Baiba Skride Returns to Charm City

Mozart / M. Haydn / Schubert (2005) Shostakovich / Janáček (2007) Souvenir Russe (2008) Bach / Bartók / Ysaÿe (2010)

The last time that Latvian violinist Baiba Skride came to the area was with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2005, and we were not likely to miss the latest chance to hear the 2001 winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, in last night's BSO concert at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore. So much the better when, after clean, burnished Lalo last time, she was scheduled to play Alban Berg's tender, sad, gorgeous violin concerto -- a work she has not yet recorded in her series of worthy discs for Sony but hopefully will soon. The lovely Skride, nearing her 30th birthday, is still easy on the eyes -- as Jens has put it so eloquently, not our most important concern, but it doesn't hurt -- and far more importantly, the "Wilhelmj" Stradivarius (1725) in her hands, loaned by the Nippon Music Foundation, produces a silky, puissant, but never strident tone.

This is a most valuable asset for the concerto that turned out to be Berg's final completed composition, a rather luscious work that regularly belies the 12-tone system used to create it. It was Berg's funeral tribute to Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius who had died of polio: little did Berg know that within months of composing it, his own life would come to an end. Although the concerto was commissioned and premiered by a male violinist, Berg cast the solo part as Manon, especially in the apotheosis at the end of the piece, as the solo merges into the first violin section and is borne upward on rising string lines: at this moment, Skride turned her back to the audience to play in unity with the musicians behind her. Her tone on that remarkable Strad was perfect for this suave solo part, and guest conductor Mario Venzago made sure that the orchestra, always tempted to luxuriate in the unusual, prismatic score mixed by the master orchestrator Berg, did not cover her. Skride was marvelous technically, with only a lack of throaty force on the G string and some sour loud double stops less than perfect. The BSO winds gave a solemn quotation of Bach's Es ist genug in the final section, slightly troubled by dissonance in Berg's arrangement.

Mario Venzago, you may recall, had his contract as music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra suddenly not renewed in 2009, after several years there that were, by most accounts, very successful. It was a homecoming for him to return to Baltimore, where he has had a long association, and he also brought interesting, if not quite optimal, readings of two fifth symphonies, by Schubert and Beethoven. Schubert's fifth symphony, a hybrid of Mozartean lightness and daring harmonic shifts, is a piece that should sound like it is playing itself, although that is not necessarily true. Venzago's gestures at the podium gave a sense that he had micromanaged the piece, giving tiny shapes to each individual phrase, and the picture of the forest was lost in the somewhat fussy attention paid to the needles on each pine. Where the work should be buoyant, as in the impeccable recordings by Günter Wand, this performance was buoyant not like a feather on the wind but literally, like a buoy buffeted by choppy water, as Venzago kept the orchestra from bending from a strict tempo and even shifted tempo slightly mid-movement. It had many lovely moments -- airy lightness and some delicate pianissimi in the second movement, a crisp third movement, and many pleasing details throughout -- but did not add up to something memorable.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Baltimore Symphony welcomes conductor Mario Venzago, violinist Baiba Skride (Baltimore Sun, March 20) Joan Reinthaler, The Baltimore Symphony at Strathmore with violinist Baiba Skride (Washington Post, March 19) James Bash, Skride torches the Schnitz in Khachaturian concerto with Oregon Symphony (Oregon Music News, March 14)

By contrast, Venzago gave Beethoven's fifth symphony a most unusual reading, full of unexpected surprises, that goes a long way toward a justification for programming a masterpiece whose overexposure makes a bland performance unforgivable. The influence of historically informed performance (HIP) practice was heard in the almost complete removal of vibrato from the strings, as well as in the sometimes jagged articulations and taut tempo choices. In particular, the second movement's Andante con moto was almost as fast as the third movement's Allegro molto that followed it. This is not to say that expressive moments were not played to the hilt, like the forlorn oboe solo that stops the first movement's recapitulation in its tracks. The pacing and the crispness of attack, especially on all those repeated-note motifs (fate's knell or the Austrian secret police knocking at the door, whatever), gave the piece a satisfying urgency, if statements by the full orchestra were not always perfectly unified. Venzago, here as in the Schubert, was scrupulous about moving unimportant parts out of the way, and his attention to detail created a far less episodic result in the Beethoven.

