CONCERTS OF THE YEAR 2004
Opera of the Year:
Salome, Metropolitan
Opera House, New York
Concert of the Year:
Mahler’s
Third, Berliner Philharmoniker and Bernard Haitink, London and Berlin
Recital of the Year:
Ivan
Moravec, Czech music recital, London
MARC BRIDLE, EDITOR
Last year
I had considerable difficulty recommending any concert performance;
opera triumphed. This year, the reverse has been the case, despite
the fact that English National Opera’s misunderstood Ring cycle
has at times impressed. With the notable exception of the LSO, who
are widening the gap between themselves and other British orchestras
with each concert, the most notable performances have been given
by visiting orchestras.
Two ‘events’
lead this years concert choices: Bernard Haitink’s 75th
birthday celebrations in London and the 100th anniversary
of the London Symphony Orchestra. One concert featured both – Mahler’s
Sixth, a performance of considerable freshness. In any standard
year it would have been my first choice, but standing head and shoulders
above anything else I have heard this year – and it is possibly
the finest Mahler concert I have been to since Karajan did Mahler’s
Ninth in Salzburg in 1982 – is Haitink’s performance of Mahler's
Third with the Berliner Philharmoniker.
This concert will become the stuff of legend.
Other
notable events include Claudio Abbado’s electrifying Act II from
Tristan
at Lucerne and Daniel Barenboim with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
in Tchaikovsky and
Beethoven. A magnificent concert with the London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Myung-Whun Chung contained a revelatory performance
of Brahms'
Symphony No.1: the work doesn’t get many finer performances than
this. For sheer bravura, Maris Jansons’ first Prom with
the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will remain forever in the
memory. When lights failed on the stage during the ‘Battle Scene’
of Ein Heldenleben both orchestra and conductor continued, note
perfect and with even greater intensity, as if nothing had happened.
The following night they gave an incandescent performance of Tchaikovsky’s
Sixth symphony. Without question, the recital of the year was Ivan Moravec's
incandescent lunchtime concert of Janácek, Smetana and Suk. Such
magnetic playing is today a genuine rarity.
CLAY ANDRES
Even
as we love going to concerts, we don’t expect every performance
to be thrilling or even necessarily wonderful. We enjoy hearing
pieces well played, with some spark of spontaneity, and in surroundings
that bring people together for collective enjoyment. There were
some duds this year that didn’t even manage to achieve this minimal
standing, but there was also one that transcended all others. It
went beyond spark to real combustatory glory. On what turned into
a very unhappy election night in the U.S., I heard a 19-year-old
pianist/composer at Yale University play American music of the 20th
Century; Adams’s China Gates, Barbar’s Excursions,
Rzewski’s Four North American
Ballads, and the artists’ own Piano Sonata #1 (actually written
in 2002). Firstly, the programming was both varied and brave. Nothing
trite or expected for this imposing young man with a seemingly limitless
range of technique. These are difficult works for both artist and
audience, but they are also united by a theme of being very American
works. Secondly, the depth of feeling brought to these works was
clear to all. The pianist had obviously made these pieces his own
and was able to communicate this without distracting from the music
itself. Finally, the performances were riveting; colorful, deeply
expressive, and full of contrasts from heartbreakingly lyrical to
astoundingly wild. This is a powerhouse pianist whose performance
stunned even me, his very circumspect father. I hope all readers
will forgive me for what appears to be a very self-serving review,
but Timothy has a combination of talents that makes him a stunning
performer even to those who know him best and have been known to
be most critical. And don’t just take my word for it. You can sample
excerpts of his performances at http://www.andres.com/timo.
COLIN CLARKE
For sheer
discovery, Donizetti's
Pia took some beating
and Boulez
and the LSO renewed acquaintance with magnificent results. A Midsummer Night’s Dream showed ENO
at its best and Birtwistle's Second
Mrs Kong was a reminder of a modern masterpiece. Outstanding
chamber music came from the Skampa Quartet
at the Wigmore Hall and for sheer endeavour there was the Semley
Music Festival.
