DSO Berlin/Metzmacher: Beethoven PC 4/DSCH 11 - great ferry across Styx from Elysian heights

This delayed broadcast of Ingo Metzmacher and DSO Berlin playing Beethoven and Shostakovich (May 11th) arrived here somewhat brutally hard on the heels of that of a Korngold opera. The contrast in programming could have hardly been more acute. In a pairing of Beethoven and Shostakovich, there was certainly a sung quality to both the musical content and as well to the music-making by Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire. One had the bel canto of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto and then revolutionary songs of the Shostakovich. The promise of Elysium and associated mirth preceded expression of much torment and pain far beneath across the stream.

Metzmacher tends favoring limited vibrato from strings in classical music, but never to go arbitrarily doctrinaire on us - as found elsewhere. A sense of hushed reserve - much anticipation of opening out to far horizons opened the concerto from both Freire and DSO Berlin. The romantic space so aesthetically required around the bridge theme with precise pointing of dotted rhythms registered in full. Freire played with constant sense of great power in reserve, tracing beautiful obbligato to orchestral line, without having to yield much his own musical profile or character to it.. He, both quietly, alertly supported by Metzmacher, opened an often slightly too overlooked moment in C-sharp minor anticipating re-transition in the first movement, facilitating expression of fine contrast between introspection of that moment and capricious re-transition tritone harmonically apart a moment later.

From reading allusion to Anton Webern's comments on Mahler’s Lied von der Erde, this it could have been who might have been impressed by such evoking of memory as is this small place. The legacy of what music-making was heard Sunday was that such could so eloquently emerge and did. Especially in the recapitulation, the extended spinning out of the line from the bridge theme was bel canto aspiring to most sublime heights. Freire turned perhaps to autographs by the composer in making a few alterations to the cadenza of both first and last movements - with only a second of stumbling over something he, as though on the cusp, had grafted in. His ascent on solo line toward end of first movement to reaching great heights with very secure support below was practically book, chapter, and verse on what is sublime.

The thumping about one is so accustomed to at start of the slow movement was so nonexistent I had to consult a score to find that Metzmacher was certainly not clipping, but playing it exactly as written - with beautifully weighted emphases, accents, shape to each line. Freire responded to all apparent despondency with tragic eloquence, only understating slightly the 'lion's roar' toward bringing this to a close.

The finale, taken quite rapidly - tempos throughout this performance one cut a little quicker than average - promised and delivered great bucolic mirth in as open, guileless a fashion as to recall Fricsay. Freire, in the aesthetic and spirit of everything that had proceeded up to here, wisely eschewed thumping the start of the cadenza, thus making succinct the round in octaves opening it. The second theme, over cello pedal, soared to such extent to make so briefly time seem on verge of standing still. In contrast to that, also true in middle of the first movement, agitato passages, internally so rhythmically, were fully in character. While equally observing the joyously witty, bucolic character of the music, DSO Berlin rustled through the coda with great aplomb and precision.

Just something, though mysterious, about the Beethoven prepared us for a 62 minute trenchant event of music-making that has been a little rare with piece in question for its fifty years of life so far. The piece was the Eleventh Symphony ('Year 1905') of Dmitri Shostakovich – never before any favorite of mine. How many performances of this that stop, have ceased at just giving us an even basically good garden variety depiction of what happened ‘bloody Sunday’ of January, 1905 in St Petersburg? The metaphorical, almost metaphysical power of this performance achieved far more.

Had it not been the composer himself who wrote, in regards to his Seventh Symphony, that if those people out there who have said silly things about his music had read the Psalms of David, they would not have said them? Ingo Metzmacher and DSO Berlin proved that it might take more than words to make the reproof complete, but how did they achieve it? Without having attended rehearsals, one can only speculate.

First off, all cliche, banality, underlining, sentimentalism, other crap we usually hear with this piece just about entirely got erased, thrown out. In its place was a different type of expression - usually heard, in effect just hinted at incompletely as underlined, pointed out to make an already obvious point too obvious while still somehow paradoxically missing it. Here, we really did indeed have something consummate, much more so instead. Only the flutes at near the start of the first movement on 'Listen' (revolutionary song) seemed to miss some placement and color. No such issue ever arose again. Flutes almost perfectly corrected themselves when offered reprise of the same tune to close the first movement. Piccolo and flutes on reprise of opening of the first movement two thirds through 'January 9th (second movement) together with other winds revealed how far DSO flutes had significantly caught up by then.

Without underlining it, with air of stillness at dawn felt, DSO Berlin strings almost levitated the opening of the first movement. The violins found pristine intonation in modal intimation of B-Flat Minor for a highly acute E natural. It became clear then that something was up. We were perhaps to get a pretty good urbane, cosmopolitan interpretation of Eleven, much and as well played one might expect from Haitink; here, played ‘live’, things even this early with Metzmacher were taking off for beyond that. The spacing of muted trumpets and equally muted timpani on 'Crowd motif' - all perfectly terraced - enhanced feeling of something indeed very ominous. Lower strings eloquently intoned broadly arched melodic line of “The Prisoner.”

