Briefly Noted: 'Rape of Lucretia'

Britten, The Rape of Lucretia, I. Bostridge, S. Gritton, A. Kirchschlager, Aldeburgh Festival, O. Knussen (released on February 5, 2013) Virgin 50999 60267221 | 105'33"

On November 22nd this year -- St. Cecilia's Day -- Benjamin Britten would have celebrated his 100th birthday. Composer anniversaries are mostly for powering the engines of publicity, but if good performances and recordings come our way in anniversary years, who are we to complain? Put in that category the chance to hear this recording of the two performances of Britten's Rape of Lucretia as they were performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2011. For all of this chamber opera's weaknesses, mostly to do with the bizarre Christian frame narrative that wraps the libretto, the score has great appeal, shown in two stagings reviewed in 2007, at Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival and at Peabody Chamber Opera. There were recordings of the work already available, all of them with advantages: the DVD from English National Opera, Britten's own version on EMI with Janet Baker in the title role (also featured in Britten's Phaedra), and the version led by Richard Hickox for Chandos. The highlight here is the narration of tenor Ian Bostridge as the moralizing Male Chorus, whose light, floating tone and pure intonation make just the right type of voice for much of Britten's writing. Add to that the warm-voiced Susan Gritton as the Female Chorus, and the plummy sound of Angelika Kirchschlager's Lucretia. The other roles are taken by less noteworthy voices, although whether the microphone placement played a part in the results is unclear. Oliver Knussen leads a detailed and subtle performance from the crack forces of the Aldeburgh Festival, with the usual caveats about live recording.

Meredith Monk, 'On Behalf of Nature'

Charles T. Downey, Meredith Monk’s ‘On Behalf of Nature’ at Clarice Smith Center
Washington Post, May 6, 2013

Monk, Impermanence (ECM, 2008) [READ REVIEW]

If nature were to rise up and speak in defense of itself, its voice might sound like a Meredith Monk theater piece. That was the goal of Monk’s new work, “On Behalf of Nature,” presented at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on Saturday night. The path-forging choreographer-composer-artist created the piece — theater without words, dance with voice — to embody “nonhuman entities” communicating through her as a spokesperson.

Monk is wise to prefer abstraction over narrative, aura over character, symbolism over clear meaning, which allows the viewer to map her work onto his or her own thoughts and perceptions. Various ideas arose in my mind in reaction to the movements of Monk and seven collaborators, three of whom also played the array of instruments to one side of the stage: tree-branch arms waving in the wind, ants marching in rows, aboriginal dances both anxious and joyously whoop-filled, a couple lost in admiration of an open vista, waves crashing on a shore.
[Continue reading]

Meredith Monk, On Behalf of Nature
Clarice Smith Center

In Brief: First Communion 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.)

• Watch the production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande from Brussels, directed by Pierre Audi and conducted by Ludovic Morlot, with sets by Anish Kapoor and a cast that includes Stéphane Degout and Sandrine Piau. [De Munt]


• Debussy's rather beautiful Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien, in a performance by the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien under conductor Alain Altinoglu, with the Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien and soloists Patricia Petibon, Isabelle Druet, and others. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, with Jérémie Rhorer conducting his ensemble Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and the Chœur du Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, with a cast including Markus Werba and Miah Persson. [France Musique]


• From last December, Christian Thielemann conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in music by Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, the last with pianist Maurizio Pollini as soloist. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Watch the Europa Konzert by the Berlin Philharmonic for its 131st anniversary, with Simon Rattle and mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená. [Medici.tv]


• An encore performance of Johann Christian Bach's Amadis de Gaule with Le Cercle de l'Harmonie and Les Chantres du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, conducted by Jérémie Rhorer at the Opéra comique in Paris. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to a concert of Baroque music by Handel, Stradella, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, and Geminiani, performed by the Venice Baroque Orchestra, with Andrea Marcon conducting soprano Patricia Petibon. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• If you missed the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites with a cast including Isabel Leonard (Blanche de la Force), Patricia Racette (Madame Lidoine), and Elizabeth Bishop (Mère Marie). [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Here is the recital by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes recorded last month at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, with music by Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin. [France Musique]


• String quartets by Joseph Marx, Mozart, and Berg, performed by the Steude Quartett at the Wiener Musikverein. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From the Salle Pleyel, pianists Bertrand Chamayou and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger join the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Louis Langrée in music of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Fauré. [France Musique]


• Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani perform's Bach's Goldberg Variations, at the Wiener Konzerthaus. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• From last April at the Royal Festival Hall in London, a concert by the Philharmonia Orchestra with music by Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky, conducted by Leif Segerstam. [France Musique]


• From the Proms last September, Bernard Haitink conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in music of Strauss and Haydn's "London" symphony. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Yefim Bronfman joins the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in music by Marc-André Dalbavie, Bartók, and Brahms. [BR-Klassik]


• Listen to a recital by pianist Nicholas Angelich, at the Salle Molière in Lyon, with music by Chopin, Schumann, and Musorgsky. [France Musique]


• A children's concert by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, featuring La boîte à joujoux by Claude Debussy and Marie Desplechin, with Eric Ruf as speaker. [France Musique]


• From the Barbican Hall last December, a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra with violinist Maxim Vengerov and conductor Robin Ticciati, including the premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies's Fanfare: Her Majesty's Welcome. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• David Grimal leads Les Dissonances in music by Schoenberg and Brahms. [France Musique]


• The 1977 live recording of Verdi's La Forza del Destino, with Leontyne Price, Cornell MacNeil, and Placido Domingo, conducted by none other than James Levine. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The Quatuor Tana plays music by Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Nepomuceno, and a new work by Daniel d'Adamo. [France Musique]


• Pianists Katia Labèque and Marielle Labèque and friends perform music by Satie, Duckworth, Cage, and others. [France Musique]


• The brass ensemble the Quintette Eburon plays arrangements of music by Rameau, Scheidt, and Telemann. [France Musique]


• Baritone Stephan Genz and pianist Michel Dalberto perform a recital of songs by Brahms and Wolf. [France Musique]

NSO's Russian Tribute to Rostropovich

Schnittke, Viola Concerto, D. A. Carpenter, Philharmonia Orchestra, C. Eschenbach (Ondine, 2009) Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5, Philadelphia Orchestra, C. Eschenbach (Ondine, 2008)

Christoph Eschenbach is taking the National Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall next weekend, with a program of Russian music in tribute to the ensemble's venerated former music director, Mstislav Rostropovich. The NSO gave a run-through of the program, featuring three composers championed by Rostropovich -- Shchedrin, Schnittke, and Shostakovich -- on Friday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, in between concerts featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

Eschenbach opened with Slava, Slava, a sort of overture composed by Rodion Shchedrin for Rostropovich's 70th birthday in 1997. The piece was premiered in Paris, but this performance by the NSO, its first, was also the U.S. premiere. (We are all thankful that Eschenbach stayed away from the terrible Slava! overture by Leonard Bernstein, a piece I never want to hear again.) Shchedrin's memorable and often strange piece, subtitled "A Festive Ringing of Bells," opens with many strikes of a cluster of three bells struck simultaneously (the score calls for Russian bells, here played on great chimes). A regular rhythmic pulse, propelled by raucous double bass pizzicati and other means, gives the feel of a solemn march, fueled further by an enormous battery of percussion. It ends in a crazy cacophony of metallic wallops, on bell plates, tubular bells, crotales, and more. It was an impressive clatter of sound.

Rostropovich himself was the last to conduct Alfred Schnittke's viola concerto with the NSO, back in 1992. Eschenbach recorded the work a few years ago with David Allen Aaron Carpenter, the same soloist featured on Friday night. Schnittke removed most treble distractions by leaving the violins out of the score, with the viola solo featured at the start against a drone in the solo cello. Carpenter emphasized the ardent soaring lines and deep-throated barks of the composer's enigmatic writing for the viola, created for Yuri Bashmet, often seeming to prefer rawness of sound over absolute precision, reaching a pretty strident tone in the cadenza at the end of the second movement. Carpenter gave plenty of frenzy to the opening of the second movement, yielding to the faux-genteel waltz with muted brass and the somewhat smug addition of harpsichord (amplified, played by Joseph Gascho). The piece's many shifting colors seems well suited to Eschenbach, who reveled in drawing out episodic characters, like the bitonal chords (recalling the "Augurs" of the Rite of Spring), the squawking high woodwinds, the crazy lush serenade eventually heightened by the nutty sound of flexatone, the Shostakovich-like grotesque march. The piece is quite a head-scratcher, but one that never leaves the ear or mind bored.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, NSO’s strengths, weaknesses, identity issues on display at Spring for Music (Washington Post, May 13) ---, Christoph Eschenbach, National Symphony Orchestra mix up the program (Washington Post, May 3) Robert Battey, David Aaron Carpenter, NSO take on Schnittke Viola Concerto (Washington Post, May 6)

