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    Performance by Maestro With Russian Ties Is Canceled in Vienna

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    A Teodor Currentzis concert at the Wiener Festwochen was canceled after the Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv, also on the program, raised concerns about his ties to Russia.When the Wiener Festwochen, a prestigious festival that brings leading international artists to Vienna, announced this spring’s lineup, the backlash was swift and fierce.The festival had planned to make the Russian invasion of Ukraine a focus of its programming, juxtaposing an appearance by the Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv with a concert by the maestro Teodor Currentzis, who has faced scrutiny over his connections to Russia. Critics, including Lyniv, had argued that the pairing was insensitive and ignored the suffering of Ukrainians.Now, after weeks of pressure, the festival has abandoned its plan, saying that it would cancel the appearance by Currentzis while moving forward with the one by Lyniv.“The decision was clear and there was no alternative,” Milo Rau, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview on Tuesday. “This was the best solution from bad ones.”Since Russia invaded Ukraine, many cultural organizations have severed ties with close associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the government there. Some institutions have been criticized for overreach after canceling performances by Russian artists with no known connections to the government. Others have grappled with how to handle artists who had less clear-cut allegiances.Currentzis, a Greek-born, Russian-trained maestro whose leadership of the Russian ensemble MusicAeterna turned him into one of the world’s most prominent conductors, has been at the center of the discussion because of his relationship with VTB Bank, a Russian state-owned institution that has been under sanctions by the United States and other countries. VTB Bank was the main sponsor of MusicAeterna. Currentzis has also drawn scrutiny for his association with Russian officials: In 2014, Putin awarded Currentzis citizenship by presidential decree.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay Schwartz’s Music Reflects a Past of Oceans and Deserts

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      The composer’s latest work, “Theta,” born of the pandemic, loss and long swims in open water, is premiering in Germany.In early March 2020, the composer Jay Schwartz traveled to San Diego from his home in Cologne, Germany, to attend the funeral for Don Bukovich — his stepfather and the only person in his extended family with an affinity for classical music.Bukovich was especially fond of music by Bach. And, when the pandemic hit and Schwartz got stuck in San Diego and stayed with his brother, he found himself playing Bach’s “Komm, süßer Tod” (“Come, Sweet Death”) over and over at the piano. He also went for long swims in the Pacific Ocean, far from the shoreline.“You reach a kind of euphoric state,” Schwartz said in an interview. “You’re in the ocean and you’re euphoric because of the natural beauty, but also because you’re on the cusp of extreme danger.”As Schwartz swam, he thought about musical ideas: an unusual chord progression in the Bach piece; glissandos, the sliding from one note to another; and an aural illusion known as the Shepard tone, the sonic equivalent of a barber’s pole.“I started to superimpose those things in an intuitive way, not thinking it was a concept,” Schwartz said. “It just happened while in the ocean.”By June 2020, Schwartz had finished a new piece for orchestra based on those ideas. He called it “Theta,” after the Greek letter once used as a symbol for death.No one had commissioned the work. But a week after it was completed, Schwartz received a call from the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. Its music director, Teodor Currentzis, was planning a program built around Gustav Mahler’s final, incomplete Symphony No. 10, and wanted Schwartz to compose a piece.Schwartz considered writing something new. But, as he researched the end of Mahler’s life, Schwartz realized that the symphony and “Theta” had both been inspired by Bach works related to death. The pieces also shared an interest in mortality’s release: As he composed, Mahler wrote in a poem to his wife, Alma, that he hoped for “the bliss of death in the most painful hours.”On Thursday, Currentzis and the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra will premiere “Theta” and other responses to Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 in Stuttgart, followed by performances in Hamburg, Freiburg and Berlin. The concerts are a milestone for Schwartz, 58, an artist with no formal composition training who has forged a career largely parallel to the structures of contemporary classical music in Germany.Schwartz, behind at right, at a recent rehearsal led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, at the podium.Felix Broede for The New York TimesDespite — or, as Schwartz sees it, because of — his lack of academic education, his music is unmistakable. All his pieces include glissandos, which he uses to create arresting parabolas of texture. “There is no glissando without dissonance,” Currentzis said in an interview. “Always he puts a note that keeps, and then the glissando creates the nirvana of the dissonance, of falling apart.” At key moments, these tendrils of sound alight on major and minor chords: familiar harmonies rendered new.Schwartz’s pieces have clearly audible forms and stark climaxes, taking obvious pleasure in sound. “Musical events happen that achieve a kind of breathing or wave-shaped