Hugo Wolf Quartett

See my review of the Hugo Wolf Quartett in today's Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Hugo Wolf Quartett at Dumbarton Church
Washington Post, October 17, 2011

Live in Lockenhausen (Haydn quartets), Hugo Wolf Quartett

The Hugo Wolf Quartett came to play serious music, and they did so with severity of concentration and devotion to the craftsmanship of sound, devoid of theatrical contortion and hair-flipping. In the first concert of the season Saturday at Dumbarton Church in Georgetown, the mostly Austrian members of the string quartet (the second violinist was born in Switzerland) put all of their performance’s considerable drama and engagement into the music, rather than into their gestures and facial expressions.

Unlike some other string quartets, these four musicians did not feel the need to scrape every last ounce of sound from the strings. Beginning with a glowing rendition of Schubert’s one-movement “Quartettsatz” in C minor, D. 703, they played with a mellow amber tone that was carefully balanced and rarified. The cello did not growl, the viola did not bark and the violins did not wail over the top of the ensemble. The intensity of the performance came from the fleet tempo and the rise and fall of expressive phrasing.

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Stephen Brookes, Hugo Wolf Quartet at the National Gallery of Art (Washington Post, February 5, 2008)

In Brief: Mike Hart Curse Edition

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

• Take a look at the video of a production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger, from the Staatstheater Nürnberg, directed by David Mouchtar-Samorai. [ARTE Live Web]


• Listen to a concert performance of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress by the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy. [France Musique]


• Starting on Tuesday, you can watch a production of Cavalli's La Didone, with Les Arts Florissants and William Christie conducting. [Medici.tv]


• Watch a choreography to the music of Steve Reich, with the Quatuor Thymos and Compagnie Karine. [Cité de la musique Live]


• Listen to John Storgårds conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, with Christian Tetzlaff playing a concerto by Jörg Widmann. [France Musique]


• Hear a program of Renaissance polyphony from Stile Antico in the Cathedral of Gerona in Spain. [France Musique]


• There is also video of a concert by the Manchester Camerata, including Mozart arias with Rebecca Bottone and Gábor Takács-Nagy. [Medici.tv]


• From the Basilica of St. Clothilde, the Chœur de Radio France performs Franz Liszt's Missa choralis and Kodály's Laudes organi. [France Musique]


• Opernwelt named the Théâtre de la Monnaie, in Brussels, the theater of the year. In great news for anyone looking to watch opera online -- bad news for your productivity in areas other than watching opera online -- La Monnaie is going to stream all of this season's productions online. You have already missed the first production, Cherubini's Médée, but we will try to do a better job of letting you know in the future. The online video can be viewed, after the final performance of each production, for a period of three weeks. [De Munt]


• Pianist Wilhem Latchoumia plays a program in tribute to John Cage, in the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. [France Musique]


• In addition to lots of Liszt in our ears this fall, it is turning out to be an Ives autumn. With the Post-Classical Ensemble's Ives Project coming to Strathmore next month, Hilary Hahn's CD of four Ives sonatas is out. Alex Ross has a clip. [The Rest Is Noise]


• From the Louvre, pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger plays a recital, including music by Liszt. [France Musique]


• With hat tip to Alex Ross, here is a comprehensive list of opera broadcasts on the Internet. [Operacast]

East Meets West, Uncomfortably

See my review of the latest concert at the Freer Gallery of Art:

East Uncomfortably Meets West (The Washingtonian, October 14):

L. Janáček, String Quartets, Prazak Quartet

The free concert series at the Freer Gallery of Art intends to encourage the rapprochement of European and Asian musical cultures, but it often ends up demonstrating how uneasy such a union is. The latest concert there, on Thursday night, featured a selection of European and Japanese music combining the Lark Quartet with koto player Yumi Kurosawa. Music from both cultures were best represented by their own traditions, while a couple new pieces that attempted to cross the divide did so somewhat uncomfortably and with little success.

The Lark Quartet was last heard in Washington in 2005, at the National Academy of Sciences. Since then, it has welcomed a new second violinist and a new cellist, part of a turnover trend in the ensemble over the years. The one thing that has remained the same is that the group has been, pointedly, an all-female ensemble since its founding, something that was still unusual in the 1980s when groups like the Colorado Quartet were challenging a male-dominated classical world. In recent years, the foursome has been concentrating on genre-crossing collaborations, a focus perhaps leading them to style themselves, apparently in earnest, as the “LARK Quarte+” on their Web site. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Yumi Kurosawa and the Lark Quartet at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (Washington Post, October 15)

Guillaume Tell

This article was first published at The Classical Review on October 14, 2011.

