Sounds & Fury

The Glyndebourne Tristan: An Object Lesson In Doing Things Right

[NOTE: This entry has been edited as of 3:47 PM Eastern on 27 Dec to restore a one-word but important qualifying parenthetical and to clean up some overblown language.]

The Guardian has posted until 6 January 2013 videos of the 2007 revival of Glyndebourne's 2003 Nikolaus Lehnhoff über-minimalist staging of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (Act I, Act II, Act III), a staging that's an object lesson in just how powerful a Wagner music-drama can be when the opera director stays out of Wagner's way by doing — and doing only — what he ought to be doing: viz., discovering, to the utmost capacity of his gift, the most vivid and compelling way to realize onstage the full sense and spirit of the opera creator's concept and vision as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions), as we've put it previously. This holds true even when the resulting staging turns out first-rate but is imperfectly realized and dotted here and there with (mostly) small but outright conceptual blunders as it is in this case. Of course, it doesn't hurt matters in this case that the cast is also first-rate, both as singers and as actors, and that the performance of one of that cast, Nina Stemme as Isolde, is the equal of every iconic performance known to us of that impossible role. On the other hand, it doesn't help much (and most especially in this music-drama) that the conductor, Jiří Bĕlohlávek, turns in a less than profound reading of the score; competent, conscientious, and lively as it may be. Negatives notwithstanding, all in all a thoroughly worthwhile and rewarding expenditure of some five hours of our time. We suspect it might prove to be for you as well.

A Thoroughly Delightful Meistersinger

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 1:49 PM Eastern on 27 Jun. See below.]

We watched the Web streaming of Wagner's Die Meistersinger live from Glyndebourne today (God bless the Internet!) and what a thoroughly delightful if unexceptional Meistersinger it was (we missed Act I due the stupidity of both the Guardian's and Glyndebourne's Web staff, but will catch it on Monday on the replay*), including a fine Sachs (Gerald Finley) even though he looked far too young for the part and should have been helped a bit by some expert makeup judiciously applied, and a superlative Beckmesser (Johannes-Martin Kränzle).

This was our first look at Glyndebourne and its stage appears too small by half (at least) to accommodate Wagner's staging requirements for this work (which requirements were adhered to with utmost fidelity whenever and wherever possible; not so much as a hint of Eurotrash perversity anywhere in evidence in this production either in the settings or the "concept" which remained Wagner's own) and as a result the staging of Act II was a compromise that looked just a bit ridiculous and simply didn't work. But the staging of Act III, also a compromise, was a marvel and a paragon of what can be done given a director and set designer of genuine creative imagination both of whom are devoted to remaining faithful to the creator's intentions as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions).

We would have loved to have seen and heard how this production looked and sounded in this alluringly intimate opera house; an opera house that seems more suited to the works of Mozart rather than Wagner. One of these days we'll get over there the universe permitting.

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* Beginning Monday, a replay of this Webcast of Meistersinger can be seen each day for the next seven days at this Guardian site or this Glyndebourne site. The Guardian gives the starting time as "from around midday"(!). We suppose that means noon BST which translates to 7:00 AM EDT. Glyndebourne is more precise. It gives the starting time of its replay as 14:45 BST which translates to 9:45 AM EDT.

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Update (1:49 PM Eastern on 27 Jun): We've just finished watching Act I of the Glyndebourne Meistersinger which act we missed yesterday on Glyndebourne's live Web streaming of the music-drama, and in its setting by designer Vicki Mortimer, and in its staging, singing, and acting, it was as well nigh spot-on an Act I as one could wish for, including a superb David as realized by singer-actor Topi Lehtipuu. Especially impressive was the acting even by the bit players who may not have had so much as a note to sing. Much of the credit for all this must go to the gifted director David McVicar who clearly understands what the work of an honest, truly conscientious opera director entails: making as vivid as possible the concept and vision of the opera's creator (which is to say, the composer) as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions).

Die Meistersinger is perhaps Wagner's most well-made and accomplished creation; a paradigm of what genuine opera is all about: not a showcase for songbirds but dramma per musica through and through and from top to bottom.

This production of Die Meistersinger puts to ignominious shame the grotesque burlesque now sullying the stage of the Bayreuther Festspiele, the work of Wagner's no-talent great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner, making a mockery of everything Wagner intended the Festspiele to be. Someone in authority should take notice and do something to put a halt to it.

The Met's Season-Closing Walküre

We posted the following quasi-review to the Opera-L eMail list today and reprint it here simply to make it part of the S&F record.

I listened to the Met's season-closing _Die Walküre_ yesterday via WQXR's excellent live feed and found the performance to be largely disappointing both musically and dramatically. What I don't know and can't determine is how much was due the vehicle (i.e., the streaming audio feed) and how much the actual performance as it was heard in-house.

