Ionarts at Large: From the ARD Music Competition - Prize Winner Concert No.2

Like a revue of old friends, familiar works from rounds before pass before my eyes and ears at the three prize-winner concerts. Teng Li, third-prize winner in this years viola competition failed to make it beyond the semi finals in 2004 when she didn’t take the hurdle of the Hoffmeister Concerto for Viola in D-major. Now she’d evidently subdued it and put it out on display again in the second of these prize winner concerts – this one with the Munich Chamber Orchestra (MKO) at the Prinzregententheater.

At least as much joy as listing to Teng Li was it to hear the MKO again – a wonderful sounding chamber orchestra that, a few lesser moments aside, cannot be commended enough for the engagement with which they participated in all of the competitions’ concerts, not just this broadcast, live, penultimate one.

Taira Kaneko, a member of the excellent Young German Philharmonic Frankfurt and student of Sabine Meyer in Lübeck (as are the other two clarinetist prize winners), took the Eduard Brunner arrangement of Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Quintet out for a ride. With many of his colleagues, Kaneko showed the slightly puzzling habit of moving about and contorting himself on stage like a snake charmer. Whether this actually improves his tone or clarity is questionable; it certainly wasn’t audibly helping in this case.

Hearing the souped-up Weber quintet I wondered if there isn’t such a version for the Brahms quintet as well, and if that might not make a better would-be concerto. A greater flexibility of tempos and greater dynamic range – in short: a conductor – would likely have benefited the work, avoiding the prolonged crawl that lasted up until the superbly played, madly leaping finale.

There is something irresistibly charming about the Charles Koechlin Bassoon Sonata that the South-Tyrolean second-prize winner Philipp Tutzer (a Camerata Academica Mozarteum Salzburg member) played so securely and even lyrically. A round tone in all registers, he gave the bassoon an air of elegance and a touch of the debonair – a skill in-and-of-itself. The sonata is not the least so pleasant because it doesn’t last longer than the music it contains.

The Afiara Quartet, the San Francisco State University’s Quartet-in-Residence, were personified cohesion for much of the competition… until they had a Beethoven (op.59/2) accident in the finale. There was plenty of that cohesion to be heard again this night, when they took the opportunity to redeem Beethoven, themselves, and show why they deserved that second prize, after all. Beethoven op.18/1, which they played very nicely in the first round already, was again presented to great effect, now with the pressure gone but exhaustion running high. It wasn’t nearly as tight a performance anymore, but easily as good: looser and more spontaneous – rightfully earning the enthusiastic ovations from the audience.

A most pleasant conclusion of the concert was handed to the audience in the form of Mozart’s modestly interesting Bassoon Concerto in B-major K.191 – at the hands of second- and audience-prize winner Christian Kunert (an Hamburg Opera Orchestra / Hamburg Philharmonic member). Voluminous and clear, elegiac and humorous in turn, this was another commercial for what the most beautiful looking instrument in the orchestra, with Kunert expertly hiding that after two weeks of competition playing he was quite ready to be done with the whole affair. If indeed he felt that way.

All pictures © Sigi Müller

Benoît Delbecq Makes Some Noise

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Benoît Delbecq, pianist (photo by Roderick Packe)

The Alliance Française de Washington partnered with the Corcoran Gallery of Art to sponsor a concert by unclassifiable French pianist Benoît Delbecq on Wednesday night. The Corcoran presented Delbecq as a jazz pianist, which he is, but his unusual style of improvisation draws on many other styles and genres, including African traditional, classical, and European experimental. In his hour-long program, Delbecq subjected the Frances and Armand Hammer Auditorium's walnut Steinway to preparation with all manner of foreign objects wedged among the strings. The forest of twigs, eraser pieces, screws, clarinet (and other) reeds, strips with thumbtacks, and other bits of detritus produced sounds like that of pitched drums, cymbals, a sistrum or other rattle, plucked strings, xylophone, and empty thumps and thuds.

