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New works at the Jewish Museum; Rameau’s “Castor et Pollux”

Friday, May 16th, 2014

blick_glashof_wBy Rebecca Schmid

Classical music historiography of the 20th century tends to create neatly delineated periods, with World War Two creating a kind of indelible caesura in all things aesthetic and philosophical. This is particularly true in Germany, where the Nachkriegszeit (post-war period) is defined as a veritable epoch: a time in which the country rebuilt itself as a reaction to the horrors of National Socialism, both in politics and art.

A concert at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, which explored both the centenary of World War One and Richard Strauss’ 150th anniversary this year, managed to throw this construction into question. The program on May 10 at Berlin’s Jewish Museum opened with a new work by David Robert Coleman, a German-British composer who blends serialist rigor with free-formed contemporary timbres and structures.

His Three pieces for Clarinet and Piano creates a whimsical dialogue between the two instruments which builds from emotional disjoint into an intense exchange culminating in banging piano chords. The clarinet, meanwhile, reveals how the soft-spoken can hold the upper ground, ending the piece with quiet trills, like a wife trying to placate her angry husband.

Berlin Philharmonic Principal Clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer showed off his slick virtuosity in the more playful, fast inner piece, with a Klezmer-inspired cadenza that yielded to a complex interlocking with the piano, performed by Coleman himself. The third piece had a more post-Romantic feel demanding tremendous breath support from Ottensamer in the serenade-like melodies that yielded to desperate pleas.

Aribert Reimann’s Ollea (2006), an a capella setting of poems by Heinrich Heine, was another testament to the continuity between pre-war serialism and atonal melodic writing in Germany today. Soprano Mojca Erdmann, for whom the piece was written, demonstrated frightening technical assurance, from the wide leaps that open “Sehnsuchtelei” to the melisma that climbs to stratospheric heights at the outset of “Helena.”

Her dramatic poise and sharp musicianship were also on display for two Anton Webern song cycles, even if she was at times a bit too precious. The craggy melodies of “Nachts” from op.14 seemed to descend from a quicksilver tap while Coleman led the five-piece chamber ensemble in a precise reading. Such fine musicianship could have benefitted more intimate acoustics than the museum’s covered courtyard.

The two Romantic works on the program emerged as a kind of lament for European civilization in its civilized, tonal splendour. Violinist Guy Braunstein’s emotional intensity was not always a clear match for the more understated playing of cello doyen Frans Helmerson in Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s D-minor Piano Trio, although they often created a moving blend, such as in the inner Andante. Jonathan Gilad, stepping in for Andras Schiff, understandably had to warm up to the piano part’s undulating fingerwork but gave an impressive performance under the circumstances.

Richard Strauss’ neo-baroque incidental music to the Molière play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in a new arrangement for chamber ensemble by Braunstein, was an interesting choice to close the program. The Lully-inspired melody of “Cleonte’s Entry” was weighed down in nostalgia as it gravitated to horn (Cenk Sahin) and bassoon (Mor Biron). Braunstein led the numbers with the authority of a musician who had assimilated every melody while also integrating his rich tone. Flutist Gili Schwarzman stood out for her elegant grasp of the dance tunes.

Castor et Pollux

The weekend continued in a French baroque vein at the Komische Oper with Rameau’s drama Castor et Pollux. Intendant Barrie Kosky’s production, which premiered at the English National Opera three years ago, opts for the composer’s 1754 revised version which, eliminating the characters of Venus and Mars, depicts Castor’s murder by Lyncée’s troups before launching into Pollux’s supplication of Jupiter to restore his twin but mortal brother back to life.

Seen at its Berlin premiere on May 11, Kosky foregrounds the human violence of the first act with cinematic-like kicks and groans. The mundane aspect is driven home through an aesthetic of bare wooden walls and bourgeois modern dress (sets and costumes by Katrin Lea Tag), with a pile of dirt to represent Hades. In the absence of any choreography whatsoever, Kosky fills dance numbers with actions such as a view of the chorus’ feet in a jamming free-for-all.

During the chorus “Que tout gémisse,” the abandoned Télaïre slaps the bloody hands of the murdered Castor against her bare thighs. And when she realizes that both he and Pollux have left her behind on earth in the final scene, she runs up against the walls like a schizophrenic in an insane asylum. The scene finally gained an ethereal quality in keeping with the tension between gods and men with streams of glitter that poured onto the empty shoes of the brothers.

Kosky’s direction aside, a Rameau opera demands from its cast fastidious attention to ornamentation, beautiful diction and phrasing that creates an inextricable synthesis between text and internal drama. Allan Clayton possesses a powerful, attractive tenor, and warmed up to give a moving performance of his final aria “Qu’il est doux de porter vos chaines,” but, alas, is no early music singer. As Télaïre, soprano Nicole Chevalier similarly made no doubt of her fine instrument but did limited justice to the score’s finer nuances.