forms,” Bernd Feuchtner, a writer and the artistic director of the Handel Festival in Halle, Germany, said in a phone interview. He added that when he hears a new Schwartz piece, “I’m always sitting on the edge of my seat.”The conductor Matthias Pintscher has said of Schwartz, “For me, he’s a Schubert of our time.”SCHWARTZ’S FATHER was a boxer turned pool maintenance worker; his mother, a homemaker who later worked as a schoolteacher. Schwartz, who was born in San Diego, showed musical talent early: At 4, he would pick out snatches of the easy listening music his parents liked on his plastic toy piano. At 7, he began formal lessons.His parents divorced in 1979, and his mother moved Schwartz and his two brothers to Deming, N.M., whose desert landscape he loved. He began practicing to become a classical pianist. Schwartz studied music at Arizona State University, where he won his first and only piano competition.“The best art, at least that I’ve done, I don’t feel like I’m inventing it,” Schwartz said. “I find it, in the sense of excavating, going into something, and digging something up.”Felix Broede for The New York Times “I was taught that that was the thing I should be doing: playing Rachmaninoff concerti, and not making them up myself,” Schwartz said. “I actually did play a Rachmaninoff concerto with the college orchestra. And at the end it was like, ‘Did that, got the T-shirt. I’m out of here.’”In 1989, Schwartz traveled to the university town of Tübingen, Germany, for what was supposed to be a one-year exchange program as part of his graduate school studies in Arizona. He has lived in Germany ever since.Schwartz considered studying musicology, but a professor, citing his then-rudimentary German, discouraged him. Instead, Schwartz practiced the language and worked on the assembly line of a Mercedes-Benz factory. “I was either listening to German grammar or to music, because the job was super boring,” he said. “You could sit there for hours and not have a single part come by.” (He now speaks German so fluently he sometimes needs a moment to find an English word.)In 1990, Schwartz became an assistant in the musical archives of the Stuttgart State Theater, where he did what he described as “menial tasks.” Later, the theater noticed his composition skill, and hired him to write small pieces of incidental music. The job wasn’t for him. “I don’t like being subordinate to some director saying, ‘I need four bars of minor’ and those kinds of ridiculous demands,” Schwartz said.But he did take advantage of free tickets to everything at the theater. He saw opera, ballet or theater nearly every night, and listened to contemporary music on public radio. He made some of his closest friends in those years. Still, it was a time of soul-searching. “An identity crisis comes with entering a foreign country,” Schwartz said. “And that whole identity crisis is super important for forming an artist. I had years when I couldn’t compose. When it did happen, it was a flood.”His catalog includes 16 pieces of chamber music, five vocal works, an opera, a recent recomposition of Schubert’s “Winterreise” for voice and saxophone ensemble, a piece for voices and orchestra, and eight pieces in the series “Music for Orchestra,” of which “Theta” is the most recent.Schwartz began the “Music for Orchestra” series in 2002, when a cellist friend asked him to write a piece for 12 of his students and a semiprofessional string quintet, “Music for 17 String Instruments.” A year later, the artistic director of the German National Theater in Weimar commissioned him to compose incidental music for a stage adaptation of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” with a full orchestra at Schwartz’s disposal.“He wanted me to copy Tchaikovsky, which I did,” Schwartz said. “At the same time, I looked at the recording plan, and I had a ridiculous amount of time in the recording studio.” He took the opportunity to orchestrate “Music for 17 String Instruments” and record it.“I put it on their stands, and they did it, like, ‘This is part of the play,’” Schwartz said. “It never entered the play.”That work became the first “Music for Orchestra.” In a phone interview, Eric Marinitsch, the former head of promotion for Universal Edition, Schwartz’s publisher, described hearing the music as a “big bang.”“The piece was so clear in its dramaturgy,” Marinitsch said, “and yet composed with such complex means.”Composed over the past two decades, the pieces of “Music for Orchestra” evoke the austere, ominous beauty and subtle gradations of the environments where Schwartz was raised: the ocean and the desert. “The best art, at least that I’ve done, I don’t feel like I’m inventing it,” he said. “I find it, in the sense of excavating, going into something, and digging something up.”In late November, Schwartz traveled from Cologne, where he lives with his husband, to rehearsals for “Theta.” In an early rehearsal, Schwartz and Currentzis worked to make the individual parts coalesce into a unified texture. “I hear fragments,” Currentzis told the timpanist as he tried to smooth out a long, slow glissando.Working together with visible joy, the conductor and the composer added Mahlerian touches — winds playing with their bells up, a dramatic hammer stroke — to the piece. They sang bits of “Komm, süßer Tod” to demonstrate musical shapes.In a section of frothy trills, Schwartz addressed the woodwinds. “Realize,” he told them, “that you’re part of the wave.” More

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      Amid Global Turmoil, Salzburg Festival Plans a Summer of Reflection

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      “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

