Pickings Were Slim

Joshua’s sister visited us over the three-day holiday weekend, and we were able to take her to a few things, having saved everything on our calendars for her visit.

Pickings were slim.

The Guthrie is dark this month; all three Guthrie theaters have been closed since the holidays and will not resume operations until February. The Guthrie is having financial problems, and most Guthrie employees have been given unpaid furloughs for part of the month of January.

Most other theater companies in town are between productions or offering performances of plays we have seen too many times or have no wish to see.

The Minnesota Orchestra is not in session, Minnesota Opera is preparing Verdi’s “Macbeth", due to open later this month, and the Cowles Center (which presents mostly dance) has nothing to offer civilized persons for the entire 2013-2014 season.

Nonetheless, we managed to make it out a few times, which was better than staying home and reading aloud from Thucydides’s “History Of The Peloponnesian War”.

________________________________________________


On Friday evening, we attended Theatre In The Round’s presentation of John Guare’s “Six Degrees Of Separation”.

“Six Degrees Of Separation” is not a strong play, and it has many faults.

To begin, the play’s dialogue lacks vividness and imagination. Clunky line follows clunky line, no rhythm develops, and poetry and high style are absent from the text. It becomes impossible for any drama or light to emerge, what with the flat, featureless writing.

The plot of the play, based upon real-life events, is not promising: a middle-aged New York couple is taken in by a skillful con artist—and consequences flow. The play might have been more rewarding (and more entertaining) if the playwright had satirized the foolish Manhattan husband and wife rather than used their gullible natures as the basis for a superficial examination of 1990s New York mores and morals.

Of perhaps greatest importance, the existential message at the center of the play—that all humankind is interconnected by no more than six degrees of separation—is both false and off-putting (as well as far too dreary to contemplate). Are there only six degrees of separation between me and North Korea’s Supreme Leader and Great Successor, Kim Jong-un? I very much doubt it.

Happily, “Six Degrees Of Separation” is a very short play—ninety minutes, with no intermission—and the play ends not a moment too soon: ten minutes more, and the audience would have been heading for the exits.

I thought Theatre In The Round gave the material a fair shot. The production was satisfactory, and the cast was satisfactory. However, “Six Degrees Of Separation” is a play that should be laid to permanent rest. It makes the plays of Edward Albee look like Shakespeare.

________________________________________________


On Saturday evening, we went to Saint Paul to hear a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert.

The conductor was Matthias Pintscher, a no-longer-young German composer (Pintscher will turn forty-three in another week) based in New York the last few years.

Pintscher was, I thought, incompetent. He lacked the command and presence of a genuine conductor—and it appeared that the musicians were ignoring him as much as possible, trying to prevent Pintscher from damaging performances of music the musicians can play in their sleep.

The popular, unchallenging program: Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2; Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite; Webern’s orchestration of the six-voice Ricercata from Bach’s Musical Offering; and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”).

The performances, bland and impersonal, resembled run-throughs with a local répétiteur, everyone awaiting the arrival of an out-of-town guest conductor to shape the proceedings. The concert had to be experienced as an “open rehearsal”.

________________________________________________


On Sunday afternoon, we went downtown to the Pantages Theatre to attend Theater Latté Da’s new production of the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Joe Masteroff musical, “Cabaret”. The production had opened the previous evening after three previews.

Theater Latté Da’s production was based upon the Sam Mendes version of the musical, first produced in London in 1993. The Mendes version is darker than the 1966 original, and lengthens—and emphasizes—the proceedings in the cabaret itself, at the expense of the proceedings outside the cabaret.

Last season, Bloomington Civic Theatre had presented the original version of the musical, which has largely fallen by the wayside in recent years. We attended one of the BCT performances of “Cabaret”—and, in my judgment, the original version is vastly superior to the Mendes version. Among other things, the changes wrought by Mendes unbalance the show: the proceedings outside the cabaret lose their significance, and their resonance; all that remains is a tale of seedy show business, something more appropriate for Las Vegas revues.

And, indeed, Theater Latté Da’s “Cabaret” was very much a Las Vegas show, desperate to hold the attention of a general audience. Everything was overplayed, overstated, overcooked, oversold, over-the-top. I kept waiting for Siegfried And Roy to appear.

The audience appeared to love this particular production of “Cabaret”.

The production left me depressed.

________________________________________________


On Monday we went to the Museum Of Russian Art to see the current Romanov exhibition, “The Romanovs: Legacy Of An Empire Lost”, a collection of “historically significant objects” from the 300-year Romanov dynasty.

Approximately 200 artifacts were on display. Although all items were being seen by the public for the first time, I felt as if I had seen this exhibition before, a hundred times, here and elsewhere.

I believe it is time to give these endless Romanov exhibitions a rest.

Disappointments

On Friday evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert at the Ordway.

The guest soloist/guest conductor was Håkan Hardenberger, who was the attraction for us. Josh had played trumpet in grade school, junior high and high school, and he had wanted to hear Hardenberger.

Hardenberger played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto in the first half of the program. Hardenberger played to a reasonably high standard, but he is no longer in his prime—and Hardenberger has never been an interesting musician. It was a capable performance we heard, not a brilliant one.

In the second half of the program, Hardenberger played Heinz Karl Gruber’s 3 MOB Stücke, a “fusion” piece borrowing ideas from jazz and popular music. The work was composed in 1968 for seven interchangeable instruments and percussion, and revised in 1977. In 1999, at Hardenberger’s request, the composer created a version for trumpet and chamber orchestra. It was the 1999 version we heard.

I am not a Gruber admirer, and 3 MOB Stücke strikes me as a very weak piece, a European’s idea of “hot” music. I cannot understand what appeal Hardenberger finds in the score.

The concert began with Bach’s Orchestral Suite No 3 and ended with Haydn’s Symphony No. 103 (“Drumroll”). Hardenberger is not much of a conductor, and the performances were little more than run-throughs. The concert was, more or less, a waste of our time.

For us, it was the first SPCO concert of the season. We had contemplated an earlier SPCO concert in October—Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, Ives’s Three Places In New England and Schubert’s Symphony No. 5—but we had decided to take a pass, largely because we had heard that week’s guest soloist/guest conductor, Christian Zacharias, a few times too many the last few seasons.

There are only three SPCO concerts of interest to us the rest of the season.

The first, in January, will feature Hans Graf leading the orchestra in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14. If that week’s concerts were to be held at the Ordway, we most definitely would go—but that week’s concerts will be held in area churches, with their poor acoustics.

The second, in May, will feature Thomas Zehetmair leading a performance of Britten’s opera, “The Turn Of The Screw”.

The third, in June, will feature Roberto Abbado, the finest of the SPCO’s regular guest conductors, leading the orchestra in a program of Haydn, Barber and Schubert.

If Milwaukee were within reasonable driving distance of the Twin Cities, we would have skipped last weekend’s SPCO concerts and instead attended one of last weekend’s Milwaukee Symphony concerts, with Graf leading the Milwaukee orchestra in Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and Schubert’s Mass No. 6. Graf is a splendid conductor of Mozart and Schubert, and I suspect that last weekend’s Milwaukee concerts, with the rarely-performed Schubert mass, were worth going out of one’s way to hear.

The SPCO needs to engage a Music Director. If an elder statesman is the objective, the SPCO could do worse than Graf, whose tenure in Houston concluded at the end of last season.

________________________________________________


Remember?
Remember?
The tenor on the boat that we chartered,
Belching “The Bartered Bride”.
Ah, how we laughed!
Ah, how we cried!

On Sunday afternoon, my parents and Josh and I went to Ted Mann Concert Hall to attend the final performance of the University Of Minnesota Opera Theatre’s production of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride”.

Even for a student performance, the presentation was not at a high level. The production was rudimentary, the musical performance disappointing.

The opera was heavily cut, which turned out to be a blessing.

The Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Of The Violin

For most of the last 130 years, the Russian School of violinists has dominated world stages.

With the advent of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Christian Tetzlaff, all mature artists by the early 1990s, the Russians were dethroned: German violinists had seized the mantle, and have continued to rule the realm for the last quarter century. (Maxim Vengerov, a Russian, the only genuine competition for Mutter, Zimmermann and Tetzlaff, has never returned to full-time concertizing since his 2007 sabbatical—he claimed he was suffering from burnout—during which he sustained a freak career-threatening injury.)

Mutter, Zimmermann and Tetzlaff are unique: all three are blazing virtuoso players; and all three are among the most gifted musicians of our time, irrespective of category. The three German violinists render most other living violinists irrelevant.

Tetzlaff may be the most intellectual of the three—in both a good and a bad sense.

Tetzlaff is not prone to the flights of inspiration that often characterize Mutter and Zimmermann performances. Tetzlaff is a very deliberate, calculating musician—nothing he does is unintentional—and his performances are planned to the nth degree. When Tetzlaff performances are found wanting, the charges invariably are lack of spontaneity and lack of passion. Such criticisms most often arise in Tetzlaff’s concerto appearances in standard repertory. Even in the Beethoven concerto, the most intellectual of mainstream violin concertos, Tetzlaff is often lambasted (Tetzlaff has received extremely negative notices for his performances of the Beethoven the last few years).

For a world-renowned violinist, Tetzlaff also lacks a unique sound. To most ears, Tetzlaff’s sound is generic, and lacking in color and richness—which I ascribe to Tetzlaff’s use of a modern violin costing a mere $30,000. Tetzlaff is the only international-level violin player before the public today that does not play an instrument made by the great 17th-Century and 18th-Century violinmakers—and, in that regard, I believe Tetzlaff is making a mistake (Tetzlaff claims historic instruments are counterproductive in contemporary repertory, which he plays often and well).

