Sunday, 8.15.10, 5:00 am
September in Music
September in Music rings in the new season, amid a beautiful fall and dotted with very skippable Gala concerts. But first a little more live music with film: On September 10th and 11th (7.30PM), the Lord of the Rings installment Return of the King will be screened at the Filene Center of the Wolf Trap. It’s the kind of pick-up orchestra brouhaha that I’m tempted to crinkle my nose at, but in truth, it’s far more impressive than cheesy. And Classical WETA’s own, regionally beloved Deb Lamberton will regale you with a Pre-Performance Discussion if you come an hour early.
The Washington National Opera still exists, and might continue to do so—in some form or another—if enough music lovers are interested in the shows it puts on. Through most of September it will treat us to Verdi. A mile-high production of Un Ballo in Maschera is headed for Washington, directed by James Robinson, Artistic Director at the Opera Theatre of St.Louis, who initially created it for the Colorado Opera. From the production pictures I’ve seen, it looks very well mannered, singers dutifully clad in originalish costumes, with little puppets livening up the set.
With Salvatore Licitra the WNO has managed to get a real star to perform, too. Admittedly, I find him dramatically untalented, utterly unmusical, and altogether painful to watch (even his erstwhile mentor, Riccardo Muti doesn’t bother with him anymore) and I’m no particular fan of his sturdy tenor, either. (Between his fine Cavaradossi in Washington [2005] and a ridiculous Radamès in Munich [2009], the decline is notable.) But a friend, colleague, and former Intendant who knows infinitely more about Verdi voices than I do attests him to still—despite the aforementioned shortcomings—possess “one of the most important voices in opera, currently.” Hear for yourself (or not); Licitra performs on the 11th, 14th, 17th, 29th, 22nd, and 25th; the other Gustavus III, Frank Porretta, on the 16th and 20th. Check the WNO website for times.
Jump on the countertenor craze and check out Damien Guillon singing Italian cantatas from the time of the castrato Farinelli at La Maison Française. He will be accompanied by Claire Gratton on the cello and Kevin Manent-Navratil on the harpsichord. Dates are Thursday, September 16th, and Friday September 17th at 7.30PM.
Mahler’s most ‘difficult’ Symphony—to my ears at least—and also one of his most atmospheric, is the Seventh. Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will tackle the marvelous, baffling, and (compared to other Mahler scores) rarely performed work at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. A mandatory trip for any self-respecting Mahlerian. Performances on Friday, September 24th at The Meyerhoff and on Saturday, September 25th at Strathmore (8PM). Also played in that concert is the Mahler-arranged, organ-fortified mélange of a Bach Suite, a work that doesn’t at all fit our current musical Zeitgeist of original intent, Urtext, and authenticity. It’s a piece easily frowned upon, but that would be taking the attitude I derided when I said that the HIP-ideology “kills off improvisatory interpretation” last week. Mahler-arrangements might not be ‘improvisatory’, but they are wonderful anachronisms that can and should be taken for what they are. And especially in baroque music, I can’t find any possible objections to the approach of aggrandizing or romantization. It was Mahler’s way of declaring his love and admiration for Bach and he even prepared his continuo piano to ‘sound like a harpsichord’ at the premiere performance with the New York Philharmonic. (Whether the Mahler anniversary means that seemingly every Symphony played by the BSO has to be done in the Mahler-arrangements is a different question, and not for now.)
The Post-Classical Ensemble has established itself as one of the most original and stimulating musical groups in the area; a veritable enrichment to our cultural scene. Their latest project revolves around Gershwin and the Gershwin perception in Russia. Two Russian pianists (Genadi Zagor and Vakhtang Kodanashvili) support them in their venture that will include all the biggest hits, the Rhapsody in Blue, the Three Preludes, the Piano Concerto in F, and the Cuban Overture. The performance on Friday, September 24th and 25th (8PM) at the Clarice Smith Center.
I don’t actually know Dutch harpsichordist Jacques Ogg (artistic director of the Twin City based Lyra Baroque Orchestra or viola da gambist Kenneth Slowik (yet). But I’m obviously, easily intrigued from afar by their program of Bach, Bach, and Bach at the National Museum of American History, presented by the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society and the first of five such Bac(c)hanals. Sunday, September 26th, 7.30PM.
A more famous gambist graces DC the next day; on Monday, September 27th, 8PM, Jordi Savall will hit the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater with the Tembembe Ensemble Continuo to perform “Folías Criollas”, music from the New World—the same he has already recorded for Alia Vox.
Hello Christoph Eschenbach, and welcome! You may like his conducting (I generally do) or not, but there is no denying that we finally—pace Antal Doráti—have a conductor of real stature and caliber in Washington. It’s up to Eschenbach and the NSO to turn out world class performances, of course, but the opening program is already an exclamation mark. Not so much because of the Beethoven Ninth, though it’s an obvious and appropriate choice for the occasion, but because of the inclusion of Matthias Pintscher “Hérodiade – Fragmente”. Matthias Pintscher is not an easy composer to embrace, but one of the more important contemporary voices and it’s good for any interested, engaged audience to have the opportunity to hear for themselves. Let’s hope that’s the kind of top-tier orchestra programming that the Washington audience wants—rather than just wishing for an animated juke box of all the greatest hits. Performances at the Kennedy Center take place Thursday, September 30th (7PM) through Saturday, October 2nd (8PM on the weekend).
Also: the Rachel Franklin Quartet’s mix of jazz and classical at the Mansion at Strathmore sounds neat. Also Thursday, September 30th, at 7.30PM. 
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Sunday, 8.8.10, 1:00 pm
Free Bach from the HIPsters (Part 1)
Our enjoyment from conductors and ensembles like Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, and Rinaldo Alessandrini, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and the Quatuor Mosaique shows us how much historicism has enriched our musical experiences.
But it has done so by effectively, severely curtailing them, by stigmatizing alternative approaches interpretations. How? Because historicism, as useful and as necessary a concept enabling restorative work it is, happens to go against the very grain of the music it purports to save: It kills off improvisatory interpretation. While it removes layers of accumulated bad habits called ‘tradition’, it assigns a new rigidity in how music is to be consumed which takes away the freedom—expected, anticipated, and encouraged—to add, adapt, and alter music to circumstance, ability, whim, and current fashion.
