Briefly Noted: Milhaud's 'L'Orestie'

D. Milhaud, L'Orestie d'Eschyle, T. Mumford, L. Phillips, B. Rae, University of Michigan Choirs and Symphony Orchestra, K. Kiesler (released on September 9, 2014) Naxos 8.660349-51 | 141'24"

One might think that the Oresteia, Aeschylus's trilogy of blood-soaked tragedies, would have been adapted as opera more often. I know of two complete settings, by Sergei Taneyev in Russian and by Washington composer Andrew Simpson in English. Darius Milhaud's electric and pulsating score, over two hours of it made from 1913 to 1923, is not a setting of the complete text. The first two parts, a small section of Agamemnon and a slightly larger portion of The Libation Bearers, were created as incidental music for a staging of the plays by Jean Cocteau. Milhaud made the third play, The Eumenides, into a complete opera, and this new recording from the University of Michigan School of Music brings together all three of the pieces, which trace developments in Milhaud's style. We do not get the chance to review Milhaud's music all that often, especially live. While the recent performance of his one-act opera Le pauvre matelot was a little underwhelming, the brutalist force of these three pieces is not to be missed.

The influence of Stravinsky is heard, especially in the little choral scene of Agamemnon, with its motoric melodic cells repeating over and over again. Much of the music sounds cut from the same cloth as Satie's Socrate, composed around the same period, but more daring sounds come into play in the second and third parts. Milhaud calls for a form of rhythmic speaking, pulsed by percussion, in the creepy Omens section of Les choéphores, something that might seem boring or weird but is riveting when realized. To capture the immortal sound of Athena's voice in Les euménides, Milhaud writes the part for three women singing simultaneously, performed memorably here by soprano Brenda Rae, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, and contralto Jennifer Lane. The performance is good, if not quite great, at its best in large textures.

At the Slovenian Embassy

Slovenija! (Songs and Duets), B. Fink, M. Fink, A. Spiri

Charles T. Downey, Violinist Lana Trotovsek gives radiant performance in Embassy Series (Washington Post, September 11, 2014)

The concerts offered by the Embassy Series bring together the interests of music, cuisine and international relations in a way that seems peculiar to the nation’s capital. The group’s season opener was a recital by Slovenian violinist Lana Trotovsek on Tuesday evening at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia.

Two standards of the violin repertoire were the main courses of this program, beginning with Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 24... [Continue reading]

Lana Trotovšek, violin
Anna Shelest, piano
Embassy Series
Embassy of Slovenia

'Lear' from the Globe

Bethan Cullinane (Fool) and Joseph Marcell (Lear) in King Lear, Shakespeare's Globe

Theaters appear to be in a King Lear phase, as Washington Post critic Peter Marks observed recently. Productions of Shakespeare's bleakest play abound, but it remains extremely difficult to pull off on the stage. A touring production of the play from Shakespeare's Globe in London is now playing at the Folger Shakespeare Theater, on the first of several stops in the United States throughout the fall, seen on Sunday evening. Although it did not succeed altogether, there is still much to recommend it.

The success or failure of Lear depends ultimately on the actor in the title role. In this production it was Joseph Marcell, who has a history with the role, having been the first black Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Marcell had the pompous and infantile qualities of the character -- a powerful tyrant who often acts like a spoiled child -- as well as his rages, but although he caught many nuances of the old king's failing mind, the final third of the play dragged. Part of that is Shakespeare's fault, but a more varied expression of Lear's grief could have helped. The tragedy of the play is undermined -- or lightened, according to your preferences -- in this production by some song and dance numbers. The gallows humor of these numbers, with Alex Silverman credited as composer and Georgina Lamb as choreographer, was mostly a nice touch, the only exception being the one that closed the performance, spoiling the catharsis of Lear's demise.

