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Jansons Turns 75

Friday, January 12th, 2018

Mariss Jansons and Martin Angerer in rehearsal in Munich’s Gasteig in January 2018

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: January 12, 2018

MUNICH — Against the medical odds, perhaps, Mariss Jansons turns seventy-five on Sunday, still adored by his favorite orchestra. Bavarian Broadcasting marks the occasion with a 44-minute video portrait, Im Zeichen der Musik, or In the Music’s Character, freely watchable. Last evening here at the Gasteig, a subscription concert of the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks paraded contrasting sides of the musicians’ long union with Jansons, and everyone’s versatility. Martin Angerer navigated the elegant byways and tricky trills of Hummel’s Concerto a trombe principale (1803) with apparent ease in its original key of E, tidily accompanied. In an interview, the section principal distinguished this “godly” tonality from the “mundane” feel of E-flat, taken often in a convenience edition of the Hummel he deems a “stab in the heart,” but he stopped short of chancing the performance with the kind of Klappen-Trompete used originally, preferring the luxuries of a modern American piston instrument. (Soloist and conductor are pictured midweek.) Genia Kühmeier, Gerhild Romberger, Maximilian Schmitt and Luca Pisaroni made an impeccable quartet for the program’s main work, after the break, Beethoven’s C-Major Mass (1807), although the bass for some reason sang half-voice. The BR Chor glowingly intoned its lines yet struggled to focus the words in the acoustically poor venue. Jansons led supportively but as always from the ground up, never from the bowels of the Earth, and showing no inquirer’s zeal for the imaginative score. His clinical manner and the Bavarian players’ skill found their most persuasive outlet in an episodic exercise in chromatic unrest at the top of the evening: the Symphony in Three Movements (1945) of Stravinsky. Here, structure reigned, details sparkled, and the con moto third movement sounded (suitably) die-cast. It was in 2003 that this celebrated partnership began, since when the demanding and fussy but personable Latvian maestro’s contract has been renewed with accelerating commitment: for three years in 2013, and for three more years less than two years later — right after he sounded receptive to a theoretical, but as it turned out imagined, offer in Berlin. Which takes us up to 2021, past several happy birthday returns.

Photo © Bayerischer Rundfunk

Tags:Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Beethoven, BR, BR Chor, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Gasteig, Genia Kühmeier, Gerhild Romberger, Howard Arman, Hummel, Kritik, Luca Pisaroni, Mariss Jansons, Martin Angerer, Maximilian Schmitt, München, Munich, Review, Stravinsky, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Symphony in Three Movements
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Spirit of Repušić

Monday, April 24th, 2017

Ivan Repušić

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: April 24, 2017

MUNICH — It was a short courtship by recent standards. Dalmatian conductor Ivan Repušić (pr. REP-oosh-itch), 39, debuted with the Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester in a concert La rondine in Oct. 2015, returned for a gala two months later and signed his contract* last June. His background, happily, is stable: general music director of Staatsoper Hannover, in a relationship dating back to 2010, and chief conductor since 2005 of the Zadarski Komorni Orkestar (by the sapphire waters of Dalmatia’s coast: no fool he).

Before stepping as Chefdirigent into Ulf Schirmer’s big shoes this fall, he agreed to fashion an MRO Paradisi gloria program March 17 here at the Herz-Jesu-Kirche: Respighi’s Concerto gregoriano (1921) and the Duruflé Requiem (1947) — not the most obvious repertory from which to judge a conductor but a thoughtful and satisfying journey unified around chant and modal harmonies.

Repušić built tension in both works, attending to dynamics and stressing the flow of ideas where he could. In the “concerto,” this produced a structure greater than the sum of three perilously disparate movements and gave his unassuming violin soloist, Henry Raudales, a basis for tracing the rhapsodic lines assertively as well as ethereally, even if the church space somewhat diffused the instrument’s sound.

In the Duruflé, it meant a bold performance grounded in lyrical contrasts and vying choral and orchestral assertions. The BR Chor served the divine rhetoric with verbal clarity and sure intonation. The MRO strings played passionately (for the concerto too), the brass gloriously. Max Hanft managed the demanding organ part with aplomb despite his equipment’s relatively muted colors. Mezzo-soprano Okka von der Damerau applied her magnificent voice to the Pie Jesu but, alas, conveyed little of its meaning. Ljubomir Puškarić’s firm and focused baritone, on the other hand, found a wealth of plaintive expression in his brief solo duties.

