Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

While last weekend brought a memorable performance from one example of those most modern of musician collectives, the percussion quartet, this coming weekend has me thinking of another. With the explosion of music written for an ever-increasing array of percussion instruments both foreign and domestic, ensembles of percussionists have increasingly struck out on their own, commissioning new works from composers happy to do so and building careers out of playing them together.

Perhaps the most prominent of these ensembles on the West Coast is the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, which is now entering its fifth season with its original line up of Matt Cook, Justin DeHart, Nick Terry, and Eric Guinivan. The group has played 20th and 21st-century works on most of the major stages around town but they passed a new landmark recently with the release of their first major label recording on Sono Luminus entitled, Rūpa-khandha.



The recording is notable for many reasons, but first and foremost because it is focused heavily on the legacy that West Coast composers have left on the percussionists' art. Ensembles like Brooklyn’s So Percussion have made a name for themselves commissioning works from the likes of New York-based composers Steve Reich and David Lang. And while the LAPQ are no strangers to this work, the material on Rūpa-khandha is decidedly different, featuring four newly commissioned works from composers working on the West Coast with an eye toward the percussion legacy left by those California giants of 20th-century composition Harrison, Riley, Harry Partch, William Kraft, and others.

One of those legacies is an interest in Eastern percussion instruments and their use in religious and folk settings. The first two pieces on Rūpa-khandha refer to those elements in direct if not always specific ways. LAPQ member Eric Guinivan’s Ritual Dances imagines music for folk rites of some imaginary tribe of the Pacific Rim. African and Arabic drums are joined by “found instruments” over five movements that emphasize the ritualistic sounds of ceremonies both solemn and celebratory. This is immediately followed by a similar companion piece from Sean Heim, Rūpa-khandha. The title refers to the first of Five Aggregates or “khandras” that constitute the human being in Buddhist philosophy. The allusions in this single movement are taken from a variety of other cultural traditions including the notion of the five basic elements and Native American musical traditions. The music evokes a sense of spirituality separate from the kind of urban transcendentalism common among works coming out of the late 20th century school of American Minimalism.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s current Principal Timpanist and composer Joseph Pereira follows suit with Repoussé, four movements inspired by his travels and instrument collecting while still playing with the New York Philharmonic. The title here, and those of the four separate movements refer to techniques of production in visual arts. Repoussé specifically refers to hammering out low-raised decorative embellishments in a malleable metal. It's an intriguing piece and it speaks to Perira's increasingly higher profile in this region as a composer. The recording concludes with a single movement from Jeffrey Holmes, Occasus.

Labels: recordings

There are a couple of notable recital recordings I've been listening to lately. Both include unusual juxtapositions of off the beaten path fare that make them worth a listen. Soprano Marlis Petersen and her pianist Jendrik Springer have compiled a song cycle entitled Goethe-lieder: Das Ewig-Weibliche for Harmonia Mundi. Goethe's poetry, and especially these texts from the mouths of his heroines, have inspired some of the most beautiful and best known lieder from the likes of Beethoven and Schubert. Petersen is mining other veins here, exploring Goethe's "eternal feminine" with unexpected settings of the same texts from other composers such as Wagner and Liszt. But the music goes even farther afield with the completely unexpected Charles Ives ("Ilmenau"), Tchaikovsky ("Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt"), and Manfred Trojahn ("Bewundert viel und viel gescholten") to name only a few. Petersen sounds confident and solid throughout with excellent phrasing. Like any program with so many different composers in the offing, there are significant shifts in style and approach that Petersen and Springer organize in an effort to minimize any jarring contrasts. And while not all of these songs are going to stay with you forever, its a smart and fascinating program with a lot to think about.


Meanwhile soprano Christine Schäfer recently made her switch to Sony and her first recording for them, Arias, may not carry an attention grabbing name. But no matter; her voice more than takes care of that job. Schäfer has managed a rather diverse set of roles already in her career leaving her mark in Mozart roles as well as Strauss, bel canto, and 20th century music. Arias captures that diversity with unexpected choices from Verdi's Otello ("Canzone del Salice"), as well as Handel, Bellini, Thomas and Strauss all performed with the support of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Julien Salemkour. Her tone is lovely throughout all of these numbers, but perhaps she is most impressive in the lone 20th century work on the program, Messiaen's "Ah! Dieu nous éblouit par excès de vérité" from Saint François d'Assise. Schäfer is well known for the role of the angel in Messiaen's sole opera and the performance recaptures some of the shine from this glorious high-water mark in her career.

