Critic’s Notebook: Andrè Schuen and the Lied, A Triumph of Youthfulness

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Triumph der unbändigen Jugend

F.Schubert, Die Schöne Müllerin A.Schuen & D.Heide DG

F. Schubert, Schwanengesang A.Schuen & D.Heide DG

Boisterous and rough and beloved

Hard to believe that Andrè Schuen was already a Don Giovanni in Niklaus Harnoncourt’s Theater-an-der-Wien production, a decade ago! He seems still so young; on the cusp of an (actually already great) career. And what more could he want? A lusciously-wild shock of hair, athletic build, and an exclusive contract with DG in his pocket – and a large, certainly loud voice, to boot. The Brahms Hall of the Musikverein was full for his Liederabend on December 16th, which may also been owed to the darkness of his voice, the untamed, impetuous quality about it. He had certainly scored big with that, a month earlier, when he was the youthful, guileless Schwanda in Jaromir Weinberger’s terrific Schwanda the Bagpiper (Theater an der Wien). He’s a kind of Siegfried of art song, more brash than subtle, more hero than thinker – and as such he took to Mahler and Schubert.

Is it a problem for Lieder singers, that in the age of GerhaherHuber™ (one word) we’ve come to expect goose-bump-inducing psychological explorations of song texts – to the point where merely singing very well and accurately is no longer enough? Or does it actually add to the attractiveness, to have someone simply jump into the subject matter without giving evidence of having pondered the scope and import of every syllable? The response in the Musikverein suggested as much, even as South Tyrolian Schuen put it on a little thick here and there (“Sei mir gegrüßt” – Schubert, not Tannhäuser) or went for all-out treacle (“Du bist die Ruh”). Daniel Heide was, as always, his accompanist and undoubtedly an invaluable asset to Schuen, but limited in his expression to dynamic differentiation. (Incidentally, he is also a dead-ringer for Southpark's Mr. Mackey.)

Despite the near-triumphal reception, not everything was perfect. The Schubert was theatrical to a breaking point; the breathy pianissimo was daring but surprisingly unstable, not every corner was smoothly taken, and the heights sounded stretched. Mahler took better to the histrionics and yodeling, especially in a hymn of self-pity like “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. (Which Gerhaher gave such a different spin, a few months later; review to follow.) Schuen sounded his best whenever things got boisterous, be it in the Songs of a Wayfarer or Schubert’s “Schiffer” or “Musensohn”. Encores – Mahler, Strauss, and a Ladin folksong – were de rigueur.

Photo © Clemens Fabry

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Critic’s Notebook: Incomprehension and Poulenc at a Kirill Gerstein Recital

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Konzerthaus: Chopin, ganz unschmeichelhaft

Chopin, torn, pensive, cerebral

F.Busoni, Piano Concerto K.Gerstein, S.Oramo, Boston Symphony Orchestra myrios

G.Fauré, Nocturnes Daniel Grimwood Peter Edition

Kirill Gerstein is a pianist I like greatly. Hard to believe it had been ten years since I last heard him in two astonishing Strauss-evenings, one with Enoch Arden [Best Recordings of 2020] and another with the Burleske. At a recent recital at the Vienna Konzerthaus’ Mozart Hall (February 24th), I didn’t understand what he was getting at, though. Faced with reasonably popular fare, as opposed to the challenges that are the above Strauss or his masterful account of the beast of a Busoni piano concerto, he introduced a pensive, cerebral, and very fragmented element to Chopin, whether the late Polonaise-Fantaisie op.61, the (very “Grave” and desensualized) Fantaisie op.49 in F minor, or the Grande Valse brilliante op.42, which was so heavy on the rubato that it gave up its waltz-character voluntarily. As the music dissolved into its individual parts, it demanded a concentration to stick with Gerstein and what he might have meant. A task beyond my abilities, that evening.

