Thursday, 4.30.09, 6:00 am
May in Music
Highlights
May has its share of great concerts coming up, but a few stand out among the already select list below. First there is Nelson Freire, who will be the soloist in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. If you like great pianism and prefer substance over flashiness, musicality over romantic contortions, you probably already consider Freire among the great living pianists, along with Alex Lubimov, Grigory Sokolov, and Richard Goode on a good day. Better yet: the BSO will also play Bruckner’s underrated Third Symphony (1889 version) in the three concerts conducted by Mario Venzago. (May 1st, 8PM, May 3rd, 3PM at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. May 2nd, 8PM at Strathmore. Attending is one way to help the BSO through these difficult times. Joining the Music Matters program would be another.)
They haven’t got superstar status by any account, but they are an example of home grown excellence: On May 6th the Suspicious Cheese Lords (superb a capella Renaissance performances under a lovably silly name) will perform at the Mansion at Strathmore. (7.30PM. In case Baltimore is closer, or May 3rd more convenient, they will also perform at the Cathedral of Mary, our Queen in Baltimore at 5.30PM.)
The description of Nelson Freire’s art above could be easily adapted to fit Till Fellner, the Austrian a whole nation seems to groom to become the successor of the finally retired Alfred Brendel. He has just released his much awaited second Bach album on ECM. Not the second book of the Well Tempered Clavier (after the first volume was such a runaway success with critics and customers alike), but with the more severe Inventions & Sinfonias. I’ve been playing the disc for the last few days and am, in subtle and understated fashion, enthralled. His deliberateness in approaching recording pays, as does his confidence with which Bach’s polyphony is tackled, mastered, and displayed from its many, surprisingly colorful facets.
He isn’t actually going to play Bach (except perhaps as an encore) at the Embassy of Austria, but the Embassy Series’ concert on May 11th is no less worth attending for the third part of his North American Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle. (7.30PM)
Finally there is a favorite chamber music combination to be enjoyed at the Corcoran Gallery: The Jupiter Quartet, again with Roger Tapping (and cellist Natasha Brofsky), will perform the Brahms Sextet after Mendelssohn and Shostakovich quartets on May 31st, 4PM.
Opera & Vocal
The Washington National Opera might come to the musico-dramatic rescue of Charm City with a concert performance of Turandot at the Lyric (June 2nd), but even after the demise of the Baltimore Opera, the genre isn’t yet dead in our northern neighbor. Opera Vivente, a chamber opera company, puts on ambitious shows in the 170 seat Great Hall of the Emanuel Episcopal Church. After Monteverdi in March, they take a crack at Britten’s Albert Herring in May (May 1st, 3rd, 7th, and 9th). It seems reasonable to adjust one’s expectations for these performances, given the small company, but small scale Britten has every potential to be gripping.
When Placido Domingo’s attention isn’t focused on LA, the Washington National Opera does eke out a spot in the limelight every so often… and its trouble-fraught “American Ring” (if you’ve followed the quaintly naïve anti-capitalist message of the first two installments you can’t help but enjoy the many shades of ambiguous irony involved) certainly has been one of those cases. The saga continues with Siegfried from May 2nd until the 17th (2nd, 5th, 9th, 14th, 17th) for now. Michael Güttler will conduct, Alan Held will resume his Wotan/Wanderer and Gordon Hawkins his Alberich.
The Washington Concert Opera, meanwhile, has a great track record (Tancredi, Esclarmonde, Luisa Miller, Tabarro, Cavalleria, and Orlando for example), displaying astonishing talent in picking ensembles of wonderful singers made up of promising talents and insider choices. It may only give two or three concerts a year and neither have a permanent orchestra nor opera-house (performances take place at the Lisner Auditorium), but I’ve found its performances consistently better than most of those at the much more famous ‘second’ opera houses in Vienna or Munich. Under the baton of Anthony Walker, the first concert on May 3rd (6PM) isn’t actually an opera but an evening of arias with Stephanie Blythe. Orfeo ed Eurydice, Samson et Dalila, and La Donna del Lago will be among the operas from which Blythe (and Nathalie Paulin) will cull choice selections.
