Symphony Review: Love and death with Denève and the SLSO

Last Saturday night (February 17) Stéphane Denève took a few minutes before giving the downbeat to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to ask the audience to applaud less.

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.

Sounds odd, yes? But this was not going to be your ordinary concert. Both the first and second halves of the evening consisted of pieces that were played attacca—that is, without breaks for applause. In the second half—which consisted of the wildly popular “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff (1895–1982)—that was because the score demanded it. The first half, though, was an experiment in creating what Denève called a “virtual symphony” out of three very different works by three very different composers.

The St. Louis Symphony Chorus
Photo: Brendan Batchelor

“Life,” observes Denève in the concert’s program notes, “starts and ends with nothingness. Music is the same: from silence to silence.” True to his word, he began the concert with a long pause for silence before giving Principal Percussionist Will James the cue for the three soft strikes of the chime that begin the 1977 "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten" for strings by Arvo Pärt (b. 1935).

The violins then enter softly while the chime continues to sound, slowly increasing in volume as more strings are added. The music reaches an ecstatic climax on an A minor chord that abruptly stops, leaving only the fading overtones of the chime.

I have heard this many times on recordings, but this was my first live performance and therefore my first opportunity to appreciate what a challenge this is for the percussionist. James had to increase the intensity of each strike of the chime ever so slightly as the music gradually built to its apex over seven minutes. That required a good ear, fine muscular control, precise cueing from the conductor, and sensitive playing by the strings.

Needless to say, all of that was present on Saturday night. Denève constructed a neat bit of sonic architecture and allowed those final chime overtones to linger just long enough before plunging headlong into the sturm und drang opening of “Icarus” by contemporary Russian composer Lera Auerbach (b. 1973).

Darryl Kubian at the theremin
Photo: Virginia Harold, courtesy of the SLSO

Like its mythological Greek namesake, "Icarus" rises to great dramatic heights. It then plummets to earth in a great descending swoop of strings, accompanied by the eerie sound of the theremin and a crash of percussion. The work concludes with a quietly elegiac section that features unearthly harmonics in the strings, the gentle sounds of the celesta and harps, and a last dying note from the theremin.

Auerbach is quoted as declaring that “all my music is abstract,” but “Icarus” nevertheless is strongly evocative of its source material, and her orchestration is as inventive as it is demanding. Every section of the orchestra got a solid workout Saturday night, with the winds and percussion being kept especially busy. There were great solo moments here as well by Concertmaster David Halen, harpists Allegra Lilly and Megan Stout, and guest artist Darryl Kubian on the theremin.

The theremin, by the way, is one of those oddball instruments whose almost-human voice you’ve probably heard before in a sci-fi or suspense movie or TV show. Miklos Rozsa featured it prominently in his score for Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller “Spellbound,” for example.  Kubian gave us a brief, entertaining introduction to his instrument at the top of the evening, complete with performances of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and, inevitably, Alexander Courage’s “Star Trek” theme. Everything I wrote earlier about the importance of fine muscle control and a good ear goes double for the theremin, which is played by moving one’s hands and fingers in the air. So kudos to Kubian and also to Denève for a compelling reading of the score.

Like Pärt’s “Cantus,” Auerbach’s “Icarus” also returned us to silence. This time it was broken by the opening notes (bass clarinet and low brass) in the concert version of the “Liebestod” (literally “love death”) from the opera “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Here, again, we have a work that is essentially one long climax (in both the sonic and erotic sense) followed by a gentle fade to silence.

Tenor Sonnyboy Dlada

Denève’s operatic background served him well in a performance that delivered the emotional punch of that big harmonic resolution, although with just a bit less impact than I had hoped for. I’m beginning to suspect that the wider and more shallow stage space at Stifel, in combination with the hall’s somewhat dry acoustics, might make it harder to deliver the kind of visceral impact one could get at Powell. This was, in any event, another fine performance by the orchestra, with lovely solo bits from (among others) Cally Banham on English horn, Tzuying Huang on bass clarinet, and Phil Ross on oboe.

Considering how common standing ovations are at SLSO concerts, I’m a bit disappointed that more of us didn’t rise from our seats at the conclusion of Denève’s brilliantly conceived “virtual symphony.” I’m reminded of Salieri’s remark to Mozart in the film version of “Amadeus”: “Do you know you didn't even give them a good bang at the end of songs to let them know when to clap?"

There’s certainly “a good bang” at the end of “Carmina Burana,” as well as at many other points in this justifiably popular work. Based on an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries, Orff’s “scenic cantata” celebrates not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: food, drink, gambling, and (especially) sex.

Those poems also convey an important message for us today: the immense influence of blind chance on our lives. The opening and closing of the work, "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi," sets the tone for this realization by reminding us that the wheel of fortune is continuously turning, and it is unwise for any of us to become overconfident.

