ORF: DSCH triumph at Vienna State Opera - Metzmacher conducts Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Angela Denoke, Misha Didyk, Kurt Rydl

Production by Matthias Hartmann. 23.10.2009. Rebroadcast by Radio Suisse Romande - 28.11.09.

After hearing the results of how two symphonies of Shostakovich went with Ingo Metzmacher - with DSO Berlin a truly harrowing Eleventh (reviewed on this blog) and with San Francisco a very dramatic Sixth though a little off-center from its competition - news that he had picked up three weeks ahead of time a production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Vienna State Opera arrived in such a way to cause much anticipation.

This work was something of a curate’s egg in the 1970’s and for a while to follow as well. It was several years after the composer had passed away that the world premiere recording of Lady Macbeth got published, with Rostropovich conducting, his wife Galina Vishnevskaya a little past her prime in the title role – ten years after she had participated in classic film of Katerina Ismailova (revised version) in Kiev. As far as a secure musicological grasp of this work goes and other qualities about the EMI recording as well, Rostropovich supposedly set a standard as to how we should hear an opera, in its original, unvarnished state that as such had suffered considerable neglect for forty-three years. I have yet to watch the Jansons dvd of this opera from Amsterdam, but would likely have been more impressed had Jansons tried conducting this ten years earlier, with greater simplicity at approaching Shostakovich’s music more natural to him then.

Ingo Metzmacher’s vision for this work is perhaps not altogether revelatory, but in several crucial ways something likely to approach just that. Presumably the same opening night performance (October 23rd) of this piece has aired on three stations so far this fall – including Austrian Radio the day after and Radio Norway two weeks ago. Radio Norway arbitrarily cut the third scene of Act One from their broadcast, and likely without full authorization to have done so. Radio Suisse Romande today made room for commentary between all four acts, especially between the first three, and of course also played the broadcast complete.

Angela Denoke may have less the verbal nuance for Russian than does Vishnevskaya but very nicely eschewed overacting Katerina, bringing out several different sides to so complex a character as this. Denoke can be heard portraying from Salzburg a Janacek heroine in similar plight, Katya Kabanova. The boredom, frustration, and even utter loneliness of Katerina’s plight immediately became apparent, in being daughter-in-law of a mean kulak married to an inept man.. The pent-up sexual drive of Katerina was also made clear in for instance Katya’s lack of resolve in upbraiding Sergei for being ring-leader in assaulting Aksinya during Act One (very smartly, insinuatingly played by Donna Ellen at first, and then incisively enough for the rest). Metzmacher made the Aksinya episode more brutal than usual in eschewing making something hyper or (radical chic) kink out of it. Her ‘Pusti’s to Sergei needed not to make Katya out as coquette Denoke, unlike Vishnevskaya, made point sufficiently clear without having to resort to that.

Journey was made complete by the dreamy quality Denoke found for most lyrical pages of the score (Act 2, Scene 2) through the utter dejection and despair with which she invested Katya’s laments in Act 4. All this was so for part that may comes less of a natural for Denoke than the German repertoire, but a role, apart from being stretched by one or two high notes in which she revealed the goods to encompass both its musical and psychological demands. Feeling for living the character was a primary consideration for Denoke at all times. During the murder of Boris, she found the right tone of irony and was prudent in not overdoing the staging of her grief over his agonizing death. It was better, for best sake of irony, to leave most of the fake grief, the obviating that she is really 'putting on' up instead to the piccolo clarinet, doubling her one octave above.

Both leading tenors made much incisive of their assigned parts.. Misha Didyk was the Sergei. While not maybe having the vocal goods of even an aging Nicolai Gedda or wisdom thereof, Didyk made as lively and incisive a Sergei, as I have heard yet. One sensed a character tragically less infatuated with Katya than she has been with him. During middle acts, Didyk let us in on what may be just the suggestion of a more sensitive side to Sergei, even if hypocritically so. He was most certainly heard to be brushing off Katya as she first upbraids him during Act One and as callous enough to laugh the way he does for ending perhaps the first real sexual congress Katya has had with any man – while married to one just, figuratively speaking, simply not up to it.

