Ionarts-at-Large: Pfitzner and Schumann's Requiem

When the orchestra of the Munich Philharmonic makes a sound, it makes a glorious sound. Whether, in the end, you agree with the use to which they – or their conductor Christian Thielemann – use that sound, there is no avoiding to be impressed.

Indeed, if you had to judge the top three orchestras in Munich by just one chord – like the opening statement of Schumann’s Manfred Overture – the Munich Philharmonic would come out on top. As it were, the program on November 29th was (once again) built around the orchestra’s sound with the Schumann overture having been accompanied by Pfitzner and Strauss orchestral songs and a grand finale in the form of Schumann’s reappearance with the Requiem in D-flat op.148.

Strauss, Complete Orchestral Songs, Haider / Niece PO / Pieczonka, Gruberova, Howarth, Petrova, Straka, Skovhus, Moll Nightingale

When the Bavarian State Orchestra played Schumann’s 4th Symphony (in the original version from 1841) they gave the symphony a lightness that truly put it in line with earlier Schumann work. When the Munich Philharmonic plays Schumann, it all sounds like late Schumann, no matter the date of composition. And so the Manfred Overture was a sumptuous, finely honed, romantic way to lead up to the potential highlight: Two orchestral songs by Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner, each. With Kwangchul Youn at hand and the Pfitzner-champion Thielemann guiding the orchestra most sensitively, Das Thal, op.51/1 and Der Einsame, op.51/2 (Strauss) and Lethe, op.37 and Zorn, op.15/2 the result was most pleasing.

Thielemann on Ionarts: Tristan & Isolde, "Dip Your Ears, No. 7"(July 20, 2004) Bruckner, Sy.5, "Slow Food for the Ears"(April 24, 2005) Parsifal, "This is Thielemann's Parsifal"(May 25, 2006) "Thielemann's Secret Work at Bayreuth"(September 01, 2006) Concert with the MPHIL, "Strauss with Thielemann" (Saturday, October 27, 2007)

Both Strauss songs are marvels well deserving their orchestration (not all Strauss songs do). More marvelous still was how Thielemann, a singer’s conductor through-and-through, tried to balance the orchestral forces with the incredibly low lie of the bass part. There are voices more suited for the very lowest parts of these songs than Kwangchul Youn’s (it is difficult not to growl “Finsterniss so dumpf und dicht” in Der Einsame) and there are better times for a bass to sing them than in the late AM after three performances on the three preceding days. Still conductor and orchestra navigated around the treacherous parts and the effortfully but valiantly struggling Kwangchul Youn was rarely overpowered. The short but powerful Pfitzner-gem Zorn (“Anger”) had to be encored.

Since Pfitzner has a political PR problem and there are plenty who will resist his music (and performances thereof) on grounds of his unfortunate proximity to the National Socialist regime (not possibly any closer than Herbert von Karajan, one may add), dedicated performances are all the more necessary. Thielemann can be relied upon for that – though his advocacy alone won’t be enough.

And he almost didn’t do Pfitzner any favors with the second half of the concert: ‘Rescuing’ the Schumann Requiem for soloists, choir, and orchestra in D-flat major from relative obscurity, with a performance that was nothing short of superlative, might justly have reduced any review of the first half to a short paragraph.

R.Schumann, Requiem op.148, Klee / Düsseldorf SO / Donath, Soffel, Gedda, Dieskau EMI

Can only committed, absolutely exceptional performances make a masterpiece out of this work? I am certain that it’s a ‘troubled’ work – but there was nothing troubling about it when the Munich Philharmonic presented it with the soloists Sibylla Rubens, Ann-Katrin Naidu, Christian Elsner, Reinhard Hagen, and especially the Philharmonic Chorus of Munich. From the hauntingly beautiful opening Requiem aeternam to the Te decet hymnus (during which I had to think of Mendelssohn’s Resurrection symphony) to the forward-marching Dies irae (by which point I was finally, completely lost in the music) all the way to the Sanctus (a little Mozart-allusion on “Pleni sunt coeli”) and the lyrical, humble, hopeful, resigned Benedictus which concludes on the word “Requiem” in a way that truly suggests eternal Rest, this was a spectacular experience. How can it be that only two recordings of this work exist, one of which fairly obscure and hard to get? After this performance one suspects – or at least hopes – that the Schumann Requiem is Christian Thielemann’s next project for Deutsche Grammophon.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Orgelreis naar Groningen en Ost Friesland

