Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Jezierski, Griffin, and Tryon will be interviewed by Sarah Willis in Live Hangouts
Sarah Willis will host a new round of "live hangouts" on her website later this week. These events have created a significant buzz among fans of live digital events and are essential viewing for students and music lovers.
On Thursday May 9 (9am EST) Willis will be interviewing long-time member of the Berliner Philharmoniker horn section Stefan de Leval Jezierski. Jezierski has been with the orchestra since 1978. Check out this video clip, probably from the late 80s, in which you can observe both Jezierski and oboist Andreas Wittmann performing that gorgeous Dvorak Serenade Op. 44:
Friday May 10 (9am EST) is officially low horn day. Willis will be talking with David Griffin, longtime member of the Chicago Symphony, and Denise Tryon from The Philhadelphia Orchestra.
I will tune in to both events. Willis is very generous in asking questions from the live chat so come prepared!!
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Die Zauberflöte off to a new start with the Berliner Philharmoniker
"[This] piece," said Simon Rattle about Die Zauberflöte, "is a conductor's graveyard." He went on to indicate that he had avoided it for reasons of "self-preservation," until an irresistible opportunity came about: incredible as it sounds, this run of performances was the first time this iconic opera has been performed live in the history of the Berliner Philharmoniker. A live concert performance of the opera was transmitted over the Digital Concert Hall.
Rattle always makes one hear familiar music in new ways. There were many gestures that he stamped as fresh and engaging. Right from the start, each of the three fanfares was played with the third articulation in echo tone, almost like a reverberation of the two articulations before it. But more importantly there was a flow within the work, in and out of the spoken dialog, that had an appealing sense of shape and structure.
The sound of the orchestra was edged and very present, and it made one aware of the particular colors that are used to shade and often connect non-adjacent moments within this opera. The singers inhabited the space between the back of the orchestra and the chorus and they were able to suggest a staging even with the limited means they had at their disposal.
Words are significant in this opera. This production placed subtitles on the screen in an interesting way. The text stretched across the entire screen in German with a smaller italicized English translation underneath it. We were able to anticipate the German text almost as if reading a score, and the German text made the care given to diction in this performance apparent. I wish Met-Live-in-HD occasionally used this style of subtitles.
The cast was well-chosen. Particularly impressive was soprano Kate Royal as Pamina. She was able to develop shades in Pamina's elusive character across the arias and spoken lines that the role contains. In her act II aria "Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden," one could feel her focus the collective energy of the hall and even of cyberspace as she shaped piercing vocal leaps and etched coloratura in a glowing G minor. I also liked soprano Ana Durlovski as the Queen of the Night. She was able to land and project the almost always overlooked lowest notes of this part known for its high side.
Balances in the ensembles were also quite good in this performance. One could hear each part in the ensemble of three boys with rare clarity. The spike in applause they received at the curtain was well earned.
It is a pleasure to hear the Berliner Philharmoniker play concert opera. One can only hope for more.
Rattle always makes one hear familiar music in new ways. There were many gestures that he stamped as fresh and engaging. Right from the start, each of the three fanfares was played with the third articulation in echo tone, almost like a reverberation of the two articulations before it. But more importantly there was a flow within the work, in and out of the spoken dialog, that had an appealing sense of shape and structure.
The sound of the orchestra was edged and very present, and it made one aware of the particular colors that are used to shade and often connect non-adjacent moments within this opera. The singers inhabited the space between the back of the orchestra and the chorus and they were able to suggest a staging even with the limited means they had at their disposal.
Words are significant in this opera. This production placed subtitles on the screen in an interesting way. The text stretched across the entire screen in German with a smaller italicized English translation underneath it. We were able to anticipate the German text almost as if reading a score, and the German text made the care given to diction in this performance apparent. I wish Met-Live-in-HD occasionally used this style of subtitles.
 |
| Kate Royal was Pamina in this Zauberflöte |
Balances in the ensembles were also quite good in this performance. One could hear each part in the ensemble of three boys with rare clarity. The spike in applause they received at the curtain was well earned.
It is a pleasure to hear the Berliner Philharmoniker play concert opera. One can only hope for more.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sarah Willis to Interview Soprano Anna Prohaska
Anna Prohaska is a singer with a story. "I suppose one could explain this yearning for fantasy," she mused in the trailer for her new Archiv Production Disc. "There is a yearning for the supernatural because everything can be explained." Prohaska has reconnected us with an "Enchanted Forest," the title of her latest CD.
An artist with a broad portfolio of interests, this disc brings a culturally relevant ache and a young attitude to Baroque repertoire. While not alone in this endeavor, Prohaska is a singer with credentials who continues to impress.
Sarah Willis will interview Prohaska on her live chat site on April 2nd at 9pm Berlin/ 3pm New York/ 7am Melbourne. These Willis interviews are "must see" events. They combine an artful sense of personal communication with a live chat audience that is informed and frequently entertaining.
Willis has interviewed several legends of the horn world on her site, but the site also includes successful chats with other kinds of musicians. Willis has a very natural journalistic sense. Her live chat with soprano Barbara Hannigan last January was an outstanding example of how insightful the process can be...you can watch that interview here.
