Doctor Atomic

Date of Performance: 9 October 2008 (Dress Rehearsal)
Official site

One of composer John Adams’ “CNN operas,” Doctor Atomic uses a topic from the relatively recent past — here, weapons of mass destruction — to address the political present. Adams said he believes such cultural relevance will give opera a future; that is, it could reconnect estranged (American) audiences to the medium, lower the enskied art form to the level of the everyday intellectual.

But even if that were true, the thoroughly modern music is bound to re-alienate them. In Doctor Atomic, Los Alamos scientists Oppenheimer, Robert Wilson and Edward “Dr. Strangelove” Teller, along with assorted military brass, struggle to build and test a working A-bomb while weighing the ethical implications of what they’re doing. As with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Doctor Atomic’s second half is far superior to its first, as it builds to a wrenching climax of boundless destruction in a single flash of light. But both acts suffer from the same problems: the operamakers’ pompous allusions, awkward libretto and abstruse score.

Keep reading at The L Magazine blog.

Finlandia Through Computer Speakers

THE PHILHARMONIC IN PROSPECT PARK

In my experience, the New York Philharmonic’s incoming musical director, Alan Gilbert, likes to sucker audiences into modernist compositions by sandwiching them into classical programs. But he played the populist at Monday [7.14.08] evening’s populism extravaganza, The Concert in the Park, when uptown elitism is packed into trucks and driven down to Brooklyn for the night. Like Fantasia, the evening began with a piece by popular favorite J.S. Bach.

If you’ve heard one Bach piece, have you heard them all? Maybe not exactly, but his “Concerto for Two Violins in D Major” offered no surprises, though it did provide a relaxing soundtrack, a lovely complement to the encroaching twilight and the orange-streaked sunset sky.

Gilbert compensated for the banal Bach, centerpiecing the evening’s bill with Beethoven’s Fourth. (I’d say it’s one of my favorites, but Beethoven symphonies are like Hitchcock movies: they’re all really good, even the not-so-good ones.) The first movement really danced, as did the fourth, living up to Berlioz’s description of the symphony as “lively, alert and gay.” Last November, I credited conductor Xian Zhang http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifwith teasing out the terpsichorean rhythms of Beethoven’s Seventh, but now I think it’s simply one of the orchestra’s general talents.

Unfortunately, the guttural throbbings that transition the first movement’s adagio to the allegro vivace were lost as they trickled out of the amplifying sound system. As usual, the park setting juggled its pros and cons—free admission, alcohol and fresh air vs. frat boy chatter, intra-movement applause and thin sound. (Not that, from what I understand, Avery Fisher is an acoustician’s dream.) Though the loose setting made me imagine that this must be what classical music performance attendance is like in China, at least judging from Alex Ross’ recent description.

The intermissionless (don’t they know everyone’s drinking?) evening ended with Sibelius’ “Finlandia,” a piece nightmarish at its start but regal at its conclusion. The Phil played exceptionally, even though it sounded like they were playing through computer speakers.

Like Reel 13’s Saturday night short, the orchestra’s encore was chosen by popular vote; the people chose the “Overture” to Carmen, which Gilbert sped through faster than even the Leonard Bernstein recording. The moment it ended, a fireworks display began, its bangs echoing through Flatbush like gunshots. As gorgeous as it was (better than Macy’s’ two weeks ago), it felt diversionary. A long, steady stream of automobiles, presumably carrying the orchestra, sped away as the people craned their necks towards the lights show. They seemed not to be able to get out of Brooklyn fast enough.

Die Walküre at the Met

Date of Performance: January 14, 2008

Seeing as this was my first live Wagner experience, I’m not quite sure where to lay the blame for Die Walküre’s stagnant drama—is it inherent in the opera, and as such the fault of Wagner, who unusually is responsible for both the score and the libretto, or is it the result of Otto Schenk’s production?

The opera boasts a story both complex and absorbing, to the nerd in me at least; based on Norse & Germanic myths, it tells an intricate tale of gods, mortals and the fate of the universe, but despite its epic concerns the opera played out staidly on a dark and drab set (by Gunter Schneider-Siemssen), usually with two characters chatting about what's happened and deciding what to do next while rarely ever offering us a chance to really see anything happen. To me, opera is the king of the arts because of the unique way in which it blends music, drama and spectacle—a way no other art can hope to match—but Die Walküre was too often tame by the standards set by other composers and productions. Not to mention that Wagner's music isn't exactly inviting.