I have always likened Tetzlaff to a great lieder singer, a singer renowned not for the voice itself but for the use the singer can make of the voice. To my ears, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf had a more-or-less unremarkable white voice—yet Schwarzkopf had in her arsenal the most sophisticated shadings, the most profound command of text and musical line, and such a deep understanding of the 19th-Century and Early-20th-Century lied, that the quality of the voice itself became largely immaterial. Tetzlaff, I believe, is a comparable figure: he is the Elisabeth Schwarzkopf of the violin.

Last evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear Tetzlaff in recital, a presentation of the Schubert Club. Tetzlaff’s pianist was Lars Vogt.

Josh and I last heard Tetzlaff in concert in March 2012 playing the Szymanowski Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Minnesota Orchestra. (We had used my parents’ tickets that night, as my parents were vacationing in France.) Josh and I last heard Tetzlaff in recital in January 2009 in Boston, with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

Tetzlaff was on stunning form last night; in fact, I thought he was on fire. I have never heard Tetzlaff to better effect—it was one of those rare nights in which an artist’s concentration was TOTAL and ABSOLUTE. Tetzlaff was so fine, last night’s concert was probably the concert of the season in the Twin Cities, much like last season’s Daniil Trifonov recital was the Twin Cities concert of the season for 2012-2013.

Tetzlaff programmed three violin-and-piano sonatas: Mozart’s final violin sonata, No. 32, K. 454; Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 1; and Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7. Tetzlaff was magnificent in each one.

Tetzlaff also played five excerpts from a György Kurtág composition for solo violin, “From Signs, Games And Messages”, written between 1989 and 2004, one of countless Kurtág pieces bearing that same title. (There are Kurtág compositions for piano, piano duo, solo viola, solo bass and string trio, all bearing the title, “From Signs, Games And Messages”.)

That the Bartók was exceptional came as no surprise: Tetzlaff has been the world’s finest Bartók violinist since Tetzlaff was in his early twenties. Tetzlaff understands the angularity of Bartók’s writing, as well as the barbarity—and the lyricism.

I had not expected the Beethoven to be so fine. Tetzlaff was a touch detached, even a touch fierce, but his ultra-detailed articulation—the widest variety of attacks, the most precise-yet-fluid separation of notes (incredible to hear, near-impossible to bring off)—carried the performance. Normally I would find such a performance cold and clinical, but last night the masterly articulation formed the foundation of a rewarding interpretation.

The Mozart was the surprise of the evening. I have never thought of Tetzlaff as a Mozart player, yet his Mozart last night was fully convincing. Tetzlaff’s Mozart was abstract Mozart a la Thomas Beecham, not gemütlich Mozart a la Bruno Walter and not dramatic Mozart a la Otto Klemperer—and Tetzlaff’s Mozart succeeded beautifully as abstract Mozart.

We’ve had more than a little live exposure to K. 454 in recent years. Julia Fischer programmed K.454 in Saint Paul in February 2012. Josh and I heard Pinchas Zukerman play K. 454 in Boston in November 2010. Mutter concluded a Saint Paul all-Mozart recital in November 2006 with K. 454.

Mutter reigns supreme in Mozart. Zukerman can be very fine in Mozart if caught on a good day (Zukerman had been in exceptional form in Boston—but not in the Mozart). Fischer’s Mozart was a work-in-progress.

In the Mozart, Tetzlaff had little to concede to Mutter other than the absence of a ravishing sound—for which he compensated with quicker-than-usual tempi and a sense of urgency.

I have never been an admirer of Vogt, a wayward pianist and a wayward musician, but last night Vogt’s work was exemplary, perhaps because Vogt was working with a soloist not likely to indulge in tempo fluctuation and manipulation of phrase length. Vogt, working with Tetzlaff, was more satisfactory than Andsnes (who I believe was having an off-night in Boston)—which suggests to me that Vogt should work with disciplined musicians on a more frequent basis.

________________________________________________


It is always thrilling to catch an artist on a great night.

Tetzlaff has never disappointed me, but last night he operated on a higher plane than during my previous encounters with his work.

One never knows, entering a hall, what to expect. One can catch Bernard Haitink on a dull night, over and over, to the point of asking, in exasperation, “Whatever accounts for this man’s exalted reputation?”—only to encounter him on a great night, and suddenly comprehend, “Ah, now I see what everyone is talking about!” and be prepared to forgive him anything.

My parents heard Isaac Stern a dozen times, and caught Stern only once on a good night—but what a great night it was! Stern played sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev, and blew the lid off the roof. For encores, Stern played entire movements of Mozart and Prokofiev sonatas until Stern said he couldn’t go on anymore because his fingers were giving out. After the passing of four decades, my parents still talk about that magical Stern recital.

And yet on every other occasion in which my parents heard Stern, they found him to be deeply disappointing.

________________________________________________


Saint Paul’s Pioneer Press needs to employ a new stringer.

In his review of the Tetzlaff recital, Rob Hubbard, the Pioneer Press stringer, merely recycled Alan Artner’s Chicago Tribune review of Tetzlaff’s Sunday afternoon recital in Chicago. Reworking Artner took more than a little gall, since Tetzlaff’s Chicago program had been different than Tetzlaff’s Twin Cities program.

There was a full house last night at the Ordway.

In contrast, the Sunday afternoon audience in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, according to Artner, had been a small one.

________________________________________________


For us, last night’s recital was the first Schubert Club event of the season.

We had intentionally skipped pianist Jonathan Biss’s Schubert Club recital that had opened the season.

On paper, Biss’s program had been immensely appealing: Brahms’s Klavierstücke, Opus 119; Janáček’s “In The Mists”; Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, perhaps my favorite Beethoven sonata; and Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze.

Alas, we had heard Biss before, and we knew not only that Biss was not worth hearing but that Biss was not worth even leaving the house for. Biss, neither a virtuoso nor a “serious” pianist, has literally nothing to offer. We heard Biss play Beethoven and Janáček, abysmally, in Saint Paul in October 2007. I fear Biss, on that occasion, frightened us away from his performances for life; I cringe in contemplation of ever hearing Biss again. (My former piano teacher, who attended Biss’s recent Twin Cities recital, has assured us that Biss was no better last month than in 2007, and that we were wise to have stayed at home.)

Are there any pianists worth hearing today that are not Russian? Stephen Kovacevich is, for practical purposes, retired, as is Ivan Moravec. Krystian Zimerman has become weird (although we heard Zimerman give a decent account of Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto in Paris in January) and Martha Argerich has always BEEN weird. Murray Perahia has lost it in live performance, at least according to persons whose opinions I respect. Maurizio Pollini is only semi-active. Everyone else, at best, is second-rate.

Besides Evgeny Kissin and Trifonov, who may be counted upon to keep the flame alive?

There is, I believe, no one.

We do not live in an age of pianism.

________________________________________________


Yesterday was Josh’s birthday. He turned 30.

We celebrated the event on Sunday evening.

Gergiev Times Two: Evening One—Shostakovich

Last Friday night, we heard Valery Gergiev lead the Mariinsky Orchestra in music of Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. It was Joshua’s first-ever visit to Carnegie Hall.

The composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Symphony No. 8 comprised the program. Denis Matsuev was soloist.

We last heard Gergiev in March 2009 in Boston, leading the London Symphony in music of Beethoven and Prokofiev. We last heard Matsuev in April 2009 in Boston, playing music of Rachmaninoff with The National Philharmonic Of Russia under Vladimir Spivakov.

Matsuev is not so much a pianist as a man who pounds keyboards. There was no pleasure to be gained in hearing Matsuev blast his way through Shostakovich’s lightweight, empty exercise in “jazz” writing. (Shostakovich’s idea of “jazz”’ is what Americans regard as salon music, ideal to accompany afternoon teas in palm courts of fading hotels.)

In both outer movements of the concerto, there were ensemble problems between soloist and orchestra, no doubt because conductor and soloist were unable to agree on tempi. Such lapses were inexcusable—the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 is the least-demanding piano concerto in the entire repertory, requiring absolutely no virtuosity from soloist, orchestra or conductor. The composer, in possession of very modest keyboard skills, had written the concerto in “popular” style as a vehicle for his own personal use. The concerto’s concise if not bare-boned instrumentation, capable of being played by a chamber orchestra, may be attributed to the composer’s need to tour the piece widely, playing with a variety of small provincial ensembles of low quality, in order to earn performance fees.

What we heard at Carnegie was a throwaway performance of a very weak piece of music, one of the very weakest to have come from the composer’s pen. The performance was unworthy of serious attention.

Nonetheless, the Carnegie Hall audience gave the pianist a prolonged standing ovation—and, pursuant to audience demand, there were even two solo encores (Liadov, Grieg). The audience was, I believe, primed to convince itself that it was hearing something important.

Shostakovich’s three “panoramic” symphonies—the Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh—are inherently problematic, entirely dependent upon performers of genius if they are not to sound weakly-constructed and assembled from feeble materials and feeble ideas. I have never heard a truly fine live performance of any of the three.

In the Shostakovich Eighth, Gergiev was, as always, Gergiev: blatantly, blaringly obvious. Musical line and musical tension were not on display so much as a constant search for climaxes—of which Gergiev found far more in the score than other conductors are able to locate. I thought Gergiev’s leadership was abysmal if not embarrassing, always trying to obtain louder and louder fortissimos while musical tension dissipated, minute-by-minute, bar-by-bar. The climax-plagued performance put me in mind of Victor Hugo’s maxim: “Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.”

The Mariinsky Orchestra is not a virtuoso ensemble on the level of Cleveland, Chicago or Philadelphia—and it is inferior to Russia’s finest orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, itself far from the last word in terms of perfection of execution and beauty of sound. (We last heard the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic in April 2011 in Boston; we shall hear that orchestra again in February in New York.)

