Jeremy Denk, piano

Sometimes there’s just too darned much talking at classical concerts. Whether it’s welcoming the crowd, thanking the donors and pleading for more contributions, or explicating what’s about to happen in the music, all that verbiage gets tiresome.

Yet along comes a musician like Jeremy Denk who’s almost as good with words as he is at playing the piano.  Denk made his third appearance at the Union College Concert Series on Friday night and offered rather extensive remarks throughout the night.  Though he’s widely known for his blog, I don’t recall him chatting at all in previous appearances.

Actually I’d had my fill long before he was done, despite his natural sense of humor, occasional references to pop culture, and illuminating use of musical examples that were both played and sung.  But there was a terrific moment in the concert that wouldn’t have happened if he’d not prepared the audience.  They responded to a piece with laughter. How rare is that?

It came at the end of Ligeti’s Etude No. 1, the first of a knotty set of works by the Hungarian composer who died in 2006.  Denk briefly described the structure or inspiration of each of the pieces and also made clear how tough they were to play. By no means was that opening etude a joke piece.  It was craggy and hard edged and kind of explodes at the end.  And somehow Denk gave the audience both the knowledge and the permission to enjoy it.

The evening’s program was based on the idea of variations.  It opened with two Bach toccatas and continued with Beethoven’s “Eroica” Variations, Op. 35. The succession of short form pieces felt kind of choppy and made one restless during the more open ended finale, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111.

But the hushed Arietta and Cantabile passages of the sonata, which linger in the treble, reached a sublime state.  Those were just some of the many times when Denk’s range of touch was amazing.  The Bach had clear voicing without being brittle.  When he switched to Beethoven, it was like he had a different instrument or had added on some new bass notes.  The sound became robust and mighty.  The Ligeti pushed technical and sonic matters into a whole other realm — one where Denk was fully in command and had the audience happily following along.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Jeremy Denk makes Carnegie Hall debut on short notice

Jeremy Denk: Out in the Times

Concert review: Denk plays Ives and Bach

Concert review: Denk plays Ives and Beethoven

Two big gulps: Denk plays Ives and Beethoven

Sunday afternoon’s program featured something far better than a risky premiere.  Instead, it was Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was written in 2009 and received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.  That award doesn’t always mean enduring quality but Higdon’s concerto has got the stuff.

One of today’s most widely performed composers, Higdon writes in the current style that might be dubbed post-ugly.  The concerto, like most of her music, is lively, fluent and engaging, but also extraordinarily demanding on the players, both soloist and orchestra alike.

It was written for and recorded by star virtuoso Hilary Hahn, a former student of Higdon’s at the Curtis Institute.  Sunday’s soloist was another Curtis student, 21-year old Benjamin Beilman.  He’s the first performer to take up the work after Hahn and this was his debut in the piece. He delivered with distinction and flair.

The first movement’s cadenza is a genuine tour de force, with a pilling up of themes and showy devices.  Higdon, who spoke before the piece, said she wondered if it was actually playable but Beilman tackled it with ease and confidence

After a stretch of romantic relaxation in the central movement, based on the form of the chaconne, comes the finale, which Higdon likened to a violin in a race at the Olympics.  The hurdles on the track were the colorful explosions from the orchestra.  The Glens Falls players shined in the numerous brief solos.

Beilman’s encore, from Prokofiev’s Sonata, revealed one of his gifts that was largely missing from the hyperactive concerto, a warm radiant tone.

After intermission, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” sounded like a different orchestra had taken the stage. The woodwinds were sour and out of tune at the launch of the first movement and the babbling brook of the second had a meager flow rate.  But Peltz added momentum with each movement and the playing got better for it.

Despite the struggles, or perhaps because of them, it was an engaging performance over all.  In other words, there was always something to listen for, good or bad, rather than just sitting through another accurate but rote account of the familiar classic.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

IN OTHER HIGDON NEWS:

The long awaited opera (Higdon’s first) for the San Francisco Symphony will no longer be in San Francisco.  The Sante Fe Opera has stepped up to take on the commission.  After a long search for the right subject, and then a protracted negotiation for rights, the source material is in place:  ”Cold Mountain,” the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier.  The Opera Company of Philadelphia is a partner in the commission and production and the premiere is slated for 2015.

Here are more details from the Sante Fe Opera’s press release:

COLD MOUNTAIN – Jennifer Higdon, composer; Gene Scheer, librettist

2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.  Cold Mountain is Charles Frazier’s powerful account of one soldier, W. P. Inman, who deserts the Confederate army as the war is coming to an end and makes his way back to his home on Cold Mountain.  The novel won the 1997 National Book Award and was made into a film in 2003. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

The Civil War has a special resonance for New Mexicans.  The New Mexico Territory was the site of one of the final and westernmost battles of the Civil War, fought at nearby Glorieta Pass in 1862.  Historians have called it a major event in the history of the Civil War.  The village of Pecos is the site of an annual reenactment of the skirmish.

