Tuesday, 9.30.08, 6:00 am
October in Music
October means that the cultural season is finally under way again, and it offers plenty interesting concerts, some of which are bound to be still remembered as season highlights come next June.
For one, it’s a good month for pianists: From Thursday, October 2nd, through Saturday, October 4th, Hélène Grimaud will play the Fourth Beethoven Concerto, perhaps the most perfect of the handful Beethoven wrote. If Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the NSO add a riveting Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, it should be time well spent at the Kennedy Center.
(October 2nd, 7PM / October 3rd, 8PM / October 4th, 8PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
On October 10th, WPAS will feature András Schiff in a recital of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas nos. 16, 17 (“The Tempest”), 18 (“The Hunt”), and 21 (“Waldstein”). Schiff, who has just completed his Beethoven cycle for ECM (recorded in chronological order), is one of the foremost pianists of our time, albeit an astoundingly unspectacular one. If you can do without flash and enjoy subtle musicality, instead (think Brendel, not Matsuev), Schiff ought to be sought out.
(October 10th, 8PM – Strathmore)
It isn’t a secret that Maurizio Pollini is one of my very favorite pianists, and whenever WPAS brings him to town the many fans of this incredibly sophisticated and refined musician can rejoice, whether he present them Chopin and Beethoven (2004) or Chopin and Liszt (2006). This year – on Wednesday, October 29th – he will play Beethoven (Sonatas opp. 31 and 57) and Chopin (Four Mazurkas, op. 33 and the Scherzo no.2, op. 31) again, with a dash of Schumann in form of the magnificent C-major Fantasy.
(October 29th, 8PM – Strathmore)
Any given month or even year, Pollini would be the focal point among piano recitals. Except that the French Embassy will host Alexandre Tharaud the Friday before, on October 24th. Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus is topical, given the 100th Messiaen anniversary, although it may limit the attraction of the recital a bit. Not but by much, I hope, because Tharaud [, who will play Chopin's 24 Préludes op.28 and Ravel's Miroirs,] is a pianist who has most consistently pleased and stunned me with his recordings for Harmonia Mundi and the chance to hear him live too enticing to miss. (A new recording is scheduled to come out in October, featuring the Debussy and Poulenc Cello Sonatas with Tharaud’s equally excellent countryman, colleague, and fellow ARD Competition prize winner Jean-Guihen Queyras.)
(October 24th, 7.30PM – La Maison Française)
Speaking of Jean-Guihen Queyras – he will appear right after Tharaud at the Maison Française, on Tuesday October 28th, where he will perform works by Haydn (Cello Concerto no.1), Lully, and Rameau with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra. Even among these already select events, this one stands out as particularly promising.
(October 28th, 7PM – La Maison Française)
Just how promising the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel is going to be when they play at the Kennedy Center on Saturday, October 4th, is difficult to say. Even in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and the G-major Suite op.55 they should have what it takes to make a deep impression – alas, I’ve found them consistently boring and uninspired the last few times I heard them. But then that was at equally dull Avery Fisher Hall – and orchestras on the road, especially with this being essentially Lorin Maazel’s farewell tour, tend to give the extra few percent that can catapult a performance from routine to rousing. Perhaps worth a try – especially with WPAS offering special deals for this concert.
(October 4th, 4PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
Sticking with orchestral performances this month, the NSO will be led by Iván Fischer in three concert series this month, all three promising and the first of the three – Mahler’s Third Symphony – downright compulsory (October 16th through 18th). Fischer’s Mahler has been among the best heard in DC, and the more the NSO gets to play it under him, the better the performances are bound to get.
(October 16th, 7PM / October 17th, 8PM / October 18th, 8PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
From October 23rd through the 25th, you have the chance for a direct comparison between the Fischer-lead NSO with Steven Isserlis and Queyras with Chamber Orchestra in the First Cello Concerto of Haydn. Isserlis isn’t my favorite cellist – but too fine a musician not to hear when he’s in town. And Fischer also has the Second Rachmaninov Symphony programmed, which the orchestra should know well enough. Leonard Slatkin led a superb performance of it four yeas ago and, because he liked it so much, another one (not quite as successful) just over two years ago. Fischer himself has recorded this “music in service of melody” (RRR) to great acclaim in his first recording for Channel Classics.
(October 23rd, 7PM / October 24th, 8PM / October 25th, 8PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
Closing out October – from the 30th until November 1st – Fischer will offer a smorgasbord of Wagner bits with the help from soprano Elizabeth Connell and bass Juha Uusitalo in the final, “Magic Fire”, scene of Die Walküre after he went through a bit of the Liebestod, Rhine Journey, and the Meistersinger Prelude. Consider it preemptive recovery from when you have to hear the National Opera Orchestra attempt Siegfried later this season.
(October 30th, 7PM / October 31st, 8PM / November 1st, 8PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will present the weird Bernstein Mass (“A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers”) that inaugurated the Kennedy Center in 1971 – and who better to do it than Bernstein protégé Marin Alsop. I hesitate to call it great music, but it will be a great show and a worthwhile event each time between October 16th and 18th. On Sunday, October 26th Alsop will bring the Mass with her orchestra to the Kennedy Center.
(October 16th, 8PM / October 17th, 8PM / October 18th, 8PM – Meyerhoff Concert Hall, Baltimore / October 26th, 4PM – Kennedy Center Concert Hall)
On the 30th and 31st of October the BSO will play the Fifth Mozart Violin Concerto with marvelous the Nikolaj Znaider under Ludovic Morlot who made a little splash with some high-profile replacement gigs in 2006 and now returns to the BSO after conducting Stravinsky and Mozart with them two and a half years ago. With Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the César Franck Symphony in D Minor it might not be the most interesting program, but Znaider is always worth hearing – violin fan or not.
(October 30th, 8PM / October 31st, 8PM – Meyerhoff Concert Hall, Baltimore)
There are many other assorted events worth looking into, like the Kennedy Center Chamber Players on October 5th, playing Shostakovich (Trio no.1, Quintet) and Beethoven (Serenade for String Trio). Nurit Bar-Josef, Daniel Foster, David Hardy, and Lambert Orkis often make very good music, and the program is appealing.
(October 5th, 2PM – Kennedy Center Terrace Theater)
The Noontime Cantata series of the Washington Bach Consort in the Church of the Epiphany (13th & G) is always worth going to – it’s an oasis of sanity amid the workday, every first Tuesday of the month. On October 7th, Reilly Lewis will present the Cantata Die Elenden sollen essen BWV 75.
(October 7th, 12PM – Church of the Epiphany)
I don’t know the “Concertante” group yet (Juilliard alumni, all of them), but the program of the Martinů, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky Sextets sounds too alluring to pass up.
