fe (Los Angeles Times, August 1) Griselda at Santa Fe Opera (The Opera Tattler, July 30) John Stege, The Good Wife (Santa Fe Reporter, July 20) James M. Keller, SFO premiere of Vivaldi's 'Griselda' misfires (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 17)

It is true that this medieval story, about the faithful patience of a maligned wife, does not make much sense to a modern viewer. Boccaccio placed it last in his Decameron, at the end of a series of ten days in which the members of the Brigata told stories back and forth about the virtues of men and women, or lack thereof, in love and life. The story is told by one of the men, Dioneo -- on a day when another of the men, Pamfilo, "rules" as king -- and it exalts Griselda and shames her husband, Gualtiero, the Marchese of Saluzzo (a town in the Piedmont region). Having no thought of taking a wife until he is enjoined to do so by his vassals, Gualtiero marries a beautiful but common girl. Convinced he has no way to determine if she will be true and obedient to him always, he tests her devotion to him throughout the story, telling her that he has killed her children, pretending to take a new wife (who is, in truth, their own daughter, now in her teens), and forcing Griselda to work in the castle like a servant. She bears it all with humility, earning the love and respect of all, and is reinstated as Gualtiero's wife. The story was widely known, receiving adaptations by Geoffrey Chaucer (the Clerk's Tale in Canterbury Tales) and Charles Perrault (a rhymed conte called Griselidis, here in English translation).

The tale did not make much sense to an 18th-century mind either, so when Apostolo Zeno adapted the story as a libretto, he made the Italian marchese into the king of Thessaly, motivated to his brutal actions by the disapproval of his subjects for his low-born wife rather than just his own caprice. When Antonio Vivaldi was assigned the libretto for his first opera at Venice's Teatro San Samuele, he and his protegée Anna Girò, who created the title role, did not think much of Griselda's vaunted patience either. Carlo Goldoni recounted in his memoirs how Vivaldi asked him to make a new aria for Griselda, in which she does not patiently accept her husband's abuse but rails against it. Add to these many layers of meaning what Sellars saw in the opera, claiming that his staging aims to return the story to

Boccaccio, who regarded his parable of grace in the face of injustice and patience in a time when wrong appears to be triumphant, as a passion story in which the cleansing and redemptive power of suffering elevates a woman to the transcendent role of savior, healer, reconciler, and the divinely beloved.

Who knows on what evidence Sellars makes this claim: it is enough to understand that Sellars believes it. He makes the point by having Griselda, at the low point of her humiliation, sing the opening movement of Vivaldi's Stabat mater instead of Vivaldi's aria for that moment, Son infelice tanto.

Austin Pederson (supernumerary), Joaquin Gonzalez (supernumerary), Amanda Majeski (Ottone), Meredith Arwady (Griselda), Isabel Leonard (Costanza), Yuri Minenko (Corrado), Paul Groves (Gualtiero), and David Daniels (Roberto)in Griselda, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

Graffiti artist Gronk returned to Santa Fe with another colorful abstract mural (imagery of brush fires and rain localized the work) that served as backdrop, unfortunately clashing in eye-squinting ways with the loud costumes of Dunya Ramicova. The men in bright-colored tuxedos looked like they were attending a high school prom circa 1978. Thessaly was some sort of police state, ruled by the wealthy, signified by Gualtiero marching around in a polo uniform and boots. Sunglass-sporting bodyguards stood solidly to either side of Gualtiero, and machine gun-toting commandos regularly terrorized other characters, including Griselda, only then to release her from her handcuffs and go away. Laughter erupted at the sight of Griselda easily disarming Ottone by taking his gun, and at the sudden reversal of the opera's conclusion, which Sellars undermined by having Griselda, in her blue apron (like those worn by employees at Walmart), just stay on stage sweeping in disbelief during the final chorus, again to much laughter. Is Sellars harping on the string of class discrepancy, the marginalization of an immigrant underclass, the inequality of the sexes? The staging is too incoherent for us to know.

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 2 )

Preview

After a chamber concert prelude (review here), I am back in Salzburg for the festival, and this time for good… which is to say: more or less the rest of the festival. Even though Salzburg is only two shakes of a lamb’s tail away from my current cultural forward operation base, Munich, the cancellation of late trains has cut Salzburg off from daily in-and-out traffic. Staying away a-near gives a greater sense of special purpose to the festival attendance, one need never rush, and work productivity is higher than within one’s own four walls, too.

The weather typical Salzburg: Reasonably warm, sunshine, and rain which—just as typically—retreats again, just in time for the evening performances, and again just before the performances are over. German speakers believe St.Peter to be the chief culprit when it comes to rain… and him being of the approximating kind, the timing is not always perfect, which creates a spectacle of umbrellas popping up as colorful as an instantly blooming spring meadow. At three o’clock and at quarter to six you can, nay: are forced to observe the daily competitions among church towers who can ring the longest and the loudest, a spectacle also repeated every morning at quarter to nine, and on weekends at what feels like five in the morning, even if the official reading might suggest seven or eight.

