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SEEN AND HEARD'S PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR 2008
 

At every New Year, Seen and Heard Reviewers are asked to nominate the concerts or opera performances that they enjoyed most over the year previously. Here is the selection for 2008.
 

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Bill Kenny - Seen and Heard Editor

This was a generally a good year for opera but two performances stand head and shoulders above all others. They were:

Kaija Saariaho, Adriana Mater: (Finnish Premiere - First Night)  Soloists, Chorus and orchestra of Finnish National Opera, Ernest Martínez Izquierdo conductor, Helsinki, Finland. 23.2.2008 (BK)

and

Holland Festival 2008 -  Messiaen, Saint François d' Assise:  De Nederlandse Opera, Het Muziektheater  Amsterdam,19.6.2008 (BK)

And for a truly extraordinary left of field concert, I could hardly better this  event which took place (almost literally) in my own back yard.

Earth Machine Music: Kimmo Pohjonen (accordion and electronics), Farm Machinery (various operatives), Westcott Barton Farm, Middle Marwood near Barnstaple. Devon, 15.5.2008 (BK)
 

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Bob Briggs - Seen and Heard Deputy Editor

Finzi, Vaughan Williams: Robert Cohen (cello), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Paul Daniel, Cadogan Hall, London, 1.4.2008 (BBr)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Gerald Finzi: Cello Concerto, op.40 (1951/1955)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.5 in D (1938/1943)

Three English masterpieces in authoritative performances. Cohen is a fine cellist whom we don’t hear often enough and Daniel has really come into his own in the concert hall. This was part of the RPO’s Green and Pleasant Land series – English music played to packed houses – and it’s a shame the series hasn’t been repeated this season.

Mozart and Strauss: Alfred Brendel, London Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, Barbican Hall, London, 8.6.2008 (BBr)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto in C minor, K491 (1786)
Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie, op.64 (1911/1915)

For his farewell appearance in London Alfred Brendel gave a performance of Mozart’s K491 which was simplicity itself, yet transcendental in his all embracing view. Thank heavens for Alfred Brendel, we should revere him for we will neither see, nor hear, his like ever again.

Mozart, Holliger, Schulhoff, Mussorgsky: Louis Schwizgebel–Wang (piano), Wigmore Hall, London, 22.9.2008 (BBr)

Mozart: Piano Sonata in D, K311 (1777)
Heinz Holliger: Elis, Drei Nachtstücke (1961 rev 1966)
Erwin Schulhoff: Cing études de jazz (1926)
Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)

A far ranging recital played with consummate artistry by 21 year old Louis Schwizgebel–Wang who is possessed of a superb technique and an extraordinary insight into the music he is playing. This was something very special.
 

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Mark Berry (Cambridge, UK)

Daniel Barenboim’s Beethoven sonata cycle at the Royal Festival Hall proved to be the stuff of legend. I reviewed three of the eight performances and could have chosen them all. If pushed, I should opt for the final concert, culminating in the mysteries of Op.111. Sublime is a word overused, yet it almost defines late Beethoven and here is quite juste.

Iphigénie en Tauride in German translation might not have sounded promising, yet Barrie Kosky’s superlative production for Berlin’s Komische Oper ensured an urgent, visceral drama. The Abu Ghraib of Tauris evinced Gluck’s fabled ‘beautiful simplicity’, whilst reminding us how utterly contemporary in its concerns Attic tragedy remains.

For the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Scharoun Ensemble, Pierre Boulez visited Berlin to conduct works by Bach, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Each received an outstanding performance. Memories of Schoenberg’s life-enhancing First Chamber Symphony – it can never have been better performed – will stay with me forever. A recording, please.
 