Among American orchestras, the Mariinsky reminded me of the San Francisco Symphony: both orchestras offer roughhewn, unsophisticated playing; both orchestras favor sheer mass of sound above transparency and translucency; and both orchestras find more fulfillment in dogged displays of power and energy than the more subtle pursuits of finesse and refinement.

It was not a good evening at Carnegie Hall—except for the box office, which made a killing. With surcharges, we had to pay $161.00 per ticket, surely the most we’ve ever laid out for concert tickets. Even the Berlin Philharmonic, appearing in Boston in November 2009, had set us back only $103.50 per ticket—and, disappointing as had been the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, the Berlin under Rattle had been a vast sight better than the Mariinsky under Gergiev.

________________________________________________


In the early 1990s, when Gergiev’s fees were still low, Gergiev appeared with some frequency in Minneapolis, leading the Minnesota Orchestra.

I was too young to attend concerts at the time, but my parents remember Gergiev’s Minnesota days. My parents recall that Gergiev obtained better results from the Minnesota musicians than the dull and dour (and profoundly unimaginative) Edo de Waart, then Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra.

However, my parents also relate that Gergiev’s Minnesota performances offered interpretations no less crude than his current ones.

That said, the man has undeniable intensity . . . a quality that, in itself, does not necessarily translate into good performances.

Comings And Goings

We skipped Bloomington Civic Theatre’s recent production, now closed, of Yasmina Reza’s oft-performed “Art”. We simply were unable to interest ourselves in a non-professional production of such a schematic play.

Minneapolis Musical Theatre’s current production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, “Sunset Boulevard”, closes this weekend at New Century Theatre. The reviews scared us off—and word-of-mouth has been even worse than the reviews. I am told ticket sales have been very scarce.

We are presently trying to decide whether Park Square Theatre’s current production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Adventure Of The Suicide Club” is worth a trip to Saint Paul. We are also trying to determine whether Theatre In The Round’s current production of Ludmilla Bollow’s “In The Rest Room At Rosenblooms”, a play whose premise sounded promising on paper, can possibly be as bad as the reviews have suggested.

This weekend, we WILL see The National Theatre Of Great Britain’s production of “War Horse”, a stage adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo children’s novel. “War Horse” has settled in for a two-week run at the Orpheum Theatre.

________________________________________________


In August, for the first time, we shall attend The Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Over four days, we shall see eight of this year’s twelve Stratford productions.

Each day, we shall pair a heavy play with a not-so-heavy play.

On our first day, we shall see “Blithe Spirit” and “Measure For Measure”. On our second day, we shall see a new work and Schiller’s grand “Mary Stuart”. On our third day, we shall see “The Merchant Of Venice” and “Fiddler On The Roof”. On our final day, we shall see “Romeo And Juliet” and a new stage adaptation of “The Three Musketeers”.

The 2013 Stratford Shakespeare Festival should be a good follow-up to last summer’s visit to The Shaw Festival, where we saw everything on the bill.

________________________________________________


As a general rule, we do not attend concerts or other music events in summer months—and this summer will be no different. There is nothing announced we want to hear.

The Twin Cities hosts a couple of minor enterprises, both small, that offer summer opera performances; we have never paid attention to either enterprise. Skylark Opera offered “The Mikado” this summer. I believe the performance run has already ended. Mill City Opera will offer “The Barber Of Seville” next month. We shall not be in attendance.

Each July, the city of Winona convenes its Minnesota Beethoven Festival. We have never attended a single performance—although we had acquired tickets last year to hear the Leipzig Quartet (at the last minute, we decided to go up to the lake that weekend rather than down to Winona).

The rarest of occurrences is scheduled for this year’s Minnesota Beethoven Festival: an appearance by a visiting orchestra. The Russian National Orchestra is scheduled to give one concert (under a conductor unknown outside Russia) during the Minnesota Beethoven Festival. The orchestra’s Winona appearance will be the first by a visiting orchestra to Minnesota in years and years and years; visiting orchestras are never heard here.

We shall not attend the concert. We have no desire to drive all the way down to Winona and back on a weeknight.

________________________________________________


In decades past, my parents used to be able to drive down to Ames or Iowa City on an occasional weekend and hear top-flight American and European orchestras on tour. Both Iowa State University and The University Of Iowa used to sponsor appearances by world-class artists and ensembles in extensive (and very impressive) performing-arts subscriptions.

Performing-arts subscriptions, everywhere, began to wither in the 1990s; for reasons of mounting cost, it became impossible for universities—or other sponsors—to continue such programming at exalted levels.

Today, if one wants to hear touring orchestras with any frequency, one must travel to New York or Washington—or to Europe.

Against Our Better Judgment

Against our better judgment, on Saturday night Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in concert.

We attended the concert as a favor to Joanne, an attorney at Josh’s firm. Joanne had wanted to hear the guest soloist, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, but Joanne’s husband had refused to go to the concert—he has declared a moratorium on SPCO concerts until all current musicians are replaced and a Music Director named—and Joanne had not wanted to go by herself.

Our arrangements were all very last-minute—and, at the VERY last minute, we were joined by Joanne’s sister-in-law.

Many persons are predicting a major career for Leonard, who is just starting to obtain important engagements. Leonard has a voice of some size and some color. She is a competent musician and—singing Berlioz’s Les nuits d'été—her French was acceptable. She has an earnest and graceful stage demeanor.

“Where never is heard a discouraging word” has long been the official policy for local music reviews. In critical notices of the Leonard concert, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Saint Paul Pioneer Press, both of which employ stringers, carried on as if a young Janet Baker had graced the Saint Paul stage. The overstatement, even puffery, of the stringers was sheerest foolishness: what Saint Paul heard was a capable singer, not a special one. Leonard will have the honorable career of a Béatrice Uria-Monzon, not the spectacular one of a Teresa Berganza.

Les nuits d'été, perhaps the most bewitching of song cycles, lacks a great current interpreter. I have heard Susan Graham and Anne Sofie von Otter, both distinguished artists, come to grief in the work. Is there an active singer that can do the work justice?

Much as I hate to say this (because I cannot stand her fundamental phoniness and smarminess), I think Renée Fleming should have a go at Les nuits d'été. Fleming’s French is faultless; Victoria de los Ángeles and Régine Crespin, among others, have shown that a soprano voice can handle the tessitura of Les nuits d'été.

The Berlioz was the main event of the first half of the program; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 was the main event of the second half.

The conductor, Edo de Waart, gave a lightweight, glib account of the Beethoven. The SPCO needs to stop engaging de Waart; the man has nothing to offer.

Two John Adams orchestrations of piano compositions completed the program. Adams’s “The Black Gondola”, a very imaginative and very successful orchestration of Franz Liszt, opened the concert. Adams’s “Berceuse elegiaque”, a less successful orchestration of Ferruccio Busoni, opened the second half of the program. Both Adams orchestrations had premiered in Saint Paul in 1989.

The SPCO needs to engage a Music Director, a Music Director that can shape up and elevate the ensemble. In its present incarnation, the SPCO plays cleanly and in tune—and that’s about it.

My suggestion is that the SPCO go after one of the young German hotshots, Christoph König or Cornelius Meister, before their fees get out of hand—and before the Baltimore Symphony grabs one and a major European orchestra the other.

König or Meister could set the town on its ear—and provide something the Twin Cities has not had since Dimitri Mitropoulos left town in 1949: a conductor worth hearing week after week.

We Should Have Been At The Kimbell

On Sunday afternoon, Joshua and I heard the Dallas Symphony in a program devoted to music of Wagner. The conductor was the orchestra’s Music Director, Jaap van Zweden.

Act I of “Die Walküre" was the primary work on the program.

Zweden was lost in “Die Walküre". Wagnerian melos was not to be heard under Zweden’s baton. The conductor had no grasp of the drama depicted in one of Wagner’s greatest spans of music; the conductor was unable to unleash the emotions that surge through Wagner’s score.

The ebb and flow Wagner built into his music, a never-ending cycle of tension and release, had been ironed out by Zweden. Everything was too swift, everything was too light, everything was too objective, everything was too uninflected, everything was too vaporous. Zweden might as well have been conducting a “number” opera, given his inability to build a head of steam and command a long time span.

I wondered whether Zweden’s swift tempi constituted a concession to an inadequate cast of singers.

The Siegmund was Clifton Forbis, possessor of a dry, grainy voice that sounded years past its prime. (It is my understanding that Forbis is in the process of giving up the stage.)

The Sieglinde was Heidi Melton, who did not for one second capture Sieglinde’s radiance. Melton has no individuality at all: Melton’s voice lacks distinctive qualities, Melton’s artistry is all-purpose. Wagnerians would be unable to pick out Melton’s Sieglinde from a police audio lineup.

The Hundig was Eric Owens. Owens had the only first-class voice onstage. Owens’s voice is incredibly rich, with amazing depth and resonance, and it is a voice of great beauty and of unique timbre. Owens is destined to achieve stardom.

Owens is not a Wagner singer. Owens’s voice is an “open”, “American” voice, with an open, American sound, ideal for American music—and no other. Owens was at sea in trying to shape Wagner’s phrases—and his German seemed to have been picked up in Appalachia.

Owens had been scheduled to sing Adams’s “The Wound Dresser” with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra this season. It was an appearance Josh and I had looked forward to. We hope the SPCO will reschedule “The Wound Dresser” with Owens in the next season or two.

Three Wagner orchestral works were played prior to Act I of “Die Walküre”.

The concert began with the Prelude to “Lohengrin”.

Zweden chose a very quick tempo, but—fatally—he could not find a pulse, and the players were unable to help Zweden find a pulse. The result was a disastrous performance, false entries everywhere, uncomfortable looks on faces all over the stage. Balancing was an issue: the brass was too prominent, the strings under-nourished and colorless and faceless.