Rossini, Guillaume Tell, G. Finley, J. Osborn, M.-N. Lemieux, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, A. Pappano (released on August 9, 2011) EMI 0 28826 2 | 208'15"

Antonio Pappano is a reliably good conductor, but some of his work, like the Verdi Requiem he recorded with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia recently, lacks that last bit of unexpected fire to make it truly great. His new recording with the same orchestra of Rossini’s mammoth opera Guillaume Tell falls into the same category. It is a beautiful recording in many ways, showing off the virtues of this unwieldy but worthwhile opera, but it does not quite reach the mark of being indispensable.

In a fine essay for a handsomely presented booklet (which includes libretto and translations) Pappano says that Guillaume Tell was put on his plate when he took the reins of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. This three-CD set claims to be the first recording to use the critical edition of the opera by the late M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, made for the Pesaro Edition of the complete works of Rossini and published in 1992.

Bartlet’s edition is preferable to the score published in the 19th century, which was made before the work was actually performed. In the course of preparing the opera for public performance, Rossini customarily made many changes that were recorded only in orchestral parts and other archival sources in Paris, and which Bartlet compiled painstakingly to create a definitive version of the opera that was actually premiered by Rossini in 1829.

As scholar Philip Gossett has noted, in his book Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, Riccardo Muti used an advance copy of Bartlet’s edition for his 1988 production of the opera at La Scala: regrettably, that performance was not done in the original French but with a retrofitted Italian translation of the libretto (an otherwise excellent version, it was released on both CD, on the Phillips label, and on an Opus Arte DVD).

Antonio Pappano, who also conducted a concert performance of the work at the BBC Proms in London this summer, uses the French text but, just as oddly, cuts some of the pieces in the Bartlet edition to fit the opera onto three discs. Without the “authentic” argument in its favor, Pappano’s version cannot quite supplant the leading contender for the most desirable French version of the opera, with Lamberto Gardelli leading the Royal Philharmonic, recently re-released by EMI. It is complete on four CDs (albeit not in the scholarly edition) and has a better cast (among others, Gabriel Bacquier, Montserrat Caballé, and Nicolai Gedda -- the last has to be heard to be believed) and studio recording quality (Pappano’s version was recorded live in concert in the Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, with the crowd noises and hasty page turning sounds that entails).

Little argument needs to be made about the value of the work itself: it has its longueurs, yes, but for its melodic beauty and dramatic qualities, it is a work to be savored, musically, all the more so because its composer went almost completely silent after it for the remaining 40 years of his life. The libretto by Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis takes up most of the story of the legendary William Tell, a (probably fictional) crossbow maker and marksman who defied his Austrian overlords and sparked the movement toward an independent Swiss confederacy.

More than Schiller’s famous play, the opera draws on a strikingly similar earlier French libretto for André Grétry’s 1791 version of the story, which was itself based on a French play by Antoine-Marin Lemierre. The most famous episode of the legend, Tell being forced by the Austrians to shoot an apple placed on the head of his young son, Jemmy (spoofed by Pappano in his photograph on this set’s cover, with a baton-pierced apple on his head), is reserved until the Third Act, followed by Tell’s escape when he is asked to pilot the ship taking him to prison and the second crossbow shot, which kills Gesler, the oppressive Austrian leader. Along the way, there is a love story involving Tell’s friend Arnold, who has fallen in love with an Austrian princess named Mathilde.

Leading the cast is the heroic, youthful Arnold of John Osborn, not only surviving this punishing role but giving its numerous very high notes force and beauty, albeit with some Iowa-inflected French pronunciation. Gerald Finley’s Tell feels just a little forced, leading to some unpleasant nasality and strained intonation, but overall a good performance. Many of the best scenes are ensembles, like the sequence of numbers in the crossbow shot scene, with the not-so-boyish (but pretty) soprano of Elena Xanthoudakis as Tell’s son, Jemmy, rising bravely over the other voices.

Soprano Malin Byström has a thick, almost mezzo-like sound as Mathilde, and the Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux brings a warm strength to the supporting role of Tell’s wife, Hedwige. The many choruses and dance scenes are among the most pleasing music, and Pappano leads most of them with grace, although it sounds like sections of the chorus, not always in tune, have been pushed to the background in the engineering of the sound.

The orchestra plays well, in general, with especially fine cello solos in the opening section of the extended overture and in the crucial aria for Tell, ‘Sois immobile’, where he bids his son to stay still during the crossbow shot.