MELANIE ESKENAZI
I
don’t think anyone who reads my reviews will be surprised at my
choice of two recitals given at the Wigmore Hall on 8 and 10 November,
by Matthias Goerne and Eric Schneider. I’m absolutely unapologetic
about my opinion that Goerne is the greatest currently active singer
of Lieder, and these recitals gave ample evidence for this. The
first
evening was made up of a brilliantly structured programme of Schubert
and Eisler, intertwining the composers’ similarities and divergences
in setting, emotion and style: the singing of Eisler’s ‘Hollywood
Songbook’ extracts was absolutely masterly, and the programme’s
conclusion, Schubert’s sublime ‘Frühlingsglaube’ was inspired.
The
second
recital was all Schubert, selected by William Lyne, and it fulfilled
the chief obligation placed upon all great performance: the presentation
of well loved material in such a way as to make the audience hear
it as though it has never been heard before. The concluding ‘Abschied’
(D 475) was the epitome of the art of Lieder singing: a whole world
in miniature, understated yet ardent emotion, and technical assurance
of a rare kind in both piano and voice – the bittersweet nature
of ‘Ach, wie wird das Herz betrübt’ can rarely have been so poignantly
conveyed.
BRUCE HODGES
Richard
Strauss seemed to get the job done this year.
In New York, the incandescent Karita Mattila was the erotically
charged lightning rod that ignited the Met’s new Salome
(and here),
with outstanding colleagues including Bryn Terfel, Larissa Diadkova,
and Matthew Polenzani. The
magnificent Met Orchestra did a riveting account of the score, with
everything overheated to perverted perfection by Valery Gergiev.
Pray for the DVD release soon.
In Los
Angeles, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
unveiled the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s mind-blowing new pipe organ
with two more Strauss blockbusters and a raucously entertaining
world premiere by James MacMillan, all three with the sensational
British organist Wayne Marshall of Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.
But
the year was packed to overflowing, including superb recitals by
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Carter and
Ives) and Maurizio Pollini (Chopin
and Debussy), the incomparable Arditti Quartet making Ligeti and
Lachenmann look easy, Sir Colin Davis as commander-in-chief
of the London Symphony Orchestra in a brilliantly played Peter Grimes,
the New York New Music Ensemble with its steel-fingered pianist
Stephen Gosling in a double-whammy of Feldman
and Grisey, and Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland
Orchestra in a dazzling evening of Dalbavie, Messiaen, Ravel
and Bartók. And a work that
continues to linger in the mind is Steve
Heitzeg's ambitious Nobel Symphony, given the
star treatment last spring in Minneapolis by VocalEssence and its
celebrated conductor Philip Brunelle.
With computer-generated graphics by the Minneapolis College
of Art + Design, Heitzeg’s work had as its core an eloquent reimagining
of Pablo Neruda: “Peace begins in a single chair.”
BERNARD JACOBSON
The claims of several Philadelphia
Orchestra concerts conducted by Christoph Eschenbach (and one in
which Jiri Belohlávek offered the best performance of Dvorák’s “New
World” Symphony I can remember hearing); of a Riccardo Muti evening
in New York with the Philharmonic that included a superb Brahms
2 and a group of Mozart concert arias masterfully sung by Thomas
Quasthoff; of several performances by the German baritone Matthias
Goerne; and of thrilling recitals by two pianists you have probably
never heard of, Idil Biret
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Santiago Rodriguez
in Charlottesville, Virginia, and by one whom you certainly will
hear of, the young Brian Ciach,
who gave an extraordinary graduation recital at Philadelphia’s Temple
University–all of these must, with reluctance, be set aside. In
almost any year, the performance of Schubert's
Winterreise that Ian Bostridge
and Leif Ove Andsnes gave at Carnegie Hall in October would have
had to take first place on my list. The two have worked together
often enough by now to have developed a collaborative relationship
that sounds utterly instinctive. It was placed, on this occasion,
in the service of a searingly dramatic and at the same time discriminatingly
intelligent interpretation of what for many of us ranks as the greatest
of all song cycles. Bostridge’s voice, moreover, which has been
taking on added richness and strength over the last few years, was
in resplendent estate. Equally impressive was the technical and
musical command of Andsnes, who in my judgement ranks as the finest
pianist to have emerged in the past two or three decades–along with
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who incidentally, in his other role as conductor,
led a performance of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony with Elena
Prokina, Sergei Leiferkus, and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia
that also clamored for inclusion.