Soprano Ying Fang

“Carmina Burana” is mostly about the soloists and the massive, percussion-heavy orchestra. This was my first opportunity to hear the SLSO Chorus and Children’s Choirs at Stifel, and I came away mightily impressed by the clarity of the sound. Both of these ensembles were in top form as usual, and Stifel’s acoustics made it easier to hear the precisely articulated multi-lingual lyrics (Latin, Middle High German, and Old Provençal) more clearly.

As for the orchestra, the big moments had plenty of impact, and the many solos sprinkled throughout the score were done quite nicely. Andrew Cuneo’s bassoon solo in "Olim lacus colueram"—a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view—pushed both him and tenor Sonnyboy Dlada up to the top of their ranges, and they both sounded chilling. Principal Flute Matthew Roitstein had a fine duet with Principal Tympani Shannon Wood in the trio of the boisterous “Tanz.” Matthew Mazzoni and Principal Keyboard Peter Henderson were very effective, especially with their two pianos placed downstage center in front of the podium.

The vocal soloists only have a few numbers each, but those few always have a substantial impact when performed well—as they certainly were Saturday night. Baritone Thomas Lehman sang with a perfect mix of vocal power and theatrical acumen in his several solos, from the comic intoxication of the Abbot of Cockaigne in "Ego sum abbas" to the powerful mix of passion and despair in “Estuans interius.”

Soprano Ying Fang has one of those voices that seems to float effortlessly in the air, as it did with the Children’s Choir “Amor volat undique.” Her singing in the “Cour d’amours” (“Court of Love”) numbers had a subtle sensuality, both in the solos and in the duet with Lehman towards the end of the section. I think she fudged the infamous upward glissando in “Dulcissime” a bit but sang the rest of it in wonderfully coloratura style.

Baritone Thomas Lehman

I have already noted Dlada’s impressive performance of his only solo. That bit can be played for laughs (as it was by Bramwell Tovey’s “Carmina” in 2018), but it’s so much more effective when delivered with the genuine, tragic anguish that Dlada gave it.

So, yes, this was a killer “Carmina,” conducted with that ideal mix of musical sophistication and theatrical insight I have come to associate with Denève’s performances of opera-adjacent works like this and last season’s  “La damnation de Faust.” Congratulations to all concerned, including guest choral director Andrew Whitfield and Children’s Choir artistic director Alyson Moore.

Next from the SLSO: On Friday, February 23, at 7:30 pm Kevin McBeth conducts the IN UNISON Chorus along with vocalist BeBe Winans in “Lift Every Voice,” the SLSO’s annual celebration of Black History Month. On Saturday, February 24, at 7:30 pm Steve Hackman conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and vocalists Rich Saunders, Khalil Overton, Erin Bentlage in “Brahms X Radiohead.” It’s a symphonic synthesis of Radiohead’s album “OK Computer” and Johannes Brahms’ First Symphony. Both performances take place at the Stifel Theatre downtown.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: Wagner and friends with David Robertson and Christine Brewer Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7, 2015

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This August, Union Avenue Opera will present the last installment of its four-year traversal of Richard Wagner's "Ring" operas: "Götterdämmerung" ("Twilight of the Gods"). This weekend David Robertson, soprano Christine Brewer, and the St. Louis Symphony are presenting "Brünnhilde's Immolation," the final scene of that opera. Think of it as something of a preview.

Wagner in 1871
en.wikipedia.org

Of course, Union Avenue will be using a reduced version of the score prepared by British composer Jonathan Dove. At Powell Hall you'll get the Full Monty (or maybe the Full Richard) with a massive orchestra that includes four (count 'em, four) Wagner tubas (instruments in the euphonium range but with smaller bells and French horn mouthpieces), eight horns, a bass trumpet and a pair of harps. You'll also be getting a highly regarded soprano with a penchant for big, powerful roles in Christine Brewer.

That's a good thing, because in the "Ring" operas Wagner writes vocal lines that are very long and closely integrated with the orchestra. "It is the avoidance of cadence or period in this manner," writes British critic John Warrack in the Norton "History of Opera", "that earns the vocal line the term unendliche Melodie [literally "endless melody"]. The demands made upon singers in articulating such lines are enormous, both of sheer stamina but also in the necessity of a close understanding of the issues involved".

To do Wagner justice, in other words, you need to be not only a powerful and technically skilled singer, you have to be a capable actor as well. Ms. Brewer's substantial operatic resume should serve her well here.

And that immolation scene is nothing if not dramatic. The stage directions in the libretto call for vassals to build a funeral pyre and place the body of the treacherously slain Siegfried on it. Brünnhilde sets the pyre aflame, jumps on her horse, and together they leap into the flames. Everything goes up in smoke, the Rhine overflows its banks, and finally Valhalla itself is incinerated. It's Armageddon on a cinematic scale, calling for all the skills a stage designer can muster.