In the beginning of July 2007, the organ class of Jacques van Oortmerssen of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam took an organ trip to the Dutch region of Groningen and the German region of Ost Friesland. This rural region contains the highest density of intact historical organs in the world from the 17th and 18th centuries. We had the pleasure to visit six of these instruments from the late Gothic (1457) to Romantic (1865) periods, among them two Arp Schnitgers.

Rysum (Ost Friesland, Germany):

Purportedly built by Master Hermannus of Groningen in 1457, this is one of the oldest playable organs in the world. Although it has only six stops, playable on one manual (no pedal). The sound of each individual stop is very intense and expressive. A deeper dimension of the music of Conrad Paumann, Arnold Schlick, and Paul Hofheimer, etc. may be discovered when experienced on this instrument.


Westerhusen (Ost Friesland, Germany):

For this organ built in 1642, Jost Sieburg used materials from earlier times, including parts of a medieval case and supposedly the oldest trumpet stop (16th century) in the world. This instrument has a very sharp sound to help lead the congregational singing in the Protestant Church, which had been only recently been allowed. A single manual and short pedal share seven stops.


Noordbroek (Groningen region, Netherlands):

Built in 1696, this is one of the best-preserved instruments of the famous organ builder Arp Schnitger. After Schnitger, Hinsz and Freytag – who were also working in the Schnitger tradition – added some stops in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As one of the only historical organs in the Netherlands that has not been completely restored, this instrument has a unique combination of poetry and harshness of sound. Link to stoplist.


Norden (Ost Friesland, Germany):

Built between 1686 and 1691 by Arp Schnitger, this instrument was adjusted to current tastes throughout the ages and finally reconstructed by German organ builder Ahrend in the early 1980s. The sound of the Norden instrument is very refined, though clearly different from the un-restored Noordbroek Schnitger (see above). This instrument contains an original case, around half of the stops were reconstructed by Ahrend (the other half Schnitger and earlier), and there is a new console copied from the destroyed Lübeck Dom organ. Link to pictures and stoplist.


Marienhafe (Ost Friesland, Germany):

Built in 1713 by the possible student of Schnitger, Von Holy, this instrument is the best-preserved Baroque organ in Ost Friesland. Compared with the organs of Schnitger, its sound is milder (especially its individual stops) and looking toward the Galant style.


Oude Pekela (Groningen region, Netherlands):

The organ in the Reformed Church of Oude Pekela was built by Petrus van Oeckelen in 1865. Van Oeckelen was not an avant-garde builder, but his work is of very high quality. The instrument in Oude Pekela has an almost classical stoplist and lacks a swell box, much like the other instruments built by Van Oeckelen. The sound of the organ has considerable warmth and is well suited for Classical and early German Romantic repertoire (e.g., Mendelssohn, Schumann).

Special thanks to Gijs Boelen and Gerben Gritter for their help in compiling this post.

The Conservatorium van Amsterdam will move to a brand new building called Dok 5 next to the brand new library near Centraal Station.

In Brief: Rorate Caeli

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Ionarts has raved about the past chamber opera productions of the Châteauville Foundation, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (2007) and The Turn of the Screw (2006). Its next production, just announced as John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, will reunite the production team of Rape of Lucretia. Christmas comes early to Ionarts: the chance to see a staged production of this classic ballad opera! [William Kerley]


• Jonathan Jones has a great piece on a favorite in the history of religious art, the Isenheim Altarpiece. [The Guardian]


• I pledge allegiance to my language. Creepy but real. [Languagehat]


• Matthew Guerrieri has a first-rate piece on interplanetary Zen Master, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. [Slate]


• The Cloisters was always a favorite place, especially after it became the site of my proposal of marriage to Mrs. Ionarts. Holland Carter has a nice tribute to a complicated but ultimately glorious museum. [New York Times]


• A meme from Blogville: list the first sentence you posted each month of this year. The Ionarts Year in Review is below (not all the first month posts are mine: there is one by Jens Laurson and one by Sonya Harway). [James Tata]
  
  • January: Thank You for Smoking, an adaptation by Jason Reitman of the Christopher Buckley novel of the same name, was nominated for a Golden Globe this year in the category of Best Film, Comedy or Musical.
    
