La Scena Musicale

Saturday, January 30, 2010

This Week in Toronto (Feb. 1 - 7)

Photo: Italian conductor Paolo Olmi





The Canadian Opera Company's winter season continues with the opening of Verdi's Otello on Feb. 3. It marks the return of Italian conductor Paolo Olmi to the company, after a highly successful French version Don Carlos replacing the late Richard Bradshaw in the fall of 2007. I attended a working rehearsal of Otello last week, and the musical values bowled me over. First of all, we are fortunate to have American heldentenor Clifton Forbis as Otello. Hard to believe he debuted at the COC in 1997 as Lensky! Well, he is the genuine article as a heldentenor and I look forward to his Otello. Italian Tiziana Caruso is a true dramatic soprano, with a big voice of lovely quality. Given the size of her voice, it isn't so easy for her to sing high pianissimos, but other than that, she will be a vocally and dramatically rewarding Desdemona. Scott Hendricks, last seen locally as Rodrigo in Don Carlos, is a very youthful Iago, perhaps his lyric baritone a bit light especially when paired with the helden voice of Forbis, but the sounds Hendricks makes is gorgeous. It opens on Feb. 3 at 7:30 pm, and a second perforrmance on Saturday Feb. 6. The production is modern and a bit glitzy, with fairly traditional staging by Paul Curran, who was the director behind the wonderful Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk several years ago. a show not to be missed.

Meanwhile, the COC Carmen continues. I saw opening night, and it was a terrific show. Rinat Shaham is a scintillating Carmen - not the biggest of voice, but with lovely quality, variety of shading, and dramatically interesting. Bryan Hymel fulfills all the requirements of Don Jose. Canadian soprano Jessica Muirhead is the best Micaela vocally I have heard in many years - brava! Rory Macdonald conducted briskly and excitingly. The production has its weaknesses, but overall it did the job. Carmen can be seen on Feb 2 an 5 at 7:30 pm, and on Feb. 7 at 2 pm.

Met in HD continues with Simone Boccanegra on Saturday Feb. 6 at 1 pm at selected Cineplex theatres in Canada. It stars the great Placido Domingo in the baritone role of Boccanegra. He has already sung it in Berlin recently and received critical kudos. I heard snippets of it - he doesn't sound like a baritone but a tenor. In other words, he does not artificially darken his voice, yet his full lower register can fully do justice to the role. Amelia is Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka. This role fits her voice like a glove. Marcello Giordani is Gabriele. The director is Giancarlo Del Monaco, the son of the later tenor Mario del Monaco. James Levine conducts.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Austin Symphony and Salerno-Sonnenberg Celebrate Barber Centenary

A centenary celebration is in order for one of the greatest of American composers, Samuel Barber (b. March 9, 1910), and yet the scheduled tributes in the country of his birth are few and far between: the Philadelphia Orchestra, for example, which premiered many of Barber’s compositions, has programmed just a handful of works, scattered over the course of their 2009-2010 season.

The Austin Symphony Orchestra (ASO), notably an exception, last week presented an all-Barber program under its imaginative music director, Peter Bay. As Maestro Bay correctly stated in his opening remarks, the ASO is very likely the only professional orchestra in the entire United States offering such a concert this season. What’s more, tickets sold very briskly for the two concerts and the audience seemed to enjoy what they heard. It probably didn’t hurt that the dynamic and flamboyant Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was the featured soloist.

Barber Out of Sync with Contemporaries

Barber is by no means a ‘difficult’ composer and never was. In fact, he was often accused of being old-fashioned and too conservative to be taken seriously as a composer of contemporary music. While much of his music does indeed have recognizable melody, it is often complex in its musical argument, and there is frequently a deep sadness in his music that can be unsettling.

The Adagio for Strings, by far Barber’s best-known composition, has become one of the staples of string orchestra repertoire and is often performed at funerals and occasions of public lament. It is a richly beautiful piece, shot through with anguish, expressing at its climax, a kind of primordial scream. Peter Bay and the ASO played the work with the utmost sensitivity and gave full value to the eloquent rests which are so integral to the work.