(October 8th, 7.30PM – Kennedy Center Terrace Theater)
Anne-Sophie Mutter and Camerata Salzburg will lend their glamour and stylish music-making to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on October 11th (8PM). It’s Bach and Tartini – and with pre-20th century fare, Mutter always has a (decidedly) interesting way. The Eroica Trio can be a bit glitzy – but they are a fine piano trio, too, and Lalo, more Martinů, and Schubert are enticing beyond the grils’ smiles at the Wolftrap Barnes on October 17th at 8PM.
The Collegium Vocale Gent is Philippe Herreweghe’s magnificent baroque practice vocal ensemble – and they’ll be at the Library of Congress with guest-director and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout performing Joseph Haydn works for three and four voices and keyboard pieces.
(October 17th, 8PM – Library of Congress)
Chamber music (Haydn, Schubert, and Smetana) at the highest level is offered by the Vienna Piano Trio on October 26th (6.30PM, National Gallery of Art) as well as by the Kronos Quartet, except their choice of George Crumb (Black Angels) and Aleksandra Vrebalov (“…hold me, neighbor, in this storm…”) is rather more progressive. They will play at the Clarice Smith Center on October 30th at 8PM.
Monday, 9.29.08, 6:00 am
New Releases: CDs
Schreker – Krenek – Bürger: As the 20th Century Might Have Sounded
"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.
“Franz Schreker and His Students” is the title of a Nimbus Records release with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, John Axelrod, and Dietrich Henschel. A promising title, if you know and like Schreker’s music – perhaps from the sick but equally enthralling and mesmerizing production of his spectacular, gorgeous, and riveting opera “Die Gezeichneten” (Kent Nagano conducting at the Salzburg Felsenreitschule, DVD available on EuroArts).
Schreker (1878—1934) might have become the epitome of daring 20th century romanticism – combining the lush sounds of late Richard Strauss with a more modern harmonic language (not unlike an offshoot of Debussy’s style) – had it not first been for the Third Reich, then the reaction to the Third Reich, crushing his reputation. A student of Robert Fuchs (as were Gustav Mahler, Franz Schmidt, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky), Schreker was, in his time, thought of as one of the most important composers during the early 20th century, his reputation (attained through his operas) comparable to those of Mahler, Strauss, Debussy, Reger, and Korngold.
At the height of his career, the causes of his future decline in popularity, esteem, and influence were already under way. Schoenberg’s music was just, if slowly, getting a hold of critics and the academies… and Fascism was on the rise even before Schreker died in 1933 (after suffering a stroke), not yet 56 years old. First his music was declared “degenerate” and sexually depraved (an allegation hurled not only at the music but the composer as well), and after the war his music was too conservative to please the modernists who wanted to cleanse music from all stains of the past.
Many of his later students suffered from a similar fate: Berthold Goldschmidt, Stefan Wolpe, and most importantly Ernst Krenek (1900—1991). Krenek is included on this disc with his First Symphony (op.7) in nine short, continuous movements. A less well known Schreker student, Julius Bürger (1897—1995, foremost a conductor like his fellow student Jascha Horenstein), is included with two Songs for Baritone & Orchestra: “Legend” and “Silence of the Night” (not a Christmas song, but based on a Gottfried Keller poem). Schreker himself is featured with two early works, the Intermezzo and Scherzo for string orchestra op.8 from 1900.
They are less interesting pieces than most of what Schreker composed later, but worthy little buffers between the – also early, but major – works of Bürger & Krenek. Schreker wrote both of these rather conventional pieces for a competition (which Intermezzo won); the Scherzo remained unpublished for many years, the Intermezzo was combined with three more movements into the reasonably popular “Romantic Suite”.
More attractive for the potential purchaser are the two 1919 Bürger works. These large-scale orchestral songs (each over 10 minutes long) offer so many inspired touches of orchestral coloration that one cannot but wonder if there is much more of his music available. (As it turns out: not much – but a cello concerto looks appealing, having been made available by Toccata Classics.) The faux Arabian Nights melodies for the solo bassoon, the dashing and bold lines toward grand orchestral climaxes, and the terrific, searing performance by Dietrich Henschel make these youthful opera of Bürger’s most impressive upon repeat listening.
Krenek’s First Symphony isn’t exactly charming right off the bat, either. Much like his string quartets, the music benefits greatly from repeat exposure. And this 1921 symphony doesn’t, of course, offer any of the lusciously dense chromaticism that the name “Schreker” of the CD-title evokes. This nervously moving, restless symphonic work flirts with all styles Krenek had encountered at age 21 – with atonalism as well as gestures of the big late romantic symphonies. And in that limited sense the work is quite unique. Krenek dutifully shows his enormous compositional skill in the work, not least with the large, bombastic Fugue just before the coyly concluding Presto. I haven’t heard Takao Ukigaya and the NDR SO-Hannover on their 1996 disc on cpo, but the performance of Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under its Texan music director John Axelrod (a former Christoph Eschenbach assistant and protégé) suggests that it would take much more than just a casual effort to better this interpretation.
Saturday, 9.27.08, 6:00 am
The NSO’s Future With Christoph Eschenbach
The NSO has at last found itself a successor to Leonard Slatkin: starting 2010, Christoph Eschenbach will be the Music Director not only of the National Symphony Orchestra, but also of the Kennedy Center with all its activities.
The choice for the former Philadelphia Orchestra music director Eschenbach is bound to be controversial, but it is also inspired. Controversial, because Eschenbach’s reputation has suffered from alleged and actual scuffles with the musicians in Philadelphia – who never warmed to a conductor who had been imposed upon them on short notice and with little or no consultation of them. Reports of personality differences were common, as were denials that claimed that the only differences are musical (making the matter not much better, possibly worse), all mixed with voices now that say things had become rather more amiable in the last year.
Nor is the critical reception of his conducting unanimously positive. A dear colleague who knows Eschenbach’s music making well wrote me: “I would not go to hear Eschenbach conduct an orchestral concert for $150. $200, if I was allowed to bring something to read. But good luck [with him in DC]!” Funny, albeit harsh. Philadelphia critics were split, veering between highly critical, vaguely positive and outright enthusiastic. Either Eschenbach’s music making was said to be haphazard or inspired. (Which is in any case better than if he were consistently judged uneventful.) When Eschenbach was in town – in 2004 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and earlier this year in a pre-honeymoon concert with the NSO – the reaction was largely positive. More positive even has been the reception of his recent recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris.
The achievement of getting the Philadelphia Orchestra, after all-too many years of not recording, an exclusive contract with Ondine, a high-end, hi-fi Finnish classical music label, was notable alone. But instead of confirming the troubled relationship between the orchestra and their conductor, the seven releases to date (Tchaikovsky Symphonies 4, 5, and 6, Shostakovich Symphony 5, Mahler Symphony 6, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra) have received the highest praise, suggesting that somehow the musical quality of the conductor-orchestra combination was completely unaffected by any qualms. With this contract, Philadelphia was the first of the bigger American orchestras to get back into the recording business – which is so important and helpful for publicity work, even if it’s no longer a revenue generator.