Delbecq's basic formula is to create an ostinato pattern, generally with the left hand in the lower range of the piano, where the sounds are left pitched but altered to have a faster decay. He then improvises over that pattern, to which rhythmic values can be added or subtracted to relieve the regularity of the ostinato, in the middle range, left unmanipulated to sound like the piano. He then adds accents from time to time in the instrument's upper octaves, where the most percussive alterations have been made. The sonic allusions include the minimalists in the ostinato patterns, John Cage in the preparation of the piano, jazz harmonies in the central piano register (Duke Ellington in a piece called Heptases and a reworking of Thelonious Monk's Misterioso), the whimsy and exoticism of Satie (Oliveira et la Sybille, named after characters in a novel, and Ando-san, a reference to the Japanese architect Tadao Ando).

Another earlier composer who came to mind while hearing these improvisations was Olivier Messiaen, in the dissonant, static color chords at the end of Le sixième sceau (named by analogy to Bergman's The Seventh Seal), which followed bubbling major second clusters that recalled Debussy's prelude Des pas sur la neige (Book 1, no. 6). Yompa, the piece that followed it with no break (which meant changing the preparation bits on the fly), was only one of the improvisations that recalled similar pieces by Fazil Say such as Black Earth, which draws on Turkish folk music. These influences, if they were there, Delbecq did not acknowledge, but he did give a brief description of a pygmy tribe in the central African rain forest, whose chanting inspired his piece Aka. This was not music I would probably choose to listen to again and again, but it was a welcome diversion for an evening.


Benoît Delbecq - piano solo
Uploaded by sextant-revue
The next concert at the Corcoran is the first in the series presented by the Contemporary Music Forum, on Sunday afternoon (September 21, 4 pm).

Ionarts at Large: From the ARD Music Competition - Prize Winner Concert No.1

With all prize winners chosen, the 57^th ARD Music Competition draws to a close. The time for competitive playing is now over, and the time for nit-picking, looking for weaknesses and flaws among the many different participants is, too. Instead, the three concluding Prize-Winner Concerts have the purpose of showcasing the discovered talent - and for those talents to simply enjoy playing before the large audience both in the sold-out Prinzregententheater and listening live on three German Public Radio Stations. This is the time to sit back and bask in these young artists’ music-making.

The Verus String Quartet, who won a third prize at what was their first ever competition, made that very easy with their performance of Beethoven’s op.18/4, proving again how enjoyable they are to hear. A quartet where the character of the violins suggests that the elegant first violinist Naoto Sakiya and the impetuous second violinist Akira Mizutani could share the first violin job á la Emerson Quartet, they are a pleasure to watch, too. Despite their usual refinement and unusual maturity, they have an inner tension and tenacity to offer and they visibly enjoy their job. It’s worth it just to look at their wily cellist Rentaro Tomioka nudging his partners on – or, for contrast, their calm violist Kouichi Yokomizo, the source of calm among the four. It isn’t at all daring to predict these four youngsters a very successful international career.

Notes from the ARD Intl. Music Competition: Day 2: Viola Competition, Round 1 (2) (September 2) Day 3: Viola Competition, Round 1 (3) (September 3) Day 4: Viola Competition, Round 1 (4) (September 4) Day 5: String Quartet Competition, Round 1 (1) (September 5) Day 6: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (2) (September 6) Day 7: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (3) (September 7) Day 8: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (1) and Viola, Semi-Finals (September 8) Day 9: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (2) (September 9) Day 10: Viola, Final (September 10) Day 11: String Quartet, Semi-Finals (September 11) Day 12: Clarinet, Final (September 12) Days 13 & 14: String Quartet & Bassoon Finals (September 13 & 14)

Somewhat surprisingly to these ears, the Belgian Dimitri Murrath, not Sergey Malov or Teng Li, was chosen – by the jury and the composer – as the Prize Winner for the best interpretation of the commissioned piece, “Tikvah” by Atar Arad. My prediction that this piece was going to be heard five times and then never again already shot, Mr. Murrath played it for the sixth time at this concert. It was announced with its preface wishing for and end to all violence, for world peace, and perpetual strawberry ice cream, which can’t be said to have made the music easier to grasp, even in this dedicated rendition. It remains difficult to appreciate without a score at hand and (forced) repeat exposure. A dilemma faced by most contemporary music.