To bullet-point what was heard via the streaming audio feed:

* Kaufmann (Siegmund): a lovely, lyric, German tenor voice with baritonal colorings but still not quite suited to this role (too light). Also, he sang the role far too lyrically; better suited to Verdi than Wagner and, surprising for a native German singer, his declamation here was also better suited to Verdi than Wagner. Not my idea of an ideal Siegmund.
* Westbroek (Sieglinde): strong but not particularly beautiful soprano voice; a voice largely absent any real dramatic nuance. Also, her German is positively atrocious.
* König (Hunding): A fine performance all round. Voice nicely matched to the role.
* Terfel (Wotan): Fine all-round job musically and dramatically. Voice too light for the role but that disability was largely overcome by his understanding of the role and his dramatic realization of that understanding.
* Voigt (Brünnhilde): Fine, big voice but still not entirely comfortable with the role either dramatically or vocally. She gives promise of becoming one of the best of the current Brünnhildes once she has more experience with the role.
* Blythe (Fricka): An exemplary performance of this role were it not for a single misstep that all but made the entire performance false dramatically: the perfectly idiot, grotesquely-Italian-opera-sentimental [and inappropriate] breaking down in sobs at the close of her line, "die Göttin entweiht er nicht so!". Whether that was something she decided to do herself or was directed to do I have no idea, but it really must be done away with!
* Jimmy and The Band: Something was very wrong there yesterday. The music came across not as a single, seamless dramatic narrative and commentary beginning to end but as a stringing together of many individual sections. That could have been the result of poor or inappropriate miking but I have no way of determining that and so will comment no further on it here.

The Met's New Die Walküre

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 3:56 PM Eastern on 25 Apr. See below.]

The second act of Die Walküre, the second music-drama of Wagner's epic four-music-drama cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, is the linchpin of the entire tetralogy. If you were listening last night to the Met's live streaming (audio) webcast of the premiere of its new production of Die Walküre (and we can speak only of the webcast as we were not in the house), you heard, overall, and excepting a single jarringly wrong moment, one of the finest live performances of Act II of Die Walküre as you're ever likely to hear today. From the opening measure through the last, James Levine and the Met Orchestra were fairly on fire and the intensity and depth of their music-making never let up or flagged. Deborah Voigt, making her first-ever appearance in the role of Brünnhilde the Valkyrie of the title, met all our expectations in this act and we're confident that with a bit more experience in the role she will emerge as one of the foremost of the world's current Brünnhildes. Bryn Terfel, on the other hand, defeated all our expectations in this act in his role as Wotan and turned in one of the most nuanced and vocally and dramatically arresting performances of the role in our experience. How he managed to do that in this act given the un-Wotan-like timbre of his voice is a feat of vocal magic we'd rather not examine too closely lest the magic be exposed as a mere trick or illusion.

Wotan's great Scene 2 monologue — an intense, 25-minute-long narration that, coupled with the immediately preceding Scene 1 colloquy between Wotan and his wife Fricka, is the defining moment of the tetralogy; a narration that only the most accomplished of singer-actors can carry off successfully — was perfect in its execution, or as near-perfect as makes no nevermind. We would gladly have paid the ticket price just to hear this performance of this monologue alone. Like most people, we don't like being shown to be in error in our predictions, but in this case we were simply thrilled to be proved wrong. The single jarringly wrong moment referred to above occurred not in this monologue but near the very end of Act II just after the slaying of Siegmund. Wotan confronts Siegmund's slayer, Hunding, and dismisses him with a twice-uttered "Geh!" (Go!) and a contemptuous wave of his hand whereupon Hunding drops to the ground lifeless. Terfel uttered his second "Geh!" in a drawn-out, angry, hysterically shrieked exclamation — dramatically and psychologically very wrong in itself, and triple-wrong if, as we suspect, it accompanied Wotan slaying with his spear Hunding directly; a bit of stage business that may or may not have been part of the action in this production's staging (remember, we were not in the house). If it was, it was in violation of the score (music, text, and stage directions) and dramatically and psychologically as wrongheaded a bit of staging as could be imagined as the very last thing Wotan would think to do at this moment in the drama is to himself slay Hunding directly.

As for the other singer-actors in this fine Act II, Stephanie Blythe's Fricka was first-rate — not Christa Ludwig first-rate, of course, but first-rate nonetheless. Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund was mostly ideal in this act, his performance marred only by his repeated employment of a cloying, very un-German, Italian-opera catch in his voice which in Italian opera passes for the expression of a moment of great emotion but in Wagnerian music-drama merely makes the singer sound a bit ridiculous. Margaret Jane Wray as Sieglinde, stepping in for an indisposed Eva Maria Westbroek who managed to get through Act I singing the role in an acceptable if less than laudable fashion, performed her part most satisfyingly, no apologies necessary for her on-the-spot assumption of the role. Satisfying as well was Hans-Peter König's Hunding, both in this act as well as in Act I, even though he has little to do or sing in Act II of Walküre.