That second thankless leading tenor part - that of Zinovy - went to Marian Talaba, who blithely made Katya’s husband out to be little more than unwitting boor he is - and so blithely unaware of it. With light lyric voice he has, he gave Zinovy all he’s got in his ardent bidding farewell to Katya during the first scene of the opera, later to make incisive banter with Katya over news of trouble back at home a moment or two before being strangled and clubbed to death by Sergei. Michael Roider managed to somewhat humanize the Seedy Lout (Shabby Peasant), snitch that he is, even in situation or two he finds unwelcome to come across.

A little free with pitch was Kurt Rydl as Boris, who at least showed the experience and prudence not to caricature the part. In how Boris is written, it is unavoidable that Boris comes across as hateful, but Rydl made us aware of how unpleasant the situation is even for him, though to a great extent pf his own making. He found a pleasing, appropriate dignity with dark tone and somber feeling to Boris’s closing lines before giving out on the rat poison – Boris here presumably to represent the dying race of kulaks – and that even if bumbling idiot - not without though at least a twisted sense of humor - he does not necessarily deserve the fate to which he succumbs midway through the opera. As Ghost of Boris, reckoning his slight variability with pitch at his age, Rydl was suitably, crustily enough, terrifying; the shudder - with very strained attempt to regain composure - Denoke provided immediately became real.

Still more reticent, Janusz Monarcha made good buffoon out of the Priest and also some sense of awareness of what may be afoot all along throughout. The dour, but comically incisive Eijiro Kai from Japan made count in full the boredom of the Police Chief; his strained attempt at social niceties at the wedding at which he must arrest two people in Act Three had all the right irony to it. Nadia Krasteva was the vocally ample hard, worldly-wise Sonyetka, Marcus Pelz the ambivalent toned Sentry to Kat’a’s demands, and Wolfram Igor Derntl unwittingly open simpleton of a professor under police interrogation. In a great variety of guises on stage, the Vienna State Opera Chorus gave of their exemplary best. Dan Paul Dumitrescu led colleagues with ample melancholy as the Old Convict; if perhaps riding the surface of things for his voice being lighter.. He did not quite efface memory of hearing one or two from the Mariinsky making a stab at it.

A sure hand through a score of considerable complexity, even waywardness intermittently was Ingo Metzmacher, who decided we can hear this piece as capably anticipatory of Shostakovich’s later style of composition as revised version written two decades later. Chung (DGG) is mostly cool and detached, Anissimov decisively second or third tier, Rostropovich though expertly finding individual character of numerous episodes very well, but missing it for others, renders so much of this opera episodic. We now have from Metzmacher what Valery Gergiev has approximated quite well already – the orchestral strength of this piece and its inherently very individual grasp of form.

Could Act Four be the first long arch slow movement of the Shostakovich symphonies – while hidden away in an opera? I have only just now heard this music so convincingly this way. Though disguised well, there are definitely elements of sonata style in devising this great scene’s overall shape. The from-behind well controlled rush through quasi-fugato writing for the strings as approaching retransition accompanying something building to skirmish between Sergei and Katya was very effective. It was very telling all within mind - getting past light episode or two - of the implacably stern recapitulatory calling back into line of aroused female convicts – followed by heart-rending very still final lament for Katya (at very end of her tether). The screams, struggle Krasteva put up for Sonyetka’s final moments were very disquieting – as leading into the rest of the convicts marching off toward huge expanse - nothing left in sight. All this was bolstered by the tremendous musical and dramatic argument Metzmacher made for the orchestral and formal strength of how Shostakovich constructed this great extended finale.

One might occasionally ask for a little more feverish intensity, but Metzmacher, while often close to achieving it, steadily kept the larger picture in mind. I have yet to have heard any of the orchestral interludes of this opera played better than encountered here. Most revelatory was first the interlude between the first two scenes of the opera, with dark halo in string tremolo and deep overtones in somber intimations from lower winds and brass and deep, yet firm lament (with no hint of phrasing from behind) in the strings and broken off-beat isolated accents from muted lower brass. Such force with which the closing scene of the opera opened became entirely plausible; such it was to make one think two hours back to this interlude.

