Poppea: Alden in Barcelona

C. Monteverdi, L'Incoronazione di Poppea, M. Persson, S. Connolly, J. Domènech, F.-J. Selig, Gran Teatre del Liceu, H. Bicket (released on May 29, 2012) Opus Arte OA1073D | 3h03

One can count on David Alden to create striking, sometimes indelible images in his opera productions. Who could forget the leopard pincushions in his Radamisto in Santa Fe, or the Angelica as Paris Hilton in his Orlando in Munich? Alden's notorious production of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea, which debuted in Cardiff and Munich (reviewed in live CD format last week) and later went to Paris, was recorded in the 2009 revival at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

Alden gives us one of those indelible images right at the first scene of the prologue, when the character of Fortune climbs up a staircase toward a bright red couch at center stage. The goddesses wear enormous platform shoes, with Fortune sporting a bald cap and lacy parasol and Virtue, aged, hobbling on crutches with her neck supported by a brace as if she had just been in a rear-end collision (costumes by Buki Shiff). The gods are all absurd, with costumes right out of horror and space movies: Mercurio as the Mummy with winged platform boots, exiting by falling into a hole; Pallas is like one of the sexy aliens who might have seduced Captain Kirk. For the first two acts the opera takes place in a sort of office building atrium or parking structure (sets by Paul Steinberg). In the opening scene a large street lamp protrudes from the wall, and Amore, with large bronze wings, sits atop a revolving door. This is whimsical enough for the prologue, which could take place just about anywhere, but then there is no set change for the opening of Act I, as Ottone walks in with a bouquet of flowers. He lies down on the sofa, folded out into a sort of bed, with the two guards asleep on it, and in the space of a few seconds, the staging turns mostly nonsensical.

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Wer ist Walton?

William Walton’s symphonies and concertos are relative rarities on concert programs—especially outside English speaking countries. So when his First Symphony, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, popped up on the calendar of the Munich Philharmonic, just two weeks after they performed Walton’s Violin Concerto, it was a very pleasant surprise. (Even more surprising might be that the MPhil has performed the same work as recently as seven years ago, with Rumon Gamba and—if one believes the hearsay—to alarming results.)

Why surprising? For one because of general concert-goers’ attitudes, especially of conservative German audiences. If a work wasn’t in the repertoire by about 1930 or composed by Richard Strauss, then it has a very hard time finding acceptance, irrelevant of how much a masterpiece it is. The case of Sibelius shows that plainly enough—he dropped off the radar around the 1940s (his music too closely embraced by the Nazis and subsequently denigrated by the aesthetic elite of the land) and never clawed his way back to the status that ought to be his. If Sibelius is neglected, and Nielsen ignored, imagine poor Walton’s standing. “Walton-who?” Exactly!

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Dip Your Ears, No. 120 (Suk's Asrael)

Josef Suk, Symphony in c-minor, op. 27 “Asrael” , V.Ashkenazy / Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra Ondine ODE 1132-5 [SACD 61:32]

Asrael is one of the grand symphonic beauties that don’t seem to get their due in the concert hall. It suffers from neglect for no other reason than having been composed by a composer who isn’t famous enough to have become a concert program staple, Josef Suk. Of course he is not alone in this neglect—every fine work that hasn’t snuck into the canon of ‘greatest hits’ suffers from it to some extent. That’s why recordings are so important and wonderful to have; they allow us to cyclically ‘rediscover’ precisely these works. They pop up, pique our interest, and remind us of the hidden gems that can’t all be in the classical Top 40. It would be silly to feign the naïve hope they ever will… so I content myself with these spurts of re- and re-re-discoveries.

Suk especially deserves regular such spurts. Perhaps you have come across Suk’s “Summer Tale” [wonderful recording with Charles Mackerras on Decca] or enjoyed his Elegy for Violin, Cello and Piano as a filler on a Dvořák disc like the Florestan Trio’s (Hyperion). The one-hour Asrael Symphony is Suk’s largest work, and arguably his greatest, too. Well performed, it is, in the best sense, a terrific and terrifying work.

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Serenade! Festival: Morsels amid Pablum

Charles T. Downey, An inconsistent Serenade! choral festival
Washington Post, July 3, 2012

České lidové písně (Czech Folk Songs), Musica Bohemica, J. Krček (Supraphon, 2010)

Choral music brings people together, literally and figuratively, and the Serenade! choral festival, taking place in and around Washington, is celebrating that unifying power. Organized by Classical Movements, a company that plans tours for classical music ensembles, the festival brought together nine choral groups from five continents Sunday afternoon for a marathon concert. Friday night’s violent storms almost canceled the event, leaving Strathmore without power, but the organizers managed to relocate to National Presbyterian Church.

