Classical Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Amid Global Turmoil, Salzburg Festival Plans a Summer of Reflection

      by

      “Our present reality seems to be completely out of joint with universal bonds and perspectives,” the festival’s artistic director said.With the pandemic still lingering and the war in Ukraine raging on, the Salzburg Festival in Austria announced plans on Friday for a summer season that would seek to offer space for reflection.The festival, classical music’s most storied annual event, will stage two operas based on works by William Shakespeare: “Macbeth” and “Falstaff,” both by Verdi. There are also plans for more offbeat repertoire, including Bohuslav Martinu’s “The Greek Passion,” which tells the story of a Greek village staging a Passion play, in a production led by the conductor Maxime Pascal.“Our present reality seems to be completely out of joint with universal bonds and perspectives,” Markus Hinterhäuser, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview, quoting from “Hamlet.” “Therefore, we have constructed a festival giving artists the opportunity to address these issues directly and indirectly.”The festival will feature more than 200 events — a mix of operas, spoken drama, orchestra concerts and recitals — over six weeks beginning July 20.The festival’s house band, the Vienna Philharmonic, will perform several concerts, including “Ein Deutsches Requiem” (“A German Requiem”), an hourlong choral work by Brahms, under the conductor Christian Thielemann. Among other prominent orchestras making appearances are the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli will star in Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice”; the conductor John Eliot Gardiner will lead a concert performance of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens,” featuring his ensemble, the Monteverdi Choir; and the soprano Renée Fleming and the pianist Evgeny Kissin team up for a recital of works by Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Duparc.Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and a Salzburg regular, will take the baton for “Macbeth,” which opens in July, in a production by Krzysztof Warlikowski. In August, Welser-Möst will lead the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert featuring works by Ligeti and Richard Strauss.The festival will again prominently feature the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has faced scrutiny since the start of the war in Ukraine because of his ties to a state-owned bank in Russia. He will take the baton for a concert presentation of Henry Purcell’s opera “The Indian Queen” with his new ensemble, Utopia. Currentzis will also lead Utopia in performances of Mozart’s Mass in C minor.Currentzis announced the formation of Utopia, which is backed by European benefactors, in August, after he faced a wave of criticism for his longtime association with the Russian ensemble MusicAeterna, which is sponsored by VTB Bank, a state-owned institution that has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries. (Currentzis had been trying for several years to secure funding for Utopia.)While the pandemic has wreaked havoc across the performing arts, the Salzburg Festival, drawing on government subsidies and sponsorship deals, has managed to minimize the disruption.The festival never canceled a season during the pandemic. In 2020, it staged a robust program for limited audiences, before returning to relative normalcy in 2021.Even as turnout for many classical events around the world has been tepid since the return of live performance, the Salzburg Festival continues to attract an enthusiastic audience. Attendance was 96 percent last summer, the festival said. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      An Opera Company’s Precarious Future Has Some Worried About a Ripple Effect