The great passacaglia midway through Act Two, thoroughly excelled in maintaining firm bass line, made Britten-esque eloquence out of lines in the strings at midrange, and accumulated in a very sensitively graded, terraced way buildup to a shattering climax. Good tone of regret infused the descent from such within unbroken line – shattering in its intensity – all separations within the line keenly observed. Not self-consciously had Metzmacher found something along lines of baroque precision in the more vivacious interludes instead of banging through them. After bringing out the folksiness of the Seedy Lout’s plundering of the estate wine cellar, he allowed just hardly noticeable slack to the line to make excellent differentiation between varying strands of activity - thus also near end of postlude to the Seedy Lout scene an excellently achieved fugato for the strings. Word has it that final Largo for the Eighth String Quartet (as chamber symphony arranged by Rudolf Barshai) supplied scene change between Third and Fourth Acts – nothing as heard online thus far. A trio of trumpets in close interval very rapid arabesque of triplets was almost precariously brought out in the both realistically and rapidly played sex interlude very nearly closing Act One (excised by Radio Norway).

When given anything incisive for high woodwinds (flute, piccolo clarinet, etc.) – for example prickly flute section descant in unison over rapid stepping scherzo for chorus very early on, followed quickly by piccolo clarinet led galop, as near incisively as possible, Metzmacher could not be denied. He, however, for purely ephemeral purpose of working or entertaining the audience, was not about to work or caricature anything either. Favorite moment of mine has been the workers’ chorus, forces out from whom come two laborers to insolently comment upon Boris’s unfortunate plight, that in just keeping its tune, its folk origins simple, Metzmacher made in place of cliche something definitively Mussorgskian out of it. In full relief was just its simplicity of feeling - plus very compelling scoring to back it up. What occurs here, without smoothing anything out seeming so naturally disjunct, Metzmacher frequently would make seem to uncannily connect by pointing out whatever link by way of motif can often get missed. There would always be fine pulsation to keep a cumulatively well connected, if at times somewhat distracted line alive and moving through everything.

Operetta and opera buffa inspired episodes in the police station and during final scene march to Siberia were piquant. As for color, Metzmacher made Byzantine out of brass and choral contributions to the wedding feast scene closing Act Three, making realization from at once quietly but strongly played fugato, opening the scene, a sense at varying levels to varying degrees of something very tense and ominous afoot. Sharp underpinning of the police chief’s social graces upon entering the scene made for as fine dark humor as one will ever find. The introspection for Kat’a’s opening laments, with clarinet obbligato of utmost simplicity and of the sleep mini-interludes during Act Two, and even for the big concertmaster solo in the previous scene, brought out a melos, especially from the strings - from within what might as well have been Philharmonic in full force – that is indeed also idiomatic for Shostakovich.

In comparing with Rostropovich, two crucial moments come to mind. Rostropovich crudely jumps the rest right before his wife begins the final lament in the last scene of the opera; he also rushes some through the revolutionary or convict’s song for duet of clarinets (and then for tenor trombone) that makes brief postlude to Act Two. He thus ignores markings of molto tenuto and tenuto espressivo, whereas Metzmacher, with sensitively measured pulsation under each so hauntingly got both. If there will be a recording, not for such reasons alone, Metzmacher then stands now as closest to definitive for this score, a success perhaps no longer so elusive to fully achieve.

There was more here than upon which one mere mortal can provide commentary. This, from all reports, was an unqualified triumph for Metzmacher in his Vienna State Opera debut. He has already been received very favorably for at least the Messiaen ad Nono he had conducted with the Vienna Philharmonic. It now seems so very ironic that he has committed no Shostakovich to disc as of yet. For so much expressive finesse Metzmacher brought to this, it comes to mind that one of only two forays that the most important predecessor Metzmacher has had in Berlin made into Shostakovich was with suite of this opera’s orchestral interludes.