Having heard all these recordings, I tend to agree with the critical tenor. The sound of the recordings and the orchestra is excellent on all of them, reference quality for the Tchaikovsky Symphonies and the Mahler, which are also striking interpretations (the Mahler quickly became one of my favorite Sixths). On top of that, these works are very imaginatively coupled with related chamber or piano works. Or, in the case of the Bartók – a disc also much praised, even as I find the Concerto for Orchestra the one (very) negative exception from the otherwise excellent performances – with Bohuslav Martinů’s “Memorial to Lidice” and Gideon Klein “Partita for Strings”. Which makes the recording still worth hearing, even if you agree on the mediocrity of the Bartók.
None of this means that the success of the Eschenbach/NSO combination can be predicted. But it is unquestionable that this combination has every potential to be a blessing for the orchestra and Washington’s cultural scene. After Rostropovich brought the name recognition to the NSO, and Slatkin respectable performance standards, it is now up to Eschenbach to bring musicality, too. The orchestra has become good enough that it no longer needs a conductor who is primarily an orchestra builder and exacting technician. They are now ready, and presumably eager, to reach the next levels of music-making if only properly inspired and motivated. With Eschenbach, they now have a conductor of international format and reputation like never before, sure to draw a level of attention on the NSO which it has not hitherto experienced. Just what they need, too, because nothing motivates an orchestra more than getting wide-spread attention.
Eschenbach, an ARD Music Competition piano prize winner, had a formidable career as a pianist before he turned to conducting. With the baton in hand, he has been music director at the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (82-87, where he succeeded, among others, Hans Rosbaud, Rudolf Kempe, and Charles Dutoit), and the Houston Symphony (88-99), where he not only very successfully stepped into the footsteps of Ferenc Fricsay, Thomas Beecham, Leopold Stokowski, John Barbirolli, André Previn, Lawrence Foster, and Sergiu Comissiona, but also developed his knack for working with an American repertoire and working American audiences and – very important – fundraisers.
From 1998 – 2004 he was the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor, an orchestra that is one of the jewels among the German Public Broadcasting symphonic bodies. At the NDR he succeeded Herbert Blomstedt on a post previously held by Klaus Tennstedt, Günter Wand, John Elliot Gardiner, and currently Christoph von Dohnanyi. Until 2010 he will remain the music director of the Orchestre de Paris (latest in the reputable line of Charles Münch, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, and Christoph von Dohnányi).
That’s about as impressive a conductor’s pedigree as one can have, and it’s a coup for the NSO to have drawn Eschenbach to Washington for that, alone. Thanks to the slight Philadelphia-dent in his reputation, the added creative (and financial) bonus of presiding over the musical activities of the Kennedy Center, and not the least due to the generous $5 million gift from Roger and Vicki Sant to their Music Director’s Chair endowment (now at $20 million), the capital now has a conductor with better name recognition than all but a handful orchestras (Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Minnesota, and Boston) in the country.
Fame may not be everything, but in especially in transient Washington, fame goes a long, long way. If he uses it as astutely as does Plácido Domingo for the LA Opera, if he even manages to get the NSO into a recording contract (assuming the unions don’t sabotage that plan), and if he takes them on successful international tours, then we are in for an exciting (and maybe sometimes exacerbating) time with the NSO in those four years for which his contract lasts. This prospect, together with the fact that there will be two years of the wonderful Iván Fischer, still, turn the situation at the helm of the NSO from worrisome to exciting.
Eschenbach won’t likely fulfill his new job without courting at least some controversy, but he will also court many old and new supporters of –and for– the NSO. He will serve as Music Director Designate in the 2009/2010 season and will start holding auditions for the orchestra’s several vacancies as soon as November of this year.
Reports and reactions elsewhere:
Anne Midgette, Washington Post:
Christoph Eschenbach to Lead National Symphony
NSO’s Choice Tips the Scales Of Emotion
John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune: Eschenbach named music director of National Symphony Orchestra
T.L.Ponick, Washington Times: Kennedy Center names new music director
From Chicago Sun-Times Contributing Critic and WFMT Fine Arts Radio’s very own Critic-at-Large, Andrew Patner: “And the March of Mediocrity Continues”
Washington blogger Marc Fischer comments: NSO’s New Leader: Daring Improviser or Musical Anarchist?
And Tim Smith for the Baltimore Sun on “Cliff Notes”: Eschenbach: music director of NSO, Kennedy Center
Thursday, 9.25.08, 6:00 am
Classical Performances
Winners from the ARD Music Competition (Viola)
The ARD Music Competition isn’t the most famous, but perhaps the most important international music competition. It is so, not just for the breadth of music it covers (over 20 categories are regularly featured), but also for the talents it discovers. Christoph Eschenbach, Maurice André, Jessye Norman, Sharon Isbin, Francisco Araiza, Anne Sofie von Otter, Christian Tetzlaff, Thomas Quasthoff, Sol Gabetta, the Trio Wanderer, and Measha Bruggergosman have all started or boosted their careers with stellar performances in Munich, where the Bavarian Broadcasting Service hosts this annual event.
So did clarinetists Karl Leister, David Shifrin, Nicolas Baldeyrou, violists Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Nabuko Imai, the bassoonist Klaus Thunemann, and the Tokyo-, Eder-, Auryn-, Petersen-, Mandelring-, Leipzig-, Artemis-, and Ébène string quartets. These four instrumental categories were the featured ones at the 57th ARD Music Competition this year, which lasted from September 1st until September 19th, when the top prize winners made their final appearance in a radio broadcast and televised concert with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
This year, I have had the dubious pleasure of following the competition in exhaustive detail, which included listening one of the Reger suites for solo viola (usually the g-minor) almost 30 times in three days and five interpretations of the Hoffmeister Viola Concerto in D-major.
With Imai, Bashmet, Kashkashian, and as of 2004 Antoine Temstit (who played at La Maison Française in April of 2006) as past prize winners, an ARD Competition prize must be the most coveted among violists. Little wonder that the violists were by far the strongest in numbers, in 2008, with over 50 violists successfully making the pre-selection. And all good reasons for me to have paid the violists extra attention, managing to hear 28 different players in 43 appearances.
Following a competition so closely (up to eight hours of music every day for a two weeks straight), has something of a tribulation about it, but it is also very rewarding to hear performers not just once, in the final, but throughout the event. To hear them on their strong days, and the weaker ones, in solo works, sonatas, and concertos alike. And to hear some of the very impressive players who never made it into the final, for one reason or another.
The promising American David Kim, for example, who didn’t make it into the semi-final, despite impressive performances of Hindemith’s op.25, no.4 or the Ninth Telemann Fantasy. Or Ida Bryhn (Norway), who bracingly played Penderecki and Vieuxtemps and Ligeti and Hindemith, sometimes like a minor Nordic Goddess (except a Goddess with stuffed nasal passages). Why she was passed over for the semi-finals (where Dimitri Murrath played, instead) remains one of those competition mysteries that are the stuff of subjectivity, personal likes and dislikes, viola-politics (!), and sheer caprice.
