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      Santtu-Matias Rouvali Knows His Way Around a Score, and a Farm

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      YLÖJÄRVI, Finland — “Here I grow peas,” the conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali said, gesturing to a plot of land the size of a small room. “Why? I just love fresh peas.”That pea garden is a blip in the scale of Rouvali’s property here — a farm, dating back to the 16th century, on over 34 acres. It is among this place’s wildflowers, evergreens and moss-covered rocks that he feels most at ease, especially compared with where he’s more often seen: inside the world’s major concert halls, whether at the podium of his Philharmonia Orchestra in London or as a guest with ensembles like the New York Philharmonic, where he is a contender to become the next music director.“I was never someone who wants to be famous,” said Rouvali, 36. “But of course, with this profession it comes automatically.”Rouvali has structured his life so that he can spend as many weekends as possible on his farm, about 20 minutes outside Tampere, in the southwest of Finland. One morning this month, he was at the start of a welcome break between the Philharmonia’s performances not far away in Mikkeli and another to come in early August at the Edinburgh International Festival.Rouvali conducting the Philharmonia in 2019.Kaupo KikkasHe and his wife, Elina, live in the property’s main house but make use of all the surrounding buildings. They include a sauna, a guesthouse with music and pole-dancing studios, and a garage with a room for Rouvali to slaughter and skin the game he hunts, like ducks and deer. He fishes in the nearby lake, where he was having a beach built (along with a waterfront sauna). They eat everything he kills and fill the table with dishes made from other local ingredients, such as foraged chanterelles or new potatoes from a neighbor.“I need this,” Rouvali said, “to kind of rest and have a mental break and not really think about music.”When he is at work, Rouvali has developed a reputation as a lively conductor, one who revels in experimentation and fluid interpretations, and who has a gift — befitting his background as a percussionist — for internal rhythms and harmonies. When he returns to the Philharmonic next season, for his third engagement there, it will be with a precious two weeks of the season’s real estate, in varied programs that include repertory mainstays and local premieres by Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Magnus Lindberg.In a time when every guest’s appearance with the Philharmonic has the air of an audition, ahead of Jaap van Zweden’s departure from the podium in spring 2024, Rouvali’s concerts come with added scrutiny and pressure. He acknowledged as much himself, though only at a whisper in the privacy of his own yard.The Philharmonic, for its part, doesn’t have anything to add. Its music director search, said Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s chief executive, is “a very confidential and sacrosanct process, and we just don’t discuss it.”“I need this,” Rouvali said of his time at home, “to kind of rest and have a mental break and not really think about music.”Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesRouvali is a charismatic, natural leader — a trait that has endeared him to musicians in rehearsal.Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesROUVALI WAS BORN in Lahti, Finland, to two members of that city’s orchestra. He played piano, and learned violin from his mother, but he eventually settled on studying percussion seriously — mostly, the mallet instruments. A fan of much music beyond the classical concert hall, he also took up jazz and rock, and was comfortable at the seat of a drum kit.Music brought him to Finland’s storied Sibelius Academy, and it was there that he made a decisive move to devote himself to conducting. “Maybe to play triangle can be a little boring,” Rouvali said. “I always loved a symphony orchestra, and as a conductor you can do more. So I thought, Why not?”He had already studied briefly with Jorma Panula, the teacher and mentor of Finnish conducting luminaries like Esa-Pekka Salonen, Susanna Mälkki and Osmo Vänskä. As a master’s student, Rouvali later worked with the podium veterans Leif Segerstam and Hannu Lintu, who gave him an essential bit of advice: You can do whatever you want at the podium, but you just have to make sure everyone understands it.In other words, Rouvali said, “It has to work, and it has to work around the world.”That freedom helped to inform his style today: one in which he retains some of a drummer’s gestures, but also in which that physicality is an expressive vessel for open, sometimes trial-and-error interpretations with a liberal use of rubato. “As a conductor, I play the orchestra,” he said. “And if I were a violin player, I wouldn’t always play the same. Sometimes, it’s not the best idea, but it makes the live performance fun.”Musicians tend to listen. Rouvali discovered at an early age that he is a natural leader, with a sense of empathy that has endeared him to instrumentalists in rehearsals. He also learned, he said, from his parents’ and his own experiences playing under various conductors. But his charisma is for the most part innate; he carries himself as if cheerfully unaware of his position in classical music.Rouvali studies scores at his piano, building out his interpretations from inner voices and rhythms.Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesThat may be what once made him a good candidate for the Finnish reality TV show “Not Born to Rock,” which assembled a group of classical musicians to form a band. In one episode, they were shown learning how to dress like a rock star; in another, how to party like one. As a group called Taltta, they ended up writing a song that they performed at a music festival. “Of course it was just for entertainment,” Rouvali said. “But it’s good to take part in those things.”Rouvali’s lightness belies scholarly rigor. He studies scores at the piano slowly, beginning with foundational inner voices and harmonies and working his way outward to melody. It’s a method that shows in his performances, which prioritize unexpected, often revelatory sounds other conductors might overlook; the opening motive of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, rather than recurring, coursed throughout the entire work in his Mikkeli performance with the Philharmonia.He first appeared with that ensemble in 2013. Not long after, he started as the chief conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra — a tenure that comes to an end with the coming season. Another chief conductor post followed in 2017, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. At the same time, he began as the Philharmonia’s principal guest conductor, ahead of being named as Salonen’s successor and taking over in 2021.Salonen said that when he called Rouvali to offer him the principal guest post, Rouvali was at a Finnish kiosk buying a six-pack of beer. Rouvali responded, “Yeah, that sounds great” with an emphatic expletive, then told the cashier, “I’ll have another one.”ROUVALI’S RELATIONSHIP with the Philharmonia has been a happy one so far; his appointment to chief conductor was the result of a vote by the musicians. Michael Fuller, a double bassist in the orchestra, said that Rouvali’s interactions with them are more or less nonverbal, so closely attuned are they to each other. That held true during recent rehearsals in Mikkeli, where he was shaping phrases more than keeping time — to the degree that he regularly, without warning, ran from the podium to hear the music from farther back in the hall.