The stiff character of the German tongue doesn't lend itself to lovely sung melodies as does the fluidity of Italian and, to a lesser extent, French, and as such German opera, via Wagner anyway, isn't quite full of the lush arias, duets and ensemble pieces that I’ve come to expect from the opera hall. German opera, and Wagner, are an entirely different breed of music and style.

Though, when he wants to, Wagner proves he’s capable of composing some of the finest music in the repertoire. Wagner is best as a composer of orchestral music—he is an unparalleled overturist—and the reliable, exceptional Lorin Maazel made the score shine from the podium. The quality of the composition or performance (the cast was uniformly superb) wasn't really the problem—what’s most frustrating about Wagner is the tremendous patience he requires. As a friend observed during one of Die Walküre's two well-deserved intermissions, "I'm all for building things slowly, I really am, but that was tough." The first two acts of Die Walküre follow similar structures: long periods of both musical and narrative development that after quite some build-up finally climax in startling moments of great opera. It's a reserved score that, gradually, acquires stirring severity. (Gil Wechsler's gorgeous lighting design followed suit, with acts opening in darkness and slowly coming to startlingly natural-looking light.) There are moments of flowing sweetness, of incomparable sweep, but they are too hard-earned by the audience.

The third act breaks the mold established by the previous acts, though, working almost in reverse as it begins with the explosive and exhilarating bangs of "The Ride of the Valkyries" (amazing!)—the opera's only ensemble piece, with its ten warrior women wailing and scurrying across the stage—and ends with a soft, touching whisper. Well, at least until Wotan (James Morris, an outstanding, dramatic bass) literally sets the stage on fire; Die Walkure, after much build-up, finally has an epic moment that fulfills opera's unique potential for spectacle. Too bad there’s not more of it, especially as, clocking in at just under five hours, Die Walküre can't help but make the audience feel just like its hero Siegmund (looking done up as the Cowardly Lion from up in the Family Circle—costumes by Rolf Langenfass) at the opera's start—collapsed on the floor, begging for water.

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The Phil Mixes Modernism with Romance

Visit the Official Site

Date of Performance: November 10, 2007

The New York Philharmonic, under the baton of Xian Zhang, began their Saturday evening performance with the New York premiere of two selections from Huang Ruo's Three Pieces for Orchestra, the "Fanfare" and "Announcement". They are both dissonant, percussive and violent pieces of music that the Phil attacked with ferocious gusto; they never sounded anything less than apocalyptic.

Blending Chinese-flavored melodies with a Stravinksy-esque audacity, the dyad ended with a haunting quiet, at least before a gong roll sent the half of the orchestra not wearing ear plugs reaching to cover their ears in advance. When the pieces were done, Huang Ruo came out from the wings to modest and appreciative applause.

With that nod to new music and living composers out of the way, the Philharmonic followed that blazing piece of modernism with two blaringly romantic symphonies, starting with Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole (Op. 21), a madly passionate piece of music met in feeling by the violinist Vadim Repin, who brought a physical intensity to the music as he moved back and forth within his personal square of performance space.

Though called a "symphony", Symphonie Espagnole is, for all intents and purposes, a violin concerto. I admit that, often times, my ears get exhausted during concerti; as I wrote in my last review of the Philharmonic, in reference to Johannes Moser's playing of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, "how much consecutive cello can the ordinary ear register?"

I don't know if it was the piece or the performance, but Symphonie Espagnole was captivating; orchestra and soloist were in perfect cooperation, neither outshining the other; they were in perfect balance. The virtuosic solo lines eschewed overreaching into the garish flash that concerti are often characterized by, and served as the wonderful icing on what would have been an otherwise delicious orchestral cake. The audience seemed to agree; Repin got an enthusiastic ovation and several curtain calls.

With a Sevillian strain in the music—Symphonie Espagnole initially premiered right around the time that Bizet's Carmen did—the pre-intermission half of the evening was particularly ethnic.

But that all ended as the evening's performance concluded with a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (Op. 92). (You could say the symphony is ethnic in its pulsing rhythms, but it'd be a stretch.) Honestly, is there any greater piece of music? Well, possibly, but it was damned near impossible to try and think of one during the Philharmonic's stellar performance. Zhang really brought out the symphony's terpsichorean qualities, matching them with her gyrating conducting performance that found her moving from one side of her rostrum to the other. (Her enthusiasm was a match for the one I often exhibit in the air-conducting privacy of my bedroom.) As the Phil tore through the piece (taking the time, of course, to ache out the superlative second movement, certainly the most gorgeous piece of music ever penned), I finally understood Daniel J. Levitin's op-ed in the Times a month ago calling for dance floors in the concert halls; from the Fourth Tier boxes, I spied several concertgoers tapping their hands and feet to the beat.

