Ionarts-at-Large: Beethoven for Voices

Within the span of a week, two of Beethoven’s grand vocal works were performed in Munich. In both cases it could be argued that the performances reinforced old stereotypes about Beethoven’s compositions for the voice, rather than dispelling them. At least the one about his writing being difficult for, perhaps even inconsiderate of, the singers and their natural abilities.

Mariss Jansons, still celebrating the 60^th anniversary of his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, led his band, the BR Chorus, and four soloists in the 9^th Symphony. Christian Thielemann meanwhile conducted a mélange of Fidelio arias and all four Overtures in three concerts between October 25^th and 28^th.

LvB, Sy.9, Abbado / BPh (live, Salzburg) Sony Kancheli, Lament, Gidon Kremer ECM LvB, Overtures, Karajan / BPh DG

The performance of the 9^th (October 29^th, repeated on the 30^th) is easily recounted: Faultless, with some of Jansons’ usual, lean, detailed, crisp Beethoven-zest, but apart from a Andante moderato nothing particularly outstanding about it. The chorus is incapable of doing anything less than excellent, and so they did. The four soloists gathered no glory; the high voices—soprano Luba Orgonášová and especially tenor Christian Elsner—tried more than they succeeded and sounded strained. The low voices—Lioba Braun and Gerald Finley—were, to the extend they were audible, quite pleasant.

Much more interesting was the premiered piece that went along with the 9^th, part of a series of commissions by the BRSO for compositions that accompany their Beethoven cycle. Similarly scored and in mental, if not necessarily musical proximity, these modern works are meant to be good enough to stand on their own, of course, but in concert they also have the function—intended or not—to reflect on their famous counterpart. Jörg Wiedman managed nicely with his “Con Brio” that went along with the Eighth and Seventh, as did Rodion Shchedrin with “Beethoven’s Heiligenstart Testament” (along the “Eroica”).

This time it was Giya Kancheli’s turn, and he provided “Dixi”, for mixed chorus and large orchestra. The chorus works its way through more or less random Latin quotes and phrases tacked to another, the first of which is “Mortuos plango” (“I mourn the dead”). Probably a reference to conductor and Kancheli-mentor Jansug Kakhidze (1936-2002) to whom the work is dedicated while German audiences it might more likely have called Friedrich Schiller’s ballad “Song of the Bell” to mind, which is subtitled (so to say) with the three lines: “Vivos voco / Mortuos plango / Fulgura frango.” The result is very effective, not great, music that sounds like Carmina Burana as re-imagined by Arvo Pärt or a new Zbigniew Preis ner film score. Truly impressive-gorgeous are the hushed string pianissimos that emerge out of the reverberation of the tumultuous percussion fortissimos and the soft choral lines that similarly emerge. Kancheli delivered something nice and easy on the ears and not likely to truly disturb any of the anniversary attendees: contemporary classical music with areal, very immediate future.

The Fidelio assemblage looked a bit like strained programming from afar: Anything to get Christian Thielemann a little opera to enjoy (scheduled before it was clear that he’d soon get to conduct as much, real, opera as he could possibly hope for). But the experience, especially with all four Leonore/Fidelio overtures in one evening, was splendid. With Thielemann, who manages to infuse (German) operatic music with unparalleled drama, it becomes clear at once why “Leonore III” (chronologically the second overture) was thrown out by Beethoven, as the music to open his only Opera. It really would have told, or at least outlined, the entire story right away; with the rest of the work merely fleshing out the story with the details.

Despite the rifts, under Thielemann, the Munich Philharmonic hums along like a well oiled machine. The flexible tempi, the darkly varnished tone so different from Jansons’ Beethoven, and yet every bit as suited, it all makes for guaranteed excitement. Edith Haller, a soprano Thielemann knows from his Bayreuth Ring, and Klaus Florian Vogt—the weirdly fascinating tenor—contributed as Leonore and Florestan. She did so splendidly by determinedly plunging into the Fidelioesque concert aria “Ah! Perfido”, where the Mozartean character of the aria part became so evident that one would not have thought alien in the Magic Flute. Mme. Haller did so with a voice that, although not blessed with an excess of character or particular beauty, impressed with clarity, precision, control, and ease of volume. As a result, it was the considerable enjoyment that was memorable, not the voice itself.