“He’s able to get results very quickly,” Fuller said. “There’s so much that he can do just through his beat. All the sudden he’ll do this thing, and the piccolo or harp will come out of the texture, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard this that way before.’ It’s all connected to this kind of pulse that he radiates.”Rouvali studies music in the main house of the farm, which dates back to the 16th century.Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesThat comes in handy, said the Philharmonia horn player Kira Doherty, because of the “unfettered” view Rouvali has of the scores they take up. “With him, it’s like he still has this fresh, almost first-time thing that, in looking at the score, brings out things that nobody has done before,” she added. “Some of them are bonkers, and later he’s like, ‘I’m not going to do that anymore.’ But he’s trying it, and it’s a way of engaging with the actual act of creativity.”The reception has been mixed. When Rouvali made his New York Philharmonic debut in 2019, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote that “every gesture expressed some element of the music.” But last season, the critic Zachary Woolfe was much cooler, finding that Rouvali’s interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony “tipped into plainness.”Rouvali has nevertheless garnered praise within the industry. Salonen said that, “first of all, he conducts the orchestra, not the audience, so the gestures are really focused and all carry something essential.” He added: “The guy has got a very good rhythm, a sense of tempo, of pulse. And that gives the orchestra a certain kind of security that allows them to express themselves quite clearly.”Rouvali on his lawn, which is kept trim by a robot mower nicknamed Jens.Vesa Laitinen for The New York TimesBorda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, said that their time together has often been lighthearted and fun. Once, in New York, the actor Bradley Cooper appeared in her box accompanied by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. They all went to meet Rouvali afterward, and, according to Borda, Wintour told him, “Maestro I love your shirt, is it Prada?” He responded, simply, “No, my mom got it from a friend in Lahti.”He is, Borda, said, “a conductor very much on the rise.” Whether that rise entails a post at the Philharmonic is an open question, even for Rouvali.At the farm, while Rouvali’s robotic lawn mower, nicknamed Jens, roamed the garden like a curious dog, he thought about how he would respond to an offer from New York. “I’d probably say, ‘Let me have a beer and call you back,’” he said. There would be much to consider: what the lifestyle change would mean for his time at home — with his wife and their children, with the high school friends who join him every year for the start of Finland’s hunting season — and what it would mean for his post at the Philharmonia.“It’s hard to say yet,” Rouvali said. “Let’s see if they even ask. But has there ever been a conductor who says no to the New York Phil?”Salonen said that, regardless, he hopes Rouvali remains with the Philharmonia “for a long time.” Rouvali feels similarly, but added that if there’s a moment to take on a lot of work, it’s now, while he’s still young. He doesn’t want to be a conductor who works well into old age; he has the farm, after all.“I do find that he’s wandered out from the forest,” Doherty, the Philharmonia player, said, “and he’s going to do some amazing stuff, then one of these days just wander back into his forest-dwelling life.” More

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      Hong Kong: Mirror Concert Accident to Be Investigated

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      Two dancers for the popular boy band were hospitalized, a local news outlet reported. Hong Kong officials promised an investigation.The Hong Kong authorities will investigate why a large, heavy video screen fell from the ceiling during a concert by a popular boy band at a government-run venue, injuring two dancers, officials said on Friday.The accident happened during a performance on Thursday night by Mirror, a 12-member band in the Chinese territory whose popularity has grown during the coronavirus pandemic. In footage from the concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum, audience members scream after the video screen lands directly on one dancer, edge-down, apparently striking his neck. The South China Morning Post newspaper later reported that one of the two male dancers had suffered neck injuries and was in intensive care. It said the other was in stable condition.Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, Hong Kong’s secretary for culture, sports and tourism, told reporters on Friday that one of the screen’s suspension cables had broken. Each of the screens for the venue’s four-sided projection system measures 5 meters by 3.9 meters, or 210 square feet, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which manages the coliseum. Emergency workers treated the injured dancers. Vivian/Associated PressJohn Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said in a statement early Friday that he had asked the leisure department and other agencies to investigate the accident and “review the safety requirements of similar performance activities.”“I am shocked by the incident,” Mr. Lee said. “I express sympathy to those who were injured and hope that they would recover soon.”The Hong Kong authorities said in a separate statement that the government had contacted the concert organizers on Wednesday — the day before the accident — about “stage incidents in the past few days.” It did not elaborate, and the leisure department could not immediately be reached for comment.On Tuesday, a member of Mirror, Frankie Chan Sui-fai, fell off the stage at the Hong Kong Coliseum during the second day of the band’s scheduled 12-day series of concerts, The South China Morning Post reported. He fell about a meter and was not seriously hurt, according to the report.Makerville, the concert organizer, apologized for the Thursday night accident in an Instagram post early Friday, adding that Mirror’s remaining concerts at the venue would be canceled. The band’s management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mirror, which draws on K-pop as an influence, formed in 2018 through a reality show designed to manufacture a hit boy band. Its members sing in Cantonese, a Chinese language spoken widely in the former British colony. The band’s escapist lyrics have been a balm of sorts for an anxious population during a tumultuous period of Hong Kong history.In 2019, the city was consumed by months of mass protests triggered by a proposed law to allow extraditions to mainland China. Then came a thicket of pandemic-related restrictions that have battered Hong Kong’s economy, as well as a sweeping national security law that has curtailed freedoms with breathtaking speed.Mirror’s popularity soared as Hong Kong struggled. The band sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic. Its members’ faces have been plastered on billboards, buses and subway ads.The coliseum where Mirror was performing on Thursday opened in 1983, according to the leisure department’s website. It seats about 12,500 people, the site says, and meets local demand for a “world class indoor stadium.”Zixu Wang More

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      Minnesota Orchestra Names Thomas Sondergard as Music Director

