Symphony gets challenge grant

The Cabell Foundation has made a challenge grant to the Richmond Symphony, under which the foundation will match, dollar for dollar, new or increased contributions to the orchestra up to $500,000.

The foundation’s $500,000 gift will go the Richmond Symphony Orchestra Foundation as a new endowed fund to recruit and retain musicians and administrators “required to sustain the Richmond Symphony as a leading regional orchestra,” according to a news release from the orchestra.

Contributions matching the grant will go to the symphony’s operating budgets for the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years (about the same time spans as the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons). The challenge grant will be applied to new and increased contributions made through June 30, 2014.

“Early success in the effort will be particularly important,” the release states, in an apparent reference to the ongoing impasse over reduced pay and benefits for symphony musicians. Terms of a proposed new contract, put into effect last month after being rejected by the musicians, were needed to address an accumulated debt of nearly $1.3 million, a spokesman for the board said.

Castleton Festival 2013

The Castleton Festival, the summer series of opera, orchestral and chamber-music performances on the Rappahannock County estate of conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife, actress Dietlinde Turban Maazel, will stage new productions of Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West,” Verdi’s “Otello” and “La Voix Humane,” a double-bill of the play by Jean Cocteau and the opera by Francis Poulenc, in its fifth season, running from July 6-28.

The 2013 festival also will present concert performances of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Fifth (“Reformation”) Symphony, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and a new work by a young American composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem and Brahms’ Serenade No. 2, Britten’s “A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” and “Les Illuminations” and Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” and a program of Mahler art-songs.

The festival, founded by the Maazels in 2009, draws 40 young singers and more than 70 young instrumentalists to work with the conductor and other leading professional musicians, next summer including singers Denyce Graves, James Morris and Neil Shicoff.

Singers in the Castleton Artists Training Seminar (C.A.T.S.) and the Castleton Chamber Players will be featured in recitals throughout the festival.

Ticket subscriptions for Castleton events are now on sale. For details, including a program schedule, visit the festival’s website, www.castletonfestival.com

Review: 'Die Fledermaus'

Virginia Opera
Gary Thor Wedow conducting
Nov. 23, Richmond CenterStage

“Die Fledermaus,” the operetta by Johann Strauss II, began its long life as a satirical celebration of the flirtatious, wine-soaked, waltz-timed frivolity of late 19th-century Habsburg Vienna. That world and its manners and mores are so long-gone that what was satire now comes across as situation comedy.

Virginia Opera’s current production of “Fledermaus,” directed by Dorothy Danner and designed by Erhard Rom, looks elegantly old-worldly, but plays out like the broadest kind of American sit-com, in which characters move frenetically, exclaim constantly and bludgeon punchlines. The cognitive dissonance could be compounded by the production’s use of a dated English translation, in quasi-Victorian rhyme; but the cast doesn’t dwell too much on diction, and the show’s non-stop high jinks distract the audience from the captions projected above the stage.

Go with the flow – or should that be the fizz? – and you get three hours of energetic, mildly risqué, belly-laughable fun.

A cast of young singers, paced by Christopher Burchett (Falke), Sarah Jane McMahon (Adele), Ryan MacPherson (Alfred) and Abigail Nims (Orlofsky), and garnished with some gifted character singer-actors, notably Jake Gardner (Frank), revel in their roles and display some impressive vocal technique – McMahon’s coloratura is as serious as its application is funny.

Grant Neale, as the drunken jailer Frosch, steals the show in Act 3 with his slow-motion contortions and deceptively sly comic turns. (A bit of his slyness would have enhanced several other characterizations.)

The chorus and dancers make a musical and visual feast of the Act 2 ball scene and the Act 3 finale.

Emily Pulley (Rosalinde) and Philip Cutlip (Eisenstein) were a bit effortful, both in voice and comic acting, in the first of three Richmond performances.

The real stars of this show turned out to be the orchestra, drawn from Hampton Roads’ Virginia Symphony, and Gary Thor Wedow, a journeyman theatrical conductor who obtains a sparkling, rhythmically crisp orchestral sound (interestingly, without using a baton). What comes out of the pit is so extroverted and tonally rich that the band sounds twice its size, and so idiomatically Viennese that you’d swear the musicians floated in on the blue Danube.

Virginia Opera’s production of “Die Fledermaus” repeats at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 25 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 27 at the Carpenter Theatre of Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets. Tickets: $25-$114. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX). The run closes with performances at 8 p.m. Nov. 30 and 2 p.m. Dec. 2 at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax. Tickets: $25-$114. Details: (888) 945-2468 (Tickets.com); www.vaopera.org 

Black Friday, boxed

“Black Friday,” as the retail industry calls the day after Thanksgiving, has long been the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season, although this year several chains jumped the gun and turned Thanksgiving into “black Thursday.” Next week, there’s “cyber Monday,” online retailers’ answer to black Thursday/Friday.

Classical record collectors needn’t worry about any of those days this year. The record industry has unloaded a heap of boxed sets, which even at list prices are scarcely believable bargains.

