Opera Review: Journey's End In Lovers' Meeting

L'Amour de Loin at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Susanna Philips (top) Tamara Mumford (left) and Eric Owens in L'Amour de Loin.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Last night, the Metropolitan Opera played its last 2016 performance of Kaija Saariaho's opera L'Amour de Loin. This the first opera by a female composer mounted at the Met since 1903, and it served as a kind of manifesto for this company's mission in this uncertain new century.L'Amour de Loin (the title means "Love From Afar") is Ms. Saariaho's first opera, and it premiered at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris in 2000. This production featured Susanna Philips and Eric Owens, American stars who have risen to prominence in the last decade, as well as the stage direction of Robert Lepage, an artist whose successes at the Met are still overshadowed by the colossal failure of his staging of Wagner's Ring.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: L'Amour de Loin

Long distance love is the subject of Kaija Saariaho's 21st century opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Keep 'em separated: Susanna Philips and Eric Owens in L'Amour de Loin. 
Image © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Sixteen years after its Salzburg premiere and fourteen years after the first North American performances, the Metropolitan Opera finally stages L'Amour de Loin ("Love From Afar") by contemporary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, in a new production by Robert Lepage.

Concert Review: Senses Working Overtime

The New York Philharmonic presents Circle Map.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Clarinetist Kari Krikku (right) makes his escape during Kaija Saariaho's D'om le Vrai Sens.
Photo by Chris Lee for the New York Philharmonic.

The Park Avenue Armory hulks on the Upper East Side, its brick ramparts a brusque reminder of this country's long military history. In this century though, it is a space for the avant-garde in art, music and theater an ideal laboratory for unusual programs that require breadth of imagination as well as breadth of physical space.  Their latest offering is Circle Map, a 90-minute concert program focusing on the music of Finnish compoer Kaija Saariaho, one of the few women who have made an international reputation as a fearless explorer of the musical avant-garde.

Festival Preview: Ear Stretching in Toronto

Toronto's 21C Festival enters its sophomore year.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Kaija Saariaho

Toronto, Ontario is a little outside the usual beat for Superconductor, but with the slowed-down May schedule in New York a festival for new music by contemporary composers has caught the attention of this blog. The 21C Festival (May 20-24) is entering its second year. Over five nights and eight concerts, this is a vibrant celebration of modern music in Canada's largest city.

Opera Review: The Globe Beneath the Orb

Gotham Chamber Opera offers The Tempest Songbook.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Thomas Richards (seated) and Jennifer Zetlan (standing) in a scene from Gotham Chamber Opera's
production of The Tempest Songbook. Photo by Richard Termine for Gotham Chamber Opera.

Putting together the works of multiple composers can often have mixed results. When the composers in question are both living and dead, the finished product can lack dramatic cohesion or fail to work as a piece of fully furnished art. With The Tempest Songbook, Gotham Chamber Opera have ended their season with a work that manages this unlikely fusion, bringing together the music of Henry Purcell and Kaija Saariaho in a brief but searing meditation on Shakespeare's final play.

Opera Preview: The Tempest Songbook

The Gotham Chamber Opera rehearses up a storm.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Director Luca Veggeti (back to camera) gives direction to
 Jennifer Zetlan (left) and bass-baritone Thomas Richards as dancers look on. 
Photo by the author. 

It is a freezing cold day in New York City, on the tail end of a bitter winter. Bright sunshine streams through the arched windows of the rehearsal space, on the top floor of an old loft building in the extreme west of Greenwich Village. Outside, drills whine and bite into brick. Inside are rehearsals for the world premiere (on March 27) of The Tempest Songbook, the third and final production of Gotham Chamber Opera's 2014-15 season.

Concert Review: The Phoenix Force

The St. Louis Symphony returns to Carnegie Hall. 

by Paul Pelkonen

The "Phoenix Force" from Classic X-Men No. 8. 
Art by John Bolton. © 1988 Marvel Comics. 
Licensed through Wikipedia.

Founded in 1880, the  St. Louis Symphony is the second-oldest major American orchestra. But in today's classical music world, the accolades and exposure enjoyed by the "Big Five" continues to elude the ensemble from the Gateway City. 

On Saturday night, the orchestra made its annual visit to Carnegie Hall, under the baton of current music director David Robertson. The program featured early works by Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, and the New York premiere of Quatre Instants, (Four Instances) a song cycle by current Carnegie Hall composer-in-residence Kaija Saariaho. 

The concert opened with Printemps, an early example of Debussy's innovative approach to tonality. This 15-minute tone poem (originally created for the piano) finds the young composer trying to shrug off the effect of the flowery perfumes of Wagner's Parsifal. With mysterious, minor-key ninth chords and a solo flute that presages the latter adventures of a certain faun, the composer succeeded. 

