Latest from Alexandre Tharaud

Autograph (Encores), A. Tharaud (released on November 19, 2013)

We were early adopters of pianist Alexandre Tharaud here at Ionarts. I have covered two of his local recitals for the Post, in 2012 and 2008 (plus one with Jean-Guihen Queyras in 2010), and we have reviewed most of his recordings over the years with high praise. The French pianist, who practices only in his friends' apartments, is leading a "private domain" at the Cité de la Musique and Salle Pleyel through November 22. Marie-Aude Roux has an article about it (Alexandre Tharaud joue du piano partout, sauf chez lui, November 14) for Le Monde (my translation):

Alexandre Tharaud planned the program around his own discography, sorted out from the screening of a documentary, Alexandre Tharaud, le temps dérobé, directed by Raphaëlle Aellig-Régnier. The filmmaker followed the pianist over the course of two years, from Kuala Lumpur to Montreal, to film what one never sees or very little: the backstage, life between concerts. "In spite of the audiences, we lead a solitary life," he says. "I am alone on the plane, on the train, in my bed (well, not always!), and I am taking advantage of this invitation to surround myself with friends and to stay for two weeks in Paris."

So Alexandre Tharaud has brought together his friends: the flamenco singer Alberto Garcia for a "flamenco Scarlatti" concert, his friends from Le Bœuf sur le toit in 2012, some from performance (tenor Jean Delescluse) and from the recording studio (the chanteuse Juliette). He entrusted the pianist Frédéric Vaysse-Knitter with Outre-mémoire, the project of the Antillais-French composer Thierry Pécou and artist François Boclé, about the enslavement and treatment of black people. He will be "content" with three recitals on November 17 (Couperin-Bach-Rameau, Schubert-Chopin, and Ravel-Satie); with Ravel's G major concerto, which he has not yet recorded in spite of his great love for this music; as well as a Bach concerto. There will also be the third concerto of Beethoven, a composer he had not played before he made the soundtrack for Michael Haneke's Amour.

Three recitals this Sunday? "J'aime les marathons," says Tharaud. His next disc is Autograph, to be released next week, is a selection of "petites madeleines," encore pieces by twenty-two composers (more on that soon). After this residency at the Cité de la Musique, he will take a vacation of three months, during which he will move into a new apartment, with a view of the Seine. He will still not have a piano at home, which he offers as advice to many young musicians. Most important, he says, is not to play on a beautiful piano, because it does not encourage you to work.

More from Pieter Wispelwey

Charles T. Downey, Cellist Pieter Wispelwey delivers gem of a program at Clarice Smith Center (Washington Post, November 15, 2013)

Bach, Cello Suites, P. Wispelwey

Pieter Wispelwey’s visits to the Washington area are always worth hearing, and his recital Wednesday night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center was no exception. The Dutch cellist, who switches easily between historically informed performance practice and the modern instrument, offered one of his gold-standard programs, this time focused on four major works from the years of the two world wars.

There was none of the barbed, bellicose pummeling you might expect from that era, though, as Wispelwey brought together serene and light-filled works that belied the time of their creation. [Continue reading]

Pieter Wispelwey, cello
Pei-Shan Lee, piano
Clarice Smith Center

PREVIOUSLY:
Robert Battey, At the Library of Congress, cellist Pieter Wispelwey shows unique, determined style (Washington Post, October 28, 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Pieter Wispelwey (Ionarts, April 29, 2007)

Matthew Bourne's Cinematic 'Sleeping Beauty'

Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance, directed by Matthew Bourne (released on September 30, 2013) Swan Lake, directed by Matthew Bourne

What would a person who fell asleep 100 years ago think of the world now? For one thing, in the age of Twilight, she would be amazed by the ubiquity of vampires in mass media culture. So, it should be no surprise that Matthew Bourne has turned to that very tired plot device in Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance, his reworking of the Tchaikovsky-Petipa classic The Sleeping Beauty with his New Adventures company, seen last night in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Premiered just last fall in Great Britain and now available on DVD, the production is on the road, with performances all this week in the big hall along the Potomac. Can a Bourne Giselle, à la The Walking Dead, be too far around the corner?