Let me be audacious here momentarily. Shostakovich may have adamantly, under some pressure perhaps, made the case that the revised version of this opera was from then on (exclusively) its acceptable performing version. I hardly doubt though that such a performance as this might have been able to persuade the composer otherwise.

Metzmacher brought out so much, including specific nobility to the original version and to several of its characters, leading kulak included. Shostakovich’s roots in Mahler, in adapting the banal closely alongside profundity, in Berg’s Wozzeck, and his partaking of recent trends in French artistic life did not get denied – as Shostakovich picked up from theatrical life during the thaw of the 1920’s. Such contrast, as so well pointed out and terraced into such an elaborately prepared conception could only work to better illuminate those qualities the aging, still well-intentioned composer wanted us to hear from time of revision. Here such internal contrast was made most distinctive about this piece - as heard now in its original version.

BBC Proms 2009 - Proms 52 and 57: Gergiev/LSO and Robertson/BBC SO

Prom 52. London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Valery Gergiev. Elena Zhidkova. Royal Albert Hall, London. August 24, 2009.

One had to wonder, with what one might first learn about Schnittke’s cantata, Nagasaki - while on such a serious, even harrowing topic but composed just out of school with a certain naivete, what it might be doing on a program with the Eighth Symphony by Shostakovich. The Shostakovich Eighth can work very well on a program with something very contrasting to it – as happened on 1960 Leningrad PO visit with Mravinsky to London for its UK premiere – the Mozart Symphony No. 33. Regardless, Valery Gergiev and the LSO attempted the pairing they did and it partly worked. It also helped to listen to a piece even now new to most of us, though composed fifty years ago just as alone; it stands on its own well.

The heavy opening theme to ‘Nagasaki, city of grief” over organ chords and slow pulsating octaves in the piano, recalls, generally speaking, melodically, choral passages of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Arriving harmonically a semitone down from what has preceded it, an interlude of orchestral chorale in canon with horn obbligato makes one think of perhaps having heard the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony recently, though without specifically thematic allusions to it. From loudly declaimed ‘Nagasaki’ antiphonally marked by measures of straight octave sextuplets in the lower strings, breaks forth syncopated increasingly enhanced percussion writing along Stravinskian lines. The aesthetic overall still operates along lines of Shostakovich.

Gergiev brought out very well this music’s inexorable tread, with flexible shaping of lines in chorus and lyrical orchestral interludes, culminating in blazing writing shot through with Byzantine colored lower brass and three note motto above them in the trumpets - a flurry of oscillating sextuplets in flutes swirling all about. Provocative near end of the first movement, noting some sobering back up to C Minor as where this piece starts, is the bi-tonal chord (B Major/C Minor) with which the first movement almost closes.

The next three movements proved most compelling - third following the second with hardly any interruption. Antiphonal broken perfect fourths deftly spin off each other, amidst supple bright flourish depicting easier life before wartime. ‘Oriental’ color became distinct as also some of the quintuple meter writing or semblance thereof chorally hearkening back to wedding songs from Russian folklore - example to Rimsky-Korsakov in his operas. Contraltos gently spun out extended smooth line of fine simplicity, quasi-Italianate, in depicting the Orient. Shimmering alternating whole tone in the violins effectively formed haloed descant over women meditating wordlessly on parallel modally harmonized triads - punctuated ominously by drone from low trombone. Getting past gathering tension, Gergiev deftly made transition back to final glimpse of life unspoiled; after brief remark on celesta, a huge multi-layered chord seemingly arose from the deep.

Out of such highly dissonant meltdown arises well crafted an overall mood of outrage or protest s to hold sway amidst fugato and toccata writing hinting at Hindemith, Shostakovich and in percussive ostinato rhythms also Stravinsky’s Symphony in 3 Movements. In there remaining some drive to this, wisely just simply pointed out by Gergiev, this vitality left the listener with glimmer of hope, even while depicting something most harrowing. High trill over choral declamation of protest nightmarishly recalls similarly effective climax to first movement of the Shostakovich Tenth. A march in C Minor allusive to theme opening ‘Nagasaki’ abetted LSO chorus toward utterance of firm protest - as enhanced to pressing level by a two-pitch-descant b-itonaity Gergiev handled well. All then dissolved softly into a multi-layered, dissonant chord. Gergiev then delineated well the simple mostly repeat-note flutes ostinato as demarcated by occasional, strong detached piano chord for complete sense of frozen stasis here.