  • February: Benjamin Britten composed Gloriana in honor of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, when it was generally considered a failure.
    
  • March: When Yundi Li won First Prize at the 2000 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, no one had received the top honor in 15 years.
    
  • April: Here is your regular Sunday dosage of interesting items, from Blogville and beyond: Leon Dominguez wrote a great post about why the David Fielding production of Strauss's Die Ägyptische Helena failed.
    
  • May: For the conclusion of their 2006-2007 season, the Washington Concert Opera performed Rossini's Otello on Sunday night at GW’s Lisner Auditorium.
    
  • June: Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature.
    
  • July: The Munich Philharmonic is better known for its Bruckner than its Mahler - Sergiu Celibidache and Günter Wand, the two conductors that shaped the recent history of the Munich Philharmonic most, rarely, if ever, touched the neurotic, restless music of Mahler and preferred the structure and spiritual conservatism of Bruckner.
    
  • August: Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature.
    
  • September: I hope Teach will accept late work!
    
  • October: Violinists have enough excellent music written by Bach for their instrument that they should not have to plunder the piano repertory.
    
  • November: Emmanuel Pahud, one of the leading flutists of the younger generation (b. 1970), has made some spectacular recordings (we have reviewed him only tangentially, playing the flute part on Pierre-Laurent Aimard's recording of the Ives Concord Sonata) and played with the Berlin Philharmonic before embarking on a solo career.
    
  • December: Pierre Boulez is 82 years old.

Rorate cæli, desuper, et nubes pluant iustum:
Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.
(Introit, Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Drop dew, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the Just One:
Let the earth be opened and sprout forth the Savior.

Ionarts-at-Large: Tristan & Isolinda in Munich

When I saw Peter Konwitschny’s Tristan & Isolde at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, together with his Parsifal, it proved the epiphany that I needed to properly develop a love, admiration, and understanding for and of Wagner’s Musikdrama. The cast then included the incomparable Waltraud Meier and Kurt Moll and the still-great-but-waning Marjana Lipovšek and Bernd Weikl. (The Tristan of Jon Frederic West was more a peripheral figure.)

I have been searching for years to find a production that has quite the effect on me as the Munich Tristan and a few productions have gotten close: Konwitschny’s Dutchman—when well executed, David Fielding’s Ägyptische Helena, David Alden’s La Calisto, to name three that managed in the last few years.

Fortunately there is a DVD of the Munich Tristan with the above mentioned cast – conducted amiably by Zubin Mehta. But the chance to reexamine live what had left such an indelible impression on me then is better than any ‘canned’ experience might be able to provide – and I had that chance when a short run of four performances of that Tristan was given at the Staatsoper.

It is not only to Wagner’s popularity in this town that all four productions were sold out to the last seat, with throngs of ticket-seekers lingering around the opera house, but it also demonstrates the widely appreciated excellence and intelligence of Konwitschny’s Wagner productions. Additionally attractive was the allure of Waltraud Meier revisiting her supreme mezzo-Isolde – sharing the role with Linda Watson.

Catching the last of these four performances, I was scheduled to hear Watson – a prospect that promised a true soprano as Isolde, but also a singer who impresses me often and moves me rarely. As it turned out, Watson was who [most] people heard, anyway – as she jumped in for Mme. Meier (who only managed one act before pulling out) mid-performance the first night and for the entire on [the latter's] second night.

If Waltraud Meier had not just put in a extremely well received Isolde for the season opening night at La Scala (under Daniel Barenboim), one might have seen her attempt and failure to tackle Isolde again as a moment heralding her withdrawal from that role. Instead the Munich attempts – struggling against alleged sickness – now look more like a test-run for the performance in Milan.