Meanwhile, it was the tenor Aco Aleksander Bišćević, in the small role of Mercury, who demonstrated enormous vocal agility. Scottish conductor Christian Curnyn also proved a redeeming factor as he led an ensemble of the Komische Oper Orchestra in a clean, vigorous performance that, although a bit square, revealed painstaking attention to detail.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info.

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“Elisir” in inglese at the Deutsche Oper

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

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A new production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore at the Deutsche Oper turned out to be a very Anglophone evening. Staged by Irina Brook (daughter of the legendary director Peter Brook), the opera starred young American singers Heidi Stober and Dimitri Pittas. And for the first time, the company introduced English subtitles alongside German above the stage. With Americans and Brits comprising most of foreign visitors—and 22% of the overall audience—some buzz was noticeable in the theater. “I was able to follow by going back and forth!” said an American behind me.

The West Berlin house may have long lost its status as the city’s wealthiest opera company, offering only three new productions next season, but it remains the principal destination for Italian repertoire and can still boast stars such as Joseph Calleja and Joyce DiDonato (even if only in concert stagings). While the young cast of Elisir might seem lightweight when held up against the roster of the Staatsoper’s most recent new production, a Tannhäuser starring big names in the Fach such as Peter Seiffert, Rene Pape and Anne Petersen, Brook’s production met with not a single boo—something I cannot remember during my four years’ time in Berlin.

Credit of course also lies with the ledes’ talent and energy. Stober is developing into a local star, singing with the Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester and Radiosymphonie Orchester alongside high-profile appearances at the Deutsche Oper, where she has been an ensemble member since 2008. She combines a pretty but ripe lyric soprano with a generous stage presence, and her grasp of the bel canto idiom has steadily improved. Brook casts the heroine Adina, a wealthy landowner is betrothed to the soldier Belcore, as the director of a theater who is, rather than a coquette, literally running the show. Stober executed the role with charm, her voice growing even richer in the final scene when she and Nemorino—here a cleaning man who woos Adina after acquiring the elixir of love (really, a bottle of wine)—finally kiss.

Pittas was stronger in solo than ensemble numbers, when his voice tended to sound thin, but he executed the critical third-act aria, “Una furtiva lagrima,” with affecting emotion and impressive breath control. One imagines he will only improve in the coming years. It was the Italian bass Nicola Alaimo, however, who stole the show as the itinerant medicine man Dr. Dulcamara. Addressing the audience from a catwalk in front of the orchestra, his final barcarole boasting the powers of his magic potion carried effortlessly above the orchestra with a natural sense of rubato and beautiful diction. The German baritone Simon Pauly found himself in less familiar waters, his coloratura in the opening scene lacking any sense of style not to mention legato, but he evoked the macho Belcore with emphatic tone and a touch a humor that fit well with Brook’s direction. As the peasant girl Gianetta, Alexandra Hutton impressed with lithe dance moves and a clean soubrette.

The chorus of the Deutsche Oper was in typically fine form (preparation by Thomas Richter), and choreography by Martin Buczkó exploited the house stage’s wide dimensions to fine effect with ensemble scenes such as the Act One finale on the village square. In Brook’s production, there is not one stage but two, the latter part of the Teatro Adina (sets by Noëlle Ginefri). This stage-within-a-stage concept pays no attention to Regietheater precedents, however, existing simply as a place where the villagers can observe numbers such as the classic duet of Dulcamara and Adina about a rich senator or a troupe of dancers rehearsing. The troupe’s rustic red caravans provided the perfect welcome for Dulcamara with an eccentric, gypsy-like cart.

Down in the pit, regular guest conductor Roberto Rizzi Brignoli coaxed spritely rhythms from the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper and achieved an excellent balance with the singers. But the instrumentalists were not able to match his intuitive understanding of the music’s finer details. The woodwinds in particular sounded unenthused and lackluster.

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“Tristan” and “L´Italiana” in Paris

Wednesday, April 16th, 2014

28165_256[1]By Rebecca Schmid

While Berlin is famous for its three-house opera system, Paris boasts at least as rich a cultural landscape. Last week, Opéra Garnier revived an Andrei Serban production of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri while Cecilia Bartoli starred in another Rossini opera—Otello—at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. At the Opéra Bastille, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde returned in Peter Sellars’ 2005 take featuring video art by Bill Viola. Parallel to the event, Viola was featured in an exhibit at the Grand Palais—the first video art retrospective in the history of France’s national galleries.

