Soprano Nina Stemme Performs at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 17:38

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Stephanie Berger

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Friday, May 2nd, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a terrific recital—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the magnificent, Swedish soprano Nina Stemme—her astonishing performance in the title role of Richard Strauss’s glorious Ariadne auf Naxos at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010 is possibly the greatest theatrical experience that I have ever had—expertly accompanied by pianist Roland Pöntinen.

The event started strongly with a marvelous rendition of Edward Elgar’s wonderful Sea Pictures, Op. 37, which consists of five parts beginning with “Sea Slumber Song,” which is set to a beautiful poem by Roden Noel. The striking lyric for the next song, “In Haven,” was written by the composer’s wife, Caroline Alice Elgar. The third song, “Sabbath Morning at Sea,” has the one text in the set written by a canonical poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The following song, “Where Corals Lie,” is also based on an excellent poem by a distinguished author, Richard Garnett. The final song, “The Swimmer,” is of less literary interest but is nonetheless an equally compelling achievement in the genre.

Stemme then brilliantly performed four extraordinary songs by Kurt Weill, the first two set to texts by Bertolt Brecht, beginning with “Surabaya Johnny”—which was famously interpreted by Marlene Dietrich—from the musical Happy End—which was adapted from the same Damon Runyon story as Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls—and succeeded by “Nannas Lied.” The second two were French songs, starting with “Je ne t’aime pas,” which preceded “Youkali”—which, according to the program note by Janet E. Bedell, had its source as “an instrumental interlude for Jacques Deval’s French play Marie Galante” and was rediscovered by Teresa Stratas for her 1981 album, The Unknown Kurt Weill.

The second half of the evening, devoted to music by Richard Wagner, was as memorable if not more so, opening with the exquisite Wesendonck Lieder: “Stehe still!”, “Der Engel,” “Im Treibhaus,” “Schmerzen,” and most indelibly of all, the magisterial “Träume,” which for me inevitably recalls Luchino Visconti’s immortal film, Ludwig. The concert concluded with the stunning Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, in the arrangement by Franz Liszt. Enthusiastic applause for this incomparable artist elicited two fabulous encores: first, the superb "Var det en dröm?," Op. 37, No. 4, by Jean Sibelius, a setting of a text in Swedish by the 19th-century Finnish poet and dramatist, Josef Julius Wecksell; and, finally, Weill’s enchanting “My Ship”—with lyrics by Ira Gershwin—from the celebrated musical Lady in the Dark, written by Moss Hart.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:48

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Richard Termine

At the terrific Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, April 24th, I was fortunate in attending another fine concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the second of two on consecutive days—featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the admirable direction of Andris Nelsons, playing music of Dmitri Shostakovich. 

The event started strikingly with a superior rendition of the powerful Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107, with the renowned, enormously popular soloist, Yo-Yo Ma. The opening of the initial, Allegretto movement is somewhat playful but with serious undercurrents; the music quickly turns suspenseful and more fraught, even sinister, with propulsive rhythms—it ends suddenly and forcefully. The ensuing Moderato is graceful, if solemn, and the music increases in intensity, culminating in what the program annotator Harlow Robinson describes as a “ghostly duet” between the cello and the celesta; the movement concludes very quietly. The third movement, an extended cadenza for the soloist, is also somber, and slow at first, but it becomes quite agitated, seamlessly transitioning to the lively finale, marked Allegro con moto—this has ludic elements but a sense of gravity pervades it and it too closes abruptly, if emphatically. Abundant applause elicited a delightful encore from Ma along with some of the ensemble’s cellists: the traditional Yiddish song, "Moyshele,” arranged by Blaise Déjardin.

It was the second half of the evening that was truly memorable, however: a sterling realization of the intriguing, seldom performed Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103, “The Year 1905,” completed in 1957. The annotator comments:

“I have great affection for this period in our national history, so vividly expressed in revolutionary workers’ songs of the time,” wrote Shostakovich. In the Symphony No. 11, he incorporated the tunes of seven different revolutionary folk songs, tunes from his own Ten Poems (1951), and a quote from Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov’s 1951 operetta Bright Lights. This use of imported material was a notable departure from Shostakovich’s usual practice.

He adds:

The first movement (“Palace Square”) portrays the merciless inhumanity of autocracy. Its powerful opening casts a hypnotic spell, evocative of autocracy, the cold, and the austere expanse of stone around the Winter Palace. This episode returns throughout the symphony as a kind of refrain. Then the movement introduces two prison songs (“Listen” and “The Convict”). The second movement (“The Ninth of January”) depicts the Cossacks’ assault, using two marching songs (“O Tsar, Our Father” and “Bare Your Heads!”). Meditative and requiem-like, the third movement (“In Memoriam”) unfolds variations of a well-known tribute to fallen heroes (“You’ve Fallen Victim”) over a slow ostinato foundation. Four different fast marching tunes (“Rage, O Tyrants”; “The Varsovienne”; “Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”; and Sviridov’s tune) combine in the raucous, percussive finale (“The Tocsin”). Several of the songs appear in multiple movements. Adding to the overall sense of unity, the four movements are played attacca, without pause.