Be that as it may, Isolde was in good hands with Watson, anyway, and she did the expected: Impress but not move – that is until the last twenty minutes of Act III where her voice, the music, the production, and her slightly anemic acting combined for something truly wonderful. Maybe it was not so much that Watson shone but that she shined in the light of her ‘supporting’ cast. If there is no great Isolde on the horizon to follow Meier, Munich has certainly found keepers in Daniela Sindram’s unobtrusive Brangäne who had a marvelous way with the words – and used her graceful, clear, and distinctive voice to excellent effect.

Michael Volle, a permanent member of the Staatsoper, easily makes any memory of Bernd Weikl fade: His Eugene Onegin was wonderful and he gave his all in Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Ecclesiastic Action” at the first Academy Concerto of the Bavarian State Orchestra. Now his Kurnewal was so superbly sung and acted that Tristan’s usually one-dimensional, emotionally limpid buddy threatened to become more interesting than John Treleaven’s main character. A fantastic performance that portrayed compassion and a genuineness that made Kurnewal surprisingly sympathetic.

The same must be said about René Pape’s König Marke. He is the undisputed successor to Kurt Moll and Hans Hotter in this repertoire. Perfect in diction and pronunciation, subtle, careful, and convincing in his acting, magisterial, round, and resonating over the entire range of his voice.

It would be unfair to say that John Treleaven’s Tristan disappointed: The singer was not just singing his fourth Tristan in just over a week, he had also gotten ill the day of this performance. But with no replacement at hand, he saved the show by singing right through, anyway. The result was of expectedly variable quality with moments that showed wear, swaths of struggle, and moving peaks. The effort alone was admirable and truly heroic.

The production, touched-up slightly from when I last saw it, makes the stage more intimate with its theatre-within-the-theatre setup. The briefest of summaries is: Ocean liner (Act I) – Flower-print couch (Act II) – Dilapidated room in castle with slide projector (Act III). Text and action are married to each other in the best of ways, the characters’ motivation always clear, and more than other productions, Konwitschny’s allows us to see Tristan and Isolde’s love not as induced by a potion but freed by casting off convention and fear when they both think that death is imminent.

The two white coffins that shine in spotlight over the last reverberating notes of the opera struck me as more tacky than I remembered. That the stage crew noisily swept broken glass from the floor behind a curtain in front of which Mme. Watson delivered a superb Liebestod was more than unfortunate. The ‘torch’ in Act II that Brangäne extinguishes looks as awful as ever. (And that in an opera house that admirably has no compunctions about using real torches, real glass, real water, and near-real explosions.) Tiny quibbles with what remains one of the very best opera productions I am familiar with.

Pictures courtesy Bavarian State Opera, © Wilfried Hösl

Ionarts: MMM

This blog got its modest start in July 2003, and we have now published posts in five calendar years, more or less without interruption. According to the Blogger software, this is our 3,000th post, which seems like an incredible number, but computers do not lie. As a way to mark the colossal waste expenditure of time and effort that this milestone represents, here is a look back at a few selections, some fun and others serious, from the embarrassingly large pile. Feel free to add quotes from and links to your most or least liked Ionarts posts in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Charles T. Downey, Bayreuth, Anyone? (August 12, 2003):

Last-minute round-trip plane ticket to Bavaria: $900.
Hotel room in Bayreuth for two nights: $200.
Admission to see Wagner's home, the Haus Wahnfried: $6.
Rental tuxedo: $90.
Ticket to Der fliegende Holländer for this Saturday night: $1,600.
The chance to see the place where Richard Wagner made his fantasies real: Priceless.

CTD, Lille, Capital of European Culture (December 7, 2003)

As Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio) put it, "We have more nuclear weapons now than we know what to do with." When even Republican representatives are saying that, it's clearly time to carve up some of that DoD budget to transform a few cities in North America into fabulous cultural madhouses.

Todd Babcock, Bud, the Brando I Knew (July 4, 2004):

In Hollywood, urban legends flourish about as strong and fast as bad publicity. In fact, sometimes they become so strong or widely believed that they actually become bad publicity. Such is the case where Richard Gere even has to address anything involving a gerbil. But the "legend" aspect often can take the form of fortifying a movie star or icon's reputation into the realm of myth. Such is the case with Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier. When Hoffman arrived on the set of Marathon Man exhausted from sleep deprivation in order to play a scene honestly, Olivier leveled him with his eyes and decried, "Why don’t you try acting."