That the Salzburg Festival is lots of fun to stay at even for those who are not at home with the Salzburgian self-proclaimed in-crowd, society’s crusty upper crust, is in some part due to the changes it has gone through in the decades since Karajan. It doesn’t exude the snobby air that it had (even at long distance to non-attendees), and its elitism is restricted to the quality of the offerings in that they tend to be superior.

The programs too, have changed considerably, and 2011 might well be the culmination of this trend. 2011 is a year of transition between the directorship of Jürgen Flimm (2006 – 2010) and the incoming festival director Alexander Pereira. The care-taker director is Markus Hinterhäuser—pianist (a Leonskaja and Maisenberg student) and increasingly artistic administrator—who has been responsible for the Festival’s concert series during Flimm’s regime and the biannual Zeitfluss series (1993 to 2001) when Gerard Mortier was at the helm.

In that behind-the-scenes position, he has been the most significant (and hopefully lasting) influence on the Salzburg Festival since Mortier himself. Modern and contemporary music are no longer the occasional occurrence, blip, or fig-leaf, but now a central part of the Festival. That move enlarged the Festival’s objective from merely keeping the flame and embalming musical culture to being a genuinely interesting source of musical stimuli even for those jaded by the parade of the conventional which remains an important, pleasing, perfectly legitimate staple of the festival.

Hinterhäuser, who can be seen pacing the Festival grounds, cigarette between the lips, head bent down, hair shaggy, like a pensive big cat from a Rilke poem, initiated the Kontinente series that has focused on one composer per Festival, allowing an unparalleled appreciation of their respective output: : Giacinto Scelsi in 2007 Hinterhäuser’s second year after re-joining the Salzburg team, then Salvatore Sciarrino, Edgar Varèse, and last year Wolfgang Rihm.

In this year between Intendants, he heads the Festival—with his air of reluctance and musical determination. Although a champion, programming and performance-wise, of contemporary music, he never once strikes as an ideologue (unlike some of the previous regular directors); he celebrates with music when it is embraced, understood, and loved. And suffers with it when it is wasted or neglected or presented with lacking enthusiasm. Hinterhäuser’s handwriting is all over the 2011 Festival, for the first time to this degree and for now for the last time. The Kontinente series receives a kind of retrospective celebration, “The Fifth Continent”. Nono’s Prometeo (performed in Salzburg at a 1993 Zeitfluss concert) returns now as a veteran work with (almost) main stream appeal, completely sold out now when twenty years ago it needed some gentle prodding to get people to dip their ears into this music.

Sciarrino’s Macbeth plays alongside the traditional highlight of the 2011 Festival, the Riccardo Muti / Peter Stein collaboration on Verdi’s Macbeth. Sasha Waltz presents a choreographed mélange of Varèse, Claude Vivier, and Iannis Xenakis (premiered last year in Zurich). Vivier gets another concert all to himself, Gerard Grisey and Morton Feldman share an evening as do John Cage (with the 1983 Ryoanji and the startling-excellent Georg Friedrich Haas mit “in vain for 24 instruments”. A night of Stockhausen and finally string quartets of Scelsi and G.F.Haas round out the series that brings more contemporary music together and to a considerably reater audience than some dedicated avant-guardish festivals. This is not your grandmother’s Salzburg anymore. Fortunately, comes to mind, because the prominent red flags along both sides of the State Bridge could be said to have been convenient after 1945, as only the logo needed to be switched out, while the spirit (so different from the founding ideals) remained.

Even if living music isn’t your main concern, 2011 bristles with highlights. To see Claus Guth’s complete Mozart/DaPonte trilogy in one summer is a treat. For me they present everything what intelligent-modern-conservative music theater should be, starting with the excellent Figaro (seen last night) and ending with the Don Giovanni I saw last year (2010 review here) in as nearly a perfect performance as I’ve experienced. The combination of Richard Strauss and Christian Thielemann would be a draw anywhere, but in the ambitious, difficult-to-cast, overlong, truly-literally fantastic Die Frau ohne Schatten (Strauss abbreviated the work to the cute, misleadingly diminutive “Frosch” – Frog), it’s especially tempting. Early reports—even from known Thielemann detractors—coming in suggest an unadulterated musical success that makes one easily overlook the dramatic irrelevance of the staging.

