Concert Review: Peter Gabriel at Radio City Music Hall

Peter Gabriel

Veteran English art rocker Peter Gabriel brought his New Blood Tour to Radio City Music Hall this weekend. Mr. Gabriel's current tour has more to do with 19th century art songs than rock and roll. His latest, Scratch My Back, is a set of twelve covers--songs by other artists. Six of them are from Mr. Gabriel's contemporaries (Neil Young, Lou Reed) and six are from younger artists like Radiohead and Arcade Fire. The show featured the singer eschewing the traditional rock format, and performing with piano and a full symphony orchestra.

Attempts to combine the power of an orchestra with a rock band dot the history of rock'n'roll, from '60s experiments like the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed and Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra More recently, Yes, Metallica and Dream Theater have done their own orchestral projects. But in this case, the drums and guitars are left in their road cases, replaced with the 54-piece "New Blood Orchestra", a hand-picked ensemble of taleneted young players, under the careful baton of Ben Foster. Thanks to Mr. Gabriel's talents and the brilliant, sometimes witty arrangements by John Metcalfe, the experiment is a success.


Mr. Gabriel performed the entirety of Scratch My Back in order, as a song cycle of sorts. The songs work well live. David Bowie's "Heroes" and Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" were melancholy, almost dirge-like. "My Body is a Cage" (the Arcade Fire entry) is a raging, minimalist crescendo. The song owes debts to Metallica's "One" but the minimalist arrangement recalled Ravel's Bolero. The grim mood was lifted by "The Book of Love," a sweet, yearning song by the Magnetic Fields. It was accompanied by whimsical, chalk-line animation which mused on the nature of commitment.

The second half of the show featured Mr. Gabriel's own material, again re-arranged for orchestra. The energy picked up as Mr. Gabriel hit the soaring high notes of "San Jacinto." The set featured a range of songs from his long solo career, standing crowd favorites "Solisbury Hill" and "In Your Eyes"  alongside more esoteric tracks. These included a propulsive "The Rhythm and the Heat", the confessional "Washing of the Water" and "Mercy Street", the poetic tribute to the work of Anne Sexton. The deepest revisions were made to "Signal to Noise", with the soprano vocals of Ane Brun replacing the qawwali vocals of the late Nusret Fateh Ali Khan. Mr. Gabriel has left his world music obsessions behind on this tour. In the process, he has discovered something new and refreshing in his music, aided by the power of the orchestra.

The Met Ring Trailer

A stage design for Das Rheingold.

The Metropolitan Opera is preparing a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. The staging, designed by Canadian director Robert Lepage and featuring imaginative use of projections and a single unit set, will feature the vocal talents of Bryn Terfel as Wotan and Deborah Voigt, who will sing Brunnhilde for the first time.

The trailer, below, was just released and gives some idea of what we're going to see. And it could be really good. I especially like the image of the gigantic wings and the wall of magic fire.



Next season will see the premiere of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. The full Ring will be performed in the Spring of 2012.

Photo © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera

Opera Review: Der Fliegende Holländer (again!)

Monday night's sailing of The Flying Dutchman at the Met marked the house debut of an impressive singer. Soprano Lori Phillips, substituting for an ill Deborah Voigt in the key role of Senta, sang the role with formidable power and passion. She was complemented by Juha Uusitalo in the title role, sounding much more sure of himself than at the season premiere.

Perhaps it was due to better personal health, (or maybe just that the Dutchman's enormous gangplank worked correctly) but Mr. Uusitalo was a much improved (if still doomed) Dutchman. The top of the voice had regained its fierce growl and the high notes rung with confidence. He also managed an impressive entrance with "Die frist ist um," carrying off this difficult aria in such a way as to provide momentum to the rest of his performance.



Ms. Phillips is an American singer with a powerful, dramatic voice and good acting ability. She takes a different approach to the role, singing with more consistent volume throughout. And yet, she sings the notes accurately. Unlike Ms. Voigt, Ms. Phillips opened up the voice at the start of the Ballad, narrating the story of her ghostly obsession and sounding just slightly over the edge. Real romantic dementia set in with the arrival of Mr. Uusitalo. Their slow-building Act II duet rose to a mighty climax that foreshadowed the powerful third act.

This is an opera where the Met chorus really gets to shine. Whether they're portraying the capering Norwegian sailors, the ghostly mariners trapped aboard the Dutchman's ship, or the spinning, sail-making women-folk of the tiny nautical town, the choristers were on exceptional form on Monday night. Their finest moment came in Act III, where the three aforementioned groups battle it out on the docks. Also worth mentioning is bass Hans-Peter König as Daland. His bumptious sea captain-turned-pimp-daddy is one of the chief pleasures of this current run.

Out to sea: Juha Uusitalo as the Flying Dutchman.
Photo © 2010 Corey Weaver/The Metropolitan Opera

Concert Review: Penderecki Conducts Penderecki

The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki brought the Yale Philharmonic Orchestra to Carnegie Hall on Friday evening as part of the orchestra's Yale in New York series. The award-winning composer led the orchestra in a program of four of his own works.

Krzysztof Penderecki conducts a rehearsal of the Threnody.

The evening opened with the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Written in 1960 for large string orchestra, this work uses "tone clusters" (whole sets of notes played together to create powerful blocks of dissonance) and unusual playing techniques to create a harsh sonic landscape that evokes the horrors of nuclear war. The players pluck, scrape, and strike the bellies of their instruments. The knocks, yowls and screeches that result create a terrifying sound: the sound of total annihilation.

Violinist Syoko Aki joined the orchestra for the Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra, a one-movement concerto that pits the skittering, panicked sound of the soloist against great slabs of brass and strings in the orchestra. Sonically, it is as if a conventional violin concerto was being played through the broken shards of a mirror. Penderecki uses brass, harmonium, piano, and even a musical saw to provide contrast to the fleet-fingered arpeggios and statement of the main theme, which in turn evokes Polish folk-songs.

Penderecki came to Yale to teach music in the 1970s. Works written in that period showed the composer gradually rejecting atonality and serialism in favor of a "neo-classical" approach to music. The thoughtful construction and fearless experimentation is still present, but the fear and oppression are gone, leading to sunnier textures that may be easier for the listener.

Written in 2008, the Horn Concerto (Winterreise) is a good introduction to this tonal approach. Soloist William Purvis coped admirably with the challenges written for his instrument. He played in call-and-response with a trio of echoing horns as the orchestra twisted and whirled through a kaleidoscope of sound including Mahlerian waltz-parody and marvelous string textures.

The concert concluded with the one-movement Fourth Symphony. Conceived as an Adagio, this slow, thoughful work laid out a glittering sonic carpet for the listener, punctuated with mighty statements from the onstage brass and three trumpeters positioned in the balcony. Penderecki propelled the work forward, leading the band into a frenzied attempt at a fugue, interrupted by the mocking brass. Finally, a second, full statement of the fugue theme led to the orchestra slowly fading out, instrument by instrument to end the composition with a powerful statement of silence. The silence was broken by the acclaim for composer and orchestra.
Photo © 2010 Yale Philharmonic Orchestra.
Photo by Vincent Oneppo, courtesy Aleba Gartner Associates