A pressure-free, somber and reflective G-major sonata for Bassoon and Piano of Camille Saint-Saëns was presented by third prize winner Václav Vonášek. A little pale in the bassoon-final, he now blossomed and underscored why the bassoon competition has garnered a surprising amount of headlines in even the national papers. That having been not just a reaction to the fact that 2008 offered the first First Prize ever in this category (which had been held 8 times, since 1954), but also because the quality of every finalist was apparently very high.

While Shelly Ezra’s performance of the Hosokawa “Metamorphosis” in the final was the epitome of controlled clarinet playing, this third prize winner from Israel let her hair down a little more (metaphorically, if not literally) in the Brahms f-minor Sonata op.120/1. The result was less refined and clean, but stormy and passionate – and particularly well accompanied by the very delicate looking Isabella Melkonyan who, defying exterior impressions, was able to plow into the sonata without the unfounded fear of competing with the nominal soloist. Brahms benefited greatly from this.

Felix Mendelssohn’s second, “Is it true?” String Quartet op.13 is modeled after Beethoven’s late quartets and a tribute to the grand composer in the year of his death. Made up of Anne Schoenholtz (first violin), Manuel Oswald (second violin), Sylvia Zucker (viola), and Uli Witteler (cello), the audience's favorite, the German/Swiss Gémeaux (“Gemini”) Quartett played, and played well. Incapable of smiling, even with the competition part over, they look – and sound – as if music was not supposed to be fun. It’s way too early in their careers for these musicians (two alpha-ladies and two subservient men, from the look of it) display such seriousness – bitterness even – and treat their work as such a terribly severe thing. Alas, the Mendelssohn sounded pretty good even without any sense of joy.

All pictures © Sigi Müller

Opera Preview: Les Pêcheurs de Perles

Bizet, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, A. Massis, L. Grassi, Teatro La Fenice, M. Viotti (released March 29, 2005) Dynamic DVD 33459

As a preview of the second production of the Washington National Opera's fall season, this DVD arrived, the only commercially available DVD of Bizet's first-composed but second best-known opera, Les Pêcheurs de Perles. In this live recording from Teatro La Fenice, Marcello Viotti leads a performance of the unabridged edition of the opera's original version, premiered on September 30, 1863, at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris (Editions Choudens, Paris). Pier Luigi Pizzi's sets are a colorful and slightly odd evocation of old Ceylon (although the libretto does not specify a time setting, there is at least one mention of rifles in the text), with the foreground taken up by a gently arced floor, seemingly of reddish plexiglass, and a golden Hindu temple gleaming in the distance.

The libretto by Eugène Cormon (né Pierre-Étienne Piestre) and Michel Carré (in French or English) is set in a fishing village in Ceylon, where the people have just proclaimed Zurga as their leader. He and his old friend, Nadir, had a falling out when both fell in love with Léïla, a priestess they saw in the temple. They vow to revive their friendship just as Léïla, veiled, arrives on the scene, summoned to the village by the people. She returns Nadir's love, in violation of her vows, which is discovered in the temple by the high priest, Nourabad. Zurga, who must judge the case, wants to show clemency to his friend, until he discovers that the priestess is none other than Léïla. As the inevitable death sentence is about to be carried out, Zurga causes a diversion by lighting the encampment on fire and allows the lovers to escape.

The singing of the two male leads is strong and well-matched, if tenor Yasu Nakajima (Nadir) and baritone Luca Grassi (Zurga) are hardly two peas in a pod physically. The danger of the opera for the average listener is that not much of the first act has gone by when the opera's only well-known piece, the duet for those two male leads ("Au fond du temple saint"), is heard. In this production, their memory of seeing Léïla in the temple is played out by long-legged prima ballerina Letizia Giuliani, spinning while suspended on a velvet cord. The music returns many times in different forms throughout the opera, always recalling the initial coup de foudre in the temple. (The duet, with a sacred text, was later sung at Bizet's funeral.) Annick Massis is a clarion and clear-voiced Léïla, so important in her big Act I aria ("O dieu Brahma"), for example, set fairly high in the voice with transparent orchestration (its words, "Esprits de l'air, esprits de l'onde" seem to have been echoed by Massenet in Esclarmonde).