Cold Mountain composer Jennifer Higdon is one of the most in-demand composers today.   She was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and a Grammy the same year for her Percussion Concerto. blue cathedral, written in 2000, on the death of her brother, has become one of the most performed modern orchestral  works.  Her compositions have been performed by leading orchestras throughout the country and she has received commissions from numerous instrumental ensembles.

The versatile American librettist and composer Gene Scheer is the librettist.  Among his many projects are several with composer Jake Heggie, the latest being Moby Dick for the Dallas Opera which was premiered in 2010.  He collaborated with Tobias Picker on two operas, An American Tragedy, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, andTherese Raquin for the Dallas Opera.  He has written songs for singers including Renée Fleming, Sylvia McNair and Stephanie Blythe, and a song cycle, Voices from World War II for Nathan Gunn.

Nathan Gunn, who will sing the role of W.P. Inman, is one of the country’s leading operatic baritones.  He has performed in virtually every major opera house in the world and is admired as an interpreter of new works including operas by Tobias Picker, Daron Hagen, Andre Previn and Peter Eötvös.  He collaborated with Gene Scheer on the opera An American Tragedy, and the song cycle Voices from World War II.  Gunn is also a distinguished concert performer and recitalist.  He appeared in the 1998 production of Berlioz’ Beatrice and Benedict and the following year in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos in Santa Fe.  He is currently Professor of Voice at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

This year’s entry is “Die Liebe der Danae.” Richard Strauss’ second to last opera, it was completed in 1940 but only premiered in 1952, three years after the composer’s death.  The piece’s New York staged debut opened on Friday night and was seen on Sunday afternoon at the Fisher Center.

Besides declaring its greatness, the notes from conductor Botstein and stage director Kevin Newbury point to the opera’s appropriateness for our times.  It’s about the worship and necessity of money, the primacy of status, and the fickleness of love.  Yet the fact that the source material is Greek myth says we’re hardly the first generation to be obsessed with such matters.

In past years, Bard’s productions have been so lavish with stagecraft as to balance out the middling quality of the work at hand. But “Danae” received a modest, if occasionally clever treatment, at least by past standards.  A spray of long tinsel is lowered to form a golden (moneyed) halo, but like an ATM card it gets used a few too many times.  After intermission, Danae and Midas are living out of a beat-up blue compact car.  Otherwise, the sets are rather static projections of Manhattan buildings or a desert horizon.

The most arresting scene visually and musically was the opening.  As the orchestra plays a tight rhythmic counterpoint reminiscent of Kurt Weill, a couple dozen Wall Streets in navy suits and power ties are scurrying about, singing of unpaid bills.  Later they opened their briefcases to the heavens, like open mouthed fledglings waiting to be fed.

The second scene is an attractive pairing of sopranos Megan Miller as Danae and Sarah Jane McMahon as Xanthe that brought to mind “Der Rosenkavalier.”  Miller’s best moments come late in the opera when the textures thin and the pace relaxes.

Almost all of the vocal writing is darned tough, with long, not terribly gracious lines set high in the register. Combine this with the constantly unfolding themes and cadences in the orchestra and the effect is unrelenting.  Given their tasks, Miller and the other leads, tenor Roger Honeywell as Midas and bass Carsten Wittmoser as Jupiter, did more than admirable work.  But the playing of the American Symphony Orchestra under Botstein was more workmanlike than usual.

R. Strauss’ “Die Liebe der Danae”
3 p.m. Sunday, July 31, 2011
Fisher Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson

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It’s hard to imagine that the Bard Music Festival will ever get around to a season titled “Noel Coward and His World.”  So it’s probably enough that the college’s SummerScape series has mounted such a loving revival of the composer’s operetta “Bitter Sweet.”   The show opened on Thursday night, was seen at the Friday matinee and runs through August 14 in the intimate smaller theater of the Fisher Center.

While his name evokes the early to mid-20th century, the dandy Coward lived until 1973 and was once a powerhouse composer, writer, performer and producer.  These days, in the realm of classical music and opera at least, his work is a rarity.  So again, “Bitter Sweet” was a welcome arrival.

But just to be clear, this is no forgotten masterpiece either. It’s probably debatable whether the category of operetta or musical comedy is a better fit.  The numbers, often overflowing with clever inner rhymes, aren’t quiet as droll as most Gilbert and Sullivan nor as studied as some of Stephen Sondheim.

Though the music never exactly soars, there are plenty of good tunes including a one-time hit, “I’ll See You Again.”  The small orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, is sweetened up with lots of saxophones.

The story is a touching reflection on youthful love seen through the eyes of a matron, played with wistful grace by Sian Phillips.  She’s surrounded by a cast that’s surprisingly large and pleasingly youthful and energetic.