To top it all off, during the third movement I spontaneously smiled, and I can't think of the last time a performance or piece of music made me do that.

Tchaikovsky at the Phil: Swan Lake, Pathetique and more

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date of performance: Oct. 13, 2007

At his best, Tchaikovsky vacillates between two extremes: insistently lachrymose melodies and explosively bombastic orchestrations, both in the most wonderful of ways. His emotions are always exaggerated—he wears them not on his sleeve but all over his body—but never insincere; he's melodramatic only in a strictly positive sense, like Douglas Sirk. (They call him an "arch romantic".) And on Saturday night, when Lorin Maazel led the New York Philharmonic in a series of Tchaikovsky pieces, they had the dynamic interplay between the two down pat.

This was in contrast to the Philharmonic's performance under Bramwell Tovey last November, when they played the Nutcracker Suite with what sounded like a mere lack of interest. (That they were playing against the energetic Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was no help, either.) The night began with excerpts from Swan Lake (Op. 20), and from the opening "Scene: Moderato" from Act II, one of the most hauntingly ethereal pieces in the repertoire, you could tell they were in perfect form. That was followed by the alternating, perfectly-measured blusters and lush sweeps of Act I's "Waltz: Tempo di valse", but the real gem of the night was the performance of "Dances of the Swans: Variation V (Pas d'action)". It begins with a ripping harp solo, which gives way to a heartbreaking violin and harp duet; then, just when you think the heart cannot break any farther, it is entirely shattered by the violin's taking up of the duet with the cello. It is as gorgeous as any duet anywhere, from Romeo and Juliette at the balcony to "Au fond du temple saint" and the Philharmonic played it flawlessly, with the soloists nailing the aching phrasings. The finale, "Hungarian Dance," was highly charged and ended with such explosive force that Mr. Maazel was literally sent into the air.

Next was Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra (Op. 33). The cellist, Johannes Moser, was fine—his playing was elegant and dramatic—but as with most any piece that calls for extended solo it becomes a tad trying after a movement or two. Despite Mr. Moser's admirable virtuosity, how much consecutive cello can the ordinary ear register?

Closing out of the evening was a performance of the Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique (Op. 74), which I last heard the Philharmonic perform this summer in Prospect Park. But the Pathétique is a work so intense that it is lost in the parks, the notes literally drifting away into space. In the concert hall its brashness and tenderness echoed from wall to wall, leaving me stunned, as though I'd never heard the piece before. The symphony is unique in that it ends on a whimper instead of the customary bang (that is pushed up into the third movement, which generated a mistaken round of applause from the crowd; Maazel waited stiffly for it to end), but it's a fittingly plaintive conclusion as Tchaikovsky died several days after the symphony's original premiere.

At the very end of the performance Maazel left his right hand, and the audience, dangling mournfully for several seconds before marking that the piece had ended. It looked like he quickly wiped a tear from his eye as well, and it was good to know he and I were on the same page.

The Philharmonic Plays Prospect Park

Official Site

In direct competition with Major League Baseball's All Star Game, the New York Philharmonic took to the stage in the fields of Prospect Park last night (10 July 2007) for the first stop in their annual free summer concerts series; not only was there a big baseball game on television, but a storm seemed on the horizon, the perpetually gray skies posing a constant threat, so the amount of people that turned up was impressive, the crowds a fair deal larger than they were a month ago at the Metropolitan Opera's analogous free concert. It would seemingly indicate that either the Phil has a stronger marketing team or, more likely, that people just don't really like opera. (I guess that ought to be obvious. Opera? Unpopular?)

The scene in the park's baseball fields was very similar to that which I described in my piece about last month's performance of Faust in the same spot—well-off looking white people drinking wine and eating expensive crackers, sprawled out in the grass relaxedly. The Philharmonic, though, had noticeably given the field a more festive appearance, dressing it up with clusters of multicolored balloons while conspicuous speakers and tents stuck out above our heads. (And, uh, blocked the view. Not that we were close enough to see anything.) It looked like more of a festival than the setting the Met had mustered; there were even more kids, occasionally running by on their way to play, which I suspect was also a symptom of the fact that, particularly with the kids in tow, people just find opera boring.