It was wonderful to see the rise of Teng Li (China): from a shy and bland performance in the first round (of Reger Suite g-minor Suite) to a glowing and ever more confident take of the said Hoffmeister Concerto in the second of three Final Concerts as the winner of a third prize (one of only two awarded prizes this year). The performance that clinched that prize for her was the Bartók Concerto for Viola, which I had just heard in Salzburg with that other ARD prize winner, Kim Kashkashian. Admittedly the Bartók performances at the competition were nowhere near the level of the latter’s collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra, but despite craggy orchestral support (the summer-version of the BRSO) Teng Li massaged the lyricism out of the music and offered a greater sense of control, if little ferocity.
Had I not heard every of Sergey Malov’s performances in the three rounds leading up to the final, I might have thought very little of this young artist. The other violist to choose the Bartók concerto, he couldn’t salvage anything with the uncooperative orchestra at his side. But as I see it, the Russian Sergey Malov is one of the very few violists who has the stuff it takes for a very successful career as a soloist. The way he turned Atar Arad’s commissioned viola piece “Tikvah” into actual music was astounding. (And yet Dimitri Murrath inexplicably and unanimously won the special prize for the interpretation of this work.) His Brahms’ op.120/1 clarinet-cum-viola sonata and his Reger g-minor Suite were little short of revelatory, and throughout the competition he exuded musicality, personality, and great maturity.
Not particularly mature, but every bit as affable and musical, was the top prize winner (this year a second prize) and audience prize winner WenXiao Zheng from China. From silver-threaded Vieuxtemps in the first round, calm beauty and an immensely tasteful vibrato in the wistful, Moonlight Sonata-referencing Shostakovich Sonata for Viola and Piano op.147, to polished Hoffmeister, he finally arrived at Schnittke’s Viola Concerto in the final. Controlled, very confident, and boldly ugly playing (when called for) were the hallmarks of a minor triumph. Although a fairly obscure piece, and the performance being WenXiao Zheng’s first time on stage with a full orchestra, it had an immediate and lasting effect on the audience. The local record store – possibly the largest classical music store outside Japan – is still out of stock on the Schnittke Viola concertos. (A work closely associated with the ARD competition about which I will write more, next week.)
The young man who immediately charmed the audience with his quiet confidence, mildly pensive yet generous and friendly air, is ambitious and idealistic at once. “Music as show” is anathema to him, though he wouldn’t mind, he says with the right mix of self-deprecation and humor, being China’s Lang-Lang for the viola if that meant being able to bring the instrument to the wider appreciation he passionately believes it should have. The ARD victory might just have given him the opportunity to work on that goal for the next year and his performances suggest that he might well be successful.
Photo of WenXiao Zheng © Dorothea Falke.
Sunday, 9.21.08, 6:00 am
Maurizio Kagel (1931 – 2008) – Mourned by More Than Will Miss His Music
The Argentinean-German composer Mauricio Raúl Kagel died last Thursday, September 18th, and with him, you might say, the ‘60s that for so long defined modern music. With Stockhausen’s death last December and now Kagel’s, Cologne – and indeed the entire musical scene – has lost one of the last remaining “Darmstadt” composers. Nono (1990), Xenakis (2001), Berio (2003), Ligeti (2006) are dead already, only Henri Pousseur, Hans Werner Henze, and Pierre Boulez remain alive.
Kagel was born in Buenos Aires on Christmas Eve of 1931, a son of a Russian Jewish family with Ashkenazim and Sephardim background – a multi cultural household, living in a multi-cultural city, early-on fluent in five languages, and interested as much in photography and cinematography as in avant-garde music.
Pierre Boulez, impressed with Kagel’s compositions, recommended he go to Europe where Kagel found himself in Cologne in 1954. There he eventually became the successor of Karlheinz Stockhausen as head of the Cologne Courses for New Music. Although a devoted modernist, composing “elitist” music, he was primarily a theatrical composer, a main exponent of modern musical theater. “Staatstheater”, “Erschöpfung der Welt”, “Der Mündliche Verrat”, “Aus Deutschland” being examples thereof, even if they are not operas in the traditional sense.
Extra-musical matters like gestures, pictures, actions – especially humor, absurdity, and (very relative) accessibility define his work, much of which is highly unsuitable for recording on CD.
His originality was unsurpassed even by his most inventive colleagues; his success in Germany second perhaps only to Stockhausen. Unlike the latter, though, he did not influence non-classical music as much, nor as lastingly. Nor did he achieve anything like the fame (or notoriety) of many of his colleagues abroad.
Maurizio Kagel contributed several works to the ARD Music Competition and was closely associated with Munich contemporary music musica viva series that Karl Amadeus Hartmann had founded. His work was regularly featured at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. His music, suitable or not, was widely recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, then Disques Montaignes, and now is most ardently championed by the Munich record label Winter & Winter.
Kagel said of composing that “[a]bsolute and non-absolute music can be separated from each other only up to a certain point; the search for unequivocal certainty here leads to confusion. I myself continually blend absolute and narrative music, and constantly have in the back of my mind concrete impressions of emotional states which are far from being absolutes. Music is a realistic art.” Absolutism certainly isn’t something Kagel could ever be accused of. And to today’s viewer, even his more straightforward tributes – like the musical piece (not the film of the same name) “Ludwig van” – will leave the aftertaste of ambiguity.
His most interesting work to new ears otherwise eschewing avant-garde composers must be the 1985 “Saint-Bach Passion”, composed for the tercentenary of J.S. Bach’s birth. A work that channels the spirit and structure of Bach’s Passions without actually reproducing any of the music (or particularly close references), it is something any willing listener might be able to react to emotionally, not just intellectually. A fine example of that latter type would be a work like “Anagrama”: a grammatical, musical, intellectual brew in constant transformation, a game on words with words, a Latin palindrome at its heart, and allegedly implying criticism of the unyielding and prescribed rules of construction of serial music.
For those thus inclined, it will be undoubtedly interesting, possibly fascinating, to explore Maurizio Kagel’s work – his journey through the European avant-garde to modernist ‘outsiderdom’ to the relatively conventional music of the last two decades of his life. (Doppelsextett, Quirinus’ Liebeskuss et al.). But if my reaction to most of his music is anything to go by, the amount of listeners who also find this sort of exploration rewarding will be considerably smaller. Maurizio Kagel will be mourned because of his stature, influence, and renommé. He will be mourned by many more people than listened to – or liked – his music.
More reading: Appreciations of Maurizio Kagel in the Guardian, New York Times, and Times Online UK.
Friday, 9.19.08, 6:00 am
Classical Performances
Discovering the Schulhoff Quartet
"Library Building" posts are reviews of recordings I find to be essential to every good collection of classical music - recordings of interpretations that are the touchstone for their repertoire.
