Cavalleria Rusticana

Dolora Zajick and Salvatore Licitra in Cavalleria Rusticana, Washington National Opera, photo by Leah L. Jones

To cap off its 2007-2008 season, the Washington National Opera is offering a boldly flavored, if hardly unusual digestif, a concert performance of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. Shrewdly programmed concert performances of opera, like many of those offered by Washington Concert Opera, are opportunities to perform a relatively unknown opera by a well-known composer (Rossini's Tancredi or Bianca e Falliero) or something that few people in their right mind ever think of staging (like Moses und Aron or Das Wunder der Heliane).

Mascagni's over-performed, bite-sized piece of verismo pablum (pace Opera Chic) is neither of those things (although WCO also resorted to Cavalleria a few years ago). The initially disappointing sales for these performances seemed to indicate that even the often unadventurous Washington audience had voted it down. The slate of singers, however, had to give anyone pause, as it included two important names in this sort of repertory. The Sunday afternoon performance removed any doubt, and as much as it may surprise you to hear it from me, anyone who loves great singing, such as we do not hear all that often here in Washington, should find a way to hear the only remaining performance, on Friday night.

There is no point in arguing about the value of the work: those who love it, love it, and vice-versa. If sung and played well, as it was here, its emotionally crude appeal can pack a punch. American mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, in her regrettably late company debut, sang with a voice that was a stunning force of nature. The few times that she sang directly toward me, it was like a torpedo of sound. That vocal bludgeon was deployed only at emotional high points, mixed with a range of vocal qualities, like the lines drawn by a quill, from razor-sharp to thickly inked. Zajick has rightly earned a reputation for this role, as well as even more forceful and demanding ones, like Verdi's Azucena and Amneris.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Mezzo-Soprano's Glorious Debut Lifts 'Cavalleria' (Washington Post, May 27) Tim Smith, An intense performance of 'Cavalleria' (Baltimore Sun, May 27) T. L. Ponick, Salute to 'Chivalry,' masters (Washington Times, May 27)

Tenor Salvatore Licitra recently sang the role of Turiddu and the title role of Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, with which it is often paired, in the same evening. (Zajick also sang Santuzza in that performance, and Bernard Holland described her voice as a "blast furnace.") Licitra was last heard on this stage in the 2005 Tosca and 2004 Andrea Chénier, both memorable performances, and here again was a tenore di forza voice to match Zajick. As in previous outings, however, there were minor problems of flatness and control that indicate areas where Licitra has room to grow.

Baritone Gordon Hawkins seemed much less at ease in this role than he did recently as Rigoletto. He stumbled over the Italian and elided or otherwise missed many entrances and cutoffs, but the frame, both vocal and physical, was right for the role. Conductor Riccardo Frizza did his best to keep the ensemble on track but occasionally seemed overwhelmed. Madeleine Grey and Leslie Mutchler were good in the supporting roles of Mamma Lucia and Lola, respectively. The WNO Orchestra, raised up to the stage level from its pit, gave its usual workmanlike performance, with lovely solos from the flute in the introductory scene, a terrible electronic organ, and a violin sound that needed some burnishing. The opera was introduced by an orchestral first half, overtures and instrumental pieces from Mascagni and other Italian opera composers.

The only other performance of Cavalleria Rusticana is scheduled for Friday evening (May 30, 7:30 pm). A few tickets, mostly the expensive ones, remain.

BSO's Casual Gershwin

Miss Ionarts and Master Ionarts, on the concert reporting beat

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra often offers a slimmed-down version of their weekly programs, called the Casual Concert, presented with no intermission on Saturday mornings at 11 am. This past weekend, it seemed like as good a time as any to pile Master Ionarts and Miss Ionarts into their car-seats to see what it was all about. On the surface, it was not really all that different. While a few in the audience wore shorts and/or T-shirts, most people were dressed about as casually as they are for a regular evening concert, while a few others still dressed more formally. On stage, the orchestra "dressed down" to jackets and ties, but Marin Alsop and this week's soloist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, wore what they generally wear. Whatever one may have expected in terms of changes in audience behavior, the same sense of decorum associated with concerts remained. Well, the audience did applaud after the first movement of the Concerto in F, understandably enough, and we are happy to report that not a finger was wagged.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, pianist

