Classical Music Agenda: December 2013

In December, much of the concert schedule is taken over by performances of the "Ho ho ho" variety, of which more after the jump. First, for some music that will not specifically get you in the spirit of the season, there are two free performances of Bach cantatas this month. Members of the Washington Bach Consort presents Schwingt freudig euch empor (BWV 36), which is for the first Sunday of Advent (December 3, 12:10 pm), at the Church of the Epiphany. Musicians from the University of Maryland School of Music perform Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (BWV 106) on their Bach Cantata Series (December 5, 1:30 pm) at the Clarice Smith Center. Both of these concerts are free and open to the public.

The Emerson String Quartet continues its season at the National Museum of Natural History (December 8), with string quartets by Mozart (K. 428, E-flat major), Beethoven (op. 59, no. 2), and Bartók (no. 2).

If the Emerson Quartet concerts are too expensive for your budget, try the Parker Quartet in a free concert at the Library of Congress (December 18). The group, with its new second violinist, Ying Xue, will be joined by violist Kikuei Ikeda.

The next installment of the Leading Composers Series at the Phillips Collection will be Slovenian composer Dušan Bavdek (December 12), with musicians from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana performing several of his pieces, including Awakening, String Quartet No. 1, Intermezzo, Dark Memory, and The Gestures of Dead Era.

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Joel Fan @ Dumbarton Oaks

Charles T. Downey, Joel Fan, an often-eclectic American pianist, sticks to the romantics at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, November 6, 2013)

Music of the Americas, J. Fan (2009)

Competitions launch many a musician’s career, but usually they do not define it for long. American pianist Joel Fan got his first breaks because of competitive victories, but he has made a career on a willingness to juxtapose traditional and unexpected repertory. In a recital at Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night, he offered a program of four romantic composers, first performed at the Ravinia Festival this summer.

It was a far cry from the eclectic programs Fan has played in the past few years at the National Gallery of Art. Wagner, for example, is not a name that leaps to mind when one thinks of a piano recital, but Fan opened with a transcription of the prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” made by Glenn Gould and rearranged by Fan for a single pianist. From it, one had the sense of the romantic striving beyond what an instrument or genre can give. [Continue reading]

Joel Fan, piano
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Fan gives fantastic close to National Gallery's American Music Festival (Washington Post, December 3, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Joel Fan performs at the National Gallery of Art (Washington Post, June 6, 2011)

Boris Giltburg @ Phillips

Charles T. Downey, Boris Giltburg’s debut recital
Washington Post, November 5, 2013

Prokofiev, Piano Sonatas 6-8, B. Giltburg (2012)

Another day, another recent competition winner’s debut recital in Washington. This time it was Boris Giltburg, winner of this summer’s Queen Elisabeth Competition for piano, in a concert at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. The museum’s weekly concert series has an exclusive arrangement with Brussels to present each year’s winner, and the experience confirmed the technical authority and sheer muscular force that brought Giltburg the prize.

Giltburg was hardly an unknown quantity before this victory, already having recordings for EMI and Orchid Classics to his name. He is a steely player who tends to wallop rather than caress the keyboard. He brought the audience to its feet mostly with circus-like demonstrations of virtuosity in Prokofiev’s eighth sonata (Op. 84, B-flat major), especially the blockbuster finale, played with savage accuracy, and in the orchestral vastness of sound he produced in Ravel’s “La Valse.” [Continue reading]

Boris Giltburg, piano
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:
Ivan Hewett, Can talented musicians be well-rounded people? (The Telegraph, October 22)

Emilie White, Queen Elisabeth Competition: Boris Giltburg (La Scena Musicale, October 1)

'Svadba' at Opera Philadelphia

Charles T. Downey, Opera Philadelphia presents American premiere of mesmerizing “Svadba”
The Classical Review, November 3

Opera companies should be presenting new operas. The risk is enormous, because many new works turn out to be duds and because a company’s most reliable audience often wants to hear the same ten operas over and over again. Enterprising organizations find ways to make it financially viable, often by bringing new works to smaller, less expensive venues.

One such success is Opera Philadelphia’s new Opera in the City series, inaugurated on Saturday night with Svadba (Wedding), an opera by Ana Sokolović. It is the company’s first presentation at FringeArts, a gritty venue along the Delaware River, in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. [Continue reading]

Ana Sokolović, Svadba (Wedding)
Presented by Opera Philadelphia and FringeArts
Production from Queen of Puddings Music Theatre

SEE ALSO:
David Patrick Stearns, 'Svadba,' a singing Serbian celebration (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5)

Heidi Waleson, It’s Ladies’ Night at the Opera (Wall Street Journal, November 5)

Peter Crimmins, Opera Philadelphia extends wedding invitation with 'Svadba' (WHYY Newsworks, November 4 -- includes a rehearsal excerpt)

Beatrice Rana @ Wolf Trap

Charles T. Downey, Beatrice Rana’s immaculate performance at Wolf Trap
Washington Post, November 4, 2013

14th Van Cliburn Competition, B. Rana (released on November 12, 2013)

Victory at music competitions often goes to the performer who makes the fewest mistakes. Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, who won the Silver Medal at this year’s Van Cliburn Competition, gave an immaculate performance at her local debut on Friday night, in the Barns at Wolf Trap. There was almost nothing to criticize but only occasionally an interpretation that compelled attention.