On May 31st (6PM) Elizabeth Futral and Donnie Ray Albert will star in a true rarity, Saverio Mercadante’s Il Giuramento which should be more than enough to make anyone with a penchant for Italian opera and a sense of discovery want to go.
Magdalena Kožená needs no introduction. On May 6th (7.30PM) she will perform, accompanied by Karel Kosarek, at the Embassy of Austria in a program of Schumann, Berg (the gorgeous Seven Early Songs), one of my very favorite song composers, the incomparable and strange Henri Duparc, and Purcell. The recital is presented by the Vocal Arts Society.
Veteran soprano Carole Farley, together with John Constable, will tackle Poulenc’s La voix humaine at the Library of Congress in a recital on Friday May 29th (8PM).
Orchestral & Choral
The National Symphony Orchestra will begin the Haydn celebrations in May with a performance of The Creation under Helmuth Rilling on Thursday April 30th, with subsequent performances on May 1st and May 2nd. (7PM, 8PM, 8PM, respectively.)
On Monday May 4th, WPAS will present the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with their new music director Manfred Honeck and soloist Alisa Weilerstein. The program (Strauss Death and Transfiguration, Haydn Cello Concerto No.1, and Beethoven Symphony No.7) is interesting but standard fare, the orchestra always worth hearing. (8PM, Kennedy Center Concert Hall.)
From May 7th through May 9th, Oliver Knussen, conducting the NSO, will first present his own violin concerto (soloist Leila Josefowicz) along with Augusta Read Thomas’s Helios Choros I, Julian Anderson’s Imagin’d Corners, and Gunther Schuller’s Of Reminiscences and Reflections. On May 10th he will lead an NSO chamber ensemble in yet more contemporary works by Knussen himself and Mark-Anthony, Sean, and Julian Anderson. (7.30PM)
updated:
The Washington Chorus will perform my favorite Rachmaninov work, his All-Night Vigil. Performances will take place on Saturday, May 30th (8.00PM) at Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Potomac, MD, and on Sunday, May 31st (4.00PM) at National Presbyterian Church in DC. Tenor Robert Baker will be the soloist.
Early(ish) Music
Handel-honoring isn’t over, only because April is. The Washington Bach Consort will perform a program of just Handel at Strathmore on Sunday May 3rd. A whole afternoon (3PM) of Handel without the “Messiah”? That’s a deal.
Don’t forget the Noontime Cantata performance by the Washington Bach Consort at the Church of the Epiphany—this time Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV 21, about which I will write more in a few days. As always on the first Tuesday of the month, which is May 5th. Obviously at noon.
More good Handel with Trio Sonatas by him and Purcell, courtesy of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society on May 17th (7.30PM) at the Smithsonian Castle.
Chamber
Chamber music, Washington’s forte, is well represented, in May. I truly cherished the Klavier Trio Amsterdam’s performances in DC and they have since become regulars. On Sunday May 3rd they will play Bach, Dvořák, and Ravel at the Corcoran (5PM) and the following Monday, May 4th, at La Maison Française (7.30PM).
Flute sonatas of Bach, Purcell, and Varèse, meanwhile, are on the menu at Shriver Hall in Baltimore when Emmanuel Pahud and Trevor Pinnock present their recital on Sunday May 3rd (5.30PM).