Other Articles: Peter Marks, A well-played, compact ‘King Lear’ at Folger Theatre (Washington Post, September 10) ---, Here a ‘Lear,’ There a ‘Lear’ (Washington Post, August 23) Gary Tischler, Who is Lear? Next month at the Folger: Joseph Marcell (The Georgetowner, August 28)

The greatest strength of the production comes in the double casting of Bethan Cullinane as both Cordelia, Lear's most devoted daughter, and the Fool. While she brought admirable dignity and sweetness to the former role, she excelled in the latter, a half-witted but straight-shooting Cockney-inflected goof, in a homely costume topped by a knit child's hat with what looked like dog ears. The doubling, which may have been a feature of the casting in Shakespeare's time, with both roles played by a boy, also heightened the poignancy of Lear's final speech where, as he cradles Cordelia's dead body, he says, "And my poor fool is hang'd!" While one normally would chalk this up to Lear's confusion or to a poetic metaphor, here the statement was literal.

The rest of the cast is fine but not quite at that level, with the exception of the noble Earl of Gloucester and Duke of Albany of John Stahl. Gwendolen Chatfield (Goneril) and Shanaya Rafaat (Regan) were venomous and spiteful, and Alex Mugnaioni was a little too spastic in expression as Edgar and the Duke of Cornwall, but the same tics suited his Mad Tom to a tee. Bill Nash was a rough-neck Earl of Kent, appropriately enough in the guise of the servant later, and Daniel Pirrie was an oily Edmund, although the scene in which he had to play both that role and Oswald simultaneously was not worth the laughs the actors played for, or the embarrassment. This was the low point of an otherwise charming production directed by Bill Buckhurst, set in a sort of rundown 20th century (designed by Jonathan Fensom). The staging went for laughs where it could, which is laudable to a degree in this often dreary play, but it is also important to give tragedy the room it deserves.

This production continues through September 21, at the Folger Shakespeare Theater.

Briefly Noted: Mariinsky 'Romeo and Juliet'

Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet (chor. L. Lavrovsky), D. Vishneva, V. Shklyarov, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on October 14, 2014) MAR0552 | 152 min

The official premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet score Romeo and Juliet was in the Czech city of Brno in 1938. Since the Russian premiere in 1940 at the Mariinsky Theater, though, that St. Petersburg company has laid special claim to the ballet, which it still performs in Leonid Lavrovsky's menacing and heart-breaking choreography. The Russian troupe last brought this production to Washington in 2007, when Miss Ionarts was too young to have seen it. It is hardly surprising, though, that she has become fixated on the work since we received an advance copy of this new DVD/Blu-Ray disc from the Mariinsky's personal label.

That 2007 touring production at the Kennedy Center did not feature Diana Vishneva's Juliet, a reminder that the Mariinsky sometimes visits the U.S. without its best dancers. The reason for the disappointment is evident when one sees Vishneva, one of the great étoiles of our era, dance this role at her home theater, a dizzying mixture of girlish coquette and shy child, with an often breath-taking perfection of line in her movements. All of Vishneva's local appearances have become instant favorites: Kitri in 2009, Aurora in 2010, and especially Giselle in 2011. The Mariinsky took this production, with Vishneva and Vladimir Shklyarov in the title roles, to London this summer, so perhaps there is hope that it will come to the Kennedy Center at some point. Vishneva's younger counterpart, Shklyarov, is not yet in the same class, but he captures the character's youthful impetuosity, and his lifts of Vishneva, especially in the tomb scene when he carries Juliet's lifeless body, are uniformly strong.

Seeing this production is, once again, so important for understanding Prokofiev's wonderful score. Lavrovsky's movements do not always reflect a strong ear for music, but the choreography reflects the bitter details of the version of the story Prokofiev had in mind. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the disturbing portrayal of Juliet's family, beginning with the fiery, red-headed Tybalt, whom Juliet's mother mourns just a little too excessively to escape suspicion, straddling her nephew on his funeral bier as he is carried away. The Dance of the Capulets, so heavy-handed musically, is a corrupt courtly affair, with Juliet's father dancing simultaneously with his wife and another woman, about which Juliet's mother is none too happy. The demeaning gesture of men holding women by their wrists hints at the violence and depravity that lurks under the household's surface.

