Review: 'Agrippina'

Virginia Opera in Handel's “Agrippina”
Feb. 16, Landmark Theater, Richmond

As a rule, directors and designers who move operas out of their scripted times and places face two daunting obstacles: The composer and the librettist, whose music, story and characterizations are crafted to evoke a certain milieu and rarely take kindly to relocation.

The major exception to the rule is baroque opera. The stories were historical or mythological, but the music was not antiqued, and the custom was to stage the operas with contemporary (i.e., 17th- or 18th-century) costumes and sets.

So the Virginia Opera is “historically informed,” sort of, in presenting Handel’s first hit opera, composed in 1709, set in ancient Rome, with a cast outfitted like late-20th century Eurotrash. This production, closing out its run this weekend in Richmond, is one of several recent revivals of “Agrippina” in the U.S. and England. Not one has been a toga party.

Agrippina, the shrewish wife of the Emperor Claudius, is determined that the next caesar will be her son, Nero. Claudius, returning from his conquest of Britain, is nearly lost at sea in a storm; he is saved by the centurian Ottone, whom he taps as his successor. The queen enlists Poppea, a courtesan loved by Ottone and craved by Claudius and Nero, in a plot to discredit her son’s rival. (If you're trying to remember this from "I, Claudius," don't bother – it transpires between episodes 12 and 13.)

Such a tale could play out in any executive suite, any political body, any family in which the stakes of marriage or inheritance are worth fighting over – and however bloody the battle or dire the consequences, it would still be in essence a farce.

Lillian Groag, stage director of this production, frames “Agrippina” as a classic farce, but with stage movement and sight gags that are more Marx Brothers or Monty Python than Molière. (My favorite is the martini shaker joining the continuo section.) The production’s physical energy and quick comic timing suit Handel’s music, especially at its speediest or most florid, and the nearly nonstop action compensates for several voices that aren’t lean or nimble enough for baroque operatic style.

In the Feb. 16 performance, soprano Sujung Kim (Agrippina), bass-baritone Derrick Parker (Claudius) and tenor Jeffrey Halili (Nero) were audibly discomfited by the demands of Handellian bel canto. Kim’s tone was too rich, and Parker’s voice too big, to manage brilliant high-speed runs without smearing. Halili’s voice was light enough, but not flexible enough, and prone to the occasional bleat.

Their shortcomings were effectively underscored by the stylistic fluency and vocal agility of countertenor David Walker (Ottone) and soprano Jane Redding (Poppea). They also proved to be gifted comic actors; and in that, at least, the other principals rose to their standard.

Countertenor Jeffrey Mandelbaum and bass-baritone Matthew Burns, as the palace courtiers Narciso and Pallante, were amusingly manic toadies, but their jittery highjinks exacted a price in vocal control.

The show’s star comics are its seven supernumeraries: Clyde Berry, Josh Dooley, Harry Drew-Wingfield, Levi Hull, Kenneth Jones, Bryan Smith and Trentonn Smith. Clad in tuxedos, faces masked in pancake makeup, rouge and eyeliner, cigarettes dangling from a lip or two, they are a silent Greek chorus, miming catcalls at the proceedings. This is an inspired touch, also a practical one: If your attention flags in the recap of an aria, somebody’s goofing divertingly in a corner.

Michael Ganio’s postmodern-classical set nicely accommodates the action – multiple levels, many nooks and crannies to peek out of – although the thrones in crinkled gold foil activate the tacky meter. Ottone’s Wehrmachtisch uniform is another unhelpful distraction.

Peter Mark, the company’s artistic director, obtained weighty, deliberate orchestral accompaniment, all too often dully colored and intonationally iffy.

Oboist George Corbett was a warmly plaintive partner to Walker in “Voi che udite il mio lamento,” the most sublime aria (and one of the few sincere ones) in the opera.

The final Richmond performance begins at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18, at the Landmark Theater, Main and Laurel streets. Tickets: $20-$85. Information: (804) 262-8003 (Ticketmaster).