      by

      For a month now, politicians, newspapers and classical music stars have been arguing over the future of English National Opera. A funding cut could have repercussions far beyond Britain.LONDON — When Leigh Melrose, a rising British opera star, looked at his calendar recently, much of the next three years were blocked out for one company: English National Opera. He was signed up to sing multiple roles there, starting with the lustful dwarf Alberich in the company’s new “Ring” cycle, a coproduction with the Metropolitan Opera that was meant to head to New York.Melrose said that he’d had his wig fitting for that role, and that rehearsals for “The Rheingold,” the first installment in Wagner’s four-part epic, were scheduled to begin Dec. 28.But now, he said, all those plans seemed uncertain. Last month, Arts Council England, a body that distributes government arts funding here, announced it was shutting off a grant to English National Opera worth 12.4 million pounds a year, or about $15 million. The Arts Council instead gave the company a one-off grant to help it develop “a new business model,” including a potential move to Manchester, 178 miles north of its current home at the London Coliseum.On the same day, the Arts Council also slashed funding to other major opera companies including the Royal Opera House, by 10 percent, and Glyndebourne Productions, by over 30 percent.Melrose said those cuts came as a “total shock,” adding that the long-term future of the “Ring” in both London and New York did not look good. If the E.N.O., as English National Opera is known, had to move away from London, “How can it keep on doing the rest?” Melrose asked. “How can it carry on doing anything?”For the past month, the fate of the E.N.O. has made headlines here. Musicians, critics and politicians have been arguing over whether the decision to cut the company’s funding is a sensible response to a declining interest in opera, or an act of cultural vandalism. Concerns have spread beyond Britain, with companies in Europe and the United States warning that the global opera ecosystem may suffer, too.Protesters outside the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, a government ministry, in London, on Nov. 22.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockDozens of senior opera figures — including Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, and Yuval Sharon, the artistic director of Detroit Opera — signed a recent letter to The Times of London, warning of a wider impact. “Everyone across the world has long looked to the United Kingdom as a center of artistic excellence,” the letter said. “We fear that this decision signals to the world that they — and we — must now look elsewhere.”Gelb said by phone that he had already pushed the Met’s run of the “Ring” cycle back a year, to the 2027/28 season, “for casting reasons.” But, he added, “if the E.N.O. doesn’t exist, we obviously can’t collaborate with it.”Christopher Koelsch, the chief executive of Los Angeles Opera, said that the E.N.O. had “historically been a crucible for creativity and experimentation,” noting that numerous stars including the conductor Edward Gardner, the composer Nico Muhly and the director Barrie Kosky had done early or important work at the company.Los Angeles Opera had been planning a new coproduction with the E.N.O. for its 2024/25 season, Koelsch said, though he declined to give further details and said he had not been in contact with the company since the funding cut was announced. “I think they’ve got other things to focus on,” he said.Newspaper coverage of opera in Britain is usually restricted to the arts pages, but the ferocity of debate here in recent weeks has propelled it to the front pages, and made it a major topic on social media.The company has been urging opera fans to pressure the government and the Arts Council to overturn the funding decision. More than 74,000 people have signed an online petition started by the singer Bryn Terfel.Performances at the London Coliseum have a relaxed atmosphere.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesGenerous policies that give free or discounted tickets to people under 35 have helped English National Opera draw in a younger crowd than the Royal Opera House.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIn the last season, each ticket the company sold was propped up with about $168 of state funding.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesJohn Berry, who was the E.N.O.’s artistic director from 2005 to 2015, said that the company had coped with funding cuts before: In 2014, it lost a third of its government grant after failing to meet box office targets. But it would be “impossible,” he said, for the company to deal with a total loss of subsidy unless “a guardian angel” appeared. That was unlikely, given Britain lacked a culture of philanthropy, he added.Britain’s major opera companies have a unique funding model that is halfway between American companies’ reliance on philanthropy and European houses’ dependence on state funding. The E.N.O.’s Arts Council grant currently represents over a third of its income. In contrast, the Los Angeles Opera gets about 5 percent of its income from public grants; the Met, about 0.5 percent.English National Opera traces its history back to 1931, when Lilian Baylis, a theater owner, established the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company to bring the art form to popular audiences. That founding aim is still central to the company, which stages all its work in English. Those performances, at the London Coliseum, have a more relaxed atmosphere than the ones at the nearby Royal Opera House, with audience members often wearing jeans rather than tuxedos, and generous policies to give free or discounted tickets to people under 35.It made its global reputation in the 1980s when it became the first British opera company to tour the United States and debuted a host of major productions including Nicholas Hytner’s much-praised 1985 staging of Handel’s “Xerxes.” Under Berry’s leadership, the company also started to act as a test bed for productions heading to the Met, with productions of Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha,” Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys” and Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” among others, premiering in London before being tweaked and sent to New York.A scene from “Porgy and Bess,” which premiered at English National Opera in 2018. The production came to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, in 2019.Tristram KentonDespite those triumphs, John Allison, the editor of Opera magazine, said in an interview that the company had recently been lurching from crisis to crisis with a string of high-profile resignations, financial difficulties and a declining number of works presented.Fewer performances meant that the Arts Council was subsidizing each E.N.O. ticket sold to a greater extent, and the company was often criticized for providing poor value for public money.A spokeswoman for the company said in an email that 90,000 people went to the company’s 63 performances last season, a figure that means each ticket was propped up with £137, or about $168, of state funding. The spokeswoman added that attendance was lower than usual that season, because of the pandemic, and that the opera reached many more people through other means, including television broadcasts seen by 2.2 million viewers.The Arts Council has defended its decision. Claire Mera-Nelson, the agency’s director of music, said in a blog post that she had seen “almost no growth in demand” for large-scale opera over the past five years, and had decided to prioritize funding for the art form “at different scales, reimagined in new ways” such as staging productions in parking lots, or pubs. Darren Henley, the Arts Council’s chief executive, wrote in The Guardian that “new ideas may seem heretic to traditionalists,” but that opera needed to reinvent itself to “remain exciting and meaningful to future generations.”On Thursday, Henley told British politicians he was having discussions with the E.N.O. over how it could keep showing work in London, as well as elsewhere in England, but added, “We can’t fund them in London.” (The Arts Council declined an interview request for this article.)While English National Opera’s future is hanging on officials’ whims, its audience seems hopeful that it will remain in London, somehow. At the Coliseum last week, before a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Yeomen of the Guard,” the atmosphere was relaxed and informal. Audience members in winter coats and bobble hats arrived on foot, rather than in sleek cars, and headed into the theater, where a merchandise stall was selling T-shirts with the slogans “Choose Opera” and “#loveENO.”Nick McConagh, 72, said he had been coming to the E.N.O. since the 1970s because its tickets were affordable. “It disproves the belief that opera is for the rich,” he said.Nearby, Hatti Simpson, 30, with pink hair and tattoos, said she fell in love with opera after taking advantage of the company’s cheap ticketing for young people. Cutting the E.N.O.’s funding and forcing it to move out of London would be “an absolute travesty,” she said.Two hours later, when the lights went down at the end of the show, the audience of nearly 2,000 applauded and cheered. After the cast had taken several bows, Neal Davies, a Welsh baritone, stepped forward and quietened the crowd for one final number. “I’m here to sing the praises of English National Op-er-a, who strive to make the medium both radical and pop-ul-ar,” he sang, to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,”If the company did not exist “your life would be a dull-er one,” he added. That prospect, Davies bellowed, “was almost as unthinkable as Gilbert without Sul-liv-an.”The audience cheered loudly. But it was unclear if anyone outside the building was listening. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Music Inspired by Notre-Dame Fire Wins a Top Prize