I will tune in to watch on Tuesday. Join me.
"Within these strict structures," said Prohaska of the Baroque style on her new disc, "there is a lot of freedom." The same thing seems true of the technology used to initiate these new enterprises, these chats, these electronic connections.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Francesca Di Rimini; Zandonai's Opera of the Unspoken
"My life," sang Eva-Maria Westbroek as Francesca, "has more sorrow than I can tell."
This rich and fascinating opera by Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) was saturated in the sense of the unspoken. As the opera progressed it increasingly articulated its central ideas through Wagnerian symbols of night and death as potential eternal union for its two central characters, Francesca and Paulo (sung by Marcello Giordani).
And yet moments after they are both stabbed and the curtain falls comes the realization of the greatest of the unspoken elements of the opera--that we know these characters through Dante. Dante introduced them in Canto V of the Inferno where the souls of the damned were swept aimlessly by constantly raging storms in the second circle of hell. Francesca is allowed to break from the torment only briefly to relate her story. This fate is a horrifying distortion of the Wagnerian concept of Liebestod.
This production, by Piero Faggioni, is well-known from the DVD starring Placido Domingo and Renata Scotto filmed by Brian Large in the 1980s. The Live-in-HD experience provided the opportunity to measure a different, and very worthy, cast but also was an example of how much the technology of HD filming and the camera techniques that have become idiomatic in HD opera change the presentation of the opera.
The detail of the set was much more apparent Live-in-HD, and since the set was so rich and complex this was meaningful. The moving cameras articulated changes in color and texture on the set in ways that would not have been possible thirty years ago. The new angles and visual clarity summed and resonated with the now classic production.
In the act one intermission we had the opportunity to hear from the Met "Resident Costume Designer" Sylvia Nolan. She explained another aspect of the unspoken that was articulated through the original costumes designed by Franca Squarciapino.
"We pass through a lot of emotion in the opera," explained Nolan. These were translated by Squarciapino into colors and textures. "We start with something very translucent, full of light and gossamer [in the first act]. Then the color palette broadens in act two with warm and hot colors, which reflect the battles. Then we move into darker colors for acts three and four."
Nolan also described another feature of the costumes: Sqarciapino "quoted the silhouettes for the period [of Dante] however, in the decoration she actually quoted the artistic movements of the time the music was written...We see in the pattern of the embroidery the Art Nouveau movement and pre-raphaelite interest in bringing back their own version of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."
"Lead me to my room and close the shutters," plead Francesca to her her sister just prior to seeing Paulo for the first time. "I need silence to calm me." This opera of the unspoken premiered on the edge of the first world war in 1914 has its own language for igniting the fearful boundary between silence and catastrophe.
This rich and fascinating opera by Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) was saturated in the sense of the unspoken. As the opera progressed it increasingly articulated its central ideas through Wagnerian symbols of night and death as potential eternal union for its two central characters, Francesca and Paulo (sung by Marcello Giordani).
And yet moments after they are both stabbed and the curtain falls comes the realization of the greatest of the unspoken elements of the opera--that we know these characters through Dante. Dante introduced them in Canto V of the Inferno where the souls of the damned were swept aimlessly by constantly raging storms in the second circle of hell. Francesca is allowed to break from the torment only briefly to relate her story. This fate is a horrifying distortion of the Wagnerian concept of Liebestod.
This production, by Piero Faggioni, is well-known from the DVD starring Placido Domingo and Renata Scotto filmed by Brian Large in the 1980s. The Live-in-HD experience provided the opportunity to measure a different, and very worthy, cast but also was an example of how much the technology of HD filming and the camera techniques that have become idiomatic in HD opera change the presentation of the opera.
The detail of the set was much more apparent Live-in-HD, and since the set was so rich and complex this was meaningful. The moving cameras articulated changes in color and texture on the set in ways that would not have been possible thirty years ago. The new angles and visual clarity summed and resonated with the now classic production.
In the act one intermission we had the opportunity to hear from the Met "Resident Costume Designer" Sylvia Nolan. She explained another aspect of the unspoken that was articulated through the original costumes designed by Franca Squarciapino.
"We pass through a lot of emotion in the opera," explained Nolan. These were translated by Squarciapino into colors and textures. "We start with something very translucent, full of light and gossamer [in the first act]. Then the color palette broadens in act two with warm and hot colors, which reflect the battles. Then we move into darker colors for acts three and four."
Nolan also described another feature of the costumes: Sqarciapino "quoted the silhouettes for the period [of Dante] however, in the decoration she actually quoted the artistic movements of the time the music was written...We see in the pattern of the embroidery the Art Nouveau movement and pre-raphaelite interest in bringing back their own version of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."
"Lead me to my room and close the shutters," plead Francesca to her her sister just prior to seeing Paulo for the first time. "I need silence to calm me." This opera of the unspoken premiered on the edge of the first world war in 1914 has its own language for igniting the fearful boundary between silence and catastrophe.
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