Labels: recordings

Do you really need another set of the Beethoven symphonies? I was skeptical too, I admit, but if it's this recent release of the live recordings made by the Vienna Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann from 2008 through 2010, you might just. The recordings have been released already in DVD and Blu-Ray formats in 2011, but Sony has put together this single set now for those not inclined towards high end home theater systems.

Poor Beethoven. You'd think the most famous name in music had fallen upon the hardest of times. His music apparently now requires entire months of radio programming to convince people to appreciate it. Concert programmers as recently as last week were still trying to explain why his music even matters. How things got this bad for the old man are unclear. But listening to a recording as good as the Vienna Philharmonic's recent symphony cycle under Christian Thielemmann reinforces how inane this kind of marketing blather is. These performances do all the explaining anyone could need.

These are big-boned Romantic performances that make the most of the Vienna players' polished, exacting sound. It's almost as if Harnoncourt never happened. But this sort of fleshy Beethoven, popular half a century ago never really went away on world stages, and Thielemann taps into this with interpretations that are bright sounding, and often muscular. There is nothing retro about this work, however, and the symphonies sound as fresh and lively as ever. Thielemann has a strong sense of dynamics and pushes tempi in both directions but never to the point of losing the bigger picture.

And if you are looking for an argument for why buying physical recordings still matter, this is it. A digital download may be infinitely more portable, but it isn't as much fun to peruse as this white, cloth-bound set with individual paper sleeves for the discs. It's a lovely set and includes a bonus DVD with interviews and excerpts from the DVD releases as well. Help yourself. You need an Easter gift.

Labels: recordings

The rise of the modern countertenor and the resurgence in the popularity of Baroque opera have blessed contemporary audiences with some unsurpassed musical experiences. And no one vocalist may have accomplished as much along these lines as Andreas Scholl. He has few rivals in an increasingly crowded field of excellent performers and has excelled on both opera and concert stages. He is one of the most recorded vocalists of his age and next week, his latest Decca compilation of Bach cantatas will be available on line in all the usual formats. It’s a return to one of Scholl’s strengths given that Bach's music played such a large role in the earliest stages of his career. Scholl will be appearing locally in Los Angeles the day the recording becomes available in the U.S. by starting off a concert tour at the Walt Disney Concert Hall alongside Harry Bicket and The English Concert in a show that includes music from Purcell on October 11. The tour will take him to Carnegie Hall and Boston before he settles in for an extended stay at The Metropolitan Opera reprising one of his most famous roles, Bertarido, in Handel’s Rodelinda where he’ll join forces with Stephanie Blythe and Renée Fleming. Best of all, you don't have to be in New York to see it since the very photogenic Scholl will get the big screen HD treatment when Rodelinda is broadcast live in the company's "Live in HD" Series around the world on December 3. And you, lucky readers, get to share in the excitement now as Mr. Scholl was kind enough to subject himself to the OWA 10 Questions this week. Catch one of the world's greatest singers when he swings through the U.S. this Fall.

1. What role would you most like to perform but haven't yet?
   

   
   Any role that Handel wrote for "Senesino" would be wonderful. The tessitura sits well for my voice.



2. What role would you never want to perform even if you could?
   

   
   Maybe some atonal "extreme-singing" contemporary opera role.



3. You will be appearing in Los Angeles this month with The English Concert and Harry Bicket performing the music of Purcell. How important are concert or recital performances for you as opposed to full-scale operatic roles?
   

   
   Concert or recital performances enable me to establish a contact with the audience as Andreas Scholl whereas I have to personify somebody else in an opera-performance. These are two different worlds. I love the intimacy of a song recital accompanied by lute, harpsichord or piano only. This way I can stay with an audience for a while which usually develops a wonderful dynamic in a concert.



4. What is the best thing about being a countertenor?
   

   
   The confusion of someone who hasn’t heard the voice before. There is an element of surprise that blocks the listener from categorizing instantly and ideally lets him receive the music itself and not the performer.




5. Your newest recording on Decca, a selection of Bach cantatas, comes out in the US next week. What is special about singing Bach for you as a vocalist?
   

   
   I would say that Bach’s vocal works for the alto voice are amongst the most challenging works for a countertenor. The compositions are executed in an instrumental manner and there is no place for technical weakness; Bach makes no compromises in his compositions in order to help the singer. On top of that the music has a tremendous depth and sometimes seems to a singer like a steep rockface for the freeclimber. So the reward of mastering this challenge is a wonderful "vision".



6. As one of the world's most leading vocal artists, you have worked with a variety of the world’s greatest musicians. Whom would you most like to work with that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
   

   
   I met the Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel this summer in Tel-Aviv. I am a huge fan and it would be a dream to work with him.



