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.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Monday, November 5, 2012
OPER FRANKFURT - PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE
Premiere on Sunday, November 4, 2012
Conductor - Friedemann Layer
Director - Claus Guth
Set and costumes - Christian Schmidt
Lighting - Olaf Winter
Dramaturg - Norbert Abels
Chorus - Felix Lemke
Arkel, King of Allemonde - Alfred Reiter
Pelléas - Christian Gerhaher
Mélisande - Christiane Karg
Golaud, Arkel's grandson - Paul Gay
Geneviève - Hilary Summers
Yniold, Golaud's son from his first marriage - David Jakob Schläger
A doctor - Sungkon Kim
Frankfurt Opera chorus
Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester
Everyone has their ghosts.
But there seems to be more than a fair share of them in Claus Guth's terrifying new reading of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, which opened at the Frankfurt Opera on Sunday.
"Je suis malade ici, je ne suis pas heureuse ici..." Mélisande repeatedly complains. She's not the only one.
Nearly 10 years after peering deep into the abyss of sexual abuse in Der Fliegende Holländer in Bayreuth, Guth takes us on another dark and disturbing journey into the depths of the human psyche here.
Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolistic play, which serves as Debussy's libretto, is fleetingly elliptical, a retelling of the fairy story of Rapunzel in colours by Edvard Munch.
But Guth isn't afraid to grab the story's subject matter by the lapels and call it what it is.
Mélisande is no ephemeral, golden-haired wisp of a nymph. When Golaud finds her -- he is alerted to her presence not by her sobs, as the libretto suggests, but by her coughs -- she has clearly suffered some terrible physical trauma. She is disorientated, her clothes and hair are dishevelled.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
We can only imagine the horror of what she has gone through as she tries, with shaking hands, to light a cigarette and pleas for Golaud not to touch her ("Ne me touchez pas!"). And when he asks who has hurt her ("Qui est-ce qui vous a fait du mal?"), her reply, "Tous! Tous!", could not be more chilling.
Unfortunately, Golaud's home of Allemonde, to which he takes her, offers no refuge for the traumatised Mélisande. The abuse, both physical and emotional, continues.
Golaud, who suspects Mélisande of being in love with his much younger half-brother Pelléas, torments not only himself and her with his jealousy, but also his small son by his first marriage, Yniold, by forcing him to spy on the suspected lovers.
The brothers' grandfather and king of Allemonde, Arkel, also crosses a line when Mélisande turns to him for comfort.
And even Pelléas, in whom Mélisande desperately hopes to have found her rescuer, humiliates her by tying her up in some sort of sublimated sexual game and leaves her there for Golaud to find her.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Not that the men are merely perpetrators. They, too, all seem haunted and tormented by their own inner ghosts, victims of some past deep traumas of their own, while the brothers' mother Geneviève cannot or refuses to see and acknowledge what is going on.
The air, sings Pelléas, is "heavy and dank like a noisome mist of lead, and there's a darkness so thick that it lies in dense and poisoned masses" ("Il y a là un air humide et lourd come une rosée de plomb, et des ténèbres épaisses comme une pâte empoisonée.")
Everyone is trapped in this stifling and claustrophobic world, which is inhabited by eerie shadows and ghosts and which we can occasionally just about make out in the all-enveloping gloom.
The ingenious set, by Guth's long-standing collaborator Christian Schmidt, is designed as a giant doll's house, allowing us to watch the goings-on in the different rooms of Allemonde simultaneously.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Even if Guth's thought-provoking new reading were not so cogently and intelligently wrought, this new staging would be worth seeing for the cast alone, with Christian Gerhaher and Christiane Karg making their debuts in the title roles.
The role of Pelléas is tricky because it is considered to be too high for a baritone and too low for a tenor.
Pierre Boulez, for example, who conducted Peter Stein's seminal staging of the work for Welsh National Opera in the early 90s, insists the role should be taken by a tenor. This is backed up in the score where Debussy notates Pelléas's part in the treble clef.
