Munich's Alter Hof

Before the Wittelsbach ruling dynasty began the centuries-long project of building Munich’s Residenz, Alter Hof was home of the Wittelsbach court.

Alter Hof is comprised of five main structures built during the Medieval, Gothic and Renaissance periods. The buildings survived until World War II, when most of Alter Hof was destroyed by Allied bombing late in the war. (The Allies could not bomb Munich until it had gained air bases in Italy, which occurred only in 1944—Munich was too far from Great Britain to allow bombers to make successful round trips between Britain and Munich. The same was true of Vienna.)

Below is an engraving of an artist’s drawing from 1850 showing a small portion of Alter Hof.


Below is an engraving of an artist’s drawing from 1869 showing the inner courtyard of the very same building that appears in the 1850 drawing.


Below is a photograph that shows the latter scene today.


Much of Alter Hof was rebuilt after the war, but rebuilding was in greatly-simplified form, as the photograph above amply demonstrates.

The only portion of Alter Hof that survived the war intact was Munzhof, the portion of Alter Hof erected during the Renaissance.

Munzhof is renowned for its beautiful arcaded courtyard.


Munzhof’s courtyard was built to serve as horse stable. It later was to house the Wittelsbach art collection, and lastly was to provide a home for The Bavarian Mint (from which Munzhof ultimately was to derive its lasting name).

The courtyard of Munzhof is the only portion of Alter Hof worth visiting today.

While Munzhof’s courtyard is open to the public, the interiors of all five buildings of Alter Hof are not accessible for public viewing. Alter Hof interiors mostly house various governmental offices—although a few have been turned into Germany’s version of condominiums.

To Americans, it seems odd that portions of a former royal palace might be sold off to the public to serve as private residences.

However, how many Americans are aware that large portions of Hampton Court Palace outside London are used as “grace and favor” apartments, offered at the pleasure of The Crown? (The apartments are most often occupied by those retired from Royal Service.)

And how many Americans realize that most of Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna—everything but the ground floor, in fact—is rented out to apartment-dwellers?

Temirkanov And Saint Petersburg

A week ago today, Joshua and I went to Symphony Hall to hear Yuri Temirkanov lead the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic.

The Saint Petersburg Philharmonic is probably Russia’s finest orchestra. For fifty years (1938-1988), the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic was led by Yevgeny Mravinsky, the man responsible for turning the orchestra into Russia’s most important symphonic ensemble. At Mravinsky’s death, Temirkanov succeeded Mravinsky; Temirkanov has remained conductor of the orchestra ever since.

The Saint Petersburg Philharmonic is not a virtuoso orchestra in the sense that the orchestras in Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia are virtuoso orchestras. The Saint Petersburg Philharmonic is a fine body, but its level of ensemble would be of garden-variety standard among American orchestras.

Further, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic lacks a distinctive sound. The orchestra’s strings are the glory of the ensemble—they produce a deep, rich sound with more than a little color—but the woodwinds are variable in quality and the playing of the brass is not polished. When all 100 musicians play, orchestral balance is not perfect—and sophisticated layering of sound and texture is clearly not one of the orchestra’s goals.

The concert began with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture”. Temirkanov conducted a serious, dignified account of the score—it was more than mere showpiece in his hands. The processional chants that begin the overture were played more slowly than usual, and with more gravitas; one could almost visualize religious icons and smell incense of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. The Allegro that followed was suitably brilliant and exciting, with the climax perfectly placed.

A performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 followed. The soloist was Alisa Weilerstein.

The orchestra gave a magnificent account of the score. Shostakovich’s music must be in the musicians’ blood—they offered the freest and most natural performance of the score I have ever heard.

The Concerto has an unusual instrumentation: double winds, a single horn, strings, timpani and celesta. The horn and timpani are called upon to play virtual duets with the soloist. Full orchestra is used sparingly; the ensemble is asked to weave in and out of the lightly-scored composition, and is seldom required to appear at full strength.

The Concerto is a difficult score for an orchestra to master, what with its many transitions. The members of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic were in total command of the work—their playing displayed ease, confidence and conviction, all in abundance.

Weilerstein was inaudible much of the afternoon. The Concerto is a series of personal utterances for the soloist, tempered with isolated public outbursts, and only the outbursts involve full orchestra. Issues of audibility should not arise in this work.