      by

      The British composer Julian Anderson won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for “Litanies,” a meditation for cello and orchestra.When a fire broke out at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, the British composer Julian Anderson was devastated.“Seeing a precise and beautiful and precious structure like that dissolving almost into the fire was very, very traumatizing,” he said in an interview.Anderson soon began channeling some of his despondence into “Litanies,” a 25-minute meditation for cello and orchestra. In the second movement, a series of chords emerges then melts away, echoing the disaster.On Monday, “Litanies” won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, one of contemporary music’s most prestigious prizes. The Grawemeyer, which is administered and was announced by the University of Louisville in Kentucky, comes with $100,000.In choosing Anderson, 55, the prize paid homage to a prolific composer known for his vivid imagination. His music draws on a variety of traditions — blending folk, for example, with more modern sounds. He has won commissions from top orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.The composer Marc Satterwhite, who directs the award, praised “Litanies” for its exploration of “virtually every sound a cello and orchestra can make together.” Anderson wrote the piece for the cellist Alban Gerhardt, who premiered the work in 2020 with the National Orchestra of France.“It spans a vast emotional range and is constantly inventive,” Satterwhite said in a statement, “but always toward an expressive end, never for the sake of novelty.”Anderson completed “Litanies” in 2019, several months after the fire and a year after the death of his close friend Oliver Knussen, the influential composer and conductor.Knussen’s death also influenced the work. “There is a sense of time running out,” Anderson said of a cadenza that gradually dissipates.The Grawemeyer has been awarded to some of the most important modern composers, including Gyorgy Ligeti, John Adams, Tan Dun, Thomas Adès, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Olga Neuwirth and Esa-Pekka Salonen, among others. Anderson will accept the prize in Louisville in the spring.Anderson, a professor of composition and composer-in-residence at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, said that he hoped the award would help bring attention to the importance of contemporary music and live performance.“There is nothing that replaces the live experience,” he said. “The joy, the pleasure, the revelation, even, of hearing wonderful music played actually in the room with you, not just on a computer screen with headphones.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Frederick Swann, Master of the Pipe Organ, Is Dead at 91

      by

      He drew the best from complex instruments at Riverside Church in Manhattan, at countless recitals and on the “Hour of Power” TV show.Frederick Swann, who in churches on the East Coast and the West played some of the world’s grandest organs, performing classical and religious works on the complex instruments with sensitivity and technical skill, died on Nov. 13 at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 91.The cause was cancer, said Karen McFarlane Holtkamp, who was Mr. Swann’s secretary in the 1960s and ’70s and then his concert manager.Mr. Swann was well known in New York as organist and music director at Riverside Church in Manhattan, where he began playing in the 1950s.In 1982 he reached a much wider audience when he moved to the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., home base of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, the television evangelist. There he appeared each week on “Hour of Power,” one of the most widely watched religious programs in the country, with a viewership in the millions.Before retiring in 2001, he also served for three years as organist at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, which has one of the largest pipe organs in the world. He also played thousands of recitals all over the United States and beyond.That was no easy feat. Large pipe organs require much more than just keyboard dexterity, and each one is different. The acoustics in each church or hall also vary.“Fred was a genius at controlling and maximizing the potential of very large pipe organs,” the organist John Walker, who succeeded Mr. Swann as music director at Riverside, said in a phone interview. “Every organ is absolutely unique. They are custom-made works of art, and Fred was so uniquely skilled at uncovering the timbres in each instrument that he was regularly invited to give inaugural recitals” — that is, the first public performance on a new or rebuilt organ.Mr. Swann at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., home base of the television evangelist Robert H. Schuller, where he moved in 1982.Al Schaben/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesHe filled that role in 2004 for the formidable organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a 6,134-pipe instrument designed by Frank Gehry. His program that night included pieces by Bach, Mendelssohn and Josef Rheinberger.“In all three,” Mark Swed wrote in a review in The Los Angeles Times, “the stirring deep pedal tones produced a sonic weight that seemed to anchor the entire building, while the upper diapason notes were clear and warm. The delicate echo effects in the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s sonata spoke magically, as if coming from the garden outdoors.”Ms. Holtkamp noted that, at Riverside and other stops, Mr. Swann was choral director as well as organist; it was not uncommon to see him playing and conducting at the same time. His energy, she said, was boundless. She recalled one Sunday on which he played and directed the morning service at Riverside, played and conducted a portion of the Messiah at the church in the late afternoon, then headed to Lincoln Center to accompany the “Messiah Sing-In.”“How Fred did so much so well in one day still amazes me,” she said by email. “I was totally worn out and I was only the page-turner!”Mr. Walker said that Mr. Swann held four centuries’ worth of music in his head and generally played from memory. He played recitals of all kinds, sometimes as the featured attraction and sometimes accompanying a vocalist, and released numerous albums. Mr. Walker said his playing for religious services was particularly poignant.“In playing a hymn,” he said, “he would be able to express the meaning of an individual word in such a poignant way that I would just immediately tear up.”Frederick Lewis Swann was born on July 30, 1931, in Lewisburg, W.Va. His father, Theodore, was a Methodist minister, and his mother, Mary (Davis) Swann, was a homemaker.Mr. Swann said he pounded on the family piano so much as a toddler that his parents locked it.“Of course,” he told The Diapason, a publication about organs, in 2014, “any 3-year-old can figure out how to get into a piano if he really wants to, and I did.”When he was 5 his parents arranged for him to take piano lessons from the organist at a nearby church. One day he arrived for his lesson and the teacher wasn’t waiting at the piano; he found her at the organ console, practicing.“I was hypnotized watching things popping in and out,” he said. “Lights were flashing, her hands and feet were flying, and I thought, ‘Oh my, that looks like fun.’”His legs weren’t yet long enough to reach the pedals, but eventually she began teaching him the organ — which was lucky, because when he was 10 the organist at his father’s church died, and there was no one else to step in but young Fred.“It must have been simply awful,” he admitted, “but that’s how I got started at age 10, and I’ve just kept on.”He earned a bachelor’s degree in music at Northwestern University in Illinois in 1952 and two years later received a master’s degree in sacred music at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He first played the Riverside organ while still a student. He also played at other Manhattan churches — sometimes, he said, he would provide music at four different churches on the same Sunday.After two years in the Army, he began playing full time at Riverside in 1958. Eventually he became music director. A tribute on the Riverside website noted his role in helping to shape the sound of the church’s organ, a famed instrument.Mr. Swann in 2006 at Riverside Church for a 75th anniversary celebration. He began playing there in the 1950s and served as organist and music director.Nan Melville for The New York Times“Although the organ was originally commissioned under the direction of Virgil Fox, Fred Swann was also on staff at the time of the installation of the organ in the mid-1950s,” it said. “In the succeeding years as director of music he oversaw a complete redesign of the organ console and supervised the organ’s expansion and tonal development. As such, he and those he worked with are responsible for the renowned instrument we hear today.”Mr. Swann acknowledged that his departure from Riverside for the West Coast and the Schuller church in 1982 was viewed with disdain by some of his colleagues.“They thought I had lost my mind because I had this beautiful Gothic cathedral, with a magnificent organ and a professional choir and really a lot of recognition as a church that set the standards in music,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998.The Schuller services, in contrast, were known for their showiness and their hodgepodge of musical styles — a service might include a choral number and a country song. Mr. Swann elevated the musical content considerably, but he also broadened his own views.“I feel like we’ve all benefited,” he told The Orange County Register of California in 1987. The challenge of adjusting to a new type of service appealed to him, he said. It also helped that the Crystal Cathedral had an impressive organ.“It goes from barely audible to oh-my-gosh thunderous,” he told The Register in 2013.(The Crystal Cathedral was sold after Mr. Schuller’s ministry went bankrupt and reopened as a Roman Catholic church, Christ Cathedral, in 2019.)Mr. Swann was married briefly to Mina Belle Packer in the 1950s. He is survived by his partner of 64 years, George Dickey.Mr. Swann was active in the American Guild of Organists, serving as its president for six years beginning in 2002, and was a mentor to many younger players, including Mr. Walker.“Most of what I know about how to play a church service I learned from standing next to Fred,” Mr. Walker said.He was also known for his sense of humor, which was often on display in his chats with recital audiences. One time, Mr. Walker said, while giving the inaugural performance on an organ in Dallas, he was vexed by a “cipher” — a pipe that, because of a malfunction, refused to stop playing.“New organs are just like new babies,” he explained to the audience. “They behave just fine until you take them out in public.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Review: J’Nai Bridges Brings Her Splendid Sound to an Eclectic Recital