Apart from Varèse, there is a series of composers to discover this month—much of it courtesy of “CrossCurrents-Contemporary Music Week”. The music of Joan Tower will be given the “Composer Spotlight” (the name of a mini concert series at the Kennedy Center) when the Muir Quartet and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio take stage at the Kennedy Center Family Theater on Monday May 4th (7.30PM)
The next day, at the Terrace Theater, it will be Ellen Taaffe Zwilich who gets the nod with the same trio and the Miami String Quartet. (7.30PM)
Wednesday May 6th, the veteran Nash Ensemble will play music by Oliver Knussen, Elliot Carter, Nicholas Maw, George Benjamin, Harrison Birtwistle, and Colin Matthews, also at the Terrace Theater. (7.30PM)
The wonderful pianist Jenny Lin will continue that trend with performances of Ligeti, Messiaen, and Unsuk Chin at the Strathmore Mansion on Thursday May 7th. (7.30PM)
Not contemporary but some of them not very often heard: Miaskovsky and Arensky (plus Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky) are being played by the National Chamber Ensemble at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater in Arlington on Sunday May 10th. (6.30PM)
La Maison Française continues the composer-discovery possibilities and presents Philippe Manoury and violist Christophe Desjardins at a concert and reception the exact program of which I can’t seem to find out. (Then again it probably doesn’t matter: if you like contemporary music in general and perhaps Manoury in particular or if you are simply curious, you will go no matter which pieces will be played.) Thursday May 28th. (7.30PM)
Finally, on Sunday May 31st (6.30PM) an intriguing mix of Bach, Schnittke (always a favorite), and Tchaikovsky with the National Gallery Chamber Orchestra under oboist-cum-conductor Vladimir Lande and the National Gallery’s own and revered Stephen Ackert at the harpsichord.
Tuesday, 4.28.09, 6:00 am
Gustav Mahler – Introduction (1.1)
From May 6thuntil May 17th, the Staatskapelle Berlin will perform all of Mahler’s Symphonies at Carnegie Hall—and there are still a few seats available. In anticipation of this Mahler bonanza, here is the first part of an introduction and eventual discussion of all Mahler symphonies (through favorite recordings) which will take place during WETA’s yet to be scheduled Mahler-Month.
Mahler is not an easy composer to love, much less understand. Few neophyte listeners immediately take to Mahler’s sound-world—somewhere between the anxiety-driven and the sheer gargantuan, un-deliberately meandering—and a good number never warm up to his music entirely. But those who get bitten by the Mahler bug fall hard for the Austrian’s symphonies and orchestral songs. And since Mahler is no longer anathema to the serious classical music lover as he was until roughly the early 70’s, more and more people fall victim to “Mahleria”. (As Prokofiev—who thought Mahler a crude, inferior composer—complained to Shostakovich, who in turn thought the world of Mahler, as one can hear in his own symphonies). Mahler, like very few other composers, has a tendency to create obsession among his ‘followers’—and if you can get heated debates over which Beethoven Fourth recording is “the best” (Osmo Vänskä’s on BIS, by the way), you can elicit the debating-club equivalent of small arms fire asking the same question about Mahler to any given two Mahler aficionados.
Perhaps this has to do with his music: intensely personal—like Bruckner’s—these symphonies (and here they differ from other, also intensely personal musical works) often stand and fall by the performer’s accentuation or interpretation of these personal aspects. Beethoven can be glorious if only the score is being followed in detail (although I suppose great performances of any music always do more than that); just following Mahler’s score produces something like re-creating a Jackson Pollock by the paint-by-number™ system. Leonard Bernstein, for example, seemed to re-live Mahler when conducting his symphonies… ‘composing’ them himself in the moment, rather than just executing commands printed in ink.
What leads to an appreciation, perhaps even comprehension, of Mahler is in ways similar to that which leads to Bruckner: An understanding of his eschatology or—very roughly—his struggle with the questions that arise from it. Bruckner’s self-contained, solemn and confident music (despite Bruckner’s own distinct lack of any self-confidence) does not seek answers but lives in the happy knowledge of eschatological certainty as I have tried to describe elsewhere. Mahler himself was more confident as a person when it came to his position as a conductor or composer. But where he exceeded Bruckner in ‘professional confidence’, he lacked utterly the latter’s spiritual confidence. Mahler converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1897, although that likely means less about his attitude towards either Judaism or Christianity than his attitude towards getting the right job in the “Jewish-influence-cautious” (not to say anti-Semitic, outright) Vienna of his time. Pragmatic conversions were common back then—and surely less remarkable in every way than they might seem from our post- Third Reich perspective.