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      Review: The War in Ukraine Looms Over an Orchestra’s Debut

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      Utopia is the latest project from Teodor Currentzis, whose home ensemble has faced scrutiny over its ties to Russian state funding.HAMBURG, Germany — After Claude Debussy heard a young Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” he was said to have quipped, “One has to start somewhere.”That start turned out to be auspicious. And Utopia — a new ensemble that has assembled some top performers from groups throughout Europe and abroad — has similar potential. It debuted this week, with a slight but superbly executed program of, as it happens, “The Firebird” and works by Ravel that it is currently touring, with a stop at the Laeiszhalle here on Wednesday evening.Utopia’s name inspires eye rolls; but its sound, awe. Tensions like that always seems to attach themselves to its founder and conductor, Teodor Currentzis, who often appears to serve himself more than music yet at the same time reveals what can feel like a previously veiled truth.His already complicated artistry has been complicated further since the war in Ukraine began. Currentzis was born in Greece but has long been based in Russia, where he was given citizenship by presidential decree in 2014. The invasion brought fresh scrutiny to his ensemble there, MusicAeterna, and its funding from the state-owned VTB Bank. Currentzis, for his part, has been silent, caught an irreconcilable position between Russia and the West. Members of MusicAeterna, however, have been seen on social media championing the invasion.Some presenters in Europe have canceled MusicAeterna’s or Currentzis’ engagements over the war — most recently, the Philharmonie in Cologne, Germany this week — while others have stood by them, including the mighty Salzburg Festival in Austria.When the creation of Utopia was announced in August, its rollout — seeking little press, and with only brief tours of one program at a time — came off as a rushed reaction to MusicAeterna’s troubles. After all, it was billed as an independent orchestra with independent (a euphemism for Western) funding. But the ensemble has been in development for several years.The State of the WarRussia’s Retreat: After significant gains in eastern cities like Lyman, Ukraine is pushing farther into Russian-held territory in the south, expanding its campaign as Moscow struggles to mount a response and hold the line. The Ukrainian victories came as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia illegally annexed four regions where fighting is raging.Dugina Assassination: U.S. intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time and that they had admonished Ukraine over it.Oil Supply Cuts: Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed to a large production cut in a bid to raise prices, countering efforts by the United States and Europe to constrain the oil revenue Moscow is using to pay for its war in Ukraine.Putin’s Nuclear Threats: For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, top Russian leaders are making explicit nuclear threats and officials in Washington are gaming out scenarios should Mr. Putin decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon.Currentzis could have more control over the story of Utopia if he weren’t so reticent because of the war. Then, he might be able to offer a stronger argument for the group’s existence than what has been advertised: simply to bring together “the best musicians from all around the world” for the web3-like purpose of decentralizing classical music.That said, there is undeniable talent among Utopia’s ranks. Sure, the concertmaster on Wednesday was Olga Volkova, who holds the same post in MusicAeterna, but elsewhere there were ambassadors from the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Paris Opera; plenty of players born in Europe, but also ones from Australia, Asia and the Americas.With little rehearsal time, they gave their first concert in Luxembourg on Tuesday. After Hamburg comes Vienna, then Berlin, where vast swaths of the Philharmonie remain unsold. That was not the case on Tuesday at the more intimate Laeiszhalle, which was nearly full with a warmly receptive audience. Outside there was nary a protester, as there have been at the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko’s recent recitals, and inside Currentzis was greeted with cheers surpassed by only the riotous applause that followed each piece.It’s not hard to see why. This was an evening that never sagged or lacked in interest, even if Currentzis’ style tipped toward the profane. He relished extremes, with hyperbolic readings of the scores that you could say reflect a lack of trust or taste — but that you could also say are riveting from start to finish. Love or hate them, his performances make people truly care about music.If there were doubts that this pickup group wasn’t ready for the public, they were dispelled at the sound of the players’ sharp, decisive articulations and unison string downbows in the Stravinsky — his 1945 version of the “Firebird” suite — or their unwavering precision in the encore, Ravel’s “Boléro,” which on Wednesday began so softly, its patient, extended crescendo had the feel of a traveling band entering the scene from afar then boisterously announcing itself.On the program were three ballet scores, and Currentzis treated them with fitting sensuality and freedom. His Stravinsky breathed fire while also luxuriating in the winding tendrils of a flame. Ravel’s second suite from “Daphnis et Chloé” blossomed organically from a wispy opening’s gentle enchantment to a densely textured tableau that, even then, refrained from giving away too much too