Luiz Gazzola (Almaviva)
October 30th, 2012, 05:20 AM
1211
Photo Credit: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
The excellent Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg and its acclaimed conductor Valery Gergiev presented on 10/29/12 a concert in Chapel Hill, NC, at the University of North Carolina Memorial Hall, part of the Carolina Performing Arts series, in general, and in particular, the CPA's celebration of the centennial of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Opera Lively's announcement for the event - which continues on 10/30/12 with a second program - can be found by clicking [here (http://operalively.com/forums/content.php/689-Maestro-Gergiev-and-the-Mariinsky-at-Memorial-Hall-in-Chapel-Hill)], including ticket information (a limited number of seats is still available).
Today's show of a total duration of 81 minutes with a 20-minute intermission, started with a contemporary piece, Chute d'Étoiles, Part I (2012) by Mattias Pintscher (b. 1971), featuring soloists Stanislav Ilchenko, trumpet, and Sergei Kryuchkov, trumpet. It was the piece's American premiere.
The second number was Shostakovich's (1906-1975) Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35 (Alegro moderato, Lento, Moderato, Alegro con brio), with Denis Matsuev, piano, and Timur Martynov, trumpet.
After the intermission, the orchestra played Richard Strauss' (1864-1949) tone poem Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40., with segments The Hero, The Hero's Adversaries, The Hero's Companion, The Hero at Battle, The Hero's Works of Peace, The Hero's Retirement from this World and Consummation.
Chute d'Étoiles is a very interesting piece. German composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher was at one point a protégé of Hans Werner Henze - who sadly has just died a couple of days ago, leaving behind some excellent operas. Mr. Henze will be missed. Anyway, Pintscher has been heralded as a composer of luminous music with great dramatic impact, and his work has been performed by leading orchestras all over the world. The current piece was commissioned by Roche for the 2012 Lucerne Festival, and Carnegie Hall.
The title - French for Falling Stars - makes reference to a massive installation of the same name by German visual artist Anselm Kiefer created for the Grand Palais in Paris, pictured below. According to the composer, what he tried to recover in his music is the use of lead - a malleable but very heavy metal - in Kiefer's work.
1212
The piece opens with deafening percussion strikes on gongs and sheet metal, marked on the score with the maximum fortissimo, ffff. If I weren't expecting it, I'd have jumped out of my seat. The music continues with screeching sounds evocative of metal grinding in a construction site, with things being torn and bent and dropped to the ground (more loud percussion), all in the middle of street cacophony of engines and horns, while the trumpets resemble birds flying around the structure, and the strings evoke flickering and buzzing insects. Pulleys and shifting gears are suggested, and one seems to be listening to large cranes lifting heavy building parts. Rhythmic impact conjures perhaps the falling stars of the title, making havoc and bringing ruin to a building. There is a rapid succession of brittle percussion and glissandos in the strings. It is all very noise and dynamic. One often gets the impression of electronic music by a synthesizer, and needs to be reminded that actually a large modern orchestra is skilfully generating these sounds. The two trumpets permeate the music throughout the piece (it lasts for approximately 20 minutes) and dialogue in a truncated clucking manner.
The core idea of this piece seems to be the ambiguity between construction and destruction. It all sounds like a building being erect, while at the same time a meteorite rain distorts and damages it. The overall effect is, to say the least, very bold and almost scary.
My companion commented that "this is not beautiful." I countered, "well, it's contemporary music, it is powerful and interesting. It certainly evokes what the composer set out to convey, and in this way it is very successful. This is not easy to accomplish and takes talent." She concluded - "yes, I can see that it is interesting and talent-laden, but still, it is not beautiful." I had to add, "you get used to it and you can find beauty in it."
So, the concert moved backwards, from the very disruptive and edgy 21st century music, to the 20th century, and further back to the late 19th century (R. Strauss' piece is from 1898).
My companion certainly got her share of the melodious kind of beauty she was looking for in R. Strauss, after harvesting some of it in Shostakovich's piece - still, not the easiest music around.
Again, Maestro Gergiev brought us something for which I'll use the same word I reached for to describe the Pintscher: interesting.
Shostakovich's first piano concert certainly qualifies for this term. It also features a trumpet, and a large contingent of strings, with no other instruments. First of all, the trumpet is not fully integrated in what the piano and the strings do. It sounds like incidental music - it seems to change the context around the piece: suddenly we seem to hear the music of a merry-go-round in an amusement park, or the soundtrack of a cartoon. These moments possess a light and merry quality. But I'm getting ahead of myself because these tunes come later.
