Posts Tagged ‘Berlin’

« Older Entries

Munich-Berlin: 4 Hours by Rail

Friday, June 16th, 2017

Trains test the completed high-speed rail line between Munich and Berlin on June 16, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: June 16, 2017

MUNICH — Today Berlin got as close to Munich as Vienna already is: four hours by rail. Deutsche Bahn test-trains for the first time ran the recently completed high-speed track between the two German cities, 400 miles apart, and the company promised passenger service starting Dec. 10, the traditional date for Europe’s yearly rail-timetable updates.

The new infrastructure linking the Bavarian and former Prussian capitals was dubbed German Unity Transport Project No. 8 when first funded fully 25 years ago, soon after the DDR collapsed. Stretches of the track — between Munich and Nuremberg and between Leipzig and Berlin — have been operational for years, but missing segments have kept total travel time over six hours. From Dec. 10, three daily roundtrips at speeds of up to 188 miles per hour will originate in each of the two end-cities, in addition to slower services.

The Munich-Vienna line, a distance of 300 miles, is served by Austrian ÖBB’s Railjet trains. This journey suffers old routing and track on the relatively short haul between Rosenheim (just south of Munich) and Salzburg, but no improvements are planned to reduce the four hours it requires.

Photo © Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Related posts:
Berlin’s Dark Horse
Petrenko to Extend in Munich
MPhil Bosses Want Continuity
Netrebko, Barcellona in Aida
Safety First at Bayreuth

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Munich Times | Comments Closed

Concert Price Check

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

Gangplanks to the Konzertsaal inside the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum in Lucerne

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 3, 2016

MUNICH — Visiting orchestras cost more for concertgoers. But why exactly? Several factors govern ticket prices on tours, often mitigating each other, and all have a bearing this month as three orchestras from this city hit the road:

— Bavarian State Orchestra (BStO) with Kirill Petrenko, general music director
— Munich Philharmonic (MPhil) with Valery Gergiev, chief conductor
— Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) with Daniel Harding, guest conductor

Here at home these orchestras cost as follows, sampling the top prices for a regular concert without subscriber discount: BStO in the National Theater, U.S. $78; MPhil in the Gasteig, $68; BRSO in the Herkulessaal, $73. Tickets in all price categories include bus and train fares to and from the venue within a 25-mile radius.

Government subsidy, at the federal, state, and in the MPhil’s case city levels, holds down prices to ensure that all Munich audiences can afford to attend. It does not necessarily vanish on tour, at least not within Europe.

For instance, at Berlin’s Musikfest this month, a six-hour drive from here, you would pay a reasonable and consistent top price of $100 for the visiting BStO, MPhil or BRSO, with subsidy applying both to the festival and, federally, to the three German orchestras.

Lack of subsidy may seem to explain exorbitant prices at Lucerne’s Sommer-Festival in Switzerland. Or is a profit motive kicking in? Actually a third factor causes them: currency exchange and the robust Swiss franc. Lucerne, just four hours by road from Munich, wants $245 and $296 for the BStO and MPhil, respectively.

That last detail raises the issue of perceived worth. Why would Lucerne charge a premium for one Munich orchestra over another when Berlin prices all three equally? For that matter, why does Berlin ask more for visiting orchestras than for its own Konzerthaus-Orchester (at a $69 top, staying with the “regular concert without subscriber discount” benchmark) or Berlin Philharmonic ($84) when subsidy applies?

The concert presenter directly, and the concertgoer ultimately, places a value on an orchestra in part as a function of geography. In the small Swiss city but not in the German capital, Gergiev’s orchestra (or Gergiev) is valued more highly than Petrenko’s (or Petrenko). In Berlin, people are willing to pay more to hear out-of-town musicians, a flip side to familiarity breeding contempt.

Price-comparing assumes events have been priced to sell out, and sell out at roughly the same pace. Which in turn assumes presenters know their job. They may. But objectively the worth of an orchestra cannot rise or fall by the tour stop.

If beauty is in the ear of the beholder, the Milanese are more attuned than most. So say Teatro alla Scala’s managers by setting a top of $162 for the BStO’s concert there — far below Lucerne prices yet still double the tag at home. Low government funding in Italy helps shape their thinking, rather than any attempt to gouge, though it will make La Scala’s big platea hard to fill.

Otherwise prices vary against a mental cushion: presenters’ realistic belief that ticket buyers will allow for some unknown but fair travel expense being passed along to them, unaware whether such expense has been covered by grants. Traveling more widely than the other orchestras this time, the BStO costs $94 in Paris, $107 in Vienna and $117 in Luxembourg.

Back in Germany on dates in between those stops, the limited revenue potential of relatively small halls may explain BStO top prices in the range of $118 to $144 for Bonn, Dortmund and Frankfurt. Either that, or someone is profiting, an alien notion when the very existence of orchestras requires subsidy.

