Youthful Artists, Mahler, Britten, Dazzle Seattle Audience

REVIEW

SEATTLE SYMPHONY, Benaroya Hall, Seattle

ERICA MINER 

Two youthful artists beguiled the Seattle Symphony audience with their dynamic performances in a vibrant program that highlighted the similarities and contrasts between early works of two composers who were connected in intriguing ways.

In his debut with the orchestra, Australian conductor Nicholas Carter chose to give the Seattle premiere of Benjamin Britten’s vivacious Piano Concerto, Op. 13, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.

Mahler was an inspiration to the young Britten, whose virtuosic concerto is full of energetic rhythms and bold orchestral colors. The performance of this early work was a tour de force for Benjamin Grosvenor, a pianist at the height of his musical powers.

Britten’s work, his first for piano and orchestra and his only concerto for the instrument, is brimming with exuberance and vigor. Premiered in 1938 at the London Proms with the 24-year-old composer as soloist, and revised in 1945, the inventive, mold-breaking and fiendishly difficult work was dedicated to British composer Lennox Berkeley. Previously paired by other orchestras with powerful Mahler pieces such as Das Lied von der Erde, there are moments that bring to mind Mahler’s much later Des Knaben Wunderhorn, as well as Britten’s mature operatic masterpiece, Peter Grimes. Described by Britten as “simple and direct in form,” in reality the concerto is a virtuosic opportunity for a pianist capable of exploiting its challenges, similar in many respects to Ravel’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with soupçons of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Grosvenor, acknowledged by Gramophone magazine as one of the top five pianists on record and known for his combination of brilliance and profound musicality, is one of those pianists. In his interpretation, he optimized both the technical and interpretative aspects of the piece so brilliantly as to seem a magician of the keyboard.

The first movement, Toccata: Allegro molto e con brio, gave Grosvenor the opportunity to make the most of the pianistic bravura. The pianist’s opening took off immediately with Shostakovich-like declamation and youthful exuberance as well as exactitude in his spirited pyrotechnics, which continued throughout the movement (what a pianist Britten must have been at that young age!) all the way to the Brahms-like flourish at the end. The huge orchestration showed off the players’ virtuosity its many textures: brass heavy, special challenges for the high horns, with special effects and rounded out with four harps. Grosvenor's cadenza glissandi were both spectacular and tasteful. 

The Ravel-like Waltz: Allegretto second movement provided additional orchestral hues in the unusual duo between muted viola and piccolo with added solo clarinet, played with stylistic elegance by all three. Grosvenor exhibited sensitivity and clarity in his interpretation, again with phenomenal technical mastery.  

The movement was followed by the Impromptu: Andante lento, a theme and variations including a quasi cadenza section, in which Grosvenor performed with delicacy and touching introspection. March: Allegro moderato sempre a la marcia provided a smart ending for the work, evoking the first movement and driving toward a climax of rhythmic potency. Britten pays respect to his inspiration, Mahler, in the dotted rhythms and in the challenging trumpet fanfares. The soloist brought the piece to an end with a rousing flourish that brought the audience to their feet.

With Britten’s concerto providing a robust opening, the festive atmosphere continued with Mahler’s ever popular Symphony No. 1 in D Major. The work is astonishing in that the young composer was courageous enough to include panoplies of orchestral delights in his first symphonic effort evoking a gamut of emotions, compared to Brahms, who waited until a more mature period of his compositional life to take on the symphonic genre. Mahler’s work reflects his own heroic journey as he envisioned it.

After the slow, Nature-inspired tranquil introduction of the first moment, the 28-year-old composer evokes his earlier Lieder eines farhrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) in the Allegro section, continuing the Nature theme derived from the words “Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld” (“I went this Morning over the Field”). Carter underscored the Wagnerian “Forest Murmurs” aspects of the piece with gentility and reverence.

The movement’s upbeat ending gives the robust Scherzo second movement notable impact, both in the beginning and in the wistful waltz of the middle section. Done with spirited movements from Carter, one could envision his leaping from the podium and dancing a Ländler. 

The third movement provides repeated contrasts between its funereal opening melody, the wild klezmer music that Mahler heard while he was growing up, and the introspective interval of delicacy in the middle section, again quoting Fahrenden Gesellen. Carter exploited the poignancy of the movement with gentle yet emotionally fraught gestures.

The stormy final movement was tempestuous and exciting. Carter contrasted the frenzied initial theme with the peaceful tranquility of the second theme, building to the ebullient climax and ending the evening with Mahlerian bravado and heroism, a bold and decisive personalized hero’s journey foreshadowing Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

There is no doubt Carter is a born conductor and no surprise that his talent has been recognized by luminaries in his field, among them Vladimir Ashkenazy, Simone Young and Sir Donald Runnicles. Carter’s dramatic, perfectly paced rendering of the much-loved Mahler work showed great polish beyond his years and reflected his operatic background as Chief Conductor of Oper Bern, Switzerland. He is fascinating to watch, showing his joy with gestures that are exuberant yet always precise and controlled; ever energetic, at times seeming to levitate above the podium.