I'm not sure how Union Avenue will manage it, but this weekend the performance will be accompanied by projections created by S. Katy Tucker. She provided some mood-setting visuals to go with an all-American program last fall, so it will be interesting to see what she does with the Wagner.

The second half of this weekend's concerts will be taken up with one very big work: the "Symphony No. 3" of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), in its final 1889 revision. Bruckner was a gushingly avid admirer of Wagner and, in fact, dedicated this symphony to him, so its placement on the program makes both musical and historical sense. Personally, I'm glad to see it simply because I don't think Bruckner's symphonies get as much attention as they deserve.

"Anton Bruckner arrives in Heaven". Bruckner is greeted by (from left to right):
Liszt, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck,
Haydn, Handel, Bach. (Silhouette drawing by Otto Böhler)
en.wikipedia.org

Writers of music criticism seem unable to discuss the symphonies of Anton Bruckner without invoking the imagery of the Gothic cathedral. Perhaps that's because they so strongly suggest a connection between the material and ethereal planes—great blocks of sound alternating with moments of otherworldly beauty. In Bruckner's music you can hear both great, heaven-storming power and quiet mystery. Time seems to act differently in a Bruckner symphony, with each movement incorporating so much emotional depth that it can feel both shorter and longer than the clock indicates. Amazing stuff, really.

Alas, as René Spencer Saller relates in her program notes, the audience at the premiere of the first version of Bruckner's third in 1877 (with the composer at the podium) didn't hear any of that. "Calling the concert a disaster," she writes, "is an understatement: think nightmare fuel, the stuff of suicide notes. He was set up to fail. Although he was a good chorus director, Bruckner had virtually no experience conducting a symphony orchestra, and this was a huge and demanding work. Even worse, he was leading—or attempting to lead—openly hostile musicians who seemed determined to make him a laughingstock."

Wagner's endorsement of his younger protégé probably didn't help. "It was after Wagner had espoused his cause," observed conductor and Bruckner booster F. Charles Adler in a 1938 radio broadcast, "accepting the dedication of the Third Symphony and hailing him as the greatest symphonic writer after Beethoven, that his trials really began. The critics who had praised his early efforts turned, and could find no words virulent enough to express their distaste. One went to far as to cry: 'Bruckner composes like a drunkard!' Orchestras and conductors refused his works as unplayable. Everywhere fun was poked at him and his music. To a man of Bruckner's timidity it was nearly fatal. But somehow he did survive it."

Bruckner not only survived but triumphed. The first performance of his "Symphony No. 7" in 1884 was a rousing success and the composer lived to see himself lionized worldwide. The music of the two other greatest post-Wagnerian composers—Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss—may be more popular these days, but Bruckner is nevertheless firmly established as one of the great late-19th century symphonists.

Photograph of Gabriel Fauré
by Eugène Pirou, c. 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts will open with the "Elegie for Cello and Orchestra," Op. 24, by Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). Like Bruckner, Fauré was an admirer (albeit a less ardent one) of Wagner. Unlike the older composer, Fauré was not much influenced by Wagner in his own music, opting for a more restrained style and shorter, less grandiose musical structures. "Whereas Wagner was the undisputed king of his self-invented 'universal music drama,'” writes Ms. Saller, "Fauré excelled in exquisite miniatures: chamber music, art song, piano pieces." His best-known large work—the 1890 "Requiem in D minor," Op. 48, clocks in at a modest 35 minutes or so and is characterized by a radiant and transparent sound that's miles away from Bruckner's massive sound cathedrals.

Still, the sad and wistful tone of the "Elegie" should work well as a preparation for the prolonged Wagnerian death scene that will follow it. "Fauré 's preference for light orchestral scoring," writes Dr. Beth Fleming in program notes for Symphony Silicon Valley, "is the ideal envelope for the rich, resonant tone of the 'cello, and in this beautiful work the solo voice controls the situation from the first moment to the last. Over steady chords reminiscent of a dirge, the 'cello melody leads the listener through a rapturous lament that begins dramatically and gradually becomes more quiet and resigned. The orchestra speaks alone for a time in a contrasting melody and is eventually joined by the 'cello, which takes over in a magnificent cadenza before the return of the original funereal section. Eventually the 'cello seems to sing itself into silence. The result of this tiny work is an impeccable moment of pure musical poetry."

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Christine Brewer, soprano, and Bjorn Ranheim, cello, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., March 6 and 7. The concerts feature Bruckner's "Symphony No. 3" and the "Immolation Scene" from Wagner's " Götterdämmerung" ("Twilight of the Gods"). The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Dim and dimmer: "Tannhäuser" at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Act II of Tannhäuser
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

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Who: Lyric Opera of Chicago
What: Wagner's Tannhäuser
When: February 9-March 6, 2015
Where: Civic Opera House, Chicago

I have a dream. I dream that some day I'll be able to walk into an opera house and not be faced with a production in which the stage director has imposed some sort of high concept on the piece that is either irrelevant to or openly contradictory to the intentions of the composer and librettist. Alas, as the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of Wagner's "Tannhäuser" demonstrates, that's still a dream.