Mathias Hausmann

See my review of the Vocal Arts recital by Mathias Hausmann:

Vocal Arts DC Debuts With Mathias Hausmann Performance (The Washingtonian, October 13):

H. Eisler, Hollywood Songbook, M. Goerne, E. Schneider

The new season of Vocal Arts DC finally opened on Wednesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater with a recital of early-20th-century German songs. The honor of opening the season fell to Austrian baritone Mathias Hausmann after bass-baritone Eric Owens canceled his September 10 Vocal Arts recital at the eleventh hour. Hausmann’s voice is a pleasure to listen to -- full-bodied, round, and well formed in tone. It joined beautifully in all registers, from resonant lows to ringing but still smooth heights, even a sweet crooner’s head voice heard in some of the popular-style songs that concluded the concert. At the same time, his performance had a coolness, a detachment that gave the impression of expressive possibilities left unexplored once a certain contentment in the beauty of sound had been reached. It’s a quality that recalls his mentor, Thomas Hampson, another uniformly rich and powerful voice.

The program brought together lieder from my favorite period in song composition, the early 20th century, focusing on German and Austrian composers who immigrated to the United States. Hausmann began with selections from the collection known as the Hollywood Songbook, the collaboration of composer Hanns Eisler and poet Bertolt Brecht (among other writers), created during Eisler’s short stint writing film scores in Los Angeles. These pieces -- a series of quirky miniatures -- are steeped in the sense of alienation experienced by World War II refugees, and reinforce the feeling of non-resolution and quietly anxious internal monologue. Hausmann relished careful attention to diction in every song without allowing it to become overdone or affected. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Hausmann recital shows potential (Washington Post, October 14)

Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center

Saxophone Colossus, S. Rollins, T. Flanagan, D. Watkins, M. Roach Tenor Madness, S. Rollins, R. Garland, P. Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, J. Coltrane A Night at the Village Vanguard, S. Rollins, W. Ware, E. Jones The Bridge, S. Rollins, J. Hall, B. Cranshaw, B. Riley

Sonny Rollins is one of the last surviving jazz legends, a status made official when President Obama gave him the National Medal of Arts this spring at the White House -- and about to be reinforced this December when the American saxophonist receives the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been coming to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall with some regularity in the last few years, sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society, and he had his latest such appearance on Monday night, still a force in his 80s. (You can watch him speak about his ongoing career with Tavis Smiley on PBS.) Rollins had some difficulty walking around the stage, and the bulk of the solos in the 70-minute set went to the talented members of his band, especially Peter Bernstein on electric guitar and Kobie Watkins on drums, with some highlights from bassist Bob Cranshaw (who has been playing with Rollins for most of his career) and Sammy Figueroa on congas.

Some clunky rhythms aside, Rollins still has a broad, buzzing tone and a laid-back improvisational style that mixes silence with pert motifs. Gunther Schuller once wrote about the way Rollins improvised, saying that his most important innovation was a more studied thematic and structural unity. Rollins is still doing this, developing the motifs of a tune as the bones of his improvisation, as he did with the main motivic cell of Patanjali, for example, the perky staccato pattern popping up again and again. The tone ranged from ultra-smooth, in the third number, the smoky ballad Once in a While, rendered with torch-song vitality as Rollins serenaded listeners in the front row, to human voice-like guttural growls, in the opening number, New Song (an "unnamed" new piece).

Through his many stylistic shifts over the years, Rollins has returned again and again to his Caribbean heritage: although he grew up in New York, his parents were from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Calypso-style rhythms, with Figueroa's congas in the spotlight, permeated the opening number, returning later in the set in the sixth number, Nice Lady, featuring a minimalistic improvisation by Rollins with lots of filler by drums and congas. Rollins had a dynamic back-and-forth with Watkins in the fourth number, Serenade, a triple-meter lark, followed by Watkins taking his most extended solo.

Rollins said very little during the concert, not announcing anything on the playlist and limiting his comments to just two points in the evening, but what he did say was memorable. He introduced his fellow musicians, saying several times, to the delight of the audience, that "these musicians are not dope addicts," and Rollins's own trials with drug use, from which he recovered, hovered in the background of those comments. He also spoke, quite movingly, about how he travels everywhere in the world, and no matter where he goes people love jazz, that the music represents the United States abroad -- and it does so very well indeed. Of a planned trip to play in Turkey, he said that some people were surprised that Muslims would like jazz, but he joked that Muslims who were listening to him play jazz were also not going to attack Americans. Those hoping to hear some of the Rollins greatest hits had to content themselves with Tenor Madness -- one of my favorites, embedded below in the famous recording with John Coltrane -- and the final number, Don't Stop the Carnival. Before he opened that last piece, Rollins assured the crowd of his love for them, adding "I'll see you again, sometime, somewhere, so don't worry about that." We plan to hold him to his word.