It’s no wonder the orchestra responded with an impassioned performance, demonstrating virtuosity in each section. Mahler’s First especially demands the ne plus ultra of trumpet playing. The musicians delivered on that challenge beautifully and consistently. Both monumental works were perfectly matched in their brashness and sensitivity, helmed and rendered with great panache by two outstanding young artists: a program to delight all tastes. 

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Benaroya Hall, 200 University Street, Seattle, WA, Saturday, November 16, 2024, 8:00 p.m.

Images: Carlin Ma

More All-American Soundscapes at Long Beach

Clayton Stephenson, soloist with the Long Beach Symphony under Music Director Eckart Preu in
the November performance of George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

The second concert in the Long Beach Symphony’s 90th Anniversary Classical season illustrated some intersections between inherited European “classical” structural forms and American popular and vernacular music idioms, as represented in works by the African-American William Grant Still (1895-1978), high-flying New Yorker Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981), and the irrepressibly gifted George Gershwin (1898-1937).

William Grant Still.

William Grant Still certainly embraced the symphony as a form, writing five in all, but as with those of Robert Schumann, their numbered order does not follow the chronology of their composition—or at least of those that followed Still’s Symphony No. 2 in G minor “Song of a New Race,” written in 1937 and included by the LBSO under its then recently-appointed Music Director Eckart Preu in the 2017 Veterans Day concert (reviewed here).

Still completed a third symphony in 1945, but then withdrew it. His fourth, entitled “Autochthonous,” followed two years later, and then in 1958 he wrote a “Sunday Symphony” as a replacement for the still-withdrawn third—somewhat oddly, as to have let chronology designate the “Autochthonous” and “Sunday” as No. 3 and No. 4 would seem more logical. As it was, he revised that 1945 No. 3 in 1958 or 1970 (sources differ), and it was premiered as Symphony No. 5 “Western Hemisphere” in December 1970 to celebrate Still’s 75th birthday.

Eckart Preu.

It would be interesting to know whether the 1945 score is still extant, as that would reveal how extensive the revision was. While its predecessor symphonies, in particular the “Afro-American” (No. 1), embrace influences from the blues, jazz, and spirituals, Symphony No. 5 seems an affirmation of sterner stuff, notably in its first movement, an extraordinarily terse three-minute span, ominous from the outset, and some distance from any ethnic influences. Hearing it played with steely trenchancy by the LBSO under Maestro Preu, one wondered whether Still had pared it down from a more loose-limbed original.

By contrast, the languorous and becalmed slow movement—adrift in the bayou perhaps—was embodied by the LBSO strings at their silkiest. As Preu noted in his introductory remarks, this symphony is characterized by steady, even rhythms—in the first movement a resolute onward tread, in the second a soft, background pulse, and in the third, filling the scherzo slot but with no contrasting trio section, a relentless drive, punctuated by slashing string figures slightly reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s iconic Psycho motif.

Again in sharp contrast, the finale juxtaposes spiky determination and warm lyricism, leading to a radiantly optimistic “big tune” and jubilant conclusion. This performance, led and played with great conviction, made the best case one could imagine for Still’s Fifth Symphony, and was notably more alert and focused than its only commercial recording. But doubts remained as to its coherence and symphonic viability, particularly regarding the unwontedly gnomic first movement. Was Still’s revision of the 1945 original score just too brutal a slash and burn?

Jessie Montgomery.

Jessie Montgomery’s 2017 Coincident Dances was the program opener—in her own words “inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood.” Prefaced by what George Gershwin might have called its “icebreaker”—a double-bass solo that gave section principal Geoffrey Osika a rare moment in the spotlight—Coincident Dances is cast in two distinct spans, the second here introduced by a trumpet riff from Principal Ryan Darke.

The work’s 12 skillfully intricate minutes seemed to be rendered the more transparent by the side and rear acoustic baffles now installed on the Terrace Theater’s platform, but its timbral and rhythmic variety failed to conceal a pervasive harmonic sameness. In the end, for this listener Coincident Dances didn’t seem to add up to very much or travel anywhere notable, particularly when compared to, say, Duke Ellington’s own aural NYC tour, the cumulatively powerful Harlem, included in the LBSO’s 2022-2023 season finale and reviewed here.

Not being a native-born American with the sounds of George Gershwin absorbed as natally as mother’s milk, for me his Piano Concerto in F from 1925 was relatively unfamiliar, and maybe its sheer unexpectedness was one reason why this smoking firebrand of a performance by Clayton Stephenson, with the LBSO and Maestro Preu matching him every step of the way through all the myriad quicksilver twists and turns of rhythm, harmony, and timbre, made such a powerful impression in the second half of the program.

George Gershwin.

Hot on the heels of Rhapsody in Blue’s sensational success, Gershwin, still only in his mid-20s, was asked by Walter Damrosch, director of the New York Symphony Orchestra, to write a full-scale piano concerto for it. The miracle is that, clearly unfazed neither by the prestigious assignment nor the genre’s looming storied past, he took the standard three-movement concerto form and made it entirely his own, from the defiant / triumphant percussion flourish that opens the first movement’s introduction to the solo tam-tam smash that heralds the finale’s exultant coda.

At around 34 minutes, the duration of this performance was a little longer than average for the work, but far from being down to any unwonted trudging, this was the result of much exquisitely attenuated rubato coordinated as of a single thought between soloist, orchestra and conductor, amidst tempi that throughout responded with consummate flexibility to the ebb and flow of Gershwin’s jazz-inspired score.