I was dumbfounded. The “Lohengrin” Prelude is nothing more than an extended crescendo-decrescendo. Any conductor should be able to lead the work capably—and yet Zweden had offered a performance that would have been unacceptable in a provincial outpost.

The Prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin” followed. Zweden played it as orchestral showpiece, in the manner of Arthur Fiedler.

Next came the Prelude to “Die Meistersinger”. Zweden’s tempi were too fast, and he did not catch the work’s exultation and grandeur—or even the necessary dignity and nobility.

The counterpoint of “Meistersinger” neither registered nor “spoke” as it must—“Meistersinger” is nothing but a glorious display of counterpoint writing—and balancing issues clearly were the root cause of the counterpoint deficiencies. Instrumental lines that should have been heard were inaudible, subsidiary lines that should have remained subsidiary often became overpowering. Counterpoint not telling in Zweden’s hands, the “Meistersinger” Prelude came across much like a French potpourri overture by Hérold—the very thing that would have appalled the composer of “Meistersinger”.

I last heard the Dallas Symphony in February 2008. The orchestra was in much better shape in 2008 than it is today.

On Sunday, balancing was off all afternoon. I did not hear a proper balance once.

The string section was unable to produce the glow Wagner’s music demands. It has been a long time since I heard such featureless, bland, anemic string playing.

The winds did not register as they must, weaving in and out of the musical line, taking charge one moment, disappearing into the orchestral fabric the next.

The brass playing was very disappointing. The section did not produce a uniform, integrated sound.

All afternoon, the musicians played as if they were bored by the music, and unconvinced by Zweden’s interpretations.

Perhaps the Dallas musicians were suffering from exhaustion at the end of a long concert season that had included a grueling tour of Europe.

Perhaps substitute musicians contributed to the haphazard nature of the orchestra’s work. Numerous substitute musicians were on the Dallas concert platform on Sunday, including two brass principals (trumpet, horn) that are members of orchestras elsewhere (Chicago, Baltimore).

Whatever the causes of the shortcomings, what we heard on Sunday was basically unforgivable, coming as it did from what is supposed to be a major ensemble.

If Sunday’s Wagner concert is representative of Zweden’s work in Dallas, the Dallas Symphony has a major problem on its hands.

Josh and I should have devoted Sunday afternoon to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

A Bird’s-Eye View Of Meyerson Symphony Center

I. M. Pei’s Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.

Meyerson, which opened in 1989, is probably North America’s finest concert hall. Its interior is glorious, and its auditorium is renowned worldwide for its remarkable acoustics.

Taking advantage of the fact that we were in Dallas, Joshua and I went to Meyerson on Sunday afternoon to hear the Dallas Symphony in Act I of Wagner’s “Die Walküre".

Transmogrifications

At the beginning of the season, Joshua and I had penciled into our calendars a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert for Sunday, May 5, at Ted Mann Concert Hall.  (The Sunday performance was to be the only performance that weekend at a traditional concert venue—and we prefer traditional concert venues to church venues, where acoustics are variable and unpredictable.)

The original program:  Schoenberg’s Ten Early Dances; Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2; Webern’s Langsamer Satz (from the composer’s String Quartet); and Mozart’s Symphony No. 28.  The conductor/soloist was to be Thomas Zehetmair.

Somewhere along the line, the program was quietly changed to:  Schoenberg’s Ten Early Dances; Mozart’s Symphony No. 28; Heinz Holliger’s Sketches For Violin And Viola; and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364.  In the revised program, Zehetmair’s wife was to have joined the orchestra as viola soloist in the final two works.

Performances for the first weekend in May have been shelved.

________________________________________________

For the second weekend in May, the SPCO was scheduled to play solely in church venues—but the program had been so interesting that Josh and I had penciled it into our calendars as a prospective concert of interest.

The original program:  Andrew Norman’s Gran Turismo; Schumann’s Cello Concerto; and Hartmann’s Symphony No. 4.  Zehetmair was again scheduled to conduct; the announced cellist was Steven Isserlis.

SPCO concerts will resume that weekend, and Zehetmair and Isserlis will honor their contracts.  However, the program has changed.

The new program:  Mozart’s “The Marriage Of Figaro” Overture; Schumann’s Cello Concerto; Schoenberg’s Ten Early Dances (saved from the discarded program of the previous week); and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39.

We shall not go.  The Hartmann was what we had most wanted to hear.

________________________________________________

We had penciled into our calendars another SPCO concert for Sunday, May 19, at Ted Mann Concert Hall (it was, again, to be the sole performance of the weekend at a traditional concert hall).

Zehetmair was once again scheduled to be on the podium.

The original program:  J. Strauss, Jr.’s “Roses From The South” in the Schoenberg arrangement; J. Strauss, Jr.’s “Emperor” Waltz in the composer’s own arrangement for small orchestra; Charles Wuorinen’s Spin 5 For Violin And 18 Players; and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 (now moved up to the previous week).

The amended program:  Honegger’s Pastorale d'été; Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 2; Holliger’s Three Sketches For Violin And Viola (rescued from the amended program for the first week of May); and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (also rescued from the amended program for the first week of May).  Both Mr. and Mrs. Zehetmair will participate in the program.

We shall not be in attendance.  We shall be in Dallas that weekend, attending Josh’s brother’s commencement at S.M.U. (and hearing the Dallas Symphony in Act I of “Die Walküre”).

________________________________________________

We had penciled into our calendars another SPCO concert for the first weekend in June, to be played in the Ordway.

The original program:  Berlioz’s Les nuits d'été; and Erwin Stein’s chamber arrangement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.  Edo de Waart was the scheduled conductor, Isabel Leonard the scheduled soloist.

The program has been amended:  Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 will now replace the Mahler.  Conductor and soloist remain unchanged.

It is very unlikely we shall attend.  If we go, it will be because of Leonard, and not because of de Waart.

________________________________________________

In January of this year, the SPCO had offered each SPCO player a $10,000 signing bonus to be paid at the time a new deal was reached.

The final terms of the agreement provide only for a $3,000 signing bonus.

Everyone in town knows the circumstances of the reduction, but I doubt news outlets will address the matter.

A Waste Of Our Time

On Thursday night before last, my parents, Joshua’s sister, and Joshua and I heard the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall in Chicago, part of a music weekend in Chicago planned around a rare opportunity to hear Pierre Boulez.

A week or two before the concert, Boulez cancelled. The replacement conductor was Cristian Macelaru, Associate Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Debussy’s “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun” opened the concert. It was a lovely performance, with ravishing winds, of a work the Chicago Symphony can play in its sleep. It made me want to hear the Chicago Symphony musicians in something more substantial by Debussy, such as the composer’s greatest orchestral work, “Images”.

Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 followed. Yefim Bronfman was soloist.

I do not admire the first two piano concertos of Bartók, both written in the 1920s, the decade after Bartók's early post-Strauss, post-Debussy works and the decade before Bartók found his own individual variant of Modernism, a variant that carried him to success during the final decade of his life and work.

There is not much for a pianist to do in the Bartók other than play the notes. The work affords little opportunity for individual expression by the soloist.

In any case, Bronfman is a technician; he has never displayed personality or individuality in anything he has played.

Bronfman recorded all three Bartók concertos for Sony in a disc released in 1995. Support was provided by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. That recording, sloppy beyond belief, is the worst integral recording of the concertos ever to see the light of day. It reflected no credit whatsoever upon soloist, conductor or orchestra, all of whom might as well have been sight-reading. If I am not mistaken, the disc won a Grammy Award—and not in the category of Best Comedy Performance.

The Chicago performance was a skilled run-through of the Bartók, nothing more. Anyone hearing the work for the first time would have asked himself, “Why is this work in the repertory?”

After intermission, the orchestra played Bartók’s Divertimento For Strings. It received the finest performance of the evening.

The Chicago strings have a steel-like quality that some persons find annoying, yet the steeliness of the orchestra’s string section worked to advantage in the Bartók Divertimento—the steeliness lended backbone to a piece always in danger of evaporating into thin air. The Divertimento lacks the gravitas and mystery of the composer’s other work for string orchestra, Music For Strings, Percussion And Celesta.

It was in the final work of the program that I most missed Boulez. Stravinsky’s “The Song Of The Nightingale” did not come off at all. It was an isolated series of nice moments that we heard, with some nice work from the winds, instead of a coherent, satisfying performance.

“The Song Of The Nightingale” is not an easy work to bring off—has anyone ever improved upon Fritz Reiner’s 1956 recording with the Chicago Symphony?—and last week’s performance amounted to nothing.

There were numerous empty seats at last Thursday’s concert. It made me wonder whether the concert had not sold well or whether ticket purchasers, disappointed at not hearing Boulez, had stayed home.

If the latter was the cause of the poor attendance, those persons choosing to stay home had made a wise decision.

Mutter

On Monday evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear Anne-Sophie Mutter in recital at the Ordway. We had not heard Mutter since November 2006, when we had attended her all-Mozart recital, also at the Ordway.

Mutter is an incomparable instrumentalist and an incomparable musician. Her interests are wide-ranging, her personality is beguiling, and she is in possession of an original and penetrating mind, all of which may be heard in her playing. As instrumentalist or as musician, she has no peer among today’s violinists.

Mutter eschews the onstage play-acting so many violinists have adopted in recent years. Not for her are displays of dumb-show faces and prance-around-the-stage dance antics that mar the performances of Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Nikolaj Znaider, among many others. Mutter allows her violin to do the “expressing”.

Monday’s recital began with a performance of Mozart’s Sonata No. 27 In G Major, written in 1781.

