On Friday evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to Orchestra Hall to hear the Minnesota Orchestra play the complete “Daphnis et Chloé” by Maurice Ravel. The conductor of the performance was Mark Wigglesworth.
The Minnesota Orchestra was the first American orchestra to record the complete score of “Daphnis et Chloé”, doing so on December 4, 1954, under Antal Dorati. (Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony were to make their legendary recording of the complete score the following year.) Twenty years later, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski led the Minnesota Orchestra in a famous recording of both suites from the score.
Recording history notwithstanding, it would not be accurate to suggest that the Minnesota Orchestra is a distinguished Ravel orchestra with a distinguished Ravel tradition. The Minnesota Orchestra plays French music like most other American orchestras: with great energy and directness, and with some brio, but with few genuine Gallic qualities.
Nonetheless, performances of the complete “Daphnis et Chloé” are uncommon, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and we did not want to miss out.
Friday evening’s performance was very fine, if a little short on ecstasy and aching beauty (which is how I want to hear “Daphnis et Chloé”). There was also too little shimmer of sound.
I fear I would be carping if I were to compare Wigglesworth’s work in the score to that of Jean Martinon, Pierre Monteux and Munch. Much of the score came across in Wigglesworth’s hands; it was probably unreasonable to have wished for something unforgettable.
Wigglesworth is a frequent visitor to Minneapolis—he has appeared here in eleven of the past seventeen seasons—and I am told that the musicians of the orchestra like and respect him, and that management finds him congenial and efficient, all qualities sought in a prospective music director. I hope Wigglesworth will not prove to be Osmo Vanska’s successor (my money is on Andrew Litton, although I do not want him, either).
The first half of the program was devoted to the American premiere of the Oboe Concerto of British composer Michael Berkeley, son of composer Lennox Berkeley. The soloist was the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal oboist, who is to retire at the conclusion of the current season after forty-one years of service.
Berkeley’s Oboe Concerto is one of those pastoral affairs the British used to produce by the truckload. In three movements and scored for strings alone, the Oboe Concerto is in a conservative, tonal idiom—and might easily be mistaken for a work by William Alwyn. The central movement is a Scherzo, surrounded by two slow movements, the last of which is a maudlin elegy for Benjamin Britten, who had died the year before the concerto was written. The score might serve as ideal background music for a British television documentary about veterinarians in The Midlands, with baby lambs dying at the end.
Berkeley was only 29 years old when he wrote his Oboe Concerto; it was his first significant composition, and not typical of his later output.
Berkeley’s music is never heard in the United States. Friday evening was the first time I had ever heard a Berkeley work performed here. If Berkeley is known at all in the U.S., it is for his laughable oratorio, “Or Shall We Die?”, a notorious work that—mercifully—sank into oblivion immediately after its much-publicized premiere in the early 1980s.
Why was the Berkeley Oboe Concerto programmed in Minneapolis? Probably because its demands on the oboist and orchestra were minimal, and because it required minimal rehearsal time.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Saturday, April 28, 2012
On A Gander
I never heard Elisabeth Schwarzkopf or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in recital, but persons who attended Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau recitals have told me that both artists maintained restrained stage presences, communicating with their voices and their eyes.
(My parents missed Schwarzkopf, but they once heard Fischer-Dieskau in recital; my parents say they did not catch the great singer on a good night.)
The issue of stage deportment in recital is an important one, because faulty stage presentation can undercut—and sometimes even destroy—the songs presented.
German baritone Matthias Goerne presented a recital in Saint Paul on Wednesday night, and my parents and Joshua and I attended the recital.
Goerne paced about the stage of The Ordway all evening, like a singer trying to hit his marks on the opera stage. When not on a gander around the stage, Goerne buried his head in his scores or glared at his pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes, for minutes at a time. Goerne, a student of Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau, apparently did not learn much about stage deportment from the two most respected recitalists of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Goerne, an estimable singer, basically lost me because of his onstage antics. It is my suspicion that Goerne was trying to “heighten” the recital experience by providing visual cues for the expressions of torment in the songs on the program. Alas, Goerne would have been far better off to allow his voice and eyes, alone, to represent the expressions of torment in the songs (and Goerne indeed has very expressive eyes)—and to leave “acting” during vocal recitals to the British.
Goerne further lost me by using scores. Recitalists must always memorize their song selections—this is one of the ironclad rules of the recital platform—because the covenant between singer and audience is that the songs on offer have been internalized by the singer to such an extent that the songs are part of the singer’s being. If a singer has not memorized particular songs, the songs should not appear on programs; if a singer has memorization problems, he should not embark upon a career as recitalist.
Goerne possesses a beautiful and distinctive voice, but he is undeniably somewhat of an oddball—The Wall Street Journal reports that Goerne, when dining out, sends food back to the kitchen without first tasting it—and it was Goerne’s oddball behavior that provided the essence of his Wednesday night recital. It proved impossible to get beyond the loopy manner in which Goerne presented both himself and the music.
