Bayreuth Festival, Die Walküre

Festspielhaus, Bayreuth
July 27th, 2013

Siegmund - Johan Botha
Hunding - Franz-Josef Selig
Wotan - Wolfgang Koch
Sieglinde - Anja Kampe
Brünnhilde - Catherine Foster
Fricka - Claudia Mahnke

Gerhilde - Allison Oakes
Ortlinde - Dara Hobbs
Waltraute - Claudia Mahnke
Schwertleite - Nadine Weissmann
Helmwige - Christiane Kohl
Siegrune - Julia Rutigliano
Grimgerde - Geneviève King
Rossweisse - Alexandra Petersamer

Conductor - Kirill Petrenko
Director - Frank Castorf
Sets - Aleksandar Denic
Costumes - Adriana Braga Peretzki
Lighting - Rainer Caspar
Video - Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra


Following a Rheingold that was full-to-bursting with exciting new ideas, Frank Castorf obviously decided to go for a few long, cold beers during Die Walküre.

The singers were practically left to fend for themselves, particularly in Act 2, in another breathtakingly opulent set by Aleksandar Denic -- this time a wooden-framed oil rig in Baku, Azerbaijan at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Not that a Siegmund of Johan Botha's size and stature can do much moving around onstage, anyway, let alone run through a forest in a storm, flee with Sieglinde and then fight to the death with Hunding.

But there was so much singing at the ramp that -- were it not for Denic's magnificent set -- we might not have been in Wagner's Holy of Holies at all, but watching a tired and dusty repertoire production anywhere in the world.

OK, there was Castorf's now all-too-familiar use of live video projection to reveal what is going on somewhere deep inside the set.
We see Sieglinde slipping sleeping potion into Hunding's drink and then their abortive love-making before Hunding nods off and Sieglinde sneaks down to Siegmund.

There are also faux newsreels of Russia during Stalin's time. 

For some reason, we also see a woman eating a cream cake, first daintily with a spoon, then with her bare fingers and finally greedily gorging herself on it. 
A dress is also delivered to her as a gift.
But quite who she is, or why we should care never really becomes apparent.

She wanders onto the stage during Wotan's scene with Fricka  in Act 2, to be angrily waved away by him.
Is she simply one of his infidelities and floozies, the reason for the breakdown of his marriage?

Nevertheless, the use of video  is nowhere near as intrusive as in Rheingold.

There, it was easy to get distracted from the music.
Here, the relative lack of action finally allowed us to sit back and listen to the music and appreciate the sensitivity and elasticity of Kirill Petrenko's conducting
Here seems to be a great Ring conductor in the making, a  musician with a fine sense for the overall architecture of the score, but one who also really listens to the singers and lets them breathe, never allowing the orchestra to drown them. 

It's just a shame that Bayreuth hasn't been able to line up a better cast to do him justice.

No matter how generous I try to be and even allowing for premiere nerves, Wolfgang Koch is no Wotan, at least not one worthy of Bayreuth, just as Claudia Mahnke isn't suited to Fricka.

With a gripping pair of actor-singers, such as I heard in Bryn Terfel and Sarah Connolly in London's recent Ring, who have the necessary scope and nobility of tone, the breakdown of their marriage at the start of Act 2 can be heart-breaking.

But here, Textverständlichkeit was far from optimal and Koch, in particular, seemed more concerned with merely getting to the end than coaxing any particular meaning out of the words.
Wotan's monologue was every bit as boring as people frequently complain it can be and -- without any supporting direction from Castorf -- dragged interminably.

Bayreuth's new British Brünnhilde Catherine Foster is much more lyrical than we're used to in this role.
Hers is a lovely voice and the ease with which she sang her opening Hojotohos was impressive and boded well. 
But she remained so underpowered in Act 2 that she was -- unjustly -- booed at the intermission.
Neverthless, it soon became apparent that she had  been saving herself, because she switched on the drama in the final act without ever sounding squally or overtaxed.

Act 1 is, of course, everyone's favourite part of the Ring and Botha, Anja Kampe and Franz-Josef Selig magnificently did it justice. With singing like that, the lack of personenregie didn't really matter.
The Valkyries were all fine, too, and it was here in Act 3 that the stage came to life, finally. 

