David Robertson – New York Philharmonic – Korngold

David Robinson is a highly respected conductor in New York, party on the basis of his willingness to program contemporary music. Last February when he came with his Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra he programmed works by John Adams and Alban Berg. In the second week of his New York Philharmonic guest stint he will conduct Berio. But in the first week, ending Saturday May 27, he played a curiously conservative program.

The first piece he played was the Symphony in B minor, Unfinished. With its lovely melodies it is one of the most popular pieces in the repertory. The Philharmonic under Mr. Robinson played a nice lean version that never was mawkish but didn’t deny its sentimentality either.

Next up was the Korngold Violin Concerto with NY Phil concertmaster Glenn Dicterow as soloist. Besides his opera ‘Die tote Stadt’, Erich Wolfgang Korngold is mostly known as a writer of film music, if he is known at all. His film scores are immensely influential; John Williams is influenced by Korngold to the extent that he would be selling popcorn in a concession stand if he had never heard Korngolde’s music. The violin concerto is pleasant enough, clearly it was written to allow the solo violin plenty of space to show off. Mr. Dicterow was prepared to impress us. It was kina of fun listening to it but it helped to screen a Steven Spielberg film in your mind. The audience loved it with a long standing ovation and some raucous cheering from the third tier. My wife and I decided the cheering must have come from Mr. Dicterow’s Juilliard students.

After the intermission another conventional piece, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1. It was played well and I enjoyed it as did most of the audience. Sibelius’s music is very well crafted and always worth listening to but his dependence on Tchaikovsky is in some way troubling. I felt I could be listening to Tchaikovsky instead of a good copy. Sibelius may have agreed, after 7 symphonies he simply quit composing for the 26 years that remained in his life.

Jonathan Biss James Levine and The MET Orchestra

The last concert of the 3 the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra played in its Carnegie Hall series was held Thursday 5/22. It was in the familiar format of a contemporary piece followed by a concerto by a noted soloist and a universally loved war horse after the intermission. Still with the contemporary composer being Levine favorite Eliot Carter and the soloist being the hot 28year old Jonathan Biss led to an exceptional evening. The scalpers and people looking for tickets in the crowed out front proved that there was some buzz too.

Eliot Carter’s Variations for Orchestra from the mid-1950s has obvious references many earlier composers: Ives, Schoenberg and Berg were obvious to me and I’m sure others caught more influences in the 10 variations. That said it was more Cater than anything else, like all worthwhile composers he is mostly himself. Carter was born in 1908 and has seen a lot of styles and has been influenced by many of them. The Met players played the variations well although they are difficult but after all they are used to playing a different style each night at the opera house, they are stars at adapting.

Jonathan Biss is well known already, although he is young, I was anxious to hear him play for myself. I was very happy with what I heard. His playing of the solo parts of the Schumann Piano Concerto were very mindful the works Romantic period but played with intelligence and feeling never with unnecessary flash. We may have come to a glorious time in performance history where intelligence is held in higher regard than gloss, or perhaps I’ve just been lucky lately. Levine and his forces also played in a restrained intelligent way, a perfect match.

The season started Oct 1^st with Lucia di Lammermoor, since then its been 7 operas a week, with the occasional Sunday for Carnegie Hall performances. For a last piece maestro Levine gave them Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. This gives most of the musicians a chance to play all out and they seemed to have fun doing it. Not the most subtle music ever written but it gave each section a chance to strut itself. The audience loved it. At the end Levine asked each section to stand starting with the woodwinds and each section got a huge ovation. Levine got a larger ovation than and section and the whole orchestra the greatest ovation of all. It was fun for the audience too; it gave us a chance to thank them for a nice concert and a great season.

Met Orchestra, Modeste Mussorgsky – Gergiev, René Pape

With the Metropolitan Opera season having just finished The Met Orchestra has the time for the last 2 of it 3 concert series at Carnegie Hall. Sunday’s concert was the last in the Carnegie Hall Perspectives: Valery Gergiev series which has lasted all season and presented Mr. Gergiev with both his own Kirov Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Gergiev decided to program a concert of work by the most purely Russian composer of all - Modeste Mussorgsky.

The first piece on the program was St. John’s Night On Bald Mountain was played here in its rare original form by Mussorgsky not the more common version by Rimsky-Korsakoff. This version is perhaps more ragged but retains a greater feeling of a Russian legend – full of awe and wonder and almost child-like. Gergiev played it with great feeling that the audience loved and I suspect Mussorgsky would have approved of.

The next pieces featured the great German bass-baritone René Pape. The first Songs and Poems of Death joined wonderful coloration from the orchestra with the pure tone of Mr. Pape. The impressionistic orchestration was quite a contrast to the straight forward singing. After intermission Me. Pape sang the more familiar Monologue of Boris from Act II of Boris Godunov. It was once again performed in its original version and again it was a pleasure to note the unapologetically pure Russian style. Mr. Pape got several curtain calls – perhaps there will be a Met Boris in his future, at least a woman we met on the subway going home had a strong desire for a Pape Boris.