For me, the Mozart was the least interesting performance of the evening. I did not hear the usual “Mutter Magic” in the Mozart, and I suspect Mutter was not yet focused for the night. Mutter is an incomparable Mozart player—the best alive among violinists—and her Mozart on Monday night was more objective than usual, and slightly impersonal, even detached. The ideal tempo was never found—at times, it seemed as if Mutter wanted to move ahead of her pianist, the excellent Lambert Orkis, and at other times it seemed as if Mutter wanted to slow down—and the perfect emotional temperature was never captured. By Mutter standards, the Mozart was a disappointment.

The Schubert Fantasy In C Major, from 1827, followed.

Within the last couple of years, Mutter has become of the belief that the Schubert Fantasy is the single greatest work ever written for violin. Mutter’s view is founded in the circumstance that the Fantasy bears all the hallmarks of late Schubert: it has the widest possible range of emotion; it is of unique and original design (but has perfection of form); and it carries the unparalleled profundity of practically everything Schubert wrote in his final two years.

If one may judge from recorded performances, the Fantasy is not an easy work to bring off. The work has been recorded countless times, by most of the prominent violinists of the last hundred years, and yet none of the recorded performances is satisfactory.

Mutter must have the measure of the work, because in her hands the Fantasy—for the first time—convinced me of its greatness.

While listening, I tried to determine what Mutter was doing that made the Fantasy come alive. My conclusions: Mutter’s sound and tonal coloration were right for the piece; Mutter’s tempi were exceptionally well-judged; and Mutter’s phrasing was extremely detailed and extremely natural. Of greater importance, Mutter knew how to knit into a unified whole the work’s disparate characteristics: its pages of melancholy; its song-like episodes; and its brilliant display passages. Mutter may be the only violinist of modern times who understands the work, and is inspired by it.

Mutter plans to record the Fantasy—and I plan to be among the first buyers when the disc is issued.

After intermission came Lutoslawki’s Partita in its violin-and-piano version. The Partita had been commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; its first performance had been at the Ordway in 1985 (Pinchas Zukerman had been soloist).

The more familiar orchestral version of the Partita first appeared in 1988, in Munich, with Mutter as soloist—and Mutter has kept the work in her active repertory ever since, often performing it alongside the composer’s Chain II and Interlude (the three works, performed together, constitute a violin concerto in all but name).

In remarkably short time, the Partita has become a classic—and Mutter has become inextricably associated with the work, performing it all over the world. The Partita is now one of Mutter’s calling cards—and, she says, it is the work that opened her mind to contemporary composition, of which she is now a master performer.

Mutter has recorded the Partita in its orchestral version, famously, and her recorded performance is excellent—but her performance on Monday night was even better than her recording. The central Largo is now freer, and carries more tenderness, than the recorded performance, and the brilliant Presto is more sizzling than before, with its Szymanowski-like central episode now thrown into high relief.

The recital concluded with a performance of Saint-Saëns’s Violin Sonata No. 1 In D Minor, from 1885.

I have never much cared for the Saint-Saëns—I have always thought it facile and empty—and I am always disappointed to see the work appear on recital programs. It must be one of those works more fun to play than to hear.

Mutter was the third recitalist in recent years to have closed an Ordway recital with the Saint-Saëns. Joshua Bell had done so in February 2008, without distinction, and Julia Fischer had done so in February 2012, again without distinction.

I was not particularly looking forward to hearing Mutter in the Saint-Saëns. Mutter’s natural realm is Central European repertory; she does not always capture the right fragrance in French music.

The Saint-Saëns turned out to be the surprise of the night. Mutter gave a performance the likes of which I have never heard. It was the most exciting—even thrilling—performance of the evening.

In hindsight, I can see that the formal Classicism of the piece is what appeals to Mutter. The Saint-Saëns allows her to display her command of Classicism while at the same time displaying her personality—and her virtuosity.

All were on abundant display.

Mutter took speeds no other violinist would dare, yet each note was perfectly-placed, and on pitch. There was not the slightest hint of strain.

Every phrase, every coloring, every shading, was minutely characterized, yet the long line was never lost.

Most of all, Mutter seemed to find content in the piece. There was true drama to be heard in the first movement, and genuine emotion in the second. Mutter succeeded in elevating the work beyond salon music, a thing few musicians have managed to accomplish.

Mutter’s was a performance of genius—of a work that probably does not deserve such careful treatment.

At the conclusion, the audience—with justification—erupted. The pianist shook his head in admiration and amazement, while Mutter gave the audience a smile that resembled that of a cat that ate the canary.

There were three encores, two French, surely as follow-ups to the Saint-Saëns: Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera; Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 2; and the Meditation from Massenet’s “Thaïs”.

Monday evening’s concert played to a full house. The last time I saw a full house in one of the two main large concert venues in the Twin Cities was, if I am not mistaken, the last time Mutter appeared here: November 2006.

Mutter clearly has a Minnesota following.

Two Recitals

There occurred the weekend before last the concert of the year in the Twin Cities.

On Sunday afternoon, February 3, pianist Daniil Trifonov appeared in recital at the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center in Saint Paul, and my parents and Joshua and I attended the recital. Tickets were the most sought-after in years; the hall could have been sold to capacity several times over.

Trifonov, only twenty-one years old, is probably already the world’s finest pianist. He has a touch and technique superior to those even of Yevgeny Kissin and Maurizio Pollini—which says much about his brilliance. Trifonov is the first genuine successor to Vladimir Horowitz; in terms of technique and keyboard artistry, Trifonov more or less renders every other living pianist irrelevant. He is the Jascha Heifetz of his age.

Trifonov’s musicianship is that of a man in his thirties, and he appears to have faultless taste, very remarkable for one so young. If he continues to develop, he will take keyboard performance to places it has never been before, and become THE musician of his time, irrespective of category. He is a genius.

Trifonov’s program was centered on Liszt’s B Minor Sonata in the first half and Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes in the second half. He blew the lid off the roof in both works.

Whether through instinct or learning, Trifonov knows how to realize a work’s “essential connective tissue”, to borrow the terminology of a famous piano pedagogue. Only a handful of living conductors, let alone instrumentalists, possesses this rare gift—and, until Trifonov, not a single living pianist enjoyed benefit of the gift. One must go back decades, to Emil Gilels, to identify a pianist who understood so deeply a composition’s materials and construction—and knew in performance how to realize such materials and construction in so fresh and spontaneous a manner.

Trifonov also has soul in his arsenal, as well as drama—and Trifonov’s sense of drama is not contrived. Not since Sviatoslav Richter has there been a pianist with such natural and convincing command of drama.

I was not the only one floored by Trifonov. My former piano teacher was floored (“the greatest pianist I’ve heard, the finest recital I’ve heard”) and my father was floored (“the most important concert in the Twin Cities since Tennstedt’s Bruckner Eighth in 1988”).

There were four encores—there would have been more if the audience had had its way—and the encores, too, were dazzling. Most jaw-dropping was a keyboard arrangement of the “Infernal Dance” from Stravinsky’s “Firebird”, dispatched with thrilling virtuosity—and dismaying ease.

The recital began with a performance of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 2. The performance was at a level worthy of Horowitz (Horowitz’s mastery of Scriabin was, I believe, Horowitz’s finest achievement).

We probably shall never again hear Trifonov in the Twin Cities. Trifonov’s Twin Cities appearance was booked well over a year ago; since that time, Trifonov’s fees have mounted to astronomical levels, and his fees are now beyond what Twin Cities presenters can meet.

I hope to be able to hear him in future—many times.

________________________________________________


One week ago tonight, tenor James Valenti appeared in recital at the Ordway Center in Saint Paul, and my parents and Josh and I attended the recital.

Valenti is an opera singer, not a recitalist, and he did not attempt Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, which I thought very wise. Instead, Valenti had enough sense to stick with what he knows, and provided a program mixing arias with lightweight songs by composers well-versed in stage music.

Valenti has a major instrument, but he is not yet a finished artist. He was a fine Werther last season in Minnesota Opera’s presentation of the Massenet masterwork, but he was nonetheless a touch awkward onstage and made little of the “Werther” text.

The singer was not in good voice last week. It was one of those nights in which it took the singer’s voice a very long time to warm up—and such things happen, and listeners are generally understanding.

The first half of the program consisted of three arias from French repertory—the principal tenor arias from “Manon”, “Carmen” and “Werther” (the last a substitute for the announced “L’Africaine”)—mixed with songs by Hahn, Duparc and Tosti. The second half of the program was devoted to two arias from Italian repertory—the principal tenor arias from “Luisa Miller” and “L’Arlesiana”—mixed with songs by Bellini, Verdi, Puccini and Tosti.

As a general rule, the arias fared better than the songs. The singer’s voice opened up in the second half of the recital and, for the first time all night, he began to enjoy himself—which, in turn, allowed listeners to relax and to enjoy the singer.

It was not a night to be recorded in concert-hall annals, but I have heard worse—and much of the audience appeared to appreciate the performance more than I, to judge from the enthusiastic applause and standing ovations.

The pianist was Danielle Orlando, Principal Opera Coach at The Curtis Institute Of Music.

Quiz Time

The first person correctly to identify the Paris building in the above photograph will win his or her choice of free concert tickets for tomorrow night.

Option Number One: The Minnesota Orchestra, Hannu Lintu, conductor, Alban Gerhardt, cello. Program: Dvorak Carnival Overture, Elgar Cello Concerto, Prokofiev Symphony No. 5.

Option Number Two: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, John Storgårds, conductor, Christian Tetzlaff, violin. Program: Sibelius Valse Triste, Schumann Violin Concerto, Corigliano Symphony No. 2.

The winner, in making his or her selection, might wish to note that Tetzlaff is one of the three of four finest violinists in the world today, while Gerhardt would not even have a career were Heinrich Schiff still in his prime.

The winner might also wish to note that most observers, comparing the two Finnish conductors, would rate Storgårds above Lintu, although such comparison is of piffling consequence, much like arguing whether Kansas or Nebraska has the higher mountain range.

