Concert Review: Joy Without (too much) Pain

Gustavo Dudamel takes on Beethoven's Ninth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Photo by Matthew Imaging
© 2018 Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Like a famous conductor on tour across America, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in d minor is a victim of its own success. The four movement symphony was the first in its genre to add human voices in the form of four soloists and a choir to an already expanded symphony orchestra. For better or worse, the main theme of its finale is culturally ubiquitous, a necessity for any orchestra or choral society. As a result, bad performances of the Ninth are legion: enthusiastic readings that do little to enhance the work’s musical worth.

Concert Review: There Are Two Paths You Can Go By

Daniele Gatti climbs Wagner and Bruckner's stairways to heaven.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Daniele Gatti at the helm of his inaugural 2017 concert as music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Photo by Mladen Pikilic for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The final utterance of a major composer is often an insight into their innermost thoughts. In the case of Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner, (two composers who knew each other in life) those utterances, performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night, were very different indeed. Wagner was a man of the theater turned to the mystic epic of Parsifal and the story of the Holy Grail and the Kingdom of Montsalvat. Bruckner, who revered Wagner, found his Grail in the structured form of the symphony, offering a Ninth that he would not live to finish.

Film Review: Copying Beethoven

Ed Harris' 2006 biopic hits some of the right notes.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A bewigged Ed Harris scores in Copying Beethoven.
Photo © 2006 MGM/United Artists.

Copying Beethoven was barely noticed when it came out ten years ago. Released by MGM/UA, this 2006 film by Agnieszka Holland stars Ed Harris as the composer in his 54th year, battling deafness and inner demons as he struggles to finish the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor. The film is a fiction, pairing Beethoven with Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) a 23-year old coal miner's daughter (no I'm not making that up) copyist and aspiring composer. She meets Beethoven when she is employed to correct and edit the players' parts four days before the premiere of the Ninth. 

Concert Review: The Three Other B's

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Barber, Bartók and Bruckner.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Photo by Marco Borggreve.

On Friday night, the Philadelphians closed out this year's Carnegie Hall series with a concert featuring music by the "other" three B's: Samuel Barber, Béla Bartók and Anton Bruckner. These three very different compositions formed an effective tryptich, giving indications at the state of the orchestra, as music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin wraps up his second season at the controls.

Concert Review: Wrestling With His Angels

The Philharmonic pairs Vivier and Bruckner.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Manfred Honeck took over this week's Philharmonic program at short notice.
Photo by Felix Broede © 2014 IMG Artists.

The sudden withdrawal of conductor Gustavo Dudamel this week caused consternation for the New York Philharmonic, who were suddenly presenting an ambitious program of music by Claude Vivier and Anton Bruckner without a conductor. However, the orchestra was able to secure the services of Manfred Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the concerts went off as scheduled. To his credit, Mr. Honeck chose to leave the program unaltered. These concerts (heard Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall) paired Vivier's Orion with Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the unfinished finale of that composer's career. These two big pieces were heard back-to-back, without intermission.

Concert Review: Earning His Beethoven Badge

Alan Gilbert conducts the Ninth Symphony.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert. Photo by Chris Lee © 2013 The New York Philharmonic

Leading a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (that's the one with chorus, soloists and the Ode to Joy) is a mark of achievement for any conductor. On Friday night Alan Gilbert led the New York Philharmonic in his second performance of that famous work this week. This is Mr. Gilbert's first series of Beethoven Ninths since becoming Music Director five years ago.

Concert Review: Sailing Toward Elysium

Yannick Nézet-Séguin opens his Beethoven cycle.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is starting his second season at the head
of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee © 2013 The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin has opened his second season at the helm of this orchestra, hoping to steer the ensemble out of the troubled waters causes by the recent financial crisis and the 2011 bankruptcy proceeding that shocked the music world.