And what about the rest of this Walküre? Well, Act I was, how to put it, somewhat lackluster both in terms of James Levine and the orchestra as well as the singer-actors for the most part although Jonas Kaufmann had his moments one of which was most decidedly not his twice-uttered cry of "Wälse!" as Kaufmann, although he ought to have known better, could not resist doing the Italian tenor thing by holding the notated fermata beyond what Wagnerian rhetoric (or the drama) required. Act III, on the other hand, had Levine and the orchestra performing as brilliantly as they had in Act II, the singing and the acting, however, not so much. Not that there was anything terribly amiss with the singing and acting in this act even though Terfel's entire "Leb wohl" had more of retribution than sorrow about it. Merely that it was routine in a major opera venue sort of way.

How all this played out in the house and how The Machine performed (for those of you who've been living in a cave for the past year or so, The Machine is director Robert Lepage's gazillion-ton, computer-driven set that serves for all four music-dramas of this staging of the Ring) is something we'll have to wait to read about in the MSM and on the opera blogs and online opera forums. As always, it will be interesting to compare notes.

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Update (3:56 PM Eastern on 25 Apr): The MSM reviews have trickled in, and while they're not in unanimous agreement on the music-making they pretty much are as concerns the direction of director Robert Lepage and the dramatic effectiveness of his creation, Le Machine: viz., they both suck (surprise!). Here's Anthony Tommasini, Anne Midgette, Martin Bernheimer, and Zachary Woolfe (added 6:00 PM on 26 Apr —acd) on the matter.

The Met's Saturday Matinée Das Rheingold

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 8:31 AM Eastern on 6-Apr. See below.]

What is one to do if one is General Manager of one of the world's major opera companies and discovers that a first-rate singer who's been booked years in advance for leading roles in not one but three major new productions spanning over three seasons has the absolute wrong voice for the roles?

The question is entirely rhetorical on our part as we have no answer, but it's a question Peter Gelb must be asking (or, rather, should be asking) himself in the matter of Bryn Terfel and his recurring roles as Wotan in the Met's new production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

We listened this afternoon to the Met's live broadcast of Das Rheingold and more than ever we're convinced that Mr. Terfel should never have been engaged to sing the role of Wotan in this first Ring music-drama much less the Wotan of Die Walküre and of Siegfried. Mr. Terfel has a fine bass-baritone voice and uses it skillfully, but its timbre lacks the "weight", "color", and gravitas required for these roles, a lack made painfully manifest when playing against an Alberich sung by a bass-baritone (Eric Owens) the timbre of whose voice has all the qualities Mr. Terfel's lacks. Were Das Rheingold some Italian-opera melodrama it might not make that much a difference, but in a genuine music-drama such as Das Rheingold it's all but lethal dramatically and will be even more so in Die Walküre and Siegfried.

Beyond that insurmountable problem, the performance this afternoon went quite well despite a clam here and there in the brass. Eric Owens as Alberich has, this time around, somehow managed to get an at least fair if far from ideal semblance of a nasty edge to his voice, a quality of voice required for this role, and he made an excellent job of it this afternoon notwithstanding some slight vocal trouble at his Scene 4 exit. Excellent as well if not ideal were the Loge of Arnold Bezuyen, the Fricka of Stephanie Blythe, and the Erda of Patricia Bardon. The break-out surprise for us was the conducting of Fabio Luisi who, regardless a slightly draggy Scenes 1 and 2, did himself and Das Rheingold proud. We were especially impressed by his handling of Alberich's exit after pronouncing his Nibelung's curse. It was taken at precisely the correct tempo; something not done even by a "Wagner Gene" possessor such as Solti.

All in all, a pleasant if not entirely satisfying way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

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Update (8:31 AM Eastern on 6-Apr): A startling thought just struck us. Is it possible that Bryn Terfel has such perfect technical control over his instrument that he purposely altered its sound in portraying the Rheingold Wotan to give dramatic (as in drama) point to Wotan's over-the-top ambitious, grasping, relatively callow younger years in Das Rheingold to act as dramatic contrast to the mature, commanding Wotan of both Die Walküre and Siegfried? We remember being thoroughly floored several years ago to learn that the sinuous, oily, superbly portrayed Loge of the Solti Ring was sung by a tenor (Set Svanholm) who was famous for his singing of Heldentenor roles(!) but who had such perfect technical control over his instrument that he altered the sound of his voice almost entirely for his role as Loge in the Solti Rheingold.

