By ANDREW POWELL
Published: November 26, 2017
MUNICH — Post is under revision.
Photos © Arthaus, BelAir Classiques, Querstand, Supraphon, Warner Classics
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By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 24, 2017
MUNICH — He had to abandon his Munich Philharmonic cycle, a cosmic Fifth being one of its relics, but Christian Thielemann’s Dresden cycle* of the numbered Bruckner symphonies has progressed smoothly to near completion, and with video. Oddly parts of it have been filmed here at the Gasteig — scene of the crime, so to speak — most recently on Sept. 6 when the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden turned to the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Das kecke Beserl, or The Saucy Wench. Meanwhile, a Thielemann successor at the MPhil, Valery Gergiev, has this month embarked on his own Bruckner loop, also to be filmed, but at Sankt Florian. For him, the First has come first: Sept. 21 in a Gasteig concert and tomorrow (Sept. 25) at Bruckner’s basilica. Both conductors opt for the engaging Linz Version (1866) in its 1877 form, although for Thielemann this means an as yet unpublished edition with slight differences from the 1953 Nowak.
Promoted by Bell’Arte, the Saxons’ program opened with a lush account of Bruch’s G-Minor Violin Concerto. Nikolaj Znaider powered the solo part, edgily at first but with eloquence in the Adagio and gutsy expression in the Finale, sending the maestro, among many others, into effusive apparent raptures. Znaider then went to sit with his St Petersburg boss, Gergiev, present to hear what wonders Thielemann would impart after the break in the still relatively rare 45- to 50-minute symphony, written the same year.
The work’s nickname may be a bizarre projection, but its confidence is certain. There is much rhythmic energy; no chorale, fugue or Generalpause impedes the momentum. It opens with a march theme of some irony, moves to a lyrical subject and soon rises to an imposing yet isolated fanfare in the trombones. The development is restrained, the recapitulation free-form and based on a new theme. This reappears in the “agitated, fiery” Finale, a propulsive construct that shifts triumphantly to C Major. In between come a solemn Adagio with fancy violin figurations and a partly songful Scherzo.
Thielemann (pictured the same day) conducted with his customary flair for counterpoint. He had memorized the music and shrewdly gauged its pulsations and climaxes, particularly in the challenging Finale, where a vein of spontaneity lit up the logic. Some hesitancy, though, in middle-movement details suggested he had not yet decided what to do with all the material, and perhaps for this reason his orchestra was not on top form.
If Gergiev took anything away, there was scant evidence Sept. 21. He sustained lighter textures and found charm in unexpected places, persuasively in the Scherzo. On the other hand, a relishing of tone colors came at cost to inner voices in Bruckner’s scheme, lessening its impact. Nothing was implied in that opening march, for example. Nor were the dance elements well served. But the maestro kept his eyes locked on the score and drew a magnificent performance from the MPhil — strings transparent and silky where those qualities counted, intense and glowing elsewhere; brass blasting and soaring with tireless accuracy. Indeed, from its steep, newly modified risers, the MPhil sounded as virtuosic as it had in the finest days of, well, GMD Thielemann (2004–2011). Scheduled for after intermission was Bruckner’s Third Symphony, alas in its late version.
[*DVDs on the C Major label: the 7th and 8th Symphonies filmed in the Semperoper in 2012, the 5th in 2013; the 4th and 9th at Baden-Baden in 2015, the 6th in the Semperoper that year; and the 3rd and 1st in Munich in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Thielemann also filmed the 4th and 7th Symphonies with the MPhil for C Major, in 2009 at Baden-Baden.]
Photo © Dresden Staatskapelle
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By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 29, 2017
PASSAU — What more heavenly way to mark your 90th birthday than conducting a favorite symphony in four cathedrals on four successive nights, and with an orchestra that adores you? This, at least, was Herbert Blomstedt’s thinking, amenably realized by the Bamberger Symphoniker — in Bamberg’s Dom St Peter und St Georg July 19, Würzburg’s St-Kilians-Dom July 20, Passau’s Dom St Stephan July 21, and, aptly in this case jumping from Bavaria to Austria July 22, the Stiftsbasilika St Florian. On the stands: Bruckner’s Fifth, his Fantastische, a work that climaxes only in conclusion.