Two of the leads certainly had an operatic confidence and power.  Mezzo Sarah Miller’s performance as Sarah/Sari only grew richer as the show progressed.  Tenor William Ferguson twice started songs without accompaniment yet was in fine tune when the orchestra joined in many bars later.

As a German chanteuse, soprano Amanda Quittieri had several fine production numbers though her finale was a garbled mix of languages.  The best showmanship came from the male quartet of droll waiters. They climaxed in the suggestive and frolicsome “Green Carnation,” Coward’s only slightly veiled reference to Oscar Wilde.

The plot jumps about between decades and across national borders.  Adrian W. Jones’ single set was elegant and efficient but it was the lavish costumes by Gregory Gale that best evoked each time and place.  A constant presence on stage was the grand piano and more than a few performers displayed fluent keyboard skills.

Noel Coward’s “Bitter Sweet”
3 p.m. Friday, August 5, 2011
Fisher Center, Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, NY

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Photos by Cory Weaver courtesy Bard College

Throwing in one afternoon recital was going to be a nice added touch.  But renditions of some standards and maybe a few arias would have sufficed, right?  If she wanted to touch on her youthful fondness for Karen Carpenter, too, well then all the better.

As it turns out, Friday’s hour-long program was a daring revelation of Voigt’s deepest self. Sure, she sang plenty — complete or truncated renditions of 18 different selections, with pianist Kevin Stites. But it was what she said that touched the audience in deep and unexpected ways.

Working loosely from a script prepared by playwright Terrence McNally, Voigt traced her life story.  Born to a Baptist family in Illinois, her earliest musical experiences were in church choirs.  During her early teens, the family relocated to California. She joked that the sound of the town’s name — Placentia — still leaves a rather unclean taste in her mouth.  While there, she took to musical theater and we heard snatches of selections from “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Music Man.”

Tracing her ascent into the highest rank of opera singers soon led Voigt to utter the f-word:  F-A-T.  She once tipped the scales at 333 pounds.  She reminded us of the international incident caused when she lost a role at Covent Garden because she couldn’t fit in a little black dress (size one). Though she mostly steered clear of settling scores, Voigt did declare, “concepts are the first refuse for directors who don’t trust the music.”  After recounting a failed marriage, the over eating and gastric bypass surgery, it didn’t come as a surprise to hear Voigt also reveal her alcoholism.

And oh, how she sang.  While her mighty voice seems rather contained in the role of Annie, songs like “Edelweiss,” “Moon River” and “Show Me” felt not just comfortable but open hearted.  Classics were also on the bill with leider of Brahms and Strauss as well as “Nessun Dorma,” the first aria she ever wanted to sing — before she learned it was the exclusive terrain of tenors.  Knocking down barriers seems to be Voigt’s greatest role these days.

“Voigt Lessons”
with soprano Deborah Voigt
Friday, July 29, 2011
Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown NY

Previously on MyBigGayEars:  Deborah Voigt Gets Her Gun On

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The storm had already hit and the argument was in full progress when the lights go up on “A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck,” the new opera by composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tony Kushner.  The one-act premiered in a double bill on July 21 at the Glimmerglass Festival and was seen on Friday evening.

It’s a recreation of a tumultuous moment late in the life of Eugene O’Neill, and the playwright is at loggerheads with his third wife Carlotta.  The music is pounding and furious while the insults, pointed and smart, zing. The pace eventually slackens, thank heavens, but the entire 40-minute opera has a power and immediacy that’s rare to new works.

Tesori conducted the Glimmerglass Orchestra, which often evoked the era of the jazz big band.  Bits of popular song come over the P.A. system, as if from the onstage phonograph.  Kushner’s fascinating libretto makes frequent use of biographical lines from O’Neill’s own works.

Bass-baritone David Pittsinger, as O’Neill, sang with a sturdy force while moving with an old man’s gate.  Soprano Patricia Schuman released plenty of fury but her part seemed to be in low register and she was often covered by the loud orchestra.  Some drama critics of the day show up as a trio, to both torment and croon.

The evening opened with “Later The Same Evening,” by composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell, in its professional company debut.   A comparatively lackluster 75 minutes, the opera dips into the imagined inner musings and chance interactions of 11 characters from five paintings of Edward Hopper.

Musto’s music is clean-lined and his settings of English combined with the singer’s fine diction revealed every word. The orchestration was lean to the point of being dry.  Taken together, it did evoke the pensive, depressive nature of Hopper’s human still lifes.

In an economical if obvious bit of staging, reproductions of the paintings are seen on the back wall, as if hung in a gallery.  The body positions and costumes of the singers mimic their painted counterparts.  Leon Major was the director.