Presenters of visiting orchestras are indeed on occasion out to make money, just as they do with non-classical artists. NBS in Tokyo has been a world-renowned price-gouger. In Munich the busy presenter MünchenMusik often prices aggressively. There are several more.

What of three Munich orchestras touring at the same time? Music contracts here commonly run “Sept. 1 to Aug. 31,” with the summer months tail-ending the term ostensibly to provide time off. In practice this structure brings chances to earn extra income at festivals instead. September becomes an odd month: the musicians need a break and audiences are sated from summer performances; the main season is supposed to start yet nobody wants to get down to it. So a window opens for touring.

Photo © KKL Luzern Management AG

Related posts:
Concert Hall Design Chosen
A Complete Frau, at Last
Mastersingers’ Depression
Netrebko, Barcellona in Aida
Portraits For a Theater

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Munich Times | Comments Closed

At the Majestic, in Casual Concert

Friday, October 10th, 2014

Terry_Riley_224_(c)_Chris_Felver_14122461123By Rebecca Schmid

“This is not a minimalist piece,” announced Cameron Carpenter in onstage discussion of Terry Riley’s At the Royal Majestic, an organ concerto which made its German premiere with the Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester Berlin (DSO) at the Philharmonie on Oct.9. His feet laced up in knee-high converse sneakers, Carpenter proceeded to play an excerpt revealing what he perceives as the influence of late Romantic composers Vierne and Widor.

Riley’s approximately 35-minute work, as conductor Giancarlo Guerrero next demonstrated with the orchestra, wearing daily dress for the DSO’s Casual Concert series, nevertheless has passages revealing the roots of the minimalist master, with repeated, almost primitive rhythms in the strings. The composer, present to dissect the music before it was performed in entirety, said with a laughing, Buddhist air of reflection that he was interested in anything that led the way to “ecstasy.”

Riley weaves together a huge spectrum of material, from ragtime, to rock, to neo-Romanticism, into a nearly cinematic spectacle that is tailor-made to Carpenter’s virtuosity and showmanship. The opening movement is inspired and named after the drawing “Negro Hall” by Swiss artist Adolf Woelfli, whom the composer imagined encountering black American culture for the first time.

A gospel-like passage on the organ gradually ushers in the orchestra, from chimes, to percolating woodblocks, to a drum set creating an Ives-like parallel realm. The ensemble comes together briefly in atmospheric swirls of color until the music takes on sharper edges, with shifting rhythms, protesting chords from the soloist and a stand-off in the woodwinds.

The inner “Lizard Tower Gang”—named, quite literally, after a tower the composer built for the reptile creatures in his backyard—emerges with eerie glissandi, chirping winds and polytonal layers that, as the composer articulates in program notes, “juggle chaos and symmetry.” It is the shortest and most mysterious movement, ending in a cadenza-like teaser that yields to atmospheric strings and inquisitive bassoons, as if marveling at the infinity of nature.

The final movement evokes a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Kailash in Tibet with a winding collage of textures, culminating in a monumental chorale of organ and brass. As Carpenter noted in his introduction, however, the soloist has the last word, with a swipe across the entire top keyboard and booming pedal clusters that yield to a slinky, jazzy melody—minimalist in its utter brevity—before the instrument fades out into nothing.

The performance was all the more powerful given the intimate introduction by the performers and composer in the DSO’s relaxed setting. Downstairs in the foyer, where pink lighting lent a club-like atmosphere, the young German band Xul Kolar and the DJ Johann Fanger played for the after party. I mostly saw 40-somethings dancing rather than the younger folk presenters are scheming to attract, but still, shouldn’t every concert feel this fresh?

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

To Russia with Love

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid

Vladimir Putin has given the western world much reason for protest over the past year. There is the law banning homosexual “propaganda.” Two members of Pussy Riot still sit behind bars. According to some residents (and ex-residents) of the former Soviet Union, Russia is reverting to a full-blown totalitarian dictatorship. The businessman Michail Chodorkowski still sits in jail on dubious charges. Just last week, the government charged a Greenpeace ship crew with piracy following protests over an oil rig. Freedom of speech is not a given even on the internet.

Gidon Kremer, with his concert To Russia with Love at the Philharmonie yesterday—exactly seven years after the murder of journalist Anna Politkowskaja—set out to raise general awareness of the declining state for human rights. The foyer was lined with the stands of NGOs and non-profits: Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders, Osteuropa. A giant canvas hung for visitors to sign their name to the cause. But Kremer’s main motivation behind the concert, as he explains in an online video, was to counter the notion of music as entertainment. “Music should serve as a vehicle for expanding our emotions and confirming our ethics,” he says. He brought together coveted soloists with his ensemble Kremerata Baltica for a beautifully curated program that was streamed live on Arte .