CTD, Susan Sontag, the Iron Lady of New York (December 30, 2004):

She said and wrote these things in spite of the grave personal danger it brought to her own person, which is what I think we can call, without any irony, heroism. She prized erudition and she abhorred ignorance. Of course, she should be buried in Paris.

Mark Barry, Don't Forget to Close the Gates (February 13, 2005):

It could not have been a more beautiful day on Saturday for the unveiling of the long-awaited project of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, known as The Gates. Thousands showed up throughout the day to take it all in. There were joggers, strollers (many of the kind with babies in them), police on horseback, helicopters circling above, and so much fur I fear the forests will be very quiet this spring.

Jens F. Laurson, Do You Love Wagner? (June 27, 2005):

More whistling follows, and then the music is broken up until the overture continues polka-style, then joined by what seems like the drunken, expelled, and disgraced chapter of the Swingle Singers. It (reluctantly) gets one of my thumbs up -- a motion you will undoubtedly agree with, if not the choice of digit.

JFL, New York Soundtrack (August 6, 2005)

To be on the safe side altogether, I walked back from 85th to Gramercy – stopped at the Lincoln Center Tower classical department and cried. It’s a temple! They have CDs that are not even supposed to be available in the U.S. And a separate room for opera – tons and tons of opera and every available Parsifal recording under the sun.

CTD, Stale Ayre (December 6, 2005):

Somewhere there must be ugly actresses to play ugly characters and fat actors to play fat characters, aren't there? By extension, if you want to have someone sing crude, nasal, unpleasant sounds, please don't ask Dawn Upshaw to do it. Get someone who has an ugly voice. They are out there.

JFL, Political Piano: Zimerman at Shriver Hall (April 8, 2006):

Despite some supportive hollers, the air of inappropriateness hung heavy over Shriver Hall at that unexpected political outburst. I am sure that the assorted inmates at Gitmo – terrorists, soldiers, innocents, and Mudjaheddin alike – (the kind who support regimes that outlaw Beethoven, blow up statues of Buddha, condemn converts to Christianity to death, generally unenthusiastic about womens' rights) appreciated his gift of the Beethoven sonata tremendously. At least as much as the present Polish Ambassador must have appreciated Zimerman’s venture into his business.

JFL, Conducting without a Pulse: Rostropovich Survives, Dvořák Doesn't (April 28, 2006):

Churchillian-sounding faux-political speeches interpolated with totalitarian crowds cheering are played from the speakers while the orchestra runs empty loops for a while. All that is not necessarily saying that Slava! isn’t fun to listen to… it is. Much in the way that your funny, slightly trashy, crude cousin from down-south is. You just wouldn’t want him telling those jokes in good company.

JFL, May I Introduce: Festa della Voce, Insult to Music (May 6, 2006)

Had he treated a physical work of art as he did Schubert’s songs (like taking a knife to a Rubens, acid to a van Gogh, or a hammer to the statue of David), he would have been arrested – and rightly so.

CTD, Gaddafi: Failure or Triumph? (September 17, 2006):

I put the word opera in scarequotes above because the director of ENO has admitted in print that the very word "opera" might put off the young, hip audiences the company is trying to attract. It sounds like that was the correct instinct, since the piece barely qualifies for the honor. The work was uniformly vilified in the British press, quotes from which have been circulating in English-language news services in Europe, North America, and Australia.

CTD, Genesis by Glass and Lanting (February 23, 2007):

The score is everything one expects of Philip Glass, static, pulsating, and hypnotically pleasing to the ear. It occurred to me last night that Glass is the modern counterpart of Antonio Vivaldi: his music appeals widely, is mostly programmatic and rhythmically activated, trades on formulas in easy-to-understand forms, and is characterized by a high degree of self-borrowing.

Mark Barry, Kinetic in Baltimore (May 6, 2007):

This year's race, in which everyone was a winner, included seasoned veterans piloting quite sophisticated and elaborate creations, along with well-intentioned water-soluble entries.