The program—which was not the program originally announced when tickets had gone on sale last year—was as odd as Goerne’s presentation: a constant back-and-forth switching between songs of Mahler and Shostakovich. Goerne sang six random excerpts from Mahler’s Das Knaben Wunderhorn, two random excerpts from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and two random excerpts from Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, all interspersed with six random excerpts from Shostakovich’s Suite On Verses From Michelangelo Buonarroti—all performed out of sequence. It was as if Goerne had assembled his recital program by playing a Mahler/Shostakovich compact disc in shuffle mode—and, having loved the bizarre results, had wanted to replicate the experience in performance.
There were two insurmountable problems with such a boneheaded concept: the songs of Shostakovich are so inferior to the songs of Mahler that the Shostakovich songs simply evaporated when sung, isolated, amongst Mahler songs; and Mahler’s Rückert songs are so superior to the Kindertotenlieder songs, which in turn are so superior to the Wunderhorn songs, that Mahler songs MUST be sung by order of date of composition if they are to have any effect.
Wednesday evening was, in consequence, a grotesque evening in the recital hall, the kind of evening that looks gruesome on paper and proves to be even worse in execution. I am surprised that Andsnes, who did not look happy, went along with such a deviant program.
I believe that vocal recitals are becoming a lost art. Other than Wolfgang Holzmair and Angelika Kirschlager (both Austrian), is there a competent recitalist today?
Current audiences are faced with a conundrum: they want to hear today’s leading singers—but they do not necessarily want to experience evenings “organized and presented by an uneducated airhead with behavioral problems and pseudo-intellectual pretensions”, which is how my father described Goerne.
There was a sizable crowd in Saint Paul on Wednesday evening, and the audience was entirely attentive and well-behaved—if justifiably muted in its response.
Ourselves, we might have been better off returning this particular dish to the kitchen, untasted.
(My parents missed Schwarzkopf, but they once heard Fischer-Dieskau in recital; my parents say they did not catch the great singer on a good night.)
The issue of stage deportment in recital is an important one, because faulty stage presentation can undercut—and sometimes even destroy—the songs presented.
German baritone Matthias Goerne presented a recital in Saint Paul on Wednesday night, and my parents and Joshua and I attended the recital.
Goerne paced about the stage of The Ordway all evening, like a singer trying to hit his marks on the opera stage. When not on a gander around the stage, Goerne buried his head in his scores or glared at his pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes, for minutes at a time. Goerne, a student of Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau, apparently did not learn much about stage deportment from the two most respected recitalists of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Goerne, an estimable singer, basically lost me because of his onstage antics. It is my suspicion that Goerne was trying to “heighten” the recital experience by providing visual cues for the expressions of torment in the songs on the program. Alas, Goerne would have been far better off to allow his voice and eyes, alone, to represent the expressions of torment in the songs (and Goerne indeed has very expressive eyes)—and to leave “acting” during vocal recitals to the British.
Goerne further lost me by using scores. Recitalists must always memorize their song selections—this is one of the ironclad rules of the recital platform—because the covenant between singer and audience is that the songs on offer have been internalized by the singer to such an extent that the songs are part of the singer’s being. If a singer has not memorized particular songs, the songs should not appear on programs; if a singer has memorization problems, he should not embark upon a career as recitalist.
Goerne possesses a beautiful and distinctive voice, but he is undeniably somewhat of an oddball—The Wall Street Journal reports that Goerne, when dining out, sends food back to the kitchen without first tasting it—and it was Goerne’s oddball behavior that provided the essence of his Wednesday night recital. It proved impossible to get beyond the loopy manner in which Goerne presented both himself and the music.
The program—which was not the program originally announced when tickets had gone on sale last year—was as odd as Goerne’s presentation: a constant back-and-forth switching between songs of Mahler and Shostakovich. Goerne sang six random excerpts from Mahler’s Das Knaben Wunderhorn, two random excerpts from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and two random excerpts from Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, all interspersed with six random excerpts from Shostakovich’s Suite On Verses From Michelangelo Buonarroti—all performed out of sequence. It was as if Goerne had assembled his recital program by playing a Mahler/Shostakovich compact disc in shuffle mode—and, having loved the bizarre results, had wanted to replicate the experience in performance.
There were two insurmountable problems with such a boneheaded concept: the songs of Shostakovich are so inferior to the songs of Mahler that the Shostakovich songs simply evaporated when sung, isolated, amongst Mahler songs; and Mahler’s Rückert songs are so superior to the Kindertotenlieder songs, which in turn are so superior to the Wunderhorn songs, that Mahler songs MUST be sung by order of date of composition if they are to have any effect.
Wednesday evening was, in consequence, a grotesque evening in the recital hall, the kind of evening that looks gruesome on paper and proves to be even worse in execution. I am surprised that Andsnes, who did not look happy, went along with such a deviant program.
