Leonard Slatkin has accepted a faculty position at Indiana University, which could be interpreted as another step toward a gradual retreat from the life of active Music Directorship... Although bound to stay extraordinarily busy, this might give him an opportunity to work on projects like a completion of the Mahler 10th, at which he hinted in a recent interview.
UPDATE:
See also Tim Page, Slatkin to Join Indiana U. Faculty (Washington Post, October 28).
Jeunehomme may be an unfortunate name for any young lady, but if the reward is to be associated with Mozart’s first great piano concerto – no.9 in E-flat Major K.271, which bears her name – it can’t be all that bad. It was the opening work in András Schiff’s WPAS-presented concert at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall last Saturday. The chamber orchestra Capella Andrea Barca (see comments below) that he founded and played with was created specifically for the purpose of performing all of Mozart’s piano concertos – although they have branched out into Beethoven, Haydn, and even Schumann, as of late. Much has been made of the fact that the players of the CAB were ‘handpicked by András Schiff’, but so is every member of any professional orchestra. More importantly these players are friends and good acquaintances of Mr. Schiff and each other who all enjoy spending time and making music together.
This familiarity, collegiality, the warmth and humor come out in their performances. Gentle-hearted, warm, and flowing renditions of the music they obviously love were the result. Mr. Schiff, conducting from the piano (more or less, at least) brought his light, delicate (but thankfully never ‘precious’ or “Dresden China” style), slightly understated Mozart playing to the mix. It came together marvelously: Mozart with a relaxed, broad smile rather than a jolt.
 Mozart, Piano Concertos, A.Schiff / S.Vegh / Salzburg Mozarteum Camerata Academica |
Tim Page, Piano to Flip Your Wig (Washington Post, October 23) |
Available at Amazon: Handel, Theodora, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, David Daniels, directed by Peter Sellars, Glyndebourne Opera, William Christie (released on June 29, 2004) |
 Lord, to Thee each night and day, Strong in hope, we sing and pray. Words by Thomas Morell, set in Handel's Theodora |
Last Friday, members of the Washington Wagner Society, Wagnerians, and a few people who love Wagner got together for their 13th Evelyn Lear & Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Concert at the German Embassy which was turned into a Thomas Stewart memorial event after his death on September 24th.Without his involvement, efforts, and energy, the Emerging Singers program would never have been what it is – or more likely never been at all. Introduced by an emotional Evelyn Lear, the performances (opera excerpts accompanied on the piano by Ms. Betty Bullock) were much more to the listeners than just variously successful interpretations of Elisabeth, Lohengrin, Sieglinde, Amfortas, et al. – they were tear-moist memories to a great Wagnerian and teacher who was with the performers and the audiences in heart and mind.
But even with the special event the concert constituted, the hyperbole of Ms. Lear (“Have you ever heard such a great performance of XYZ in any opera house in the world? I haven’t…”) didn’t ring true – and neither did the uncritical applause of the audience which had an excited cheerleader in the form of Mark J. Estren in their midst. (His review for the Washington Post can be read here.)
Soprano Kara Harman started things off with “Dich, teure Halle” from Tannhäuser and proved to be successfully loud, if nothing else. Her gestures were ridiculous stock-phrases that I thought we’d gotten over 30, 40 years ago. There was no sense of bel canto, no ability to reduce the voice in “Sei mir gegrüsst!” – and for the most part no attempt, either. It was, in short, a collection of Wagner clichés, screamed with moderate beauty, straight at the audience. Isolde’s Liebestod was not a lot better. Lack of legato but plenty exaggerations, always lack of softness, unsubtle diminuendi at “ertrinken, versinken” (but at least some diminuendo), lack of breath control (“mild versöhnend – inhale – aus ihm tönend”), and the last note (“Lust”) ever so slightly flat… it would have been reasonably enjoyable – but being told that it was the “best Liebestod we could have heard in any opera house imaginable” soured the last bit of appreciation I could have mustered. “Du bist der Lenz” from Act 1 of Die Walküre had two shrill moments (“erblÜTHE”, “an mein OHR”) and the last line’s loudness (“zuerst ich den Freund ersah”) seemed aimed to impress only. Otherwise there was little to criticize.