The concert opened with Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance Op. 23a, taken from a ballet score written for Martha Graham in 1946. I must confess that I have never really warmed to this piece – it always sounds to me like a second-rate version of the "Dance of the Seven Veils" from Richard Strauss’ opera Salome – but Bay and the ASO played it very well indeed.

Flashy Organ Concerto Suits Occasion

The Toccata Festiva Op. 36 closed the first half of the concert. Barber composed this piece in 1960 to inaugurate the new organ installed at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, which, at the time, was the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Toccata remains a largely ceremonial piece to be trotted out on special occasions, such as this. Christoph Eschenbach (with organist Olivier Latry) performed and recorded (Ondine ODE 1094-5) the work at the inauguration of the new organ in Verizon Hall in Philadelphia in 2006.

The audience at the Long Center was utterly fascinated watching the stagehands bring on the portable organ console piece by piece and then assemble it onstage. One of the highlights of the Toccata Festiva – apart from the setting up of the organ – is undoubtedly the remarkable cadenza which is almost entirely played on the pedals. This is exciting to watch, especially if the keyboards and pedals are facing the audience, as they were in Austin. The organ soloist was Stephen Hamilton, Minister of Music at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City.

Nadja-Salerno Sonnenberg “owns” this Concerto!

After intermission came the two works which stand for me as among Barber’s greatest achievements: the Violin Concerto (1936) and the Symphony No. 1 (1939).

The soloist in the Violin Concerto was Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, who has been playing this piece with love and virtuosity for decades. She doesn’t just play this piece; she enters into the soul of it. From the almost inaudible opening bars she seems to be improvising, slowly bringing the music to life before weaving an engrossing tale of beauty and emotion.

The first melody at the opening of the concerto is exquisite. The tune first played by the oboist (Ian Davidson) at the beginning of the second movement is even more beguiling.

For all its beauty, the last movement of this concerto is problematic for some listeners – especially critics – in that it seems too short and too different from what has come before. But in Salerno-Sonnenberg’s hands it is, as Duke Ellington liked to say, simply “beyond category.” This is a perpetual motion movement in which the soloist’s fingers and bow are a blur from beginning to end. Unique to Salerno-Sonnenberg’s performance is the way in which she so perfectly catches the infectious ‘swing’ of the music. Bay and the ASO were right there for her in all the passionate moments and in the lightning fast and metrically complex finale.

And After Intermission…a Performance Worth the Wait!

I expected that there would be a rush for the exits after the concerto. In cities famous and not so famous all over the world, listeners tend to head for home after the celebrity guest artist has done his or her thing. As far as I could tell, not a single person left the hall on this occasion. There are some serious music-lovers in Austin and they are not all on Sixth Street!

In fact, fleeing patrons would have missed a fine musical experience; the performance of Barber’s Symphony No. 1 nearly topped what had preceded it. The Austin Symphony played superbly and Peter Bay conducted with total mastery of this complex score. There is an achingly beautiful oboe solo in this work too and once again Ian Davidson rose to the occasion.

Samuel Barber Then and Now

All the music on this concert except for the Toccata Festiva dates from 1936-46. Looking back, this was Barber’s golden period and a gradual decline in productivity and quality set in after that. Depression, alcoholism and a break with his life-long partner Gian Carlo Menotti all contributed to an apparent loss of confidence and energy.

Many people admire Barber’s opera Vanessa (1958); I am not one of them. It has always seemed to me somewhat ‘precious’ and lacking in drama. In 1966, Barber wrote another opera, Antony and Cleopatra, on a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. At the time, the consensus was that this was a fiasco and Barber was deeply hurt by the experience. Many of his admirers blamed the excessively grand staging by Zeffirelli for the opera’s failure and it has since been produced elsewhere with some success. This coming March Curtis Opera Theatre will mount a new production at the Kimmel Centre in Philadelphia as part of its year-long celebration of the Barber Centenary. Barber studied at Curtis as a young man and later returned to teach there.