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      The Danish conductor succeeds Osmo Vänskä, who led the ensemble through the most tumultuous period in its history.The Minnesota Orchestra, after the departure of a longtime leader who shepherded the ensemble through the most tumultuous period in its history, announced on Thursday that the Danish conductor Thomas Sondergard would become its next music director.Sondergard, who has conducted the orchestra several times in the past year, currently leads the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and will continue to do so. In Minnesota, he succeeds Osmo Vänskä, who led the group for about 19 years — including during a lockout that was one of the most bitter labor disputes in classical music in recent history.A former principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Sondergard first conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in December, leading Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Ein Heldenleben,” among other pieces.“It was just a beautiful, open-minded, warm, interested first meeting with the ensemble,” Sondergard, 52, said in an interview. “I just felt instantly that there was a connection.”Sondergard brings an anti-authoritative spirit to an orchestra that, perhaps more than most, values a democratic approach, following a contentious period between musicians and orchestra leadership about a decade ago. In Scotland, he said, he has sought to encourage a collaborative ethos among musicians by asking them to rehearse — and sometimes perform — without a conductor during one week of the year; instead, the concertmaster steps in when a leader is required.“Musicians have long educations and loads of ideas about how music-making can be done,” Sondergard said. “They aren’t puppets.”In a news release announcing the appointment, R. Douglas Wright, the orchestra’s principal trombone, said that in the performance of “Ein Heldenleben,” Sondergard “trusted the musicians to do our job in a way that gave us great freedom.”The chair of the orchestra’s board of directors, Joseph T. Green, said he believed Sondergard would prove to be a “powerful advocate” for the musicians.A timpanist who joined the Royal Danish Orchestra in 1992, Sondergard has served as guest conductor for ensembles around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. In April, Sondergard returned to the Minnesota Orchestra to conduct Debussy’s “La Mer” and Stravinsky’s “Symphony in Three Movements.”Sondergard starts as music director designate in the 2022-23 season before formally stepping into the position in fall 2023; he’ll adopt the group’s missions, including helping the company weather the ongoing effects of the pandemic shutdown and diversifying both the ranks of the orchestra and of the composers whose music it plays. More

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      ‘A Stone in the Mosaic’: A Director Enters the House of Wagner

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      At 33, Valentin Schwarz is taking on the monumental “Ring” cycle at the theater Wagner built for it in Bayreuth, Germany.New productions of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, a 16-hour epic taking place over four evenings, are always a highly anticipated event, and even more so when they take place at the annual Bayreuth Festival.Opera houses most often roll out stagings of the four “Ring” works — “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” — over multiple years. But Bayreuth, which is still managed by the descendants of the composer himself, presents the entire cycle all at once. And its newest production, by the Austrian director Valentin Schwarz, opens July 31.Since World War II, there have only been nine Bayreuth productions of the “Ring” — among them Patrice Chéreau’s storied 1976 staging, which introduced critical, political dramaturgy to the piece, and the most recent one, a divisive 2013 interpretation by the Marxist firebrand Frank Castorf.A new “Ring” had been scheduled to premiere there in 2020, taken on by a team of surprisingly fresh faces: Schwarz, 33, and the Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, 42. The pandemic delayed the project, and last week, Inkinen fell ill with Covid-19 and had to miss crucial rehearsals. He was replaced by Cornelius Meister, who had originally been engaged to lead “Tristan und Isolde.”In between recent rehearsals, Schwarz discussed his vision for the “Ring” in a video interview. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How are you holding up in the heat?Well, the coolest place in Bayreuth is on the stage. The audience generates the heat.And the building sort of cooks all afternoon, right, when people are about to take their uncomfortable seats?Yes, and I think this kind of torture has to have its reward — especially a “Ring,” which is basically one week of torture. You should get one big plot, one tale, one big story that you enjoy each evening and have the feeling that you want to know how it’s going to turn out in the next piece.What is your approach to the cycle?It’s long and there’s an Everest-like quality to it, but, in fact, it’s not so many characters for these 15 hours of music. It’s 30 or 40 people. It reminds me very much of the typical stories of today — TV series, big novels — where you can dive in and experience getting to know the characters in a way that is not only one-dimensional.We follow Wotan, we follow Brünnhilde, we follow Siegfried, and never get just one impression that one is a hero and the other is purely evil. Instead, we get to know the scratching, the deep dive into unconscious motivations. The “Ring” is mainly about one big family. We take this tale through different generations, through children and grandchildren, and this long stretch of history within the people and this family.There are guests — wanted and unwanted — who interfere in this family story. The basic conflicts are Greek conflicts. Motivations of anger, of hatred, of love, the will to power. This stays within this family, and that informs my, you could say, Nietzschean approach. What is the thing that motivates every person in the piece? It’s knowing the end: that they will die, that it will end, that time ends. All of them are trying to find a solution for this.This summer’s production will have many singers switch roles between productions instead of, for example, casting one single Wotan and Brünnhilde throughout the entire cycle. Is this related to that generational approach, or is it a more prosaic choice?Like most things in a theater, there’s the basic mundane thing, which is that we have not so many Wagner singers, and they are reducing in number every year. There’s maybe five people in the world who can sing Wotan. Bayreuth gives those singers a chance for singers to evolve within the pieces. Over time, someone can sing Fasolt and go on and sing Wotan afterward, for example.For the casting, I was of course very involved with Katharina Wagner. In many cases, it’s interesting to show how the role, the character changes between pieces. Irene Theorin, for example, sings Brünnhilde in “Walküre” and “Götterdämmerung,” and in between, in “Siegfried,” it’s Daniela Köhler. To make this big transition, it was great to see — at the end of Walküre, Irene Theorin is trapped on the cliffs by Wotan behind the magic fire, but this person is changing.When you talk about approaching the work as a TV series or film, is this something that at least partly comes from the filmic quality of Wagner’s music?Most modern medieval movies and TV series are unthinkable without that Wagnerian aspect. Even in “Game of Thrones,” as soon as it’s medieval, it has to sound like Wagner. What you describe as filmic is for me more about Wagner being a very practical man of theater. He knew about filmic effects long before movies existed. He built the Festspielhaus here at Bayreuth precisely for this work. It’s democratic. You can see the same stage from every seat. The invisible orchestra. He wanted to have this approach — you could call if filmic — from a visual perspective as well.From the structural side, it’s even more interesting, because