Sellars’ Tristan, commissioned as it was under the tenure of Gerard Mortier, took on its own historic importance, prompting a moment of silence for the late impresario before the first performance on April 8. The production proves a living memory of Mortier’s risk-taking, with scenery consisting exclusively of Viola’s videos and a simple black platform on the Bastille’s enormous stage. The setting, much like the Passions Sellars has staged for the Berlin Philharmonic, draws attention to the director’s mastery of interpersonal dynamics (in German, Personenregie ), while the video art—at its best— serves to immerse the viewer in characters’ emotional worlds. Although it took a few scenes to become accustomed images such as those of Viola and his partner dunking their faces in water before Kurwenal’s entrance in the four scene, the artwork ultimately allows the characters to emerge as universal emblems of a passion that, in a very Schopenhauerian sense, transcends their physical forms.

Sellars also plays with the entire dimensions of the theater to give the audience a more active experience. After submerging most of the first act in darkness, he brings up all the lights at Kurwenal’s line, “Heil, Tristan,” as if to expose the entire experience as artifice, making voyeurs out of those both off and onstage. Throughout the evening, singers and select wind instruments are placed on the balconies—such as the young sailor who opens the first scene and the solo English horn at the onset of the third act which transports Tristan. While his ascension as a rising stream of bubbles in which the body levitates from a tombstone (a video portrait which is at the end of the Grand Palais exhibit) risks being too explicit, the repeated images of water serve to engulf the viewer much as the orchestra creates an ocean of endless time.

Music Director Philippe Jordan created sensuous waves of tension and release with the orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris, with particularly elegant playing in the woodwinds, while the brass was less homogenous. Violetta Urmana remained a powerhouse in the role of Isolde despite some screechy high notes. As Tristan, Robert Dean Smith did not possess the same volume but gave a performance of moving vulnerability. The bass Franz-Josef Selig was indomitable in the role of the betrayed König Marke, and Janina Baechle and Jochen Schmeckenbecher gave fine performances as the lovers’ confidantes, Brangäne and Kurwenal. Raimund Nolte was a nasal-voiced, menacing Melot; the performance of Pavol Breslik, as the young sailor and shepherd, bordered on the mannered but there is no denying the seductive qualities of his tenor.

The following evening, at the Opéra Garnier, brought together a stellar cast for L’Italiana in Algeri. I have been sceptical of the baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in roles such as Don Giovanni, but he seems born to sing the role of Mustafà, the Bey in Rossini’s opera who is duped into the phony rite of “Pappataci” (roughly, father of silence) which allows the enslaved Lindoro and his lover, Isabella, to flee back to Italy. The mezzo Varduhi Abrahamyan was sovereign as the Italian seductress from her first aria “Cruda sorte! Amor tiranno,” with smooth coloratura and excellent comic timing. She was more than well-matched by the Lindoro of Antonino Siragusa, whose technical assurance could blow several commercially-known tenors out of the water. The soprano Jaël Azzaretti was charming as Mustafà’s spurned wife, Elvira, leading the zany Act One stretta “Va sossopra il mio cervello” with sharp musicianship. In the role of Taddeo, Isabella’s accompaniment, the baritone Tassis Christoyannis at times stole the show with his understated physical humor even if his voice is on the less voluminous side.

Credit of course goes to Serban for capturing the spirit of Rossini’s comedy in a modern context. The Bey is cast a terrorist hooligan—with furs and a golden pistol to match—while the “Pappataci” scene is portrayed with dancers dressed, respectively, as a giant bottle of wine, a pizza pie and a bed (sets and costumes by Marina Draghici). From the ape which greets Isabella and Taddeo after their ship crashes to the dancers which insinuate themselves into ensemble scenes (choreography by Niky Wolcz), there is always a great deal happening onstage, but never at the expense of distracting from the story. The male chorus—now pot-bellied eunuchs, now suited Mafiosi—were always on the mark (preparation by Alessandro di Stefano), and Riccardo Frizza propelled the orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris with high energy and clean attacks, even if rubato was wanting to create dramatic emphasis in scenes such as Mustafà’s initiation.

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The DSOB breaks the Mold with Roussel and Honegger

Tuesday, April 1st, 2014

untitledAHBy Rebecca Schmid

Given the range of works across the classical repertoire, one wonders how the same Brahms and Beethoven warhorses continue to dominate programming, especially in the midst of constant debate about how to keep the art form lively. The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin manages to prove an exception. An evening of Honegger, Franck, Roussel and Ravel under guest conductor Stéphane Denève on March 29 at the Philharmonie made this particularly clear.

César Franck’s Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1886) uses a hybrid structure that hovers somewhere between concerto, symphony and variations’ cycle. The pianist and orchestra exchange short episodes of dialogue, with the soloist becoming more and more virtuosic. The influence of Chopin seems evident in recitative-like melodies that relegate the orchestra to the background.