HIP restaurateurs have, in saving the original substance, unwittingly killed the spirit of early music. Akin to the Greek statues that became white marble perfections that have less in common with the (colorful) original than it does with our projections of presumed purity. I cannot tell how much an achingly earnest, painstakingly researched, historical instrument-using, pitch-adjusted small ensemble performance of a baroque work shares in common with the original. But perhaps it isn’t more than our belief how the Barberini Faun ought to look (just like the Roman copy: white marble) has in common with the (speculative) original, completely covered in ‘garish’ colors.
This is not the beginning of an article bashing historically informed performances or its practitioners. I love them. The interpretive laziness they’ve put an end to, alone! Thank goodness for the Bach cantatas of Philippe Herreweghe, the Mozart operas of René Jacobs, the Haydn Creation of McCreesh, Adrian Chandler’s Vivaldi, Marc Minkowski’s Handel, or John Elliot Gardiner’s Brahms. It is not their wonderful work that has done any damage per se, but the historicism behind it that makes us more receptive to the efforts of the aforementioned and less so to other, different concepts. The open range of genuinely contemporary (as opposed to eternal) emotions expressed through an old artwork is now only present in opera stagings. But dare anyone mess with the music; the perpetrators would have a pack of critics on their back.
Like a new species set free in an alien environment, historicism ceases to be enriching and begins to be stifling when there is a trend to de-diversify in the music world, when projects that might once have felt natural are now not undertaken. We still play Bach on the piano, of course, but where is the Matthew Passion with Christian Thielemann?*[1] The thought alone would seem absurd to some. But might he not also feel the urge to play this apex of Western musical achievement? (He does.) And in a way that his musical conscience would dictate him? I, for one, want to hear that, because I think we’d be the poorer for not having heard it.
Of course it would be radically different from Konrad Junghänel’s. It would have to be. But is it any less ‘valid’ for that? Historicism says yes, I say no. And yet we don’t have a Thielemann Matthew Passion, or Barenboim Monteverdi, or Handel with James Levine. And Simon Rattle’s Haydn gets mocked. An anti-Zeitgeist baroque or even classical project could count on ruthless criticism these days, and the dismissive attitude (even before any actual concert had taken place) could be bet large sums of money on. Even Haydn and Mozart are slowly disappearing from regular Philharmonic programs, which is why it is Dennis Russell Davies’ declared mission to ‘wrest [them] from the jaws of the period performers. (See also “Why Haydn Should Be Mandatory”.) As long as the historicist attitude is as prevalent as it is now, we are depriving ourselves of a constantly rejuvenated classical music scene where works are not only re-interpreted into the HIP, but all conceivable directions. It’d be an important first or second step after we have learned not to take classical music so darn seriously. (Right after we re-learn to clap after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. But that’s a topic for a different day.)
Without comment, I would like to quote Gustav Mahler on the subject of Bach performance, as he put it to Natalie Bauer Lechner in 1901 (as quoted in Henri Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler – Vienna: The Years of Challenge):
Bach often reminds me of those stone effigies lying with folded hands on top of their tombs, and which always move me because they suggest the continuation of life beyond the limits of existence. They seem to be fervently desiring the survival of the soul, and to believe in it now more than they did during their lifetime. Bach, too, has something so petrified about him that only a small minority are capable of making him come alive. This is because of all those bad performances of his works in which nothing conjures up the great cantor playing to himself on the harpsichord. Instead of true Bach, his interpreters give the public nothing but a wretched skeleton. The chords that were intended to give this marvelous fullness of body are simply left out, as though Bach had provided a figured bass without rhyme or reason. And yet it must be played, and what a magnificent roar those rising and falling chords produce. This is how you should perform […] all the Cantatas, and you would be amazed at the sound they would produce…
[I would like to perform the Matthew Passion, enhancing the polyphony by placing an orchestra and a chorus on each side of the stage.] I would place a third chorus, to represent the congregation of the faithful, the people, somewhere else, and in addition, a boys’ choir as high up as possible, around the organ, so that their voices would seem to come from heaven. You would see what an effect it would have, sharing out questions and answers, instead of having it all run together higgledy-piggledy, as they usually do nowadays. But for that I would need a different hall from that of the Musikverein, perhaps a huge drill hall like the one… where I conducted Paulus with choruses from all the neighboring towns.
Almost more telling are excerpts from the reviews of 1901 Philharmonic concerts not conducted by Mahler—yet are all about Mahler, by negative analogy:
To be sure, [conductor Josef Helmesberger] does not present all of Beethoven, but neither does he try to present anything other or more than Beethoven. The audience would rather complete the picture in its imagination than have to remove extraneous elements from it. A portrait from which a few of the sitter’s features are missing will always seem a better likeness and more successful than even the cleverest of images or reproductions containing the slightest foreign element. I am both willing and able to hear more than is offered me with my inner ear, but I cannot, even with the utmost good will, cut out anything that I actually hear… An atmosphere of profound peace pervaded the hall, every personal element, in so far as it did not come from Beethoven, seemed to have been erased, and we all experienced perfect happiness, as though we had left our nerves behind in the cloakroom.
[1] Sergiu Celibidache, Thielemann’s predecessor with the Munich Philharmonic, still got to perform a Mass in B Minor; but its release on CD is a mere footnote in the Celibidache discography; a curiosity for the devoted Celi-collector.
Sunday, 8.1.10, 7:10 am
New Releases: CDs
The Neglect Within: Early Marc Blitzstein on CD
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Marc Blitzstein only lived 58 years, but they were plenty eventful. Born in 1905 to well-to-do parents in Philadelphia, his musical talent was obvious early on. He studied piano with a pupil of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, and—briefly—composition with Nadia Boulanger and then Arnold Schoenberg. He snubbed political artists like Kurt Weill, but later became a communist party member himself and composed political songs. He was best buddies with Leonard Bernstein. He married ‘properly’ but was openly gay. For whatever it’s worth, he’s been played by Hank Azaria in Tim Robbins rather idealized film “Crade Will Rock”.