Before the Beethoven, microphone in hand, Venzago gave a warm tribute to the suffering people of Japan, adding that musicians can pray only when they are playing music. To that effect, the BSO offered a moving sort of prayer, the Japanese song Kojo No Tsuki (“The Moon over the Ruined Castle”), which Venzago said came from the Fukushima prefecture, where a damaged nuclear reactor continues to release radiation. As arranged by one of the BSO's double bass players, Jonathan Jensen, it was a somber piece, full of melancholy nostalgia.

This concert will be repeated this evening (March 19, 8 pm), in Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

NHK Symphony Orchestra

Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra was less than a day away from its planned departure for a North American tour when the recent cataclysmic earthquake struck Japan. The musicians came together and ultimately decided to go ahead with the tour, even though it meant leaving concerned families behind: only two of the musicians stayed in Japan, because their homes were destroyed in the disaster. In emotional remarks read and translated before the ensemble's appearance Wednesday night at Strathmore, the group's chairman, Naoki Nojima, said: "We decided to come, because we believe that music can uplift the heart and strengthen the spirit. So as we play tonight, not only are we performing for you, but also for our loved ones back home."

The tour's guest conductor, the venerable André Previn, initially declined to make any comment on the disaster during the tour, for which he was, perhaps unfairly, criticized by Norman Lebrecht. To my eyes, Previn was being respectfully silent rather than offering an empty tribute, but he has since decided to donate part of his fee from the tour to the relief effort in Japan. As Jens noted quite forcefully (and I echoed less so), there is a great difference between paying lip service to solidarity with a country in crisis -- "dedicating" an already scheduled performance, for example -- and putting your money where your mouth is. Previn did choose to lead a performance of Bach's Air ("on the G string" as it is widely known), one of the standard pieces for public observation of mourning, and the audience was encouraged to donate money to the Red Cross in support of the Japanese relief efforts. Audience members, including many of Japanese descent, filled the hall in support of these Japanese musicians.

Elgar / Walton, Cello Concertos, D. Müller-Schott, Oslo Philharmonic, A. Previn

A stalled semi tractor at the entrance of the parking lot delayed my arrival so that I missed the opening work, Tōru Takemitsu's Green, but I did hear the two larger pieces on the program. Elgar's autumnal Cello Concerto (E minor, op. 85) featured the German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, who gave the many melancholy passages of the work a forlorn quality, making this piece, conceived by a rather depressed composer in the midst of World War I, perhaps more suited to reflection on the Japanese tragedy. Müller-Schott is a player of many marvels, but also one who tends to push his tone just slightly when playing with a large orchestra (frankly, he does so at times in smaller combinations, too). Previn did little to help the situation, although the frailty of his gestures at the podium largely lie with the fact that he is moving very slowly and deliberately these days and had to be helped up and down, walking with a cane. Müller-Schott's gush of notes in the spastic second movement rarely lined up perfectly with the orchestra, and much of the fault is Previn's, for not navigating the ensemble better through the shifts of tempo. The loud punctuating chords in the fourth movement, for example, often rippled from front to back as different sections attacked at different times. By far Müller-Schott's best playing was during his solo encore, the gorgeous legato cantilena of Ernest Bloch's Prayer, the first movement of From Jewish Life, offered in sincere tribute to the cellist's friend Yakov Kreizberg, who died earlier this week.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra puts on a good face at Strathmore (Washington Post, March 18) NHK Symphony Orchestra quintet performs at local school (Washington Post, March 18) Michele Norris and Robert Siegel, NHK Orchestra Plays Tribute To People Of Japan (NPR, March 17) Wah Keung Chan, The show must go on for the NHK Orchestra (Montreal Gazette, March 17)