The last Nocturne of Fauré (No.13, op.119) fared better. Usually, the Fauré and Chopin meet somewhere on a common plane of romantic solo piano music, as Fauré is usually performed with an eye to his seductive, charming side. Here the pointillist Nocturne was closer to Alban Berg than to Satie or Debussy: Dark, threatening, chromatically charged, and very much true to its 1921 year of creation. Whatever Schumann wanted to say with his Faschingsschwank wasn’t clear here. Yes, this hymn of disappointment to Vienna isn’t funny to begin with. But did it need to be so hard-driven, so purposefully avoiding natural agogics, so decidedly undermining any expectation? Like so much this evening, it felt hard fought for, pensive, and wildly introspective. Animated on the outside, hollow on the inside. Ditto Liszt’s Polonaise 223/2, Rachmaninov/Kreisler’s Liebesleid (notably, fittingly no Liebesfreud), and the two funereal Armenian “Dances” by Komitas of the encore – which reminded of the terrible second anniversary that day.

The only silver lining was Poulenc. Not only for being on the program in the first place, which is rare enough. The Three Intermezzi managed to do what Poulenc does so well: Fuse seriousness and humor. They even elicited a few heartening giggles from the audience. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever understood or ‘gotten’ so little at a recital.


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Critic’s Notebook: Too much beauty from the Dresden Staatskapelle and András Schiff?

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Retro-Schönklang im Konzerthaus: So hat man Bach und Mozart lange nicht gehört

An excess of gorgeousness, if that is possible

I’ve never been to a concert where an orchestra played so well and annoyed me as much. The travel-contingent of the Dresden Staatskapelle was in Vienna with Sir András Schiff conducting and playing with them, and it was a bath of beauty, mostly. But was something amiss?

Throwback-Bach

Certainly with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5 (taking on the part of the overture in this most classical of overture-concerto-symphony sandwich concerts). Not necessarily the very old-fashioned sound and style from the interpreters, concert master Matthias Wollong and solo flute Sabine Kittel, who played next to Schiff while the latter who was operating on his gorgeous, shiny, red-and-black Mahagony Bösendorfer. While t’s a matter of taste (and certainly not to mine), hearing Bach performed as if by Karajan, it might posisbly have been neat enough to hear that kind of throwback-sonority (but at reasonably brisk tempi), had it not been for the balance being completely off, usually with Schiff drowning out his colleagues - or the soloists together the little orchestra.

Retro-Mozart

A similar kind of retro-prettiness hung over Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, played with a flawlessness and beauty that is rare and impressive, but that also felt spelled-out, rather than impetuous or spontaneous, and had its share of sentimental moments that bordered mawkishness. If anyone found it too slow, Schiff made up for it with a racing encore of the first movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto.

Confectioner’s Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony raced out the gates like a horse possessed. Or, as I wrote in my German review, “chattering like a stork on cocaine”. (This I had better kept to myself, as it prompted a slew of sternly worded letters to the editor, not all of which stayed clear of invective and several suggesting that it was not the storks that were under the influence of the mentioned substance.) The well-oiled machine that was the Dresden Staatskapelle played gorgeously. András Schiff seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience, happily waving his arms before them. With the speed determined at the outset, the symphony seemed to uncoil inexorably, quite independent of any further movemenet on the part of Schiff's. Every group was clean, the sections together, and the strings shone with a noble, dark timbre. Beauty goes a long way, not the least in Mendelssohn, but at least to these ears, there was something curiously unsatisfactory about the relentless loveliness. It rang a little hollow, giving the Symphony a Midsummer Night's Dream-esque, fairy-like character. The orchestral encore – Mozart’s Figaro overture, didn’t undo that impression. Suggesting that, after so much sugar and beauty, "a beer and a cigarette were what was needed in order to return to the real world", also did not go over well with the reader who thought the suggestion “disgusting, classless, repulsive, objectionable” and altogether unworthy of the fine newspaper I write for. I wonder if it had been better, had I suggested instead that after a concert such as this, the only thing to do was to wake up – and bow before such skill.

Photo © Manuel Chemineau

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Critic’s Notebook: Daniil Trifonov in Recital

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Wie Daniil Trifonov den Mount Beethoven erklomm

Daniil Trifonov - Shtick but Shtupendous!"