      by

      The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges performed at the 92nd Street Y, joined by the pianist Mark Markham and the Catalyst Quartet.Some singers simply have a voice built for the stage — an instrument whose particular blend of color, vibrancy and volume is best heard live. The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges is one of them.When she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, as Nefertiti in the company premiere of Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” in 2019, she loosed a luscious voice as opulent and seamless as the regal fabric of her costumes.Then, when the pandemic closed arts venues worldwide the following year, Bridges participated in the ad hoc streaming industry. Recorded audio, though, can flatten or harden some voices, and a rich sound like Bridges’s comes to life in a resonant auditorium.On Thursday, she gave a recital at the 92nd Street Y, with the pianist Mark Markham and the Catalyst Quartet. Her program, varied yet concise, drew from the work of Black and Hispanic composers — an eclectic repertoire that could not easily accommodate her splendid sound.She opened with a galvanizing spiritual, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” which set an affirming tone. The opening phrases emerged from a smoky contralto register, and her middle voice, warm and velvety, pealed forth with immediacy. Her switch into an operatic style for her high notes felt prim, an imperfect melding of different vocal techniques. She followed with Carlos Simon’s setting of the Langston Hughes poem “Prayer”; in a performance seething with irony yet propelled by earnestness, she urged the audience to embrace “the sick, the depraved, the desperate, the tired,” whom she gathered up herself with a lavish, generous tone.In the middle part of her program, Bridges sang Jimmy López Bellido’s “Airs for Mother,” a world premiere for voice and string quartet; an aria from López Bellido’s opera “Bel Canto,” which she has performed onstage in Chicago; and Manuel de Falla’s “Seven Popular Spanish Songs,” among the most well-known and beloved Spanish-language art songs.Her voice bursting with color but sometimes flagging in the middle or end of phrases, Bridges overwhelmed the dimensions of “Airs for Mother” and the Falla songs but also didn’t consistently commit to her choices.López Bellido wrote the text as well as the music of “Airs for Mother,” tracing a simple, impactful narrative from a child’s awe at her life to an adult’s devastation at her loss. Even though the piece felt quasi-operatic, with recitative, climactic high notes, dramatic flourishes and string tremolos, Bridges overwhelmed the quartet’s slender, glimmering sound with her plush, powerful singing.Bridges performed the López and Falla selections with a music stand, making her seem earthbound. And Markham, a warm collaborator at the piano, was more supportive than secure in his parts.But the evening snapped into focus with John Carter’s “Cantata,” a five-part suite that honors the tradition of spirituals by elaborating on several as contemporary art songs. Originally written for the majestic soprano Leontyne Price, it firmly occupies a classical idiom, with a bravura ending so obviously crafted for her shimmery upper register that it sounds like a plaster cast of her voice.Bridges, finding in “Cantata” a piece that suits her, gave an electrifying performance. There were no gear shifts in technique, and her voice sounded taut with intention. Flinging her arms wide, she took flight.J’Nai BridgesPerformed on Thursday at the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Review: A Shostakovich Symphony Finally Reaches the Philharmonic