Erhard Rom’s silver-walled set gets filled with dry ice after intermission for “Blizzard.”  Company director Francesca Zambello staged that with typically unfussy and economic ease.

All told, the new Zambello era at Glimmerglass has had about as many successes as failures.  But the company is reaching higher and once again making Cooperstown a destination for inquisitive arts goers of all stripes.

“Later The Same Evening” (Musto/Campbell)
“A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck” (Tesori/Kushner)
Friday, July 29, 2011
Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown NY

Previously on MyBigGayEars:
Tony Kushner’s first opera explores Eugene O’Neill

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

All production photos by Julieta Cervantes courtesy Glimmerglass.

When it filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, the venerable institution became a sad symbol for the fragile state of the economy and the arts in general. Only the near demise of the New York City Opera — once an annual visitor to Saratoga — has been bigger news.

Meanwhile the orchestra keeps playing and awaits its young music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, whose tenure is still more than a year from starting. It’s a period of transition for the annual summer residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as well, after last year’s retirement of music director Charles Dutoit. It’s only logical to conclude that every guest conductor this season might also be auditioning.

Marin Alsop was a fine choice to lead Wednesday’s opening night (7/27/11). There’s her family history with the Spa City, but more importantly she has an obvious rapport with the players.

She launched the evening with a vivid account of Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3. There were even more dramatic highs and lows in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 “Pathetique,” which ended the night.

Alsop, who conducted from memory, didn’t take long in bringing out the symphony’s bleeding heart. During the opening Adagio the strings surged as the winds pulsed. After the waltz in the second movement got going, she occasionally dropped the beat and just gave small jabs of accents to the cellos and basses or the brass. Throughout it all, Alsop seemed in firm command and yet allowed enough room for the players to achieve a state of raucous exultation.

A tight and lively reading of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 featured Sarah Chang as soloist. She displayed a characteristically impressive technique combined with a slightly austere tone. Though not exactly a warm presence on stage, Chang can be fun to watch, especially when she tilts so far backward while playing a long line. After ending some phrases in the final movement, she swung her bow down in a long arc, something like the pendulum of a clock.

The evening ended with an unexpected encore, one of Brahms’ Hungarian dances. Brief and fast, it was filled with light percussion in the Turkish style.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Marin Alsop: From the lawn to the podium

In the new production of “Carmen,” which opened at the Glimmerglass Festival on Saturday, the action grows more tight and focused throughout the night until Carmen and Don Jose are alone in a ring.  In a daring moment of surrender, Carmen stops her tormenting ways and prostrates herself before her angry and jilted lover.  She seems to think better of it, but it’s too late. The knife plunges.

The lights are at their brightest in that climax.  The evening began in a washed out haze with only fleeting bits of color against a jumbled set of sepia and gray tones. In a program note, director Ann Bogart says that she took inspiration from bull fighting and the grittiness of the Orson Welles film “Touch of Evil.”  She makes the evening a long but inexorable progression.

The performances also have a cinematic intimacy, especially that of twenty-four year old Ginger Costa-Jackson who’s making her debut as Carmen. In fact, it’s her first time to have the lead role in an opera.  Her voice was dark, rich and attractive. Bringing to mind a tousle-haired Jennifer Lopez, she displays a youthful and unceasing passion and an understated skill of seduction. Costa-Jackson seldom played overtly to the house, but stayed tightly bound in the role, intently focused on Carmen’s shifting priorities and ploys.

The show horse of the night was tenor Adam Diegel as Don Jose.  His voice grew more powerful and compelling with each scene.  As for his acting, Carmen seemed to truly piss him off. More than once he flung her away from him, as if trying to fight a magnetic bond.

The secondary leads were fine to serviceable.  Anya Matanovic sang beautifully as Micaela. Keith Miller hit his marks in the famous toreador number but later had a frog in his throat.

A pair of Spanish dancers enlivens several scenes, especially with a terrific shadow dance in the second act.  Just after the opening, there’s a creepy mix of soldiers and children marching in formation.

As expected, Bogart’s production mostly avoids the obvious and traditional. Carmen never handles a rose. Instead, a basket of oranges sit stage center for much of act one. They’re tossed about in a vaguely erotic way.

The set is often jumbled and junky, in that familiar, supposedly non-traditional manner.  How many seasons now have we seen the theatre’s back wall?  But it takes more than clutter and shadows to rob the drama from “Carmen.”

MEDEA
Glimmerglass Festival
Opening night, July 8, 2011

The dramatic soul that enlivens Glimmerglass’ new production of Cherubini’s “Medea” doesn’t appear on stage but comes from the pit.  Starting with the lengthy overture, it’s an evening for the orchestra thanks to the 28 year-old Italian conductor Daniel Rustioni.