Michael Lodico, American Opera Theater's Messiah (December 10, 2007):

The Hallelujah Chorus came next – with the four singers predatorily circling the tortured, tied-up, wingless angel. Needless to say, the audience’s instinct to stand and cheerily sing along had been zapped by that point.

Blessed Jacopone da Todi

December 22 is the feast day of Blessed Jacopone da Todi (d. December 25, 1306), one of the Franciscan spirituals. In a post this summer I mentioned that an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia singled out Jacopone da Todi and Dante as "mouthpieces of an ultra-spiritual and impossible Catholicism." Pope Boniface VIII, Dante's bitter enemy, imprisoned Jacopone for his extreme views calling for the Franciscans to return to the poverty of life embraced by St. Francis. This point of view was supported by Celestine V, the disgraced predecessor of Boniface VIII.

Jacopone was born Jacopo Benedetti, son of a noble family in Todi whose life changed when his pious wife was killed. Like Dante, Jacopone's literary influence was heightened because he wrote in the vernacular, and his popular hymns (laude) helped spread his love of strict penance and absolute poverty. His most famous composition, if it can reliably be attributed to him, is the famous sequence Stabat mater dolorosa (selections below, with my translation).

Image: Jacopone da Todi, fresco by Paolo Uccello, Cathedral of Prato, now in the Museo di Pittura Murale

Stabat Mater dolorosa iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.		The suffering mother stood next to the cross, weeping, while her son was hanging there.
Cuius animam gementem, contristatam et dolentem pertransivit gladius.		The one whose moaning spirit, saddened and in pain, was pierced by a sword.
O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta Mater Unigeniti!		O how sad and afflicted was that blessed woman, mother of the only begotten one!
Quis est homo, qui non fleret, Christi Matrem si videret in tanto supplicio?		What man would not weep, if he saw the Mother of Christ in such agony?
Quis non posset contristari, piam Matrem contemplari dolentem cum Filio?		Who would not be saddened to contemplate the loving mother suffering with her son?
Sancta Mater, istud agas, crucifixi fige plagas cordi meo valide.		Holy Mother, do this thing for me: imprint the wounds of the crucified one deeply into my heart.

Old School Brandenburgs

St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, photo courtesy of the Kennedy Center

The Fortas Chamber Music Series decided to attempt to create a new holiday tradition in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, by importing a performance of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos from Lincoln Center. In each of two performances on Wednesday and Thursday, the Chamber Ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's presented the entire set of six concertos in one evening, a feat that is manageable when the fast tempos are pressed ahead (although six individual stage set-ups add considerable time). Disappointingly, the group opted to present the concertos not in the order in which Bach copied them by hand into the manuscript to be offered to the Margrave of Brandenburg, whence the concertos' name.

Brandenburg Concertos: St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Il Giardino Armonico Concerto Italiano Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

It is easy to understand the temptation of reordering: you can end both halves with the most popular concertos (the paired recorders of no. 4 and the clarino trumpet of no. 2, respectively, which allows the trumpeter to show up late, just in time for his only work on the program) and you can sandwich the enigmatic no. 6 (with its pairs of violas da gamba and solo violas -- what was Bach thinking?) in the middle of the first half, the slot normally reserved for unpalatable atonal music. Given what we know about Bach's practice of creating large forms when joining works together into sets, however, it is most likely that the choice of order was not only intentional but significant.

These were reputable performances, at times technically impressive and at others a little stodgy, that stood out as distinctly old-fashioned to ears familiar with any of the spectacular recordings by historically informed performance (HIP) ensembles of the last two decades. Here we had all modern instruments, no Baroque bows, flutes instead of recorders, French horns instead of corni da caccia, cellos instead of violas da gamba, and no violino piccolo. Why not a Steinway instead of a harpsichord? Throughout much of the evening the performances gave me flashbacks of listening to my parents' 1968 LP of Benjamin Britten's recording of the Brandenburgs with the English Chamber Orchestra, a set still in my collection and still occasionally given a spin on the old turntable for a misty-eyed bit of nostalgia. This is not to say that the only way to play the Brandenburg concertos is with HIP instruments, just that the experience is much more enjoyable that way.