Rachmaninov for Two S.Babayan/D.Trifonov DG

L.v.Beethoven, Hammerklaviersonate Maurizio 'The God' Pollini DG

Sit down, play away. Chop-chop, no dilly-dallying. First thoughts on Trifonov racing away with op.106 in the Konzerthaus’ Great Hall: “He can’t possibly keep this tempo up without cracking.” Well, not for lack of pushing the envelope, he didn’t. His way out was a flighty into extreme rubatos, extremes in general, within a movement, within a phrase. As if the sonata wasn’t enough of a high wire act, Trifonov played it without a safety net, almost coming to a halt a few times, then racing away wildly. A bit the cliché of a tempestuous Beethoven, unbridled and famously on perennial bad terms with the comb. There were unwitting elements of George Antheil in this performance and while it was never outright off, there were several occasions where you had to flinch. The slow movement was of ineffable ardency. Again, really going to the limits, seeking, striving, experimenting, putting together an emotional puzzle in the moment. First charming then probing existential questions. Finally the resurrection. In the end, only notes were left, and hardly any Beethoven. Ivo Pogorelich would have been proud. Very nearly absurd? Yes. But also much less annoying that it sounds reading about it. In the Allegro risoluto Trifonov appeared to be in search of time lost in the slow movement, doubling the tempo or making it seem that way, anyway, which underlined the eccentricity of op.106 without actually giving it the needed cohesion.

The flippant, jazzy encore after this (his riff on Art Tatum/Johnny Green’s “I cover the waterfront”), the Chopin-esque bit of Scriabin, or the Chopin-Variations of Mompou’s were very odd and rather out of place, after this titanic struggle.

Speaking of “Pogorelich would have been proud”: The evening started with the Great Hall dimmed well below the usual levels. In this twilight, Daniil Trifonov emerged, all shaggy-bearded and unkempt, in a battered old black suit, walked briskly to the Bösendorfer, sat down, and began before most of the applause arose and before that which had arisen died down. Happily, he doesn’t do any interpretative piano-bench dances, but plays unfazed, fully composed. Yes, it’s still an act, staged and calculated for effect, down to the look, something that’s crept from between some seedier Tolstoi-pages or, half Revenant, half Joaquin-Phoenix-on-Letterman; the sense of a high mass being celebrated; the “don’t disturb the maestro – he is decomposing” air. But happily Trifonov doesn’t just act the ‘great artist’, he is a great artist. Even in the carefully cultivated neglect with which he played the Jean-Philippe Rameau Suite in A minor, all in an introvert shade of pianissimo, forcing the hall into silence. Splendid when it works, although one phone in two-thousand is always on and someone in the audience is always half-way dying of pneumonia. An intermediate mezzo-forted jolted people out of their seats. The introspective, technically astonishing, detail-intense playing lulled one in a sense of safety. And then: Woof! The martial, “too-many-notes” Finale, so not at all French and dainty.

Off stage, back on stage, sit down, on we go. Applause? I don’t think so: Mozart. Sonata in F-Major K.332. Mannerisms galore, showing and trying to show that it’s supposed to be all about the music. Bent over the keys, this was nuanced, very fast, never sloppy, Mozart. A wondrous mix, self-possessed, very personal. How the Mendelssohn Variations sérieuses op.54 have been more often performed at the Konzerthaus than the preceding Mozart can only be explained by K.332 being one of many brilliant Mozart-sonatas, but the Variations one of only a few larger single-work Mendelssohn piano pieces. Not even Trifonov was able to bring forth a different argument for that little factoid.


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Critic’s Notebook: A Bum Show from the Wiener Concert-Verein

Enthusiasm and good programming are not sufficient as a substitute for good music-making

S.Coleridge-Taylor, Violin Concerto, Ballade, African Suite Chineke! Orchestra Deccca

S.Coleridge-Taylor, Piano & Clarinet Q5ts Nash Ensemble! Hyperion

This concert was a while back – but it refuses to become less memorable for all the distance I’ve put between us. The “Wiener Concert-Verein” is a telephone chamber orchestra of sorts that was founded in 1987 by young members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, presumably to try out interesting repertoire that they were never going to play with the stuffy ol’ big boys and to get their feet wet. They are now neither associated with the VSO anymore, nor young, but to their great credit, especially given that they exist in Vienna (where it is either Brahms or subsidized avantgarde music but rarely anything between), they still keep up the reasonably interesting programming. A concert in January of this year, for example, featured Elgar’s Introduction & Allegro (Elgar being a rare guest on the continent, that’s nice), a work for string orchestra by Oscar Jockel (made slightly less surprising seeing that Oscar Jockel is their current conductor-in-residence, conducting said concert), Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (a.k.a. “Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra”; not that adventurous no matter which way you twist it), and the always welcome Josef Suk with his Serenade for Strings.

