Concert Review: Point-Counterpoint

Taka Kigawa plays Bach at Le Poisson Rouge.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pianist Taka Kigawa is a regular at Le Poisson Rouge.
Photo from the artist's website.

There's something to be said for attending a concert with just your ears.

That was the case at a crowded Le Poisson Rouge on Monday night. The event: pianist Taka Kigawa was the featured artist playing all of Johann Sebastian Bach's The Art of the Fugue. In a crowded club, it wasn't always possible to watch the artist play, which led to one's ability to concentrate on and enjoy this final Bach masterpiece.

Before the review: some explanation:

The Art of the Fugue is one of Bach's last creations. Starting with a simple theme:

the composer embarks on a thorough exploration of counterpoint and thematic development. In the course of the fourteen movements, this theme is subject to the following techniques:

• augmented: note values lengthened.
• diminished: note values shortened.
• inverted: (a low melody trades places with a high one)
• imitated: (a theme is repeated on lower or higher voices)
• stretto: ("narrowed") where themes are repeated in an overlapping structure.

Bach's work contains double, triple and quadruple fugues, where the artist is responsible for maintaining many contrasting voices all overlapping. There are also so-called mirror fugues (where the whole piece is played, inverted and then repeated) and the four canons that divide the 14 movements and provide a stylistic calm at the center of a storm of counterpoint.

Concert Review: Beethoven Gets Eighty-Sixed

Mass in C closes Mostly Mozart Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Clarinetist Martin Fröst did not wear
this hat on Saturday night.
Photo from tumblr.com 

The 2012 Mostly Mozart Festival ended on Saturday night with the second of two concerts featuring the composer's Clarinet Concerto with soloist Martin Fröst. The concerto, Mozart's last instrumental work, was paired with Beethoven's Mass in C Op. 86, one of the composer's least performed works. Festival music director Louis Langrée conducted.

Mozart wrote the Clarinet Concerto for soloist Anton Städler in 1791, the year he died. It features the sum tota of his abilities as a composer of passionate music that both charm and provoke. The work places great demands on the soloist, who must also provide a sweet tone that takes advantage of the clarinet's uncanny ability to imitate the human voice.

The autograph of Mozart's score is not available, but the work may have been based on an earlier work that the composer had planned for the bassett horn, a kind of alto claarinet with a disticnctive "angled" body. Mr. Fröst, who may be the first woodwind superstar in music since Heinz Holliger, played the work on an extended "bassett" clarinet (down to low C) to meet the required low notes.

Opera Review: The Heroine and the Terror

Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble mounts Dialogues des Carmelites.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

"So that's how this opera ends?" Jennifer Moore as Sister Blanche in Dialogues des Carmelites.
Photo by Angel Roy © 2012 Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble

Presenting François Poulenc's 1953 opera Dialogues des Carmélites may seem like an insanely ambitious project for a small New York opera company. On Friday night, Christopher Fecteau's Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble did not just meet the challenges of this work (based on the real-life execution of French nuns during the Reign of Terror) but surpassed it, delivering a raw, potent performance of great clarity and simple faith.

At first glance, Carmélites is the story of Blanche, a shrinking violet born to a French aristocratic family. Clumsy, terrified and unsure of herself, she finds a safe haven in a strict order of Carmelite nuns. Their lives are destroyed by the anti-religious fervor of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Finally, the nuns face the guillotine singing a chorus of Salve Regina, one that is ultimately silenced by the falling blade.

Jennifer Moore (heard in this company's 2010 one-off performance of Königskinder as well as last year's Ariadne auf Naxos) walked Blanche's dramatic arc in Act I, rising from a timid figure into a full-fledged dramatic heroine. She brought acting focus to the role and clarity of tone, highlighted by the simple set and minimal costumes. Poulenc's shimmering, radiant score brought forth the small joys of Blanche's friendship with Sister Constance (the fine soprano Maria Alu) and the stern guidance of the Prioress (Leanne Gonzalez-Singer) The latter's death scene at the end of Act I was wrenching, a foretaste of the dark events to come.

Concert Review: Evolution Calling

Bach and Mendelssohn are featured at Mostly Mozart.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Stephen Hough. Photo by Stanley Fefferman.

When attending a concert at Mostly Mozart consisting of standard repertory works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn and Mozart himself, one can be hard pressed to tease out a connection between abstract classical compositions from different time periods. The challenge becomes greater over the course of a long festival, made more so when one's occupation consists of writing reviews on a classical music blog.

Happily, this week's penultimate Mostly Mozart program (seen Wednesday night) consisted of threee works that made a coherent whole. Conductor Andrew Manze chose Mendelssohn's concert arrangement of Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, the younger composer's own First Piano Concerto (played by Stephen Hough) and a Mozart favorite, the ubiquitous but forward-thinking Jupiter Symphony. The choice of Mozart's last symphony seemed particularly apt, as the Jupiter anticipates at what would become the strange world of 19th century Romanticism.