Classical Music Agenda (May 2015)

With the arrival of May, the classical music season draws near its end. Although some organizers have already closed up shop by this point, here are the Top 10 performances worth hearing in May.

Sibelius, Violin Concerto (both versions), L. Kavakos, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, O. Vänskä (BIS, 1992)

KAVAKOS:
Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos will have a brief residency with the National Symphony Orchestra in May. He will begin it as a concerto soloist, performing the Sibelius violin concerto with the NSO (May 7 to 9), with Christoph Eschenbach also conducting Mahler's fifth symphony. Next he will take the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater's stage as recitalist, in a concert with Christoph Eschenbach at the piano (May 11, repertoire not yet announced). Finally, he will take the podium of the NSO and conduct works by Musorgsky and Sibelius, as well as playing the solo in Bach's A minor violin concerto (May 14 to 16).

VOICES:
Take your pick of mezzo-sopranos Isabel Leonard and Tara Erraught, who will alternate in the title role of Rossini's La Cenerentola, a delightful corker of a comic opera in a production by Spanish director Joan Font and his troupe Els Comediants (May 9 to 21) at Washington National Opera.

We raved about soprano Heidi Melton in a Wagner program with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2013. She returns to sing Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs with the BSO in May, along with guest conductor Markus Stenz leading performances of music by Weber and Schumann (May 21 and 22 in Baltimore; May 23 at Strathmore).

Opera Lafayette gives a staged performance of André Grétry's L'Épreuve Villageoise, from 1784, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (May 30). Pascale Beaudin and Emmanuelle de Negri each take a turn at the role of Denise.

Bach, Partitas, I. Levit (Sony, 2014)

KEYBOARD:
Washington Performing Arts presents two pianists who should be on your radar, both in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Igor Levit will play an afternoon recital with music of Bach, Rachmaninoff, and Beethoven, plus Ronald Stevenson's Fantasy on Peter Grimes (May 9). The following day, English pianist Paul Lewis has his turn, playing the last three sonatas of Beethoven (May 10).

In the same week, the National Symphony Orchestra presents French organist Thierry Escaich in a recital on the Kennedy Center Concert Hall's organ (May 13). He plays music by Vierne, Bach, and Stravinsky, as well as his own compositions and, even better, improvisations.

CHAMBER MUSIC:
Pro Musica Hebraica presents the ARC Ensemble in a concert called Before The Night: Jewish Classical Masterpieces of Pre-1933 Europe in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (May 7). The program includes music by Jerzy Fitelberg (String Quartet No. 2, 1928), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Piano Quintet No. 1, 1931–32), and Erich Korngold (Suite for 2 violins, cello, and piano, left hand, 1930).

You will want to hear the new piano trio by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, performed on a free concert by violinist Jennifer Koh, cellist Anssi Karttunen, and pianist Benjamin Hochman (May 22) at the Library of Congress. The three musicians, in various combinations, will also play other music by Saariaho, Ravel, and Debussy.

See the complete calendar after the jump.

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Kennedy Center Announces New Season

The Kennedy Center has a shiny new Web site to go with its new president. Earlier this week, Washington's leading cultural institution announced its new season, marked by a desperate, rather pathetic grab for more popular programming, but there is relatively little new of interest to readers of Ionarts.

For this Wagnerian at least, top billing goes to the long-awaited debut of Washington National Opera's first complete staging of the Ring cycle (April 30 to May 22, 2016). We have already reviewed three of the four operas in Francesca Zambello's American-themed staging, but the chance to see the whole cycle with Philippe Auguin at the podium and, as Brünnhilde, Catherine Foster (Cycles I and II) and Nina Stemme (Cycle III) makes this the highlight of the season to come. If you need to find me during that month, I will probably be in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Adding the premiere of a major revision of Philip Glass's Appomattox is another positive, while the Return of the Musical, with the Lost in the Stars I found so tedious at Glimmerglass, is a decided negative.