But baritone Gerhaher, one of the most consistently intelligent and thoughtful Lied singers around today, has no trouble with the high tessitura.
He is utterly believeable in the role, too, twitching with suppressed sexual feeling, but with ripples of ambiguous menace showing through the surface at times, too.
Mélisande can also be sung by either a soprano or a mezzo since it only occasionally strays above the stave to A flat.
Natalie Dessay took on the role a few years ago in Vienna, while Anne Sofie von Otter has sung it too.
Frankfurt Opera's own Christiane Karg has a limpid, well-focused lyric soprano, but her Mélisande, while scarred and fragile, is never timid or fey.
Paul Gay is gripping as Golaud, no outright villain, but a man at sea emotionally who ends up hurting everyone around him and murdering Pelléas. He vainly tries to convince himself that the love between Pelléas and Mélisande is innocent, but continues to torment Mélisande even when she is dying.
The role of Geneviève is somewhat thankless. She isn't called on to do much after her big scene early in Act 1. Nevertheless, the normally excellent Hilary Summers sounded occasionally underpowered, as if she might have been somewhat indisposed.
Frankfurt Opera's own Alfred Reiter was well suited to the role of Arkel and David Jakob Schläger was enchanting as Yniold, looking and sounding like Little Lord Fauntleroy.
The only slight drawback of the evening was conductor Friedemann Layer, whose slow and leaden tempi occasionally weighed down much of Debussy's miraculous score. But that is a perhaps a minor quibble which will hopefully be ironed out in subsequent performances.
The production runs until early December. It may not be one for the faint-hearted. But if you like your opera to be challenging and unsettling, this is definitely one for you.
Premiere on Sunday, November 4, 2012
Conductor - Friedemann Layer
Director - Claus Guth
Set and costumes - Christian Schmidt
Lighting - Olaf Winter
Dramaturg - Norbert Abels
Chorus - Felix Lemke
Arkel, King of Allemonde - Alfred Reiter
Pelléas - Christian Gerhaher
Mélisande - Christiane Karg
Golaud, Arkel's grandson - Paul Gay
Geneviève - Hilary Summers
Yniold, Golaud's son from his first marriage - David Jakob Schläger
A doctor - Sungkon Kim
Frankfurt Opera chorus
Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester
Everyone has their ghosts.
But there seems to be more than a fair share of them in Claus Guth's terrifying new reading of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, which opened at the Frankfurt Opera on Sunday.
"Je suis malade ici, je ne suis pas heureuse ici..." Mélisande repeatedly complains. She's not the only one.
Nearly 10 years after peering deep into the abyss of sexual abuse in Der Fliegende Holländer in Bayreuth, Guth takes us on another dark and disturbing journey into the depths of the human psyche here.
Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolistic play, which serves as Debussy's libretto, is fleetingly elliptical, a retelling of the fairy story of Rapunzel in colours by Edvard Munch.
But Guth isn't afraid to grab the story's subject matter by the lapels and call it what it is.
Mélisande is no ephemeral, golden-haired wisp of a nymph. When Golaud finds her -- he is alerted to her presence not by her sobs, as the libretto suggests, but by her coughs -- she has clearly suffered some terrible physical trauma. She is disorientated, her clothes and hair are dishevelled.
We can only imagine the horror of what she has gone through as she tries, with shaking hands, to light a cigarette and pleas for Golaud not to touch her ("Ne me touchez pas!"). And when he asks who has hurt her ("Qui est-ce qui vous a fait du mal?"), her reply, "Tous! Tous!", could not be more chilling.
Unfortunately, Golaud's home of Allemonde, to which he takes her, offers no refuge for the traumatised Mélisande. The abuse, both physical and emotional, continues.
Golaud, who suspects Mélisande of being in love with his much younger half-brother Pelléas, torments not only himself and her with his jealousy, but also his small son by his first marriage, Yniold, by forcing him to spy on the suspected lovers.
The brothers' grandfather and king of Allemonde, Arkel, also crosses a line when Mélisande turns to him for comfort.