Blomstedt wore a beatific smile here as he gently yet cohesively propelled the players through the 75- to 80-minute score, applying a number of firm accelerations (to clock in at the fast end of that range). Occasionally he requested less sound, from his chair on his podium on a tube-and-clamp orchestra platform far below Dom St Stephan’s emphatic white moldings and rich Carpoforo Tencalla frescos. Cathedral acoustics had their various effects: here was “staccato with resonance,” in Jochum’s phrase; here, too, pizzicato without exactness, quite a drawback in this symphony.
The cohesion lay of course in the counterpoint: not everyone’s strong suit but certainly Blomstedt’s. So the grand musical edifice stood straight and its sections and parts sounded and ended exactly where they needed to. Light shone into the music, much as it streamed through Carlo Lurago’s transom windows. Ideas flowed in long breaths. There was no leaning on particular notes, no pushing for effect by the Bambergers. Blomstedt presented a rational and questioning, ultimately peaceful, encounter with this magnificent score, keeping volume in reserve for its late peroration. Even there, from where the Finale’s two fugues sound together in the brass (after the double fugue) and the horns lastly restate the first-movement theme, no one blasted. Balances had been set, and the American-born maestro could cue without visible effort players he has known for decades, his back to a capacity crowd.
The Passau performance took place as part of European Weeks, in another American connection. This was the first festival founded in postwar Germany, in 1952, when the U.S. 7th Army Symphony Orchestra served in the pit for Le nozze di Figaro starring Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender and “We Demand the United States of Europe” served as marketing slogan. The 65th European Weeks was as busy as any before.
Home to Europe’s largest cathedral organ, Dom St Stephan splendidly models the Italian Baroque. Along with Lurago and Tencalla, designer Giovanni Battista Carlone produced its dramas of contrast: stucco against frescos, daylight against shadows, plain verticals against the ovalled, vaulted ceiling. Outside, meanwhile, three rivers calmly meet: the charcoal-colored Ilz from the Bavarian Forest, the milky-aqua Inn from St Moritz via Innsbruck, and, in between, the coffee-colored Danube from the Black Forest. (Munich’s Isar and Salzburg’s Salzach are upstream tributaries.) The main stem takes the Danube name although the Inn has been the trunk flow, and the coffee color prevails as it enters Austria two kilometers down.
Photo © Diözese Passau
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By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 6, 2017
MUNICH — Under the incongruous stewardship of Valery Gergiev, the Munich Philharmonic intends to stress its Bruckner credentials the next three Septembers with filmed visits to the Stiftsbasilika St Florian. There, where the composer worked and rests, just south of Linz, the MPhil will record for DVD his numbered symphonies, three per visit, the orchestra said Friday.
Gergiev: “In the Munich Philharmonic, dazzling technique is combined with a deep common experience on the subject of Bruckner … . I want people around the world to [hear this].” The partnership recorded the Fourth Symphony for CD in 2015 in Nowak’s 1953 edition.
Orchestra statement: “The MPhil has a special and unique relationship to the symphonic work of Anton Bruckner, going back to its founding as the Kaim-Orchester, and over the years has … developed a specific Bruckner tradition.
“Conductors such as Hermann Levi, under whom the [1885 Munich] premiere of the Seventh Symphony went down as a triumph in European music history [before the Kaim-Orchester existed]; Ferdinand Löwe, Bruckner’s pupil [and two-term MPhil chief]; and not least Sergiu Celibidache [Chefdirigent 1979–1996], whose Bruckner interpretations are legendary, made major contributions to the [status of these] symphonies … as a summit of the genre.”
Painfully this supporting rhetoric omits mention of recent MPhil Generalmusikdirektor Christian Thielemann. He led stunning Bruckner concerts here before a foolishly managed struggle resulted in his resignation, and he is now filming his own Bruckner cycle in various cities — including Munich! — with the Dresden Staatskapelle.
Filming at St Florian (pictured) begins Sept. 25 and 26, when Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 and 4 are scheduled; identical programs will be played at the orchestra’s Gasteig home days earlier. Details were unclear as to the editions. The project will open Gergiev’s third through fifth (of five contracted) seasons as MPhil Chefdirigent.