Issues with Brahms

Symphony No. 3, "Variations on a Theme of Haydn" – London Philharmonic/Marin Alsop (Naxos 8.557430)

Symphony No. 4 (with Schoenberg: Variations for orchestra, Op. 31) – Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Kent Nagano (Harmonia Mundi 901884)

Piano Concerto No. 1 – Krystian Zimerman (piano), Berlin Philharmonic/Simon Rattle (Deutsche Grammophon B0006203)

Piano Concerto No. 2, "Four Piano Pieces," Op. 119 – Marc-André Hamelin (piano), Dallas Symphony/Andrew Litton (Hyperion 67550)

I approach a new Brahms recording much as (according to Samuel Johnson) one approaches a second marriage: Hope triumphs over experience – or at least hopes to.

Brahms eludes most performers today. They grasp his content, perhaps too well, playing up structural and expressive details at the expense of phrasing and rhythmic pulse. Romantic expression is a second or third language to most living musicians, and their fluency does not extend to Brahms’ uniquely introspective and internally pressurized romanticism.

Modern interpreters typically emphasize the classicist in Brahms, rendering the music’s structure in sharp relief and its rhythms crisply. But then along comes a reminder that Brahms isn’t Haydn, or even Beethoven. The listener senses the moment of realization – "Oh wait, this is romantic" – followed by a sudden downshift in volume or tempo or an extra-generous application of rubato or vibrato.

The oh-waits accumulate, continuity is lost, and soon the performance lives down to George Bernard Shaw’s sour view of Brahms’ music as "a string of incomplete dance and ballad tunes, following one another with no more organic coherence than the succession of passing images reflected in a shop window . . ."

The young Shaw (there reviewing the Fourth Symphony in 1890) delighted in belittling Brahms, and later apologized for it. But his shop-window simile perfectly describes what happens in a performance that fails to reconcile Brahms’ classicism with his romanticism – or, if you like, his percolating intellect with his simmering emotional state.

* * *

A handful of artists performed Brahms in the composer’s presence, and lived long enough to make listenable recordings. The most prominent was the conductor Felix Weingartner, whose 1938-40 cycle of the four symphonies and "Academic Festival" Overture with the London Symphony and London Philharmonic (ASV Living Era 2009, two discs) is a brisk, brawny, no-nonsense purgative to the swooning Brahms so often heard today.

Kent Nagano’s new disc of the Brahms Fourth, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, recalls Weingartner’s directness and muscularity, as well as the old master’s generally close adherence to the composer's instructions. Nagano’s tempos are slightly broader; his ear plus a modern recording enlarge the palette of colors and enrich sonorities, especially among lower strings and horns.

Nagano pairs the Brahms with a dynamic, explosively volatile account of Schoenberg’s Variations, Op. 31, music on the other side of a divide in tonality and perhaps one of intent. (Brahms can be didactic, but isn’t obviously bent upon it.) Hearing the two pieces in succession, though, it’s clear that Schoenberg was building, both structurally and expressively, on foundations laid by Brahms.

Marin Alsop continues her Brahms cycle with the London Philharmonic in solid, middle-of-the-classical/romantic-road readings of the Third Symphony and "Haydn Variations." A bewilderingly variable First Symphony and sluggish Second mercifully behind her, Alsop sounds more fully engaged and secure in interpretive direction here. Sound quality is somewhat muddy; lapses in ensemble and split-second-late entries suggest the musicians couldn’t hear one another properly in the recording venue, London’s Blackheath Concert Hall.

Krystian Zimerman’s recent disc of the Piano Concerto No. 1 with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic is an exemplar of latter-day high-romantic Brahms. These musicians treat this concerto about as unclassically as it could stand to be treated – hearing their rhapsodic first movement, "sonata form" is not a phrase that springs to mind – but their combination of expressive probing and sensuality proves persuasive, at times irresistible.

Even those with little patience for this approach will find themselves drawn into Zimerman’s sound world. No pianist produces more variety of tone (his bell-like tone is unique) and gradiants of touch and volume. Rattle is likewise intent on immersing the listener in sonority, which the Berlin Phil provides in abundance. The weight and clarity of orchestral sound – especially string sound – in this recording is extraordinary.