Well, we shall have our answer fairly quickly as the Met's new Walküre has its premiere in just a little over two weeks time (22 April).

Stay tuned.

First Hearing: Nixon In China

[NOTE: This entry has been edited as of 6:23 AM Eastern on 14 Feb to add a closing graf and correct some overblown language.]

We listened on and off last night to the Met's streaming webcast of the Met premiere of John Adams's Nixon In China (on and off not by choice but because the audio stream kept going on and off, and off for considerable stretches at a time), and in terms of the music itself, mostly liked what we heard in this our first hearing of this work. Its minimalist-influenced score is often attractive, but in terms of opera — in terms of dramma per musica — the work is perfectly empty. The opera's subject is a nullity — a political event engaged in by politicians where both the event and the politicians have zero dramatic interest or potential except in the mind of a politics-besotted ideologue and purveyor of agitprop such as the opera's instigator and stage director, Peter Sellars. Why Adams permitted himself to be persuaded to squander his considerable gift creating music in the service of such a pedestrian subject and dramatic cipher is simply beyond our understanding.

Oh!, to hear an Adams opera created in partnership with a librettist of literary gift equal to Adams's musical one on a subject of genuinely mythic and/or poetic proportions! Dr. Atomic could have been such an Adams opera had it not been crippled fatally by Sellars's resoundingly dumb, hockey-puck-leaden libretto. Perhaps Adams will choose his subject and librettist more wisely with his next effort.

Oh Dear (Met Rheingold Premiere On Sirius)

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (5) as of 5:50 AM Eastern on 11 Oct. See below.]

Oh dear. That was most disappointing. Overall, a dramatically (as in drama) lackluster, even phlegmatic, performance from all, Jimmy and the band included. Beyond that, we always thought Terfel would make a fine Rheingold Wotan even though he'd never do for the Walküre and Siegfried Wotans, but it seems we were way wrong in that judgment. He sounded not only miscast vocally, the timbre of his voice lacking the necessary weight and gravitas, but his dramatic declamation was all but nonexistent even though he on occasion attempted to force it. It's not a good thing, not a good thing at all, when the Alberich comes across sounding more noble and commanding than the Wotan.

Too bad. We trust the Lepage staging acquitted itself with more success.

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Update (12:49 PM Eastern on 28 Sep): We're awaiting three in-house, MSM reviews of this Met premiere — viz., those by Alex Ross, Martin Bernheimer, and Anne Midgette — and will post links to them when published. From our experience, MSM reviews by the rest are mostly silence — or might as well be.

Update 2 (3:50 PM Eastern on 28 Sep): From Martin Bernheimer:

The eyes and ears of the music world were supposed to be magnetised by this epochal Rheingold. As a quixotic fate would have it, the ears fared better than the eyes. Much better.

Update 3 (10:26 PM Eastern on 1 Oct): Although we weren't looking for it, New York Magazine's Justin Davidson had some apposite commentary to offer:

In the first part of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the god Wotan uses his sister-in-law as collateral for a new home. In a similar fit of recklessness, the Metropolitan Opera has bet its own house on a new Ring. The production by Robert Lepage, which will roll out over the next two years and serve the Met for many more (unless it bankrupts the company first), begins with a whiz-bang but verveless Das Rheingold, in which miracles of stagecraft alternate with long stretches of standing around, waiting for the computer-guided set to trundle into place.

Update 4 (5:44 AM Eastern on 11 Oct): Anne Midgette — who missed the premiere but caught up with the production this past Saturday — weighs in:

Lepage's Ring is utterly traditional: All the characters are taken at face value, with little effort to delve beneath the surface. All of the creative energy went into the set.

Update 5 (5:50 AM Eastern on 11 Oct): Alex Ross — who despite the delayed filing date was at the premiere — had this to say (New Yorker subscription required to read the full review):

Director Robert Lepage’s production is a work in progress. The first two nights of the show had technical issues, and when the set stopped moving, the singers looked as though they were fending for themselves. The costumes were gaudy and the props not very godlike, making arrogant deities come off as glum and monochromatic.

Los Angeles Opera's James Conlon

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:44 PM Eastern on 30 May. See below.]

In a lengthy S&F post of February 2009 titled, "The Upcoming Los Angeles Opera Ring", we asked ourself this question concerning LAO music director James Conlon:

How competent is Mr. Conlon to conduct the Ring as staged music-drama as opposed to orchestral excerpts?

and answered it by writing:

Our provisional answer ... is not a happy one. Nothing of what we know of Mr. Conlon's work leads us to believe he's up to the formidable task of conducting a staged Ring with anything more than mere technical excellence. Needless to say, that's not nearly enough, but we're willing to believe that he may rise to the challenge once confronted.