The opening movement begins softly and soberly and sustains an almost meditative mood throughout—although it becomes more urgent as it progresses—while in the following one, the music becomes turbulent and builds to a climax. The third movement is elegiac and lugubrious and the finale is exciting, dramatic and energetic, with a driving momentum, if with more subdued passages—it concludes triumphantly. 

The artists merited and received a standing ovation.

New York Philharmonic Performs Bartók at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:22

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, April 26th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a marvelous concert featuring the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of the extraordinary Iván Fischer, the founder and leader of the amazing Budapest Festival Orchestra and one of the greatest living conductors.

The event started appealingly with an effective rendition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular Overture from his magnificent opera, The Magic Flute. In useful notes for the program, James M. Keller—who is the “former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator; San Francisco Symphony program annotator; and author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide,” published by Oxford University Press—comments about Mozart and the piece as follows:

He finished almost all of Die Zauberflöte during the spring and early summer of 1791, but several numbers (including the Overture) remained to be written when, in July, he was invited to compose an opera, to Metastasio's already much-used libretto La clemenza di Tito, for the festivities surrounding the coronation in Prague of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia.

A solemn Adagio introduction precedes an ebullient, “fugal Allegro, the theme of which seems to have been borrowed (consciously or not) from a piano sonata by Muzio Clementi,” according to Keller; this is interrupted by another serious passage before a mostly exhilarating, concluding section.

The splendid soloist, Lisa Batiashvili—who looked lovely in a beautiful, bright yellow gown—then joined the musicians for a terrific performance of Mozart’s superb Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219, the “Turkish,” from 1775. The initial, Allegro aperto movement begins charmingly, after which the solo violin enters lyrically. For all its gracefulness, the movement at moments attains an intensity that anticipates that of Ludwig van Beethoven; it closes somewhat abruptly, but affirmatively. (The notes explain that “Mozart did not provide cadenzas for this concerto” and that in this movement, the soloist “played a cadenza written by Tsotne Zedginidze, a 15-year-old composer/pianist from Georgia who is a participant in the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation.”)

The ensuing Adagio is more playful than usual for a slow movement by Mozart, but it too features aria-like passages for the soloist and plumbs greater emotional depths as it unfolds; it closes elegantly. The enchanting Rondeau finale, marked Tempo di Menuetto—is appropriately dance-like, with numerous dynamic episodes, and is often sparkling but also has more profound currents; it ends gently, if suddenly. (In this movement, the soloist played a cadenza that she composed.)

The second half of the evening was at least equally as strong and as memorable: a sterling account of Béla Bartók’s outstanding ballet score, The Wooden Prince: A Dancing-Play in One Act, to a Libretto by Béla Balázs, Op. 13. Keller records that:

Among the considerable output of Béla Bartók we find only three works for the stage: the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911, revised through 1918), the ballet The Wooden Prince (1914–16, orchestrated in 1917), and the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin (1918–19, orchestrated in 1924). 

He adds:

The Budapest Opera had approached Bartók in March 1913 about writing a ballet that they might consider producing, but it wasn't until the following year that the composer, who was in the backcountry collecting folk songs just then, began work on The Wooden Prince, which he started in April 1914 and then set aside for another two years. In April 1916 his Two Portraits for Orchestra (Op. 15, from 1907–08) received a belated premiere, and the excellent performance on that occasion catapulted him back into working mode. Within a few months The Wooden Prince was substantially completed, and by January 1917 it was fully orchestrated — very fully indeed, we might say, given the size of the orchestra employed.

He goes on to describe the scenario:

In Bartók's work a Prince, wandering in a forest, spies a Princess, who has just been confined to her castle by the Fairy of Nature. Unable to reach her, the Prince carves a puppet from his wooden staff and thrusts it high into the air, trying to attract the Princess's attention. He adorns it with his robe, then his crown, but only when he cuts off his curly hair and affixes it to the puppet does the Princess show interest. She leaves her castle but lavishes all her attention on the “wooden prince” rather than the real one, who stands by in abject frustration. The Fairy, who is monitoring all of this, causes the puppet to dance about, to the Princess's delight. Eventually, the Fairy takes pity on the lovelorn Prince and reverses the influences. Suddenly the Prince himself appeals to the Princess more, but Nature sees to it that she must also sacrifice something to achieve love, just as the Prince sacrificed his curly locks. She gives up her crown, and the Fairy elevates the couple into the realm of love. The dreamlike substance found in symbolism invites interpretation, and Balázs suggested one possibility:

The wooden puppet, which my prince makes in order to make his presence known to the princess, is an act of creation, embodying everything that an artist has to give, until it is perfectly and brilliantly lustrous, but leaving the artist himself empty and bereft. I was thinking here of the deep tragedy that artists frequently experience when an act of creation becomes a rival of the creator, and of the painful glory when a woman prefers the poem to the poet, the picture to the painter. 

Balázs, who authored the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle, alsowrote a collection of fairytales praised by Thomas Mann as a “beautiful book,” as well as poetry, drama, an autobiographical novel, screenplays, film criticism and theory, and a work on the aesthetics of death.

As for the music, which resists summary, it is mysterious, evocative, haunting and sometimes ludic.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.