For those of you not familiar with it, "Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle" (to quote the full title), first performed in 1845 and revised in 1861 and 1875, concerns the titular medieval knight/minstrel who, after months of libidinous frolicking with Venus in her subterranean grotto, becomes spiritually weary and returns to Wartburg castle, where he had won both the singing contests and the heart of Elisabeth, niece of Hermann, the Landgraf of Thuringia and lord of the castle. In the heat of a singing competition in which the goal is to compose the best song on the true nature of love, he reveals where he has been for the last several months. His only hope of salvation, he learns, is a pilgrimage to Rome and a pardon from the Pope.

The Venusberg ballet
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

All does not go as planned, and while Tannhäuser finally achieves his salvation, it comes at the cost of both his own life and Elisabeth's.

Wagner, who wrote his own libretto, based on a variety of sources, set the action in a semi-mythical version of the 14th century, in which the prosaic reality of Wartburg could co-exist with the fantastic world of Classical legend. Stage director Tim Albery, in his Lyric debut, has elected to jettison all that and instead move the action to what appears to be a contemporary guerrilla camp in Afghanistan. The Wartburg grand hall in the second act becomes, in the hands of set designer Michael Levine, a ruined theatre complete with a collapsed proscenium and the third act—originally set in the Wartburg valley in autumn—appears to be taking place on top of the flattened ruins of the hall under a blanket of snow.

Venus' domain is represented by a gilt false proscenium arch with scarlet drapes that flown in from above. She and her attendants are decked out in slinky black gowns. The residents of Wartburg, by contrast, are in drab earth tones and look like refugees. And everyone is so dimly lit that facial expressions were often difficult to discern, even from our excellent seats on the orchestra floor.

John Relyea and Amber Wagner
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

None of this serves the material very well. The lack of visual interest and the often static staging—there's a great deal of planting of feet and singing downstage—destroys any dramatic momentum. And turning Wartburg into a contemporary armed camp with shabby fighters toting automatic weapons only serves to underline how much (to quote my wife) their moral rigidity resembles that of the Taliban.

Perhaps that was Mr. Albery's point but if so, it was an unnecessarily heavy-handed way to make it. And it's certainly contrary to Wagner's intent.

The one exception to all this is the opening Venusberg orgy sequence. Jasmin Vardimon's energetic, erotically charged choreography perfectly matches Wagner's increasingly frenzied music and is an ideal introduction to mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster's impressively seductive Venus.

The theme of the conflict between sacred and profane love was one to which Wagner, who was certainly guilty of his share of the latter, would return to often in his operas, along with the notion of redemption through love. Not surprisingly, given Wagner's psychology and the time in which he lived, that redemption usually involved selfless sacrifice on the part of the female lead.

In "Tannhäuser" that thankless task falls to Elisabeth. The role isn't especially large but it's dramatically crucial. Happily, Lyric has mezzo Amber Wagner in the role. Her big, luscious voice is an attention grabber and makes all of her scenes compelling. In her program bio, she is quoted as describing Elisabeth's music as "achingly simple, yet substantial and full of its own longing." You can hear all that and more in her performance.

Gerald Finley
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Bass-baritone Gerald Finley shines as well as Wolfram, Tannhäuser's friend who carries a torch for Elisabeth. His "O du, mein Abendstern" ("O evening star," often performed as a standalone piece) was a high point of the final act. John Relyea, who was such an imposing presence as Henry VIII in Lyric's "Anna Bolena" this season, radiates gravitas once again as Hermann. And soprano Angela Mannino has a nice cameo as the voice of the Shepherd, whose simple song is the first thing Tannhäuser hears on his return from Venusberg in the first act.

I haven't said anything about the South African tenor and Lyric veteran Johan Botha, this production's Tannhäuser, for the simple reason that I didn't see him perform. The night we attended, the role was sung by Richard Decker, an American tenor brought in as a last-minute substitute while Mr. Botha recovers from what the program describes as "a severe throat infection." Mr. Decker, at least when we saw him, seemed not entirely comfortable in the role and had noticeably less vocal power than his co-stars. This was especially apparent in his second act duet with Ms. Wagner.

As this is being written, Lyric's "Tannhäuser" has only two more performances (March 2 and 6), so I don't know whether Mr. Botha will be returning to the role or not.