Schnittke did not stop in sculpting dignified melodic line for “On the Ashes” with genuflecting accompaniment as happens in Prokofiev’s Nevsky, but made orchestral involvement instead psychological in its own right. Elena Zhidkova sang this movement with requisite steady tone and noble reserve. Ostinato on theremin (electronic instrument) and picking up the mezzo’s lament on the same is harrowing, after grimace of pain from brass and wordless chorus. Ornamentation of line from celesta, winds, percussion is incisive, elaborate. In Gergiev’s hands it became deft and precise toward expressing what this music should say, attendant upon many expanded out layers of meaning. With such could not the authorities in charge been more specific.

”The Sun of Peace” finale, opening a semitone higher than the key it actually is in, C Minor, sounded clichéd at first, but steered clear of ultimately becoming oppressive as such. Promise of a well thought out, if not always most imaginative cumulation to all that had preceded this got confidently maintained here. The tragic sentiment, naivete of this music, its simple design, and elaborate musical mind in nascence but already absorbing so much could hardly have found a better advocate in Valery Gergiev here or anywhere.

The focus of this concert was to be still the Eighth Symphony by Shostakovich, or has it started to be played so often – as opposed to how things were thirty years ago – that it starts to become like the Fifth (or Seventh)? Cellos and basses opened the long-arch Adagio with fine rhetoric, though missing the double dotting of the motif that as stated has pushed them in. Meditatively taking on a long expanded second half of first subject, violins of the LSO found unforced means to make it deeply felt over crest of their lines. They still sounded a bit phlegmatic on their own restatement of the very opening but wisely without overstating the case. Contrast of deep musing on lower winds with acrid comments above from trumpets upon high got well delineated.

Gergiev treated coolly section with irregular phrase lengths marked Poco piu mosso, including on directly phrased ascending lines that according to personal tastes, could have used slightly more space. The chorale however that followed in lower strings and then with its repeat registered spaciously, reaching for deep recesses of focus and emotion as should occur here.

As the agitated middle section got under way, one sought just a little more intensity; such registered from the LSO this time as glib, phlegmatic with contributions from winds in high register being the exception. The ‘death-dance’ (Allegro non troppo) pushed forth urgently, but lacked ideally sharper rhythmic profile. Extended English horn solo coming off imposing climax was full, nobly expansive in its sorrow, rhetoric, this time without any Rostropovich learned underlining and excessive dramatizing thereof to carry over to an otherwise excellent Adagio last time the LSO played this at the Proms – under Bernard Haitink. Spacing of all that followed, including the still, peaceful close, was excellent, for Gergiev. LSO strings undercut here preparation for last ominous fanfares from duet of trumpets right before the end of the Adagio.

Slurred lower strings opening the first scherzo, octave doublings already present, felt a bit Tchaikovskian insipid here, giving piccolo double duty in making his part upon entering incisive enough without overstating it; he managed it famously so. Tricky shift to triple meter after fine calibration of high concertato of woodwinds came off very well too, managing to usher in the working up of a pretty good head of steam, somewhat short-lived, for reprise of the first subject eventually leading to understated case for close to this. The toccata that followed strongly suggested fear, relentless struggle from violas, but intensity seemed to go only just so far. Such was true too with slurred trumpet leading the trio section and phlegmatic negotiation of other material as main section resumed, leading to only approximately firm ending climax to this.

