CONCERTS OF THE
YEAR 2005:
Reviewers reflect on concerts and opera during last year.
MARC BRIDLE, EDITOR
2005 was a largely disappointing year for concerts and
opera, but my concert of the year is the first one I attended:
Riccardo
Muti's magnificent Schubert 9 and Vadim Repin’s even more
extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with
the Philharmonia Orchestra. Muti’s greatness as a conductor
was self-evidenced by the orchestra’s superb response, and
Repin, unlike so many violinists today who take the Beethoven
concerto at such a steady pace, gave the kind of mesmerizing
performance to equal the stature of this great work.
Eschenbach’s Bruckner 8 (see Alex Russell’s Concert of
the Year below) from this year’s Proms runs the Muti concert
a close second. Apart from the beauty of the playing, the
great surprise was Eschenbach himself. This was the kind of
performance that surprised constantly; the sign of a conductor
who constantly rethinks the music he is conducting.
BILL KENNY, REGIONAL EDITOR
Opera provided most of the best experiences
last year, but one surprise concert, local to where I live,
rounded everything off nicely. In chronological order,
my favourites were:
Alban Berg, Wozzeck (new production
premiere) Soloists, Welsh National Opera, Vladimir Jurowski,
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 19th February 2005.
WNO's first new production in the Wales Millennium Centre.
A fine start to the company's latest phase of the development which
ranked as world class opera without a doubt.
R. Wagner, Parsifal (new production) Finnish National
Opera, 4th April 2005.
Harry Kupfer's latest Parsifal magnificently staged by Finnish
National Opera. Probably not the last word on the work, but
close enough for the time being.
Einojuhani Rautavaara,
'Rasputin' soloists, Finnish
National Opera orchestra and chorus, Mikko Franck 23rd May
2005.
Another winning performance from FNO with Salminen at his
absolute best and Rautavaara's score handled expertly by the
company's Music Director Designate, Mikko Franck.
Wagner, 'The 24
Hour Ring' Tiroler Festspiele,
Erl, Austria - Soloists, Tiroler Festspiele Orchestra and
Chorus, Gustav Kuhn, 22nd to 24th July 2005.
A ludicrous idea in prospect, but in fact a compelling
Wagner experience. Only Gustav Kuhn would think of it in
the first place and very few others could pull it off so
well.
Christmas Is Come:
Eighteenth Century Dance and West Gallery Music from The Mellstock
Band Chittlehampton Parish Church, Devon, 2.12.2005,
Four men in period costume providing an evening of no-nonsense
entertainment and expert musicianship. For joyful, good-hearted pleasure
this was hard to beat.
COLIN CLARKE
It was wonderful
to see and hear Alfred
Brendel on top form. This was an excellent way to bring
temporary closure to the Festival Hall's activities as it
undergoes a major facelift, and a reminder as to what this
pianist really can do when he rises to the occasion.
EVAN
DICKERSON
Elgar’s
The Dream of Gerontius at the Proms was notable for excellence and intelligence
in every department: soloists’ contributions (particularly
Alice Coote’s heart-wrenching singing of the Angel – the finest
that I have heard), the Halle orchestra and chorus on truly
inspired form led by Mark Elder - together they go from strength
to strength.
MELANIE ESKENAZI
Billy
Budd at ENO. Not a 'concert' of course, but unquestionably
my musical event of the year: in the midst of all the sniping,
all the sensationalism with its mean, so-predictable subtext
(why should London have two opera houses?) the ENO stages
a hugely ambitious production of one of the greatest of all
20th century operas, by a great British composer, casts it
from tremendous strength with a mostly British cast, and pulls
off a notable triumph. London needs the ENO, and this production
shows why.
GÖRAN FORSLING
I have mainly reviewed opera this
year and been fortunate to see very good productions, but
top honours must go to Das
Rhinegold in Stockholm for presenting the gods as
down to earth humans and setting the action in more or less
a fairy-tale milieu. And, of course, for singing out of the
top drawer.