Ms. Saariaho's song cycle uses French texts (instead of her native Finnish) to paint four images of the different stages of a relationship. The songs, with words by Amin Maalouf, were sung to thrilling effect by Karita Mattila, the Finnish soprano whose searing delivery and magnetic stage presence made each chanson a probing, psychological journey. Attente used water imagery to project the coming instability. Doleur was a picture of self-castigation. And Parfum de l'instant had a smoky, atmospheric texture of need and regret.

The sparse orchestral textures and innovative accompaniment built to a climax with Résonances, the last of the four songs. Here, soprano, poet and composer brought back themes from the three previous songs, creating a tragic portrait of a shattered heart. Mr. Robertson proved an expert collaborator, working closely with the singer to deliver the maximum emotional impact of each piece.

The second half of the concert featured a full performance of The Firebird, the ballet score that made Igor Stravinsky a household name. Mr. Robertson led a slow, atmospheric account of the score, letting the instrumental textures shimmer and the woodwinds pop out for the occasional solo. This was Stravinsky's music at its most romantic, with the influence of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov clearly heard.

With its fortissimo sections--particularly the two frenzied dances of Katschei the Immortal--this Firebird spread its wings and burst into full flame. The dances were played with rude, primal energy. Offstage brass (placed in the lower balcony) added to the enveloping wall of sonic power. The bright acoustic of Carnegie Hall seemed to surround and engulf the listener.

The famous final section, where Stravinsky resolves plot and tonality with a simple, descending figure for French horn, swelled with redemptive power. Mr. Robertson brought in the strings, creating an upswelling of emotion. As the final chords crashed down, the audience rose in a ten-minute standing ovation. This superb orchestra had earned it.

Concert Review: The Sound of the Northlands

Listening in Suomi at Scandinavia House. 

Parenthetically speaking: the members of counter)induction.

Monday night at Scandinavia House's underground Victor Borge Hall featured members of the chamber group counter)induction, playing works by contemporary Finnish composers Esa-Pekka Salonem, Jukka Tiensuu, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg. 

Visitors to New York's concert halls might recognize some of those names:

• Mr. Salonen is an international conductor, who also devotes considerable time to composition. 
• Ms. Saariaho, Carnegie Hall's composer-in-residence is known for her spacious, austere soundscapes. 
• Mr. Lindberg is completing his third year as the New York Philharmonic's composer-in-residence. 

All three are long-serving members of Finland's "Ears Open" movement, a resurgence of sonic creativity in that country.

Mr. Lindberg served as the emcee of the evening, introducing each work. He started by introducing the New York audience to the sound-world of Mr. Tiensuu, arguably the most obscure composer on the bill. Mr. Tiensuu's sound-world incorporates microtones--notes generated between those pitches on a standard scale--but does so in a unique way that recalls the complexities of baroque music. NOUS was a terse toccata, with repeated pounding rhythms and opportunities for virtuosity in its central waltz section. 

Next up was Homonculus for String Quartet by conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. As the title suggests, this was an intense piece of music. The two violins traded lines with the viola, over short, chopped rhythms that occasionally galloped or capered. constructed atop galloping cello rhythms that recalled another Finnish chamber ensemble: Apocalyptica. 

Similar, alchemical ideas infused Mr. Lindberg's Piano Trio, receiving its New York premiere in this concert. The Trio  was followed by the premiere of Mr. Lindberg's Clarinet Trio, with nimble playing from all three instruments. Mr. Lindberg laid out the thematic ideas in an opening "whirlpool." To build the second and third movements, the material was drawn from the bubbling cauldron, reshaped, and occasionally transmuted with fascinating results.

The second half of the program opened with Ms. Saariaho's Pres, a three-movement work for cello and electronic tones generated by an onstage MacBook Pro. . In a pre-concert interview Ms. Saariaho described an idea she had for an "endless" cello bow, the size of a large suspension bridge. She then moved to the computer station, working with 

It was not impossible to imagine that mega-instrument in the swoops and whooshes generated by the computer. Cellist Sumire Kido played with admirable focus, bringing the dreamy world of Ms. Saariaho's music to vivid life. The three movements incorporated natural and electronic sounds to accompany the cello, and a good balance was achieved in this unusual duet.

The concert concluded with Mr. Lindberg's Clarinet Quintet, a playful 20 minutes that, Liszt-like, packs the ideas of four seperate movements into one economical form. The five players tossed the theme back and forth rapidly, as if the musical ideas were too hot to handle. The most athletic playing here came from clarinetist Benjamin Fingland. Without the ability to play chords, the woodwind had to work twice as hard.

Beyond the actual notes, what made this performance work was the explosive energy built from Mr. Lindberg's taut rhythms and intertwining musical fragments. The work was clearly taxing on the musicians, but they were also enjoying the exchange of energy with eye gestures, shoulder movements and repeated leaps into the complex melodic fray.