From this point on, all became close to spotless. Once a minute into the passacaglia, one felt as though one had at last been transported in full to world this music inhabits. If a Shostakovich Eighth can be most memorable for how all has transpired during its quieter moments, there then is ultimately little issue one can have with one winding up so, whatever might have felt shortchanged before. Other than principal clarinet starting off by missing dynamics slightly, this was a passacaglia without going self-consciously too slow, that caught all the rhetoric of it in full nobly so at moderate pace. All helped make, following fine contributions from all winds and hushed strings - a very still opening to the Allegretto finale.

In all the characterization that Gergiev gave every episode, he made something – it sounds oxymoronic – deftly Mussorgskian out of this, starting from naïve hurt expressed by bassoon - wounded innocence, simplicity at the core to the hilt - in halting step, imploring tone the LSO principal provided his solo. Equal at naivete, more animatedly so, entered the flute. Cellos reminiscing on B subject from the Adagio and menacing wind concertato registered as sobering up an atmosphere where not even near time yet for true relief or cause for real joy or feeling of successful release. Before start to an imposing fugato, the violins entered sharply with their incisive tavern dance as though unawares of what could always, was about to get stirred up again; mildly complicit in all that has transpired apparently has passively been the complacency of the Russian people. Again, Gergiev is right – here is as much Mussorgsky inasmuch as it is Shostakovich. Dynamics were perhaps slightly understated for shattering climax to come; it was all in the preparation that it still made one’s heart stop - that brought in as though unawares it would rear its ugly head again.

Bass clarinet, continuing dance from earlier, provided no consolation, neither did ‘tavern’ concertmaster, but then so very specific at last entered solo cello and concertmaster too with temporarily reassuring gesture. Right after, the concertmaster, the principal bassoon both sounded apologetic but as if to say, ‘for what?’ The close to the fifteen minute Allegretto was very still with concertmaster limning final ascent up to final C Major chord toward reaching a perfectly sublime state, a beautiful febrile stillness, but including with ominous warning from deep recesses of the LSO, clear sense of this still being an unstable or restive peace.


Prom 57. BBC Symphony Orchestra, David Robertson. Stephen Hough, Steven Isserlis.
Royal Albert Hall, London. August 28, 2009.


How it happened that Concert Fantasy by Tchaikovsky could follow Agon on the same program was, as found here, truly confounding. Agon closed complete Proms survey of the eleven ballets of Stravinsky that had begun - using same orchestra as has Agon, with an incomplete performance of Petrushka (using the misguided concert version) weeks earlier under Belohlavek.

In Concert Fantasy, with its garden-variety usage of folk melody, with kitsch tambourine for entering dance in ‘Contrastes’ (second movement-finale), little ultimately gets said with extensively thorough technical display for the pianist, which Stephen Hough negotiated very well, as he just had also the First Concerto under Vasily Petrenko. The lightness was there where expected, but also the weight and guided rhetoric for the heavily chordal passages - awesome cascades up and down for the instrument, in display of Tchaikovskian ardor and elaborate sequencings bursting forth thereof.

It is with relief that remainder of this program was of material promisng more substance, starting even with Rococo Variations as played by Steven Isserlis. The neo-classical touch came across with near assured feeling for its own naivete. Isserlis’s tone tended to turn thin when faced with some of the daunting technical challenges his part poses for him. At such places thin to practically skittish support from Robertson and the BBC SO became order of the day. Variation eight of this piece’s original version was included here, with usual final variation coming in, Isserlis sounding stretched by it, instead as fourth variation. Though with less full than desirable tone – precariously thin especially at harmonics at the end of several lines – Isserlis smoothly limned the melancholy lament of third variation here in D Minor and then the rhapsodic poetry of the seventh, supported quite eloquently with supple hand from podium. Coda spinning off the original final variation however became simply too much - with at times more scratch than tone.

