Metropolitan Opera Preview: Tristan und Isolde

The Met opens its season with Wagner's transcendental tragedy.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Nina Stemme is Isolde in the Met's new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

It's love and death on the high seas. The 2016 Met season is set to open with this new nautical staging of Tristan und Isolde starring Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton as Wagner's star-crossed lovers.

Carnegie Hall 2016-17 Preview: Masks, Marathons, and Marvels

Ambitious 2016-17 season offers Mahler, Bruckner and a Venetian festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Venetian festival La Serenissima comes to Carnegie Hall in February 2017.
Original image courtesy of  and © 2016 by Carnegie Hall. Photo alteration by the author.

For the last three years, Carnegie Hall's annual press conference unveiling the slate of its forthcoming season has been held upstairs at the no-longer-new Resnick Education Wing, atop the world-famous music hall at the corner of West 57th St. and Seventh Avenue. Today's conference featured a lengthy presentation by still-reigning Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson, a conversation between Mr. Gillinson and next year's composer-in-residence Steve Reich, and the distribution of weighty vermilion folders to members of the working music press. From the looks of the schedule, next year is going to be...big.
Make that...really, really big.

Concert Review: The End is the Beginning

Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Berlin Philharmonic open Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Anne-Sophie Mutter, 2014-15 Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist
played at opening night. Photo by Harald Hoffmann for Deutsche Grammophon.
© 2014 Universal Classics/UMG

The opening of Carnegie Hall is always a festive occasion, with red carpet laid down under the famous portico on W. 57th St., a black-tie crowd and this year, a gala dinner on the Hall's new grassy roof deck. However, the main attraction this year was that the season was opening with the Berlin Philharmonic, in town for a week of concerts, a residency that will launch not only this year's Carnegie season but Lincoln Center's own White Light Festival next week.

Concert Review: The Defense of the New

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Soprano Barbara Hannigan as the Police Chief from Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre.
Image from BarbaraHannigan.com.

Some composers still need an advocate. Today's audiences are filled with skeptics, put off by the idea of atonal music and names like Berg, Webern and Ligeti. On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, the current music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. This program cemented Sir Simon's reputation as a fearless advocate for these new sounds, interpreted through the rich, velvety texture of this top-flight ensemble.

Concert Review: The Apocalypse Watch

Sir Simon Rattle conducts Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.

Sir Simon Rattle.
Photo © EMI Classics.

When Simon Rattle was 12 years old, he went to a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony: the massive five-movement worked dubbed the Resurrection after its choral finale. The young listener immediately wanted to conduct it. Four decades later, Sir Simon Rattle sees the Resurrection as his classical calling card: the central composition of his conducting career. Small wonder that he chose this work to end his three-night stand at Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic. The 

Since a performance of the Mahler Two usually runs about 90 minutes, it is usually not paired with works by other composers. This concert started with three short choral works by Viennese composer Hugo Wolf. The Westminster Symphonic Choir made a good case for "Fruhlingschor", from Wolf's unfinished second opera Manuel Venegas. The Wagner-inspired melodies wound forth from the orchestra, casting a brief spell that makes one want to hear more of this rare opera.

Soprano Camilla Tilling led the short "Elfenlied," evoking the Romantic side of Wolf's writing with its pixie-dust orchestration. The mini-set ended with a virtuoso performance of the challenging "Die Feuerreiter." This genuinely disturbing lied--about an arsonist who perishes in a burning mill, was performed in a complex choral arrangement that proved a welcome challenge for the Berlin players.

Maybe it's because they were warmed up from playing the Wolf pieces, but the Berlin Philharmonic played the opening funeral march of the Resurrection with unusual zeal. The basses and cellos growled out the first subject, answere by rising figures in the horns and a longing melody in the low woodwinds. Sir Simon showed his long experience with this work, letting his orchestra swagger but never sacrificing momentum. 

The ferocity of the Totenfier march gave way to the longing ländler of the second movement and the ironic, bitter pages of the central scherzo. This is some of the most difficult terrain of this symphony, as Mahler's protagonist bids a bittersweet farewell to mortality. Acceptnce comes in the ravishing "O roschen rot" sung here by mezzo Bernarda Fink. Singer and orchestra created a brief peace with this meditative movement, before the real firepower was unleashed.