The 2010/11 double-anniversary of Mahler doesn’t leave the Salzburg Festival unscathed, either. But instead of mounting yet another cycle of the complete symphonies and perhaps the big song cycles, Hinterhäuser has arranged concerts under the heading “Mahler Scenes”. As part of WETA’s 2009 Mahler Month I wrote one (intended were two) short pieces that tried to grab Mahler by the influences on him and those he influenced (The Spheres of Mahler) and Mahler Szenen, does that, just better and filled with music. That includes the next particular joy for me, a performance of Hans Rott’s Symphony in E. (Paavo Järvi on Rott here; concert review from Järiv’s Frankfurt performance here.) Guest orchestras like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, regular Mozart Matinee’s, and a cycle of the complete Shostakovich String Quartets courtesy of the splendid Mandelring Quartet (WETA review here) in just two (!) days are to be looked forward to. Maurizio Pollini is a guest, of course, Viktoria Mullova and one of my favorite fortepianists, Kristian Bezuidenhout are performing together, I will hear Grigory Sokolov tonight (in Bach and Schumann), and Fazil Say will play the Rite of the Spring for four hands with his computerized self. Two concerts down, and twenty-six promising more to go.

Classical Month in Washington (October)

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Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
1 pm
Dvořák in the New World: Symposium and Lecture-Recital (Dr. Michael Beckerman, chair) [FREE]
Library of Congress

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
2 pm
Till Fellner, piano
WPAS
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
5 and 8 pm
Folger Consort
400th Anniversary of the King James Bible (with Cathedra)
Folger Shakespeare Library

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
John O'Conor, piano [FREE]
Music by Haydn, Field, Beethoven, Schubert
Washington Conservatory of Music
Westmoreland Congregational Church (Bethesda, Md.)

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
Music by Beethoven, Orff
With Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (conductor), Choral Arts Society
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Yan Pascal Tortelier (conductor), Horacio Gutierrez (piano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Ying Quartet
Candlelight Concert Society
Smith Theater, Howard Community College (Columbia, Md.)

October 1, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Philharmonic
Music by Corigliano, Beethoven
Music Center at Strathmore

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
2 pm
Folger Consort
400th Anniversary of the King James Bible (with Cathedra)
Folger Shakespeare Library

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Yan Pascal Tortelier (conductor), Horacio Gutierrez (piano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
National Philharmonic
Music by Corigliano, Beethoven
Music Center at Strathmore

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Philip Glass, piano
Phillips Collection

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
6 pm
What Makes It Great? Beethoven, Symphony No. 1
Peabody Chamber Orchestra (lecture-concert)
WPAS
National Museum of Natural History

October 2, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
NGA String Quartet [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

October 4, 2011 (Tue)
12:10 pm
Noontime Cantata: Ihr Menschen, ruhmet Gottes Liebe
Washington Bach Consort
Church of the Epiphany

October 4, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
Sonnambula Viol Consort
Royal Wedding: Music from Historic Renaissance Marriages
United Church (1920 G St. NW)

October 4, 2011 (Tue)
8 pm
Kelly Ker-Hackleman (piano) and Rochelle Oedemann (clarinet)
GMU Center for the Arts

October 5, 2011 (Wed)
12:10 pm
U.S. Army Chorus [FREE]
St. John's, Lafayette Square

October 5, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Yoko K., electronica
Mansion at Strathmore

October 6, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Storgårds (conductor), Gidon Kremer (violin)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 6, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Soheil Nasseri, Broadwood piano
Mansion at Strathmore

October 6, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
GMU Symphony and University Singers
Bernstein, MASS
GMU Center for the Arts

October 7, 2011 (Fri)
7 pm
Flight 93 Memorial Concert
IBIS Chamber Music Society
With Alessandra Marc, soprano
George Washington Masonic Memorial (Alexandria, Va.)

October 8, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Mariinsky Theater Orchestra
With Valery Gergiev (conductor), Daniil Trifonov (piano)
Music by Tchaikovsky
GMU Center for the Arts

October 8, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Storgårds (conductor), Gidon Kremer (violin)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 9, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Storgårds (conductor), Gidon Kremer (violin)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 9, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Left Bank Concert Society [FREE]
Music by Debussy, Dutilleux, Fauré
Smithsonian American Art Museum

October 9, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Phillips Camerata
Music by Gould, Weber
Phillips Collection

October 9, 2011 (Sun)
5:30 pm
St. Lawrence String Quartet
Shriver Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 9, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
NGA Orchestra / St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

October 10, 2011 (Mon)
8 pm
Sonny Rollins
WPAS
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 12, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Mathias Hausmann, baritone
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 13, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Lark Quartet with Yumi Kurosawa, koto [FREE]
Freer Gallery of Art

October 14, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Great Noise Ensemble
Mansion at Strathmore

October 14, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Verdi, Aida
Virginia Opera
GMU Center for the Arts

October 14, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Ahn Trio
Barns at Wolf Trap

October 15, 2011 (Sat)
6 pm
Emerson Quartet
Smithsonian Resident Associates
National Museum of Natural History

October 15, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
A Musical B&B: Bach and Brahms
Cantate Chamber Singers
St. John's Norwood

October 15, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Ji-Yoon Park, violin
Korean Concert Society
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 15, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Hugo Wolf Quartett
Music by Schubert, Schumann, Wolf
Dumbarton Concerts