Spending 13 days with up to 8 hours of live music is a grueling affair, but it also has its rewards. While listening to the same Reger Suite for solo viola (g-minor, if you must know) 18 times in three days is not one of them, happening upon marvelous, hitherto unknown music is. In that sense, following a music competition very closely is a bit like listening to a boldly curious radio station, with the benefit of live performances (and the detriment of endless Reger).
A few days back, at the first round for string quartets of the ARD Music Competition I was still straining to justify why the Schoenberg Third Quartet should be listened to (and maybe even liked), when all my arguments collapsed like a house of cards upon hearing the First String Quartet of Erwin Schulhoff, brought to life by the Dutch/Belgian EnAccord Quartet.
This 1924 work entertained, charmed, amused, riveted, boogied, lulled, and seduced and seemed to leave no arguments for the other participating quartets to have instead picked such tough fare as said Schoenberg No.3 from the list of 20th century works they were able to chose from in this round. Even with some truly great works vying with the Schulhoff on this list (Berg’s Lyric Suite, Janáček’s First String Quartet), the only explanation that only two out of twelve chose the Schulhoff is that they likely never bothered to look at the notes – or else only at the first page which is dark with notes, scored unisono throughout: not a particularly auspicious beginning, you might think.
But things turn immediately to the charming, and then to unbridled fun. The music is very viola friendly, there is whispering, there are slides, tickles and spider-feet, pizzicato picking, au talon bowing, and col legno knocking… it’s a whole bag of fun; in short: it rocks. After hearing the dreamy Andante molto sostenuto finale (with treacherous flageolet notes) for the first time, I was shocked that I had not known this marvelous Schulhoff quartet, so full of expressive extremes, quadruple-pianissimos, and long sul ponticello sections, already. Hearing it first with the EnAccord Quartet (and the next day with the Brodowski Quartet) was nothing short of a revelation.
Erwin (alternatively Ervín) Schulhoff, was born in 1894 in Prague. He died of a combination tuberculosis, malnourishment, and exhaustion in the Weißenburg Concentration Camp just over a year after the Nazis had detained him, foiling his planned emigration to the Soviet Union. Along with Hanns Eisler, Berthold Goldschmidt, Pavel Haas, Paul Hindemith, Erich Korngold, Hans Krása, Ernst Krenek, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Viktor Ullmann, Karl Weigl, Kurt Weill, Erich Zeisl and others, Schulhoff was quick to be labeled a composer of “degenerate music”.
This would have happened even if Schulhoff had not been Jewish, because he was one of the most innovative and open musical minds of his time. He took Jazz in deeply, he organized concerts of contemporary composers, and he associated with the Dadaists. The latter lead to his “Five Pittoresques” for George Grosz – short movements for piano based on Afro-American popular music and containing a middle movement, “In futurum”, that consisted of nothing but a rest, but written out including dynamic markings and the indication to play “with great sentiment”. Indeed, 30 years in the future, John Cage did take the cue for his most notorious work from Schulhoff’s early experiments with the absurd.
But Schulhoff didn’t ever remain still, and his style constantly changed. Apparently a man of unbridled temperament, he explored all the fringes of classical music in the 20s, not just those of pantonalism or Dadism. His first string quartet, the fourth of five works he wrote for that genre, was well received at its premiere with the Zika Quartet. The critic Erich Steinhard wrote of it: “The Quartet, a fiery temperamental outburst, is made all of a piece and one has the feeling that the composer’s pen could hardly keep pace with his inspiration […] I defy anyone (except Hindemith, maybe) to match the tempestuous pace of the first movement, and its natural musicality, its clarity and its homophony […] A catchy melody with simple accompaniment… characterizes the next movement, while the third arouses rhythmic interest with a playful Slovak theme and presents the appearance of folk music. All three movements are fast moving. Not until the last section does an Andante-like passage… introduce a contemplative mood, at the close of an otherwise boisterous and cheeky piece of writing.” (Die Musik, March 1927)
The swing and fanciful touches are present in every of its short movements (the first lasts roughly two minutes, the second and third about three, and the fourth a bit over six), and a quartet can show off all its qualities in them. Fortunately a few quartets do so on record. The Colorado Chamber Players, the Brandis-, Talich-, Petersen-, Kocian-, and Schoenberg- Quartets have recorded Quartet No.1. Of these, the two Czech bands and the German quartet are the truly competitive ones. Unfortunately, the Kocian (Supraphon) and Petersen (Capriccio) are difficult if not possible to get in the US, which leaves the Quatuor Talich on Calliope the undisputed first choice.
Good thing that 2005 recording is worthy of the limelight and comes with bristling interpretations of Janáček’s two quartets. Their greatest difference to the Peterson is that they race through the Allegretto as if there was no tomorrow, compared to which the German group sounds positively laid-back, while the Kocian opts for a moderate middle way. Neither approach is better or worse, though I prefer the sense of frenzy the Talich creates. But then I like the Petersen’s greater affection and variety of colors in the third movement over either Talich or Kocian. For those who want the most Schulhoff possible, the Kocian disc might be worth trying to find: They not only include String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 and the Five Pieces for String Quartet, as does the Petersen, but squeeze the String Quartet No.0, op.25 onto their 80 minute long disc as well. That’s everything Schulhoff wrote for that instrumentation, except the early five-part “Divertimento” from 1914 which (only?) the Kocian Quartet has recorded – on volume 2 of this out of print Schulhoff edition.
The EnAccord String Quartet somehow didn’t make it into the second round, but if they continue to explore and perform the less traveled paths of the string repertoire with such dedication, they will be a group to look and listen out for.
Tuesday, 9.16.08, 6:00 am
Classical Performances
Salzburg Concluded: Rattle’s Messiaen Tribute with the Berlin Philharmonic
The concert of the Berlin Philharmonic on Sunday, August 31st, concluded the Salzburg Festival 2008 – and it concluded it in style. Simon Rattle presented his band with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan & Isolde followed by Olivier Messiaen massive Tristan-inspired spectacle of color and sound, the Turangalîla Symphony for Solo Piano, ondes Martinot, and large orchestra.
Love was the theme, in either case, and there was plenty love in the Berliner’s playing: Absolute evenness in the continuous build-up of the Tristan Prelude was achieved with tension and volume being increased at such a minimal gradient and with such consistency that it wasn’t noticeable — only felt. This was perfection in conceptualization and execution, scarcely doable with but a handful of orchestras.
The swelling and receding, the thrillingly gentle pianissimos, the falling and lifting of the Liebestod was no less nuanced. It encapsulated the essence of ‘smooth’ without a hint of glibness. And all in the Berlin Philharmonic’s terrific, involving sound in the Large Festival Hall.
It is hard to say if this was a typical ‘Berlin’ sound – not the least because bands are known to play better on the road. But it was stunning to hear – and stunning to hear how nothing on Sir Simon’s recent recordings with this orchestra – nothing at all – suggests what they can really sound like.
