In Brief: Online Music Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• In online video this week, Sandrine Piau and Detlef Roth in Mozart duos with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. [Cité de la musique Live]


• Listen to Vivaldi's opera Farnace with Vivica Genaux, among others, and the ensemble I Barrochisti with Diego Fasolis conducting. [France Musique]


• Hear Italian pianist Béatrice Rana, the winner of the first prize at this year's Concours de Montréal. [France Musique]


• See how Leonard Slatkin is doing in his new position with the Orchestre National de Lyon, in a performance with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. [Medici.tv]


• Daniele Gatti leads a performance of Mahler's ninth symphony, with the Orchestre National de France at the Théâtre du Châtelet. [France Musique]


• Madrigals by Monteverdi, Diego Ortiz, and Adriano Banchieri with Ensemble Sagittarius at the Festival Sinfonia en Périgord. [France Musique]


• More video, of Bach's Magnificat from the Festival d'Ambronay. [ARTE Live Web]


• A rare Te Deum by Jan-Dismas Zelenka from the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, with Collegium vocale 1704. [France Musique]


• Listen to François-Frédéric Guy playing Franz Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S.173, at the Festival de l’Eté musical d'Horrues. [France Musique]


• Watch the winners of the ARD Competition in concert. [ARTE Live Web]


• From the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, Renaud Capuçon playing Korngold's violin concerto with the Orchestre du Festival de Gstaad. France Musique]


• Listen to the Hagen Quartett, playing a concert in Schwetzingen. [France Musique]

Czeching In

See my review of the latest concert from the Mutual Inspirations Festival in today's Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Czech Embassy celebrates 170th anniversary of Dvořák’s birth
Washington Post, September 17, 2011

Dvořák, Moravian Duets, op. 32, Prague Chamber Choir

Czech composer Antonín Dvořák famously spent several years in the United States during the 1890s. The Embassy of the Czech Republic celebrates the connection — and what would be the composer’s 170th birthday — with a Mutual Inspirations Festival. The festival continued Thursday with a performance by members of Washington Musica Viva.

The Dvořák on the program was the “Moravian Duets,” op. 32. In these charming, simple pieces, Dvořák used the words of folk songs, mostly substituting his melodies and harmonies for the original music. They were instantly popular, and they have the same spring-meadow freshness today. Soprano Elizabeth Kluegel and mezzo-soprano Karyn Friedman had an admirable blend of vocal tone color, important because the parts are often joined in pleasing harmonies. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Dvořák’s music to be celebrated in two-month festival (Washington Post, September 2)

Abingdon Plantation

When Central Park was created, in the middle of Manhattan, it was not an already empty space. One of the losses was an African-American village, currently being excavated and researched. There have been similar discoveries of this long-ignored part of American history only now receiving this sort of historical protection. Purely by chance, while returning a rental car to National Airport last month, I happened on a historical monument to what used to occupy most of the land of that airport, Abingdon Plantation, the birthplace of Nelly Custis Lewis, the adopted granddaughter of George Washington. In an easily missed space between two parking garages are the ruins of the main plantation building, which during the course of its history was owned by members of the Alexander family, for whom Alexandria is named. On the various markers placed there by the airport authority, the lineages of the owning families are displayed, but there is no mention if slaves lived there or not. One assumes that slaves were part of this plantation: the owner at the time of the Civil War served in the Confederate Army, although the Union occupied Alexandria and used it a base to take in slaves escaping the south. Alexandria was one of the farthest points north in the American slave trade before that. The Library of Congress has chilling photographs, available online, of slave pens in Alexandria, on the property of slave dealers Price Birch & Co., in the 1300 block of Duke Street.

American society (and government at all levels) needs to take steps to make sure that we save and protect as much historical information as we can about the history of slavery in the United States. I cannot recommend highly enough the work that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has done, in programs aired on PBS, to help African-Americans learn about the history of their families going back into slavery -- and sometimes not. The Virginia Historical Society has recently taken a step in the right direction by launching a new database, called Unknown No Longer, "to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent." It is a work in progress at the moment, containing around 1,500 names, but there is much more information to be gained from scouring historical documents. More slaves were reportedly held in Virginia than in any other state.

Photo: "J. J. Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, S.C." (photograph by Timothy O'Sullivan), showing a group of black men and women in front of the slave quarters, Library of Congress

More Art Ramblings

So the de Kooning exhibit is a must, opening at the Museum of Modern Art on the 18th, but there's much more to see! As I was strolling around Chelsea, fashion week was in full fling. Skinny, chain smoking girls and boys where everywhere. Admittedly there where some stunningly beautiful girls mixed in, but what a freaky world they inhabit; that said, a fitting mix for the Chelsea art scene.

And speaking of art, Anne Neely's dripping, glowing, and otherwise manipulated paintings at Lohin Geduld brought me back for a second look. Very nice, complex surfaces. My Vermont neighbor Anne Pibal's small acrylic-on-aluminum wonders at Meulensteen are great: loving the washy backgrounds on some of them. Courtesy of the Pace Gallery, David Byrne has a huge bulging, inflatable earth sculpture with sound stuck in a garage on 28th Street? Lots of photo-ops with models when I was there.