Perchance to Stream: Thanks to Alex Ross Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio and online video from the week gone by. 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. (Welcome to those who found Ionarts because of Alex Ross's column in The New Yorker. Please add suggestions for other streams in the comments.)

• Listen to Yannick Nézet-Séguin conduct Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer at the Wiener Staatsoper, in a production starring Bryn Terfel and Ricarda Merbeth. [ORF]


• Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra in Strauss's Elektra, starring the inestimable Christine Goerke. [BBC Proms]


• From the Festival de la Journée Européenne de Musique Ancienne, Hervé Niquet leads Le Concert Spirituel in a program of music by Henry Purcell. [France Musique]


• Marco Mencoboni conducts Cantar Lontano in an F major Mass by Alessandro Scarlatti and a 10-voice Stabat Mater by Domenico Scarlatti, recorded last month at the Innsbruck Early Music Festival. [ORF]


• Watch Ingo Metzmacher conduct Schubert's opera Fierrabras at the Salzburg Festival, in a production directed by Peter Stein. [Medici.tv]


• Music of women composers -- Barbara Strozzi, Fanny Mendelssohn, Hildegard von Bingen, Clara Schumann, others -- performed by women's voices, including Hasnaa Bennani, Sophie Karthauser, and the ensemble Mora Vocis, as well as chamber works performed by pianist Edna Stern and the Dali Trio. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in Bach's St. Matthew Passion. [BBC Proms]


• Listen to Christoph Eschenbach conduct the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Bruckner's seventh symphony, plus the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's second piano concerto, with Tzimon Barto as soloist, recorded at the Salzburg Festival. [ORF]


• Oliver Knussen leads the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in music by Harrison Birtwistle. [BBC Proms]


• From the Klassik Open Air concert in Nuremberg, soprano Simone Kermes performs a program called "La Primadonna." [BR-Klassik]


• Concerto Palatino performs music by Bertali, with soprano María Cristina Kiehr, recorded at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. [Radio Clásica]


• From the Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije, Solistes XXI perform music by Xenakis, Gabrieli, and Luis de Pablo. [France Musique]


• Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic perform Stravinsky's Firebird and Symphonic Dances at the Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Clarinetist Sabine Meyer joins the Modigliani Quartet for Mozart's clarinet quintet, recorded last month at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. [ORF]


• Marin Alsop conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No 1 in D and music of John Adams, recorded at the BBC Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Watch the final round of the Operalia Competition, recorded at Los Angeles Opera. [Medici.tv]


• Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor plays music by Chopin, Mompou, Weir, and Gounod at Cadogan Hall. [BBC Proms]


• Cellist Edgar Moreau and the Modigliani Quartet perform music by Ravel and Schubert, recorded at the Festival Périgord Noir. [France Musique]


• Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra perform music by Dvorak and Berlioz, recorded at the BBC Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• Listen to pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet play Ravel's G minor concerto with the Orchestre National de France, and Daniele Gatti also conducts symphonies by Haydn and Tchaikovsky. [France Musique]


• A performance of Schubert's Winterreise, with Michael Volle and Helmut Deutsch, recorded at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg last month. [ORF]


• Charles Dutoit conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Berlioz, Respighi, and Walton, recorded at the BBC Proms. [Part 1 | Part 2]


• From the Salzburg Festival, Daniele Gatti conducts Verdi's Il Trovatore, starring Anna Netrebko, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Francesco Meli, and Placido Domingo. [France Musique]


• Pianist Anna Vinnitskaya joins Les Solistes européens for Brahms's first piano concerto, with Christoph König also conducting music by Debussy and Bizet. [RTBF]


• The BBC Symphony Orchestra plays music by Saint-Saëns, Falla, Mahler, and Sibelius, with conductor Sakari Oramo and pianist Javier Perianes, recorded at the Festival International de Musique de Grenade. [France Musique]


• From the Utrecht Early Music Festival, a commemoration of the Turkish siege of Vienna, with Viennese music performed by Armonico Tributo Austria and Turkish music performed by Kudsdi Erguner. [France Musique]


• Pianists Florent Boffard and Claire Désert play a recital with music by Bach, Schoenberg, Stroppa, and Beethoven, recorded at the Festival Le vent sur l'arbre. [France Musique]

SFO “Summer and the Symphony” – The Beethoven Revolution

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from out West.