After a brief introduction, we hear the familiar descending minor triad in the piano that is directly borrowed from Beethoven's Appasionata. This is followed by two melodic lines; the piano very lively and with strong rhythms in a gallop, while the strings are suave and repeat motifs over and over. The contrast is striking and almost funny. Then the piece shifts mood in the second movement, which is slow and melancholic. The piano sluggishly suggests serenity, helped by a legato in the strings, to which the trumpet finally converges. It's a waltz theme, and it soothes my companion who was so rattled by the contemporary music of the first third of the concert. The restful piano plays unaccompanied for some stretches. Then there is a short, rhapsodic third movement (moderato), and we plunge into the carousel music I was talking about. Oh boy, this is eventful! This alegro con brio shifts moods constantly. Are we in a children's amusement park? Well, maybe it's a cabaret. Or are we in a Spanish plaza listening to a fanfare? Whatever it is, it is playful and enjoyable, and after it ends in a ruckus with a bundle of energy, the public erupts in delirious applause. My companion is pleased.
Then, we get to the pièce de résistance - my beloved Richard Strauss. Once more, I cherish Maestro Gergiev's intriguing selection, since this tone poem is fabulous. Its title translates into "A Hero's Life" - and while it is inspired by Beethoven's Eroica which was dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, some argue that the hero in question was R. Strauss himself. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the movement "The Hero's Companion" was confessedly (as per one of Strauss' letters to Romain Rollard) based on his wife Pauline, with the violin reproducing her soprano voice, and very clearly mimicking her personality. We get it from her husband's words, which the program notes kindly printed for us and are very interesting indeed (and describe accurately the sounds): "très femme, a little perverse, a bit of a coquette, never the same twice, different each minute earlier. At the beginning, the hero follows her lead, picking up the pitch she has just sung, but she escapes farther and farther. Finally he says, 'All right, go. I'm staying here,' and he withdraws into his thoughts, his own key. But then she goes after him."
Well, this sounds like the core premise of Intermezzo, Strauss' autobiographical opera about his marital life. With one major difference: while Intermezzo bores me to death and is one of the only pieces by R. Strauss that I don't like, Ein Heldenleben is exhilarating! It is appropriately heroic with plenty of horns; it has some really giggly parts (like the flute that sounds like a clucking chicken and is supposed to represent the hero's enemies), and it reaches peaks of sublime and serene music ("The Hero's Works of Peace"). Finally, it provides the perfect finale to this outstanding concert by the Mariinsky and Gergiev, since it ends with a quotation of the majestic Also sprach Zarathustra. My companion is very happy, and so am I.
The orchestra was... hm, I need to reach for my stock of superlatives. I've rarely heard something this good. All the transitions were perfect. All the strings sounded like one. There was exquisite equilibrium and precise dynamics. It doesn't get any better than this. Some orchestras have a signature quality. I'd say that the Mariinsky has clarity. It sounds so crystalline, so pure!
Maestro Gergiev was his usual extremely competent self, and I had the pleasure of chatting briefly with him at the end of the performance, and of having one of my CDs of his music autographed by him (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Moscow Cantata & Marche Slave). We got a first-rate pianist as well: Denis Matsuev, the winner of the 11th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1998, is a regular with the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the London Symphony, and the London Philharmonic. His recording with Maestro Gergiev of this very piece of today, Shostakovich's 1st piano concert, has received from BBC Music Magazine a Five Star rating.
The orchestra came to North Carolina braving Hurricane Sandy. They had a concert on Sunday in Newark, NJ, at 4 PM, and were scheduled to fly to Raleigh-Durham on Monday. Well, fortunately for us, the Chapel Hill public, they decided to fly out of New Jersey at 9 PM on Sunday, or else they'd have been retained in the Northeast by the hurricane, since all airports were shut down on Monday. According to Mr. Emil Kang, once they got into town, exhausted, they had to catch up by having some good vodka!
It was a cold, windy, and rainy night in Chapel Hill, but the concert was more than worth the freezing walk through the long stretch from the parking lot on Franklin Street to Memorial Hall which is right in the middle of campus. We got to our seats quite wet and miserable, but we couldn't complain, given that other fellow citizens further North are having much more hardship with this monster storm; we got spared. Sandy or not, we walked back to our car very fulfilled by this night of great music. Do I need to say A++, highly recommended?
Our local readers should not miss the opportunity to see the Mariinsky again tonight, 10/30/12 at 7:30 PM, when they will be playing the contemporary mono-opera Cleopatra and the Snake by Rodion Shchedrin, with soprano Veronica Dzhioeva, then Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6, and will end the program with Stravinsky's gorgeous The Rite of Spring. Stay tuned. Go to www.carolinaperformingarts.org (http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org) for more information.