And even Pelléas, in whom Mélisande desperately hopes to have found her rescuer, humiliates her by tying her up in some sort of sublimated sexual game and leaves her there for Golaud to find her.
Not that the men are merely perpetrators. They, too, all seem haunted and tormented by their own inner ghosts, victims of some past deep traumas of their own, while the brothers' mother Geneviève cannot or refuses to see and acknowledge what is going on.
The air, sings Pelléas, is "heavy and dank like a noisome mist of lead, and there's a darkness so thick that it lies in dense and poisoned masses" ("Il y a là un air humide et lourd come une rosée de plomb, et des ténèbres épaisses comme une pâte empoisonée.")
Everyone is trapped in this stifling and claustrophobic world, which is inhabited by eerie shadows and ghosts and which we can occasionally just about make out in the all-enveloping gloom.
The ingenious set, by Guth's long-standing collaborator Christian Schmidt, is designed as a giant doll's house, allowing us to watch the goings-on in the different rooms of Allemonde simultaneously.
Even if Guth's thought-provoking new reading were not so cogently and intelligently wrought, this new staging would be worth seeing for the cast alone, with Christian Gerhaher and Christiane Karg making their debuts in the title roles.
The role of Pelléas is tricky because it is considered to be too high for a baritone and too low for a tenor.
Pierre Boulez, for example, who conducted Peter Stein's seminal staging of the work for Welsh National Opera in the early 90s, insists the role should be taken by a tenor. This is backed up in the score where Debussy notates Pelléas's part in the treble clef.
But baritone Gerhaher, one of the most consistently intelligent and thoughtful Lied singers around today, has no trouble with the high tessitura.
He is utterly believeable in the role, too, twitching with suppressed sexual feeling, but with ripples of ambiguous menace showing through the surface at times, too.
Mélisande can also be sung by either a soprano or a mezzo since it only occasionally strays above the stave to A flat.
Natalie Dessay took on the role a few years ago in Vienna, while Anne Sofie von Otter has sung it too.
Frankfurt Opera's own Christiane Karg has a limpid, well-focused lyric soprano, but her Mélisande, while scarred and fragile, is never timid or fey.
Paul Gay is gripping as Golaud, no outright villain, but a man at sea emotionally who ends up hurting everyone around him and murdering Pelléas. He vainly tries to convince himself that the love between Pelléas and Mélisande is innocent, but continues to torment Mélisande even when she is dying.
The role of Geneviève is somewhat thankless. She isn't called on to do much after her big scene early in Act 1. Nevertheless, the normally excellent Hilary Summers sounded occasionally underpowered, as if she might have been somewhat indisposed.
Frankfurt Opera's own Alfred Reiter was well suited to the role of Arkel and David Jakob Schläger was enchanting as Yniold, looking and sounding like Little Lord Fauntleroy.
The only slight drawback of the evening was conductor Friedemann Layer, whose slow and leaden tempi occasionally weighed down much of Debussy's miraculous score. But that is a perhaps a minor quibble which will hopefully be ironed out in subsequent performances.
The production runs until early December. It may not be one for the faint-hearted. But if you like your opera to be challenging and unsettling, this is definitely one for you.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Grand opening concert: ECB's European Cultural Days 2012
Alte Oper, Frankfurt
Grosser Saal
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Les Talens Lyriques
Christophe Rousset
Gaëlle Arquez, soprano
Aimery Lefèvre, bass-baritone
"Passions à la française"
Overtures, Arias and Duets from
"Roland" - Jean-Baptiste Lully
"Medée" - Marc-Antoine Charpentier
"Tancrède"- André Campra
and
"Castor et Pollux", "Zoroastre" - Jean-Philippe Rameau
It's not a central bank's job to organise concerts.
But the opening night of this year's European Cultural Days by the European Central Bank was a bit of a botch-up.
Every year, the month-long festival showcases the culture of a different European country. And this year it is France's turn.
But the "Grand opening concert" in Frankfurt's Alte Oper on Wednesday was -- from a purely artistic point of view -- a total mismatch between programme, venue and audience.