As of late this afternoon, we have a less provisional, more definitive answer to the question (or, rather, as definitive an answer as can be gotten from an MP3-quality webcast* of an LAO-approved recording of a single live performance of the LAO's new production of Das Rheingold auditioned over a typically crappy computer sound system). And that answer is that Maestro Conlon's reading displayed a thorough knowledge of the score, which score he conducted with admirable technical excellence, drawing technically flawless performances from both orchestra and singers alike (we were especially impressed by the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, and most especially by the orchestra's brass section which performed splendidly, and the horns most notably so). But as we previously remarked, that's not nearly enough where a Wagner music-drama is concerned.

So, what was amiss with this performance of Das Rheingold? To state it in short: Maestro Conlon's conspicuous lack of an intuitive sense of Wagnerian rhetoric. This performance was polished entirely too smooth throughout. One might even go so far as to say the performance was sedate (or as sedate as a technically excellent performance of this work's music is capable of being); a troubling quality most distressingly apparent in the lynchpin episode of Wotan's theft of Alberich's ring.

The question then remains, Can one really fault a conductor merely because he lacks an intuitive sense of Wagnerian rhetoric? The first answer that wants to escape our lips is, Yes, one can when the performance of a Wagner music-drama is being assessed. But when we think back on the technical excellence of this performance which was proof positive the conductor knew the score thoroughly and was able to communicate its requirements to the performers, then we're not at all sure such a conductor should be faulted merely for his lack of what is, after all, a specialized and peculiar gift; one that's essentially innate and can neither be taught nor learned in the ordinary sense of those words, which gift we long ago dubbed metaphorically the "Wagner Gene".

It's a question difficult to answer fairly and neatly, and so one must be content to spell things out in one's assessment of such a conductor as we've above done, and leave the reader of that assessment to draw his own conclusions regarding the matter.

* The webcast was by Los Angeles public radio station KUSC, "the largest and most listened-to public radio and non-profit classical music station in the country" which is webcasting recorded live performances of each of the four music dramas of the LAO Ring each Saturday at 1:00 PM (EDT), this Saturday having been the first in the webcast series which series will continue over the next three Saturdays.

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Update (2:44 PM Eastern on 30 May): Several eMail missives have admonished us for saying nothing about the individual singers in this recorded performance. We suggested to our admonishers that they again read the title of this piece. It was NOT intended as a detailed critical review of the performance, but as a commentary on how conductor James Conlon acquitted himself as a conductor of a staged Wagner music-drama, and we noted the performance of the singers generally within that context.

We trust the foregoing will forestall any further admonitory e-missives along this line.

A New Discovery

As we noted in this post, since its transfer to WNYC we've been forced to listen to WQXR via streaming transmission on the Web as we're now outside the reach of QXR's new and puny 600 watt signal, and that, interestingly, we've actually found ourself listening far more often to QXR's less-often-heard-, new-music-programmed sister Web stream, WQXR Q2, than to QXR itself. We must say it's something of a novel experience for us to have to look at a printed playlist to identify what's being performed, or even merely to identify the name of the composer, but that's how it's gone with us these past couple weeks since listening regularly to QXR Q2.

And what have we learned by this experience? Lots, actually, but we won't bore you with details except to note that we've discovered (that is, a discovery for us) a composer the works of whom if not his name were entirely unknown to us previously; discovered by the circumstance that every time we heard a piece that totally arrested our attention it turned out to be a work by this composer.

And the composer in question? Finland's Einojuhani Rautavaara, a composer who, for reasons which elude our current comprehension, didn't merit even passing mention in Alex Ross's fairly comprehensive, The Rest Is Noise.

Lordy! What consistently rich, evocative music comes from this man's pen. We can now see that this new discovery of ours will cost us mucho bucks in the near future; bucks which at present are in perilously short supply.

Ah well. We'll just have to abandon our daily $25/lb Norwegian smoked salmon breakfast for a few months (a practice we have no business indulging in in the first place given our parlous financial condition) to free up the required cash. Shouldn't be that difficult to manage. It's merely an unnecessary extravagance, after all. (Why does that have the ring of Famous Last Words?)

The New QXR

When The New York Times Company divested itself of its long-held classical music station WQXR by selling it to NPR's WNYC this past September, we were deprived of our area's only classical music station as the puny 600 watts at which WNYC operates the station at its new location on the FM dial (105.9) is a far cry from the 6000 watts at which it was operated at its previous FM dial location which permitted us to receive the station's signal quite well albeit not in stereo as even at 6000 watts we're located just barely within the signal's fringe reach. And so now, when we want to listen to QXR, we have to listen via our computer and the Web.

Not exactly the best of all possible worlds.

The above notwithstanding, the transfer of QXR into the hands of WNYC is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for QXR. For the past five years at least, the Times has considered the station a sort of problematic stepchild, and this was reflected in its presence on the Web which in the Times's hands was a decidedly, let us say, slapdash affair.

