Washington's Season to Come: 2013-2014

Here in Washington, there is relatively little to hear in the sleepy month of August, and one's ears start to think ahead to the fall. This city offers a lot of high-quality music, more than most people can afford to hear. What are the performances that you should mark on your calendar now, the ones you do not want to miss? Here are my picks for the Top 25 events in classical music in the season to come. As always, it was a difficult mark to keep to, so watch for our Classical Music Agenda (with ten top picks for each month) throughout the year for many more worthy choices.

SEPTEMBER:
Richard Wagner, whose 200th birthday is being commemorated this year, will get his due from the Kennedy Center's two major institutions. Washington National Opera, while still working up to its first Ring cycle, will open the fall season with Tristan und Isolde (September 15 to 27). The cast will be headlined by soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Ian Storey, and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop, but the major draw will be the company's music director, Philippe Auguin, at the podium.

OCTOBER:
The National Symphony Orchestra joins the act a month later, when Christoph Eschenbach conducts a concert performance of Act III of Parsifal (October 10 to 12). This features tenor Nikolai Schukoff as Parsifal, baritone Thomas Hampson as Amfortas, and bass Yuri Vorobiev as Gurnemanz, backed up by the Washington Chorus.

Les Violons du Roy, the early music ensemble based in Quebec, is coming back to the area this season. We have enjoyed both of their last visits (in 2005 and 2012), and this time they will perform a concert with Stephanie Blythe (October 15) in the Music Center at Strathmore. Blythe, a voice to be reckoned with, will sing a Haydn cantata and some Handel arias, paired with orchestral suites by Bach and Telemann.

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In Brief: Savoring Summer Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) Now you know what to do with that last week of summer vacation.

• You can now listen to the end of the Ring cycle from Bayreuth. [Siegfried | Götterdämmerung]


• Listen to the August 2 performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with Daniele Gatti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, starring Michael Volle (Hans Sachs), Roberto Saccà (Walther von Stolzing), Anna Gabler (Eva), and Markus Werba (Beckmesser). [ORF]


• Watch this summer's production of Don Pasquale from the Glyndebourne Festival, plus the 2009 production of Verdi's Falstaff. [Glyndebourne]


• John Eliot Gardiner conducts music of Bach, the Easter and Ascension Oratorios, with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. [BBC Proms]


• At the Festival de Saintes, Philippe Herreweghe leads the Collegium Vocale Gent in Bach's cantata Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott (BWV 127) and Missa Brevis (BWV 235). [France Musique]


• Mariss Jansons leads the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's second symphony, with soloists Genia Kühmeier and Gerhild Romberger, at the Royal Albert Hall. [BBC Proms]

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'Falstaff' at Wolf Trap

(L to R) Tracy Cox (Alice Ford), Mireille Asselin (Nannetta), Margaret Gawrysiak (Quickly),
and Carolyn Sproule (Meg) in Falstaff, Wolf Trap Opera, 2013 (photo by Carol Pratt)
Five years after Wolf Trap Opera presented Verdi's first and only other comedy, Un Giorno di Regno, the company let the other shoe drop. Their new production of Verdi's Falstaff is timed conveniently with the composer's bicentennial year, an event marked by most summer festivals this year. Heard on opening night yesterday, in the small theater at the Barns, it is a pleasing if not ideal version of this most masterful of Verdi's operas.

Verdi, Falstaff, T. Gobbi, E. Schwarzkopf, L. Alva, A. Moffo, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, H. von Karajan

The cast of young artists performs at a high level, led by the Alice Ford of dramatic soprano Tracy Cox, a juicy and puissant voice, and the Ford of baritone Norman Garrett, towering in presence and both powerful and refined in sound. Their foil, the hilarious and pompous Falstaff of bass-baritone Craig Colclough, showed remarkable range in the role after an imposing Commendatore and sly Shadow in last year's Don Giovanni and The Rake's Progress. Margaret Gawyrsiak, who stole the show last season as Baba the Turk, came close to doing the same as a guest artist Mistress Quickly, and mezzo-soprano Carolyn Sproule was a comely Meg.

Herbert von Karajan is to blame for me thinking that every Nannetta should sound like Anna Moffo, when in fact no one does, but Canadian soprano Mireille Asselin came admirably close, a slight tendency to sharpness aside, with a radiantly transparent sound as the Queen of the Fairies. Tenor Matthew Grills, a Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Winner last year, was her equal as Fenton, with a pretty sound and solid high notes, revealing no sound of strain, in the gorgeous aria that introduces the final scene. The supporting cast were also in good form -- the braying Caius of tenor Juan José de León, the bright-nosed, Scarecrow-like Bardolfo of Brenton Ryan, and the rotten-toothed Pistola of Aaron Sorenson -- rounding out a well-balanced ensemble that made the most of the exquisite and rollicking fugue with which Verdi adroitly ends the opera, the most savant of rib-jabs.