Eckart Preu and Clayton Stephenson
at the post-concert reception.

Particularly memorable were the superbly bluesy clarinets that opened the central movement Adagio, leading to an equally haunting account of the trumpet solo that in turn gave way to Stephenson’s idiomatic delineation of the movement’s main theme. Then, after its last long-drawn cadence, the opening of the Allegro agitato finale, though not marked attacca, immediately erupted like a Belmont thoroughbred thundering out of its starting stall.

Even by the elevated standards of recent LBSO/Preu concerto performances, this partnering with Clayton Stephenson was quite exceptional, and was rewarded with a standing ovation that showed no signs of stopping until Mr. Stephenson stilled the cheers by sitting down to deliver a rocket-propelled encore, Hiromi Uehara’s The Tom and Jerry Show. And even this wasn’t the end, as he once again took the piano stool for a last Gershwinian reminiscence—Fazil Say’s arrangement of Summertime Variations. 

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, November 9, 2024, 7.30 p.m.

Images: Clayton Stephenson, Eckart Preu: courtesy Long Beach Symphony; 

Eckart Preu: Caught in the Moment Photography; William Grant Still: wrti90.1; Jessie Montgomery: composer website; Gershwin: Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress.

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The Long Beach SO Celebrates Its 90th Birthday In Style

l-r: Roger Wilkie (concertmaster), Chloé Tardif (principal second violin), Eckart Preu (Music Director), Andrew Duckles (principal viola), and Cécilia Tsan (principal cello), after their performance of Anna Clyne’s Quarter Days for string quartet and orchestra.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

The Long Beach Symphony Orchestra is making a very big deal of this being its 90th anniversary season, and so it should. For any performing body devoted to large-scale “classical” music to survive that long in a country which, unlike much of mainland Europe, does not by and large regard government support for the arts as vital, is an achievement indeed. And that’s not counting the last 90 years’ socio-political upheavals.

Though the present LBSO survived World War 2, the 2008 Great Recession, and the Covid pandemic, its predecessor in Long Beach succumbed to the Great Depression of 1929. However—and characteristic of the USA—it was individual enthusiasm, expertise, and funding that pulled together a new orchestra for the city, and on February 16, 1935, the then Long Beach Philharmonic (“Philharmonic” was replaced by “Symphony” in the name after WW2) gave its first concert under the baton of Fort MacArthur band-master Robert Resta (1891-1979), who after his departure in 1955 was named Founder Conductor of the orchestra.

Robert Resta.

That first concert mustered an impressive 87 players (extra strings, or doubled woodwind, one wonders?) and its program was a marvelously heterogeneous mix of short pieces by no fewer than 11 composers, from Max Reger to Johann Strauss. It opened with Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont, Op. 84, and without implying any shade on those intrepid pioneers under Maestro Resta, I wonder whether their performance could possibly have surpassed that from today’s orchestra on the first Saturday in October under his successor and LBSO’s sixth Music Director, Eckart Preu, played as a deliberate callback to that inaugural performance.

In his pre-concert talk Preu had sketched in the background: Goethe’s 1787 play Egmont that dramatized the life, fight against injustice, and death of the titular hero; Beethoven’s reverence for the great writer and eagerness to compose incidental music for the play’s revival in Vienna in 1809; the correspondence and single meeting in 1812 of the two German creative giants; and how vividly Beethoven’s overture encapsulates the essence of Goethe’s drama.

Beethoven and Goethe taking a walk in the German spa town
Teplitz, July 1812: etching by Ernst Pickardt (1876-1931).

This was faithfully bodied forth in the performance, from the LBSO strings’ trenchant attack on the opening motif and the plaintive eloquence of the winds’ response, through the unhurried but sweepingly intense and coherent account of the main body of the piece, leading to the martyrdom of Egmont (as vivid a musical coup de grâce as that of Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel), and then the final triumph, with the piccolo shrilling at the top of its lungs above the tumult. It was an auspicious start indeed to this celebratory concert.

Maestro Preu’s programming as Music Director has maintained a judicious balance between the familiar and the new, and the evening’s concerto was certainly of the latter. This was the third time he has included a piece by Anna Clyne (b. 1980), following his inclusion of her string piece Within Her Arms in the 2017 Veterans Day concert and the cello+orchestra DANCE in February 2022 (reviewed here and here).

Anna Clyne.

She describes her Quarter Days for string quartet and orchestra as “a reflection on the passing of time – both within a minute, a day, through the seasons and within a lifetime,” with specific inspiration drawn from the initial 10 lines of Burnt Norton, the first of the four long poems that comprise T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. “Quarter days” is a British term that approximates to the autumn and spring equinoxes and winter and summer solstices, and thus Clyne’s four movements amount to a “four seasons”—which at around 22 minutes she gets through in less time than either Piazzolla or Vivaldi, not to mention the evening-long splendor of Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons or Raff's quartet of Symphonies 8-11.

The string quartet for this performance were four of the LBSO’s own stars: Roger Wilkie (concertmaster), and section principals Chloé Tardif (second violin), Andrew Duckles (viola), and Cécilia Tsan (cello), playing with all the skill and commitment one would expect, whether in solo passages, duetting, or collectively. As for the work itself, it raised the interesting question of how unmistakably representational can music be if you don’t know in advance what it’s supposed to be representing.