BRUCE HODGES
In
a year that was notable for thought-provoking programming,
the brilliant Jonathan Nott led the Bamberger Philharmoniker
in two wildly assembled concerts combining Beethoven, Ligeti
and Mahler, and James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
offered an impeccably conceived evening of Ives, Foss, Carter
and Gershwin. Franz-Welser Möst, pianist
Radu Lupu and the Cleveland Orchestra blazed through all five
of Beethoven’s Piano Concerti, with Berg, Birtwistle,
Dutilleux, Harrison, Schubert and Shostakovich as intelligent
companions. The New York Philharmonic gave some of its best nights
I’ve heard in many years, such as Kent Nagano in Messiaen’s
sweeping late masterpiece, Éclairs sur l’au-delà...(Illuminations
of the Beyond…), and Lorin Maazel in
a rocking opening to the fall season with pianist Lang Lang
in Chopin, followed by a sumptuously detailed Mahler First
Symphony. The intrepid Ensemble 21 scored a huge, exhausting
hit with Ferneyhough’s complete Carceri d’Invenzione, and
the FLUX Quartet cannot be thanked loudly enough for delving
into the five string quartets of Giacinto Scelsi.
But
for “Best of 2005” I’m offering a tie: the esteemed Reinbert
de Leeuw and the Juilliard Symphony closed down this year’s
Focus! Festival with a stark Shostakovich
Symphony No. 15, prefacing an even more striking Stimmen…verstuffen
by Sofia Gubaidulina. The
haunting Shostakovich made an eerie preface for Gubaidulina’s
vast and rarely performed canvas, vibrating with bone-chilling
commitment from de Leeuw and the young Juilliard players.
And as Ligeti’s Piano Etudes
are gradually assimilated into the repertory by master pianists
who can cope with their taxing challenges, virtuoso Christopher
Taylor can only be held in awe for surmounting all eighteen
of them in one astonishing sitting.
Miller Theater’s piano is probably still sweating.
BERNARD
JACOBSON
Because,
as I remarked in my original review, “forgetting is too easy,”
one event must take precedence for my choice of memorable
performances in 2005. Other occasions offered a characteristically
profound and incisive recital for the Philadelphia Chamber
Music Society by Ivan Moravec; a Philadelphia Orchestra Shostakovich
Sixth Symphony conducted by Yakov Kreizberg that threw new
light on Russian humor in the face of political insanity;
Christoph Eschenbach’s presentation, in the shape of Esa-Pekka
Salonen’s Insomnia,
of the finest new orchestral work I have encountered in years;
and some thrilling Beethoven, including Daniel Barenboim’s
masterful reading of the Seventh Symphony with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra on tour, Marta Argerich’s of the First
Piano Concerto with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra,
and an account of the Triple Concerto, by the Eroica Trio
with Ignat Solzhenitsyn and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia,
that beguiled a delighted audience with the obvious delight
the performers themselves obviously took in a work that is
too often denigrated. But the story of the year has to be
Riccardo
Muti's return on 13 February to the Philadelphia Orchestra
podium.
I style this an “event” rather than
just a “performance” for some weighty reasons. To be sure,
the performance itself was vividly rewarding, from the brilliant
opening with Rossini’s Guillaume
Tell overture, by way of Barbara Frittoli’s spine-tingling
recreation of all the drama and pathos of a group of Verdi
and Puccini arias, to Muti’s authoritative realization of
every facet to be found in the Brahms Second Symphony. But
the former music director’s return was significant in several
ways. It was, to begin with, his first appearance in the hall
for whose construction his advocacy in the 1980s and ’90s
laid much of the groundwork. Then, it marked a moment of healing
in his relationship with the orchestra, a relationship that
suffered some deterioration in the years after his resignation–it
was the players themselves who had extended the invitation
for this benefit concert, at which they, as well as the conductor
and soloist, appeared without fee. With a sizeable segment
of the Philadelphia public, Muti’s standing has never been
in doubt. It was evidenced by the extraordinary warmth of
feeling to be felt throughout the evening, which culminated–after
a graceful speech in which he proclaimed his affection for
the orchestra and the city–in a typically zestful and passionate
performance of the Forza
del destino overture by way of encore. And all this was
to seem the more gratifying, indeed consoling, a mere few
weeks later, when Muti’s distinguished leadership of La Scala,
Milan, came to an untimely end, sabotaged by an unbelievably
barbarian and politically motivated campaign of denigration,
exacerbated, it must be said, by no less unbelievably scurrilous
contributions from certain elements of the musical press.
For now, the New York Philharmonic’s ongoing love-fest with
Muti, as well as the renewed cordiality of his ties with Philadelphia,
should serve to keep his American audiences supplied with
musical experiences of a quality that the Milanese will surely
be kicking themselves for throwing away.
ALEX RUSSELL
It is always an invidious task to try and select the
single best concert of the year and 2005 was no exception
so I have selected three great performances that were truly
outstanding from three world class orchestras: the Wiener
Philharmoniker, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia
Orchestra.