With his vigorous style and unceasing energy, Rustioni displays a strong vision of the score and musters an unusually hearty and sustained sound from the Glimmerglass orchestra.  One still wishes that the string section was 20 or 30 percent larger, but the thought didn’t come to mind during Friday’s opening night.

Though a central component to any successful opera staging, a conductor can’t overcome limitations and failings on the stage and there are many with this “Medea.”

Soprano Alexandra Deshorties got all the notes in the hugely demanding title role but failed to deliver the kind of coherent and unflinching grit that the character requires to be convincing let alone compelling.  She was not aided by some bizarre choices from director Michael Barker-Cavan.

This is not, however, an opera transplanted to some strange new time and place.  The single set is vaguely Greek, distinctly temple.  A ceremonial scene makes elegant use of incense and water.  Medea’s appropriately chilly first entrance is one of her best moments.  In the second act, her body is contorted into one awkward yoga position after another.  Toward the end, as she sings on and on about her children, she hardly looks at them or touches them.

During one of many climactic arguments with Jason, the two are shoved off to the side of the stage and grip opposite sides of a black wall.  The old fashioned stand and sing method would have been better.

Joe Vanek designed the set as well as the costumes and they’re a hodgepodge of styles. Medea gets caught up in a pea green dress with a stiff and distracting train. At one point the male chorus looks like some Ken and G. I. Joe dolls decided share play clothes.

Deshorties gets upstaged by singers more comfortable — and showy — in their roles.  Wendy Bryn Harmer is a knock out as Glauce, Jason Collins unflagging but not particularly moving as Jason. David Pittsinger is sturdy as a rock in the priestly role of King Creon.  As the wretched plot winds on, some of the most moving moments come from the servant Neris, played with affecting beauty by Sarah Larsen, a member of the company’s Young Artist program.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Photos by Julieta Cervantes courtesy Glimmerglass Festival.

GAY EARS ADDENDUM:

During the intermission of Medea I spoke to a colleague about the handsome and dynamic conductor Daniel Rustioni.  I said that he’s got that Joshua Bell-type hair with a great bounce.  The person I was conversing with had been at the company’s opening night dinner the prior week and said that when he saw the guy across the way  at the party he asked, “Who’s boy toy is that?”  He got the reply, “He’s one of this year’s conductors!”

Rustioni is starting to get an internet buzz and recently appeared in Italian Vanity Fair.

Two Boys, which opened on Friday, will attract expostulations of outrage from all the usual suspects for its depictions of gritty crime, illegal grooming and under-age sex. Susan Bickley plays a Helen Mirren role as the detective who has to unravel the mess. The drama is coherent and the music often painfully beautiful, never more so than when Muhly writes an Anglican church chorale for a stunning boy soloist, and we know all the while what will happen to 
him.

– Norman Lebrecht
The Telegraph

Librettist Lucas, an American, fails to create a convincing atmosphere of Britishness for the story. Mentions of swimming pools and full-time gardeners are off track in referring to the U.K. urban middle classes.

All would be forgiven for some decent music. Instead, Muhly serves up a footling reworking of John Adams’s early minimalism in a score which rarely breaks out of a sclerotic andante- moderato. He overuses a technique of chugging unison bass instruments under flighty treble sounds too.

His vocal writing moves in a uniformly plodding one-note- per-syllable parlando which never brings any of the characters to life. It fails to conjure up love, or hatred, or despair, or any of the other emotions the story would seem to demand.

One of the characters is a dangerous female spy, for heaven’s sake. You’d think that should be a gift to a composer. Not for Muhly. Plod, plod, plod. She sounds the same as Brian’s boring dad.

– Warwick Thompson
Bloomberg

The most surprising thing about Two Boys is the consonance and quiet sensuality of the score. Many words spring to mind: elegiac, mournful, poetic, melismatic – a digital age score without digitalisms, without electronics, actual or simulated, without amplification. And it’s clear, so clear – but never clinical – in word and gesture and thought: a preposterous tale of intrigue and attempted murder (or is it?) born of false identities and fiction masquerading as fact. Opera was ever thus. But it’s just gone viral.

– Edward Seckerson
The Independent

Musically it unfolds far too sedately, with vocal declamation over smoothly contoured orchestral ostinatos, pitched somewhere between recent Philip Glass and the John Adams of The Death of Klinghoffer, as the default musical idiom. Just occasionally the music reveals what might have been – in the aleatoric choral writing depicting the cyber-babble of the chatrooms, the multi-layered chorus with which the work ends, or some of the wonderfully voiced orchestral textures, such as the poignant string lines that underpin the aria in which Brian attempts to describe the importance of the internet in his life. But balance between pit and stage is a regular problem, and too many vocal lines get swamped by the orchestral textures.

– Andrew Clements
The Guardian

Founded in 1980 by a band of stalwart devotees of music from the Medieval and Renaissance, the organization has expanded over the last 30 years into an international powerhouse that’s a unique combination of opera company, concert series, touring company, trade show and record producer.