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Robert J Farr (Manchester, UK)

Nearly all of my live performances in 2008 have been of opera. So many things need to come right in opera performances to make then memorable and worthy of inclusion here. First the singing has to be good, then the conductor and orchestra, whilst the whole lot can be ruined by the perversity of directors and set designers. Too often that has been my experience this year with Opera North managing to ruin its well sung Gounod and Bellini takes on the Romeo and Juliette story. One involved multi colour haired punks gliding round the stage on blades whilst the second had far too much gratuitous violence along with balaclavas and armalite rifles. I do not think the composers would have recognised their creations without the benefit of the music!! Thankfully my season was saved by visits to the Welsh national Opera and a student performance at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music.

It was the Welsh National Opera on Tour in Llandudno that provided my most memorable opera performance of the year. Early in the year the renowned director Peter Stein revisited his Falstaff production of twenty years ago. In naturalistic sets and with Stein’s attention to detail it was a great operatic evening. As there were no cast changes from the Cardiff premiere, reviewed by my colleague (see review), there were no Press Tickets available in Llandudno, but the cost was worth it (see review). The same Company provided a second evening of unforgettable music during their autumn tour to the same venue with a performance Leos Janáček’s fraught drama Jenůfa. Although the costumes were updated, the set was timeless with drama the name of the game. This came with quality singing, acting and directing alongside conducting and orchestral playing of the highest order to leave my nerves shattered whilst at the same time being exhilarated by the experience (see review). As an antidote to the horror story of Jenůfa it was great to finish off my operatic year on a lighter note with the superb set and production of Die Fledermaus at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. The R.N.C.M. is one of the U.Ks. leading music conservatoires and the orchestral playing of Strauss’s melodies was first class under Wyn Davies. Add Stefan Janski’s production and superb natural sets and the evening was off to a flying start. The student soloists might not yet be in the international class, but I venture more than one will make it on to the professional stage with distinction. Unlike a Welsh National production of a handful of years ago when that Company, unlike now, was going in for perversity and turning off audiences, this RNCM had me leaving the theatre with spirits lifted and humming the tunes (see review).
 

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Göran Forsling (Sweden)

Having concentrated exclusively on opera during 2008 I have been lucky to attend a number of outstanding performances, two of them being World Premieres, which of course is something special and shows that the health status of contemporary opera is high. As a kind of opposite pole I have included the revival of Folke Abenius’s 37-year-old Der Rosenkavalier in Stockholm, which is still fresh as paint.

Sven-David Sandström: Batseba at the Royal Swedish Opera

For the cruel and bleak drama, based on the Old Testament story of King David and Batseba, Sandström has composed music of the utmost beauty and with a cast of some of the best singers at the house the performance is a feast for both eye and ear – even though the visual and aural aspects of the work sometimes seem to follow separate courses.

Mari Vihmand: The Formula of Love at the Estonian National Opera

Like Sandström’s Batseba this is also highly singable music within a fairly contemporary musical idiom. The choral writing is also impressive from both composers. The Argentine setting of the story is mostly only hinted at in the music, but of course Chuco is a tango singer. Readers afraid of ‘modern opera’ should know that Batseba as well as The Formula of Love are true bel canto operas.

Richard Strauss:  Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Swedish Opera

There have been few more lavish productions than Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera since I started to go there regularly almost forty years ago. And it was not only nostalgia that sent shivers down the spine. The beauty of the sets and the meticulous direction pared with singing and acting to match contributed to consummate evening at the opera.
 

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Bruce Hodges (New York, USA)

Focusing primarily on concerts in New York asks for a bit of readers' indulgence, acknowledging that the landscape here is so dense that on any given night there are three or four (or more) choices.  There is simply no way that a single person can cover even a small fraction of the thousands of performances that appear here every year, in venues large and small, scattered all over the city.

Last March, Either/Or tackled two hair-raisingly difficult scores by Helmut Lachenmann (which they will repeat in the spring of 2009); this is frighteningly original music balanced on that precipice between music and absolute sound, which lingers in the memory and rewards repeated hearings.

To mark the Messiaen centennial, David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra made a joyous clatter in an unbelievably visceral reading of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony.  And the Metropolitan Opera did Benjamin Britten proud by casting Anthony Dean Griffey and Patricia Racette to anchor John Doyle's stark production of Peter Grimes, with Donald Runnicles in the pit, and brilliant work from the Met Chorus.
 