Concert Fantasy, as it turned out, did not only pair badly with Agon, but also ultimately with what closed this program two pieces later - both having fantasy in their full titles. The fantasy overture ‘Francesca da Rimini’ sounded little more substantial than just yet another concert fantasy here. The opening Andante lugubre with throat clearing, dry cellos and basses to usher it in became practically instead an Allegretto grazioso. No ‘lugubre’ was within sight or hearing range. So lugubrious was the breezy way with downward tread in cellos and basses, as though promised air ventilation equipped circles of hell beneath for thus far a Francesca closer to Oberon or Fra Diavolo than to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde Robertson invoked in interview. In such context, the guilty Francesca and Paolo could have stepped closer to blast of wind to touch during their forsaking of good eternal destiny, given that its abrasive edge here sounded so airbrushed away as to register as little more than the gentle gust of a spring breeze.

High flute and other woodwind decoration, complete with Mendelssohnian grace and spree, of steady ascent up to forceful lite, quasi-athletic statement of Allegro vivo main theme succinctly fit right in. Brass, not playing excessively loud, covered the melodic line in dry BBC strings, making so many repeated notes sound more compelling than melodic line - inexorable sweep that one reckoned before should come with it.

The Andante cantabile interior Robertson taught us had it foregone conclusion that perhaps either the tenets of Christianity or of social correctness too had in time taught Francesca and Paolo that it might be better they never touch. What condemnation might ensue for just feeling lust instead of acting on it and bringing it to full fruition as sin I suspect must have gotten picked up from Protestantism. Tutti reprise of sad strain of clarinet introducing sadder episode than anticipated portended sorrow by our dear Paolo and Francesca to have probably missed out at least to full extent that for which they are condemned - for just to have only vaguely (or perhaps slightly more than that) felt it instead; all proceeded with greater oomph then, still tragedy lite, forward to an Italianate band-y brash conclusion.

The right place for Robertson to have put Stravinsky’s Agon was to follow Francesca da Rimini – Francesca as heard after Chairman Dances or Dr.Atomic - here, more apt, an Agon not quite as having been heard or conceived after Desert Music. All was lithe with this Agon; with Agon there is fortunately more than one way to skin a cat; there are indeed many ways. So wily a concept, Agon with its shifting levels of nuance and meaning among bridging works - competing with Canticum sacrum – leads the way from so extended neo-classicism to Stravinsky’s then too abbreviated late period of serialism.

Plasticity of line and gesture was everything in this Agon; what indigenous roots in which certainly some of Agon finds soil – I have not yet read Taruskin for how deep the roots might go - sounded as though mostly pulled up by now. In other words, if you have Taruskin on your shelf and think his way is how Agon should go – the other extreme - then you must have certainly been dismayed or struck dumb here. At the same time, I blithely found something a bit sexless about it all - now feeling like George sounding off to Nick and Martha about cutting of tubes in Albee’s ‘Virginia Woolf’ in so speaking up.

With contained feel for so much - thus then for purpose of score analysis Robertson might be ideal – ability to tap near any emotional core for this was more vague than norm. A firmer grip on connecting tissue through it all could have been useful. Tempos for Double pas de quatre and for the Pas de deux tended toward sluggish. Fleeting hints of Sacre du printemps and also of beasts of prey - just so far back as climax of Orpheus - were there - marked, but defanged. Sense of stasis during the Pas de deux was certainly somewhat apt, but there being little upon which we could concretely put our hands or feel. Robertson subtly gave account for transition from the diatonic to constructed world of serialism, aptly so, while delineating well occurring reference to jazz motifs in Agon. The undercutting of wet sensuous harmony, interplay for mandolin and harp, piano in Gaillarde automatically called for here an emulsion or humidifier.

I complained early during Proms survey of Stravinsky ballets issuing forth about it all several times being too safe, sterile – docile just about altogether. Agon is different than the other ballets. From the get-go, we assume meeting up with pure abstraction here, along with bad cliché of Stravinsky being charged thus. It is never anywhere near being so, but in a few subtle ways, but indeed may be easier to get away with it on Agon than again on earlier works. The passion, exuberance, vigor, grief and fragility of human existence are all on display here, even if framed relatively abstract.

Pierre Boulez, who may have mentored Robertson, described Tchaikovsky as threadbare (in inspiration). Even so iconoclastic, could not he better than Robertson, still have made something, if still different, out of Framcesca da Rimini?

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.