Photo © Christian Herzenberger
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By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 18, 2016
MUNICH — Late to an unprofitable game, the Munich Philharmonic on Friday announced a new recording label of its own, “MPhil,” in partnership with Warner Classics.
Its purpose? To broaden the audience.
Content will be sourced live, mainly from concerts at the orchestra’s Gasteig home. But archive releases are promised too, as are “celebrity” conductors. Distribution: physical media, downloads, and streaming offers.
The label will issue up to six titles yearly with emphasis “on the abundant German repertory and works by composers with whom the ensemble has been closely connected since its founding 125 years ago.”
Exactly how MPhil Chefdirigent Valery Gergiev fits this artistic focus is unclear. Anyway, the first titles appear in September: a symphony each by Bruckner and Mahler with provisional album art showing Gergiev’s name twice the size of the orchestra’s.
Which begs a question, given the maestro’s affinities and the hopelessly saturated market. Who in their right mind would want a Gergiev recording of any Bruckner or Mahler symphony? The MPhil’s archivist?
To be sure, the new imprint will expose the Munich Philharmonic’s work in the way BR Klassik and Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings already do for its “competitors,” to cite only German examples.
But such ventures nowadays hemorrhage serious euros.
MPhil releases will follow, after a delay of at least a year, broadcasts of the same performances via outlets like Bayerischer Rundfunk.
Warner’s Erato label, meanwhile, has recently issued live recordings from 2013 and 2014 of Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra: the Shostakovich Cello Concertos as expansively shaped by Gautier Capuçon.
Image © Warner Classics
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By ANDREW POWELL
Published: February 17, 2013
MUNICH — There is a genteel inscrutability about Herbert Blomstedt. Authoritative, tall and silver-haired, he has never cut the profile of a star. But the gaze is probing. Musicians play well for him perhaps out of a sense of being acutely monitored. Two years ago Bayerischer Rundfunk hired the Massachusetts-born, Juilliard-educated Swede, now 85, for a Dvořák Seventh with its flagship Symphonie-Orchester. That was a revelation: the minor-key work played as an engrossing set of assertions and retorts, Victorian shadings and Czech emphases. Much cheered, it soon showed up as a pirate CD. These last two weeks Blomstedt has been back with the BRSO, conducting music associated with him. The Feb. 7 Gasteig program paired Nielsen’s Flute Concerto (1926) with Bruckner’s D-Minor Third Symphony.
Henrik Wiese, one of the orchestra’s two principal flutists, nimbly traced the solo line of the stubbornly jaunty two-movement concerto. Its brief sections of banter with other wind instruments injected droll humor. Blomstedt and the modest orchestra, in unobtrusive support, flexed their way through the Danish composer’s background shades of light and dark. The concluding tempo di marcia section, written last and calibrated to sum up the 18-minute piece, made its witty impact without seeming to try.
By using the symphony’s Urfassung of 1873, Blomstedt cast the work in optimal light, as a snapshot of a composer in transition. (Christian Thielemann and his Munich Philharmonic did the same in 2009; Lorin Maazel in concerts since then has not.) For Bruckner was just settling on what would become his trademark compositional palette and his way of leading the ear with brass motifs. The piece suffers from odd logic and thematic paucity, especially when compared with the less “Brucknerian” yet fully mature and richly argued C-Minor Second Symphony of the previous year (1872). Numerous revisions to the Third never overcame these problems.
The opening trumpet melody over rippling string figures signaled a balanced, restrained performance. Conducting from memory and without visible toil, Blomstedt had apparently set fine dynamic and interpretive details in rehearsal. Wind intonation was exemplary. The Gemäßigt, misterioso first movement, as marked in this version, and the brief Scherzo brought suave playing from the BRSO strings. Blomstedt did not always nudge the pulse in the second-movement Adagio as might his peers in this repertory — fellow octogenarians Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (still busy at 89) and Bernard Haitink (83), along with Thielemann (53) and the versatile Daniel Barenboim (70) — and so Bruckner’s longueurs took their toll, but the conductor’s discipline and his rapport with the musicians compensated. Call it an honest snapshot.
Photo © Martin Lengemann
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