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
1 and 3 pm
NSO Family Concert
Peter and the Wolf Live (with film by Suzie Templeton)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
2 pm
Verdi, Aida
Virginia Opera
GMU Center for the Arts

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Mark Hill (oboe) and Katherine Murdock (viola)
Clarice Smith Center

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
famaQ (string quartet)
Phillips Collection

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
"From the Top" with Christopher O'Riley [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

October 16, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
Ensemble Caprice
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

October 17, 2011 (Mon)
8 pm
Ensemble Caprice
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

October 18, 2011 (Tue)
8 pm
GMU Wind Symphony / Fairfax Wind Symphony
GMU Center for the Arts

October 19, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Riccardo Minasi (violin), Beiliang Zhu (cello), Kenneth Weiss (harpsichord)
La Maison Française

October 19, 2011 (Wed)
8 pm
Louis Lortie, piano [FREE]
Music of Liszt
Library of Congress

October 20, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Louis Langrée (conductor), James Ehnes (violin)
Music Center at Strathmore

October 21, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Louis Langrée (conductor), James Ehnes (violin)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 21, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Martha Graham Dance Company
GMU Center for the Arts

October 21, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Lieder Weekend
An die Musik Live (Baltimore, Md.)

October 22, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
New York Festival of Song
Vocal Arts D.C.
Marvin Center Theater

October 22, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Baltimore Lieder Weekend
An die Musik Live (Baltimore, Md.)

October 22, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Martin Bruns (baritone) and Christoph Hammer (keyboard) [FREE]
Library of Congress

October 22, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Louis Langrée (conductor), James Ehnes (violin)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 22, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra
GMU Center for the Arts

October 23, 2011 (Sun)
2 pm
Baltimore Lieder Weekend
An die Musik Live (Baltimore, Md.)

October 23, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Eclipse Chamber Orchestra
Music by Adamo, Boyce, Mendelssohn
George Washington Masonic Memorial (Alexandria, Va.)

October 23, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Olivier Cavé, piano
Phillips Collection

October 23, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
Hanson-Kong Piano Duo [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

October 23, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
Keyboard Conversations with Jeffrey Siegel: Liszt
GMU Center for the Arts

October 24, 2011 (Mon)
7:30 pm
Opera Lafayette
With Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor), Gaële LeRoi (soprano)
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 25, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
George Li, piano
Young Concert Artists
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 25, 2011 (Tue)
8 pm
Soloists from the Budapest Festival Orchestra, with Jenő Jandó (piano) [FREE]
Library of Congress

October 26, 2011 (Wed)
3 pm
Master Class with Trio con Brio Copenhagen [FREE]
Kreeger Museum

October 26, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Tokyo String Quartet
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

October 26, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Yoko K., electronica
Mansion at Strathmore

October 26, 2011 (Wed)
8 pm
Budapest Festival Orchestra
WPAS
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 27, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Lorin Maazel (conductor), Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 27, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
UMD Wind Ensemble [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Trio con Brio Copenhagen
Kreeger Museum

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Cathedral Choral Society
Glagolitic Mass, Te Deum
Washington National Cathedral

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
François-Frédéric Guy (piano) and Tedi Papavrami (violin)
Beethoven violin sonatas I
La Maison Française

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Daniel Hope, violin [FREE]
Library of Congress

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Lorin Maazel (conductor), Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Vasily Petrenko (conductor), Barry Douglas (piano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 28, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
UMD Symphony Orchestra
Clarice Smith Center

October 29, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
François-Frédéric Guy (piano) and Tedi Papavrami (violin)
Beethoven violin sonatas II
La Maison Française

October 29, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Vasily Petrenko (conductor), Barry Douglas (piano)
Music Center at Strathmore

October 29, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Genova and Dimitrov, duo piano [FREE]
Library of Congress

October 29, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Lorin Maazel (conductor), Simon Trpčeski (piano)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Vasily Petrenko (conductor), Barry Douglas (piano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Amerigo Trio
Phillips Collection

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
4 pm
Reston Chorale, Amadeus Orchestra, et al.
St. Luke Catholic Church (McLean, Va.)

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
5 pm
François-Frédéric Guy (piano) and Tedi Papavrami (violin)
Beethoven violin sonatas III
La Maison Française

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
5:30 pm
Christian Tetzlaff (violin) and Lars Vogt (piano)
Shriver Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
Genova and Dimitrov Piano Duo [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

October 30, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Ingrid Fliter, piano
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'Wozzeck'

Randall Bills (The Fool), Richard Paul Fink (Wozzeck), and Nicola Beller Carbone (Marie) in Wozzeck, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

The slot in the Santa Fe Opera season for a modern masterwork was taken by Alban Berg's ground-breaking opera Wozzeck. Wisely from a financial perspective, it receives only four performances: last night, the second of those four, had more empty seats than one is accustomed to seeing, many seats filled by the cast of other operas, and a handful of people left mid-opera in apparent disgust. As indisputably great as this opera is, some opera lovers want only their Verdi and Puccini. Equally shrewd in the present economic climate was the decision to revive Daniel Slater's critically acclaimed 2001 production of the opera. It is a brutal staging that takes some liberties with the way that Berg envisioned the libretto, but in a way that actually underscores the psychological developments of the story and helps illuminate it.

