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| Music and Recordings |
| A Prokofiev Celebration: 2008 |
| Robert Kurilla, Renée Dumouchel, and Michael Miller |
January 22, 2009 |
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1. 2008, A Prokofiev Year, by Robert Kurilla
2. Sergey Prokofiev and His World, the Bard Music Festival 2008, by Michael Miller
3. Sergey Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare, (original version), Bard Summerscape, Mark Morris Dance Group, Leon Botstein, ASO, by Renée Dumouchel
4. An Uneasy Rivalry: Prokofiev and Stravinsky, Bard Music Festival Chamber Concert, October 25, 2008, by Robert Kurilla
5. Prokofiev, Music for Ballet, Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Sunday, November 9, 2008, Avery Fisher Hall, by Robert Kurilla
6. Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (complete), Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Monday, November 10, 2008, Avery Fisher Hall, by Robert Kurilla
7. Sergey Prokofiev, The Love for Three Oranges, Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Sunday, November 16, 2008, Avery Fisher Hall, by Robert Kurilla
8. Sergey Prokofiev, Film Music, Valery Gergiev, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater, Monday, November 17, 2008, by Robert Kurilla
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Valery Gergiev as a Force of Nature: his Mahler Recordings on LSO Live.
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| Huntley Dent |
December 28, 2008 |
Journalists call Valery Gergiev a force of nature in a common-or-garden way all the time, referring to his unflagging energy, which is remarkable even in the hyperactive circle of international conductors. When he signed up to become principal conductor of the London Symphony starting in 2006, Gergiev already led the Mariinsky, or Kirov, Orchestra and managed the vast forces of the opera, ballet, and symphony housed in the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. He ran the White Nights Festival in that city and another festival in Rotterdam, where he works with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Additionally he was chief guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and logged about twice as many engagements, all told, as any other major conductor in the world. It is commonplace for him to appear as a guest conductor in two cities in the same twenty-four hours if need be.  |
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Russell Sherman, piano
Chapin Hall, Williams College
November 19, 2008
Liszt, Transcendental Etudes and Master Class
Russell Sherman Live at the Angel Orensanz Center. Avie Records DVD AV 2152
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| Michael Miller |
December 11, 2008 |
| Williams has had an exceptionally strong recital program this fall, from its Messaïen tributes, medieval and renaissance music, and Ani Kavafian and Mihae Lee early on to the splendid Brahms violin sonatas of Williams' own Joanna Kurkowicz and Doris Stevenson (soon to be reviewed) and, in November, the great Russell Sherman. I'm used to driving to Peterborough or Boston to hear him play, and it would be a great thing to be able to rejoice in the convenience of hearing him at home, if it weren't for the unfortunate combination of Chapin Hall's acoustics and the Williams Bösendorfer. I've never heard any musicians, especially pianists, realize their potential under these circumstances. However, one undeniable advantage was the opportunity to talk with Mr. Sherman during his visit, which included a master class the following day. |
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| The Mahler Ninth: Standing on Beethoven’s Shoulders - a Survey of Recordings |
| Huntley Dent |
December 12, 2008 |
| I doubt that anyone was fooled by Sir Isaac Newton’s show of false modesty when he wrote to a rival, “If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Classical music has proceeded the same way, through a series of giants, but Newton had the benefit over Mahler that his achievement could be measured mathematically. Mahler’s depended on pure subjectivity, for how else is music ultimately judged but intuitively? A few fervent acolytes heard the Mahler Ninth and immediately recognized a masterpiece, but for every Berg, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter (who premiered the work in Vienna in 1912), there were legions of scoffers. Could either side have imagined that Mahler’s last completed symphony would be the only work of the twentieth century to seriously challenge the Beethoven Ninth as a universal human testament? |
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A Weekend of Opera, Part I
Boston Early Music Festival presents the
First of New Chamber Opera Series: two one-act operas
at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall on November 29, 2008, 8 pm
Venus and Adonis, a Masque by John Blow (1649-1710)
Actéon, a Pastorale by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)
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| Michael Miller |
December 5, 2008 |
| This past Friday and Saturday I attended two operatic performances, one at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the other at Boston's New England Conservatory, which began decorously enough, but both ended in an uproar one might have expected to find at a major prize fight. Both audiences were absolutely thrilled by what they saw and heard. I didn't count the curtain calls, but the audience's response to Tristan und Isolde under Daniel Barenboim conjured up legendary evenings of many years past, and the baroque and early music enthusiasts who packed Jordan Hall to attend the Boston Early Music Festival's first annual production of baroque chamber operas was no less uninhibited in their cheers, whoops, and clapping, expressing their well-deserved appreciation of a brilliant start to an important new series. Although my account of Tristan will appear separately below, I wish to present them together, because of what they tell us about opera and its current state. |
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A Weekend at the Opera, Part II
Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
Metropolitan Opera Company, November 28, 2008
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| Michael Miller |
December 5, 2008 |
| Last season's disastrous series of Tristan performances, of which I reviewed the March 14 evening, was bad enough to leave one with the feeling that its useful days in the mainstream repertory were coming to a close. Nothing seemed to work that night. The most physically adequate of today's Tristans, unable to pull out of an extended illness due to misdiagnosis by his New York doctors, had to cancel. Deborah Voight's shrill and unpleasant Isolde came to a premature halt because of a stomach ailment, we are told. Amidst the chaos, even Dieter Dorn and Jürgen Rose's elegant minimal production was beginning to wear out its welcome. Only the great Matti Salminen seemed unfazed. However, I must emphasize that the contributions of the replacements, Gary Lehman as Tristan and Janice Baird as Isolde were highly creditable, considering that Mr. Lehman was singing the role for the first time in public, and that Ms. Baird, who has sung Isolde numerous times in France to high acclaim, had virtually no preparation. I also got the impression that these fine singers would have projected better in a smaller house. |
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Stephen Hough, piano
Troy Chromatic Concerts, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
Sunday, November 9, 2008, 3 pm
| Bach/Cortot/Hough |
Toccata & Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 |
| Fauré |
Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat, Op. 63 |
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Impromptu No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 102 |
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Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp, Op. 66 |
| Franck |
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue in B minor, M. 21 |
| Copland |
Piano Variations |
| Chopin |
Nocturne in B major, Op. 62, No. 1 |
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Sonata no. 3 in B minor, Op. 58 |
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| Michael Miller |
November 21, 2008 |
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Behind Stephen Hough’s astonishing recital in Troy, there are significant connections with two others I recently heard in Boston, both with the American pianist Jeremy Denk. In one of these Mr. Denk collaborated with the great cellist Stephen Isserlis (review forthcoming), with whom Stephen Hough often plays and with whom he has made several recordings. Mr. Denk’s ensuing solo recital consisted of a striking, revelatory juxtaposition of Ives’ “Concord” Sonata and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier.” For one thing, it is striking how different Mr. Hough’s pianism is from Mr. Denk’s, a sign of Mr. Isserlis’ great range, if he can be compatible with both of them, and for the other, Hough’s carefully “curated” program was no less enlightening than Denk’s. What’s more, both pianists write their own program notes, and much else. A prolific recording artist, Mr. Hough is also a composer, a poet, and theologian, having written what seems to be a very interesting book, The Bible As Prayer: A Handbook for Lectio Divina,
the traditional Roman Catholic discipline of reading Scripture. He has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship.
What we heard, then, in the beautifully balanced, atmospheric acoustic of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, was playing of intellectual rigor and carefully considered consistency, balanced by a sensual ear for the many colors of the piano.
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Hector Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust
Metropolitan Opera, November 7, 2008 (Click here for slideshow.) |
| Michael Miller |
November 10, 2008 |
| La Damnation de Faust is especially tempting material for any director eager to experiment with dramaturgy or design. Since there is no established stage tradition and the work has proven inherently intractable on the stage, audiences are more inclined to approach it with an open mind. Fewer patrons will walk out in disgust, like our own Huntley Dent at Robert Lepage’s production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at Covent Garden this past summer. Unlike the Rake, Berlioz’ thoroughly French, intensely personal, even eccentric treatment of Nerval’s translation is almost a tabula rasa for that renowned theatrical jack-of-all-trades. The new production at the Met, which first saw light in Japan in 1999, is, typically for Lepage, the fruit of long-term collaborative work through his production company, Ex Machina of Québec City. Peter Gelb saw the production in evolved form at the Bastille, and approached Lepage to bring to the Met, offering him additional funds to realize the digital components of the production in the most advanced possible way. Cutting-edge technology is, in fact, the trademark of Ex Machina’s multimedia approach to theater, not to mention the strapping young aerobats who dance—if that is the word for it—suspended from the rafters by cables. I noticed that The Big Apple Circus was already open next door. What we saw on the stage of the Met Friday evening made their efforts look like pretty tame stuff. My only reservation is that Robert Lepage and his associates may have done the same for Berlioz’ opéra de concert. |
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| The Wagner Cult on Record: Tristan und Isolde |
| Huntley Dent |
November 13, 2008 |
| Mild und leise. Plenty of otherwise gentle people lose their grip on civility when Wagner’s name is mentioned. I was standing in line at the post office explaining to a friend why I thought Wagner was greater than Bach. I felt that we were in a safely uncivilized location, but no. The woman in front of us turned around and said, “I totally disagree with everything you’re saying.” I had been foolish. The cult of Wagner, which swept half of Europe in his lifetime (the other half being divided between Brahms and various conservatives with rocks in their ears), went underground after World War II. |
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| Wagner Cult and Conductor Cult |
| Michael Miller |
November 18, 2008 |
| It is only too obvious that the worldwide economic collapse will affect all sectors of the global economy and therefore most aspects of our lives. Most arts organizations are already well along in addressing this murky, complex, and constantly shifting situation have announced cuts ranging from the relatively minor to cancelled or postponed performances, exhibitions, and building projects. Their managers know that things will be different in three months or six months, and probably not for the better. The crisis, however, is less apparent in concert halls, theaters, and galleries, which are full of enthusiastic, if somehow indefinably chastened people. In Boston and New York City in particular, houses have been full, and at the Metropolitan Opera the mood seems almost exuberant. The crowds who recently gathered at Sanders Theater for Hespèrion XXI, at Symphony Hall for Brahms, at Emmanuel Church for Russell Sherman, or at the Met for Robert Lepage all seemed very happy to be there. If the plentiful audience who converged on Lincoln Center on Wednesday to see Peter Sellars’ dramatization of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments was appreciably less upbeat, it was because they were the sort of people who enjoy entertainments which contain lines like “Slept, woke, slept, woke, miserable life.” What their engagement lacked in jollity shone forth in its intensity. All of these diverse assemblies were buoyed up by one thing, the anticipation of an experience beyond the average and the normal, perhaps even the transcendent. |
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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Sunday Concert Series, November 2, 1:30 pm
Jeremy Denk, Piano
Ives: Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840–1860”
Beethoven: Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”
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| Michael Miller |
November 4, 2008 |
| What amazing idea to put Ives’ “Concord” Sonata and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” together! They belong together with an affininity that seems perfectly inevitable once you’ve heard them in the same program, but nobody, as far as I know, has ever thought of it before. Beyond that, not every concert pianist, even good ones, have the stamina and concentration to accomplish the feat—and it is unquestionably a feat—but that notion soon disappeared in the shadows of the glorious music and Jeremy Denk’s luminous vision of both works. |
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Hespèrion XXI
directed by Jordi Savall
presented by the Boston Early Music Festival
Music from the Time of Cervantes
Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 8pm
Sanders Theatre at Harvard University
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| Michael Miller |
November 4, 2008 |
| Last summer, amidst Tanglewood’s rich offerings in baroque and early music, it struck me that they had done a very clever thing, both for themselves and for early music, in booking Hespèrion XXI. Ozawa Hall was filled close to capacity with the group’s legion of fans, many of whom travelled considerable distances to get there. It was also filled with a warm, expectant atmosphere, which only a truly devoted crowd can create. We saw that again at Tanglewood this year in Tashi’s reunion and the Beaux Arts Trio’s farewell concerts. The same spirit reigned in Harvard’s Sanders Theater, which was packed with a most enthusiastic audience. The primary difference is that Hespèrion XXI comes to the area every year under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival. This audience has been seasoned by years of Hespèrion XXI’s unique combination of precision, refinement, understated vivacity, scholarship, color, and showmanship. |
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Emmanuel Music, Robert Schumann Chamber Series
Russell Sherman, piano
October 26, 2008
Robert Schumann
Arabesque, Op. 18
Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Fantasie, Op. 17
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| Michael Miller |
October 29, 2008 |
| By now, after 38 years, Emmanuel Music is almost as much a part of Boston’s musical life as the Boston Symphony. However, on Charles Street, after yesterday’s concert, I was addressed by a gentleman who had just settled in town, who had noticed the program in my hand and asked me excitedly about the concert and the venue. Hence, it’s probably not redundant to mention that Emmanuel Music was founded in 1970 by Craig Smith, initially to organize performances of Bach’s complete cantatas in their proper liturgical setting at the Sunday services in Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street. While this continues today, their repertory has expanded enormously to include much more, including the comprehensive Schumann chamber music series which is now in its fifth and final year. Audiences consist of staunchly loyal admirers of the program, individual musicians, and its founder. Mr. Smith, who sadly passed on prematurely earlier this year, was fortunate to have a friend and collaborator in one of the very great American musicians, who understands Schumann, Liszt, and Debussy as well as he understands Beethoven and Mozart, Russell Sherman. |
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Piques Dames – Vocal Trio
Weill Recital Hall
Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 5:30 PM
(A shorter version will take place at Trinity Church, Monday, Nov. 10, 08, 1-2 pm.)