Carnegie Hall is a great music venue, but its high balconies and tight backstage spaces make putting on the last movement of the Resurrection something of a challenge. Mahler calls for bell players, offstage horns, and an entire marching band in the distance depicting the rising of the dead and the build-up to the final judgement. 

Sir Simon's long experience in this symphony made this huge movement--almost a dramatic scene from an opera--move forward from one section to the next. The orchestra produced admirable effects, from the raised horns in the back proclaiming the tuba mirum to the percussion and basses going to town depicting the earth itself cracking open in a series of apocalyptic sonic blasts.

When the chorus came in, it was almost a relief, that the heavenly torments were at an end and the redemption promised in the first movement finally began to unveil itself. Ms. Tilling and Ms. Fink were added to the massed voices of the choir, and the whole work seemed to elevate into a higher plane. It was overwhelming and gloriously over the top.

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

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.

Concert Review: A Grand Tour of the Gilded Age

Sir Simon Rattle brings the Berlin Philharmonic to Carnegie Hall

Black-and-white brilliance. Sir Simon Rattle in action.
Photo © EMI Classics.

Mention the Berlin Philharmonic to a classical music aficionado, and you'll get a dreamy response, with memories of floor-shaking fortissimos and the flexible, powerful army of musicians that can create liquid tones of light and shade and transport a listener to a state of bliss.

Sir Simon Rattle and the orchestra in question made a welcome return to the Carnegie Hall stage on Thursday night, with a program celebrating the rapid changes in music that took place at the turn of the 20th century. In his decade at the helm of this orchestra, Sir Simon has remade the orchestra into a lean, flexible ensemble, capable of playing even the most familiar music with freshness and energy.

The four works programmed were by four different composers from different countries. But they cohered into a potent artistic statement, forming a kind of mini-symphony when played over the course of the evening. That statement started with Emmanuel Pahud's flute, leading off Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. With this ten-minute work, Debussy has been acknowledged (for better or worse) as the composer who ended the spell of Wagner and paved the way for the 20th century.

This performance owed something to that German composer. The weary dream of the solo flute echoed passages of melting beauty in Parsifal: the sound of dappled light and softly breathing woods. Dreamy brass chords meandered into this forest of sound. An English Horn evoked a sad shepherd. And the music hypnotized, seeming to hang floating in the air as it wound to a soft close.

The "dance" movement as Antonín Dvořák's The Golden Spinning-Wheel, a late example of the composer's final style where symphonic structures were replaced by that newer form, the tone-poem. The Wheel is an effective symphony in minature, contrasting the gallop of horses through a Bohemian forest with the horrifying fate of a girl tortured and mutilated by her evil relatives. The Berlin cello section drove the piece forward, slowing for a central section that recalled the wide American vistas inspired by Dvořák's visits to the American Midwest.

The slow movement of this "mega-symphony" was Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, played by the strings in the composer's expanded orchestration. Credit here goes to the razor-sharp string playing, evoking the drama of a man and a woman in the woods negotiating the future of their troubled relationship. Under Sir Simon's leadership, the tonal fabric was stretched to its limit, with delicate solos on the violins and violas leading towards a soft, transcendent close.

Many symphonies conclude with a theme-and-variations. In this case: Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations, a kind of parlor game played by a huge orchestra. Elgar's original "enigma" has a meaning that has never been decoded by conductor, critic, or composer. But the opening theme was eloquently stated, and the tonal colors of the Philharmonic were fresh and bright. Sir Simon then launched into the astonish series of re-workings, re-orchestrations and rhythmic re-structurings. The 23 variations were divided into paragraphs of musical thought, with the whole flowing forward from his baton.

While the secret behind Elgar's musical riddle has never been cracked, it is known that each variation serves as a musical tip of the hat to all of the important people (and one dog) in Elgar's immediate social circle. As the work moved past the famous "Nimrod" variation, the orchestra began building up into a giant dance of joy. Each quarter of the ensemble was heard from in this muscular, good-natured performance, which was finally joined by the organ for a triumphant, final shout. That climax was fitting, as the last movement depicts Elgar himself.