After hushed close to the first movement, the scurrying motion in lower strings for the second movement got underway - so rapidly that even though one could tell on close observation that all the notes were there, it was no longer notes being played, but instead agitation to be depicted - as though all contributing to a natural process itself. After playing with Metzmacher for nearly two whole seasons, it was also as though his violins had forgotten how to indicate shifts. One could not hear any. For once, with this music, they are inaudible. Needless to say, one still kept moving on to the next thing before the shock of hearing this music so very accurately this way could collect time to register. The easy road is to wear one's heart on the sleeve and dig in; that was simply not good enough for this music this (or any) go at it. The toccata near the close of this movement was not given ‘that swing’, so fatal to it. It turned out, after all this time, so many previous times, really cumulative, terrifying - not ‘film score.’

‘Eternal Memory’, with introduction of very tense anticipation, was played with great solemnity, without anticipation of, past brief Intro, any downbeats. Metzmacher, to provide balm, had his violins just gloss the major key ‘invocation to liberty’ middle section with right amount of sheen to form halo aloft. Brass continued implacably forthright, absolutely precise in shape and rhythm to open ‘Tocsin’ (finale), starting inexorable trajectory toward symphony’s close, broken just once by English horn solo played with Shakespearean grandeur. Lower woodwind triplets were played with uncompromising accuracy, with no intrusion of false accents or ‘shifts’ (since it is music first ever heard in the strings), a moment, since played badly, cripples the Barshai/WDR Koln recording here, after so much on it had gone well.

How could there have been any dry eye in the Philharmonie? The whole thing seemed to end, from what I could remotely sense, with a shudder over the hall. It is highly unusual to hear this music played absolutely without shortcuts taken as to how to fully achieve what has been called the most Mussorgskian of this composer’s fifteen.

There has been talk of the Soviet squashing of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 having been rationale for writing this piece. Certainly the motif of memory and recurrence, as cited as referring to between the revolutions of 1905 and of 1917 (spawned by the former) is very important, but I think in certainly a psychological way more important than just the retelling of two events. Communism in Europe, well before 1956, had become institutionalized to a great extent (though it still could be called a form of communism then) as type of fascism - legacy certainly mostly of Stalin, but before that somewhat of Lenin also as well.

The way I heard narrative told Sunday is that there are universal truths here paramount instead. This is music to which one does not need necessarily to know the revolutionary poetic text origin of its melodies to be able to fully appreciate what one hears, though it sounds as though Metzmacher made his players learn them. It is to some extent just music. Metzmacher kept temperature to proceedings cool, but while ensuring our getting in place of the usually expected with Eleven a far greater intensity from within instead.

Metzmacher gave Eleven a stature to sit unapologetically next to the composer’s not first but last three symphonies. Part of this was in the quiet, but completely acute register of subtle harmonic changes, changes to minor Neapolitan in already the minor mode, and in same sense equally modal sense of progression to the minor mediant numerous times. It was also found very internally in this music’s rhythms and how they are generated. These are all small, very little things it is so extremely easy to overlook or get casually just about halfway so often. Should one miss what seem just like minutiae to any audible extent whatsoever in playing late-period Shostakovich, then you miss playing late-period Shostakovich, all then glibly oblivious then to emotional investment contributed or involved. There was even a somatic sense of pain, with anguish so great in the playing, for alone the acute sensitivity to hearing many very close intervals (also in mixing and contrast with open ones). One has never had to go about all this artificially.

Moments occur a little further on than being just introduced to this that one gets pounding dissonances with again very close intervals involved. The effect here for once was fully cumulative instead of bombastic; it certainly could not happen by how much racket DSO Berlin could make with such a passage. Instead, one had sense of a new mechanized form of violence, still somewhat new to that time (to extent it had developed), but still too new for it to be accepted for any time. In quieter moments, working with an inimitable combination of open or perfect intervals and very close ones, one had sense of something still barely moving but frozen – almost perfectly imperceptible movement within this state – however much is illusion or real.

The slow, none too obvious shifting reflecting and/or refracted night light or artificial light on the square over frozen surfaces of course is what might feed somewhat the inspiration of such aurally recreated illusion. It feeds too metaphor of how much this music is of memory and recurrence - even the still living threat of recurrence.

One can not limit or codify what this music means, to any specific historical incident, including the terrible purges that had already taken place. Shostakovich, especially with the inexorability of the last movement, and how the music progresses almost quite inhumanely through such, wrote the Eleventh as a warning. That much is clear. It is a warning for our own time, even to leading democracies in power (including one in which this performance took place) across the world, as well as to one or two former leading communist states, including one that still is very much so in name, but really hardly anymore. At least there is not there nowadays the wholesale murder of actively living human beings like a full generation ago historical records have recently revealed.

Preceding six weeks ago broadcast of an altogether fine interpretation of Mahler 2 - only several seconds of pause separating the two - was an equally excellent performance of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, Ligeti’s textural music, including his choral, is such that it is its sonorities that determine the form - similar to with the Shostakovich, working with very fine intervals. One thinks too of the music of Carl Nielsen, as so very influential on Shostakovich, in his music’s adoption of artificial scale patterns to thoroughly infuse its harmonic language.