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Bernard Jacobson (Seattle, USA)

As it happens, for the niggardly three performances our stern-faced editor is restricting each of us to this year, all my irresistible choices are of vocal music. Among several outstanding opera productions, I must reconcile myself to omitting Seattle Opera’s great Tosca and Elektra, its Young Artists program’s enchanting double-bill of L’Enfant et les sortilèges and Gianni Schicchi, Portland’s stirring Fidelio, and a charming Yevgeny Onegin at Vancouver Opera. Equally honorable mentions go to Christoph Eschenbach’s farewell Schubert program with the Philadelphia Orchestra, two superb Seattle Symphony weeks under Günther Herbig with soloists Garrick Ohlsson and Xavier Phillips, Gerard Schwarz’s Mahler Sixth and Eighth Symphonies with the same orchestra, and a wonderful chamber concert at the Olympic Music Festival played by the youthful N-E-W Trio with violist Alan Iglitzin. Here follow the ones I simply can’t leave out:

Schubert: Ian Bostridge, tenor, Julius Drake, piano, Kaul Auditorium, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, 24.1.2008 (BJ)

Under the auspices of Portland’s enterprising Friends of Chamber Music, the English tenor and his long-associated pianist turned this Liederabend into a searing experience of high poetry and profound emotion.

Handel, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato:  Gerard Schwarz, cond., Mark Morris, choreographer, Adrianne Lobel, set designer, Christine Van Loon, costume designer, James F. Ingalls, lighting designer, Christine Brandes and Lisa Saffer, sopranos, John McVeigh, tenor, James Maddalena, baritone, Seattle Symphony and Chorale, Mark Morris Dance Group, Paramount Theater, Seattle, 18.5.2008 (BJ

Music and dance, in this stunning collaboration, were blended to perfection, and one of Handel’s most magical works emerged utterly fresh, yet imbued with the wisdom of the ages.

Verdi, La traviata: Portland Opera, soloists, cond. Stephen Lord, original production by James Robinson, stage direction by Jennifer Nicoll, sets and costumes by Bruno Schwengl, lighting designer Mimi Jordan Sherin, choreographer Sean Curran, Keller Auditorium, Portland, Oregon, 4.10.2008 (BJ)

From the conductor’s delicate shaping of the prelude and his life-giving rhythm in the Brindisi onwards, this musically and dramatically riveting production put scarcely a foot wrong, and the cast was uniformly worthy of such strong leadership.

 

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Jens F Laurson (Munich, Germany)

Schubert :  Christine Schäfer (soprano); Eric Schneider (piano). Herkulessaal, Munich, 19.3. 2008 (JFL)

The first highlight came early: Christine Schäfer sang Schubert's Winterreise at the Herkulessaal. I began listening with some trepidation -- but by the time Der Wegweiser came around, I witnessed some of the most miraculous singing ever.

Salzburg Festival 2008  (2) Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, Webern: Quatuor Ébène, Mozarteum, Salzburg  18.8.2008 (JFL)

After a tense first half, the four fantastic musicians of the Quatuor Ébène were letting their hair down in their debut recital at the Salzburg Festival. Bartók and Ravel were expectedly the ticket to excellence, but the highlight was Webern’s Langsamer Satz - Tristan & Isolde condensed into 9 minutes.

Berg, Wozzeck:  Bavarian State Opera, Soloists, Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, Kent Nagano (conductor), Nationaltheater, Munich  10.11.2008 (JFL)

If you are spending time in the town with one of the three great opera houses in the world (self-proclaimed, often alleged, and difficult to argue against, as it turns out), there ought to have been an opera performance deserving mention in this list. Indeed, there were a few, but above all the new production of Wozzeck which brings together excellence in the singing, acting, staging, orchestral playing, and conducting. What an intelligent, engrossing night out, despite the fact that the challenges Berg's music places on most listeners remain as true today as they must have then.
 

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Tim Perry (Sydney, Australia)