Act III of Tannhäuser
Photo: Robert Kusel

If I have major misgivings about this production's dramatic direction, I have none whatsoever about its musical direction. Under the capable baton of Lyric's music director and principal conductor Sir Andrew Davis, Wagner's mammoth score got a well thought out and polished reading, with good tempo choices and excellent vocal/instrumental balance. Working with a substitute lead must have been a challenge, but everyone clearly rose to the occasion. The Act II "entry of the guests" (often heard in a stand-alone concert piece), with its offstage brass and full chorus, was a joy to hear.

The Lyric Opera season at the Civic Opera House continues with its production of "Tosca" and Mieczyslaw Weinberg's "The Passenger" in March. It wraps up with Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" in April and May, followed by a special recital with pianist Lang Lang on May 9th. For more information: lyricopera.org.

Expectancy and ecstasy

Karita Mattila
Photo: Marcia Rosengard

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson with soprano soloist Karita Mattila
What: Music of Brahms, Wagner, and Schoenberg
When: Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

The OnMusic Dictionary (at dictionary.onmusic.org) defines attacca as "a musical directive for the performer to begin the next movement (or section) of a composition immediately and without pause." Lately the symphony has been experimenting with playing compositions by different composers attacca as a way of highlighting similarities between the pieces. This weekend's bit of attacca might be the boldest yet, following the prelude to Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" (first performed in 1859) with Arnold Schoenberg's neurasthenic 1909 "monodrama" "Erwartung" ("Expectation").

[Find out more about the music with the symphony program notes and my Symphony Preview article.]

Although separated by six decades, the two works have more in common than you might think. Musically, the expanded harmonic language of "Tristan" marked the start of a sea change in composition style that eventually led to the serialism of Schoenberg, with its complete demolition of conventional notions of consonance and dissonance. Dramatically, both "Tristan" and "Erwartung" mix images of love and death. Or, as Freud would have put it, Eros and Thanatos.

Wagner in Paris, 1861

In Wagner's opera, the musical and psychological tension set up by the unsettling "Tristan chord" in the first measures of the "Prelude" aren't resolved until nearly four hours later when Isolde, in the rapturous "liebestod," wills herself to join her lover Tristan in death. In "Erwartung" the mixture of the erotic and the violent that forms the subtext of "Tristan" comes to the forefront in "a stream of consciousness libretto (it starts on page 59 of that link) written by poet and medical student Marie Pappenheim and inspired by Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams."

Scored for soprano and post-Wagnerian orchestra, "Erwartung" unfolds as a somewhat hallucinatory monolog in which the narrator (The Woman) wanders into a nocturnal forest expecting to meet her lover and instead finds his corpse. "The line between truth and fantasy grows increasingly blurred," writes Paul Schiavo in his program notes. "Who killed her lover? Did she do it herself? The only reference point is the dramatic impulse, but the protagonist is unreliable, in thrall to her own circuitous dream logic." Schoenberg himself, in his essay "New Music: My Music," said the aim of the piece "is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour."

This is demanding music, both for the audience and the soloist. Schoenberg's didactic, theme-free score is no easier on the ears now than it was over a century ago and the challenges it presents to the singer are substantial. She has to hold her own against a huge orchestra and convincingly portray a wide range of disordered emotions without tipping over into absurdity. It requires a performer with a powerful voice and exceptional acting skills.

Karita Mattila clearly has both. She gave us a jaw droppingly intense performance Friday night. A striking, statuesque figure in a slinky black gown and gray shawl, Ms. Mattila commanded attention from the moment she walked on stage during the final pages of the "Tristan" prelude and held it all the way through the deranged twists and turns of "Erwartung."

Schoenberg's Der Rote Blick (Red Gaze)
1910
en.wikipedia.org

The focus on the drama was enhanced by the canny use of lighting, as the house was dimmed more than usual and the orchestra illuminated by lights that changed color to match the mood of the text. The opening section describing the forest was all in green, for example, with a change to the silvery when the narrator's attention shifted to the moon. The lights went red when the narrator raged against a rival and then gold when the sun rose; very effective.

The orchestra's performance was no less impressive. The occasional massive musical explosion not withstanding, "Erwartung" has long solo and small ensemble passages that leave individual musicians very exposed. Peter Henderson on celesta and Allegra Lilly on harp acquitted themselves particularly well, I thought.

The concerts opened with a lush and passionate Brahms "Symphony No. 3" in which the rubato dial was cranked up to 11. I'm usually very impressed with Mr. Robertson's ability to highlight the musical architecture of a symphony while still retaining the dramatic tension of the music from beginning to end. This time things got rather sluggish as Mr. Roberson tended to linger lovingly over too many phrases and there were occasional intonation problems, especially in the third movement. It sounded somewhat under rehearsed in spots, which made me wonder whether or not it got short changed by the Schoenberg.