It almost felt like a guilty pleasure to enjoy the artists under the circumstances. As Emmanuel Pahud and Khatia Buniatishvili performed a transcription of Lenski’s famous aria from Eugen Onegin, the flute’s luxurious tone bordered on the overly sentimental. Buniatishvili, in a floor-length, low back gown, also gave a virtuosic if flashy account of the agitated final movement from Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No.7. But, following the impassioned speech of human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, the music served a clear dramaturgical purpose. The concert opened with a poem by Herta Müller which resembled more of an informative speech: “Putin thinks he is the law…intimidation is daily fare.” Kremer led a soulful reading of the third movement from Mieczysław Weinberg’s Sinfonietta Nr.2 which gave way without a pause to an eerily hushed Allemande from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite Nr. 2 with Nicolas Altsteadt as soloist.

The cellist immediately switched to a bold, insistent tone for the last movement of Gubaidulina’s Seven Last Words, joined by bayan soloist Elsbeth Moser, who provided everything from atmospheric to ripping textures against glassy strings. The appearance of a Ukranian girls’ choir in traditional costume for Pärt’s Estonian Lullaby took on an appropriately ironic, if not tragic tone. It is worth noting that although the composer lives in Berlin, his work is rarely performed here.

Kremer’s lyrical taste in contemporary music found further expression in the premiere of Giya Kancheli’s Angels of Sorrow, dedicated to the 50th birthday of Chodorkowski. The Georgian composer blends solo violin, cello and piano into transcendent textures with choir, xylophone and string ensemble. When the approximately 20-minute piece breaks out into angry passages, they are quickly countered by celestial responses. A percussive melody to bass drum lends passages of the final section a Dies Irae quality, but the soothing choir and solo violin, even as it is reduced to wispy pizzicato, seem to reassure the listener that the heavens will have their way.

The second half of the program included moments of sardonic humor. Kremer, to impromptu accompaniment by Daniel Barenboim, took a deliberately modernist approach to the Rachmaninov/Kreisler Prayer which more often assumes the guise of feel-good film music. Martha Argerich brought playful energy to Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto alongside the ironic interjections of trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov. Music from Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov’s score to the film Target ended the evening on an upbeat note, from the free, tonal invention in Vivaldi’s January to the street scene of his Foxtrot.

Barenboim and Argerich joined for an encore of Schubert’s Grand Rondo in A-major, having warmed up to an even more gentle performance than last month at the Musikfest. Perhaps audiences in Berlin are simply spoiled, but one couldn’t help but perceive the music as an empty crowd-pleaser. As the listeners rose in enthusiastic applause, the atmosphere was one of prosperity and pride—less self-reflection than self-congratulation. A journalist sitting next to me noted how poorly Berlin’s Russian community was represented in the audience. Even intentions as sincere and courageous as those of Kremer’s intentions cannot escape the bourgeois trappings of classical music consumption. But he might have taken a step toward forcing the world to listen with different ears.

rebeccaschmid.info

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Après lui, le déluge…reflections on Wagner at the Akademie der Künste

Friday, February 1st, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid

Richard Wagner has managed to slowly dominate the scene internationally in recent seasons, but with the official arrival of his bicentenary, the saturation in Germany has only begun. Nürnberg, Leipzig, Munich and Dresden have unveiled new exhibits; in the latter’s case, an entire new building. A stream of publications has hit the market, leading Nike Wagner—rebellious daughter of Wieland, one-time bidder for the Bayreuth Festival upon Wolfgang’s resignation—to point her finger at the ‘tsunami-like influx’ (NB: her book Über Wagner comes out February 20). And then there’s the 15-hour opera. Klaus Zehelein, president of the Deutscher Bühnenverein (German Stage Association), called for a moratorium on Ring cycles last June. ‘We should leave the work alone, ideally worldwide,’ he said, denouncing centenary programming as a series of ‘encyclopedic events without artistic relevance.’

In what may be an attempt to provide an antidote, the exhibit, lecture and stage production series Wagner 2013 Künstlerpositionen at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste has set out to grapple with the German master’s polarizing effect and his place in artists’ lives, from painters to contemporary composers. A spokesperson explained that the concept arose from the international enthusiasm for Wagner and was intended to take place prior to this year. Why that didn’t happen is anyone’s guess. On January 27 the academy invited four composers and academy initiates of different generations—Dieter Schnebel, Erhard Grosskopf, Manos Tsangaris, and Enno Poppe—to discuss their relationships to Wagner in the same hall that is exhibiting the legendary rat costumes from Hans Neuenfels’ 2010 production of Lohengrin in Bayreuth.

Musicologist and moderator Jürg Stenzl opened the dialogue with a quote from Pierre Boulez, who declared Wagner ‘forgotten music’ for his generation and invited the composers to express their views on the issue. Schnebel, born in 1930, admitted that he had been corrupted as a child of Nazi times and, upon re-listening to Tristan post-war, couldn’t resist. His Wagner-Idyll (1980), for soprano and chamber orchestra, reworks the lines of Gurnemanz, the veteran knight in Parsifal, into Sprechgesang for a mezzo-soprano—naturally a subversive use of the material. At the other end of the spectrum, Poppe considers Wagner a ‘historical phenomenon,’ much as he considers Nazi Germany part of the past.