The Philharmonic, under the baton of conductor Ludovic Morlot, opened with a gorgeous, mellifluously melodic Berlioz piece, "Le Corsaire Overture", which developed nicely; clocking in at only about seven minutes, it was short and sweet, the perfect aural appetizer to the upcoming Tchaikovsky entree. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto followed (accidentally I originally typed "Violent Concerto", an amusing Freudian slip); its first movement is impressively virtuosic but struck me as emotionally wanting—I found it akin to watching a mediocre film with a fantastic lead performance, and I have little interest in, or patience for, such star vehicles. (I don't mean, however, to disparage the astounding skill of soloist Stefan Jackiw.) Thankfully, as the piece moves along it becomes increasingly less showy and more effusive, concluding with a charming ebullience, and especially as it inspired a four year old girl next to my party to perform an impressive faux-ballet, I really can't complain.

The relaxed atmosphere of the parks concerts—and the permissibility of drinking Pinot Grigio (hiccup!)—make it a time to let loose and go crazy; I, for one, really letting my hair down, was violating the taboos of the concert hall left and right, coughing when I felt like it and even applauding between movements. After intermission, the Philharmonic performed the evening's anticipated highlight, Tchaikovsky's magnificent Sixth Symphony, known as the "Pathétique". It's an unusual symphony that is loud and quiet in unusual places; it ends, for example, uncharacteristically—particularly for the bombastic Tchaikovsky—on a whimper. The Brooklyn audience honored the entire forty-some odd minute performance and its soft passages with a respectfully solemn silence. (The unfortunate exception was one woman behind us, though I gathered, from her audible cell-phone conversation and grating accent, that she was from Staten Island—go figure.) There was no better atmopshere, the soft glow of early evening (moon, candle and lamppost light), for enjoying Tchaikovsky's gorgeous piece; even a handful of stars were coaxed out from behind the clouds to lighten up the hitherto ceaselessly gray and gloomy day. The predicted rains never arrived, obviously because even God loves Tchaikovsky.

Incidentally, I cannot understand the point of view of people who don't. While he can certainly be a bit ostentatious in his orchestration, his God-given melodic mastery is so lush and lovely; that Condoleeza Rice, a classically trained pianist in her less sinister life, has publicly professed to dislike the music of Pyotr Ilyich—and that George W. Bush prolly never heard-a 'im—is just one of the many symbolical indicators of what's gone wrong with this country. An anti-Tchaikovsky contingent has infiltrated the highest levels of government! And obviously endless war cannot be far behind.

After the music was a generous fireworks display, perhaps a bit too soon after the Fourth of July to truly dazzle, although our proximity to the event beat watching the Macy's fireworks from miles away on the rooftop of my Southwest-Brooklyn apartment. (They were the size of dimes softly fading in the distance.) The crowd was impressed, and was markedly quieter than they had been during even the musical performance, save for the ooohs and ahhhs. It seems the classical music community of New York has finally found something that the general public can really respond to.

Gounod's Faust in Prospect Park

A steady stream of (bourgeois white) people were walking up Ninth Street on Tuesday evening (19 June 2007) around seven o'clock, as I imagine they were doing on all of the other thoroughfares that lead to Prospect Park; the Metropolitan Opera's free Concerts in the Park are famously famous. (Had they not already been a beloved fixture since 1967, I'm sure that Peter Gelb, current manager and revitalizer at the Met, would have invented them.) At first the crowds were sparse, but the grassy baseball fields, which had been transformed into a makeshift outdoor theater, soon filled-up, like ants on sidewalk-spilled ice cream. It seemed as though attendance was a bit thinner this year than it has been in others, but there were still several hundred people, by my quick estimate, dutifully picnicking on the cool summer evening. There were two big letdowns: one, it was cloudy so there were no stars in the sky (and what's an open-air opera without stars?); two, the Met, unlike the New York Philharmonic, does not conclude the alfresco evening with a fireworks display, merely a offensively bright spotlight that helps light the way but also indicates that you don't have to go home but you can't stay there, as the thinning crowds reveal a strong police presence lying in wait. Grab your empties and scram.

The Concerts in the Parks are at once the best place to hear opera and the worst place to hear opera; the expansive fields of Prospect Park are infinitely more comfortable, in no small part thanks to the at all times presence of Monsieur Bouteille de Vin, than the cramped seating of the opera house, but the expanse requires the sound to be unwelcomely amplified while the technical challenges involved in mounting an opera outdoors results in the unfortunate, but understandably necessary, elision of opera's greatest virtue—its opulence, in set and costume design (not to mention audience appearance.) It's particularly regrettable in the case of a potential spectacle like Faust, the Met's choice for this particular night (they are also doing La Boheme elsewhere); I saw it performed several months ago up at Lincoln Center and the extravagance of the staging and Santo Loquasto's sets, which received their own ovations every time the curtains parted, was opera at its very best, especially in the crowd scene spectacular that is, or can be, Act II. Although at the park "Vin ou Bière" was accompanied by a blithely dancing child in the crowds behind me, so I suppose each venue has its merits.