All of this music-making is laudable, and in one sense, those who most enjoy such performances are the enthusiastic performers themselves. Delights for the listener were not as consistent, especially when poor planning stretched the performance to nearly three hours. So much contemporary choral music is in a vaguely pop style — catchy rhythms, cloying harmonies, banal melodies — that thrills some listeners and grates on others. It comes in various regional accents — African (South Africa’s Imilonji KaNtu Choral Society and Namibia’s Voices of Namibia), South American (Colombia’s Verata E Liberi children’s choir) and North American (Boston City Singers children’s choir and Canada’s Cantaré Children’s Choir), including close-harmony jazz (Countermeasure, a polished a cappella group from Toronto) — but it all sounds pretty much the same. [Continue reading]

Serenade! Choral Festival
National Presbyterian Church

SEE ALSO:
Joan Reinthaler, Young choruses make a joyful noise as part of Serenade! festival (Washington Post, July 2)

Reviews Deferred

Anne Midgette and Charles T. Downey, At ‘Don Giovanni’ and other outdoor performances, storm is a show-stopper (Washington Post, July 2, 2012)

Don Giovanni survived at Wolf Trap on Friday night. There was thunder and lightning, to be sure, but those special effects accompanied not a descent into hell but the storms that passed overhead and wiped out the power just as Olivia Vote, a young mezzo, was gearing up to begin Donna Elvira’s aria “Mi tradi” (“He betrayed me”). All that betrayed her, though, were the lights, which flickered and flashed and then went out, leaving Vote standing in darkness.

There were a few bright hopes, voiced from the stage — first by a staffer and then by Kim Witman, the company’s director, illuminated by flashlights and the gentle glow of exit lights powered by the emergency generator — that the power could be gotten up and running again, but after a few minutes the company conceded defeat. “This guy gets to live tonight,” Witman said when she finally dismissed the audience, taking the stage with Craig Irvin, who played Giovanni. Few present had yet realized the magnitude of the storms, or the fact that the show would be silenced for the whole weekend: Sunday’s matinee performance of “Don Giovanni” was also canceled (as was Saturday’s scheduled performance at the Filene Center of “The Pirates of Penzance”). [Continue reading]

The resourceful performer always has a piece or two memorized and ready to play at the drop of a hat. That was the lesson for young musicians to learn on Friday night, when a violent storm swept through Rappahannock County and knocked out power to the Castleton Festival, meaning that resourceful General Director Nancy Gustafson was looking for musicians ready to keep the audience occupied.

Thanks to a small generator that provided power to the festival’s other venue, Theater House, I was able to hear a recital of singers from the Castleton Artists Training Seminar on Saturday afternoon. Like most events of this type, there was admirable promise as well as room for improvement. Big sounds came from baritone Darik Knutsen, with the lusty brindisi from Thomas’s Hamlet, and dramatic soprano Jing Zhang, in a scorching rendition of “Depuis le jour” from Gustave Charpentier’s Louise (in need of more French diction coaching). Bass Brandon Cedel scored high points for his choice of music, with an earnest but earthbound rendition of Mahler’s song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. His performance of Purcell’s “Arise, ye subterranean winds,” Prospero’s aria from The Tempest, roared and rattled in imitation of the previous night’s tempest.

Evelyn Lear (1926 - 2012)

Evelyn Lear, who has joined her husband, will be remembered warmly by those who had known and heard her.

Our appreciation of Evelyn Lear on record can be read here.

In Brief: Already July Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• To close the Festival de Saint-Denis, John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre National de France and the Chœur de Radio France in Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts with American tenor Michael Spyres, a voice you want to hear, as soloist. [France Musique]


• From Martha Argerich's festival in Lugano, cellist Gautier Capuçon, pianist Maria João Pires, and others join the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana for music by Mozart, Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn. [France Musique]


• Pianist Maria-Joaõ Pires and the London Symphony Orchestra, under Bernard Haitink, visited the Salle Pleyel last month, to perform music by Mozart, Bruckner, and Purcell. Rebroadcast is limited to just a couple more days. [France Musique]


• The Jerusalem Quartet visited the Radio France studios last month, to perform Shostakovich's ninth string quartet. [France Musique]


• Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Symphony and pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, in music of Respighi and Beethoven. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Thomas Hengelbrock conducts the Balthasar-Neumann Chœur and Ensemble in a performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo, recorded last month. [France Musique]


• The Belcea Quartet plays Beethoven at the Schwarzenberg Festival. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Violinist Christian Tetzlaff, soprano Christiane Karg, and tenor Michael Schade join the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and Chorus for music of Berg and Mendelssohn, under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado. [France Musique]