None of the composers stated they could ‘believe’ in Wagner. He is too ambiguous, a man who works with symbols, said Schnebel, as opposed to Verdi, whose operas he considers ‘clear cut’ and ‘music of reality.’ This is a fair assessment, although morality is far from clear cut in an opera such as La Traviata (based on the life of the singer Giuseppina Strepponi, whom the composer married). Nor is it true that Verdi didn’t work with symbols—he used entire allegories. The Jewish people in Nabucco represent Italians fighting for liberation from the Hapsburg Empire; the title character of Rigoletto is a disguised king.

Stenzl ended the discussion with a quote from Mauricio Kagel who, upon Beethoven’s centenary, suggested that there be a hiatus from his music for an entire year so that ‘we could then look forward to January 1’ (for a hilarious commentary of the mania around Beethoven, see Kagel’s film Ludwig Van). Tsangaris suggested that, contrary to Cage—who was feted for an entire year at the Akademie der Künste last year—there is already enough interest in Wagner from the public at large (perhaps the academy should have taken up the centenaries of Britten and Lutoslawski instead?). Poppe joked that we will need a ten year break from the Ring because the singers will have to recover their voices.

By many accounts, the music world is already weary. In New York, Robert Lepage’s colossal, machine-generated cycle has provoked a scandal of seemingly irreparable proportions. In Berlin resentment has long been brewing over a tetralogy that the Staatsoper mounted in co-production with La Scala, yielding a light, futuristic aesthetic that one critic likened to a Star Wars film. Meanwhile, in Milan, the decision to open the season with a new Lohengrin by Claus Guth was more than enough to leave national pride wounded in a country where people sing along to the ‘Brindisi’ on New Year’s Day. Still, few can ward off an endless fascination for Wagner, even if it necessitates psychiatric support (as Simon Rattle recently joked in an interview with Die Zeit). For better or for worse, we will be wandering the dark forests of myth for the next year.

rebeccaschmid.info

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Ultraschall as pan-New Music Haven

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid

Berlin may be the capital residence for young composers today, and no other time of year makes this more apparent than the Ultraschall Festival for New Music. They gathered in strong numbers during freezing temperatures for a concert on January 19 at the Haus des Rundfunks, where Brad Lubman led the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in works by Johannes Maria Staud, Michael Jarell, Chaya Chernowin and Georg Friedrich Haas—only the last of whom was not present because he is moving to New York. The concert was moderated by Co-Intendant Magarete Zander, a broadcaster with Kulturradio RBB which co-hosts with the festival with the former West Berlin station Deutschlandradiokultur.

Staud, a young Austrian composer and former student of Jarell whose commissions include works for both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, mentioned in onstage discussion how unusual it was to be programmed back-to-back with one’s teacher. His work Contrebande (On Comparative Meterology II), which premiered with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2010, reveals the influence of Jarell in its non-conformist language and ability to narrate through intricate orchestration. Staud takes the listener’s hand through this approximately 18-minute series of miniatures based on excerpts from a Der andere Herbst by the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, exploiting the full orchestra with melodies that are tossed organically between sections and textures from piano clusters to hollow blows that do not exist for their own sake but to build an inner drama.

Jarell, when asked about mentoring his students, said that a composer has no choice but to be an honest with himself—a precept that is more obvious in theory than practice. The Swiss native’s Sillages—Congruences II for flute, oboe and clarinet and orchestra (2005), originally conceived for flutist Emmanuel Pahud, clarinettist Paul Meyer and oboist François Leleux, undertakes a sonic exploration of rippling water that draws inspiration from the artist Alberto Giacometti. With this in mind, the first section of the approximately 26-minute work moves mystically through space like the sculptor’s signature figures that stretch their bodies inexorably toward heaven. The trio, performed by ensemble recherche, twitters above an atmospheric orchestra, breaking still surfaces. The second part recalls Jarell’s Flute Concerto for Pahud in its frenzied dialogue, creating tremendous tension that is resolved in the leading winds.

Chernowin’s The Quiet (2010) similarly moves from whispering, creaking and muted percussion that evoke the beginning of a snowstorm until the bassoons and double bassoons break through the surface and usher in an ominous swarm of musical ideas—an avalanche turned upside down, in the composer’s words. The most haunting work of the evening was Haas’ …sodaß ich’s hernach mit einem Blick gleichsam wie ein schönes Bild…im Geist übersehe for chamber string ensemble (1990/91), inspired by a W.A. Mozart letter about the act of transforming an idea into a finished work. Fragments from the Sonata for Violin and Piano in B-Major (KV 454) emerge like ghosts out of an extended stretch of subdued squeals, pizzicato, and col legno strokes before receding again into emptiness. One could almost see the glow of the melodies as they unfurled—so fleeting that one could not catch them—before the strings resumed their relentless search.

