Posts Tagged ‘Philharmonie’

The Paris Philharmonie’s Second Year Numbers.

Friday, March 17th, 2017

By:  Frank Cadenhead

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There was considerable concern about the future of the Philharmonie complex when it opened its doors in January of 2015. It was two years later than originally scheduled and almost three times the original cost estimate. It was still not totally finished and was in a poor area of town next to the highway that circles Paris. Would it attract the bourgeois audiences accustomed to going to traditional venues in the center of the city?

The first year was a surprising success even though the famed architect who designed it, Jean Nouvel, protested that his ideas were not fully achieved. The Orchestre de Paris, one of the principal residents, saw their traditional audience augmented by new attendees (“They applaud between movements!” it was noted with a shake of the head). The house was always full, whether for soloists, chamber groups or visiting orchestras and the outreach to local kids to experience music attracted thousands of participants. The dramatic architecture became part of the landscape as you drive by on the Boulevard Périphérique.

The real measure of its success has just been made public: the results of the second year of operation suggests that the success of the first year was not a fluke. The Philharmonie complex which includes the new hall, now named the Salle Pierre Boulez, and the earlier hall in the adjacent Cité de la Musique, counted 1.2 million seats filled, a remarkable 97% of capacity in 2016. This is essentially the same as the first year (a fractional 10,000 seats less) and points to a complex which is now an integral part of the Parisian music scene. Ticket sales, business and foundation donations and even international donor support guarantee 53% of the budget and the future looks secure. The support of the state (34 million euros) and the city (6 million) continues without counting the auxiliary benefit of the jump in real estate prices in the surrounding area along with other signs of local economic growth.

The just-opened Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, also absurdly over budget, is architecturally dramatic and has a similar open auditorium and widely-praised acoustics. Will it follow Paris and become not only a landmark which will be an important part of the city’s identity but produce corollary financial returns and new audiences? The Paris experience suggests yes.

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Krzysztof Urbanski makes Berlin Philharmonic Debut

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

If Krzysztof Urbanski’s debut with the Berlin Philharmonic late last month should serve as any indication, this is a conductor whom we can expect to hear again soon at the Philharmonie. The young Polish native, quickly on the rise on the both sides of the Atlantic, presided over an all-Czech program on May 25 in which his fluent virtuosity and wise modesty were equally on display.

In the opening movement of Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, a less-often performed worked commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society in 1884, he managed to give fierce attacks before allowing the music to release into the players’ hands. When the light pours into this predominantly melancholy work with the entrance of a solo horn in the following Poco Allegro, Urbanski created a buoyancy that distracted from the work’s Brahmsian influence.

The Scherzo was furious but elegant through pounding dance-like rhythms, and he created a powerful tension in the apocalyptic moments of the final movement that recede again into melancholy. Curving his fingers into gallant gestures with his left hand while using the baton in his right hand to phrase with clear, sweeping movements, he kept the orchestra on its toes as the piece drew to a majestic close.

The Philharmonic’s dark strings, clean brass and chiselled woodwinds were at natural service of the drama, even more so than in two symphonic poems from Smetana’s Ma vlast cycle, which opened the evening. While the ripples of the Moldau emerged elegantly in the second poem, recalling Wagner’s music for the Rhine in the Ring cycle with the entrance of the brass, the soaring main melody evoking the composer’s Czech homeland sounded tense despite the violins’ rich tone (concert master Andreas Buschatz).

The following portrayal of the mythic figure of Sarka in the third poem bounded forth with authentic folk rhythms, elegant clarinet solos from Andreas Ottensamer, and frenzied strings but also gentle lyricism in the inner Moderato section. Urbanski at times danced on the podium but knew when to dig in with his baton, such as in the following fugal passage which he held together with fierce precision.

The evening’s most exciting bit of programming was Martinu’s First Cello Concerto featuring Sol Gabetta, whose visceral exchanges with the Philharmonic captured the chamber music underpinnings of the work, revised and expanded by the composer for full orchestra following its 1938 premiere. She was not afraid to draw harsh sounds from her instrument but also moved seamlessly into a gentle, lyric pianissimo during the cadenza-like passage that closes the first movement.

Picking up the melody of the winds that open the following Andante, she captured the music’s introspection while allowing her fiery personality to shine through. The orchestra’s strings created a gentle bed beneath her, Martinu’s harmonies shifting like shades of color in a watercolour painting.

