Fear and Admiration

Beethoven: Symphony no. 5

Watch this amazing video of MusicAeterna playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony under the direction of Teodor Currentzis. With the Sasha Waltz Dance Company & Guests at Radialsystem Berlin, January 2016.



The same mystery, drama and physical movement which inspired Currentzis' interpretation of this amazing music remains in this new recording, to be released four years later. Only now there is even more of each of those components, and it results in one of the most exciting new Beethoven recordings I've heard this century.



Robert Schumann's comments on the Fifth Symphony are especially a propos in this case:

No matter how frequently heard, whether at home or in the concert hall, this symphony invariably wields its power over people of every age like those great phenomena of nature that fill us with fear and admiration at all times, no matter how frequently we may experience them.

Currentzis' high energy level, his brisk tempi, and his pointed dynamics might seem to some exaggerated, but I was completely swept along and swept away, almost, but not completely, against my better judgment. Yes, he's faster than a speeding Toscanini, more powerful than a Von Karajan locomotive, he leaps over tall buildings Klemperer walks around.

I recognize my own tendency to enthusiastically embrace shiny new things, and occasionally I come back with sober second thoughts. Let's see how this works out for me!

This album will be released on May 8, 2020

A post-modern pastiche redeemed by music

Leos Janacek: From the House of the Dead

Leos Janacek's final work was From the House of the Dead, his opera based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel. It wasn't premiered until 1930, two years after his death. Opera companies have had to make do with a version by Janacek's pupils that added a happy ending, but the recent publication of a new edition provides something more closely aligned with what Janacek originally intended. This new score has been responsible for quite a few new productions in the past couple of years, including this one from Munich. Reading reviews of the productions in Wales, London and Paris, it's probably not surprising how different each one is. Opera today often seems to be focussed less on the music, the drama, and even the personality of the singers, and has become primarily a tabula rasa upon which clever (and sometimes genuinely innovative) stage directors overwrite their own aesthetic and political ideas. That's certainly the case with Frank Castorf's intriguing staging involving on-stage videography, complex picture-in-picture sequences, and anachronisms from Trotsky to Adidas. Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Masculin Féminin was famously about "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola". Castorf's vision of this opera is a similar melding: this time of the Czarist Eagle, the rites and symbols of the Orthodox Church, and a big neon Pepsi sign.

This is more or less standard post-modern pastiche, and it's often to the point, tragic and/or funny. But it can also be occasionally too much on the nose, and when it's not deliberately obscure, it is sometimes only banal. The main problem is that the opera is rather short; it runs only 90 minutes, without an intermission. The secondary problem is that neither Dostoevsky nor Janacek bothered with any overarching story, but rather strung together a series of episodes which happen in the Siberian prison location. A confusing jumble of images might be the by-product of this remix; it might even be by Castorf's design. Having the opera on Blu-ray does allow one to re-watch and gain new insights, pausing along the way to do some Wikipedia sleuthing. I admit that the work seemed more coherent the second time around. But there must have been some head-scratching an hour and a half after the curtain rose at the Staatsoper.

What sells me on Janacek's opera, though, is his music. If one can follow the dramatic sense of a scene, it's absolutely staggering what beautiful, poignant, haunting, terrifying sounds Janacek provides, over and over again. What he has done through the music is to wordlessly re-introduce the most important theme of this, and of all Dostoevsky's novels: redemption.

The Munich production shines in this regard. Simone Young's conducting of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and Chorus is outstanding; the music is taut and naturally evolving, even as the stage action gets run through Castorf's blender. The singing, and within Castorf's limits, the acting, of the principals is marvellous. Evgeniya Sotnikova is outstanding as Aljeja in her various guises, while standouts in the otherwise all-male cast include Peter Rose, Ales Briscein and Charles Workman. I believe this production will improve each time I watch it; there's no doubt in my mind, though, that this is one of the greatest operas ever written.

A fascinating musical world to explore

Sandbox Percussion: And That One Too

I've been thinking a lot lately about musical arrangements and re-compositions. My last review, of songs by Meredith Monk, is definitely in the latter category. This new album by Sandbox Percussion begins with an arrangement that completely transforms the sound of the piece, but whose basic character remains very much the same.