Many of these come from Sony Classical, which has plumbed the back catalogues of RCA Victor, Columbia Masterworks and other affiliated labels to assemble boxed sets whose cost works out to as little as $2 per disc. Most are from the 1950s through ’70s, which were the golden ages of those labels.

Universal Classics is also reissuing big chunks of the Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Decca/London and Mercury catalogues at much the same price per disc – although their boxes tend to be larger and so carry higher price tags. EMI Classics’ batch of boxes is somewhat less comprehensive (so far, anyway), and a bit pricier, averaging $3-4 a disc.

Here are my picks among the many bargain boxes, and what they cost. I’m citing current prices from Arkiv Music – www.arkivmusic.com – the leading (although not always the cheapest) online classical retailer. These prices are not typos:

* “Fritz Reiner Conducts Richard Strauss” (“Also sprach Zarathustra,” “Symphonia domestica,” “Ein Heldenleben,” “Don Juan,” “Death and Transfiguration,” “Don Quixote,” “Le bourgeois gentilhomme,” “Burleske” for piano and orchestra, “Salome” [excerpts], “Elektra” [excerpts], waltzes from “Der Rosenkavalier”) – Byron Janis (piano), Inge Borkh (soprano), Antonio Janigro (cello), Chicago Symphony/Fritz Reiner (Sony Classical/RCA Victor 7686992, 5 discs, $21.49).

* Mozart: piano concertos Nos. 1-27 – Murray Perahia & Radu Lupu (pianos), English Chamber Orchestra (Sony Classical 1914112, 12 discs, $28.49).

* Beethoven: symphonies Nos. 1-9 – Minnesota Orchestra, et al./Osmo Vänskä (Bis 1825/6, 5 discs, $34.99).

* Beethoven: string quartets Nos. 1-16, “Great Fugue” – Budapest Quartet (Sony Classical 7776782, 8 discs, $20.49).

* Beethoven: piano concertos Nos. 1-5; Brahms: piano concertos Nos. 1-2, “Handel Variations,” waltzes, Op. 39; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503 – Leon Fleisher (piano), Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell (Sony Classical 1918052, 5 discs, $18.49).

* “Bruno Walter Conducts Mahler” (symphonies Nos. 1, 2 [“Resurrection”], 4, 5, 9; “Wayfayer Songs;” “Das Lied von der Erde;” Lieder) – Mildred Miller (soprano), Desi Halban (soprano), Maureen Forrester (mezzo-soprano), Columbia Symphony, New York Philharmonic/Bruno Walter (Sony Classical 1920102, 7 discs, $19.99).

* “Solti Conducts the Wagner Operas” (“The Flying Dutchman,” “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin,” “Tristan und Isolde,” “Parsifal,” “Die Meistersinger,” “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried,” “Götterdämmerung,” orchestral excerpts) – René Kollo (tenor), Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano), Jessye Norman (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Birgit Nilsson (soprano), Hans Hotter (baritone), Kirsten Flagstad (soprano), George London (bass-baritone), Joan Sutherland (soprano), James King (tenor), Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), et al., Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony/Georg Solti (Decca 001746302, 36 discs, $109.99).

* “Schubert Lieder on Record” (250 selections) – Lotte Lehmann (soprano), Hans Hotter (baritone), Ian Bostridge (tenor), Elisabeth Schumann (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gérard Souzay (baritone), Fritz Wunderlich (tenor), Thomas Hampson (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano), et al. (EMI Classics 27575, 17 discs, $46.99).

* “Mravinsky Conducts the Leningrad Philharmonic” (Shostakovich: symphonies Nos. 5, 10, 12; Tchaikovsky: symphonies Nos. 5, 6, “Francesca da Rimini;” Glazunov: “Raymonda” Suite; Mozart: symphonies Nos. 33, 39; Beethoven: symphonies Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7; overtures and orchestral excerpts from operas by Wagner, Mussorgsky, Glinka) – Leningrad Philharmonic/Yevgeny Mravinsky (Erato 698905, 12 discs, $37.99).

* “Mélodie Française” (art-songs by Chausson, Hahn, Debussy, Fauré, Poulenc, Chabrier, Duparc, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, others) – Marie-Nicole Lemieux (alto), Sandrine Piau (soprano), Stèphane Degout (baritone), et al. (Naïve 5311, 6 discs, $19.99).

* “Charles Munch Conducts Romantic Masterworks” (Schubert: symphonies Nos. 2, 8, 9; Mendelssohn: symphonies Nos. 3, 4, 5, Violin Concerto, “Capriccio brilliant,” Octet; Schumann: Symphony No. 1, “Manfred” and “Genoveva” overtures; Brahms: symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 4, piano concertos Nos. 1,2, “Tragic” Overture) – Arthur Rubinstein (piano), Gary Graffman (piano), Jascha Heifetz (violin), Boston Symphony/Charles Munch (Sony Classical/RCA Victor 7826732, 8 discs, $20.49).

