NSO's Drab Tchaikovsky-Fest

If you looked at this week's underwhelming program from the National Symphony Orchestra and wondered if it would be worth hearing, don't bother. Fans of Tchaikovsky, who is the sole composer represented this week and next week, will not be dissuaded by anything I write, nor will those who want to hear the ensemble's fine concertmaster, Nurit Bar-Josef, take the platform as soloist. For those who were already on the fence, though, you can stay home.

My distaste for Tchaikovsky's music, when his propensity for long-windedness was not limited by an opera libretto or a ballet choreographer, is (probably too) well known. He was a prodigiously talented composer, and music director Christoph Eschenbach is to be congratulated for choosing mostly Tchaikovsky never before played by his orchestra or at least not in some time. The execution, however, did not put this less familiar music in the best light. The fantasy-overture Hamlet, last heard in 1990 under Mstislav Rostropovich, had a bland opening in Elsinore (all that unison playing left a little tedious) and the fast sections underscored their own banality. The playing of assistant principal oboist Jamie Roberts, on the forlorn theme associated with Ophelia, saved the middle section, even when Tchaikovsky's writing for the instrument, into the occasionally unreliable lower range, caused some inevitable intonation issues.

The situation did not improve much for the youthful first symphony, last heard on much better terms in 2009 under Andrew Litton. "A sin of my sweet youth," Tchaikovsky reportedly said of the work, with the better orchestrational and melodic ideas reworked in more effective form in the score for The Nutcracker. Eschenbach and the musicians got the most out of the slow movement, which oozed along and had some fine mistiness in the soft playing, but while the scherzo was warm and genial, the tempo was perhaps on the slow side. Eschenbach pushed a little too much for bluster and speed in the finale, which made the often absurd fugal sections something of a jumble.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach starts two-week Tchaikovsky focus at NSO with unusual repertoire (Washington Post, January 23)

In the middle came two slender pieces, the Sérénade mélancolique and Valse-Scherzo, mini-showpieces for violin that received their first NSO performances here. Nurit Bar-Josef does what she does as the NSO's concertmaster extremely well, but parts of Tchaikovsky's more demanding writing put her in a not so excellent light. Her vibrato-heavy, buzzing tone on the G string was electrifying on the opening of the Sérénade, and her octaves were clean and strong, but little about the phrasing or musical choices struck me as all that remarkable. The more challenging Valse-Scherzo also had plenty of energy and flawless spiccato technique, but the passages in double-stops not so much. Even the audience in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, which routinely gives a standing ovation for any soloist, stayed firmly in its seats.

This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night.

Briefly Noted: Suzuki's Requiem

Mozart, Requiem / Vesperae solennes de confessore, C. Sampson, M.B. Kielland, M. Sakurada, C. Immler, Bach Collegium Japan, M. Suzuki (released on January 13, 2015) BIS-2091 | 74'34"

We are admirers of the work of Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan here at Ionarts. With the group's fine traversal of Bach's cantatas now complete, Suzuki has turned his attention to Mozart's setting of the Latin Requiem Mass. Not surprisingly, he has made a recording that is beautiful to listen to and forces the listener to confront the scholarly understanding of this often misunderstood work. Because the composer's death prevented him from completing it, Romantic imaginations have often run wild concerning the genesis and meaning of this Requiem. This recording's supremely informed program essay, by scholar Christoph Wolff, ends on the description of the composer's sister-in-law Sophie's memory of Mozart's final moments on earth: "The last thing he did was to try to mouth the sound of the timpani in his Requiem -- this I remember even now." Wolff also observes that in 1791, the year he died, Mozart was expecting to be appointed Domkapellmeister at St. Stephen's Cathedral, and that he sought to make his Requiem a piece that could be used in an actual liturgy.

Suzuki performs every note Mozart actually wrote down just as he wrote it, and he also tries to honor the intentions of both of the early completions of the work, by Franz Xaver Süßmayr and Joseph Eybler. The edition he uses, by Masato Suzuki (the conductor's son and the organist of the ensemble), makes a few corrections to the sometimes clumsy writing and instrumentation of the Süßmayr completion. This includes a second version of the Tuba mirum movement, one that follows Mozart's indication that the trombone play only the opening fanfare figure, with the rest of that part going to a bassoon (not how it is usually performed now). Most interestingly, Suzuki has added an Amen fugue to the end of the sequence, based on a fragment in Mozart's hand written around the same time (discovered in Berlin in 1960).