Here's the original version of the second of Andy Akiho's Six Haikus, written for trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice, and performed by the contemporary music group Loadbang in 2011.




And here is the same piece, arranged in 2019 by Akiho and Sandbox Percussion for tuned ceramic bowls, metal pipes, wooden slats, a metal pot lid, a glass bottle, and a piece of scrap metal.




The performance video is very cool, because it helps to illustrate the clever structure of Akiho's piece. Ian Rosenbaum explains:

This work has no text, but it observes the 5-7-5 form of a haiku musically. The rhythmic structure of each measure consists of a group of 5 sixteenth notes, then a group of 7, then another group of 5. The larger metric structure is also based on the 5-7-5 of a haiku - the material is played 5 times, then 7 times, and then 5 again. When one returns to the beginning of the cycle again, each player in turn leaves their pitched instrument and moves to an unpitched sound, until by the end, all that is left is a dense hocket among the four players.

That's a lot to include in a piece of music of less than four minutes! The great thing is that the more you watch and listen, the more you get out of it.

The other three pieces are equally interesting, though all written originally for percussion ensemble. Music for Percussion Quartet, by David Crowell, includes complex polyrhythms, expressing two different musical landscapes: a busy urban one, and a serene countryside. Amy Beth Kirsten's she is a myth comes out of her 2017 project QUIXOTE, a fully-staged work about literature and reality, love and chivalry. Kirsten herself sings each of the three voices in the piece, with more fabulous sounds from Sandbox Percussion. Finally, with not only that one but that one & that too, Thomas Kotcheff provides a kind of Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, except for the whole range of percussion instruments played by the four members of Sandbox Percussion. Each movement highlights a different category: wooden instruments, drums, & pitched metal instruments, and each features an individual virtuoso member of the group.

A fascinating musical world to explore!

Inspiration for the Apocalypse

Meredith Monk, with the Bang on a Can Allstars: Memory Game

These Meredith Monk songs, which date from 1983 to 2006, are expanded, refined, opened up, multiplied and divided in new orchestrations by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. This is authentic Meredith Monk, with her own vocal contributions, as well as those of her Vocal Ensemble: Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger, & Allison Sniffin. But there are very impressive contributions as well from the Bang on a Can All-Stars: much more than simple arrangements and instrumental accompaniment, they're closer to re-compositions. Monk's music is rich and diverse enough to play the role that Bach plays in Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras.

The highlight on the disc is Waltz in 5s, originally written in 1996. This vocalise with a quirky rhythm is a kind of hybrid of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 and Paul Desmond's Take Five. Many of the pieces, whether they're inspired by musical theatre (Memory Song) or Weimar Berlin (Totentanz), are haunting and often disturbing, no matter how light and frothy they may sound. But in spite of this, there is still an optimistic, uplifting note. As Monk says in her Composer's Notes:

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I made a number of apocalyptic pieces that were a reflection of the fragmentation, violence and speed of the time. Soon after that, I realized that instead of stating the problem, it would be more useful and inspiring to return to the notion of offering an alternative. I wanted to create a musical world in which members of the audience could have a pure, direct and immersive experience.

In the middle of our own apocalyptic time there is much inspiration and encouragement to be found within this intriguing album.

This album will be released on March 27, 2020.

Perfectly judged performances

Beethoven: Piano Trios op. 1 no. 3 and op. 70 no. 2

The three piano trios that Beethoven published as opus 1, and especially the third in C minor, constituted an announcement to the wide world that a new composer was about to enter into the top echelon in Vienna, the musical centre of Europe at the time. It's astounding that this obscure young man from Bonn, without connections, should be interacting with Joseph Haydn, the world's most famous composer, and having his new music premiered two years later at the home of Prince Lichnowsky. I'm not sure which disparity was more pronounced: the social distance between this impoverished newcomer and the one-percent Viennese aristocracy, or the professional gap between a freelancer with barely any gigs on his resumé and Europe's top musical superstar at the peak of his powers. Perhaps this social mobility came about because of the recent revolutionary events in France, though I'm sure at least as much was due to Beethoven's outsize talent and his pure strength of will - chutzpah in a word.