Tenor Jeffrey Springer sang Lohengrin’s “In fernem Land”, Parsifal’s “Nur eine Waffe taugt”, and the Preislied from Die Meistersinger. The stiffness and inflexibility of his singing was not made up for with the sheer volume he can sing with. (As if singing loud were tantamount to singing Wagner well… especially in small places.) The portamentos at “es heist der GRAL” and “Vom Gral ward ich…” were questionable, at “Tugend Recht ernannt” the unidiomatic pronunciation was slurred, there was no sweetness at all in the lines from “Wer nun dem Gral zu dienen ist erkoren” on, “von einer Engelschar gebracht” wasn’t taken back even a little, “höchstes Heiligtum bewacht” needed an extra breath, and a few phrases were flat. On the other hand, the phrasing of “– dann muss er von euch ziehn” was delicate and very well rendered. As Parsifal, “Quelle” (spring) and “Welle” (wave) turned into “quäle” (torture) and “wähle” (chose) while the poses he struck were abominable (extended arm, shaking from stiffness and tension). And this was already better than the Lohengrin. During the Prize-song from the Meistersinger, Sachs could have finished more shoes than a Vietnamese child laborer had he marked every oddly pronounced word or clunky phrase. Little of it was sung, much of it was screamed. The last line of “Parnass und Paradies!” was a booming howl.
I go into perhaps inane detail to avoid the accusation that I dismiss these singers’ earnest efforts and surely impressive capabilities off hand or without reason or justification. And I may have brushed over much of the gruesome details had there not been the constant barrage of “wasn’t this just the best, ever!”. No, it wasn’t. It was no more than would expect from a local group of Wagnerians who show off a few vocal talents. Or at least it would have been just that, had it not been for baritone Jason Stearns and – despite one large caveat – Ms. Deidra Gorton’s dramatic soprano.
Jason Stearns was much touted as Thomas Stewart’s favorite and reminding Evelyn Lear much of her late husband. If that sounded like another setup for disappointment, the first few lines in Wotan’s “Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge”, convinced at once. A beautiful piano (!), nuance (!), very decent pronunciation, numerous smart touches (“ward sie gewonnen”, “so grüss ich die BURG”) made this by far the best performance of the evening and one that no opera house would be ashamed of having heard from its stage. I was not quite as impressed with his Amfortas where he sounded a little more muffled, could have done more to give “götlichem Glanz den Erlöser selbst erschaust” a transfigured touch, but at least he had that essential tool that was missing utterly from his two colleagues’ set of abilities: nuance. In his Wolfram (“Wie Todesahnung”) I should have liked to have a little more Bellini, a little less Verdi – but apart from a small lack of clarity and three mangled syllables, there was nothing to complain about.
Finally, Mr. Stearns impressed as Wotan in the conclusion of Act III of Die Walküre with Deidra Gorton’s only appearance. Her one appearance made up in quality for her lack of stage exposure. With a nice mezzo hue she sang well and controlled the entire dynamic band from soft to loud. Her loudest did not rival Ms. Harman’s decibel acrobatics, but then Ms. Harman only had “on” and “off” – whereas Ms. Gorton had everything in between, too. Her ability (or willingness?) to vary her voice, her singing according to the text and situation, and most of all her exemplary dramatic skills (at least in this crowd it looked exemplary) set her apart from the rest in that respect. There were none of the idiotic, meaningless gestures here – even with the limitations of standing, moving, lying on a bare stage with one chair for quarter an hour or more. Unlike the other singers – except Mr. Stearns, to a degree – she actually seemed to know what it meant to sing on stage and convey a character in some sort of believable form. Her weakness? Her voice narrows slightly at the top register, although this wasn’t much an issue in a compelling performance. Slightly more worrying was her excruciatingly bad German pronunciation that had a fifth of the text barely discernable. A problem that might require unpleasant amounts of work but can be fixed should she desire to sing Wagner roles on German stages with ample success.
Thanks to these two singers, the Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singer Concert did impress, after all.