I begin with the VPO playing at Prom
72
that I actually did not either attend or review but watched
at home on a BBC TV broadcast: ironically maybe the best front
row seat at the Royal Albert Hall! The concert was conducted
by Christoph Eschenbach who gave a paradigm performance of
Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony (ed. Nowak). The VPO played
with both power and sensitivity and were always ever watchful
of their conductor’s elegant and economic gestures. Eschenbach
had a total grip of the vast structure of the score treating
all four movements as an integrated whole and making the music
flow organically. My colleague Marc Bridle wrote of the adagio:
“The Adagio, so often
the point at which this Bruckner symphony encounters paralysis,
was almost over-emphatically articulated in its single arc
stretch. Eschenbach secured a wonderfully expressive tonal
response from the strings, but there was also a throbbing
pulse to the tremolo phrasing that, quite eerily, gave a life
force to this movement one rarely encounters.”
And
of the finale,
he wrote: “As the final notes crashed down one felt
that Bruckner’s glory was utterly complete. The Wiener
Philharmoniker’s and Christoph Eschenbach’s achievement had
been to realize that glory in a performance of rare distinction.”
This was a
truly a majestic and mesmerising experience even viewing from
the virtual space of the television screen: being there must
have been overwhelming: a great performance.
André
Previn conducted a colossal performance of William Walton’s
First Symphony in
B flat minor
(1932-35) with the London Symphony Orchestra (‘Previn at 75’
Concert 3, Barbican Hall, 22nd June). I wrote of this
performance: “This
‘mature’ reading was weighty, brooding, broadly measured and
extraordinarily Brucknerian in the spacing of the gaps between
brass interjections and silences - notably in the first and
last movements… An ecstatic audience rewarded this great performance with rapturous applause
and kept recalling the frail conductor back to the stage.”
Previn has had a long personal association with
this score and this magnificent performance brought all this
experience and understanding to bear: a performance of his
life time of a work he obviously knows and loves inside out.
And finally Sir
Charles Mackerras
conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in a sublime performance
of Elgar’s Symphony
No.2 in E flat Major, Op.63, (Royal Festival Hall: 16th June). Mackerras made the score sound fresh
and newly minted and I wrote: “His performance of Elgar's Symphony No.2 in E flat
Major, Op.63 was very close to the late Giuseppe Sinopoli's
radical conception, stripping the score of the inflated grandiose
pomposity so often heard in Barbirolli's grunting accounts.
From beginning to end this was a beautifully prepared and
played performance with incredible orchestral details shining
through even in climaxes…This was an extraordinarily fresh,
radical interpretation of a work which is all too often wrongly
seen as a backward-looking work of the Edwardian era. This
concert was dedicated to Carlo Maria Giulini: born 9 May 1914;
died 14 June 2005.” Mackerras and the Philharmonia
also dedicated this performance to reviving Elgar stripping
and eschewing him of the customary cliché ‘pomp and circumstance’.
HARVEY
STEIMAN
Without question, San Francisco
Opera's world premiere in October of Doctor
Atomic, the new John Adams opera about the first nuclear
bomb test, rates as the most significant musical event of
2005. Despite its shortcomings, which are not trivial, this
is a landmark work, and it carries a powerful musical wallop.
Adams' writing for the orchestra evokes all kinds of emotions,
from tenderness to terror. It runs the gamut from simple moments
of delicate beauty to immensely complex structures. It disappoints
in Adams' parlando style of vocal writing and in writer-director
Peter Sellars' over-reliance on quoted texts. The out-with-a-whisper
ending comes as anti-climax, but the musical riches are legion,
magnificently drawn by conductor Donald Runnicles. No one
leaves this work with a shrug. It practically demands that
you have a point or view, a gut reaction.
For sheer musical beauty,
however, Lyric Opera of Chicago's pairing of Renée Fleming
and Thomas Hampson in Massenet's Thaïs
was a musical triumph of the highest order in February. On
the orchestral side, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco
Symphony blazed through two sprawling Mahler symphonies in
September in revelatory performances of the 5th and 7th. The
latter was recorded for the orchestra's current Mahler cycle.
One more concert sticks in
the memory, if for no other reason than to cement the virtuosity
and sheer musical sensitivity of the violinist Christian Tetzlaff
in my mind. He played a ravishing Berg violin concerto at
the Aspen Music Festival in July with Michael Stern conducting.
Every time I hear Teztlaff I am convinced that there is no
more complete soloist of any kind today. Every performance
I have heard of his is deeply musical, soulful and thought-provoking
on so many levels.
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