The most recent biennial festival ran June 12-19 and was attended by several thousand professional musicians, instrument builders, music publishers and loyal fans.   A highlight of every festival is a new, fully staged opera, usually something resurrected from historical obscurity.

For more than a decade BEMF has been bringing these operas to the Berkshires, first to Tanglewood and more recently to the historic and intimate Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington.  Two years ago, amidst the shock of the recession, the company brought a more scaled back production than was originally planned. But they return this weekend (June 24-27) with not only a lavish new staging of “Niobe: Queen of Thebes” by Agostino Steffani (1653-1728) but also a second and more intimate piece, Handel’s “Acis and Galatea.”

“Our budgets keep growing and we keep dreaming more dreams,” says Kathleen Fay, who started as a volunteer with BEMF in 1985 and has been its top executive since 1987.  “Our growth parallels the expanding field of early music and I’d like to think we play a major role in that.”

In its early seasons BEMF was something like a circus tent — full of life and activity for a brief period than gone and out of sight.

“This presented a terribly difficult challenge and marketing obstacle, to open and close down again,” recalls Fay.

In order to maintain a year around presence, Fay launched an annual concert series in Boston in 1991 that presented up and coming groups as well as stars of the early music movement.  Six years ago a similar series began at the Morgan Library in Manhattan.

Then there’s the operas.  A typical opera company will pull a score off the shelf and hire a conductor, director and cast.  Instead, the festival’s artistic directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs usually select something that’s not been staged in centuries and then carefully recreate the score into a modern performing edition.  For the scholarly crowd — a key part of the early music scene — they publish a thorough and thoughtful essay on the piece and its history, plus a full libretto.

Also unusual is that for the last few operas, BEMF’s production team has been largely the same.  Returning with “Niobe” are stage director and set designer Gilbert Bin and costumer Anna Watkins, as well as O’Dette and Stubbs, who lead the orchestra of strings, winds, and sundry ancient instruments.   The continuity among collaborators and the two-year production time that goes into each new staging has for an unusual depth and cohesiveness.

Kathleen Fay was fresh viewing the final dress rehearsal of “Niobe” when we spoke. “It’s not describable, I’m speechless — the sets, the costumes, the singing, right down to every member of the cast,” she said.  “It’s one of the most breathtaking couple of hours.” (Actually the piece runs about three and a half hours, including two intermissions.)

Taking pleasure in her company’s work is a relatively small part of Fay’s activity.  Fundraising is a top priority, with the budget during a festival year running at just over $3 million. “I knock on a lot of doors and we have a devoted group of friends from all over the world, who give from $4 to $200,000,” she says, adding that the festival also receives federal and state grants.  Continues Fay, “The economy is better than two years ago.  We’re not where we were in 2007, but we’re in better shape than we were in 2009.”

While the staging of “Niobe” may be lavish — “the costumes steal the show,” says Fey — this year’s second opera was created with strict economics.

Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” is the latest installment in yet another new BEMF initiative: chamber operas that are mounted during an annual fall season in Boston and that also go on the road.  The two Berkshire performances will cap a tour of that began in Seattle in March and also arrived in Vancouver, Kansas City, and New York as well in Boston for an encore run during last week’s festival.

“When we initiated the chamber operas, we made a pledge not to build new sets or costumes but use our stock,” explains Fay. “We also pledged to hire young talent and musicians and dancers for these chamber operas. It’s been another staggeringly successful initiative.”

Boston Early Music Festival presents
Stefani: Niobe, Queen of Thebes
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Great Barrington, Mass.
Saturday June 25

In the Baroque opera “Niobe, Queen of Thebes” by Agostino Steffani, the differences between the rustics, the royals and the gods are blurred.  Characters regularly float down in chariots from the clouds and the pleasures of earth and the rule of heaven are debated and confused.  Near the end, soldiers appear draped in the stars and the queen begins to fancy herself as eternal.

One thing is certain though.  From start to finish the production by the Boston Early Music Festival is divine.

Saturday’s performance at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center was part of the festival’s biennial return to the Berkshires, which this year continues with a second opera, Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” that runs through Monday night.

The impeccable performances and lavish staging were a happy continuation of the company’s mind bogglingly high standards.  Once again the opera itself is something almost forgotten and that probably won’t be seen again for a generation (though a recording will likely appear within a year or so).  In the hands of music directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, stage director Gilbert Blin, costumer Anna Watkins and designer Gilbert Blin, it’s truly something to be treasured.

Of the uniformly fine cast, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky was a standout.  His clear and pure voice was always as agile and fast moving as the music demanded.  He was at his best, though, in a deliciously meditative aria during the first act.  As he sang the prayer to the spheres, a half dozen children processed around him carrying large models of the planets.