Rostropovich, because of his close friendship with Shostakovich, had a special insight into the composer's works, although his limits as a conductor often got in the way with the symphonies. Eschenbach has his own way with Shostakovich, which he showed in this performance of the fifth symphony, a work that is either a desperate attempt to get back into the graces of the Soviet government, after the condemnation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, or an ironic commentary on blind obedience to authority. One can certainly play the work either way, and the latter interpretation conveniently sounded much better for the composer in the post-Stalin years. In a fine performance, Eschenbach drew out a somber but also tender beginning to the first movement, saving the biting tone until later, with limpid violin sound over lush chords, a silvery flute solo and juicy woodwinds -- at times one can almost hear Shostakovich purging his compositional idiom of its atonal, sarcastic urges. The NSO, with all sections in excellent form save some dicey moments in the horns and some harp tuning issues in the fourth movement, made a lumbering dance in the second movement, with a tempo just the right side of Allegretto, going slower and more lop-sided in the chamber-sized trio, with smile-inducing pizzicato bits and bassoon burps. The third movement was a searing elegy for strings, with an elegant serenade for flutes and harp and a plaintive oboe solo, echoes of the Tristan theme heard at times. The fourth movement was satisfying bombastic, music that could indeed be heard either as an optimistic sort of patriotism or as a critique of blind devotion to the state. Our business is rejoicing, indeed.

This program will be repeated next weekend, when the NSO performs it at Carnegie Hall in New York (May 11, 7:30 pm).

Dip Your Ears, No. 136 (A Versatile Viol)

The Versatile Viol Scottish & Irish Music Tina Chancey & members of Hesperus Golden Apple

This 2007 release is for all practical purposes a self-published CD; a tribute to Violist Tina Chancey’s (recorder-playing) husband Scott Reiss who took his life days after contributing to five of the 16 Scottish and Irish early folk songs here. In a technical sense, it’s a ‘vanity release’, except minus any trace of personal vanity. Instead there is splendid and lively playing, which makes this a casually enjoyable release; an untroubled delight to all who are into Gaelic tunes and/or the viol... In short: a successful musical business card for the violist. Not something to seek out as much as it is something to happily stumble across. Stumble away!

Turloch O'Carolan, O'Carolan's Draft (excerpt), Tina Chancey et al., Golden Apple

Oh Dear, Poor Actaeon

Charles T. Downey, At the Kennedy Center, Opera Lafayette performs Charpentier’s ‘Actéon’
Washington Post, May 4, 2013

M.-A. Charpentier, Actéon, A. Sheehan, Boston Early Music Festival, P. O'Dette, S. Stubbs (cpo, 2010)

The vengeful gods of ancient Greece devised devilishly clever punishments. The hunter Actaeon found that out when he glimpsed Artemis bathing in a pool. The goddess, her chastity offended, transformed Actaeon into a stag, to be hunted down and killed by his own pack of dogs.

The legend was the subject of “Actéon,” a hunting party pastoral composed in 1684 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, given a rare revival by Opera Lafayette on Thursday night at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.
[Continue reading]

Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Actéon
Rameau, Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour (excerpts)
Opera Lafayette
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Philadelphia Orchestra

Hilary Hahn: A Portrait (excerpts of Korngold concerto) (DG, 2007) Bruckner, Symphony No. 7, Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, Y. Nézet-Séguin (Atma, 2007)

The Philadelphia Orchestra has survived the past few years of financial and leadership crises, but not without some damage to that venerable institution's reputation. Hopes are high that the tenure of the orchestra's new music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, inaugurated this year, will stabilize the orchestra, the board, the subscribers and donors. Every great city deserves a great orchestra, and the city of Philadelphia should do all it can to shore up its ensemble, one of the best in the country, and keep it from falling into ruin. We had our annual chance to listen to the Philadelphians in their annual visit hosted by Washington Performing Arts Society, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Wednesday night. It was a bittersweet moment to be savored, since the orchestra is not on the WPAS schedule next season.

The opener was a bonbon impossible not to like, the sweet, rambunctious violin concerto by Erich Korngold, the Austrian Wunderkind turned Hollywood glitzmeister. It is a concerto beautifully suited to the elegant simplicity of tone from American violinist Hilary Hahn, who also played it in Munich recently. While Hahn gave ample agitation to the wilder parlando parts of the first movement, it was that clean ribbon of sound she produces on long lyrical lines that made the performance so good. Some of the highest parts of the E string came off slightly pinched, even though Nézet-Séguin went overboard holding down the orchestra to accommodate Hahn's sometimes modest sound, especially in the fragile second movement with its murky veils of orchestral sound.