The NHK musicians sounded at their best in a solid, unified rendition of Prokofiev's fifth symphony (B♭ major, op. 100). Here Previn seemed much more in control, his minimal gestures and cues well timed and precise, in spite of being seated low enough on a stool that there was no sight line for some of the musicians. In contrast to the most recent performances of this symphony under review, with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2009 and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in 2006, Previn and the NHK captured the "grandeur of the human spirit" Prokofiev said he intended in this work, conceived near the end of World War II. The first movement had a nobility and sense of Romantic sweep, with ominous brass -- the strongest of the orchestra's sections, followed by the strings -- and rumbles of bass drum that menace near the end. The second had a more sardonic twist, with a military flash of snare drum, the suave, even sexy trio contrasting with the scherzo-like galop of the A section. Most wisely, Previn, whose musical mind is still sharp, kept the third movement from bogging down in an over-slow tempo, giving it a tense feeling, which led well into the crazy mechanical spirit that percolated through the finale. The only weak point in this fine orchestra was the woodwinds, who contributed some strident and badly out-of-tune playing, especially in the slow introduction of the first movement.

The second half of this week's visiting orchestra diptych presented by WPAS is the Boston Symphony Orchestra, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Saturday (March 19, 4 pm). Roberto Abbado will take the podium in relief of the ailing James Levine, with Peter Serkin serving as piano soloist: early reports of the appearance of Andris Nelsons with the BSO make us wish he were conducting here, too.

One More 'Butterfly'

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey,
‘Butterfly’ honors Japan, showcases young singers
Washington Post, March 17, 2011

(L to R) Jennifer Lynn Waters (Butterfly), Akiro Licitra (Dolore), Sarah Mesko (Suzuki) in Madama Butterfly, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)

Given the subject matter, a performance of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is an odd thing for Washington National Opera to dedicate to the people of Japan. Nevertheless, Placido Domingo made this symbolic gesture of unity from the podium at the Kennedy Center Opera House on Tuesday night, leading the orchestra in a solemn rendition of the Japanese national anthem. It would be unreasonable to expect the gesture to be anything more than symbolic: The struggling company’s special performance of the opera, featuring its Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, was being underwritten by a donor.

In this rather long run of “Butterfly,” Domingo was set to conduct late in the schedule, at a point probably out of earshot of newspaper critics. The orchestra played with the same amount of technical polish, but the score had none of the flow and assured, unified ensemble as under music director Philippe Auguin. Confident singers sometimes overruled tempos from the stage, and less secure ones occasionally faltered at entrances. Domingo’s most positive contribution, as usual, was his celebrity: People craned their necks and stood up to get a glimpse of him. [Continue reading]

Puccini, Madama Butterfly
Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

Yakov Kreizberg, Ave atque Vale

Yakov Kreizberg: Mozart, with J. Fischer (2007) [Review] Mozart 1/2/5, with J. Fischer (2006) [Review] Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto (2006) [Review] Russian Violin Concertos (2004)

The news came earlier this week that conductor Yakov Kreizberg had died, at the age of 51. Jens has reviewed him twice, in concerts with the Munich Philharmonic in 2009 and 2008, although for some reason we were not able to cover his last appearance here in Washington, with the National Symphony Orchestra (here is Anne Midgette's review in the Washington Post). Over the last decade or so, Kreizberg has produced a series of fine recordings on the audiophile label PentaTone, many of them with violinist Julia Fischer.

The musicians who worked with Yakov Kreizberg have been offering remembrances, and mostly they focus on his collegiality, that he was a collaborative conductor, more concerned with the music than his own ego. At the same time he was an impeccable technician, with a profound musical understanding and clear and perfectly shaped beat that comes across in his recordings. Here are a few things we have written about him over the years.

Jens, about a performance of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony: "If so, the third movement Pastorale would surely raise the fewest question marks: It’s a beautiful and dainty affair, undermined only (and not much) by the Manfred theme that rears its head and the bells that toll as if to remind us that the carefree episode will come to a grim end, soon. The fourth movement was perfectly musical mayhem and positive chaos under Kreizberg. How better to depict a civilized hell than Tchaikovsky does here? And yet the question comes up: ‘Wouldn’t it be hell, indeed, if music could only sound like this’?"