I believe that vocal recitals are becoming a lost art. Other than Wolfgang Holzmair and Angelika Kirschlager (both Austrian), is there a competent recitalist today?
Current audiences are faced with a conundrum: they want to hear today’s leading singers—but they do not necessarily want to experience evenings “organized and presented by an uneducated airhead with behavioral problems and pseudo-intellectual pretensions”, which is how my father described Goerne.
There was a sizable crowd in Saint Paul on Wednesday evening, and the audience was entirely attentive and well-behaved—if justifiably muted in its response.
Ourselves, we might have been better off returning this particular dish to the kitchen, untasted.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Sorrows Of The King
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
The Sorrows Of The King
1952
Pompidou Centre, Paris
Gouache On Paper On Canvas
115 Inches By 152 Inches
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
A Beautiful Occasion
Herbert Von Karajan owned Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, the composer’s final complete symphony. The Bruckner Eighth may have been the single work from the orchestral literature in which Karajan most majestically demonstrated his incomparable gifts.
Karajan conducted the Eighth from early in his career until the very end of his life. He spent more than sixty years studying the score, and more than fifty-two years performing it in concert. Karajan gave more performances of the Eighth—sixty-three in all—than any other Bruckner symphony. (There were 53 Karajan performances of the Seventh, 38 of the Ninth, 32 of the Fifth and 19 of the Fourth; Karajan recorded but never performed in concert the First, Second, Third and Sixth.)
Karajan recorded the Eighth three times—and a tape survives of a fourth, incomplete wartime recording. All are transcendent readings. In fact, they are the four finest readings of the Bruckner Eighth ever captured on tape.
The wartime recording, from June 28, 1944 (the second and third movements, in mono) and September 29, 1944 (the fourth movement, in stereo), has been legendary for decades. Like Furtwängler’s equally-legendary wartime recording of Bruckner’s Ninth (from October 7, 1944), Karajan’s wartime Bruckner Eighth is filled with the deepest spirituality and the starkest, most abject despair. Karajan’s and Furtwängler’s 1944 Bruckner performances provide unforgettable experiences—they are terrifying musical portraits of a world and civilization on the very brink of collapse.
Unlike Furtwängler, who never returned to the Bruckner Ninth after his great wartime performances, Karajan continued to perform the Bruckner Eighth for the rest of his life (Karajan’s final performance of the Eighth was in Carnegie Hall five months before his death).
Recording-wise, Karajan’s 1957 Berlin Philharmonic recording for EMI, issued in 1958, was an improvement over the famed 1944 wartime recording. The 1975 Berlin Philharmonic recording for Deutsche Grammophon, issued in 1976, was an improvement over the EMI recording. The 1988 Vienna Philharmonic recording for Deutsche Grammophon, issued that same year, was the finest and most profound of all. Karajan’s 1988 performance of the great Adagio is one of the greatest half-hours ever captured by microphones. Karajan's Adagio is so incandescent, so supremely musical and of such utter nobility that it renders the entire recorded output of Leonard Bernstein largely irrelevant.
It was impossible for me not to be reminded of Karajan’s unique authority in the Bruckner Eighth on Friday evening, when my parents and Joshua and I attended a Minnesota Orchestra performance of the Bruckner Eighth conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, former Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Skrowaczewski is considered by many to be the leading Bruckner conductor of the day. However, Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner has never moved me.
I find Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner to be rough-hewn. Skrowaczewski dispenses with the many luxuries of sound for which Karajan was renowned—exploration of color, depth and texture as well as intricate layering and voicing of instruments—and instead seeks an unadorned presentation of the musical argument. Even my father, a great fan of Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner, acknowledges that it is hard not to wish for “the sheer glamour of sound” that Karajan brought to Bruckner’s music.
I also find Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner to be untheatrical. The spellbinding drama and grand rhetoric Karajan found in Bruckner are nowhere present in Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner performances. Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner, in comparison to Karajan’s, is earnest but plain.
In short, I found Friday evening’s performance to be of limited pleasure, tending toward the dry and dull, and rather a trial to endure. I also found the playing of the Minnesota Orchestra to be unimpressive, although I would be the first to admit that the Minnesota Orchestra is not a Bruckner orchestra.
The Minnesota Orchestra had last programmed the Bruckner Eighth in October 2005—and those most recent performances, too, had been under Skrowaczewski (a pirate recording of one of the 2005 performances is available in Japan). The previous Minnesota Orchestra performances of the Bruckner Eighth had been in 1988, when Klaus Tennstedt conducted the score in a series of sensational performances still remembered in the Twin Cities. My father says that Friday night’s Skrowaczewski performance was not much different from the 2005 Skrowaczewski rendition—and not nearly as searching as Tennstedt’s 1988 performance, which my father recalls as “thrilling, albeit more than a bit peculiar”.