Bourne has had such enormous success precisely because he has mass appeal, and his productions have an unmistakably cinematic quality -- big-budget, high-tech theater adorned with the trappings of ballet. The story told by Tchaikovsky's music is diced up, rearranged, substituted, but in a genre with no words, the music can serve many different choreographies, provided that the choreographer does as Bourne claims he did, in an informative program note, and follows the cues of the music in all his decisions. Trimmed down to about two hours, almost an hour short of the entire score, the story begins with the birth of Princess Aurora in 1890, the year that Tchaikovsky and Petipa premiered the ballet. The baby is played by an adorable puppet, who claps, bobs her head, scoots around the floor, and even climbs the curtain. This image of Aurora as marionette is echoed in the third act, when the son of the evil fairy (mother and son both played with oily menace by Tom Jackson Greaves) dances with the limp body of the sleeping Aurora.

Other Articles: Sarah Kaufman, Matthew Bourne injects new energy into ‘Sleeping Beauty’ with dance theater piece (Washington Post, November 14) Sarah Anne Hughes, DCist Interview: Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty @ The Kennedy Center (DCist, November 13) Celia Wren, Matthew Bourne’s “Sleeping Beauty” (Washington Post, November 8) Joan Acocella, Wake Up!: Matthew Bourne's "Sleeping Beauty" (The New Yorker, November 4) Robert Johnson, Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty': don't leave the windows open at night (Newark Star-Ledger, October 30) Robert Greskovic, Matthew Bourne Bites Into 'Sleeping Beauty' (Wall Street Journal, October 28) Brian Seibert, After a 100-Year Sleep, a Beauty Wakes to Vampires (New York Times, October 27) Roslyn Sulcas, Waking Up to a Bloodsucking Lover (New York Times, October 18)

In Act II, the year is 1911, and we see the grown-up Aurora (a spirited Hannah Vassallo) falling in love with Leo, the commoner who tends her family's Edwardian garden (an earnest Chris Trenfield). The evil fairy's curse is actually carried out by her son, with the prick of a poisoned flower putting Aurora to sleep for a hundred years. This is where the leader of the fairies, one Count Lilac (Christopher Marney), bites Leo on the neck, the price of being turned into an undead abomination apparently worth the chance to survive for a century until he is able to release his love. No more spoilers, but let us just say that the normal conventions of ballet, where the drama is sewn up early on to make for a divertissement of unrelated entrées, are turned on their head.

If you are expecting a classic Sleeping Beauty (e.g., the Mariinsky Ballet in 2010, or the Royal Ballet in 2006), you will be disappointed, as will small children looking for their familiar fairy tale. Purists may sniff at the changes, and the use of recorded music always bothers me, but what Bourne is going for -- a sort of living cinema, complete with projected titles and impressive perspective-rich scenes and lavish costumes in many eras (set and costume design by Lez Brotherston) -- justifies the crushing sweep of the recorded music. Amplified at volumes that were not only far beyond what an actual orchestra could produce but sometimes uncomfortable for my ears, the recording was made especially for this production, in 2012, by an orchestra put together for the purpose.

Bourne's storytelling is impeccable and fun, but most of the big payoffs of true ballet are ignored. The closest we come to a corps scene is the the sleepwalking scene in Act III. There is not a satisfying pas de deux, either, since Bourne uses lots of pantomime in the interest of telling the story. His emphasis struck my eye as mostly on the torso movements and expressive port de bras, rather than the legs, which Brotherston's costumes, often dark on the bottom and light on top, help to hide. If the work is judged only on its own merits, however, it is an entertaining evening in the theater, with plenty of laughs, if not necessarily the moments of grace and beauty one craves in ballet.

This production continues through November 17, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Reduced-price orchestra-level tickets are available: use the code "166894" when you contact the box office.

Virtual Opera in Paris

Much fuss was made about Nico Muhly's Two Boys as an Internet opera, but starting today the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris will host performances of The End, Vocaloid Opéra, featuring the completely virtual "diva" from Japan, Hatsune Miku. Eléonore Prieur has a preview article (Le premier opéra virtuel investit le Théâtre du Châtelet, November 12) for Le Figaro (my translation):

It is the first time since Max Headroom, the star presenter of cybernetic culture in the 1980s, that a virtual character has risen to the rank of celebrity. After all, Hatsune Miku is not a teenage girl of 16 like the others, she is a Vocaloid (a program of vocal synthesization). The brand created by Yahama is associated with a manga-like character imagined by the company Crypton Future Media. Like any other diva, she appears in concert. She sang recently at the Mori Museum in Tokyo, in an exhibit bringing together works by Chagall and Jeff Koons. Proud of their superstar, the Japanese have even brought her to life in the form of a drawing placed on board their space probe Akatsuki.