Richard Paul Fink and Eric Owens both made pleasing debuts in Santa Fe, as Wozzeck and the sadistic Doctor, respectively, neither so striking to be singled out but both strong. German soprano Nicola Beller Carbone, also in her company debut, was a strident, lustful Marie, a voice that was not always pleasing, growling at the bottom and often ugly at the top. Her native German pronunciation stood out in a cast that struggled to make the text comprehensible. The strongest performances came from the large-framed, bravura-strong Drum Major of Stuart Skelton (his brutal smack-down of Wozzeck in the barracks scene, choreographed by Jonathan Rider, was particularly vicious) and the twitching, self-parodying Captain of Robert Brubaker, all neurotic falsetto, angry shouts, and intense fear. Patricia Risley's Margret and especially former apprentice Jason Slayden's Andres were a little underpowered but dramatically effective.

Nicola Beller Carbone (Marie), Stuart Skelton (Drum Major), and Chamber Orchestra (Santa Fe Opera Orchestra Members) in Wozzeck, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

In the most striking company debut of all, David Robertson was a commanding presence at the podium, weaving together the singers -- whom he cued, distractingly, by mouthing most of their words -- and the complex orchestral score with savvy and much obvious study of the music. Robertson, formerly in Lyon and now music director of the Saint Louis Symphony, has a way with 20th-century music, and the situation was no different here, with all of the nuances of this beautifully orchestrated score given careful attention. For all the opera's dissonant psychological brutality, it was the lush suavity of many scenes -- Marie's music in Act I and the red moon orchestral interlude in Act III, for example -- that stood out.

The staging opens in silence, as Wozzeck is confronted on the stage by the entire chorus of anonymous faces, setting the background of the social anxiety and paranoia the character is going to experience. Before the first downbeat of music, there is a sense of unease and hostility, which only increases in both the score and Slater's direction. At the end of Act II, scene 4, there is a two-line interaction between Wozzeck and Der Narr (an Idiot, credited here as The Fool), who says that he can smell blood (the smell of a skunk's spray had serendipitously begun to waft through the theater a few moments before Der Narr sang "Aber es riecht"). Slater expands this character, played malevolently by Randall Bills, into a mute presence through the end of the opera, shadowing Wozzeck as if his personality had literally split in two. The Fool shows Wozzeck the knife and how to cut Marie's throat, and he seems to be taking Wozzeck's place at some points in the action. His face is covered in white paint, and as Wozzeck's paranoia and the sound of the voices in his head increases, the entire cast becomes zombie-like with white face makeup as well (perhaps going too far over the top in the frantic third scene of the final act).

Other Articles: Sarah Bryan Miller, Robertson drives a riveting 'Wozzeck' (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 11) Kyle MacMillan, Santa Fe's adventuresome operas include "Griselda" and "Wozzeck" (Denver Post, August 7) Lawrence A. Johnson, Fink a tour de force in Santa Fe’s riveting “Wozzeck” (The Classical Review, August 4) Sarah Noble, The view from here: opera in Santa Fe (Limelight Magazine, August 4) John Stege, Shock Therapy (Santa Fe Reporter, August 3) Mark Swed, David Robertson conducts 'Wozzeck' in Santa Fe (Los Angeles Times, August 2) Brian Holt, Death and the Maiden (Out West Arts, July 31)

This is only the most prominent part of the staging that departs from Berg's libretto. In the third scene, the onstage ensemble of chamber musicians -- in the exact formation of Schoenberg's op. 9 Kammersymphonie, Berg's tribute to his teacher -- is costumed as the other musicians of the Drum Major's military band. The conversation between Marie and Wozzeck, which is supposed to happen on the street, occurs through the closed door of the flat, as Marie is mid-tryst with the Drum Major, serenaded by the chamber symphony. The other onstage musicians -- a sort of folk band that plays a Mahler-like Ländler and a badly tuned bar piano -- were handled in more conventional ways. The set is a single vertiginous trapezoidal box, raked upward toward the vista at the back of the stage and enclosed by wires at the top: receding sections of the set began to tilt at jagged angles as Wozzeck's paranoia closed in (sets, as well as costumes, by Robert Innes Hopkins). Queasy green and blood-red lighting (designed by Rick Fisher) heightened the most terrifying moments of this often gruesome staging, the first triumph of the Santa Fe Opera season.

This opera will be repeated on August 12 and 17.