The tempo of the opening movement is paced so that the soprano's statement of the psalm, quite rightly, sounds more or less like a psalm tone. The luscious Carolyn Sampson sings both phrases each in a single breath and is matched in beauty by mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland. The male voices are less suited, with the tenor not always on the money pitch-wise (more when he is on his own), and the bass a little woolly. The only curious tempo choice was in the Recordare movement, so fast that the intertwining instrumental lines are a chaotic tangle. The focus in Mozart's life on sacred music makes the pairing here, with the Vesperae solennes de confessore (K. 339, composed in 1780 for the Cathedral of Salzburg), particularly appropriate, albeit in a middling performance, La Sampson's Laudate dominum aside. In fact, not noticed by me before, the "Qui habitare" fugue at the end of the Laudate pueri movement seems to be echoed in the "Sed signifer sanctus Michael" fugue in the Requiem Mass.

À mon chevet: 'The Museum of Innocence'

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Except for my years in America, I had spent my whole life in this big apartment whose sitting room and wide balcony overlooked Teşvikiye Mosque, where one or two funerals took place every day, and when I was a child, these spectacles initiated us into the fearful mystery of death. Not just Istanbul's rich but also famous politicians, generals, journalists, singers, and artists had their funeral prayers said at the mosque, considered a prestigious point of departure for the "final journey," whereby the coffin was carried slowly on shoulders to Nişantaşi Square -- the procession accompanied, depending on the rank of the deceased, by a military band or the city council ensemble playing Chopin's Funeral March.

[...] Just before a funeral of broad public interest -- if the deceased was a prime minister, a famous tycoon, or a singer -- the doorbell would ring and unexpected guests would appear, saying, "I was just passing by, and I thought I'd drop in," and though my mother would never let her manners lapse, later on she would say, "They didn't come to see us but to see the funeral." And so we began to think of the ceremony not as a comfort against the sting of death or a chance to pay one's last respects to the deceased, but as an amusing diversion. [...]

Like everyone else Füsun was wearing the photograph of Belkis on her collar. It had become commonplace at funerals following political assassinations (so frequent in those days), and the custom had quickly gained currency among the Istanbul bourgeoisie. Many years later I was able to assemble a small collection of these tokens, and I display them here. When crowds of sighing (but inwardly content) socialites sporting sunglasses took to such displays, like so many right- and left-wing militants, these photographs would give an ordinary lighthearted society funeral intimations of an ideal that might be worth dying for, a hint of common purpose, and a certain gravitas. In imitation of the Western conceit, the photograph was framed in black, by which formerly happy images appropriated for death notices assumed the cast of mourning, and the most frivolous images could attain in death the somber dignity usually reserved for victims of political assassination.

I left without coming eye to eye with anyone, rushing off to the Merhamet Apartments, where I impatiently awaited Füsun. Every now and then I glanced at my watch. Much later, and without giving it much thought, I found myself parting the dusty curtains to look through the always closed window that gave onto Teşvikiye Avenue, and I saw Belkis's coffin pass below slowly in the funeral car.

Some people spend their entire lives in pain, owing to the misfortune of being poor, stupid, or outcast from society -- this thought passed through me, gliding by with the measured pace of the coffin, then disappeared. Since the age of twenty I had felt myself protected by an invisible armor from all variety of trouble and misery. And so it followed that to spend too much time thinking about other people's misery might make me unhappy, too, and in so doing, pierce my armor.

-- Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (translation by Maureen Freely), pp. 81-83

Lovely people keep buying me books, and so the detour from my Balzac reading project continues. So, after loving My Name Is Red and, to a lesser extent, Snow, I have been more than happy to dive into the Orhan Pamuk book that followed them, The Museum of Innocence. This book also has an unusual narrative structure, as the presentation of a tour guide leading you through an actual museum, filled with artifacts handled by the characters in the story or significantly placed within their lives. Pamuk published this book after winning the Nobel Prize, in 2006, and he then went and bought a house in Istanbul, turning it into an actual Museum of Innocence that opened to the public in 2012. In the last few pages of the book is a ticket to the "Museum of Innocence," which one can use to gain entry to the actual museum.