Photo Credit: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
The excellent Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg and its acclaimed conductor Valery Gergiev presented on 10/29/12 a concert in Chapel Hill, NC, at the University of North Carolina Memorial Hall, part of the Carolina Performing Arts series, in general, and in particular, the CPA's celebration of the centennial of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Opera Lively's announcement for the event - which continues on 10/30/12 with a second program - can be found by clicking [here (http://operalively.com/forums/content.php/689-Maestro-Gergiev-and-the-Mariinsky-at-Memorial-Hall-in-Chapel-Hill)], including ticket information (a limited number of seats is still available).
Today's show of a total duration of 81 minutes with a 20-minute intermission, started with a contemporary piece, Chute d'Étoiles, Part I (2012) by Mattias Pintscher (b. 1971), featuring soloists Stanislav Ilchenko, trumpet, and Sergei Kryuchkov, trumpet. It was the piece's American premiere.
The second number was Shostakovich's (1906-1975) Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35 (Alegro moderato, Lento, Moderato, Alegro con brio), with Denis Matsuev, piano, and Timur Martynov, trumpet.
After the intermission, the orchestra played Richard Strauss' (1864-1949) tone poem Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40., with segments The Hero, The Hero's Adversaries, The Hero's Companion, The Hero at Battle, The Hero's Works of Peace, The Hero's Retirement from this World and Consummation.
Chute d'Étoiles is a very interesting piece. German composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher was at one point a protégé of Hans Werner Henze - who sadly has just died a couple of days ago, leaving behind some excellent operas. Mr. Henze will be missed. Anyway, Pintscher has been heralded as a composer of luminous music with great dramatic impact, and his work has been performed by leading orchestras all over the world. The current piece was commissioned by Roche for the 2012 Lucerne Festival, and Carnegie Hall.
The title - French for Falling Stars - makes reference to a massive installation of the same name by German visual artist Anselm Kiefer created for the Grand Palais in Paris, pictured below. According to the composer, what he tried to recover in his music is the use of lead - a malleable but very heavy metal - in Kiefer's work.
1212
The piece opens with deafening percussion strikes on gongs and sheet metal, marked on the score with the maximum fortissimo, ffff. If I weren't expecting it, I'd have jumped out of my seat. The music continues with screeching sounds evocative of metal grinding in a construction site, with things being torn and bent and dropped to the ground (more loud percussion), all in the middle of street cacophony of engines and horns, while the trumpets resemble birds flying around the structure, and the strings evoke flickering and buzzing insects. Pulleys and shifting gears are suggested, and one seems to be listening to large cranes lifting heavy building parts. Rhythmic impact conjures perhaps the falling stars of the title, making havoc and bringing ruin to a building. There is a rapid succession of brittle percussion and glissandos in the strings. It is all very noise and dynamic. One often gets the impression of electronic music by a synthesizer, and needs to be reminded that actually a large modern orchestra is skilfully generating these sounds. The two trumpets permeate the music throughout the piece (it lasts for approximately 20 minutes) and dialogue in a truncated clucking manner.
The core idea of this piece seems to be the ambiguity between construction and destruction. It all sounds like a building being erect, while at the same time a meteorite rain distorts and damages it. The overall effect is, to say the least, very bold and almost scary.
My companion commented that "this is not beautiful." I countered, "well, it's contemporary music, it is powerful and interesting. It certainly evokes what the composer set out to convey, and in this way it is very successful. This is not easy to accomplish and takes talent." She concluded - "yes, I can see that it is interesting and talent-laden, but still, it is not beautiful." I had to add, "you get used to it and you can find beauty in it."
So, the concert moved backwards, from the very disruptive and edgy 21st century music, to the 20th century, and further back to the late 19th century (R. Strauss' piece is from 1898).
My companion certainly got her share of the melodious kind of beauty she was looking for in R. Strauss, after harvesting some of it in Shostakovich's piece - still, not the easiest music around.
Again, Maestro Gergiev brought us something for which I'll use the same word I reached for to describe the Pintscher: interesting.
Shostakovich's first piano concert certainly qualifies for this term. It also features a trumpet, and a large contingent of strings, with no other instruments. First of all, the trumpet is not fully integrated in what the piano and the strings do. It sounds like incidental music - it seems to change the context around the piece: suddenly we seem to hear the music of a merry-go-round in an amusement park, or the soundtrack of a cartoon. These moments possess a light and merry quality. But I'm getting ahead of myself because these tunes come later.