With some of the best writing given to Jaroussky’s character, King Anfione, the only question was why the opera wasn’t named for him.  The answer finally came when Niobe, played by soprano Amanda Forsythe, comes into her own with a previously unseen passion and ire. That’s in the third and final act, which opens with a wedding and points us toward a happy ending.  Yet fate demands that the favored leads must die and a visiting royal ascends the throne.

Some of the other choicest bits of the opera go to the sassy nurse, Nerea, played in drag by the fine countertenor Jose Lemos.  Also memorable was baritone Charles Robert Stephens as the blind soothsayer Tiresia.  An ensemble of six dancers further enliven many of the scenes.

Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
Nathan De’Shon Myers, baritone
Carnegie Hall, May 10, 2011

How appropriate that a festival called Spring for Music resulted in a new blossoming sound of an orchestra. It was the Carnegie Hall debut of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, a reprise of an all-American program titled “Spirituals Re-Imagined.”  A great accomplishment long in the planning, the concert should make music director David Alan Miller and the community that supports his efforts immensely proud.

A more than respectable-sized audience turned out, including about 500 devoted fans from the Capital Region as well as a substantial number of New Yorkers, many from the music business. They could hardly have asked for a more incisive or energetic evening.

Even to those who have already had extensive exposure to the orchestra, the famous hall revealed many strengths.  There was gusto and enthusiasm, plus accuracy and insight — assets already present at most ASO outings.  New was the expansive space that allowed a welcome breathing room for Miller’s always big ideas and the player’s often meaty sound.

In Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” which ended the night, the strings went from vigorous to consoling and back again.  Miller took the famous “Simple Gifts” theme at a good clip yet clarinetist Susan Martula and oboist Karen Hosmer maintained both clarity and delicacy.

George Tsontakis’ “Let the River Be Unbroken,” the opener, began and ended with violinist Gregor Kitzis as a strolling fiddler.  Yet the stand out string playing came from concertmaster Jill Levy, who dug heartily into a brief solo.  Though the passage was full of weird harmony it felt right in the hazy, fun collage of a piece.

Another memorable moment in the Tsontakis was a gentle swell from the brass. Otherwise, they didn’t exactly hold back.  Their climaxes in the Copland were terrific, full bodied but not blaring.  Again, the hall had something to do with that.

Principal trumpet Eric Berlin obviously relished his sassy solo at the end of Stephen Dankner’s “Wade in de’ Water,” played with a mute and in a jazzy talking style.

That came at the end of the set of eight spirituals, with baritone Nathan De’Shon Myers.

Some of the variety and detail in the spirituals was lost this time and Myers’ performance was compelling but uneven.  Whether it was because of the size of the hall or the volume of the orchestra, he had to work hard and tended to over sing at points.  He did rally for that rousing finale though and it prompted a spontaneous standing ovation.

Speaking of applause, the three curtain calls at the end of the night seemed to affect Miller, who acknowledged his players and his audience with equal fondness.

Originally published in the Times Union, Albany, NY

Read more about the ASO in New York at HudsonSounds.org

Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Jaap Van Zweden, conductor
Carnegie Hall, May 11, 2011

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s May 11 concert at Carnegie Hall was the only program in the Spring for Music Festival that featured a single work. “August 4, 1964” was written by composer Steven Stucky and librettist Gene Scheer and premiered in Dallas in September 2008. Best described as an oratorio, it commemorates the centennial of President Lyndon Johnson by focusing on two pivotal events — one having to do with civil rights, the other with the advance of the Vietnam War — which occurred in a single day.

While the sheer scale of the undertaking must surely be a point of pride for the DSO, the piece itself seemed a curious choice for a festival meant to showcase orchestras. During the performance, lead by music director Jaap Van Zweden, the orchestra’s presence fell low in prominence. There was also the huge, all-volunteer Dallas Symphony Chorus plus four vocal soloist.

The over arching presence, though, was of the themes of race, war and corruption that are still a long way from being resolved in the American psyche. Granted that’s big stuff for an orchestra to take on. Yet it never felt that the eighty-minute piece elevated the discussion.

Scheer’s libretto, drawing extensively on historical documents, deals with prejudice and murder in the south and cataclysmic events in southeast Asia, all amidst the mundaneness of a busy day in the White House. Almost none of it called out for music. Stucky’s settings were either literal and obvious or melodramatic and overwrought.

For a tribute to LBJ, the creators didn’t give the guy many points, casting him as someone at the mercy of events beyond his control and making decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate intelligence. A short scene early on did nicely depict several aspects of Johnson’s persona, including his confident swagger, distaste for intellectuals and slight paranoia. Baritone Rod Gilfrey gave his performance erratic bits of a Texas accent. Yet as the piece progressed, the role seemed to fall uncomfortably into the upper reaches of his range. This, combined with a slow cadence to the words, shrank the president into someone uncomfortable in his office, if not his own skin.