Roger Wilkie, Chloé Tardif, Andrew Duckles, Cécilia Tsan.

In this case, the opening movement’s easeful harvest-home character seemed appropriate to autumn, while its successor had a somewhat chillier feel, with a stepwise motif on low horns that slightly brought to mind the Bydlo movement from Mussorgsky’s Pictures in Ravel’s orchestration.

If winter was the work’s “slow movement,” then spring was its scherzo, with skittering, April-showery textures and a contrasting “trio” section. Summer, with nothing of Vivaldi’s heat exhaustion, led off with insistent pulsing akin to Bernard Herrmann’s title music for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, against which Mr. Wilkie spun an eloquent high-lying violin melody.

Quarter Days was certainly easy on the ear, but no more than any other of Clyne’s work I’ve heard did it clarify why she should have become one of the most-performed living British composers (heaven forfend that it’s for any reason other than pure musical worth). But on the other hand it didn’t prompt the “Thank goodness that’s over / I never want to hear that again” response that some new music (and to be fair, some old too) generates.

Antonin Dvořák with pigeons.

After the interval, the crowd-pleasing blockbuster was Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor “From the New World” Op. 95 B. 178, a self-confessed favorite of Maestro Preu. in his pre-concert talk he vividly conjured up the composer’s 1892-1895 tenure as Director of the recently established National Conservatory of Music of America in New York: eagerly absorbing African-American musical influences, obsessively train-spotting with a fellow enthusiast, feeding pigeons in Central Park, and of course, composing his most famous symphony as well as other works.

Adam Richardson sings Goin' Home.

Before the "New World," however, there was a kind of “trailer,” the arrangement made in 1922 by William Arms Fisher (1861-1948), one of Dvořák’s Conservatory students, of the famous English horn melody from the symphony’s Largo. With Fisher’s own words added, this became Goin’ Home, sung here with restrained but heartfelt sonority by the baritone Adam Richardson and rapturously received by the audience.

As for the symphony itself, the performance was as vibrantly fresh as if it was a welcome new discovery for all concerned, rather than one of the most familiar of repertoire works. If not up to Dvořák’s very fleet metronome mark of eighth note = 126, the first movement’s Adagio introduction moved purposefully forward rather than being the dreamy wallow some performances deliver, and the unison horns’ immaculate opening to the main Allegro molto, as bold and bright as it was observant of the dynamic markings, confirmed earlier indications that they were having a very good night.

The “New World” was Dvořák’s only symphony after the Sixth in which he marked the first movement exposition to be repeated, but though he includes four first-time lead-back measures, its observation often does deliver a jolt, and in an interpretation as dynamic and forward-thrusting as Preu’s, going “back to the beginning” would have felt wrong. The Largo was no more a wallow than that first movement introduction had been, with Joseph Stone’s delivery of the English horn solo more plaintive than nostalgically romantic, and the whole orchestra delivering beautifully aerated textures throughout.

In keeping with the interpretation as a whole, the Scherzo was crisp and clean, and though Dvořák does not mark the Finale to follow attacca, Preu’s doing so not only avoided annoying inter-movement applause but, more importantly, maintained and tightened the already-present tension by observing to the full the Finale's marking of Allegro con fuoco.

Driven thus, the movement was convulsively dramatic, even sounding something of a cri de cœur, with the whole orchestra individually and collectively at the top of its game. Coming it at just under 40 minutes, this performance of the "New World" was the perfect antidote to any prior thoughts of “not that old warhorse again?” and was duly cheered to the rafters by the near-capacity audience.

With the orchestra clearly in such fine shape, and the news this week that it has received the largest grant in its 90-year history, let’s hope that Long Beach music-lovers not yet born will celebrate another 90 years' success in 2114, and of course, other anniversaries in between. Meanwhile the next concert of the current celebratory year, highlighting this time American music of the 20th and 21st centuries, can be enjoyed on November 9.

Kelly Ruggirello, LBSO President, talks to audience members at the post-concert champagne reception in the Terrace Theater foyer.

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, October 5, 2024, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason (top) and Caught in the Moment Photography; Robert Resta and string soloists: courtesy Long Beach Symphony; Beethoven and Goethe: Wiener Antiquariat; Anna Clyne: Christina Kernohan; Dvořák: Wikimedia Commons.

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Tianyi Lu Unfurls Drama with Seattle Symphony

Tianyi Lu

The combination of Ravel and Tchaikovsky on the same program is a luxurious feast for any classical music lover. The Seattle Symphony treated a fervent Benaroya Hall audience to these delights on Sat., September 28, when conductor Tianyi Lu gave dramatic renderings of two major familiar works and another lesser-known piece that fit in perfectly with the atmosphere of the evening. 

As a First Prize winner in the 2020 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition, Chinese born New Zealander Tianyi Lu often has been recognized as a high energy performer putting an innovative spin on the symphony repertoire. Her reputation led to high expectations, and she delivered that and more on the podium. 