Shostakovich was developing a part of his late style, albeit to less radical an extent than Ligeti in that sonorities started taking on formal properties. With the intense stoicism and anguish in the playing of DSO Berlin added to its other great virtues this time, DSCH 11 has never sounded more harrowing. Again, how often has this symphony sounded like ‘film score’ – even under Stokowski in Houston - and then how many times has it ever sounded anything like this?

Metzmacher has also conducted some Shostakovich with the London Philharmonic. To British falling over themselves over how wonderful the Korngold from Royal Opera sounded earlier this year writing in as though they could have missed something, the only sensible reply is ‘You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet.’ This concert marked a late arriving epiphany for me, in regards to Shostakovich.

Nelson Freire, with equally impassioned lyricism, played as encore to the Beethoven, Melodie d’Orphee (Gluck/Sgambati). That started me thinking - enhanced by Janos Gereben sending me his review of Metzmacher conducting a near definitive Stravinsky’s Orpheus in San Francisco two seasons ago. Allow me just one last moment to speculate further. What if Orpheus instead had used any tune or melodic shard from Die Tote Stadt to indicate pathos? The shades would have then made the Hades resound with the loudest yawn heard within yet, then would have categorically the guardians sent him packing with message to ‘get a life’ clearly in tow. Forget Euridice.

Had Orpheus showed up however with the English horn solo, as played by unfettered Orpheus from among DSO Berlin double reeds to nearly close the Shostakovich, the weeping of the shades instead would have been so wrenching that guardians below would have, in addition to letting Euridice go, had to put all remaining boarders out at least on furlough. Nelson Freire had unwittingly served double duty for the rest of us as also Charon for new arrivals to ferry across the Styx. He, I am confident, would still graciously concede to DSO English horn.

This was my first encounter yet with Metzmacher on Shostakovich. DSCH 11 received its American premiere in Houston fifty-one years ago. After hearing this, can there be further doubt as to where Metzmacher belongs in whatever conducting echelon devoted to Shostakovich? This was not just personal vision of Ingo Metzmacher – not at all - too selfless an effort - but something to be reckoned positively apocalyptic.

ROH Metzmacher Tote Stadt - sunk under its own weight

Think back to Salzburg Festivals under Herbert von Karajan in the late 1970's, 1980's, and the elephantosis that took place with a variety of repertoire, whether Aida, Carmen, Rosenkavalier, etc. The exception here, what follows, is that it is mostly compositional. Try to ignore who it is who wrote what review follows here; you should not be alone in your disbelief as to who did so. I immediately join you. I had high expectations. According to the press I read, this was to be a revelation.


Die Tote Stadt manages to commit as much excess as Frau ohne schatten, if not a little more (or as Egyptian Helen), but in the space, in abridgment applied by Willi Decker, of just two hours, as opposed to 200 minutes for the Strauss. Let’s not even mention the reminders of Ketelbey and Palm Court. Come to think of it, perhaps Metzmacher should follow up ‘Who’s Afraid of 20th Century Music’ with 1930’s-40’s-50’s Light Classics, etc. Anyone for some Metzmacher Leroy Anderson, Victory at Sea, Cole Porter arrangements or of course still better yet singles from him such as Down Peacock Alley, The Picnic Party, In A Chinese Temple Garden, Roses of Picardy? I should prefer to settle for some Edith Piaf.

Until listening to this broadcast, I have always considered Christian Thielemann the less subtle between Metzmacher and himself, but Thielemann's Frau ohne schatten from the Met (2002) was a paragon of subtlety compared with this. Korngold did not want to miss a beat, as there are a number of places he almost slavishly lifts from Frau ohne schatten and more shamelessly a couple of times the closing dance from Elektra – what is Strauss’s operatic masterpiece. Strauss spoke of Korngold as being a most promising young genius, right after Violanta, that Korngold wrote at age of eighteen. I am no advocate for appealing to measure of youth as any yardstick. One has to wonder how flattered Strauss must have felt, from hearing this (later than he had praised Korngold so) for being so emulated.

At any rate, in all its incipient tendencies, the music of Die Tote Stadt needs no help, but Korngold picked up an advocate in Ingo Metzmacher to make sure it gets the help it does not need anyway. There are subtleties here, an engagement with color, fine playing much of the way through by the Royal Opera orchestra - that is when Ingo Metzmacher held back from getting too enthusiastic about what is here. And yet he started clipping and doing weird things I am not accustomed to hearing him do on better repertoire - such as the other day, live from Berlin by DSO, Symphonic Prologue to Tragedy by Reger and Berceuse elegaique (Busoni).

I have two questions. If Korngold's Die Tote Stadt is such a great masterpiece, why do Royal Opera and Ingo Metzmacher not do it unabridged instead of doing the Willi Decker endorsed cuts, as also followed by Donald Runnicles (as heard from Salzburg)? As the music of Act 3 continues, I really begin to believe that someone is trying to pull my leg. Now let's overdo the Emperor-scene references from Frau, if the last act confessional moments with orchestral interludes to follow for Marie are not almost shameless enough.

