'Dear Leader' music?

It has become commonplace to protest the formality of classical music performance, especially refraining from applause until the end of multi-movement works – which, as The New Yorker’s Alex Ross and others have pointed out, is a 20th-century practice, unknown to musicians and audiences of earlier times.

Few, though, have protested as outspokenly as Richard Dare, CEO and managing director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, who writes for The Huffington Post that highbrow etiquette prevents him from “authentically enjoy[ing] the performance going on inside that hall as I might spontaneously appreciate any other cultural pursuit like a movie or a dance or a hip-hop concert – if I could clap when clapping felt needed, laugh when it was funny, shout when I couldn’t contain the joy building up inside myself.”

Instead, Dare writes, classical performance is a realm resembling “a musical North Korea. . . . Rise to your feet and applaud. The Dear Leader is coming on stage to conduct. He will guide us, ever so worshipfully through the necrocracy of composers we are obliged to forever adore” . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dare/classical-music-concerts_b_1525896.html

Dare and others who’ve written similar pieces neglect to note that etiquette afflicts other kinds of musical performance. Go to just about any jazz concert and you’ll hear applause after every solo, whether or not it warrants applause. At most pop-music arena shows, audience response is as carefully stage-managed as at a Soviet May Day parade. Spontaneous response to performers is rare in any genre of music – or any other performing art, for that matter.

“Classical music belongs to the audience – to its listeners, not the critics, to the citizens, not the snobs,” Dare writes. Yes, but: Classical music differs from other kinds because the focus of the performance is not the artist, however stellar, or the audience, however enthusiastic. It’s about the music.

What enhances the enjoyment and appreciation of the music is good, what distracts from it is not. Clapping between movements does not break the spell; clapping whenever you feel like it, shouting when you can’t “contain the joy,” disrupts the musical experience of others.

“Stuffy” is one way to describe classical concert etiquette. “Considerate” is another.

Operas target 'tsar' Putin

Protest against the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin now extends to the country’s leading opera houses, as productions of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockrell” at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre are updated with scenes of riot police and missiles on parade.

The operas’ stories of strife in tsarist times are easily updated: “You can take any epoch in Russia and bring it to modern times and it will be the same thing. That’s what happens in Russia – it’s the same thing, over and over again,” Kirill Serebrennikov, director of the Bolshoi production, tells The Guardian’s Miriam Elder:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/31/protests-vladimir-putin-boris-godunov-opera

Review: Virginia Symphony

with soloists & chorus
JoAnn Falletta conducting
May 26, William and Mary Hall, Williamsburg

The late newspaper columnist Guy Fridell once wrote that you should always go to the circus when it’s in town, because you never know when you’ll get to see an elephant again. About the same can be said of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, in both timing and taxonomy. Mahler 8 is a great rarity; I suspect it would be even if it weren’t also elephantine in scale.

“The Symphony of a Thousand,” as an impresario dubbed it, is in fact a symphony of 500 or so – 400 voices, 100-piece orchestra – in this weekend’s Virginia Arts Festival performances by the Virginia Symphony and guests, including members of the Richmond Symphony Chorus and (if my eyes didn’t deceive) several instrumentalists from Richmond as well.

The first of two performances was staged in William and Mary Hall, a basketball arena on a somewhat more intimate scale, with somewhat less cavernous acoustics, than most such places. The stage was erected on one of the broad sides of the hall, positioning performers closer to the audience than in the usual arena setup. The Virginia Symphony is recording the weekend’s performances for a subsequent disc; but it sounded as if the many microphones onstage were also linked to a sound system.

Balancing voices with the orchestra is a challenge in much of Mahler – and much more so in the Eighth Symphony. Eight solo singers have to carry over a busy orchestration; the orchestra, in turn, has to hold its own with hundreds of choristers, often in full cry.

