Bayreuth on the Danube: The Budapest Wagner Days. Production Photos from Das Rheingold

Freia (Lilla Horti), Fasolt (Per Bach Nissen) & Fafner (Walter Fink)

The Budapest Wagner Days are a 15-year old institution that I only got to know this year. Shame on me. At the heart of the Wagner Days, initiated by Ádám Fischer and taking place at the Müpa, Budapest’s splendid modern arts center, has been an annual Ring Cycle, always coupled with another Wagner opera. Last year, this cycle was on hiatus in favor of two non-Ring Operas. The feedback was immediate: "We want our Ring back", chanted the international crowd that had come to love the tradition and the semi-staged production by Hartmut Schörghofer & his wife. I don't know if they went to the Müpa Center with placards in their hands and horns on their helmets, but the Wagner Days were quick about bringing the Ring back, with the videos - an essential part of the production(s) - overhauled and brought up to technological date. Blood now splatters in HD. A good thing that they did that, too, one must assume (not having seen the previous incarnation), because these things tend to stale quickly. (Take the La fura dels Baus' vapid Ring Cycle, where the video elements looked like HAL 9000 had mated with a Windows 95 Screen Saver soon after that Ring first hit the stage.) To make up for the hiatus, the Ring was put on twice, from June 13. until 16. and from June 20. until the 23.

Here is part one (of two) of my review on ClassicsToday: A Magnificent Budapest Ring: Prelude and Rheingold

Below are loads of production photos from Das Rheingold to go with that review (or titillate you all on their own.)

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Briefly Noted: Piemontesi's Colorful Liszt

Liszt, Années de pèlerinage, 2ème Année ("Italie") / Légende No. 1 , F. Piemontesi (released on May 24, 2019) Orfeo C982191 | 62'19" 1ère Année (2018)

It was a pleasure to discover Francesco Piemontesi earlier this year when he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra. Far more impressive than his take on a Rachmaninoff blockbuster was his encore, a sensitively voiced rendition of the slow movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto. That experience led me to push the Swiss-Italian pianist's recordings toward the top of my listening rotation. His most recent release, the second year of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, gives a varied and delightful cast to the composer's memories of his years in Italy.

Rather than Venezia e Napoli, the supplement Liszt later added to the second volume of his collection, Piemontesi prefaces it with the first of the Deux Légendes, pieces dedicated to miracles associated with Liszt's two name saints. This turns out to be the highlight of the disc, with pastel-light avian trills twittering around the unison lines of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds.

More than the technical exploits of the Petrarch Sonnets and the dizzying excesses of "Après une lecture du Dante, fantasia quasi sonata," it is these more musical moments that stand out. In the dreamy "Sposalizio," inspired by Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin in Milan, tinkling motifs rain down in the seraphic postlude. In the dirge-like "Penseroso," inspired by the moody sculpture of Michelangelo for the tomb of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici in the "new sacristy" of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Liszt explores the somber bass end of the keyboard. The latter artwork made quite an impression on Liszt, as he published the music with a quatrain of Michelangelo's he felt applied to the sculptor's portrait of Lorenzo: "I am thankful to sleep, and more thankful to be made of stone. So long as injustice and shame remain on earth, I count it a blessing not to see or feel; so do not wake me – speak softly!"

A Stunning Orchestral Surprise in Budapest

A Budapest Miracle? Concerto Budapest's "Wow" Moment

Budapest, March 27, 2019: Müpa: Ever since Budapest’s new concert hall—known as “Müpa” or “Palace of Arts”—with its combination of high-tech echo chambers and its traditional common-sense “shoebox” design opened in 2005, I’ve wanted to hear it in action. Located at the edge of downtown—alongside the Danube, right next to the comically hideous 2002 National Theater—it is not an imposing building from the outside, but welcoming and logically laid out on the inside. The main hall, the Bartók National Concert Hall, is a soft-curved wooden shoebox with a very sensible capacity of 1700. Its acoustic was overseen by Russell Johnson. The massive organ, built by the Pécs Organ Manufactory and Mühleisen Stuttgart, features an imposing prospect—including a battery of pipes protruding from the façade—and is one of the largest of its kind.