Lubman, asked by Zander if one could find such a program in the U.S., could only laugh. “In the U.S.?” he asked rhetorically, explaining that smaller ensembles dominate the scene. A concert of purely contemporary orchestra music was a non-existent breed, he said, praising Germany for the value it places on culture. Of course, the history is not so simple. The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, founded in 1946 by Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), is one of several broadcast orchestras erected under American reconstruction after World War Two. The many composers who flock over the pond are, depending on one’s view, returning to their roots.

As it happens, Ultraschall’s official motto this year is to celebrate the exchange of ideas between France and Germany, once warring nations who signed the Elysée Treaty fifty years ago this month. The narrative of ‘internationality’ having come to dominate many artists’ identities, the theme can be stretched to showcase a wide range of composers—which is exactly what the festival does best. I just wonder how the Geneva-born Jarell fits into the spectrum of Franco-Allemand fraternity (Vive la Neutralité)…

Stay tuned for more on the Ultraschall Festival (January 17-27).

rebeccaschmid.info

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times, Uncategorized | Comments Closed

‘Lulu’ as post-racial Manifesto

Friday, October 12th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The socially aware agenda of the Komische Oper’s new Intendant Barrie Kosky has been ruffling the feathers of Berliners months before he officially took over this season, not least with the decision to end the house tradition of performing operas exclusively in the German language. His emphasis on cultural pluralism aside, the program so far should assuage any fears that the native Australian will create a rupture with the opera’s hallowed emphasis on reinventing opera for contemporary audiences. Following a 12-hour Monteverdi trilogy as rescored by Elena Kats-Chernin and staged by Kosky, the intendant has unveiled the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s American Lulu, a shortened, updated version of Berg’s incompleted last opera.

It is either ironic or a sign of historic progress that Berlin, where Nazi politics once thwarted a full staging of the work, has mounted the second new Lulu in less than a year. The Staatsoper presented the work with a recomposed third act by David Robert Coleman last spring when a new production by Andrea Breth made it legally impossible to use the standard reconstruction by Friedrich Cerha. Almost foreshadowing Neuwirth, Coleman drew upon the jazz band of the First Act for his orchestration, thinning out textures to a chamber ensemble including marimba, steel drums cowbells, and banjo.

American Lulu (seen Oct.6) takes the thematicization of jazz a step further, setting out to reference Afro-American culture in everything from a steam blown organ ballad to a trumpet which emerges as a symbol for the blues singer, Eleanor (a curly haired, less feudal characterisation of Countess Geschwitz). Neuwirth resets passages of Berg’s original music to the first two acts for brass, woodwinds, a small set of strings, and percussion as well as electronic guitar and piano, in some places adding contours to Berg’s expressionist lines with the deeper timbres and expanding the sonic space with recorded sound. By contrast, her entirely original third act emerges as an unsure blend of quasi-minimalist textures, jazz-band brass, spectralist fades and raw, avant-garde string textures.

The English-language libretto is redevised in a similarly awkward fashion. The story begins and ends in an upscale New York apartment, traveling through New Orleans, where Lulu is living with the painter—here a photographer. Dr. Schön is instead Dr. Bloom, who kills Lulu’s lover by throwing ice at him. She flees with Bloom’s son, Jimmy (a stand-in for Alwa), becoming a high-class whore to a white banker and rebuffing the advances of Eleanor without remorse until she is killed by a stranger. Neuwirth also inserts an unidentifiable, pimp-like character named Clarence, who upbraids Lulu for being so “damn insatiable.” Recitations about black rights and other poetic musings emerge perplexingly through the speakers between acts.

The racially conscious goals of the production mostly came across as clichéd, but it had to its credit Marisol Montalvo in the role of Lulu, able to nail her high notes and move seamlessly into Sprechgesang as she cavorted in everything from lingerie to Brazilian tassels. Despite the high dose of eroticism, her dramatic portrayal did little to convey the danger of a femme fatale, which can also be attributed to the limited scope of her character in Neuwirth’s libretto and stilted direction by Kirill Serebrennikov. In the role of Eleanor, Della Miles performed with saucy poise, coaxing the orchestra of the Komische Oper into her R&B inflected grooves. The male roles were well-cast but not outstanding. Jacques-Greg Belobo gave a smooth-voiced delivery of Clarence, and Austrian baritone Claudio Otelli was an imposing Dr. Bloom. The bass Philipp Meierhöfer was in fine form as the Athlete, and Rolf Romei made for an earnest Jimmy, including when he cracked into the higher range.