On Friday, August 1^st, the San Francisco Symphony’s “Summer and the Symphony” series concluded at Davies Symphony Hall with The Beethoven Revolution, featuring the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, the Triple Concerto, and Symphony No. 5.

This was my first visit to the series and I had not realized the informality of the occasion. I think I was the only one in the packed concert hall with a tie on. The San Francisco Symphony is obviously trying to engage new, younger audiences, and it seems to be working. In the foyer before the concert began, The Martini Brothers provided dance music and a number of patrons took to the floor. But the evening was to be educational as well as entertaining. Conductor Edwin Outwater began with a standup routine explaining that the first part of the concert would be “conventional” Beethoven on his best behavior, and the second—the Fifth Symphony—the bad boy “revolutionary” part.

Be that as it may, Outwater is an energetic young man who appears to be tightly coiled. He gestures with his hand splayed and his fingers extended as if there were an electric current running through them. From his body language, I began to worry that he might rush through the music and not stop to smell the roses. A decidedly false impression as it turned out.

L.v.Beethoven, Symphony No.7 et al., MTT / SFSO SFSO Media L.v.Beethoven, Triple Concerto et al., N.Harnoncourt / P-L.Aimard, T.Zehetmair, C.Hagen Warner

I was already aware that the San Francisco Symphony knew its Beethoven, as I had been particularly impressed by Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of the Seventh Symphony in his complete traversal of the Nine. I don’t mean to be taking any credit from Outwater by saying this—in fact, I mean it to give a great deal of credit—but in a blind listening session, I might’ve suspected that it was Thomas conducting the program.

The Prometheus Overture was finely articulated, rhythmically animated, and slightly mellow. The introduction in the Triple Concerto positively glowed with a kind of seamless warmth. In this piano trio cum concerto, there are obviously a lot of chamber music textures, and Outwater kept things beautifully scaled in light of them. The Gryphon Trio (violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys, and pianist Jamie Parker) played as among friends, with intimacy and eloquence. It doesn’t seem that Beethoven gave Archduke Rudolph, for whom he wrote piano part, quite as much to do as the others; so the Triple Concerto sometimes seems more of a duo concertante for violin and cello, than a concerto for piano trio. In any case, there was a great deal of joy in the Trio’s music making. In particular, that Roman Borys sang his heart out on the cello. It’s not a work I listen to very often, but I heard more to like in it in this performance than I have before. I will revisit it.

Before being plunged into the revolutionary Beethoven, Matthew Guerrieri, author of The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination, addressed the audience in a very casual manner about the historical context of the Fifth. He prepared us for the novelty of seeing displayed on screens at either side of the stage projections of the numbers of times Beethoven repeats the famous four-note motif as the Symphony is played. I am not sure if it was a distraction or an enhancement. You certainly listen differently when you see the numbers flashing before you. In the first movement alone, there were 271 repetitions, and 530 altogether. (Which begged the (equally novel) question: Was Beethoven a proto-Minimalist?)

The Fifth contains an enormous amount of energy, but Outwater was not willing to stampede the music for the sake of it. Yes, he released its power, but there was also some highly expressive playing (particularly in the winds), some delightful pizzicato playing in the strings in the third movement, and a good deal of nuance all around. In other words, Outwater did not strain things to show us how revolutionary the music is. He let it speak for itself, and by doing so displayed its novelty and its exhilarating majesty in a convincing way.

Briefly Noted: Choral Music by Herzogenberg

H. von Herzogenberg, Requiem / Totenfeier, F. Bobe, B. Bräckelmann, Monteverdichor Würzburg, Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha, M. Beckert (released on July 8, 2014) cpo 777755-2 | 102'52" H. von Herzogenberg, Sacred Choral Music (a cappella), Ensemble Cantissimo, M. Utz (released on June 10, 2014) Carus 83.408 | 62'14"

Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900) is one of those composers on the margins of music history we love to write about here at Ionarts. An aristocratic dilettante who became an accomplished composer, Herzogenberg is generally grouped in the more conservative camp of the late 19th century. His prolific output includes eight symphonies, as well as five string quartets and a pile of other chamber music. A faithful Catholic, he composed a large amount of choral music in German for the Lutheran church in Strasbourg, as well as Latin works for Catholic worship. The style, looking back to J.S. Bach and farther, will appeal to choirs that enjoy the music of Bruckner or Josef Rheinberger, for example.