Each program, in its way, is attractive. Joshua and I had penciled both concerts into our calendars—this was to be the weekend of The Battle Of The Finns—but we have decided not to attend either concert owing to our outrage over Monaco’s new policy on Guillemets.

Instead, we shall devote our weekend to teaching something useful, such as algebra, to my parents’ dog.

Salle Pleyel

Salle Pleyel, the primary concert hall in central Paris, named after the piano manufacturer.

During my previous visits to Paris, Salle Pleyel had been closed for extensive renovation. It was only last month that I was able to see anything other than the exterior of Salle Pleyel.

A splendid example of Art Deco architecture and design, Salle Pleyel opened in 1927. A 1928 fire required the auditorium to be reconstructed. The reconstruction was done on the cheap, with the result that the auditorium lost not only its beauty but also its acoustics.

The auditorium was to remain notorious for the next 74 years, known worldwide for its disadvantageous seating layout and atrocious acoustical properties. It was only in 2002 that Salle Pleyel was closed for wholesale renovation, one purpose of which was to create at long last a concert hall worthy of Paris.

The current auditorium, completed in 2006, is entirely new and entirely modern, and bears no resemblance to the original auditorium or its 1928 replacement. The rest of the building has been restored to its original Art Deco elegance.

After only two visits, Salle Pleyel has become one of my favorite concert halls.

Three Paris Concerts

We heard three orchestra concerts on three successive evenings in Paris.

The first concert was by Orchestre National d'Île de France, playing under its Music Director, Enrique Mazzola, at Salle Pleyel.

Orchestre National d'Île de France is a full-time orchestra that serves not only Paris but the entire Île de France, frequently playing in suburban and exurban locales. The orchestra is of fairly recent provenance, founded in 1974, and has had one Music Director of note, Yoel Levi, who surely found the job a challenge.

Orchestre National d'Île de France is not a good orchestra. It is by far the least of Paris’s four full-time concert orchestras. Ensemble is not tight, the orchestra’s sound quality is thin and wispy, and the orchestra lacks deep musical instincts. From the appearances of the musicians onstage, three-quarters of the orchestra’s membership is comprised of musicians at the very ends of their professional careers while one-quarter is comprised of musicians at the very beginnings of theirs.

The primary work on the first half of the program was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1; the sole work on the second half of the program was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 3 (“Polish”).

The Beethoven sounded as if it had not been rehearsed; the Tchaikovsky was a sloppy, loud, vulgar performance, the kind of thing one seldom hears in the U.S., even from provincial ensembles. I found Mazzola, a Spaniard who studied in Italy, laughable in the Tchaikovsky, so over-the-top was his interpretation.

The pianist in the Beethoven was Cédric Tiberghien, a French pianist highly regarded in France, but never able to establish a U.S. career.

Tiberghien was, I believe, having an off night. There were lots of slipped notes, and Tiberghien appeared unable to relax, most likely because he was working with a poor conductor. Mazzola did what he wanted in the Allegro, changing tempi constantly, which threw Tiberghien off. Mazzola conducted the Largo like a dirge, which made the lengthiest middle movement among all Beethoven concertos go on forever and ever. Even the jaunty Rondo was a mess—the conductor displayed a tendency to speed up at the ends of phrases, with the result that the players became in sync neither with themselves nor the soloist. (Mazzola’s Tchaikovsky also displayed the same tendency to speed up at the ends of phrases, a practice that single-handedly destroyed the Alla tedesca as well as the Scherzo and Finale.)

Two short works were placed at the beginning of the concert.

Panufnik’s “Katyn Epitaph”, from 1967, was first. Little more than an eight-minute crescendo, “Katyn Epitaph” received the one convincing performance of the night—and I suspect “Katyn Epitaph” ate up a significant portion of the available rehearsal time.

A world premiere was next: Svitlana Azarova’s “Mover Of The Earth, Stopper Of The Sun”, billed as an overture. I had never previously heard a note of Azarova’s music—in fact, I had never even heard of Azarova until we had booked our tickets for the concert.

“Mover Of The Earth, Stopper Of The Sun” was written in a very conservative idiom; it was the musical equivalent of an Alex Katz painting. The composition demonstrated a genuine mastery of orchestration—there was some real color to be heard—but the musical materials and the composer’s manipulation of those musical materials, on one hearing, did not strike me as fundamentally imaginative.

I have no idea whether the composition was a representative work of the composer.

________________________________________________


The following evening we heard Orchestre National de France at Le Théâtre du Châtelet.

Le Théâtre du Châtelet is not the normal venue for Orchestre National de France concerts—Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is the orchestra’s permanent home—but Théâtre des Champs-Élysées had been booked for the evening, forcing Orchestre National de France to play elsewhere.

Despite its poor acoustics, Le Théâtre du Châtelet is much-used for orchestra concerts—for Paris orchestras as well as visiting orchestras. (In 2003, I had heard Riccardo Muti lead the orchestra of La Scala at Le Théâtre du Châtelet.)

At the time we booked our tickets, Colin Davis had been announced as conductor for the January 24 Orchestre National de France concert. Nonetheless, we had not expected Davis to appear, knowing that Davis has been canceling most of his scheduled concerts for the last year, often at short notice.

As we had anticipated, a few days prior to the concert, it was announced that Davis would not be appearing, and that Neeme Järvi would be on the podium instead. The scheduled program—Mozart and Sibelius—was unchanged.

I have never been a Järvi admirer. Järvi is famed for his glibness, skating over the surface of an enormous repertory. Järvi’s secret, I believe, is that he chooses faster-than-necessary tempi in order to keep things moving at all costs—a practice that, for him, has proven successful (within obvious limits).

The concert began with a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”). Järvi is not a Mozart conductor, and I had expected nothing from him in the “Haffner”.

Järvi surprised me greatly, offering the finest performance of the evening. Järvi’s Mozart was abstract Mozart, like Beecham’s—and, in the right hands, abstract Mozart can work beautifully. I was in rapture the entire performance, marveling at its freshness and ebullience of spirit, the most distinguishing characteristics of this “Haffner” interpretation. Järvi’s may have been the finest “Haffner” I have ever heard.

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 followed, with Arabella Steinbacher—wearing a ridiculous dress in a shade of purple I hope never again to encounter—as soloist.

I had heard Steinbacher once before, exactly two years ago, playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 with the Boston Symphony (under Dohnanyi).

Steinbacher had been unimpressive in Mozart in 2011, and Steinbacher remained unimpressive in Mozart in 2013. I do not know where Steinbacher’s strengths lie—but they clearly do not lie in the music of Mozart. Steinbacher comes across as bland and uninteresting in the music of Mozart, aimlessly pecking away at the notes.

Steinbacher produces a beautiful but unvarying sound; her music-making lacks tension and personality and rhythmic life. Like Julia Fisher, with whom she shares a teacher, Steinbacher seems to be going for an all-purpose “radiance” in her performances. Radiance is a one-note device (and a device unable to sustain any performance for long), and I believe Steinbacher needs to add a touch of Anne-Sophie Mutter-like steel to her arsenal.

In the Mozart concerto, Järvi tried to stay out of the way—when he probably should have inserted himself into the proceedings and seized control. It appeared to me that Järvi deliberately tried to keep the orchestral contribution low-key in order not to upstage Steinbacher. Giving the spotlight to the soloist is not always the best course of action for a conductor—and, at this point in his career, Järvi no longer need worry that a soloist might attempt to undercut him behind the scenes, and cause him loss of engagements, if he took command of a performance.

The second half of the program was devoted to Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3.

Davis does a masterful Sibelius Third—Davis is far and away the best living exponent of this symphony—and it would have been a rare privilege to hear Davis lead a work he conquered more than forty years ago.

Järvi is not a Sibelius conductor at Davis’s level. Järvi’s propensity to skate over the surface comes to the fore in music of Sibelius—Järvi’s Sibelius, above all, sounds “colorful”—and the Paris performance of the Sibelius Third was lightweight, without mystery or soul or grandeur. It did not cohere as a complex, fascinating and profound work, which the Sibelius Third very definitely proves to be under Davis’s guidance.

What we heard from Järvi was conducting more appropriate for Sibelius’s incidental music from the 1890s (music light and pleasant, but nothing much beyond that): tunes were brought to the fore, beauties of orchestration were highlighted, the music was paced so as to bounce along agreeably. Amid this outpouring of bucolic delights, symphonic argument became lost; the music was drained of content and drama. Järvi’s performance was, in essence, facile—always the standard knock against Järvi.

At the conclusion of the performance, I observed widespread smiles among members of the audience. The Sibelius Third is not supposed to cause an outbreak of smiles.

I last heard Orchestre National de France in 2004 (under Daniel Harding, in music of Berg and Mahler). That long-ago night had not been a happy one. The orchestra’s basic intonation had been shockingly poor, the level of ensemble dismaying. I honestly wondered, throughout the performance, whether the musicians were deliberately insulting Harding, a conductor widely disliked (the musicians studiously avoided looking at Harding all night, and Harding appeared to grow more despondent by the minute).

The orchestra clearly has improved since that unfortunate concert nine years ago. Parisians like to claim that Daniele Gatti, Music Director since 2008, has performed miracles with the orchestra—but I believe such assertions may be carrying things too far. Orchestre National de France in its current state remains nothing more than a typical French ensemble.

The French idea of an orchestra remains different from—and alien to—the Central European or American idea of an orchestra: a body of musicians that plays as one. French orchestras, for better or worse, have always been 100 musicians, playing as 100 musicians. The result: French orchestras are of comparable quality to French armies; both institutions are preternaturally incapable of performing their functions at a high level.

At the conclusion of the scheduled program, the orchestra and Järvi performed an encore: Sibelius’s “Andante Festivo”.

That there was an encore at a standard subscription concert surprised us. After the concert, I asked an elderly man sitting near us whether the orchestra typically played encores.

