Musical America Blogs

By Rebecca Schmid

“If opera wants to find the connection to ‘great theater’ again, it has to adopt a flexible form that represents new theater’s most valuable qualities,” wrote Kurt Weill in 1929, one year after the Threepenny Opera premiered at Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. A recent visit to that very theater for the Berliner Ensemble in Faust I and II, which premiered earlier this season, made me realize the weight of this statement. As seen on July 9, Robert Wilson’s witty, imaginative staging, together with a score by the songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer, made for a more immersive theater experience than I can recall in any Berlin opera house this season.

Goethe’s two-volume play is condensed to just over four hours (text and dramaturgy: Jutta Ferbers), creating a fast-moving but mesmerizing series of tableaus, from the shimmering, pastel-toned angels of the prologue in heaven to the mock-rococo throne room of the emperor in the second play. Grönemeyer, drawing on a palette of organ, synthesizer, guitar and string quartet, follows suit with a collage-like pastiche, integrating everything from French baroque to Middle Eastern influences. Electronica and ambient sounds timed precisely to the actors’ every move create a filmic effect, while pop-like numbers add a touch of revue. Only the repetitive, not particularly lyrical melody of the final “chorus mysticus” praising the eternal female veered too far toward the mundane.

In Wilson’s reading, Mephistopheles and Faust are two sides of the same coin, transcending good and evil. With the conception of the Homonculus in the second part, the devil tells the sleeping Faust to never forget that he, too, loves. When the title character is united with Margaret, his bourgeois aloofness only makes the viewer empathize with the isolated Mephistopheles, ever seeking fun and pleasure, as he transforms into a ghoul. It is Mephistopheles, however, who is running the show, returning in a more human, attractive guise and handing over one of his horns to Faust in the final scene.

The actor Christopher Nell tirelessly anchored the evening as the demonic protagonist, whether singing a flamenco-like number while air-playing a guitar or hanging above the stage and puffing a cigar. Following a technical problem with the computer-controlled set in the ninth scene of the first play, he returned to tell the audience, “I had nothing to do with it,” and the show carried on with an unwaveringly high level of fantasy and comic timing.

The first act yields not one but four Faust characters and three Margarets, who not unlike the devil and his conquest form multiple parts of a single personality. It is the Faust of Fabian Stromberger who proceeds to the second part, however, easily complimenting Nell with his physical grace and earnest characterization.

One could only wish that the Berlin Ensemble’s sharp acting were possible within the often rigid confines of opera. Grönemeyer’s music may not always be the most sophisticated response to Goethe, and Wilson allows himself a dose of humor which might meet with skepticism in the opera house, but I can hardly imagine a more relevant, entertaining take on a 15th century saga.

When hearing a soprano sing the title role of Donizetti‘s Anna Bolena, it is impossible not to draw comparisons with Maria Callas, who helped ensure the work’s re-entry into the repertoire with a La Scala performance in 1957.

And indeed, the star of a revival production at the Vienna State Opera this month has been called today’s answer to the legendary singer-actress. Dark-eyed and seductive, a fierce stage animal, Anna Netrebko may loom even larger within her time thanks to globalization (although her allegiance to Vladimir Putin has sullied her reputation).

Where Callas—whom I of course only know via recording—made the 16th century Queen fragile and heartbreaking, Netrebko brings a dose of dark tragedy. The voice flows like uncrushable velvet, resigned to her fate even through floating high notes. Seen April 10, the soprano was at her peak in the final scene after being condemned to death by Henry VIII for her alleged adultery.

Unravelling in a mad scene which foreshadows that of the more mature Donizetti opera Lucia di Lammermoor, she was affecting in the slow aria “Oh! chi si duole?” in which she pines for her beloved Percy, furious in the ensuring cabaletta in which she offers her mercy to the King and the to-be-crowned Jane Seymour.

Netrebko was not convincing in the first act cavatina “Come innocente giovane,” however, failing to convey a sense of vulnerability as she lamented the loss of the King’s love. While her Italian diction has only improved over the years, her vowels often suffer from a throaty timbre that—at least to the listener—compromises the authenticity of her performances.

