Intermezzo

Renee surfs the amber waves

Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma surprised visitors to Chicago's Thompson Center yesterday with an 'impromptu' recital, roping in whatever members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and local school choirs just happened to be hanging around.

Fleming, creative consultant to the Chicago Lyric opera and Ma, creative consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, were in the city for the day to promote arts education.

The three-number, 15 minute performance was crowned with this stab at America the Beautiful.

gone but not missed

 
Could conductors soon be as rare on the orchestra podium as they are on London buses?

When Riccardo Muti dropped out of Saturday's Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the very last minute with a stomach bug, the band simply played on - without him.

Swapping some scheduled items for a Mozart symphony they'd performed earlier in the week, and allowing soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter to flap her arms around a bit during the Beethoven Violin Concerto, the CSO not only coped but "showed their mettle with a refined and worthy performance" according to the Chicago Classical Review.

A new option for any orchestra faced with swingeing cuts?

(thanks to Muti fan Maria for the tip off)

UPDATE - Maria also sent this video, where Muti presciently tells a group of young musicians exactly why a conductor is not necessary:

Bernard Haitink and the CSO - part 2

Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Haitink  - Royal Festival Hall, 24 September 2009

Playfulness doesn't come any more easily to Bernard Haitink than it does to Gordon Brown. But the effort made his 'Clock' Symphony a livelier affair than last night's Mozart. Still, the CSO need to let their hair down more to sparkle convincingly in Haydn.

Bruckner's Seventh employed the glacial perfection of the Chicago sound to better effect. Haitink is skilled in constructing these gigantic works inch by inch, brick by brick. His subtle shifts of dynamic and balance, his diligent observation of tempo markings like 'a little slower'  might not register in a more wayward ensemble. But here every ripple on the cool glossy surface told its own story.

Bruckner is frequently accused of being repetitive and by extension, boring (was that the reason for the many empty seats?) And if you simply look at the notes, there's a certain truth in that. But Haitink adds nuance, whether it's reflecting myriad facets in the central motif in the opening Allegro or shimmering through the descending strings of the coda. He creates a momentum that's not a mad burst of energy but a stately, almost imperceptible glide to the finishing line. And that's what Bruckner's all about. As Jaap van Zweden so eloquently put it "it makes you clean inside".

 

 

Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra hit London - 1

Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Haitink - Royal Festival Hall, 23 September 2009

This first of the CSO's two-night Royal Festival Hall residency displayed the best and the worst of the American approach. On a technical level, they are consummate musicians, and not just individually. Their intonation is immaculate, their ensemble so precise that lines of bows glide up and down as if attached to the same invisible string. Their vibrato trembles in unison; even the piccolo is in tune all night. They bend as one into any shape a conductor desires.

In the 'Jupiter' Symphony, this translated into a joyless performance of sterile perfection - Mozart by numbers. I'm grateful Haitink spared us the syrup, but this performance needed more seasoning to bring it to life.

But the inexorable tread that sucked Haitink's Mozart dry brought Brahms's first Symphony to life. The tautly responsive CSO let him pull and mould those long lines, leaping and swooping with feline ease. The final movement's famous quotation from Beethoven's 9th became both banal and profound, gloriously uplifting. In less wise hands, this orchestra could become a blunt weapon of meticulously-crafted tedium. In Haitink's, it's magic. Sometimes, anyway.

What's on in London in September

Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.

Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.

Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).

On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.

Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.

If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.

Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".

Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.

Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.

Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.

English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.

There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.

And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.

Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.

At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.

At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).

And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.

Quality don't come cheap - Muti brings Chicagoans to London

Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Muti - Royal Festival Hall, 5 October 2007

That Mitsuko Uchida gets everywhere. After Tuesday's LSO concert, here she was again, tucked away at the back of the stalls, understated in black and teal Issey. I spotted a number of other musicians too, here to catch the first of two nights from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Riccardo Muti -- as usual looking glossily ex-footballer chic, and amazingly youthful for a man pushing 70.

Although the first half of tonight's programme was familiar -- Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, the second was less so -- Hindemith's Nobilissima Visione Suite and Scriabin's Le poème de l'extase. Perhaps this accounted for the fair number of empty seats. Or perhaps it was the eyewatering ticket prices, nearly all in the £45+ range. Even the handful of cheapest seats (restricted view, no legroom) were £17. The Southbankers make the right noises about inclusion, but for most people I speak to, cost is the #1 reason why they don't attend concerts.

The CSO have been touring this programme around Europe for the last couple of weeks, and it was reflected in the bleached and blowdried sheen of their performance, almost antiseptically flawless in its precision of intonation and ensemble, polished from top to bottom -- no passengers here.

The Tchaikovsky was actually a little too perfect, honed to near-lifelessness. Muti has to be congratulated for avoiding the temptations of sentimentality, but this interpretation veered towards complete inscrutability. Though the tutti pauses did make me draw breath -- many orchestras over-anticipate these and sort of sag into them then lurch out again. The CSO disappear in a puff of smoke, then flick back on -- pure magic.

Even the CSO's polish couldn't buff the ugly layers of Hindemith's Nobilissima Visione, but they triumphed with the orgiastic thrills of Scriabin's Le poème de l'extase. Denying bombast and with, for once, the arid acoustics of the refurbished Royal Festival Hall working in its favour, Muti rolled the densely embroidered score from one climactic crest to another in ecstatic splendour. Whew! I needed a cigarette afterwards (and I don't even smoke), and judging by the applause I wasn't the only one.

Instead, after a cryptic extended introductory speech from the maestro himself, we got a suitable musical substitute - Schubert's Rosamunde overture, delivered with tender poise.

For a (depressingly truthful) perspective on this concert, and on London, from the other side of the platform, check out CSO bassist Michael Hovnanian's fascinating blog -- he should be one of the guys pictured below.