I last heard the Bruckner Eighth two years ago, when Josh and I traveled from Boston to Cleveland to hear Franz Welser-Möst lead the Cleveland Orchestra in the great work. Welser-Möst had used Bruckner’s original 1887 score, an unheard-of concept until recent years. On Friday night, Skrowaczewski used his personal amalgamation of the 1939 Haas and 1955 Nowak editions.
My father insists that Friday evening’s performance was entirely commendable, worthy of the highest appreciation. On the podium was one of the most dedicated and respected musicians of the day, leading a performance of one of the greatest works in the symphonic repertory—a work he has studied and cherished for decades—with an orchestra he has conducted for over fifty years. After the performance, my father noted, “Had this performance been offered in a city that loves Bruckner, such as Berlin or Vienna, the audience would have applauded for thirty minutes.”
Friday night’s Minneapolis audience did not applaud for thirty minutes—but it did applaud for almost ten minutes, certainly not a crime in a city without a Bruckner audience.
Friday night’s concert attracted a capacity crowd, which I found gratifying—although the size of the audience had more to do with respect and admiration for Skrowaczewski than love for the music of Bruckner.
Skrowaczewski will soon be 89 years old. Last weekend’s concerts will likely be among his last in Minneapolis—and there had been a concerted effort among local music-lovers to provide Skrowaczewski with a sizable audience for a concert of music by a composer Skrowaczewski has championed for over half a century.
There was another reason for such a large crowd on Friday night.
At the conclusion of the concert, The Bruckner Society Of America presented a medal to Skrowaczewski in honor of Skrowaczewski’s long service to the music of the great Austrian master. Many persons had come to the hall, no doubt, out of loyalty: they wanted to be present for a ceremony of special importance to Skrowaczewski, and to show their support for a man who has given much to the musical life of the Twin Cities.
The ceremony was dignified, and also stirring. The audience interrupted the presentation several times with warm and sustained applause.
It was, I thought, a beautiful occasion.
Karajan conducted the Eighth from early in his career until the very end of his life. He spent more than sixty years studying the score, and more than fifty-two years performing it in concert. Karajan gave more performances of the Eighth—sixty-three in all—than any other Bruckner symphony. (There were 53 Karajan performances of the Seventh, 38 of the Ninth, 32 of the Fifth and 19 of the Fourth; Karajan recorded but never performed in concert the First, Second, Third and Sixth.)
Karajan recorded the Eighth three times—and a tape survives of a fourth, incomplete wartime recording. All are transcendent readings. In fact, they are the four finest readings of the Bruckner Eighth ever captured on tape.
The wartime recording, from June 28, 1944 (the second and third movements, in mono) and September 29, 1944 (the fourth movement, in stereo), has been legendary for decades. Like Furtwängler’s equally-legendary wartime recording of Bruckner’s Ninth (from October 7, 1944), Karajan’s wartime Bruckner Eighth is filled with the deepest spirituality and the starkest, most abject despair. Karajan’s and Furtwängler’s 1944 Bruckner performances provide unforgettable experiences—they are terrifying musical portraits of a world and civilization on the very brink of collapse.
Unlike Furtwängler, who never returned to the Bruckner Ninth after his great wartime performances, Karajan continued to perform the Bruckner Eighth for the rest of his life (Karajan’s final performance of the Eighth was in Carnegie Hall five months before his death).
Recording-wise, Karajan’s 1957 Berlin Philharmonic recording for EMI, issued in 1958, was an improvement over the famed 1944 wartime recording. The 1975 Berlin Philharmonic recording for Deutsche Grammophon, issued in 1976, was an improvement over the EMI recording. The 1988 Vienna Philharmonic recording for Deutsche Grammophon, issued that same year, was the finest and most profound of all. Karajan’s 1988 performance of the great Adagio is one of the greatest half-hours ever captured by microphones. Karajan's Adagio is so incandescent, so supremely musical and of such utter nobility that it renders the entire recorded output of Leonard Bernstein largely irrelevant.
It was impossible for me not to be reminded of Karajan’s unique authority in the Bruckner Eighth on Friday evening, when my parents and Joshua and I attended a Minnesota Orchestra performance of the Bruckner Eighth conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, former Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Skrowaczewski is considered by many to be the leading Bruckner conductor of the day. However, Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner has never moved me.
I find Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner to be rough-hewn. Skrowaczewski dispenses with the many luxuries of sound for which Karajan was renowned—exploration of color, depth and texture as well as intricate layering and voicing of instruments—and instead seeks an unadorned presentation of the musical argument. Even my father, a great fan of Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner, acknowledges that it is hard not to wish for “the sheer glamour of sound” that Karajan brought to Bruckner’s music.
I also find Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner to be untheatrical. The spellbinding drama and grand rhetoric Karajan found in Bruckner are nowhere present in Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner performances. Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner, in comparison to Karajan’s, is earnest but plain.