Rheingold must be the easiest part of the Ring to stage because there is so actually a story to tell, while Die Walküre and Siegfried have less to offer in the way of real action.
But after the almost over-busy Vorabend, it really felt as if Castorf had got bored and gone AWOL.

So it will be intriguing to see how he handles the next instalment on Monday or whether he skives off again here, too.


 

Bayreuth Festival, Das Rheingold

Festspielhaus, Bayreuth
July 26th, 2013

Wotan - Wolfgang Koch
Donner - Oleksandr Pushniak
Froh - Lothar Odinius
Loge - Norbert Ernst
Fricka - Claudia Mahnke
Freia - Elisabet Strid
Erda - Nadine Weismann
Alberich - Martin Winkler
Mime - Burkhard Ulrich
Fasolt - Günther Groissböck
Fafner - Sorin Coliban
Woglinde - Mirella Hagen
Wellgunde - Julia Rutigliano
Flosshilde - Okka von der Damerau

Conductor - Kirill Petrenko
Director - Frank Castorf
Sets - Aleksandar Denic
Costumes - Adriana Braga Peretzki
Lighting - Rainer Caspar
Video - Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

The only production by Frank Castorf that I've ever seen was Dostoyevsky's Der Spieler, which was so excruciating -- with the actors relentlessly shouting their lines (that is when they didn't forget them), belching and generally making pigs of themselves -- that I left in the interval.

So it was with some trepidation that I came to Bayreuth this year to see his new staging of the Ring, one of his very few forays into opera.

Nevertheless, if the tantalising glimpses of brilliance that characterised long stretches of Rheingold can be sustained over the next three parts, we could be in for something really special. 

Of course, there are stretches, too, which don't work quite so well and where Castorf appears to lose momentum or interest.
But his main premise -- of casting Wagner's Nordic tale of gods, demi-gods, giants and dwarves as a modern-day gangster movie that combines the look and feel of Quentin Tarantino with the weirdness of David Lynch -- is surprisingly cogent.

As the curtain rises, we find ourselves not on the banks of the River Rhine, but in a sleazy motel on America's iconic Route 66.

The Rheintöchter are brassy blonde prostitutes who lounge on deckchairs at the side of the motel's seedy little pool, swigging vodka out of a bottle and grilling sausages on a barbecue.
Alberich and Mime are both pimps and Wotan a gangster whom we first encounter having a threesome with Fricka and Freia.
Fasolt and Fafner are violent thugs armed with baseball bats who clearly bear a grudge towards Wotan and threaten to smash up his Mercedes and kidnap Freia unless Wotan repays his debts.

The set by Aleksandar Denic, which revolves to show alternatively the motel and a petrol station cum convenience store and bar, is a jaw-dropping masterpiece.

Castorf wouldn't be Castorf if he didn't have multiple video cameras placed at different vantage points around the set to project images of what's going on behind the scenes on to a giant screen on the motel's roof.  

And there is so much going on all the time that is easy to get distracted from the music.

But like lots of updatings, Castorf's reading has its weak points, too. 
There is a clear mis-match between the stage and what the characters are singing about.
There is no Valhalla, no Nibelheim and  no Rhinegold for Alberich to steal.

Puzzlingly, Alberich and Mime are already bound and gagged by Wotan and Loge when the latter "arrive"in Nibelheim, which is actually only a cramped caravan that Alberich calls home.

And in the crucial scene where Wotan wrests the ring from Alberich and the Nibelung utters his catastrophic curse, all three protagonists are comfortably relaxing in deckchairs.

But most of the time, Castorf's concept is intelligent and illuminating.

Sadly, the singers are another weak point.
Wolfgang Koch sings well, but with his slim, lightweight baritone, is simply miscast as Wotan.
Norbert Ernst made his name as David in Meistersinger, but hasn't the slippery wiliness that the part of Loge demands.

Martin Winkler also lacks the range and depth to really convince as Alberich.

The women fare better, particularly Claudia Mahnke, an ensemble member in Frankfurt, as Fricka, Elisabet Strid as Freia and Nadine Weissman as Erda.

The giants and the Rhinemaidens were also well cast.

Castorf and his team didn't show themselves when the curtain came down and the all-too-predictable storm of boos was unleashed.
But I think it's usual in Bayreuth for the leading team to do so only when the Ring is complete.
I can't imagine Castorf is chickening out in any way.