[*One downside of the haste is that he is not fully available for his debut season, as announced at a Pressekonferenz April 26 to formally introduce him. Only five Repušić concerts are slated in Munich for 2017–18: another gala, a family program of symphonic dances, a concert performance of Luisa Miller, and two Paradisi gloria programs. The church plans, in a series created by Marcello Viotti, continue the Respighi-Duruflé eclecticism: Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and Variations on God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, together with Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms; and a pairing of Kodály’s Psalmus hungaricus with his Budavári Te Deum, sung by the Hungarian Radio Choir, no less. Separately at the conference, the MRO’s new website was launched and we learned some trivia: the orchestra is 32% women; the longest service among active members is 41 years; the mean age is 44; and the oldest played instrument was made 312 years ago. Schirmer, absent, received a warm round of applause from the 100 or so assembled journalists for his eleven years of MRO work.]

Photo © Künstleragentur Seifert

Tags:BR Chor, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Duruflé, Henry Raudales, Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Ivan Repušić, Ljubomir Puškarić, Max Hanft, München, Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester, Munich, Okka von der Damerau, Respighi, Review
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St John Passion Streams

Friday, May 27th, 2016

BR Chor’s St John Passion filmed in Nuremberg in June 2015

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: May 27, 2016

NUREMBERG — Tired of paying for digitized concert-hall privileges? Here is a sumptuously sung, gloriously gratis (for the moment*) St John Passion from this city’s Lutheran Lorenzkirche, filmed in June 2015 as part of a drawn-out Bavarian Broadcasting project to mark “500 Years of the Reformation”:

— Windows
— Android

Maximilian Schmitt is the Evangelist. Tareq Nazmi sings Jesus. Christina Landshamer, Anke Vondung, Tilman Lichdi and Krešimir Stražanac make up the SATB quartet for the arias. The BR Chor and Concerto Köln are conducted by Peter Dijkstra.

The corresponding Munich performances of Bach’s favorite work, from three months earlier, have merged their way onto an excellent BR Klassik CD set, but with Julian Prégardien as the Evangelist and Ulrike Malotta singing the alto arias.

[*As of May 17, 2017, this remained the case, although in early 2017 the video was issued as a BR Klassik DVD set that went on to win the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.]

Still image from video © Bayerischer Rundfunk

Tags:Anke Vondung, Bach, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR Chor, BR Klassik, CD, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Christina Landshamer, Concerto Köln, DVD, Johannes-Passion, Krešimir Stražanac, Lent, Lorenzkirche, Maximilian Schmitt, News, Nuremberg, Nürnberg, Peter Dijkstra, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Tareq Nazmi, Tilman Lichdi
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BR’s Full-Bodied Vin Herbé

Friday, March 18th, 2016

Prinzregententheater in Munich

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 18, 2016

MUNICH — It would be a novelty to hear Le vin herbé the way composer Frank Martin conceived it. The 1940 secular chamber oratorio reportedly soars when realized in concert by twelve French-singing voices, double string trio, double bass and piano — its lean forces yet complex harmony producing intriguing shafts of color; its drama predicated on shuffling the voices, used one-to-a-part and as a chorus. But a listener could wait decades for the chance. When Martin’s 100-minute Tristan et Iseut saga shows up at all, it has either morphed into an opera (Katie Mitchell’s realist concept for Berlin as example) or, more often, been puffed up for standard choral forces. This was its fate in a Bayerischer Rundfunk outing Jan. 23 here at the Prinz-Regenten-Theater, a missed opportunity given the broadcaster’s resources and artistic umbrella.

BR Chor artistic leader Peter Dijkstra kept Martin’s instrumentation but fielded 38 singers, blocking entry to the planned sound world and permitting only sporadic drama. Martin’s varied commentaries took on a sameness, so that for instance no urgency accompanied the waking of Gorvenal and the “last night-flight through the beloved woods.” Still, tenor Marcel Reijans’ keen and heroic Tristan injected vitality, and with good French. In support: soprano Johanna Winkel’s sensitive Iseut, soprano Barbara Fleckenstein’s clearly worried Branghien, and the unruffled, oaky Marc of baritone Andreas Burkhart. Refined choral contributions only emphasized what was amiss texturally, despite peppy punctuation from members of the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and Dijkstra’s conducting brought out the intriguing harmonies at reverential speeds.