But this was generally an evening of fine singing, at least for today’s standards, set against the stark but tasteful production of Eric Génovèse. A grey scaffolding conveys the sinister confines of the King’s court, while Anna’s bedroom is all warm blue tones (sets: Jacques Gabel and Claire Sternberg). Luscious period costumes by Luisa Spinatelli bring a dose of regal authenticity.

As the king, the bass Luca Pisaroni an authoritative presence, both musically and dramatically, his sculpted tone setting him apart from the rest of the cast. The Jane of Ekaterina Semenchuk, in her house debut, started out strong with fiery, booming tone but her high notes turned shrill in the second act and her diction was often muddied.

Celso Albelo brought a ringing tenor to the role of Percy, and the mezzo Margarita Gritskova was a stand-out as Anna Bolena’s smitten household musician. The Vienna Philharmonic under Andriy Yurkevych provided buoyant accompaniment, crisp strings and glowing brass making the orchestra a star in its own right during the overture, but the musicians also lived up to their reputation for playing too loudly in the opera pit.

Fore more by Rebecca Schmid, visit www.rebeccaschmid.info.

By Rebecca Schmid

There has been too much music to keep up with between the Konzerthaus’ Festival Mythos Berlin and the contemporary music festival MärzMusik. At the Konzerthaus, I caught the premiere of Christian Jost’s BerlinSymphonie, an homage to the German capital in all is mercurial energy. The approximately 27-minute work for full orchestra creates a vivid enough landscape, blending minimalist textures with everything from sharp modernist gestures to snatches of smooth jazz.

Pulsating brass and a low string motive repeated above the hollow wooden sounds of a marimba capture the dark, mysterious side of Berlin—the bombed out churches, the abandoned banks of the Spree river—while lyrical woodwinds evoke its embracing thrill. Jost’s orchestration strikes an unusual balance between the accessible and the sophisticated, but it also recycles not so original ideas. A solo alto saxophone which emerges throughout the work as the soulful voice of the urban individual is at best clichéd.

The Konzerthausorchester Berlin gave a strong performance under its Music Director Iván Fischer, who since arriving in 2012 has brought the sections into impressive balance and softened the edges of an ensemble which has at times struggled with technical shortcomings. Whether or not one considers Jost a ground-breaking voice, the audience’s enthusiastic applause spoke to his communicative powers.

At the Philharmonie, MärzMusik offered contemporary music of a different breed. As part of an emphasis on the Greek composer Georges Aperghis, the ensemble Klangforum Wien performed his most recent large-scale composition 23 Situations (2013) under conductor Emilio Pomàrico. Written explicitly for the 23 musicians at hand, the work exploits a virtuosic array of extended techniques and theatrical elements.

The most compelling moments emerge with vignettes for individual players, such as the siren-like sighing of the violinists, the multiphonics of heckelphone which is then slapped, the celeste player’s absurdist chanting. In passages for full ensemble, Aperghis brings forth intricate webs of variegated timbres but also cacophonic chaos that is not kind to the ear. Shrieking piccolos and the banging chords of a piano do little to enhance the drama of this approximately one-hour work.

But when the full ensemble gives a final response to the Russian-speaking interjections of the accordionist, each instrument emerges with such immediacy that one has the sense of listening to a jumbled chorus, blurring the boundaries between word and sound, theater and reality.

Fore more by Rebecca Schmid, visit www.rebeccaschmid.info

By Rebecca Schmid

The annual 20th-century music festival Musikfest Berlin (Sept.2-22) this year undertook the ambitious agenda of exploring the evolution of the orchestra from Brahms and Strauss to Lachenmann and Widmann. Intriguing programs have emerged at the Philharmonie, with a roster of guest ensembles ranging from the Munich Philharmonic to the Cleveland Orchestra alongside local institutions. But the event’s Germanic focus eschews a plurality in modern music that is impossible to ignore.

References to the German capital’s central role in history abound in program notes—“Music belongs without a doubt to a particular Berlin tradition,” writes Culture Minister Monika Grütters in an opening greeting, and we are told that Felix Mendelssohn was still a “genuine Berliner” when he wrote his Trumpet Overture, op.101. But the attempt to tie contemporary composers inextricably to a monumental classical-romantic tradition ignores irreversible cultural-historical shifts of the 20th century.