Vogt is a stranger bird, altogether. With his odd, or perhaps lacking, technique, one wonders how many trained but struggling tenors listen to him thinking: “I’m stuck in the boonies and he’s got a world class career with that!?” Well, the difference is that whenever his voice ‘fits’, he has something no one else does. Since the listener/viewer only cares about the result, not what went into it, that’s more than sufficient. Klaus Florian Vogt’s special quality—“strange” doesn’t begin to describe its chorister-metallic-behind-the-forehead-bell-like character—certainly takes getting used to, but when he’s playing outsiders or introverted characters (Lohnengrin, Walter von Stolzing), that’s easy, because its distinctive character makes immediate dramatic sense. For it to make sense as Florestan, it will take longer than two arias in one evening. With him in that role, there is at least no doubt who’s wearing the pants in the two characters’ relationship—not just during, but also before and after his incarceration.

Picutres of Mariss Jansons & Christian courtesy & © Astrid Ackermann

The Ghost of Bernstein: Mahler 4

Mahler, The Complete Symphonies, L. Bernstein (released on April 14, 2009) Sony Classical 88697 45369 2

When it comes to Gustav Mahler, I always defer to Jens Laurson, who is running an excellent and definitive overview of recordings of the Mahler symphonies for WETA's Mahler Month at the moment. He has already written about this new remastered re-release of Leonard Bernstein's cycle of the Mahler symphonies, and as usual he is right on the money. The presentation of this 12-CD set from Sony is impeccable, with clear and elegant arrangement of the volumes, liner essays from Tim Page (new and laced with LP nostalgia), Bernstein himself (a reprint of the famous essay "Mahler: His Time Has Come"), and Erik Ryding, as well as plenty of photographs of the vivacious conductor. The audio engineering of the new set began with locating the original master tapes of the recordings, digitally mixed to get the best possible result while staying as faithful as possible to the sound of the original sessions. At a price of a little over $5 per disc, anyone who does not already own some version of the Bernstein cycle should find this re-release very attractive.

There is no need to rehash the advantages and disadvantages of Bernstein's Mahler, as few would argue the historical importance of these recordings (all but the eighth symphony with the New York Philharmonic). Sometimes Bernstein is terribly off the mark, but he never fails to make Mahler sound damn exciting. His is rarely the version I would turn to first, but in preparation for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mahler's fourth symphony this weekend -- I was at last night's performance (review forthcoming) and there are two more on November 7 (8 pm) and 8 (3 pm) -- Bernstein's reading of that happy work has provided a pleasant listening contrast to the most recent version in my ears, David Zinman conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, released last year. Zinman seems unwilling to leave his own brush marks on the canvas, while Bernstein slaps paint at it like Pollock.

Mahler once described the fourth symphony as a series of children's dreams (see this cogent analysis by Henry-Louis de La Grange), culminating in one of Mahler's most guileless settings of the poetry from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection. The last movement gives the poem Die himmlische Leben to a soprano soloist, whom Mahler advises to sing with child-like simplicity. This is a disarmingly naive but nonetheless compelling of vision of heaven, where the blessed dance and sing like happy children, with mighty saints living like jolly villagers, serving as shepherd, butcher, fisherman, and cook. Deer and rabbits run down the streets hoping to serve their flesh, the angels bake the bread, and fish swim up to be eaten on fast days.

Bernstein's fourth makes me rethink the many details of the score, which it struck me again last night come out completely only in live performance. The only downfall is the last movement, because Bernstein's soprano soloist, Reri Grist, is not the ideal of vocal clarity. Zinman's choice, the Slovakian soprano Luba Orgonášová has the right kind of voice, but perhaps a little too early music treble in color. Marin Alsop's ongoing Mahler cycle with the BSO (no. 1, as well as the excised Blumine movement, no. 5, and no. 9 so far) has not been stellar, but you will want to hear her soprano soloist, Susanna Phillips, who lived up to my expectations about as well as she could have.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performs Mahler's fourth symphony this evening at 8 pm and tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm, only at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

Cloudy Skies for Russian Stars

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for contributing to ionarts again with this review of the National Symphony Orchestra's concert. You can read his latest column for InsideCatholic here.