The freewheeling jig of the third movement, a sort of refined hoedown, was fired by athletic energy from both soloist and orchestra. The swashbuckling hero moments in the score have their echoes in the scores of American film composers, as do the often overused touches of celesta (and gong, tubular bell, glockenspiel, vibraphone, xylophone) in the first movement. (The "Hollywood label" is not attached because of highbrow snobbery, since Korngold literally borrowed sections of the concerto from his film scores.) For her encore, Hahn chose not to go with one of the pieces from her Encores Project but with an oldie but a goodie, the gigue from Bach's third partita (E Major, BWV 1006), in just the right spirit to follow Korngold's dance-like third movement.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, At Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Orchestra’s new leader turns up the volume (Washington Post, May 3) Emily Cary, Visionary violinist Hilary Hahn and the Philadelphia Orchestra together again (Washington Examiner, April 30) Jens F. Laurson, Ionarts-at-Large: Dallas SO and @violincase in Munich (Ionarts, March 21) Dutoit in Philadelphia: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 Yannick Nézet-Séguin: Leipzig (2011) | Interview (2010) Salzburg Festival (2010) | NSO (2008)

If Nézet-Séguin wanted to make a show of confidence in his bid to maintain the Philadelphia Orchestra's legacy, programming Bruckner's seventh symphony (E major, WAB 107) was one way to do it. We last heard the piece from Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra just last year, but it is one of the most often heard of the Austrian composer's symphonies. Many elements of this performance were in just the right place, like the spectacular power of the orchestra's brass section (including the four Wagner tubas) and Nézet-Séguin's insistence on real delicacy of sound in the soft moments. While this attention to sonic detail made the high points of the score, those blossoming crescendos of massive sound, more effective, some of this focus on the small parts -- right from the beginning with an arching, longing opening statement from the cellos -- took away from the overall picture of this long work (not unlike Nézet-Séguin's recording of this symphony with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal). The big climaxes often seemed to fall victim to micromanagement, like the glorious Wagnerian "Rheingold" moment in the last thirty bars of the first movement: one long crescendo on a single unchanging E major (extended) chord, beginning with the E pedal point at Rehearsal W ("Sehr feierlich") and really getting going when the harmony resolves to E major (with just minor movement) at Rehearsal X ("Sehr ruhig").

Another example was the extensive second movement, with the opening statement of its main theme and many other details all stretched out, in a way that deflated the overall power of the movement. The performance had many admirable parts but did not add up to something as emotionally thrilling as it could have been. The final climax, a crescendo up to fff, was not as cataclysmic as possible: even though Nézet-Séguin did include the cymbal crash and triangle roll, added by Bruckner late in the rehearsal process on a piece of paper pasted onto the score (at Rehearsal W), it did not seem all that loud. (The effect is much the same on his OMM recording.) Likewise, the third movement did not seem quite as fast as "Sehr schnell," as Nézet-Séguin seemed to go for a stronger etching of the various motifs, in stark contrast to the soupy strings of the trio. The fourth movement was perhaps the most satisfying, at a tempo that did not feel too fast, with imperious orchestral unisons and long pauses where they were called for. Still, to stretch out a long Bruckner symphony without achieving the overall sweep needed does nothing to help this sort of work.

Andrew Tyson, YCA

Charles T. Downey, At Kennedy Center, pianist Andrew Tyson makes debut solo recital
Washington Post, May 2, 2013

Scriabin, Sonata No. 3 (inter alia), E. Kissin

What does it take for a young performer to distinguish himself in the world of classical music? One way is to win a competition, which Andrew Tyson did by taking first prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2011. The victory resulted in a debut solo recital Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

If it was not a head-turning accomplishment, the North Carolina-born pianist showed admirable promise. [Continue reading]

Andrew Tyson, piano
Young Concert Artists
Music by Mozart, Scriabin, Bach, Chopin
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Encores:
Schumann, Romance in F-sharp major
Chopin, Mazurka in C major (op. 33/3)

SEE ALSO:
Elijah Ho, Interview with pianist Andrew Tyson (San Francisco Examiner, May 25, 2012)

Vivien Schweitzer, Ascendant and Ambitious, a Pianist Honors the Masters (New York Times, January 24, 2013)