soon. But when the climax came, it was so powerful that I felt the nudging vibration of my watch warning me that the sound had pushed past 90 decibels.Throughout, the Utopia players were visibly pleased, and united. During Ravel’s “La Valse,” Currentzis didn’t keep time so much as swing his arms broadly from right to left and back again, yet the orchestra maintained controlled instability in this affectionate but darkly ambiguous tribute to Johann Strauss II and his symphonic treatments of Vienna’s signature dance.Ravel nearly named the piece after that city, with the German-language working title of “Wien.” Currentzis’ interpretation was largely one of entropy, but it also had transporting, whirlwind glimpses of a joyous ballroom. Those moments were a painful reminder of his current relationship with Vienna, where Utopia is welcome but MusicAeterna is not.These days, that kind of bitter aftertaste accompanies all of Currentzis’ performances, both the good and the bad — certainly on Wednesday, and who knows for how long.UtopiaPerformed on Wednesday at the Laeiszhalle, Hamburg, Germany. More

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      Star Maestro With Russian Ties to Depart German Orchestra

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      Teodor Currentzis, who has faced scrutiny for his association with a Russian bank, will step down as chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in 2025.The conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has been criticized since the start of the war in Ukraine because of his ties to a state-owned bank in Russia, will step down as chief conductor of a prominent German orchestra in 2025, the ensemble announced on Friday.Currentzis, who has led the ensemble, the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, since 2018, will leave his post when his contract expires at the end of the 2024-25 season, the orchestra said. He will be replaced by François-Xavier Roth, who leads the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, Germany.The SWR Symphony Orchestra has faced pressure in recent months to cut ties with Currentzis because of his affiliation with VTB Bank, a Russian state-owned institution that has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries. VTB is the main sponsor of Currentzis’s longtime ensemble, MusicAeterna.In a statement to The New York Times, the SWR said Currentzis’s departure had been decided last year and had nothing to do with concerns about his Russia ties.“The announcement of today is not related to the discussion about the financing of MusicAeterna,” Matthias Claudi, a spokesman for SWR, said. He added that the orchestra hoped to continue to work with Currentzis after he steps down.A representative for Currentzis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Currentzis, 50, is one of classical music’s most prominent conductors. Since the start of the war, his career has been complicated by questions about Russian support, with some presenters canceling or postponing engagements. He has been denounced for his silence on the war and criticized for working with associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including some who sit on the board of MusicAeterna’s foundation. Putin awarded Currentzis, who was born in Greece, citizenship by presidential decree in 2014.Working to get beyond questions about his Russian benefactors, Currentzis announced in August that he would form a new international ensemble, called Utopia, with the support of donors outside Russia. The benefactors include a private foundation called Kunst und Kultur DM, which is affiliated with Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian businessman who is a founder of Red Bull. Beginning next month, Utopia will tour Europe, continuing through next year.Currentzis has continued to perform with MusicAeterna, which he founded in Siberia in 2004, often before sold-out crowds. More

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      At the Salzburg Festival, Riches, Retreads and Notes of Caution

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      Classical music’s pre-eminent annual event had more revivals than usual, but also a breathless new staging of Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova.”SALZBURG, Austria — The premiere of a new production of Janacek’s opera “Kat’a Kabanova” had just ended at the Salzburg Festival here last week. When the lights went up, Kristina Hammer, the festival’s new president, was wiping tears off her cheeks.It was hard to blame her for crying. “Kat’a” is a breathless tragedy about a small-town woman trapped in a loveless marriage and driven to suicide after having a brief affair. Janacek’s music stamps out her ethereal fantasies with the brutal fist of reality.Barrie Kosky’s staging was the highlight of a week at Salzburg, classical music’s pre-eminent annual event, which runs through Aug. 31. Kosky has pared down this pared-down work even further, to its core of quivering human beings.The only set is rows of uncannily realistic models of people, standing, wearing street clothes, and facing away from us — and away from Kat’a and her pain. (I admit: I was fooled into thinking these were many dozens of very still extras.) Behind them loom the stone walls of the Felsenreitschule theater, whose vast stage has rarely seemed bigger or lonelier than when the soprano Corinne Winters races across it, running with nowhere to go.David Butt Philip and Winters in “Kat’a.” Behind them are uncannily realistic models of people standing in street clothes.Monika RittershausJittery and balletic, ecstatic and anxious, Winters has a child’s volatile presence, and her live-wire voice conveys Kat’a’s wonder and vulnerability. She