In part thanks to the latter, he might now be best known for his musical-cum-opera “The Cradle Will Rock”, which made more of a political splash, than an artistic one, at the time. After that deliciously controversial success in 1936, he wrote largely for the stage and screen, which might have culminated in a commissioned opera for the MET in 1960 (Sacco and Vanzetti), had he not been meted out his early demise by three sailors he propositioned; bludgeoned after a tryst in Martinique.
“First Life”, the CD release by Other Minds (a “new music community” not-for-profit organization), showcases not this late output, but three important earlier piano works and his two forgotten string quartets. Blitzstein at his most (neo) classical, if you will. His Piano Percussion Music is more rout than romp; a vigorous, spiky piece that delights in slamming the piano lid shut a few times, courtesy pianist (and radio-host) Sarah Cahill. Stravinsky is never far away as a model, and with Antheil the work shares a kinship of spirit. The one-movement Piano Sonata that precedes it by two years, with fewer neoclassical influences, isn’t exactly the masterpiece that Berg’s op.1 represents. But what a striking work of the then twenty-two year old composer, all the same: A bit of a muddle and a happy mess, unashamedly uncomfortable and in-your-face.
The “Italian” String Quartet (1930) sounds like ill digested early Schoenberg—and I mean that as a whole-hearted compliment. The early (tonal) Schoenberg quartets are marvels in their own late-romantic right, and even an ill-digested version would still bring askew gratification and enchantment to the inclined listener. The Del Sol String Quartet does excellent work in keeping the meandering lines a cohesive whole; getting the balance right between long, if broken, romantic lines and a chugging propulsive beat.
Obviously there’s a certain amount of sameness to the second quartet, the “Serenade for String Quartet”. Three movements, each five minutes and a few seconds long, each with the tempo indication and title: Largo. “Largo, largo, largo” wasn’t so much a joke as Blitzstein’s rebellion against ever shortening attention spans. The initial audience wouldn’t have it and expressed disapproval. Either to appease or hose future audiences, Blitzstein changed the tempo markings to “Allegro Moderato”, “Larghetto”, and “Andante Maestoso” at some point. It’s a dense and unwieldy work, but with enough going on to hold—and reward—the listener’s attention. This isn’t background music and it’s certainly not easy-listening. But for those with interest, patience, and some proclivity toward art-through-effort, Marc Blitzstein reveals himself in this tasteful compilation as one of the finest American composers of second rank.
Wednesday, 7.28.10, 6:00 am
Schumann From Many Angles (Pedal Piano / Organ)
From the very early days of Audite, back when it was a local German label with a small insider following and already a reputation for fine sound, comes this now re-released album of Robert Schumann rarities: His (complete) work for Pedal Piano performed on the Walcker organ (from around Schumann’s time, 1846) by Andreas Rothkopf and recorded in 1988.
The idea of performing works written for pedal piano on an organ is, of course, that the whole point of the pedal piano—a contraption of pedals and strings attached to an upright or grand piano, like the pedal harpsichord before it—was to enable the performer to practice organ playing without having to sit on an organ in the first place. Gounod and Alkan, organist-composers, also composed specifically for the instrument, but the argument for performing the music on an organ is an obvious one.
Debussy was so impressed with Schumann’s Studies for Pedal Piano: Six Pieces in Canonic Form op.56 that he transcribed it for two pianos, making it far more practical to play after the pedal piano fell hopelessly out of fashion towards the end of the 20th century. Christoph Eschenbach and Tzimon Barto Smith perform them as a brilliant filler on their terrific Schumann album reviewed here. (Scroll below the interview with Helmchen to get there.) It goes to show that there is perhaps an extra quality in hearing these works on a piano (pedals or not), after all.
Still, Marie-Claire Alain-student Andreas Rothkopf makes a very fine case for the organ version. The playing is not just impeccable, as one can expect from a German professor of Organ—it is playful, flexible, jocular even, where the music permits. And that cannot necessarily be expected from a German professor of Organ. The instrument is used in all its colors, the Sketches for Pedal Piano op.58 to the above mentioned Studies to Schumann’s only piece originally intended for the organ: Six Fugues on B A C H for Organ or Piano Pedal, op.60. If the Schumann years inspires you to explore the outer fringes of Schumann (not all of which I feel particularly excited about), this might prove to be one of the most enjoyable fringes you’ll come across.
Also on WETA: Robert Schumann, Incompetent Genius?
Saturday, 7.24.10, 5:00 am
August in Music
Is there an August in Music, outside of Salzburg? (Which is incidentally where I’ll be and report back from.) There are hints of music, and there are hybrid attractions that all seem to involve film in some way.
It starts with “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony” which is apparently a show that travels the world (and has, for years), from Sydney to Copenhagen—among other stops—to DC, or nearby, seeing that it puts up its tents (again) at the Filene Center at the Wolf Trap on August 6th and 7th at 8.30PM. Awfully cute and bound to be widiculously wambunctious, the old classics are screened on the lawn and the Summer-NSO will ‘accompany’ live. Unfortunately Air & Space Conductor, Wing Commander (and would-be Supreme Bunny-Master) Emil de Cou will not conduct (the show’s creator George Daughetery is at the helm), but that should not tinge the scent of cartoonishly musical carrots with (too much) disappointment.
Then follows the more adult-themed Salomé at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Charles Bryant’s lavish, over-the-top (-less) 1923 silent film starring Alla Nazimova. Live music is provided by the Silent Orchestra, a troupe of unheard-of skills. The screening will take place on Saturday, August 7th, at 3PM and it’s free admission.
