Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein'

Kevin Burdette (General Boum, center) and cast in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Fizz is off the champagne in Santa Fe Opera’s “Duchess of Gerolstein” (The Classical Review, July 31)
Listening to three hours of an Offenbach operetta will likely cause a hangover, not unlike the one caused by all the champagne that is guzzled by the

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Castleton Festival Closer

Charles T. Downey, Castleton Festival offers excellent tribute for Benjamin Britten centenary
Washington Post, July 29, 2013

J. Bridcut, Britten's ChildrenWhat to make of the Benjamin Britten centenary? The final concert program of the Castleton Festival, heard Saturday night, offered an excellent tribute to the British composer. How does one square one’s admiration for the beauty of Britten’s

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 3 ) El Sistema • Simón Bolívar Orchestra

El Sistema • Simón Bolívar Orchestra & Gustavo Dudamel
Glorious Venezuelan Mahler

A complete Mahler cycle is not terribly novel these days, nor particularly imaginative programming for a large festival. Then again, with the amount of great orchestras and Mahler-savvy conductors in town that the Salzburg Festival can boast, it’s a perfectly welcome opportunity to get one’s annual Mahler fix: A

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Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.3 (Part 2)

This continues "Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.3 (Part 1)"

Mahler wrote his Third Symphony in the summers of 1895 and 1896—having become the ‘summer composer’ only two years before, while finishing the Second Symphony. Unwilling to see himself only as a conductor and opera director rather than a composer, he compared himself to what the great composers before him had achieved at his age (then

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Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.3 (Part 1)

Continued here: "Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.3 (Part 2)"

The Third Symphony, Mahler’s longest, has sublime moments and plenty of them, but it can be difficult to find your way to—and around—it: Its quilt of music is complicated and never just straight forward and clear-cut. It has two large outer movements around four smaller movements—the first movement alone takes over half an hour. In my

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'La Traviata' Redux

Michael Fabiano (Alfredo) and Brenda Rae (Violetta) in La Traviata, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
It is the last week of July, and that means press week here at the Santa Fe Opera, the chance to hear what five operas, and other goodies, are on offer. My week in New Mexico began last night with Verdi's La Traviata, one of the season's two chestnuts -- part of a brilliant programming

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Gawain • Harrison Birtwistle

Harrison Birtwistle • Gawain
Detail - click to see entire picture.
All production photos above and below courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Ruth Walz
How to Explain Opera to a Dead Hare
Now with a single step, your journey starts…

One of my main reasons to attend the Salzburg Festival this year was the promise of Harrison Birtwistle’s opera Gawain (more pictures here) staged by Alvis Hermanis.

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) El Sistema • Youth Orchestra of Caracas

El Sistema • Youth Orchestra of Caracas
Great Shostakovich, Gruesome Propaganda
Since the unstoppable rise of Gustavo Dudamel, Venezuela’s Orchestra Academy El Sistema (FESNOJIV) has become a brand. The Simón Bolivar Orchestra (SBO) became its flagship and Dudamel is the brand ambassador. A strong presence at this year’s Salzburg Festival, El Sistema is present with seven branches: four

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In Brief: Armchair Festival 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.) No one could possibly listen to all of it.



From the Festival de Beaune, Ottavio Dantone leads his Accademia Bizantina in a performance of Vivaldi's opera

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Ionarts-at-Large: A Damrau Liederabend to Harp On

A Liederabend in Munich’s National Theater is normally a compromised proposition: few singers have the voice—and fewer still the courage—to look into the vast round and still sing Lied-appropriately: light and naturally. Christian Gerhaher can do it, and I’ve heard Thomas Quasthoff do a Müllerin there in an I-can’t-be-bothered-kind-of-way that was at once insulting and splendid. But most

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Dip Your Ears, No. 148 (Double the Chorales, Double the Joy)

J.S.Bach, Orgelbüchlein
BWV 599-644
Francesco Cera (organ)
Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera
Diego Fasolis (director)
Brilliant

A Musical Diet of Aural Respite

The label’s PR blurb claims that this release is “an original concept: the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599-644 performed alternating the organ chorale with the same chorale sung by a choir.” Perhaps not that original. Ton Koopman has