122'

Bizet, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, B. Hendricks, J. Aler, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (released April 10, 1990) EMI Classics CDCB 7 49837 2

The best recording of the opera is now available from EMI Classics, at a bargain price from Amazon (click the image). The performers here also used the unabridged version of the opera, and it is a generally attractive version. Its main appeal is in the radiant sweetness of Barbara Hendricks' Léïla (although there is an awkward splice, right at the top of Léïla's wordless arpeggio upward, in the final measures of the first act -- track 13, 5:10). As reported earlier this year, Hendricks is still singing, and you can buy her recordings directly from her label. In her heyday (she will celebrate her 60th birthday this November), the Arkansas-born Hendricks (she has since become a Swedish citizen) was one of my favorite sopranos of the shimmering, pure variety (not the sheer power kind). She is also one of the few opera singers to have led a completely viable second career as a jazz singer.

Her Nadir is another favorite, for certain kinds of repertory (this opera included), tenor John Aler. The timbre, light and fluty, is a nice match for Hendricks, and Aler's rendition of "Je crois entendre encore," Nadir's Act I romance, is a guileless singing of that simple folk-like tune. Aler's voice does not stand up as well in the Act I duet or the other numbers against other voices. (Jan Neckers has some nice words for the Alfredo Kraus recording of the opera, which I have not heard.) The liner notes to this recording also provide a clear explanation of the differences between Bizet's original score, rediscovered by Michel Poupet (also recorded here), and the 1893 version, for what was only the second staging of the opera, after Bizet's death.

The 1893 changes include cutting the conclusion of the famous Act I duet ("Amitié sainte, unis nos âmes fraternelles"), which was replaced by a partial repeat of the famous first section of music ("Oui, c'est elle"), with an adaptation of some of the second part's text. As that later version is believed to be based on changes Bizet himself later made (and because it concludes with the music that all audiences know and love), it is often performed, even when the performance uses the 1863 version. This recording's final track is a recording of the duet's original version, which is definitely worth having and not only from a completist's point of view. If anything should be cut it is that dippy "Tra-la-la-la" chorus that opens the second act.

126'57"

To prepare for Saturday night's opening of the Washington National Opera production, you could hear British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes give a free lecture on Friday night (September 19, 6:45 pm). She will speak about her set and costume designs for the production, at the National Museum of Natural History's Baird Auditorium (10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW). No tickets are required.

Saxon State Opera Names Intendant

MUNICH -- For the first time in its 169 year history, the Saxon State Opera Dresden, Sächsische Staatsoper, home to premiere performances of most Richard Strauss and several Wagner operas, has appointed a woman intendant. Today Saxony's Secretary of Science and Arts, Eva-Maria Stange, announced that Ulrike Hessler will lead the house starting 2010, succeeding current Intendant Gerd Uecker.

--> for full article, go to MusicalAmerica (subscription required)

Ionarts at Large: Berlin Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festval

The concert of the Berlin Philharmonic on Sunday, August 31st, concluded the Salzburg Festival 2008 – and it concluded it in style. Simon Rattle presented his band with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan & Isolde followed by Olivier Messiaen massive Tristan-inspired spectacle of color and sound, the Turangalîla Symphony for Solo Piano, ondes Martinot, and large orchestra.

Love was the theme, in either case, and there was plenty love in the Berliner’s playing: Absolute evenness in the continuous build-up of the Tristan Prelude was achieved with tension and volume being increased at such a minimal gradient and with such consistency that it wasn’t noticeable — only felt. This was perfection in conceptualization and execution, scarcely doable with but a handful of orchestras.