Thibaudet must tire of playing these two Gershwin concertos -- his recording of Rhapsody in Blue with the BBC Symphony Orchestra showed up again on his recent Movie Album. One had the sense, listening to this performance of both of them back to back, of Thibaudet searching for something new in the way he played them. While he did drive himself over and past many of the denser passages, as if daring himself to push the envelope, he did not hit on something truly striking, as Fazil Say did with the BSO a few years ago. His strength was in the suave, bluesy side of the works, as Thibaudet coolly explored every riff and twinkle of this mixture of jazz and Ravel. Alsop followed that lead, justifying her programming of Gershwin on a non-pops program in her earnest introduction to the concert. It is what it is, so enjoy it.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Soloist, BSO play Gershwin with vim (Baltimore Sun, May 24) Ronni Reich, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Washington Post, May 26)

What was promised in the promotional materials was the original 1924 orchestration for the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, by the Paul Whiteman Band (really a swing orchestra), but the program notes claimed this was the later orchestral arrangement. Ferde Grofé was the mastermind behind transferring Gershwin's score for two pianos to that original Whiteman Band arrangement, as well as two revisions in 1926 and 1942, for chamber and full orchestra. Grofé later went on to teach orchestration at Juilliard, among many other things. Listening to the premiere performance, or most of it, online (Part 1 and Part 2) is an enlightening experience. Among other things, you can hear Whiteman's clarinet player, Ross Gorman, on the now iconic opening glissando, a touch that was improvised by Gorman and later added by Gershwin to the score. The BSO played with polish and verve, with a smooth opening solo from the clarinet and well-behaved trumpet lines. The group was not always exactly together with Thibaudet, but not to any disconcerting degree. The verdict from the younger members of the Ionarts family was unanimous: they listened attentively and bopped along to some of the bouncier parts. Fortunately, at a Casual Concert it is alright for a small child to giggle softly when delighted.

Next week, under the baton of Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra undertakes a program of South American music called The Inca Trail. On Friday (May 30, 8 pm) at Strathmore, and on Saturday (May 31, 8 pm) in Baltimore.

DVD: In Soviet Russia, Music Played You

Available at Amazon: The Red Baton / Gennadi Rozhdestvensky: Conductor or Conjuror, directed by Bruno Monsaingeon (released February 12, 2008) Idéale Audience International 3073498

The latest of Bruno Monsaingeon's films for Arte to cross my desk is this pairing of films centered on the Russian conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. Of greatest interest is the first one, Notes interdites (Forbidden notes, retitled The Red Baton, 2003), in which Rozhdestvensky and others narrate the story of musical life in the Soviet Union. It is an absorbing documentary of sound and images. For example, Rozhdestvensky reads from a copy of Prokofiev's biography, with two versions of the same page, the edited one completely revising an anecdote attributed to the composer. This is followed by Rozhdestvensky conducting a performance of Prokofiev's absolutely creepy cantata Zdravitsa, composed in 1939 for the Stalin's 60th birthday, accompanied by pictures from propaganda films.

The propaganda clips are terrible and ominously seductive to watch: a stage full of white-dressed little girls playing Bach, David Oistrakh saying he was proud to advance Soviet musical culture, Tikhon Krhennikov addressing the Soviet Composers Union, a musician recalling conservatory students madly erasing their scores, removing dissonances, when it was announced in 1948 that the government would monitor student compositions. A clip of an insipid song by Krhennikov is a stitch, immediately following Rozhdestvensky bitterly wondering what Prokofiev must have thought of Krhennikov's music. I am unlikely ever to hear Shostakovich's 4th symphony again without remembering what Rozhdestvensky says he told the Cleveland Orchestra about it: that the percussion pattern at the end of the scherzo movement could be thought of as prisoners communicating by tapping on pipes. The footage of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Rostropovich playing is worth seeing, too.