Next at Powell: Christian Tetzlaff is the soloist and Mr. Robertson is on the podium for Shostakovich's "Violin Concerto No. 1" and Sibelius's "Symphony No. 2." Performances are Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, April 5 and 6. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Love and Death

The "Tristan" chord
commons.wikimedia.rg

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In his "Concord Hymn" Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the first shot of the American Revolutionary War as "the shot heard round the world." The same phrase has been applied to the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. This weekend the St. Louis symphony will be playing the musical equivalent of "the shot heard round the world." Let's call it "the chord heard round the world." Its effect was less violent, but no less revolutionary in its own way.

The chord in question is called the "Tristan chord." It's heard at the very beginning of the work that opens the second half of this weekend's concerts, the Prelude to Wagner's 1857 opera "Tristan und Isolde." It sounds dissonant, even to modern ears and, in fact, many critics have pegged it as the first shot in the ongoing war on tonality in music (although just as many others dispute that idea). Certainly it seems to anticipate the expanded harmonic palette of post-Wagnerian composers like Richard Strauss and Mahler and, by extension, the active hostility to conventional notions of harmony and melody which are still more popular than they probably deserve to be in some compositional circles.

Ludwig and Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld in the title roles
of the original production of
Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in 1865

But its significance goes beyond that. What's really revolutionary about it is that it never really resolves. The tension it creates isn't fully released, in fact, until nearly four hours later when Isolde, in the rapturous "liebestod," wills herself to join her lover Tristan in death.

The erotic subtext of the "liebestod" is undeniable to anyone who has ever heard it. What destroys Tristan and Isolde, after all, isn't some chaste affection but rather a consuming passion that drives them to betrayal. Which ultimately makes the "Tristan chord" a bit of foreplay before the longest musical orgasm on record.

Does that all sound a bit Freudian? It should. The relationship between the constructive and destructive instincts in the human psyche—sex and death, Eros and Thanatos—is a central concept of Freudian psychology. Which is what makes the piece the immediately follows the "Prelude" this weekend so appropriate.

With a stream of consciousness libretto inspired by Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams," Arnold Schoenberg's 1909 monodrama "Erwartung" ("Expectation") for soprano and orchestra unfolds as a somewhat hallucinatory monolog in which the narrator (The Woman) wanders into a nocturnal forest expecting to meet her lover and instead finds his corpse. "The line between truth and fantasy grows increasingly blurred," writes Paul Schiavo in his program notes. "Who killed her lover? Did she do it herself? The only reference point is the dramatic impulse, but the protagonist is unreliable, in thrall to her own circuitous dream logic." Schoenberg himself, in his essay "New Music: My Music," said the aim of the piece "is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour."

Which, in a way, brings us back to "Tristan" and its four-hour climax.

"Erwartung" is, in any case, a major challenge for the soprano soloist. Writing for The Guardian, Andrew Clements notes that the music is "immensely taxing, demanding a huge vocal range and sometimes a Wagnerian power and authority, while the huge orchestra supports and challenges her in a web of ever-shifting colours and thematic shapes presented with chamber-like transparency." It's not surprising, then, that this weekend's singer, Karita Mattila, has an impressive musical and theatrical resume, with substantial experience in the music of the 20th century and beyond. Her program bio describes her as "an influential artistic force in the development of new music, regularly collaborating with eminent contemporary composers in the debut performances of significant modern works."

This weekend's concerts open with music that is about as far away as one can get from the psychological depths of Wagner and Schoenberg. Brahms's "Symphony No. 3 in F major," Op. 90 was written in the summer of 1883 when the composer was, to quote Mr. Schiavo, "robustly healthy, if fat, and had a lust for life—as well as for young women." It bubbles over with the joy Brahms took in walking the forests and mountains around Weisbaden. He stayed there in an airy studio overlooking the Rhine, and you can almost hear that majestic river in the sweep of the opening of this music. It's wonderful stuff.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soprano Karita Mattila in Wagner's "Prelude to Tristan and Isolde," Brahms's "Symphony No. 3," and Schoenberg's "Erwartung" on Friday and Saturday at 8 PM March 28 and 29, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday performance will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and via live Internet stream.

The fire this time

Alexandra LoBianco as Brünnhilde and Timothy Bruno as Wotan
Photo © Ron Lindsey, 2013

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Union Avenue Opera is nothing if not fearless, often taking on works that strain the company’s space at the Union Avenue Christian Church to the limit.  Through next Saturday Union Avenue is presenting the second installment of its most ambitious project yet—Wagner's mammoth operatic cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (“The Ring of the Nibelung”).  And it's pretty darned impressive.

“Das Rheingold” (“The Rhine Gold”), which Union Avenue did last August, sets up the characters and the story that play out over the course of the cycle. Wagner regarded it as a mere prologue, though, and “Die Walküre” ("The Valkyrie") is where the rubber hits the road, dramatically speaking.  It's a tale of incest, murder, and ironic tragedy as the most powerful creature in the world—Wotan, father of the Gods—finds himself undone by his own machinations and powerless against the curse of the magical ring he stole from the dwarf Alberich back in “Das Rheingold”.