This project should have benefitted from the intervention of Mariss Jansons in his supposed joint capacity as chief conductor of the BR Chor and the BRSO, to ensure forces were cast in line with Martin’s wishes and to properly serve the broadcaster’s listeners. The charismatic Dutchman, meanwhile, is closing out his 11-year BR Chor tenure. He has not been the most imaginative musician in Romantic and Modern works, but Bach he conducts naturally and lyrically. His St Matthew Passion three years ago deserved its plaudits, and his St John Passion, with the mellifluous Kuwaiti bass Tareq Nazmi as Jesus, has just appeared in a neatly documented BR Klassik CD set. Dijkstra’s farewell actually comes soon, with the B-Minor Mass here and in Baden-Baden, Nuremberg and Ingolstadt. Replacing him in September will be British conductor Howard Arman, while Jansons remains chief conductor, for what that is worth. As for Le vin herbé, Victor Desarzens’ 1961 recording with Eric Tappy as Tristan and Frank Martin at the piano (on the Westminster label) provides an authentic path through the score.

Photo (modified) © Martina Bogdahn for BR

Tags:Andreas Burkhart, Barbara Fleckenstein, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR Chor, BR Klassik, CD, Frank Martin, Howard Arman, Johanna Winkel, Johannes-Passion, Le vin herbé, Marcel Reijans, München, Munich, Peter Dijkstra, Prinz-Regenten-Theater, Review, Tareq Nazmi
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Muti Crowns Charles X

Thursday, January 14th, 2016

Riccardo Muti rehearses in Munich’s Herkulessaal in December 2015

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: January 14, 2016

MUNICH — Framed by an andante Kyrie and a beguiling instrumental Communion marked grave, Cherubini’s 1825 Coronation Mass for Charles X is one handsome piece of music. No, its movements are not exactly symphonic. They sound bonded to the flow of the service, so much so that unset sections can be imagined. Words are crystal clear, floating on lucid melodic ideas that never overstay. There is no congestion of texture, instrumental or vocal. The chorus, in three parts (STB), references the Trinity but no doubt also hedged against the Reims cathedral acoustics; in place of vocal soloists, choral exchanges offer contrast and illumination. In short, this Messe solennelle is a world apart from its Germanic peers.

Revisiting the score 31 years after his Abbey Road document, Riccardo Muti appeared elated to perform it live in the Herkulessaal Dec. 17 and 18 with musicians familiar with Cherubini: the BR Chor, Latin-trained by Stellario Fagone of Bavarian State Opera and singing with poise and focus (also good diction: patch-em for once, not pats-em); and the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, enhanced by someone resembling the opera company’s imaginative solo clarinet, Andreas Schablas, all alert to the transparency of this Mass. (Of the seven Cherubini services championed by Muti and recorded* between 1973 and 2006 for EMI, four made their way to disc via London studios, three via live Munich concerts.) Unerringly Muti found the equilibrium and peace in the 56-minute work, an advertisement for restored royal power. His eloquent phrasing supported its structure and stressed its lyricism, and dynamic shifts were unexaggerated. He drew expressive contributions from the woodwinds, much used; conveyed details candidly, such as through the halting but pale Crucifixus; presented the elegiac 10-minute Offertoire as the score’s heart, soaring on a five-note figure; and tautly unified the sequence from the brief, plain Sanctus, through a long-breathed Thomas Aquinas setting, O salutaris hostia, to the slightly acerbic Agnus Dei. Best of all, he conjured a palpable hushed walkabout of the just-crowned monarch in that concluding Communion, a coup de concert that caught the audience off-guard both evenings.

Schubert’s C-Minor Symphony (1816) emerged in comparably grand form before intermission, note-complete, each movement infused with a distinct elegance; the BRSO may love Mariss Jansons but it plays magnificently for Muti. The visiting maestro, however, looked less agile than for previous concerts in this hall, his upper body stiff and filled out. His printed biography sprawled to three pages, two more than for anyone else, and ended with a Riccardo Muti Music notice. Whether these concerts lead to an RMM CD or one on BR Klassik to share the music beyond Munich, or none at all, remains to be seen. Muti’s many major engagements since 2006 have produced little on disc.