Trifonov and Kremer in Charm City

M. Weinberg, Symphony No. 10 (inter alia), Kremerata Baltica, G. Kremer (ECM New Series, 2014)

While Daniil Trifonov has dazzled in solo recital, the Russian pianist's appearances with orchestras, most recently with the NSO, showed the same daring but not always a natural aptitude in ensemble situations. This did not augur well for Trifonov's local debut as a chamber musician, at Shriver Hall on Sunday night, doubts that were borne out in an otherwise intriguing selection of music performed with violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė.

There were no questions about Trifonov's technical accomplishment, although what he did with the first piece, Mozart's slender D minor fantasia (K. 397), was not really about that. Faced with a lack of technical challenge, Trifonov pushed and pulled the music in every which direction, with enigmatic and slow arpeggiation followed by a poignant rendition of the tragic arioso, the contrasting sections shifting moods on a dime. Kremer, who was last in Baltimore ten years ago (but with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2011), did similar things with Mieczysław Weinberg's second solo violin sonata, op. 95. Each of the seven short movements received a different emphasis of tone: a deliberate, even clumsy straightness in Monody, frenetic sawing attacks in Interval, a gorgeous vibrato-heavy sound in Repliques, and a fragile deference in Accompaniment. Kremer hit his stride in the last two movements, producing that full-throated biting sound in the intense, even strident Invocation and giving a folk-flavored fiddle drive to the final movement, Syncopations.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Gidon Kremer, Daniil Trifonov in brilliant form at Shriver Hall (Baltimore Sun, January 21) Niels Swinkels, Kremer and Trifonov Deliver Rewards with Challenging Program (San Francisco Classical Voice, January 18) Mark Swed, Gidon Kremer shares a performance of a lifetime (Los Angeles Times, January 15)

Schubert's C major fantasy, D. 934, is a bear of a piece, especially for the pianist, most recently heard from James Ehnes and Orion Weiss last year. Trifonov was astounding from a technical point of view, although ensemble challenges like balances and a shared rubato were not always in hand. He achieved some remarkable lightness of tone, although not everywhere he needed to do so, while Kremer floated on his arching lines in the first movement, although his high flautando sound was a little perilous at times. There was one moment in the second movement that sounded like a misalignment, although the duo quickly recovered from it, but the variations were sentimental in nature, without turning overly sappy.

The low point of the concert was Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque No. 2 (D minor, op. 9), a youthful work composed just after hearing the news of Tchaikovsky's death. The performance was appropriately steeped in gloom, with songful playing from Dirvanauskaitė, but the obsessive repetition of motivic cells in the melodic themes of the first movement, for example, made me wonder if the popularity of Rachmaninoff's music might not be due to the same qualities observed in successful pop songs. The theme at the heart of the middle variations movement is truly banal, and the qualities the composer harps on in each variation did not make things any better. The piece is centered almost exclusively on the keyboard pyrotechnics, and at this Trifonov excelled. Two encores rewarded strong ovations: a Scherzo by Shostakovich (the second movement from the second piano trio, I think), and the second of Rodion Shchedrin's Three Funny Pieces, titled Let's Play an Opera by Rossini.

The fine season at Shriver Hall continues next month with a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet (February 15, 5:30 pm), playing music by Haydn, Schulhoff, and Schubert.

Herbig Finally Back for More Bruckner with BSO

Bruckner, Symphonies 3-9, Munich Philharmonic / Te Deum, S. Celibidache (Warner, re-released in 2011)

A few years ago, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra hosted veteran German conductor Günther Herbig for one of the Bruckner symphonies, often paired with a Mozart concerto. This series of appearances continued, but without the Bruckner, at least after Bruckner 7 in 2007 and Bruckner 9 in 2006. Until this week, that is, when the BSO played Bruckner's eighth symphony with Herbig at the podium, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. This comes in close proximity to the performance of the same symphony in Christoph Eschenbach's ongoing cycle with the National Symphony Orchestra, but you will not hear any complaints from us.