Karina Azatyan (piano, voice)
Olga Shyp (soprano)
Roza Tulyaganova (soprano)
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| Robert Kurilla |
October 30, 2008 |
| On Sunday October 19 in Weill Hall, I was privileged to attend an exeptionally delightful recital of Russian music from the nineteenth century by three exquisite singers of the highest caliber and interpretation. Called “Piques Dames,” (a play on Tchaikovsky’s opera Пиковая Дама (Pikovaya Dama=Queen of Spades), Roza Tulyaganova (soprano), Olga Shyp (soprano), and Karina Azatyan (voice and piano) brilliantly performed rarely heard chamber masterpieces that took us into deepest Russia with all its Slavic darkness, love of nature, and color of the folkloric tradition. The program was like a Fabergé egg, a rare jewel that kept unfolding more and more until it ended. |
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Opera Boston
Der Freischütz
Music by Carl Maria von Weber
Libretto by Friederich Kind
Cutler Majestic Theatre
October 21, 2008
Conductor – Gil Rose
Stage Director – Sam Helfrich
Producer – Carole Charnow
Scenic Designer – Andrew Holland
Costume Designer – Nancy Leary
Assistant Conductor / Chorus Master – Edward Jones
Cast
Max – Daniel Snyder
Agathe – Emily Pulley
Kaspar – Andrew Funk
Ännchen – Heather Buck
Samiel / Hermit – Herbert Perry
Ottokar – David Kravitz
Kilian – Aaron Engebreth
Kuno – Tom O’Toole
Brautjungfer - Angela Hines Gooch
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| Michael Miller |
October 29, 2008 |
| If Carl Maria von Weber occupies an esteemed position in music history textbooks, his works make only rare, fleeting appearances on opera programs outside Germany, even Der Freischütz, considered to be his only work with a sufficiently convincing libretto to merit staging today. As for Weber’s popularity in the United States, I expected to find that Der Freischütz had been a standard at the Met earlier on in its history, perhaps up until the 1960’s, when its theme of good triumphing over evil would have begun to grate, or at least before the First World War, when anti-German sentiment put a damper on such entertainments. |
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Johannes Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem)
September 27, 2008, Saturday 8:00 PM
Symphony Hall, Boston
Boston Symphony Orchestra,
James Levine, conductor
Christine Schäfer, soprano
Michael Volle, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
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| Michael Miller |
October 15, 2008 |
| In 1865 Johannes Brahms set to work on his A German Requiem, following the death his mother, Christine Brahms, who died in February of that year. Formally, it is his most original work—later his genius found a secure place in traditional forms, above all the symphony. Before expanding on that, I should take Brahms’ example in remembering my own teachers, especially since one of them once had a principle which has some oblique relevance to A German Requiem, or at least to my own experience of it. |
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| Leonard Bernstein’s Mahler – The Composer as Cataclysm - |
| Huntley Dent |
October 28, 2008 |
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Veni creator spiritus.
Leonard Bernstein turned Austrian Mahler into American Mahler overnight, and this unlikely metamorphosis was one of those rare events, like Beethoven’s dedication of the ‘Eroica’ to Napoleon, that merged music history and world history. The night was September 23, 1962, at the opening concert of Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Bernstein, New York City, and America were at an apex of cultural triumph. It was a prophetic choice to begin the concert, not patriotically with Appalachian Spring, Rhapsody in Blue, or even Bernstein’s own West Side Story suite, but with the ecstatic outburst of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Thanks to a nation-wide broadcast on CBS television, the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ became a symphony of millions. At a single stroke, countless more people heard this music than had ever heard the Eighth in concert, perhaps more than had ever heard all of Mahler’s symphonies in concert.
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The Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music
Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston,The Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater,
Gil Rose, 2008 Artistic Director
Co-produced by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
The first in a series of biennial festivals of contemporary music initiated by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, which supports music by emerging American composers. Also with generous support from the Boston Musicians’ Association
September 18-21, 2008
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| Charles Warren and Michael Miller |
October 20, 2008 |
| Boston was recently the scene of an extraordinary event, the first Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music, initiated by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, which sponsored a series of more modest contemporary music festivals at Columbia University in the 1950’s. Now, in 2008, it has been revived in a more ambitious form, as a biennial festival, which will take place in a different American city, curated by a leading musician from that city. Accordingly, the next Ditson Festival will occur in New York City in 2010. The inaugural festival in Boston was organized by Gil Rose, the almost incredibly productive director of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Opera Boston, was to my mind so successful, that it seems a pity for the Festival to move on anywhere else, as fine an idea as its itinerant comprehensiveness my seem. |
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Ani Kavafian, violin and Mihae Lee, piano
Chapin Hall, Williams College, Friday, September 26 2008, 8 pm
Mozart, Sonata for Violin and Piano in B flat Major, K. 378
Brahms, Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, opus 78, “Regen”
Beethoven, Sonata No. 9 for Violin and Piano in A Major, opus 47, “Kreutzer”
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| Michael Miller |
October 1, 2008 |
| Williams College was fortunate to have hosted two of the great figures in American chamber music Friday evening in a program of core masterpieces of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both Ani Kavafian and Mihae Lee, who play often together as a duo and as the Triton Trio [To read a review of a 2007 Music Mountain concert, click here.], which includes Ms. Lee’s husband William Purvis, the great horn player, as well as in larger groups, have distinguished reputations for their work with new music. With their roots in the present day, they reach into the past with all the more conviction. Their performances of the classics are consistently deeply studied and thought through, original, and impeccably played. It is a joy to listen to the mere sound Ani Kavafian produces from the 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius, always centered right on pitch and surrounded by a rich bloom which fans out into an amazing variety of color and nuance; and the intelligence with which she applies her virtuosity is of the highest order. In the three works on this evening’s program piano and violin are virtually equally matched, giving Ms. Lee full opportunity to use her musicality, insight, and strength to the fullest. |
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| Vivica Genaux and Craig Rutenberg at Tannery Pond |
| Michael Miller |
September 1, 2008 |
| Outstanding vocal performances, many of them by mezzo-sopranos, have been among the defining features of this summer’s musical life. Anne Sofie von Otter finally reached her true potential as Dido in Berlioz’ Les Troyens. The great Anna Caterina Antonacci thrilled us as Cassandra in the same opera, and a newcomer, Kate Lindsey, excelled in the small part of Ascane, going on to greater things (with the splendid baritione, Thomas Meglioranza) in John Harbison’s Symphony No. 5 and, magnificently, in Elliott Carter’s In the Distances of Sleep. Sopranos Lucy Shelton, Iwona Hossa, and, of course, Renée Fleming were equally unforgettable. But one of the most remarkable and fascinating of these took place last Saturday evening at Tannery Pond, when Vivica Genaux, accompanied by Craig Rutenberg, performed an unusual program of little-known works. |
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Tanglewood 2008 Retrospective:
Kurt Weill
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Tanglewood, Theater, Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:30 p.m.
Original German text and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht
English translation by David Drew and Michael Geliot
Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Erik Nielsen, conductor (TMC Fellow)
Doug Fitch, director and scenic designer
Yoshiaki Takao, costume designer
Clifton Taylor, lighting designer
Fatty the Bookkeeper - Alex Richardson, tenor
Trinity Moses - Jonathan Beyer, baritone
Leocadia Beckbick - Christin-Marie Hill, mezzo-soprano
Jenny - Rebecca Jo Loeb, mezzo-soprano
Jimmy Mahoney - Steven Ebel, tenor
Jacob Schmidt...........Adam Sattley
Moneybags Billy.........Mischa Bouvier
Alaska Wolf Joe.........Evan M. Boyer
Toby Higgins............Zachary Wilder
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| Michael Miller |
September 10, 2008 |
The mood of the audience during intermission was particularly subdued. As I wandered in the dark among Tanglewood’s enormous pines, I overheard the same conversation at least three times:
“What did you think of it?”
(Pause) “It’s okay...”
It is possible to be more specific than that. The Tanglewood audience on the whole isn’t young. Most of these mostly affluent people are old enough to have some acquaintance with the politics of the left, but the annual TMC opera is hardly workers’ theater. As audiences crowd into the wonderful, atmospheric Tanglewood Theater to enjoy it, they are there in the spirit of what Brecht called “gourmet’s opera” (kulinarische Oper) in his essay about Mahagonny, in which he admitted that he and composer Kurt Weill had not totally eliminated this traditional element from their opera in their attempt to create a democratic epic opera. In the TMC production these operatic gourmet elements faired better than its Brechtian aspects, partly through the flaws of the dramaturgy itself, and partly through Doug Fitch’s slapdash staging and his and Yoshiaki Takao’s hideous design.