Brahms, Violin (& Double) Concerto(s), Repin / Chailly / Gewandhaus DG .com .co.uk .de .fr

Sergei Prokofiev, Symphonies, Järvi / Scottish NO Chandos .com .co.uk .de .fr

Prokofiev, Khachaturian, DSCH, Russian Ballet Suites, Vedernikov / Russian NO PentaTone .com .co.uk .de .fr

On Thursday night, November 5^th, the Russian stars were out on a cloudy night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, where Alexander Vedernikov took the helm of the National Symphony Orchestra to play the Brahms Violin Concerto, with violinist Vadim Repin, and the Prokofiev Symphony No. 5. The clouds were inside, however, not out, about which more anon.

The stars shone most brightly during the Brahms Concerto. It was not a particularly urgent performance, nor was it in any way slack. It was down the middle, perhaps leaning in the direction not of Brahms’s progenitor, Beethoven, but more toward Tchaikovsky and his gorgeous long-lined melodies.

In the publicity blurbs for Repin’s recording of this concerto on Deutsche Grammophon, I think I saw that it was considered by the British press as a statement of real “stature,” but also highly “poetic.” Stature did not come to mind Thursday night so much as poetry, which is fine when the melodies that Brahms employed in this work are so beautiful. Repin is obviously a master and fully in command of this piece with the orchestra fully engaged as the themes were tossed back and forth with soloist in this relaxed, lyrical approach. Soloist and orchestra certainly captured together the gypsy jeu d’esprit of the last movement’s Allergro giocoso.

The cloud cover began to thicken at the opening of the Prokofiev Fifth. The beginning of the first movement was positively soporific. In this work Prokofiev said (however silly it sounds of agitprop) that he was singing “the praises of the free and happy man.” This left me to ponder, if this is Vedernikov’s version of a happy man, what must the constrained and unhappy man sound like? Absent from this movement was its hushed sense of mystery and expectancy, and any underlying energy—no juice, no passion. Things did stir to life half way through, but then subsided. The brass outbursts near the end are meant to sound minatory, like the deepest rumblings of Russian basses. Here, they simply sounded blatty, like a flatulent product of orchestral indigestion—a moment of dark majesty reduced to farce. The failure to express the grandeur at which Prokofiev aimed was the conductor’s, not the orchestra’s.

All of sudden, with the start of the second movement, the clouds cleared and Prokofiev sprang to balletic life. Yes, this was recognizable Prokofiev with verve, vivacity and a spring in its step. The playing of the NSO was highly alert, completely on point. Everyone seemed as if they were having fun with the Allegro marcato. The lovely Adagio began with promise but then became a bit enervated by a sense of drag in the tempo. Vedernikov’s slow tempi laid bare the textures of Prokofiev’s music and, thanks to the NSO’s playing, this made for some moments of compensating beauty. The last movement, except for some signs of life at the very end, was routine.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Cheap thrills: the NSO flirts with vulgarity in Russian program (Washington Post, November 6)

In short, Vedernikov did not succeed in capturing the underlying experience that this music was seeking to express. It was not simply a matter of his slow tempi. Yevgeny Mravinsky could conduct Prokofiev at same tempi and leave you with your eyebrows singed off. With Vedernikov, there was little sense of digging into the music. Thus, it only fitfully came to life in a low wattage performance. I wish I could say that it is going to get better in the next two performances, but I think it is a matter of interpretive choice. Obviously, the audience disagreed with me because it gave Vedernikov a standing ovation. I’d wager that if they heard someone like Neeme Järvi give the Fifth the performance it deserves, they would have to levitate.