With Friday's matinée concert (the first afternoon performance of the young 2013 season) Mr. Nézet-Séguin staked his claim to one of the great works of the orchestra-choral repertory. Leading Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (yes that's the one with the "Ode to Joy") is difficult as it is. Mr. Nézet-Séguin chose to couple this epic work with two more short choral works, upping the stakes considerably.

Concert Review: Checking the Baggage

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Mahler's Ninth. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen. Photo by Mat Hennek © Deutsche Grammophon

It's not every day that a familiar conductor can present a well-known and well-loved repertory symphony in such a way that the listener hears it with fresh ears. But that's exactly what happened Sunday at Avery Fisher Hall, when Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philharmonia Orchestra in Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

No other symphony has the baggage of the Mahler Ninth. It's the composer's last completed work. Mahler did not live to hear it played. And the opening, descending dotted rhythm phrase that forms the motto of the entire 90-minute symphony was associated (by Leonard Bernstein, no less) as representing the composer's own damaged, faltering heart.

That's quite a legacy. However, in performing ths symphony on Sunday night, Mr. Salonen chose to lay sentiment aside. He took a clear, assured approach which offered the audience new inroads into the mysteries of these four strange movements. Throughout, this performance had a clarity of texture in the strings. The Philharmonia horns sounded noble and mournful, but not over-wrought.

Concert Review: The Door to Infinity

The Berlin Philharmonic plays the completed Bruckner Ninth.
by Paul Pelkonen.

Portrait of Sir Simon Rattle by Robert Lewis Booth.
© 2010 Robert Lewis Booth.

When Anton Bruckner died in 1896, he was working on his Ninth Symphony. He had finished three movements, but it was widely believed that the finale of this last work only existed as a few sketches, with not enough music to be performed. On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, New Yorkers were able to hear the completed symphony for the first time.

However, when a team of researchers and musicologists began investigating the composer's documents, they found (after assembling pieces of manuscript that had been taken as far as Washington D.C.) that Bruckner had indeed finished his final movement, at least up to the coda. (In a video on the Berlin Philharmonic website, music director Sir Simon Rattle explained that, in a work that was 650 bars of music, the musicologists only had to write 28 bars of music based on the composer's ideas.) The result is a giant, cosmic close to his last symphony, with huge brass figures, a massive orchestral fugue, and an organic, flowing exploration of the heavens and the ultimate meaning of life.

In 1992, when musicologists Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzuca, working with John A. Philips and Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, produced a performing version of the final movement of this symphony. It was revised in 2005. In 2011, the revision was re-worked and premiered in Sweden under conductor Daniel Harding. This concert marked the U.S. premiere of this new revision. An earlier version by William Carragan premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1984.

Bruckner was a deeply religious man, a Catholic who saw the writing of gigantic symphonies as a way to reach upwards to heaven and offer great works "to the dear Lord." The Ninth is his ultimate statement, a confrontation with the mysteries of the beyond that moves from earth-shaking fury to a stellar, cosmic realm where only the bravest conductors may tread safely.

Sir Simon Rattle is one of these conductors. Working from memory, the British maestro wasted no time in grappling with this work's cosmic mysteries. A hushed chord for the brass stammers, as if clearing its throat. Then the strings, Wagner tubas, and heavy brass announce a stately theme of flexibility and power. This first climax was a potent, visceral moment, seeming to shake the walls of Carnegie Hall.

The second movement was even better. Based on the form of a dance, this movement was more of a mosh pit for orchestra. The timpani took the lead in this tribal, pounding rhythm, playing with a savagery that reminded one of The Rite of Spring. The trio section was the perfect contrast, with grace and even humor  leads into a theme of flexibility and power. This made the return of the head-banging main theme even more jarring.

Bruckner called the third movement of this symphony--the last he completed--his "farewell to life." But the slow movement of this symphony sounds different when heard in context and not as Bruckner's "final statement." Under Sir Simon, the Berlin strings came to the fore, delivering a deeply heart-felt performance of this tortured, heart-rending Adagio. The sound rose in a series of slow, blossoming climaxes, powered by the mighty sound of the trumpets and Wagner tubas. The final dissonance hung in the air, a profound statement in its own right.