of the leitmotifs. He figured out how to construct this piece as a collage. I’ll take this idea from the Eddas, I’ll take this from the “Nibelungenlied,” I’ll invent something there. It’s not a myth; it’s a myth of other myths. And to make it not just a car crash but something which fits together well, also musically, over a 30-year creation time with a long break from composing, there’s this narrative structure in which the orchestra, through its use of the different musical motives, is an all-knowing storyteller. It’s not a logical thing about knowing all the motives before you enter but something that comes from an unconscious layer of enormous emotionality, which makes it approachable for everybody.That all-knowing storyteller quality might clash with the immediacy of storytelling in a TV series, no? So much of the piece isn’t action but people describing things that have happened or will happen.Of course it has to be psychologically gripping. I have to know why this person is telling us the thing that happened half an hour ago. Wagner didn’t think we were so stupid we would forget. In most cases, the interest is that it’s not a monologue where someone stands onstage and sings into a mirror, but someone who is communicating to someone else. Psychologically speaking, this act of speaking is the first step in therapy. In many of these monologues, the characters give their own approach to the thing that has happened, and their position changes within the monologue.The second thing is that it has to do with the relationship of the characters to the myth. Everyone in the piece knows about the ring, has their imagination of what it does. But knowledge of different things in the piece moves like a telescope; it shifts position and zooms out and in. We explore this three-dimensional sphere of the myth and the story. It grips me that these moments, when they tell us things that have happened, are creating the past itself.You’re directing this work in the house that was built for it. What is that like?You arrive, and you are baffled. You sit down in the audience for the beginning of “Rheingold,” and the sound comes out of nowhere. This experience is singular. To come to this place is also to come to the history of this place. We know that there were very dark hours in the history of the festival. They have done a good job in the last years of reflecting on these: to hire Jewish directors like Barrie Kosky, to process the past and try to create something new.It’s enormous, in this place, how the common knowledge of Wagner still exists, in every orchestral musician, in every stage technician. They remember that this is where Wolfgang Wagner wanted the curtain to rise or fall. And the audience, which is the most advanced Wagner audience in the world — they know everything about the reception history of this repertoire. So it’s not my job to tell them the story that Wagner has written, but instead it forces us to have a new vision and approach every time.In the last few years, I realized that the intrinsic feature at Bayreuth — where the works cycle and nothing lasts forever — means I don’t have to make the “Ring” production for all time. I am making something for this moment, not something that lasts. A stone in the mosaic of the big picture of the history of Wagner. This makes me humble, feel down to earth, reminds me of what small insignificant pieces of stardust we all are in the end. More

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      Review: Salzburg Festival Opens With Operatic Apocalypses

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      Romeo Castellucci directs, and Teodor Currentzis conducts, an unusual double bill of a Bartok classic and an Orff rarity at the Salzburg Festival.SALZBURG, Austria — The public has spoken.Any fears the Salzburg Festival had over whether the conductor Teodor Currentzis’ presence there would attract boos or disruptive protests were dispelled on Tuesday. Since the invasion of Ukraine began, he has attracted controversy over his and his ensemble MusicAeterna’s Russian state support, as well as their silence on the war and ties to associates of that country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. But at the opening of a new double bill led by Currentzis and featuring members of the MusicAeterna choir, the audience responded only with applause.Whether the evening — a pretentious, overlong yet occasionally illuminating marriage of Bela Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and the Carl Orff rarity “De Temporum Fine Comoedia,” directed by Romeo Castellucci at the expansive Felsenreitschule — could have been divisive on artistic grounds is one thing. Politically, however, it was extremely complicated, worthy of neither cheers nor boos but rather more of a “hmm.”The festival itself was under scrutiny for standing by Currentzis. Unlike, say, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which has taken a hard line on Russian artists with links to Putin, such as Valery Gergiev and Anna Netrebko, Salzburg has kept a close eye on the European Union’s sanctions list and said in a statement, “We see no foundation for artistic or economic collaboration with institutions or individuals who identify with this war, its instigators or their goals.”Do Currentzis and MusicAeterna fall into that category? Based in St. Petersburg, they are primarily sponsored by VTB Bank, a Russian state institution that was sanctioned this year, and some prominent Russian officials sit on the board of the ensemble’s foundation. As a collective, it doesn’t have any public stance on the war, though organizations and critics have mostly demanded one from the safety of their Western perches.At the very least, Currentzis seems to have fallen into careerist behavior. Since 2004, he has been building MusicAeterna toward the international standing it enjoys, and as the ensemble went freelance in recent years, it found Russian funding that has since been revealed as untenable. To survive in the West without scandal, it needs a new home, and new sponsors. And the longer this war goes on, the more silence will become as impossible as the group’s current position.Teodor Currentzis leading a rehearsal with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the pit ensemble for the production.Alexandra MuravyevaIn an interview on Monday, Markus Hinterhäuser, the Salzburg Festival’s artistic director, said that if people are looking for a statement from Currentzis, “the signs are there.” His work has subtly condemned Russian state beliefs, as well as the country’s troubled 20th-century history; and in 2017 he was outspoken about the arrest of the director Kirill Serebrennikov, which was widely seen as punishment for his theater that was critical of life under Putin.The examples could go on in either direction. But outwardly, Currentzis remains a mystery. If his previous projects have offered signs of his beliefs, there were few if any political revelations in the double bill on Tuesday. All that was left to judge was the art-making itself.And that was something of a sequel to Currentzis’ collaboration with Castellucci last year: a staging of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” here that stretched the score an hour beyond its typical running time, with recitative delivered at the speed of snow melting in the nearby Alps. I remember spending four hours inside the Grosses Festspielhaus trying to understand why an interpretation like this was necessary; I still don’t have an answer.Both men are strong-willed, provocative auteurs. Separately, they have been capable of awe-inspiring work; together, they seem to mutually enable an exasperating self-indulgence. Their Bartok and Orff, then, made for an uneven night, as double bills can be — a “Bluebeard” of