German conductor Johannes Kalitzke balanced the score’s wide-ranging demands with a steady hand. Sets and costumes by Serebrennikov provided a stark backdrop for Neuwirth’s modern fantasy but ended tastelessly with a bloodied picture of a murdered Lulu. Conventional black-and-white video projections by Gonduras Jitomirksky similarly did little for a production whose progressive aspirations fail to match up with its artistic standards. Perhaps Lulu was never meant to be a vehicle for racial mobility after all.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

The Elixir fails to work its Magic at Lincoln Center; Efterklang with the Wordless Music Orchestra

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid
Many American opera-goers, including New Yorkers, look across the ocean and wish that their home institutions would afford themselves the same liberties of programming. Back in Berlin, the Deutsche Oper kicked off its season with a Lachenmann opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, while the Komische Oper launched a Monteverdi trilogy including themed culinary experiences during intermission, devised by the new Intendant Barrie Kosky. Anyone steeped in bel canto might be secretly happy to spend his or her time otherwise, melody being as foreign to Lachenmann as plot is to the tradition of Regietheater. But the opening production of the Metropolitan Opera this season, L’Elisir d’Amore (seen September 27), sadly reaffirms the stereotype that even this country’s leading companies are often content to rehash well-known repertory in not so inspired packages.

The director Bartlett Sher, who recently presided over Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters at English National Opera, attempts to go against the grain by positing Donizetti’s opera as an allegory for the Risorgimento. Sergeant Belcore and his soldiers represent the Austrians, while the peasant Nemorino and the beautiful landowner Adina must hold to their Italian territory. This is at least what the program notes tell us, all the more convincing given that the love potion which Nemorino falsely believes has allowed him to win over the heart of Adina is nothing more than a bottle of red wine. Yet the production concept fails to materialize with depth and stalls an inherently humorous, light hearted opera.

The star of the production is of course not Sher but Anna Netrebko, the Met’s official poster child who opened last season in another Donizetti opera, Anna Bolena. Her reappearance this year in a top hat failed to distract from the fact that bel canto operas are not an ideal vehicle for her vocal skills. The Russian soprano’s timbre has only become rounder and richer in recent years, and her personality naturally lends itself to the role of the flirty Adina, yet her Italian diction is largely incomprehensible and her mastery of coloratura still subpar. It was refreshing to see the American tenor Matthew Polenzani in the spotlight as Nemorino, albeit in a more earnest than buffo portrayal. He briefly stopped the show in a soulful account his romanza “Una furtiva lagrima,” demonstrating fine use of messa di voce.

Mariusz Kwiecien possesses a tough, gallant baritone that suited Sher’s vision of Belcore, yet it was Ambrogio Maestri who brought the heaviest of dose of authenticity—and humor—in the role of Doctor Dulcamara, distributor of the love potion. One of the most memorable moments in the opera occurs in his barcarolle with Adina at the start of the second act, in which Dulcamara portrays a rich senator. The contrast of Maestri’s old school inflections with Netrebko’s hammed up acting was especially prominent here, although they both appeared to be having a good time onstage. Rounding out the cast in the role of the peasant girl Gianetta was the lyric soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, whose nasal timbre and studied acting did little to enhance what was largely an under inspired evening.

The orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera performed with natural verve and flexible phrasing under Maurizio Benini, although the Italian conductor was a bit too eager to keep the energy high with fleet tempi. The Met’s chorus did not deviate from its high standards as the peasants surrounding Adina and Belcore’s platoon. Naturalist sets by Michael Yeargan aimed for a larger-than-life, rustic charm that gained aesthetic appeal in the pastel buildings of the village square scene in the first act, while the painted haystacks lining Adina’s farmhouse in the second act indicated a bland attempt to reinvent this familiar opera in bold, accessible strokes. Costumes by Catherine Zuber, ranging from frilly peasant dresses to Austrian soldiers’ uniforms, were well-crafted but not particularly memorable. Top hats for Adina and Dulcamara added perplexing, out of place flash. While there is no doubt that Lincoln Center remains a center of world-class opera, even with the remains of New York City Opera roaming the streets, it may not be enough to ride on big names and crowd pleasers if the Met is to live up to its name as an unrivalled bastion of quality.

Wordless Music

A visit to New York would of course not be complete without a venture into the thriving homegrown culture of indie classical. The Wordless Music Orchestra, founded in 2006 by Ronen Givony, has won attention for bringing together musicians who specialize in contemporary repertoire with rock artists such as Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead and the Japanese band MONO. On September 22, the Met Museum presented the orchestra in arrangements of songs by the Danish trio Efterklang, whose new album Piramida was released three days later. The concert boasted a strong representation of what a friend was quick to identify as hipsters, i.e. younger listeners who would most likely not venture outside their borough for a formal event at Lincoln Center. Orchestration by Karsten Fundal and Missy Mazzoli added ethereal textures to the cool vocals and ambient electronica of Efterklang, described by NPR as lying “somewhere between the cooing gloom of Bon Iver…and the soaring grandiosity of Coldplay.” A trio of female vocalists, led by Katinka Fogh Vindelev, added another layer of atmospherics, while lead singer Casper Clausen brought a friendly, casual presence to the stage.