When Haydn, shocked by the new sounds of the C minor Piano Trio, advised Beethoven to abandon the work, the young composer was devastated. His pride hurt, he put the criticism down to Haydn's jealousy. Thus did Beethoven's relationship with his true musical father enter its full Oedipal stage. Haydn's relationship with his other protégé, Mozart, had always been cordial, though Mozart, of course, had his own fraught relationship with his own musical, and actual, father. So from now on it would be this: Beethoven against the world!

I'm impressed with the way the London-based Sitkovetsky Trio give us some idea of just how new the C minor trio might have sounded to those who heard it for the first time at Prince Lichnowsky's musical gathering, without leaning in too hard towards the revolutionary, after the fact as it were. I've heard some groups anachronistically make too much of a meal of this work. While Haydn and Mozart had recently overhauled the piano trio, freeing it from its salon music roots, this was still within a rather narrow, civilized band. If one considers this relatively sedate landscape, then Beethoven's dramatic effects and new harmonic and rhythmic devices can sound a bit disconcerting, even considering the two centuries of musical innovation to come.




The Sitkovetsky Trio usher us into a completely different soundscape with their performance of the second Piano Trio of Beethoven's op. 70 set, from 1809, the period of the Second Symphony. Gone is the chip on his shoulder. We know that life was no easier for the composer, in spite of some significant successes, but the quiet confidence and grace of the first movement is perhaps a sign of maturity.  Haydn died on May 31st of that year; perhaps this work, in a genre that Franz Joseph had truly made his own, is a tribute to Beethoven's true musical father.

Tucked away between these two works is a little gem that Beethoven wrote in 1812, the Allegretto, WoO. 39. This may be a simple piece, designed for the ten-year-old Maximiliane Brentano, the daughter of a friend of Beethoven's, but the degree of difficulty to bring about such a perfect result is very, very high. Here again is evidence of the sensitivity and musicality of the Sitkovetsky Trio. This entire program is remarkable, and bodes well for future volumes.

A musical, scholarly and cultural triumph

The Other Cleopatra, Queen of Armenia: Arias by Hasse, Vivaldi, Gluck

This remarkable album is more than a classical music recording; it's also a work of original scholarship and an effective cultural advocacy project. I hasten to add that it works especially well musically. Isabel Bayrakdarian is in fine voice, and she receives stellar support from the very fine conductor Constantine Orbelian and the excellent Kaunas City Symphony in Lithuania. As a bonus, the superb harpsichordist Jory Vinikour is on hand to add special zest to the continuo parts. He and Bayrakdarian are especially fine partners in the recitatives.

In the 18th century Abate Francesco Silvani wrote a libretto based on the story of King Tigranes II, the greatest king in Armenian history, and his wife Cleopatra of Pontus. It was set by a number of composers, including three who feature on this album: Johann Adolph Hasse, Antonio Vivaldi and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Bayrakdarian put this program together as part of her research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Associate Professor of Voice and Opera,  choosing these arias and recitatives, which fit her "voice and temperament". There are some exciting moments here: "Squarciami pure il seno" by Vivaldi and Gluck's "Presso l’onda" are stand-outs. But even better are the slower, more contemplative, moments: Hasse's "Parte, parte" and "Presso a l'onde", and Gluck's "Priva del cara bene". This is lovely, graceful music. Even more impressive, though, is Vivaldi's aria "Qui mentre mormorando", introduced by the recitative "Lasciatemi in riposo". It's music worthy of the mature Mozart, full of sadness and pathos, but always dramatic. Like Mozart, Vivaldi has a keen sense of the psychology of his characters. So it doesn't matter what actually happens with the plot (alas, Abate Silvani was no Da Ponte!); what is key is how the music helps us to understand what the character is feeling. And, of course, that communication also requires a singer of some psychological awareness as well as technical and dramatic skills, and we are indeed lucky to have in this project such a remarkable soprano as Isabel Bayrakdarian. I couldn't recommend this album more highly.

This album will be released on March 30, 2020