Nick Cave is back at Jack Shainman with his new fashion week-friendly show, Forever-After. His sound suits, which he calls visual landscapes, camouflage the body, concealing race, gender, and class; they're amazing, beautifully crafted, yet as usual, a little creepy. The video of dancing suits is fun to watch. Digitally manipulated art can be cold and impersonal, and yes -- admit it -- we're all guilty sometimes. With new paintings at Jeff Bailey Kris Chatterson manages to manipulate his imagery and still keep his surfaces hands-on and painterly.

So many 9/11 tributes and I will admit I went underground this past week; however, Woodward Gallery has an interesting take, Charting Ground Zero: ten years after. The exhibit uses aerial shots with cartographic representation, laser imaging, and GPS tagging. It's as complex and impersonal as it sounds, until the image of the GPS locations of remains, fire equipment, and plane parts. Ten years later it's still unfathomable.

I think Alex Katz probably made a good decision moving from Pace to Gavin Brown. Not only is he now the big fish, but his paintings look great in the space. Nicole Etienne, at Sloan Fine Art, is all fantastical and dreamy: good shows, always worth a stop. Sloan's lease is up, and they may be moving to a new location -- watch their site. I happen to be quite proud of myself: I can finally find my way around the LES galleries without a map; well, I peek.

Loren Munk may be better known for his James Kalm Rough Cuts of gallery openings on his YouTube site, but his show up at Lesley Heller should qualify him as a master historian of the New York art world. His paintings or painted maps of the studio locations of art stars, both past and present, are quite thorough and entertaining. He could have a book in this somewhere or, maybe better, a game app.

Looking forward to Agnes Martin at Pace Gallery, opening the 15th, and Degas is coming to Boston. Brace yourselves, Beantown, the buses are coming!

The Full de Kooning

If ever there were a list for immigration, poster boy Willem de Kooning could be an honorable mention. He didn't immigrate as an established artist, as many Europeans did, fleeing World War II. He came in 1926, with a student's academic portfolio -- a good one -- in search of the long-legged American women he had been lusting for in the Netherlands. Those same caricatures that would later play such a powerful role in his most important paintings.

The Museum of Modern Art's new exhibit de Kooning: A Retrospective brings together an amazing collection of some 200 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture from 100 private and museum collections, tracing seven decades up to his last paintings of the late 1980s. It's a masterful feat of scouring and culling by curator John Elderfield and his team. Some desired works were too fragile to loan: one from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was too good to travel -- true story.

When we think of de Kooning and the image of the hard-drinking womanizer, he is part of a gang of guys associated with the New York School, which includes the serial womanizer Jackson Pollack -- the original mad men of the art world. Not like Picasso's embrace of women -- literally, as he would anything with a pulse -- de Kooning's depictions showed vulnerability, fear, mistrust; sexual confusion? I think so. I won't linger here as there are far more gifted interpreters than I here and here.

This is one of those must-see exhibits that will only be seen at MoMA. It's filled with rarely seen gems and, what's best for me, the drawings -- amazing drawings. Through de Kooning's drawings we get to see the master at work, always searching, always experimenting, never afraid of change; the immigrant's experience.

More images from the exhibit on my flickr. This Carol Vogel piece in the NY Times discusses the influences of  the era on the artist. The black and white series may have a Casper the Friendly Ghost connection.

World Doctors Orchestra: "With wings I will soar upwards"

See my review of the September 11 memorial concert by the World Doctor Orchestra:

World Doctors Orchestra (The Washingtonian, September 14):

Mahler, Symphony No. 2, C. Schäfer, M. DeYoung, Vienna Philharmonic, P. Boulez

The World Doctors Orchestra, composed of physicians who are all devoted amateur musicians from around the world, came together in Washington last week for the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. It was both a concert honoring those who lost their lives in the twin towers and a benefit for Whitman-Walker Health. A local glut of other memorial concerts for the September 11 anniversary, most of them free, was likely the cause of the unfortunately large number of empty seats in the hall, but the idea behind the WDO certainly ennobled the undertaking. No one with discerning ears would ever have mistaken the playing of the group for that of a professional orchestra, but perfection of sound was not ultimately the point. Amateur musicians gave their time and talent with the goal of honoring those who died and of raising money to support a local healthcare cause.

The program of music selected was too long, making for an overtaxing three-hour concert, enough to do my head in at the end of a day full of heavy remembrance in Washington. It would have been preferable, surely, to cut the opening work: Barber’s beautiful but cliché-ridden Adagio for Strings, and perhaps also the Mozart violin concerto (Number Five in A major), thrown in for good measure. The light-hearted nature of the Mozart undermined the weightier message of Mahler’s Second Symphony, which was waiting in the second half.

[Continue reading]

This review is a Washingtonian exclusive.