The National Symphony Orchestra's season has a few high points, starting with Donald Runnicles at the podium and soprano Olga Peretyatko singing Strauss's Four Last Songs (October 1 to 3); Christoph Eschenbach conducting Mahler's third symphony, with Anne Sofie von Otter as soloist (November 5 to 7); and Jiří Bělohlávek leading Martinů's sixth symphony, plus Igor Levit as soloist in Beethoven's fifth piano concerto (November 19 to 21). Interesting world premieres include Tobias Picker's Concerto for Orchestra (March 10 to 12, 2016) and Sean Shepherd's violin concerto (June 2 to 4, 2016). The speculation about the successor to Christoph Eschenbach will continue, something that will increase with each guest conductor's appearance.

On the Fortas Chamber Music series, we look forward to the Tallis Scholars (December 3), eighth blackbird (March 7, 2016), and the Takács Quartet (April 20, 2016) -- dotted amid a bunch of crossover acts that do not interest us. On the theater season, Belgium's Ivo van Hove will direct a production of Sophocles's Antigone, starring Juliette Binoche (October 22 to 25). The ballet season will feature visits from the Joffrey Ballet (Nutcracker), the National Ballet of Canada (The Winter's Tale), American Ballet Theater (The Sleeping Beauty), the Mariinsky Ballet (Raymonda), New York City Ballet, and the Royal Swedish Ballet (Juliet and Romeo). Contemporary dance is also heavy on the usual suspects: Alvin Ailey, Ronald K. Brown, Paul Taylor, plus the 50th anniversary of Twyla Tharp's company (November 11 to 14).

Beyond these highlights, it looks like Ionarts will be reporting somewhat less from the Kennedy Center next season.

Reviving Strauss's 'Guntram'

(L to R) Zachary Nelson, Robert Dean Smith, Maestro Antony Walker, Marjorie Owens, Tom Fox, and cast
in Guntram, Washington Concert Opera (photo by Don Lassell)
Wagner's last opera was Richard Strauss's Guntram, or so the joke goes. Its story, about a wandering minstrel-knight who falls in love with another man's wife, only to deny himself her love because of his guilt at killing her husband, has strong echoes of Meistersinger here, Parsifal there. Derivative or not, the composer's first performed opera was a flop, both in 1894 when it was first premiered and after Strauss revised it in 1940. The libretto, written by Strauss in imitation of Wagner, is a bit of a dud -- although more compact than Wagner's more unwieldy examples -- but the music is generally quite glorious, especially in the revised version performed by Washington Concert Opera on Sunday evening at Lisner Auditorium. It was the first time the work came under review in the history of Ionarts, a welcome addition to the celebration of the Strauss anniversary, for which the National Symphony Orchestra and other groups focused on the same old, often-done works.

Another reason why Guntram is so little performed is that the title role is a killer, and the risk for a heroic tenor in learning it is far greater than with a more established work by Strauss or Wagner, where the payoff in future performances is more certain. Robert Dean Smith, an American singer we have reviewed mostly in Europe, gave it his all. His reliably powerful instrument, giving out only on a few strained high notes over two hours of mostly impassioned shouting, still had considerable suavity and suppleness in Guntram's Act II song scene. One of the best young Strauss voices I have heard in recent years -- soprano Marjorie Owens, heard at Wolf Trap's Ariadne in 2008 -- surpassed Smith as Freihild, the role created by Pauline de Ahna, the soprano who would become Strauss's wife. While Owens had plenty of zip to launch herself over the large orchestra, the voice is a precision instrument, silky but full-bodied, particularly exultant in the awakening scene toward the end of the second act.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Washington Concert Opera exhumes Strauss rarity — once (Washington Post, March 3)

Freihild's evil husband, Duke Robert, is not that much of a role, sung capably by Annapolis-born baritone Zachary Nelson. The villain duties fall more to Freihild's father, the Old Duke, voiced with snarling outrage by baritone Tom Fox, while bass Wei Wu, a regular in the Washington National Opera young artist program, had a robust turn as Guntram's fellow-knight, Friedhold. The supporting cast was generally strong, with a stand-out performance from the youthful, bright-toned tenor of James Flora as the Duke's Fool.