Into The Woods: A Practical Guide to Pelléas et Mélisande

Mary Garden, the first Mélisande.

This Friday, the Metropolitan Opera presents a long overdue revival of Pélleas et Mélisande, the lone opera by French composer Claude Debussy. Pelléas presents a classic love triangle against a fairy-tale background, set to strange, dream-like music that could only come from Debussy's pen. The work is adapted from the play of the same title, by French Symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Debussy's version focuses on the two main characters and omits scenes for the castle servants. The work combines words and music into a seamless whole where the drama is expertly supported by the orchestra. It sounds like no other opera.

Hunting in the forest, the Prince Golaud (Gerald Finley) discovers Melisande, (Magdalena Kozena) a mysterious girl with long blonde hair. He marries her and brings her home. She immediately falls in love with Golaud's brother, Pelléas (Stéphane Degout) although the "couple" never consummate their relationship. Eventually, Golaud kills Pelléas in a fit of rage. Melisande gives birth to Golaud's child, and dies. The entire work takes place in a shadowy dream-world, the mythical kingdom of "Allemonde" ("All the world") which could be anywhere.

The music for Pelléas uses a unique, shifting tonality, where light and shade dapple through the score, providing support for the almost conversational dialogue. There is one (offstage) chorus. There are no arias or "hit numbers." In fact, there are only two points in the opera's four-hour length where the orchestra is instructed to play forte (loud). Berlin Philharmonic music director Sir Simon Rattle will be making his Metropolitan Opera debut in the pit, conducting this run of performances.

Here's three recommendations:

Royal Opera House of Covent Garden cond. Pierre Boulez
Pelléas: George Shirley
Mélisande: Elisabeth Söderstrom
Golaud: Donald McIntyre

Pierre Boulez brings some needed clarity to this admittedly murky opera. Boulez takes a brisk approach to the score, allowing the orchestra to flex its muscles and bringing out the shimmering textures of Debussy's orchestration. This set remained out of print in North America for about 20 years, and was reissued as part of Sony Opera House, an invaluable series of great reissues from the CBS, Sony Classical and RCA archives.

If you want a studio version of the opera with no background hiss or coughs from the audience, this is the one to get. George Shirley is a solid presence as Pelléas. He is well matched with the great Elisabeth Söderstrom, a fine singing actress. Donald McIntyre, who would later sing Wotan in the Boulez Ring at Bayreuth, is ideal casting as the heart-broken Golaud.

Royal Philharmonic cond. Vittorio Gui
Pelléas: Hans Wilbrink
Mélisande: Denise Duval
Golaud: Michel Roux

This live recording is one of many made by John Barnes, (archivist of the Glyndebourne Festival) that have been released in recent years by Naxos. Recorded in 1963, it sat in the vaults until 2009.

The intimate Glyndebourne opera house is a fine recording venue, and Debussy's work comes to life as a living, breathing work of theater. Conductor Vittorio Gui takes an unconventional, "Italianate" approach to the opera, yet his performance has passion without going into Wagnerian excess. Hans Wilbring is an ardent Pelléas. This recording is worth hearing also for the performance of soprano Denise Duval, who created the role of Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. One of the great "lost" recordings of the 20th century.


Orchestre symphonique de Paris cond. Roger Désormière
Pelléas: Jacques Jensen
Mélisande: Iréne Joachim
Golaud: Henri Etchiverry

This is an invaluable recording in monaural sound, made during the German occupation of France in 1941. It was a bold move to record this most French of modern operas while the Nazis occupied the city, but the results are simply electric. Désormière's reading of the complete score (the first ever recorded) would set the template for future conductors who wanted to drown Debussy's opera in its own darkness. Yet light shines through, especially in the Well Scene and the opera's gorgeous Interludes.

The EMI remastering cannot hide the fact that this set was recorded in the era of 78s, a decade before commercial opera recording became a viable industry, but that does not lower its value to the listener. The excellent bonuses include three 1904 recordings of Debussy songs featuring Mary Garden (who created the role of Mélisande) and the composer himself at the piano.