Still, we need not rely on biographers to tell us that Mahler was constantly in search of answers he never found (not even with Siegmund Freud whom he visited after his wife, Alma, had had more fun with Walter Gropius than is generally considered appropriate for a married woman)—we only need listen to his music. Mahler, as Bernhard Haitink puts it, “had a real talent for suffering.” As in Wagner, there is much constant tension and anticipation of resolution in Mahler’s long-stranded music. But unlike Wagner, who simply continues in this way to one, final goal, Mahler really has no such goal, has no such determination in his music. That might not be obvious because his symphonies not only have a beginning and an end but tell stories as well, in addition to often having a very discernable, clear and down-right classical (if bloated) structure. The “Titan” of the First symphony or the hero of the Sixth or the story of the Second, the “Resurrection”, symphony are all told from beginning to end with a general arch guiding the musical action. But listen to the music itself. Like yarn that opens and untwines from both ends; like Will-O-the-Wisps erring about the night; like sparks from a bonfire; there is no determination or direction in the actual music. ‘Determination’ in Mahler is like a hammer hitting a pool of mercury. Hundreds of little mini-climaxes and relaxations ripple through the music in a fashion that makes Mahler’s symphonies so prone to the label “Angst-ridden” or Anxiety-riddled. And there are moments in his symphonies where the music seems more disoriented than a butterfly with ADD. In Bruckner’s music, there isn’t a single question mark. In Mahler, plenty.
One last time in classical music, Mahler raises the ‘grand musical statement’ to its full height– as Beethoven and Wagner (and Bruckner, nearly unknown to the wider music-loving world) had done before him. And then he proceeds to smash it. If Nietzsche, a child of these times, philosophizes with the mallet (“mit dem Holzhammer philosophieren”), Mahler, in a very similar way, composes with a mallet. (Literally, as it were, in the Sixth symphony.) Nowadays we might consider Mahler’s way of treating musical materials and traditions as “deconstructivism”. But although there is a deliberate element of satirizing the material in his symphonies with banalities, non-sequiturs, irony, sarcasm, trivialisms—all amidst some of the most glorious and beautiful music and grandiloquent statements—he was probably less ‘deconstructing’ but instead ‘forced to take apart’. If he tip-toes on the line between satire and sincerity in his most romantic or jovial moments, it is not because he analyzed a certain popular mood or pointed to inherent ironies in society (in the way Shostakovich would approximate Mahler’s music thirty years later) but more likely because he did not trust these feelings himself. He was forced to expose the hollowness of the ‘great statement’, expose the implausibility and untenability of the very idea. Forced by an invisible drive towards the void… Mahler—as so often in his life—also in music vis-à-vis de rien.
He seems to mock in his music (mocking of love, of beauty, of tradition, and most of all: mocking of joy and lightheartedness) not as a jester with a mirror would, but a someone who cannot do otherwise, who is compelled for reasons perhaps not even entirely known to himself. He was very much a man of his time: less consciously visionary than sometimes assumed; never, however, a reactionary. A child of a time that was saturated with that ‘great nothingness’ (or ‘empty greatness’—as exemplified in the great novels from about that time—especially Robert Musil’s (appropriately unfinished) Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften but also Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, James Joyce’s Ulysses and, later, Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg. A great nothingness that eventually accumulated—only three years after Mahler’s premature death—in the grandest empty statement of them all, World War I.
Monday, 4.20.09, 6:00 am
Orchestral Music You Didn’t Know You Love (Max Bruch)
Surroundings and mood can flavor music as music itself can suggest landscapes and atmosphere. Rosetti Horn Concertos in a Viennese Coffee house had an immediate air of quintessential classicism about them; Max Bruch’s Suite on Russian folk melodies op.79b—or at least the first 4 calm minutes of the 20 minute, 6-movement work—stirred visions of a happy Hobbits’ Shire. At least it did when plopped into the player during a drive around the Isle of Mull, where brooks and moss covered stone hedges, lazily grazing lambs, gnarly small forests and rolling hills seemed as much to suggest the music as the music suggested precisely such terrain.
This relationship to landscape isn’t totally arbitrary: In the liner notes (more about those in a bit) I read of Bruch’s three inspirations for composing: “A beautiful picture, a beautiful landscape, or a beautiful woman.” In these Russian Suites, the two Swedish Dance Suites, and the Serenade on Swedish melodies—works that Bruch orchestrated later for good money and personal pleasure—Bruch works humble wonders of evocative tunes and harmonies; the stuff Howard Shore would probably kill for. (Although plagiarizing from the likes of Bruch, Pfitzner, and Strauss seems to work well enough for him.)
