Emerson Quartet, Warmth in the Ice

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Journeys (Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg), Emerson Quartet, P. Neubauer, C. Carr

The Emerson's current season in Washington, the first with new cellist Paul Watkins, began in October at the Kennedy Center. After missing the first of their concerts on the Smithsonian Associates series, I braved the icy weather for the second one, Sunday evening at the National Museum of Natural History. In October, there were minor intonation inconsistencies heard from Watkins, but encouraging signs of a breakthrough towards a new group sound in the Britten quartet they played. Once again here, the Emersons seemed to be moving away from their strident, forceful way with the music towards a warmer palette of sound. The opening work, Mozart's sixteenth quartet (E-flat major, K. 428), was the best example of this, with just the right tempos and the overall tenor of the work set by the mysterious opening unison melody. There were tiny problems, including what sounded like a slipped beat in the first movement, but all were covered nicely, and the golden color of the ensemble sound seemed to strike into new territory, especially in the inner movements, with Eugene Drucker's sweet-toned first violin complemented nicely by the spicier second violin of Philip Setzer.

The Emerson Quartet's Bartók quartets have generally ranked somewhere below our favorite, the Takács Quartet, but the modified sound from the group turned their performance of the second quartet more in that direction, drawing out the softer, speech-like, folkish elements in the first movement, including some beautiful murmuring textures. The more discordant parts were still hammered and clashing, but nicely voiced rather than just walloped, with a second movement that still sounded savage without being overpowered, flurries of notes played with gravitas and nerve, and a particularly effective mutes-on section. Setzer's more powerful tone better suited to first violin here, in the burning, moody lament of the third movement, marked by an intensity that never flagged.

Beginning with their November concert at the Smithsonian and concluding with the next concert in January, the Emersons are performing all three of Beethoven's op. 59 ("Rasumovsky") quartets. With no. 2, in E minor, the group seemed to return more to its normal, more strident sound, pushing the tempos to the fast side just a bit, forcing the tone a little bit, which caused some intonation issues, especially in the first movement. The second movement, at a tempo that did not seem quite slow enough for Adagio Molto, had some lovely moments, while the third movement was the most satisfying, a relaxed Allegretto with playful syncopations and a more controlled sound, especially in the rollicking major-key trio. The finale hit the Emersons in the wheelhouse, with its jaunty dotted rhythms driving the piece to a thrilling conclusion.

The next concert by the Emerson Quartet's Smithsonian Associates series will be on January 12, 2014, at the National Museum of Natural History.

NSO on Saturday, Brahms and Mozart

Brahms, Symphonies, G. Wand, NDR-Sinfonieorchester Mozart, Violin Concertos, J. Ehnes, Mozart Anniversary Orchestra

What conductors do on the podium does not really matter. It may seem a ludicrous statement, but even some famous conductors, like Riccardo Muti, claim to believe it. It is true that the sound an orchestra produces is entirely made by the players, and the interpretation that results from the alchemy between a conductor and the musicians is not entirely due to the work on the podium. In the same way, though, people who are too willing to give all the credit for a good performance to the musicians can be just as quick to give the blame for a bad one entirely to the conductor. Especially now, when conductors are accorded far less authority than they used to have, much of the conductor's job boils down to inspiration and the alchemy with the musicians is largely a matter of personal relationships. Although musicians can still be awed by some conductors, willing to subjugate their own musical impulses to a venerated baton, they are generally less likely to do so. When there is a conflict between the musicians and their leader, however, both are to blame if the musical results are unsatisfactory.

Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, certainly has his detractors, who come out to comment on articles about him, no matter where he is. With this sort of "sour grapes" sentiment, it is hard not to suspect personal bias or revenge as the motivation. Even so, Eschenbach's tendency toward controversy over the years shows that he has some deficiencies in creating consensus among his musicians, which is mostly what being a conductor means these days. Not being privy to the rehearsal process of the NSO or the personal interactions between conductor and musicians, I have only the performance results on which to judge Eschenbach's successes and failures. These successes and failures, as stated above, must rest on the shoulders of both conductor and musicians. Last week's program from the NSO, heard at the final performance on Saturday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, did not make the cut for my December concert picks, largely because the selection of Brahms and Mozart felt like a concession to the conventional. It turned out to be anything but ordinary.