misguided tempos and dynamics but committed performances and a “Comoedia,” for all the work’s flaws, more persuasively executed than on Herbert von Karajan’s original recording, in a staging characteristically monumental yet somewhat pompous.Once again, the evening was longer than it needed to be. Each score contains about an hour of music; with an intermission, the double bill ran a little over three and a half hours, in part because of tempo choices, but mostly because the scenes in the Orff were padded with new, atmospheric transitional passages written by Currentzis. This prolonged a piece that few find enjoyable to begin with, and that Castellucci didn’t have much to say about.Members of the MusicAeterna choir and the Bachchor Salzburg in Carl Orff’s “De Temporum Fine Comoedia.”Monika RittershausHis biggest interpretive statement was in bridging the two works, which wouldn’t appear to share much beyond different scales of apocalyptic events. In “Bluebeard,” it’s intimate — the slow-burning drama of a wife unveiling her new husband’s pained world, to the destruction of them both. And in the “Comeodia,” which premiered at Salzburg in 1973, it’s cosmic, with an impersonal, aggressively Christian vision for the end of time.Castellucci has the spoken prologue of “Bluebeard,” a cameo role called the Bard, given with a declamatory grandeur that later matches the musicalized speech of the “Comoedia.” (The Bard is also played by Christian Reiner, who returns at the end of the Orff as Lucifer.) And he threads the action of the first opera with the second: Bluebeard and his wife Judith, Castellucci suggests, are here an established couple in grief over the loss of their child, and in a dreamy, dark void of just water and fire. Peace comes for them at the end of the “Comoedia,” where they return in an act of redemption that renders Judith as a sort of Eve bringing about universal salvation.Elsewhere, visual motifs — masks, costumes and even stains — recur throughout both works, which are otherwise aesthetically distinct. The trouble is that these Easter eggs, along with the more explicit gestures, and stylized movement choreographed by Cindy Van Acker, exist more to justify the double bill than elevate the meaning, and, crucially, the emotional impact of either work. Both the Bartok and the Orff come out feeling less operatic for it.Ausrine Stundyte brought a compelling, fierce humanity to her Judith.Monika RittershausNot that emotion was absent from the performance. As Judith, the soprano Ausrine Stundyte made a bizarre treatment of the character — constantly on the verge of self-immolation — at least compelling, with a fierce humanity largely absent in the staging. (Her counterpart, the bass Mika Kares, was a resonant but wooden Bluebeard, a passive presence where he should have outdone her unraveling.) The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra played with organic unpredictability yet skilled precision, and brought animalistic intensity to the Orff.Where they took a wrong step, they were following Currentzis’ baton, which was less reliable than when he and the orchestra performed a moving, sweeping account of Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” Symphony during the festival’s Ouverture Spirituelle last week. His reading of “Bluebeard,” an opera of accumulative power, was one of luxuriant tempos and high emotional temperature with nowhere to go but occasional crests that drowned out the singers, despite the hair-raising power of Stundyte’s voice.Currentzis’ take on the Orff, though — realized by the orchestra with a game combination of the MusicAeterna choir, the Bachchor Salzburg and the Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor — was a triumph that reveled in the primitive, ritualistic nature of the work and rose to rattling clashes that you could feel deep within your ears.In an evening of looking for signs in Currentzis’ work, it was difficult to miss that his podium sat empty during the final, prerecorded moments of the “Comoedia” score. So he was nowhere to be seen as a single sentence spread over supertitle screens above the stage: Pater, peccavi. Father, I have sinned.Bluebeard’s Castle and De Temporum Fine ComoediaThrough Aug. 20 at the Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria; salzburgerfestspiele.at. More

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      Phyo Zeya Thaw, Burmese Pro-democracy Rapper, 41, Is Executed

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      The hip-hop star became a democracy activist in military-ruled Myanmar, and then a lawmaker. After the latest military coup, he joined the resistance, and was hanged for it.U Phyo Zeya Thaw, a Burmese hip-hop pioneer whose democracy-affirming lyrics led to a career in Parliament and, after Myanmar’s military coup last year, as a resistance leader, was executed on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar, by the country’s military junta. He was 41.His execution, and those of three other political prisoners, were announced in the junta-controlled news media on Monday. His mother, Daw Khin Win May, confirmed his death.The four men were convicted of terrorism charges in trials widely denounced as a sham. The four executions, including that of the veteran democracy activist U Kyaw Min Yu, popularly known as Ko Jimmy, were the first to be carried out in decades in Myanmar.Since the junta seized power last year from a civilian government, it has killed more than 2,100 civilians and arrested 14,800, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a monitoring group. Large swaths of the country are in open rebellion, with civilian militias defending against military incursions and launching occasional raids on army bases.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw, already well known as a democracy activist, led an underground resistance cell in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital. Many such civilian militias, loosely grouped together as the People’s Defense Force, are led by ousted legislators, pro-democracy activists and even the occasional doctor or lawyer.After Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw was arrested on terrorism charges last November, the authorities released a photo of him surrounded by weapons that they said he had been planning to use to kill members of the military forces.His defenders disputed the authenticity of the photo. Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw’s face in the photo was visibly bruised and puffy.“I laughed when I saw the weapons in the picture,” said Ma Thazin Nyunt Aung, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw’s fiancée, who said she had been with him when he was arrested. “The military council is an organization that is never trusted because it never tells the truth.”Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw, who was commonly known as Zayar Thaw (pronounced zay-yahr thaw), was adept at career makeovers.Toward the end of the military’s first round of iron-fisted rule, in the early 2000s, he fronted one of Myanmar’s first hip-hop groups and co-founded Generation Wave, a collective of rappers, activists and other young people who used music as a medium of dissent.“With hip-hop, we can express ourselves without fear,” Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw said in a 2011 interview, shortly after he was released from his first stint in prison. “Music can make us brave.”As the ruling generals began to open up the country and allow members of the long oppressed National League for Democracy to run for Parliament in a 2012 by-election, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw reinvented himself as a politician, trading his baggy hip-hop outfits for the demure shirt and sarong of the political class. His sideways baseball cap gave way to a neat hairdo worthy of a business executive.He won a seat in Parliament for the N.L.D., the party of the democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.His was a rare young face in a political party whose stalwarts had grown old battling the military generals who had ruled Myanmar for nearly five decades, a period of international isolation and destruction.