Classical Music Agenda: November 2012

Assuming that cultural life continues in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's visit to Washington, here are the ten concerts we most want to hear in the month of November. We had to leave out many worthy choices, but this exercise would not really be any fun if we did not. Keep your eye on the sidebar for many more options.

NATIONAL SYMPHONY:
It is true that Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is a difficult

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ETHEL Pokes Fun at Classical Music

Charles T. Downey, Todd Rundgren and Ethel: Reimagining the ’70s
Washington Post, October 30, 2012


T. Riley, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (inter alia), Kronos QuartetDid anything good come out of the 1970s? Music of all kinds was composed, and that was the focus of “Tell Me Something Good,” the latest venture off the beaten path for the string quartet known as Ethel. The group is

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BSO Musicians Shine in Brahms Double

Conductor Cornelius Meister
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Cornelius Meister, 32, performed a program of Brahms, Mozart, and Richard Strauss Saturday evening at the Music Center at Strathmore. The gem on the program was Brahms's Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, which featured the BSO's own concertmaster, Jay Carney, and principal cellist Dariusz Skoraczewski

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Alexandre Tharaud de Retour

Charles T. Downey, Alexandre Tharaud’s expressive piano at La Maison Française
Washington Post, October 29, 2012


D. Scarlatti, Sonatas, A. Tharaud (2011)


Le Bœuf sur le Toit, A. Tharaud et al. (2012)
Where some pianists thrill with fanfaronade, Alexandre Tharaud teases out the piano’s delicate side, weaving threads of sound into exquisite lace patterns. The French pianist returned to La

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In Brief: Hurricane Sandy Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)
From the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, hear a rare performance of Niccolò Piccinni's Atys, performed by the Le Cercle de l’Harmonie under violinist Julien Chauvin. [France Musique]

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Ionarts-at-Large: MPhil and Dausgaard in White, Blue, and Orange

A very fine guest conductor, a superb soloist—not as a name, but as a musician (though in this case both)—and an intriguing, intelligent program in white, blue, and orange: Promising stuff for a concert of the Munich Philharmonic. And indeed Thomas Dausgaard and Leif Ove Andsnes in Kurtág, Beethoven, and Dvořák delivered with panache.

Kurtág’s quasi-Piano Concertino …quasi una fantasia… op.27/1

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Concert Program Synesthesia

When you see a concert program, do you associate it with colors? It’s a strange kind of faux-synesthesia, but one I experience in full blown form. I see works and composers on a program and I associate them with colors or color combinations and, to a lesser extent, with shapes, linearity, clearness, and purity. One look and I see whether it fits (according to my perfectly subjective prejudices

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There she blows: Moby-Dick in the Bay Area

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House.


On the evening of October 22, 2012, I was at the San Francisco Opera House, which maintains one of the highest standards of production values in America. In its San Francisco premiere, the presentation of composer Jake Heggie’s and librettist Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick confirmed this impression.

To say

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'War Horse' at the Kennedy Center

After huge success in London and a run of almost two years in New York, Nick Stafford's stage adaptation of War Horse has come to the Kennedy Center Opera House, where I saw it on Thursday night. Somewhat incredibly, the story is drawn from Michael Morpurgo's book for young readers, in which the story is told from the view point of the horse. A hunter, part thoroughbred, Joey ends up on a farm

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Latest Docu-Opera from Philippe Béziat

Philippe Béziat made his new documentary Traviata and Us during the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. Including footage of rehearsals and performances, he claims to show how soprano Natalie Dessay "literally becomes Verdi's heroine." Christian Merlin writes about the film in an article (Natalie Dessay, les secrets d'une métamorphose, October 24) for Le Figaro (my translation):
Up to this point there

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Gershwin for the 21st Century

Charles T. Downey, New York Festival of Song pokes gentle fun at politics in Vocal Arts D.C. show
Washington Post, October 24, 2012


Gershwin, Of Thee I Sing / Let 'Em Eat Cake, 1987 studio cast recording, M. Tilson Thomas [MP3]
The chance to hear some gentle fun poked at America’s political obsessions was welcome Monday night, especially as it coincided with the final presidential debate. The

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Thibault Cauvin at the Phillips

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.