The second film is less likely to be of general interest, as it focuses exclusively on how Gennadi Rozhdestvensky conducts, which is, to say the least, idiosyncratic. We see him in rehearsal and in concert, as well as speaking about his ideas of what conducting is all about, and even leading classes with his conducting students. If you find the minutiae of how conductors do what they do fascinating (yes, guilty), you will enjoy it. Bonus features include more footage of Rozhdestvensky conducting: first, his own Suite for Orchestra (based on the film music of Alfred Schnittke), and second, a complete performance of that hideous Prokofiev cantata, Zdravitsa, for Stalin's birthday (hideous because it is so beautiful).

In Brief: Memorial Day Edition

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

• Images of vintage classical LP covers, created or inspired by pioneering graphic designer Alex Steinweiss. Yet another way you can waste time. [Boing Boing]


• Susan Sontag was a lesbian, Philip Johnson was gay, and Robert Rauschenberg was gay. What do all of these rather important details have in common? They are all generally glossed over, if mentioned at all, in their obituaries. Get over it, Mainstream Media. [Modern Art Notes]


• What am I doing this weekend instead of reviewing concerts? Watching the Pistons (against the Celtics) and the Red Wings (against the Penguins), of course -- oh, if only I could be back in Michigan this week. [Puck Daddy]


• Joyce DiDonato describes a spectator's perfectly timed sneeze during her dress rehearsal for I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Bastille. She is co-starring with someone named Anna Netrebko (backed up by Patrizia Ciofi). [Yankeediva]

"B7" - Solti, Haitink, Böhm & Co.

Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Solti / WPh - Decca Eloquence Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Haitink / CSO - CSO Resound, live Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Böhm / BRSO - audite, live Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Karajan / WPh - DG Gold, live Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Wand / BPh - RCA, live

Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Jochum / Dresden StaKap - EMI Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Rattle / Birmingham SO - EMI Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Herreweghe / O.d.Champs-Élysées Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Harnoncourt / WPh - Teldec, live Bruckner, Symphony No.7, Celibidache / MPhil - EMI, live

Decca’s Australian Eloquence subsidiary is to be thanked for their tireless re-issuing of forgotten, out of print recordings from the vaults of Universal Music: DG, Philips, Decca/London. In doing so, they occasionally unearth treasures, sometimes classics, emotional favorites, or simply recordings that have been unavailable long enough to generate some interest and demand.

Just as few recordings receive universal praise, so, too, few interpretations have no following at all. Somebody will always like one particular album above all. And surely someone will also like this one: Solti’s Bruckner 7^th with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1965. In listening to it, it struck me again how it can be just as difficult, if not more so, to determine with any precision what makes a performance ­unspecial , as it is to pinpoint the reasons for excellence with another. Direct comparison usually exacerbates the felt differences without necessarily helping to get a firmer grip on the specific reasons for it.

What remains easily discernible here, though, is that somehow swells don’t quite resonate, that climaxes are not intense and don’t resolve. Energies, nervous rather than compelling, seem misapplied into the wrong directions by margins scarcely noticeable but strongly palpable. The Adagio (with cymbal clash) is reasonably well articulated, while not as drawn out as later in his Chicago recording and performances (where it, too, is hailed the most successful of the movements). Some extraneous noises at the end of that second movement can be heard when listening closely, but are not loud enough to be disturbing. “Disturbing” would be much too harsh a word for the very occasional pitch ambiguity of the woodwinds and brass, but it contributes to playing that is every bit of the standard expected from a very good orchestra in a live performance (which this, however, isn’t), but not much more than that.

Those who don’t appreciate Bruckner in the first place might reason that the music plods along for most of the symphony’s duration because that lies in the nature of Bruckner’s music, not Solti’s conducting. It’d be witty enough – but it needn’t be so at all, and recent recordings of Bruckner’s Seventh make painfully obvious how a linearity and an arch can lead from the first to the last note, and the the hour between. (Solti takes about 66 minutes here, which is insignificantly above average, unless you include Celibidache in the count, who distorts the statistics.)