Hearing the Berlin Philharmonic in this program of traditional as well as (relatively) new repertoire, it became clear why the orchestra has voted to reaffirm and extend Rattle’s contract last April. At the same time, it was a vital reminder that recorded output can give a hint of an orchestra’s and its conductor’s quality, but that it need not necessarily give an accurate impression.
Messiaen’s 1946-48 Turangalîla, the central part of a triptych on the myth of Tristan & Isolde (“Chant d’amour et de mort” ‘45 and “Cinq rechants” ’48 being the other two), was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky for the Boston Symphony and premiered in 1949 under the young Leonard Bernstein. Messiaen himself described this long and lovably strange work as “a love song, a hymn to joy”, a ‘fatal, irresistible, transcending love that suppresses everything outside, an overwhelming, superhuman joy’. Words of either religious motivation or Liebestod inspired, and well possibly both. In any case, a worthy work to serve as Salzburg’s nod to the Messiaen centenary.
For all its relation to Wagner’s Tristan, the concept and music of Turangalîla is vastly different. For one, the “amour impossible” both composers deal with in these works seemed insurmountable to Messiaen at the time of writing – it became possible only 13 years later, when Messiaen married Yvonne Loriod (soloist at the premiere of this work) after the death of his first wife. Wagner, in contrast, took such amorous impossibilities merely as theoretical concerns and discarded them when no longer convenient, necessary, or tenable. In real life, Wagner more or less seized what he wanted, and even in his operas emotional suffering is more of a sport than cause for consternation. There’s scarcely a convention, rule, or law that he won’t let his heroes break, if it’s for love. For the catholic Messiaen, “No” actually meant “No”; his yearning is in that sense more truthful than assertive.
This might be an idea to keep in mind while listening the Turangalîla-Symphony, but it will hardly explain the complex work of ten movements with its four dominant ‘statue’-, ‘flower’-, ‘love’-, and ‘chord’-themes. At points, this symphony makes Messiaen sound like a Bruckner-type of liquid luminosity. The “Introduction” offers musical blocks with edges and corners that wouldn’t be out of place in a Varèse or Stravinsky work – except for the twittering and chirping everywhere. Sometimes excited, sometimes soft elements intrude, the latter bringing short illusions of Saint-Saëns. Just when you think havoc is the name of this game, the love theme tenderly forces itself on the ears with all its seductive might. Even so, this “Chant d’amour” is still one of the more robust love songs written.
Rattle and his Berliners moved through the music with great poise: the echoing ondes Martenot of soloist Tristan Murail, the dreamy tinkling, the respite, and standstill, the swinging rhythms, the sea of Messiaenic sound (“Chant d’amour 2”), the metallic birds that pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard freed from his Steinway, the statue theme in its orgiastic guise in “Joie du Sang Etoiles” where it sounds like a quote from a Broadway musical about the Wild West… it all amounted to what Herbert Glass so aptly calls the “magnificent monster”.
Instead of quietly shifting in their seats and uttering nervous coughs, the audience that remained (some had inexplicably left after the short Wagner appetizer) listened with alert ears and some with open mouths as the music switched from featuring feathered friends to a movement with altogether more hoofed animals running about (“Turangalîla 2”), to movie-music sweep (“Développement d’amour”), to the fanfares of “Joie de Sang des Etoiles 2” again. And if the stars didn’t ‘bleed joyful blood’, the music is ambitiously written to depict a universe in climax. How appropriate that the final exclamation is one of love. And how fitting an end that to the Salzburg Festival, which had chosen as its motto for this year: “For strong as Love is Death.”
Recommended recordings of the Turangalila Symphony (see links above):
Between two fine recordings, this Salzburg line-up can be cobbled together: Simon Rattle conducts the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on a 1987 EMI recording – and Tristan Murail plays the ondes Martenont. Peter Donohoe plays the piano in that performance which created a small sensation when it was originally issued. The Berlin Philharmonic and Pierre-Laurent Aimard are conducted by Kent Nagano on a 2001, Grammy Award winning Teldec recording. The latter, one of my favorites, is also available in Warner’s splendid 2006 Messiaen Edition box of just about all of Messiaen’s works on 17+1 discs. (One of my “Best of 2006” picks.)
Worthy of everyone’s consideration is also Myung-Whun Chung’s performance on DG with the Bastille Opera Orchestra and the performers who played the work together more than any other artists: Yvonne Loriod and her sister Jeanne Loriod. My favorite, however, is a recording with altogether less famous participants: Naxos’ recording with Antoni Wit, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Thomas Bloch and François Weigel. It is the very recording that once and for all convinced me how good Naxos recordings really can be, and it remains my first choice at any price.
Tuesday, 9.9.08, 9:09 am
New Releases: CDs
Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love (4)
"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.
In the long history of composing conductors and conducting composers – activities that were once intractably combined – there came a point where the two activities were seen as – and eventually became – separate. That point is the ‘invention’ of “repertoire”, and the man best individually identified with this change is Felix Mendelssohn.
We consider Mendelssohn a composer, even if we know that, as the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he instrumentalized the idea of the regular programming of the classic and great music literature of days before him – re-popularizing Bach for the concert stage in the process.
Wagner is claimed by some as a great conductor, especially of Beethoven, though that is obviously not so easy to verify beyond reports from contemporary observers, critics, and Wagner himself. Without sound-recordings, the legacy of a composer-conductor will rest on his own creations, not his interpretations. Perhaps the only conductor who retained some measure of fame without available recordings is Gustav Mahler, though naturally the legacy of the composer dominates the conductor here, too. But Richard Strauss, of whose conducting (variously described as superb or merely competent) there are a couple recordings, but thanks to the unquestionable greatness of his own opera we only him as a composer. Ditto Hans Pfitzner, to the extent we are aware of him at all and minus the “unquestionable” part.
Near contemporary Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose compositions are distinctly lacking in greatness (though neither ambition nor, generally, quality) became instead synonymous with the ‘modern maestro’: a brilliant interpreter of the music of others. Today there are about 10 accounts of him conducting available to every disc that features his music. Surely not what Furtwängler, who insisted on being a conducting composer, would have wished for. If Felix Weingartner had lived beyond 1942, his conducting (for which he is primarily known thanks to his associations with the Vienna and Berlin operas and Vienna and Munich Philharmonic) might be even more prominent and his composing, if that’s possible at all, even less.
How lucky then, that we are finally able to discover the composer Weinberger. It is one of the many great, laudable achievements of that enterprising record label cpo that they are unearthing Weinberger’s music piece by piece, CD by CD. For every disc I hear of his chamber or symphonic output, I become more willing to chuck all records of “Weinberger the conductor” and embrace “Weinberger the composer”. A hypothetical that is fortunately not necessary to enact, but telling: Who would ever say the same thing about Furtwängler?
