Second Opinion: Playing with Mermaids: Conlon and the NSO

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center..

The only disappointing thing about the evening of Thursday, April 10, 2014 at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall was that it was not full. When the National Symphony Orchestra chooses such interesting repertory as it did for this concert under conductor James Conlon, the musical idealist imagines the place full to the rafters.

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Conlon and 'The Mermaid'

A. Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau, Gürzenich Orchester Köln, J. Conlon (EMI, 1997)

James Conlon's stint with the National Symphony Orchestra last week was one of my Top Ten concert picks for the month. There were other assignments in the way for the first two performances, but as noted on Saturday, there was no way I was going to miss the chance to hear Conlon conduct Alexander Zemlinsky's tone poem Die Seejungfrau, at the last performance on Saturday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The program was inverted from the usual order of a symphony concert, with the major Zemlinsky work performed first, followed by the concerto and the short piece that would usually be a concert-opener. At the outset, Conlon took microphone in hand and gave a savant and convincing introduction to Die Seejungfrau, speculating that Zemlinsky saw himself in the mermaid and the beautiful and inaccessible Alma Schindler, with whom he was in love, as the unapproachable prince. Alma Schindler -- later Mahler, Gropius, finally Werfel -- provided the common thread of the program, too, as she was the dedicatee of Korngold's violin concerto on the second half, composed when both Korngold and Alma lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s.

Die Seejungfrau is in three movements, which are not identified with elements of the story but correspond roughly as follows: the little mermaid's life in the sea and first encounter with the prince; the spell that transforms her into a human and her attempt to get the prince to marry her; and her ultimate embrace of death, because she will not accept the Mer-Witch's offer to kill the prince and be returned herself to the sea. The first movement evokes the deep rolling of the sea, with static motifs, including deep harp notes, layered on top of groaning bass instruments, leading to huge tidal swells of sound. Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef was mercurial and passionate in the violin solos of the little mermaid, numerous enough to make the work almost a sort of violin concerto. Conlon gave the work a decisive pacing, which added gritty excitement to the faster passages. A rollicking horn theme signifies the prince and his men, and a passage of music in the second movement, excised from the score after the work's premiere, has been put back into the score, recovered from the holograph score in the Library of Congress, heard for the first time in the United States in these performances.

As Conlon noted, the second movement has a number of waltzes in it, and the solo violin gets swept up in one of them. If you only know this story from the sanitized Disney movie version, Andersen's mermaid suffers terrible searing pain every time she walks on her magical legs. The Mer-Witch tells her that she will move more gracefully than any human but with this terrible pain, which she endures quite happily for the chance to please the prince. The stakes in the Andersen story are deadly: if a human does not marry her, thereby sharing his immortal soul with her, the soulless mermaid will dissolve into the sea foam. The mermaid's family strikes another pact with the Mer-Witch, trading their hair for an enchanted blade: if the mermaid kills the prince with it, her fish's tail will return and she can go back to the sea. Selflessly, the mermaid throws the knife into the sea, giving up her life, but she joins spirits in the air, who can earn a soul by performing acts to help the living. Zemlinsky's has its eeriest effects in the third movement, including the return of the menacing deep sea music from the opening of the piece, with radiant string strings lifting up the violin solo, with harp twinkles and muted brass, quite ethereal. It is a score that should be on every conductor's To Do list.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, NSO concert stuffed with Romantic music by Zemlinsky, Korngold and Brahms (Washington Post, April 11) Terry Ponick, NSO, James Conlon highlight 20th century’s missing masterpieces (Communities Digital News, April 11) Jesse Hamlin, James Conlon leads musical revival of Nazi-banned composers (San Francisco Chronicle, April 9)

Gil Shaham has been specializing in 20th-century violin concertos, and here he was the soloist for the sugary Korngold concerto. Shaham's tone is often beautiful and his phrasing sensitive, when the sound of the orchestra does not push him too far and the writing is not too high on the E string or otherwise demanding, so the delicate parts of this concerto were lovely, often colored by the celesta, seated right in front of Conlon's podium in this performance. In recent years, though, elements of Shaham's playing have unraveled a bit, and there were some hairy flautando notes here, iffy intonation, and slightly sketchy double-stops -- not enough to make the performance disastrous by any means, but dulling some of its shine. After these two large works, the Brahms "Variations on a Theme by Haydn" were probably unnecessary, especially since it was last heard from the NSO only in 2009, but it offered another chance for the NSO musicians to shine, especially the contraforte player Lewis Lipnick, whose line was given special prominence in the theme and several variations. Conlon kept most of the piece moving along, with a minimum of oozy sentiment to the rubato, making the minore variation (no. 4) legato and smoldering.

The NSO season continues next week, with guest conductor Cornelius Meister leading performances of overly familiar Mendelssohn and Mozart, plus Prokofiev's third piano concerto, with Nikolai Lugansky as soloist (April 17 to 19).