Contrast this with tenor Vale Rideout as a shrieking and hysterical, chicken little of a defense secretary (Robert McNamara). The other soloists, soprano Indira Mahajan and mezzo Kristine Jepson, portrayed the mothers of slain civil rights activists who mostly grieved and sobbed. All four principals were attired in dignified clothes from the early 60s. The text was projected, line by line, onto the wall above the stage.

It fell to the chorus and the orchestra to briefly infuse the evening with poetry and eloquence. Near the opening, the chorus sang portions of a poem by Stephen Spender, set in a conservative style, reminiscent of Randall Thompson. The chorus, prepared by Donald Krehbiel, sang with outstanding clarity and warmth.

Less moving was a lengthy elegy for orchestra positioned at the dead center of the work. Though hushed and deftly scored, its modest melodic contours felt like little more than a respite amidst the hollow frenzy of the night.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Thursday April 28, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

There was magic to be heard, but little slight of hand to watch on Thursday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  The occasion was a concert of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in a return presentation by the Troy Chromatics.

With up to 33 players onstage but no official leader, one expected to see more demonstrative gestures — nods of the head, swaying bodies, jiggly eyebrows — than there actually was.  The group is now in its 39th season of tackling large and small works without an overlord conductor to keep everybody together.

Orpheus has a democratic system of decision making, but in the midst the music there’s no time for a vote and someone has to give cues that say things like “Now!”   Somehow the varied program of works kept happening, often beautifully, though the players’ inner workings were usually subtle to imperceptible.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher was the guest soloist in three pieces.

Hartmann’s Concerto Funebre dates from 1939 and commemorates the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia.  The emotional affects of war are present in practically every bar, especially the austere opening passages, which brought to mind Schoenberg’s haunting “Survivor from Warsaw.”  And yet the actual writing was not particularly jagged or angular at all. It was the orchestration and the sentiment, as well as the restrained but searing performance, that gave it such an edge.  The ironic and slashing Allegro evoked many similar movements by Shostakovich.

Steinbacher’s tone blossomed over the course of the evening, from a cool clear line in the opening of the Hartmann to a shade brighter by its end.  Then after intermission, she was full of color and warmth in the rippling strains of Mozart.

The evening began with 13 wind players in Richard Strauss’ Serenade, Op. 7.  An early work, it was tuneful, uncharacteristically light, and well played.  Maybe the four horns did take some advance in the first crescendo.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D Major ended the program with a full stage and a full sound. The first chair violinist raised his bow extra high to launch key moments. But Haydn’s playful scoring became darned fun to follow as the rhythms and tunes jumped unexpectedly between sections. Since there were no obvious visuals to track, it was now the audience working without the aid of a conductor.

Two quick movements from Handel’s Water Music were offered as an encore.

Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
with Nathan De’shon Myers, baritone
Friday, April 29, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Friday’s concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall was no mere local try out, but a thoughtful program handsomely played.  Nevertheless a repeat performance on May 10 was on the minds and tongues of many.  That’s when the ASO will make its Carnegie Hall debut.

It’s worth being explicit:  almost anybody with the dough can rent Carnegie and then boast forever after that they played there. The ASO was selected by the hall to be part of the first Spring For Music, a festival of innovative American orchestras.

After nine years of covering the orchestra, no other particular evening of works comes to mind as a better snapshot of what David Alan Miller has forged over his 19-year tenure. The opener was a 1994 piece by George Tsontakis, a local composer of international renown. Next were eight selections from “The Spirituals Project,” a brilliant two-year commissioning effort. After intermission came a beloved American classic, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

An all-American night certainly isn’t a rarity with the ASO, but more typically the wrap-up to a concert is some European masterpiece, large or small.  Miller expends most of his time in the outback of American repertoire, commissioning new works from younger composers and, less frequently, reviving things from the mid-20th century.  Hearing the Copland felt like the ASO was rightfully claiming prime real estate.

Playing the full ballet score, rather than the familiar suite, kept the ears alert for lesser known passages and changes in orchestration.  Just as the ASO usually ends a night wringing every bit of life from a symphony, this performance often bordered on the raucous, with meaty brass, heavy percussion and full-bodied strings.

Baritone Nathan De’shon Myers has a more mature sound and greater interpretative depth than when he premiered the spirituals in 2004-2005. The pieces themselves remain compelling.  Far more than arrangements, most are mini-dramas and several evoked the era of the Iraq War.

Tsontakis’ “Let the River Be Unbroken” is a delightful weaving together of Appalachian folk songs with hazy instrumental effects reminiscent of Ives.  It begins with a fiddler in the back out the house who plays as he walks down the aisle.  I’m looking forward to hearing and reporting how this and the rest of the program sounds in Carnegie Hall.