• An opera gala with Ana María Martínez and Joseph Calleja recorded in Eisenstadt last month. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Prize-winning pianist Brigitte Engerer died of cancer this week. Celebrate her memory with two archival recordings: a recital of Schubert, Ligeti, Schumann, and Chopin from the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 2004, and an Emperor Concerto at the Opéra Bastille with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Marek Janowski in 1992. [France Musique]


• Cool down from the summer heat with a performance of Winterreise by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake, from the Schwarzenberg Festival. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The Ensemble Intercontemporain performs Philippe Manoury's Neptune and Luciano Berio's Ofanim. [France Musique]


• Watch Leonard Slatkin conduct the Orchestre National de Lyon in the ninth symphonies of Shostakovich and Beethoven. [Medici.tv]


• Listen to a performance of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge by the ensemble La Dolcezza, with violinist Veronika Skuplik and Wolfgang Glüxam at the harpsichord. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra perform a concert of music by C. P. E. Bach, Bernd-Alois Zimmermann, and Robert Schumann. [France Musique]


• More St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with music by Bach, Haydn, Handel, Scarlatti, and Charles Avison, recorded back in 2010. [France Musique]


• Even more St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, also recorded in 2010, mezzo-soprano Kelly O'Connor and the choral group Cantus join the group in music of Schubert and Kurt Weill's Die sieben Todsünden. [France Musique]


• The Ensemble Wien plays Mozart and Haydn at the Wiener Festwochen. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Mark your calendar for July 7, when the production of Verdi's Il Trovatore will be streamed from Brussels. [Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie]


• A classic performance of Verdi's Luisa Miller from the Metropolitan Opera, with Montserrat Caballé, Richard Tucker, and Sherrill Milnes. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]

NOI New Lights

Classical music, as we all know, is dying. Greg Sandow, the self-appointed Dark Horseman of this particular tribulation, stands regularly on the virtual street corner, proclaiming that the terminal patient is finished unless we encourage applause between movements, unless we program more contemporary music, unless classical institutions undo everything they have done until now and embrace popular culture, unless -- whatever. While hammering home the details of this devastating illness, he also offers a miracle cure -- workshops for musicians to brand themselves, consultation services to help ensembles bring that elusive young audience into the hall.

This is not to say that classical music does not need to change and evolve, or that Greg Sandow's ideas are not worth musicians pursuing -- only that one tires of the apocalypse. After all, at least since Monteverdi, musicians or critics have been declaring that the true art is dead. What strikes me when attending a performance that supposedly represents the salvation of classical music is that audiences do exactly what they do in the concert hall under normal circumstances: they listen in silence. That is what we are supposed to do with this music we love so much, give it all of our attention. The New Lights concert, offered every year (2011, 2010, 2009) by the participants in the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland, provides the chance for performers to "explore unconventional performance practice, technology and other artistic disciplines." The latest installment, heard on Thursday night at the Clarice Smith Center, experimented with only the first one from that list, but it was another chance to appreciate some of the ways that musicians can be innovative. It is always good to experience something new, but if all concerts followed this kind of format, I would probably stop going to them.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, National Orchestral Institute at Strathmore (The Washington Post, June 30) Andrew Lindemann Malone, 45-Minute Workout: National Orchestral Institute and Festival’s “New Lights” Chamber Concert (DMV Classical, July 1)

The principal benefit was compactness, with a program that lasted 45 minutes without an intermission. A single movement of Bach's second Brandenburg concerto -- with the odd substitution of marimba for trumpet -- opened the concert, ending with a sort of audio rewind effect as the final chord glissandoed upward. The Bach's corresponding book end was Paul Moravec's Brandenburg Gate, composed in 2008 for (almost) the same forces as Bach's second Brandenburg concerto (including the trumpet left out of the Bach), as part of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's Brandenburg project. Moravec's piece, the most substantial work on the program, gave tribute to Bach -- in its use of repetition, rhythmic drive, and an almost-obsessive quotation of the B-A-C-H motif. In both pieces, the young musicians played with élan and athleticism, even without a conductor -- something that they coached with members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to learn how to do. In the middle was a screeching, unpleasant performance of the second movement of John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts, played from an upper balcony, and a ruminative (in the cud-chewing sense) Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt, with an antiphonal alternation of instruments on the stage and others in the upper balconies. Two improvisational exercises were included -- one involving clapping that opened the performance, and another involving voices singing in a cluster (a common vocal warm-up used by actors) that connected the Pärt to the Moravec.