Manuscript, Brandenburg Concerto no. 3
The solo oboe playing of Stephen Taylor stood out in no. 1 and throughout the evening for consistent tone and nimble embellishments, while Naoko Tanaka's violin solo was a little shallow and scratchy in no. 1. In the strange, low-lying no. 6 (placed at the end of the collection probably as a final statement of Bach's ability to write an interesting concerto for no matter what motley assortment of instruments), the two solo violas were not well matched in tone, which spoiled most of the piece's effect. Flutist Elizabeth Mann gave a penetrating and mercurial performance in her two big appearances, in no. 5 and as first recorder flute in no. 4. Violinist Krista Benion Feeney had a good handle on the blindingly fast runs in no. 4.

Other Reviews: Daniel Ginsberg, Germany's Tastiest Six-Pack (Washington Post, December 21)

Someone needs to tell harpsichordist Robert Wolinsky to stop mumbling and humming as he plays, and it may as well be me. It was obtrusive enough, especially in the exposed cadenza sections of no. 5 (where one really just wants to hear the notes, please), to bother me halfway up the auditorium. Carl Albach was generally amazing with his elongated piccolo trumpet on the stratospheric clarino part in no. 2, although the one or two notes at the peak of his range barely squeaked out. There were more than a few moments where a conductor could have helped keep the ensemble on the same track, as in no. 2 and the most complicated concerto, the wreath of interwoven strings in no. 3. A dictatorship can have a few advantages over a democracy, at least in keeping order.

If it's more Bach you want to hear, the Washington Bach Consort continues its 30th anniversary season with a program of Bach concertos for various combinations of violin and harpsichords, at the Harman Center for the Arts (January 20, 3 pm). The next concerts in the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center will feature the Guarneri Quartet (January 10, 7:30 pm) and beloved soprano Dawn Upshaw (January 23, 7:30 pm).

WPAS Presents Violist Jennifer Stumm

On Tuesday evening Washington Performing Arts Society presented Atlanta native Jennifer Stumm, the first violist ever to win first prize in the Concert Artist Guild International Competition in its 55-year history. For this recital at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Stumm was joined by Irish pianist Finghin Collins.

Schumann’s Märchenbilder, op. 113 (Fairy Tale Pictures), and Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, op. 20, were beautifully played, though one sometimes sensed a bit of insecurity in softer, slower movements. Stumm seemed most at home in strong movements with virtuosic passagework, where the abundance of power at her disposal could be put to full use. Bright Sheng, whose new string quartet was under review just last week, originally composed The Stream Flows Forth for solo violin, but it was offered here in a transcription for viola. With Asian folk-style portamenti, the work is phrased in a long, long twisting and turning line that never breaks. After moments of booming sound, the work died away with mysterious portamenti in harmonics.

Other Reviews: Daniel Ginsberg, Jennifer Stumm (Washington Post, December 20)

In brief remarks, Stumm described Britten’s Lachrymae (Reflections on a Song of Dowland), op. 48, as a unique set of variations followed by the theme, a sad love song by Dowland. After the diverse sequence of variations, Stumm gave an emotional rendering of the modal, lamenting song. Pianist Finghin Collins was best in Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, where his mannerisms and somewhat blurred sound were minimized. This work won second prize in the 1919 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge competition behind Ernst Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano. Clarke’s writing at times is reminiscent of both Debussy’s splashing colors and the plaintive tunes of Vaughan Williams (one of her supporters) and Stanford (one of her teachers).

As in the earlier works, Stumm seemed more confident with virtuosic material, though she had a tendency to sway left and right in slower bits, somewhat dissipating her energy. Stumm’s encore, The Donkey and Driver, was a hoot. The descending octave (or two) figure represented well the voice of an exasperated donkey, as did Stumm’s retuning of her lowest string (C) for the donkey’s last bray. Kudos to WPAS for targeting and supporting such promising artists at crucial points in their careers.

You must wait until 2008 for the next WPAS classical concerts: recitals by the Artis-Quartett Wien (January 11, 7:30 pm) and pianist Adam Neiman (January 12, 2 pm), both at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.