      by

      The composer’s 12th, from 1961, is being played by the orchestra for the first time under the conductor Rafael Payare, also making his debut.When the stirring central tune of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12 first emerges, a few minutes into the piece, it’s very soft in the cellos and basses. The model for this moment is clear: Very softly, in the cellos and basses, is how the “Ode to Joy” is introduced in Beethoven’s Ninth.Beethoven’s Ninth, of course, is at the center of the repertory, while Shostakovich’s 12th, “The Year 1917,” had never been played by the New York Philharmonic before Thursday, when it was a vehicle for the conductor Rafael Payare’s debut with the orchestra at David Geffen Hall.Why has this symphony been neglected? Shostakovich’s reputation in the West, even after the Cold War ended, was founded on a sense of him as a kind of dissident of the heart, his music covertly opposed to the Soviet regime he outwardly served — or at least attempted to make peace with.But it’s hard to find ambivalence or coded irony in the 12th, which tells a triumphal tale of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and is dedicated to that struggle’s hero, Lenin. It premiered in 1961, a year after its composer finally joined the Communist Party. (How willingly he joined is one of the many questions that persist, unanswerable, about his true beliefs, and so about the relationship between his music and the dangerous political situation he faced.)Unlike his 11th Symphony from a few years before, into which some read secret sympathies with the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, there seems to be little in the 12th but positivity; even in quieter moments, blazing victory is never far away. I suppose the dark undercurrent that briefly pursues Lenin in his countryside hiding place outside St. Petersburg in the second movement could also suggest the fear Shostakovich might have felt. But here, that feels like a reach.The 12th wouldn’t, at this point, need to be disqualified from programs merely for being sincerely created propaganda — though I wouldn’t follow the program note’s glib assurance that we can forget the historical context, since “‘The Year 1917’ was over a century ago, and the Soviet Union is gone.” Tell that to the current president of Russia.It was valuable to get a chance to hear this symphony live, but it does come off a bit repetitive and thin, however wearyingly loud and dense it gets. You will not want to hear that earworm central tune again.In 40 minutes — its four movements flowing together without pause, and revolutionary songs quoted liberally throughout — the piece depicts a Petersburg (then Petrograd) simmering with chaos and tension, ready for battle; then Lenin’s retreat to plan his next move; the thunderous beginning of the revolution; and “The Dawn of Humanity,” the fortissimo, major-key utopia of Soviet life.It’s not the fault of Payare, 42, the music director of the San Diego Symphony and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, that it’s difficult to build tension in those final 10 minutes or so, which manage to be both relentless and fitful.His neat, spirited rendition of the work didn’t stint the mellower second movement, in which successive solos — the bassoonist Judith LeClair, the clarinetist Anthony McGill, the trombonist Colin Williams — advanced an atmosphere of doleful meditation. The Philharmonic seems to be steadily acclimating to its newly renovated hall, though the brasses remain extremely bright-sounding at full force, sharpened rather than golden.As the orchestra’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, regularly shows, a conducting style that fits the punchy extremity of Shostakovich is not always right for Beethoven, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was overemphatic and sluggish on Thursday, particularly in a plodding Adagio. The veteran soloist, Emanuel Ax, seemed to be searching for a middle ground between his pearly geniality and Payare’s starker phrasing, and the results sounded unsettled. Ax seemed more suavely at ease in his encore, Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s “Ständchen.”The concert opened with another Philharmonic premiere, William Grant Still’s brooding “Darker America” (1924), an ambiguous, 13-minute dreamscape of haziness, low-slung blues and a subdued conclusion.This was the first time the orchestra has put Still’s work on a subscription program in over 20 years, and it will be followed in March by his Symphony No. 2, “Song of a New Race.” To hear so much new to this ensemble — even Beethoven’s Second, while hardly a rarity, is probably the least played of his piano concertos — is a heartening sign of searching artistic leadership.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      At 26, the Conductor Klaus Mäkelä’s Star Keeps Rising