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BBC Promenade Concert No. 51
Monteverdi Choir
English Baroque Soloists
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor
J. S. Bach St. John Passion |
| Huntley Dent |
September 3, 2008 |
| Unregenerate. I like Bach sung the old-fashioned way, by artists who sound reverent, and I like it even better if they can expand to embrace the transcendent. If Bach wanted to reach God, shouldn’t his performers? This may sound flowery and churchy, but actually I don’t care if Bach sounds Christian – for me, the realm where faith touches the ineffable is the same as where music touches it. Music is my holiness. Therefore, I was not well disposed to attend the St. John Passion at the Proms tonight, as conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has toiled mightily for thirty years to leach all trace of reverence out of Bach’s passions, masses, and cantatas. As a reward for his success, he’s the cat’s meow in London. Musically, I look upon him as an updated Sir Malcolm Sargent, a bluff semi-talent honored for his proper Englishness more than any real inspiration (if you please, direct vitriolic retorts to my editor). |
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Beethoven Weekend at Tanglewood
Friday, August 22, 8:30 pm, Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
Christiane Oelze, soprano
Kristine Jepson, mezzo-soprano
Richard Croft, tenor
Hanno Müller-Brachmann, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
All-Beethoven Program
Mass in C
Symphony No. 5
Saturday, August 23, 8:30 pm, Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
All-Beethoven Program
Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 3, Eroica
Sunday, August 24, 8:30 pm, Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Christiane Oelze, soprano
Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano
Joseph Kaiser, tenor
Hanno Müller-Brachmann, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
Beethoven Symphony No. 9
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| Michael Miller |
August 30, 2008 |
| The Tanglewood Festival 2008 closed with an all-Beethoven weekend, bringing the number of all-Beethoven concerts up to four. (For my review of Bernard Haitink’s Triple Concerto and Pastoral Symphony, click here.) Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was also played in the Music Shed by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Hence all the great odd-numbered symphonies were represented this year, as well as two of the evens. Only the first (which is, of course, great music as well), the fourth, and the eighth were lacking. Add to this the magnificent performances of the relatively rarely heard works, the Triple Concerto and the Mass in C, and we have a mini-Beethoven festival. (NB. Since I was unfortunately unable to come Friday evening and was compelled to hear it on the radio, I shall review only the Saturday and Sunday concerts, but I can at least say that Friday was superb.) I could have done a similar tally for 2007, of course, 2006, and so on. For all its rich operatic and contemporary offerings, Tanglewood continues to place Beethoven in a revered place at the center of its programming. Can one hear too much Beethoven? Only if his music is indifferently played, and I haven’t heard that yet at the new Tanglewood. |
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| Richard Wagner, Das Liebesverbot, after Shakespeare
Glimmerglass Opera, Cooperstown, New York
Conductor: Corrado Rovaris
Director: Nicholas Muni
Cast:
Friedrich - Mark Schnaible
Isabella - Claudia Waite
Claudio - Richard Cox
Mariana - Holli Harrison
Luzio - Ryan MacPherson
Dorella - Lauren Skuce
Brighella - Kevin Glavin
Pontio Pilato - Joseph Gaines
Antonio - Zach Borichevsky
Angelo - Todd Boyce
Danieli - Robert Kerr
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| Heidi Holder |
August 22, 2008 |
| From the sprightly start of the overture, you know this is not Bayreuth’s Wagner. The Glimmerglass Opera, as part of its Shakespeare-themed season, presents the North American fully-staged premiere of Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), Wagner’s own topsy-turvy adaptation of Measure for Measure. It was only his second full-length piece (the first was Die Feen—the Fairies—another rarity), initially staged in 1836. The overture sets up the quarrel to follow between somber ascetic and antic carnivalesque impulses. If you know Shakespeare’s play you think you know who wins, but Wagner makes some significant alterations. |
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BBC Promenade Concerts No. 38
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim conductor
Joseph Haydn, Sinfonia Concertante in B flat major, for oboe, bassoon, violin, cello
Arnold Schoenberg, Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31
Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 4 |
| Huntley Dent |
August 27, 2008 |
| Grand alliance. In 1999 Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said founded an orchestra that unites both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict – the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. The name derives, arcanely, from a book of late poetry by Goethe. The eminent conductor has done nothing greater in his career, and when he and his young ensemble took the stage at the Proms last night, there was an ovation before the first note was played. Afterwards, Barenboim told the audience, “You have just heard the best of the Middle East,” the evening’s only reminder, obliquely, of what the worst is. Throughout the program, the Divan played as if they had something to prove (as opposed to the Gothenburg Symphony the night before, which played as if they have nothing to live for). As an example of grace under fire, this group exhibits passion and love for music (and each other) that’s unique in the classical music world. |
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BBC Promenade Concert No. 40,
August 15, 2008
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Pierre Boulez conductor
BBC Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Chorus
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano
Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet soprano
Anna Stéphany mezzo-soprano
Simon O'Neill tenor
Peter Fried bass
Simon Preston organ
Leoš Janáček Sinfonietta
Janáček Capriccio for piano (left hand) and wind instruments, 'Defiance' (1926)
Janáček Glagolitic Mass (original version, reconstr. Paul Wingfield)
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| Huntley Dent |
August 27, 2008 |
| Grand masters. Leos Janáček is the greatest composer outside Debussy to refuse to get on the bus of Western (i.e., German) harmony. Nobody sounded like Debussy before Debussy, and nobody sounds like Janáček after Janáček. It took him a long time to invent his barbaric yawp. He tinkered in Dvorak’s shadow before developing a signature style, part folkloric, part rough-shod eccentric, that only got more daring with age. What a shame that he is so little played outside his homeland – the best late works are searingly psychological and modern, not at all limited by Czech provincialism. Janáček could have chatted on equal terms with Freud if they had happened to meet in the park. Last night another one-of-a-kind modernist, Pierre Boulez, reunited with his old orchestra, the BBC Symphony, for an all-Janáček concert at the Proms. This composer and conductor may seem like an odd couple, but Boulez has been conducting Janáček since his stint as successor to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic in the Seventies – he lasted a stormy seven years before the board turned to the safer, duller Zubin Mehta. |
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BBC Promenade Concerts, No. 48
Gürzenich Orchestra
Markus Stenz conductor
Angelika Kirchschlager mezzo-soprano
Apollo Voices (womens' voices)
Mahler Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
Stockhausen Punkte (1952/ 1962/ 1993)
Schubert Songs
Orch. David Matthews Ständchen, D920b
Orch. Manfred Trojahn Bei dir allein, D866/2
Orch. Colin Matthews Nacht und Träume, D827
Orch. Detlev Glanert Das Lied im Grünen, D917
Beethoven Overture 'Leonore' No.3
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| Huntley Dent |
August 26, 2008 |
| The big show. A friend of mine once remarked, hyperbolically, “German music is music.” As much as the Renaissance is Italian, the soul of classical music rests with the astonishing emergence of composers, mostly Viennese but extending to the reaches of Moravia and Hamburg, who sustained a lineage of genius for three hundred years. Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich Orchestra gave me an encouraging sense of music’s current soul, at least in Cologne, where the orchestra is based. Functioning as both a symphony and opera orchestra – they play 150 opera engagements a year – the Gürzenich is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Which was cause for putting on a “mega-Proms,” as it was billed, that lasted almost three and a half hours, the audience cheering them on every step of the way. |
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| BBC Promenade Concerts, No. 47
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Jiří Bělohlávek conductor
Dvořák, Slavonic Dances, Op.46
Janáček, Osud
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| Huntley Dent |
August 22, 2008 |
| Glorious dementia. At the intermission of last night’s Proms, I had grown impatient and bored with Jiří Bělohlávek—a Celibidache disciple, no less—who conducts the BBC Symphony the way one might lay bricks or sort buttons. His methodical reading of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances Op. 46 squashed the juice out of these rollicking souvenirs of rustic happiness. But nobody in the rather skimpy audience was there for Dvorak. The point of the evening was a rare encounter with Leoš Janáček’s failed opera, Osud (“Destiny”). It’s an act of pure devotion to stage it, so demented is the libretto. The story is a barely concealed roman a clef about Janáček himself, who fell under the spell of a disgruntled diva at a spa where he was recovering from grief over the death of his young daughter. In the opera the hero is a composer who falls under the spell of an old lover whom he got pregnant and ruined by abandoning her and his infant son. |
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BBC Promenade Concert No. 46
Tchaikovsky, The Sleeping Beauty
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor
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| Huntley Dent |
August 21, 2008 |
| Beauty, not sleeping. Sometimes a completely satisfying concert leaves little to say. My London summer began (almost) with Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony playing the Mahler 8th and now is ending (almost) with them. The program, as heard last night at the Proms, was the complete Sleeping Beauty ballet. The evening floated on a cloud of endless melody from one of the world’s masters of melody (Who else shall we nominate? Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Mozart, Schubert?). With only one intermission the score is a long sit, three hours plus a bit, but Gergiev has no peer in Tchaikovsky, so the time flew. He turns any of the composer’s major works into an event, and in this case I welcomed the prospect of hearing Tchaikovsky’s most ambitious ballet score done by a full symphony orchestra, anticipating that the conductor would feel free to provide extra dramatic tension and speed. My only other experience with Sleeping Beauty as a live concert event came from a BBC Legends recording by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the BBC symphony dating back to 1979. |
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BBC Promenade Concert 34:
BBC Philharmonic
BBC Singers
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor
Rachmaninov, Symphony No.1
Puccini, Il Tabarro
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| Huntley Dent |
August 11, 2008 |
| Ugly ducklings go to the ball. Being good-natured, the Proms audience tonight didn’t seem to mind that the BBC Philharmonic program was truly bizarre, consisting of two famously scorned works. Shostakovich and Prokofiev became overnight stars with their first symphonies, Stravinsky made a so-so impression with his, but the dour, gangly Rachmaninov walked into a buzz saw. The 1897 premiere of his Symphony No. 1, under an allegedly drunk Glazunov, was blistered by critics as music to be played in Hell and “the ten plagues of Egypt.” As a result, the composer sank into a depression that was not lifted until he came under the care of a skilled hypnotist three years later. |
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Così Fan Tutte, K. 588
Hubbard Hall Opera Theater
Hubbard Hall, Cambridge, New York, August 15, 16, 21, 23 at 8 PM, August 24 at 2 PM
Richard Giarusso, conductor
Dianna Heldman, director
Cast:
Roza Tulyaganova, soprano- Fiordiligi
Kara Cornell, mezzo-soprano - Dorabella
Alix Jones, soprano - Despina
Ivan Amaro, bass-baritone - Don Alfonso
Brian Tanner, tenor - Ferrando
Richard Mazzaferro, baritone - Guglielmo
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| Michael Miller |
August 19, 2008 |
| I recently enjoyed an opportunity to capture a rare and very special moment, the very first performance of a newly founded organization in its historic and atmospheric home. For its first production, the Hubbard Hall Opera Theater (“The mission of HHOT is to provide classically trained singers and instrumentalists in New England and upstate New York greater opportunities to create something beautiful close to home, while also giving rural audiences the chance to enjoy an opera without having to spend the night in a city to do so.”) offered a complete, fully-staged performance of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Così Fan Tutte, and when I say fully-staged, I mean fully-staged and then some. This production was entirely in the round. Dianna Heldman’s direction, which was brimming with originality and insight, placed the action in the center of Hubbard Hall’s main seating area, which was surrounded on three sides by bleachers. |
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Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Gustavo Dudamel conductor
Martin Fröst clarinet
Ravel, La Valse
Anders Hillborg, Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales) (UK premiere)
Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique
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| Huntley Dent |
August 14, 2008 |
| Wunderkindfest. Unless you are a stubborn opinionator, performances can confuse you at times. I was flummoxed last night at the Proms by Gustavo Dudamel and his Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, in a concert I was expecting to enjoy, though not to the utmost. The Berlioz Symphonie fantastique wore out its welcome many years ago, and only a brilliant performance can redeem it for me. That Dudamel did not deliver. Sparkling as he is in the bright media limelight, the skyrocketing young Venezuelan has to have the goods, too. In this case, his reading was flat, disjointed, and plodding, with a drawn-out Scene aux champs that lasted long enough for Madame Defarge to knit a quilt. |
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BBC Promenade Concert No. 23
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Donald Runnicles conductor
August 3, 2008
Beethoven, Symphony No.1
Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde
Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano
Johan Botha, tenor
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| Huntley Dent |
August 3, 2008 |
| A wee dram o’ Mahler? If ever an argument were needed for bringing high culture to remote areas on the map, I found a moving one last night when the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra filled the Proms with roaring enthusiasts for Mahler. Conductor, musicians, much of the crowd, and even the mezzo in Das Lied von der Erde were Scots (I say “even” because no orchestra can just ring up a soloist for Das Lied out of the opera yellow pages), a marvel when you consider that this tiny country has another major ensemble, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, that could challenge the BBC to a throw-down. As a Huntley, I mean no disrespect to my forebears when I say that the likelihood of Mahler flourishing in the braes was slight even recently, but on this night the BBC Scottish, greatly expanded in ranks to fulfil Das Lied’s amplitude of brass and winds, attacked the score with touching confidence. Scotland isn’t remote, of course, compared to Siberia, and I was reminded that the great Sviatoslav Richter, a deep-dyed Soviet artist, used to load a Bösendorfer grand on the trans-Siberia express and have it drop him off in tiny towns above the ice belt. Locals who had probably never heard a Beethoven symphony in person would sit in the hall with snow melting off their boots while Richter, in total darkness except for a dim reading lamp on the keyboard, played a book of the Well-Tempered Klavier. |
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin
Tanglewood, Saturday, August 2, 8:30 p.m.