(The Rattle and Nagano discs remind us that the Berlin Philharmonie, the house that Karajan built, is still his sound box. Its plush bass response and spacious projection of high frequency tone are givens, regardless of the orchestra or conductor performing in the hall. In a previous post, "The key instrument" [January archive], I commented on performance spaces as musical instruments; here's a classic case.)

Marc-André Hamelin, the Canadian-American virtuoso, might be expected to deliver high-romantic Brahms, and so he does in the "Four Piano Pieces," Op. 119, that fill out his new disc of the Piano Concerto No. 2 with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony.

Hamelin and Litton – co-directors, in effect, of a symphony for piano and orchestra – are unindulgent interpreters, trusting this music to express itself without extra dollops of performer temperament, letting its rhetorical scope and natural momentum drive their performance. This is straightforwardly "Olympian" Brahms whose coloristic and dynamic byways do not slow or divert the journey.

Cost is an issue with import labels such as Harmonia Mundi and Hyperion. Does the performance warrant spending $2 to $5 more than you would for a full-price domestic release? In Nagano's case, yes – but for the Schoenberg more than the Brahms. In Hamelin's case, not unless you're a hardcore fan. (He has many.)

* * *

The Brahms symphony discography has not seen a compelling addition since 1992, when Deutsche Grammophon released Claudio Abbado’s cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic. The complete set, also including Brahms’ short vocal-orchestral works, is available as an import at ridiculous cost; single discs are merely full-price. [Addendum: Musical Heritage Society offers the set at mid-price; as with most book or record clubs, membership comes with automatic product shipments and deadlines for declining them.]

Among complete sets, the best value for performance, recording and price is the 1971-72 cycle by Kurt Sanderling and the Staatskapelle Dresden (RCA Classics 74321303672, three discs). The set, including the "Tragic" Overture and "Haydn Variations" with the symphonies, sells for about $15.

Most every prominent pianist of the past three generations has had one or more goes at the Brahms concertos. Among the most durable accounts of the First are those by Arthur Rubinstein with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony (RCA Victor 66378), Clifford Curzon with George Szell and the London Symphony (Decca 466 376), Maurizio Pollini with Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic (DG 447 041), and Leif Ove Andsnes with Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony (EMI Classics 56583).

Among recordings of the Second Concerto, standouts include Wilhelm Backhaus with Böhm and the Vienna Phil, paired with one of the definitive readings of Mozart’s Concerto No. 27 (Decca 448 600), and Sviatoslav Richter’s uniquely ruminative version with Erich Leinsdorf and the Chicago Symphony (RCA Victor 60860).

Among sets pairing the two concertos, best options are Emil Gilels with Eugen Jochum and the Berlin Phil (DG 447 446, two discs), Stephen Hough with Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony (Virgin Classics 61412, two discs), and – my pick and many others’ – Leon Fleisher with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (Sony Classical 63225, two discs).

Some pre-stereo Brahms worth owning: Guido Cantelli’s 1955 account of the Third Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra, coupled with a 1951 recording of Mendelssohn’s "Italian" Symphony (Testament 1173); Wilhelm Furtwängler’s manic-romantic (romanic?) interpretation of the Fourth Symphony, from a 1948 concert with the Berlin Phil (Classica d’Oro 1007); and Edwin Fischer in the Piano Concerto No. 2 with Furtwängler and the Berliners, vintage 1942 (Testament 1170). Also, if and when it's reissued, Arturo Toscanini's BBC Symphony recording of the Fourth Symphony from 1935 – more lyrical and rhythmically flexible than his later NBC Symphony version on RCA Victor.

* * *

Recommended discs of the Brahms symphonies and piano concertos:

* Symphonies Nos. 1-4, "Variations on a Theme of Haydn," "Tragic" Overture – Staatskapelle Dresden/Kurt Sanderling (RCA Classics 74321303672, three discs).

* Symphony No. 1, "Gesang der Parzen" – Berlin Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado (DG 431 790).