As the opera opens Siegmund, one of a pair of twins sired by Wotan with a mortal and separated at birth from his twin sister, stumbles into the home of Hunding, after eluding a vengeful mob. Hunding isn’t home—he is, in fact, part of the mob—but his wife is. Their attraction is immediate and it’s not in the least dampened when they realize that Hunding’s wife is Siegmund’s long-lost sister Sieglinde. Hunding arrives, recognizes Siegmund, and challenges him to a fight to the death in the morning. Sieglinde has other plans; she drugs Hunding and flees with Siegmund, but not before the latter plucks a magical sword from the trunk of a tree in Hunding’s house.

Alexandra LoBianco as Brünnhilde
Photo © Ron Lindsey, 2013

Back in Valhalla, Fricka is outraged that Wotan is condoning not only adultery but incest as well. She browbeats him into upholding the sanctity of marriage by letting Hunding kill Siegmund, even though Wotan had hoped Siegmund would be the hero who would save Valhalla from the descendants of Alberich. When the Valkyrie Brünnhilde (who, like all the Valkyries, is a daughter of Wotan and the earth goddess Erda) violates Wotan’s orders and tries to save Siegmund, Wotan is forced to punish her by turning her mortal, placing her into a magical sleep, and surrounding her with magical flames that only a true hero can penetrate. His farewell, in the final moments of the opera, is one of the most moving sequences in opera.

Sieglinde, meanwhile, has escaped. She’s pregnant with Siegmund’s child, Siegfried. But that’s another opera.  For a more detailed plot summary of the entire cycle, I refer you to Wikipedia.

The Union Avenue production uses a reduced version of Wagner's original created by English composer Jonathan Dove in 1990 that cuts nearly an hour out of the original’s run time of nearly four hours and takes its three acts down to two. That’s not the sacrilege you might think; Wagner the librettist does not always serve Wagner the composer well, and there’s much in the text that is redundant and discursive. That said, Dove’s edits in the first act delete too much of Siegmund’s back story, in my view, and compress the development of his and Sieglinde’s affection so much that it seems rather rushed. Wotan’s massive blocks of exposition in Wagner’s Act II and III, on the other hand, feel like they could use more editing. Dove also cuts four of Brünnhilde’s seven Valkyrie sisters, which drastically shortens the famous “Ride of the Valkyries” sequence that opens Wagner’s Act III—a pity, as it’s rather stirring stuff.

Melissa Sumner as Helmwige, Cecelia Stearman as Waltraute,
Alexandra LoBianco as Brünnhilde, Lindsey Anderson as Rossweisse,
and Amber Smoke as Sieglinde Photo © Ron Lindsey, 2013

Still, this reduced “Walküre” still packs a considerable punch, thanks largely to some heavy-duty Girl Power in the cast.  Amber Smoke (Sieglinde), Elise Quagliata (Fricka), and Alexandra LoBianco (Brünnhilde) are all outstanding, with powerful voices and well-defined characters. Ms. Quagliata is the same powerful presence she was in “Rheingold” while Ms. Smoke perfectly captures Sieglinde’s passion and despair. Ms. LoBianco’s really big moments won’t come until the next two operas are mounted in 2014 and 2015, of course, but based on what I saw and heard here I expect very good things from her in “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung”. Melissa Summer, Cecelia Stearman (Erda in last season’s “Rheingold”), and Lindsey Anderson are a formidable trio of Valkyries as well.

On the male side, Nathan Whitson is an appropriately thuggish Hunding (although there’s not much to the part in this reduction), but James Taylor is a bit bland as Siegmund. He’s very interesting vocally, though, in that he’s a baritone who now sings as a tenor. His voice has, as a result, a depth that one doesn’t normally associate with tenors and only very rarely did he seem uncomfortable in his top notes.

Amber Smoke as Sieglinde and
James Taylor as Siegmund
Photo © Ron Lindsey, 2013

Timothy Bruno brings the kind of vocal power to Wotan that I missed last year when Kevin Misslich sang the role in “Rheingold.” Unfortunately, he mugs too much and is too physically "busy" (when will actors and directors understand the power of stillness?), undercutting the character's gravitas.  Still, Wotan's famous "farewell" scene with Brünnhilde was appropriately moving.

Dove’s reduced orchestration is for 18 pieces—one per part. Conductor Scott Schoonover has beefed it up a bit with extra strings, but even so, Wagner’s music inevitably loses some of its visceral impact with a band this size. Intonation issues in the brasses, especially toward the end of the second act, didn’t help. The ensemble as a whole played well, though, and Mr. Schoonover’s tempo choices felt more right here than they did in “Rheingold” last year.