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Virginia Magic Flute Living Up to Mozart

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from just around the corner.

One feels a slight bit of trepidation when a regional opera company takes on one of the masterpieces of the repertory—in this case, Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Can it live up? However, one need not have worried with the Virginia Opera’s production, which reached George Mason University’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax on the evening of December 6^th, 2013, after an earlier run beginning on November 8^th elsewhere in the state. It did live up.

See also Charles Downey's ionarts-review here.

Vocally, things went very well indeed, with several outstanding performances. The only controversial note of the evening was the production itself, and that only partially. Stage director Michael Shell chose to set the opera as a dream. During the overture, the lights come up on a bed center stage. We also see a red tricycle, a baby bottle by the bed stand, and other appurtenances of a young family.

Husband and wife enter in pajamas; they are icily silent toward each other. They are obviously going through

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Virginia Opera's 'Magic Flute'

The libretto of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is not about realism. Ways to make sense of it include playing up the Masonic elements that are part of the backdrop of the opera's creation, relocating the story in a completely different era, exaggerating the fairy tale aspects, using marionettes to enhance the surreal nature of the events, making the story even more confusing, or dispensing with reality altogether. The production that Michael Shell directed for Virginia Opera, seen on Friday night at George Mason University's Center for the Arts, is essentially a traditional staging, albeit in an English adaptation by Kit Hesketh-Harvey. Shell recontextualizes the story by setting it as a dream, shared by a husband and wife who have fallen asleep after a fight. The unbelievable -- the Egyptian temple, the unlikely love story, the diametrically opposed forces of good and evil, the magic instruments -- is made oneiric. The husband, who somehow becomes Tamino in his dream, is not falling in love with the portrait of his wife, who becomes Pamina -- he is rediscovering what made him fall in love with her in the first place. In this context, the libretto's moral lessons, compact dicta against lying and hurting others, seem like valuable marital advice.

The conceit works in large part because of the convincing acting and fine singing of both singers: tenor Matthew Plenk as an ardent Tamino, and particularly the robust, not weepy Pamina of Nadine Sierra. The two foils of male and female in the libretto were also served beautifully, in the daring but refined, not overblown coloratura of Heather Buck as the Queen of the Night (pictured, see interview) and the smooth, not dragging Sarastro of bass Kenneth Kellogg. In Shell's retooling of the story, the foibles of both of these characters, the conniving queen and the misogynistic Sarastro, can be seen as the shortcomings behind the argument of the dreaming husband and wife. Baritone David Pershall, a former emerging artist with Virginia Opera, was a charming, if not extraordinary Papageno, matched by the goofy Papagena of Amanda Opuszynski, a current emerging artist. The three ladies, quizzically recast as a sort of Andrews Sisters backup trio, were also sung by current and former emerging artists, effective but not optimal.

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In Brief: Immaculate 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.

• Listen to the third cycle of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded in the production by Opera Australia in Melbourne, starting with Das Rheingold. [ABC Classic]


• Watch a performance of the Vespers and Matins portions of the Vigilia by Einojuhani Rautavaara, recorded in Helsinki. [ARTE Live Web]


• Watch Valery Gergiev conduct the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in music of Shostakovich, with pianist Daniil Trifonov and trumpeter Timur Martynov, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• More Shostakovich with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in Paris, with symphonies no. 14 and 5. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Still more Shostakovich, the sixth and tenth symphonies, and the first cello concerto with Gautier Capuçon, from Gergiev and the Mariinsky in Paris. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Also from the Salle Pleyel, soprano Karita Mattila joins the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste, in music by Beethoven and Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs). [France Musique]


• A concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded last year, with pianist Maurizio Pollini in a Mozart concerto (no. 21), plus music by Mendelssohn and Liszt, conducted by Christian Thielemann. [RTBF]