There is nothing lacking in Lu’s conducting. She is a major talent, a complete conductor in every sense. Watching her command of the orchestra, both gentle and forceful, was a pleasure. Her gestures were consistent, yet beautifully varied and nuanced. Her energy level was astonishing, and built to a frenzy by the end of the evening. The orchestra in turn responded with commensurate vitality and drive. 

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Ciel d'hiver (Winter Sky) is an arrangement of the second movement of her Orion (2002), commissioned for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and premiered in 2014. The piece was appealing, with plenty of atmosphere: a landscape from which to meditate on the forces of nature and the music of the spheres as they sweep through the starry night.

In her interpretation, Lu showed a deep commitment to bringing out the contemplative ambience of the work and its wintry elements: glistening drops of rain, harsh wind, and thunder. With an eerie opening, handsomely played by the piccolo, solo violin and strings, the stage was set for a chilly adventure that ultimately morphed into dissonance. Lu maintained the continuous flow needed to generate convincing coherence and bring the piece to a gentle close. Her gestures were precise, yet seemed to float on the air like the shimmering effects of the harp.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, with its flash and wit, provided a huge contrast to the introspective Wintry Sky. Award winning pianist Alexandra Dariescu gave a performance that shone brightly: with panache, incisiveness and stylishness.

Dariescu, a child prodigy in her native Romania who emigrated to the UK as a teenager, was the first female Romanian pianist to perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall. She is also an educator, mentor and producer, known for groundbreaking innovation and such creative multimedia works as The Nutcracker and I. Her wide repertoire includes that of women composers Florence Price and Clara Schumann.

Alexandra Dariescu

The pianist’s interpretation of the Ravel ranged from meticulous with an astonishingly delicate touch and great sensitivity, to technically showy and dramatic. She made the most of the contrasts between the sensational first and third movements and the wistful second movement. By the end of the technically challenging third movement, Dariescu had the audience demanding an encore. She complied with élan by performing Clara Schumann’s charming, dreamy Romanze in A-flat major, the second movement of the composer’s Piano Concerto. Dairescu’s performance was exquisite and mesmerizing, and appreciably enhanced by the gorgeously played solo cello obligato of principal cellist Efe Baltacıgil.

Tchaikovsky described his monumental Fourth Symphony as a battle with the inevitable forces of Fate and a reflection of Beethoven’s Fifth. From the opening declaration of the Fate motif in the Andante sostenuto of the first movement to the driving inexorable energy of the fourth movement, Finale: Allegro con fuoco, the work provides repeated opportunities for a conductor to shine.

Lu seized every moment with great attention to detail, generating energetic, impressive playing from each section of the orchestra that increased multifold as the piece progressed. The second movement, Andantino in modo di canzona, created a magical atmosphere, the oboe solo tastefully played. The brass, which was not quite up to its usual standard in the Ravel, came through with bold, attention-grabbing playing throughout the Tchaikovsky.

The concert ended with a finale that effectively blew off the roof of the hall: dynamic, powerful, and filled with Lu’s inspiring energy and force. The performance was, in a word, superb.

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Benaroya Hall, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, 8:00 p.m.

Images: Ben VanHouten

Music Of Deep Feeling Thrills Big Mount Wilson Crowd

Ambroise Aubrun (violin), Kate Hamilton (viola), and Allan Hon and Cécilia Tsan (cellos), play Arensky's String Quartet No. 2 in the 100-inch Telescope Dome at Mount Wilson Observatory. 

REVIEW

"Strings Attached!" Mount Wilson Observatory

JOHN STODDER

What a success Artistic Director Cécilia Tsan is having with the Mount Wilson Observatory’s “Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome.” The September program, “Strings Attached!,” comprising works by Franz Schubert, Todd Mason, and Anton Arensky, and performed by four superb musicians including herself, was an uncompromising artistic treat that drew a sold-out audience to the great telescope dome. A rollicking crowd, larger than any I’ve seen in this building, occupied all the seats arrayed to each side of the small raised stage, filling almost half of the "Life Savers"-shaped mezzanine that surrounds the blue "Erector Set"-like mounting for the Hooker telescope towering in the center.

They were a perfect audience for what Tsan and Mount Wilson had to offer:

• Virtuoso string performances reverberating through the 100-inch Telescope Dome’s magical acoustics; 

• Three compositions that shared similar qualities—emotional richness, musical intricacy, stirring moments;

• A 360-degree spin inside the Observatory on its rotating floor; 

• Then, for those who lingered after the music ended, another 360-degree spin around the Observatory, this time in the dark, to experience an “immersive video work” by Rebeca Méndez.

An outdoor wine reception (above) in 95-degree heat between the two performances of the same program also enhanced the mood, making this not just a great concert but a good time had by all, a summer jam for an arts crowd.

Schubert at the piano, as visioned
by Gustav Klimt in 1899.

The first work—the only completed movement of Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471 (1816)—was charming and nostalgic, an end-of summer farewell full of feeling. The primary voice through most of it was violinist Ambroise Aubrun, and he gave the relaxed performance of a seasoned raconteur. 

With Kate Hamilton (viola) and Ms. Tsan on cello, the three musicians together were like streams flowing into a stately river. Each plays frequently in chamber and symphony concerts throughout Southern California, often together, so they have the perfect kind of familiarity with each other to convey the conversational qualities of this piece.