Furtwängler, for all the respect and pleasure (more of the former than the latter) I have for – and gain from – his music, suffers from the dubious distinction of having managed to combine the gaiety of Brahms with the brevity of Bruckner. Which, if it needs spelling out, is to say: He created fearfully towering, unsmiling symphonic behemoths (and sonatas) that offer acoustic clarification of the difference between gigantic and great.
So very different Weingartner. There is a smiling soul and Austrian charm in his music that shines through, even in a relatively somber, mourning quartet as his first, op.24 in d-minor. (“The saddest of all keys”, as Nigel Tuffnel famously reminds us of.)
Schubert’s Death & the Maiden, late Beethoven, and the Florestan side of Schumann are audible literally (Schubert) and in spirit (Beethoven, Schumann). This romantic quartet surpasses in immediacy of appeal even delectable Classical Kleinmeister like Onslow or Ries or the Munich romantic Ludwig Thuille. The Schubert theme for the first movement came to Weinberger upon news of the deaths of Bismarck and (more likely responsible for the incredible tenderness) that of his former landlords’ young child. Now here’s “In Memory of an Angel” without the atonal element!
The work is substantial, 37:45 in the Swiss Sarastro Quartet’s deeply felt reading. Maybe the 9-minute Adagio assai could be more succinct, but it’s beautiful enough that there really is no reason to wish it shorter, even for the very few spots that don’t progress the musical storyline. Beethoven rears his head in the Allegro molto as if it were a collection loosely connected reminiscences of what Weingartner (a noted Beethoven conductor and occasional orchestrator) liked about Beethoven’s string quartet writing. Then, when the Finale (Vivace – Andante Tema con Variazioni) hits upon the Schubert theme again (about 2 minutes into the 15 minute movement), there emerges a sense of such poised beauty that it seems a shame for any chamber music loving ears not to have heard it. Meandering through Seven Variations, it culminates in an exclamation mark of a flippant fugue on the subject.
The Third Quartet op.34 in f-minor, a wedding gift to his second wife Feodora von Dreifuß, opens by spelling her name out (F-E-Do-re-A – which sounds Beethovenesque) only to just scrape by another near-direct Schubert. Ralph Orendain, Roman Conrard (violins), Hanna Werner-Helfenstein (viola), and Stefan Bacher (cello) move the music along – lyrical now, then lightly dancing – as if the Allegro commodo didn’t quite know whether it wanted to be either Allegro or comodo. No ambiguities in the swift, driven Allegro molto: galloping away with the players in tow, the four voices ever more independent, it is the movement which sounds least out of place in 1903 where Ravel and Debussy and Smetana had already written theirs. The third and final movement Poco adagio – Allegro giocoso bring calm once more, and once more only temporarily. Of a wedding gift you might expect a more optimistic tone, especially of Weingartner, than it musters. Perhaps Weingartner (“no propaganda will help my compositions if they’re no good and if they are good, they’ll succeed eventually”) was as realistic about marriage as about the ways of his music and its reception?
His marriage with Feodora wasn’t likely a great success (he was to marry twice more), but his quartets have now received the treatment that should pave their way to their much deserved recognition. This being cpo’s volume 1 of Weingartner string quartets, the next round is awaited most eagerly. 
Previously and since in Chamber Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintets
( 2 ) – Joseph Marx, String Quartets
( 3 ) – Franz Mittler, String Quartets
( 4 ) – Felix Weingartner, String Quartets
( 5 ) – Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, String Quartets
Previously and since in Orchestral Music You Didn’t Know You Love:
( 1 ) – Friedrich Ernst Fesca, Symphonies
( 2 ) – Max Bruch, Swedish & Russian Dances
( 3 ) – Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Orchestral Songs, Symphony
Wednesday, 9.3.08, 6:00 am
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Vienna Mahler in Salzburg
The first four of the Vienna Philharmonic’s five concerts at this year’s Salzburg Festival were conducted by Pierre Boulez, Jonathan Nott, Riccardo Muti, and Mariss Jansons, featured works by Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók (Boulez), Bach, Mahler, Ives, Schubert (Nott), Brahms (Muti), Webern, Berlioz, and Brahms again (Jansons). The fifth program on the prepenultimate and penultimate days of the festival was conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and featured Mahler’s most Mahlerian Symphony – the overstuffed, intense, and exhilarating Third Symphony.
The Symphony, Mahler’s longest by some measure, has sublime moments and plenty of them, but it can be difficult to find your way around it: It’s a quilt of music and never just straight forward or clear-cut. It has two large outer movements bracketing four smaller movements – the first movement alone takes over half an hour. Michael Gielen likens the Mahler Third to Robert Musil’s novel “The Man Without Qualities”. Gratifying, because I love Musil’s novel about – essentially – nothing and just like the Third Symphony, I’d never claim to wholly understand it.
Gielen also quotes a Georg Trakl poem in talking about this Symphony – apt in this case, because Salzburg has Trakl poems liberally sprinkled all over town, carved into stone plaques. And like Trakl’s poetry, much of the Third is “flavor” – which you either relate to, or not. This relation – to a time, a mental state, a social setting, a mood – can only be made possible to an outsider (someone who has not had similar experiences, lived similar moods, nor known a similar social environment) through music, not theoretical constructs. Mahler’s original movement titles may therefore provide answers to intellectual questions we have, but cannot evoke any feelings that the music can’t rouse. Which is also what Mahler said: “No music is worth anything if first you have to tell the listener what experience lies behind it.”
The Salonen-Vienna performance illuminated the symphonies’ difficulties. Even though the Vienna Philharmonic displayed absolute unity in the strings (throughout), a brass section that surprised and delighted with clarity and accuracy (unfortunately only until about the third movement), well defined woodwinds and percussion, and impressed with an altogether vivid sound in the fine acoustic of the Large Festival House, there was something distinctly lacking.
Either the reason therefore or result thereof was a particularly episodic impression that made the digestion of this behemoth more difficult than ideal. The second movement (“What the flowers tell me”) had a studied swing in its gait, and deliberate lightness. In movement three (“What the animals tell me”) even those animals imparted a sense of control – orderly rambunctiousness! There was wonderful delicacy in the strings while the distant trumpet(s) sounded from behind the stage: just one of many marvelous moments that, alas, had some difficultly forming a unified whole. Zeal and excitement were offered only with prudence and coolly so. The luring cliché of Salonen offering nordic, ‘Sibelian’, Mahler becomes all too tempting to abuse. (And an impression not necessarily reinforced by his clean yet sumptuous 1997 performance on Sony with Anna Larsson.)