BILL KENNY
Since a fair number of my reviews are from Scandinavia
and more particularly from Finland, it should be no surprise to
find that my choices have a strong Nordic bias. My reviewing year
in Helsinki actually began in the last week of December 2003, with
exceptional performances of Peter
Grimes (conducted by Sakari Oramo) and with Mattila’s Katya Kabanova given on consecutive evenings by Finnish National Opera.
Either of these would have been strong contenders for my choices
of the year had it not been for the truly remarkable Ring that FNO staged this September, and a couple of other barnstormers.
First
of these was the new Tristan
und Isolde from Royal Swedish Opera in March. ‘Mortgage
your Grandmother,’ I wrote at the time, ‘If only to hear Nina Stemme.’
I still think that those who couldn’t part with Grannie missed one
of the great Wagner sopranos of all time and I do not say that lightly.
Supported by a strong cast of other principals and by expert conducting
from Leif Segerstam (another Finn)
in Hans – Peter Lehmann’s new and textually faithful production,
Nina Stemme gave an absolutely stunning performance as Isolde.
‘Wagner can’t come much better than this,’ I remember thinking at the time.
But
it could; in the form of FNO’s Ring
in September. Enter Ms Stemme once again as a fine Sieglinde
partnered this time by Jyrki Anttila, a held
in the making if ever there was, and another strong team including
Salminen as both Hunding and Hagen. The real ear-opener though was
Juha Uusitalo’s extraordinary Wotan. A capable Balstrode in Oramo’s
Grimes, Uusitalo became
positively majestic in this production in terms of both his effortless
singing and his acting. Three great Wagner singers in the same production
are rarities these days, but apart from its Brünnhilde, this production
had pretty well everything. It was definitely world-class opera
and abidingly memorable at that.
Three
weeks after this and Uusitalo popped up again, this time as Scarpia
in Oramo’s concert- performance Tosca
in Birmingham. And yes, he did that magnificently too: this was another commanding characterisation with the
same extraordinary voice, with the customary excellent diction and
with the same quietly and assured and easy acting. There’s no end
to this man’s talents apparently and equally little constraint on
Oramo’s abilities as an opera conductor or so it seems. With Claire
Rutter as an extremely competent Tosca and some lusty singing from
the two CBSO choruses this was another thoroughly enjoyable evening
of opera. The Finns (and one truly wonderful Swede) ruled in 2004
so far as I’m concerned.
ALEXANDROS RIGAS
The
indisputable first position is occupied by Bernard Haitink’s performance
of Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin
on 25th September. It was the concert of a lifetime with
a finale that left everybody speechless. The involvement was total,
an absolute achievement. I hope that Haitink will conduct it again
(in an interview he gave the impression that these performances
of the Mahler Third would be the last ones under his baton).
Very
close behind comes the concert the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
gave during the Athens Festival at the ancient “Herodeion” theatre
below the Acropolis on 23rd August. Herbert Blomstedt
conducted an all Brahms concert featuring the Greek violinist Leonidas
Kavakos in a fabulous performance of the Violin concerto. But the
revelation came with the First Symphony. One wondered what to admire:
the velvet strings, the fabulous and so characteristic winds or
Blomstedt’s perfectly balanced view of this over-played work? This
was an unforgettable experience leaving me with the rare impression
of “this is how it should be played”.
ALEX RUSSELL
In a year
of many fine concerts it is an invidious task to select a favourite.
Having said that I vote for veteran Mstislav Rostropovich's shattering
account of Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony with the LSO (Barbican Hall, 4th November,
2004). I wrote in my review:
“Rostropovich's deeply moving account was one of the most violently
intense I have ever heard…The central climax in the Allegro non
troppo was pure terror, with the march-like timpani and brass savagely
characterized and the bass drum thuds giving the sensation of decapitation.”
The charismatic Rostropovich exuded total command over
his players, securing highly concentrated playing that had the audience
mesmerised from beginning to end: the hallmark of a great performance.