* Symphony No. 2, "Alto Rhapsody" – Berlin Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado (DG 427 643).

* Symphony No. 3 (with Schubert: Symphony No. 5; Mendelssohn: "Hebrides" Overture) – Chicago Symphony/Fritz Reiner (RCA Victor 61793) [an ArkivCD available from ArkivMusic, www.arkivmusic.com]

* Symphony No. 4 – Vienna Philharmonic/Carlos Kleiber (DG 457 706).

* Piano concertos Nos. 1-2, "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel," waltzes, Op. 39 – Leon Fleisher (piano), Cleveland Orchestra/George Szell (Sony Classical 63225, two discs).

Elsewhere

"Your Niche or Mine?" in which I run some numbers on what constitutes a "niche" or minority interest and what qualifies as "mainstream" culture (hint: not much anymore), is posted at NewMusicBox:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4962

My review of eighth blackbird's latest CD, "strange imaginary animals" (this group is not big on capital letters), is in print in Style Weekly and online at:
www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=13849

Monteux redux

Pierre Monteux: Decca and Philips Recordings, 1956-64 (Decca 000797902, seven discs)

Was Pierre Monteux the greatest conductor of the past century? Not according to conventional wisdom, which rates Monteux as a second- or third-round pick in a field headed by Toscanini, Furtwängler, Karajan, Mravinsky, Bernstein and Solti.

A rotund Frenchman with pomaded hair, a bushy mustache and twinkling eyes, Monteux did not display the usual kinds of conductor charisma. His public face was not glamorous, or sternly learned, or artistically rarified. By the time he had an international reputation, he was a grandfatherly presence with an authority born of long experience (and with many pupils trailing behind him).

As a master of the craft behind the orchestral art, he had very few peers. (Thus the pupils, among them René Leibowitz, André Previn, Neville Marriner and David Zinman.)

Monteux conducted the premieres of Stravinsky’s "Pétrouchka" (1911) and "Le sacre du printemps" (1913), Ravel’s "Daphnis et Chloé" (1912), Debussy's "Jeux" (1913), Prokofiev’s Third Symphony (1929) and other music from the modernist hotbed of Paris in the first three decades of the century.

He was the most versatile conductor of his time. Today, we assume that any competent maestro can lead credible performances of repertory from the baroque to the contemporary. Monteux was the first major conductor to demonstrate such breadth. His proficiency evolved into distinction over the years, and he remains one of the few conductors on record who is equally persuasive in Bach and Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Stravinsky, Beethoven and Debussy.

He was a master manipulator of orchestral sound. Look back at that list of premieres; imagine the skill required to guide a theater pit orchestra through a first performance of something like "Le sacre" or "Daphnis." From then on, not surprisingly, Monteux was able to obtain exactly the sonorities, colors and balances he wanted from an orchestra. That ability proved especially beneficial in making recordings.

Monteux was born in 1875 and lived until 1964, not just a long life but a fortuitous working life for a classical musician. He was old enough to have experienced romanticism at first hand, then to have participated in the birth of modernism and to have seen the modern symphony orchestra take shape, and then to have spent 50 more years performing – time enough to document his work with first-tier orchestras in modern recordings.

"Pierre Monteux: Decca and Philips Recordings, 1956-64," part of the "Original Masters" series of mid-priced reissues, generously samples the recordings Monteux made in his last years, one of the great Indian summers of performance history.

Some of these recordings have circulated fitfully on CDs: Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2, Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D major and Gluck’s "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" with his son, flutist Claude Monteux, and the London Symphony; a Sibelius Second Symphony, recorded in 1959 with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Monteux’s 1959 Vienna recording of the Brahms Second Symphony has long been my reference version of this work – full-blooded but unindulgent and propulsive, and a performance that equals or surpasses any other recorded by the Vienna Phil in the 1950s and ’60s. Monteux recorded the "Tragic" and "Academic Festival" overtures and "Variations on a Theme of Haydn" with the London Symphony, which he served as principal conductor from 1961 until his death.