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Preview of the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( Gawain )

Preview of Salzburg’s Gawain • Harrison Birtwistle
One of the performances I’m most looking forward to at this year’s Salzburg Festival is Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain, in a Alvis Hermanis production, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, and featuring the ever strapping and striking Christopher Maltman. Here are some photos (below the jump) of the production (courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Ruth Walz)

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Armonia Nova at Church of the Epiphany

Charles T. Downey, Armonia Nova performs rarely heard medieval music at lunchtime concert
Washington Post, July 25, 2013


G. de Machaut, Sacred and Secular Music, Ensemble Gilles Binchois
For classical-music listeners thirsting for summer concerts, the Church of the Epiphany offers a weekly oasis. The most recent concert in its free Tuesday noontime series featured rarely heard medieval music,

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Mieczysław Weinberg’s IdiotAwe-inspiring Masterpiece Unearthed in Mannheim

Click excerpts to see entire picture.All pictures above and below courtesy Mannheim National Theater, © Hans Jörg Michel
A transfixing experience and the discovery of one of the major operas of the second half of the 20th century
Just a decade ago the name “Mieczysław Weinberg” drew a blank from music lovers. In record stores, which still existed then, you weren’t likely to find an index card

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The Cello Suites, Bach III (Gastinel, Queyras, Lipkind)

Over a few months in 2008 (republished now) I’ve looked at recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites including Mischa Maisky on DVD in February and the classic Harnoncourt, Fournier, Rostropovich as well as Steven Isserlis’ new account. Still missing from my little survey are three recent recordings: Anne Gastinel’s, Jean-Guihen Queyras’, and that of Gavriel Lipkind... to which I turn now. (I will

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Gorgeous 'Fanciulla del West' at Castleton

The high point of this summer's Castleton Festival, edging out a fine double-bill of La Voix Humaine, was a rather spectacular production of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, heard in the final performance on Sunday afternoon. Made for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it was premiered in 1910, Fanciulla would get my vote for the most beautiful, most accomplished score that Puccini

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'La Voix Humaine' at Castleton

Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, La voix humaine, Castleton Festival, 2013
(photo by E. Raymond Boc)
The Castleton Festival was inaugurated with the chamber operas of Britten, an auspicious choice to make a new summer opera destination stand out from the crowd. Lorin Maazel, a Puccini specialist, soon was turning instead to more standard fare for his summer vacation, chestnut operas that may have more

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Ionarts Turns 10

Image by jfl
Ionarts was launched on this day in 2003, in an era when one had to explain what a blog was when you said you were writing one. The Age of the Blog (2005-2008, R.I.P.) has come and gone since. Most of the blogs we enjoyed reading every day are now defunct or intermittent, and these days we usually describe Ionarts as an online magazine.

In the last ten years, we have published

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Lloyd Webber's Requiem Lives Again

Charles T. Downey, At Castleton Festival, a take on 2 composers
Washington Post, July 22, 2013


Barber, Violin Concerto (inter alia), J. Ehnes, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, B. Tovey
Somewhere in between the operas at the Castleton Festival, Lorin Maazel takes his Festival Orchestra out for a spin. At a concert on Saturday night in the Festival Theater, Maazel led his young musicians, most of

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Through Labor and Love: Weinberg, War and PersecutionInterview with Julia Rebekka Adler

[July 2010] An article about violist Julia Rebekka Adler could easily, rewardingly turn into an article on Mieczysław Weinberg instead. For one, it is Weinberg to whom she has pinned her hat, whose viola sonatas she has now torn from obscurity into the (narrowly focused) spot-light of well-regarded niche repertoire, and to whose music she very obviously responds. Further, she is genuinely

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In Brief: Weekend at Castleton 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.) Good luck finding the time to listen to and watch all of them!