This
was very closely followed by Myung-Whun Chung’s superlative account
of Brahms' First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra (Barbican, 5th
December 2004), which glowed from beginning to end; the finest I
have heard live since Celibidache’s 1980 LSO account. Not only did
the Korean conductor have a total grasp over the structure of the
score unifying all movements as an organic whole; he also realised
the powerful pathos, poetic lyricism and profound tragedy of the
music often obscured by bombastic accounts; the LSO’s playing was
warm and deeply expressive sounding more akin to a great German
orchestra. As Marc Bridle wrote of the performance: “…it was
the ending of the work that suggested Mr Chung is a master Brahms
conductor. Put simply, the conductor – as he did throughout the
performance – kept that sustained base line absolutely audible,
and his timpanist firmly under control. A broadening at the final
bar - rather than an accelerando dash during the bar – returned
us to where we had begun: in to an atmosphere of true cataclysm.
Brahms’ First doesn’t get much better than this.”
Also
outstanding was Valery Gergiev’s impassioned account of Prokofiev's complete ballet Romeo & Juliet with the Rotterdam Philharmonic
Orchestra (RFH, 6th June 2004). Gergiev’s reading was refreshingly
raw and visceral, making the two and a half hours of ballet music
sound like a symphonic score. The
playing of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra was rugged and metallic
with the brass and bass-drum in particular having nerve-shattering
dramatic intensity. Marc Bridle wrote: “It is a tribute to this
conductor’s talent for creating performances of searing intensity
that this performance held the interest for its entirety…None of
this would have been possible without the virtuosic playing of the
Rotterdam Philharmonic who seamlessly negotiated Gergiev’s extremes
of rubato with a polished consistency”.
Last
but not least was Christoph Eschenbach’s deeply moving and sensitively
sung and superbly played account of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde
with Andreas Schmidt (bar) and Yvonne
Naef (mezzo) with Orchestra de Paris, (Prom, Royal Albert Hall,
28th August, 2004). While
the Orchestra de Paris is not usually associated with the music
of this composer, Eschenbach achieved an authentic ‘Mahler sound’,
notably with the poetically pointed woodwind. As I said in my review of the concert: “Christoph
Eshenbach's reading of Das Lied was the finest performance I have
heard of this work in concert: this was a paradigm Mahler performance
with soloists, conductor and orchestra totally unified in their
vision.”
HARVEY
STEIMAN
It was 1984 and I was
just beginning to get serious about opera when Jon Vickers' portrayal
of Peter Grimes gobsmacked me. The Royal Opera Covent Garden was
performing in Los Angeles as part of a cultural festival before
the summer Olympic Games. I had never seen or heard an opera singer
so completely inhabit a role, sing it and act it with such power
and perfection. In the intervening years, in several hundred opera
performances, nothing has surpassed that individual effort for me
until Karita Mattila sashayed onto the stage at the Metropolitan
Opera in New York last spring as Salome. She was
mesmerizing.
Because my colleague
Bruce Hodges reviewed this production twice here, I did not feel
the need to chime with essentially the same take. Mattila managed
the impossible, a woman past 40 convincing us she was a nasty little
teenage sexpot, all the while singing Strauss' music the way you
always wish you could hear it and seldom do, even in concerts. Bryn
Terfel as Jokanaan (in four performances) led a powerful cast up
and down the roster, and Valery Gergiev urged the Met Orchestra
into some astounding music making. A DVD is in the works for 2005
release. Don't miss it.
Singers played a role
in my other favorite concerts this year -- two wonderfully intimate
recitals by the mezzo soprano Susanne Mentzer
at the Aspen Music Festival last summer, Thomas Quasthoff's amazingly
natural set of orchestrated Schubert songs with the San Francisco
Symphony in September, the star-studded gala in October that Lyric Opera
of Chicago threw itself to celebrate 50 years, and a beautifully
realized Cunning Little Vixen
starring Dawn Upshaw at San Francisco Opera in June.