Not so in the hands of WNYC. Now QXR's website and Web presence are veritable paragons of the type, and the station's programming just what it ought to be for a general interest classical music radio station. One could quibble with some of WNYC's decisions in bringing over staff from the old station (we've, however, more than a quibble with WNYC's decision to bypass Clayelle Dalferes in favor of Midge Woolsey whose bourgeois sensibilities are on display front and center in both her playlists and her commentary on the new QXR just as they were on the old), but, by and large, the new QXR's host lineup is more than satisfactory as is its general-interest classical music programming, and as is the host lineup and less-often-played- and new-classical-music programming on the newly created, 24/7, online-only WQXR Q2 radio stream which we lately find ourself listening to far more often than to QXR itself despite such stuff as Terry Riley's for-some-reason-famous In C, a performance of which we've been listening to determinedly for the past gazillion hours or so — or, rather, so it seems — and which is perhaps the most tedious, mindless piece of music it's ever been our displeasure to hear.

Now if we could only convince WNYC to petition the FCC to permit it to boost QXR's wattage just a teensy-weensy, piddling, ten-times bit....

The Future Of The Symphony Concert?

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

We're somewhat embarrassed admitting this, longtime concertgoer that we are, but after clicking-over fifteen minutes before concert start to the free Brahms concert by the Berlin Philharmoniker last night (Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4), webcast via their Digital Concert Hall, we felt the same sense of heightened anticipation and exhilarating social interaction we feel when attending an actual live concert, that sense of being there persisting throughout the entire concert. And that feeling was due almost entirely the superbly photographed, miked, choreographed, and flawlessly reproduced high-def presentation, both visual and audio, which we watched and listened to in full-screen-display mode from beginning to end using a high-bandwidth transmission (low- and medium-bandwidth transmission were also available). Even though the program was a bit too much Brahms for us at one sitting (OK, a lot too much Brahms), we watched and listened through the entire webcast precisely for the purpose of assessing the totality of the experience of a digital presentation of a symphony concert, and found it remarkably (and unexpectedly) satisfying even though our 17" CRT display is ancient technology, and our computer's speakers nothing but three-inch-paper-cone wonders.

Is this the future of the symphony concert? We have to say we're afraid it is notwithstanding that in our estimation no reproduction, no matter how superbly presented, reproduced, and received, can equal or replace the in-hall experience of a live performance.

But, then, perhaps that's just us. You know, a diehard, old fogey reactionary, as we've been called, right down to the bone.

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

Free Concert By The Berlin Philharmoniker

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

We've just received from the Berlin Philharmoniker on behalf of the Philharmoniker and its longtime sponsor, the Deutsche Bank, the following press release. And, yes, we've signed up. We recommend you do so as well. Sounds like a splendid way to spend a November Monday evening.

Deutsche Bank will present a free webcast of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle performing Brahms’ Third and Fourth Symphonies on Monday, 9 November 2009 at 8 PM EST (GMT-5) on its website. To register for the free webcast, follow the link to the webcast on the Deutsche Bank homepage.

Click here for the Deutsche Bank website (www.db.com).

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

The Berlin Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

For those of you not already acquainted with it, we'd like to direct your attention to what is almost certainly the Web's most beautiful and beautifully conceived, designed, and organized classical music website: the Berlin Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall. It's a largely pay-to-view operation that presents the Berlin Philharmoniker in live concert in high definition video and audio, and, considering what's on offer, ticket prices are cheap, cheap, cheap (about $15 USD per concert). Monthly passes and season subscriptions are available as well, also cheap, cheap, cheap. Registration is for free. Our U.S. symphony orchestras should all take their cue from this website, and put up websites of their own of the same type and quality. In our estimation, no single marketing tactic can equal it in promoting both the orchestra and classical music.

Do click over and take a look/listen.

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

Fireworks And Beethoven

We've just finished watching a video of Duddy's (that's Gustavo Dudamel to you) much and widely ballyhooed inaugural concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as its new Music Director, the video courtesy of the LAP's website (and with thanks to classical music critic and blogger Robert D. Thomas of Class Act for the heads-up and the link). The single work given (or at least the single work on the video) was Beethoven's No. 9, and it was not, how shall we put it, a performance for the ages — a performance twice jarringly interrupted by inappropriate applause (don't get us started!) — notwithstanding the fireworks show accompanying an encore of the choral section of the last movement. (The concert, we hasten to add for those who've been living under a rock for the past couple months, was given free at the Hollywood Bowl, and, no, we're not going to give you all the gory details of the performance. Watch and listen to the video for yourselves if you're interested.)