Most of the rest of the set dates from Monteux’s London tenure, and features composers and works in which he was authoritative – Ravel ("La Valse," "Ma mère l’oye," "Bolero"), Debussy (Nocturnes, "Images," "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," orchestral fragments from "The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian") – plus a warmly lucid reading of Elgar’s "Enigma Variations" and a suite from Tchaikovsky’s "Sleeping Beauty," a reminder of Monteux’s early mastery of ballet music.

Monteux leads the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in mid-'50s monaural recordings of the Stravinsky ballets "Pétrouchka" and "Le sacre" and the "Firebird" Suite, and the Vienna Phil in an eminently sensible 1959 reading of Haydn's Symphony No. 101 ("The Clock").

These were demonstration-quality recordings of the late-monaural/early stereo period. They still sound vivid, and more naturally balanced and in better perspective than many digital or super-audio productions.

Peter Guroff (1959-2007)

Peter Guroff, former principal violist of the Richmond Symphony, since 1992 a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, died Feb. 6 after a 15-year battle with cancer. He was 47.

In July 1992, shortly after joining the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mr. Guroff was diagnosed with lymphoma. Through several recurrences and courses of treatment, he continued to perform with the orchestra. He also taught and was artistic director of the Ionian Chamber Players.

Mr. Guroff is survived by his wife, Maureen, and two children, daughter Hannah and son Eric.

His obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07039/760336-122.stm

Eine kalte Nachtmusik

Nothing doing tonight, which is fortunate, as the temperature is barely in double digits. Block-party weather in the Dakotas, but in these parts a time to burrow in.

What do I listen to on a cold night? This prompts something like the hot-drink-on-a-hot-day, cold-drink-on-a-cold-day dialectic. Do I want to acclimate myself, or ward off the chill?

For acclimating, one might reasonably turn to Scandinavian or Russian music. Somewhere around here, I have an LP of Rued Langgaard’s "Defoliation" Symphony, which I bought years ago for its catchy title but never got around to playing. This could be the night.

Or maybe Mussorgsky’s opera "Khovanshchina," Peter the Great vs. Old Believers, huddled masses, concludes with immolation scene . . .

For warmth without fatalities, I'm thinking Brahms, Elgar, cello, bassoon, baritone. Harmonium?

Arr.

That’s not a growl. It is the abbreviation used in scores for "arranger" or "arrangement." Its appearance in concert programs prompts some highbrows to growl.

Arrangements of operatic, orchestral and chamber works have been around almost as long as the originals.

Baroque composers (in)famously cribbed from one another, and from themselves. Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, composers made their music known – and earned much of their money – through piano reductions of orchestral and other ensemble scores, meant to be played at home. Liszt and other piano virtuosos wrote flashy elaborations on tunes from popular operas.

Austrian musicians of the late-18th and early 19th centuries arranged suites from the operas of Mozart and Rossini, even some of Beethoven’s orchestral music, for wind octets known as Harmonie. That tradition lives on in symphonic wind ensembles and concert bands playing arrangements of symphonic works.

Conductors of the late 19th century viewed themselves as collaborators with, rather than servants of, composers whose music they directed. Gustav Mahler’s reorchestrations of Schumann and Beethoven symphonies don't cry out for revival; but his string orchestrations of Schubert’s "Death and the Maiden" Quartet and Beethoven’s "Quartetto serioso" (Op. 95) are still performed and recorded with some frequency.

Felix Weingartner produced an orchestration of Beethoven’s "Hammerklavier" Sonata. George Szell orchestrated Smetana’s "From My Life" Quartet. Hamilton Harty and Thomas Beecham augmented Handel. Leopold Stokowski augmented Bach, as had Ferrucio Busoni and other pianists of the 19th century.

Solo violinists from Paganini onward have peppered their programs with arrangements of operatic, keyboard and other repertory. So do classical guitarists. So does every brass quintet playing for paying customers.

The Society for Private Musical Performance, organized by Arnold Schoenberg and friends in the early 1920s in Vienna, generated a number of chamber-scale arrangements of earlier Viennese orchestral music, from Strauss waltzes to symphonies and song cycles of Mahler.