Faust, with a solid score by Charles Gounod and a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, does not enjoy its glowing reputation for no reason, and I've never enjoyed it more, musically, than I did that on Tuesday. (James Morris' particularly devilish performance of "Vous Qui Faites" was a highlight.) Faust is laden with lush, sweet and infectious melodies that are reminiscent (well, vice versa) in character of those of perhaps my favorite operatic composer, Geroges Bizet, whose Carmen is perhaps the crown jewel of Western culture. Relatively speaking, there's not a whole lot of French opera in the repertoire, so its distinctly romantic flavor is something of a unique treat.

Though for purists and fusspots the park is not the ideal place to go to hear it; the expected low murmur of talking voices only gets louder as the wine bottles empty, the occasional futile shushes from bitter old ladies go completely ignored, and by Act III it was a slight struggle to hear above the din, as though I were mischievously playing opera on the satellite jukebox, in a NYU bar, on a Saturday night. While some of the world's most beautiful music was being performed, New Yorkers, in characteristic fashion, were tuning it out as though it were the Mr. Softee song or a passing siren. But that's New York for you, and it's endearing in its own way. Though many of the noisemakers stumble out during intermission, small pockets of increasingly drunk patrons picked up the noise-level slack.

I suppose that I exaggerate a bit and anyway these things, of course, come with the relaxed and casual atmosphere that necessarily accompanies being outside, and I gladly surrender absolute silence for the ability to drink wine and eat sandwiches, not to mention stretch my legs and lie down from time to time. And, as an aside, the Prospect Park experience is still superior to Central Park's where, as opposed to Prospect, the space is so long, vertical-wise, that it's easy to be so far from the speakers in the much larger crowds that all you can hear is people chattering. (By and large Brooklynites are respectfully softer than their Manhattan Island counterparts.) By the middle of the show, now bored children ran off to play in the dirt and the dogs tended to follow; it was a gorgeous portrait of all that the West can be and offer—transplendent tunes and reposeful people, a direct repudiation of all things George Bush. The backpack-carrying man in a turban wandering the perimeter and looking like a foreign exchange student will surely return home with tender tales of a halcyon America.

Brahms' Third and Fourth - New York Philharmonic

At Avery Fisher
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Allan Kozinn of the Times called Thursday's portion of the ongoing Brahms Festival "coldly unemotional", "vulgar", "empty" and "hulking". I don't pretend to be a music critic—just a casual fan, for once—but, sitting up in a Third Tier box with the poor people, I can't claim to have been equally offended. My ignorant ears even enjoyed some of it!

I have always thought that the quality of Brahms' symphonies mirrors the character of each movement within them—that is, one and four, whether referring to a symphony or any of the symphonies' movements, are dynamite powerhouses, while two and three are...well, not so special. Brahms' third movements especially—and particularly when pitted against those of someone like Dvorak, a master of the third movement—feel perfunctory.

And Lorin Maazel, conducting the New York Philharmonic on 31 May 2007, did little to change my mind on Brahms' Third, although it sounded probably as good as I've ever heard it. Though the symphony itself has its moments, such as its plaintive opening, overall I find it much of it to be melodically banal; the orchestra's performance did nothing to change my impression, and I found my mind wandering quite often.

I know only a small portion of the Romantics' repertoire, but what I am familiar with I became so through Leonard Bernstein's classic recordings with New York, so I always find it interesting and a bit challenging to hear Maazel's interpretations. Against Bernstein, his rhythms are slower, and his phrasing is more drawn out, stretching the melodic sequences as if, because so many of them are by now so familiar, he is holding them back for an element of surprise; comparing the two conductors reminds me of comparing the speech rhythms of Americans and Canadians. The latter is just a bit slower, even a bit frustrating in its temper.

But the orchestra's performance of the Fourth was rewarding, although I suppose any orchestra doing a competent performance of that piece would thrill me; I'm still young and inexperienced enough to be thrilled at hearing this gorgeous music performed live. Kozinn said they played it like Tchaikovsky; I like Tchaikovsky. What was remarkable for me about their performance of the Fourth was Maazel's take on the third movement; he reinvented it for me in a similar manner to which he had with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring several months earlier. The Philharmonic played it with gusto and bluster, giving it a wide dynamic range that allowed frequent "dramatic blasts" to ring out. It was truly rousing, and the highlight of the evening. I applauded enthusiastically though, as is my custom, I did not stand.