On the occasion of my visit in the Brahms Saal of the Musikverein on December 11th, it was a mix of Mozart (“Serenata notturna”), Johanna Doderer with Ritus, DWV 150 (I sure hope that “Doderer Werke Verzeichnis” number she gives her works, instead of working with opus numbers like mere mortals, is tongue-in-cheek and not unironic off-the-charts-pretentiousness), Joseph Bologne’s Symphony op.11/2, an excerpt from Aldemaro Romero’s Suite for Strings, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Novelette for Strings and Percussion, op.52/1. The Mozart and the out-of-tune first violins sounded like cats on an off day. The concertmaster was hopelessly out of his depth and the lack of coordination was probably not helped by the unorthodox ‘conducting’ of Glass Marcano, who seemed be engaged in something that was equal parts Tai chi, a Philippe Herreweghe imitation, and an interpretative dance.

The Doderer, while not excessively together, was less afflicted by these woes and the music itself is lovely enough: Austro-Pärt, none too complex, easy on the ears if not the patience. The slight and charming Colombe Symphony was promising in the first movement but torpedoed by miserable second violins in the next, unable to take back. The Romero piece is the kind of fun work that makes European audiences feel daringly exotic – and they were egged on by the suggestive, flashy gestures of the conductor moving along to the music. The violins still sounded sour in the primo Coleridge-Taylor (not yet recorded, so someone get to it!), but by and large all hands were on deck again, despite the painfully hapless conducting going on in front of them. Unfathomably, there were encores given: Venezuelan music important to the very enthusiastic Glass Marcano, enthusiastically played too, but sold under value.

Photo © Venezuelasinfonica.com

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Critic’s Notebook: Alexander Malofeev gives his recital debut in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Sensationell: Ausnahmepianist Alexander Malofeev begeistert bei seinem Wiener Solodebüt

A piano recital to remember: Alexander Malofeev in his solo debut in Vienna

There was a very young, very blond man in front of the Steinway, sitting low, and bent like an adult in a soapbox racer. Did he saw the piano bench’s legs off? For his Vienna recital debut, Alexander Malofeev, the up-and-coming Russian piano star, chose one half of baroque music and one half of Russian late romantics. He started with Händel, the Suite in B-flat major: There was terrific energy in the last of the variation of the Aria and lovely contrast in the lyrical-tender Minuet. Attacca, Malofeev went right into the Purcell Ground in C minor and from there into Georg Muffat’s Passacaglia from his Apparatus musico-organisticus, giving this part the sense of being a grand suite. In all of this he was unfazed, unsentimental, providing long, structured passages rather than a string of merely beautiful moments. You could hear the structure – and it was beautiful to do so.

He allowed for applause before the twice-transcribed Bach Concerto BWV 593 (in any case too famous to have fitted snugly into that imaginary baroque suite) and almost seemed pleasantly surprised, amazed that he got any, never mind such a boisterousness round. The Vivaldi concerto for two violins, turned into a concerto for solo organ by Bach and then liberally-romantically transcribed to suit the piano by Samuil Feinberg, was a thundering, bell-tinkling affair, imposing and tender in turn, elaborate and ornate here, introverted and sober there. A grand crescendo thunderously reminded of the work’s intermittent origins on the organ. Grand stuff.

Only very minimally less impressive was the second half, beginning with Scriabin’s Prélude and Nocturne for left hand, op.9. Chopin-like, as early Scriabin is wont to be, and for once a Wittgenstein-unrelated work just for the left hand; apparently Scriabin wrote it for himself after a bout with tendinitis and/or wanting to brag in front of an audience. Then again, it’s a piece that’s surprisingly devoid of obvious braggadocio. More dreamy, if anything. Still impressive, though, especially since Scriabin doesn’t at all let the ‘one-hand-only’ thing limit him to which range on the keyboard he writes for. Incidentally, Malofeev is no braggart himself, either. Nor, in a way, even a virtuoso who goes for the fireworks, even though his brilliant technique would surely allow him to do so.