Christian Thielemann leads the Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresdner Kammerchor, MDR Rundfunkchor, and

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'Otello' at the Castleton Festival

In a formidable stride in its fifth season in the picturesque fields of Rappahannock County, Virginia, the Castleton Festival’s production of Verdi’s tragic Otello was almost a triumph. Conducted by Castleton founder Lorin Maazel in the Festival Theater, which except for the pit and stage is something of a barn-like tent structure, grand opera was offered in a chamber setting.

Maazel’s

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Dip Your Ears, No. 147 (Rick LaSalle's Sonatas)

Rick LaSalle, Piano Sonatas, Ragtime
Ingrid Marsoner
Gramola

Whocareswhenitwascomposed-MusicIt’s such a delight to stumble upon a composer, one that I've never heard of before, who turns out to be most enjoyable: Rick LaSalle (*1951) in this case, with three of his eight traditionalist piano sonatas. This is Whocareswhenitwascomposed-Music, joyous compositions with spunk and humor and a

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Ian Bostridge Celebrates Britten in Aix

On Wednesday, Ian Bostridge sang in a Britten anniversary concert at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Marie-Aude Roux had a piece about the singer's approach to Britten (Ian Bostridge, fauve aux aguets face à la partition, July 17) for Le Monde (my translation):
One month ago, [Bostridge] was in the grayness of Aldeburgh, for a session of master classes about the songs of Britten, presented from

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À mon chevet: Lucky Jim

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.


Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the

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The Cello Suites, Bach II (Fournier, Isserlis, Harnoncourt et al.)

Bach’s Cello Suites have been popping up left and right, recently – re-issues and new recordings alike. As with every piece of music that is so widely recorded (there are more than five dozen versions currently available, not counting transcriptions for recorder, guitar, marimba, harp, viola, double bass, the question arises why yet another recording is necessary or what it can bring us that is

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'Dutchman' at Les Chorégies d'Orange

Wagner has been a hard sell at Les Chorégies d'Orange, not programmed at the festival in the Roman amphitheater of Orange since the Ring cycle in 1988. Even in this double-centenary year, the second performance of this season's Flying Dutchman had to be canceled because of low ticket sales, while Verdi (Il Ballo in Maschera this year) continues to be ever popular. Marie-Aude Roux saw the Wagner (

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'Elektra' at Aix-en-Provence

Interesting opera all around this year from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. The revival of a controversial Don Giovanni by Dmitri Cherniakov, Robert Carsen's Rigoletto in a circus (don't miss the video stream from Arte), and a highly lauded staging of Strauss's Elektra directed by Patrice Chéreau. Christian Merlin covered that last one in an article (Tout le monde se lève pour Elektra, July 12)

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Ionarts-at-Large: Bavaro-Russian Peace Orchestra with Gergiev

“Mahler 5” on one rehearsal—a dress rehearsal—with an orchestra that’s never played together like that: it’s a welcome taster of what’s to come for the Munich Philharmonic under incoming music director Valery Gergiev… even if they won’t likely share their desks with colleagues from the Mariinsky Orchestra again, as they did as part of this well intentioned gimmick to celebrate the German-Russian

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In Brief: Formez vos bataillons 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.) The list is longer than normal this week because the France Musique Web site, recently reconfigured, has once again made concert streams available.


Celebrate le 14

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Dip Your Ears, No. 146 (Christine Schäfer Sings SchoenBerg)

Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, String Quartet no.2, Langsamer Satz, Largo desolato,
Petersen Quartett & Christine Schäfer
Capriccio

This is a CD that elicits raves and frustration. The excellent Petersen Quartet teams up with the sublime Christine Schäfer and present us Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet op.10 (for two violins, viola, cello and soprano), Anton Webern’s heavenly Langsamer

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À mon chevet: Le Grand Meaulnes

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.