The folk dances that Bruch works off become buoyant pieces, only very occasionally a bit heavy-footed in the First Orchestral Suite of Swedish Dances, and throughout Bruch applies a light and dainty touch which—if you have given Bruch’s more grandiose efforts like “Odysseus” a try—is his saving grace. Not aiming quite so high apparently freed him and the music from overwrought pathos to everyone’s benefit. If romantic music is your thing generally and you like the more famous Bruch pieces specifically, the Russian and Swedish Dances should be near the top of your acquisition list.
Eckhardt van den Hoogen’s liner notes are a tad wordy but he’s at his eloquent-humorous best. It’s reading that is as informative as it is entertaining. He should sue Susan Maria Praeder for slander, though, because her singularly awful and completely insensitive translation (cruelly betraying what must be a non-native speaker) into “English” is half a step above Babblefish and makes a complete hash of the author’s text.
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
Sunday, 4.5.09, 12:25 pm
Bach on Palm Sunday
To my ears, Bach—and anything by him—is always apposite listening. But especially around Easter it becomes almost de rigeur that my musical diet be enriched with one of the Passions (as last year) or cantatas. And since Bach wrote his cantatas for the (Lutheran) liturgical year, there’s always an “appropriate” one to chose.
For today, Palm Sunday, it is BWV 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (“King of Heaven, be Thou welcome”), first performed on March 25th, 1714 in Weimar. That this is the only cantata for Palm Sunday has to do with the tradition in Leipzig to perform Passions, but not cantatas on the Sundays in Lent. And that it’s such an extensive cantata has to do with Palm Sunday concurring with the Annunciation that year, making that Sunday a very special event.
BWV 182 opens with a sonata for violin, recorder, and basso continuo. After the chorus of “Himmelskönig…” and the recitative for bass, three successive arias (for bass, alto, and tenor) follow. The alto aria with recorder “Leget euch dem Heiland unter” is a slow moving (over 10 minutes in Karl Richter’s recording with Anna Reynolds but only 6:30 with Ton Koopman’s counter tenor Kai Wessel), beautiful point of rest before the tenor aria “Jesu, lass durch Wohl und Weh” suggests weariness. A fugue-like (fore-imitation) chorale and final chorus conclude this somber beauty which lacks the ‘greatest hits’ moments required to become one of the famous cantatas. Its relative obscurity is perhaps an additional reason to seek it out on a day like this.
There is no excess of recordings but plenty of choice. The most recent addition comes from Atma Classique with Eric Milnes leading Montréal Baroque, Matthew White (alto), Charles Daniels (tenor), and Harry van der Kamp (bass). It is a fine, if slightly indistinct performance. For those preferring countertenors over altos, the choice is as great, if not greater, as for those who like altos. Matthew White isn’t my ideal of a counter tenor, but I prefer him to Yoshikazu Mera (Suzuki), and Wessel (Koopman). I have not yet heard volume 3 of the Purcell Quartet’s Weimar Cantatas which includes BWV 182, but based on my impressions of the preceding volume Michael Chance might give Matthew White a run for his money—but in either case you need to like your (OVPP) Bach very swift and even leaner. Too bad Daniel Taylor or José Lemos have not recorded this yet.
Karl Richter’s cantata recordings are emotional favorites and will always remain that. The second volume of his Cantatas on Archiv conveniently covers all the Easter Cantatas and they are the recordings I first reach for and Anna Reynolds and the recorder playing of Peter Jenne is a true joy. That said, BWV 182 can be had in more energetic and sprightlier performances. Not by much with Helmut Rilling (alto Doris Stoffel, tenor Aldo Baldin, bass Phillippe Huttenlocher, Haenssler), but plenty with John Elliot Gardiner who features my favorite alto in this work, Nathalie Stutzmann. Since tenor James Gilchrist is second only to Christoph Prégardiern (Koopman) in my estimation, and bass Peter Harvey faultless, this is my current favorite.
You can listen to Ton Koopman’s performance of BWV 182 on YouTube.