The atmosphere took a decidedly more pop-rock direction when Clausen asked the audience to stand up for the last two numbers. Among the encores was a reprisal of “The Ghost,” a rhythmically catchy number to which Mazzoli added inventive, rubbery textures in the strings. Fundal had arranged the bulk of the songs, with a range of success. Tremoli in the slow medley “Sedna” met powerfully with vocal wailing and live electronica, while the scurrying violins were drowned out by the drums and electronica toward the end of “Between the Walls.” Despite such moments, Efterklang’s meditative, rock-inflected vibes were only enhanced in the collaboration with classical musicians. The flutes in “Told to be fine,” also entrusted to Fundal, added a heavenly sheen. The result may lack the mental rigor classical listeners associate with everyone from Bach to Lachenmann, but if blending popular and classical idioms can be such good listening, why spend one’s time otherwise?

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

New York Rites

Friday, September 21st, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

In Berlin, where contemporary music thrives from the Philharmonie to off spaces, it is a widespread perception that New York’s mainstream institutions are afraid to program anything past Stravinsky. A look at Alan Gilbert’s recent undertakings with the New York Philharmonic, notably in a hugely successful “360” concert of Mozart, Stockhausen, Boulez and Ives in June that exploited the full space of Park Avenue Armory and was streamed live on medici.tv, reveals the idea to be a fallacy. Yet it is ironic that the orchestra’s new season has kicked off with a tribute to Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). The concert is only the first of many events that will commemorate the centenary of Stravinsky’s ballet, which falls on May 29 of next year.

As with many works that have shaped the canon, the work was a scandal upon its Paris premiere. Choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky reportedly set off physical fights in the audience, perhaps a response to the primitive energy that Stravinsky’s music launched onstage—a far cry from the cultivated elegance high society expected to encounter on the Champs-Elysées. Le Sacre has since become one of the most widely recorded and well-known 20th-century works. Even if it doesn’t feel monumental, in the right hands, it is still hard to resist the score’s raw power.

Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic, seen at Avery Fisher Hall on September 19, made a strong account for venerating Stravinsky, investing ripping strings and grinding rhythms with the animalistic vigor that turns this music into a pagan feast. The painterly dissonances of “The Sacrifice” emerged with ethereal mystery, while the players invested the metallic, stabbing attacks of the final “Sacrificial Dance” with unrepressed drive. The delicate, overlapping wind solos of the opening “Adoration of the Earth” emerged with unpretentious clarity before ceding to the mechanical churning of the “Augurs of the Spring” that effectively wipes the unconscious of its need for soothing classical idioms.

Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, performed with Leif Ove Andsnes, received a less unified, persuasive interpretation. Andsnes could not quite match the heat of the Philharmonic in the opening Allegro, although his clean, incisive pianissimi nearly redeemed the performance. He and Gilbert communicated effortlessly, and yet the emotional arc from inner torment to Mozartean bitter-sweetness at times lacked conviction. The inner Largo movement felt a bit studied despite the orchestra’s sensitive phrasing, while the players’ tempered use of bombast was well suited to the final Rondo in its stormy pursuit of light-heartedness. Andsnes brought a natural, although not terribly spontaneous, playfulness to his final solo passages.

Opening the program was Kurtag’s …quasi una fantasia…for Piano and Groups of Instruments, an approximately 10-minute work that calls for the distribution of instrument clusters around the performance space while the pianist (Andnes) remains onstage in pseudo-concerto style. The rustling percussion and sparse descending piano melodies that open the piece would have been even stronger with the lights dimmed, but even more importantly than visual aesthetics, Avery Fisher Hall did not provide ideal acoustics. The snare drums behind me at one point overwhelmed the timpani onstage. Gilbert nevertheless coordinated the work with care, allowing sensuous sighing melodies to linger as strongly as the battery of percussion.

Although the piece is not tailor made for Avery Fisher Hall, Gilbert is making a concerted effort to seduce his audience base into what many listeners would consider unusual repertoire, and one hopes that he will succeed. It takes vision, charisma and daring but sound artistic choices to guide an orchestra through the current age of economic uncertainty and cultural levelling. And if Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring can teach us anything, it is that challenging the status quo is sometimes the only way to make artistic progress. As I descended into the subway after the concert, the flute melody from the opening “Adoration of the Earth” hovered mystically. It was of course just a busking musician. Even if New York does not meet the expectations of more academically-minded new music connoisseurs, one can´t deny its magic.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Impressions from the Green Hill: Tattoos, Rats and Embryos

Friday, August 24th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The Bayreuth Festival has had its share of scandal to contend with as Wagner’s bicentenary approaches next season. An international investigation into exclusive ticketing practices; the publicized struggle to find the director for a new Ring cycle; administrative policies that have reportedly shortened rehearsal time; widely reviled productions; and—most recently—the last-minute withdrawal of Russian baritone Evgeny Nikitin from the title role in a new production of Der Fliegende Holländer due to an alleged swastika tattoo have marred the regime of Katharina Wagner and her half-sister Eva Pasquier-Wagner, who took the reins from their father Wolfgang in 2008. It will be a test next year when Frank Castorf, intendant of the Berliner Volksbühne and a notorious enfant terrible on the German theatre scene, stages his tetralogy, which he has revealed will center upon the “race for oil” as a turning stage revolves between a post-modern socialist vision of East Berlin and Wall Street on the other—an allegorical concept that is eerily reiminscent of Patrice Chéreau´s seminal 1976 production, commissioned by Wolfgang for the centenary of the cycle´s first performance in Bayreuth.