Available at Amazon: Sting, Songs from the Labyrinth, Edin Karamazov (released on October 10, 2006) |
Chris Pasles, Sting's only in it for the lute (Los Angeles Times, October 17) Martin Hodgson, Sting plucks lute composer from obscurity (The Independent, October 16) Elizabeth Blair, Sting's 'Labyrinth': 16th Century Pop Music (NPR, October 16) Jessica Duchen, Hooked on classics: Rock stars who attempt the crossover (The Independent, October 16) Sting's Journey Through History (CBS News, October 15) Elysa Gardiner, Sting's 'Labyrinth' mines the oldies — from the 1600s (USA Today, October 4) |
We love our anniversaries here at Ionarts. One that I have missed was the 500th anniversary of the death of Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. A recent article by Roderick Conway Morris (Mantegna's rise from teen prodigy to master, October 20) in the International Herald Tribune drew my attention to the exhibits marking the event in Italy:
Andrea Mantegna never forgot his debt to Padua. For an artist of his unusual talents and temperament, he could not have come into the world in a better place at a better time. Born here, probably in 1431, he went on to spend the greater part of his life in Mantua. But he remained proud of his hometown, which he clearly felt conferred on him, a boy from a very humble background, an aura of learning and intellectual respectability. It was also the scene of his early triumphs.Three simultaneous exhibits are being held right now, at the Museo Civico Eremitani in Padua, the Palazzo Gran Guardia in Verona, and the Museo di Palazzo Ducale/Palazzo Te (Andrea Mantegna e i Gonzaga) in Mantua. Here's the overall Web site for the Mantegna 2006 exhibits (Padua | Verona | Mantua). And, heck, if you are going to go to Padua, you have to see the Scrovegni Chapel, right?
Mantegna's formative years coincided with the extended stay of the Florentine sculptor Donatello, the greatest long-term visual influence on this most sculptural of painters. The more enlightened scholars of this university town provided the young artist with an informal education in the classics and archaeology, helping him to establish himself as one of Italy's authorities on Antiquity. His aristocratic admirers were instrumental in assuring his involvement in a major fresco cycle here, and another commission for his first altarpiece, destined for Verona. They also smoothed the way to his gaining, while he was still in his 20s, the prestigious and well-paid post as court painter to the Gonzagas in Mantua, an artistic center whose importance far exceeded its modest size and territory, guaranteeing the artist international recognition.
From Ionarts guest-critic Robert R. Reilly comes this review of London's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
In the pivotal role of Katerina, understudy Ann Williams-King replaced an indisposed Eva-Maria Westbroek. One can only imagine the pressure on this British soprano, who was making her ROH debut in this very difficult role at the last minute. At first, as she remained glued to the conductor’s prompts, I worried that she would be swamped by the orchestra and blown offstage by John Tomlinson’s riveting, larger-than-life portrayal of Boris, Katerina’s father-in-law. However, she grew into the role, took it over, inhabiting it so completely by the final act that even the person who booed the announcement of her substitution must have been won over. Tenor Christopher Ventris as Katerina’s lover, Sergey, was another standout. Roderick Earle’s Police Inspector and Maxim Mikhailov’s Priest were also superbly rendered.
Since opera staging today seems to require transposing the original time in which an opera is set – in this case, the 19th century – to something more modern, I was not surprised to see this 1950s setting of Lady Macbeth. I was also prepared to be irritated by it, as I often am by such transpositions, which usually reveal nothing more than the poverty of the director’s imagination. However, I caught on to what I think Jones may have been trying to achieve here and found it mostly convincing. The 50s banality somehow conformed to the brutality, the falseness, the disposability of everything.
Shostakovich said he saw Katerina as the "tragic portrayal of the destiny of a talented, smart and outstanding woman, dying in the nightmarish atmosphere of pre-Revolutionary Russia.” Change that to: the destiny of a country, Russia, dying in the nightmarish atmosphere of the Soviet Union, and we get closer to what we are shown and hear. In 1936, it is lucky that the offended Stalin left the opera early and that all he heard was “noise instead of music,” as announced in Pravda several days later. Otherwise, had he seen it to the end, he would have probably killed Shostakovich for this subversive work. 
As a consequence, this loveless society is drenched in alcohol, cupidity, and lasciviousness. Everything is coarsened; everything is false; everything is a lie. This, of course, would be true anywhere where love is so completely absent, but the Soviet Union took a particularly bizarre and surreal turn due to the total lie upon which it was based as to who and what human beings are. When reduced to this level, people do become caricatures of themselves. The deprivation of love dehumanizes. It leads to terrible things. This cruelty is what Shostakovich shows. It hurts to watch and sometimes to listen.| Erica Jeal, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (The Guardian, October 3) Anna Picard, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (The Independent, October 8) Hugh Canning, Opera: The State They're In (The Times, October 8) De Nederlandse Opera (2006) Bolshoi (2004) Petr Weigl film (1992) |