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'La Bohème'

David Lomelí (Rodolfo) in La Bohème, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

The programming formula at Santa Fe Opera generally calls for two opera chestnuts, one 20th-century classic, one world or American premiere, and one Baroque or wild card opera. The company took a bit of a risk with one of the chestnut choices this season, its first production of Gounod's Faust, but ticket sales do not appear to have been affected by a problematic production (it receives a total of ten performances). The other warhorse is a no-brainer, a revival of the 2007 production of Puccini's La Bohème (reviewed by Michael Lodico), which at eleven performances, all of them likely to sell out, is the most-performed opera at Santa Fe this summer. The results do not have to be extraordinary, or even all that good, for tickets to move.

As heard last night, under a menacing, dark-clouded, and lightning-streaked sky, the cast was, with a few exceptions, excellent. David Lomelí's Rodolfo made the biggest splash, in his Santa Fe debut: a winner of the 2006 Operalia Competition, the Mexican tenor sang with heroic poise, with seemingly boundless energy and control, and is definitely a singer to watch. The only limitations were visual, in that he was a little stiff on stage, his hands often in his pockets, but he came across as an innocent, slightly lumpy romantic. Matching him was the refined Marcello of former Santa Fe apprentice Corey McHern, less so the dramatically easy, if slightly silly and not vocally weighty Schaunard of Keith Phares. Numbered also among the revelations was the robust, rich Colline of Christian Van Horn. With each performance of this opera, Colline's Act IV coat aria, Vecchia zimarra, is becoming my favorite moment in the score, and Van Horn's stalwart tone and powerful low notes certainly continued that trend. In fact, Van Horn was squandered a bit in this opera, when he could have been cast as Méphistophélès in Faust.

(L to R) David Lomelí (Rodolfo), Markus Beam (Schaunard), Thomas Hammons (Benoit), Christian Van Horn (Colline), and Corey McKern (Marcello) in La Bohème, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

Although we have admired the voice of soprano Ana María Martínez before, she did not sound quite in command of the role of Mimi, although definitely not as outclassed as she was by Butterfly in Washington last season. There was much to admire, especially exquisitely controlled decrescendos on high notes to pianissimo and heft on loud high notes, and she was a lovely and fragile Mimi. Heidi Stober had some hits at Wolf Trap a few years ago, but her Musetta was the least pleasing of the leads, overly coy, too self-indulgent in tempo and phrasing, and then underpowered when she needed to bite like a viper. Former Santa Fe apprentice Thomas Hammons, who had a hilarious turn in L'Elisir d'Amore here in 2009, was equally zany as the bumbling landlord, Benoit.

Other Articles: Sarah Bryan Miller, Somebody should feed 'La Boheme' director some downers (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9) Lawrence A. Johnson, Gleaming vocalism from two leads makes for a powerful “Boheme” in Santa Fe (The Classical Review, August 3) John Stege, Passionless in Paris (Santa Fe Reporter, July 13) Warwick Thompson, DiDonato Elopes to Vegas, Rages Against Arts Cuts: Interview (Bloomberg News, July 11) James M. Keller, In SFO's 'La bohème,' Ana María Martínez in full bloom as Mimi (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 3)

The staging, by Paul Curran, is nothing special but it gets the job done quite well. Kevin Knight's set alternates between a sharply angled corner background for the artists' garret and a large V-shaped space for the crowd scenes, all of it rather grim. The crowd scenes were manic, a little over-active but engaging, and the chorus, down to the children (Susanne Sheston was chorus master), sang well and forthrightly, giving verve to the visual pageantry. Curran chose not to update the setting from the gritty 19th century of Henry Mürger's Scènes de la vie de bohème, one of my favorite books in the Paris Reading Project, avoiding some of the embarrassing excesses of Washington National Opera's production, for example. As he also showed in his 2008 production of Billy Budd, Curran gave careful thought to the movements and emotional reactions of the characters, making the comic relief scenes of the artists' quartet and especially the tragic conclusion believable and emotive. Close attention to the details of the libretto and score pay off in this sort of directing, rather than trying to overlay an opera with whatever philosophical or political ideas happen to be in your head at the time.

The lovely mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was in the house last night, to see the Santa Fe Opera conducting debut of her husband, Leonardo Vordoni. The couple met here in Santa Fe, during that memorable Laurent Pelly production of Massenet's Cendrillon in 2006, in a whirlwind romance. Vordoni may be a good conductor, but you could not tell it from this performance, which was a bit of a jumble, the sense of ensemble discombobulation more pronounced perhaps by comparison to the refined and precise version by Lorin Maazel heard earlier this summer at the Castleton Festival. Singers, both soloists and chorus, veered off regularly in their own directions, and the orchestra that had sounded so confident the night before, under Frédéric Chaslin, seemed tentative and a bit off-kilter. Without some incisive ideas from the podium about the score, singers made many of the decisions, making the end of the Act III duet, for example, drag out to an exasperating degree.

