Anna Bolena in Sorrow and Rage; A Review of Met Live in HD

photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Anna Bolena is a study in contrasts. The music exposes clear distinctions between public and private faces, between fantasy and longing to recapture a sweetly imagined past and affairs, and intrigues and deceptions.

The 2011-2012 season of Live in HD transmissions from the Met opened with an old-school production of Anna Bolena centered around Anna Netrebko. This production by David McVicar added to the contrasts in the music itself. McVicar contrasted a traditional and simple presentation of characters onstage with sophisticated transitions between scenes involving quickly programmed, and elegantly conceived mechanicals.

While the old-school blocking of characters allowed us to focus on the beauty of the bel canto production of this excellent cast, there were times, especially early on, where the production became visually sleepy.

Conductor Marco Armiliato was criticized by Anthony Tommasini for "routine conducting" during the season opening concert on September 26. Tommasini felt that Armiliato needed to better "instill...intensity into the music." I heard that performance on MetRadio and felt it was fair criticism. This performance was noticeably different. Armiliato kept the music leaning forward and got a much edgier sound from the orchestra.

This cast ensemble proved that this opera is more than a diva machine. Tamara Mumford, as Mark Smeaton, was a pleasant surprise, and took the character through a sensational arc. Her understanding of the locket aria was centered on a contrast of its own--between the character Smeaton's ability to live in fantasy and his slowly dawning realization that he is outside of the opera listening in. Smeaton's sudden leap back into the opera, through the gory representation of his tortured confession served to remind us that brutal force was always lurking just below the surface throughout this opera.

Netrebko saturated Anna Bolena in sorrow and rage. The amazing close-ups that were possible through the Live in HD cameras created a surrealistic force in her portrayal. Though she absolved the King and his new bride before being led to her own execution, the force and intensity that Netrebko unleashed into the music made any forgiveness chilling.   

LAPhil Live in HD Review: Mendelssohn "Like a Dark and Cold Wind"

The LAPhil Live in HD season returned to cinemas with a program of frequently played works by Mendelssohn. Conductor Gustavo Dudamel has been all over the news over the past week, being named "Musician of the Year" by Gramophone Magazine and with the announcement of two new music education with links to our side of the country.

This production looked markedly different from last season. There were many shots from within the orchestra; as if we were sitting in the string section, and many more close-ups of players. There was no host, and a host was not missed. The rehearsal footage alone made the event worth attending--Dudamel expressed fabulous insights into the Scottish symphony in particular.

The event opened with a dark and moody performance of the Hebrides Overture. Dudamel worked on the slower side and let lines surge and build with great skill. Given this context the famous clarinet statement of the second theme group in B major (with the editorial marking "tranquillo assai") seemed overly articulated and was played with a dotted 8th and 16th at the end of its first measure. Was this decision based on one of the new editions of the work? Still the work was a gorgeous and evocative way to open the event.

Dutch virtuoso Janine Jansen joined the orchestra as soloist in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Mark Swed raved about her playing on Thursday evening. This particular performance did not come into the cinema as effectively as the performance he described. Jansen never seemed fully comfortable during the first movement and seemed not to explore the stillness and silences of the cadenza that she described in the preconcert interview footage. There were lovely chamber-like moments in the second movement where she brought out a vulnerable quality in the music, and the finale was fabulous from start to stop. For her encore she played the sarabande from Bach's second partita in D minor.

After intermission we heard significant insights from Dudamel and great rehearsal footage. "Its like a cold and dark [wind]," said Dudamel of the opening gesture of the symphony. "The structure is very classical," he said of the symphony in general, "but with a nostalgic and Romantic soul."

Laughter erupted several times in the orchestra as he described the image of a queen, "who goes to the gym" taking part in the massive victory celebration at the end of the finale. And Dudamel kept looking for edges that would project a sense of warfare.

In my cinema "Real Steel" was playing next door. Some of that fighting spilled into our space, but I swear that Dudamel was so much in command that I could be persuaded he had willed it to be so. Dudamel's vision of the piece worked. The explosive sound as the finale opened was memorable, and textures throughout were rich and well-balanced. It was a performance that was detailed and expressive.

The next LAPhil Live in HD will be Mahler 8 in February...but that seems too far away. I would have loved at least one other event between now and then.

Magical Transitions and the Wisdom of Cutting Away the Superfluous in the Digital Concert Hall

Violinist Nikolaj Znaider mentioned "the wisdom of cutting away the superfluous" during his intermission interview with Berliner Philharmoniker violist Amihai Grosz in a concert broadcast through the Digital Concert Hall.

He was referring to a saying attributed to Michelangelo, but that particular wisdom was the single most striking aspect of his performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Unlike many soloists who have matched wits with this famous concerto, Znaider chose an understated almost conversational framework, choosing to "cut away" the idea that every note in the work must be played molto espressivo. This interpretation was refreshing, and it gave him more room to lift the slowly arcing intensity curves that shape the work. When the time came for passionate outbursts the sound was welcome.