is the production’s center, but the entire cast is powerful; Winters’s interactions with Jarmila Balazova’s headstrong Varvara make years of friendship between the characters easy to believe. The conductor Jakub Hrusa confidently paces the work as a bitter, intermission-less single shot, even if the Vienna Philharmonic — the festival’s longtime house band — sounded a bit thin and uncertain in what should be heated unanimity.There is a kind of familial resemblance between Kat’a and Suor Angelica, the agonized young nun at the center of one of Puccini’s three one-acts in “Il Trittico,” directed here by Christof Loy, with the Philharmonic conducted with sensual lightness by Franz Welser-Möst. Like Winters, the soprano Asmik Grigorian, who stars in all three acts, is an intense actress with a voice of shivery directness. (This is the vocal taste at the moment in Salzburg; the days in which Anna Netrebko’s plush tone ruled here seem over.)Spare yet detailed, unified by an airy buff-color space with shifting walls, Loy’s staging reorders the triptych, beginning rather than ending with the comic “Gianni Schicchi,” which now precedes the grim adultery tale “Il Tabarro,” with Roman Burdenko as a firm Michele.In “Suor Angelica,” Asmik Grigorian, left, faces off against Karita Mattila in a blazing confrontation of dueling pains.Barbara Gindl/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Suor Angelica,” the closer, is the reason to see this “Trittico”; it’s the only one of the three roles in which Grigorian’s lack of tonal warmth plays fully to her advantage. Her face-off against the veteran soprano Karita Mattila — not an alto, as the role of Angelica’s aunt really requires, but properly imperious — is a blazing confrontation of dueling pains. And Grigorian’s final scene, which milks the unexpected poignancy of her simply changing in front of us from her habit into a sleek black cocktail dress and letting down her hair, is just as wrenching.A woman is also on the verge of a breakdown, but far more amusingly, in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” Now that the star mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli runs the springtime Whitsun Festival here, every summer includes a production vehicle for her. But there were snickers when it was announced that Bartoli, at 56, planned to play Rosina, usually sung at the start of careers. (Bartoli made her professional stage debut in the role, 35 years ago.)But her voice — and her rapid-fire coloratura — are remarkably well preserved, and her enthusiasm is irresistible. Directed by Rolando Villazón, the show is a love letter to the movies, like “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” which has characters walking on and off screen. Here it’s the silent era that comes to life, with Bartoli as a diva whose experience is winked at in a rundown of her pictures, from Joan of Arc to pirates, projected during the overture. But the concept is not held to so stringently that it detracts from the adorably madcap fun.Cecilia Bartoli, right, as Rosina in “The Barber of Seville,” a role usually sung at the start of careers.Monika RittershausThe ensemble Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco plays with silky spirit for Gianluca Capuano, who leads a cast as expertly easygoing as Bartoli — including Alessandro Corbelli, Nicola Alaimo and, as a Nosferatu-esque Basilio, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo. And the existence of a rarely performed mezzo version of the climactic aria “Cessa di più resistere” lets Bartoli trade off verses with the agile young tenor Edgardo Rocha.The other opera in the relatively intimate Haus für Mozart this summer also takes a hint from the movies: Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” framed by the director Lydia Steier like “The Princess Bride,” with a grandfather telling the story to a young child — here, three boys. As when this staging was new, in 2018, this is a clever way of super-compressing the work’s extensive spoken dialogue.Four years ago, the production sprawled in the festival’s largest theater; now it’s been smushed into its smallest. Steier has wisely jettisoned a whole strand of steampunk circus imagery and concentrated more on the plot as a parable of the start of World War I, with “Little Nemo” touches. It’s subtle work as the boys gradually become participants in the action, not merely observers. The Philharmonic played under Joana Mallwitz with an ideal mixture of crispness and roundedness.Not every Salzburg Festival includes a revival of a past show; this year there are two. In 2017, the Iranian-born photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat’s staging of Verdi’s “Aida” was that summer’s most eagerly awaited offering, a rare full production conducted by the Verdian giant Riccardo Muti, and Netrebko’s debut in the title role.Rather in the background was Neshat, her first time doing opera — and a pristine, bland effort. Now, with less starry collaborators, her work has come to the fore, still decorous but deeper. To poetic effect, some of her blurry, languid early videos of slow-moving crowds on Middle Eastern streets and coasts have been added; her photographs also now play a part, and some dancers are covered in Arabic calligraphy, a trademark of her art.Directed by Rolando Villazón, “The Barber of Seville” is a love letter to the movies.Monika RittershausThere are some good ideas, like the ominous, violent renderings of the ballet in Amneris’s chamber and the Triumphal Scene. Also some bad ones: Amonasro, Aida’s father, here seems to be a specter, already dead, at the start of Act III, which makes the plot incomprehensible. Alain Altinoglu’s conducting of the Philharmonic is sensibly paced