Patrick Huber’s unit set is the same one used for “Rheingold.” It’s dominated by a huge screen on which images and video (designed by Michael Perkins, whose innovative work has graced many a local stage) take the place of the elaborate scenery envisioned by Wagner. Those work better here than they did in “Rheingold” (although video playback is still a bit jerky), and are very effective in creating the right moods and sense of place. Unfortunately the screen, the catwalk above it, and the stairs to either side take up so much room that most of the action is played out in a fairly shallow area downstage. Director Karen Coe Miller does the best she can with this space, but it’s hard to create decent stage pictures under those circumstances. It’s also hard for Mr. Huber to light that space, apparently, given the number of times singers’ faces were in shadow.

Teresa Doggett and her crew have done well by the costumes. As in “Rheingold”, Wotan and Fricka are decked out as late 19th century European royalty while the mortals are all in peasant outfits. The Valkyries look appropriately martial, with costumes that have the look but not the bulk of stage armor, so they don’t impede movement or singing. English supertitles by Elise LaBarge and Philip Touchette are, as usual, clear and easily visible throughout the house.

There has not, to the best of my recollection, been a performance of Wagner’s “Ring” in St. Louis in my lifetime and given that our major opera company, Opera Theatre, seems allergic to the composer, there may not be another one for many years, if ever. That means that this may be your only chance to see a locally produced “Die Walküre.” If you have any interest in the “Ring” at all, you should grab it. This may not be a perfect production, but it’s a very good one and well worth seeing.

Union Avenue’s “Die Walküre” has two more performances this Friday and Saturday at 8 PM at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information: unionavenueopera.org. Note that there is a parking lot but it tends to fill up quickly, so you’ll want to get there not later than 7:30 if you can.

The ring of power. No, not THAT one.

Union Avenue Opera is nothing if not fearless, often taking on works that strain their space at the Union Avenue Christian Church to the limit.  This weekend and next, though, marks the second installment of their most ambitious project yet.

That project is a complete traversal of Wagner's  titanic "Der Ring Des Nibelungen," a cycle of four operas (or, as Wagner referred to them, three operas and a prelude) that took 26 years to write and almost as long to perform ("that's a joke, son!").  The epic story spans three generations and tells the tale of a cursed ring of power that grants its holder world dominion—but at a terrible cost.  Mythical creatures abound, including dwarves, giants, demigods, and even a dragon.  If that sounds familiar, that's not surprising; both J.R.R. Tolkien and Wagner (who wrote his own libretti) drew heavily on the same mythical mother lode.  Tolkien claimed that he wasn't influenced by Wagner, but some scholars haven't been convinced.

Be that as it may, the "Ring" is a massive undertaking.  In its original form it runs around 15 hours, employes huge orchestral forces, and would be out of the question for smaller opera companies like Union Avenue—or even Opera Theatre, for that matter.  Recognizing that problem, in 1990 British composer Jonathan Dove and director Graham Vick created "The Ring Saga," a "reduced" version of the Ring for the Birmingham (England) Opera Company.  It proved so successful that other companies took it up, including Union Avenue.

Dove's reduction uses a much smaller orchestra (18 pieces; Union Avenue uses 21) and makes substantial cuts in all four operas, bringing the entire business in at around 9 hours.  Union Avenue is producing it over a period of four years, one opera per year.  It began with "Das Rheingold" last August and continues with "Die Walküre" this weekend and next (August 16-24).  "Siegfried" and the gargantuan "Götterdämmerung" will follow in 2014 and 2015.

Reviewing "Rheingold" last year, I dubbed it something of a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.  I will certainly be there this Friday to see how the company handles "Walküre."  I'm especially looking forward to Soprano Alexandra LoBianco's Brunnhilde, favorite daughter of Wotan and chief Valkyrie.  It's a long and demanding role, even in Dove's reduction, and is usually associated with older singers.  "Dramatic sopranos," writes Sarah Bryan Miller in an August 11th article at stltoday.com,  "mature later than other voice types, and at 35, LoBianco is young for a dramatic soprano to be taking on this particular role."

Bottom line: it'll be exciting to see what Union Avenue does with this difficult but rewarding material, and unless the entire idea of a Wagner opera fills you with dread, I strongly encourage you to go.  If your exposure to the "Ring" is limited to "What's Opera, Doc?" ("Kill da waaaabit!"), though, you might want to read through a synopsis of "Die Walküre" at wikipedia.  Union Avenue also offers a capsule what "Das Rheingold" ("previously on The Ring...") at their web site.

Or you can just enjoy the great Anna Russell's half-hour version.

Tickets for all performances as well as for the opening night reception at Tavern of Fine Arts are available at Union Avenue's web site.  Note, by the way, that while parking is free, the lot fills up quickly, so it's a good idea to get there early.  You can always have a snack and drink (non-alcoholic, alas) in the lobby before the show.