ADDENDUM: And why is the day after Thanksgiving called black Friday? Kevin Drum of Mother Jones magazine traces the term to Philadelphia in the 1950s:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/11/my-annual-black-friday-post

ADDENDUM 2: I neglected to add my usual warning against depending on the performances of one interpreter in music that can be rewardingly interpreted in many different ways. For instance: While I find the Vänskä/Minnesota Beethovcen cycle splendidly played and generally laudable, I find their treatment of the Ninth Symphony “Ode to Joy” overly punctilious; and observe that listeners who prefer a more romantic or “Olympian” treatment of the Beethoven symphonies may find these performances too brisk or insufficiently expressive. I wouldn’t say that Solti’s Wagner or Walter’s Mahler are the last words on either composer, although I’m tempted to say that of Reiner’s Strauss.

Opera bailout

Virginia Opera will bail out the subscribers of the struggling Lyric Opera of Virginia, agreeing to stage two of the latter’s planned productions and offering tickets to a Virginia Opera show in place of a canceled Lyric Opera event, Teresa Annas reports in The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk):

http://hamptonroads.com/2012/11/virginia-opera-stage-lyric-operas-2013-season

Leaders of the two Hampton-Roads based companies deflect talk of a merger.

Annas quotes Joseph Mayes, a member of the Lyric Opera board, as saying the company “will explore a new mission for itself that will still aim to ‘increase the audience for opera in Hampton Roads.’ ”

Lyric Opera, launched last year by Peter Mark after his dismissal from artistic direction of Virginia Opera, had postponed its 2012-13 season because of financial problems.

Virginia Opera will pick up LOV’s January 2013 production of “Camelot” and will stage Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West” in January 2014. Lyric Opera subscribers will be able to exchange their tickets for admission to Virginia Opera productions of André Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” or Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Review: Brentano String Quartet

with Bruce Adolphe, composer & piano
Nov. 17, Virginia Commonwealth University

The Brentano String Quartet, an American ensemble that has won widespread plaudits and punched many desirable buttons (Naumburg Award, residencies with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Princeton University) in its 20-year career, came to town twice in recent days: live, in the latest installment of VCU’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts; and on the soundtrack of the film “The Late Quartet,” for which the Brentano recorded Beethoven’s late, uniquely challenging Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131.

“The Late Quartet” (which I haven’t yet seen) is said to be Oscar material. A win certainly would raise the Brentano’s profile. Not that these musicians need to bask in reflected glory.

Violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory and cellist Nina Lee stand up to comparison with the best quartets currently at work. Their collective sound is one of high clarity, perfect and focused pitch, animation and expressiveness without excess. Listeners of a certain age may hear echoes of the Quartetto Italiano in the Brentano’s technique and interpretive outlook.

The group’s most singular asset may be its cellist. Lee produces a warm and burnished yet crystalline tone that provides a solid, sonorous foundation for the higher strings without overbalancing them. The cello anchors an ensemble that projects strongly and evenly at all volumes, conveying weight without loudness.

It proved to be the perfect sound for the two largest works on the VCU program, Haydn’s Quartet in E flat major, Op. 33, No. 2 (known as “The Joke”), and Beethoven’s Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2. The Brentano got more than sound right in these performances; the foursome also captured the bumptious humor of these pieces, an elusive target for all too many quartets.

The Brentano’s treatment of Schubert’s “Quartettsatz,” the unfinished Quartet in C minor, D. 703, was less overtly passionate than I’m used to hearing. This more straight-faced approach, however, reaped dividends in clarity and instrumental balance.

The Schubert, with its fragmentary andante, was paired with “Fra(nz)g-mentation” (2010) by Bruce Adolphe, a piece that reworks the main theme of the Schubert andante in a fashion that could be called kaleidoscopic, or episodic.

The Brentano rounded out the program with four fantasias by Henry Purcell, adapted from the originals for consort of viols. Enterprising as it may be to adapt pre-violin music for modern fiddles, and impressive as it is to hear modern fiddlers play well with next-to-no vibrato, the somberly droning tone and measured paces of these pieces invited the listener to tune out before the set concluded. Two of these in one sitting may be plenty.

Adolphe, a prolific composer, doesn’t appear to be too distressed that he’s better-known as the creator of “Piano Puzzlers,” the feature on public radio’s “Performance Today” in which familiar tunes are recast in the stylistic manner of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and other greats. A pre-concert sampler of these bits of musical whimsy showed them to be not just fun, but quite well-crafted miniatures that could stand on their own without the need to play Name That Tune.

Symphony conductors re-up

The Richmond Symphony’s two artistic leaders, Music Director Steven Smith and Associate Conductor Erin R. Freeman, have renewed their contracts with the orchestra.

Smith, who took over as music director in 2010, has extended his commitment to the symphony through the 2015-16 season. Smith also is music director of the Santa Fe Symphony in New Mexico and artistic director of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in Ohio. He and his wife, Stacia Lewandowski, live in Richmond.

Freeman, who became the orchestra’s associate conductor in 2007 and took over artistic direction of the Richmond Symphony Chorus later that year, has renewed through the 2014-15 season.