The performance of the opera is presented on four screens, allowing the character to walk around the stage, accompanied by live musicians and electronic music by composer Keeichiro Shibuya. Performances of the work are planned for Montreal and the United States. The music may not yet be worth listening to, but the possibilities are mind-boggling.

More 'Ring' Cycle in Geneva

The Grand Théâtre de Genève has been working its way through the Ring cycle, in the staging by Dieter Dorn. After Das Rheingold last March, it was time for Die Walküre this month. Marie-Aude Roux was there (Si "La Walkyrie" nous était contée, November 9) for Le Monde (my translation):

On a purified and timeless set -- a few wood panels for the hovel of the humans, a mass of tectonic plates for the gods -- the director Dieter Dorn imposes on the different protagonists (costumed in simple woodsmen's outfits or habits inspired by some samurai saga) acting direction both sensible and profound. Gods and dwarves, dragon and giants rub shoulders with men, rams, and horses: Dieter Dorn takes the ironic step of treating the animals anthropomorphically (the "human" rams of Fricka, the man-like horses of the Valkyries) or in the shape of articulated marionettes (Grane, the iron steed of Brünnhilde is the work of the Puppet Players), thus making the myth something like a child's fairy tale. Particularly striking is the scene where Wotan, forced to sacrifice those he loves (his son Siegmund, then his daughter Brünnhilde), seems to come apart in the way that his justifying monologue raises up the menacing shards of plates of shining mirrors -- the same ones that will protect Brünnhilde, fallen asleep in her circle of fire.

Both the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the cast had their shortcomings, with the conductor, Ingo Metzmacher choosing tempos often too fast, but both won Roux over. Among the singers, the Fricka of Elena Zhidkova and the Hunding of Günther Groissböck stood out for praise. (Christian Merlin's impressions were quite similar for Le Figaro.) No word yet on whether the performance will be broadcast on France Musique or Arte.

In Brief: Veterans Day 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.) Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• Watch pianist Wu Han, tenor Christoph Prégardien, the Quatuor Ebène, and bass player Benjamin Berlioz join Menahem Pressler for a concert to celebrate the veteran pianist's 90th birthday -- also embedded at right. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Listen to a recording of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier from the Vienna State Opera, recorded last month, starring Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch, and Peter Rose and with Adam Fischer at the podium. [RTBF]


• Mariss Jansons leads the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for the organization's 125th anniversary, with the premiere of Louis Andriessen's Mysteriën and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. [RTBF]


• Pianist Daniil Trifonov plays a recital in the Auditorium du Louvre, with music by Debussy, Chopin, and Robert Schumann, recorded last month. [France Musique]


• Keyboard concertos by J. S. Bach, with Martha Argerich and friends, recorded in the Salle Pleyel in Paris. [Part 1 | Part 2]

Read more »

Never Put Schumann after Shostakovich

Shostakovich, Cello Sonata No. 1, S. Gabetta, Munich Philharmonic, L. Maazel (2012) Schumann, Violin Concerto / Cello Concerto (arr.), J. Storgårds (soloist), Tampere Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (1996)

The debut of John Storgårds, Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and new Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2011 made his return to the group's podium this week an event we wanted to hear. True to form, the Finnish conductor brought a mostly exciting program and a driven, almost harried beat to the concert heard on Friday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, to which the NSO musicians responded with gusto. That some sections, particularly the violins, sounded as if they were knocked off their normal stride was a sign that the customary or the routine had no place in this performance, which often leads to compelling listening.

One of the hallmarks of the Christoph Eschenbach era at the NSO, the programming of great pieces for the first time in the orchestra's history, was again in evidence, with the belated debut of Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge (op. 10, from 1937). It is a daring and precocious piece, last heard from the chamber orchestra A Far Cry last year, with each variation a free-standing miniature in a new mimicked style -- with each one, the 20-something Britten seems to say, "Look what else I can do!" This performance, not the most polished perhaps, highlighted each of these styles with brashness (the March, the Moto Perpetuo, the forceful Funeral March) or luscious sound quality (the Adagio, the fine Romance) or delight in rhythm (the Bourrée classique, with its Paganini-ish solo by concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, and the Viennese waltz, filtered through several different types of nostalgia).