The second question is more a rhetorical one. It is an obvious given that Korngold was a man of the theater. Is it for reasons that Metzmacher really trusts that Korngold's music can stand on its own (considering that Nadja Michael and Stephen Gould have limited acting talent) that Willi Decker for this revival (one among many of this production thus far) might have sent an assistant in his stead? However, if this is such a great masterpiece, why did not Ingo Metzmacher insist that Decker show up himself? There are complex variables, from especially the story line, that Decker (of whom I am no fan) can bring out and that actually enhance the music. On the other hand, if the music is so great that it can stand entirely on its own, why not do it in concert version? The entirety of this is only about 140 minutes; there could only be weak excuse to take so many cuts as advocates Willi Decker.

Metzmacher gets to underlining things so with Korngold's score at times, I begin to think that he might assume that it is Turangalila Symphony in front of him, except that the Messiaen, though it almost sounds equally Hollywood in the wrong hands (Previn, Rattle, also Chailly) is genius when led by the right people (Nagano, Chung, Rosbaud, presumably Metzmacher and Ozawa as well). Die Tote Stadt is, beyond a most qualified sense most certainly not however, regardless what flashes of genius strewn about here and there do occur within.

Donald Runnicles, at Salzburg, is on disc about everything that Metzmacher was not earlier this year in London. Runnicles is only similar to Metzmacher in pretty much taking the same cuts. His conducting of it, while being perfectly clear with the orchestral parts, has it played as just contributing to the entire theatrical experience; it succeeds at this by virtue of understatement. All the Elektra, Frau and even what could be construed as Keltelbey references manage not to stick out at you; the lyrical places in it do not get saccharinized to death either. The otherwise highly estimable Hermann Prey, of all people, as Fritz on the Leinsdorf recording, moons so over Fritz's lush solo during Act Two that it made me come relatively close to gagging on it.

What of this cast? Gerald Finley sang his Decker-ized double role of Frank and Fritz very responsibly, if with a slight want for better legato, and a tendency to croon just a bit at the start of his big moment as Fritz in Act Two. Kathleen Wilkinson, (Brigitta), singing well except for weak low notes, made conscientious enough effort. Bernard Richter, as Victorien/Gastone, sang adequately, but phrased and acted stiffly - seemingly well in accordance with just about how all this revival was led. Ji-Min Park, as fellow masquerader Graf Albert, sounded most genuine and even mildly besotted and happy, carefree that way, instead of singing oratorio (what sounded more authorized the entire broadcast through, as I found Finley and Richter doing, than any other way).

Nadja Michael took much time to warm up into acting the part of Marie/Marietta. Except for her fine lyrical singing of Marietta's Lied, a couple of other places plus a few acuti she nailed and phrases ascending to them, she tended to be unsteady, on especially anything approaching the break, and above. She may have helped Metzmacher in pushing advocacy for what modernism is in the score; what came out more times than I could count was however not quite what Korngold had written. Thinking back to listening to a disc of Phyillis Bryn-Julson (conducted very well by Simon Rattle) do Erwartung by Schoenberg the other day, Bryn-Julson might as well have been singing Schubert’s Hirt auf den Felsen, compared to what resulted from Michael here. The atonality was very interesting, but again, it was not Korngold.

Angela Denoke, heard in Erwartung with Metzmacher last Tuesday live was the Marie and Marietta for Runnicles. She also had pitch problems, and a somewhat constricted top, but one can always hear at least the pitch she is aiming for. With what went on during that run, her psychological identification with Marie/Marietta is complete; for that, it makes her intonation problems just quite easy to overlook. Denoke reveals herself taped live not to be the type to glibly toss off the passionate entreaties to Paul toward the end of Act 2, yet Michael did just that.

At the Straussian awkwardly cruel tenor role of Paul, Stephen Gould succeeded little. When not singing softly, his tone - much as with two tenors before him on disc as Paul - tightened considerably. Certainly neither he nor the score benefited from all the choppy italicization going on from the pit, so much so at times I might have guessed, if I had not been so informed, that perhaps it was Jansons instead.

Perhaps it is wise epiphany to me that Ingo Metzmacher is not King Midas, in his Indiana Jones style vigor and thrust found here to make something out of this. I have never listened to Fricsay's recording of Dantons Tod and do not plan on it. (Has anyone ever investigated whether or not Klemperer was really ill or instead had just simply had a look at that score?). The only way Metzmacher should be allowed near Die Tote Stadt again is as aggressively produced by Peter Konwitschny. Someone has suggested that Metzmacher be invited back to Royal Opera for one of Franz Schreker’s operas. Such an idea seems far less prudent than others - not forgetting that Metzmacher's operatic conducting debut was for Der Ferne Klang at Brussels.

Donald Runnicles attempts no alchemy on Korngold at all. The music may even still fart at you a few times; there still results no ethanol. He gets the little he needs out of the Vienna Philharmonic and wisely leaves it at that. At the end of the first two acts, you need not count the carbohydrates. He allows this piece to simply be what it is, and feeds off best he can some apparently very astute things transpiring on stage. Even so, Korngold, its more venal aspects, fully catches up with him well before end of Act 3.