[*The Chimay Mass (1809, live in the Herkulessaal with the BRSO in 2003), the long Missa solemnis for Esterházy (1811, live in the same hall with the same orchestra in 2001), another Missa solemnis (in E Major, 1818, live at the Gasteig with the BRSO in 2006), the two Coronation Masses (for Louis XVIII and Charles X, from 1819 and 1825, under studio conditions in Watford Town Hall with the London Philharmonic in 1988, and in Abbey Road studios with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1984, respectively), and the two Requiems (in C Minor and D Minor, 1816 and 1836, made in Kingsway Hall with the Philharmonia in 1980, and at All Saints Tooting with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in 1973). The service for Louis XVIII was also filmed by Sony in Ravenna’s Piazza San Francesco with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in 1991, and the C-Minor Requiem has been streamed by CSO Radio in a 2012 Orchestra Hall performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.]

Photo © Peter Meisel for BR

Tags:Andreas Schablas, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, BR Chor, BR Klassik, Cherubini, Herkulessaal, München, Munich, Review, Riccardo Muti, RMM, Schubert, Stellario Fagone, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
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With Viotti, MRO Looks Back

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

Doors of the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Munich

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: November 19, 2015

MUNICH — Eleven years ago the late Marcello Viotti quit as chief conductor of the Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester because he foresaw existential cuts in its budget. Happily the MRO survived, and today thrives. Tasked with exploring rare repertory, it is artistically the livelier of BR’s two orchestras, forcibly more daring than the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and free not to endlessly regurgitate Bruckner and Mahler. Its CD output offers a peek: Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend, Trouble in Tahiti, Braunfels’ Verkündigung, Pärt’s Te Deum. Much credit belongs with current Künstlerischer Leiter Ulf Schirmer, who has fostered a rich string sound. But another MRO dimension is the Paradisi gloria concert series, a legacy of Viotti that leavens each season much as Alexander Pereira’s Ouverture spirituelle brightens the Salzburg Festival.

That string sound and the spiritual programming overlapped poignantly last Friday (Nov. 13) in a sold-out concert at the Herz-Jesu-Kirche, a chic shoebox of a venue in glass and louvered wood near Schloss Nymphenburg. 25-year-old Lorenzo Viotti, winner of the latest Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, manned his father’s onetime podium for Poulenc’s Sept répons des ténèbres framed by grief-laden essays of Messiaen, Les offrandes oubliées and Le tombeau resplendissant.

The essays comprise baldly contrasted panels, with slow material that extends unrestrainedly. Both were written before the Avignon-born organist turned 23 and in the wake of the loss of his mother. Offrandes (1930), a triptych, centers on a wall-thumping tantrum titled “The Sin” for full orchestra; its serene, rather bland outer panels are in the strings alone. Tombeau (1931) more astutely channels the composer’s anger and acceptance in four sections, vif-lent-vif-lent, which Viotti and the MRO traced with riveting precision.

The nature of Poulenc’s suite, a personal Passion piece, brought to mind the elder Viotti’s untimely death ten years ago, at age 50, not long after that anxious resignation. There was an elegance to his conducting, a rhythmic subtlety and rare degree of insight in lighter-limbed scores. Qualities much missed. Sept répons des ténèbres (1961) sets texts chanted during the Holy Triduum, specifically in prayerful vigilance as candles burn out, to signal the extinguishing of Jesus’ life. The verse-and-respond form serves only as a basis for Poulenc, who boldly and equally deploys chorus and orchestra, and with chiseled calculation. By turns nostalgic, biting or sour, his ideas concisely distinguish each répons and leave intense flavor. Only the relatively long last piece permits contemplation: Ecce quomodo moritur justus (See How the Just Man Dies), spun out wistfully over a rhythmic ostinato.

Simona Brüninghaus’s shaky but boyish soprano projected the innocence in the limited solo part (intended by Poulenc for treble voice, possibly a projection of himself). Although not always clear in its Latin, the BR Chor navigated the often sharp contours with expertise and, for Judas mercator pessimus (Judas, the Worst Merchant), a certain brutality. Viotti mustered grandeur in Tenebrae factae sunt (There Was Darkness) and due gravity for the brass-tinged Sepulto Domino (The Lord Having Been Buried) despite mishaps in the MRO’s winds. Throughout, the conductor kept balances in check and conveyed confidence in the music’s ability to explain itself — a resignation of a different kind.