Cellist Sol Gabetta certainly had moxie to come to Washington with Shostakovich's first cello concerto (E-flat major, op. 107), a piece written for former NSO music director and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. (Heinrich Schiff was the last to do so, in 2007.) We had to miss Gabetta's NSO debut in 2008, which included the farewell concert for departing music director Leonard Slatkin, but she had a pleasing way with this rather sardonic piece, biting into the crunchy rhythms of the first movement with weight, if not always that extra degree of snarl high on the A string at the climaxes. Storgårds and the NSO gave an appropriate roughness to the orchestral part in the first movement, going with Gabetta in a sort of choked-up sound in the lyrical second movement, which felt a little caught in the throat emotionally, with little happy moments sounding as if from a music box toward the end. The horn solos, the only brass sound in the unusual orchestration, were rather fine, and many other remarkable moments shone, like the grotesque low woodwind sounds in the first movement and the celesta solo that mirrored the near-flawless harmonics from Gabetta in the second movement. Gabetta did not quite hold my ear captivated over the course of the very long cadenza that leads to the finale, which was not as compelling as it should be, and it felt like she hit her dynamic ceiling in the third movement when there was still room to soar.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, John Storgards leads NSO in fine tribute to Benjamin Britten (Washington Post, November 8) Felix Stephan, Cellistin Sol Gabetta ist eine virtuose Managerin (Berliner Morgenpost, October 23) David Kettle, Classical review: RSNO, Edinburgh (The Scotsman, October 14)

Storgårds probably should have violated the rules of the symphonic programming manual (overture, concerto, symphony -- always in that order) and finished the program with the Shostakovich, since putting Schumann's first symphony (B-flat major, "Spring") after it was an inevitable disappointment. Not that the performance was not full of surprises, because Storgårds's tendency toward fast and incisive tempi and attacks made it so. The lovely pastoral introduction was followed by a snappy and forceful Allegro molto vivace, with a nice build-up to the recapitulation and the bloom of the brass section, not heard throughout the first half, had an extra oomph to it. The second movement was far from the slow side of Larghetto but remained a little dull, the fault largely of the score, with the over-agitated third movement becoming the piece's high point -- fast but still smooth -- with the finale feeling still a little rough around the edges.

This performance will be repeated tonight (November 9, 8 pm) in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. ADDENDUM: If you go tonight, applaud vigorously after the concerto, because Gabetta apparently had an encore ready to go, which we did not hear on Friday.

Dip Your Ears, No. 161 (World Premiere Holmboe Goodness)

Vagn Holmboe, Concertos, D.Slobodeniouk / Norköpping SO / E.Heide, L.A.Tomter Dacapo

World Premiere Bookends

The timpanist in Vagn Holmboe's 1992 (!) Viola Concerto op.189 whacks away at the opening of propulsive Allegro moderato first movement as if to give, double handedly, the finale of Nielsen's "Inextinguishable" Symphony a run for its money. The recurring phrase alternates with wistfully-lyrical solo passages before soloist (Lars Anders Tomter) and the Norköpping Symphony Orchestra meld into a highly condensed and lean work of some 20 minutes that has every chance to be included in the sparsely populated pantheon of great Viola Concertos. If you hear infusions of Jewish (or Central European folksy), rather than Nordic themes, it probably has to do with Holmboe having written the work for the Israeli Violist Rivka Golani. It's shocking that this should be the premiere recording of the work.

The 1929 Concerto for Orchestra can well hold its own against the famous(ish) exponents of the form, Bartók, Lutosławski, Ginastera, and Hindemith and—except for the latter which may have served as inspiration to Holmboe—precedes all of them. Unlike them, it's rather less a showcase for individual instruments in layered form but a cohesive, dark orchestral work of neo-classicism with larger and smaller hints from Nielsen to dramatic Mozart. Again it's astounding that the Norköpping performance under Dima Slobodeniouk should not only be the first recording but also the premiere performance.

The 1979 Violin Concerto op.139 is a stellar firecracker, energetic, and prompting thoughts of Mendelssohn here, Enescu there, juggling its Balkan themes in lighthearted manner all the way to its virtuosic end which Erik Heide does proud. It confirms this disc as one of the most accessible and rewarding when it comes to Holmboe. The persuasiveness of the works reflects on the ability, dynamism, and verve of the performers.