Along the walls above the upper tier—vaguely colored like a Scottish tartan—are the resonance boxes that can be closed or opened to give the desired length of reverb for the program at hand. Although closed on this occasion in late March, they are apparently in regular use—in contrast to fancy features like the Sala São Paulo’s adjustable ceiling, which is very cool in theory but hardly used in practice. Now: one visit to a concert hall cannot begin to give an adequate idea of its acoustic. But this one impression of hearing the Concerto Budapest, one of five symphony orchestras in Budapest, suggested that at its best, the acoustic is superb.

The Rambunctious Joy that is King Ubu’s Dinner Music

BAZi, 'Ubu Music', Symphony in One Movement, Giostra Genovese, Concerto for Strings P.Hirsch/WDR-SO Wergo

And what a concert it was. More specifically: What a first half! On the far side of intermission, a very finely played, generally soft-edged Rite of Spring awaited the listeners, full of well-shaped individual contributions, sexy contrabassoon notes, and fierce highlights. It didn’t have the ferocious bite I look for in the work, delivering—*de gustibus*—rather urbane suaveness instead. A bit like the Concertgebouw Orchestra might play that work. Indeed, like in Amsterdam, the perception may have been shaped by the acoustic which gave the impression of some orchestral energy dissipating upwards: even the greatest *fff* climaxes were not shrill or harsh or even particularly loud.

It would have been a more impressive performance, hadn’t that first half rocked as hard and delighted as much. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu—which incidentally throws out a quote from Le Sacre right off the bat on the organ—is a tumultuous, riotous, quintessential musical collage: None of the music is, *en détail*, original. But collectively the phrases as put together by Zimmermann, create a unique, decidedly original work.

It certainly sounds, in parts, like a “who’s that composer” guessing game. But more to the point, it is a riveting, compelling work all of its own which has, not in any individual incident but structurally, parallels in the music of Gustav Mahler and Charles Ives. And then there are four solo basses fiddling for their life up front in episodes that make Mahler’s “Frère Jacques” episode seem like child’s play. Perhaps most notably, instead of being doom-and-gloom as one would might reasonably expect from the composer of the *Ecclesiastical Action* (“I turned and beheld all the injustice perpetrated under the sun”), it is very often very funny. The classical bits (from plainchant to Stockhausen’s banging, repetitive chords of Klavierstück IX, and with plenty Wagner in the middle) are interrupted by Jazz-outbreaks that sound like someone turned the knob on the radio… eventually blending it with a medieval flute consort and then an ever-increasing amount of musical layers. E-guitars and basses are thrown into the mix, too. Altogether a bit like someone was taking Schnittke, Purcell, Monty Python and started juggling. What a joy!

Supple Pianism and a Lesson in Orchestral Alertness

J.Brahms, F.Liszt & W.Lutosławski, Paganini Variations & Paganini Rhapsody Tzimon Barto/Schleswig-Holstein FO/C.Eschenbach Ondine

The rest of the front-loaded first half of the concert consisted of the two piano-and-orchestra humdingers, the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. Andrei Korobeinikov played with rare feeling: short notes were still soft-edged. There was no incident of harsh banging, although banging is certainly required by at least Rachmaninov. What a *very* pleasant surprise in works where technical efficiency and accuracy, however necessary, would be so very much insufficient.

If that hadn’t been enough for enthusiasm, the Concerto Budapest—long established but revived and raised to new heights by its current music director András Keller (of Keller Quartet fame)—performed with absurd accuracy and sensitivity. The turn-on-a-dime-agile brass was secure; the strings warm and wispy-velvety in the true pianissimos; the woodwinds colorful. Moreover, the collective responded in such minute detail to Keller’s instructions that it just about took your breath away. Climaxes were approached not with a permanent swell but only quick peaks followed by an immediate and gentle receding of the strings. It’s just the way you think a string quartet player would want to make his orchestra play. You just don’t think he’d actually achieve it. Astonishing… just as it was impressive how the band could disappear into the background by becoming pure atmosphere—both in the pointillism of Lutosławski and the Delacroix-like tone painting of Rachmaninov. At one point I pinched myself: Is it really that good or am I hearing things?