Some admin-feathers were apparently ruffled when I suggested (July in Music) that it needed a certain element of Opera-desperation to check out the Wolf Trap Opera Company schedule, but that’s of course always a matter of standards, expectations, and purpose. If we shadows have offended, let me point out now that a perfectly wonderful production there certainly has its place in a cultural calendar, especially since you wouldn’t go there expecting a Salzburg-Lulu or MET-Onegin. Which is all by way of saying that you can see Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream there—on Friday August 13th, Tuesday the 17th (8PM, both) and Sunday the 15th at 3PM. Worth alone for seeing how Britten was able to improve on Shakespeare with well wielded scissors.
Somehow a genuine classical performance slipped into sweltering August—it must be premonitions of September that you will be hearing, when Joo Young Oh, a former child-star violin protégée whose career is trying to catch up with the promises of youth, performs at the Kennedy Center. He’ll perform a fairly conventional competition-violinist’s recital of Tartini, Saint-Saëns, and Sarasate (Faust-Fantasy via Gounod!)—but one work stands out as being of potentially particular interest: Nathan Milstein’s “Paganiniana for Solo Violin”. The name probably says it all, but whatever this classiest of violinists of the 20th century made of it, it ought to be interesting. It can’t help but to intrigue… and that curiosity can be cured on Saturday, August 28th, at 7.30PM at the Terrace Theater. While there, just overlook the program’s corny name, “The Passion of the Violin”. (Didn’t Joshua Bell trademark that?)
Wynton Marsalis is not my favorite jazz musician, mostly because I have a feeling that his jazz is to jazz what retrogressive productions are to opera; a museal approach, not a constant search for (timeless) truths in new guises. But that’s really just a vague sense, not a meticulously worked-out theory, and probably based on my overhearing Keith Jarrett (whose creative output I have always adored) saying something to the effect. (Of course, Marsalis was also famously dissed by Miles Davis on stage, back in the days.) I didn’t feel like getting into an argument with the Jazz-master himself, though, when I reluctantly went in for an interview session with him earlier this year in Abu Dhabi. Turns out that he’s sensitive on the issue—we got in a tussle on the meaning of the word ‘progressive’: he thinks calling some Jazz “progressive” implies other (his?) Jazz being ‘regressive’ or ‘backward’ to which I replied that he was now talking semantics, not Jazz. That started a repartee that he seemingly enjoyed, the didactic tone in his voice went out and in came a guarded wit reveling in spirited banter more than sycophantic chit-chat.
Since he is incredibly good at what he does (and in practice musical quality tends to win out over ideology), the concert that followed was the unexpected high point of my Abu Dhabi Festival adventure and it’s the reason that the second silent film showing this month—where he and his 10 piece band perform—can be easily recommended. The (new) film is “LOUIS” by Dan Pritzker, set in New Orleans in 1907, and an homage to Louis Armstrong, one of Marsalis’ heroes. It’s Marsalis’ music that will feature—alongside the wonderful piano music of New Orleanian Louis Moreau Gottschalk performed by Cecile Licad. It takes place at the Music Center at Strathmore on Saturday, August 28th, at 8PM.
Saturday, 7.17.10, 8:00 pm
Remembering Charles Mackerras
At the age of 84, Charles Mackerras—Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras with his full name—has died last Wednesday in London, the city he has called home for over sixty years.
Charles—Sir Charles—Mackerras brought Czech composers to a whole generation of western audiences. When high quality recordings of especially Janáček and Dvořák’s operas were few and far between in the West, it was the American-born Australian who supplied us with gold standards for Katja Kabanova, Jenůfa, and The Macropulos Case—first with western forces and casts, then later, after Eastern Europe became free, with native speakers (for Supraphon) in the Czech Republic and also in English (for Chandos). As it turned out, his studies with Václav Talich in Prague had paid even greater dividends for Janáček than Mackerras… if we take for granted today that his masterpieces are part of the canon, operatic and (to a lesser extent) symphonic, it is in some, very large if inestimable, part the legacy of Charles Mackerras.
When historically informed Mozart was still in the ascendency, Mackerras brought us the complete Mozart symphonies on Telarc, with a chamber orchestra, full of unheard-of spirit, and devoid of ideology. For those reared on Mozart with Karl Böhm—lovely though those are in their own way, this was a shot of adrenaline for the listeners and for Mozart alike. Music always spoke more strongly with Mackerras than ideology; he wasn’t a man of fad or trends for their own sake, but he was always abreast of the latest developments in music making. His first Mozart cycle was an obvious example, but in their own, understated way, his second Beethoven Symphony cycle (released on Hyperion) and his second take on Mozart Symphonies (on Linn) made that point more genially-forcefully, still. “A charming and subtle triumph”, I wrote about the last release.
His Brahms, among the first to be veer away from the established heavy, German romantic style (Symphonies and Serenades) was eye-opening and raised a few eyebrows. When he performed the Beethoven Symphonies at the Edinburgh Festival, they were very warmly received. Hyperion was bright in getting the tapes and the rights and released the complete cycle into the midst of a catalogue teeming with Beethoven cycles and a time where new and re-releases were abundant. With the odds against it (Mackerras’ first Beethoven cycle, although the first to use the new Bärenreiter Edition that was part of the selling point for Abbado’s, Rattle’s, and Zinman’s cycles, went straight to EMI’s super bargain label, CfP), this second cycle caused a small and deserved sensation.
Charles Mackerras, who started in music as an oboist, was at home in opera and the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan just as much as he was in the concert hall; he accompanied singers as ably as he did instrumentalists like Alfred Brendel (he even conducted Brendel’s farewell concerts) and always with the self-effacing ease borne of complete mastery and subtle confidence. Although never a flashy conductor, never one to hog or even particularly enjoy the limelight, his splendid reputation made him a consistent draw for record buyers—and record labels responded: With almost 400 recordings on more than two dozen different labels still in the catalogue (and several planned projects now canceled), there are few conductors living (or dead) who have left such a mark in the world of recorded sound.
With his particular penchant and talent for the Czech, Bohemian, and Viennese world of classical music it’s surprising that there is not much Mahler from Mackerras; Das Knaben Wunderhorn on Virgin is the only commercial disc in print… (his Mahler 1st with the Royal Liverpool PO is currently deleted) but a Mahler 6th released by the BBC Music Magazine strongly suggests that he would have succeeded with style in that repertoire as well.