Here is an aside – lavish onanism uttered by BBC’s Eric Levy (almost worse devil’s advocate than on Meg and Ira show from the Met) in reference to Schreker (not an entirely bad composer) as the most important Austro-German composer of opera since Richard Strauss of their generation. Far better case can be made for Eroberung von Mexiko by Rihm being the supreme operatic masterpiece of the past sixty years than what I heard on BBC said for Franz Schreker. Again, let it be said, if I have not forcefully enough already – even Fricsay did not quite have the power to make shoe polish out of fertilizers.

Neither would Ingo Metzmacher.

LOC Brief Encounter with Alban Berg's Lulu

The title of a new opera starts things off in reviewing a now past season performance of one of the greatest classics of the twentieth century, and perhaps for good reason. For one, I only listened through Act 2 of the Saturday broadcast from Chicago Lyric. What was heard thus far did not do Alban Berg’s score adequate justice.

Using equally the Friedrich Cerha completion of Act 3 was a broadcast of Lulu from Lyric twenty years ago, starring Catherine Malfitano and Viktor Braun and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. I was, going in, a bit apprehensive of what might lean toward being too dry or academic. If anything needed to help, it certainly was the frisson that producer Yuri Lyubimov somehow brought to the stage, even infusing such a line as ‘Der Teufel’ from a dying Dr Schon with acerbic wit. Somehow Rodney Milnes (in review I looked up last weekend) found the production altogether humorless, but I hardly at all believe him. Up next to what I heard Saturday, the Davies performances were positively orgiastic; this Lulu had its very deeply affecting moments too. Saturday, by way of contrast, there were numerous instances in which the singing actors pointlessly hammed up their lines or worked the hall. I do not surmise that this is what passes for humor to Rodney Milnes, as I usually very much respect his judgment.

In terms of pretty good knowledge of the score, Sir Andrew Davis is someone I certainly find efficient enough, for instance being able to hold things together and for having a pretty good superficial understanding of what essentially goes on musically here. Beyond that, still keeping in mind that the Lyric orchestra plays this music well, I heard little that made any difference. Gilding phrase endings of passages of musical romanticism in this and (in effect just partly to help singers sustain strenuous high notes) clipping other passages or note values for modernistic effect do not really cut it, as toward giving a unified feel to Lulu. Even in the context of smoothly enough handled transitions and what have you, it still is lacking.

The coloring, nuance Davis did provide, it is insufficient for sense of the overtones in the complex motivic and harmonic language of this music. It is most definitely in some of that most certainly lies the soul and even the spirituality of Alban Berg's music, and as revealing the character of Lulu herself. The internal engine for the frisson a good producer can add to theatrical proceedings is found in the substance of the music itself.

There is the dialectic in how the system by which Lulu was composed seriously undermined the system of overtones we have with diatonic or what we call tonal music. Berg further expanded upon things, the dialectic, by re-introducing diatonicism into the mix of composing in tone rows. If not a convincing and completely thought out romantic view of the work – or even a completely thoroughly worked out balance between all romantic and modernistic elements as one might get from Metzmacher – why not then a convincing modernistic take on it, such as we’ve heard already from Boulez and Davies? With Andrew Davis, there was instead little of any point of view conveyed here at all.

An assured smugness, self-satisfaction has taken over with Andrew Davis that Saturday one had to wait until 'O freiheit' in Act Two, Scene 2, for any sense of the heat being turned up to anywhere near the level at which some of this music is written. Here it merely seemed that Davis got carried along by Marlis Petersen, in one of her best moments in the broadcast. There is also so much need for contrast between sections in music so immersed in the classical tradition as Lulu is - with its beautifully crafted adaptation of sonata and rondo forms - for the chamber music sections, with its beautiful woodwind concertato writing. Fact remains too that some of the best comic relief scenes – mix of high and low comedy – in this opera occur with these passages. Clarity of much of Berg's writing was good, but the reason why any of it should be so clear, anymore than Previn's facilely crafted spinning and re-spinning over and over again of seventh and ninth chords in Brief Encounter here, hardly existed at all.

The buhnemusik sections (for jazz band) seemed to be coming, instead of from where the noise of audience applause from very back of stage for Act 1, Scene 3 (back-stage scene) is, to be coming from the orchestra pit. I decided then to investigate the Glyndebourne dvd, as also conducted by Andrew Davis. Graham Vick has set up a brick-wall cyclodrome, which in his conceptualization seems to be blocking off of any notion that anything should or might be such to ever happen behind it, except for a couple of apertures in it through which characters can enter and exit - so aurally the effect on the dvd was pretty much the same as heard from Lyric.. The production at Lyric was by Paul Curran, not Graham Vick, so what might have been the excuse here? Frankly, what may have been the excuse either time? This is by far cutting corners way too much on what the composer wrote. It is especially to be cutting corners if the special instrumentation for the jazz band is not fully included; the temptation to cut back thus is so much greater with this music played in the pit, including for those who will follow this example.

Marlis Petersen spoke very sympathetically of the character of Lulu at second intermission, right before I tuned out. She tended however to overplay Lulu as a malicious vamp in the early scenes of the opera. While being just a bit weak with low notes, her voice showed the flexibility to meet most of the demands of the music, but let it perhaps be churlish to say that notes above the staff tended to tighten much, and thus she became a little easily compromised by some of the most cruel demands the music makes on the upper part of the soprano range. Compromising her best efforts was the failure of any really truly complete support from the podium.