Yet Weilerstein was barely audible when unaccompanied, even in the lengthy third-movement cadenza. She disappeared completely in passages involving full orchestra. I wonder whether Weilerstein plays an inferior instrument.

Weilerstein must have an Actors’ Equity card. She performed a series of moon faces for the audience while she performed. She also engaged in unnecessary and ostentatious playacting gestures when applying bow to strings.

The disparity between the largeness of Weilerstein’s onstage dramatics and the smallness of her sound was disconcerting.

After intermission came Brahms’s Symphony No. 4.

Last Sunday was the fifth time Josh and I had heard Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 in concert since September 2007. In order, we had heard performances by Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Neville Marriner and the Minnesota Orchestra, Fabio Luisi and the Dresden Staatskapelle, and Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Temirkanov conducts the music of Brahms more freely than Central European conductors—he offers a great deal of rubato, most of it convincing, and he invariably slows for transitions, not always successfully—and his Brahms has greater warmth than the Brahms of any other active conductor.

The performance was a good one. The first-movement was a little too expository and a little too lacking in inevitability, with the climax—the syncopated double-statement of the eight-note theme—not overwhelming as it must be. The Andante, on the other hand, was perfection.

The Scherzo might have been more vividly characterized, and the Passacaglia should have been more dramatic. Nonetheless, it was a performance of the Brahms Fourth that I would be happy to encounter again.

The orchestra offered the standard Temirkanov encore: “Nimrod” from Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”. It was beautifully and movingly done.

Furtwangler In America

Wilhelm Furtwangler’s first appearances in the United States occurred in 1925.

Between January 3 and January 30 of that year, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in ten concerts, nine in Carnegie Hall and one in the Brooklyn Academy Of Music.

The photograph below depicts Furtwangler conducting the New York Philharmonic in Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 during the conductor’s first visit to America.


Furtwangler’s 1925 New York repertory is listed below. If Furtwangler offered more than one performance of a listed work, asterisks note the total number of performances.

Beethoven
Symphony No. 5
Symphony No. 7

Berlioz
“Benvenuto Cellini” Overture **

Brahms
Symphony No. 1 ***

Handel
Concerto Grosso, Opus 6, Number 10 ***

Haydn
Cello Concerto No. 2 **
Symphony No. 94 (“Surprise”)

Mendelssohn
The Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”)

Schumann
Piano Concerto **
Symphony No. 4 **

R. Strauss
Death And Transfiguration
Don Juan **
Till Eulenspiegel

Stravinsky
The Rite Of Spring [complete ballet] **

Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 5 **

Wagner
“Die Meistersinger” Prelude
Prelude And Liebestod From “Tristan Und Isolde”

Weber
“Der Freischutz” Overture

Furtwangler’s New York concerts were a sensation, more so with the public than with American critics, most of whom were diehard advocates of the streamlined music-making of Arturo Toscanini. At Furtwangler’s final 1925 New York concert, the ovations were the most prolonged of the season—and Furtwangler was immediately reengaged for the following year.

Furtwangler spent no unnecessary time in the United States.

On the morning after his final concert, he returned to Europe on the “Minnetonka”.

Munich's Residenz

Munich's Residenz, former home to the Wittelsbach dynasty, which ruled Bavaria for over 700 years, is the subject of this photograph. Munich's National Theater, now home of The Bavarian State Opera, is barely visible on the right.


The Residenz as it appeared in 1875 may be seen in this photograph. Once again, The National Theater, then home of The Munich Court Opera, may be seen on the right.

Gueden, Jurinac And Della Casa

There are singers of the past I regret I missed.

Three of them—sopranos Hilde Gueden, Sena Jurinac and Lisa Della Casa—appear in the photograph above. The photograph was taken at the Salzburg Festival in 1960.

That year, Salzburg’s new state-of-the-art Festpielhaus was inaugurated with great fanfare amid worldwide interest. Opening night saw a new and elaborate production of Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosencavalier” with Gueden singing Sophie, Jurinac singing Octavian and Della Casa singing the Marschallin. The conductor was Herbert Von Karajan.

In the last century, more soprano reputations have been made in “Der Rosencavalier” than any other opera. Such was certainly the case with Gueden, Jurinac and Della Casa, all three of whom found their earliest acclaim in roles from Strauss’s 1911 evocation of The Age Of Maria Theresia.