(The program is repeated Friday evening, November 6, at 8:00 PM, and Saturday evening, November 7, at 8:00 PM.)

Susanna Phillips: Superlative

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Phillips: languid legato
Washington Post, November 5, 2009

Susanna Phillips, soprano (photo by Ken Howard)

Soprano Susanna Phillips, in the area to perform with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this weekend, gave an exceptionally beautiful recital on Tuesday night in the auditorium of Alexandria's Bishop Ireton High School. Those in attendance received a preview of the delectable program of songs Phillips will present later this month at the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. Even better, the proceeds went to support the creation of a summer music camp for the students of Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School.

Phillips has a charming stage presence in operatic roles, but her greatest strength may be as a singer of lieder. As in her Vocal Arts Society recital in 2007, Phillips sang with a tone of consummate beauty, strength and consistency, a voice suited more to the spinning out of flowing legato line than to pyrotechnical acrobatics. In songs like "Adieu," part of a languid Fauré set, she savored the unctuous flow of the melody wrapped around the poetry, even when high notes coincided with unstressed syllables. The song's long final high note hovered in the air without any sign of flagging breath support, until it gradually vanished. [Continue reading]

Susanna Phillips (soprano) and Craig Terry (piano)
Bishop Ireton High School (Alexandria, Va.)

Previously on Ionarts:
Don Giovanni (Santa Fe Opera, 2009) | Le Nozze di Figaro (Santa Fe Opera, 2008) | Recital with Wolfgang Holzmair (Vocal Arts Society, 2007)

Lunch with Bach

The best part of the Washington Bach Consort's season most years is their series of free noontime cantatas, on the first Tuesday of every month. Yesterday, I had the rare chance to attend one of those concerts, at the Church of the Epiphany downtown, in the company of the elementary school class of Master Ionarts. Few will probably believe that this trip was not planned at my instigation (really, it was not), but when the note came home about it I volunteered to help make it happen. Wisely, the children were seated in the balcony, where they could move around to the music a little and ask the occasional question without bothering serious listeners. In the few minutes before the concert, we explained the organ and its pipes, the other instruments, the voices. When it was time for the music, the kids were attentive (even through conductor J. Reilly Lewis's inevitable lectures), although the slow movements lulled some of them to sleep.

The brief program opened with organist Marvin Mills playing Bach's organ adaptation of Vivaldi's D minor concerto (BWV 596). Opening with a flutey registration, the performance had a dreamy Largo movement, a pastoral barcarolle, but there were so many adjustments to the tempo that much of the work lost its rhythmic flow. Advent came early with the cantata on offer, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn (BWV 132), created for performance on December 22, 1715. The text by Salomo Franck, court poet of Weimar, makes references to the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, relating to John the Baptist (mostly over the heads of the younger members of the audience). Highlights of the performance included the mellow oboe of Meg Owens, beautifully scaled to the demure soprano of Kate Vetter Cain, and the mellifluous legato of mezzo-soprano Barbara Hollinshead, paired with a lovely obbligato from violinist June Huang.

The next noontime cantata presented by the Washington Bach Consort will be Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63 (December 1, 12:10 pm). All of these cantatas are free of charge and open to the public, at the Church of the Epiphany (1317 G St. NW).

Till Fellner's Beethoven Cycle, Part 4

Pianist Till Fellner (photo by Francesco Carrozzini) Fellner Beethoven Cycle: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Online scores: No. 25 (op. 79, "Cuckoo") | No. 24 (op. 78, "A Thérèse") | No. 15 (op. 28, "Pastoral") | No. 27 (op. 90) | No. 4 (op. 7)

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Till Fellner crossed the midpoint in his seven-concert cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas in Washington on Sunday night to a capacity crowd at the National Gallery of Art. The Austrian pianist's Beethoven has already included a marvel of a Hammerklavier, a pleasingly unmannered Appassionata, and a colorful, subtle op. 101, with the only reservation one might express being an occasional superficiality in the lesser sonatas. The latest program, of five sonatas from across the first two stylistic periods of Beethoven's career, stood out as the most consistently beautiful, showcasing Fellner's exquisite musical craftsmanship, technically impeccable but never showy or vulgar. Here was the first concert in Fellner's plan that was not centered on one of the major sonatas, and every selection was carefully thought out, in each case with a reading that had its own peculiarities, its own highlights.