Bell'Italia, T. Cauvin
In the Phillips Collection Music Room, adorned with prized paintings and warmly awash in a fall Sunday afternoon’s light, French virtuoso guitarist Thibault Cauvin gave a masterful recital in support of his latest album, CITIES, released just three days before. The simple conceit of a global journey, with each programmed work

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Gregorian Chant Supreme

Charles T. Downey, Cathedral Choral Society opens 71st season
Washington Post, October 23, 2012


Duruflé, Complete Choral Works, Choir of Trinity College Cambridge
The Cathedral Choral Society opened its 71st season with a tribute to the flowering of late romantic music in France. This grand program, at Washington National Cathedral on Sunday afternoon, combined the cathedral’s imposing organ

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Great Noise Ensemble at the Atlas

Kicking off their residency at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on Friday, Washington’s homegrown Great Noise Ensemble delivered an engaging performance that included two world premieres. Though David Vickerman conducted for the evening, the concert bore the mark of Armando Bayolo, who in addition to being one of the premiered composers, is the founding music director of the Great Noise Ensemble

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In Brief: Gala Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)

Watch the Paavo Järvi conduct the Orchestre de Paris in music by Haydn (Symphony No. 84), Mozart (Piano Concert No. 27, with Menahem Pressler), and Sibelius (Symphony No. 1). [

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Classical Month in Washington (November)

Last month | Next monthClassical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

November 1, 2012 (Thu)
10 and 11:30 am
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Youth Concert
Wizards and Wands, with Enchantment Theater
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

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Ionarts-at-Large: BRSO in Shchedrin, Shostakovich, Beethoven

Once one finds out the under-communicated fact that Yefim Bronfman is one of the two 2012/13 Artists-in-Residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (the other one is, considerably more titillating, Christian Gerhaher), it becomes understandable that he doesn’t seem to leave town anymore at all, with appearances in June (alongside terrific Salonen), July (granted with the Berlin

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Gerhaher & Co. Remember Fischer-Dieskau

The memorial matinée for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at the Bavarian State Opera—‘Dieskau’s opera house’—on October 14th, started ideally: With no speech. Just the Larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, one of the most beautiful movements in music, beautifully performed by the members of the Bavarian State Orchestra that make up the Schumann Quartett (thank goodness not their LazArt Quartett)

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Laurie Rubin's Technicolor Dreams

L. Rubin, Do You Dream in Color? (2012)


Do You Dream in Color?, L. Rubin, M. Stroke, N. Sivan
(released on February 14, 2012)
Mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin is coming to Washington next week, to give a free recital at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (October 22, 6 pm). While she is in town, she will speak on the radio to Diane Rehm and Bob Edwards and give a private performance at the

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From Hell's Heart

Charles T. Downey, ‘And God Created Great Whales’ by Rinde Eckert at Clarice Smith Center
Washington Post, October 19, 2012
Writing an opera is hard enough. Now imagine you are suffering from a degenerative disease that is destroying your ability to remember anything. This is the premise of “And God Created Great Whales,” a fascinating multimedia theater piece by singer and composer Rinde

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Thomas Dunford at the Maison Française

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

As the candidates rehearsed their cutting remarks before Tuesday night’s debate, two men shared a very different stage in the ballroom of La Maison Française: French lutenist Thomas Dunford (pictured) welcomed Iranian-French percussionist Keyvan Chemirani for an amiable encounter between musical worlds. Though Dunford headlined the evening, it was marked

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Cinderella in Manhattan

Unlike opera, the more traditional ballet is not updated or recontextualized as much by new choreographers -- with a few notable exceptions, like Alexei Ratmansky, formerly of the Bolshoi in Moscow and now of American Ballet Theater. In his choreography of Prokofiev's Cinderella, which the Mariinsky Theater brought back to the Kennedy Center Opera House last night (the troupe performed it here in

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'Pearl Fishers'

Charles T. Downey, Virginia Opera’s ‘The Pearl Fishers’ may signal a turn to the conventional
Washington Post, October 16, 2012


Bizet, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, B. Hendricks, J. Aler, Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson
Last season the Virginia Opera positioned itself as the local opera company most willing to challenge its audiences. It had accomplished this in the wake of a

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Inon Barnatan in WPAS Solo Debut

Darkeness Visible I. Barnatan
(released on April 10, 2012)
Avie AV2256 | 69'27"
Pianist Inon Barnatan gave his well-deserved Kennedy Center Terrace Theater solo debut Saturday afternoon, under the auspices of the Washington Performing Arts Society's Hayes Piano Series. Now in his early thirties, Barnatan is transitioning from first-call collaborative piano partner -- read: accompanist -- to

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In Brief: Cool Air Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) This week is chock-a-block with options, so you had better get started.