Rana used her refined technique to tame the venue’s Yamaha piano, coaxing from it sounds of remarkable delicacy and finesse, especially in detailed inner voicings. Her performances of the two sets of variations by Robert Schumann she played here, recorded at the Cliburn, are being released this month by Harmonia Mundi. [Continue reading]

Beatrice Rana, piano
Silver Medalist, Van Cliburn Competition
Barns at Wolf Trap

Schumann, Variations on the Name of Abegg, op. 1
Schumann, Symphonic Etudes, op. 13
Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No. 6, op. 82
ENCORE: Rachmaninoff, Etude-Tableau, op. 39, no. 1 (C minor)

SEE ALSO:
Tim Madigan, Cliburn finalist Beatrice Rana is a happy prodigy (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 6)

Christophe Huss, Beatrice Rana, la vedette programmée (Le Devoir, October 12)

Claude Gingras, Brillant début de saison à l'Orchestre Métropolitain (La Presse, October 19)

Arthur Kaptainis, OM gets it half Rite on opening night of season (Montreal Gazette, October 21)

Terry Ponick, Beatrice Rana, Van Cliburn Silver Medalist, to perform at The Barns (Washington Times, October 31)

In Brief: Toussaint 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.) Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• Evelino Pido conducts Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena at the Wiener Staatsoper, with Luca Pisaroni (Enrico), Krassimira Stoyanova (Anna Bolena), Sonia Ganassi (Giovanna Seymour), and Stephen Costello (Precy). [ORF]


• From the Salle Pleyel, violonist Sergey Khachatryan joins the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and conductor Tugan Sokhiev in music by Liadov, Khatchaturian, and Elgar. [France Musique]


• Raphaël Pichon leads the Ensemble Pygmalion in motets by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, and Georg-Philipp Telemann, recorded in the Chapelle Royale at Versailles. [France Musique]


• Peter Dijkstra conducts Rossini's Petite messe solennelle in Munich with the Bavarian Radio Chorus. [BR-Klassik]


• The Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France plays the Musikverein in Vienna, with violonist Renaud Capuçon, organist Christophe Henry, and conductor Myung-Whun Chung in music by Weber, Bruch, and Saint-Saëns. [France Musique]

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Dip Your Ears, No. 160 (A Magical Night from Kurt Weill)

Kurt Weill Zaubernacht Arte Ensemble CPO

Unideological Tin Soldiers and Horsies

Art—books, music, whatnot—made specifically for children falls often either pray to insufferable patronization (i.e. Norene Smith’s narration of Mark Petering’s The Tomten and the Fox) or is refreshingly stripped of ideology (Charles Curtis’ Richards Reise, for example). Kurt Weill’s strangely delightful Zaubernacht (music for a children’s pantomime) falls solidly, perhaps surprisingly, into the latter category. Radical and revolutionary November group stuff seems far away when a fairy’s song awakes the toys, and off they go, most pleasantly: A grumpy stove and martial little tin soldiers and nimble Jumping Jacks and horsies and foxtrotting bears—all musically portrayed and invited to a dance. In 1922, 22 years old and fresh off his studies with Humperdinck and conducting operettas in Lüdenscheid, Kurt Weill went to work on Vladimir Boritsch’s piece and came up with something for an (economic) nine-piece combo of piano, percussion, strings, flute and bassoon. The result is an innovatively scored, thoroughly delightful, hour-long dance suite. It might be unfair to the composer (of whose music I’m not usually that keen), or just not saying much, but there’s little of Weill’s music that I enjoy as much as this Zaubernacht. This is the first recording of Weill’s own orchestration.

The Met on the Global Stage

The Peter Gelb publicity machine churns on, with a major piece on his work at the Metropolitan Opera featured on 60 Minutes. The New York company is in the French news this week, because the Louvre will host a series of cinematic broadcasts of operas from the Met, beginning this month. According to an article in Le Point (Le Louvre diffuse les opéras de légende du "Met" de New York, October 31), Gelb himself will be in Paris to introduce the series this weekend. Marie-Aude Roux also weighed in on the matter of the company's music director, James Levine, with an interview for Le Monde (James Levine, "fondamentalement optimiste", October 30) with some interesting questions (my translation):

What would you have done if you had had to give up your career?

My vocation has always been music. It is what has always lifted me up and saved me. As a child, I sang before I could talk. But I would have done other things: I would have devoted myself to teaching, to painting, or to writing. I am passionate about everything concerning the history of art. I am also a fundamentally optimistic person. I have always done what I can to live the sort of life I wanted, the best that I could, and now I know that I continue doing that.

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