but, compared to the exquisite colors and textures Muti elicited, otherwise ordinary. (The nocturnal beginning of the Nile Scene is one of many passages less evocative this year than in 2017.)Elena Stikhina’s soft-grained Aida and Ève-Maud Hubeaux’s dignified Amneris were impressive, but Piotr Beczala, a shining Radamès, was the only really glamorous singer. And glamour is, like it or not, part and parcel of the ideal Salzburg experience: an extravagance of imagination and achievement that surpasses what you can get at the Met or the Vienna State Opera.There was grumbling among Salzburg watchers about the two revivals and the not-quite-new “Barber,” which premiered in June. An almost $70 million budget for just three truly new stagings?This was clearly a note of caution as the pandemic wears on. “I’m convinced it is the right thing artistically, and from the economic side,” Markus Hinterhäuser, the festival’s artistic director, said when the season was announced last year.But the economic part seems truer than the artistic. “Flute” and “Aida” were improved — the Mozart was tighter, the Verdi more nuanced. The question is whether opera’s most famous and rich summer festival needed repeats of two repertory standards — works that can be seen all over the world during the regular season — in performances that, while solid, weren’t much more distinguished than what you’d get in any major house.It is a telling bit of weakness as Salzburg faces renewed competition, especially from the growing Aix-en-Provence Festival in France — and even from the likes of Santa Fe Opera, which this year presented “Tristan und Isolde,” its first Wagner in decades, and a world premiere (“M. Butterfly”). For all its resources, Salzburg has of late abandoned major commissions in favor of bringing back underappreciated modern works.Aix and Salzburg went head-to-head this summer, both offering productions by the in-demand auteur Romeo Castellucci. It was a showdown that Salzburg soundly lost. Aix got a huge, haunting staging of Mahler’s Second Symphony as the exhumation of a mass grave. Here in Austria, though, as Joshua Barone wrote in The Times, Castellucci’s double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Orff’s “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” was a grim, murky slog, played sludgily by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis.But even an expanding Aix lacks the scope of Salzburg’s concert schedule, which begins with a long Ouverture Spirituelle mini-festival and offers an enviable, overlapping array of often superb orchestral programs and recitals.Though less widely publicized, the weekend Mozart Matinees featuring the Mozarteum Orchestra often present the most joyful, vibrant playing of the festival. Marco BorelliThis year the concerts didn’t all satisfy. The pianist Grigory Sokolov’s pillowy touch was alluring in Beethoven’s “Eroica” Variations and Brahms’s Op. 117 pieces, but smoothed Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” into slumber. The tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s voice rarely came alive in a recital whose halves were dully drawn from his two most recent albums.But it was touching to see the superstar pianist Lang Lang show his respect for Daniel Barenboim by joining that conductor and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for Manuel de Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” not at all a virtuoso showpiece. And while the Vienna Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons made a muddle of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Yefim Bronfman, the orchestra sounded sumptuously ripe in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.More memorable was a less exalted, less widely publicized concert: one of the festival’s 11 a.m. weekend Mozart Matinees featuring the Mozarteum Orchestra. These mornings often have the most joyful, vibrant playing of the festival, and last week’s program was no exception, led with verve by Adam Fischer.The Mozart Matinees are well attended and happily received. But they still feel like a Salzburg secret. More

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      The Classical Music Event of the Summer Is in Salzburg’s Shadow

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      With surprising concerts performed at the highest level, the Ouverture Spirituelle is part of the Salzburg Festival but outshines it.SALZBURG, Austria — Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” Symphony, a celebration and condemnation of Russian life and cultural memory, was met at the Grosses Festspielhaus here on a recent evening with a standing ovation that lasted over five minutes.Preceded by a setting of the Kaddish and opening with an evergreen reproof of antisemitism, the symphony is the kind of music that welcomes reflection. But it was understandably difficult to keep quiet after a performance of a masterly art delivered with mastery.And that was only the first concert of the night.Such a lengthy, substantial evening is typical of the Ouverture Spirituelle — a Salzburg Festival series separate from the main slate, and originally designed to ease into it — which started with the “Babi Yar” on July 19 and continued through Thursday, often with at least two programs a day.Now in its 10th edition, the Ouverture Spirituelle is still in the shadow of the rest of the festival. Not all performances sell out; the audience is visibly less international; and the press coverage doesn’t come close to comparing with, say, the main-stage glamour of a starry new “Il Trittico” at the Grosses Festspielhaus last week.Videos by the artist Shirin Neshat, who is staging “Aida” at the festival, were screened at the Kollegienkirche.Marco