Gabetta moved with playful ease through the freely conceived rhythms of the final movement while remaining on point with the orchestra’s pizzicati and fragmented responses. Her coordination with was so Urbanski natural as to be barely perceptible.

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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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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.

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An Italian, and possibly a Swiss, Symphony at the Philharmonie

Friday, January 11th, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid

Journeys have provided powerful inspiration to writers, painters and composers alike, opening eyes to new ways of seeing the world. The broadening of artists’ palettes has sometimes allowed them to capture a landscape more vividly than the natives could themselves. One only has to think of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Gauguin’s portraits of French Polynesia (colonialist considerations aside), and—at least for an outsider— Mendelssohn’s Fourth, or Italian, Symphony. Riccardo Chailly, guest conducting the Berlin Philharmonic on January 9, juxtaposed this work with Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, which in a similar vein was likely inspired by a trip to either Switzerland or Upper Bavaria.

Bruckner is easily the most provincial Romantic composer to have entered the symphonic canon, having rarely ventured outside his native Austria and devoting much of his opus to sacred works. Passages of the opening movement of the Sixth deviate strongly from the stormy, fretful tone one associates with his symphonies, with an exotic modal brass motive and a positively sunny melody for the violins. Program notes suggest that an underlying, one could say proto-minimalist, string texture represents the motoric drive of a train, while the trumpets herald new earthly vistas. Chailly’s vigorous, scooping gestures brought out the might of the Philharmonic.

The following Adagio brims with Mahlerian stillness, which the conductor savoured to melting effect. Even if Bruckner was not referring to the Swiss Alps, he suggests a heaven on earth that sounds very close. It is also worth noting that Mahler made several changes to the symphony before it had its first full performance in 1899, 18 years after Bruckner had completed it. By the third movement, the composer has—at least stylistically—returned closer to home terrain, with menacing blows of fate and bombastic, descending tutti passages, although there is an almost classical alternation between forte and piano sections.

The finale further vacillates between the serene and the tempestuous, with declamatory Wagnerian harmonies in the brass contrasted against delicate, protesting pizzicati and a fleeting waltz-like melody that, in the context of a journey, indicates a certain wistfulness for the fatherland. The symphony ends with a fervor that Chailly brought to a resounding close. Although the horns of the Philharmonic have even more precise on other occasions, it hardly mattered in the wider scheme of this bracing performance.

Mendelssohn’s Fourth emerged with tremendous care for dynamic contrast and shape of phrase as Chailly held thorough, but unaffected, control over the orchestra. Most impressive were the perfectly-built crescendi and decrescendi that emerged, particularly in the third movement Con moto moderato, and beautifully rounded, legato lines. Mendelssohn’s economic orchestration at times calls to mind a chamber ensemble, which the Philharmonic brought out through its characteristically tight communication between sections, particularly in the last two movements.

Concert Master of the evening Daishin Kashimoto led the violins with great precision, although the sound could have been warmer in fortissimo passages. Solo Clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer played with particular finesse in the Andante movement, characterized by sensuous, swelling lines throughout the orchestra and a touch of melancholy. True to his ‘German’ spirit, Mendelssohn does not only convey the pleasures of fine wine and sunshine but a deeply introspective, nostalgic view of the world. Perhaps this is why his symphonic portrait of Italy resonates so strongly.

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The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra takes the Philharmonie

Friday, July 6th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

A timpanist just tall enough to rumble his mallets over the kettle drums stares out from beneath his specs as Lars Vogt slides onto the bench for the opening chords of Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

“I like that sound!” says Music Director Donato Cabrera to the young percussionist as he walks out into the front aisles of the Philharmonie. “Could you do more of a crescendo?”

He immediately resumes.

“Yeah!”

The members of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) stamp their feet in congratulation. As rehearsal continues, former Music Director Alasdair Neale, who has dropped into town for a visit, also weighs in from the aisles, coordinating seamlessly with Cabrera to refine balance issues. The orchestra plays through parts of Mahler’s First Symphony, the strings attempting a dreamy pianissimo that even the world’s best orchestras struggle to create.

Finally, it is time for rehearsal to come to an end. “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” Cabrera offers as a final suggestion. “And play your guts out!”