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Dip Your Ears, No. 150 (Langgaard’s Stringed Nightingale)

Rued Langgaard String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 6, Variations on “Oh, Sacred Head” Nightingale String Quartet Dacapo SACD

Musical Nattergale

Rued Langgaard (1893—1952) is a strange and most wonder-full romantic composer, whose 16 symphonies cover the gamut from massively delightful to charmingly bizarre. His violin and piano miniatures are among the sweetest found in the 20^th century. His works for string quartet included in the first string quartet-devoted volume of Dacapo’s superb Langaard series, have more bite and the occasional acerbic note, but they don’t stray far from the general harmonic and melodic principles that make the Danish composer so intriguing… especially the one-movement Sixth Quartet. Astonishingly, all but one work languished unpublished until the 1990s, when these pieces, containing the whole microcosm of 20^th century classical styles, were rediscovered. Dacapo is improving on their 1984 set with the Kontra Quartet by including all the works for string quartet in this series, and the Nightingale String Quartet adds a pinch of extra enthusiasm and exactitude.

Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 10 ) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 1 • Mariss Jansons

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 1 • Mariss Jansons

A Russian Pair of Sixes

A pair of Russian Sixes came from Mariss Jansons and his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in their first of two Salzburg concerts: Shostakovich’s and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony each, related by their key (B minor), nationality, and number, but little else.

The lower strings of the BRSO opened the Shostakovich with that rare total cohesion that has its very own

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: San Miguel Mission

On this last trip to Santa Fe, I spent more time in Santa Fe itself, rather than in the surroundings. On Sunday afternoon, that meant visiting the Loretto Chapel, whose beautiful spiral staircase is the subject of Barbara Hershey's movie The Staircase, and another visit to the city's cathedral, which features in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, the best evocation of the mystery of this part of the world. The oldest church in Santa Fe -- and supposedly the oldest surviving church in the United States -- is the Mission of San Miguel, which was first constructed in 1610 by the Tlaxcalan Indians. It has been altered quite a bit since then, although there are wood and adobe vestiges from at least as far back as the 18th century. Behind the altar is a typical New Mexican reredos, brightly colored with statues and paintings in roundels, with St. Michael, the church's patron, at the top and as the statue at the bottom (shown at right).

The most precious artwork in the church, though, are two tapestries painted onto deerskin, a crucifixion (on the left side of the nave) and a John the Baptist (on the right). The images and colors on these have faded since they were made at some point in the 17th century, but like so much in Catholic churches in New Mexico, they are a fascinating mixture of Native American and European. The church has served many different purposes over the years, but it is, unlike the Loretto Chapel, still a functioning church, hosting an austere Mass in Latin (Extraordinary Form) on Sunday at 2 pm, which offers quite a look back into history. At the end of that Mass this past Sunday, the celebrant explained that the new altar in the church is actually the church's old altar, which had been removed to a location across the street. It has just been put back in place, on the wall directly under the reredos -- suitably for Mass said ad orientem.

Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.5 (Part 1)

Continued here: "Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.5 (Part 2)"

Picture of postcard with Mahler by Hans Boehler (detail; click to see in entirety) courtesy Carnegie Hall Archives

Gustav Mahler’s Fifth, along with the Fourth, is the most popular among Mahler’s symphonies… not the least because of the famous slow fourth movement, the Adagietto (soundtrack to “Death in Venice” and Robert Kennedy’s funeral, courtesy Leonard Bernstein). It is easy to have that movement get out of hand by slowing its pulse to the point where its heart stops beating. Similarly, some conductors work too hard against this and those results tend to be long on admirable intellectualism (or at least cool air) but short on wanted yearning.

The timing does not tell it all; the pulse is more dependent on how the conductor sees his orchestra through this than the seconds he takes to do it. The same ten minutes might sound lovingly cared for when conducted in two—but interminable when conducted in four. Then again, with duration differences of up to 80% in this movement, the timing does tell at least part of the story. Mahler was reported to have taken just over, and at least once well under, eight minutes for this movement. Bruno Walter, who should know, takes 7:35 in his 1947 recording with the New York Philharmonic and was even faster in his earlier recording. Though what is true to the letter need not necessarily be true to the spirit. Haitink with Berlin, at his most luxurious, clocks in at 14 minutes.

What is certain is that the Adagietto is not an

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 9 ) Vienna Philharmonic • Zubin Mehta

Vienna Philharmonic • Zubin Mehta

Mahler in the Morning

Mahler in the morning is a tough proposition, even for avowed Mahlerficionados™. Which is perhaps why the concert of the Mahler Fifth Symphony in this year’s Salzburg Mahler cycle was buffered with Mozart before intermission—Mozart being decidedly more morning-suited music to the extent that any orchestra performance can be truly suited to 11am. Zubin Mehta, Pinchas Zukerman—both part of the still extant 70s music mafia and now embalmed embodiments of the establishment (thus very suited to the corresponding element of the Salzburg Festival, which is just about the only place you’ll find Zukerman appear in Europe these days)—and the much reduced Vienna Philharmonic (8+6+4+4+2+winds) came out on stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus and delivered the Third Violin Concerto, K.216.

The last time I heard a Mozart concerto precede Mahler’s Fifth with Zubin Mehta, the Mozart was a train wreck. But then the soloists then were not Pinky, who—feel about him what you will—is a consummate professional with standards he won’t undercut (when it comes to his own playing), even when he hops from concert to concert and continent to continent with scarcely enough time to pack a suitcase in between. And so it turned out much better than frankly feared: thick and beautiful, self-satisfied and old fashioned, with a dark timbre and quick paws fiddling his way through the work in a very entertaining manner. Early stumbles notwithstanding, the orchestra responded nimbly and perky to the suave and routine elegance with which

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