Schoenberg's 1937 orchestration of Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, is in a category all its own, equal parts homage, parody, inspiration and intoxication.

The Richmond Festival of Music, directed by cellist James Wilson, will feature two arrangements on March 15: Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata reworked for string quintet, and Schoenberg’s arrangement of Strauss’ "Emperor Waltz."

The Schoenberg, Berg and Webern versions of the Strauss waltzes are pretty familiar. The enlarged "Kreutzer" is another story. "I had never heard it or even knew of it," Wilson says.

"A former student of mine likes to find obscure pieces and send them to me for my
birthday and other occasions. So she sent me this 'Kreutzer,' an anonymous arrangement published by Simrock in 1832. It looks very hard but very good . . . and very egalitarian" in its apportioning of Beethoven's violin and piano parts among five fiddles.

"It's always nice to find music for quintet with two cellos," Wilson says. "Other than the Schubert and about a million Boccherinis, there isn't much literature out there."

Another arrangement making the rounds this season is the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony – Rudolf Barshai's orchestration of the String Quartet No. 8 – which the Richmond Symphony is playing on its tour programs.

Most arrangements are grouped by prevailing academic and critical opinion into two basic categories: (1) historical curiosities and (2) kitsch.

Several rungs up the ladder of respectability, you find efforts by early modern composers to revive music of (usually forgotten) earlier composers, filtered through the reviver’s style and sensibility: Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella," Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances," Ravel’s "Le Tombeau de Couperin," and many sets of folk song rendered as art-song, piano miniature or orchestral dance suite.

That period also saw Ravel produce his now-standard orchestration of Mussorgsky’s "Pictures at an Exhibition." Ravel was late to the Mussorgsky game; the standard versions of most of the composer’s orchestral scores were post-mortem reworkings by Rimsky-Korsakov. (Mussorgsky untouched by Rimsky wasn’t widely heard until the 1970s.)

Challenging old hierarchies is one of our most popular indoor sports, so naturally musicians and listeners are reevaluating arrangements long dismissed by respectable opinion.

Conductors don’t blush when reviving Stokowski’s Bach or Mahler’s "Death and the Maiden." Pianists eagerly dive into Liszt’s opera potpourri. Violinists show their stuff in Sarasate’s "Carmen" Fantasy. Some Lieder singers are finally getting the hang of folk song.

The old condescension toward arrangements persists in chamber music, Wilson observes. "But as a cellist, I've always done a lot of arrangements" to compensate for gaps in the instrument's solo and chamber repertory. "And I think people now want to hear a broader range of music than you find in the established canon."

Six recordings of arrangements that, to my ears, do justice to the originals, even enhance them:

* Strauss/Schoenberg: "Emperor Waltz," "Roses from the South;" Strauss/Berg: "Wine, Women and Song;" Strauss/Webern: "Schatz" Waltz (with Stravinsky: Octet, Pastorale, Concertino, "Rag-time") – Boston Symphony Chamber Players (Deutsche Grammophon 463667).

* Shostakovich/Barshai: Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a [string orchestration of Quartet No. 8] (with Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1) – I Musici de Montreal/Yuli Turovsky (Chandos 8357).

* Schubert/Mahler: "Death and the Maiden" (with Schoenberg: "Transfigured Night") – Norwegian Chamber Orchestra/Iona Brown (Chandos 9316).

* Avison: 12 string concertos after Domenico Scarlatti – Brandenburg Consort/Roy Goodman (Hyperion 66891).

* Mozart: "The Abduction from the Seraglio," "Cosí fan tutte" (Harmonie arrangments) – Berlin Philharmonic Winds (Orfeo 260931).

* Mahler/Stein: Symphony No. 4; Mahler/Schoenberg: "Songs of a Wayfarer" – Christine Brandes (soprano), Susan Platts (mezzo-soprano), Santa Fe Pro Musica, Smithsonian Chamber Players/Kenneth Slowik (Dorian 90315).