In short, I found Friday evening’s performance to be of limited pleasure, tending toward the dry and dull, and rather a trial to endure. I also found the playing of the Minnesota Orchestra to be unimpressive, although I would be the first to admit that the Minnesota Orchestra is not a Bruckner orchestra.
The Minnesota Orchestra had last programmed the Bruckner Eighth in October 2005—and those most recent performances, too, had been under Skrowaczewski (a pirate recording of one of the 2005 performances is available in Japan). The previous Minnesota Orchestra performances of the Bruckner Eighth had been in 1988, when Klaus Tennstedt conducted the score in a series of sensational performances still remembered in the Twin Cities. My father says that Friday night’s Skrowaczewski performance was not much different from the 2005 Skrowaczewski rendition—and not nearly as searching as Tennstedt’s 1988 performance, which my father recalls as “thrilling, albeit more than a bit peculiar”.
I last heard the Bruckner Eighth two years ago, when Josh and I traveled from Boston to Cleveland to hear Franz Welser-Möst lead the Cleveland Orchestra in the great work. Welser-Möst had used Bruckner’s original 1887 score, an unheard-of concept until recent years. On Friday night, Skrowaczewski used his personal amalgamation of the 1939 Haas and 1955 Nowak editions.
My father insists that Friday evening’s performance was entirely commendable, worthy of the highest appreciation. On the podium was one of the most dedicated and respected musicians of the day, leading a performance of one of the greatest works in the symphonic repertory—a work he has studied and cherished for decades—with an orchestra he has conducted for over fifty years. After the performance, my father noted, “Had this performance been offered in a city that loves Bruckner, such as Berlin or Vienna, the audience would have applauded for thirty minutes.”
Friday night’s Minneapolis audience did not applaud for thirty minutes—but it did applaud for almost ten minutes, certainly not a crime in a city without a Bruckner audience.
Friday night’s concert attracted a capacity crowd, which I found gratifying—although the size of the audience had more to do with respect and admiration for Skrowaczewski than love for the music of Bruckner.
Skrowaczewski will soon be 89 years old. Last weekend’s concerts will likely be among his last in Minneapolis—and there had been a concerted effort among local music-lovers to provide Skrowaczewski with a sizable audience for a concert of music by a composer Skrowaczewski has championed for over half a century.
There was another reason for such a large crowd on Friday night.
At the conclusion of the concert, The Bruckner Society Of America presented a medal to Skrowaczewski in honor of Skrowaczewski’s long service to the music of the great Austrian master. Many persons had come to the hall, no doubt, out of loyalty: they wanted to be present for a ceremony of special importance to Skrowaczewski, and to show their support for a man who has given much to the musical life of the Twin Cities.
The ceremony was dignified, and also stirring. The audience interrupted the presentation several times with warm and sustained applause.
It was, I thought, a beautiful occasion.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Bruckner At Walhalla
Adolf Hitler admires a newly-installed bust of Anton Bruckner at Walhalla, near Regensburg, in 1937.
Oddly, Bruckner’s bust was the only one added at Walhalla, an 1842 shrine to distinguished figures from 2,000 years of Germanic history, during The Period Of National Socialism.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Pursed Lips And Distant Eyes
Franz Welser-Möst, the music director [sic] of the Cleveland Orchestra for ten seasons already and who serves in that position at least until 2018, is a hard man to warm to. It's partly his stage demeanor, by which, after all, an audience makes its first judgment. With pursed lips and distant eyes, Welser-Möst didn't exactly look like he wanted to be in Segerstrom Concert Hall on Tuesday night. Never mind, he had work to do.
But as a conductor, he's a cool customer as well. Those pursed lips come through in the music making, elegant though it can be. In leading his vaunted orchestra through a fresh program of works by Mendelssohn, Saariaho and Shostakovich, he seemed to be holding himself at one remove and conserving his resources. But then that, too, is self expression [sic] of a kind.
It is frightening to read what passes for music criticism in English-speaking countries. The above bit of nonsense, from the website of The Orange County Register, would never pass muster in Paris or Berlin.
The foolishness quoted above was signed (and therefore presumably was written) by one Timothy Mangan.
At least The Orange County Register does not run Mangan’s articles in its print editions—or so is my understanding. And, in its defense, the newspaper made Mangan shut down his weblog some time ago, a charitable act on behalf of the newspaper's readers and advertisers as well as Mangan himself.
Nonetheless, one must ask: why would a publication keep someone like Mangan on its staff? And allow such idiocy to appear on its website?
Southern California deserves Gustavo Dudamel.
And Mangan missed out on his true calling: covering Liberace.
But as a conductor, he's a cool customer as well. Those pursed lips come through in the music making, elegant though it can be. In leading his vaunted orchestra through a fresh program of works by Mendelssohn, Saariaho and Shostakovich, he seemed to be holding himself at one remove and conserving his resources. But then that, too, is self expression [sic] of a kind.