Kreizberg was no slouch at the piano: "Tchaikovsky rejected the concerto's original slow movement, in favor of the Canzonetta in the final score. He reused the material from the rejected Andante as the first movement (Méditation) of a work for violin and piano he called Souvenir d’un lieu cher. This performance, with Yakov Kreizberg off the podium and at the piano, rounds out a very fine achievement, enough to make even a Tchaikovsky skeptic like me sit up and listen."

Nor did he lack talent in composition: "This disc is essentially the second volume of a complete set of the Mozart concerti violin, to go along with her 2005 CD of the third and fourth concerti, with the same forces. For the second installment, Fischer has combined the last of the five, K. 219, with the two minor concerti, nos. 1 and 2 (K. 207 and 211). Just as on the 2005 disc, she has composed her own cadenzas and added her own ornamentation (in the booklet, she shares credit for their composition with Yakov Kreizberg)."

Jens again, about a performance of Shostakovich's first cello concerto: "Such refreshing Shostakovich: you get to the hyperactive parts without having to wade through all the labored build up. Those in the restless subscription audience who could not befriend the work -- not even the skewed beauty of the marvelous slow movement -- had time to focus on the gorgeous-looking conducting of Kreizberg; so picture perfect -- the dashing, ever engaged young maestro -- that it borders caricature. You might say that Kreizberg is the Hugh Jackman of conducting."

We express our condolences to his family, especially his wife and two sons.

Trio Mediaeval's Worcester Ladymass

A Worcester Ladymass, Trio Mediaeval (released on March 15, 2011) ECM New Series 2166 | 50'59" [Listen on NPR] Worcester Fragments, Orlando Consort

We are great admirers of the singing of Trio Mediaeval, having reviewed these three Scandinavian women in concert in 2005 and 2008 and enjoyed their recordings. Their new disc returns to their best territory, late medieval polyphony juxtaposed with modern music, and their sound is as pristine as it ever was. This program is centered on some of the pieces of the so-called Worcester Fragments, a partial collection of music, mostly three-part polyphony, sung at Worcester Cathedral. The book was destroyed in the Protestant Reformation, cut up into pieces used to bind other books: the fragments were pieced back together and transcribed by musicologist Luther Dittmer from groupings at Oxford's Bodleian Library, with other shards of the manuscript still in the Worcester Cathedral Library. The music is not unknown on disc, with recordings by the Orlando Consort and at least some of the pieces included on programs by Paul Hillier and Theater of Voices.

What makes this disc of interest, besides the refined, ethereal singing, is that it is a hypothetical reconstruction of a Mass for the feast of the Assumption of Mary, on August 15. (For that reason, the program inevitably recalls the two Ladymass discs by Anonymous 4, An English Ladymass and A Lammas Ladymass -- the former is one of my all-time favorite recordings of medieval music.) Worcester Cathedral was maintained by a community of Benedictine monks, until the 16th century when they were driven out by Henry VIII, and the Virgin Mary was the patroness of their monastery, the Abbey of St. Mary's. The concert includes settings of the Proper and other Marian texts, with some plainchants taken from a 13th-century Worcester gradual, plus settings of the Ordinary (the editions used here were prepared by musicologist Nicky Losseff, of the University of York, one of the group's regular collaborators). Faced with the missing parts, a Credo and a Benedicamus Domino, Trio Medieval commissioned new settings by contemporary composer Gavin Bryars (completed in 2008), with whom they have also collaborated before. His compositions, rather than sticking out, merge seamlessly with the older music.

The ECM sound is, as usual, impeccable, captured in the delectable acoustic of the Propstei St. Gerold in Austria, where a number of the label's artists record. The booklet, however, is not particularly helpful on a number of counts, not least because the Latin texts are printed in the booklet without English translation (other listeners might object to this more strongly than I). This seems to reflect the indifference of the musicians to the original Catholic context of this music, a point on which the liner notes, for example, are somewhat evasive. The group's self-avowed mission is to interpret these pieces not as medieval music but as contemporary music -- thus the pairing with new music.