The Schubert was a little bit like that last glass of wine that would have been nice to bring upstairs if you could sneak it past the docents. His music put the audience in the mood to listen, ready to absorb the chromatic harmonies and galloping rhythms that framed Todd Mason’s String Trio (2023) in one movement. Mason, who attended both performances, composed this rapidly metamorphosing piece to illustrate through the three string players “a range of emotions including urgency, love, wistfulness and, ultimately, triumph.” These were all vividly present, expressed through the musicians’ facility with a full range of techniques, and ability to shift from rough and grinding to lyrical and free-floating.

Todd Mason.

The music was, at times, like a journey through a dark tunnel, right down to the running footsteps. The changes from dark to light and back, when they came, felt unexpected. The audience seemed fascinated by the building sense of drama. Like much of Mason’s music, it was harmonically challenging in a 20th/21st-century way, but as a flavor only. The piece overall was accessible and stimulating, and was given an empathetic reading by the trio. The audience applauded exuberantly.

The lineup changed for the third and final piece, Anton Arensky’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35 (1894). This is scored for violin, viola and two cellos, a rare configuration that, as one might expect, had a strong sonic foundation. The second cello was played by Allan Hon. It became apparent as the piece began why Arensky—a student of Rimsky-Korsakov’s but a disciple of Tchaikovsky—chose this line-up.

The opening Moderato broods, filled with what seems like painful self-reflection, and its deep, dark texture made me think of a monologue by a Dostoevsky character. Reading Arensky’s bio, it did not come as a surprise that he was a drinker and gambler who only lived to 44. The music in this movement conveys an inchoate yearning, ultimately unresolved, followed by painful resignation—at its end, you could almost picture a doomed man crawling into bed.

Anton Arensky, painted by 
Karl Tavaststerjna in 1901.

Of course, it was the performance by these great players that brought such images to mind; working with magnificent intuition, they collectively inhabited the soul of this music. Like actors, musicians need to find such deep feelings in themselves in order to convey them to the audience, and these four did so. At the end of this movement, the audience breached convention to burst into applause. The musicians smiled as if to say, “Let’s not stand on ceremony, we nailed that.”

Then, the piece takes an interesting turn. Our depressed lead character, most often voiced by Aubrun’s violin, seems to have survived the night, and is now up, tentatively, and moving around their shabby basement apartment, or remote wooded cabin—a hovel somewhere. The middle movement of the work's three is based on a theme from a Tchaikovsky song and opens into a series of seven variations, the first of which has a dancing quality. Clearly, our hero has revived, at least in their imagination.

The playing through each of these variations was so engaging that, in the pauses between them, audience applause poured in. But far from being distracting, this enhanced this journey, almost as if, variation by variation, the audience was cheering on the character from the first movement on their increasingly active revival. The pizzicato-dominated fourth variation, Vivace, brought to mind the prisyadka, the famous Russian Cossack dance (above right), while the sixth, Allegro con spirito, seemed to describe a mad escape. The final variation, Andante con moto, leading into the Moderato Coda, felt like another journey into a much less troubled sleep.

The Finale, Andante sostenuto, takes a step back from the emotional tumult of one person’s psyche, offering a slower and more formal discourse which, however, just a few seconds before the piece ends, breaks into a run. The audience remained delighted, and then lingered as the Observatory went dark, and Mendez’ multi-media creation began to play. Her imagery is anything but peaceful. Just like much of the music, it conveyed emotional turbulence in response to a topsy-turvy world. But it all felt like something to celebrate. These Mount Wilson "Concerts in the Dome" have an unusual artistic alchemy that makes them even greater than the sum of their considerable parts.

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100-inch Telescope Dome, Mount Wilson Observatory, Sunday, September 8, 2024, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Schubert, Cossack dancer: Wikimedia Commons; Arensky: www.meisterdrucke.us.

Seattle "Pagliacci" Hits All the Notes

The cast and setting of Pagliacci at Seattle Opera.

REVIEW

Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, McCaw Hall, Seattle Opera, Seattle

ERICA MINER

Ruggero Leoncavallo.

Verismo, It.: “slice of life.”

The term has become familiar and beloved to opera lovers since the late 19th century. Seattle Opera offered Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, one of the most performed works of this genre, as its opening production of the 2024-25 season. Often paired with another iconic verismo opera, Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (“Rustic Chivalry”), Pagliacci has more than enough engaging music and drama to stand on its own as a complete operatic evening.

The company assembled a brilliant cast in director Dan Wallace Miller’s 1940s post-World War II setting, with two debuting artists in the leading roles. 

Monica Conesa as Nedda.

Cuban American soprano Monica Conesa brought a feminist sensibility to the role of Nedda, the feisty, beleaguered woman of her times, the only female member of her traveling troupe of stage performers. Her voice was sumptuous down to the excellent lower chest tones and crystal clear in the sparkling high notes. She made the most of her characterization, with many alluring contrasts between the sympathetic, put-upon wife, captivating Commedia dell’Arte ingenue, and shameless adulteress.