The Monteverdichor Würzburg and Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha, under conductor Matthias Beckert, have recorded Herzogenberg's setting of the Latin Requiem Mass, premiered in Leipzig in 1891, as well as two other commemorative works for the dead. Herzogenberg's wife, Elisabeth, died in the year following the performance of the Requiem, and he composed the Totenfeier, a Lutheran cantata, in memory of her, a work that contains many personal touches of their life together. (Elisabeth was also a gifted musician, with some published works for piano, also released recently in recording by CPO. Both husband and wife carried on a lengthy correspondence with Johannes Brahms.) Not long after Elisabeth's passing, Herzogenberg's friend Philipp Spitta died, and the composer created the Begräbnisgesang, op. 88, with his own commemorative text, to be performed at the dedication of a stone marker at Spitta's grave.

The Requiem and Totenfeier should be on the radar of any group that wants to perform yet another Mozart, Brahms, or Verdi Requiem. The Requiem is sung entirely by the chorus, with no parts for soloists. It ends on a consoling, celestial tone, with some barn-burning moments earlier in the work, sung here in a good performance by the full-size chorus composed largely of students from the University of Würzburg. By contrast, the Totenfeier has a less liturgical feel, with dramatic movements for bass soloist especially, but also for soprano, the latter sung with radiant tone by soprano Franziska Bobe, a clarity that recalls Arleen Auger at times.

Also released this summer is a new disc of Herzogenberg's unaccompanied choral works, with liturgical texts proper to Advent, Epiphanytide, Holy Week, and Totensonntag (the last Sunday before Advent in the Lutheran liturgy, a day of prayer for the dead akin to All Souls Day), plus the four motets. Almost all of these pieces thus receive their first recording, in rather lovely and balanced performances by a chamber choir called the Ensemble Cantissimo, directed by Markus Utz, a professor at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. (Although not packaged as such, this is the sacred followup to the same group's two volumes of Herzogenberg's secular choral music.) The rediscovery of Herzogenberg's music, much of which was thought destroyed when it was held in Germany by the Edition Peters company during World War II, continues at an exciting pace.

Briefly Noted: Barbara Strozzi

B. Strozzi, Arias and Cantatas, op. 8, E. Galli, La Risonanza, F. Bonizzoni (re-released on July 29, 2014) Glossa GCDC81503 | 72'01"

The historically informed performance ensemble La Risonanza was founded in 1995, but we reviewed them live for the first time in a concert at the Library of Congress only two years ago. It was one of the most successful American debuts in recent memory, earning a place on our list of that year's best concerts. They made this recording of the solo arias and cantatas by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) back in 2000, in Lugano, and it has finally been re-released this summer. It brings together all of the pieces in the Venetian composer's op. 8, published in 1664, the last of eight volumes of her compositions, published over the course of twenty years. The fact that Strozzi was that prolific, as Richard Taruskin wrote, "at a time when prejudice against the creative abilities of women ran high, bears impressive witness to her excellence as a composer in the eyes of her contemporaries." Her harmonic idiom is marked by the savoring of expressive dissonance, from carefully marshaled suspensions to occasionally hair-raising chromatic progressions. In these exceptionally beautiful performances, the voice of soprano Emanuela Galli is flexible, light, and pure, if just slightly brittle here and there. Director Fabio Bonizzoni provides expert leadership at the harpsichord, with varied continuo accompaniment from Caterina dell'Agnello on cello and Franco Pavan on theorbo or Baroque guitar. Two violinists, David Plantier and Elisa Citterio, take the plangent, interwoven obbligato lines in the serenata Hor che Apollo.