The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano - Tatiana
Ekaterina Semenchuck, mezzo-soprano - Olga
Peter Mattei, baritone - Onegin
Garrett Sorenson, tenor - Lensky
Vitalij Kowaljow, bass - Prince Gremin
Tony Stevenson - Triquet
Wendy White, mezzo-soprano - Larina
Barbara Dever, mezzo-soprano - Filipyevna
Alan Dunbar, bass (TMC Vocal Fellow) - Zaretsky
Evan Boyer, bass (TMC Vocal Fellow) - Captain
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
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| Michael Miller |
August 8, 2008 |
| One can only say that Tanglewood was incredibly lucky in landing James Levine’s distinguished counterpart at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Sir Andrew Davis, to replace him for the annual TMC opera concert performance. No conductor could have managed the performance with a keener appreciation of its drama, the melancholy lyricism of its music, the lucidity of Tchaikovsky’s score, and the energy and bite of its climaxes. Sir Andrew has always shown an extraordinary ability to respond to many sides of complex works, and this past Saturday, relatively fresh from conducting Onegin at the Lyric this spring, he produced a rich and balanced reading of the score as well as astonishing playing from the TMC Orchestra. His insight and musicianship were not the only reasons that this was one of the truly unforgettable nights at Tanglewood—or nights of opera anywhere—but it is fitting to honor this extraordinary conductor and musician who is heard all too seldom on the East Coast. |
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| Karol Szymanowski Double Bill
Bard Summerscape, Sosnoff Theater, Friday, July 25, 2008 - Sunday, August 3, 2008
Harnasie, a ballet-pantomime
Music by Karol Szymanowski
Scenario by Karol Szymanowski and Jerzy Rytard
Król Roger (King Roger, or The Shepherd), an opera
Music by Karol Szymanowski
Libretto by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
Directed and designed by Lech Majewski
Choreographed by Noémie Lafrance
American Symphony Orchestra,
conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Wrocław Opera Chorus
Summerscape Festival Children’s Chorus
Cast:
Tadeusz Szlenkier - The Shepherd
Adam Kruszewski - Roger ll, King of Sicily
Iwona Hossa - Roxane
Wojciech Maciejowski - Edrisi
Ewa Marciniec - Deaconess
Wojciech Bukalski - Archbishop
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| Michael Miller |
August 12, 2008 |
| Bard’s summer opera productions are dedicated to first-rate productions of little known operas. Now opera was extremely important to Prokofiev. It even seems to have played a role in his decision to return to Soviet Russia, where composers were still interested in opera, which was neglected by his American colleagues. However, his operas are no longer the rarities the once were. Both The Gambler and War and Peace were staged by the Met this past season. Therefore Leon Botstein and his fellow organizers decided to look further afield, offering the American professional stage premiere of a neglected masterpiece of the early 1920’s, Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger. |
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| Two at Wigmore:
Ann Murray DBE (mezzo-soprano) is accompanied by pianist Malcolm Martineau.
Bellini, Romanza from “Adelson e Salvini”
Fauré, “Claire de lune”; “En sourdine”; “Green”
Hahn, “Offrande”; “L“heure exquise”
Poldowski, “En sourdine”
Bordes, “Dansons la gigue”
Schubert, “Lachen und Weinen”; “Du bist die Ruh:
Schumann, “O, Ihr Herren”; “Volksliedchen”
Mahler, “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft”; “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!”; “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”
Granados, “La maja dolorosa” (I, II and III“; “Callejo”; “El tra la la y el punteado”; “El majo timido”; “El majo discreto”
Barber, “Three Songs to poems by James Joyce”
Irish Folk Songs: “The Spanish Lady”; “The last rose of summer” (Stephenson version); “Ach, I dunno”; “He moves thro’ the Fair”; and “Phil the Fluter, Ball”
Kungsbacka Piano Trio
Brahms, Piano Trio No. 2 in C, Op. 87
Beethoven, Piano Trio in Eb, Op. 70 No. 2.
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| Huntley Dent |
July 26, 2008 |
| Sweeties...
British concertgoers look surprised when I tell them that we don’t eat ice cream during intermission. They all do, even if the show is tragic. To me, eating a sweetie during Wozzeck or Parsifal seems strange. But when the Apocalypse comes, if it has an interval, the English will be eating ice cream. The national sweet tooth leads to surprises. Do you know what wine gums are, or Eton mess, or a Pavlova? They’re all beloved and super sugary (we won’t touch on the subject of British teeth). Most restaurants offer summer pudding or the Queen of puddings or pudding in general, since that’s the generic name for all desserts here. The sophistication of current cuisine is unbelievable to the bangers-and-mash generation, when dessert was Spotted Dick, a crumble, or a jumble. (If your Dick was unspotted, it would mean you ate suet pudding without raisins. No cause for alarm either way.)
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BBC Symphony Orchestra
Jiří Bělohlávek conductor
Lars Vogt piano
Mendelssohn, Overture to Ruy Blas
Mendelssohn, Symphony No.4 in A major, “Italian”
Brahms, Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat major
Brahms, Symphony No.2 in D major
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| Huntley Dent |
July 24, 2008 |
| I went to the Proms last night, and during the boring parts, which only lasted from the first note to the last, I looked out over the sea of listeners. Five hundred are standees, who like the groundlings in Shakespeare’s time, occupy the floor directly in front of the stage. Prime spots for five pounds. To a person they stand as still as the Queen’s guards. My knees couldn’t take it if I tried. The other standing room area is located in the clouds, high above the second balcony, and these stalwarts are the promenaders for whom the concerts are named. It’s good that they get the exercise since there’s no chance they hear anything except birds flying past. In his days as a music critic a century ago, George Bernard Shaw jeered at the noisiness of boorish British audiences – I hope younger listeners are still reading and laughing at Shaw’s witty reviews, penned under the name Corno di Bassetto—but given that Albert Hall holds thousands upon thousands, one hears nary a cell phone now and precious little coughing. |
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The Rake's Progress
by Igor Stravinsky
Libretto by W. H. Auden
Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
Thomas Adès, conductor
Robert Lepage, director
Anne Trulove - Sally Matthews
Tom Rakewell - Charles Castronovo
Nick Shadow - John Relyea
Mother Goose - Kathleen Wilkinson
Baba the Turk - Patricia Bardon
Trulovep Darren Jeffery
Sellem - Peter Bronder
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| Huntley Dent |
July 24, 2008 |
| Dashed expectations...
At The Rake’s Progress last night I was taken aback when my seat mate growled “terrible libretto” at the intermission. I practically know the Augustan pastiche cobbled together by W.H. Auden by heart. Its witty gilded poetry meshes perfectly with the score’s witty plays on Handel. Auden generously included the name of his unruly lover Chester Kallman on the libretto, but I have my doubts. Stravinsky’s opera has long been a pet of mine – I even own a dim radio air check of the premiere from Venice in 1951. That first night was a shambles. The composer couldn’t keep the ragtag orchestra together, and ruin quickly followed. The Rake pleases music lovers but rarely audiences – Rudolf Bing staged it at the old Met, one of his few gestures toward modernism, and he later claimed that infuriated patrons spat on the box office. The more fools they.