BorrelliNight by night, though, the Ouverture Spirituelle is the superior event this year — it’s also the finest I’ve attended all summer. Each program holds some sort of surprise: unfamiliar repertoire, illuminating juxtapositions of music old and new, opportunities to hear works that are typically reserved for concert halls but shine in spaces like the airy Kollegienkirche, or Collegiate Church. Above all, its artists are as top-tier as those at the main festival. And some, like the pianist Igor Levit, appear at both but break new ground at the Ouverture Spirituelle.Alexander Pereira, a former artistic director of the festival, introduced the Ouverture Spirituelle in 2012, with the aim of focusing each edition on the music of one world religion. But that approach had exhausted itself by the time Markus Hinterhäuser took over as artistic director, presenting his first slate in 2017.“The idea from my predecessor was wonderful,” Hinterhäuser said in an interview. “But this is done. I cannot repeat that, and I don’t want to repeat that.”Instead, he and Florian Wiegand, the director of concerts, have organized the Ouverture Spirituelle around themes, like “Transfiguration,” “Pax” and, this year, “Sacrificium,” meant in both a sacred and secular sense. Intentionally broad, they allow for “the whole geography of music history to be used,” Hinterhäuser said.The pianist Igor Levit introduced new repertory in Paul Dessau’s “Guernica” and Hartmann’s “27. April 1945” sonata.Marco BorrelliCrucially, he and Wiegand have a direct hand in organizing the concerts, which is less the case with the main festival, in which touring artists and orchestras often come with their own traveling repertory. “Of course when you ask Jonas Kaufmann to do a recital,” Wiegand said, “he delivers the program.”But for the Ouverture Spirituelle, the process works in something like the reverse. Hinterhäuser and Wiegand spend a lot of time listening to music and discussing what could work with the theme. They have some goals, like pairing early and contemporary repertoire to essayistic effect, or giving the quasi-religious themes a political edge. Then they begin to match the programming with artists, sometimes calling them directly instead of going through managers.This results in concerts that artists — including this year’s guests, like the Tallis Scholars, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and John Eliot Gardiner with his Monteverdi Choir — don’t perform anywhere else. “That is what a festival should be,” Wiegand said. “If it’s going to Lucerne or the Proms, why should people come to Salzburg?”Maxime Pascal led a one-night-only performance of Honegger’s enormous “Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher,” featuring, at his left, the French actress Irène Jacob.Marco BorrelliTrue. As a critic, I’m less inclined to dip into other festivals when I see programs that have already taken place elsewhere or that will make their way to New York. The Ouverture Spirituelle, however, is densely packed with music that I haven’t even heard of, and that I’m not likely to come across again.That Shostakovich concert — played by the Mahler Youth Orchestra under the baton of Teodor Currentzis — was about as traditional as the Ouverture Spirituelle got this year, aside from Handel’s “Messiah,” which was led by Jordi Savall but with smaller, clearer forces than usual and at the less-than-400-seat Kollegienkirche.With its pride of place on the Ouverture Spirituelle’s opening night, the “Babi Yar” — nicknamed for its setting of a poem about remembering the massacre of over 30,000 Jews at the site in Ukraine — might have seemed a response to the war there, where Russian missiles struck the area around the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in the early days of the invasion. But, in an eerily prescient move, it was programmed last year.Beyond that, the program was conducted by Currentzis, who with his ensemble MusicAeterna is under scrutiny for ties to the Russian state. (On Tuesday, he announced the formation of a new group, Utopia, with Western backing; tellingly, the news release referred to him as Greek instead of Greek-Russian, as he had been identifying himself, and made no mention of what this development means for the future of MusicAeterna.)At the “Babi Yar” concert, though, the audience’s focus seemed to be more on the performance itself, given the ecstatic response to the orchestra and Currentzis — not to mention members of the MusicAeterna Choir and the Bachchor Salzburg. The soloist, Dmitry Ulyanov, had a characterful, sonorous bass that was reason enough to forgive indulgences by Currentzis like having the instrumentalists stand at an emotional climax (a gesture that doesn’t trust the music), or interminably holding his arms up to keep the hall silent at the end of the symphony (a gesture that doesn’t trust the listeners).The evening took a more adventurous turn not long after at the Kollegienkirche, where members of Cantando Admont and Klangforum Wien presented two harrowing and hauntingly resonant works by Luigi Nono, one inspired by horrors in Poland during World War II (“Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatti in Auschwitz”), the other by oppressive Soviet rule (“Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco n. 2”).Threading one concert to the other in the same night, or one piece to another within a single program, is part of the planning thrill. “It has to do with knowledge and intuition,” Hinterhäuser said. “There’s always this kind of balance, what Robert Musil would say is between the sense of possibility and reality.”The possibilities, with the Salzburg Festival’s cachet and budget of nearly 60 million euros ($61.5 million), are