But there's time for stellar performances by Duddy and the LAP of No. 9 and of other great music. What was extraordinary about this concert was not the performance or the fireworks in the sky, but the fireworks in the audience. One would have thought Duddy a rock star of the very first magnitude so charged-up and unrestrainedly enthusiastic were they. And this for a mere conductor of a symphony orchestra!

Go figure.

Things seem to be looking up thanks to a gifted, charismatic, 28-year-old, afro-coiffed Latino.

Who woulda thought.

Saturday Ring Reminder

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:44 PM Eastern on 25 Apr. See below.]

This afternoon, beginning 12:00 PM EDT, the Met closes its current Ring cycle with a performance of Götterdämmerung which performance will be aired via the Met's regular Saturday afternoon opera broadcast, and also via the Met's own webcast which can be accessed here. For some of you, this 2005 commentary on Götterdämmerung titled, "The Trouble With Götterdämmerung", might be of some small interest, and so we accordingly recommend it to your attention.

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Update (1:44 PM Eastern on 25 Apr): After hearing the Norns episode, we thought there might be a chance for this performance. No such luck. The thing is a veritable train wreck — from Levine on down. We're off. We've had it. We're no masochist.

Has It Always Been Thus?

After hearing the rousing audience reception of Die Walküre tonight, we're forced to the sad conclusion that the Met's audience has got to be among the most undiscerning opera audiences in the world.

Has it always been thus?

Our memory is not what it used to be, but we don't think so.

Carter, Barenboim, Levine, and Rose

Here's a video of an extraordinary conversation which yesterday aired on an extraordinary segment of (and for) PBS's Charlie Rose Show in celebration of the 100th birthday of composer Elliott Carter: A Conversation With Elliott Carter, Daniel Barenboim, and James Levine. Carter showed himself to be still sharp as a tack mentally, and, if you ask us, doesn't look a day over 80.

For us, one of the most telling moments of that conversation was Barenboim's explanation of why Carter's notoriously complex atonal music is perceived by audiences as genuine music. His explanation — which runs from 13:25-15:10 on the video — although expressed more eloquently, sounded remarkably like what we had to say in our 24 April 2008 post, "On Music And Gibberish"; viz.,

It's not atonality per se — i.e., the music's lack of a triadic tonal center(s); a "home base," so to speak — [that makes so much of atonal music sound so unmusical; even non-music], nor is it the almost unrelenting, unresolved harmonic dissonance that's the hallmark of the atonal. It's something much more fundamental: the lack of a perceptible and coherent musical narrative from work's beginning to end, which is to say the lack of the work's saying comprehensibly something beyond and exclusive of commentary on its own processes and methods which are — or ought to have been and be — but mere tools used in its making.

[...]

To put the matter more bluntly and much less eloquently, a composition absent a perceptible and coherent musical narrative from beginning to end is gibberish and not music.

[...]

And that's the test — the touchstone — that determines whether a work as a whole is genuine music or gibberish. Flashes of musical brilliance — even a sustained series of such flashes from work's start to finish — simply won't do to make that work a work of genuine music unless those flashes conspire to produce a perceptible and coherent musical narrative [from work's beginning to end].

[...]

That's genuine music's sine qua non — even its very definition.

This exceptional 32-minute video is well worth your time viewing in toto.

A Remarkable Matter

There's no way to discuss this matter without its seeming to come off appearing a thoroughly petty complaint when measured against the larger achievement, but it's so remarkable a matter that we simply can't let it pass absent remark.

We're talking about the absolutely wrong and wrongheaded realization, musically and dramatically, of the critically important opening two-measure phrase of the opening ten-measure paragraph of the Vorspiel to Act III of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and the two-measure phrase's following second statement (as well as the second statement of the entire paragraph some six measures after the first) as they were realized by Daniel Barenboim in his debut on the Met's podium on 28 November; a realization repeated this past Saturday for the broadcast matinée.

That opening ten-measure paragraph is one of the small wonders in an opera filled with manifold wonders of magnitudes large and small, and which paragraph is perhaps the most concise, deeply affecting, and profound evocation of utter desolation and despair, external and internal, to be found in all of opera, perhaps even in all of music. And much of that paragraph's effect (and affect) can be attributed directly to its opening four measures — i.e., its repeated opening two-measure phrase — ergo, the critical importance of those measures, and the reason for this article which by its very nature cannot help but be somewhat technical, for which, our apologies.

Wagner notates the tempo for the Vorspiel, Mäßig langsam (moderately slow; the German, langsam, is roughly equivalent to the Italian, largo), and the meter, common time (4/4). The Vorspiel's opening ten-measure paragraph is played by the orchestra's string choir (violins, violas, cellos, and contrabasses) alone, and its opening four measures are hugely and hollowly dissonant the hollowness of that dissonance due largely (but not entirely) the violins sounding its prolonged, dissonant major-second G against the F tonic sounded in the rest of the string choir using the G of the violin's lowest open (i.e., unstopped) string. That open-string G is so important to the sound and sense of the Vorspiel's opening paragraph and of the Vorspiel itself that we'd almost be willing to declare that Wagner chose the nominal minor key of the Vorspiel (f-minor) precisely in order that the strongest dissonance of its opening paragraph would be produced using that hollow-sounding open-string G.