Photo © Allmann Sattler Wappner Architekten

Tags:BR Chor, BR Klassik, Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Le tombeau resplendissant, Les offrandes oubliées, Lorenzo Viotti, Marcello Viotti, Messiaen, München, Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester, Munich, Poulenc, Review, Sept répons des ténèbres, Simona Brüninghaus, Ulf Schirmer
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Nézet-Séguin: Hit, Miss

Friday, June 26th, 2015

Yannick Nézet-Séguin rehearses in Munich’s Herkulessaal in June 2015

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: June 26, 2015

MUNICH — It would probably be asking too much for Yannick Nézet-Séguin to stand still while conducting. He likes to throw himself around, as if anything less might diminish the enthusiasm he intends to convey or deprive his musicians of essential signals. Mostly it works. He is after all a success. Yesterday (June 25) in the Herkulessaal here his physical language neatly fit every idea in Haydn’s E-Minor Trauer Symphony, No. 44 (1771), and contradicted every breath of Brahms’s German Requiem (1868).

Despite its name the Haydn does not overtly relay mourning, although its Adagio has a certain sadness, with violins con sordini and lines tending to descend. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played the four movements affectionately, lending charm to the two-voice canon of the second and preserving clarity in the Finale, taken prestissimo by the scoreless Canadian maestro. The audience listened in rapt silence.

Closing one’s eyes for the Brahms solved part of the problem on the podium but left an interpretation insistent on bright color and drama, and not only in the second and sixth movements. Forget introspection. The BR Chor sang glowingly and with considerable power as prepared by Michael Gläser. The soloists were disappointing. Christiane Karg lacked ideal control and vocal weight for the soprano’s ethereal Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit. Baritone Matthias Goerne sounded firm in the low notes, but he swallowed consonants and staggered about like a drunk at a banquet, without tie, forearms and belly thrust forward. (Memories of José van Dam and the dignity he brought to this assignment, mostly motionless, accentuated the sad spectacle.) The orchestra mustered passion as well as its customary precision even if flute and oboe lines often pierced the air. At the end, after shaping Brahms’s masterwork so theatrically, Nézet-Séguin stood in place for a long, contrived silence, intended presumably to register the music’s meaning. Today’s performance of the same program (June 26) will be broadcast by BR Klassik, and the German Requiem will no doubt find its way to disc.

Still image from video © BR Klassik

Tags:A German Requiem, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, BR Chor, Brahms, Christiane Karg, Ein deutsches Requiem, Haydn, Herkulessaal, Matthias Goerne, München, Munich, Review, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Trauersinfonie, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
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BRSO Adopts Speedier Website

Friday, April 17th, 2015

New website for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: April 17, 2015

MUNICH — Although no news release hailed its arrival, a revamped website was launched today for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It is faster, navigationally flatter, and better geared to mobile platforms than the old pages, criticized here. To enable the advance, domains have been set up liberating the orchestra from the giant br.de, which until today hosted all three BR Klassik entities — the BRSO, the BR Chor and the Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester — as well as a panoply of services of parent Bavarian Broadcasting. In the bureaucratic context, this is revolutionary. Domain br-so.de will serve German readers while br-so.com is for everyone else. Simple tasks, such as finding the orchestra’s managers, are now as easy as they should be. Corresponding domains br-chor.de and br-chor.com have been established for the excellent chorus but for the moment resolve elsewhere. The MRO, currently on a two-week homeland tour playing operetta behind Jonas Kaufmann, retains its present site arrangement.

Tags:Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR Chor, BR Klassik, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Commentary, Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester, News, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
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BR Chor’s Humorless Rossini

Saturday, November 2nd, 2013

Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: November 2, 2013

MUNICH — Can music be sincere and ironic at the same time? Ask Peter Dijkstra, the artistic leader of the BR Chor who last weekend (Oct. 26) led Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle as billed. Solemnly. The result sounded not much like Rossini. Nobody smiled, and the musicians looked tense on the stage of the Prinz-Regenten-Theater, even as they sang and played expertly.

