The Year in Music: International

By Keith Clarke

With Wagner and Verdi enthusiasts hanging up the bicentennial bunting and Britten fans getting a whole year of centennial celebrations, there was little chance of noting bicentennial also-rans like Charles-Valentin Alkan and Stephen Heller or centennial no-chancers like Witold Lutosławski and Maurice Ohana, let alone the 450th anniversary of Dowland’s birth or the 400th of Gesualdo’s death.

Wagner frenzy gripped the world with many a Ring to entrance audiences and in the darkness bind them. The 15-hour cycle even made it to the BBC Proms, where musicians and audiences alike heroically withstood record temperatures as Barenboim carved his way through a magnificent reading with the Staatskapelle Berlin.

Wagner 200, a seven-month event starting on the composer’s birthday, May 22, found a way to perform the cycle in just five hours—ditch the music. A reading of the entire libretto was one of the wackier events packing the festival, which also found time for a symposium exploring Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Verdi enjoyed rather more modified rapture, but a new production of Les Vêpres Siciliennes at the Royal Opera House caused much excitement even before it opened when director Stefan Herheim and choreographer Johan Kobborg enjoyed a bout of “artistic differences,” the latter walking out, taking 32 dancers from the Royal Ballet, the Royal Ballet School, and the Royal Danish Ballet with him.

Britten’s special year saw some great performances that emphasized his now worldwide appeal, but the event that got the most column inches was a production of Peter Grimes staged on the windswept shingle of the beach in his home town, Aldeburgh.

RECORDING AND BROADCASTING
Universal Music’s chairman and chief executive of its global operations outside the U.S., Max Hole, took time off from being the most powerful man in the record business to give some advice to British orchestras: chill out. His message, delivered to delegates at the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras, was that orchestras needed to appear more engaged with the audience: “There’s more to it than just taking a couple of bows at the end of the concert,” he explained.

Back at the day job, Hole and his team were ticking the boxes that the European Union’s competition regulator had drawn up for Universal’s acquisition of EMI, getting rid of the Parlophone Label Group, which passed into Warner’s hands. The deal included the catalogues and recording activities of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics, but not the brands, which left Warner hurriedly removing logos on new releases from those labels.

As the big companies engaged in multi-million deals, increasing numbers of artists took the DIY approach. Among those launching their own label was the Academy of Ancient Music, whose AAM Records had the supreme own-label benefit that it would “allow the AAM to take full control of its future recording catalogue.”

Declining CD sales saw the collapse of distributors Harmonia Mundi Iberica in Spain and Portugal, followed by Benelux-based Codaex. It was hoped that a new U.K. distributor could emerge from the wreckage of Codaex—shortly before its collapse it formed New Arts International, a joint venture with producer and distributor Challenge Classics to share distribution and warehousing costs.

In June, Greek state broadcaster ERT was summarily taken off the air by the cash-strapped government but continued broadcasting via the Internet. The station returned to the airwaves after a month, but uncertainty hung over it and the fate of its 75-year-old symphony orchestra and various performing groups.

ORCHESTRAS
With Gergiev’s tenure as chief conductor of the London Symphony ending in 2015 and Simon Rattle’s at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018, it was only a matter of time before someone saw a potential marriage made in heaven for the London band. It fell to Guardian blogger Tom Service to read the banns, writing: “There is at least one sign that the musical planets could be aligning to bring together the most dynamic
and inspirational British conductor there has arguably ever been with the British orchestra that has been the country’s most consistently brilliant for at least 15 years now.”

The Berlin Philharmonic meanwhile had the task of finding not just a Rattle replacement but no fewer than four principals and two section players, a surprise given the general scarcity of orchestra jobs. One band already with a new principal conductor booked was the Spanish National Orchestra, which named rising young German maestro David Afkham, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra had a new assistant conductor in Jean-Claude Picard.

Riccardo Chailly extended his contract at the helm of the Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig, for a further five years, keeping him on the podium until 2020. He arrived in 2005 and is credited with increasing the orchestra’s touring and recording schedules. The Royal Academy of Music announced a new director of conducting in Sian Edwards, a pioneer among women conductors and a former music director of the English National Opera.

OPERA
The offstage opera story of the year was Angela Gheorghiu’s claim that she had been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of soon-to-be-ex-husband Roberto Alagna. The tenor maintained a dignified silence and the allegation was dubbed “silly” by the Daily Telegraph, which opined: “What one has to bear in mind is that both parties have a terrible reputation in the business for being chronic exhibitionists, blabbing to journalists and generally courting tabloid publicity of the seamiest kind.”

English National Opera presented a strong season, including an excellent Medea starring a magnificent Sarah Connolly, but the Daily Telegraph wondered about its financial health, writing: “English National Opera has been exceptionally cagey of late: it currently publishes no open Annual Report and I can understand why: what figures one can obtain are extremely worrying, to the point that one wonders how long the organization can continue to function in its present form, however strong its artistic program (and it currently is strong).”

Those figures suggested a loss of getting on for $5 million over the past two years with reserves dwindling to around $2.8 million. In July chief executive Loretta Tomasi decided to step down in what was described by the company as a “very personal . . . amicable and calm” way. After the controversial manner of her arrival in 2005, along with Artistic Director John Berry, swiftly ousting Seán Doran in a boardroom coup, the company is likely to be on best behavior when appointing her successor.