But the Bayreuthers have clearly fallen in love already with Kirill Petrenko, making his debut here.
I heard him conduct the by now legendary Ring in Meiningen about 10 years ago but can't, to be honest, remember much about it.

It's his first time in Bayreuth and he is clearly still finding his feet.
The prelude didn't always flow as readily as one could have hoped, but he soon picked up the tension and gave a nicely balanced reading, always attentive to the singers.
It'll be interesting to hear what he does with Die Walküre tomorrow.

Bayreuth Festival Opening Night, Der fliegende Holländer

Festspielhaus, Bayreuth

July 25th, 2013

Daland - Franz-Josef Selig
Senta - Ricarda Merbeth
Erik -  Tomislav Mužek
Mary - Christa Mayer
Der Steuermann - Benjamin Bruns
Der Holländer - Samuel Youn

Conductor - Christian Thielemann
Director - Jan Philipp Gloger
Sets - Christof Hetzer
Costumes - Karin Jud
Lighting - Urs Schönebaum
Video - Martin Eidenberger

Orchestra and chorus of the Bayreuth Festival

I didn't much like Jan Philipp Gloger's staging of Der fliegende Holländer when it premiered at the Bayreuth Festival last year.
I found his decision to update the action to the present merely gratuitous and it offered no new insights.
Casting the Dutchman as a snappily-suited businessman who makes his first appearance with a trolley suitcase and a Starbucks coffee in his hand was simply gimmicky.

Admittedly, the opening scene is visually impressive: Daland and the Steersman are adrift in a small dinghy in some gigantic super-computer.
But that is as strong as the production gets.
And it's all downhill from there.


OK, there are some nice touches: the spinning scene is a factory floor where the women pack portable electric fans. And Erik is the factory's handyman and a likeable loser.
But that's about it.
Gloger's "reinterpretation" might be acceptable in an ambitious opera house somewhere in the provinces, but worthy of Bayreuth's fabled Green Hill it certainly was not.

For its first revival as opening night of the Bicentenary Bayreuth Festival, Gloger has added a few changes.
But they're primarily cosmetic -- Senta's dress is now black instead of red. And, artistic free spirit that she is, she splashes black paint on the cardboard sculpture she makes while the other factory girls sing their spinning song.
The model she makes isn't of the Dutchman's ship, either, as it was a year ago. But of the Dutchman himself, looking more than a little like an artwork by Stephan Balkenhol.
And the cardboard wings she pins on to become the Dutchman's "angel" were not the childish butterfly wings we saw last year, but larger more sinister black ones, turning her into some sort of Angel of Death.

Video projections have been added to, massive globs of black paint that dribble down the factory walls.

Maybe because I've now seen the production three times -- twice last year and once this year -- I found the storyline more coherent than on the first encounter.

The Dutchman is a businessman of limitless wealth, but suffering from existential ennui and the general emptiness of modern life, self-mutilating, bored by money and freely available sex.
Senta is the spoilt daughter of a factory owner who doesn't hesitate to pair her off with a wealthy suitor.


Nevertheless, Gloger's updating still comes across as a little trite and I left asking myself, "So what?".

Vocally, the evening was similarly unspectacular, and a long way short of festspielwürdig.
Last year's Senta, Adrianne Pieczonka, is in a completely different league to Ricarda Merbeth, who only ever sounded really comfortable in her middle range. And she has a distracting wobble.

Samuel Youn simply hasn't got the vocal clout needed for the Holländer, and his intonation was frequently off, as it had been last year, too.
Franz-Josef Selig was much more satisfactory as Daland.
But it was Tomislav Mužek as Erik and Benjamin Bruns as the Steersman who both really stood out.

Bruns' voice is light, but has a pleasant burnish to it, and his diction was always clear.
Mužek was suitably plaintive as the downtrodden Erik, a big bulky bear of a man.

It almost goes without saying in Bayreuth that it was Christian Thielemann who really stole the show.

The Dutchman, for him, is no "Sturm und Drang" piece and his orchestra never sounds brash or loud.
Every detail and dynamic is carefully and expertly shaded, but never exaggeratedly so.

It seems that Thielemann can never do wrong in Bayreuth, anyway, just as he can't in Vienna.
But he deservedly got the most rapturous reception at the end of the evening.