The concluding Rachmaninov (the first two bits from the Morceaux de fantaisie, a transcription of “Lilacs” from his Twelve Songs op.21, and the B-flat minor Sonata) was full-throated but not violent. Most pleasingly, Malofeev never succumbs to romantic treacle and the Sonata suffered only from being boring because, hey, it’s Rachmaninov. Not that everyone in the hollering crowd felt the same way about good old Sergei, but the encores from Mikhail Pletnev’s Nutcracker Suite made up for it, for anyone who did. What a bloody extraordinary recital!

Photo © Manuel Chemineau

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Happy 56th Birthday, Rossini

Fifty-six is no age for a composer and so it is little wonder that Rossini - or at least his music - is alive and well. Born on February 29th, 1792, Gioachino Antonio Rossini soon discovered a penchant and talent in culinary appreciation as well as note-churning. The latter he put to use for the creation of almost 40 operas, the former to support his stately appearance.

So much has been written about Rossini, that I would not likely contribute anything new on this special Rossini-day - so instead I list below all that has been written about Rossini on Ionarts over the last few years.

Except, before I do that, I still want to rehash some reasonably well known stories about Rossini, just because they are too good to pass up on - and because they endear the composer to me, if not always his music.

There is, of course, the story that when Rossini laid on bed composing and he dropped a sheet of freshly written music, rather than making the effort to climb off the bed and pick it up, he simply wrote the music out, again. Consider this - and that tiny little Rossini's daycare consisted of a pork butchery, where he got to watch the production of sausages - and listen to his music carefully...

The most enduring story about Rossini may well be his admission to having cried only three times in his life: Once after his first opera (La cambiale di matrimonio) had a disastrous premiere. Then again when he heard Paganini play. And finally when he witnessed a truffle-stuffed turkey fall overboard in a picnic boating accident. (Sharp tongues might point out that Rossini would have known all about turkeys, but that's just not a nice thing to say on such a rare birthday.)


Rossini on ionarts:

Lawrence Brownlee, classical voice

Another evening of Arias
CDT, October 20, 2016

Lawrence Brownlee Returns to Wolf Trap

An evening of Arias
CDT, March 28, 2016

Rossini's 'Semiramide' in Concert

CD Review
CDT, November 24, 2015

Dismally Banal 'Tell' at Covent Garden

Commentary
CDT, July 03, 2015

Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO

Opera Review
RRR, May 13, 2015

In Search of the Perfect Mousetrap: WNO's 'La Cenerentola'

Opera Review
CDT, May 11, 2015

Ionarts-at-Large: Rossini in San Francisco

Opera Review
RRR, November 26, 2013

Briefly Noted: More of Pappano's Rossini

CD Review
CDT, August 27, 2013

Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Opera Review
CDT, August 02, 2013

Operatic Threesome, Damrau Glitters in 'Ory'

DVD Review
CDT, June 21, 2012

Guillaume Tell

DVD Review
CDT, October 14, 2011

Briefly Noted: Julia Lezhneva

CD Review, Rossini Arias
CTD, October 6th, 2011

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 9 )

Concert Review, Stabat Mater
jfl, August 15th, 2011

8½ Turks in Italy at Wolf Trap Opera

Opera Review, Il Turco...
CTD, July 14th, 2010

'Cinderella' Not a Dream Come True

Opera Review
Sophia Vastek, September 28th, 2009

'Barber of Seville' as Cartoon, and Not with Bugs Bunny

Opera Review
CTD, September 15th, 2009

Wall of Horns (Munich Opera Festival 2008)

Concert Review, Works for Horn Octet
jfl, August 19th, 2008

Washington Concert Opera: Bianca e Falliero

Opera Review
CTD, April 15th, 2008

Opera on DVD: Il Viaggio a Reims

DVD Review
CTD, November 27th, 2007

Ionarts in Siena: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Stabat mater dolorosa, 64th Settimana Musicale Senese, Siena
CTD, July 16th, 2007