The vast catalog of recordings assures that the memory of Charles Mackerras will live on for generations. I enjoy all of the above mentioned recordings greatly and they will be played often. But the one Mackerras-recording I cherish the most, the one I have been playing since I first heard that he lost his battle to cancer, is that of the Summer Tale by Josef Suk, glorious, sunny, and genial as Mackerras’ career itself.
Monday, 7.12.10, 8:00 am
The Politics of Opera: Kent Nagano Leaves Munich
Music Director Kent Nagano has announced on Wednesday that he will not renew his contract with the Bavarian State Opera beyond the summer of 2013. Even if the decision doesn’t come as a surprise, it is big news in Germany’s classical music scene and a delicious little scandal in Munich. There’s a reason Nagano’s temperately worded statement takes a dig at the tensions between culture and politics that have been running high in the capital of Bavaria.
“It’s not the fact that he is leaving, that upsets me”, says opera critic Klaus J. Kalchschmid, “but the fact that he was forced to announce it now, by deliberate leaks to the press.” A few days earlier, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the local rag, had suggested that Nagano received a call from the Bavarian Secretary for Science, Research, and Art Wolfgang Heubisch, a dentist by trade, wherein Nagano was told that he would be at liberty to choose the moment when he would announce ‘his decision’ not to renew his contract. The indiscretion of course meant that Nagano was no longer at liberty to wait with the announcement—even if his departure had been an open secret. If the operation was designed to let Nagano save face and gracefully exit, it failed miserably thanks to the botched execution.
His official statement was released today and the Intendant of the Bavarian State Opera, Nikolaus Bachler, has declined comment, pointing out that Nagano’s statement spoke to the matter eloquently enough. Bachler does well to defuse this slightly out-of-the-routine announcement, because there is no point for him to be the focus of an operation designed to save face. Mostly Nagano’s… to a lesser extent the Opera’s and the politics behind it.
In light of the cultural and political developments of the recent months in Munich…, I have decided that I will not be available for an extension of my contract as GM of the Bavarian State Opera beyond the summer of 2013. With this decision I wish to avert any harm from the State Opera that might be caused by a protracted succession debate and the subsequent in-house tensions.
The full text and translation of Nagano’s letter can be read here.
First of all: Letting Nagano take the initiative in this allows him to lay out the situation in a way that suggests it is he who chooses not to renew his contract beyond 2013. As if, let’s be honest, that had ever been his to decide. Or even much of a viable option. It wasn’t; anyone with half a toe dipped into the operatic waters of Munich knew well enough that Nagano was not the man of choice for Klaus Bachler, that he had not connected with the audience in a particularly meaningful way, that he didn’t perform the music dear to the orchestra’s tradition with the enthusiasm they would have preferred.
Nagano, dubbed “the Californian Fridge” by the more disgruntled elements in Munich’s opera crowd, hadn’t been one for eliciting raw emotions from the orchestra; his Strauss was often coolly flowing (not seldom mistaken for glib), too coolly for the Strauss-towners. His Verdi, never mind Puccini, didn’t satisfy the Italophiles among the crowd and administration. Munich thinking itself the northernmost Italian town, and Klaus Bachler being a fan—of Verdi in particular—noted with slight dismay. His Wagner didn’t conform to comfortably held stereotypes about Wagner, either. None of that should have come as a surprise when he was hired, though.
Nagano should have insisted, as the boss, to answer questions in English, rather than looking weak by struggling through them in modest German.
The cosmopolitan Californian’s cool and reserved style, musically and socially, never quite fit the Munich scene and despite demonstrative applause and standing ovations at the recent performance of Don Giovanni, he wasn’t enthusiastically embraced by the audience and less so critics. Klaus Kalchschmid, who wrote about Saturday’s Don Giovanni in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the overture was shapeless and that tension was lacking throughout, suggests that it’s no wonder that someone who has a hard time with Mozart or Tchaikovsky also has a hard time establishing a broad fan base.
But it wasn’t really his opera conducting—in any case often superb, such as his thrillingly well executed Wozzeck—that spelled doom to a prolonged Munich career, nor his concert repertoire conducting, which I thought rather more wanting, despite positive outliers and great outings on CD. It was a clash of personalities with the Intendant who had not chosen Nagano in the first place.
Nagano is a quiet guy, not prone to take charge for the sake of taking charge. And Nikolaus Bachler, on the other hand is a wily mover and shaker, who laps up and thrives on a healthy degree of conflict, who charms and schmoozes, and likes decisiveness and being decisive. Sitting next to him in press conferences, Nagano looked like a school boy, timid and intimidated—even though he can be quite tough behind the scenes. (The situation is exactly the opposite of the Munich Philharmonic, where a larger-than-life Christian Thielemann had to be seated two places apart from their mousy, cowering Intendant, so that the latter wouldn’t look too pathetic.)
A considerable mistake of Nagano’s, I think, was that he insisted on answering questions in his execrable, faintly spoken, often unintelligible German. Bad German is, consciously and subconsciously, taken as a sign of weakness (and worse) by any German. Thus limited by language, his answers seldom addressed the actual question. The contrast to the former actor Bachler, who exceeds at communication and keeping pesky journalists down with rebuttals that are well beyond the writers’ intellectual or verbal capacities to counter, only made Nagano look worse. No one likes a wimp. He should have insisted, as the boss, to answer questions in English. If the local jornos didn’t like: “Tough. Go learn a second language.” Alas, he stumbled on… and never got to communicate his strengths sufficiently, never got out of the defensive, never forcefully showed Munich why he was so good for them. Which he could well have, because he was good for Munich.
Seven years of Nagano were a gain for the opera and for Munich. To have had him was good; to have him move on is just as good.