Rheingau Musik Festival: Britten, War Requiem

July 18, 2013

Kloster Eberbach, Basilika

Christoph Prégardien - tenor
Thomas E. Bauer - baritone
Susanne Bernhard - soprano

Bachchor Mainz
Chor der Hochschule für Musik Mainz
Mainzer Domchor

Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern

Ralf Otto - conductor


Would it not be for the War Requiem, I've a nagging feeling the Britten Centenary would pass almost unnoticed in Germany.
OK, in this neck of the woods, Karlsruhe and Mannheim are staging, at the very end of their 2012/2013 seasons, Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw respectively. And both productions are thankfully being revived in September, so I hope to see them then.
But inexplicably, Frankfurt Opera has shunned Britten completely both this season and next, surprising given its very solid Britten pedigree, with a memorable Owen Wingrave a few seasons ago and a perfectly presentable Death in Venice. 
And it doesn't feel as if performances of Britten's concert works -- never really a mainstay of German programming anyway -- have been any more numerous this year than in the past.

Except, that is, for his op. 66.
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra gave two blistering performances under Mariss Jansons with Christian Gerhaher, Mark Padmore and Emily Magee in March.
And then followed the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle with soloists Matthias Goerne, John Mark Ainsley and Emily Magee in June.
Here's hoping that one or both of the concerts will be released on CD at some point.

Of course, the apparent rush of interest in the War Requiem in the centenary year is gratifying for someone  who used to drive his family to distraction as a schoolboy by repeatedly replaying a scratched and worn set of LPs of the composer's still unrivalled recording but didn't experience a live performance until much later. (If I remember correctly, it was under André Previn in the Royal Festival Hall in the late 80s.)
Since then, performances haven't really been ten-a-penny, even if the list of recordings continues to grow steadily.

Following the Munich performances in March and, after having missed the Berlin concerts in June, I must admit to having had some misgivings about what seemed a bit of B-grade line-up for a performance in Kloster Eberbach as part of this year's Rheingau Musik Festival.

I've never consciously heard the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern before, nor the conductor Ralf Otto.
I've long admired Christoph Prégardien as a Lied singer, even if his voice has aged noticeably in recent years. And whether he still had the vocal range for the demanding tenor part, not to mention a requisite command of English for Wilfred Owen's poems, was, in my mind, open to question.
I've always been very impressed by baritone Thomas E. Bauer the few times I've heard him in Austria.
But the soprano soloist, Susanne Bernhard, was a new name to me.

So it all seemed a bit of a mixed bag.  And with those two moving Munich concerts still very much in my ear, there was ample room for disappointment.
And then, of course, there were the acoustics.

As spectacular a setting the former Cistercian monastery in Eberbach is in the beautiful wine-growing area of the Rheingau, as a concert hall it is dire. And I've boycotted it ever since the misery of hearing a performance of Bach's B-minor Mass by John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi forces transformed into a distant, indifferentiable gloop of sound.

When I looked, only the cheapest tickets were still available online, which meant sitting somewhere at the back in a side aisle -- not an option at all.
So, when I called the hotline on an off-chance and was offered a top-price ticket in the front row, I didn't hestitate.

Things also began to look (or sound) up as I queued to collect my ticket.
The choir and orchestra were having a warm-up in the basilica and from outside, it sounded very promising.

Audiences in Eberbach aren't the most discerning or open-minded and I'd wager that only a handful had ever actually heard a work by Britten before, let alone the War Requiem.
So I steeled myself psychologically for a fair amount of fidgeting and bored leafing through the programme.

The basilica must be one of the only concert halls in the world where the risk of interruption by a swallow's cry is greater than the danger of a mobile phone going off.
The swallows nest in the apse high above where the orchestra is seated.
And their chirping was the only sound to be heard before the opening bars of the Requiem aeternam.

It immediately became apparent that my favourable impression of the snatches of the "Anspielprobe" I'd heard outside was correct.

Ralf Otto, chief conductor of the Bachchor Mainz, the main chorus of the evening, was in perfect control, with secure and astutely judged tempi, given the cavernous acoustics.

The small stage was crowded, with the chamber orchestra forming an inner circle around the conductor in the middle of the full-scale symphony orchestra.
The boys' voices were placed slightly behind to the right, in a side aisle.
Not really an ideal set-up for the contrasting sound-worlds that Britten had in mind.
Surely in a space as cavernous as this, more imagination could have been put into the positioning of the different ensembles instead of huddling them all together.
It certainly might have helped overcome some of the basilica's acoustical difficulties.