Trio Mediaeval will undertake a brief North American tour later this month (March 23 to 31), with visits to Toronto, Kansas City (Mo.), University Park (Pa.), and Dartmouth College -- but not to Washington.

Late-Evening Ragas with Pianist Utsav Lal

The following review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Sunday evening, as part of the maximum INDIA festival at the Kennedy Center, 18-year-old pianist Utsav Lal offered a program of two late-evening ragas with the assistance of tabla player Suryakasha Deshpande. Lal mesmerized his audience with a two-hour improvised program over a single droning pedal point.

With the damper pedal perpetually down, Lal was unencumbered by the twelve-note limitations of the modern piano -- Classical Indian octaves can have twice that number of microtones -- by creating and sustaining an array of wavy overtones. One experienced an immediate pianistic flourish that was then floating and soon immersed within a sustained, resonant texture. With the aim of emulating a sitar, Lal took the audience through the slowly unfolding form of the raga: the atmospheric Alap that introduced the theme of raga, followed by the Gat, when the tabla entered, with rhetorical Taans between the two, which then accelerated into the arresting Jhala to conclude. These particular ragas were in eleven- to twelve-beat cycles. Deshpande’s tabla playing was efficient and restrained, while subtly adding pleasing microtones to the texture. Lal ended the program with two Bhajans, both favorites of Mahatma Gandhi, to which some audience members quietly sang along.

Although the audience was seemingly pleased by the genuine “unforced fusion” of the musicians and novel sense of extended pacing when compared to most offerings in the Terrace Theater, missing was any technical or harmonic adventurousness pianistically. Where were the hints of the western Classical harmony and colorful jazz training Lal has been receiving at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow? These shortcomings will likely be remedied by his continued journey as an international artist and we wish him all the best.

The maximum INDIA festival comes to its conclusion this week, with performances that include this week's concerts from the National Symphony Orchestra (March 17-20), featuring Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony, a cycle of seven songs on the Bengali poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

WNO Celebrity Series: Bryn Terfel

Bad Boys, B. Terfel, Swedish Radio Orchestra Verdi, Falstaff, B. Terfel, C. Abbado

Perhaps the savviest part of the budget-minded restructuring at Washington National Opera, in the face of the financial crisis, was the programming of two solo recitals. The Plácido Domingo Celebrity Series, in essence, features big-name stars that the company is not likely to be able to draw for one of its productions. The series got off to a grand start last month with a blockbuster recital by Juan Diego Flórez, and it continued on Saturday night with an equally palatable concert by Bryn Terfel. The celebrated Welsh bass-baritone has been one of the most sought-after opera singers on world stages since his discovery in the late 1980s, but this was his first time on the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. When Terfel turned 40 in 2005, there was some talk about cutting back his performance schedule -- a wise choice both in terms of vocal health and for the sake of his young children. It has paid off in that he still sounds in excellent voice and seemed relatively relaxed and healthy, even having slimmed his profile a bit.

In charming commentary between numbers, Terfel characterized his program as focusing on the "misfits and malcontents of the operatic stage," putting its cast of villains into the same sort of rogues' gallery as his recent aria CD, Bad Boys. Opening with the aria "Udite, udite, o rustici" of Dulcamara, the mostly harmless snake oil salesman of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, set a rather light-hearted tone for the evening. This was only helped by Terfel bringing on, as props, a can of a popular energy drink and a bottle of beer -- the latter of which he actually chugged on stage. Terfel's bonhomie continued throughout the evening as he established a cheerful rapport with the audience, adding a loud wolf-whistle at the appropriate spots in "Son lo spirito che nega" (from Boito's Mefistofele) and then afterward encouraging the audience to respond with their own whistles -- a challenge many in the house gladly accepted. (Terfel recounted that his border collies at home went "absolutely bonkers" as he rehearsed this piece.) Vocally these pieces were the sort of thing Terfel is ideally suited for -- along with the Honor Aria from Falstaff, a role for which Terfel is justly renowned (see this video from the 2008 Proms) -- the bluster of his higher range and the rough charm of his stage presence.