The young pianist Bertrand Chamayou was an ideal champion of the music, delivering a gentle, passionate but clean interpretation in both soulful slow phrasing and racy passages in which he stayed perfectly in sync with the orchestra while Denève coaxed well-calibrated, swelling phrases. As an encore, Chamayou, who possesses a refreshingly assured but non-pretentious stage presence, offered a performance of Debussy’s Claire de Lune in which he inflected the melodies with the right touch of jazziness while also bathing them in a wash of pastels.

Opening the evening was Arthur Honegger’s Symphonie liturgique (1946), a work whose style might seem archaic against modernist developments which have claimed more social relevance. The score layers textures in strict, mostly tonal counterpoint to create a spiritual journey in protest of the “barbarity, stupidity, suffering, mechanization and bureaucracy” which emerged under Nazi occupation.

An angry Dies irae of frenetic strings and threatening brass gives way to a meditative Adagio, De profundis clamavi, whose aching, slow moving harmonies might recall Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The final Andante, Dona nobis pacem, builds into march-like, dissonant protest until the orchestra lets out a collective scream. After a lamenting cello emerges out of the dust, a flute descends out of the sky to deliver peace. The work’s overtly Christian message may verge on the kitschy, but it is composed with tremendous skill and emotional depth. The DSOB gave an earnest performance under guest conductor Stéphane Denève.

Albert’s Roussel’s Third Symphony (1930), another example of early twentieth-century music which struggles to find its place in the canon, proved an interesting companion in terms of orchestration, opening with an explosive, staccato brass and string motive that gives way to a plaintive flute melody. The work was commissioned by Serge Kossewitsky for the Boston Symphony and premiered to rave reviews.

With colourful instrumentation for the entire orchestra, the piece remains vibrant from beginning to end without becoming superficial. The second slow movement creates reflective pools of tragedy out of which, once again, a flute summons the orchestra out of its melancholy. The inner Vivace is a tour de force of festive gaiety, while the final movement—with its twittering winds and marching brass—is not without a hint of farce, evoking shades of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, but in a thoroughly idiomatic context. The DSOB played with high energy and clean attacks.

Closing the evening was the only familiar work on the program, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928). Denève built tension gracefully as the work’s circular melody was tossed through the wind instruments—including saxophone—before consuming the entire orchestra in a throbbing dance. The piece was of course premiered not in straight concert but to choreography by Bronislava Nikinska at the Paris National Opera. In a better world, we would see all the great dance works of this era—by Debussy, Stravinsky, and even Strauss—performed as they were intended rather to a motionless, half-empty hall.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info

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At the Konzerthaus, a German Premiere and a half-empty Hall

Friday, March 14th, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

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The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin presented what was announced as a “French evening” on March 12 featuring the German premiere of Dutilleux’s Le temps l’horloge. The RSB has its share of competition between the Berlin Philharmonic, Deutsche-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (another orchestra with broadcast roots), the Staatskapelle and others. But it was a surprise to see the main hall of the Konzerthaus half-full for guest artist Laura Aikin—one of today’s finest sopranos in contemporary repertoire—and the conductor Ludovic Morlot.

Dutilleux left behind only a small body of works, first writing for the voice later in his career, although he called it “the most beautiful instrument of all.” Poetry settings such as Correspondances, released by Deutsche Grammophon in a version updated for Barbara Hannigan shortly before the composer’s death last year, have already proved their staying power. In Le temps, a short song cycle written for René Fleming in 2007, the composer builds delicate worlds of sound around the singer, from the molten bed of strings in Le Masque, to the accordion and bass pizzicati of Le Dernier Poème.

In the final Enivrez-vous, the vocal lines become positively vertiginous against an orchestral backdrop at once frightening and playful, perhaps a self-conscious warning against Baudelaire’s hedonist sentiments. Aikin mastered the technical demands with flexible but full-bodied lines, moving through each atmosphere with a clear sense of musical architecture. It is a shame her French diction did not rise to the same standards, making it difficult to appreciate the poetry’s beauty. Morlot coaxed, at least from my seat directly above the stage, what sounded like a clean, well-calibrated performance from the orchestra. The instrumental Interlude beginning with a fugato in the cellos took on a dreamy quality that allowed the listener to wander aimlessly through the sea of emotions.

Martinù’s Sixth Symphony opened the evening with swirling textures that recalled the cycle’s first poem and namesake, Le temps l’horloge. Despite the symphony’s distinctive and mainly Czech-influenced orchestration, one can detect shades of Débussy and Stravinsky in the atmospheric timbres and biting harmonies. The music has moments of quick vacillation between peace and despair, such as the violin solo above timpani in the opening movement, or the angry brass and woodwind blasts that interrupt the humdrum strings in the following Poco allegro. But even ominous moments have a tremendous sense of momentum which Morlot captured with the orchestra, even if its vigorous playing at times compromised a sense of elegance.