Promising "a selection of the best French baroque music composed between 1680 and 1750," the organisers, the French central bank or Banque de France, had invited Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques to do the honours.
But this is the land of Bach and Händel. And even in the small but thriving area of historically informed performance, the works of Lully and Rameau remain relatively unchartered territory and are regarded as very much an acquired taste.
So quite what Rousset was thinking in serving up a random selection of little-known arias and duets from even lesser-known operas -- such as Lully's "Roland" or Rameau's "Zoroastre" -- to a largely uninitiated audience is anyone's guess.
Surely a concert such as this should pull in the crowds and whet their appetites for a four-week extravaganza celebrating the very best in arts a country can offer.
If the opening event really had to be an evening of French baroque, where were the more palatable crowd-pleasers such as the catchy, foot-stomping march from "Le bourgeois gentilhomme" or one of the well-known set pieces from "Les indes galantes"?
Only the most widely-read and erudite listener could find things to relish and savour in this wilfully esoteric and po-faced choice of works.
It's equally puzzling why the Alte Oper should be the chosen venue, too.
The acoustics of its cavernous 2,500-seater main auditorium are problematic, to put it mildly.
They certainly do not do justice to the delicate timbres of a small period-instrument ensemble such as Les Talens Lyriques, who numbered all of 25 on this particular evening.
Perplexingly, Frankfurt's mayor Peter Feldmann described the Alte Oper as Frankfurt's "loveliest" concert hall.
To be honest, there aren't many to chose from in this city of steel and concrete skycrapers. But the Alte Oper has all the charm of a shoe-box.
In the selection of operatic overtures -- Lully's "Roland", Charpentier's "Medée", Campra's "Tancrède" and Rameau's "Castor et Pollux" -- the acoustics robbed the sound of Rousset's players of any body, rendering it thin and scrawny. And with only two oboes and bassoons to augment strings and continuo, there was little variety in texture or orchestration.
Most of the audience were totally out of their depth, too.
Apparently, there were 2,400 invited guests, including president Mario Draghi himself, Banque de France governor Christian Noyer and Frankfurt's mayor Feldmann.
But there was many an empty seat at the start of the evening and a great many more after the interval.
In fact, most of the audience seemed to be ECB staff press-ganged into attending. And many of them looked like as if it was their first-ever classical music concert.
Clearly bored, they leafed distractedly through the programme, chatted to their neighbours or looked repeatedly at their watches.
The two young soloists, Gaëlle Arquez and Aimery Lefèvre, were overtaxed most of the time.
Arquez's light soprano, touching in what was perhaps the best-known aria of the evening, "Tristes apprêts" from "Castor et Pollux", lacked the power and heft for the more dramatic "Quel prix de mon amour" from "Medée".
Lefèvre, stepping in at short notice to replace the indisposed Edwin Crossley-Mercer, was only marginally less one-dimensional and his slender bass-baritone showed a slight tendency to strain higher up in different arias from "Roland", "Tancrède" and "Zoroastre".
At times of crisis such as these, central bank chiefs Draghi and Noyer are busy men, so it may not be surprising that they made a dash for it at the interval.
But the overriding impression was that their hearts were simply not behind the venture anyway.
I similarly recall Draghi leaving early at last year's opening concert when Claudio Abbado and his Orchestra Mozart represented Italy.
Surely it would be more satisfying for everyone involved for the organisation of such an event to be handed over to experienced professionals who can bring together the right ensemble with the right programme for the right audience.
It would certainly leave a less sour taste in the mouth than this evening did.
One can only hope that the rest of the 2012 Cultural Days festival is better thought out.
Grosser Saal
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Les Talens Lyriques
Christophe Rousset
Gaëlle Arquez, soprano
Aimery Lefèvre, bass-baritone
"Passions à la française"
Overtures, Arias and Duets from
"Roland" - Jean-Baptiste Lully
"Medée" - Marc-Antoine Charpentier
"Tancrède"- André Campra
and
"Castor et Pollux", "Zoroastre" - Jean-Philippe Rameau
It's not a central bank's job to organise concerts.