From the 2011 ARD Competition, Day 11

September 9^th, Organ Finals, Part II

Playing on the grand 1985 Klais Organ of the Philharmonic Hall of the Gasteig, the four young organists Lukas Stollhof, Michael Schöch, Johannes Lang, and Anna-Victoria Baltrusch came together for the second part of the organ finale for four performances of the Hindemith Concerto for Organ and Chamber Orchestra, op.46 no.2 (1927), a.k.a. Kammermusik 7, not to be mistaken for his Concerto for Organ from 1962, as I found out when I looked at the score and the notes didn’t match what was being played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sebastian Tewinkel. They were an integral part of making the four performance continuously diverting, which is—not to take too much of a dig at Hindemith—a great compliment.

P.Hindemith, Kammermusik, Chailly / RCO Decca [FYI: Chailly is set to record a new set of Kammermusik with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.]

The first candidate of a day, especially when it involves a work one doesn’t know well and perhaps an instrument with which one isn’t on very intimate terms, serves largely to get to know both. That role fell to Lukas Stollhof, the oldest and most experienced of the candidates. He worked his way through a lively and pleasant first movement, with liberal—frankly distracting—use of the swell for dynamic variation. The second movement sounded like organ and orchestra mutually accompanying each other and with neither taking up the case of the music. At its best, it’s truly a chamber work for winds and organ, with the flute and oboe duetting with the organ, after which the rest of the winds and eventually the horns enter.

Michael Schöch put the performance into perspective. One of the students of Munich organ professor and member of the ARD competition’s jury, Edgar Krapp, he gave more of a pulse to the first movement, more rigor, and more horizontal pull which resulted in, ironically, a great flow. He dealt with dynamic issues through nicely subtle registration that eschewed abrupt blocks of sound… and his third movement showed first signs of humor, not pretentiousness as it had with the first candidate. The painfully obvious better registration might be considered a by-product home field advantage, though a (slightly sleazy) article in the local paper insinuated foul play by Krapp—who knows all three organs on which the candidates performed very well and whose students were very successfully in making the initial cut—and his fellow jury member from Munich, custodian of the Gasteig organ, Friedemann Winklhofer. Local storm in a teacup, for the most part.

Johannes Lang and Anna-Victoria Baltrusch are not students (former or current) of Krapp, nor overly familiar with the Gasteig’s (or Music Academy’s) organ, and their registrations were considerably better, too. The former still worked the first movement mainly through the swell, which I find off-putting, but the second movement was indeed “Very slow and very calm”, beautifully, subtly registered, with a nice give-and-take—albeit not quite as seamless and grayer, more homogenous than Schöch’s. The last movement, suggested ♪ = up to 184, was taken slower, with wit penetrating even into the registration. Mlle. Baltrusch substituted daring for wit, and threw herself at the first and third movement with buoyancy, meticulous registration work, and a stern, grand, brilliant ring to it, especially in the finale where the winds and brass of the chamber-sized Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sebastian Tewinkel must have felt the challenge. Her second movement—this the exception—was flexible, gentle, and slightly boring. The audience reacted with astonishment that their favorite, audience prize winner Lang, did not even receive a third prize which went to Stollhof. Second went to Mlle. Baltrusch, and the first—this one hardly controversial—to Schöch.

Thrilling 'Attila' from WCO

See my review of Washington Concert Opera's performance of Verdi's Attila:

Excellent “Attila” at Lisner Auditorium (The Washingtonian, September 12):

Verdi, Attila, S. Ramey, C. Studer, N. Shicoff, La Scala, R. Muti

As previewed last week, Washington Concert Opera kicked off the opera season on Friday night with an outstanding concert performance of Verdi’s Attila. Like most early Verdi operas, the work has its dramatic and musical longueurs, but Attila already shows the composer’s finely honed sense of dramatic tension, with two particularly memorable entrances, for Attila and then for Odabella, in the first act. Even at this point in his career, Verdi was also striving to make Italian opera conventions, like always having a slow-paced aria (cavatina) followed by a fast-paced one (cabaletta), fit more convincingly into his opera’s dramatic structure. Certainly, when sung as well as it was in this performance, Attila can be an excellent night at the opera.

Bass-baritone John Relyea had the necessary snarl and vocal brawn for the title role, menacing but also showing greater range and variety in the dream scene, for example. Top billing, however, goes to soprano Brenda Harris, who gave a gutsy, sharp-edged, virtuosic rendition of Odabella, one of Verdi’s more demanding roles. The composer wrote for a dramatic soprano with sizzling voltage on the top, brute strength, and agility in fast passages, all of which Harris had in spades as well as a regal stage presence. She also had the other side of the package, giving Odabella’s gloomy slow aria in Act I a tender quality, with intense control over a silky pianissimo tone and overall excellent intonation. This is a voice to be reckoned with, although her recent and upcoming stage appearances, somewhat surprisingly, are mostly with smaller American companies. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Washington Concert Opera scores with Verdi’s ‘Attila’ (Washington Post, September 12)

Emily Cary, Relyea adds Attila to his list of operatic villains (Washington Examiner, September 8)