It is frightening to read what passes for music criticism in English-speaking countries. The above bit of nonsense, from the website of The Orange County Register, would never pass muster in Paris or Berlin.
The foolishness quoted above was signed (and therefore presumably was written) by one Timothy Mangan.
At least The Orange County Register does not run Mangan’s articles in its print editions—or so is my understanding. And, in its defense, the newspaper made Mangan shut down his weblog some time ago, a charitable act on behalf of the newspaper's readers and advertisers as well as Mangan himself.
Nonetheless, one must ask: why would a publication keep someone like Mangan on its staff? And allow such idiocy to appear on its website?
Southern California deserves Gustavo Dudamel.
And Mangan missed out on his true calling: covering Liberace.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Minnesota Opera's "Madama Butterfly"
On Saturday night, my parents, my sister-in-law, and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to attend Minnesota Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”, the final presentation of Minnesota Opera’s 2011-2012 season.
I dislike the music of “Madama Butterfly”. It is one of two mature Puccini operas I dislike—“Turandot” is the other—and I dislike the score because I find much of it sickly-sweet and unduly obvious. “Madama Butterfly” lacks the freshness and inspiration of “La Boheme” and “Tosca”, two Puccini works that preceded it, and it lacks the sophistication and subtlety of “La Fanciulla Del West” and “Il Trittico”, two Puccini works that were to follow.
Mine is a minority view. Persons with more than a little authority—Virgil Thomson and Herbert Von Karajan among them—have identified “Madama Butterfly” as Puccini’s finest achievement. Many others have defended, eloquently, Puccini’s tale of East-meets-West without proclaiming it Puccini’s outright masterpiece.
I find “Madama Butterfly” to have a weak musical argument, a weak musical argument further watered down by an undue emphasis on orchestral color and unconvincing (and discomfiting) orientalism. The score is fundamentally all about “atmosphere”—and only a great orchestra and a great Puccini conductor can bring the atmosphere of the score fully to life.
Minnesota Opera did well by the score, all in all. The orchestra played well, and Michael Christie (who next season will become Music Director of Minnesota Opera) conducted the score capably. This was about as fine a musical presentation of “Madama Butterfly” as one might hope to hear in an American regional house.
The production, the company’s own, had been unveiled in 2004. (Over the last eight seasons, it has been rented by several other companies in North America.) The late Colin Graham directed the original production; one of his assistants was on hand to direct the current revival. The production is a spare one, using shifting Japanese screens as its primary visual device, but it has color and beauty and simplicity in its favor. It is one of the most stage-worthy “Madama Butterfly” productions I have ever seen—it presents the drama cleanly and without affectation, yet includes plenty of freedom for different artists to shape the drama to their own individual strengths.
Minnesota Opera has double-cast this season’s “Madama Butterfly”, offering four performances with a first cast and four performances with a second cast. We saw and heard the first cast—and it should not be assumed that the first cast of this “Madama Butterfly” production is better than the second cast, as persons affiliated with the company have made clear to Minnesota Opera patrons. Indeed, the second cast may be superior to the first, as some insiders have asserted.
The Cio-Cio-San on Saturday night was American soprano Kelly Kaduce, a native of Minnesota. (Kaduce also sang Cio-Cio-San when the production was new eight years ago.)
Kaduce is a convincing stage actress. Her physical portrayal of the young Japanese girl was very fine.
Kaduce, however, does not possess a major voice. There is nowhere near enough color and weight in her voice to create a compelling musical portrait of Cio-Cio-San. The result is that the audience witnessed a physical portrayal of high finish and much accomplishment—and a vocal portrayal that was bleached, wan and tepid. Kaduce, however hardworking and dedicated an artist she may be, simply does not possess the vocal chords necessary to get her in the door of an international-level house; hers is destined always to be a regional career.
Kaduce was at a disadvantage all night because the Pinkerton, Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz, DOES possess a major voice. Chacon-Cruz is not yet a polished artist; he is rough around the edges in his vocalism, and an actor of little subtlety. However, his instrument is first-class, possessing a distinctive timbre, a distinctive ring and loads of color.
Chacon-Cruz already has an important European career. Over the last five years, he has appeared in numerous second-tier European opera houses such as those in Cologne, Hamburg, Lyon, Naples, Stockholm and Venice—and recently he has been moving up to first-tier houses, singing major roles in theaters such as Staatsoper Unter Den Linden and Teatro Alla Scala. If Chacon-Cruz continues to polish his voice and musicianship and stagecraft—and if he does not blow out his voice early—he will become an important fixture at international-level houses for the next fifteen or twenty years.
The smaller roles were beautifully sung and beautifully portrayed. Mika Shigematsu was an excellent Suzuki and Levi Hernandez an even better Sharpless.