Znaider delivered this performance on the 18th century Guarneri “del Gesu” that Fritz Kreisler played as his primary instrument from 1904-1919. The instrument had an amazingly rich and varied low register and seems to sing with a choir of musical ghosts.

Bernard Haitink was the scheduled conductor, but he needed to cancel due to illness, so the young Slovakian conductor Juraj Valcuha got the call. Valcuha projected confidence and led the orchestra with cerebral elegance throughout the evening.

Valcuha did have trouble holding the Philharmoniker back in several moments of the work, like the opening of the third movement, where the dynamic level was too loud and the sound was too heavy. But Valcuha and Znaider also chose to "cut away" the sense of parody in the finale that many interpretations seek. They played the music with a soulful and sexy dance energy and when the the great dark force that closes the movement swept through it seemed a culmination rather than a contradiction.

Valcuha was able to shift around the program that Haitink had planned, which included the Eroica Symphony. The Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 and Weber's Euryanthe Overture were tasty choices, and seemed much more interesting than the previously scheduled fare.

It became an evening of magical transitions.

The Euryanthe Overture opened its development with whispered music for 8 muted solo violins in colors that shifted with smoky edges through several minor keys. Somehow this passage seemed to speak directly to the retransition in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky symphony where an elemental and sparse pattern of syncopated intervals emerged from an otherwise logical development section.

The finale of the Tchaikovsky first symphony has an interpretive challenge. The introduction is long...and it returns at the end of the movement. But Valcuha led us perfectly from this return through another magical transition: rising chromatic lines that slowly pulled the music away, and pointed it with great skill toward the allegro vivo sprint that ended the work in breathless euphoria.

It was a program of works that harmonized. Listen again to the opening of the Sibelius concerto, and then the opening of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky. Right?

Valcuha was not only confident onstage, through some clever concert programming he started his success even before he arrived. That was a magical transition in its own right.

Mahler 1 in the Digital Concert Hall; Zubin Mehta and a Celebration of Intensities

Zubin Mehta led the Berliner Philharmoniker, on the 50th anniversary of the year of his debut as guest conductor with the orchestra, in a stunning program that was transmitted live over the Digital Concert Hall.

The event began with the Orchestermusik, Op. 9 written in 1948 by Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996). This was an attractive work punctuated by military gestures, but driven by long lines that were draped on inventive and engaging textures. It was music that spoke with an identifiable voice and made me eager to explore more of von Einem's music.
Next, cellist Johannes Moser joined the orchestra as soloist in the Cello Concerto by Robert Schumann. Moser is a cellist with ideas, and this event was the perfect platform for him to showcase the electrifying technical command and also the fluency of his musical thinking.

Moser embraced the rich fragments of style and intention that comprise the Schumann concerto. While many soloists try to join these contrasts, Moser let them collide and the results were impressive. It was in the development of the first movement that we were first able to hear the impact of this strategy. The Berliner Philharmoniker edged their gestures and kept the sound moving like a machine. Moser was able to use his lines to contrast and resist, pushing against and later becoming attracted by that very different sound. The movement became about poetic resistance to mechanization.

When the parallelism in the recapitulation was broken to move toward the second movement, one could not help but to hear the falling 5th played by Moser as a voiced invocation to Clara herself. It was easy to imagine the poet seeking haven through her spirit. Moser delighted in the intricacies of the third movement and seemed to amplify its rock & roll through the force of his own charisma.

Well received by the audience, Moser played a well chosen encore. He played the sarabande from the first Bach cello suite. This meditative dance was the perfect resolution for the concerto, as the spirit of Bach so often both followed and haunted Schumann.   

After intermission we heard Mahler's Symphony No. 1 performed with the Blumine movement that was discarded by Mahler during the process that bridged the composition of the work and led to its final published format. In fact, Mahler himself conducted this symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker at around the time that he first conceived of the work as a symphony instead of a symphonic poem. After Mahler's death the "Blumine" movement was lost, and it was not rediscovered until 1966. The movement was reintroduced to the 20th century just down the street from me, by the New Haven Symphony, in the Spring of 1968.

Mehta performed the work with the Blumine movement reattached. It was wonderful to hear the work this way, and I actually prefer it to the version we normally hear.

In the finale of the symphony there was a critical passage where a quotation from the introduction of the first movement falls from D-flat down to C and opens on a vista of quotations over a long C pedal. The second theme group from the Blumine movement was quoted there, as were many other moments in the symphony. With the Blumine intact it made everything seem plugged in again without loose ends.

Mehta was in great form. He is a master of economy, but when he moves the entire orchestra shines. The recapturing of D major as the work closed was a powerful moment, writ large over the course of more than an hour through a summation of details, a celebration of intensities.