Antony Walker, who is also mid-run as conductor of Washington National Opera's production of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, brought out this perfumed score's beauties. His hardy orchestra could have benefited from another rehearsal or two, to be sure, but they did justice to Strauss's youthful excesses -- double harps and double timpani, the latter with plenty of rumble in the battle scene -- if not yet approaching the wonders of the later orchestrations. The strings, in particular, felt underpowered -- numbers-wise, 10/8/7/6/4 -- and at moments of great strain, like the conclusion of the first act, the sound squealed at the edge of ugliness. The male chorus, with a number of regulars from the WNO chorus, was stalwart in their limited appearances, most beautifully in the off-stage monastic Requiem Mass sung for the murdered Duke Robert.

Washington Concert Opera's 2015-2016 season is devoted to the bel canto era, with performances of Rossini's Semiramide (November 22, 2015) and Donizetti's La Favorite (March 4, 2016).

Mark Morris and Lou Harrison

Words, Mark Morris Dance Group
The Mark Morris Dance Group has been coming to the George Mason University Center for the Arts every couple of years. We try not to miss any of their local appearances, especially not one that features two choreographies set to the music of American composer Lou Harrison (1917-2003), seen on Saturday evening in the first of two performances. The whole affair, including two fun dances set to Mendelssohn and a recording of Indian music, was whimsical and occasionally breath-taking, invigorated by Morris's reliance on the shape of the music to create his dancers' movements -- and, not unrelated, his insistence on live music.

Morris created Pacific for a different company, and this performance was the premiere of this choreography with his own troupe. Harrison and Morris collaborated on several works in the 1980s and 90s, and this work sets the third and fourth movements of the composer's piano trio, performed here by violinist Georgy Valtchev, cellist Robert Burkhart, and pianist Colin Fowler. Sections of music for solo violin and combinations of the instruments correspond to groupings of the nine dancers, with the men bare-chested in long skirts and the women in dresses (costumes by Martin Pakledinaz), combining bright colors with white. Stark lighting of glowing colors projected on a rear screen (lighting by James F. Ingalls) was matched to the costumes. The finale of this dance, bringing together all of the dancers, was vibrant and joy-filled, with shifts of steps that corresponded to the metric disorientation in the music, over a constant beating pulse.

Grand Duo, also from the 90s, opens to the somewhat mysterious prelude movement of Harrison's Grand Duo for Violin and Piano, on a stage shrouded in darkness, with the dancers reaching their hands into a beam of light shining across the stage. To the slightly folksy, active-sounding movements that follow, Morris gives a somewhat ritual or tribal feel of dances for his large group of 14 dancers, with the men in skirts or loincloths and the women in colored dresses. The second movement, Stampede, had multi-metric shifts in the movements that matched the music, echoed in the later Pacific, followed by A Round, featuring graceful but painstaking held poses. The finale, the antic Polka, was a wild rumpus of crazy movement, capturing beautifully the verve of Harrison's music, hammered clusters and all.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Mark Morris Dance Group’s many surprises flow naturally at GMU (Washington Post, March 2)

The two dances in between provided the whimsy, especially the brief Tamil Film Songs in Stereo Pas de Deux, the only piece performed to a recording, featuring the sounds of Indian music. Brian Lawson's campy gay dance instructor harasses, belittles, but ultimately affirms the struggling dance student of Stacy Martorana, a welcome moment of levity with some resonance as commentary on how dance is taught.

The longer Words is set to selections from Mendelssohn's various Songs without Words. Here the costumes (pastel tank tops and shorts with belts) and a blanket, carried on and off to cover entrances and exits, suggested a picnic or beach party, as did the playful gestures of some of the dances, something like tennis or another type of game. Again, Morris found movements that were the ideal visual counterpart of the music they accompanied: twirling bodies for the chromatic "spinning wheel" motif of op. 67/4; heavy steps and lowered heads for the "funeral march" (op. 62/3), ending with two dancers finally seeing one another and looking into each other's faces; much of the choreography is a jeu de miroirs, with dancers in paired parallel movements. Most strikingly, in one piece dancers clenched their hands in front of their bodies, making them shudder up and down, when there was the distinctive sound of an authentic cadence over a tonic pedal. The sound, which is distinctive, will now forever be linked to that gesture in my mind.