The joyous dances of no. 25 (G major, from 1809) were played with no affectation, the airy Tedesca of the first movement without a trace of heaviness. The gentle, ruminative Andante was followed by a sweet Vivace, with each statement of its theme, which gave the sonata its nickname of "Cuckoo," carved with minute differences. No. 24 afforded many opportunities to appreciate Fellner's immaculate voicings, especially in full, loud chords, with each note weighted optimally. Its second movement had just enough of a Hanswurst characterization, slightly mischievous. The relatively early "Pastoral" sonata closed the first half with a more traditional formal approach to the sonata. The first movement had a reflective and idyllic sound, the tempo not too fast and the unusual turn of the development set off enigmatically. The wry B section of the second movement contrasted happily with the melancholy A section, its legato melody underpinned by a graceful détaché touch in the left hand. The scherzo, with its theme of octave-skipping chords, was delightfully understated, followed by a fourth movement that flirted with folksiness without becoming raucous.

Other Articles: Vivian Schweitzer, Beethoven, and Plenty of It, in a Worldwide Sonata Tour (New York Times, November 2) Geoff Brown, Till Fellner at the Wigmore Hall (The Times, October 31) David Weininger, Till Fellner's run of Beethoven continues with this cycle (Boston Globe, October 30) Ben Finane, Soundboard: Pianist Till Fellner (Playbill Arts, October 26) Karl Korinek, Kleiner und großer Beethoven (Wiener Zeitung, October 20)

Fellner's polished veneer peeled away slightly only in no. 27, where he allowed some impetuous outbursts to rock the first movement, quite appropriately, without ever seeming to crash outside of his Steinway's palette of sounds. The second movement was indeed singing in tone, in keeping with the detailed tempo indication, but it seemed a little dull at times, an overly perky afterthought to its stormy counterpart. No. 4 had a brilliant tempo in the first movement, never forced, although there was a slight relaxation of the pace to accommodate the sixteenth notes of the closing section of the exposition and recapitulation. Fellner captured precisely the effect Beethoven seemed to want in the recapitulation, which comes out of nowhere, by not drawing attention to the sudden shift back to E-flat major, the modulation pivoting on V⁷ in first inversion with no drawn-out pedal point or anything.

The gorgeous second movement was almost excruciatingly slow, in a good way, in that every dense chord could be voiced with dizzying control to realize the "gran espressione" that Beethoven said he wanted. Again Fellner showed that he has an enviable handle on Beethoven's wry side in the third movement, a positively sunny Allegro, with a Minore section that drew no attention to itself but in which every note rustled. Fellner took the rondo theme of the last movement at just the right, graceful tempo, allowing the sforzando octave on B-flat, where the theme seems to run aground temporarily (m. 11 the first time), to decay just enough so that it just melted into the final phrase. Once again, just as Beethoven indicated, the piece simply drifted off in its final bars, into a dreamy silence. Sadly, we apparently missed out on the encore Fellner has played with this program in other venues, the miniature op. 49, no. 1. Clap louder and longer, Washingtonians!

The fifth and sixth concerts in Till Fellner's Beethoven cycle are scheduled for the National Gallery of Art (February 7, 2010) and the Austrian Embassy (March 22, 2010).

Anne Truitt's Life as Color

The major exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum this fall, Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection, is a great way to spend a couple blissful hours lost in thought. Although Truitt grew up in Easton, on Maryland's eastern shore, and worked for most of her career right here in Washington, D.C., her work flew under the radar. Most of what I knew about her before this show is because of Tyler Green's pieces at Modern Art Notes.