________________________________________________
Minnesota Opera had an excellent 2011-2012 season. We caught four of the five presentations—Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte”, Massenet’s “Werther”, Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” as well as “Madama Butterfly”—and all four were performed to a standard that would reflect credit upon any regional company in North America.
We skipped the fifth presentation, the world premiere of “Silent Night” by composer Kevin Puts, an opera that recently won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize For Music. I doubt we missed much. Persons whose opinions I respect thought that the non-threatening, anti-Modernist score of “Silent Night” was pure musical twaddle and should have been laughed off the stage. (The award of a Pulitzer Prize is meaningless these days, since Pulitzer Prizes have been declining assets for decades and now serve primarily as certifications of mediocrity or acknowledgements of longevity.)
From a repertory standpoint, the 2012-2013 season for Minnesota Opera does not look as promising. I dislike Verdi’s “Nabucco”, I dislike Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” and I dislike “Turandot”, all three of which have been announced. A world premiere adapted from John Patrick Shanley’s play, “Doubt”, has also been announced, as has Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet”. We may attend “Hamlet”, but I wish the company had announced Thomas’s “Mignon” instead. “Mignon”, a much finer work than the composer’s “Hamlet”, is a work sorely in need of revival.
And why three Italian operas, yet no German works? I think that is a blunder.
________________________________________________
Other than presentations of Minnesota Opera, opera performances in the Twin Cities are limited in number.
For years, University Of Minnesota Opera Theatre has been the other primary opera resource in the Twin Cities. Opera Theatre mounts two full-scale productions each academic year; the productions are generally of very, very high quality.
We missed Opera Theatre’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” last autumn because of my grandmother’s illness, and we shall skip Opera Theatre’s upcoming world premiere of an opera by a University Of Minnesota professor, a production scheduled to open tomorrow night and run through the weekend.
I do not know what is in the works for Opera Theatre for next academic year—Opera Theatre’s productions for 2012-2013 have not been announced as far as I know.
For the last few years, the Minnesota Orchestra has entered the opera arena, presenting one opera in concert each season during the summer months. This summer, the Minnesota Orchestra will present a concert performance of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” under Andrew Litton.
We probably shall skip the Minnesota Orchestra “Rigoletto”. As a general rule, we do not attend concerts during summer months. Further, it seems pointless for the orchestra to present such a well-known work as “Rigoletto” in concert.
Next season, a new local enterprise will enter the operatic fray: Minnesota Concert Opera. Minnesota Concert Opera will offer performances in the new Cowles Center For Dance And The Performing Arts in downtown Minneapolis.
Minnesota Concert Opera has announced three operas for its premiere season: Bellini’s “I Puritani”, Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Handel’s “Giulio Cesare”.
I have no idea when we shall first make our way to the Cowles Center to catch a Minnesota Concert Opera presentation. Repertory for the company’s first season is not much of an attraction for us.
Hans Pfitzner’s “Palestrina”, had it been announced, surely would get us in the door.
I dislike the music of “Madama Butterfly”. It is one of two mature Puccini operas I dislike—“Turandot” is the other—and I dislike the score because I find much of it sickly-sweet and unduly obvious. “Madama Butterfly” lacks the freshness and inspiration of “La Boheme” and “Tosca”, two Puccini works that preceded it, and it lacks the sophistication and subtlety of “La Fanciulla Del West” and “Il Trittico”, two Puccini works that were to follow.
Mine is a minority view. Persons with more than a little authority—Virgil Thomson and Herbert Von Karajan among them—have identified “Madama Butterfly” as Puccini’s finest achievement. Many others have defended, eloquently, Puccini’s tale of East-meets-West without proclaiming it Puccini’s outright masterpiece.
I find “Madama Butterfly” to have a weak musical argument, a weak musical argument further watered down by an undue emphasis on orchestral color and unconvincing (and discomfiting) orientalism. The score is fundamentally all about “atmosphere”—and only a great orchestra and a great Puccini conductor can bring the atmosphere of the score fully to life.
Minnesota Opera did well by the score, all in all. The orchestra played well, and Michael Christie (who next season will become Music Director of Minnesota Opera) conducted the score capably. This was about as fine a musical presentation of “Madama Butterfly” as one might hope to hear in an American regional house.
The production, the company’s own, had been unveiled in 2004. (Over the last eight seasons, it has been rented by several other companies in North America.) The late Colin Graham directed the original production; one of his assistants was on hand to direct the current revival. The production is a spare one, using shifting Japanese screens as its primary visual device, but it has color and beauty and simplicity in its favor. It is one of the most stage-worthy “Madama Butterfly” productions I have ever seen—it presents the drama cleanly and without affectation, yet includes plenty of freedom for different artists to shape the drama to their own individual strengths.