The brass playing sounded less clean when I moved further away from the stage for the second half of the program, Débussy’s Images for orchestra, part of a series he undertook parallel to writing La mer. The RSB etched the textures in bold lines rather than shading in pastel, although Les parfums de la nuit of the second movement, Ibéria, proved an exception with gentle, swelling phrases. The following Le matin d’un jour de fête captured the playful atmosphere of a fair as the violinists strummed their instruments in dialogue with the winds. And although the diaphanous Rondes de Printemps still felt too opaque, Morlot maintained a high energy among the players that captured the fresh splendour of spring. Perhaps the atmosphere would have been even better with more listeners in the hall.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info

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Ritual in the Philharmonie: Bach’s ‘St. John Passion’ and MusicAeterna

Friday, February 28th, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

In the final scene of Bach’s St. John Passion, staged by Peter Sellars at the Philharmonie on Feb.27, the members of the Rundfunkchor gather in meditation around a spotlight, the rest of the hall submerged in darkness. The body of Jesus has been quietly removed during a lament of Mary Magdalene, his absence hovering in the afterglow. With only ten arias, St. John, J.S. Bach’s first completed Passion, finds its dramatic backbone in choral numbers illustrating both the adulation and persecution that accompanied Jesus’ final days before crucifixion. The chorus can transform from a blood-thirsty mob to a gathering of pleading individuals within one scene.

Sellars relies heavily on pantomime to illustrate their very human plight. The singers, at first lying like corpses, stretch their arms to the heavens during the opening “Herr, unser Herrscher” (Lord, our Lord), only to throw dice at the dying Jesus during “Lasset uns nicht zerteilen” (Let us not be divided). Although it is sometimes a challenge to take the chorus’ histrionic expressions seriously, the director manages to capture the ambiguity, hypocrisy, cruelty and spiritual deliverance of the Gospel while always working within the space of Bach’s transcendent score. The Rundfunkchor, singing its parts from memory, immerses itself completely in the interaction of music and gesture.

Sellars considers his recreations of the Passions not stagings but ritualizations. His 2010 production of St. Matthew with the Berlin Philharmonic and Rundfunkchor was such a success that the ensembles re-joined in St. John with all the same soloists save for the now-retired Thomas Quasthoff, here replaced by baritone Roderick Williams in the role of Jesus. The director opts for an even more raw approach in St. John to externalize the music’s fierce dramatic conflict. As he explained in a recent interview via Skype (see A Hall That Invites the Audience Into the Music-Making), while “Matthew” is filled with “contemplative spaciousness, “John” is “super immediate, super visceral and shockingly realistic, over and over again.”

While chorus and orchestra interwove like polyphony in the more generously scored St. Matthew, with a white tombstone representing Jesus’ ultimate fate, St. John is all flesh and blood, violence and stasis. In one of the most powerful moments, during Pilatus’ aria urging the chorus to make a pilgrimage to the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, the chorus shouts back “where to?” from all corners of the geometric, vertiginous Philharmonie. Even the stage hands, dressed in black like the choral members and musicians, are treated as a homogenous part of the action, blurring the boundaries between theater and life, religion and secularity.

As in St. Matthew, the tenor Mark Padmore grounded the performance with a portrayal of the Evangelist at once dramatically earnest and naturalist. Often seated at the edge of the stage, he narrated with a sense of clairvoyant regret. Extensive recitatives never grew dry due to Padmore’s clear, expressive timbre, impeccable diction and direct engagement with the audience. In the role of Pilatus, Christian Gerhaher was cast as an impotent bureaucrat of sorts, sitting centerstage in empty contemplation that sometimes bordered on the deranged. Yet he brought unaffected, baritonal purity to the aria “Mein teuer Heiland” (My beloved Savior), an intimate dialogue with cello continuo and choral accompaniment that is one of the most memorable numbers in St. John.

Magdalena Kožená, returning as a Mary Magdalene figure—but this time pregnant and in a lipstick red dress—also made the most of her few numbers, conveying quiet devastation in the aria “Es ist vollbracht” (The act is completed) with a velvety, rich tone and clear diction against viola da gamba and continuo. The soprano Camilla Tilling, although blessed with a creamy timbre and commanding presence, was not as well suited to the demands of Bach’s sinuous lines, sounding thin in the extended high notes of “Zerfließe, mein Herze” (Dissolve, my heart) as she wandered among of blanket of collapsed bodies.

The tenor Topi Lehtipuu is also not the ideal choice for baroque music, with a fast vibrato that weakened his arias. Williams, when not bound to the stage floor as the blind-folded Jesus, invested his lines with pain and spiritual depth. Sir Simon Rattle and a 13-strong ensemble struck a balance between introspection and charged energy that was well in keeping with the directorial conception.