You can watch five operas staged at the Armel Opera Competition and Festival in Szeged, Hungary, including

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PRISM Quartet at the Atlas

We welcome a new guest contributor to Ionarts, Noah Mlotek, who is a singer and classicist here in Washington. You know how much we love classical languages here at Ionarts: please direct all your Latin and Greek questions to Noah. Noah's first review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Having traversed near-total gridlock on the night of the Nats’ last stand on Friday, and reaching the Atlas Performing

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Second Opinion: Eschenbach and the Sheer Beauty of Bruckner

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.


I caught on to the glories of Christoph Eschenbach’s Bruckner some time ago when I came across the Koch CD live-recording of his 1996 performance of the Bruckner Second Symphony, with the Houston Symphony. He somehow conjured the players of that orchestra into sounding like the Berlin Philharmonic. Since his arrival in

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More of Eschenbach's Bruckner

Wagner, Wesendonck-Lieder (arr. Henze), J. Van Nes, Northern Sinfonia, R. Hickox (Chandos, 1995)


Bruckner, Symphony No. 7, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, K. Böhm (Audite, 1977) [64'30"]


Bruckner, Symphony No. 7, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, B. Haitink (CSO Resound, 2007) [67'30"]
They can't all be winners. This week's concerts from the National Symphony Orchestra certainly worked on

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Roger Tapping Joins the Juilliard Quartet

In the world of string quartets, this is big news: Roger Tapping, much beloved at ionarts for his musicianship—as part of the Takács Quartet (where he played viola for a decade and shaped the group's extraordinarily successful 'Decca - period') and as an add-on violist to many young quartets (which stopped by the Corcoran Gallery when it still had the best chamber music series in town), the Auryn

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Bella goes to the Prinzregententheater

Writing from the Family Concert of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on September 29th is our Junior Family correspondent, Isabelle Lysette Zeba. We’re very grateful that she took the time out of her busy schedule of being fabulous, eating flowers, sipping champagne, and furthering her operatic career-in-the-making, to report from this glamorous event with artists from the BRSO, Yefim

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Paulo Szot Goes to Hell

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.


Paulo Szot in Don Giovanni, Dallas OperaWe have already written a lot about Washington National Opera's revival of John Pascoe's staging of Don Giovanni, with reviews by me on opening night and by Robert R. Reilly mid-run. The production has only one remaining performance, this Saturday, but Ionarts went back to the Kennedy Center Opera House for the

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Sretensky Monastery Choir Goes Secular

The concerts of the Sretensky Monastery Choir made our picks for October principally because we wanted to hear them sing Orthodox liturgical music. Anyone who went to their second concert, at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Monday night, hoping to hear that repertory was, like me, disappointed to learn that this program, unlike the one at the Library of Congress over the weekend, was

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44th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards Announced

44th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards AnnouncedNew York, NY, October 9, 2012: The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has announced the winners of the 44th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for outstanding print, broadcast and new media coverage of music. The winners will be honored at a special invitation-only ceremony and reception on Wednesday, November 14th at ASCAP's New York

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Jupiter Quartet Brings Music Back to NAS

Mendelssohn (op. posth. 80) / Beethoven (op. 135), Jupiter String Quartet
After winning the Banff Competition in 2004, the Jupiter String Quartet gave a pair of top-notch concerts in Washington in 2005, at the Corcoran and the Library of Congress. For that and for personal reasons (the first violinist, Nelson Lee, is the son of my undergraduate piano teacher), their subsequent performances here

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Ionarts-at-Large: MPhil Season Opening Concerts

After two introductory concerts (Mahler and Wagner/Bruckner), Lorin Maazel’s first season with the Munich Philharmonic was well under way in a variety—deliberately varied—of concerts. The inclusion of works by Bach, Schubert, Strauss, Stravinsky, Puccini, Fauré, and Ravel was no accident, it’s all part of the consistently stressed, heavy handed at times, repertoire-diversity that Maazel is meant

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Krenek Symphonies

This article was originally published at The Classical Review on October 7, 2012.