Vesti la giubba is considered the highlight of the opera, and the lead tenor’s performance frequently is judged most on this iconic aria. As Nedda’s volatile husband, Canio, Mexican/Australian tenor Diego Torre hit it out of the park, but he also made a huge impression in the role overall. Both his voice and his stage presence were immense. Dramatically, he did not hold back. His violence toward his unfaithful wife was supremely believable, yet his psychic pain was real and relatable. Vocally, he exuded a Wagnerian power while staying true to the Italianate quality required of the role.

Diego Torre as Canio.

As Tonio, Seattle audience favorite Michael Chioldi commanded attention from the very first note of his opening monologue, Si può, embodying the slice of life the audience is about to witness. From that point on, he varied his lush voice according to the characterization, whether the lovesick loser or the vengeful would-be lover, with compelling vocal strength.

Rounding out the cast in lesser but pivotal roles were Seattle Opera Resident Artist Michael J. Hawk as Silvio, and John Marzano as Beppe. Marzano’s voice had the perfect range and lightness for his “Colombina” aria, which was pleasing in every way. Hawk was not entirely convincing as the passionate lover of a mature married woman, but vocally he made an admirable effort.

A great deal of thought had gone into Dan Wallace Miller’s setting and period of the production. Italy was devastated by World War II, and the stresses of struggling with that crushing situation added tension and conflict to the already strained relationships between all the characters, especially the troubled marriage of Nedda and Canio. This portrayal, which gave the audience a view into the mind of a murderer, allowed for a heightening of the effect of the music, which is some of the most overwrought in the verismo genre.

The "play within a play", l-r: John Marzano as Beppe, Michael Chioldi as Tonio, and Monica Conesa as Nedda.

Miller gave the audience plenty to observe onstage throughout the drama, with lively, nicely detailed chorus activity that was a pleasure to watch and never distracting the viewer from the main characters’ actions. Especially appealing were the chorus children’s playful goings-on. The main characters were well drawn. Each of them displayed the gamut of emotions, from amorous to violent, three-dimensional and plausible in their relationships to each other, inexorably leading up to the explosive climax.

Michael J. Hawk as Silvio.

In his Seattle Opera debut, scenery and props designer Steven C. Kemp skillfully combined a traditional look with an ambiance reflecting difficult postwar times. The unit set, reminiscent of the best aspects of the classic Metropolitan Opera Zeffirelli production, drew the viewer in: extremely realistic, slightly tattered, but evoking an atmosphere of joy and anticipation during hard times.

Debuting Lighting Designer Abigail Hoke-Brady’s bright, sun-filled setting at the beginning of the drama became increasingly foreboding as the background gradually turned into darkness.

The players’ costumes by former Seattle Opera Costume Director and Director of Production Cynthia Savage effectively contrasted the grim realities of life for the characters in their everyday clothing with the colorful Commedia dell’Arte garb of the play within a play.

The climax of Pagliacci at Seattle Opera.

Physical conflict is also important in this gritty work, and fight director Geoffrey Alm kept the viewer glued to the stage, especially in the brutal climactic scene of grisly murder that ends the drama.

Familiar to SO audiences over many years, Conductor Carlo Montanaro showed his usual deft approach in the repertoire he clearly knows so well. Tempi were appropriate, and well-paced, and he kept the momentum throughout. The cello and violin solos were especially well done.

Chorus Master Michaella Calzaretta prepared the 36-member Seattle Opera Chorus impeccably, as Youth Chorus Master Julia Meyering did with the 16-member youth chorus.

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McCaw Hall, Seattle Opera, 321 Mercer St, Seattle, WA, Sunday, August 11, 2024, 8:00 p.m.

Images: Leoncavallo: Opera World; The production: Sunny Martini (cast and setting, Monica Conesa, opera climax), Philip Newton (Diego Torre, play-within-a-play, Michael J. Hawk).

"The Righteous" Has World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera

The opening scene of The Righteous: l-r Greer Grimsley (Paul), Brenton Ryan (CM),
Michael Mayes (David), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Jonathan).

REVIEW

Gregory Spears' The Righteous, Crosby Theater, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe

RODNEY PUNT

Gregory Spears.

Highly anticipated at this 67th season of the Santa Fe Opera was the world premiere production of The Righteous, an opera commissioned by the company from the New York-based composer Gregory Spears, setting a libretto by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and memoirist Tracy K. Smith. The production was directed by Kevin Newbury, whose previous work at Santa Fe Opera included The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in 2017 (reviewed by myself here and in its Seattle Opera incarnation by my colleague Erica Miner here), and was conducted by SFO newcomer Jordan de Souza. I took in the fourth of six performances on July 30.

The setting is an unidentified locale (Texas?) in the American Southwest during the 1980s, when President Reagan proclaimed his term in office, with unintentional irony, as “Morning in America.” (In reality, Reagan's election represented a politically retrograde revolt by America's conservative interior states against its more progressive coastal ones, along with the ideas the latter were embracing to propel the country toward more liberal social policies.)

However, having invoked just enough real-life context for what the opera was to unfold, Smith and Newbury avoided any further direct reference to then-current history or personalities, so that only in a general sense does that decade’s socio-political climate inform the work’s two Acts, each of about 70 minutes' duration.