After the concert an exhausted Keller said, with refreshingly level-headed pride: “They really are that good. And they play more than 40 programs – not concerts: programs! – a year. I think Concerto Budapest can claim to be the second best orchestra in Budapest [after Iván Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra].” A second-best—assuming this concert was not a positive outlier—that would be the very best in most cities. I know I’ll keep my ears peeled for them.

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Dip Your Ears, No. 243 (Like Father [Un]Like Daughter: A Panufnik Twosome)

Andrzej & Roxanna Panufnik Dreamscape Songs and Trios by Andrzej & Roxanna Panufnik Heather Shipp (mezzo) Subito Piano Trio (Signum UK)

Andrzej Panufnik lived through a spectacular Cold-War escape story—from Poland via Switzerland to arrive in England. There he managed—nearly as impressive and courageous—to escape the musical constraints of the Western avant-garde. The price was freedom but relative obscurity, dotted only by occasional successes. His symphonic music is given much-deserved attention on the CPO label; here Signum features his chamber works and songs… coupled with those of his daughter.

Understandably, from a psychological if not musical point of view, composing composer-daughter Roxanna Panufnik wanted to get as far away from her father’s distinct late 20th-century romantic tone. As she points out in her fine liner notes to this release: she didn’t succeed. The spirits of beauty sneak into her songs at many corners, despite some (self-)conscious attempts not to let them in. The program reflects a Viennese recital that first brought father and daughter together and opens with father Panufnuk’s love song “My True-Love Hath my Heart” of heart-rending, mode-insinuating tribute to his wife. More Elizabethan poetry follows from Roxanna, culminating in her tribute to her later father, the black-and-sweet, bitter-and-tender “Virtue”.

The fine mezzo Heather Shipp, proudly steely-yet-sensitive, cedes duty on the song that gives its name to the release: Andrzej pitch-bending “Dreamscape” which is here recorded in the transcribed vocalize-version for cello and piano which daughter and mother prefer of the original. Roxanna’s short three-movement-within-one Piano Trio Around Three Corners vacillates between conventional upbeat loveliness and defiance thereof; at one point there’s reason to suspect that one of those cappuccino-milk whirly things is being taken to the piano strings.

The Piano Trio op.1 of Andrezej’s to close out the disc is a worthy highlight—the most substantial work on disc and also the most easily appreciated: Tenacious and challenging romantic lines from 1934, tightly interwoven and beautifully executed by the Subito Piano Trio. A fine release that grew on me considerably, but undoubtedly too conventional for the self-proclaimed avantgardists and too modern for those who lazily draw the line at late Schumann.


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Teodor Currentzis steps down as Artistic Director of Perm Opera

Teodor Currentzis steps down from Opera position in Perm. In a rambling three-page letter* he cites “a thorough lack of comprehension, utter lack of engagement and sensitivity” on the part of the administration of the city of Perm as the main reason for him leaving “his paradise”. The rest of the letter is a mix of thanking companions, musing on whether he was ever fully understood by anyone and on how governmental agencies by are incapable of understanding anything at all. The information the letter contains – if much – is between the lines, decipherable by insiders. Financial and bureaucratic fetters appear to be shining through as the problems causing this move… which would make sense to sufficiently offend an artist who ostentatiously despises fetters of any kind into resigning.

The Athens-born Currentzis, something of the Jack White among conductors, had been Artistic Director of the Perm State Opera and Ballet Theatre since 2011. This move will presumably not affect Currentzis’ work with his orchestra and chorus, musicAeterna, which he founded in 2004 in Novosibirsk (when he was Music Director of the Novosibirsk State Opera and Orchestra) and which has resided at the Perm opera since 2011. If anything, it was done to focus more on his work with this ensemble. His work as artistic director of Perm’s International Diaghilev Festival, too, will remain unaffected. Not surprising, as this festival will extend to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris starting in 2021, giving him another foothold in the West. Currentzis is also the Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, where he just wrapped up his first season.

*So far the most comprehensible version I’ve come across is one translated into German by Natalia Breininger at Andreas Richter Cultural Consulting GmbH: Many thanks! Her source is the letter in the original, as published online by the Perm Opera house.