After a brief introduction, we hear the familiar descending minor triad in the piano that is directly borrowed from Beethoven's Appasionata. This is followed by two melodic lines; the piano very lively and with strong rhythms in a gallop, while the strings are suave and repeat motifs over and over. The contrast is striking and almost funny. Then the piece shifts mood in the second movement, which is slow and melancholic. The piano sluggishly suggests serenity, helped by a legato in the strings, to which the trumpet finally converges. It's a waltz theme, and it soothes my companion who was so rattled by the contemporary music of the first third of the concert. The restful piano plays unaccompanied for some stretches. Then there is a short, rhapsodic third movement (moderato), and we plunge into the carousel music I was talking about. Oh boy, this is eventful! This alegro con brio shifts moods constantly. Are we in a children's amusement park? Well, maybe it's a cabaret. Or are we in a Spanish plaza listening to a fanfare? Whatever it is, it is playful and enjoyable, and after it ends in a ruckus with a bundle of energy, the public erupts in delirious applause. My companion is pleased.
Then, we get to the pièce de résistance - my beloved Richard Strauss. Once more, I cherish Maestro Gergiev's intriguing selection, since this tone poem is fabulous. Its title translates into "A Hero's Life" - and while it is inspired by Beethoven's Eroica which was dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, some argue that the hero in question was R. Strauss himself. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the movement "The Hero's Companion" was confessedly (as per one of Strauss' letters to Romain Rollard) based on his wife Pauline, with the violin reproducing her soprano voice, and very clearly mimicking her personality. We get it from her husband's words, which the program notes kindly printed for us and are very interesting indeed (and describe accurately the sounds): "très femme, a little perverse, a bit of a coquette, never the same twice, different each minute earlier. At the beginning, the hero follows her lead, picking up the pitch she has just sung, but she escapes farther and farther. Finally he says, 'All right, go. I'm staying here,' and he withdraws into his thoughts, his own key. But then she goes after him."
Well, this sounds like the core premise of Intermezzo, Strauss' autobiographical opera about his marital life. With one major difference: while Intermezzo bores me to death and is one of the only pieces by R. Strauss that I don't like, Ein Heldenleben is exhilarating! It is appropriately heroic with plenty of horns; it has some really giggly parts (like the flute that sounds like a clucking chicken and is supposed to represent the hero's enemies), and it reaches peaks of sublime and serene music ("The Hero's Works of Peace"). Finally, it provides the perfect finale to this outstanding concert by the Mariinsky and Gergiev, since it ends with a quotation of the majestic Also sprach Zarathustra. My companion is very happy, and so am I.
The orchestra was... hm, I need to reach for my stock of superlatives. I've rarely heard something this good. All the transitions were perfect. All the strings sounded like one. There was exquisite equilibrium and precise dynamics. It doesn't get any better than this. Some orchestras have a signature quality. I'd say that the Mariinsky has clarity. It sounds so crystalline, so pure!
Maestro Gergiev was his usual extremely competent self, and I had the pleasure of chatting briefly with him at the end of the performance, and of having one of my CDs of his music autographed by him (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Moscow Cantata & Marche Slave). We got a first-rate pianist as well: Denis Matsuev, the winner of the 11th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1998, is a regular with the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the London Symphony, and the London Philharmonic. His recording with Maestro Gergiev of this very piece of today, Shostakovich's 1st piano concert, has received from BBC Music Magazine a Five Star rating.
The orchestra came to North Carolina braving Hurricane Sandy. They had a concert on Sunday in Newark, NJ, at 4 PM, and were scheduled to fly to Raleigh-Durham on Monday. Well, fortunately for us, the Chapel Hill public, they decided to fly out of New Jersey at 9 PM on Sunday, or else they'd have been retained in the Northeast by the hurricane, since all airports were shut down on Monday. According to Mr. Emil Kang, once they got into town, exhausted, they had to catch up by having some good vodka!
It was a cold, windy, and rainy night in Chapel Hill, but the concert was more than worth the freezing walk through the long stretch from the parking lot on Franklin Street to Memorial Hall which is right in the middle of campus. We got to our seats quite wet and miserable, but we couldn't complain, given that other fellow citizens further North are having much more hardship with this monster storm; we got spared. Sandy or not, we walked back to our car very fulfilled by this night of great music. Do I need to say A++, highly recommended?
Our local readers should not miss the opportunity to see the Mariinsky again tonight, 10/30/12 at 7:30 PM, when they will be playing the contemporary mono-opera Cleopatra and the Snake by Rodion Shchedrin, with soprano Veronica Dzhioeva, then Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6, and will end the program with Stravinsky's gorgeous The Rite of Spring. Stay tuned. Go to www.carolinaperformingarts.org (http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org) for more information.