At that point, one hard-core Brucknerian got up and left. His mistake.

Much like the last movement of the Beethoven Ninth (without the singing), the Finale of the Bruckner Ninth brings together the themes from the first three movements. The questions asked by the descending opening theme of the first movement are answered by a dissonant, raging theme from the trumpets and horns. The whole is expressed in a gigantic double fugue over a thick texture of strings. The Berlin forces poured themselves into this music. At last, the major key returned with the ringing final trumpet chorale of the new coda (built from the same theme in the preceding Adagio.) This last theme became a key to the infinite, as Bruckner's final mysteries were unlocked at last.

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Stupendous!

Gustavo Dudamel appears on Sesame Street.

Gustavo Dudamel, with baton conducts penguins
 as Elmo (with cute fuzzy red fur) looks on. Stupendous!
Image © 2012 Children's Television Workshop/PBS.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel became the latest celebrity to join Elmo on Sesame Street. The Dude (or El Duderino, if you're not into that whole brevity thing) discussed the meaning of the word "stupendous" with Elmo. He then auditioned a violin-playing sheep, an octopus playing the drums, and an all-penguin choir singing the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Here's the footage:

Concert Review: Glass and Steel

The American Composer's Orchestra premieres Philip Glass' Ninth Symphony.

Composer Philip Glass turned 75 last night.
Photo from Orange Mountain Music.

The New York premiere of a composer's Ninth Symphony is a momentous occasion. When the composer is Philip Morris Glass, the most important voice in American music in the last three decades, the occasion is simply historic.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Glass' friend and collaborator Dennis Russell Davies led the American Composers Orchestra in the first U.S. performance of the Glass Ninth, paired with the New York premiere of Lamentate by Arvo Pärt. The concert also marked Mr. Glass' 75th birthday, which will be celebrated throughout 2012 in opera houses and concert halls around the world.

Mr. Pärt's work was both puzzling and frustrating, a sort of piano concerto with the orchestra playing in dissipated fragments. The very absence of a center line meant that the listener was forced to draw on the pauses as elements of sound, constructing the structure negatively as the orchestra played on. The work seemed to wander for 37 minutes between what the composer described as two polarities.

The first of these is a Mahlerian brass theme, that occasionally repeats, contrasted with a second figure for the strings and piano. But in building from these slender materials, it proved difficult to grasp the entire structure as it unveiled. Piano soloist Maki Namekawa did an admirable job with the solo part, although her hot pink concert gown was the most vibrant thing about the performance.

Philip Glass is not primarily known as a symphonist, but has honed his craft over the last two decades at the prompting of Mr. Davies. He started with the "Low" Symphony (based on the work of David Bowie and Brian Eno) and explored choral writing, poetry and folklore in his Fifth, Sixth and Seventh. The Ninth has the same structure as the Eighth, with three similar movements. But in this work, the years of honing pay off in a big, muscular composition that makes virtuosic use of a large orchestra.

The familiar Glass ideas are present: ostinato rhythms, built from whole-tone arpeggios that repeat in an obsessive fashion before changing tack and giving way to a new set of repetitions. But the writing is meatier than in his early period, and the orchestration lends gravitas to the musical ideas. The writing technique actually recalls complex, so-called "progressive" rock music, with the music never flowering fully before changing direction on the listener's frustration and fascination..

Over his 40 year career, repetition remains a central idea in Mr. Glass's oeuvre. So perhaps it is fitting that each abstract movement of the Ninth is built on the same frame. Each movement starts slowly, building to a loud, almost Brucknerian climax. Like Strauss' Alpensinfonie, the true climax is at the center of the middle movement, a stunning peak of sound that had the Carnegie Hall audience on edge.

Mahler, Interrupted

Ringing iPhone stops New York Philharmonic.

by Paul Pelkonen.

He can kill your cell phone with his brain.
New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Pascal Perich © New York Philharmonic.

