Yo-Yo Ma's Om

Bach, Solo Cello Suites, Yo-Yo Ma

Washington Performing Arts Society presented cellist Yo-Yo Ma in an exclusive solo recital at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Monday night. It was the first such local performance since 2006, not counting a duo recital with Kathryn Stott, and it also featured three of Bach's solo cello suites. It is a rare thing to see a single classical musician -- a man, a cello, a chair, not even a music stand -- hold a large hall of people, including many seated on the stage with him, utterly spellbound. Ma plays the Bach suites with extraordinary dignity, not the greatest or even really unusual interpretation, but a dignity that he can bring to all sorts of music, even the most humble. That he also does admirable things like make a visit to a local elementary school while he is in town is surely partly responsible for that dignity.

The Bach -- suites 1, 2, and 3 -- is much as I remember it from 2006: a consistently beautiful, carefully spun, rarely overblown, often straight tone; not disappointingly metronomic pacing, but little ostentatious rubato except some oozing and stretching in the sarabandes; some very intimate, small dances contrasted with more outgoing pieces, especially the preludes. Although he took all the repeats, Ma added basically zero ornamentation to any of this music, although he often gave the repeats a different articulation or dynamic. None of the movements felt rushed or even strikingly fast, even the gigues, but it was all thoughtful, musical, and measured.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Yo-Yo Ma and the Bach cello suites: Familiar, but certainly not routine (Washington Post, December 5) Jane Cavalier, Yo-Yo Ma’s sold-out concert blends cultures, styles (The Dartmouth, September 14)

The dignity that Ma brought to the Bach suites extended to the pieces he paired them with, in the first half holding the audience from applauding so that the two pieces ran together. This was true of music of modest interest, like the Allegretto movement of Turkish composer Ahmet Saygun's Partita, op. 31, a repetitive cantillation on a modally inflected scale. It was even true of Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz, a piece "composed in fifteen minutes" and that sounds like it. Now available in any number of arrangements, it is the worst kind of hokey claptrap, a musical meringue that seems good as an idea but has no substance. The only piece that held up to the Bach was George Crumb's sonata for solo cello, composed in 1955 when the composer was in his 20s. The piece is not in the experimental style one expects from Crumb's later works, with soft pizzicati and a bluesy melody in the first movement, and a dance-like theme with a broad range of variations in the second. Here at last was a rollicking gigue, in the last movement, the final part of a bracing moment, much needed in an evening that could have been too meditative.

The next big event on the WPAS season is a recital by pianist Daniil Trifonov (January 19, 2 pm), in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Anderszewski @ Shriver

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Piotr Anderszewski makes Shriver Hall debut
Washington Post, December 4, 2012

Bach, English Suite No. 6 (inter alia), P. Anderszewski (2004) Schumann, Humoreske (inter alia), P. Anderszewski (2011)

Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski is on a U.S. tour this month, making his first return to the Washington area since a recital at the National Gallery of Art in 2006. For his debut at Shriver Hall in Baltimore, where he played Sunday evening, the program paired two of the composers whose music he has recorded to critical acclaim, Bach and Schumann. Anderszewski is not a fastidious fine-tuner of sound at the keyboard, but he used a broad palette of articulation and voicing to put his mark on some familiar pieces.

He chose Bach's third and sixth English suites, and they made an ingenious pairing. Anderszewski added many small embellishments to the score, taking all of the repeats but never to the point of obfuscating Bach's music. [Continue reading]

Piotr Anderszewski, piano
Bach, English Suites 3 and 6
Schumann, Fantasy in C Major, op. 17
Shriver Hall

ADDENDUM:
The third and sixth English suites are the two that both have gavottes in the optional dance position, and as Anderszewski's performance showed, they have many other things in common. For both of these suites, Bach also wrote out completely ornamented “doubles” for the sarabandes, which Anderszewski played after making his own ornamentations to the original dance, then further ornamenting Bach’s ornamentation on the final repeat. In both cases, the “double” had the feel almost of a completely different movement.

Washington Ballet 'Nutcracker'

Septime Webre's choreography of The Nutcracker, made for Washington Ballet and presented each December at the Warner Theater, will always be associated with good memories. Webre reimagined the famous story as taking place in Washington, with Clara receiving the present of a nutcracker from her eccentric godfather at a Christmas party in Georgetown, seeing the dance of the snowflakes with the monuments in the background, and the Land of Springtime, cherry blossoms and all, replacing the Land of Sweets. It was the first ballet that Miss Ionarts ever saw, but when I asked her what she remembered about it earlier this fall, she recalled very little. So we decided to make our first trip back to the Warner Theater to see what this Nutcracker was like now.