      by

      Having assumed the podium of three major orchestras and appeared on the world’s prestigious stages, he debuts next at the New York Philharmonic.AMSTERDAM — It’s impossible for an artist to avoid making an entrance at the Concertgebouw, one of the world’s most storied spaces for classical music.Double doors behind the stage are flung open, making way for a soloist or conductor to descend a flight of steps leading to the spotlight. When Klaus Mäkelä, a sharply dressed young Finnish maestro, did so on a Friday night in August, he was greeted with the kind of applause typically reserved for the end of a concert. With each stride, the ovation became stronger until, as he stood at the podium, the audience let out a sustained cheer.“That was amazing,” Mäkelä said in an interview later. “It feels like an eternity, to walk down to the stage, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt the warmth of an audience in that way.”You could understand the enthusiasm. The house band, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, had been without a chief conductor since Daniele Gatti was abruptly dismissed over sexual assault allegations in 2018. After years of guest batons and speculation, the news had come at last in June that Mäkelä, just 26, would take the podium. This night was his first appearance since the announcement.Mäkelä, perhaps the fastest-rising conductor of his generation — beloved by players and administrators, if not always by critics — already leads two orchestras, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris. When he accepted the job here in Amsterdam, it was as “artistic partner,” a title he will hold until he officially becomes chief conductor in 2027, when his contracts with the other groups expire.Mäkelä conducting the Orchestre de Paris. “I haven’t found someone in the orchestra with something bad to say,” Nikola Nikolov, a violinist in the ensemble, said.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut that is bureaucratic speak for what is effectively the beginning of his tenure, with a starting commitment of five weeks this season. That’s on top of guest appearances that will add to his résumé of prestigious ensembles like those in Berlin, Vienna, Chicago and Cleveland; next up is the New York Philharmonic, where Mäkelä makes his debut on Dec. 8, leading a contemporary work by Jimmy López Bellido and symphonies by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky.Again, he is 26.But age has virtually never been a barrier, neither to his ambition nor to the way older colleagues regard him. Christian van Eggelen, a first violin in the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the chair of the group’s artistic committee, described Mäkelä’s first visit to the hall as “love at first sight.”“He was 24, and the second-youngest person onstage,” van Eggelen added. “Yet after three minutes, it was very clear that we were dealing with the most precocious conducting talent that we’ve seen in the past 50 or 75 years.”MÄKELÄ WAS BORN in Helsinki to music teacher parents — his father, cello, and his mother, piano. They both had students who attended a local German school, and decided to enroll Klaus there as well.“Everyone who went there was very efficient,” Mäkelä said, as he often does, with a wide smile but soft tone. “So they must have thought the same would happen to me.”The school might have taught discipline, but Mäkelä was already, in his words, a very nerdy child. He listened to the works of specific composers obsessively like immersive projects, and happily practiced his cello and sang in choruses, including in “Carmen” at the Finnish National Opera. It was there, backstage and watching the conductor on the monitor, that he first had the urge to pick up a baton.“I remember that we all had free ice cream,” he recalled. “But I also remember that I was completely mesmerized. I think it was the music, but also that the conductor was able to play all of this, which is a kind of instrument on a large scale.”His primary focus, though, was still the cello, which brought him to the famed Sibelius Academy’s youth department. While there, he made it into a conducting class with Jorma Panula, the teacher of luminaries like Susanna Mälkki, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Osmo Vänskä.“He had a very specific taste, which is that less is more,” Mäkelä said of Panula. “We all had to be able to conduct without moving at all. And then after that, we could do whatever we wanted. Conducting isn’t very difficult; one can learn it very quickly. But we never learned that. He never lectured, but instead felt us out. I think that was just his way of being: asking questions and always searching.”When the time came to attend the Sibelius Academy proper, Mäkelä continued with cello — though he never graduated — and played in the Helsinki Philharmonic, under conductors including Mälkki. That orchestra, no minor ensemble, was the first to ask him to conduct. From there, the invitations flooded in.By 20 — a time he refers to in conversation as “when I was younger” — he had an agent, the classical music power broker Jasper Parrott, and began to put a personal stamp on the programs he conducted. His championed the works of Jimmy López Bellido, whose name continues to dot Mäkelä’s concert calendar.A breakthrough came when he took the podium of the Oslo Philharmonic, in 2020. That orchestra, Mäkelä said, “feels like my baby.” The ensemble had offered him the job of chief conductor after only one visit; it’s a relationship, he added, that “started with this crazy trust, but has been one of the most fruitful things of my life.”Principally, it has led to an ambitious recording project of Sibelius’s complete symphonies, released this year on Decca. (Mäkelä is only the third conductor in the label’s history to have an exclusive contract.) The cycle reveals a lot about the strengths and shortcomings of Mäkelä’s career so far. Reviewers found it to be an uneven account, both glorious and forgettable, with what David Allen in The New York Times called “ups and downs” that were “sensationally played throughout.”That last part is essential to characterizing Mäkelä’s style. He elicits clean, skillful playing. And he falls somewhere between those conductors known for unfamiliar, occasionally counterintuitive readings of repertory classics — like Teodor Currentzis or Santtu-Matias Rouvali — and those who prioritize composer intentions with little need for additional insight. His performances are rarely sensational, nor do they seem to strive for novel arguments; yet they are unwaveringly honest and deferential to the score.