--> Full article moved from WETA to ionarts
Salzburg Concluded: Rattle’s Messiaen Tribute with the Berlin Philharmonic

Matt Haimovitz Goes Modern

Odd Couple, M. Haimovitz and G. Burleson (released September 16, 2008) Oxingale 2015

Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Geoffrey Burleson are on a concert tour, to promote their new CD, Odd Couple, recently featured on NPR. Their travels brought them to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington on Sunday night for a sold-out concert, featuring all but one of the four selections on the recording. Haimovitz and Burleson may have doubts about the compatibility of their two instruments, a misgiving reflected in the CD's title, but the program is centered on two of the more convincing sonatas for this pairing.

Elliott Carter, soon to celebrate his centenary while still alive, wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano back in 1948, when he was a mere 40 years old. The piece is in the less stringently serialized style of the composer's early works, and Haimovitz did more to champion it by his introduction, which clearly primed many in the audience to listen to it with open ears. Haimovitz's tone was slightly fragile and timorous in the first movement, but a jazzy fizz bubbled into the second movement's free sense of rhythmic disjunction. There were hints of cantillation or Asian folk melody in the third movement and more pointillistic textures in the fourth.

Where Haimovitz and Burleson did sound like an odd couple was in an unconvincing and possibly under-rehearsed Beethoven fifth sonata (D major, op. 102, no. 2). The dry acoustic exacerbated the cello's jejune tone and the piano's hammered, sometimes rough octaves. It would have been better, surely, for the duo instead to play the remaining piece on the CD, by Augusta Read Thomas. The most recent work in the program fared better, David Sanford's 22 Part I, the composer's tribute to the omnipresence of the number 22 in his life. Haimovitz and Burleson clearly felt most at home with the modern pieces, this one above all. Sanford's sense of rhythm, influenced by later jazz like the music of Ornette Coleman, is just as complex as the most serialized atonal pieces. What jazz avoids, unlike the "atomization of rhythm" (as John Adams put it) in the post-Darmstadt composers, is a regularity, a metricality that allows the ear to follow complex patterns with greater ease of understanding. Haimovitz and Burleson drew out the many coloristic effects in the second movement, especially many slithering and fluttering passages for the cello, and the jagged rhythms all somehow added up to a whole rather than sounding like fractured splinters.

Other Reviews: Mark J. Estren, Matt Haimovitz and Geoffrey Burleson (Washington Post, September 16)

The final work, Samuel Barber's op. 6 sonata, is more consciouly backward-looking, with a Brahmsian delight in low sonorities and in hemiola and duple-triple oppositions. Here Haimovitz's tone finally opened up into a luminous, passionate howl in the second movement, and again there were jazz-influenced harmonies in the third movement, which seemed to hover between earnest Brahmsian rhapsody and something heard in a hotel barroom. Many of the shifts between tempi seemed unnecessarily exaggerated, and a certain rhythmic freedom (or laxness) was noticeable, as it was to my ears in Haimovitz's recording of the Bach cello suites. The encore made Barber's tribute to Brahms clear, with a substantial movement from the latter composer's second cello sonata, op. 99.

The next concert in the Polinger Artists of Excellence Concerts Series at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, will feature the Brillaner Duo with cellist Amit Peled (November 2, 7:30 pm).

Marian, Kathleen, Indira

The Spiritual Side of Soprano Indira Mahajan
Washington Post, September 17, 2008

Indira Mahajan, soprano
2008 Winner of the Kennedy Center's Marian Anderson Award
With Ted Taylor (piano), Kenneth Slowik (viola da gamba), and William Simms (theorbo)
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

• Henry Purcell, Come, All Ye Songsters, Music for a While, and Sweeter Than Roses
  
• Franz Schubert, Rastlose Liebe, Du bist die Ruh, and Gretchen am Spinnrade
  
• Claude Debussy, Ariettes oubliées (selections)
  
• Fernando Obradors, Al Amor, ¿Corazón, porqué pasáis?, Del cabello más sutil, Chiquitita la novia
  
• André Previn, Honey and Rue (selections)
  
• Traditional spirituals: Honor, Honor, His Name So Sweet, He's Got the Whole World in His Hand