For all his ups and downs, Barber created a substantial body of work. Along with Ives, Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein, he has earned the right to be considered one of the major American composers of the Twentieth Century. As we begin to make our way through the second decade of a new century, Peter Bay and the Austin Symphony reminded us of Barber’s stature in a very positive way.

And For Those Who Want More…

Some years ago Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg made a recording of the Barber Violin Concerto (EMI 54313). She currently leads her own orchestra, the New Century Chamber Orchestra in the Bay Area and with this ensemble she has released an album called Together. For more on NSS visit her website.

For more on Samuel Barber, the biography by Barbara Heyman is essential reading: Samuel Barber: the Composer and his Music (Oxford University Press). I recommend also the fine appreciation of Barber in a long essay by Paul Wittke.

Barber’s songs are at the heart of his compositional output and it will be a long time before his music finds a better interpreter than Thomas Hampson. The distinguished American baritone has recorded all of Barber’s songs (DG 435 8672) along with soprano Cheryl Studer, pianist John Browning and the Emerson Quartet in a 2-CD set.

Paul E. Robinson is the author of Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar, and Sir Georg Solti: His Life and Music, both available at Amazon.com.

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This Week in Toronto (Jan. 25 - 31)

Conductor of MSO Kent Nagano
Photo credit: Nicolas Ruel



This week marks the start of the Canadian Opera Company's winter season, with the opening of Carmen on Wednesday, Jan. 27. (The other production, Verdi's Otello, will open a week later, on Feb. 3) The Bizet opera is a true warhorse - the showing of this opera on Met in HD broke all attendance records recently. It was last staged in Toronto only five years ago, with Ukrainian mezzo Larissa Kostiuk as the Gypsy, in the Montreal Opera co-production. Much drama has already transpired offstage, with the American mezzo Beth Clayton withdrawing from all twelve performances. The COC scrambled to find a replacement, and it was announced a week ago that Israeli mezzo Rinat Shaham will sing the first six performances, which has now expanded to the first eight. I saw Shaham as Carmen just five years ago at the Montreal Opera and she was wonderful. I look forward to hearing and seeing her again. Two days ago, I received a COC press release that the young Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili will make her Canadian debut as Carmen here, singing the last four shows. Rachvelishvili, a young artist at La Scala, was chosen to sing the title role of Carmen at the La Scala 2009-10 season opening on December 7, opposite the sensational Jose of Jonas Kaufmann under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. The show was telecast live in selected movie theaters and transmitted on Italian Television. Despite the high pressure situation, Rachvelishvili acquitted herself well and received a big ovation from the audience. The rest of the COC cast include American tenor Bryan Hymel as Jose, Canadian soprano Jessica Muirhead as Micaela, and Paul Gay as Escamillo. Rory Macdonald makes his COC conducting debut. There will be a total of twelve performances, with shows on Jan. 27 and 30 this week.

Another important event this week is the return of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to Roy Thomson Hall under the baton of Kent Nagano. On the program is Weber's Overture to Oberon, Stravinsky's Firebird, and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Till Felner. The concert is on Monday Jan. 25 at 8:30 pm, an unusually late start. On Jan. 28 and 30 at 8 pm, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra presents the grand Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, with conductor James Gaffigan. Also on the program is the Canadian premiere of Thomas Ades' Violin Concerto "Concentric Paths" played by soloist Leila Josefowicz.

On Thursday Jan. 28, the Canadian Opera Company presents a free noon hour concert, Songs of Heaven and Earth by Olivier Messaien, performed by members of the COC Ensemble Studio, with Steven Philcox at the piano. This is a good opportunity to hear this comparatively rare work. Remember to show up at least 30 minutes early to secure a spot.

On Sunday, Jan. 31 at 2:30 pm, Opera in Concert presents Handel's Giulio Cesare, with countertenor David Trudgen, soprano Charlotte Corwin, mezzo Catherine Rooney, and baritone James Levesque. Kevin Mallon conducts the Aralia Ensemble. Jane Mallet Theatre at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.


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