MusicAeterna

Sellars received an unexpected homage earlier this month with the arrival of Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna. The ensemble brought an ambitious enough program on Feb.16, performing Handel’s Dixit Dominus alongside the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas. But the young Greek conductor returned to the half-lit Philharmonie and announced that, with Sellars in the hall, the ensemble chorus would like to perform a ritual of sorts. The chorus moved through a sequence of expressive gestures in a number from Purcell’s Indian Queen, which the director staged for MusicAeterna last year in its home city of Perm.

While the classical music world has its pick of superb early music ensembles, from Concentus Musicus to Les Arts Florissants, the origins of MusicAeterna have a stake to originality. Currentzis assembled the ensemble himself in Novosibirsk, Siberia and managed to integrate both the chorus and ensemble into the Perm Opera—over 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow—upon becoming artistic director. The musicians’ non-bureaucratic genesis is still evident in their playing. The energy is high and fresh, if at times bordering on frenetic, and the communication so easy that the players breathe with Currentzis. Phrasing unfurls in shooting but clean lines, betraying hours of intense rehearsal.

This was particularly evident in the fugal seventh movement of Dixit Dominus. In the penultimate “De torrente in via bibet,” the strings’ gripping tension recalled the finest early music ensembles, although the choral soloists did not rise to the same standards. As a unit, however, the vocal ensemble produces an even, musical glow. Even if diction was an issue in the English-language libretto of Dido and Aeneas, the performance’s charm distracted from such details. Sopranos Anna Prohaska and Nurial Rial gave magnetic performances as Dido and Belinda, and Currentzis’ fluid, lanky gestures maintained a perpetual sense of momentum and dramatic intensity.

While dynamic architecture often pushed the boundaries of authentic performance practice, the sense of understatement in the final scene could not have been more effective. Against Prohaska’s florid ornamentation in reprises of “Thy hand, Belinda,” the orchestra’s sustained pianissimo hovered on the edge of an abyss.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info

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Dual Frequencies at the Ultraschall Festival

Friday, January 24th, 2014

TOM1848[1]By Rebecca Schmid

Duos—both literal and metaphoric—are the official theme for this year’s Ultraschall Festival for New Music, taking place in Berlin until Jan.31. The event, hosted by the city’s two main classical radio stations, Kulturradio rbb and Deutschlandradio Kultur, is better known for its wide range of offerings than its tight programming. But the concept was not lost on a mostly orchestral concert at the Haus des Rundfunks on Wednesday.

Opening the evening was Jörg Widmann with his own work 5 Bruchstücke (1997) for clarinet and piano. The approximately eight-minute series of miniatures creates pointed dialogue with a range of extended techniques, from circular gestures which are echoed inside the clarinet—so skillful in the hands of Widmann as to simulate live electronic loops—to the strumming of prepared strings. Holger Groschopp, stepping in for Heinz Holliger—who was forced to withdraw for personal reasons—coordinated from the piano with impeccable timing.

In onstage moderation, freshly installed co-intendant and rbb radio host Andreas Göbel extended the duo theme to Widmann’s parallel activities as a clarinettist and composer as well as his use of both A and B clarinets in the Bruchstücke. Widmann admitted that he sometimes “curses” himself in writing such difficult music but considers it an interpreter’s responsibility to test established boundaries.

He then took the stage for Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Concerto (1996). The approximately 18-minute work requires the soloist move about and join different instrumental groups in short episodes until the entire ensemble comes together.

Widmann’s virtuosic execution of the filigree melodies and ability to emerge organically from a range of timbres revealed his uncanny ability to bend the clarinet to his own artistic ends. The conductor Wolfgang Lischke led the Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester in a precise reading whose slightly studied nature can easily be excused given that he was replacing Holliger last-minute.

The second half of the program was devoted to Swiss composers, Holliger the first among them with his double concerto Janus, which premiered in Salzburg two seasons ago. The original soloists, violinist Thomas Zehetmair and violist Ruth Killius, engaged in heated struggle with the orchestra, puncturing a molten surface of swarming textures.

The final stretch of the approximately 20-minute piece, named after the Roman god who looks both to the future and the past, creates tremendous tension with the soloists thrashing their bows in the air, the harpist swiping various plastic objects across her instrument, metallic whirring in the string section giving way to ethereal chimes.

Klaus Huber’s Tenebrae, the only work of the evening to exploit a large-scale orchestra and the oldest on the roster with a premiere date of 1967, is also a study in masterful instrumentation and dramatic purpose. The darkness implied in the title is more of a metaphysical force that drives the music, alternating glassy strings with frenetic winds, eerie emptiness with screaming blasts, a mystic realm that does not seek clear answers. A certain duality nevertheless underpins the 18-minute work.