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'Faust'

Faust, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

This week at Santa Fe Opera, the first with all five of the season's productions rolling, began last night with the company's first attempt at Charles Gounod's Faust. Gounod's opera is many leagues away from Goethe's source play (Part 1 | Part 2), and its metaphysical conclusion is no Mahler eighth symphony (see my preview article for much more background on the opera). That being said, it can be a rather satisfying night at the opera, which unfortunately last night's performance was not quite.

The high point of the evening was the playing of the orchestra, whose wind section in particular sounded unified, well-balanced, and colorful but in tune in the many beautiful solos and group moments in Gounod's beautifully orchestrated score. Conductor Frédéric Chaslin, in his first season as chief conductor of the Santa Fe Opera, gave the score plenty of room to breathe, not forcing any tempos too fast (in direct contrast to the work of Antonio Pappano under review last week), indeed prevailing on some of the more hasty singers to slow down and not rush things. Rubati and every little swell and other detail in the score were attended to, but not overdone. The string sound was suave, with some lovely solos, and Chaslin kept the overall sound beneath the singers, except where such a thing was impossible, due to the lack of projection from some in the cast.

The best singing came from lower down the cast list, beginning with the magnificent Siébel of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Holloway, with velour-smooth legato and shining high notes in the character's two poignant arias in Acts III ("Faites-lui mes aveux") and IV. She was also just as convincingly male as she was as Le Prince Charmant in the 2006 Cendrillon, and her character seemed to be as much in love with Valentin, Marguerite's brother (a mostly ineffectual Matthew Worth), as he was with Marguerite. Potent mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton had a witty turn in the minor role of Marthe, and she could have stolen the show with a larger role. The chorus was hale and hearty, especially the men in the famous soldiers chorus, and the ghostly ppp singing at the death of Valentin was heartbreaking.

Walpurgisnacht, Faust, Santa Fe Opera, 2011 (photo by Ken Howard)

The Marguerite of soprano Ailyn Pérez was coquettish and charming, a pretty enough sound with a pure high pianissimo, but lacking zing and power when the role needed it, as in the final statements of Marguerite's prayer ("Anges purs, anges radieux"). Hers was an acceptable, certainly pleasant performance but not a particularly noteworthy one. Intonation suffered, worst on her final high note, which skewed unpleasantly sharp, a deficiency noted of her Countess at Wolf Trap in 2006. The Faust of tenor Bryan Hymel was somewhat better, with the high notes the role requires, but not really pretty or thrilling (when you are assigned Salut, demeure chaste et pure, you should not be outshone by the violin solo, beautiful except for the closing high notes). At the bottom of the list, perversely, was a murky Méphistophélès from Mark S. Doss, whose tone was so swallowed that he was covered most of the night by the orchestra. Apprentice Darik Knutsen, in the small role of Wagner, seemed intent on singing with his own private sense of rhythm.

Other Reviews: Sarah Bryan Miller, A needlessly updated 'Faust' with first-rate music (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 10) Scott Cantrell, A perplexing ‘Faust’ in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2) Lawrence A. Johnson, Stylish production lifts a variable cast in Santa Fe Opera’s “Faust” (The Classical Review, August 2) John Stege, Devil in the Details (Santa Fe Reporter, July 6)

Stephen Lawless, given the golden opportunity to create the first Faust in Santa Fe, delivered a staging that was as over the top as his 2009 Elixir of Love, but in all the wrong places. Updating the action to 19th-century Paris: Marguerite sits at a sewing machine instead of a spinning wheel, Méphistophélès is costumed like an undertaker or surgeon, periodically injecting people with poisons, and he gave the city scenes in Act II a grotesque circus-like atmosphere (costumes by Sue Willmington). Display cases with misfits and freaks of various kinds rolled out from the wings (sets by Benoit Dugardyn), leaving the chorus with very little to do and little room in which to do it, amid the crowd of supernumeraries (including roller skaters, Marguerite among them, in the waltz scene). By the time we got to the Walpurgisnacht scene in Act V, with the ballet music restored, there was nowhere to go. Dancers playing six of the great opera seductresses (Manon, Salome, Carmen, etc.) minced around unconvincingly (choreography by Nicola Bowie), but by this point the devil's bag of tricks was spent. If there was ever a reason why the ballet music should be cut from a staging of Gounod's Faust, this was it. A self-propelled organ in the cathedral scene, rolling around and playing on its own after Méphistophélès warms it up, was silly and only drew unwanted attention to the awful canned organ sound from the pit.

Chinati Foundation in Marfa

One of the places I have wanted to visit for a long time, since reading about it the first time in the 1990s, is Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, which opened in 1986. For those not acquainted with the place, it is a special collection of minimalist art (like most minimalists, of both the artistic and musical varieties, Judd bristled at the label), constructed as a sort of permanent archive in the buildings of what used to be a military base, Fort D.A. Russell, in Marfa, Tex. Judd put into words his philosophy behind making a shrine to the art made by him and other artists like John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, and eventually others, writing:

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. [...] Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.