Wolfgang Schone made a good, conventional Dr Schon, that showed too some growth into the part since performing it at Glyndebourne fifteen years ago. Willliam Burden made a somewhat light-voiced but at the same time refulgent enough Alwa to be at least very close to fully credible in the part, instead of for instance being cast as the Painter (capably sung by Scott Ramsay). A chesty sounding Jill Grove somewhat underlined the butch aspect of Geschwitz a little much for my tastes, but otherwise served the part adequately well. Thomas Hammons, being light in voice for Schigolch, relied a little heavily on broad cliche to put across such a mysterious character as Schigolch, thus one got little or considerably less feel for what Schigolch is about certainly than one should. Some of that may have to be chalked up to failure on part of the dramaturgy behind the Paul Curran production - regardless the praise for it I have read.

Other reviews have remarked upon the clarity and ease with which Marlis Petersen sings the title role of Lulu. One however only has to remember just back as far as Christine Schafer to find a true ideal - and for who so effortlessly acts the part that she is practically indistinguishable from the character herself. Vick however does so little to work with the singer toward bringing out how she might be able to give a little of her own insight and as such not to quite interfere much at all with whatever Vick's lofty ideas or ideals might be, that is, if there exist any. Vick tends to work best with singers being on stage with just one other singer, but his putting Norman Bailey as Schigolch at one point in poistion of humping Lulu does absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing at all, but confuse whoever is watching as to what is going on. It is not even risible in any outré way; it is just boring - but we must see that it is his way instead of that of the top Lulu in the world (no pun intended) and one of the top Wotan's of the 1970's as Schigolch.

The necessity of having the Lulu from Glyndebourne is indeed the vocalism and complete artistry of Christne Schafer. Andrew Davis, here with a London Philharmonic that seldom ever goes the second mile in revealing the harmonic depths of Lulu, is less interpretative, affected, or obfuscating of musical form than how I found his work from Lyric. The inner rhythmic vitality of the music comes across on the dvd performance better as well. When one reaches 'O freiheit' towards the end of Act Two however, one still has to ask, 'is that all he or they can give?'

Graham Vick curiously also cheats us of feeling sympathy for other than Countess Geschwitz (sung eloquently by Kathryn Harries). The buildup of manic obsession in Dr Schon, that can get clichéd too much the other way, is such from Vick that Wolfgang Schone is mostly left to fend for himself toward finding it, and while a too little and especially too late, he does halfway through Act Two, Scene 1. Having David Kuebler, incisive as Alwa, play the artist son of Dr Schon a bit wild-eyed all the time, undercuts some how Alban Berg may have found some of his own persona in Alwa Schon.

What got undercut through most of this is the music of Alban Berg, so at once ornate and meditative on the psychology of what drives these characters (especially of about five of them).that both implicitly and openly admits to there being greater secrets to the characters we can only start getting to know. Anymore than that we must unearth ourselves. Such is the very beauty, even the aesthetic of Alban Berg's Lulu.

Whatever loss was encountered - there was much - it is good to remake the acquaintance of such a good friend as this score, that Saturday upon better unearthing its riches, is such that may not be able to stop paying back. However inadequate a performance, it is only so far that one can take away from such genius. Perhaps when we return - in attempting perhaps to rescue Mozart from the Glyndebourne tradition more than some have tried so far - to doing Mozart the justice his music deserves, we will eventually also in a more deep and satisfying way find Alban Berg. For all the ‘glutinous’ layering on of rallentandi at the ends of numbers in Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Andrew Davis, almost in simultaneous run with the Lulu of 21 years ago, Rodney Milnes found the Nozze to be in ‘sanctimonious Victorian’ mode so much of the way.

Could not have Lyric instead lured Markus Stenz, Jonathan Nott, Ingo Metzmacher, Kazushi Ono, Kent Nagano, Edo De Waart, Ilan Volkov, or even Dennis Russell Davies again to their podium for this? It has been mentioned that the score of Lulu, such as could be said of Mahler 6, is in effect a dirge, though inculcating such a variety of both instrumental and vocal forms. Whereas there may be much death over which to suffer loss, there should be some or at least a little more semblance of life to have made it noticeable or a little more so than was made evident Saturday.

HGO: Previn world premiere - Brief Encounter

With the even somewhat commercial success of Andre Previn's first opera, Streetcar Named Desire that had its world premiere in S.F., his second opera met with considerable anticipation here. Previn wisely chose a story, a subject less portentous, weighty, with Noel Coward this time instead of Tennessee Williams.

One saw Streetcar, in the likelihood of already having seen the Leigh/Brando classic, to be still haunted by the poetry of the film that overshadowed the Previn - yet still the story had enough popular appeal. For many who embrace Americana of just about any stripe or flavor, for the always elusive hope of classical music cultivating populist appeal - especially for those who accept any apologia or excuse this way - one could not go wrong at all with Streetcar. The good news here is that Brief Encounter is a better work than Streetcar for reasons mentioned already. It makes a better chick (as in chick flick) or 'date opera’ too than does Streetcar.