E. Krenek, Complete Symphonies, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, T. Ukigaya, A. Francis
(released on May 29, 2012)
cpo 777 695-2 | 229'39"It took a while, but the last installment in the cycle of Ernst Krenek’s symphonies, recorded by the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, has finally appeared. For those who had

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In Brief: Baroque October Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)
Watch a performance of the Orchestre de Paris, with Tomas Netopil and Anja Harteros, in music by Janáček, Strauss, and Dvořák. [Cité de la Musique Live]

A rare performance of

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Ionarts-at-Large: BRSO Season Opening Concerts

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s courtship (perhaps already engagement period) of the wonderfully, sharply musical Andris Nelsons, currently Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, continues: In 2012/13 by handing him the season opener and letting him play with the BR’s unequaled chorus in a very smart program of Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, and—treasure of

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Dip Your Ears, No. 124 ("get happy")

"get happy",
Rodgers, Berlin, Gershwin et al.,
Jenny Lin
Steinway & Sons
[Release date 30.10.12]

A new release by Jenny Lin – a long time ionarts favorite in Shostakovich and Mompou (Best Recordings of 2011) and various clever piano exotica – is always something to delight about. Even when it is ‘only’ one of “virtuoso show tunes for piano”, titled Get Happy… I suppose.

Hodge-podge

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NSO Celebrates Love

For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, O power that links together my mind with my inmost thoughts?

The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book I (trans. Albert C. Outler)
Dante

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BSO Goes for Baroque

Charles T. Downey, Markus Stenz makes BSO debut in concert influenced by early music movement
Washington Post, October 6, 2012


Beethoven, Sy. 3, Helsingborg SO, A. Manze


Rebel, Les élémens, Les Musiciens du Louvre, M. MinkowskiThe historically informed performance movement continues to have an impact on mainstream orchestral ensembles. For a time, conductors shied away from that territory,

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WNO's Don Giovanni: Eros to the End

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.


Halfway through its run till October 13th, on October 1st, I caught the Washington National Opera’s performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

The theme of the opera is that Eros unbound and undirected to an end that can fulfill it—such as marriage—is destructive. We see this destruction all around the decidedly unmarried Don

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Tharaud and the Cabaret

Le Boeuf sur le Toit: Swinging Paris, A. Tharaud et al.
Alexandre Tharaud is an Ionarts favorite, and his upcoming recital at La Maison Française (October 26, 7:30 pm) is high on our list of concerts to hear this season. Tharaud plays well, obviously, but we also admire him for some of the more unusual projects he takes on. For example, at the moment, he is involved in a recreation of Le Boeuf

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Historical Brahms

Brahms, Piano Sonatas 1 and 2 / Scherzo, op. 4, A. Melnikov
(released on February 8, 2011)
HMC 902086 | 69'23"
Recordings of 19th-century music with historical pianos are becoming an obsession of mine -- Andreas Staier's Diabelli-Variations on a Graf, Edna Stern's Chopin on a Pleyel, or Kristian Bezuidenhout's Schumann on an Erard. Publicists, please keep sending them to me, because I find them

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NSO Opens Third Season with Eschenbach

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter
Our recommendation of the National Symphony Orchestra's Season Opening Ball Concert came with the caveat that such gala events rarely merit serious consideration. Christoph Eschenbach, who embarked on his third season as the NSO's music director on Sunday night, has made an effort to make this and his earlier gala concerts of at least some interest. He did that

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'Creation' on Cathedral Day

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

President Theodore Roosevelt spoke on the grounds of what would become Washington National Cathedral on September 29, 1907, when the building's corner stone was set in place. The anniversary of that event is celebrated as Cathedral Day, for which the cathedral's choirs and hired period orchestra performed Haydn's oratorio Die Schöpfung on Saturday evening.

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