Prégardien proved to be the biggest surprise of the evening.
His voice does not have the ease or gleam it used to have in the top register.
But as well as being a consummate Lied singer, he is exemplary in oratorio, particularly as the Evangelist in Bach's Passions.
His experience and near faultless diction served him well here.
While his voice no longer has the shine and beauty of younger Britten tenors, this was a truly searing performance.
The final single rising line in the Agnus Dei -- "Dona nobis pacem" (the tenor's only snippet  of Latin text) -- was all the more moving precisely because Prégardien's voice cracked at the pianissimo top.

Baritone Thomas E. Bauer is much younger and his voice more supple and beautiful.
His German accent was also more audible than Prégardien's, but since Britten originally wrote the part for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau -- and it has become something of a tradition to give it to a German singer -- that was fine.

His is still a comparatively small voice, so I'm not sure Bauer would have been audible much further back. But his and Prégardien's interpretation of the final Wilfred Owen poem, "Strange Meeting", was suitably moving.

Just as Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau have still never been matched in the work, no soprano has ever surpassed Galina Vishnevskaya, either.
Susanne Bernhard has a nicely rounded voice, full and even across the range, but nowhere dramatic enough for this part.
In fact, according to the programme notes, Bernhard seems to specialise in lighter, more lyrical roles such as Susanna or Sophie, so one senses she was a little miscast here.

Indeed, situated further back behind the orchestra and in front of the choir, she also had trouble making herself heard at times and was totally drowned out in the closing pages of the Libera me where the soprano line should really soar.

The Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern may not be the Berlin Philharmonic or the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, but acquitted themselves very ably. The chamber orchestra in particular seemed tuned in to Britten's idiom.
No complaints either about the Bachchor Mainz, which was always alert, every word clearly audible.

Predictably, the Eberbach audience -- here for the event rather than the music -- gave the performance standing ovations.
But it should be noted that the most vocal shouters of "Bravo" were precisely those who had flipped endlessly and noisily through their programmes for most of the evening and shattered the magical closing silence with premature applause.
Enough said?

Richard Wagner 200th Birthday Concert

May 22nd, 2013

Festspielhaus Bayreuth

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Eva-Maria Westbroek - soprano
Johan Botha - tenor
Kwangchul Youn - bass
Christian Thielemann - conductor


I'm probably going to be hung, drawn and quartered for saying this.
But the much-hyped Geburtstagskonzert to mark the Wagner bicentenary really wasn't what we could -- and should -- have expected from one of the highlights in a year full to bursting with new books and recordings, commemorative stamps and coins and, naturally, performances of Wagner's operas.

No doubt the logistics of such an event were extremely challenging.
Here we have a theatre which only ever opens its doors for a few weeks in the summer, suddenly expected to be up and running smoothly for a solitary concert on a cold, blustery and wet May evening.
The Festspielhaus itself is clad in scaffolding because Bayreuth's Baupolizei has decided that its crumbling facade is a health and safety hazard.
And no date has been set yet for when the repair work can be completed and the scaffolding taken down again.
The Steigenberger group, which runs the adjoining restaurants -- never really a culinary treat at the best of times -- decided it wasn't worth the trouble to bring in all the necessary staff and infrastructure for just one night.
Instead, a couple of makeshift beer and bratwurst tents were set up next to the Festspielhaus.

In the town itself, the Richard Wagner Museum housed in the composer's former home Wahnfried is a building site, due to intensive and intrusive renovation and rebuilding work which will probably drag on until 2015.
And the baroque jewel of the Markgräfliche Opernhaus, the UNESCO heritage-listed opera house that drew Wagner to Bayreuth in the first place, has also been shut for renovation since last October with no firm date yet set for its reopening.

Now no-one can be blamed for the bad weather, of course.

But surely the festival management and town authorities could have gotten their act together to lend a much less makeshift feel to the celebrations marking Richard's Big Fat Birthday.
It's not as if the Bicentenary was sprung on them by surprise.
It's been a looming for a long time.
And yet no-one thought to get the town ship-shape in time?