However, the neurotic edge of both movie and the acting of Vivien Leigh was softened, marginalized and sanitized by the generic scoring of Andre Previn and the heavy back phrasing of Renee Fleming - with music written for her to cater exactly to that aspect of her vocalism. Elisabeth Futral, Stella Dubois in Streetcar, had perhaps the best solo of the first act in it and created Laura Jesson in the world premiere of the new opera.

For about thirty minutes of Brief Encounter – ultimately at 135 minutes none too brief - I began to think that Previn may have come up with a real winner too (with words by John Caird). He seemed to follow the design of the screenplay of the David Lean movie quite faithfully, if unimaginatively. Previn slipped too in having failed a bit to get Caird to scale things back on how far the part of Laura extends itself.

Previn, with extensive years of commercial background he has had, could not help, following how he wrote Streetcar, but fortunately less tendentiously here, making the opera considerably a star vehicle now for Futral as somewhat guilt-ridden heroine as is Laura Jesson by opera’s end. Same as happened with Blanche in Streetcar, passages of Brief Encounter, even with break-ins on banter going on at bar counter in the train stop, form especially in Act One into a stream of seemingly almost endless monologue for Futral - mixed in too with snatches and extended passages both of dialogue mostly with the doctor Alec.. Except in perhaps a self-regarding way, they ultimately fails to say or communicate much, especially when one considers the length of such passages

The story deals with a series of increasingly contrived unplanned mostly Thursday meetings (to eventually being planned entirely) between a married woman and doctor who is not her husband at the same train depot. The husband does not appear at all in the original one-act by Noel Coward, Still Life - neither is there in that play any flashback or, at least to significant degree as structural device, narration.

Previn's strengths include here having a pretty good ear for comic relief and the characters on stage that provide it and also capturing, momentarily numerous times the atmosphere overall of the place in which his action takes place. Emotions of regret and foreboding were clearly felt right at the very end of Act One and a good several times quite effectively during Act Two. His feel for writing diegetic music (music on stage) lacked sufficient humor to match what was happening on stage. The impatience of passengers with their continuing to play for well beyond the desire to hear them anymore certainly then became noteworthy.

As far as what humor he did adequately write in, the writing for Laura's friend, Dolly (Rebekah Camm), verbose in her gossip for the two extended scenes she is in, is smart.. It was certainly enough so, that the second time that Dolly comes on during Act Two same way, one felt like bending one's ear a little extra to eavesdrop on what she might have to say; Laura, by comparison, did not seem to have ever said much at all.

More than in Streetcar and in there being too more of an element of autobiography to Brief Encounter for Previn, I detected a little strain in attempting to apply a personal stamp to especially how well he (and Caird) had developed his main characters in this opera. How much that is due too to the influence of David Lean would require my watching the film. The character who is more reserved and less frivolous of the two protagonists in Still Life is Laura.

Previn infuses Alec (Nathan Gunn) with what he wants us to hear from near the start as more credible passion and conviction about his goals in life, whereas Coward's lines to do with the latter clearly read as though they are to just come off as flighty. Is it that with opera, here being in the realm of high art, that Previn does not want to be caught to have missed a beat this way? However, does Previn really have it syntactically in his attempt to present a personal operatic language to really convincingly pull it off? It just seems to be with considerable strain that he does so.

And then there is Laura's crossword puzzle obsessed husband Fred. At least, George, during 'Hump the Hostess' late in Act Two of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' so bemusedly puts on that he is not even mildly irritated that his wife is (acting at) making out with the handsome young (and also married) new biology assistant professor (who and his mousey wife are still her invited over guests at four a.m.). Martha even more uselessly tries to get George openly upset over this and George gives Martha a little more of her fill of 'that's nice'. Cut Fred down to a torso and we’d certainly still have him.

The low point of Act One was Alec down to his skivvies on houseboat with Laura. The low but a somewhat intended high point of Act Two was a trio where all three (?) of them, including Fred, moon and swoon over the desire to be remembered for a long time to come. What could have been memorable might have been Alec with his hand on Laura's ass (while Laura is tormented inside whether she should be enjoying this or feeling guilty about it) while Fred hardly looks up at all. That we knew that Fred was probably never going to quite 'get it' (could he be autistic?) anyway, Previn could have ended Brief Encounter with the simplicity of letting us guess a bit more (except that he expects that we have probably seen the David Lean film by now) about Laura and Alec by ending the opera with a good scene that is there of ongoing witticism between Mr. Godby and Myrtle over at the counter, plus Dolly with her gossip of the day - and then a mere shrug of the shoulders or two by Laura - my idea - over whatever. Gosh. A 'kingdom for a horse' one of Fred's crossword puzzle clues ends up? How about 'a kingdom (or his castle) for the next train' instead?

Had Previn not cut Alec or himself as the complex heroic figure he does, he could have effectively had Laura do a Monica Vitti on us, as at the end of Antonioni's The Eclipse and speak of meeting again tomorrow, the next day after that, and so on and so on as though she could not possibly anymore give a damn or shred thereof one way or another ever again. Pipe dreams, you should say indeed. Brief Encounter would then make a lousy instead of the pretty good 'date' opera that in fact it really does - barring anyone upset over current or past infidelities.