7. So much of the standard countertenor repertoire is Baroque music. What would be an ideal contemporary music project that you would like to help develop or participate in?
   

   
   Any project that breaks with the established standard of music-presentation. It would need to be a project without "dark suit"; it would not take place in a concert hall, explore new spaces for music and combine singing with dance.

8. Later this year you will reprise your performance of Bertarido in Handel’s Rodelinda for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. What do you like best about American audiences?
   

   
   That they are open minded about baroque music and haven’t yet adopted the "Baroque-Style-police" attitude which enslaves the performer as well as the audience to the myth of "authenticity." Human feelings and enthusiasm, love and passion for the music we are singing are "authentic." Instruments, choice of strings on a violin, temperaments and so on are empty formulas and not "authentic" in themselves.



9. What is your current obsession?
   

   
   Filmmaking. I produced a documentary film about my singing teacher Richard Levitt. (He grew up in Los Angeles.) It was a wonderful experience to make a film, and I am already thinking about a new idea.



10. What can we look forward to in the coming years from Andreas Scholl?
    

    
    I want to develop not only as a singer, but as a musical and creative personality. So in the future I want to combine different art-forms with baroque music and the countertenor voice in at least one project a year. I have already realized some of these ideas and there are many more to come.

Labels: 10 Questions, LA Philharmonic 11/12, Met opera reviews 11/12, recordings

Antonio Pappano has been amassing a number of superb recordings over the last few years including notable versions of Verdi’s Requiem and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. The DVD releases of productions under his baton at the Royal Opera House during his tenure as Music Director there alone would make a case for his standing among the finest of the world’s conductors. This year, his winning streak continues with two new recordings that showcase his range in a number of different musical arenas. Since 2005 Pappano has been Music Director of the Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and earlier this month, EMI released a live recording of Rossini’s William Tell from the ensemble in the original French. Rossini’s final opera premiered in Paris in 1829 and the critical edition used for this recording emulates the version presented at that opening. And while some will grouse that this may not be the most complete version of the opera, it seems appropriate that a performance that returns to the original French uses a text as close as possible to that premiere in that same language.

On hearing the first few bars, though, all concerns about these minutiae are pretty quickly swept away. Pappano leads a brisk, lively performance from the players and this most familiar of overtures immediately connects with new force. The cast is excellent across the board and features a very exciting performance from tenor John Osborn as Arnold. This is a notoriously high part and one of the reasons the opera is not often revived on stage. Yet, Osborn sounds great here with no strain and real excitement through the whole evening. This is not something you hear everyday and it recommends the recording in its own right. Gerald Finley sings the title role. He’s a singer I’ve always liked and in the last few years seems increasingly to be on the top of everybody else's list as well. His rich, warm tone is evident, and he stands out repeatedly in the ensemble numbers. Marie-Nicole Lemieux sings Mathilde and has fine technique and plenty of stamina. It’s also worth noting the chorus work on this CD, which isn’t the least bit sloppy either and is a pleasure to listen to. It’s a recording worth owning the physical CD of as well, given the packaging includes one of those great, if rather outlandish, classical CD covers that comes along once every so often as pictured above.


Speaking of outlandish covers...So we know Pappano excels with bel canto repertory. So what could be more of a contrast that the upcoming release of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole filmed during its premiere run at the Royal Opera House in London earlier this year. ROH has a good track record of preserving its mainstage world premieres over the last several seasons, which has included Birtwistle’s The Minotaur. Anna Nicole shows Pappano in a very different light as he coaxes the ROH orchestra through Turnage’s tour of American musical genres. It’s all here from Jazz and Blues to Country and Western. Turnage isn’t afraid of going for some swelling romantic Hollywood soundtrack moments along the way either and Pappano masterfully keeps the show musically on an even keel with this panoply of stylistic indulgences.

I was most excited about the performance of Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role. This is not entirely an easy sing and there are some moments where her Wagnerian inclinations serve her well. But this is a very physical and often not very glamorous character and Westbroek does it all from the nervous girl in the plastic surgeon's office to the voracious pole dancer. Gerald Finley shows up here as well as the lawyer Stern, the villian of the opera, and while Stern may not be quite as charming as Don Giovanni, Finley is masterful at the cold and calculating parts of his character's nature. Susan Bickley has a substantial part as Anna Nicole’s mother Virgie and also has some lovely dramatic passages at the end of the evening in a Brangane sort of way.