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| Candide
by Leonard Bernstein
at the English National Opera
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| Huntley Dent |
September 2, 2008 |
| Innocents abroad. Few Americans fit the bill anymore. Since the advent of charter flights in the Sixties, London might as well be the sixth borough of New York City (it takes five hours to fly here; I once took three to go crosstown to the Lincoln Tunnel). It’s rare to hear an English accent in Leicester Square at the height of tourist season – every passerby I asked directions from ten years ago was American – but now that London has become de facto the capital of Europe, Babel prevails. Recently the most American place you could go to was the stage of the English National Opera, where Leonard Bernstein’s Candide resembles a tacky souvenir shop of Warhol images, including Jackie and Marilyn... |
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BBC Proms, July 20, 2008
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Concert Orchestra
Paul Daniel conductor
Andrew Kennedy tenor
Nigel Kennedy violin
Bax, The Garden of Fand
Finzi, Intimations of Immortality
Elgar, Violin Concerto
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| Huntley Dent |
July 21, 2008 |
| Trailing clouds of glory. From the American side of the Atlantic, it’s hard to see how Nigel Kennedy pulls it off. To be a bad boy at 41, affect a working-class accent and ghetto handshake, wear a Chinese smock and fringed chemise onstage, and publicly denigrate the formal trappings of classical music – for all this Kennedy has earned the love of the wider British public, regular blokes who ogle the bare breasts on Page Three. He’s a pop hero in a Mohawk as much as a violin virtuoso. I went last night to hear Kennedy play his signature piece, the meandering Elgar Violin Concerto. Not exactly showboat material. You wouldn’t have known it form the swooning crowd, however. Royal Albert Hall (the Wembley Stadium of classical music, with benign Prince Albert sitting in gilded splendor across the road like a Victorian gentlemen strapped in for takeoff in a Gothic rocket) was packed, the crowd cheering when Kennedy pulled a little trick but hushed when he played [at his first Proms appearance in 21 years.- ed.] |
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Tanglewood: The Haitink Weekend
Friday, July 11, 8:30 p.m., Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Jonathan Biss, piano
Julia Fischer, violin
Daniel Müller-Schott, cello
All-Beethoven Program
Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello, Op. 56
Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” Op. 68
Saturday, July 12, 8:30 p.m., Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Heidi Grant Murphy, soprano
Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
Mahler, Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”
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| Michael Miller |
July 20, 2008 |
| It is worth remembering that Bernard Haitink became the chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the most prestigious positions in the musical world, in 1961 at the incredibly young age of thirty-two. Since even before then, up to the present day, he has continued to grow as a musician in his own discreet way, always maintaining a traceable thread back to the values of his early work—clarity, balance, and restraint—qualities, which in the end often proved much more affecting than the excesses of more histrionic conductors. He also showed a particular knack for long, complex symphonic works, working wonders in clarifying their texture and form. His performances of Bruckner’s symphonies on tour and on record made them accessible to a much broader audience outside Austria and Germany. Leonard Bernstein may have popularized Mahler with his intense but sometimes unbearably showy performances, but it was Haitink who made their best qualities more accessible by focussing on coherence in structure and in orchestral sound—a very handsome sound, which has often been described as the “burnished” Concertgebouw sound. It is really Haitink’s sound. None of his successors or predecessors have cultivated it to quite the same extent, and this burnished sound is what he brings to the BSO, especially in their present, improved condition. I still have a vivid recollection of his magnificent Eroica which closed the 2006-07 season in Symphony Hall. The BSO was able to produce that rich, homogeneous sound to perfection. With a full complement of strings there was both mass and fine detail: nothing was lost. The loudest tutti were as clear as the extraordinary pianissimi Haitink can extract from the orchestra. |
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Christianne Stotijn (mezzo-soprano)
Isabelle van Keulen (viola)
Joseph Breinl (piano)
at Wigmore Hall, Monday, July 14, 2008
Tchaikovsky, The Sun has Set Op. 73 No. 4; It was in the early spring Op. 38 No. 2; The mild stars shone for us Op. 60 No. 12; If only I had known Op. 47 No. 1
Duparc, L'invitation au voyage; Chanson triste; Extase
Brahms, Gestillte Sehnsucht Op. 91 No. 1; Geistliches Wiegenlied Op. 91 No. 2
Fant de Kanter, 3 Songs on poems by Ingrid Jonker
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| Huntley Dent |
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| I just came from a vocal recital at Wigmore Hall that featured the rising Dutch mezzo, Christianne Stotijn, who is tall and has flowing pre-Raphaelite hair down her back (the last syllable of her name rhymes with ‘fine’) except to offer that Stotijn is young, vibrant, and emotionally generous with her voice. After thinking so much about Death, it’s a relief to encounter a maiden. I first heard Stotijn on a CD of early Mahler songs and felt a connection. Live, in an intimate setting, she made the same connection with several hundred Wiggies. They greeted her opening set of Tchaikovsky songs warmly and grew steadily more enthusiastic, until by the end they showered her with bravos. Stirring up listeners with Tchaikovsky and Duparc is no mean trick, especially when Stotijn’s voice was in full sail and swashed her French pronunciation overboard. At moments one heard echoes of a beloved mezzo who was a Wigmore favourite, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (the CD of one of her recitals from here can be found online – it’s at once heartbreaking and a treasure). |
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Schubert Songs
Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Reiko Uchida, Piano (Pleyel, “Palatial” Grand Piano, ca. 1907, courtesy Klavierhaus, New York)
recorded in early June 2007 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City; Judith Sherman producer and engineer; available through Thomas Meglioranza's Web site and CD Baby (CD $15. Mp3 download $9.99) or Amazon.com.
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| Michael Miller |
July 16, 2008 |
| I’ve wanted to write about this wonderful recording for some time now, but one thing or another got in the way. Recordings, for better or worse, are not as fugitive as a concert performance. Now, however, the time is more than ripe, since the outstanding young baritone featured in this recording is about to appear at Tanglewood in Harbison’s Fifth Symphony, replacing Nathan Gunn, who sang at the Boston premiere only a few months ago. Thomas Meglioranza’s approach should be quite different, so anyone who heard the premiere will want to come back for another point of view on Harbison’s rich and dramatic setting of Milosz’ bizarre retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. |
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Mozart, Così Fan Tutte
The Garsington Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Steuart Bedford conductor
Barbican Hall, Mostly Mozart, July 11, 2008
Erica Eloff - Fiordiligi
Anna Stéphany - Dorabella
Ashley Catling - Ferrando
D'Arcy Bleiker - Guglielmo
Riccardo Novaro - Don Alfonso
Teuta Koço - Despina |
| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Smiles of a summer night...
Few at home know about the Garsington Opera, an outdoor company that sounds like an idyll. Situated outside Oxford, their productions are tailored to balmy evenings in a c garden attached to a Jacobean manor. One imagines white lawn dresses draped on willowy ladies redolent of heliotrope. (On second thought, idyllic doesn’t begin to describe it.) Or is this an abreaction, a word invented by Freud for an episode of strong emotional release or catharsis? I needed a release after attending the Garsington’s Cosi fan tutte, which moved indoors to the unbalmy clime of the Barbican in north London. Mozart in a concrete bunker more or less defines cognitive dissonance, but we’ll let that be.
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| Imogen Cooper, Piano, All-Schubert Program
Tanglewood, Seiji Ozawa Hall, July 10, 2008, 8:00 PM
Franz Schubert
Sonata in C, D.840, Reliquie
Four Impromptus, D.935 (Opus Posthumous 142)
Sonata in A, D.959
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| Michael Miller |
July 15, 2008 |
| Imogen Cooper has played Mozart and Beethoven (No. 1, No. 3) concerti with the BSO on several occasions over the past few years, both at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood—always with outstanding success. She balanced a strong comprehension of the formal and harmonic structures underlying the compositions with a great range of touch and color, as well as a sensitivity to shifting moods with a certain authoritative detachment—all fine qualities. I wish I could say that her all-Schubert recital last week in Ozawa Hall achieved the same satisfying completeness. Although the evening was full of brilliant ideas and exquisite moments, Ms. Cooper failed to grasp the organic framework of the works, above all the late sonatas, in which it is such a crucial element. This was surprising, since one of her teachers, Alfred Brendel, excels at this aspect of interpretation, and her concerto performances showed her to be an apt pupil. |
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| Preview of Tannery Pond, Saturday, July 12, 8 pm: Soojin Anjou, Piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata In E-Major, K.332
Maurice Ravel, Sonatine
Johann Strauss Jr. / Leopold Godowsky, Concert Paraphrase "Die Fledermaus"
Olivier Messiaen, La Colombe
Isaac Albéniz, Triana
Maurice Ravel, Le Tombeau De Couperin
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| Michael Miller |
July 11, 2008 |
|
I don't intend to offer a review of a private concert preview, but I would like to express my most enthusiastic recommmendation of the upcoming Tannery Pond recital by the young pianist Soojin Anjou, a native Korean who now resides in Berlin. This afternoon I had the great pleasure of hearing her play in a home setting. Her program shows extraordinary sensitivity to subtle relationships among the works, which emerge only cumulatively as the listener absorbs them in succession—beginning with one of Mozart's most popular sonatas, which laid the groundwork for Ravel's Sonatine. There followed a striking contrast in Godowsky's moody and whimsical paraphrase of tunes from Die Fledermaus. Messaien's otherwordly short piece, La Colombe, Albéniz exotic Triana, and finally one of Ravel's finest works, Le Tombeau de Couperin—all played with impressive technique, insight and nuance by this extraordinary young woman at the beginning of her career. Her performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin showed the highest mastery, revealing aspects of the work I never knew existed. With Soojin Anjou's sharply etched technique the more delicate passages never lost their strength and rigor, and she did full justice to the grander passages, never compromising the basic lucidity of her playing. This is an event not to be missed.
I should add that this private preview was presented in connection with The Tannery Pond Concerts. Its organizer, Christian Steiner, was present, but he ceded his usual role of host to his Sealyham Terrier, Nikolai, who fulfilled this duty with a graciousness worthy of his master, scuffling enthusiastically around the piano before each piece, and barking once discreetly to support the applause. Nikolai is obviously a seasoned concert-goer, and many Tanglewood visitors would do well to take a page from his etiquette book.
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Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 8
St Paul's Cathedral, 10 Jul 2008 8:00 PM
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev conductor
Victoria Yastrebova soprano
Ailish Tynan soprano
Liudmilla Dudinova soprano
Lili Paasikivi mezzo soprano
Zlata Bulycheva mezzo soprano
Sergey Semishkur tenor
Alexey Markov baritone
Evgeny Nitikin bass
The Choir of Eltham College
London Symphony Chorus
The Choral Arts Society of Washington
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| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Back from Elysium. St. Paul’s cathedral is a dicey venue for classical music, but even when the gold-banded dome is swallowing up the sound of the chorus like the yawning gulf in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, the church itself overawes. Music turns into a paean to architecture. God looks in through the clear, unstained windows (This is Protestantism.), cherubs comport with English admirals and generals on the periphery, some of whose statues are jauntily posed, and the white-and-black checkerboard floor reminds one of a plain Dutch parish church magnified in excelsis. |
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Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)
Graham Johnson (piano)
Wagner, Wesendonck Lieder
Berlioz, Villanelle; Le spectre de la rose
Duparc, Lamento; Au pays où se fait la guerre
Hahn, Infidélité
Chausson, Les papillons
Falla, Trois Mélodies
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Sir Thomas Allen (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Members of the Aurora Orchestra
Poulenc and Courtly Love
Debussy, Trois ballades de Villon
Poulenc, Songs from Poèmes de Ronsard
Duparc, L'invitation au voyage; Soupir; Le manoir de Rosemonde
Ravel, Don Quichotte a Dulcinée
Poulenc, Le bestiaire; Le bal masqué
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| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Hooray for Wigmore Hall. To American ears the name sounds funny, and some of the bag-toting habitués who come for a concert every day may qualify as wiggy. But no other venue offers more great music in an intimate setting than here. As crowds devour the summer sale at Selfridge’s around the corner on Oxford Street, a few hundred listeners repose in the beauty of chamber music and song inside the jewel-box Wigmore. Dappled sun peeks in through the skylights – or the tap-tap of rain – while for half the price of tea at the Ritz some of the best performers in the world play for your pleasure. |
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Opening Night at Tanglewood:
Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens
Boston Symphony Orchestra
James Levine, Conductor
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Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 1 (The Capture of Troy)
Saturday, July 5, 8:30 pm
Marcus Haddock, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anna Caterina Antonacci, Soprano (Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Chorebus)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Pantheus)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Jane Bunnell, Mezzo-Soprano (Hecuba)
Ronald Naldi, Tenor (Helenus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Soldier)
Gustav Andreassen, Bass (Ghost Of Hector)
Kirk Eichelberger, Bass (Greek Captain)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, Conductor |
Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 2
(The Trojans at Carthage)
Sunday, July 6, 3 pm
Marcus Haddock, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano (Dido)
Kristinn Sigmundsson, Bass (Narbal)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Christin-Marie Hill, Mezzo-Soprano (Anna)
Matthew Plenk, tenor (Iopas)
Philippe Castagner, Tenor (Hylas)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Pantheus)
Anna Caterina Antonacci, Soprano
(Ghost Of Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Ghost Of Chorebus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Sentry 1)
Gustav Andreassen, Bass (Ghost Of Hector
And The God Mercury)
Kirk Eichelberger, Bass (Trojan Sentry 2)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, Conductor
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| Michael Miller |
July 7, 2008 |
An hour before Part I of Les Troyens was to begin, I found myself wandering peacefully and somewhat aimlessly among the trees. The grounds were still unpopulated and quiet, providing an exceptionally favorable atmosphere for music. The first two acts of Berlioz’ epic masterpiece which awaited us are hardly what one would call contemplative music, but a contemplative mood seemed the right preparation for the violent, burning sweep of Berlioz’ romantic tableaux of the fall of Troy. It gave me an hour of so to forget whatever baggage I had brought with me, which amounted to some scepticism as to whether a Tanglewood reprise of the massive, impressive, but flawed effort of late April and early May would make much of a difference.