His answer: “Never”.

________________________________________________


The following evening, we were back at Salle Pleyel, hearing the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi, the orchestra’s current Music Director.

The Orchestre de Paris is once again Paris’s finest orchestra, the traditional place it has occupied in the pecking order.

In 2003 and 2004, that honor had gone to the orchestra of the Paris Opera, a tribute to the work of James Conlon, Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera from 1995 to 2004. In 2003, I heard the finest Strauss “Salome” I ever expect to hear from Conlon and the orchestra of the Paris Opera—the orchestra had been magnificent—and I had experienced that “Salome” only one night after hearing an unimpressive and nondescript Orchestre de Paris in a subscription concert at Théâtre Mogador, at the time the orchestra’s temporary home while Salle Pleyel underwent renovation.

The Orchestre de Paris has an excellent array of winds. The wind playing is the shining glory of the orchestra, and is much finer than anything we are accustomed to hear in the Twin Cities, where the winds of the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra are not top-of-the-line.

The brass section of the Orchestre de Paris is competent—the Orchestre de Paris is probably the only Paris orchestra of which such may be said at present—but the level of sheer virtuosity does not approach that of brass sections of American orchestras.

The orchestra’s strings are the weak link. The strings of the Orchestre de Paris produce a featureless, un-beautiful sound. If a listener seeks richness, depth and coloration from a string section, the listener will find the Orchestre de Paris strings disappointing. If a listener seeks transparency, translucency and delicacy from a string section, the listener will find the Orchestre de Paris strings disappointing.

Music of Schumann, Lutoslawski and Beethoven was on the program. (When I had heard the Orchestre de Paris in 2003, music of Lutoslawski—the Concerto For Orchestra—had been on the program that night, too.)

Schumann’s “Genoveva” Overture started things off. Järvi gave a “by-the-notes” reading—Schumann is definitely not a Järvi strength—and the performance failed to ignite, lacking emotional weight and cumulative power.

Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto followed the Schumann. Krystian Zimerman, who premiered the Lutoslawski in 1988 and for whom the work was written, was soloist.

Until we arrived in the concert hall, we had been unaware that the Lutoslawski was being performed in order to mark the 100th anniversary, to the day, of Lutoslawski’s birth: January 25, 1913.

The performance—from pianist, conductor, musicians—was excellent. It was the best thing we heard in Paris.

I have come to the conclusion that the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto must be the finest post-war piano concerto. No matter how many times one hears the work, one always hears countless new and fascinating things. In less than a quarter-century of existence, the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto has already been recorded at least six times, four times to stunning effect. Of modern works for orchestra, only Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 3 can claim a comparable number of commercial recordings.

I agree with the prediction Shostakovich made near the end of his life: Shostakovich’s own music would not survive the test of time, but Lutoslawski’s music would. (In making his pronouncement, Shostakovich did not have the benefit of knowing the late flow of masterpieces yet to come from Lutoslawski’s pen.) Lutoslawski surely is the great post-Stravinsky composer, with the necessary nod to Carter and Dutilleux.

Zimerman, who no longer appears in the U.S., now looks old, even shopworn. His virtuosity was undiminished, although his countenance grows more dour each time I see him.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”) concluded the program.

The storm music was lively—in what otherwise was an abysmally tedious performance. The first, second and fifth movements were deadening beyond belief.

Järvi can be a profoundly boring conductor . . . and I was bored out of my mind by Järvi’s Beethoven.

The audience appeared to be bored, too. The applause after the Beethoven was less than half the applause at the conclusion of the Lutoslawski—and the audience present was a regular subscription audience, and not a specialist modern-music audience.

Järvi achieved something I did not think possible: he made me appreciate Osmo Vanska’s Beethoven.

Vanska’s Beethoven may be criticized relentlessly. Little more than an accumulation of details, Vanska’s Beethoven is fierce if not brutal, unsophisticated and one-dimensional, exaggerated and anti-intellectual, un-German and un-Classical, totally lacking in spirituality and heart—and wholly empty.

Yet, as a general rule, Vanska’s Beethoven is not boring.

A Creation Of The IMG Marketing Department

On Tuesday evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan in recital, a recital on this season’s Schubert Club subscription.

I had heard Weilerstein before.

In April 2011, Weilerstein had played Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic and Yuri Temirkanov in Boston’s Symphony Hall. That concert had been a stop on the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic’s 2011 North American tour, and that afternoon’s performance of the Shostakovich concerto had provided the low point of the concert.

Temirkanov and the orchestra had been magnificent in the Shostakovich, offering the finest orchestral account of the work I ever expect to hear—all the while entirely ignoring the soloist. Weilerstein’s presence had been imposed on the orchestra by IMG, the producer of the tour (IMG is also Weilerstein’s management firm), and Temirkanov clearly had been unimpressed with the soloist he had been handed. That afternoon, Temirkanov did what he always does when he finds an artist to be unsatisfactory: he pointedly disregarded the soloist, and totally overplayed the orchestra’s contribution. In doing so, Temirkanov was insuring that the orchestral part, by itself, became sufficiently interesting to maintain listener attention.

Temirkanov, over the years, has become a wizard at this sort of thing: keeping concertos interesting and fulfilling, no matter how dreadful the soloist. Temirkanov probably picked up this particular skill during his journeyman years in Russia, a period in which he was required to deal with one poor soloist after another, most often in Tchaikovsky concerto literature—and forced to learn how to keep a concerto performance alive and vibrant all by himself (longtime Russian conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky also possesses this very same skill).

Given how little she had contributed to the performance of the Shostakovich concerto, Weilerstein might as well have skipped that 2011 Boston concert. Her absence would have been noticed by few—she was THAT unimpressive—and her small sound was lost in the confines of Symphony Hall (Temirkanov had been determined deliberately to drown her out in tutti passages, but Weilerstein could not be heard even in unaccompanied passages, of which there are many in the work).

Weilerstein did not reproduce her disappearing act in Saint Paul, perhaps because she was no longer paired with a musician who possessed no respect for her and perhaps because Saint Paul’s Ordway Hall is a much smaller space than Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Weilerstein is a capable instrumentalist, but she is not an interesting musician. Her playing is bland; it lacks personality and individuality and character and depth. Everything she plays sounds much the same—and, to my ears, remarkably insincere.

Weilerstein is thirty years old. Her musicianship is that of someone ten years younger, which signifies that Weilerstein is developing far too slowly . . . or has no business embarking upon a solo career. Weilerstein appears to be—and very much acts like—the prototypical American airhead, with very little between the ears.

Whatever the cause of Weilerstein’s dull-paced maturation, it is easy to understand why Temirkanov had had no use for her. If she were Russian, Weilerstein would be outranked by 500 other cellists and be consigned to life membership in some out-of-the-way provincial theater orchestra.

In Saint Paul, Weilerstein played, in order, Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 5, Barber’s Cello Sonata, Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne and Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata.

Weilerstein was lost in the Beethoven, which in any case she played in far too Romantic a style. The Barber did not come off, and I had expected that: the piece is thin if not empty, the ideas shopworn; no one can do much of anything with the piece. The Stravinsky, one of four chamber-music offshoots from “Pulcinella”, was fun—but that had everything to do with Stravinsky, and nothing to do with Weilerstein. In the Rachmaninoff, Weilerstein’s sound was all paste and glue, as if her notion of Late Romanticism was to saturate everything in a gooey stream of sound.

Throughout the recital, Weilerstein emoted shamelessly.

Her facial muscles received the workout of a lifetime; it was exhausting—and ultimately demoralizing—to watch Weilerstein go through her prepared facial maneuvers. Her eyebrows, alone, embarked on a Marine Corps-like lifting regimen demanding unprecedented strength and endurance.

Weilerstein threw her head—and mountains of hair—back and forth and side-to-side all night, like some madwoman in a 1930s Warner Brothers prison movie; her ostentatious, ultra-dramatic bow movements, clearly rehearsed, were straight from 19th-Century “She Can’t Pay The Rent” melodrama.

I hadn’t seen such hokey onstage dramatics since . . . the last time I saw Weilerstein.

Happily, the presence of Barnatan kept the evening from being a total waste.

Barnatan is an extraordinary pianist, as eloquent in Beethoven as in Rachmaninoff. He possesses a beautiful touch and beautiful fingerwork. He drew a sound from his instrument that had clarity and warmth and color. Barnatan brought intellectual vigor to the Beethoven, rhythmic life to the Stravinsky, and power and mood to the Rachmaninoff.

Barnatan is the finest pianist I’ve heard in quite some time. Barnatan should have a solo career . . . and not have to waste his time traipsing around, traveling with and accompanying a creation of the IMG marketing department . . . who is perilously close to camp.

Update Of January 15, 2013, at 5:22 p.m. C.S.T.

I have closed comments on this particular post, something I have never previously been forced to do in over six years of posting.

“Clotted Cream On The Cusp Of Curdling” Or “Sight-reading Reger”

My father remarked a few days ago that Rudolf Firkušný, were he alive today and in his prime, would be the world’s finest pianist.

Half a century ago, when Firkušný was at the peak of his powers, Firkušný had trouble obtaining prestigious engagements—and no one on the planet believed Firkušný to be among the handful of finest living keyboard artists.

Firkušný’s artistry was never in doubt. The problem was that, during Firkušný’s active years, he was superseded by artists possessing greater gifts and greater magnetic force. All such artists had something special to offer, something unique that Firkušný lacked, whether it be temperament, personality, imagination, more penetrating musicianship or virtuosity. Figures such as Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Wilhelm Kempff, Wilhelm Backhaus, Claudio Arrau, Rudolf Serkin, Arthur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli were all considered occupants of a class of pianism above Firkušný’s.