“I was just an activist who rebelled against injustice,” Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw said shortly after his electoral victory. “When I was in prison, I thought seriously about what I wanted. I wanted to end injustice, so I joined the N.L.D.”He grew close to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, traveling overseas with her and soothing her often cranky dog.“He is almost like a son to her,” U Win Htein, a now-imprisoned N.L.D. elder, said of Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw in 2019. “He is very obedient. He believes in her, and she believes in him.”Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who rose to de facto leader of Myanmar after elections in 2015 and 2020, is also imprisoned and has been convicted of crimes that Western governments and human rights groups say are trumped up.Phyo Zeya Thaw was born on March 26, 1981, in Yangon. His father was a rector of a dental school, and his mother was a dentist. In ninth grade, he told his parents that he wanted to become an artist. They encouraged him to pursue more traditional studies.A year later, he informed his mother, Ms. Khin Win May, that he wanted to become a D.J.“I asked him to explain what a D.J. is,” she said. He obliged.She survives him, along with his father, U Mya Thaw; his sister, Daw Phyu Pa Pa Thaw; and his fiancée, Ms. Thazin Nyunt Aung.Myanmar was then one of the most closed countries on earth, moldering under the generals’ inept rule. The military secret police terrorized the population. Listening to foreign radio broadcasts or holding foreign currency could result in long prison sentences.While completing his university studies in English, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw opened a recording studio and began to form Myanmar’s first major hip-hop band. The band was called Acid, and his music name was Nitric Acid.In 2007, amid rising fuel prices and yet another economic crisis, Buddhist monks led mass protests in Yangon and other cities, overturning their alms bowls to signal disenchantment with the military junta. Young protesters syncopated their rebellion with local hip-hop.As it had with previous mass demonstrations, the military ultimately responded with gunfire. Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw then co-founded Generation Wave, a secret band of anti-government hip-hoppers and youth activists.He was arrested in 2008 and convicted of violating a law-and-order statute and of illegally possessing the equivalent of about $20 in foreign currency.After his release from prison in 2011, he still performed at occasional gigs, but he began to focus on promoting the National League for Democracy.With the military agreeing to power-sharing with a civilian authority, he was elected to Parliament in 2012 and re-elected in 2015, this time to represent a district in Naypyidaw, the capital built by the generals early this century to replace Yangon. The military-linked party was shocked by its defeat on home turf.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw busied himself as an assistant to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, helping to prepare briefing papers on legislation and peace talks with ethnic minority rebels. He remained loyal, even as she earned international condemnation for her support of the military when it unleashed a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims.During parliamentary season in Naypyidaw, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw lived in an austere concrete dormitory for legislators, his room outfitted with little more than a hard bed with a mosquito net and a table piled high with legislative paperwork. There was little evidence of his life as one of Myanmar’s most renowned hip-hop artists.“He liked singing more than politics,” said Ms. Thazin Nyunt Aung, his fiancée. “But he did his duty to the end.”Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw declined to run for re-election in 2020, hoping to return to rap. The National League for Democracy won an even bigger margin of victory that year. The military-aligned party was mortified.The putsch came less than three months later, and the country’s top leaders were quickly rounded up and imprisoned.When mass protests against the new junta spilled onto the streets, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw joined the rallies. But with soldiers killing unarmed protesters with single shots to the head, even targeting small children, he and others went underground.His activities in the resistance are not publicly known. He was arrested in November when 300 soldiers descended on the Yangon housing project where he was in hiding.The military accused the four men executed on Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 50 civilians, as well as soldiers, but it has not publicly presented any evidence of that.In January, the junta’s court sentenced Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw and the three other activists to death.“These death sentences, handed down by an illegitimate court of an illegitimate junta, are a vile attempt at instilling fear among the people of Myanmar,” the United Nations said in a statement.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw was hanged before dawn on Saturday, along with the three other democracy activists.“I will always be proud of my son because he gave his life for the country,” Ms. Khin Win May said. “He is the martyr who tried to bring democracy to Myanmar.” More

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      Lizzo’s Complicated, Joyful Pop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherLizzo’s second major-label studio album, “Special,” another collection of up-tempo disco-pop empowerment anthems, just arrived at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart. Its single “About Damn Time” also climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100, securing her place as one of pop’s established stars.But “Special” is also a reminder that she is one of pop’s most idiosyncratic performers, too. Lizzo’s throwback-minded anthems are full of internet-primed catchphrases, and she remains a peppy outlier in a pop music landscape dominated by performers who largely traffic in melancholy, not joy.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lizzo’s career, her relationship with empowerment culture and optimism in pop music. Also, a segment celebrating the life of the classical music scholar Richard Taruskin, who recently passed away.Guests:Justin Charity, senior staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the Sound Only podcastLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and othersWilliam Robin, an associate professor of musicology at University of Maryland, College ParkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      What Is Beyoncé’s Definitive Album?