But the opening night of this year's European Cultural Days by the European Central Bank was a bit of a botch-up.
Every year, the month-long festival showcases the culture of a different European country. And this year it is France's turn.
But the "Grand opening concert" in Frankfurt's Alte Oper on Wednesday was -- from a purely artistic point of view -- a total mismatch between programme, venue and audience.
Promising "a selection of the best French baroque music composed between 1680 and 1750," the organisers, the French central bank or Banque de France, had invited Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques to do the honours.
But this is the land of Bach and Händel. And even in the small but thriving area of historically informed performance, the works of Lully and Rameau remain relatively unchartered territory and are regarded as very much an acquired taste.
So quite what Rousset was thinking in serving up a random selection of little-known arias and duets from even lesser-known operas -- such as Lully's "Roland" or Rameau's "Zoroastre" -- to a largely uninitiated audience is anyone's guess.
Surely a concert such as this should pull in the crowds and whet their appetites for a four-week extravaganza celebrating the very best in arts a country can offer.
If the opening event really had to be an evening of French baroque, where were the more palatable crowd-pleasers such as the catchy, foot-stomping march from "Le bourgeois gentilhomme" or one of the well-known set pieces from "Les indes galantes"?
Only the most widely-read and erudite listener could find things to relish and savour in this wilfully esoteric and po-faced choice of works.
It's equally puzzling why the Alte Oper should be the chosen venue, too.
The acoustics of its cavernous 2,500-seater main auditorium are problematic, to put it mildly.
They certainly do not do justice to the delicate timbres of a small period-instrument ensemble such as Les Talens Lyriques, who numbered all of 25 on this particular evening.
Perplexingly, Frankfurt's mayor Peter Feldmann described the Alte Oper as Frankfurt's "loveliest" concert hall.
To be honest, there aren't many to chose from in this city of steel and concrete skycrapers. But the Alte Oper has all the charm of a shoe-box.
In the selection of operatic overtures -- Lully's "Roland", Charpentier's "Medée", Campra's "Tancrède" and Rameau's "Castor et Pollux" -- the acoustics robbed the sound of Rousset's players of any body, rendering it thin and scrawny. And with only two oboes and bassoons to augment strings and continuo, there was little variety in texture or orchestration.
Most of the audience were totally out of their depth, too.
Apparently, there were 2,400 invited guests, including president Mario Draghi himself, Banque de France governor Christian Noyer and Frankfurt's mayor Feldmann.
But there was many an empty seat at the start of the evening and a great many more after the interval.
In fact, most of the audience seemed to be ECB staff press-ganged into attending. And many of them looked like as if it was their first-ever classical music concert.
Clearly bored, they leafed distractedly through the programme, chatted to their neighbours or looked repeatedly at their watches.
The two young soloists, Gaëlle Arquez and Aimery Lefèvre, were overtaxed most of the time.
Arquez's light soprano, touching in what was perhaps the best-known aria of the evening, "Tristes apprêts" from "Castor et Pollux", lacked the power and heft for the more dramatic "Quel prix de mon amour" from "Medée".
Lefèvre, stepping in at short notice to replace the indisposed Edwin Crossley-Mercer, was only marginally less one-dimensional and his slender bass-baritone showed a slight tendency to strain higher up in different arias from "Roland", "Tancrède" and "Zoroastre".
At times of crisis such as these, central bank chiefs Draghi and Noyer are busy men, so it may not be surprising that they made a dash for it at the interval.
But the overriding impression was that their hearts were simply not behind the venture anyway.
I similarly recall Draghi leaving early at last year's opening concert when Claudio Abbado and his Orchestra Mozart represented Italy.
Surely it would be more satisfying for everyone involved for the organisation of such an event to be handed over to experienced professionals who can bring together the right ensemble with the right programme for the right audience.
It would certainly leave a less sour taste in the mouth than this evening did.
One can only hope that the rest of the 2012 Cultural Days festival is better thought out.
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