The Crosby Theater's al fresco setting, enhanced by its open sides, provided cinematic views of New Mexico's incomparable blazing skies, and the unfolding drama of The Righteous duly recalled the scope of classic Hollywood films such as 1955's Giant, where Texas cattle-ranchers, in testosterone-driven competition with oil barons and their dirty wells, vied for control of land and the state capital, while their pretty wives sipped mint juleps and decorated huge mansions. 

The Righteous is thus a Texas-sized morality tale in which a circle of family and friends pursue multi-generational power, with tugs of war between ambition and personal relationships: archetypical struggles where timeless religious and temporal political power intertwine by habit and history in a land where the Protestant former leans toward Fundamentalism and the latter fervently embraces the notions of individual freedom and self-reliance. 

l-r: Michael Mayes (David), Greer Grimsley (Paul).

In Spears' and Smith's debut opera all this requires a lot of words, and the density and quantity of dialogue often had audience eyes swiveling up to the close-caption scrolling to catch all the spoken action's nuanced twists and turns.

The story opens with charismatic oil magnate Paul (powerful bass-baritone Greer Grimsley) on a hunt with his son Jonathan (countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo), as the former prepares to run for state Governor. Paul's hunting partner and political protégé, the preacher David (plangent baritone Michael Mayes), is also considering a run for Governor at the suggestion of political adviser “CM” (tenor Brenton Ryan), who recognizes that David’s charisma and drive make him ideal for political as well as priestly success.

Michael Mayes (in real life born in the Texas city of Cut and Shoot, no less) brought authenticity and a nuanced pathos to his pivotal role. The story centers around David's personal and professional life, but while he demonstrates uncanny public leadership skills, he seems unaware how manipulative he is, and what effects his ambitions have on others. 

l-r: Michael Mayes (David), Anthony
Roth Costanzo (Jonathan).

The sensitive Jonathan's best friend is this same David, for whom he has special feelings that are reciprocated but not with the same sensibility. David tells Jonathan that God wants him to marry his sister, Michelle (radiant soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano), who later agrees. Meanwhile David's friend Eli (tenor Andrew Turner), a serviceman in David's church, is called up for overseas military duty, and leaves over the protests of his wife Sheila (soprano Elena Villalón). 

Paul’s death early in Act 2 enables David's (successful) run for Governor, but his drive for achievement and recognition alienates him from Michelle, who leaves him. After Eli's death in battle, David marries his widow, Sheila (sweet-voiced soprano Elena Villalón), a parishioner he had recruited to lead a women’s group, but she too eventually departs. Despite his outward success, David's constant ambition makes him unable to connect with people emotionally and even Jonathan finally feels he must move on. 

In the end David admits to alienation and loneliness: always assigning his ambition to "God's will," he has failed to see that his actions reflect that ambition's essential selfishness. His character recalls the 1960 film, Elmer Gantry (from the Sinclair Lewis story), where charismatic preacher Gantry (Burt Lancaster) delivers fiery sermons to persuadable country rubes. But where Gantry knows he is manipulating people (film audiences relished his virtuoso con-artistry), David in The Righteous, while also self-promoting, is so sincerely focused on his mission that it's hard to feel real contempt for him. Rather than outrage, one's disapproval tends instead to pity which, unfortunately for this work, is an emotion hard to invoke real dramatic heft in an operatic context.

l-r: Elena Villalón (Sheila), Jennifer Johnson Cano (Michelle).

In this very crowded, quasi soap-scenario, the large cast of 17 named individuals establish a pattern of contrasting gender behaviors. The self-absorbed career ambitions and personal drives of the first Act's male characters yield, in the second Act, to the kinder sensibilities of the females. This contrast is one of the work's main points, typified when, late in Act 2, the former wives, Michele and Sheila, meet accidentally and form a bond of friendship that neither had been able to find in their marriages to David.

The work's other key character is Jonathan, an un-outed gay devoted from childhood to David. Eloquently portrayed by Anthony Roth Costanzo, he weaves in and out of the story’s main arc, occupying an almost Christ-like presence as an implied moral conscience. As with other aspects of this work, a Hollywood film is invoked—Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on a Larry McMurtry story, in which a similar gay/straight relationship develops.

Anthony Roth Costanzo (Jonathan), with members of the Santa Fe Opera Chorus.

Musically, the long first Act's single-minded quest for power is evoked in Spears’ churning and thickly orchestrated score. Indebted to Minimalist models, its relentlessly dark and dense textures pile one on another in almost numbing succession. By welcome contrast Act 2—focusing as it does on relationships between the women characters—is much more lyrical, with the SFO Orchestra under Maestro de Souza (left) emphasizing the transparent textural interplay of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion.

As in past years, Santa Fe Opera in this crowded work benefited from a depth of vocal resources. Credit the training and cultivation of singers this company invests in each year, with a special shout-out for the Apprentice program, its opportunities for young singers (and technicians) being among the nation's most impressive.  

Despite some reservations over the story per se and its operatic handling, the singing and stage presences of the principals were uniformly impressive, their voices carrying over even the thick orchestral textures of Act 1. 

The ensemble cast of The Righteous, against the backdrop of distant Santa Fe scenery.

                                                                 

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Crosby Theater, Santa Fe Opera, 301 Opera Drive, Santa Fe, NM, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, 8:00 p.m.

Images: Gregory Spears: Composer website; The production: Curtis Brown Photography.