Rossini's Otello, Washington Concert Opera

WCO
Sonya Harway, May 1st, 2007

Flórez's Breakthrough

CD Review, Matilde di Shabran
CTD, February 28th, 2007

Two Comedies of Errors

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Kennedy Center, Washington
jfl, February 4th, 2007

Siege of Baltimore

L'Assedio di Corinta, Baltimore Lyric Opera
CTD, October 16th, 2006

Frolics and Frippery: A Roll in the Hay with Rossini

Le Comte Ory, Wolftrap
Richard K. Fitzgerarld, July 22nd, 2006

Summer Opera 2006: "Barber of Seville" in St. Louis

Preview - Barber of Seville, St.Louis
CTD, June 23rd, 2006

Il Viaggio a St. Petersburg

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Mariinksy Theater, St.Petersburg
Oksana Khadarina, May 30th, 2006

Let's Do Silly Things in Algeria

L'Italiana in Algeri, Washington National Opera
jfl, May 16th, 2006

Tancredi: Sounds Good

Tancredi, Washington Concert Opera
jfl, April 6th, 2006

Summer Opera: La Cenerentola at Wolf Trap

La Cenerentola, Wolf Trap
CTD, August 21st, 2005

Summer Opera: Barber of Seville in Santa Fe

Barber of Seville, Santa Fe
CTD, July 23rd, 2005

Even Google celebrates Rossini today:

ABT returns to the Kennedy Center with "Swan Lake"

Daniel Camargo and Isabella Boylston in Swan Lake with American Ballet Theatre. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor

American Ballet Theatre brought its gorgeous version of Swan Lake back to the Kennedy Center Opera House this week. Last presented here in 2017, when it also sold out, Kevin McKenzie's choreography has not not been substantially altered in the Susan Jaffe. The only thing that stood out was in the introductory scene, which took place behind a scrim, when the evil antagonist, von Rothbart, seduced Odile. This bit of filling in the back story, during the otherwise unrelated orchestral introduction, is on its own merits a bad idea. Having the villain emerge from the cave, where he has taken the young woman, pretend wrestling with a stuffed swan added an unneeded note of absurdity.

Fortunately, most of the other elements of the ballet were in good hands. Isabella Boylston, a principal dancer since 2014, brought experience and subtlety to the leading role. Her Odette, the fragile white swan, was strikingly less human, more wild animal than woman in many ways. The swoops of her head in the tragic pas de deux of Act II, with gorgeous violin and cello solos from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, seemed a little stiff and unnatural. She was much more striking in Act III, flashy and seductive as Odile, the supposed daughter of von Rothbart who tricks Prince Siegfried into betraying Odette. Her sequence of thirty-some fouetté turns was impressively virtuosic.

The triumph of the evening went to Daniel Camargo, the Brazilian dancer who joined ABT as a guest artist in the 2021-2022 season. (Alexei Ratmansky had worked with Camargo at Dutch National Ballet, a connection that led him to approach Camargo about coming to New York when ABT had some injuries to deal with.) Named a principal dancer in the summer of 2022, he was something to behold as Prince Siegfried: an athletic presence with amazing vertical lift in his leaps, and a steady, upright axis in spins. This role is in many ways the dramatic focus of this ballet, and Camargo's emotional range was worthy of the spotlight.

The ABT corps continues to impress with the improved unity of its movements, particularly the women as the flock of swans, crisply coordinated and elegant in style. The men, featured in the divertissements, were uniformly strong as well, with an energetic turn by young dancers Jake Roxander and Takumi Miyaki in the Neapolitan dance of Act III. McKenzie's decision to split the character of von Rothbart into two personas remains as ill advised as before, with the monster version, rather cartoonish and silly, undermining the character's menace. Jose Sebastian's sebaceous performance as the human von Rothbart was way over the top: he seduced every woman on the stage, even Siegfried's mother along with all four princesses, and then leapt playfully onto Siegfried's throne. One may or may not need comic diversion in a ballet like Swan Lake, but there it was.

Swan Lake runs through February 25. kennedy-center.org