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Dip Your Ears, No. 165 (Butt Passion Redux)

J.S.Bach, St. John Passion + Passion Liturgy John Butt / Dunedin Consort N.Mulroy, M.Brook, J.Lunn, C.Wilkinson Linn SACD

Historically Most Informed

After a most invigorating Matthew Passion in 2008 (See Best Recordings of 2008 - "Almost List"), and a less convincing Mass in B-minor, the historically most informed John Butt presents us now with the St. John Passion, and it’s his best of the lot! No other recording of the St. John Passion is as palpably historically informed, nor equally manages to point out so vividly the inherent futility of “historically informed” efforts. (Futility, not pointlessness, or dispensability!) Butt sets the Passion into its liturgical context of 18^th century Leipzig Good Friday service (authentic 1720 Lutheran sermon included as a free download, replete with subtle Saxonian accent in the German!). That includes organ chorale preludes for intro and outro, congretational chorales at the relevant points, a concluding motet, responsory, collect, blessing, and the chorale that responds to the blessing. So far for unparalleled authenticity.

But equally we become aware of the inherent impossibility of a meaningful authenticity, because clearly the way we hear, feel, perceive, and understand music is to a considerably greater degree dependent on where we listen (in a cold church, not our home), and how, and when (on one specific, stipulated day, as part of a greater community), and what kind of awareness of the world we have, what a working day looks like for us, and where the house stands we live in, than on the type of string the violinists use, or how they phrase their bowing. Once we accept that, we can go back to enjoying Butt’s lively and fresh take, which has grown on me with every hearing.

Standing in for what would have been Leipziger townsfolk as the chorale-singing masses are the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir singers. Butt of course leads his Dunedin Consort in an infectious, tight performance that is (unlike the Mass in B-minor and to some extend the Matthew Passion) not marred by singers; Nicholas Mulroy is steadfast and Clare Wilkinson in particular is—thankfully—in top form.

Butt performs an ‘ideal version—an amalgamate of the 1724 and 1749 version that Butt calls “a reconstruction of the 1739 performance, one that never actually took place.” It’ll be one of the St. John Passions I’ll most likely grab off the bulging shelf, when in the mood!

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

Cantus Radio Drama, 'All Is Calm'

Charles T. Downey, A cappella choir Cantus offers a radio-drama-like re-creation in ‘Christmas Truce of 1914’ (Washington Post, December 7, 2013)

All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, Cantus, Theater Latté Da

The search for a Christmas-themed concert without all those tiresome holiday chestnuts continues each December. The a cappella choir Cantus presented an intriguing solution to this problem Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. “All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914,” presented by the Fortas Chamber Music series, is a radio-drama-like re-creation of that Christmas night during World War I that brought German and British soldiers together in no man’s land.

This historical episode has featured as an affecting vignette before, in Steven Spielberg’s film “War Horse,” for example, but it was not clear that it could be adapted to fill an evening. [Continue reading]

All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914
Cantus and Theater Latté Da
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SVILUPPO:
The aim of this recreation, like all retellings of this story, is, I think, to provide an example of the power of Christmas to elicit noble sentiments. In the end, though, rather than being uplifted, one could just as easily be disappointed at the confirmation of the superficiality of the “Christmas spirit,” since after the Christmas truce of 1914, the war resumed at full pace.

SEE ALSO:
Liam O'Brien, War Horse author Michael Morpurgo writes new play about WW1 Christmas truce (The Telegraph, March 24)

Deborah Cohen, The War No Image Could Capture (The Atlantic, December 2013)

Ionarts-at-Large: The Petrenko Debut without Shadows

All pictures courtesy Bavarian State Opera, © Wilfried Hösl. Details, click for full picture.

The 50^th anniversary of the re-opening of Munich’s National Theater was celebrated with a production—then as now—of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten. On November 21^{st t}he town, or at least the part of it interested in the Bavarian State Opera,was atwitter about the new production as it had not been

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