Other Articles: Robert Battey, Bryn Terfel at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, March 14) Bryn Terfel calls for young musicians to follow their dreams (WalesOnline, February 28)

The bass side of the voice, especially at one particularly low note in the Boito aria, was less robust. Somewhat strangely, he gave "O du mein holder Abendstern," from Wagner's Tannhaüser, an almost transparent, even underpowered sound: the sort of interpretation that is possible in a concert setting but that might not work on stage. Also strange, it was the only Wagner on the program at a time when many ears are on Terfel's Wotan in the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera -- part of a cast, Anne Midgette recently speculated, chosen for the simulcast rather than the house because its smaller voices are easier to record. Terfel reached his apex of sound and grit in the "Credo" aria from Verdi's Otello, a performance of snide, snarling, sinister dark wit that does make one curious about what sort of Iago he would make.

Catherine Naglestad, the lead in the first cast of WNO's current production of Madama Butterfly, was scheduled to join Terfel but fell ill. Her counterpart in the second cast, the lovely Ana María Martínez, stepped in valiantly to save the show, with a suave, contained rendition of "Vissi d'arte" and dropping the other planned aria from La Forza del Destino. The Opera House Orchestra was its usual solid self in the lovely overture from that work, which opened the concert -- surely no one doubts that programming two selections from Forza, which is notoriously cursed, contributed to Ms. Naglestad's illness. She is lucky that she was not crushed by a falling light fixture. The other orchestral selections, from Lohengrin and Die Fledermaus were competently played and largely unremarkable. The rest of the second half was given over to music theater selections.


Three encores began with one of the evening's most affecting selections, My Little Welsh Home, a song steeped in nationalistic Heimweh for the rural Wales of Terfel's upbringing -- embedded in the video above. The piece was offered in connection with the recently passed national holiday of Wales, St. David's Day, on March 1 -- "Cymru am byth" to all our Welsh friends! The duet "Là ci darem la mano," from Mozart's Don Giovanni, was obviously added at the very last minute, since the orchestra did not even have parts, so that accompaniment had to be provided by a piano at the back of the stage -- Terfel's Mozart is a known quantity, and the chemistry between him and Martínez was flirty and fun. The final encore, the lovely Viennese Christmas carol "Still, still, still," came from Terfel's unpardonably cheesy Christmas album, a sad reminder of his execrable Simple Gifts disc, which brought him a Classical Crossover Grammy, a badge of shame if ever there was one.

The Plácido Domingo Celebrity Series will continue next season, with recitals by Angela Gheorghiu and Deborah Voigt.

Dip Your Ears, No. 107 (Bezuidenhout, the Mozart Prince)

W.G.Mozart, Keyboard Music vol.2, Kristian Bezuidenhout Harmonia Mundi

W.G.Mozart, "Sturm & Drang" (K.475, K.457, K.540, K.310, K.397), Kristian Bezuidenhout Fleur De Son

For the longest time (well, a couple years, at least) my favorite Mozart Sonata CD on the fortepiano had been Kristian Bezuidenhout’s disc on Fleur de Son. Well, move over Bezuidenhout and make room for… Bezuidenhout. Volume 2 of his survey of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard on Harmonia Mundi is played on a Paul McNulty instrument, a copy of a Anton Walter & Sohn fortepiano from around 1802. (McNulty also supplies the incandescent Ronald Brautigam, arguably the king of the fortepiano if Bezuidenhout is the “prince” [The Times, UK].)

The disc is choc-full of favorites (The sonata K.330, the Rondo K.511, the Adagio K.540...) and each one of them is played with freshness and a vividness that delights from the first note to the last. The playing and the quality of the instrument are such that we get all the intended benefits from the fortepiano (note separation, quicker decay, greater nimbleness, the more heterogeneous sound) with virtually none the downsides of the often clangy, twangy sound of the badly restored, dried-up fortepianos of yesteryear. Total joy!