Les Troyens may still remain something of a connoisseur’s opera, but there are plenty of people who are fascinated with it—Hector Berlioz’ forgotten masterpiece, a vast stage work which only found any real currency with Hugh Macdonald’s publication of a scholarly edition of the score in 1969.
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All-Sibelius Program
London Symphony Orchestra
The Barbican, July 3, 2008
Sir Colin Davis conductor
Nikolaj Znaider violin
Jan Sibelius
Les Océanides
Violin Concerto
Symphony No 4
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| Huntley Dent |
July 4, 2008 |
| Ugliness, thy name is Barbican. No other great orchestra has been miserably consigned to a concrete mausoleum of art except the London Symphony. I went to hear them last night in an all-Sibelius program under Sir Colin Davis. One approaches the Barbican by trudging through an underpass with four lanes of traffic two feet from your elbow and banks of jaundice-colored sodium vapour lamps overhead. The building itself looks like something airlifted intact from East Berlin. The architectural style is a spawn of Brutalism, a masochistic favourite with the British in the post-war era, but without being quite as punitive. |
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Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, July 2, 2008
Conductor- Mark Elder
Director - Christof Loy
Revival Director - Andrew Sinclair
Primadonna (Ariadne) - Deborah Voigt
Composer - Kristine Jepson
Music Master - Thomas Allen
Dancing Master - Alan Oke
Wigmaker - Jacques Imbrailo
Lackey - Dean Robinson
Tenor (Bacchus) - Robert Dean Smith, Richard Margison
Zerbinetta - Gillian Keith
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| Huntley Dent |
July 4, 2008 |
| What better way to anticipate the Fourth of July than spending time with Richard Strauss, who fiddled while the Nazis burned Europe? He languished in apparent dotage as the Yanks stormed the beach at Normandy. Suddenly the first oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra showed up at Strauss’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. Then a uniformed GI, the oboist commissioned a concerto from the snowy-haired, stork-like composer, and a minor masterpiece was born.
Strauss’s arch comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos appeared in 1912, in the delusional twilight that masked Verdun (714,000 casualties), the Munich putsch, and every satanic horror to come. Blissfully unaware, Strauss also had the nutty idea of preceding his operatic confection by a complete performance of Moliere’s play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, but the premiere, a flop, stretched the audience’s attention span, not to mention their Sitzfleisch, beyond human capacity. What we are left with is caviar, Strauss’s most sophisticated stage work and a bubbling treasure of melody unmatched by anything outside Die Fledermaus. And like Fledermaus, Ariadne dreams of a heaven where the triumph of love is the same as the triumph of humor.
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| A Ghostly Concert at Tannery Pond
June 20, 2008
David Finckel, cello
Da-Hong Seetoo, violin
Wu Han, piano
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Piano Trio Op.1, No. 1
Piano Trio Op.70, No. 1, “Ghost”
Piano Trio Op. 97, “Archduke”
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| Michael Miller |
July 2, 2008 |
| The Tannery Pond Concerts, founded in 1991 by the renowned photographer and musician, Christian Steiner, is still in its youth, compared to its elders in Norfolk, Music Mountain and Marlboro, but it is true to the mold, such as it exists, and shows no signs of diffidence. Beginning in the 1960’s, Mr. Steiner’s position as the preeminent portraitist of musicians has given him a unique knowledge of the musical world. He is as much in contact with young, emerging artists as with the most established figures in the field, who have included Herbert von Karajan, Maria Callas, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. As director of Tannery Pond, he is especially proud of the debuts or early appearances he has sponsored of musicians who have since risen to the top of the profession. Another feature of Tannery Pond is the beautiful old tannery, built in 1834, now the chapel of The Darrow School, which occupies the site of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. Its acoustics are remarkably present and intimate, and, since it seats only 290, its atmosphere is equally intimate. The audience, on the whole, appears to be composed of keen and educated music-lovers who have been attending loyally for some years. Many appear to know each other, and this enhances the family-like atmosphere of the concerts. |
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Our American Cousin
An Opera in three acts by Eric Sawyer
Librettist: John Shoptaw
Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Conductor, Gil Rose
Stage Director: Carol Charnow
Academy of Music, Northampton, June 20, 2008
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| Heidi Holder |
June 29, 2008 |
| A young man, having outsmarted a haughty woman seeking a wealthy husband for her daughter, crows in triumph: “I guess you found your hymnal page, you sock-dologizing ole man-trap!” Hard as it may be for us to imagine, this line brought the house down every time in Tom Taylor’s 1858 hit play Our American Cousin. And appropriately so: a “sockdologer” (a corruption of “doxology”), was in American slang a decisive or knockout blow. The line might be lost to all but theater historians were it not for the fact that Taylor’s play was performed at Ford’s Theatre the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and that John Wilkes Booth used the famous line as a cue for his own decisive blow. Eric Sawyer and John Shoptaw’s new opera, Our American Cousin revisits that night and charts the intersection of real life and that of the theater. The opera offers us a play within an opera: a recreation of the performance Lincoln was attending at Ford’s Theatre the night of his assassination. Taylor’s play was a popular and cleverly-made comedy/melodrama about a distant--and rich--relative from America who appears suddenly at the estate of his titled but financially troubled English relations. The plot and characters of this largely forgotten play turn out to matter in unexpected ways, and point towards the thematic heart of the work. |
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| Music Mountain, Falls Village, Connecticut, Sunday June 15, 3 PM
Special Benefit Concert for the Operating Fund
St. Petersburg String Quartet
Alla Aranovskaya, first violin
Alla Krolevich, second violin
Boris Vayner, viola
Leonid Shukayev, cello
Daniel Epstein, piano, replacing Charles Rosen
Debussy: String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 10 (1893)
Shostakovich: String Quartet #12 in D Flat Major, Opus 133 (1968)
Schumann: Piano Quintet in E Flat Major, Opus 44 (1842)
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| Michael Miller |
June 19, 2008 |
| Music Mountain has offered extraordinary chamber music since 1930, when it was founded as a summer home for the Gordon String Quartet. Audiences loyally drive up the winding country road to enjoy the beauty of the grounds and its surroundings, its long, narrow hall with its superb acoustics, and the major chamber groups who play there. Jazz is also a major component of the season, and there is also choral music. On the lawn which spreads out down the hillside from Gordon Hall, you will also find a tent with books for sale, a snack bar, wooden benches under the trees, as well as some rather funky abstract sculptures. There had been a violent storm the week before, which snapped the trunks of several large trees surrounding the lawn. The season, called “Borrowed Melody” this year, because works with themes borrowed from outside sources or the composer’s own works will be worked into most of the programs, got off to a strong start with a special benefit concert featuring the great St. Petersburg String Quartet. Charles Rosen was to have joined them for the Schumann Piano Quintet. He was unfortunately unable to play, but Daniel Epstein filled the gap with intelligence and sensitivity. |
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| In Praise of Herbert von Karajan, with a Selective Critical Discography |
| Huntley Dent |
May 31, 2008 |
| My immediate reaction to Michael Miller's commentary on the Karajan centenary [Oh no! He’s not back again, is he? - May 2, 2008] was rather choleric, but I've settled down a bit since then and can write this from a relatively balanced perspective.
I bought those 1962-63 Beethoven symphonies, too, which by the way are in such bad sound that three remasterings later, including the most recent in SACD, they remain boomy and muddy. I'm not sure where you heard them praised. But Karajan's quasi-hypnotizing style didn't appeal to me back then. I dropped out until the mid-80s. Since then -- don't be shocked -- I've bought his entire EMI output from 1947 until the early Eighties, all his Decca recordings (which are relatively few), a huge chunk of his DG catalogue, and many highlights from the historical archives. As a result, I incline toward his English biographer, Richard Osborne, in believing that Karajan was among the greatest conductors of the century. And not just in the Fifties, that canard notwithstanding.
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| Concerts at Tannery Pond. Season Opening.
Sunday May 25, 2008, 3pm
Edward Arron, Cello
Pedja Mužijević, Piano
Soovin Kim, Violin
Nicholas Phan, Tenor
Franz Joseph Haydn, Piano Trio In C-Major, Hob. 15:27
Gabriel Fauré. La Bonne Chanson, Op. 61
Benjamin Britten, Folk Songs
Robert Schumann, Piano Trio No.1 In D-Minor, Op. 63
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| Michael Miller |
May 28, 2008 |
| The summer season began for this concertgoer Sunday afternoon on a very high level in a very good place, Tannery Pond, on the Darrow School campus, which occupies part of the Shaker community at New Lebanon, New York. A bright, warm Sunday afternoon arrived on cue to inaugurate this season of a distinguished chamber music series which began in 1991. There is no more comely place to gather for music; the acoustics are intimate, clear, and warm in this converted tannery, originally built by the Shakers in 1834; and its founder-director, Christian Steiner, a distinguished pianist and photographer, provides a uniquely enthusiastic “one-man-show,” introducing the program, arranging chairs, recording and photographing the concert, turning pages, and picking up overturned flower pots, as was necessary this afternoon.