In the time that Judd spent in southern California and then here in West Texas, he was influenced artistically by the desert, its clean lines and colors. On the properties that he bought in and around Marfa, he was also interested in preserving the land in a pristine state. He spent time restoring, but also improving aesthetically, the land he bought (including a vast ranch, still not open to the public) as a place in which to sink and incorporate his art and the art of others he admired. This puts Judd somewhere at the intersection of minimalism and land art, since he prepared or at least considered the setting, existing buildings and surrounding terrain, and placed his art into it. Last week, I finally had a chance to appreciate what he did firsthand.

In a sense the process behind Chinati is a variation on what cathedral builders did or what city planners have done to orient civic life to the contours of a locale. Judd had no religious motivation in his art, Western, Eastern, or anything else, but what he was trying to do was to tap into something timeless. The two most important permanent installations on the base -- Judd's 100 aluminum boxes and Flavin's six barracks full of fluorescent light sculptures -- have an eternal, even religious architectural character to them. The idea of long narrow architectural spaces -- two munitions sheds for the aluminum boxes, the U-shaped double-tunnel barracks buildings for the light bulbs -- in which the structure can interact with light both natural and, in Flavin's case, most unnatural, is familiar to anyone who has entered a Gothic cathedral for example. Judd and Flavin wanted to exalt, sanctify, set apart their own ideas, rather than the idea of a deity of any sort.

As Tyler Green has written, in his review of Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd and an account of his visit in 2005, a visit to Chinati is one of the least hospitable ways of viewing art. The sheds and barracks are not climate controlled, the temperature outdoors can exceed 100 degrees, and one is expected to walk through the dust and, although we did not encounter any as Tyler reportedly did, by rattle snakes. We did see a couple local pronghorn antelope, cooling off under a tree, and most unusually there was an afternoon rain storm. This has plenty of historical resonance, too, as far as examples of arduous journeys undertaken to experience important art, from drawings made in deep, distant caves to the hike up the cliff at Rocamadour to see the Black Virgin.

Some of the grasp at infinity in the major Judd and Flavin works at Chinati is mathematical, the numbers -- of colors, objects, rows, proportions of length and height and width -- that create a sense of visual harmony. The impersonality of the art -- Judd only designed the specifications of the boxes, for example, which were cut and assembled of mill aluminum and left as unmodified as possible, without polishing or other changes -- may seem distancing at first, but the installations leave many things to chance or reveal the hand of the artists, such as the less than straight-lined placement of some of the boxes. The imagery that kept coming to mind was similarly geometrical, the symmetrical vision of the Empyrean described by Dante at the end of Paradiso, a mathematically symmetrical ordering of the powers of heaven, the perfect gyration of the spheres of the heavens mirroring the turning of God himself, shown metaphorically as three joined circles. Mathematics imply both certitude on one hand but also ineffability: Dante cannot quite say what he understood of this final vision of the Trinity, and he uses the impossibility of "squaring the circle," that is, the geometric conundrum of attempting, with only a compass and straight edge, to create a circle and square of exactly the same area (something that is still accepted as an unsolvable problem). The object of the search for a vocabulary of the eternal is quite different, but the way of arriving there is similar.

The other installations at Chinati are far less successful. Judd's outdoor concrete boxes, lined up on the grounds in an arc paralleling the layout of the base, recall nothing quite so much as neolithic dolmens, but they are hideously ugly in their machine squareness. Richard Long's Lava Circles, left on a concrete slab almost like an afterthought, and Judd's Arena building nearby seem trite. Ingólfur Arnarrson's untitled white-on-white installation out-Judds Donald Judd but seems only a sad satire of the vision that is so compelling at Chinati. Ilya Kabakov's tongue-in-cheek recreation of a Soviet-era school, left like a painstakingly maintained artificial time capsule, provides some much-needed levity, as do John Wesley's fleshy, cartoonish, and sometimes naughty paintings.

A permanent Robert Irwin installation is still in the works at Chinati, with a Flavin-derived fluorescent light bulb piece on temporary display as a possible fundraiser. Carl Andre's cabinets of word art, texts diced up and catalogued with draftsman-like results, recall the experiments of Gertrude Stein and the OuLiPo writers. Andre's new sculpture installation, recently reviewed in the New York Times, had the most beautiful reaction to the brief rainstorm that passed over Marfa on the day of my visit last week, cold raindrops falling on its rusting metal. Our guide kindly let us carefully look through the accompanying temporary installation, which was about to be packed up and sent away, of wooden and steel pieces by Andre. John Chamberlain's crushed metal sculptures, in the depot by the railroad tracks in Marfa itself, seemed a world away from Chinati, their automotive and industrial origins too evocative of the regular world.