The orchestra played from what was reportedly a combination of the Haas and Nowak editions, but the duration of the performance, at a taut 78 minutes, did not seem to indicate that many of the passages excised by Bruckner were restored in this version. Our resident Brucknerian keeps track of the recorded Bruckner symphony cycles, and in preparing for this performance I happened to listen to Celibidache's recording with the Munich Phil, which clocks in at over 100 minutes by comparison. The BSO fielded almost all of the instruments called for in the score, including the four Wagner tubas (doubling on Horn 5-8), but only two of the three harps, which still made a beautiful sound in the middle two movements.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, A transcendent Bruckner 8th from Gunther Herbig, BSO (Baltimore Sun, January 17) Simon Chin, Back to basics with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Washington Post, January 19)

Herbig paced and shaped the piece well, if without the infinity of time in Celibidache's recording, with the first and second movements pushed ahead considerably in tempo. This made the Scherzo feel just a bit Mendelssohnian in character, although the slower Trio was sinuous, and placed the emphasis of the piece largely on the slow movement. The Adagio seethed with subdued energy, bathed in golden string sound, from which Herbig built up a series of massive crescendi, leading logically to the forceful, almost violent opening of the Finale. The last movement, indeed the whole symphony, is about the evasion of the home key, and sadly just at the moment where the orchestra relents, a perfectly timed cell phone ring disturbed the near-silence. Brucknerians in the house could not have been blamed for taking the owner of the device out back for a good pummeling.

The opening Mozart piano concerto (C major, K. 467) was not necessary, but it is one of the most perfectly crafted examples of the genre. Herbig chose just the right tempo for each movement, against which the soloist, pianist Alon Goldstein, struggled because of a tendency to rush the beat, especially in the outer movements. That conflict, which frayed the edges of the beautifully woven fabric achieved by Herbig and the orchestra, lessened the final results, so that I would have preferred no Mozart and a little more infinity in the Bruckner.

Best Recordings of 2007 / These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: II - Concerto

For 2007 I wrote something similar to the "Best Recordings" list for WETA's long-defunct blog, naming it: "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things", which ended up being divided into eleven parts:

I - Crossover


This is the second part, restored to ionarts:

Read more »

Perchance to Stream: Philharmonie 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, you may need to press the "Play" button to start the broadcast. Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• William Christie and Les Arts Florissants give the new Philharmonie de Paris a whirl, in a concert featuring music by Charpentier, Mondonville, and Rameau. [France Musique]


• From the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels last March, René Jacobs leads Le Cercle de l'Harmonie in Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione, with Sophie Karthäuser and other soloists. [Radio Clásica]


• Riccardo Chailly conducts the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in music by Richard Strauss, recorded in Leipzig last summer. [France Musique]


• Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic perform music by Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky's Firebird, from a concert recorded in Berlin last August. [ORF | Part 2]


• Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the Munich Symphony in music of Anders Hillborg (Eleven Gates), Grieg (the piano concerto, with Alice Sara Ott as soloist), and Sibelius (fifth symphony). [BR-Klassik]


• Nina Stemme stars in the performance of Strauss's Salome, with the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin and conductor Donald Runnicles, recorded last summer at the Proms. [RTBF]


• From the Teatro Regio in Turin, Gregory Kunde stars in Verdi's Otello, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. [Radio Clásica]


• The Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar performs under Gustavo Dudamel at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, with music by Beethoven and Wagner. [RTBF]


• From the Barbican Hall in London, Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Schumann's oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri, with Sally Matthews, Mark Padmore, Kate Royal, Bernarda Fink, Andrew Staples, and Florian Boesch as soloists. [BBC3]


• Albert Recasens leads his ensemble La Grande Chapelle in music by Tomas de Torrjon y Velasco, Antonio de Salazar, Diego Ortiz, Luis Milan, and Lucas Ruiz de Ribay. [France Musique]

• Music by Nielsen (the violin concerto, with Alina Pogostkina as soloist), Elgar, and Walton with the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Storgards. [ORF]


• The Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra performs music by Haydn, Prokofiev, Eugène Ysaye, Friedrich Cerha, and Rachmaninov at the Frankfurt Opera. [France Musique]