I had never made a long trip on a bicycle. This was my first one. But, some time ago, despite my bad knee, Jasmin secretly taught me how to ride. For most ordinary young men the bicycle is a lot of fun, so why should it not be the same for a poor boy like me, who not so long ago was still

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Beethoven Sonatas - A Survey of Complete Cycles Part 8, 2010 Onward

Incl: R.Buchbinder II • H J Lim • S.Goodyear • F.F.Guy • M.Korstick • L.Lortie • P.Rösel



Louis Lortie
1991 - 2010 - Chandos

Louis Lortie got started in the early nineties on this cycle, with discs released individually, and worked on it until 2000 and then it went nowhere... until, seemingly out of nowhere, Chandos remembered the project late in 2009 and hurried it to an

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The Cello Suites, Bach I (Mischa Maisky - DVD)

I count nearly 80 available recordings of the Bach Cello Suites and I’ve probably missed a few and wasn’t even counting transcriptions. I have about a quarter of those recordings, which goes to show that I can show restraint, especially when it comes to Bach.

Along with the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, the Cello Suites really are—in an abstract sense—among the most perfect creations of Bach

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Opera Reviews from Aix-en-Provence

Who can explain the vacillations of the critical heart? It is a mystery how an opera production, or a singer, or a conductor can thrill one's ears at one hearing and leave one vexed the next. You may recall a controversial staging of Don Giovanni in 2010, directed by Dmitri Cherniakov at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Like most critics, Marie-Aude Roux hated it the first time around, so she sounds

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Verdi Celebrated at Caramoor

Charles T. Downey, Angela Meade sizzles in Verdi’s “Vêpres” at Caramoor (The Classical Review, July 7)

Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, J. Brumaire, J. Bonhomme, BBC Concert Orchestra, M. Rossi (Opera Rara)Don’t look now, but it’s time for another annoying composer anniversary. Worse, the Verdi bicentenary this year is the most irritating kind of composer anniversary, requiring us to commemorate a

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In Brief: Independence Day 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.) The list is shorter than normal this week because the France Musique Web site is undergoing a renovation. We are assured that the concert streams will be reinstated in their new

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Dip Your Ears, No. 145 (Jan Vogler's Bach Suites)

J.S.Bach, Cello Suites,
Jan Vogler
Sony




Jan Vogler is a busy man, running the lovely Dresden Music Festival. It wasn’t surprising then that when I last heard him in his function as a cellist, he sounded as though he had been busier administrating than practicing. That he dared or bothered to perform the marvelous and rare Arthur Honegger Cello Concerto made up for much, but not all. If I

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Whither the Avignon Festival?

This coming September, stage and opera director Olivier Py will take over as head of the Festival d'Avignon, which opens today in southern France. Nathalie Simon wrote an article (Le festival d'Avignon face à ses contradictions, July 5) for Le Figaro, taking stock of the tenure of the departing directors, Vincent Baudriller and Hortense Archambault (my translation):
If they have sometimes been

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Serenade! Festival Goes to Russia, Australia

Charles T. Downey, Russian Singers and Australian Voices close Serenade! festival
Washington Post, July 3, 2013
The goal of the Serenade! festival, presented by music promoter Classical Movements, is to offer a cross section of choral music from around the world. In its third year of free concerts throughout the Washington area, the annual summer event ended Monday night at Damascus United

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How Much Reger do you Need? (How Much Reger can you Take?)

How much Max Reger (1873 – 1916) does one need? Enough to rid oneself of the stereotypes, not so much as to reinforce them. This catch-all box of re-released Reger by Brilliant does a very fine job of striking that balance.

About those stereotypes of Reger as a composer more appreciated than listened-to, a “master of thick textures, heavy counterpoint, and interminable fugues”… here is the only

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Ionarts-at-Large: Koopman's Stockhausen Antidote

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s SAMSTAG aus LICHT, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and Bach’s St.John Passion in five concerts in four days is a curious musical tour-de-force. An astute musical friend remarked: “That sounds like one of those combinations where each one is an antidote for the other.” Very much so. Last Friday, after the initial dose of Stockhausen (Scenes 1 & 2) it was time for Bach, from the

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Modern Meets Medieval in Montmajour

Montmajour was a Benedictine abbey founded in the 10th century on an island near the town of Arles. Now a protected national monument, the restored monastery is the site of an exhibit, Mon île de Montmajour, curated by Christian Lacroix, of contemporary glass sculpture, from the Centre de recherche sur le verre et les arts plastiques (Cirva) and mostly not exhibited previously. Florence Evin

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