Gueden (1917-1988), a native of Vienna, sang only one “Rosencavalier” role her entire career, contenting herself with Sophie. Gueden’s first Sophie was sung in Italy during the war, under the baton of Tullio Serafin. The role made her famous. Gueden was to return to Germany after the war carrying the status of a certified international star (Gueden, half-Jewish, had been forced to leave Hitler’s Germany). Gueden retained Sophie in her repertory until late in her career, never “moving up” to the Marschallin, unlike so many other sopranos.

Jurinac (born 1920), of Croatian/Viennese descent, became a member of the Wiener Staatsoper ensemble in 1944. Her debut was to be delayed, considerably, because the Staatsoper was destroyed by Allied bombs on Jurinac’s third day in Vienna. Staatsoper performances were not to resume until the war had concluded.

Jurinac’s first performance in “Rosencavalier” came in 1946, and it came in Vienna. She sang her first Octavian, to unprecedented acclaim, with the Staatsoper while it occupied Theater An Der Wien.

Jurinac kept Octavian in her repertory for almost twenty years. During this period, she also sang a handful of performances of Sophie. Late in her career, Jurinac became a celebrated Marschallin. Jurinac gave her farewell performance in 1982 in Vienna, singing the Marschallin one last time at the Staatsoper.

Della Casa (born 1919), from Switzerland, sang Sophie early in her career. She was soon to add Octavian to her repertory, and later she added the Marschallin, the “Rosencavalier” role for which Della Casa was most celebrated.

A famous film was made of the 1960 Salzburg “Rosencavalier” production, but the filmed performance involved only one of the three sopranos in the photograph: Jurinac. Della Casa was replaced by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf for the filmed performance, and Gueden was replaced by Anneliese Rothenberger.

Della Casa was livid when she learned that Schwarzkopf would replace her for the filmed performance. Della Casa, believing she had been wronged, permanently thereafter struck Salzburg from the list of venues at which she would appear.

Ironically, when Schwarzkopf made a belated Metropolitan Opera debut in 1964 as the Marschallin, Della Casa appeared as Schwarzkopf’s Octavian. Relations between the two artists during rehearsals and performances in New York, it was reported, were amicable.

Gueden and Della Casa were not known as amicable persons during their performing careers.

Gueden, especially, was widely disliked by those with whom she worked. There was a mettlesome quality in Gueden’s personality that made her one part charming and gemutlich, and one part obstreperous and unyielding. Gueden’s odd combination of soft tissue and hard steel apparently worked to her advantage onstage—the two dissimilar qualities lent her performances tension, and helped to make her performances interesting—but such qualities did not make Gueden many friends in private life.

On a personal level, Gueden and Della Casa intensely disliked each other.

During Georg Solti’s first studio recording of a complete opera for Decca, a recording of Strauss’s “Arabella” made in Vienna in May and June 1957, Gueden’s and Della Casa’s childish antics drove Solti to despair. He almost abandoned the project (and was to hate his “Arabella” recording for the rest of his life).

The producer of the recording, John Culshaw, has written how Gueden and Della Casa carried on like third graders during the lengthy recording sessions, bickering with each other over the most trivial matters—the two women actually resorted to shoving each other during the sessions—and relentlessly complaining about the other to anyone who might listen.

Gueden and Della Casa were almost fired from the project on account of their behavior. Neither Solti nor Culshaw worked with either singer ever again—and both singers were soon to find that their services as recording artists were no longer much in demand once the “Arabella” sessions concluded. (According to Culshaw, practically everyone involved in the recording sessions resolved never again to work with Gueden and Della Casa; George London, who sang Mandryka for the recording, was thereafter to refer to Gueden and Della Casa as “a couple of ball-busting bitches”.)

Jurinac, in contrast, was loved on a personal level by almost everyone who worked with her. It is hard to find anyone who offers anything but praise for Jurinac as a person.

Gueden, Jurinac and Della Casa all possessed one common trait: envy over the fact that Schwarzkopf enjoyed a much higher career profile than they (as well as the higher fees that came with that higher profile).

