Concert Review: Too Many Cookes

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the completed Mahler Tenth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle at study.
Photo by Monika Rittershaus for EMI Classics/WBC. 

When Gustav Mahler died on May 18, 1911, he left behind five folders of musical sketch material. There were two completed movements and three of four-stave sketches: the bones of his unfinished Symphony No. 10. On Monday night, in the concluding performance of a three-movement series, Sir Simon Rattle and his London Symphony Orchestra gave their first New York performance together of this still controversial work, in a five-movement performing edition created in 1960 by musicologist Deryck Cooke.

Concert Review: Full Silken Jacket

No tuxedos for Kurt Masur, just Schubert and Shostakovich.

Busted: Kurt Masur, 2009.
Sculpture by Bertrand Friesleben.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Former New York Philharmonic Music Director Kurt Masur returned to  the podium of Avery Fisher Hall this week. Mr. Masur is now 84. And he still doesn't use a baton. But he remains a thinking man's conductor, a compelling music maker of the old school who does not let his age or medical conditions affect the beauty of his performance.

On Friday night, the maestro looked pale, frail-looking, and his left hand trembled uncontrollably. However, he delivered a compelling performance of a compelling program, music that sounded comfortable as the tangzhuang jacket he wore instead of white tie.

The concert opened with a thoroughly Romantic reading of Schubert's 8th, the most famous torso in the orchestral repertory. These two movements were played at a broad pace, giving the orchestra's players room to luxuriate in Schubert's phrases. But the horns had trouble early, creating unattractive tones in the first movement's signature theme. The cellos, integral to the rhythmic makeup of this symphony, played superbly. 

Mr. Masur's second piece was Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, a choral symphony also known as Babi Yar. The orchestra was joined by baritone Sergei Leiferkus and the New York Choral Artists, the same team that recorded this symphony in 1994. The most political of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies, Babi Yar is a setting five uncompromising poems from the acid pen of  Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

The poems and their symphony are products of the "cultural thaw" that took place in Russia under Khrushchev. But even the "thaw" froze on the Thirteenth, which was banned in Russia in 1963 after only a handful of performances. The music is tough and uncompromising with snarling brass, complex percussion and slamming chords dominating the titular first poem, a reflection on the Nazi massacre of over 33,771 Jews outside Kiev on Sept. 29-30 1941.

The poems were sung by Sergei Lefeirkus, a Russian baritone with a long history of playing villains onstage. He was grim and dark of tone in the opening movement, singing with passion, pleading the case that as the "true Russian" is he who attacks and condemns the anti-Semite. With its frightening descriptions of pogroms and figures like Anne Frank, this movement is hard going. Mr. Masur brought out the stark, black-and-white quality in Shostakovich's writing, helped by superb brass and percussion work from his old orchestra.

Mr. Lefeirkus did his best to inject a light note into the jaunty second poem Humor, with its brassy, Mahlerian march figure. The setting also recalls the nose-thumbing of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel, although the Russian phrase "юмор показывал кукиш!" translates to something other than what appeared in the super-titles. Mr. Leiferkus returned to seriousness for the slow In the Store, accompanied movingly by Mr. Masur.

Fears is the toughest movement of this symphony, opening with a long 11-note tuba solo that recalls Wagner's dragon from Siegfried. Alan Baer played that difficult solo with superb breath control, laying groundwork for the dark movement that followed. Mr. Masur cast a familiar spell over his old orchestra, weaving his fingers in complex patterns, lifting an elbow, shifting a shoulder and drawing out Shostakovich's complex tonalities and instrumental textures.

Mr. Lefeirkus lightened up for the final A Career, a sarcastic meditation on the wisdom of speaking out against visionaries like Galileo, Newton and Tolstoy. His interaction at that point with the men of the New York Choral Artists ("Lev?" "Lev!") was a high point. As the symphony came to an end, Shostakovich brought back the "Humor" theme (as a chilly solo for bass clarinet) and the final "Babi Yar" motive, played very softly, with chamber-like textures by the principal strings and wind.

Concert Review: An Early Exit in a Hurricane's Path

Mostly Mozart ends with unfinished music.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, led by conductor Louis Langrée.
Image courtesy Lincoln Center © 2010 Mostly Mozart/Lincoln Center.

The 2011 Mostly Mozart festival came to a premature end on Friday night. Due to the imminent arrival of Hurricane Irene this weekend, Saturday night's concert was cancelled. With the audiences from both nights combined at the last minute, a capacity crowd was on hand to hear the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra offer a program of Stravinsky, Schubert, and Mozart's last work, the Requiem. Louis Langrée conducted.

The packed house meant some unusual seating arrangements. My seat was on the stage, in one of the jury-box like arrangements that recall Wieland Wagner's 1961 production of Tannhäuser. Also, I could sight-read the double bass part over the musicians' shoulders during the Schubert "Unfinished" Symphony. For the Mozart Requiem I divided my attention between the choristers, the sheet music and conductor Louis Lortie.

The concert opened with Stravinsky's In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, a dirge-like setting of the poet's "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night." The work has an unusual chamber orchestration: four string players and four trombones. Tenor Joseph Kaisersang the complex vocal part (which belongs to Stravinsky's difficult, late style with fervent emotion and beauty of tone. As Hurricane Irene whirled slowly toward the city, the poem seemed an appropriate message for the assembled audience.

Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (his Eighth) remains a giant question mark in his career. Unlike Bruckner and Mahler (who also left incomplete symphonies) Schubert lived for several years after stopping work on this piece after only two movements. Those movements were played with sure beauty by the Festival Orchestra, coloring in the complicated woodwind parts and the rolling, eloquent main theme in the 'cellos. The second movement loped with easy grace, and the horns played with firm, ringing tone.

A great deal of myth swirls around Mozart's Requiem. Here's the truth: the work was commissioned by an eccentric nobleman: Count Franz Walsegg-Stupach who planned to pass it off as his own work.Mozart died having only completed the first movement. But he wrote out vocal sketches for the work up to the beginning of the Lacrimosa, the final section of the Dies Irae.. His widow Constanze hired composer Franz Xavier Süssmayer to finish the piece and meet the commission.

Unlike later Requiem masses by Berlioz and Verdi, Mozart eschews clock-you-on-the-head orchestration, relying on the power of the human voice to convey the message of the Latin text. This is most apparent in the Tuba mirum, where the Last Trumpet is announced by a ringing bass voice with brass accompaniment. Morris Robinson delivered this unearthly message with power and warmth. Soprano Julia Lezhneva, in her American debut, was impressive in the work's lyric passages, as was mezzo Kelley O'Connor.

The second half of the Requiem was written by Süssmayer. Strong choral contributions from the Concert Chorale of New York were prominent here, particularly in the Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The final passages of the work sound forth in a triumphal shout, quoting the very beginning of the mass. This might not be the most imaginative ending, but one can only imagine how Mozart would have done it.

Concert Review: Revelation Calling

Bruckner's Ninth Brings Cleveland Residency to a Mystic Close.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Anton Bruckner: Master of the Mystic Arts. He composed, too.

The final installment of Bruckner (r)Evolution, the Cleveland Orchestra's four-concert residency at the 2011 Lincoln Center Festival, paired Anton Bruckner's Ninth (and final) Symphony with the Doctor Atomic Symphony by contemporary minimalist composer John Adams. Franz Welser-Möst conducted. His intent: to show Bruckner's influence on modern music.