In her Cleveland Park studio from the 1970s until her death in 2004, Anne Truitt quietly created sculptures in an emblematic style. In her preference for geometric shapes and solid colors, Truitt is related to the Washington Color Field School, just in three dimensions instead of two. Really, it's four dimensions when you experience her sculptures as she intended, according to her writings in Daybook and elsewhere, taking in all sides of the piece as they unfold to a circumambulating viewer over time. "The emotional impact of the work depends on memories accumulated as one walks around the sculpture," she said. "The impact is cumulative, available to remembered experience rather than immediate visual impression." The object carries in it the potential image, like a Sumerian cylinder seal, waiting to be realized as an image when it is impressed on the pliant clay of a willing viewer's mind.

Anne Truitt, Daybook

Truitt's favorite shape, well represented in the show, was the rectangular prism, tall and narrow and standing on one end. Truitt dropped hints about the shape's meaning and how it evolved in her work, from stories about her childhood as an intrepid explorer looking through fences (the fence makes a literal appearance in some early pieces). She also wrote about how she had an image of herself as a citadel, shielding her interior life from life's challenges (the thick wall was also an important early stage). She certainly had enough of them: illness, her family's loss of its earlier wealth, a divorce, her ex-husband's eventual suicide.

In her last decade Truitt had the chance to travel and saw in person some of the works she realized had been an influence on her, including those of Giotto and Piero della Francesca, in which architectural elements like columns and segmented façades are used to assist formal organization of the picture plane. Outlines of houses and buildings, from her upbringing on the Chesapeake shore, also appear, both in drawings and silhouette pieces. Her work combines the seemingly contrasting feelings of solid groundedness and upward-yearning flight, of "wanting to set color free in three dimensions for its own sake," as Truitt wrote, adding "as if in some mysterious way I felt myself to be color."

Her favorite medium was wood, which she covered with acrylic paint, brushed on in layers, sanding after each one. The long rectangular prisms are hollow but weighted to the bottom, standing on narrow bases that are recessed so that the object appears to hover. Truitt began using regular house paint but switched to mixing her own colors, which she did meticulously, with some shadings that modulate over the surface in almost imperceptible ways. (She worked out many of her ideas in large white drawings with just a few faint pencil lines on them.) The exhibit closes with a screening of Jem Cohen's short film Anne Truitt: Working, which combines some beautiful stills and film footage of Truitt working in her studio with the artist's narration of her working methods, made during a stay at Yaddo. One of the images is of shelves filled with her jars of mixed colors, as well as modifying agents, bowls for mixing, sanders, and brushes. At last, the color is set free.

Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection will be on view at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., through January 3, 2010. Sadly, it will not travel to other museums.

In Brief: Le Toussaint Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Henry Fogel, one of the ArtsJournal bloggers, calls it quits. Thanks for three years of weekly (or so) thoughts, Henry! [On the Record]


• We may not agree with our favorite Milanese blogger that Hans Werner Henze is the "greatest living composer" (at least not while György Kurtág is still in the running), but it is very good news to hear that Henze is at work on a new opera, Gisela, set to premiere next fall. [Opera Chic]


• A recently founded, exceptionally waggish classical music parody Web site has gotten itself into trouble rather quickly, forced to go on hiatus while the threat of a libel lawsuit is sorted out. Inquiring minds want to know which insult caused the trouble. [The Cereal List]


• We are big fans of the music of Lera Auerbach at Ionarts. So we are sorry indeed to hear of the Russian composer's personal tragedy this week, as reported by Anne Midgette, a fire that gutted her Manhattan apartment. The losses include "all of her manuscripts (including sketches for an opera, Gogol, slated for a premiere in Vienna in 2011), her family's library of rare books from Russia and photographs, and her Steinway concert grand." Insurance will not cover all of the losses, so Auerbach is looking for donors to help her recover. Anyone with deep pockets and a desire to further the future of classical music should contact her. [The Classical Beat]


• With a hat tip to On an Overgrown Path, we direct you to a new and very interesting classical music blog from Athens, Greece. [Music is your only friend]


• Congratulations to Fred Himebaugh on his new opera, They're Made Out of Meat, a setting of Terry Bisson's sci-fi short story. [The Fredösphere]