Another Year, Another 'Carmen'

Charles T. Downey, Virginia Opera stages ‘Carmen’
Washington Post, April 14, 2014

An opera company is unlikely to have a triumph, in the critical sense, by staging “Carmen,” but Georges Bizet’s story of passion and murder will fill a house. It worked for Virginia Opera, which staged the opera on Friday night at George Mason University Center for the Arts. With some talented singers and a handsome production, updated by director Tazewell Thompson to Franco-era Spain, it was bound to be a crowd-pleaser.

Mezzo-soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson... [Continue reading]

Bizet, Carmen
Virginia Opera
GMU Center for the Arts

VIRGINIA OPERA, 2013-14 SEASON
Falstaff | Magic Flute | Ariadne auf Naxos

Sadly, Virginia Opera will celebrate its 40th anniversary season by giving over half of its productions to music theater and operetta. It is a long way from the company's daring 2011-12 season.

In Brief: Tax Man 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.

• Listen to a concert of Vivaldi by Vivica Genaux and Europa Galante, conducted by Fabio Biondi. [France Musique]


• From the Wiener Staatsoper, Wagner's Lohengrin, with Klaus Florian Vogt (Lohengrin), Camilla Nylund (Elsa von Brabant), and conductor Mikko Franck. [ORF]


• From the Théâtre Graslin de Nantes, a performance of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, recorded last month. [France Musique]


• Philippe Jaroussky and Emöke Barath perform Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the Château de Fontainebleau. [ARTE Live Web]


• Violinist Thomas Zehetmair joins conductor Alan Gilbert and the Berlin Philharmonic for music by Lutoslawski, LJanacek, Bernd-Alois Zimmermann, and Bartok. [France Musique]


• Philippe Herreweghe conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, joined by mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg and Collegium Vocale Gent in music of Brahms. [France Musique]


• Jordi Savall leads violinist Manfred Kraemer and Le Concert des Nations in music by Michael Praetorius, William Brade, Guillaume Dumanoir, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Johann Rosenmuller, Henry Purcell, and Jean-Philippe Rameau. [France Musique]


• Thomas Hengelbrock conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven's Mass in C Major and Schubert's Stabat mater and "Unfinished" Symphony. [ORF]


• Watch Marin Alsop conduct the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, in music by Shostakovich and Rachmaninov. [ARTE Live Web]


• Semyon Bychkov conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall. [BBC3]


• A program of Vivaldi concerts from Gli Incogniti, led by violinist Amandine Beyer. [ORF]


• Shostakovichs 13th symphony and Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine, with Ingo Metzmacher leading the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. [ORF]


• Watch Myung-Whun Chung conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, in music by Gustav Mahler. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Conductor Tugan Sokhiev and cellist Johannes Moser join the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, in music by Miecyslaw Weinberg, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Albert Roussel. [ORF]


• London Handel Players perform at the Wigmore Hall, as part of the London Handel Festival 2014. [BBC3]


• Music of Bach, Richard Danielpour, and Prokofiev performed by violinist Gil Shaham and musicians from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. [France Musique]


• Harpists Iris Torossian and Marion Lénart join La Maîtrise de Radio France, under conductor Sofi Jeannin, to perform music by Francis Poulenc, André Caplet, Holst, Bernard Andres, and Daniel Lesur. [France Musique]


• Violinist Arabella Steinbacher joins the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Andrés Orozco-Estrada at the podium, in music by Haydn, Prokofiev, Ysaye, Friedrich Cerha, and Rachmaninov. [France Musique]


• The ensemble Sillages offers a celebration of composer Allain Gaussin, with the world premiere of his latest work, Le vent se lève, plus music by Javier Torres Maldonado, Francisco Guerrero, and Alex Mincek. [France Musique]


• A performance of Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland, starring Paul Schöffler (Sebastiano), Oskar Czerwenka (Tommaso), Gre Brouwenstijn (Marta), and Hans Hopf (Pedro), with the Vienna Symphony. [ORF]

Briefly Noted: 'The Mermaid'

A. Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau, Gürzenich Orchester Köln, J. Conlon (EMI, 1997)

James Conlon has devoted much of his career to the revival of forgotten works and composers from the early 20th century. One of those composers is Alexander Zemlinsky, one-time teacher of Arnold Schoenberg and eventually his relative, when Schoenberg married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde. A little-known tone poem by Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau, was given its premiere in 1905, on a concert sponsored by the Society of Creative Musicians that also featured Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande. Zemlinsky's 45-minute work, for a massive orchestra [4 3 4 3 - 6 3 4 1 - timp, perc(2), hp(2), str], is based on the same Hans Christian Andersen story (Den lille Havfrue) that was (loosely) the basis for Disney's film The Little Mermaid, except that in the Danish story the mermaid decides not to stab the prince, who has betrayed her by marrying another woman, opting instead to throw her knife into the sea and dissolve into the air as a sort of benevolent spirit. Conlon was not the first to record this work, but it has become associated with him since this recording with the Gürzenich Orchester Köln. In his concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra this week -- the last performance is this evening -- Conlon is leading the first U.S. performances of a new critical edition of the work, which restores a section of 83 measures cut by the composer after the work's premiere, from the mermaid's visit to the Mer-witch.