In the fourth movement’s “Oh Mensch” Lilli Paasikivi’s mezzo sounded a touch distressed; plaintive, not unlike the reeds that echo it. A suitable voice, if not exactly a vocal revelation. The Vienna State Opera Choir and the Salzburg Festival Children’s Choir did their angelic job in the “Bim-Bam” of the fifth movement well enough, but only the soft, sonorous rise of orchestra following it truly tugged at the heart strings: a touch too controlled to be tear-inducing, but very nearly so. The cumulative power of the terrific finale cannot and did not fail to be inspiring. The applause that follows such a work – and did here – always strikes me as directed at the work more than the performance per se. For all its individual qualities – each deserving of the ovations – this one remained in the category “very good”, not “life-altering” which I had secretly hoped for. A case of luxurious disappointment.
An oddity: Timid applause after the rousing first movement was hissed down by the Festival audience only for that (admittedly artificial) silence to be disrupted and undercut with broad applause when Salonen returned to the podium to continue; at least as odd as the applause when the choir tried to sneak onto the bleachers before the fourth movement. It is apparently uncouth to applaud stirring music (and the first movement was exceptionally played, too), but perfectly fine to dole out appearance-applause at any point new artists enter the fray?
Monday, 9.1.08, 6:00 am
Bayreuth After Wolfgang
If Munich’s annual Opernfestspiele is the largest opera festival in Europe, and Salzburg the most glamorous, the Bayreuth festival (just two hours to the north of Munich and conveniently without overlapping) is the most iconic.
Munich can boast with quantity and variety (46 performances in 34 days, 20 different operas), Salzburg with location and star power. “The Green Hill” in Bayreuth meanwhile is the nexus of all things Wagner. The annual point of pilgrimage for Wagnerians around the world has even near mystical qualities… a fact to which the eight year waiting list for tickets contributes.
But Bayreuth seemed in troubled waters for the last few years with squabbles between the Festival Director “for life” Wolfgang Wagner and the Bayreuth Trust (which includes influence and funding from the Bavarian State Government) breaking out over the future leadership of the Festival. Wolfgang Wagner, the master’s grandson, wanted to anoint his daughter of second marriage (with Gudrun Wagner, née Armann) as the new director. Apart from lacking the statutory power to stipulate his successor, that daughter, Katharina Wagner, was eyed with suspicion as too young, too inexperienced. Her niece Nike Wagner – daughter of Wolfgang’s genial and more artistic brother Wieland and artistic director of her Weimar Festival – bickered loudly and very undiplomatically in all the German Feuilletons about revolutionizing post-Wolfgang Bayreuth.
Wagner might have supported revolutionary activities when in Dresden, but his successors in Bayreuth shiver at the very idea. Nike Wagner became a persona non grata at the festival. Not the least to prevent Nike Wagner from bringing her ideas to this most traditional of opera festivals, Wolfgang Wagner clung to the directorship and – and given his deteriorating vitality – seemingly to life, also. Wolfgang Wagner’s daughter from his first marriage meanwhile, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, herself the seasoned artistic co-director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, was once vetoed by her father as the potential successor by her own father – presumably to keep the chances alive for the succession of Gudrun’s daughter. The curtain-raiser for the convoluted end-game of the Bayreuth ascension was to be Kathrina Wagner’s direction of Die Meistersinger at last year’s festival – by all accounts an impressive and intelligent feat.
All in all it was a terrific plot of brothers, step-daughters and –mothers, changing alliances and broken contracts, and all in a battle over the ascendancy of the Wagnerian throne. Operatic stuff, you might say, and it has happily filled the cultural sections of newspapers for some time.
Unexpectedly and in keeping with great drama, Wolfgang Wagner’s young second wife Gudrun, who had domineered behind the scenes, died. No one would likely admit to her passing having been a relief for the many involved in the future of Bayreuth, but it certainly did hasten efforts in coming up with a workable compromise.
Step-daughters Katharina the Young (30) and Eva the Quiet (63) have made their peace – leaving Nike the Wily out in the rain. Not even a last-minute ‘application’ of Nike Wagner teaming up with ex-Salzburg, Paris and future New York City Opera General Director Gerard Mortier changed anything about that. If their last-hour bid was even meant to be taken seriously, it likely wasn’t seriously considered by the Bayreuth Trust’s board who made their decision for the succession of the Festival leadership today.
Wolfgang Wagner, who few trusted to have the energy necessary to effectively run the Festival, can now lean back with the future of Bayreuth securely in the hands of his branch of the family. To see him take his last bow after the last performance under his reign (Parsifal, last Thursday), became a touching affair.
Judging from the Wagner-daughters’ concept for the future of Bayreuth, a happy end might come of the tussle, after all. The happiest part of it being that is has come to an end, at all. A conservative approach to the tradition ensures that that which has made the Festival special will remain in place. Bayreuth will continue to show the 10 Wagner operas of the Bayreuth canon – and only those. For Rienzi, Das Liebesverbot, and The Fairies Wagnerians must continue to look elsewhere. Hardly too much to ask of them.
Innovation for innovation’s sake – a common disease of many traditional institutions – is shunned. Meanwhile weaknesses are reckoned and named. The quality of the singers in Bayreuth has been less than that at the great Wagner opera houses in Berlin, Munich, New York, Vienna et al. Few of the great Wagnerian singers are willing to spend their summers only at Bayreuth when they could more profitably make shorter appearances at different festivals. Money and determination will have to aid mere reputation to improve matters here. Audiences won’t continue to give standing ovations to the well-below average vocal performances forever. The same can be said for the conductors who appear at Bayreuth who have been – Bayreuth’s future musical consultant Christian Thielemann excepted – less than inspiring. Even Daniele Gatti’s Parsifal this season was short on the mystical and long on, well, length.
More emphasis will also be placed on how the Festival markets itself. Just relying on one’s own importance combined with a rather dusty approach to press relations will eventually not suffice for keeping Bayreuth vital. Katharina Wagner is the woman for this – and has already introduced concepts like a public viewing and internet streaming of (her) Meistersinger that found nearly 40,000 viewers: more than could watch the performance live over a regular 7 year run. Marketing, however, does not mean gratuitously offending existent clientele nor breaking with traditions for the sake of breaking with them. Hopefully this will also include adjusting its 19th century-style PR division,
The rest of the Wagner/Wagner-Pasquier program emphasizes matters still or already in place – not the least the continued choice of intriguing and innovative directors who challenge the status quo, balanced with traditional productions that avoid being backward. Their rather reticent plan, devoid of revolutions or surprises, might disappoint those who hoped for creativity out of upheaval, creative destruction. It will come as a great relieve to those who believe in Bayreuth’s skill to innovate within the bounds of a strong and strict tradition. Even to those who cherish Mortier’s ability to give institutions of ‘high culture’ a shot of adrenaline (or cocaine?) – I among them – it must seem unlikely that Mortier’s work would actually have advanced Bayreuth as much as he can any other institution (like the City Opera of New York or Madrid’s Teatro Real), while offering a potential of irrevocable loss of customs where customs are held so particularly dear.
Boredom won’t overcome Bayreuth if the quality of its performances is first class. And seeing that few of its productions have failed to outrage the reactionaries, hopes are high that they will continue to do so in the future.