Conductor JoAnn Falletta managed the balancing acts remarkably well – especially considering that the orchestra, big as it is, is still relatively under-strength in the string sections. Falletta set a brisk pace in Part 1, a fantasy on the hymn “Veni, creator spiritus.” Her pace was more measured, appropriately almost conversational, in the lengthy Part 2, a setting of the final, redemption scene from Goethe’s “Faust;” and her buildup of expressive intensity through the closing sections was almost operatic. (Making the two parts sound like they belong in the same work is a feat of a different kind.)

The eight vocal soloists – sopranos Jennifer Check, Rebecca Nash and Jennifer Welch-Babidge; mezzo-sopranos Ann McMahon Quintero and Robynne Redmon; tenor Gregory Carroll; baritone Lester Lynch; and bass Jason Grant – all summoned tones of Germanic late-romantic heft, some (Quintero, Lynch, Nash) more consistently than others.

The Virginia Symphony and Richmond Symphony choruses, the Christopher Newport University Chamber Choir, the Old Dominion University Concert Choir and the Virginia Children’s Chorus produced plenty of volume when it was called for; but past a certain point in amplitude, the ear heard mass more than tone.

None of the soloists or the chorus had much success at projecting the texts. The arena acoustic soundly beat the performers on that score. Many finer details of orchestration also were lost in this space. These issues presumably won't arise in Norfolk’s Chrysler Hall, the smaller venue being used for the second performance.

This straightforward but highly expressive reading is the last chapter in a Mahler symphony cycle that Falletta has been presenting with the Virginia Symphony over the past two decades. The cycle closes with a work that is at times rousing, at times weirdly arousing, and one that calls on all of the conductor’s skill in directing a large cast through a complex score.

The Virginia Symphony Mahler Eighth repeats at 3 p.m. May 27 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. Tickets: $20-$85. Details: (757) 282-2822 (Virginia Arts Festival box office); www.virginiaartsfest.com 

Roanoke Symphony seeks $250,000

The Roanoke Symphony has launched a campaign to retire $250,000 in debt. The orchestra has received an anonymous grant of $100,000 to launch its Crescendo Campaign, and hopes to raise the additional $150,000 in contributions and ticket sales by Oct. 1.

“The success of the Crescendo Campaign will place the organization in the black for [fiscal year] 2012 and provide reserves to manage cash flow throughout the coming year,” according to a statement issued by the orchestra. The Roanoke Symphony’s current operating budget is $1.7 million.

More on the Crescendo Campaign from the orchestra’s web site:

http://www.rso.com/news/index.html

$4.3 million for tchotchkes

An auction of mementos from his long career has netted $4.3 million for Van Cliburn, the pianist and maestro of the leading U.S. piano competition. Cliburn says he will give the money to the Juilliard School in New York and to the Moscow Conservatory, Jamie Wetherbe reports on the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster arts blog:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-pianist-van-cliburns-collection-fetches-43-million-at-auction-20120517,0,3371800.story

Review: 'Carmen'

Lyric Opera Virginia
Peter Mark conducting
May 19, The Steward School

“Jewel box” opera, about which Lyric Opera Virginia maestro Peter Mark has been doing a lot of explaining lately, turned out – in Bizet’s “Carmen,” anyway – to be not just truncation of a long show into 90 minutes, but also general downsizing of the production: small chorus and troupe of dancers and supernumeraries, one big scenic element manipulated to serve as several locations, and, most noticeably, a small pit orchestra.

In this production, Bizet’s not insubstantial orchestral score is played by clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, bass trombone, percussion and string quintet. The ensemble sounded to be amplified, and not very pleasantly so. Wiry, at times harsh, string sound, at a volume rivaling that of full-throated operatic vocalizing, detracted from what otherwise was a well-crafted abridgement with a fine cast of singers.

Magdalena Wór is in voice and appearance a very persuasive Carmen. Stage director Lillian Groag emphasizes the gypsy’s independence laced with nihilism, which Wór conveys with forcefully expressive singing and a physical and emotional stance that combines playfulness with sullenness. (Alex Apointe, the young super cast a street urchin, spends much of the show miming Carmen’s worldview and lifestyle.)