The Munich opera audience is a continental, conservative, stuffy crowd, easily pleased with reoccurring favorites and gossip, and dispiritingly uncurious. They do go along with racy productions, because they love the faux-outrage afterwards, and they like to self-congratulate themselves for enduring the occasional audacious programming. A few journalists are apparently of the opinion that Salieri would constitute adventurous-rewarding programming; perhaps because they liked Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. But enthused individuals apart, en gros the audience is not really interested in exploring the repertoire-greats that are beyond those already established 80 years ago or not German. Strauss, Wagner, the Italians we already have—why would we need more? When Nagano brought Poulenc’s Dialogues (superbly performed, excellently staged, warmly-efficiently conducted), it was considered downright radical, certainly novel stuff; one of the greatest operas of the 20th century… yet unknown here, just as most of Britten’s œvre isn’t on opera goers horizons, or Stravinsky or Prokofiev or Shostakovich. Nagano was—or could have been—the man to do that. To the extent he succeeded he probably wasn’t given due credit.
In any case, the seven years (still a considerable artistic reign, in these short-lived days) under Nagano were a gain for the opera and for Munich. To have had him was good; to have him move on is just as good. More inspired playing from the orchestra certainly can’t hurt in the future—and there was one conductor, already approached and openly suggested as the ideal successor, who did just that: inspire them to consistent world class performances. The young man, like Nagano formerly with an opera job in Berlin (but at the Komische Oper), conducted Jenůfa in Munich and charmed everyone from the Intendant to the janitor, musicians, administrators, assistant producers, audience, and critics alike. Even those who didn’t like Barbara Frey’s subtly-generous production fell instantly in love. (In my recap of the Summer Festival I wrote of the second run of the production: “Kirill Petrenko elicited, again, the most emotional performance from the Bavarian State Orchestra I’ve heard this season: seething, harrowing, and placid in turns.”) It is clear that Bachler, was he to stay at the opera (his contract, too, runs out in 2013), was not going to do it for another couple years with Kent Nagano, but someone who better matches his artistic vision, is more enthusiastic about embracing repertoire that Bachler, too, would like to see championed. And because this is Europe, where opera is socialized, the politicians are important, too—no matter how little they know of the subject; no matter whether they could tell Rossini from Monteverdi or not.
High level appointments like the MD of the Opera are the one field where the Cultural Apparatschiks get to enjoy a hint of the glamour of the arts; where they can mingle with people who actually know the business, hoping, perhaps, that a little will rub off. The Nagano-Bachler mess was the making of two successive CSU ministers; Hans Zehetmair (exceptionally competent and cultured, but not knowledgeable of opera), then Thomas Goppel (a teacher-cum-lifetime politician). Now a dentist will call the shots (which has the potential for a great insider joke); Wolfgang Heubisch from the FDP (the alleged classical liberal party that loves subsidizing art because its rich clientele loves subsidized art—incidentally also nicknamed the “Dentists’ Party”) will have to be made to look as though he came up with the brilliant plan to hire Kirill Petrenko. (Behind the scenes, at all times, was and remains Toni Schmidt, the undersecretary in the arts ministry with cultural ambitions.) Bachler, surely a politicking genius, knows so much and will allow Heubisch’s ego to be thus stroked if that means the opera can take the right conductor under contract… i.e. if he, Bachler, can get his way. It should suit Munich well enough, since this means that the actual decisions can be taken by someone who is well enough equipped to make a good decision.
On his way out, he takes a well deserved dig at the incompetence of culture-politics in Bavaria and Munich.
Not all critics in town agree that Bachler’s contract should necessarily be renewed, though. Citing Bachler’s controversial brand of aesthetic decisions for the opera house, musicologist, professor, and journalist Dr. Klaus Peter Richter thinks that having made the future of the Bavarian Opera an either-or situation where one of the two, Bachler or Nagano, would stay on, was yet another mistake. He wouldn’t mind seeing a fresh start on both positions, seeing Bachler’s weaknesses chiefly in his desire to make opera more interesting by adding ever more extra-musical stimuli and life-style glitz, a strategy Richter says will necessarily exhaust itself sooner or later and doesn’t bear satisfactory results.
An editorial writer at KlassikInfo.de, a local arts website, cites all the productions he didn’t like in evidence that Bachler should be looked at critically. A fair enough point, but tragically undermined by the patently absurd suggestion that the minister (!!!) should tell Bachler how to get more satisfactory productions onto the stage. (Satisfactory presumably meaning that they please the author in question.) Such naïve faith in the government to dictate great art, one might point out, hasn’t been so freely admitted for many decades in Germany.
In any case, Nagano’s ‘decision’ to rule out the extension of his contract is the first move in this game of politico-operatic chess, letting the king-who-wasn’t exit the board reasonably gracefully before he is check-mated in a messy game of attrition that Nagano was never going to win. What is nice that on his way out, he not only tries to save face, he also takes a well deserved dig at the incompetence of culture-politics in Bavaria and Munich. The Gärtnerplatz-story is too much inside-baseball to comment on here; but the Thielemann–affair cruelly exposed the ineptitude of city clerks playing with their culture-toys. His early exit strategy, perhaps coming at the suggestion from above, now spares us the look behind the scenes of such appointments… which is like being spared to watch sausage being made, before eating it. In this case, we’ll just wait for 2013, close the eyes, and enjoy the music. Until then I pray that Nagano will get to waken Munich to a few 20th century opera gems that, on its own, it would be too lazy to bother with. Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges (coupled with Zemlinksy’s Der Zwerg) and Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise in the 2010/11 are a good, ambitious, start to go out with an educational bang.
Listen to opera on WETA via Viva La Voce, WETA’s internet and High Definition Radio Opera Station.
Wednesday, 7.7.10, 12:00 pm
Mahler Today
Mahler. I’ve gotten much out of my system when WETA let me preempt the double anniversary hoopla (2010 his 150th anniversary; 2011 it will have been 100 years since Mahler died) last fall during our Mahler Month. A post today is appropriate though, because today, 150 years ago, Mahler was born. Aside, there’s always more of Mahler, and like any proper addiction, it’s impossible not to return to it. I have, and I’ve traveled to meet Mahler half-way where necessary, and he will be the subject of several more columns in the next months.