As we have reported over the past few years, since our first experience of this production, the Washington Ballet has stopped performing its Nutcracker with a live orchestra -- except for a small orchestra hired last season, which turned out to be an exception. This was quite unfortunate for the company, since it happened when Alastair Macaulay came through Washington on his Nutcracker Chronicles tour and the review was damning. Washington Post critic Sarah Kaufman, after soft-pedaling the orchestra issue in the last couple years, led with it in her review on Sunday. Who knows how bad press affects ticket sales, which it should, but the crowd on Saturday night seemed not as full as it should have been.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Lack of orchestra takes some of the magic out of Washington Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ (Washington Post, December 2)

We have suffered through a Nutcracker without live music before, and the effect was just as disappointing here. Without a live conductor and musicians, there is no elasticity to the coalescence of music and dance, and too much of the movement just felt rushed as dancers nervously made sure that they did not get behind the unfeeling metronome blasting from the speakers. So this is not a Nutcracker for purists or for most adults who have expectations about ballet from experience. That being said, the choreography is delightful in many ways, and Miss Ionarts was so charmed that she proclaimed it her favorite Nutcracker yet. Although Webre has stacked the stage with a critical mass of cute kids -- mice in pilgrim hats! snow angels! toadstools! butt-shaking bees! polka-dot polichinelles! -- the corps scenes and the pas de deux are far from child's play.

Washington Ballet's production of The Nutcracker continues through December 23, at the Warner Theater.

'Die Fledermaus'

Charles T. Downey, Virginia Opera's "Die Fledermaus" at George Mason University
Washington Post, December 3, 2012

J. Strauss, Die Fledermaus, E. Schwarzkopf, N. Gedda, Philharmonia Orchestra, H. von Karajan

The Virginia Opera’s 2011-12 season was marked by daring programming and innovative staging, a gutsy move for a company that has just undergone a crisis in leadership. But it was a short-lived experiment. After an unsuccessful attempt to get a new company off the ground, ousted artistic director Peter Mark was welcomed back into the Virginia Opera fold last month, with the company even agreeing to mount the productions Mark had planned for the coming year. The move seals the Virginia Opera’s return to a more conservative strategy, a shift borne out by its latest production, Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus,” seen Friday night at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts.

This evergreen operetta has its appeal, played for all of its champagne-cork-popping effect in an effervescent, even manic staging by Dorothy Danner, revived from 2006. The cast, more satisfactory than striking, went with the antics physically but did not always deliver vocally, including the overextended Rosalinde of soprano Emily Pulley and baritone Philip Cutlip’s Eisenstein, cracking at the top of the role by the end. Continue reading]

J. Strauss, Die Fledermaus
Virginia Opera
GMU Center for the Arts

SEE ALSO:
Mike Paarlberg, Holy Cornballs, Batman! Virginia Opera’s Die Fledermaus (Washington City Paper, December 1)

Jens F. Laurson, Holy Leaden Joke, Batman! (Ionarts, April 14, 2004)

New Music Triple Bill at the Atlas

In back-to-back concerts Friday night, the Atlas Performing Arts Center presented three of New York’s hottest new music ensembles, cementing its own reputation as one of the finest venues for contemporary music in Washington, D.C.

First, in the main theater, Sō Percussion played an assemblage of works by John Cage and more recent composers. The pieces were played seamlessly alongside and atop one another, in a model of what an inspired Cage tribute can be. Cage once avowed “a greater interest in quantity than in quality. If you have a large enough number of things, judgment decreases and curiosity increases.” As it was, the great quantity of sounds produced by Sō Percussion were also of impeccable quality. Some stood out, like Needles, a group composition by Sō Percussion and the electronic duo Matmos, which featured amplified cactus. It sounded at first like soldiers marching briskly over cobblestones, but soon the addition of whimsical electronic sounds and danceable counter-rhythms replaced the image of a menacing army with that of a fabulous high-stepping flag troupe. Use by Cenk Ergün presented the muffled scrapings and stirrings you might hear if you were a barnacle attached to a sailboat's hull. In Dan Deacon’s Bottles, a series of those objects in various sizes, suspended like gongs and amplified, were played and then emptied with the measured sobriety of a Shinto temple ritual.

The quantity of sounds was greatly augmented when, simultaneously with four Cage pieces, the entire packed house (press included) was enlisted in a performance of Deacon’s Take a Deep Breath. Following instructions in the program, we sighed, sang, and stomped, squeaked and squawked, made phone calls, surfed YouTube, and switched seats. Parents appreciatively abandoned all pretense of restraining their gleeful children (of which there were an impressive number). It was wonderful.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, So Percussion, ACME and yMusic showcase new sounds (Washington Post, December 3) Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, So Percussion’s Limited-Edition John Cage Project (New York Times, November 23) Royce Akers Akers, Rob Moose from yMusic Seems Friendly and Smart Like You'd Expect (VICE, November 20)

Next, the Library of Congress presented ensembles ACME and yMusic in the Atlas’s smaller Sprenger Theater, where tables and a bar, along with the genial commentary of violist Nadia Sirota (member of both groups), created an uncommonly intimate atmosphere. A standout of ACME’s performance was Don Byron’s Spin, a violin and piano duet commissioned by the Library’s McKim fund. Its sharply contrasting sections ranged from aggressive Bartókian moto perpetuo to shimmering, jazzy harmonies executed elegantly by pianist Timothy Andres. Cage was present again, with the String Quartet in Four Parts. It was the Washington area’s second chance in as many months to hear this sparse, detached work, though here gentle amplification allowed one to get inside the music more.