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      With the superstar’s seventh solo studio album, “Renaissance,” due Friday, our critics and reporters debate which work from her past reveals the most about her artistic vision.Much is made of pop star “eras” these days, but the term is deployed as a tool of marketing, not meaning. Rare is the artist who can sustain multiple visions and repeatedly regenerate. But different cultural and social moments have demanded different Beyoncés, and she has consistently delivered. At times she has been a singles powerhouse, dominating the radio and pop charts. At others, she has announced herself as a seismic cultural force, playing on a field much bigger than music. On Friday she will release “Renaissance,” her seventh solo studio album. Below, eight New York Times critics and reporters choose what they believe to be her definitive album so far, the one that reveals the most truth about the scope and shape of her career.‘B’Day’ (2006)Beyoncé’s second solo album opens with “Déjà Vu,” and “bass” is the first thing we hear her say. So up rumbles the most bootylicious bottom. The second is “hi-hat.” And a slapping sizzle ensues. But I don’t know who’s at the kit, ’cause that ain’t what no regular cymbals sound like when you slap ’em. These ones here? They make a sick drag. They double-dutchin’.That’s the time signature for at least the first half of this album: two rope turners and a jumper. “B’Day” arrived in 2006 just before Labor Day. And the whole thing — minus two of the last three ballads — is wet with the nectar of a wrenched-open fire hydrant.“Déjà Vu” spreads into “Get Me Bodied,” which hops to “Suga Mama” then “Upgrade U” and “Ring the Alarm,” which leads to “Kitty Kat,” “Freakum Dress” and “Green Light.” Different rooms on Single Ladies Night at the biggest club in Stankonia. It slinks and struts. This album’s the one that culminates with the ninth track (of an efficient 12): That would be “Irreplaceable,” the “Wanted Dead or Alive” of “better call Tyrone” balladry.“B’Day” doesn’t have the split-persona nerve of “Sasha Fierce” or that damn-the-charts idiosyncrasy of “4,” the first of her masterwork trio. It’s a parade of bangers about lust and its discontents, about how to take a nightspot over with Naomi Campbell’s walk. Her singing hadn’t yet gone through the puberty of playing Etta James. And yes, Jay-Z’s two appearances still sound like a formula replicated rather than a partnership forged. And do I know why she’s been photographed for the cover to evoke Brigitte Bardot if Bardot missed the last train out of Stepford? I really don’t.What’s essential about it, though, is its author’s determination to have it be more than some pop singer’s next album. Beyoncé angles for the synths and drum machines to frolic with all the horns, Latin percussion and credited use of a ney. She all but resorts to violence and makes funnies (“pat-pat-pat your weave, ladies”). I remember hearing these songs for the first time and feeling as slinky and swaggering as this music. I also remember laughing. With respect. I mean, she went and called the thing “B’Day,” like a star who knows she was born. WESLEY MORRIS‘I Am … Sasha Fierce’ (2008)Before Beyoncé’s third solo LP, she was a girl-group standout. She was a master of the cadences where early 2000s R&B met hip-hop. She was a sturdy practitioner of the ballad, the soulful throwback, the dancey throwdown. But on “I Am … Sasha Fierce,” she became something more significant: a character.Sasha Fierce was the name of an alter ego Beyoncé created over the years “whenever I have to perform,” she told Oprah Winfrey in 2008. It was her stage persona; the fearless, brash pop queen in the leotard, not the demure mortal on the host’s couch, gamely discussing her work — something Beyoncé would stop doing once fierceness transformed from an onstage mood into her default public presentation. Beyoncé seizing control of how her music is released, commandeering a girl army in a dusty apocalyptic wasteland, leading a squadron of dancers on the Super Bowl halftime field, transforming a music festival into a personal showcase, redefining her relationship with her husband on a joint album, controlling her image on Instagram — all of that springs from the absorption of Sasha Fierce into Beyoncé.The music on “I Am … Sasha Fierce” was divided in half: eight ballads where Beyoncé unfurled elegant, virtuosic vocals, and eight uptempos delivered with snarls and grit. Sasha Fierce’s arrival was cemented on “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” where she became a defiant spokeswoman for the spurned. Gender dynamics dominated the album’s most interesting tracks, including “If I Were a Boy,” where Beyoncé imagined the freedom she’d enjoy if she’d been entitled to the casual power of manhood, and “Diva,” where she redefined a feminine archetype as a masculine, streetwise pose.But the album’s true pivot point may have been “Video Phone,” an almost atonal, grindy track Beyoncé rereleased as a remix with Lady Gaga, then pop’s most adventurous star; Beyoncé repaid the favor with an appearance on “Telephone” that let her be astonishingly, gloriously weird. Over the past few years, they’ve nearly swapped careers: Gaga has become the traditionalist, and Beyoncé the explorer. CARYN GANZ‘4’ (2011)Even Beyoncé had to pull back and re-center before exploding outward again. In between the complementary bombast of “I Am … Sasha Fierce” and “Beyoncé,” following a split with her manager-father and something of a creative hiatus, came the relatively subdued “4,” the first album released via the singer’s all-purpose entertainment company, Parkwood.That Beyoncé chose, in this moment of renewal and self-determination, to wrap herself in the warmth of traditional soul and R&B was telling, and it paid off in the strength of her vocal performances, which rank among her best even on the album’s inconsistent array of ballads. Opening the original track list with “1+1,” possibly her barest emotional showing, seemed at the time like a play for seriousness, and unlike most pop stars staring down their perceived frivolity, it actually worked: Even as “4” remains the least commercially successful of Beyoncé’s solo albums, it feels like the pivot moment in which she came to be perceived as an auteurist, capital-A album artist, timeless and often untouchable. Stripping down well can do that.Yet “4” also contains some of the most enduringly crowd-pleasing Beyoncé singles (“Love on Top,” “Countdown,” “Party”), plus her best bonus track (“Schoolin’ Life”), with the production and writing duo The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, consistent collaborators throughout the singer’s various eras, operating at the height of their powers. (Even the album’s lead single, “Run the World (Girls),” which doesn’t quite fit and was originally tacked onto the end of the track list, provides the best peek at the self-titled moment to come.) Pure Beyoncé, tight at just 12 official tracks but with plenty of all of the things she does best, “4” is an amuse bouche and a palate cleanser that ends up being better than most meals. JOE COSCARELLI‘Beyoncé’ (2013)When a musician’s fifth album is self-titled, it can be a sign of empty gimmickry or a lack of ideas. But “Beyoncé” marked her full transformation into the star we have known ever since: an artist whose true medium is fame, who cannot be limited to any format, who bends the world to her will.At midnight on Dec. 13, 2013, Beyoncé posted “Surprise!” on Instagram, and the album’s 14 songs and 17 videos appeared for sale on iTunes. The stealth release — back then, partly a defensive strategy against leaks — is what mostly captured public imagination. But in retrospect, “Beyoncé” comes across as a broader manifesto about Beyoncé as a performer and a human being. It’s all about containing multitudes, and looking fabulous doing so. Songs like “Flawless” and “Pretty Hurts” (“We shine the light on whatever’s worst”) position her as a paradox, both perfect and imperfect, a deity who is kinda-sorta relatable.Yet “Beyoncé” also marked the point at which mere music seemed insufficient for her. Beyoncé’s true project was on a bigger canvas, one centered on her image and her potency as a 21st-century media celebrity. The music videos that were part of the original “visual album” — now best viewed as a YouTube playlist — are essential to the story she tells. That narrative touches on the meaning of feminism (with a place for lap dancing), monogamy and Black identity; the video for “Superpower” even includes a Black Lives Matter-style protest scene with Beyoncé in camouflage and fishnets.Mostly, though, the story adds up to Beyoncé’s majesty, with music just one jewel in the crown. BEN SISARIO‘Lemonade’ (2016)On “Lemonade,” Beyoncé merged a message of solidarity with a cry from the heart. The second of Beyoncé’s visual albums, “Lemonade” mustered lavish musical and filmic resources to expand an individual story — the fury of a betrayed wife — toward a recognition of how many kinds of injustice, personal and historical, that women have endured, particularly Black women.The songs easily stood up on their own, slipping sonic experimentation and an eerie sense of space into sturdy pop structures. Beyoncé both collaborated widely and drew samples from across genres and eras: Kendrick Lamar, the Weeknd, James Blake, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Led Zeppelin, Animal Collective. She hurled raspy imprecations in “Hurt Yourself” and let her voice break with tearful desperation and then find its own resolve in the hymnlike “Sandcastles.” She claimed Texas country with “Daddy Lessons,” electronica with “Sorry” and marching-band unity in “Freedom.”The album’s lyrics continued Beyoncé’s career-long stance of self-determination, but they also admitted to pain and bewilderment. Heard as a whole, “Lemonade” created a narrative of one couple’s fracture, separation and, amazingly, reconciliation, with a postscript — “Formation” — that posited Beyoncé’s success as the spearhead of a movement.Then the visual album multiplied the songs’ implications. Beyoncé recited poems by Warshan Shire that saw women’s pain as not only individual but archetypal. She showed images of women of all ages and multiple eras — in plantation dresses, African-style face paint, haute couture and streetwear — and of real parents mourning children shot by police. Onscreen, Beyoncé was singing not only for herself, but for all of them. JON PARELESI know exactly where I was when “Lemonade” dropped: at home mourning Prince’s death by listening to the obscure and familiar that is his oeuvre. Then Beyoncé’s most personal album arrived as an offering to her audience and her ancestors, an otherworldly gift that crossed histories, geographies and genres to help us all heal.She opened on a stage, then in a field while wearing a hoodie. With the haunting ballad “Pray You Catch Me” as its score, she was a stand-in for Trayvon Martin, tragically killed in Florida. And as her album’s tale unfolded, this insistence on not forgetting was underscored by the appearance of his mother, Sybrina Fulton; Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr; and Michael Brown’s mother, Lezley McSpadden-Head; each holding photographs of their gone-to-soon sons. These were the album’s stakes — “Lemonade” was not about a woman scorned (though that might be there), but a work made in the struggle and for a people whose lives seem not to matter. So, yes, it is fair to say this was her movement album, but it is also her major album.Beyoncé had been experimenting with the video form for a minute; her 2013 self-titled album was a mix of styles, personas and declarations. But on “Lemonade,” she was at her most liberated — beyond the eye of her father or the gaze of her husband — and in the company of other Black women and girls with whom she found solace and salvation. And if that weren’t enough, Beyoncé was also settling scores and swinging baseball bats.To watch it for over an hour was to embark on an epic journey; to hear it was to witness her take on the American songbook. Her swift move from reggae (“Hold Up”) to rock (“Don’t Hurt Yourself”), from country (“Daddy Lessons”) to hip-hop (“Formation”), with so much soul and R&B in between (“Freedom,” anyone?) was not just a testament to her skill, but also her testifying about the innovative power of Black music and how it repeatedly makes American pop music, well, so popular. During that weekend in April 2016, Beyoncé not only gave us her genius, she moved a nation. SALAMISHAH TILLET‘Homecoming: The Live Album’ (2019)It’s not terribly controversial to call Beyoncé’s brilliant 2018 Coachella performance — excuse me, Beychella — one of the undisputed highlights in her career. So why does the 2019 live album “Homecoming” still feel strangely underrated? Even without the dazzling visuals, considered solely as a sonic document, the immaculately recorded “Homecoming” deserves to be mentioned alongside classics of the genre like the Who’s “Live at Leeds,” Sam Cooke’s “Live at the Harlem Square Club” and Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense.”Across nearly two hours, “Homecoming” becomes something more than a souvenir of the impressively calisthenic Beyoncé concert experience. It also works remarkably well as an unbroken piece of music, an expertly arranged 40-song medley that finds common moods and grooves throughout Beyoncé’s deep catalog — thanks in large part to the unifying presence of a drum line and marching band, recalling those of historically Black colleges and universities — and makes the case for her discography not as a disparate collection of eras and aesthetics but a vast continuum containing some of the century’s most forward-thinking pop music.A militantly commanding rendition of “Sorry” seamlessly shape-shifts into a slinky “Me, Myself and I”; “Don’t Hurt Yourself” segues into a transcendent version of its spiritual predecessor “I Care” (just in case Beyoncé needed to remind anyone that she’d been making scorched-earth breakup songs long before “Lemonade”); even her verse on the remix of J Balvin’s 2017 “Mi Gente” smash-cuts to her early, Sean Paul-featuring solo hit “Baby Boy,” subtly connecting the dots between the different decades of pop over which she’s reigned. By the time Beyoncé (and a crowd of about 100,000 screaming people) reaches the album’s pinnacle — an ecstatic mash-up of “Get Me Bodied” and “Single Ladies” — it’s hard to feel anything but sweat-drenched awe at the scope of what she’s just achieved. LINDSAY ZOLADZDestiny’s Child, ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ (1999)Slight cheat here, but hear me out. Before “The Writing’s on the Wall,” released in 1999, Destiny’s Child was a promising R&B girl group with strong gospel roots. Its relatively straightforward 1998 debut album was good, sometimes very good. But the shift on “The Writing’s on the Wall” is palpable. It’s a wildly playful album, full of risky production and arrangements — skittering aquatic beats, odd filigrees, punchy power harmonies. To evolve their sound, Beyoncé (and her groupmates) opted to work with pop and soul progressives including Missy Elliott, Kevin (She’kspere) Briggs, Kandi Burruss and Rodney (Darkchild) Jerkins, all of whom were at the height of their powers. “Bills, Bills, Bills” is dizzyingly complex, “Jumpin’, Jumpin’” is futuristically forceful and Beyoncé’s singing at the end of “Bug a Boo” is a soaring interjection of traditional glory into the modish present.These collaborators used Destiny’s Child as a template for forward-thinking pop grounded in experimental soul music, and Beyoncé was paying close attention. Throughout her solo career, she’s excelled at finding ways of folding songwriting and production avantists into her vision, demonstrating a preternatural understanding of how unexpected gestures can deepen an artist’s vision, not distract from it. The long tail of that lesson stretches through her solo discography: “Upgrade U,” “Run the World (Girls),” “Partition,” “Get Me Bodied” and many, many more. JON CARAMANICA More