Silk Road Ensemble

A Playlist without Borders, Silk Road Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma (Sony, 2013)

Robert S. Pohl, One of Yo-Yo Ma’s second acts is a force in its own right
Washington Post, March 2

Having traveled the globe, appeared with the world’s leading orchestras and achieved virtually anything a solo cellist could dream of, Yo-Yo Ma has sought a range of second acts. One is the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of international musicians Ma founded to explore other musical styles and traditions and mingle them with his own. Now that once-experimental ensemble is a recognized force in its own right. On Sunday, the group appeared at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, presented by Washington Performing Arts, as part of its 15th-anniversary tour. How time flies.

Some pieces were more successful than others... [Continue reading]

Silk Road Ensemble
With Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

Congratulations to our own Robert Pohl, who was at this concert last night for Ionarts and ended up covering it for the Washington Post.

Folger and Jacobi's 'Merchant of Venice'

Lo Sposalizio (Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli), King's Consort, R. King (Hyperion, 1998)

Charles T. Downey, In ‘Merchant of Venice,’ authentic music accents the Bard’s history (Washington Post, March 2)

Sometimes the mission of the Folger Consort, to present historically informed performances of early music, overlaps with the specialization of its host institution, the Folger Shakespeare Library. Over the years, the ensemble has collaborated with actor Derek Jacobi and stage director Richard Clifford to present adaptations of the plays of Shakespeare, combining excerpts of the play with appropriate music. After their version of “The Tempest” in 2010, these artists reunited for a program of “The Merchant of Venice,” heard Friday night at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda.

Three traditions came into play in the choice of music,... [Continue reading]

Folger Consort and Piffaro
With Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford, and Samantha Bond
The Merchant of Venice
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Rebecca Ritzel, Concert of late Renaissance music inspired by an unlikely source (Washington Post, February 24)

PREVIOUSLY:
The Fairy Queen (2007)
The Tempest (2010)

Stile Antico @ Ascension and St. Agnes

From the Imperial Court: Music for the House of Hapsburg, Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi, 2014) [Review]

Charles T. Downey, Sounds from olden Europe return to Washington
Washington Post, March 2

Stile Antico, the 12-voice English choir specializing in Renaissance polyphony, will celebrate its 10th anniversary this summer. This relatively young group has given three concerts in Washington since 2011, all met with acclaim from this reviewer. The latest, on Wednesday night at the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes, was in an acoustic closer to the vaulted stone churches for which this austere music was intended.

The group has recorded most of the music in this concert on its most recent disc, devoted to pieces made for the Hapsburg imperial court... [Continue reading]

Stile Antico
Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes

PREVIOUSLY:
2013 | 2011

Perchance to Stream: St. David's 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.

• Get your Welsh on with the St. David's Day Gala featuring baritone Bryn Terfel and the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, recorded at St. David's Hall in Cardiff. [BBC3]


• Listen to a production of Bellini's I Puritani, starring Olga Peretyatko (Elvira), Carlos Alvarez (Riccardo), and others, from the Wiener Staatsoper under conductor Marco Armiliato. [ORF]


• William Christie leads Les Arts Florissants, countertenor Tim Mead, and other soloists in music of Handel composed for Queen Caroline, recorded in 2013 at the Abbey of Ambronay. [ORF]


• Watch Sandrine Piau, Maite Beaumont, and others in a performance of Handel's Alcina, with Christophe Rousset conducting Les Talens Lyriques, recorded in Brussels. [De Munt]


• Listen to the audio of performances from the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. [Alcina | Tamerlano]


• René Clemencic leads the Clemencic Consort in Jacob Obrecht's Missa Sub tuum presidium confugimus, vocum septem, recorded last month in the Wiener Musikverein. [ORF]