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Currentzis on ionarts & Forbes.com:

Dip Your Ears, No. 239 / Ionarts CD of the Month (Pathétique Heroin)
Favorite Recordings 2018: Mahler 6 (CDT)
Classical CD Of The Week: Not Everyone Does It Like That – Currentzis’ Così
The Currentzis Dances II & Ravel’s Wonderful Rubbish
Ionarts-at-Large: The Currentzis Dances (MPhil)
Best Recordings of 2011 (#3 – Weinberg/Passenger)

Briefly Noted: Sacred Tchaikovsky from Latvia

Tchaikovsky, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (concert version) / Nine Sacred Pieces, G. Dziļums, K. Rūtentāls, Latvian Radio Choir, S. Kļava (released on June 14, 2019) Ondine ODE1336-2 | 77'07"

The appearance of the Latvian Radio Choir at the Library of Congress last fall was one of the highlights of the year in music. Their new disc, recorded earlier this year in the resonant acoustic of Riga's St. John's Church, adds another facet to my appreciation of Tchaikovsky as a composer. While never a fan of much of his symphonic music and overblown concertos, I have often admired him as a composer of ballet music, songs, and operas. Add to that admiration a new-found high regard for Tchaikovsky as composer of sacred music.

Sigvards Kļava conducts the shortened version of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, made for concert performance with only some of the prayers for the celebrant and deacon, sung beautifully here by tenor Kārlis Rūtentāls and bass Gundars Dziļums, respectively. It is remarkable that this piece sounds so little like what most listeners likely expect from Tchaikovsky, reflecting the composer's belief that music for the Russian Orthodox service should reflect a more austere idiom.

There is greater musical interest frankly in the motets grouped together in the collection Nine Sacred Pieces. The affecting setting of Da ispravitsya (Hear my prayer) is particularly gorgeous, especially the sections for three angelic women's voices, here sung by sopranos Agnese Urka and Agate Burkina, plus alto Dace Strautmane.

Dip Your Ears, No. 242 (Not Surprised by Beauty - Braunfels Piano Concerto)

Walter Braunfels Piano Concerto, Ariel’s Song, Scottish Fantasy Victor Sangiorgio (piano), Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola) BBC Concert Orchestra Johannes Wildner (conductor) (Dutton)

Walter Braunfels’s greatness is being further reestablished with this release, by adding his Piano Concerto (1911), a large quasi-Viola Concerto—the Scottish Rhapsody (1932)—to the catalog. It’s not surprising that the music is luscious and gorgeous; if anything it’s surprising that it took this long to be recorded. Nods to Wagner, whiffs of Richard Strauss, toying with Berlioz, Variations on “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow”, and lots of Braunfels are all present. Sarah-Jane Bradley has latched upon a wonderful, rare viola concerto and matches it with her playing; Victor Sangiorgio plays his piano part to the hilt. The BBC Concert Orchestra under Johannes Wildner delivers the goods, with these world premiere recordings of wrongfully neglected romantic 20th century music.

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Briefly Noted: Schiff's HIP Schubert

Schubert, Sonatas / Impromptus, A. Schiff (fortepiano) (released on April 26, 2019) ECM New Series 2535/36 | 124'10"

A few years ago, András Schiff performed three concerts in Washington over the space of a couple years. The programs brought together the three final sonatas of four composers: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. Although he was performing here on a Steinway concert grand, he was capitalizing on his exploration of a rather different instrument, a fortepiano built by the Viennese maker Franz Brodmann in around 1820. It belonged to the Austrian imperial family and was taken by Karl I, the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with him into exile in the early 20th century. In Basel it was magnificently restored by Martin Scholz, and in 2010 Schiff acquired it and donated it to the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

It is there that Schiff has made a few recordings on the instrument, starting with Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and continuing with two Schubert sets. The latest one, released this past spring, is a 2-CD set, rounding out the trilogy of final sonatas he played live on a modern instrument. The Brodmann instrument, in Schiff's words, is "ideally suited to Schubert's keyboard works. There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità." Schiff plays it most expressively, using its four pedals to create varied sounds: the due corde pedal and moderator fill out the ghostly piano side of the music, and the buzzing bassoon pedal increases the loudness of some bass sections. One by one, the titans of the old classical school are seeing the value of the historical instruments movement, and it is informative indeed to find out what a master like Schiff has discovered about music he has played almost all his life when he gets to know the sort of instrument that Schubert likely knew.