Finally yMusic played a selection of their repertoire, which includes works by artists from Indie rock acts such as St. Vincent and Son Lux. These pop- and minimalist-inflected pieces were performed with warmth and skill by the six musicians, four of whom doubled or tripled smoothly on different instruments. Jeremy Turner’s The Bear and the Squirrel sounded like a contemporary version of a lush Mahlerian adagio. Andrew Norman’s well-crafted Music in Circles, receiving the premiere of its revised version, started out with hushed, wispy sounds like those of a distant passing jet, and ended that way, too, after a churning, melancholy middle. Finally, the enchanting harmonies and sprightly, irregular rhythmic hooks of Judd Greenstein’s Clearing, Dawn, Dance were a fitting coda to a rich night of music.

In Brief: Advent I Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)

• Listen to the world premiere of Pierre Henry's new piece Le Fil de la vie, performed in September at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]


• Here is a performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from the Vienna State Opera, with James Rutherford (Hans Sachs), Ain Anger (Veit Bogner), Adrian Eröd (Beckmesser), and Johan Bohta (Walther von Stolzing). [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Watch members of Les Arts Florissants sing the fourth book of Monteverdi's madrigals. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• A performance of Handel's Esther, with soloists Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Daniel Taylor, and Njal Sparbo, from last May at the Händel-Festspiele Göttingen. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to the three prize-winners in the piano competition of the Concours International de Genève, playing concertos with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. [France Musique]


• Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts Concentus Musicus Wien, the Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, and soloists Roberta Invernizzi, Werner Güra, and Gerald Finley in Mozart's arrangement of Handel's Alexander's Feast for the 200th anniversary of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• James Conlon conducts the Orchestre de Paris in a performance of Dvořák's Requiem Mass. [France Musique]


• Hear the HR-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt under conductor Sakari Oramo in music of Sibelius, Jukka Tiensuu, and Szymanowski, with soprano Anu Komsi. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Cellist Truls Mørk joins the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for music of Weber, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Berlioz. [France Musique]


• You can keep up with what Leonard Slatkin is doing with the Orchestre National de Lyon, performing Haydn, Hindemith, and Brahms, the last a piano concerto with Emanuel Ax as soloist. [France Musique]


• From Vienna, a recital by pianist Alexei Volodin, featuring music of Schubert, Beethoven, Kapustin, and a piano arrangement of Tchaikovsky's music for The Nutcracker. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Nicolas Dautricourt and friends perform music by Debussy, Ravel, and others. [France Musique]


• Sergej Krylov performs the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Orchestre National de Lille, under the baton of Jean-Claude Casadesus. [France Musique]

Interview with Kaija Saariaho

Video and transcript/translation of Johannes Baumann’s interview with Kaija Saariaho in Istanbul at the Borusan Arts & Culture Foundation’s Music House on the day of the world premiere of her piece for violin and electronics, Frises. (Review here.) Because Mme. Saariaho didn’t feel comfortable with an interview being conducted solely in German, I happily volunteered to facilitate or translate where necessary. In return I got to sneak in a few questions of my own. Johannes Baumann runs VioWorld, a Germany-based employment website for culture and especially orchestra jobs all around the world.

Transcript below the jump

Read more »

La Risonanza @ LoC

Charles T. Downey, La Risonanza shines in U.S. debut concert at Library of Congress
Washington Post, December 1, 2012

Le Cantate Per Il Marchese Ruspoli (Le Cantate Italiani di Handel, vol. 2), E. Galli, R. Invernizzi, La Risonanza (2007)

George Frideric Handel wrote a lot more than a certain piece played to death in the month of December. During his stay in Rome, from 1707 to 1710, he composed many Italian cantatas and oratorios, mostly on secular subjects. These often exquisite, lesser-known works were the focus of the stellar American debut of the Italian early-music ensemble La Risonanza on Thursday night at the Library of Congress.

Founded by Fabio Bonizzoni in 1995, the group has recorded a fine set of the complete Italian cantatas of Handel, a project finished in 2009 for the Glossa label. Soprano Yetzabel Arias Fernandez brought a limpid tone, delectation of text, and expressive face and musical line to the solo part of both cantatas. Her embellishments on the da capo repeats of the arias of “Notte placida e cheta” were inventive and moving, especially the sighing touches in the aria “Zeffiretti, deh! venite.” [Continue reading]

La Risonanza
Handel, Notte placida e cheta, HWV 142
Handel, Armida abbandonata ("Dietro l'orme fuggaci"), HWV 105 (text by Tasso)
With Yetzabel Arias Fernández, soprano
Library of Congress

La Risonanza is currently "Ensemble en Résidence” at the Fondation Royamount, where they are developing a performance project devoted to the music of Arcangelo Corelli.