Jonathan Burton, portraying Don José, the young soldier who loses all for the elusive love of Carmen, started out this performance in a single dimension of expression but became more nuanced as the evening went on. Christopher Job give the role of the bullfighter Escamillo to a hale-fellow, smooth-tongued celebrity treatment – most effective in this context.

Suzanne Vinnik, as Micaëla, Don José’s old flame from back home, was suitably earnest and innocent in character and quite splendid vocally. Her solo arias are this production’s real show-stoppers.

The miniature choruses of soldiers and cigarette girls/gypsy wenches were in good voice and even better character. Their high jinks, and Apointe’s, provide more amusing distraction and atmospherics than one might expect in a production on this small scale.

Lyric Opera Virginia’s “Carmen” repeats at 7:30 p.m. May 20 in the Cramer Arts Center of The Steward School, 11600 Gayton Road in Richmond. The production concludes its run with performances at 7:30 p.m. May 23-24 at the Sandler Arts Center in Virginia Beach. Tickets: $20-$85. Details: (757) 446-6666; http://www.lyricoperavirginia.org/ 

Review: Chamber Music Society

May 18, First Unitarian Universalist Church

Chamber music is rarely heard today in chambers, the large-parlor- or small-ballroom-sized spaces in which chamber works from the 18th and 19th centuries were heard. Even more rarely is chamber music heard these days in “parlor” proximity, with musicians playing on the same level as, and just a few feet away from, their audience.

That was the physical musical encounter set up by the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia for the performance of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet that concluded the first concert of a weekend series. The four string players came down from the platform altar of First Unitarian Universalist Church and positioned themselves around the piano in a snug grouping; they were separated by about two paces from front-row listeners, and performed within 15 feet of most of the audience.

This “Trout” inhabited a different stream, with stronger currents and more sizeable splashes than one would hear in a typically mellow and cheerful performance of this work, at typical concert distance. Punchy accents and enveloping sound were a product of close proximity. A curious by-product, at least from my third-row vantage, was the inside-out sensation of hearing with vivid clarity string figures that are usually covered by piano sound.

Pianist Carsten Schmidt gave an energetic account of the piano part, without neglecting the shades of tonality and timbre that Schubert entrusts to the instrument. Violinist Diane Pascal, violist Max Mandel, cellist James Wilson and double-bassist Jason Phillips produced a collective sound that was both bright and full-bodied. They took a while to find Schubert’s rhythmic wavelength – only the final movement boasted true Viennese lilt; but the impact and clarity of the performance more than compensated for its small imperfections.

Preceding the Schubert were three stretches of water music from different eras and fairly radical changes of musical perspective from one to another.

Wilson, artistic director of the group, provided an arrangement of Smetana’s “Vltava” (“The Moldau”) for two pianos, flute and string quintet. Except in its subtlest string effects – nicely handled by Pascal, Mandel and Wilson – this orchestral tone poem does not downsize well. In this performance, the two pianos, played by Schmidt and Rieko Aizawa, seriously overbalanced the strings and took on a hard, harsh quality when impersonating Smetana’s brass writing.

Pianist Aizawa securely negotiated the manual demands of Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau” (“Fountains”), but with more edge than sparkle and with less rhythmic fluidity than this piece needs.

A set of four dances from Handel’s “Water Music” wisely steered clear of the big, brassy movements in these suites. In the rather intimate sarabande, rigaudon and menuet, the ensemble of flute/piccolo (played by Mary Boodell), violin, viola, cello, double-bass and harpsichord (played by Schmidt) had just the right degree of heft and deft animation. They sounded a bit pushed in the closing gigue.

The Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia continues its “Water Music” series with concerts at 7:30 p.m. May 19 and 21 at First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1000 Blanton Ave. at the Carillon. Tickets: $25. The society also will present a free concert at noon May 19 in the Gellman Room of the Richmond Public Library, First and Franklin streets. (Seating is limited at the library.) Details:
(804) 519-2098; http://www.cmscva.org/