You don’t have to go to Amsterdam to hear great Mahler—but it helps. When I heard Daniele Gatti’s beyond-stunning Mahler Fourth Symphony with the Munich Philharmonic in February this year, I knew that there would be no excuse to miss his Mahler in Amsterdam. That was going to be the Fifth Symphony, with the Concertgebouw this June as part of the Concertgebouw’s two-year Mahler cycle (where I had heard Mariss Jansons’ Third, just weeks before the Gatti Munich performance). The allure is great not the least because the Concertgebouw Orchestra is one of the four orchestras with the greatest Mahler tradition—and among them the most devoted to Mahler. (The other three are the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic [even if their Mahler-tradition is a bit reluctant], and the Munich Philharmonic [which never bothered treating their heritage professionally and can’t currently be considered Mahler-specialists, despite that above mentioned Fourth].) And hearing the Concertgebouw is also a chance to meet some of their fabulously musical players for a beer (or two, or three – girlfriend permitting), so a trip to Amsterdam is always something to look forward to, despite the faint attraction the city otherwise exerts on me.
High hopes can be the perfect setup for dull disappointment, but fortunately that’s not what happened this time. Sure, Gatti’s Fifth wasn’t the ear-opening experience of his Munich Fourth, but it was so refreshing to hear Mahler that is the polar opposite of Mariss Jansons’ carefully calibrated approach. At least with Gatti I heard everything that contributed to making the Fourth great—which in one word is: Risk. Gatti takes risks everywhere, is unpredictable (to the orchestra, too, by all appearances). This Fifth lacked greater lines and coherence—the 10 minute Adagietto especially didn’t gel—and it offered several really messy spots where Gatti, seemingly out of nowhere, took insanely brisk tempi next to large leisurely patches. At the same time, there was a palpable level of excitement present at all times which kept Mahler more exciting than a more scrupulously detailed version could ever have managed.
In the first half of the program, Gatti led the orchestra through Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll with results that exhibited to perfection the band’s tender, sonorous side and the ‘soft accuracy’ of the RCO. At the same time it should be admitted that even woodwinds that sound like butter, and the most beautiful orchestral sound, can’t hide the fact—at least not in a leisurely performance such as this—that 20 minutes is more than enough time to thoroughly exhaust the meager musical material of the Siegfried Idyll. Between the acts, there was communal watching of Germany vs. Ghana—the Dutch faction of the Concertgebouw probably rooting for Germany so that their team might defeat them in the finale for the most delicious possible victory.
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Because we don’t have enough Mahler to satisfy our every taste and desires, Manfred Honeck has also started a cycle “if it is possible, in the next five, six years” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. If the audiophile Exton label doesn’t get its distribution act together, it may not matter, since we can’t get a hold of the recordings… but if we do (and I’ve snagged a copy of the First, released in April; the Fourth will be out next, and the Third was recorded in June), we might find it’s much more than another layer of Mahler-overkill. Über-idiomatic and rambunctious, joyously self-celebratory, laugh-out-loud daring, hyper-romantic but without the (differently-appealing) heavy hand of Bernstein, it is one of the most notable Firsts to have appeared in a very long time. Perhaps that can be partly blamed on the old zither teacher of Honeck.
When Honeck was a kid, he was—very reluctantly, because it was deemed cruelly uncool even then—made to learn the zither. He had an old teacher; not technically gifted but of a generation that had the Austrian folk music and rhythms in their blood and able to pass it on. Recording Mahler now, Honeck said that now he knows why he has reason to be thankful for those lessons: because he took to Mahler’s Ländler-rhythms like fish to water. “That’s something you can’t learn”, he suggests, “but rather absorb and hope to be able to pass on. In any case, that’s what I’ve tried with these recordings and so far I am very happy with the result.” The fact that he plays the unique rhythms and snaps up wherever they appear, contributes a good deal to the zest and color of this recording.
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Yet another Mahler cycle from Roger Norrington who finds himself delighting in a happily controversial golden fall of his career. With the ideology and methods of the original instrument and historical performance practice movement, he’s been inching his repertory ever further up, suggesting that the modern tradition of performing romantic music is in fact much more modern than the music itself and that in just a few decades the newfound habits—especially that of permanent orchestral vibrato—have clogged out memory of how the composers themselves still had (and expected) their music (to be) played. When he forces this theory down an unwilling or unable orchestra’s collective throat—regardless of the merits of his theories—the results have been frankly awful. I shudder to remember the Bruckner Fourth he made the NSO perform a few years back. But he has his own modern orchestra lab now—the excellent SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and they have wisely learned to go along with Norrington’s shtick. Not just hesitatingly, by the sound of it, but with considerable enthusiasm and even more dexterity. The results are performances of staple repertoire played in ways you haven’t likely heard before (Norrington goes further, with more teeth, than Herreweghe) which has in turn put the Stuttgarters squarely on the map of record collectors and concert-goers—both as object of derision, but more and more so of admiration.
Norrington calls the vibrato-free playing of his strings the ‘pure tone’ and suggests that the last time we’ve heard an orchestra play with such a pure tone was the pre-World War II Vienna Philharmonic, still led by concertmaster Arnold Rosé (Mahler’s friend and brother in law), and conducted in such a ‘pure’ Mahler 9th by Bruno Walter’s famous EMI recording (which I happen to think is woefully overrated). So Norrington gives the great diffuser and comfort-smudger that permanent vibrato admittedly is, the boot, and has his modern instrument violinists, violists, cellists, and double basses hit the notes and play them clean without—literally—the wiggle room that vibrato provides, intonation-wise. Since his orchestra knows how to do that, now, the sound isn’t off; instead it’s more direct, perhaps seeming a little more strident at first, a little sharper, but it’s certainly also more detailed and clearer or, I suppose, ‘purer’.
I’ve only now heard the Ninth Symphony of Mahler with Norrington (the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth are also available), and while I wouldn’t say that loving this performance means being sold on his theory to the exclusion of the various other current ways of performing Mahler, I, well… I love it. There is a zany bite and yet a plain simplicity to the music that is very refreshing, gripping, and exciting. Although Norrington certainly doesn’t stretch the heavenly closing Adagio to its limits at 19’24’’ (that’s two minutes faster than Boulez), he draws out the ethereal quality just right. He also manages to keep the tension in those last minutes when the energy of the symphony drops to what sometimes ends up a hesitant whimper rather than carefully stringed repose evaporating into a confident, gentle goodbye.