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Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium
Boston Symphony Orchestra Symphony Hall, Boston,
James Levine, conductor
Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 1 (The Capture of Troy)
Sunday, May 4, 2008, 3pm
Marcello Giordani, Tenor (Aeneas)
Yvonne Naef, Mezzo-Soprano (Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Chorebus)
Julien Robbins, Bass-Baritone (Priam)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Panthus)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Jane Bunnell, Mezzo-Soprano (Hecuba)
Ronald Naldi, Tenor (Helenus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Soldier)
James Courtney, Bass-Baritone (Greek Captain)
Eric Owens, Bass (Ghost of Hector)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor |
Les Troyens, Part 2 (The Trojans at Carthage)
Sunday, May 4, 2008, 6.30 pm
Marcello Giordani, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano (Dido)
Kwangchul Youn, Bass (Narbal)
Christin-Marie Hill, Mezzo-Soprano (Anna)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Eric Cutler, Tenor (Iopas)
Philippe Castagner, Tenor (Hylas)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Panthus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (First Trojan Sentry)
James Courtney, Bass-Baritone (Second Trojan Sentry)
Yvonne Naef, Mezzo-Soprano (Ghost of Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Ghost of Chorebus)
Julien Robbins, Bass-Baritone (Ghost of Priam)
Eric Owens, Bass (Mercury; Ghost of Hector)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
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| Michael Miller |
May 16, 2008 |
Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordings  are still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career. Expertise in Berlioz seems to be a prerequisite for the job. Yet, this is the first complete performance of Les Troyens by the foremost Berlioz orchestra in America, which in the past has only played brief excerpts, above all the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from Act IV. Hence these concert performances of Parts I and II on following weeks, culminating in a complete performance on Sunday May 4, are in fact landmarks. |
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| Daniel Lessner, piano
Williams College Bösendorfer Recital
Chapin Hall, April 26, 2008, 8 pm
J. S. Bach, Goldberg Variations
Robert Schumann, Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13
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| Michael Miller |
May 9, 2008 |
| Once again, the Williams Bösendorfer Recital program has given us the opportunity of hearing a gifted younger musician display his musicianship with the singular obstacles of a mismatched instrument in an unpleasant acoustic. A portable acoustical shell has been introduced to remedy Chapin’s muffled sound. I heard a favorable judgement of this innovation at the New England Baroque Orchestra concert, which I unfortunately missed, but it was of little help with a solo piano: the music, instead of sounding as if it were being played in another room with the door partially open, sounded as if it were being played in a tunnel, or perhaps a swimming pool. The Williams Bösendorfer has never been a credit to its justly famed manufacturer, partly, it could be, because of the Berkshire climate and partly because it is too much instrument for the hall. The instrument is extremely loud, and so was the pianist, painfully so, occasionally giving me the feeling of being in close quarters with a mad rhino. |
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| Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine conducting
Symphony Hall, Friday, April 18, 8 pm
John Harbison, Symphony No. 5 (2008), on texts of Czesław Miłosz,
Louise Glück, and Rainer Maria Rilke
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano
Nathan Gunn, Baritone
Gustav Mahler, Das Lied Von Der Erde
(after Hans Bethge’s “The Chinese Flute”)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano
Ben Heppner, tenor, replacing Johan Botha, who was ill.
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| Michael Miller |
May 5, 2008 |
| [N.B. The Boston Chamber Music Society will offer a performance of a Das Lied von der Erde in Schoenberg’s arrangement for chamber ensemble, Sunday, May 17, 7.30 p.m. at Sanders Theater in Cambridge.]
As in November, James Levine has chosen to pair a work of Mahler with the premiere of a commissioned work, this time, not Elliot Carter’s brief, dense, but deceptively limpid Horn Concerto, but an ambitious symphony for mezzo-soprano, baritone and massive orchestra by John Harbison. It was only after Harbison had begun to make sketches that Maestro Levine, exercising his substantial gifts as a patron of new music, suggested that voices would be a welcome addition. The composer responded by taking up works by three poets who have been particularly highly regarded in recent years, the late Czesław Miłosz, Louise Glück, and, as the classic guest, Rainer Maria Rilke. These texts extend throughout the four movements like wall-to-wall carpeting, and one might get the impression that they had come to dominate the symphony, if its orchestral foundations and symphonic structure were not as strong as they are. The result is a work which attempts to do justice to two objectives: the expressive setting of narrative and lyrical verse and a fully-realized symphonic work. One might think that such a duality might prove a recipe for disaster, but in Harbison’s intelligent and experienced hands, the result is a double, if still somewhat divided, success.
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| Benjamin Moser plays, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Holliger, Tchaikovsky, and Skryabin at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, March 27, 2008 |
| Michael Miller |
April 4, 2008 |
| This was an important event, not only because of the superb playing of a young musician I hope to hear many times again, but also because it showed what the Colonial Theatre can really do for classical music in our community. I have already commented enthusiastically about the acoustics in the hall, which remind me somewhat of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and are excellent for small string ensembles, chamber music, and piano, if the piano is of the right sort, that is, smaller than a full sized concert grand. The Colonial has acquired a splendid rare instrument in an 1894 Hamburg Steinway, a nine foot Model D, which in a modern instrument would be too powerful for the hall. |
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Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes
Montagu Slater, libretto
Metropolitan Opera House, March 15, 2008, 1.30 pm (transmitted “live” in HD, March 29)
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Peter Grimes – Anthony Dean Griffey
Ellen Orford – Patricia Racette
Captain Balstrode – Anthony Michaels-Moore
Mrs. Sedley – Felicity Palmer
Auntie – Jill Grove
Niece – Leah Partridge
Niece – Erin Morley
Hobson – Dean Peterson
Swallow – John Del Carlo
Bob Boles – Greg Fedderly |
Rev. Horace Adams – Bernard Fitch
Ned Keene – Teddy Tahu Rhodes
John – Logan William Erickson
Production – John Doyle
Set Designer – Scott Pask
Costume Designer – Ann Hould-Ward
Lighting Designer – Peter Mumford
TV Director – Gary Halvorson |
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| Michael Miller |
April 2, 2008 |
| Peter Grimes' first performance in 1945 was a triumph, and the opera has settled into a secure place in the repertory—accessible to a broad audience, as its creators intended, but commanding respect among critics as a serious and important effort, considered by some to be Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece. The composer and his librettist, as well as his companion, Peter Pears, who premiered the role of Grimes and consulted during its composition, achieved a rare success in combining a leftist program of popular appeal, social criticism, and authentic tragedy—a feat many have attempted, but few have brought off. Inspired by the atmosphere of his native region around Aldeburgh, where he grew up and lived most of his life, as well as formative influences like Berg’s Wozzeck, which left its mark almost everywhere in the opera, Britten took a section (Letter XXII) from The Borough by George Crabbe, the Aldeburgh-born poet and coleopterist, and, with the indispensible assistance of the left-wing writer Montagu Slater, transformed it from a black morality tale into the tragedy of an outcast who was hounded to his destruction by the hostile community into which he was born. |
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| Biava Quartet
Austin Hartman and Hyunsu Ko violin, Mary Persin viola, and Jason Calloway cello
Clark Art Institute
Sunday, April 6, 2008, 3 pm.
Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 54, no. 2
Kodály, String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 (1916–18)
Mendelssohn, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
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| Michael Miller |
April 9, 2008 |
| It is perhaps not entirely accurate to call the Biava Quartet (named after the distinguished Philadelphia violinist and conductor Luis Biava.) a “young” quartet, since it is already ten years old. During that time they have collected an impressive array of prizes, including the Naumberg Chamber Music Prize and a first at the London International competition. Today they hold the Lisa Arnhold Quartet Residency at the Juilliard School, serving as graduate quartet in residence and teaching assistants to the Juilliard Quartet. This Juilliard connection is not without significance, since, as cellist Jason Calloway mentioned while introducing the Kodály, the Juilliard Quartet were their mentors. During the Biava’s Sunday afternoon concert, the relationship was constantly apparent, not only in their tight ensemble and disciplined rhtyhm, but in their sound, which recalls not so much the mellowed timbre of the Juilliard Quartet today, but the brilliance and bite of their earlier years. On the other hand, the Biava Quartet’s approach to ensemble textures is quite different. |
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| New Morning for the World
a concert by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Joseph Schwantner, with speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. performed by Omar Sangare; The Williams Symphonic Winds conducted by Stephen Dennis Bodner; Filmed live by Berta Jottar [link1/link2], Sunday, February 3, 2008, produced by Sandra Burton and Stalwart Originality.
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| Michael Miller |
March 29, 2008 |
| When Americans celebrate their more significant secular holidays with art, they notoriously reach for hackneyed expressions which are at best well-intentioned and at worst, totally empty. Williams College, however, produced a notable exception to this in New Morning for The World, a concert piece for winds, percussion, and piano, with recitation, by the distinguished American composer Joseph Schwantner. Regrettably I missed the performance, but I recently came upon a video of the event, filmed by the Mexican video artist and activist Berta Jottar, who is a member of the Williams faculty, along with Omar Sangare, who recited the texts by Martin Luther King, Jr. to the accompaniment of Schwantner’s music. The music and the selection from Dr. King’s speeches was work of a high order, powerful in its effect, as was Dr. Sangare’s recitation and the performance of the Williams Symphonic Winds under their director, Stephen Dennis Bodner, who has been responsible for a series of ambitious, original programs over this academic year and before.
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| Eastman Studies in Music from The University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer publish their 50th volume and then some. |
| From the music-book blog From Beyond the Stave edited by Michael Miller |
March 25, 2008 |
| In February the University of Rochester Press published the 50th volume in its acclaimed series, Eastman Studies in Music: Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations (edited by Jack Douthett, Martha M. Hyde, and Charles J. Smith). "When we began, I didn't dare dream that this could happen," says Ralph Locke (pictured right in front of the URP offices), a professor at the Eastman School of Music for more than 30 years and series editor since 1994. "We started producing two books a year, and now we are up to seven and growing, which means we can publish books on a range of topics and reach a wider spectrum of the reading public."
Reviews of some volumes from the series will be appearing in The Berkshire Review for the Arts over the next weeks and months: The Substance of Things Heard: Writings about Music, by Paul Griffiths; Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community, Edited by Carol K. Baron; and others.
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G.F. Handel, Messiah (Dublin Version, 1742)
The Dunedin Consort and Players
John Butt, director
Susan Hamilton, soprano
Annie Gill, contralto
Clare Wilkinson, contralto
Nicholas Mulroy, tenor
Matthew Brook, bass
Recorded at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh: 1-4 May 2006
Linn Records CKD 285, available as CD, Vinyl, or downloads in MP3, CD, or Studio Master Quality; click here for samples.
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| Michael Miller |
March 20, 2008 |
| Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices and the other is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1946 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
John Butt, driector of the Dunedin consort and Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow, does not offer the Dublin version as the best or the most original of the ten identifiable versions from Handel’s lifetime.
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| G. F. Handel, Messiah (includes bonus DVD with interview with Sir Colin Davis)
Sir Colin Davis conductor
Susan Gritton soprano
Sara Mingardo alto
Mark Padmore tenor
Alastair Miles bass
Tenebrae Choir
London Symphony Orchestra
Recorded live, December 2006, Barbican, London
LSO Live, LSO0606, available as 2 CD/SACD + DVD discs or as download from iTunes, eMusic, or Amazon (USA) Click here for an excerpt.