It was quite natural that all three singers regarded Schwarzkopf with suspicion. For them, Schwarzkopf was the elephant in the room—Schwarzkopf's career was of such overwhelming brilliance that it eclipsed the careers of her Central European contemporaries. It was then and it is now hard to assess the careers of any of the three sopranos without bringing Schwarzkopf into the equation.

All three, at one time or another, were to criticize Schwarzkopf publicly, and sometimes brutally—and the criticisms were often directed both at Schwarzkopf as an artist and Schwarzkopf as a person.

Of the three, the most direct rival of Schwarzkopf was Della Casa, whose repertory was most similar to the repertory of Schwarzkopf.

Della Casa’s and Schwarzkopf’s repertories overlapped significantly. Both singers recorded many of the same roles at much the same time, a circumstance made possible because Della Casa recorded for Decca while Schwarzkopf recorded for EMI. A natural rivalry of sorts emerged.

Invariably, Schwarzkopf came out on top.

I cannot think of a single instance in which, in the same role, Della Casa’s recorded version trumps Schwarzkopf’s recorded version. Schwarzkopf always operated on multiple levels, an inherent part of Schwarzkopf’s incomparable genius, while Della Casa was very much a “surface” artist.

Jurinac and Schwarzkopf, on the other hand, were to share a common misfortune that was to trouble both singers for decades: in the very early 1960s, Karajan, without notice and without explanation, coldly and abruptly dropped both singers from the list of artists with whom he would work.

Neither singer ever forgave the slight.

Richard Tucker Costumed For "La Gioconda"

There are singers of the past I am pleased I missed.

Plans

On Sunday, Joshua and I plan to hear in concert the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov. The program: music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich and Brahms (Temirkanov is a wonderful Brahms conductor, one of the finest Brahms conductors alive).

So far as we know, Temirkanov has not cancelled. The last two times Josh and I planned to hear Temirkanov, he cancelled, leaving us disappointed (and a little bit miffed). Needless to say, we hope he does not cancel on Sunday afternoon.

When I was in law school, I would often drive up to Baltimore to hear Temirkanov lead the Baltimore Symphony. Temirkanov’s Baltimore concerts invariably were excellent. It was during this period that I found out that Temirkanov was much more than a specialist in Russian repertory. I learned firsthand that Temirkanov was especially fine with Brahms and Mahler—as well as Elgar and Britten, something I found surprising at the time.

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The following weekend, Josh and I may attend a performance of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, to be presented by Boston Ballet. The run of performances begins tonight.

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Otherwise, we are hunkered down, wrapping things up (and dealing with taxes).

We are still in the midst of making graduation arrangements with everyone from out of town. It has taken us longer than we expected, primarily because everyone is having trouble making final decisions. We hope to have everything completed within another ten days.

Because everyone is coming for Josh’s graduation, we will not attempt to go home for Easter this year.

A Seventh Grader With A Thesaurus

Three weeks ago tomorrow night, Joshua and I went to Jordan Hall to hear the Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin play music of Bach, Handel and Telemann.

The concert was not good.

Intonation was poor. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin has been performing for thirty years; there is no excuse for such a long-established original-instrument ensemble to offer impure intonation.

Balance was an issue all evening. Balances were generally odd if not outright peculiar. Both wind instruments and string instruments would often overwhelm the entire instrumental ensemble, then virtually disappear from the orchestral fabric.

Voicing of instrumental lines was absent. Musical phrases would start and stop, without clear notion of how phrases might be tailored to the requirements of instrumentation and maintenance of musical line.

The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin has always played without a conductor (except for a handful of special performances tied to recording projects). The engagement of a conductor would immediately address the group’s intonation, balance and voicing deficiencies. Remaining conductorless has hampered the group’s level of ensemble—which in turn hampers the level of music-making.

Playing was not neat and sparkling, as we have come to expect from British original-instrument ensembles. The quality of sound was not sweet and beguiling, as we have come to expect from Italian original-instrument ensembles.

Indeed, much of the evening was simply a mess. The group left the impression of a devoted but hapless college faculty ensemble, composed of eager but not-quite-first-class musicians at a small college in Kentucky.

The concert began and ended with Telemann. The Overture (Suite) In F Major got things underway; the Concerto In E Minor For Recorder And Flute concluded the proceedings.

In between were Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Handel’s Concerto Grosso, Opus 6, Number 2.