At least the musical offering offered some hope of compensation.
On the programme was Act I of Die Walküre, with Johan Botha as Siegmund, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde and Kwangchul Youn as Hunding.
After the interval came the Vorspiel and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried's Rheinfahrt and Trauermarsch from Götterdämmerung and the overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

The problems arose here because, for a concert which was to be broadcast live on radio and television, the orchestra and soloists clearly hadn't rehearsed sufficiently.
Youn, in particular, Bayreuth's magnificently voiced Gurnemanz in Stefan Herheim's recent Parsifal, clearly had very different ideas of tempi from Thielemann.
Bayreuth's unofficial GMD -- currently unsurpassed in this repertoire -- was of course alert enough to respond and the orchestra followed him blindly.
But it nevertheless made for some awkard moments.
Botha, no stranger to this role, was in fine form, too, and his effortless, gleaming tenor appears to have darkened to just the right degree since I heard him last. But he strangely fluffed the text a couple of times and made a duff entry.
Westbroek, currently singing Minnie in Puccini's La Fanciulla del West in Frankfurt, gave a blistering performance as Sieglinde, her voice rich with colour and never forced or squally.
But her Liebestod after the interval remained strangely underpowered.
The Dutch soprano is to sing her first complete Isolde at the end of this year in Dresden and she will also be Thielemann's Isolde in Bayreuth in 2015 in the festival's next staging of Tristan by Katharina Wagner.
So this performance really felt like a trial run, when surely, on this date of all dates, it should have been the real thing.

Acoustics were another problem.
The orchestra in the Festspielhaus usually sits in the covered pit, invisible to the audience.
And Wagner built the whole theatre around just that concept -- which explains the miraculous acoustics of the house in staged opera performances.
But for the Birthday Concert, the orchestra was on stage itself and so the sound was very different.

And with just a run-through rehearsal earlier that day (Thielemann had been in Dresden with his Staatskapelle Dresden and Jonas Kaufmann the night before), the tuttis -- experienced Bayreuthers as all the players were -- were sometimes a bit rough around the edges and intonation frayed. And the Meistersinger overture in particular was marred by some scrappy ensemble playing.
Surprising for an orchestra drawn from the best players all across Germany (and occasionally beyond) and which, with this repertoire in Wagner's holy of holies, can sound like no other in the world.

Again, organisational difficulties were no doubt to blame here, not artistic ones.
But this was Big Richie's Birthday we're talking about, not some arbitrary one-off gig in the provinces.
Other engagements and obligations aside, is it too much to expect musicians of this calibre to allot sufficient time to rehearse just a little bit more?

Unlike the summer festival, tickets for the birthday concert were put on sale on a first-come-first-served basis last year and were almost immediately sold out.

Given the upcoming elections in September, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a regular at Bayreuth, had no time to drop by this time.
Her foreign minister Guido Westerwelle had been scheduled to attend but was in the Middle East instead.

That left Bavarian State Premier Horst Seehofer as the only politician of national standing and he made some bland comments about the universality of Wagner's genius and how proud Bavaria was to have given  the composer asylum.

Britain's Stephen Fry, a Wagner fan and Bayreuth devotee, tweeted blissfully about the music and dining with the Wagners afterwards.

The audience also roared and stamped in tumultuous applause.

As for me, I was left feeling sadly underwhelmed, despite one or two gripping moments in the first half.
Never mind, I'm sure Bayreuth will get its act together for what promises to be a truly exciting summer.

Barock+ March 8 and 9, 2013

Barock+

March 8 and 9, 2013
hr-Sendesaal

hr-Sinfonieorchester
Sebastian Wittiber - Flute
Fazıl Say - Piano
Paavo Järvi - Conductor


What do Bach's Ouverture Nr. 2 in B-Minor BWV 1067, Mozart's Piano Concerto Nr. 12 in A-Major KV 414 and Franz Schmidt's Symphony Nr. 2 in E-flat Major have in common?

Not a lot, to be frank. And it would be disingenuous to try to pretend otherwise.

Hessischer Rundfunk moderator Adelheid Coy, in her pre-concert talk, attempted to plot a curve connecting all three works.
The slow movement of the Mozart concerto is, for example, an hommage to one of Bach's sons, Johann Christian Bach, taking as its theme a few bars from one of the "London Bach's" opera overtures.
And Schmidt (1874-1939), an Austrian late Romantic who is nowadays barely known outside his home city of Vienna where he played the cello in the Vienna Philharmonic,  "has a lot do with the Bach," Coy assured us, but failed to enlighten any further.