“Maybe that’s the only moment where one could say, maybe, he is young,” van Eggelen said. “He doesn’t turn a score around and search for things to prove himself. What is noticeable is that there is this search for colors and the meaning of these different colors. Nothing’s dogmatic, though. It is, simply put, extremely pleasurable to work with him.”That was the feeling, too, at the Orchestra de Paris, which hired Mäkelä in 2020. (Together, they will be in residence at the Aix-en-Provence Festival next summer, with a triptych of Stravinsky scores for the Ballets Russes, and in a coming season as the pit orchestra in a new “Frau Ohne Schatten” directed by Barrie Kosky.) Nikola Nikolov, a violinist in the ensemble, said in an interview translated from French that although the players initially had doubts about him because of his age, they were quickly won over. Mäkelä, he added, doesn’t make aggressively distinct choices but comes with a clear interpretation and executes it with exactitude.“I haven’t found someone in the orchestra with something bad to say,” Nikolov said. “Klaus has confidence in people, and in this way he is a good conductor.”Mäkelä is also, players have said, remarkably efficient in rehearsals. His phrasing is direct without being dictatorial, and he doesn’t leave musicians waiting. “There are conductors who flip through pages when we are done,” Nikolov said. “Him, never. He always knows what he wants to talk about, and what he wants to say. That’s magic.”That is one reason Mäkelä attracts admirers among musicians in both Europe and the United States, where he first played with the Minnesota Orchestra but has developed steadier relationships with the Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra. In Cleveland, he debuted at a summer Blossom Music Festival concert but made a more spectacular impression filling in last minute for Jaap van Zweden in a program that culminated with Beethoven’s Seventh.Mäkelä isn’t sure what he will do when his contracts expire in Oslo and Paris. “I love them both to death,” he said, “and they’ve been teaching me so much.”Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesThe Clevelanders, musicians who are not easily impressed, took a quick liking to him. So did the local press; The Plain Dealer’s review of the Beethoven performance began, “Let there be a substitute every week, if every substitute can be like conductor Klaus Mäkelä.” He is the only guest with a two-week engagement there this season.Speculators may already be wondering whether there’s more of a future in Cleveland for Mäkelä if that orchestra’s music director, Franz Welser-Möst, departs at the end of his contract in 2027, after what will have been 25 years with the ensemble. But for now, Mäkelä would prefer to keep his attention on the orchestras he already has.HIS CONCERTGEBOUW DEBUT took place in an empty hall during the pandemic. Van Eggelen recalled that the orchestra had braced itself for Mäkelä’s arrival, being told to “watch out, apparently he’s amazing.” Mostly, van Eggelen said, the first rehearsal felt more like a homecoming than a visit from a star. “It was a way of working which we recognized, which brought us back to how wanted to be,” he said. “He was meticulous and at the same time let things go and let us make music. This combination of precision, which you need in our hall, and freedom — that was something that shook the whole orchestra up.”Chief conductors at the Concertgebouw Orchestra are elected by the players, who were in no rush to make a decision until they found what felt like a right fit. Other names had been in circulation, but a vote came quickly for Mäkelä because, as van Eggelen said, “there was an absolute, North Korean majority preference for Klaus.” They only had to offer him the post.That happened during the lockdown days of early 2021 in Paris. Mäkelä was preparing a concert there, keeping to himself because of a curfew. With only a small window of opportunity, a delegation from the Concertgebouw Orchestra went to Paris and had dinner with him. Afterward, back at the hotel, they emptied their minibars and knocked on Mäkelä’s door. Inside, they asked whether he would take the job.Thus began, Mäkelä said, a nearly year-and-a-half-long negotiation over how to keep his two orchestras while taking on Amsterdam. Eventually, they arrived at the plan to spend five years with him as artistic partner until 2027, with a commitment of five seasons as chief conductor to follow. Mäkelä had yet to play before a live audience at the Concertgebouw, but the orchestra had invested in a decade with him.The audience did finally come, that night in August, for a meaty program of Kaija Saariaho’s “Orion” and Mahler’s 80-minute Sixth Symphony. The rehearsals hadn’t been perfect, and the players were just returning from a summer holiday, but Mäkelä wasn’t worried. “They are concert animals,” he said. And he had felt as though he had been studying the Mahler, in some way, his whole life.Lifting his baton, Mäkelä said, he didn’t feel like the “cool cucumber” he appeared to be from the audience. But he relaxed the moment the Saariaho began. The evening was typical of his performances: accomplished without being overly assertive; legible and restrained with an eye toward explosive climaxes. By the end of the Mahler, the audience was even more enthusiastic than at the start. His Amsterdam era began.Mäkelä doesn’t yet know what he will do when the Paris and Oslo contracts expire in 2027. “I love them both to death,” he said, “and they’ve been teaching me so much.” But three music directorships won’t be possible, and with effectively all of them filling out his calendar now, he can feel the jet-setting, rising-star lifestyle of his early 20s begin to calm down.“That’s a conscious decision,” he said. “In a way, I’m trying to concentrate more. Guest conducting is fun, but a deep connection with the musicians — in Oslo, in Paris and now with the Concertgebouw — that’s my next big thing, to get to know them really well.” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Scarred by War, a Ukrainian Children’s Choir Finds Hope in Music