Mr. Gergiev saved the most popular piece for last, Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Ravel. This seems to be a crowed pleaser no matter how its played. The last time I heard it Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic played it fast and rather light and people gave a standing ovation that lasted a good five minutes. Mr. Gergiev and Met Orchestra played a much slower and moodier take on it but the result was the same – a long ecstatic ovation. Gergiev’s version might not have been as much fun, people did not leave the hall whistling it, but it made us feel and think more. I think it was more Russian and more Mussorgsky.

La Fille du Régiment - Metropolitan Opera

Donizetti had one desire as a writer of opera – entertainment. He has no obvious philosophy, politics, axe to grind. True he wrote many operas on historical topics, but I don’t think you will find a historian who takes his portrays very seriously. What he gives you music written for the beautiful voice, bel canto, and either lots of broad comedy or lots of blood. This season we got blood from him on opening night in the form of Lucia di Lammermoor and comedy for the last new production of the season La fille du régiment. In both cases Natalie Dessay was the eponymous heroine. She was fine as the doomed Lucia and sang wonderfully but it was hard to take the stilted libretto, for the comedy of La fille du régiment she was brilliant in every way Either way, like Donizetti, she’s as great at over the top as she is as singing and acting.

Although the Laurent Pelly production is new to the Met, it has already been done with Ms. Dessay and her Tonio, Juan Diego Flórez, in Vienna and London where the production was co-produced. Mr. Florez got most of the press for getting a rare encore for the aria "Ah! mes amis" and its 9 high Cs. The encore was hardly a surprise since it was widely expected; Flórez sang one in Milan for the same aria last year, breaking a rule put in place by none other than Toscanini, and the Met broke its own rule before by giving Pavarotti one for "Ah! mes amis" in 1984. The whole audience seemed to know that the whole charade was bogus. Everyone dutifully cheered and applauded for minutes until Flórez meekly bowed at the audience motioned to conductor Marco Armiliato to begin again and did in fact sing it better the second time than the first. It was great fun but I had the nagging feeling I had participated in something slightly bogus. Its OK since Flórez sang the aria so effortlessly it was hard remember most tenors can’t sing it at all, his ease at the high notes certainly beat out my memory of Pavarotti singing the same thing, he seemed to be reaching a bit. I have heard many women who sounded great in the bel canto repertory but Juan Diego Flórez is the fist man I know who completely owns the genre.

Donizetti is just so much pretty fluff but that’s just fine once in a while. The Met probably put his work on for opening night and the last new production galas is fine because they are fun and the gala audiences are probably looking for fluff for their $5000.00 opera plus dinner. Fortunately we got Peter Grimes, Satyagraha, Tristan und Isolde and other serious nights in between.

Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at The Metropolitan Opera

Opera librettos don’t really have a good reputation, a few librettists like Lorenzo Da Ponte and Hugo von Hoffmansthal are respected but often the libretto is either derided or not even mentioned when talking about opera. Its no wonder since the story is most often just a framework to give the work form, the real point being communicated by music. Phillip Glass realized this and deals with the problem by doing away with the liner story completely replacing it with meditations on the subjects work, philosophy and illuminating moments. When Mr. Glass jumped into public view with Einstein on the Beach this seemed as much a part of Minimalism as the music. I thought the combination was potent when I first saw Satyagraha in 1981 and still found it moving and effective when I saw at The Met on Monday.

Satyagraha has been translated as a compound of two Sanskrit words meaning, according to the Met Playbill as truth force or holding on to truth. The libretto is indeed in Sanskrit and is made of excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sources that illuminate the opera’s subject - the ideas of peace, human rights and self respect that transformed Gandhi and through him Indians in South Africa and India and eventually others around the world, specifically Martin Luther King Jr. This may sound very static but I found the combination of the music played by a small orchestra of strings and woodwinds (with a single electronic keyboard), the production and words to be very effective. The music the first score Glass wrote for traditional rather than electronic instruments, when I first heard it I was amazed at the increased interest the traditional instruments add to the minimalist style. As conducted by second generation Glass specialist Dante Anzolini the music was meditative in just the way the opera demands. Its not that it doesn’t move its that it moves you in ways too subtle to think about but just right for feeling. The flutes and bassoons were particularly effective; they have been noticeably effective all season. The Chorus and soloists performed the music like theve been singing it all their lives. Richard Croft as Gandhi used his gentle tenor voice with true grace. I know some people are offended by Glass’s music but that is hard for me to understand since it works so well for me.