The 90-year-old Huber was present for a short conversation in which he spoke of the work’s premiere in Warsaw, leading Göbel to tie the theme of darkness to Cold War politics of the time. Yet the composer emphasized that the music should speak for itself, perhaps even more easily now than it did in the 1960s.

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Radiale Vokalnacht

Friday, December 13th, 2013

my_brightest_diamond[1]By Rebecca Schmid

Vocal music, in all its forms of expression and social relevance, was the subject of a Radiale Vokalnacht at the Radialsystem on Dec.7. It was an opportunity to catch the vocalist-instrumentalist-composer Shara Worden, otherwise known as My Brightest Diamond, who performed with drummer Earl Harvin and accompaniment from BerlinJazzVocals. After the a cappella ensemble opened the evening in the main hall with an Australian polyphonic number, Worden appeared in one of her most successful songs, “We added it up,” strumming an amplified ukulele in a fitted white blazer and signature poof-hairstyle.

A trained opera singer, she was in top form as she crooned about the attraction of opposites—a trite sentiment that she manages to give depth with clever lyrics and catchy but deceptively simple tunes. The replacement of her original orchestration with BerlinJazzVocals was not entirely convincing but created an organic continuity as the audience joined, with few tone-deaf contributions, for the refrain “love binds the world.”

Her choral work “The Pleiades,” about a Native Indian rite involving the constellation, emerged with soothing harmonies but not the most inspired lyrics— “How many stars can you see in the Pleiades,” sang the chorus. The song “That point when,” to dreamy synthesizer and lulling percussion, had more dramatic impact. Worden tuned up an electric guitar for the ethereal, poetic final number, “From the Top of the World,” with sensitive rhythm from Harvin and not so subtle serenading from the JazzVocals.

The rotating program followed with the choice of three different events. On the top-floor dance studio, a Pecha Kucha Night unexpectedly presented a series of lectures. A social scientist touched on the benefits and dark sides of community singing. The presenter of a public choral concert in Germany, Brussels, Norway and England touted his event’s goal of breaking walls “both visible and invisible.” More convincing were the founders of Kiezoper Berlin, a grassroots organization which has staged operas in clubs and industrial spaces with the aim of making the art form more accessible.

If one was left wondering about the purpose of the ad hoc mini-conference, the following act in the main hall provided some food for thought—although no conclusions. The all-female Carmina Slovenica deals, in the words of event curator Laura Berman, with the “abuse of religion” and how its structures “ultimately topple.” The all-female chorus, in its Berlin premiere, performed works from Jacob Cooper to Rachmaninoff to Sirian orthodox chant in choreographed situations that merge spiritual transcendence with a heavy metal aesthetic and abstract theater.

While the performance had moving moments—such as in the earnest, military execution of Boaz Avni’s “Kyrie”—the girls should have perhaps ended the show after they all fell to the ground, presumably under the weight of societal oppression. The buckets of clementines which subsequently scattered across the stage did little to emphasize the narrative about subjugation and the will for freedom.

The evening further included a vocal workshop with Christina Wheeler called Your Voice is Your Oyster and the performance Glacial Revisited with Audrey Chen on cello, voice and electronic. At that point, my head was reeling.

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‘Il Trovatore’ at the Staatsoper Berlin

Friday, December 6th, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid

trova_ohp_st_op0749

While Il Trovatore counts as one of Verdi’s most gripping scores, the libretto’s sprawling tale of love and vengeance is not without dramaturgical challenges. A staging by Philip Stötzl which opened at the Staatsoper Berlin on Nov.29 featured several first encounters with the opera. Anna Netrebko, who attended the premiere of the co-production with the Wiener Festwochen last spring, decided to make the performance her role debut as the lady-in-waiting Leonora. The sinister Conte di Luna marks a first for Plácido Domingo, better known for his portrayal of the troubadour Manrico during his heyday as a tenor. Staatsoper Music Director Daniel Barenboim had never tackled the score, and Stötzl—a film director by training who has mostly staged Wagner—also found himself on new terrain.

Stötzl deals with the rapid jumps in plot and formulaic approach of Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto to a tragic love triangle in 15th century Spain by creating a series of caricatures. The action is confined to an open cube tilted downstage (sets by the director and Conrad Moritz Reinhardt), with doors on all sides for the characters to spontaneously emerge. The aesthetic creates a tone at once classic and comic: The count’s army frolics with spears and top hats, while Leonora and her confidante, Inez, twirl around in cartoonish blonde wigs and oversized bustles (costumes by Ursula Kurdna). Azucena and her band of gypsies appear as clown-like hooligans—wearing not rags but ruffs.

The production is visually captivating from start to finish—with choreography by Mara Kurotschka to animate choral scenes such as the famous anvil number; expert lighting by Olaf Freese which casts colourful shadows in mirror-image; and video projections by fettFilm that transform the otherwise static set with optical illusions, dismantling the walls into a starry sky in the final scene. However, one could have done without the childish vignettes featuring the characters in miniature and fake blood dripping down the walls after Leonora has stabbed herself.