To my taste, the group’s music-making was unduly physical—the musicians “acted out” the music as they played, telegraphing the emotions of the music with their bodies and faces.

I do not embrace “dumb show” music-making, but on the evening of March 12 I was in the minority: the Boston audience ate up such antics. The more the musicians mugged, the more the Boston audience responded.

Myself, I wished the quality of music-making had matched the intensity of the elaborate mime show enacted onstage.

An excerpt from Rameau’s “Dardanus” was performed at the conclusion of the scheduled program.

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The Boston Globe has become a laughingstock—assuming the newspaper has not always been a laughingstock, which very well may be the case. Globe music coverage grows worse by the day.

The Globe review of the Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin concert had to be seen to be believed. It was the work of a stringer, Matthew Guerrieri, who clearly is the world’s biggest fan of romance novels written for the trailer-park set.

The breathless yet meaningless hokum offered by Guerrieri was incessant, coming in wave after wave of hoary cliche: “the multifariousness of the past”, “historical vectors coalesced”, “Bach in a cutting-edge mood”, “the cutting-edge Handel in an old-fashioned mood”, “the performance stylishly plundered elements from across history”, “an artful imagining of the era’s foreshadowings”, “a cornucopia of approaches”, “a Renaissance-bucolic Passepied”, “an ambient-frozen Plainte”, “populist splendor”, “posited as a plausible forerunner of Romantic virtuosity”, “dexterously mediated between the ensemble’s comping and [the] harpsichordist’s flamboyance”, “furiously buzzing, harpsichord-hero shredding”, “historically informed astringency conjuring modernist bleakness”, “a tight session of traded motives”, “a work that builds entire edifices out of busy, form-following-function passagework”, “limpid, percolating proficiency”, “moved blocks of sound around with frictionless ease”, etc.

One feels the need to vomit after wallowing in such hog-slop.

Does not Guerrieri know the difference between the word “mood” and the word “mode”? And what, precisely, does “an artful imagining of the era’s foreshadowings” signify? And what is the meaning of “harpsichord-hero shredding”?

It is easy to understand why Guerrieri is unemployed (Guerrieri is supported by his wife): anyone who writes so atrociously is bound to have difficulty landing a job.

Guerrieri’s writing is the work of a seventh grader with a Thesaurus.

No Weekend Plans

There being no Hansi Knoteck film festival in Boston this weekend (at least insofar as we know), Joshua and I shall be staying in . . .

Lamenting . . .


Hansi Knoteck, popular German cinema star of the 1930s and 1940s.

A Formulaic Commercial Vehicle

Last weekend, Joshua and I attended a performance of Willy Russell’s “Educating Rita” at Huntington Theatre Company.

“Educating Rita” is a formulaic commercial vehicle—and not a particularly strong one—but the play undoubtedly “works”. I suspect the play “works” because its two characters make evolutions of sorts during the course of the play—and, further, I suspect the play “works” because good actors can make something of its two roles.

I had seen two previous stage productions of “Educating Rita”, and both Josh and I had seen the movie, so there was no uncharted territory for us to explore. We nonetheless enjoyed seeing the actors go through their paces. It was a worthwhile afternoon.

The actor portraying Frank was excellent. He was much better than the actress portraying Rita, who tried a little too hard all afternoon to show Rita’s Pygmalion-like development from hairdresser to woman with intellectual pretensions and middle-class aspirations.

“Educating Rita”, premiered in 1980, resembles nothing so much as a 1970s British television comedy. It is one part earnest, one part pretentious, one part canned laugh lines, one part situation comedy—and one part examination of Britain’s class system, more entrenched in the 1970s than it was to become after the Thatcher reforms.

I am surprised the play has endured—and I am equally surprised that I have bothered to attend a performance three times. The New York Times described “Educating Rita” as “the perfect play about literature for anyone who wouldn’t dream of actually reading books”, and that assessment was spot-on.

“Educating Rita” has never enjoyed a Broadway production, although it has been presented Off-Broadway. Austin Pendleton performed the role of Frank in the original Off-Broadway production, which had a very short run.

The actress who portrayed Rita in the movie, Julie Walters, was the first stage Rita (in London). In fact, the role of Rita was largely responsible for jumpstarting Walters’s career, limited as it has been.