Tuesday night's New York Philharmonic performance of the Mahler Ninth was stopped dead by an unusual instrument--the iPhone.

An iPhone (using the marimba ring-tone) went off repeatedly in the fourth movement of Mahler's final completed symphony.

According to an eyewitness, the offending phone owner was in the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall when his phone went off. (A post by Michael Jo on the classical music blog thousandfoldecho.com specifies that the interruption happened just 13 bars before the last page of the score.) In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement, that ends a 90-minute symphony.

"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concert-goer, music student Kyra Sims, reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."

Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting in front of the concert-master: "Are you finished?" The man didn't respond.

"Fine, we'll wait," Mr. Gilbert said.

The Avery Fisher Hall audience, ripped in an untimely fashion from Mahler's complicated sound-world, reacted with "seething rage," Ms. Sims said. Someone shouted "Thousand dollar fine."

This was followed by cries of 'Get out!' and 'Kick him out!.' Some people started clapping rhythmically but the hall was quieted down. House security did not intervene or remove the offender.

The ringing stopped. "Did you turn it off?" Mr. Gilbert asked.

The man nodded.

"It won't go off again?" 

The man shook his head.

Before resuming, Mr. Gilbert addressed the audience. He said: "I apologize. Usually, when there's a disturbance like this, it is best to ignore it, because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself. But this was so egregious that I could not allow it."

"We'll start again." The audience cheered.

The final movement of this symphony (marked Adagio: Very Slowly and Restrained) is a long slow meditation on death that eventually fades to silence. The work has special significance at the New York Philharmonic, an orchestra that Mahler conducted in the last years of his life. 

Mr. Gilbert turned to the orchestra and said "Number 118." (Again, thanks to thousandfoldecho.com for this detail.) The band picked up the movement from the final fortissimo ending in the brass, and played the work through to its last, quiet pages.

No other phones went off.


Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

DVD Review: The King of the Golden Hall

Discovering Beethoven: Symphonies 7, 8 and 9
with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic

Christian Thielemann, leading the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein.
Photo © The Vienna Philharmonic/Unitel Classics

These recordings conclude a collaborative project between the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann, the impressive conductor who, over the course of the past decade, has become the most eminent baton in German music. Here, Mr. Thielemann leads engaging performances of the last three Beethoven symphonies, the heroic Seventh, the humorous Eighth, and the Ninth, the composer's mighty shout for joy and brotherhood that ends the cycle.


The great opportunity here is to experience the Vienna forces playing in their home building, the legendary Goldensaal of the Musikverein in Vienna. Better yet, they're playing this beloved music in front of a live audience. Something is gained from actually recording in the bright, warm acoustic of the Musikverein, the chance for the home viewer to share in the unique communion between the audience and this ancient, brilliant orchestra.

In fact the whole endeavor, like Mr. Thielemann himself, is a bit of a throwback, to an age before tonmeisters and record company suits crammed the record shelves with mediocre Beethoven cycles led by egotistical conductors at the height of an unsustainable boom. By making honest music without the aid of modern machinery, the Viennese have done the impossible: they have come up with a fresh take on this well-known, well-loved music.


Mr. Thielemann leads a straightforward, über-Romantic interpretation, opting for a limpid clarity of texture that allows the listener to hear these sturdy works afresh. He is aided by the sterling acoustics of the hall, the quiet-as-mice audience, and of course the unique sound of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose well-documented use of "Viennese" horns, period oboes and goat-skin drums make them, in effect, an historic ensemble that chooses tradition over technology.

The Seventh hums with vibrant energy, throwing itself into its dramatic, frenzied dance movements with real fire and muscular good humor. The slow movement (made famous once more in the Oscar-winning The King's Speech--is it a coincidence that Mr. Thielemann looks like a larger, burlier brother of Colin Firth?) is produced here with all due weight and power, and the final movement whirls to a celebratory climax. It is well matched with its "little" brother, the Eighth. In Mr. Thielemann's hands, the least-known of the symphonies continues the air of heroic bonhomie, proving that Beethoven did indeed, have a sense of humor.