According to Antony Beaumont's biography of Zemlinsky, it was Die Seejungfrau "that stole the show" at that 1905 concert: "His diaphanous orchestration teased the ear; the rich harmonies and passionate climaxes gave pleasure, and with his experience as a conductor of operetta, he knew how to articulate the finest nuance, to negotiate the subtlest of rubatos." During the Schoenberg piece, on the other hand, the audience grew restless, and many listeners left. Conlon's recording is well worth revisiting, or hearing for the first time, revealing a work that is in keeping with other fairy-tale music works of the same era, including the Pelléas adaptations by Fauré and Debussy. Listening to it now (see embedded video below), as with many of Zemlinsky's works, it is hard to believe that this composer could have passed into obscurity.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Charles T. Downey, Library of Congress’s contemporary music show scores
Washington Post, April 11, 2014

E. Rautavaara, String Quintet No. 1 (inter alia), Sibelius Quartet, J.-E. Gustafsson (Ondine, 1998)

The past week’s concert schedule has been loaded with contemporary music, from an anniversary celebration for Louis Andriessen to a residency by British composer Oliver Knussen. In the midst of it all, the Library of Congress hosted a performance of yet more recent music on Thursday night, as part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s touring program. A slate of musicians performed selections from the last two decades, which were paired with the monumental “Quartet for the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen.

Pierre Jalbert’s... [Continue reading]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Music by Jalbert, Carter, Rautavaara, Messiaen
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Einojuhani Rautavaara, Rasputin (2006) | Percussion concerto with BSO
Rautavaara's conclusion to Sibelius's sixth symphony (Vienna Symphony)

Iestyn Davies and Melancholia

Charles T. Downey, Countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, April 10, 2014

The Art of Melancholy: Songs by John Dowland, I. Davies, T. Dunford (Hyperion, 2014)

Both countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford have given first-rate concerts here in the last few years, the former at the Phillips Collection and the latter at the French Embassy. We have Vocal Arts DC to thank, however, for presenting the combination of the two musicians in an immaculate and affecting concert on Tuesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Davies possesses one of the most refined and lucent countertenor voices, with flawless intonation, ease and beauty across its range and not even a hint of shrillness. With his love of text, intelligent phrasing and clean but not overdone English diction, Davies is a natural match for the English Renaissance lute-song repertory, and Dunford, who has a similarly delicate approach to his instrument, matched him phrase for phrase. [Continue reading]

Iestyn Davies (countertenor) and Thomas Dunford (lute)
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
David Gordon Duke, The enchantment of the lute song (Edmonton Journal, April 1)

Iestyn Davies:
Midsummer Night's Dream (Metropolitan Opera, 2013)

Phillips Collection, 2011

Thomas Dunford:
La Maison Française (2011, 2012)

With William Christie, Les Arts Florissants

Andriessen at 75

Charles T. Downey, Monica Germino performs at Andriessen 75 tribute at Atlas
Washington Post, April 9, 2014

L. Andriessen, De Materie, R. de Leeuw (Nonesuch, 1996)

The city-wide festival for Louis Andriessen’s 75th birthday continued on Monday night at the Atlas Performing Arts Center with a concert featuring a piece by the Dutch composer and music by composers he influenced. The hour-long program was performed by violinist Monica Germino, the composer’s wife, and her instrument and voice were enhanced and processed by sound designer Frank van der Weij.

Andriessen’s “Xenia” is a three-movement etude-like piece, commissioned by the Manchester International Violin Competition. A “Sarabande” of slow glissandi in double-stops is contrasted with a “Caccia” of pulsing repeated notes, followed by a melody sung by the performer and accompanied by the violin, coming to rest on a major chord. [Continue reading]

Monica Germino, violin
Frank van der Weij, sound designer
Atlas Performing Arts Center

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, ‘La Commedia,’ at National Gallery, opens Louis Andriessen festival (Washington Post, April 8)

---, Classical Music spring preview: Washington celebrates Louis Andriessen’s 75th birthday (Washington Post, February 1)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The Road to Hell and Back Is Paved With Surprises (New York Times, April 8)

Alex Ross, Brazen (The New Yorker, May 3, 2010)

BY ANDRIESSEN:
Workers Union (1975, any group of loud instruments)

De Staat (1976)

De Materie
3. De Stijl (1984)

La Passione (2002)

Mysteriën (2013)