• Philippe Herreweghe leads soloists and Collegium Vocale Gent in music of Purcell, recorded at the Cathedral of Wrocław in Poland. [RTBF]


• The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and sopranos Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski perform contemporary songs for voice and small ensemble, by Jonathan Harvey, Babbitt, Adès, Birtwistle, and others, recorded at the Wigmore Hall. [BBC3]


• Pianist Nikolaï Lugansky gives a recital of music by Schubert, Franck, and Tchaikovsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. [France Musique]


• Christoph Eschenbach leads the London Philharmonic Orchestra in music of Beethoven and Schumann, plus Mendelssohn's violin concerto with Ray Chen as soloist, recorded in the Royal Festival Hall. [BBC3]


• Bernard Haitink conducts the Orchestre National de France and clarinetist Patrick Messina in Mozart's clarinet concerto and Sibelius's ninth symphony. [France Musique]


• Murray Perahia joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under Bernard Haitink, for the Schumann piano concerto, plus music of Purcell, Steven Stucky, and Brahms. [ORF]


• From the Barbican Hall, Leif Segerstam conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Bruckner's eighth symphony, plus motets by Bach and Bruckner, with James O'Donnell conducting the BBC Singers. [BBC3]


• Baiba Skride joins the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, under conductor Kazuki Yamada, for the Brahms violin concerto, plus Albert Roussel's suite from Bacchus et Ariane. [RTBF]


• Roger Norrington conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in symphonies by Haydn (no. 49) and Beethoven (no. 6), plus Mozart's D minor piano concert with Lars Vogt as soloist. [BBC3]


• Gustavo Dudamel leads a concert by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, recorded last April in Lucerne, in music of Beethoven and Stravinsky. [ORF | Part 2]


• From the Anvil in Basingstoke, violinist Viktoria Mullova plays the Brahms violin concerto with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, plus music by Smetana and Dvorak. [BBC3]


• Pianist Steven Osborne joins the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, under conductor Douglas Boyd, for music by Mendelssohn and Mozart. [France Musique]


• Les Surprises and La Main Harmonique perform sacred music by Clérambault, Brossard, Charpentier, Gesualdo, and Lasso. [France Musique]


• Concentus Musicus Wien, under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, plays the last three symphonies of Mozart. [RTBF]


• Organist Iveta Apkalna joins the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, under conductor George Pehlivanian, for Khachaturian's third symphony. [RTBF]


• Pianist Anastasya Terenkova gives a recital of music by Bach and Alessandro Marcello in the Auditorium du Musée d'Orsay. [France Musique]


• Pianist Alexander Melnikov and conductor Teodor Currentzis join the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, for music by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. [ORF]


• From the Présences Festival, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France performs music by Gordon, De La Fuente, Carter, and Rizo Salom. [France Musique]


• Martyn Brabbins conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with violinist Jack Liebeck, in music of Beethoven and Bruck. [ORF]


• Listen to a concert by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, recorded in January, with violinist Christian Tetzlaff and conductor Daniel Harding and music by Beethoven and Berg. [France Musique]


• A recital by violinist Nicola Benedetti and pianist Alexei Grynyuk, with music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, and Elgar. [RTBF]


• Pianist Aaron Pilsan plays a recital of music by Bach, Schubert, Widmann, and Schubert, recorded last month at the Wiener Konzerthaus. [ORF]


• Four pianists -- Vanessa Wagner, Marie Vermeulin, Cédric Tiberghien, and Wilhem Latchoumia -- perform music by Schönberg, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Varèse, recorded at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. [France Musique]


• Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and conductor join the Orchestre National de France for music by Bizet, Pierné, Debussy, and Ravel. [France Musique]


• Sofi Jeannin conducts La Maîtrise de Radio France and the Orchestre des jeunes du Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris, in Ibrahim Maalouf's Au pays d'Alice.... [France Musique]


• Pianist Nicholas Angelich plays a recital of music by Haydn, Beethoven, and Schumann. [RTBF]


• Have another listen to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Mozart's Don Giovanni. [France Musique]