extensive. This year, it has meant bringing the Monteverdi Choir to the Kollegienkirche for the brief but exquisite Carissimi oratorio “Jephte”; a pickup ensemble including Kopatchinskaja for Giya Kancheli’s “Exil,” from the 1990s and now unimaginable in a space without that church’s acoustics; and, on that same program, the Tallis Scholars making a cameo appearance in 16th-century music by Orlande de Lassus.Jordi Savall led an intimate “Messiah” at the Kollegienkirche.Marco BorrelliIt has meant one-night-only performances of Josef Myslivecek’s “Abraham ed Isacco,” an oratorio with turns of phrase that prefigure Mozart, by Collegium 1704; Honegger’s “Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher,” with a magnetic Irène Jacob as the heroine and a tireless Maxime Pascal on the podium; Levit in Paul Dessau’s tintinnabulary “Guernica” and Hartmann’s doleful, trudging “27. April 1945” sonata (just the first part of a concert that also included the Hagen Quartet in Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 and the MusicAeterna Choir in Shnittke’s Requiem for Soloists, Mixed Choir and Instruments).Some programs were mercifully given two performances, like the “Messiah,” sublimely intimate with agile soloists joined by Le Concert des Nations and La Capella Nacional de Catalunya. The visual artist Shirin Neshat, who is back in Salzburg to restage her “Aida” from 2017, screened four works — on a spectrum from subversive to shallow — at the Kollegienkirche, which attracted an audience not typically seen at concerts there. And, as part of the festival’s homage to the living composer Wolfgang Rihm, his 1979 chamber opera “Jakob Lenz” was given a welcome showing, with terrifying intensity and utter commitment from Le Balcon, under Pascal, and its phenomenal Lenz, the Austrian baritone Georg Nigl.If this sounds a bit overwhelming, it is. (Imagine being Hinterhäuser and Wiegand, who were spotted at every performance.) But for fans of classical music — especially the most curious among them — it doesn’t get much more fulfilling than the Ouverture Spirituelle.As it heads into its second decade, Wiegand said, the series can promise more of the same — at least through 2026. That’s when Hinterhäuser’s contract expires. “The plan until then is to continue with the themes,” Wiegand added. “Then, we see what comes next.” More

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      Under Pressure to Cut Russian Ties, Maestro Forms New Orchestra

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      Teodor Currentzis, who has been criticized for his association with a Russian bank, has enlisted European benefactors to finance his new group, Utopia.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, announced on Monday that he would form a new international ensemble with the support of donors outside Russia.The ensemble, to be called Utopia, will bring together 112 musicians from 28 countries, many of them soloists and principal players in renowned orchestras, for a European tour that is to begin this fall and go through 2023, according to a statement. The group will rely on ticket sales as well as donations from European benefactors to finance its operations, the statement said.Currentzis, who has made a career of defying conventions in classical music, said he wanted the new group to shake up the traditional model of orchestras, in which musicians play together for years in the same concert halls. He said in a statement that the new group would “leave behind the framework of respectable institutions which, while being blessed can also be doomed to create what could be described as a certain standardized international sound.”“We are stepping into a more experimental field of searching for the perfect sound with masterful musicians who all crave it,” he added.The statement did not address Currentzis’s future with his longtime ensemble, MusicAeterna, which has drawn fire for its reliance on VTB Bank, a state-owned Russian institution that has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries but remains the ensemble’s main sponsor. Representatives for Currentzis and MusicAeterna did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.The statement did not offer details about Utopia’s European benefactors, except to say they included a private foundation called Kunst und Kultur DM.Currentzis has faced pressure in recent months to secure financing outside Russia for MusicAeterna, which he founded in Siberia in 2004. He has also been criticized for remaining silent on the war and working with associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including some who sit on the board of MusicAeterna’s foundation. Several of the ensemble’s engagements have been canceled or postponed since the start of the war because of concerns about the ensemble’s benefactors.Still, MusicAeterna has pushed forward with engagements in Russia and abroad. In recent days, Currentzis, who was born in Athens but was awarded Russian citizenship by Putin in 2014, has led performances before sold-out crowds at the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria.Some of his artistic partners praised his decision on Monday to form Utopia.Matthias Naske, the artistic director of the Vienna Konzerthaus, who has said he would not engage MusicAeterna until it secured independent financing, called Utopia an important achievement. The new group will perform at the concert hall in October, during a tour that includes stops in Luxembourg and Germany.“I am grateful to Teodor Currentzis for his commitment and look forward to many encounters with his new project in the interest of cultural life in Vienna,” Naske said in a statement. 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