So to be honest, it felt like a bit of a cheat  to present three such disparate works in the third concert in this season's highly popular Barock+ series in the Hessischer Rundfunk's own broadcasting studio, the Sendesaal.

The real motivations behind the choice of works were likely more prosaic: Paavo Järvi is leaving as chief conductor at the end of the current season and had yet to conduct a single concert in the Barock+ series.
Furthermore, he has never previously worked with the charismatic (but not uncontroversial) Turkish pianist Fazıl Say, this season's artist in residence.
So it was, so to speak, an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Järvi himself admits that he's no baroque specialist and it was in fact the first time he's ever conducted Bach in Frankfurt.

But he couldn't have found a better partner than Sebastian Wittiber, one of the orchestra's two solo flautists, for a performance of Bach's B-Minor Suite.

Wittiber is an extremely versatile musician, equally at home in Mozart's flute concerti or virtuoso contemporary repertoire such as Matthias Pintscher's flute concerto Transir to classic 20th century pieces such as the Ibert concerto or the Poulenc sonata.

For BWV 1067, Wittiber opted for his own modern concert flute, rather than a wooden Böhm equivalent or even a copy of a baroque transverse flute.
But he gave a nod to historically informed performance with his scaled-back vibrato and slick, unfussy ornamentation.
Nevertheless, this was an unapologetically modern-day Bach that used double-tonguing for the fast passage work and relished the ripe lower register of the modern instrument (which has about as much to do with the flutes of Bach's day as a Steinway has to do with a clavichord).

Wittiber's range of dynamic shading -- from the most delicate and barely audible pianissimo to a beautifully rounded forte -- is remarkable, his articulation and phrasing always clear and expertly judged.

Tempi were fleet, particularly in the first of the two Bourrées and the final Badinerie, possibly one of the best known pieces ever for flute, was taken at a break-neck (or should I say "break-tongue") speed.

It is becoming increasingly popular for Mozart's piano concerti to be performed on fortepiano.
But Fazıl Say is no period-instrument man and he unabashedly chose a Steinway for his two performances of Mozart's Piano Concerto Nr. 12 in A-Major.

Say's residency with the hr-Sinfonieorchester this season has taken us from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Ravel and Gershwin to his own compositions and most of the concerts have been sold out.

His detractors rage and fume at what they see as Say's self-serving willfulness and idiosyncracy of interpretation and two of them tried to make their boos heard amidst the frenetic applause that followed Friday's performance.
The virility of Say's attack is certainly not to everyone's taste and his left hand in particular can sound aggressive and intrusive.
But in KV 414 -- composed in 1782 not long after Mozart arrived in Vienna and full of fresh air and sunlight -- we caught glimpses of a refinement and delicacy in his playing, too. 

There is nothing remotely baroque about Franz Schmidt's gigantic Symphony Nr. 2 in E-flat, which came after the interval. Scored for massive forces, including quadruple woodwinds, four percussion players, eight horns and four trumpets, this was late Romanticism à Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Max Reger and Anton Bruckner.

Neeme Järvi's recordings of Schmidt's four symphonies are already regarded as a reference by many.
And his son Paavo -- currently recording successive Bruckner symphonies with the hr-Sinfonieorchester -- clearly feels at home in this repertoire, too. (Paavo is in fact planning a Schmidt cycle of his own when he returns to Frankfurt as Conductor Laureate next season in performances which will similarly be captured on CD.)

His clear analytical style and firm sense of architectural proportion are ideal for guiding the listener through such an unfamiliar work.
Written in three movements and lasting 50 minutes, the symphony, for all its bombast, is tightly structured.
Perhaps the most accessible on first listening is the second movement, a set of 11 variations on a chorale-like theme introduced by the woodwinds.

From a technical point of view, Schmidt's writing is extremely demanding for all instrumental groups, but the hr-Sinfonieorchester took it in their stride, boding well for what promises to a fascinating exploration of the other symphonies over the coming seasons.

I just hope they'll be performed in the orchestra's normal subscription series, leaving space in Barock+ for works that really merit inclusion there.

hr-Sinfonieorchester Barock+ Series

If I had any bone at all to pick with the excellent hr-Sinfonieorchester or Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra -- which must arguably be one of the best of Germany's radio symphony orchestras at the moment -- it'd be about the labeling of its phenomenally successful Barock+ series. 