Although the programming explores the toppling and reconstruction of orchestral form, we are left with a sense that everything somehow circles back to Bach and Brahms. A concert of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin under Vladmir Jurowski segued nicely from a focused, authentic performance of Mendelssohn’s Trumpet Overture into Magnus Lindberg’s Chorale, an eerie setting of J.S. Bach’s of Es ist genug, with monumental brass that fight in vain to break through the sea of strings.

Schönberg’s masterfully orchestrated but pompous setting of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue for Organ in E-major provided tonal respite from the Chorale’s dissonant uncertainty and spiritual ambiguity before Schnittke’s Third Symphony deconstructed western tradition even further with distorted, at time cheeky references to Wagner, Strauss, Mozart and more.

When a cembalo attempts to have its word with a a Bach keyboard prelude in the inner Allegro, only to lose out to a sardonic waltz bass line on the harps, and then an organ cluster that crashes from above, the message is clear. Schnittke moves at will in and out of modernism and post-modernism, searing dissonance and tonal clarity, with minimalist textures that cede to a post-Romantic lament in the final Adagio before the music ends in an irresolute nether. Jurowski presided over the 111-strong ensemble with sinuous gestures and unforced precision.

A program of Reger, Strauss and Lachenmann with the Bamberger Symphony followed similar dramaturgical contours, emphasizing the line from Reger’s war-traumatized, at time proto-serial dissonances, to Strauss’ forward-looking harmonies, to Lachenmann’s reinvention of timbre and structure. “As radical as the music after 1945 may seem, a reference to the classical-modern tradition usually established itself,” we are told.

Lachenmann’s Ausklang, which ended the program, adheres to the binary opposition of piano and orchestra that defines a concerto, building itself around the soloist’s attempt to break through with a single tone. There is even a second piano onstage, where the player is armed with a hammer to respond to the protagonist’s insistent gestures. After the orchestra is reduced to ghostly, hollow sounds—an example of Lachenmann’s ability to turn timbre literally inside-out—a string melody breaks through, and sounds ricochet throughout all sections of the orchestra in a kind of da capo reference to the work’s opening. In the end, the soloist wins with two major, triadic chords.

The pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a seasoned performer of this work, gave a tour-de-force in fierce virtuosity and playful dramaticism, while the orchestra realized the range of extended techniques with admirable control under Jonathan Nott. The program opened with a polished account of Reger’s Fantasy and Fugue for Organ in d-minor, as performed by Christian Schmitt. The shades Bach and Brahms, thwarted by shattering dissonances, provided an interesting bridge into the dreamy but devastated world of Strauss’ Four Last Songs in an enchanting if underpowered performance by soprano Genia Kühmeier, who jumped in for Christine Schäfer.

The Munich Philharmonic, despite the recent loss of its Music Director Lorin Maazel, made a fine ambassador for its long Strauss tradition with a program of two of his best-known tone poems, Don Juan and Ein Heldenleben, and the Horn Concerto No.2. If the Staatskapelle Dresden owns this music with a round glow and sensuous line, the Munich players bring a staggering level of detail and exactitude to the inner voices.

Semyon Bychkov presided with a clear, sophisticated baton technique that was balanced by calm and restraint. Soloist Jörg Brückner brought masterful articulation and breath control to the Horn Concerto, particularly in the lively final Rondo. What a shame that the hall was half-empty.

That was not the case for the opening concert of Brahms’ First and Second Piano Concertos with Daniel Barenboim as soloist alongside the Staatskapelle Berlin, which performed not under his direction but that of guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The audience went wild despite the musicians’ awkward coordination and Barenboim’s under-rehearsed performance.

Dudamel beat his baton mechanically and attempted to keep the orchestra together with the the pianist’s willful, elastic phrasing, which included its fair share of smudges. Both soloist and orchestra achieved a melting pianissimo in the inner Andante of the Second Concerto, and Barenboim’s tireless trills and sensitive dynamic shading nearly compensated for the lack of precision elsewhere, but Dudamel’s tense presence belied the imbalance of the situation.

The evening, meanwhile, only underscored the contradiction of centering a 20th-century music festival around the temple of German music. Even if one ascribes to Schönberg’s theory that Brahms was a “great progressive,” one must still account for Dvořák, Lalo, Sibelius, Stravinsky. . .particularly in a city that claims to have rebuilt itself as a cosmopolitan capital for the arts.