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| Michael Miller |
March 20, 2008 |
| Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006, the other a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1945 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
I have chosen to review this magnificent live recording under Sir Colin Davis together with the equally cogent historically informed performance by the Dunedin Consort under John Butt, because they have appeared within a year of one another and because they are both of such superb quality. I do not intend to compare them in detail or to make a judgement between them. Rather I hope to point out what can be gained from both approaches.
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| A Night at the Opera: Gary Lehman and Janice Baird Sing Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera |
| Michael Miller |
March 15, 2008 |
| The evening began with Peter Gelb’s suave announcement that Ben Heppner was ill and recovering at home in Canada. He reminded the audience that only perhaps five tenors in the world were able to sing Tristan, but a replacement had been found, a tenor named Gary Lehman, who would be singing the role for the first time in public. Great promises he did not make. It would be wonderful to say that Lehman electrified the house and became an instant star, just like in the movies—not so, unfortunately, but almost. As pleasing and appropriate as Lehman’s very attractive dark, baritonal voice was, and as thorough as his understanding of the role, and as elegant and intelligent his phrasing, especially in the quieter, more reflective passages, it might have been better for him to have sung the role for a few years in smaller opera houses—there must be some left in Germany or Scandinavia that would still tackle Tristan—before taking the plunge at the Met. What's more, he is a tall, handsome fellow who actually looks like what we expect Tristan to look like. All he lacked was confidence and experience. He deservedly earned a powerful ovation for his effort, but I sincerely hope he will allow himself to develop a bit more, before, God willing, he returns as a master Heldentenor. In fact, he is a singer of considerable experience, although Heldentenor roles are a new direction for him. I thought it better to address the question which will be on everyone’s mind straight out at the beginning before continuing with the other convolutions of this rather strange night at the opera. |
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| A Musical Weekend at Williams, I:
Berkshire Symphony Orchestra
Ronald Feldman, conductor
Chapin Hall, Williams College, 02/29/2008 - 8:00pm
“Three Premieres and a Classic”
Kevin Kaska: from the video game “Lair”
David Kechley: WAKEFUL VISIONS/MOONLESS DREAMS: A Symphony in Four Movements
Felipe Lara: Onda
George Gershwin: An American in Paris
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| Michael Miller |
March 11, 2008 |
| Williams has traditionally placed a high value on the arts without exactly pursuing the disciplines to the level of more specialized institutions, like Bard or Oberlin, except perhaps in the visual arts. The ‘62 Center has changed that in respect to theater, and the new facilities, as well as the distinguished faculty who have been hired to go with it, like Omar Sangare, the brilliant Polish playwright, poet, and actor, have attracted the sort of students who might otherwise have chosen Yale or Tisch. The Williams community, Berkshire residents, and whoever decides to make the trip, can expect great things in the future. Music, while very much a Cinderella in terms of physical plant, considering the problematic acoustics of Brooks-Rogers and Chapin Hall, is nonetheless richly endowed with talent of the first order, and many of these assets were much in evidence this past weekend in departmental chairman David Kechley (recently awarded an ASCAPlus Award as well as an Aaron Copland Award composer residency from Copland House), cellist-conductor Ronald Feldman, and, on Sunday, David Porter, Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts, who is as much a classicist as a musician. |
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| A Musical Weekend at Williams, II:
Charles Ives (1874-1954), Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860)
1. Emerson
2. Hawthorne
3. The Alcotts
4. Thoreau
David Porter, Piano, with Anne Royston ‘08, flute
Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, Williams College
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| Michael Miller |
March 11, 2008 |
| Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata is without a doubt one of the great monuments of American music. It is not heard often, because it is difficult for both the pianist and his audience, and perhaps that is a good thing. It would be a pity if, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, it were played too often in unworthy performances. It embodies the highest principles of American thought and American music, and a performance of it should remain a special occasion, as if it were a secular Missa Solemnis. |
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| Opera Orchestra of New York, Eve Queler, Music Director
Carnegie Hall, February 27, 2008
Vicenzo Bellini, La Sonnambula
Eglise Gutierrez, Amina
Dimitry Korchak, Elvino
Ferruccio Furlanetto, Count Rodolfo
Elisabeth Caballero, Lisa
Laura Vlasak Nolen, Teresa
Brian Kontes, Alessio
Luke Grooms, A Notary
Ira Siff, Stage Director
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| Arlene B. Isaacs |
February 28, 2008 |
| If you were in Carnegie Hall on February 27, attending The Opera Orchestra of New York’s performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” you were indeed fortunate. Founder/Conductor Eve Queler established the company in 1971, and since then it has provided an annual series in Carnegie Hall in which the Maestra has conducted over 90 operas. OONY is one of New York City’s cultural phenomena. Long noted for important discoveries of repertoire and singers, each performance at Carnegie Hall is judged a “must attend” event for serious opera-goers from around the world and loyal subscribers who convene during intermissions to exchange insights, reminiscences, and comments. |
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Alfred Brendel, piano
Friday, February 22, 8pm, Symphony Hall, Boston (Celebrity Series of Boston)
Haydn, Variations in F minor, Hob: XVII/6
Mozart, Sonata in F major, K. 533/K. 494
Beethoven, Sonata in E flat major, “quasi una fantasia” Op. 27, no. 1
Schubert, Sonata in B flat major, D. 960 |
| Michael Miller |
February 28, 2008 |
| For his Boston farewell program, Alfred Brendel chose a selective cross-section of the repertoire he has cultivated through much of his career, and a fascinating selection it was, both in terms of Mr. Brendel’s taste and the inter-relationships between these mostly classical composers. There was no Schoenberg, no Schumann, and Liszt only as an encore. One felt that he had concentrated on the very marrow of his repertory. On the other hand, it came as a powerful discovery to experience the various forms—the overall shapes—of these four works within the compass of a single concert. Brendel has always been especially strong in comprehending and delineating classical structure and form, and now, at the very end of his public career, he appears to have distilled it to the utmost. |
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The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Deborah Voigt, Soprano
Alfred Brendel, Piano
Webern, Six Pieces for Orchestra
Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Berg, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
R. Strauss, Final Scene from Salome
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| Michael Miller |
February 20, 2008 |
| It comes as particularly sad news that Alfred Brendel will retire from public recitals at the end of this year. He will have been playing for sixty years, and I’ll have been attending his performances for over forty, ever since one of his first Boston concerts in 1967. Since then he has been for me the musician who was always present throughout my musical life and who has served asas the reference point for my musical experience, in my estimation, the musical personality most characteristic of the late twentieth century. During this period, the music of the Second Vienna School made progress into the basic repertory. Performances became more polished and masterful. Brendel, as a pupil of Eduard Steuermann, has been one of the great exponents of this music, above all Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto. Following the example of Artur Schnabel, Brendel adopted Schubert’s late piano sonatas, making them a regular feature of his concert programs and recording them numerous times. His love of Schubert was also developed by another of his teachers, Edwin Fischer, as was his approach Mozart’s piano concertos. The weight, emotional range, and intellectual rigor of his interpretations of these works, have to my mind set the standard for the past generation. His Beethoven sonatas again set the standard for the late twentieth century, just as Schnabel’s did for the first half of the century, as did his performances of the piano concertos. Finally, no other musician has done as much to promote the reevaluation of Franz Liszt’s work, stressing his strongest music rather than pieces which offered the most fruitful resources for virtuoso display. |
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| The Elgar Year and Beyond, Collected Reviews |
| Michael Miller |
February 8, 2008 |
| A compilation of reviews from the Bard Music Festival, Boston Symphony Concerts, and Recordings |
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| Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Friday, January 25, 2008
Sir Edward Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius
Sir Colin Davis, conductor
Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano
Ben Heppner, tenor
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
For an in-depth discussion of the major Elgar year (2007) celebrations in America, click here.
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| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| Once again, less than two months after James Levine’s great reading of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, Symphony Hall audiences heard a truly unforgettable performance—on the very highest level in nearly every respect and even miraculous in some—of a very great work, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Even the widespread neglect of this great work in America offered an advantage of sorts. Hearing it out of its secure context in the repertoire of the English choral societies, one could more readily appreciate its universality, its power to move audiences in purely human terms, beyond its ostensible religious, particularly Roman Catholic, origins. However, as rich as its musical and spiritual rewards were, the event posed just as many questions, above all, why is the music of Elgar so dismally neglected in this country, when critics have singled Elgar out as the most international of British composers?* In his own time, he was regarded as the true successor to the great German symphonists, and Gerontius itself enjoyed its first successes in Germany. Its freedom from religious specificity, the universality of its effect on audiences, poses another question. If it isn’t a church work, just what sort of music is it?
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| Emmanuel Music: Russell Sherman presents three concerts featuring the complete English Suites of J. S. Bach. Each program will also include one of Bach’s three Viola da Gamba Sonatas and Bach-Busoni Chorale Preludes. |
| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| CONCERT 1: Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 8:00 pm, Emmanuel Church, Boston
English Suite No.2 in A minor, BWV 807
Russell Sherman, piano
Sonata No. 3 in G minor for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard, BWV 1028
Mary Ruth (UV) Ray, viola
Minsoo Sohn, piano
Chorale Prelude, In dir ist Freund, BWV 615 (Bach-Busoni)
Chorale Prelude, Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659 (Bach-Busoni)
Minsoo Sohn, piano
English Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810
Russell Sherman, piano
I should stress at the beginning of this review that I write it as one of Russell Sherman’s most ardent admirers. His knowledge of his extensive repertoire, his penetrating understanding of it, his technique (even at the age of 76), and his imagination and resourcefulness of expression are second to none, in my opinion. He has distilled all his sensitivity and intelligence into a highly personal, even idiosyncratic method, which is not equally palatable to all listeners, perhaps inevitably in our age of conformity. While I can respect, enjoy, and learn from an O’Conor, an Ohlsson or an Ax, Russell Sherman brings a unique insight and sensibility to his performances, which are only accessible in the unique form he has developed over many years. I have collected his recordings and travelled many miles to attend his concerts, which in recent years have focused on Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt.
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| The Handel and Haydn Society, Harry Christophers, conductor
Friday, January 25, 8.00pm, Symphony Hall, Boston
Handel: Water Music Suite No. 3
Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3
Purcell: Selections from The Fairy Queen
Handel: Royal Fireworks Music
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| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| If there is a baroque equivalent of an old-fashioned Tanglewood program, consisting of perhaps Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, this is it. In fact, during the break, I overheard one perky female voice exclaim, “Yes, I actually know that song. That’s the Air on the...G string!” Some people may be too jaded to enjoy that imaginary program from the old days or the Handel and Haydn Society’s offering from this past weekend, no matter well performed, but the appeal of hearing this superb, if familiar music performed by a first-rate period band in Symphony Hall, is irresistible. When the results are as ebullient and musical as on Friday evening, such tried and true programming can only seem brilliant. |
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| Click here for music reviews from 2007 |
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| Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). by Ilya Repin. oil on canvas. 125 × 89.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg |
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