The Ninth may be famous, but given its choral requirements, difficult vocal writing and prodigious length, it is tricky to bring off. This is a near-flawless reading. There are some odd tempo changes: for example, a sudden accelerando in the Turkish March that serves only to build momentum into the climactic double fugue. The camera crew gives equal time to singers, musicians and Mr. Thielemann, and it is fascinating to watch this great opera conductor lead singers under full light, not hidden in an orchestra pit. The four vocal soloists (Annete Dasch, Mihoko Fujimura, Piotr Beczala and Georg Zeppenfeld) are strong, as is the accompanying chorus: a mighty shout of Austrian humanity.

It is a sign of bizarre musical times that these sterling performances are not available on that antiquated format, the CD. These are DVD-only readings, incorporating the joys of a live performance with visuals. (The Blu-Ray releases are single discs, the DVD sets are three discs each.) The symphonies come with copius bonus features, including a series of documentaries where Mr. Thielemann explains his tempo decisions in detail. It is a mark of their depth that the three films taken together are longer than the performances.

Of course, you could just leave the television off and connected to the stereo, but that would deprive one of the full experience of attending a concert at this famous hall, without the benefit of a Viennese benefactor, a job at Musical America or a decade on the orchestra's waiting list for tickets. Still, an audio-only version would be welcome.

Concert Review: A New Baton For Mahler's Threnody

Sean Newhouse.
Image © SeanNewhouse.com

Saturday night's concert at Symphony Hall featured Boston Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor Sean Newhouse leading the third of four performances of Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Mr. Newhouse is a 30-year-old American conductor, who left the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 2010 to assist BSO music director James Levine. He was promoted to the podium following 11th-hour back problems that incapacitated Mr. Levine, forcing the 68-year-old maestro to cancel his appearances this weekend.

The Mahler Ninth is a dark symphony, containing forebodings of the composer's imminent death. Although it is in four movements, its atypical structure (with the slow movements coming first and last and two fast movements in the middle) presents challenges to any conductor. The outer movements required the building of long, shining bridges of sound, delicate structures of strings and wind that breathe and yearn with longing. The central scherzo and Rondo-burleske walk the line between sentiment and grotesque parody.

Mr. Newhouse proved himself up to the task on Saturday night, leading a vigorous performance that balanced the extremes of this long, difficult work. From the faltering heartbeat that starts the first movement to the final, shimmering violin figures of the last few bars, Mr. Newhouse was firmly in control of his orchestra. But the young conductor did more than just beat time--he offered his own interpretation of the work, making Mahler's last completed symphony a profound and deeply humanistic statement.


Nowhere was this more apparent than in the third movement. Marked Rondo-Burleske, its bizarre structure allows Mahler to vent his rage with bitter irony. But under Mr. Newhouse, the burlesque became a subtle, almost Bach-like fugue. The theme was tossed nimbly from section to section. The entire orchestra took flight as the trumpets (led by principal Thomas Rolfs) came in to soothe the conflict, playing a warm, comforting theme. The entire orchestra took up this new theme, until a blast of brass and percussion ended the Rondo where it began.

The last Adagio expresses something far more difficult: the infinite. A heart-wrenching melody in the cellos sings out. It extends into a lengthy contemplation which includes quotes from three (and possibly four) other Mahler works. Robert Sheena's English horn offered thoughtful commentary throughout. And the harp part maintained Mahler's faltering heart-beat played by principal Jessica Zhou.

Mahler left his final thoughts to the strings, led by concertmaster Malcome Lowe. Given the late substitution on the podium, Mr. Lowe's role in the success of this performance cannot be overstated. As the great orchestra faded, brass players put down their horns, and percussionists laid their mallets to rest. All that was left were the strings, playing quiet bits of melody that quoted from Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. The great sonic space of Symphony Hall was suddenly empty of all but those thin musical threads. Mr. Newhouse slowly lowered his arms, and the piece ended in profound, reverent silence.