This season´s new Flying Dutchman, much like the protagonist himself, struggles to find redemption as it sails on into the final weeks of the festival. Jan Philipp Gloger, in his third opera staging, has opted for a capitalist critique that posits Daland and his sailors as Wall Street manipulators, while the Dutchman appears with his scalp branded by some kind of technological degeneration. Senta is a lowly factory worker, packaging fans until she takes a can of red paint and devises a sculptural cardboard podium on which to greet her sailor. She even holds a torch alluding to the Status of Liberty, as if we didn´t understand the references to consumerist culture. Instead of jumping overboard, she stabs herself in the final scene, and the Dutchman bleeds as she releases from the curse of eternal wandering. Mass production continues after their death as the factory churns out blinking sculptures of the couple in their final embrace—a hyperbolic, hokey, if sardonically amusing, final touch.

While Gloger generally does not stray from Wagner´s libretto, he fails to give his social commentary depth and coherence. Sets by Christof Hetzer start off promisingly, with a sleek black motherboard of sorts that flashes with stock market numbers and lights up in time with the music, but the cardboard play world of Senta and the Dutchman looks amateurish at best. Most disappointing was the lack of compelling inter-personal dynamics onstage: the romance between the two main characters was as two-dimensional and alienating as the set itself. Costumes by Karin Jud were underinspiring with the exception of the unidentifiable skin disease on the heads of the Dutchman and his crew which left viewers racking their brains to no avail.

A musically indomitable Dutchman might have saved the evening, but Samuel Youn—who stepped in last-minute to replace Nikitin—was vocally bland. Adrianne Pieczonka brought a lush, expressive voice to the role of Senta, and yet she suffered from occasional intonation problems and a slightly steely edge to her booming climaxes. Franz-Josef Selig sang the role of Daland handsomely despite a slightly husky quality, blessed with clear diction. Michael König was an appropriately menacing Erik as he struggle to pin down Senta, while Christa Mayer did not leave a strong dramatic impression as Mary, Senta´s nurse. In the role of the Steersman, Benjamin Bruns´ ringing tenor opened the opera on a pleasant note. The most redeeming aspect of the evening came from the pit as Christian Thielemann conducted the festival orchestra in a sleek, streamlined reading that was well-matched to the more elegant moments of Gloger´s production, driving the sailor´s choruses at a swift pace while allowing for expansive exchanges between Senta and the Dutchman.

Hans Neuenfels´ Lohengrin has further confirmed the German stage director as a master of controversy, inspiring a passage in Woody Allen´s last film, To Rome with Love, while perplexing critics. The notion of the Brabantians as a pack of slowly mutating rats may sound more far-fetched than it appears within the larger context of the opera, although the staging is full of tasteless gestures—namely presenting Gottfried, Elsa´s abducted brother, as an embryo who tosses pieces of his umbilical cord when Lohengrin departs. Yet the swan knight is not just pureness and virtue. He is also a skilled manipulator, and the laboratory-like setting of Neuenfels´ production (sets and costumes by Reinhard von der Thannen) is as comical—and inane—as it is thought-provoking. One could do without the kitschy video art by Björn Verloh, cartoons which only over-saturate an already visually dense production. The only slightly meaningful moment occurred in the image of a rat skeleton running as smaller rodents fell off its ribs during the famous line “Für deutsche Land, das deutsche Schwert” (for the German land, the German sword), although the willingness of these creatures to abide by deceptively God-given precepts was more than clear at this point. The rat-tailed flower maidens in the wedding scene may not deserve profound reflection, but they were certainly amusing in a self-conscious manner that was severely lacking in Gloger´s Dutchman.

Musings on Regietheater aside, the revival of Neuenfels´ 2010 production mostly profited from having Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role. The seduction is immediate when the German tenor, who also saved Kaspar Holten´s recently unveiled Lohengrin at the Deutsche Oper, utters the opening line, “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan” (Now you can express gratitude, my dear swan). The voice is at once angelic and virile, pleading yet authoritative. He was unfortunately not well matched by Annette Dasch, charming but underpowered in this Wagnerian role. Something of a star in Germany, the soprano nevertheless received thunderous applause. Thomas Mayer and Susan Maclean were well cast as the sinister couple Friedrich von Telramund and Ortrud, and Wilhelm Schwinghammer brought a powerful bass to the role of King Heinrich. Youn fared better as the King´s Herald than as the Dutchman the night before. Shimmering tremolo and sumptuous harmonies emerged with grace and passion under the baton of Andris Nelsons despite some minute technical imperfections, confirming Bayreuth´s tradition of superior musical standards despite a recent tendency toward wayward stagings.

Stay tuned for more on Parsifal, Tannhäuser and Tristan…

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

« Older Entries