The brainchild of former chief conductor, Hugh Wolff, the idea was to pair the orchestra with leading exponents -- both conductors and soloists -- of the early music, period instrument or historically informed performance movement and explore repertoire that is nowadays no longer associated which a large modern symphony orchestra.

It was Wolff, during his nine-year tenure in Frankfurt from 1997 until 2006, who first introduced valveless horns and trumpets and kettle drums for performances of the symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven, changed the seating order of the strings and minimized their use of vibrato. 

In that sense, neither the orchestra nor the audience was treading on wholly unfamiliar ground when the Barock+ series was launched in November 2004.

But what was exciting was the prospect of the orchestra tackling -- on modern instruments and at a modern concert pitch of A = 440 Hz -- works that seem to have dropped out of the repertoire of a modern symphony orchestra and become the sole preserve of period instrument ensembles. 

The very first concert on November 26, 2004, featured countertenor Andreas Scholl in arias by Händel sandwiched between Haydn's 89th and 91st symphonies.

On December 17 of the same year, the irrepressible Emmanuelle Haïm gave her German debut conducting Händel's rarely performed oratorio La Resurrezione while Christopher Hogwood conducted works by Haydn, Mozart and Schnittke on February 25th, 2005.

Wait a minute. Run that by me again. 
Schnittke.
Ah yes. Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) made use of baroque forms in his works. 
I get it. He composed a number of Concerti Grossi. 
The series, so it seemed, would explore the influences of the baroque on later composers and their music. Hence the "+" added to the series' title.  

Many of the hr-Sinfonieorchester's regular subscribers have never seemed inordinately fond of baroque music anyway. 
Maybe Wolff saw it as way of making it more palatable for an audience that generally only wants to hear the core classical and romantic repertoires. 

Given such prejudices, I sense it came as something of a surprise to all concerned that Barock+ proved such a runaway success.
The Sendesaal -- with its excellent acoustics and much more intimate atmosphere than the Alte Oper where the hr-Sinfonieorchester gives its regular subscriptions series -- was regularly sold out. And over the years, the series was lengthened from three to four concerts and extended from one to two nights.

Nevertheless, for real baroque aficionados, the title of the series has always appeared rather tenuous, a bit of a "Mogelpackung" to use the German term.  
The number of baroque works actually performed has never been particularly extensive, with the focus largely on the early classical.
In fact,  I've heard a number of subscribers quip that a more appropriate name would be "Klassik minus" rather than Barock+.

Of course, that is not do dismiss the high quality of the performances per se, even of the non-baroque works. 

Last season, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, after conducting the overtures to Händel's Serse and Rameau's Platée before the interval, took everyone by surprise and gave an eye-opening interpretation of Ravel's La Valse and Boléro in the second half. Not repertoire you would normally associate with the man who has almost single-handedly pioneered the renaissance of interest in Vivaldi's operas.

I don't mean to be curmudgeonly.

After all, Emmanuelle Haïm returned last November to conduct an exquisite programme of Lully, Purcell and Rameau.

But the next concert in this season's series very much demonstrates my point.
OK. There will be a baroque work: Bach's B-minor Suite performed with the orchestra's phenomenal solo flautist, Sebastian Wittiber.  
But that's where the "Barock" stops.
Dazzling a player though Sebastian is, I can't imagine he'll be playing on a baroque flute or even a wooden Böhm one. 
Then Fazıl Say will perform Mozart's A-major Concerto KV 414.
And most puzzling of all,  Paavo Järvi will conduct the hr-Sinfonieorchester in Franz Schmidt's 2nd Symphony after the interval.
I don' think it's uncharitable to say that the choice of works seems, ahem, a little arbitrary. 

[Järvi, it should be pointed out, has never previously conducted a Barock+ concert during his entire time in Frankfurt, which comes to an end this season.
And while he has taken on board some historically informed practices for his critically acclaimed Beethoven and Schumann cycles, Järvi is not a conductor you'd normally turn to for early classical or baroque repertoire.]

In fact, the only reason that I can see that Schmidt (1874-1939) -- a late Romantic composer barely known outside his home country of Austria -- is being performed is that Järvi will be conducting his 3rd Symphony next season and is embarking on a cycle of all four symphonies.
That's all well and good. But what has it got to do with the baroque?
Perhaps the programme notes will enlighten me and explain the dramaturgy behind it all.

Watch this space for a write-up of the concerts on Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9.