Despite Stötzl’s tight emphasis on the inter-personal relationships of the opera, his tongue-in-cheek tone ultimately detracts from its pathos. It was hard to take Azucena, in an unusually youthful but powerfully sung portrayal by Marina Prundenskaja, seriously when she tells Manrico (Gaston Rivera) how she accidentally burned her own son. And despite Netrebko’s heartfelt delivery in the final scenes, there lacked a sense of tragedy when she dies at Manrico’s feet, followed by the troubadour himself. Perhaps because Stötzl emphasized fairy-tale farce over the primal elements of the story—class struggle, blood-thirsty revenge, the continuity of death and life—the characters remained trapped in a bubble of theatrical whimsy.

The evening had its strengths and weaknesses vocally. After warming up in the opening scenes, Netrebko was best in the full-blooded lines of ensemble numbers, such as when the count abducts her from a convent in the second act. But her hushed tones the Adagio “D’amor sull’ali rosee,” which she sings to the imprisoned Manrico, were brittle. Domingo struggled with the role of the Count—producing a raspy tone which left listeners worrying about his health—although his beautiful diction and sensuous phrasing remain intact.

Rivera, stepping in for an ill-disposed Aleksandrs Antonenko, gave an admirable performance as Manrico, bringing a penetrating tone and agile lines to the cabaletta “Di quella pira.” The voice has a fast vibrato, however, that is not always attractive. As Ferrando, the count’s officer, Adrian Sâmpetrean brought a true basso profondo and excellent rubato to the opening scene in which he warns the troops about the troubadour. Staatsoper ensemble member Anna Lapovskaja gave a pleasant account of Leonora’s confidante, Inez.

Barenboim led the Staatskapelle with gripping forward drive and elasticity of phrasing. The brass section was at times too Wagnerian, and tempo transitions such as that from Leonora’s exchange with Inez into the slow aria “Tacea la Notte” were not smooth, but his first take on the opera counts as a triumph. The Staatsoper Chorus, challenged by some of the precisely-timed choreography, was not as polished as it could have been in rhythm and diction, but the anvil scene and a-capella female number in the convent were beautifully delivered.

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East meets West: The National Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonie

Thursday, November 21st, 2013

Taiwan_NSO_1[1]By Rebecca Schmid

The Taiwan Philharmonic, which also calls itself the National Symphony Orchestra, came to Berlin on Nov.18 as part of the second European tour in its history. With two recent commissions on the program—one by a German composer, the other by an American-trained Taiwanese native—it became clear how global classical music trends have become.

Ming-Hsiu Yen’s Breaking Through, which opened the program, stays true to its title with a clear dramaturgical structure. In the first section of the approximately 14-minute piece, after an exciting drum fanfare, various sections of the orchestra—high strings against brass, low strings against winds—are set into friction with each other, creating an immediate sense that something has to give. The second section builds out of an insistent, mourning motive in the low strings until only glassy textures and xylophone are left, only to rise again into a heroic close.

A post-Romantic feel also extends to Christian Jost’s Taipei Horizon, although a more apt title might be Taipei Apocalypse. The music opens with spurts of atmospheric, extended dissonances. There is some relief when an oboe solo emerges above pizzicati and swirling motives, but the approximately 16-minute work proceeds to march on in a procession of directionless despair, with brushes of pentatonic motives that should lend eastern flair, warring percussion, and morose low strings that have their final word in rumbling double-basses.

The orchestra, under its Music Director Shao-Chia Lü, gave a careful reading of both scores, although the Jost had perfunctory moments. In Breaking Through, the trombones got off to a wobbly start but warmed up to a more even tone.

The Sibelius Violin Concerto, featuring Viviane Hagner as soloist, was less convincing. Despite the Philharmonic’s clean, well-calibrated playing, there was no sense of the spacious mystery or profound melancholy that brings this music to life in the opening Allegro.

The middle movement, which relies on the expressive power of the soloist in passages of naked, soulful lyricism, was even more disappointing. Hagner’s soft dynamics were not trenchant enough, nor did she capture the complex emotions behind the notes. The zesty delivery of the final movement was more satisfying, although the soloist’s tone could have benefitted from more strength.

All sections of the orchestra were in fine form for Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, which unfolded with fresh energy and elegant phrasing, particularly in the lilting dance-like melody of the closing Allegro ma non troppo. Lü, clearly in high spirits, showed off his flair for the composer with an encore of the Fifth Slavonic Dance. He then brought the soprano Meng-Chun Lin onstage to perform a traditional Taiwanese song.

As the orchestration flowered around her earnest melody, one caught a glimpse of what may be the future of classical music.

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