Most notably and recently there are two live recordings from veteran Bruckner conductors Bernhard Haitink (May 2007, on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s own CSO Resound label) and Karl Böhm (April 5^th, 1977 on audite). Both bring a gentility to the work that exudes moving tenderness: elaborate, reticent and glowing at once in Haitink’s recording, slightly tighter in the outer movements with Böhm. Both Haitink’s CSO and Böhm’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra outperform the VPO (WPh), if in different ways. The CSO appeals with playing that’s anywhere from luminously to blazing and ever precise, while the BRSO reveals the music’s structure beyond the notes, playing more lively and with more understanding than the anemic 1965 WPh. (Any subsequent WPh recording of this, including Böhm’s 1976 on DG , is much improved.)

The sound of Decca’s John Culshaw (producer) and Gordon Perry (engineer) from the Sofiensaal is good for its time – but that is also to say that it sounds slightly aged now. The divided violin sections, meanwhile are caught in nice (almost too prominent) contrast... lovely, generally, but potentially an issue when listening with headphones.

In a highly competitive field – roughly seventy different, single-CD versions are offered on ArkivMusic, alone – this will only appeal to the Solti enthusiasts. I like Günter Wand; the Berlin recording more so than WDR (box set) or NDR (DVD) – but apart from the above mentioned Haitink and Böhm, favorites are Karajan III (WPh, 1989), Jochum (Dresden), and – I’m almost embarrassed to admit – Simon Rattle / Birmingham (EMI). Good alternatives to ‘standard’ interpretations are Herreweghe (O.d.Champs-Élysées), and Harnoncourt (WPh) on the ‘non-cymbolic’, fleeting side – and of course Celibidache with the Munich Philharmonic for not-thought-to-be-possible breadth and glory.

Cielo e mar

Cielo e mar (Italian opera arias), R. Villazón, OS di Milano G. Verdi, D. Callegari (released April 22, 2008) Deutsche Grammophon B0010871-02

The star of Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón rose like a rocket in recent years, helped especially by his frequent pairing with Anna Netrebko, in the 2003 Salzburg La Traviata among other operas. Then, last year, there was a major wrinkle in that meteoric ascent: it first came to my ears when he sounded awful at the Met Gala last April. That preceded a spate of cancellations in the summer and fall due to unspecified health problems. Villazón has been on his way back, however, at least well enough to shoot the filmed La Bohème with Netrebko this winter, for example. His official schedule has some concerts and a few opera appearances, but no heavy engagements before late September. We certainly wish him a full recovery.

This latest solo disc, his debut for Deutsche Grammophon, was actually in the can just a month before that Met Gala. It is a collection of lesser-known arias from the 19th-century Italian opera repertoire, taking its title from Enzo's not really unknown aria from Ponchielli's La Gioconda, which is the first track. Villazón and researchers at DG put the program together, sifting through operas and selecting what inspired him. As he put it to one interviewer, "If my heart beat faster and my skin prickled, then I chose it." It started with one of the eight operas, Fosca, by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896), and continued with arias by Cilea, Mercadante, Boito, Pietra, and lesser-known operas by Verdi and Donizetti.

It is a worthy disc for opera lovers, both those who love Villazón's voice and those interested in obscurities. In this craze for unearthing the past, he is in good company, following similar efforts by Cecilia Bartoli and Juan Diego Flórez. Sadly, there are sounds of strain, an edgy grain in the voice on many tracks (track 12, e.g.), a raggedness (track 9), all of which indicate the troubles to come, but not enough to diminish the pleasure of listening too much. At a total timing of only 56:41 and an appropriately reduced price, it is a refreshment easily quaffed.