Royal Opera House Music Director Antonio Pappano put the cat among the pigeons when he took a pot  shot at the current generation of opera singers. Within frequent outbreaks of cancellitis at the house, he questioned singers’ commitment and suggested they were “weaker” than the singers of yore. His remarks came at what was intended as an announcement of new season plans and had publicists reaching for their heart pills as he warmed to his theme. “There’s something about this generation of singers who are either weaker in their bodies or just don’t care,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s something that is very frustrating for me personally. I have to conduct these guys.” He added: “Physically the organisms are not as strong. For Domingo to cancel he would have to be on his death bed. It’s just a different generation.” Pappano’s outburst followed a vigorous round of musical chairs for a production of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable.

The Royal Opera lost its chief executive, Tony Hall, lured by the poisoned chalice of the director general’s job at the BBC; Australia Opera and Finnish National Opera both got new CEOs in Craig Hassall and Michael Güttler; and young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen took over the Australian Ring after the veteran Richard Mills walked out citing “personal chemistry.” Bayreuth got a new executive in former Deutsche Oper intendant Heinz Dieter Sense, hired to run affairs alongside the Wagner sisters under a two-year contract. Kristin Lewis was a hit in Vienna, making her Staatsoper debut as Aida and being hailed by Intendant Dominique Meyer as “the new Viennese soprano.” Also in Vienna, January saw the world premiere in Austria’s parliament of an opera by Peter Androsch depicting how the Nazis methodically killed mentally or physically deficient children at a Vienna hospital during World War II.

PLACES
For visitors to Russia, St. Petersburg was the place to be, with the opening of the $700 million Mariinsky II, a new theatre connected to the 19th-century original Mariinsky Theater by a pedestrian bridge over a canal. Valery Gergiev, who was honored with the title “hero of labor” by his chum Vladimir Putin at the gala opening, conducted the event, which also served as his 60th birthday party.

Moscow, with its long-held rivalry with St. Petersburg, was definitely the place not to be. Bolshoi Ballet Artistic Director Sergei Filin was the victim of an extraordinary acid attack allegedly ordered by dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko (known for playing villainous roles) which led to 22 operations and threatened to leave Filin blind. Dmitrichenko is in jail awaiting trial. The Bolshoi’s woes unfolded like a Tolstoy tragedy, with star ballerina Svetlana Zakharova storming out of Eugene Onegin over a casting dispute, fellow dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze sacked for criticizing the management, General Director Anatoly Iksanov either fired or retired after 13 years in the job, then 65-year-old Bolshoi veteran violinist Viktor Sedov killed by a fall into the orchestra pit.

Adding to the Russian gloom was news that Alexey Zimakov, the first Russian to win the American Guitar Association Competition, had to have eight fingers amputated following frostbite.

Edinburgh named a new director for the festival, Irishman Fergus Linehan, succeeding Jonathan Mills, who announced his intention to return to composition with an opera about his native Australia. London’s Southbank Centre announced plans for further refurbishment with the development of an ambitious Festival Wing but National Theatre boss Nicholas Hytner came out fighting, saying the plans would cause “irreparable harm.”

Before the streets of Cairo witnessed bloody massacres, the city’s arts community was already in uproar following an attempt to fire Opera House head Ines Abdel-Dayem.

WINNERS
American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who began listening to opera in rebellion against “hippie parents” who reared her on a diet of Led Zeppelin and The Grateful Dead, was named BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and also won the Song Prize. Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg won first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, securing a prize portfolio of more than 40 solo recitals and concerto engagements.

Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, fresh from his 2013 Grawemeyer Award win, was named winner of the 2013 Mauricio Kagel Music Prize, a bi-annual award for musicians who work across various media, and Greek composer Nikolas Sideris won first prize in the Second International Composition Competition “Artistes en Herbes” in Luxembourg with his Piano Stories.

NEW MUSIC
George Benjamin scored a winner with his intense and beautifully conceived opera Written on Skin, which got its London premiere at the Royal Opera House in March after playing Aix and Amsterdam. As ever, the BBC Proms honored its public commitment to new music. Despite resources being stretched by a complete Ring cycle (not to mention a Tristan, a Tannhäuser, and a Parsifal in Wagner’s bicentennial year), it managed to pack in 18 world premieres, 14 of them BBC commissions, and a further 13 European, U.K., or London premieres. Notable among the world premieres were David Matthews’s A Vision of the Sea, Thomas Adès’s Totentanz, Edward Cowie’s Earth Music 1—The Great Barrier Reef, Frederic Rzewski’s Piano Concerto, Param Vir’s Cave of Luminous Mind, and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Frieze (all BBC commissions, the last a co-commission with the Royal Philharmonic Society and the New York Philharmonic).

In Switzerland, the Verbier Festival presented the world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Praise of Peace, an oratorio integrating English, Hebrew, and other spiritual texts into a worldly plea.

Philip Glass’s The Perfect American, the story of the last months of Walt Disney’s life, was premiered in January in Madrid and taken on by English National Opera in June, a musical curiosity carrying little dramatic weight. The Daily Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen, for whom Glass’s music is “a form of masturbatory minimalist repetition,” buried it in faint praise: “The Perfect American hasn’t explained the secret of Glass’[s] appeal to me, but it’s far from the worst of his efforts.” •

Keith Clarke is consultant editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor to MusicalAmerica.com.