Muiscally alone, a clever enough audience colleague of mine, possibly said it best that the whole thing felt like a play (with music in the background - implied). There is indeed a 'reinvent the wheel' tendency Previn shows in quickly becoming so gratuitous with seventh and ninth chords, plus for melodic line (somewhat as developed out of a good love theme first introduced by the orchestra) a constant arch over a minor seventh above perfect fifth to which Previn, I am only mildly led to believe, thinks he may have the same relationship as Al Gore once famously claimed to have with the internet.

Briefly before a little good music depicting a stormy breeze blowing the door to the station open or something like that, Previn at the start of Act Two does a sequence of a dozen plus harmonically distantly related triads and chords which made me immediately think of very similar passage in Britten's Billy Budd (right around point where Billy is to be read his death sentence, I think) that we did last year. I had to turn back and whisper to a older lady opera patron from Seattle to ask whether or not we should start counting to thirty-four when Previn repeated it halfway through Act Two for great moment of epiphany in its story line handed down to him and as intended to us here. Or perhaps one could have looked up 34 across or down on puzzle in the Friday New York Times.

Before I am seen to be picking on Andre Previn too much here, let it be said even from me that for Futral and the rest of his cast he has composed music that fits, suits voices, personalities and temperaments very well. Futral's singing, and as so complemented by Previn's music for Laura, has taken on more fully lyric qualities since her Manon (Massenet) for us six years ago; she has found a fine benefactor in Previn. She cut a very sympathetic figure on stage. One had to wait until a good aria for Alec alone to open Act Two as to quite know what to entirely make of his character either dramatically or musically. That was certainly no fault of Nathan Gunn, still very handsome and in fine, supple voice, acting and singing the part with the romantic ardor Previn requests. .

Rebekah Camm led the supporting cast with a cleanly sung, pert, sassy enough Dolly without turning any of it for a moment arch or cloying in any way. Camm has proven here one of the finest artists to have emerged from Houston Opera Studio, and as a member of the studio of Shirley Verrett - with whom Verrett must certainly be happy as well - after also her fine Pamina in Magic Flute of last season here. Kim Josephson, acting the part of Fred as troubled somehow but clueless nevertheless, sang, created his part well to all specifications.

Not having observed cast list beforehand, I turned to ask who was the fine character tenor as Mr Godby, to find out a little to my embarrassment that it was baritone Robert Orth, who we saw here eighteen years ago as a disappointing Guglilemo in Cosi Fan Tutte (together with Mattila, Van Der Walt, Stella Zambalis and Renato Capecchi). Should he ever follow Fink to be a next Alberich, I fear that for anyone in the future listening to the Ring over the air who does not know it well, one might confuse him for either the Loge or Mime. He proved as Mr Godby, equally ideal casting as such alongside cavernously ample voiced Meredith Arwady (the next Stephanie Blythe?) as incisively acted bossy lady at the counter, Myrtle, their banter accentuated once by playful slap (with good punch line) on where Ms. Arwady proved more than ample enough as well. Alicia Gianni was the cute, quickly alert appearing Beryl.

Patrick Summers led the Houston Grand Opera orchestra with full sympathy for Previn's opulent melodic lines and harmonic language, and very amply gauging its interesting moments here and there of rhythmic trickery with suitable aplomb as well. His pacing, even if Previn's did not always, worked very well for the piece; Previn found a well nigh perfect advocate in Summers of his new opera, and with by now more than ample experience in American opera, not only with Streetcar, to pull it off so well.

John Caird's production was sentimentally atmospheric and true to period in most every gesture, idiom, costuming, fine lighting and what have you. He returns here next season here for a new production of Tosca. Although my sentiments will only be echoed by a few, I had to think as Friday evening ended that this is what so much a standard mid cult audience for opera (such as anything of more sizable mind or intellect the Met and Peter Gelb go out of their way these days to discourage attending there anymore) imagines Puccini to be almost exactly.

The plot of Brief Encounter and more vaguely feeling for atmosphere could possibly strike one as, though at most, mildly allusive to that of La Rondine. And yet it is our loss, such as with the horrible dvd-immortalized Boheme from the Met last season, in our grasp of Puccini - even of La Boheme - that this is so. One of Myrtle's assistants sweeps up the floor of the train stop and there is no visible dust to come up. I am so reminded of the so nonexistent to be out-of-corners mice-eaten grime, dust Il Tabarro from the Met two years ago.

I should close here by referring back momentarily to good anecdote about Previn during his Symphony years here in the late 1960's. He possibly even confided to a friend of mine how speechless, amazed perhaps, he was that the Symphony offices were picking up so many calls (from presumably blue-haired old ladies) upset over his programming of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Never mind that it predated his stint here with the HSO in when it was written by what was already nearly the age of the composer and conductor Previn at the time. There was little or nothing about Brief Encounter to strike anybody even nearly fifty years ago as being the least bit avant-garde. Even Previn, with opportunity to do so for a moment, might be wise to think back, for sake of posterity if nothing else, to all he could have meant then.