But perhaps the composer was smiling, wherever he is. The famously social 71-year-old used the tuneful giddy Mass — his only complete setting of the Ordinary — to demand admission to Paradise, describing for God its ingredients: “[un] peu de science, un peu de coeur.” The year was 1863 and Paris was digesting Darwin’s De l’origine des espèces, ou Des lois du progrès chez les êtres organizés, in its first French edition. Rossini may have viewed his demand as only natural. Ditto his casting stipulation: “chanteurs des trois sexes – hommes, femmes et castrats.”

If Dijkstra’s straight face precluded irony, and with it a few musical plaisanteries, at least he secured a tidy performance. His choristers, forty strong, mustered volume sparingly, reveling most of the time in transparent textures, soft floated tones and expressive accents. The evening burst into life in their spry counterpoint for Cum Sancto Spiritu, but choral virtuosity was just as apparent in Rossini’s contrasted, wistful Sanctus.

BR Chor members could have been assigned as quartet soloists, as the composer planned. Instead, BR (Bayerischer Rundfunk) hired glamorous outsiders. Regula Mühlemann and (mezzo-soprano) Anke Vondung paired exquisitely in the soprano and alto duet Qui tollis peccata mundi. Mühlemann’s sweet, light sound and the charm of her phrasing added luster to the Thomas Aquinas hymn, O salutaris hostia, interpolated after the Sanctus by Rossini (in 1867) to press musically his case for an agreeable afterlife. Vondung attuned herself to all colleagues, singing with dynamic sensitivity and great poise. She even adjusted neatly to the sudden weight of the Agnus Dei, pleading earnestly for mercy and peace against the score’s quirky aura of melodrama.

Eric Cutler and (baritone) Michael Volle made heavy work of the tenor and bass solo parts. Cutler, alarmingly, bellowed through the Domine Deus, but he brought finesse to the ensembles. Performing on a break from a run of Les vêpres siciliennes in London, Volle brightly characterized his words.

Mordant musical wit in the Petite messe solennelle mirrors Rossini’s droll remarks in its dédicace to God and on the manuscript’s flyleaf. In a skillful reading, particularly one using the original scoring for two pianos and harmonium, as on this occasion, a thread of humor helps link the incongruous styles and moods of the individual sections, ranging as they do from jaunty to buffo to melodramatic to properly solemn.

Dijkstra erred anyway on the side of objectivity, also slowness, and passive accompaniment from the duo pianists belabored his approach. Andreas Groethuysen (principal) and Yaara Tal (second piano) hovered below the music’s surface much of the time. The bubbly rhythmic figurations in the Kyrie passed by unremarkably. The instrumental Offertorio, waggishly labeled Prélude religieux lest anyone find it misplaced, lacked shape and in fact dragged. Groethuysen faltered technically now and then as well.

In a nod to the Verdi bicentennial, Dijkstra began the concert with the unaccompanied, seldom-heard Pater noster (O Padre nostro che ne’ cieli stai) of 1878, sung mellifluously in clear Italian with restrained power. Here his straightforwardness paid off. (Mariss Jansons is chief conductor of the BR Chor.)

Tags:Andreas Groethuysen, Anke Vondung, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR Chor, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eric Cutler, Giuseppe Verdi, Max Hanft, Michael Volle, München, Munich, Pater noster, Peter Dijkstra, Petite messe solennelle, Prinz-Regenten-Theater, Regula Mühlemann, Review, Rossini, Yaara Tal
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Jansons Extends at BR

Monday, June 3rd, 2013

Mariss Jansons

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: June 3, 2013

MUNICH — Mariss Jansons has signed an extension of his contract as Chefdirigent of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its choral forces, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) announced today here. The added period runs from Sept. 2015 through Aug. 2018.

The Riga, Latvia-born conductor, 70, also serves as chief conductor of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. His tenure in Munich, a collegial one, began in 2003.

Separately, at a ceremony in the Prinz-Regenten-Theater tomorrow (June 4), Jansons receives the 2013 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. He has promised to donate its €250,000 bounty toward the design and building of a (much needed) new concert hall for Munich should the project actually happen.

BR additionally announced the promotion of one of the orchestra’s artistic planners, Nikolaus Pont, 41, to the position of Orchestermanager. Born in Vienna, Pont earlier worked for the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Austrian broadcaster ORF.

Tags:Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR Chor, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Mariss Jansons, München, Munich, News, Nikolaus Pont, ORF, Prinz-Regenten-Theater, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Wiener Konzerthaus
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