Rolando Villazón, Cielo e mar (publicity video)

Sasha Cooke's NMWA Recital

Sasha Cooke Showcases Vocal, Emotional Range
Washington Post, May 23, 2008

Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano) and Pei-Yao Wang (piano)
Songs by de Falla, Norman, and Schumann
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Ionarts at Large: Schumann Terrific, Brahms Terrible

Robert Schumann’s “Herrmann & Dorothea Overture” op.136 is probably not better known than the once loved and now forgotten ’idyllic epic’ of Goethe that served as inspiration and namesake. Schumann may not have composed grand music for it, but in concert this utterly charming, rather light and airy work is a splendid curtain raiser – a just like the opening ‘throw-away’ joke is sometimes the best part of a Sunday cartoon.

That the overture is laced with quotes from the Marseillaise – often and obviously – goes back to Schumann’s intention to write a whole opera on the subject of Goethe’s epic which opens with a scene of German refugees fleeing from advancing French Soldiers. (Though if you listen to Schumann, you’d think on their heals was rather a flock of frolicking Frenchmen on their way to a boating party.) Even if Christian Thielemann, conducting the Munich Philharmonic in this opening Schumann-salvo of their May 11th concert, isn’t known for a particularly light touch, the overture came across as positively, quintessentially gay.

Before Schumann continued, Brahms’ Double Concerto was on the program. Cellist Antonio Meneses must know this concerto well enough – not the least because he first recorded it in 1981 with Anne-Sophie Mutter under Karajan. On Hänssler Profil he has a recording with Thomas Zehetmair under Kurt Sanderling. Alas, his knowledge turned to routine in this performance. Entries were not particularly clean, the cello’s tone unlovely above mp. On the plus side: nicely articulated pizzicatos and a fine, electric pianissimo. The orchestra around him played boomily, sometimes sloppy (missed entries, again), as if no one particularly cared about it, and with wayward horns in the third movement. None of this mattered, though, because one man heroically combined and focused everything that was bad about this performance on himself: Daniel Hope delivered a performance that was just shy of insulting.

Slinking through the work un- or under-rehearsed, playing out of tune notes with imprecision and as if his technical ability were taxed to the maximum (it shouldn’t be, by this concerto), the result was a travesty. Tinny, rough whenever digging into the notes, every double stop woefully approximated: this was no way to treat the audience. Or, for that matter, Brahms. How the two artists deduced that the – admittedly indiscriminate – applause demanded an encore, I don’t know. But in honor of Menahem Pressler, who retired his Beaux Arts Trio (in which Meneses and Hope were his most recent partners), they played a part just for violin and cello from Beethoven’s “Ich bin der Scheider Kakadu” trio.

This might not have boded well for the Schumann Fourth Symphony yet to come, but from the depths of artistic poverty, the concert catapulted the keen listener to the pinnacles of musical triumph.

Schumann’s chronologically second, but then heavily revised and last-to-be-published Symphony had recently been performed in Munich by Kent Nagano in its original version. A fine performance, indeed. The Mahler edition of the Symphony has been recorded excellently by Riccardo Chailly. But as if proof needed to be administered that Schumann can be all shades of fantastic without the meddling of others or by reverting to earlier drafts, Christian Thielemann put down a performance that was sumptuous and serious, never tedious, truly romantic - though not in the neurotic or wild and untamed way in which Leonard Bernstein makes Schumann work so well. (Well enough on his DG recordings, better still on [oop] Sony.)

Cohesive, swelling mightily, receding tenderly again, massive but not thick, this was a totality of harmonious noise played phenomenally well by his Munich Philharmonic players. Whether the cellos buzzing in true excitement, or the impeccable ensemble work of the brass, or the commanding volume of the whole apparatus in the finale, it felt like Thielemann put his foot down as one of the foremost interpreters of Schumann. Given his recent success with the ‘difficult’ Schumann Requiem I am ready to believe that he really is.

I must either completely re-evaluate his previous Schumann recordings (1 with 4, 2 and 3 with the Philharmonia) which I remember dismissing rather carelessly, or else hope for new Schumann recorded with the Munich Philharmonic which, if DG should decide to go that way, I’d await most eagerly.