The show itself is certainly operatic if not necessarily groundbreaking. The narrative is often commented on externally by several characters who step in and out of the main narrative including Anna Nicole herself. It's like everybody's a part of the Greek chorus sooner or later. The story is a standard issue downside of fame and fortune tale. The young innocent Anna Nicole rides her oversize ambition out of her small town marriage and into a strip club and eventual fame only to pay the price. She’s a tragic figure, the victim of the predatory males around her—father, lawyer, husbands, et al. All of this is wrapped in a lampoon about American culture and this year’s model of the American dream. Richard Jones’ production, surrounded by garishly lit corrugated steel walls features any number of kitschy over-sized objects from bobbled-head dog figurines to an uncovered mattress big enough for Paul Bunyan. It’s like a Jeff Koons exhibit with singing. And while Anna Nicole is not The Great Gatsby, the criticisms that it makes about America are still worth making.

The opera conspicuously avoids much reflection on its title character’s actual work as a model and TV performer. The only mentions of her activities outside of her marriages and addiction to drugs come in later scenes where she is victimized by Stern who arranges for a series of the most invasive and personal media appearances. There's a great trio on the set of the Larry King Show with the host. And then there’s the language. The ROH chorus probably doesn’t get too many chances to dress as 1990s TV anchors and repeatedly sing lines with the words fuck and cunt in them, and Anna Nicole may have filled their quotient on that front for the rest of most of their lives. But the language seemed appropriate and was often quite funny. I was particularly amused by the chorus of small-breasted women in Act I and the Jimmy Choo shoe aria Anna sings in Act II. Despite all of this, though, I was drawn into the story and was admittedly moved by Anna Nicole’s tragic end. Turnage and his librettist Richard Thomas have a real sympathy for Ann Nicole that wins out in the end. This caring shines through and that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?

Labels: recordings

One of the great things about the Metropolitan Opera’s recent expanded presence both in movie theaters, via the Live in HD Broadcast series, and on the radio, via SiriusXM, is the increasing number of great performances from both series that subsequently become available for the first time for closer inspection on both DVD and audio formats. I've featured some of these before, but there are two recent audio releases that bear further attention not only for the remarkable quality of the performances, but also their timeliness in terms of the endless kerfuffle that surrounds nearly all aspects of the Met. Lately the hand-wringing over current music director James Levine, his health, and the fantasies about the Met after he has moved on have reached a fever pitch. As I've written about before, I find all of this attention a bit ridiculous and distasteful. But with all the concurrent hoopla over Levine's 40th anniversary at the house, two of the most recent Sony releases from the company's extensive broadcast archive ironically provide an interesting footnote to the hue and cry.


The two recordings in question are both works by Wagner. The first is a 1968 recording of Die Walküre conducted by Berislav Klobucar who had filled in for an ailing Herbert von Karajan when this broadcast was held. The casting and vocal performances are unparalleled with Brigit Nilsson as Brünnhilde, Thomas Stewart as Wotan, Leonie Rysanek as Seglinde, Jon Vickers as Siegmund, and Christa Ludwig as Fricka. The other Wagner offering from Sony and the Met is a Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from 1972 conducted by Thomas Schippers. This cast includes Pilar Lorengar as Eva, James King as Walther von Stolzing, Benno Kusche as Beckmesser and Theo Adam as Hans Sachs. Both of these performances aired around the same time as James Levine was making his house debut in 1971. And while Wagner's music had a long history at the Met prior to this time, Levine's recognition as a specialist in all things Wagner was still off in the future. Since then, many conductors have led Wagner's operas at the Met, but there is little question now that Wagner's operas are near and dear to Levine's heart. He has personally helmed most of the new productions and major revivals of Wagner's operas since taking over as music director there in 1976 and his mark on these works at the Met is indelible.

But if one is looking for clues of what the future holds, what better place to start than with these recordings, offering a state-of-the-art view of Wagner at the Met in the years immediately preceding Levine's take over. Of course, the vocal performances are out of this world. Nilsson is at her best as are Stewart, and Rysanek in the Walküre performance. But with these riches, the orchestra performances can be surprisingly scrappy at times with rough tidbits in the most exposed moments. Levine's Wagner legacy at the Met has come mostly from the pit where his attention to the house's world class orchestra has created a richness and shine to the ensemble's sound, especially in this corner of the opera repertory. No doubt this is an asset, but there is something to be said for the vitality in these earlier recordings when the house orchestra didn't necessarily share the reputation it does today. Schippers and Klobucar both manage to produce something that may not be as polished as what audiences have come to expect under Levine's guidance today, but there is no lack of mission or energy in either of their performances. Some grit can be a good thing and both of these recordings avoid the kind of stasis that can plague the more controlled and refined playing that now dominates. Is this what Wanger at the Met will sound like in Levine's absence? Most likely not, because there is no going back. But both of these excellent offerings suggest that there are many different ways of doing things and both come recommended.

Labels: recordings