Donata Cabrera rehearses with the SFSYO at the Philharmonie (c) Oliver Theil/SFSYO-Few professional orchestras enjoy the same degree of artistic adventure as the SFSYO. The orchestra came to Berlin as part of a European tour (June 20-July 6)—its eighth since being founded in 1981—that traveled through three other German cities, Luxemburg, and ended in Salzburg. As the orchestra’s Director of Education Ronald Gallman pointed out, playing on the same stage as the Berlin Philharmonic is already an enormous accomplishment, not to mention a huge boost for the morale. The ensemble, drawing together Bay area musicians aged 12 to 21, exists on a tuition-free basis (thanks to generous sponsorship which also made this year’s tour possible) and receives weekly coaching with members of the San Francisco Symphony as well as yearly sessions with San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. Guest artists have included Yo-Yo Ma, Sir Simon Rattle, John Adams, and Midori.

Vogt, joining the SFSYO for the fifth time, told me backstage that “the sky is the limit” with this orchestra, adding how important it is for professional musicians not to be “set in their frames” and allow the youthful inquiries of musicians playing something like Mahler for the first time to bring a fresh take on issues that more seasoned players take for granted. Cabrera emphasized that the act of discovery is no different with a youth orchestra than any other professional ensemble. “This is what we live for,” he said. “There is always more to peel away and discover.”

Speaking with three of the orchestra’s members, it was clear that they shared these values of music-making as a constant learning process. Principal violist Omar Shelly explained that while they had already rehearsed the programmed works extensively at home, the tour was a “huge opportunity to adjust a prime product to different places, like a catering to a menu.” Principal oboist Liam Boisset, who like Shelly plans to become a professional musician, raved about how the acoustics of the Philharmonie allowed all the orchestra’s members to hear one other. “I’ve learned so much more about Mahler on this tour,” he said. “It makes me much more aware about where I sit in the orchestra.”

At the concert later that evening, the Grieg opened with a precisely built crescendo on the timpani that carried well to the back of the Philharmonie. The close attention in rehearsal to balance made itself clear in the elegant flute and horn solos of the first movement, while Vogt brought a light yet intense touch to the runs underlying the orchestra. Vogt’s emotional togetherness with the ensemble was particularly apparent in the Adagio movement, and the sighing melodies received a lovely rubato in the strings. The final Allegro, featuring Vogt in a spirited evocation of a Norwegian folk dance, was thoroughly polished and on point. Every dynamic shading emerged well-conceived and firmly in its place, yet there was also a mystical quality to the quieter passages, such as when the flute and dusky strings usher in a nocturnal passage on the piano.

In Mahler’s First Symphony, Cabrera and the SFSYO admirably captured the leisurely pace the composer indicated in his tempo indication Langsam, schleppend—as opposed to the third movement (Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen). The playful “kuckuck” wind motifs were particularly endearing coming from a youth orchestra, contrasting at first ironically with the glassy opening strings and the primordial inquiries underlying the music. The orchestra nailed the Scherzo, with its jaunty waltz riff (in fact an Austrian Ländler), executing phrases of mature heft and temperament. Even after the deluge of Mahler last season for the centenary of his death, it is impossible to resist being captivated by the Frère Jacques canon of the third movement, with its slow, resigned march toward death, interrupted by Jewish folk melodies that mourn as they rejoice. After making its way with rapt attention through this spiritual ambiguity, the orchestra let loose in the turbulent final movement, lending charged passages force without becoming muscular. Mahler not being a composer of the greatest psychological simplicity, the Sitzfleisch and intellectual stamina of these young musicians deserve much praise.

Yet it was John Adams’ Shaker Loops that showed the orchestra at its best. The composer’s extensive collaboration with the musicians’ home organization of course strengthens their claim to this music, Adams having inspired the Meet the Composer residency program and established his national reputation with works written for the San Francisco Symphony. Shaker Loops is one of his first major compositions, adapted from a septet to full string orchestra in 1982 and featuring pulsating minimalist textures that, unlike in Reich or Glass, are set to Western harmonies and traditional form. The high energy of the repeated tremoli in the opening Shaking and Trembling immediately brought some west coast wind into the Philharmonie, and the eerie microtonal slides in the following Hymning Slews revealed impressive technical precision. A Final Shaking provided a satisfying close with anxious high-pitched shimmering that yields to ecstatic tonal harmonies. It is not for nothing that the SFSYO won an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and the Award for American Programming on Foreign Tours this year.

Cabrera with the SFSYO (c) Jeff Bartee Photography/SFS

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