• The Freiburger Barockorchester plays music by Mendelssohn and Mozart with Kristian Bezuidenhout on fortepiano, recorded in 2013. [ORF]


• Emmanuelle Haïm conducts Le Concert d’Astrée in Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, with Lydia Teuscher, Delphine Galou, and Laurent Naouri, recorded at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2013. [RTBF]


• From the Turbulences Festival at the Cité de la Musique, with the Ensemble Intercontemporain performing a program put together by composer Marko Nikodijević. [France Musique]


• Jordi Savall leads Hespèrion XXI, Le Concert des Nations, and La Capella Reial de Catalunya in Biber's Missa Salisburgensis and other works. [ORF]


• From the Wigmore Hall in London, a recital by violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Itamar Golan, with music by Shostakovich and Ravel. [BBC3]

• Listen to sacred music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-Baptiste Lully performed by Le Poème Harmonique and Capelle Cracoviensis, conducted by Vincent Dumestre. [ORF]


• Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in music by Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, and Nielsen. [BBC3]


• The Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE performs music by Turnage (Scherzoid), Elgar (cello concerto with Alisa Weilerstein), and Shostakovich (fifth symphony), conducted by Kirill Karabits in Madrid. [Radio Clásica]


• A recital by pianist Markus Schirmer, with music by Schubert and Gerd Kühr, recorded last November in Graz. [ORF]


• From Madrid, pianist Boris Berman plays music by Schnittke, Scriabin, and Prokofiev. [Radio Clásica]


• A recital by pianist Imogen Cooper, with music by Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Robert Schumann. [RTBF]


• The Lausanne Chamber Orchestra under Karl-Heinz Steffens perform music by Bartok, Ligeti, and Brahms. [BBC3]


• Music from Moscow and St. Petersburg between Catherine II and Alexander I, recorded in 2013 at the Herne Early Music Days. [ORF]


• Frank Braley plays the piano with and conducts the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, with Julien Libeer as second soloist in music of Bach and Corelli. [RTBF]

• The Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra performs music by Robert Fuchs, Georg Breinschmid, and Ravel, recorded in Bregenz. [ORF]


• Soprano Sandra Pastrana joins the Orchestre de la Suisse italienne and conductor Alain Lombard for music by Villa-Lobos, Tchaikovsky, and Mendelssohn. [RTBF]


• Domingo Hindoyan conducts the Ulster Orchestra in music by Schumann, Beethoven, and Dvorak. [BBC3]


• The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Gustavo Dudamel, performs music by Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Bernstein, recorded at the Lucerne Festival in 2013. [Radio Clásica]


• From the 2013 Mäntta Festival in Finland, a recital by pianist Antti Siirala with music by Schumann, Beethoven, and Scriabin. [France Musique]


• The Arriaga Quartet performs music by Debussy, Chapi, and Borodin, recorded in Madrid in 2013. [RTBF]


• Listen to the concert inaugurating the Cité de la Musique, recorded on January 13, 1995, with Pierre Boulez conducting the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris and Ensemble Intercontemporain, plus Les Arts Florissants. [France Musique]


• Listen to two archival concerts, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Orchestre National de France at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. [France Musique]

Dip Your Ears, No. 190 (Sibelius’ Masonic Ritual Music)

J.Sibelius, Masonic Ritual Music (original and orchestrated versions) J.Kuusisto / Lahti SO, YL Male Voice Choir / M.Pohjonen, H.Jurmu, H.Viitanen BIS

Luxurious Miscellany

In order to be among the target audience for this disc, you should be a Freemason or Sibelius-completist; preferably both: Sibelius Masonic Ritual Music, though hardly free of minor gems, isn’t far up the list anybody’s must-have Sibelius—neither in its original form with organ accompaniment as he wrote it for his, Finland’s first and finest Lodge, nor in the version orchestrated, bar one bit that Sibelius did himself, by conductor Jaakko Kuusisto. But it is a sign of how we live in the customer’s golden age of the record industry: To receive such superb performances of these miscellany, including the last of the Masonic movements—a male a cappella version of Finlandia—is the embodiment of a collector’s embarrassment of riches.