SEE ALSO:
Mark Jenkins, In concert: Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, October 11)

Chris Barton, Jazz review: Sonny Rollins at Royce Hall (Los Angeles Times, September 23)


Tenor Madness, S. Rollins, J. Coltrane

NSO Succeeds North by Northeast

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the NSO.

J.Sibelius, Violin Concerto et al, Kremer / Muti / Philharmonia O. EMI C.Nielsen, Symphony No.5 et al., R.Kubelik / Danish RSO EMI

The National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Finnish conductor John Storgårds covered itself in glory last Sunday, when it performed a program of Mussorgsky, Sibelius, Liadov, and Nielsen. Generally positive reviews of the Thursday-performance (see ionarts review) spoke of occasionally ragged playing, particularly in the Mussorgsky, but such was not the case at the Kennedy Center on Sunday afternoon. Whatever problems there may have been had been ironed out by Storgårds and players.

Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was given a rhythmically sharp, full-bodied, and clearly delineated performance. Rimsky-Korsakov may have found Mussorgsky’s orchestration ragged, but the NSO's playing of Mussorgsky’s original version certainly wasn’t. Storgårds kept a tight grip in the piece and the NSO stayed with him for the entire, wild ride.

The Sibelius Violin Concerto featured soloist Gidon Kremer who produced a nicely nuanced, genially expressive, somewhat underpowered reading; not exactly meditative, but not driven either, and certainly not pyrotechnical. Sibelius—cliché or not—can do with a fair amount of detachment, but the concerto in particular shouldn’t be entirely devoid of fire. There was warmth here, but no heat. Perhaps my ears are still prejudiced from hearing Nikolaj Znaider in London three years ago, where he gave a charged and stirring performance with the LSO under Colin Davis. Incidentally, the powerfully accompanying NSO was not to blame; it was Kremer who did not fully match the band.

After these two high-powered pieces, Storgårds showed how well he and the NSO could handle subtlety. Playing with great finesse and refinement, they infused Liadov’s Enchanted Lake, a delicious piece of Russian impressionism, with magic and made it glitter. The Carl Nielsen's Fifth Symphony was the highlight of the afternoon. Storgårds and the NSO built the statement of the main theme in the first movement, before the main timpani attack, in a magnificent manner. The snare drum entered a bit too forcefully, though that may have been Storgårds’ interpretive choice, not an errant percussionist’s fault. Storgårds went on to capture the visionary essence of this music by building the climax toward the end of the first movement in a most persuasive manner. In media res, the second movement, starts in the center of a maelstrom—perfectly portrayed by the NSO’s exciting playing. Storgårds again demonstrated his superb ability at musical architecture with his handling of the giant fugue. There was detail in abundance without ever losing the long line. If it is impossible to single out one section of the NSO, then that’s only because they all deserve singling out; strings, winds, brass, and percussion performed exemplarily.

This was the debut performance of John Storgårds (chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra) with the National Symphony Orchestra and, based on musical evidence alone, it should not be his last. I, for one, would love to hear what he does with the Nielsen Fourth Symphony.

Phillips Camerata on the Rise

See my review of the debut of the Phillips Camerata in today's Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Phillips Camerata chamber ensemble has impressive debut at museum
Washington Post, October 11, 2011

Weber, Clarinet Quintet (inter alia), Gaudier Ensemble

The Phillips Collection, one of the jewels among Washington’s crowd of museums, first opened its doors to the public 90 years ago. For 70 of those years, the museum has hosted a concert series. To honor both anniversaries, Caroline Mousset, the museum’s music director, has created a resident chamber music ensemble, the Phillips Camerata, which gave its maiden performance Sunday afternoon.

Resident ensembles have worked relatively well for other museums, like New York’s Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert and several such groups at the National Gallery of Art. They can relieve some of the pressure of programming a season-long concert series, although in its first season the Phillips Camerata will perform only twice at the museum.

Mousset serves as the Camerata’s artistic director, programming music for each concert and selecting from a flexible roster of 14 musicians, which she says may grow to as many as 20. The second half of the concert, devoted to Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in B-Flat, Op. 34, was animated by the virtuosity and musicality of lead performer Ricardo Morales, who is about to leave his seat as principal clarinetist of the Philadelphia Orchestra to take the same position at the New York Philharmonic.

[Continue reading]