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Reviews of further recent releases by Christoph Eschenbach (DSO Berlin, Mahler 1st & Rückert Lieder with Christine Schäfer) and Paavo Järvi (Frankfurt RSO, Mahler 2nd with Alice Coote and Natalie Dessay) and perhaps a little more of Norrington’s Mahler will follow over this long, two-year Mahler anniversary.
Monday, 6.28.10, 4:07 am
New Releases: CDs
Lasser’s Licks
"New Releases" posts are regular columns that feature reviews of new CDs that are, for one reason or another, truly outstanding among the many I come across every month.
Truth in advertising and breathless PR-work can, at times, come perilously close to mutual exclusivity. I often wonder to what extent hyperbole-laden copy of media relations personnel backfires, especially since it usually goes to professionals who have heard and seen it all and know how to read through the code. Would it really be so harmful not to make something less seem like a little more at every occasion?
With this Simone Dinnerstein release on Telarc from a year ago, the slick attempt to spice up every last phrase includes even the title: “Simone Dinnerstein, The Berlin Concert”. There are a few pianists who have had a “The Berlin Concert”. Evgeni Kissin’s debut under Karajan at the 1988 New Year’s concert was one such event. And, although that could already be stretching it, so was the concert by Arkadi Volodos with the same Berlin Philharmonic and James Levine eleven years later. “The Berlin Concert” has a tempting ring to it. It comes with connotations of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra—which wasn’t anywhere near Ms. Dinnerstein then or since. And how easily does “at the Berlin Philharmonic” (Chamber Music Hall) become “with the Berlin Philharmonic” in subsequent press announcements by presenters that don’t catch the subtle difference. Maybe not a strategically induced ‘mistake’, but convenient.
“The Berlin Concert” also insinuates that it was a big event with hints of red carpet, columns of searchlights left and right, and critics in eager anticipation at the vast 2440 seat Philharmonie. Whether quite that much attention was given in Berlin’s 1180 seat Kammermusiksaal (admittedly adjacent to the Philharmonic Hall), despite the astounding success of her Goldberg Variations released three months earlier, is questionable. And no one makes that claim, explicitly.
It’s a sickness of our times that spin—whether in politics, business, or the arts—is the preferred and predominant mode of public communication and those of us who object that honesty, straight-talk, and frankness take a back seat can only hope that it is not so much an Orwellian omen but a fad, soon again out of fashion like excessive shoulder pads.
Better than to let Simone Dinnerstein’s PR-hounds (lovely people, actually) do the talking, let’s listen—by way of skipping the artists vacuous liner notes—to what the music has to say, which is, these four-hundred introductory words notwithstanding, the ultimate arbiter of a CD’s value.
She opens with Bach’s French Suite No.5 in G major, which is in keeping with her Goldberg Variation success that brought her from ‘giglets’™ in nursing homes to the concertizing limelight. Whenever she plays Bach, for better or worse, I can’t help thinking that it’s taken from—or belongs on—a “Bach for Babies” or “Lullabies for Lovers” CD. The wallowing style has its appeal, but I’m not sure I’m proud of whatever part in me it is that this appeals to. Perhaps the one that would like to play piano itself, to indulge in pianistic exaggeration, the part that would like to underline everything already in italics and put in parentheses whatever is in small fonts. Ultimately I find the ostentation of her mannerisms, the caressing, and rhythmic freewheeling more detriment than their superficial seduction a benefit. Recent recordings by Gulda (see review) and especially Till Fellner show that less is (much) more.
There is even less I can recommend in the performance of Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata, op.111. If this is “the last classical piano sonata” (not just Beethoven’s, but indeed the Omega of its genre)—as Adorno, via Thomas Mann, via Wendell Kretschmar would have it—Dinnerstein sure doesn’t make a case for it. There is nothing of the patrician heaping of music upon music that Arrau brings to this, nothing of the crystalline, tight-lipped energy of (early!) Serkin, and certainly no hint of the momentous vertical struggle and intellectual rigor that Pollini, in one of his greatest recordings, has achieved. Worse yet: there is nothing that Dinnerstein has to offer in place of any of these qualities; just the notes, played efficiently and with mechanical accomplishment.
So far it sounds like this CD would already be in my ‘discard’ pile. Instead I will file it under “L”, and regard it highly. Because centre-recital Dinnerstein plays Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach. And that’s what you will want to hear. The chorale is “Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott” from Cantata BWV 101 and the forty-six year young Lasser, who is a member of the faculty at Juilliard, finds 12 ways to vary this that are typical of his style which simply calling “neo-romantic” would be rather too simple. It’s part of a new, bold melodiousness that is inoculated against the accusation of kitsch or triteness through sheer quality and originality. Lasser, and a very select few other composers, manage to write music that can be immediately established as new, yet uses means that have been part of the composer’s toolkit for a hundreds of years. More graphically: Those who like the ‘music’ of John Rutter, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, or John Williams will find Lasser equally appealing as those who can’t control their gag reflex at the very mention of those composers’ drivel.
Best of all, Dinnerstein’s essentially romantic, eagerly pleasing style, coupled with her technical faculty, not only allows the Lasser to shine, it positively contributes to it. Bach provides the structure, Lasser’s perennial French air absorbs Dinnerstein’s floweriness, and the audible 21st century, modern touch assures the whole concoction stays lean and clean.
Consider the Bach and Beethoven on this disc the packaging; the former of which may well conform to many a listener’s taste more than to mine, the latter which probably can’t be helped. The Lasser is the center of this musical tootsie pop and it’s worth getting there, no matter how many licks it takes.
Check out Deb Lamberton’s conversation with Simone Dinnerstein from February this year.
Reviews in this WETA column of her Goldberg Variations and of her Beethoven sonatas can be found here and here, respectively.