The production was by Phelim McDermott of the Improbable Theater Company was created jointly with The English National Opera and has already played successfully in London. While the production is respectful to the subject matter it is also fanciful in many places. I especially liked a bit when coat hangers came down from the ceiling as Gandhi, his supporters and the Indian workers took off their European closees, put them on the hangers leaving them in their traditional Indian garb. This scene simply said more both musically and theatrically than a more traditional opera ever could. If the first two acts were kind of George Grosz meets Julie Taymor, which ain’t bad, The last act, called King, was especially moving. As the act unfolded an actor mutely portrayed Dr. King giving his famous speech at the Washington Mall. Film of the event was also projected on the back of the stage. As the scene went on the window grew large enough to fill the entire back of the stage. In its way it reminds us that what started as a personal journey by one man grew to affect the whole world. In many was this production at the Met was done better than the one I saw in Brooklyn in 1981, but by far the best difference is that apartheid doesn’t exist in South Africa anymore.

Lang Lang, Tan Dun , New York Philharmonic

The great thing about attending a world primer is that you get to hear a piece without any pre-conceived notion about what you are about to listen to. Unfortunately the silly people who run the education department of the New York Philharmonic decided to have a speaker tell us what we were to think about Tan Dun’s new piano concerto before we heard it. The speaker was described as a ‘composer’, although I don’t know or much care exactly what he composes. He also played a video of him interviewing Tan Dun who said his piano concerto was like martial arts. I don’t know what this middle brow drivel is supposed to add to the musical experience but I suspect its one of the reasons more people don’t take classical music seriously. Fortunately it was easy to ignore the assault on our intelligence once the musicians came onstage and the concert proper commenced.

The piano concerto was clearly written with Lang Lang in mind, both his fiery percussive playing he is known for and there more lyrical style he seems to be moving towards. The concerto makes ample use of percussion including the solo piano. This aspect of the music is undeniably exciting. This concerto also lets the soloist go in the area his going as he becomes more mature and gives him lots of melody to play, which he does with greater feeling than I remember him displaying in the past. It must be remembered that both Tan Dun and Lang Lang play western music and the fleeting influence of Chinese music is an influence in the same way the folk music has influenced European composers for the last 100 years. It is hard to really judge the success of a new work on first hearing but it was an exciting performance featuring one of music’s most charismatic players. Lang Lang, Tan Dun and the conductor Leonard Slatkin received an extended standing ovation from what seemed to be a sold out house.

After intermission the Philharmonic played the complete ballet music from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Mr. Slatkin did not seem to have a strong unifying conception of the music but the Philharmonic played both ensembles and solos with grace and precision. The audience certainly seemed to leave the concert happily and it was a fun evening. I couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit ironic that Stravinsky has become the composers to pair with a modern composer to keep the conservatives in the audience happy. This concert repeated 4 times Wednesday – Saturday, I attended on Thursday.

Richard Goode, Sir Colin Davis and The New York Philharmonic

Intelligence is hard thing to find in this world, even in the rarefied world of classical music, so it was with some delight that I noticed that all three concerts NYP concerts featuring conductor Sir Colin Davis and pianist Richard Goode were sold out. Mr. Davis and Mr. Goode may not be the flashiest musicians out there but the seem to consider the result of every gesture they make and the result makes you listen a little more closer to the music. This was useful since the first half of the program featured familiar pieces by Beethoven.

The first was the Leonore Overture No. 2. I always enjoy this whether played fast or slow, spirited or even perfunctory. Davis’s reading was more significant than most because he seems to remember its roots in the opera Leonore/Fidelio, which returns the music the composer’s intention in writing it. Davis places the offstage horns into the one of the upper tiers of the hall and their playing really reminds those of us who know the opera of the rescuers coming to save the day. This rendition is quite literally a condensed version of the opera, just as Beethoven meant it to be.

A piece like Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 is so popular it takes something

special to make it memorable. When I heard it in February played by Hélène Grimaud with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by conductor Xian Zhang it was pleasant and very well played. Grimaud and Zhang are young and their interpretation reflected the energy of the young. Goode and Davis are older and have had more time to think about it. As in his celebrated CD set of the Beethoven piano sonatas every phrase Goode plays in the solos is an essay that demands your complete attention and is like a standalone work on its own. The tempo changed in each solo depending on what Goode wanted to communicate. Davis clearly was in tune with Goode’s conception and the result left the audience deeply involved with the music.

My vision of Ralph Vaughan Williams is of a perpetually old and kindly country gentleman. Listening to his Symphony No. 4 for the first time I realized he can have a knurly and angry aspect as well. The work is modern and complex and fit in very nicely with the Beethoven that made up the rest of the evening. Sir Colin is a regular visitor to New York, most years with at least a week with the New York Philharmonic and three programs with the LSO. Over the years he has introduced us to a lot of British music we may have otherwise missed, I glad he introduced us to Vaughan Williams 4^th, it rounded out an intelligent evening.