One memorable instrumental
concert among many by the San Francisco Symphony, which I am privileged
to hear year round, involved second chances. In late spring, Michael
Tilson Thomas conducted a second hearing of John Adams' My Father New Charles Ives and the world
premiere of the English composer Robin Holloway's orchestration
of Debussy's En Blanc et Noir. The Debussy/Holloway
made a strong first impression, but in May I felt it lacked the
clarity of Debussy's piano writing. A performance of a revised score
this fall was truly magical. The Adams reinforced my feeling that
this is his best work in years. That concert concluded with a riveting
account of Rimsky's Scheherezade, but I left still immersed in Adams' very personal paean
to an American original.
HANS-THEODOR WOHLFAHRT
In
the end, it is not the number of concerts or operas one attended
in a single season, but the ones one chose to go to and it seems
that I chose carefully and well. There were hardly any events I
forgot instantly; most were fascinating, being for repertoire or
interpretation or both, some were just plain awful. But in retrospect,
the highlight has been a one-hour BBC lunchtime recital at LSO St
Luke´s on May 13th. The Czech pianist Ivan Moravec
played works by his compatriots Janácek, Smetana and Suk. The editor
reviewed this concert and I entirely agree with him. Moravec is
the last pianist of an era which sadly, now, belongs to the past.
His tireless commitment to an ever more masterly interpretation
and his total involvement into the complexities of each single work
as well as his honesty are second to none. In this case, he also
understood perfectly well how to balance the acoustical difficulties
of this half empty hall – an hour to treasure forever. But I should
also mention two further events, which had hardly any coverage in
the national press. On May 17th Paul Crossley gave his 60th Birthday
Concert at the Wigmore Hall. It had been a feast of great contemporary
compositions starting with Takemitsu
(Crossley’s deeply felt transcription of the movement `Visions´
from Takemitsu´s orchestral piece “Visions”,) followed by compositions
specially written for this occasion by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Magnus
Lindberg, George Benjamin, Hans Wener Henze and Oliver Knussen.
After the interval, Paul Crossley gave another example of his lifelong
refinement and understanding of Debussy’s works for piano with his
interpretation of Préludes Book 2. Without Paul Crossley, the pianist,
conductor and untiring champion of contemporary music, England would
be much poorer. The other event also
took place in the Wigmore Hall on June 8th, where Emily Pailthorpe
(Oboe), Julian Milford (Piano) and James Gilchrist (Tenor) played
rarely heard works by Bartók, Finzi, Vaughan-Williams, Patterson,
Ravel, Korth and Britten. My most overwhelming opera experience
happened at the Grange Park Opera with Tchaikovsky's
Charodeika on June 13th.
PETER GRAHAME WOOLF, EMERITUS EDITOR
We draw attention here
to a small selection of live events which particularly stick in
the memory, many of them not covered elsewhere.
Leaving London's orchestral
concerts aside for others to recall, we went often to the refurbished
Wigmore Hall, where the Aviv String Quartet
made a huge impact, confirmed later at South Bank. The variety of
'chamber music' (still avoided by many concert goers) is illustrated
by just three unusual events which readers are likely to have missed;
Tarleton's Jig at Blackheath, Alice & Martin
Neary at St John's and O Duo
in the Purcell Room.
Opera has been various
indeed. The colleges have delighted us as ever; Thomas's Mignon
(seen twice at the Guildhall) was an unexpected pleasure. We enjoyed
Raymond Gubbay's ill-fated venture
at the Savoy far more than the newspapers told us we ought to have.
At Holland Park, Puccini's La
Fanciulla was one of the best in a good season. Clockwork, at the Linbury, down below
the Royal Opera House, stays in the memory better than anything
upstairs. Family Matters, by six young composers,
anticipated the greatly deplored demise of the Bridewell
Theatre, that irreplaceable music theatre centre. I Fagiolini
made Monteverdi madrigals into a virtual opera
in Greenwich, where the annual Early Music Festival
jamboree brought huge crowds from many countries.
Rewarding festivals
abroad included contemporary music
at Amsterdam and Lucerne (Boulez's Festival
Academy and Ullmann's The Kaiser of Atlantis
on the lakeside); early music in
Antwerp and most notably of all, a unique coming together
of nations and faiths singing Musica Sacra International in Bavaria.