And what does Wagner write for the opening four measures of that opening ten-measure paragraph to produce its magic? It's utterly simple. The violas, cellos and contrabasses sound a chordal pedal using the tonic, sixth, fourth, and fifth degrees of the f-minor scale, while above, after a quarter rest, the first violins join them by first sounding a hollowly and hugely dissonant tied half-note and eighth open-string G, with the second violins joining at the same time sounding a dotted half-note open-string G which is tied to another dotted half-note open-string G in the following second measure of the two-measure phrase the entire string choir resolving at phrase's close in an f-minor triad, the triad's uneasy fifth degree sounding prominently on top.

When taken at Wagner's indicated tempo, the prolonged, major-second dissonance of that hollow-sounding open-string G produces a sense of desolation that's all but unbearable which is precisely the effect it was intended to produce. In fact, experienced Wagner conductors typically prolong that hollow open-string dissonance slightly beyond the notated time value of the notes by introducing a slight rubato or quasi-fermata on the open-string G in the first measure of the two-measure phrase.

Which brings us to Mr. Barenboim's realization of those critical four measures.

First, he ignores Wagner's tempo marking entirely, and takes that opening ten-measure paragraph almost Alla breve. As if that weren't wrongheaded enough, he treats the tied half-note plus eighth open-string G in the first violins in the first measure of that repeated opening two-measure phrase almost as if it were a tied eighth plus sixteenth, thereby destroying utterly the effect intended by Wagner as indicated in the score.

Now, nothing could make those opening four measures and the remaining six of that ten-measure paragraph sound anything but doleful. That's a function of the notes themselves no matter what the tempo taken. But Wagner didn't intend to express the merely doleful. He intended to express an external and internal landscape of utter desolation and despair as we've noted above. A sympathetic reading of the score tells us that, and all one need do to realize in performance what Wagner intended is to follow his notation as written. Mr. Barenboim, however, and for reasons which elude us entirely, chose not to do so, and instead of evoking a landscape of utter desolation and despair, ended up evoking a landscape merely doleful which robs the Vorspiel of its special genius, and this closing act of the opera a fair measure of its opening gravitas which is a matter not to be taken lightly (NPI); ergo, this complaint. And if the complaint appears petty measured against the larger achievement, well, then, so be it. We lodge it that notwithstanding.

Podcast: Beaux Arts Trio's Final American Concert

This PR release just received from American Public Media:

(St. Paul, Minn.) August 27, 2008—Capping a 53-year career, one of the world’s best-loved chamber ensembles, the renowned Beaux Arts Trio, played its final American concert on Thursday, August 21. American Public Media’s Performance Today is offering an exclusive podcast of this historic concert. Beginning on Wednesday, August 27, the concert at Massachusetts’ Tanglewood Music Festival will be available in its entirety, in two segments, by visiting www.performancetoday.org.

Led for more than half a century by pianist Menahem Pressler, the legendary Beaux Arts Trio will disband after a series of European concerts in September. With the concert at Tanglewood, the ensemble returned to its place of origin — it played its first concerts there in 1955. The occasion also marked a return to repertoire it made American audiences familiar with over the decades: Franz Schubert’s magisterial Opus 99 and Opus 100 piano trios. The group’s three encores will also be included in the podcast.

Fred Child, host of Performance Today, served as host for an exclusive live Webcast of the August 21 concert, and he’ll provide commentary, features and interviews with the members of the trio: pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses.

Worldwide Compendium

We've just been made aware of what turns out to be a valuable online classical music resource. It's a new website called Classical DJ, and the name is most apt. Classical DJ is a worldwide compendium of online commercial (broadcast) classical music radio stations neatly organized and hyperlinked for your convenience. We've added Classical DJ to our exclusive listing of Culture Sites on our left-hand sidebar.

(Note to those contemplating eMailing us to announce the existence of a new website or blog and requesting a link on Sounds & Fury in exchange for a link to S&F on the new website or blog.

Although we're most gratified when linked to by others, we don't engage in link trading on S&F. We almost dumped the eMail that came to us announcing the above website as it suggested such a link exchange. If you have a new website or blog that you think would be of interest or use to S&F's readers, by all means let us know about it. If we think the website or blog worthy of a listing on S&F, we'll list it. If not, not, regardless of whether you post a link to S&F on your website or blog or not. We trust we make ourselves clear.)