      by

      Members of the Shchedryk Children’s Choir have emerged from conflict determined to sing, including at Carnegie Hall this weekend.When air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv recently, the Shchedryk Children’s Choir, which was deep in rehearsal for a Christmas program, went into action.More than two dozen young singers, carrying sheet music and backpacks, rushed from the Palace of Children and Youth, their longtime practice space, to a nearby bomb shelter. There, using cellphones as flashlights, they resumed their singing, filling the cold, cramped space with folk songs and carols until the sirens faded.“I was scared, but I was also hopeful,” recalled Polina Fedorchenko, a 16-year-old member of the choir. “We knew that if we could get through this, we could get through anything.”The children of the Shchedryk choir, which will perform at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, have been hit hard by the war. They have lost friends and relatives in the fighting; watched as Russian bombs have devastated schools, churches and city streets; and grappled with the anxiety and trauma of war.But the choristers have also forged a determination to use music as a way to heal Ukraine and promote their culture around the world.At Carnegie, the choir’s 56 members — 51 girls and five boys, ages 11 to 25 — will perform traditional songs and carols alongside other Ukrainian artists in “Notes From Ukraine,” a program sponsored in part by the Ukrainian foreign ministry. Proceeds will go to United24, a government-run platform that is raising money to repair damaged infrastructure.Clockwise, from top left, members of the choir including: Anastasiia Rusina and Taisiia Poliakova; Bogdana Novikova; Polina Fedorchenko; and Kateryna Rohova.Lila Barth for The New York TimesThe concert will also celebrate the centennial of the North American premiere at Carnegie Hall of “Carol of the Bells,” by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych. (The name of the choir comes from the Ukrainian title for the music.)The choir hopes that the concert will help bring attention to Russia’s continuing attacks, including its recent efforts to damage Ukraine’s supply of electricity, heat and water, threatening a new kind of humanitarian crisis this winter.“It has been exhausting,” said Mykhailo Kostyna, a 16-year-old singer. “We’re just happy now that we can share Ukraine’s culture and spirit with the world.”The State of the WarA Pivotal Point: Ukraine is on the offensive, but with about one-fifth of its territory still occupied by Russian forces, there is still a long way to go, and the onset of winter will bring new difficulties.Ukraine’s Electric Grid: As many Ukrainians head into winter without power or water, Western officials say that rebuilding Ukraine’s battered energy infrastructure needs to be considered a second front in the war.A Bloody Vortex : Even as they have celebrated successes elsewhere, Ukrainian forces in the small eastern city of Bakhmut have endured relentless Russian attacks. And the struggle to hold it is only intensifying.Dnipro River: A volunteer Ukrainian special forces team has been conducting secret raids under the cover of darkness, traveling across the strategic waterway that has become the dividing line of the southern front.After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many members of the choir scattered across the country. Some, seeking shelter and security, fled abroad.The choir, which has been a training ground for Ukrainian singers since its founding in 1971, held virtual rehearsals to keep the ensemble together. The choristers stayed in touch on social media, where they shared upbeat songs as well as clips of practice sessions, and checked in on one another.“The choir kept my connection to Ukraine alive,” said Taisiia Poliakova, 15, who fled to Germany shortly after the invasion. “It gave me a safe environment amid all the madness of war.”“These songs remind me of the pain,” one choir member said, “but they also help me somehow deal with the pain.”Lila Barth for The New York TimesLearning new songs at home was a challenge that provided an escape from the constant ringing of air-raid sirens. It also gave choir members an outlet for the intense emotions they were experiencing.Oleksandra Lutsak, 20, said the war had deeply affected her music. Now, when she sings, she said, she sees the faces of five friends who died in the war. Sometimes, she imagines the experience of a friend captured by Russian soldiers. When rehearsing folk songs, she envisions “destroyed homes with no roofs, collapsed walls, everything burned down — and people standing around who have nowhere to spend the winter.”“These songs remind me of the pain,” she said, “but they also help me somehow deal with the pain.”Other singers have struggled to look beyond the chaos of war. Polina Holtseva, 15, said she sometimes felt she was living in a constant state of fear. She was pained to see friends and relatives endure physical injuries and economic hardships because of the conflict.“I feel like I’ve suffered so many psychological traumas I can’t even speak of them,” she said. “My nervous system is all over the place. I feel like my whole world has been turned upside down.”Clockwise, from top left, the singers: Mykhailo Kostyna; Uliana Sukach-Kochetkova; the twin sisters Marharyta and Kira Kupchyk; and Varvara Avotynsh.Lila Barth for The New York TimesIn August, the Shchedryk choir reunited for a series of concerts in Copenhagen. Then, this fall, as it prepared for its Carnegie debut, the choir rehearsed in Kyiv for the first time since the start of the war.The recent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure brought new challenges. Rehearsals were often interrupted by sirens, and frequent power outages meant long stretches without light.“It was in those moments that we felt the most responsibility to keep practicing, because this was a testament to our dedication to our craft,” Fedorchenko said.Because of the war, the choir left Ukraine on Nov. 19 for Warsaw, where they were given rehearsal space inside the Chopin University of Music and obtained visas to travel to the United States.Marianna Sablina, the choir’s artistic director and chief conductor, whose mother founded the ensemble, said that the Carnegie concert, which was planned before the invasion, is now “even more momentous, given the struggles we are facing.”The choir is one of several Ukrainian ensembles to go abroad since the invasion, as part of efforts to highlight the country’s cultural identity. The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, an ensemble of refugees who fled the war and musicians who stayed behind, toured Europe and the United States in the summer. The Kyiv City Ballet performed in many American cities this fall.The Shchedryk choir arrived in New York this week with a mix of excitement and nervousness, uncertain whether the performance would resonate with an American audience. They brought Ukrainian flags, T-shirts and souvenirs to give to new friends.In New York, they have a busy schedule: rehearsals at local churches as well as visits to tourist destinations including Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On Wednesday, they gathered at Grand Central Terminal to sing “Carol of the Bells.”Marharyta and Kira Kupchyk, 14-year-old twins from Kyiv, said they felt relieved to have some distance from the war while in New York. But they said they were still growing accustomed to the enormity of the city.“In Kyiv, you can walk easier — you can even dance down the streets,” Marharyta said. “But in New York, it’s not like that.”In between rehearsals and sightseeing, the twins checked social media apps for news of the war and sent messages to family and friends in Ukraine. They said they worried about their father, who has been out of touch because he recently started military training in Kyiv.“I hope we can help make sure this war will end soon,” Kira said.Marianna Sablina, the artistic director of the Shchedryk choir, preparing the singers for their performance in New York.Lila Barth for The New York Times More