Minnesota Opera has double-cast this season’s “Madama Butterfly”, offering four performances with a first cast and four performances with a second cast. We saw and heard the first cast—and it should not be assumed that the first cast of this “Madama Butterfly” production is better than the second cast, as persons affiliated with the company have made clear to Minnesota Opera patrons. Indeed, the second cast may be superior to the first, as some insiders have asserted.
The Cio-Cio-San on Saturday night was American soprano Kelly Kaduce, a native of Minnesota. (Kaduce also sang Cio-Cio-San when the production was new eight years ago.)
Kaduce is a convincing stage actress. Her physical portrayal of the young Japanese girl was very fine.
Kaduce, however, does not possess a major voice. There is nowhere near enough color and weight in her voice to create a compelling musical portrait of Cio-Cio-San. The result is that the audience witnessed a physical portrayal of high finish and much accomplishment—and a vocal portrayal that was bleached, wan and tepid. Kaduce, however hardworking and dedicated an artist she may be, simply does not possess the vocal chords necessary to get her in the door of an international-level house; hers is destined always to be a regional career.
Kaduce was at a disadvantage all night because the Pinkerton, Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz, DOES possess a major voice. Chacon-Cruz is not yet a polished artist; he is rough around the edges in his vocalism, and an actor of little subtlety. However, his instrument is first-class, possessing a distinctive timbre, a distinctive ring and loads of color.
Chacon-Cruz already has an important European career. Over the last five years, he has appeared in numerous second-tier European opera houses such as those in Cologne, Hamburg, Lyon, Naples, Stockholm and Venice—and recently he has been moving up to first-tier houses, singing major roles in theaters such as Staatsoper Unter Den Linden and Teatro Alla Scala. If Chacon-Cruz continues to polish his voice and musicianship and stagecraft—and if he does not blow out his voice early—he will become an important fixture at international-level houses for the next fifteen or twenty years.
The smaller roles were beautifully sung and beautifully portrayed. Mika Shigematsu was an excellent Suzuki and Levi Hernandez an even better Sharpless.
________________________________________________
Minnesota Opera had an excellent 2011-2012 season. We caught four of the five presentations—Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte”, Massenet’s “Werther”, Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” as well as “Madama Butterfly”—and all four were performed to a standard that would reflect credit upon any regional company in North America.
We skipped the fifth presentation, the world premiere of “Silent Night” by composer Kevin Puts, an opera that recently won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize For Music. I doubt we missed much. Persons whose opinions I respect thought that the non-threatening, anti-Modernist score of “Silent Night” was pure musical twaddle and should have been laughed off the stage. (The award of a Pulitzer Prize is meaningless these days, since Pulitzer Prizes have been declining assets for decades and now serve primarily as certifications of mediocrity or acknowledgements of longevity.)
From a repertory standpoint, the 2012-2013 season for Minnesota Opera does not look as promising. I dislike Verdi’s “Nabucco”, I dislike Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” and I dislike “Turandot”, all three of which have been announced. A world premiere adapted from John Patrick Shanley’s play, “Doubt”, has also been announced, as has Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet”. We may attend “Hamlet”, but I wish the company had announced Thomas’s “Mignon” instead. “Mignon”, a much finer work than the composer’s “Hamlet”, is a work sorely in need of revival.
And why three Italian operas, yet no German works? I think that is a blunder.
________________________________________________
Other than presentations of Minnesota Opera, opera performances in the Twin Cities are limited in number.
For years, University Of Minnesota Opera Theatre has been the other primary opera resource in the Twin Cities. Opera Theatre mounts two full-scale productions each academic year; the productions are generally of very, very high quality.
We missed Opera Theatre’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” last autumn because of my grandmother’s illness, and we shall skip Opera Theatre’s upcoming world premiere of an opera by a University Of Minnesota professor, a production scheduled to open tomorrow night and run through the weekend.
I do not know what is in the works for Opera Theatre for next academic year—Opera Theatre’s productions for 2012-2013 have not been announced as far as I know.
For the last few years, the Minnesota Orchestra has entered the opera arena, presenting one opera in concert each season during the summer months. This summer, the Minnesota Orchestra will present a concert performance of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” under Andrew Litton.
We probably shall skip the Minnesota Orchestra “Rigoletto”. As a general rule, we do not attend concerts during summer months. Further, it seems pointless for the orchestra to present such a well-known work as “Rigoletto” in concert.
Next season, a new local enterprise will enter the operatic fray: Minnesota Concert Opera. Minnesota Concert Opera will offer performances in the new Cowles Center For Dance And The Performing Arts in downtown Minneapolis.
Minnesota Concert Opera has announced three operas for its premiere season: Bellini’s “I Puritani”, Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Handel’s “Giulio Cesare”.
I have no idea when we shall first make our way to the Cowles Center to catch a Minnesota Concert Opera presentation. Repertory for the company’s first season is not much of an attraction for us.
Hans Pfitzner’s “Palestrina”, had it been announced, surely would get us in the door.