Firkušný simply got lost amid all the great keyboard talents of his time. An estimable pianist, Firkušný could not compete in a market overrun with legendary figures.

Over the last fifty years, the giants of pianism have died—and they have not been replaced. A figure such as Firkušný, never in the top flight of pianists during his lifetime, would today tower over virtually every living pianist.

My father’s point was not to advocate raising Firkušný to the pantheon—my father adored Firkušný, but my father was well aware that several of Firkušný’s peers were far greater artists—but to note how unimpressive is today’s supply of pianists.

We do not live in an age of pianism. As always, there happens to be a very large number of touring virtuosos traveling the globe—but most are not worth hearing on a frequent basis. They are, with few exceptions, uninteresting, lacking individuality and distinguishing characteristics.

My father’s dictum was inspired by a piano recital—more accurately, half of a piano recital—we attended a week ago Tuesday night.

Onstage at The Ordway Center was Stephen Hough in a Schubert Club recital, playing for an audience that was very small. Never have I attended a Schubert Club recital with such a large number of unoccupied seats—which signified that many Schubert Club subscribers had stayed home.

Those who missed the recital missed nothing.

The first half of the recital consisted of two Chopin Nocturnes and Brahms’s Piano Sonata No. 3. The second half of the recital—which we, along with approximately sixty other concertgoers who left at the same time we did, decided to skip—consisted of a composition by the recitalist followed by Schumann’s Carnaval.

Hough has good fingers—but he has nothing else in his arsenal.

Hough is the most commonplace of pianists. He has no singular touch, he draws no unique sound from his instrument, he does not explore the instrument’s sonority. His music-making lacks individuality, character, personality, temperament—and grace and charm (if an artist has no other qualities, grace and charm can make up for a lot). Hough demonstrated no emotional range or conviction in the Chopin, he exhibited no grasp of the intellectual demands of the Brahms.

The Brahms was a true disaster. “Clotted cream on the cusp of curdling” was my mother’s description of Hough’s Brahms, and my mother was correct. Textures were thick and crude, rhythms were unsubtle and machinelike, drama and lyricism were absent, tension was intermittent, the pianist exhibited no emotional depth. Hough demonstrated, over and over, that he did not understand Brahms’s counter-rhythms and Brahms’s counterpoint.

The entire performance, I remained clueless why Hough had programmed Brahms’s greatest contribution to the piano-sonata form. In Hough’s hands, the Brahms sounded formless, poorly-constructed, with page after page of weak and uninteresting musical argument—just the opposite of the work’s most pronounced qualities. Said my father of Hough’s Brahms, “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was sight-reading Reger.”

Given the first half of the recital, we were unable to countenance sitting through the second half. We had no interest in hearing Hough as composer, and the Chopin and Brahms had demonstrated amply that Hough lacked the poetry and sensitivity necessary to make the Schumann worthwhile.

When we departed at intermission, we noticed that two renowned piano instructors in the Twin Cities were leaving at the very same time, heading out of the building as fast as they could walk, as if escaping a fire. We heard one of them say to the other, “typical British pianist”, which I doubt was intended as a compliment.

I suspect The Schubert Club put Hough on this season’s subscription because his fees are low. The Schubert Club will present only one high-fee artist this season—Anne-Sophie Mutter, whose fee is astronomical—and the rest of the artists on this year’s schedule are very much drawn from the low-budget lists circulated by the various agencies.

Although Hough is not worth hearing, there ARE up-and-coming pianists who carry more than a little promise. Daniil Trifonov, for one, is arousing great excitement throughout Europe. Trifonov is scheduled to make his Twin Cities debut early next year. We have tickets, and we are excited at the prospect of hearing Trifonov.

Another pianist attracting great acclaim in Europe is Simon Trpčeski.

This very weekend, Trpčeski had been scheduled to make his Minneapolis debut. His local appearance was cancelled because of ongoing labor troubles at the Minnesota Orchestra.

Trpčeski was supposed to have played the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. I cannot stand the music of Rachmaninoff and I generally avoid it—but I would have made an exception this weekend in order to hear Trpčeski.

This weekend’s Minnesota Orchestra program was one of only six during the entire 2012-2013 season that Joshua and I had contemplated attending. Andrew Litton was to have been on the podium. In addition to the Rachmaninoff, the program was to have included Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 and Stravinsky’s 1919 “Firebird” Suite.

I regret not hearing Trpčeski.

Throwaway Virtuosity

Two weeks ago last night, we heard the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall in Chicago. The conductor was Charles Dutoit; on the program was music of Britten, Walton and Beethoven.

Britten’s Variations And Fugue On A Theme Of Purcell (“The Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra”) opened the concert. The performance was excellent, splendid in every way. I never expect to hear a finer performance of the work.

It was a rare thing, hearing an orchestra play with such perfection of balance—perfection of balance is the first quality that immediately strikes listeners accustomed to hearing second-tier ensembles—and the Chicago Symphony’s balance was phenomenal. No European orchestra is capable of playing with such utter perfection of balance, except perhaps the Vienna Philharmonic under the right conductor in the right repertory; in the U.S., only the Cleveland Orchestra displays such acute and brilliant attention to matters of balance.

The Walton Violin Concerto followed. Soloist was Gil Shaham.

Shaham, an admirable artist, gave a very reticent account of the Walton. I do not think Shaham has internalized the Walton Violin Concerto; the performance had no unique character, no fervor, no flavor. It would not surprise me if Shaham had added the Walton to his repertory only in recent years—and it would not surprise me if Shaham were to admit under cross-examination that he does not love this particular concerto (which he has no obligation to do).

The Walton Violin Concerto is a very great work, but one not easy to master. Very few violinists have proven totally compelling in the work—starting, oddly, with Ida Haendel, whose 1978 recording captures a reading of purest inspiration—and many front-rank violinists have never bothered to add the work to their repertories.

Anne-Sophie Mutter is working on the Walton for the first time right now—Mutter began working on the concerto seriously in February, and she says that she loves it—and it will be interesting to hear what Mutter makes of the piece (although Mutter has yet to schedule it). It was Haendel, whom Mutter worships, who convinced Mutter to look at the Walton.

Unlike most great violin concertos, the first movement of the Walton Violin Concerto is not a major sonata-form movement carrying the weight of the work. The first movement of the Walton is a scene-setter, contrasting two lyrical themes. Marked sognando (“dreamy”), the first movement is attractive and atmospheric, but it is the least interesting and least satisfying and least dramatic movement of the concerto.

Weight is introduced in the magnificent second-movement Scherzo, one of Walton’s finest creations. A blend of Neapolitan dance and canzonetta, the Scherzo is fiendishly difficult, exceedingly dramatic and emotionally gripping from beginning to end.

Finer still is the Rondo that concludes the concerto. The Rondo contrasts march-like episodes with moments of deepest lyricism and regret—and the Rondo finds Walton at his most inspired. The composer proceeds through a bewildering array of emotions, forever increasing tension and excitement, until a final release of energy dazzles and overwhelms the listener.

In a great performance of the Walton, the listener’s blood begins to boil early in the second movement—and grows hotter by the minute until the concerto reaches its thrilling and passionate conclusion.

The Chicago performance was unable to reach such heights. What we heard was something very neutral.

No one onstage gave evidence of profound love for the work. No one onstage gave evidence even of wholehearted belief.

It was a professional, objective and guarded performance we heard, not a memorable or distinguished one. I doubt the Walton Violin Concerto is Dutoit’s piece or the Chicago Symphony’s piece, any more than it is Shaham’s piece.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 concluded the program.

I have never thought of Dutoit as a Beethoven conductor, but the performance of the Beethoven could hardly have been bettered—unless Colin Davis, the living master of Beethoven’s Seventh, had been on the podium. Dutoit’s performance was sprightly and fleet, in the current fashion, but I never felt that genuine gravitas or depth was lacking. Dutoit’s was a performance on an entirely different plane than the performance of the Beethoven Seventh we had experienced exactly five weeks earlier, when we had suffered through Thomas Dausgaard’s toy-soldier account of the same symphony with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Dutoit has the gift of keeping things fresh, no matter how often he has performed a work. How Dutoit manages this is beyond me—but I have had occasion in the past to remark upon Dutoit’s possession of this unusual gift, a gift that Dutoit alone of today’s leading conductors exhibits in abundance.

One would think that the musicians of the Chicago Symphony, too, would be sick unto death of playing the Beethoven Seventh—yet the performance demonstrated not merely professionalism but great dedication and commitment as well. I was in awe, the entire time, how spectacular was the playing, how vital and energetic was the music-making, with ardency and ebullience to spare.

To my ears, the Chicago Symphony has never sounded better. Intonation, balancing, voicing, phrasing, layering and texturing and quality of sound, rhythmic vitality and crispness: everything was to die for.

The Chicago strings displayed the perfect blend of heft and transparency, a characteristic only a handful of orchestras in the world can claim. Absent were the glassiness and wiriness that mark some American string sections; absent also were the impenetrable thickness and opaqueness that mark others.

Given how high were the orchestra’s exacting technical standards, to mention that the level of bar-by-bar execution approached perfection—attacks, releases, uniformity of sound throughout the full dynamic range: all displayed throwaway virtuosity—becomes mere afterthought.

The Chicago Symphony of today sounds better and plays better than it did during the Daniel Barenboim years (not that the Barenboim era was a high point in the orchestra’s history—I always thought the Chicago musicians under Barenboim sounded as if they were operating under constraints). My father says that the orchestra sounds at least as fine as it did under Georg Solti—and perhaps better.

This is a great, great orchestra. Chicago provides a template of how an orchestra is supposed to sound. I wonder whether Chicago is now better even than Cleveland.

We are due to hear Chicago again in March. We are already looking forward to it (and wondering whether Pierre Boulez will cancel; it may be Josh’s last chance to hear Boulez).