Season of Concessions
By ANDREW POWELL
Published: October 11, 2012
MUNICH — Arts groups here present a compromised 2012–13 season, facing pros and cons not always aligned with those in America.
Funding holds steady. City and state (Bavaria) play their part, and local powerhouses — Siemens, BMW, Audi, Allianz, and Linde among them — step up habitually to the plate.
Audiences are large and regular. Art music matters in Munich, as it has since the days of Lassus. Tickets for most events afford free access to the metro-wide public transportation network.
Excellent pools of musicians, instrumental and vocal, fill the rosters of the choir, chamber orchestra, two opera companies, and five symphony orchestras surveyed below. It doesn’t hurt that at least two imaginative opera singers — soprano Anja Harteros and tenor Jonas Kaufmann — call Munich home.
But creative torpor hovers, a reflection in part of more than one sadly filled music directorship. The Régietheater problem — never truly felt in the U.S., even given the howls of Met audiences — rages in Germany, defiling the worthiest efforts in opera. Atrocious acoustics plague Munich’s largest concert hall. And one likeable theater is shut for now for a retrofit.
The 201-year-old Bavarian State Orchestra ventures six programs at the Nationaltheater in 2012–13, mostly under outgoing Generalmusikdirektor Kent Nagano.
These Academy concerts — their roots actually stretch back to 1523 and encompass tenures more recent than that of Lassus by such men as Strauss, Walter, Knappertsbusch, Krauss, Fricsay, and Sawallisch — can suffer from under-rehearsal due to the esteemed ensemble’s hectic theater schedule. That the GMD does not always supply the last ounce of insight, or much rhythmic thrust, only accentuates the negative. Despite and still, one upcoming program has allure: the eloquent young Czech conductor Tomáš Hanus tackles Mahler’s kaleidoscopic Seventh Symphony (April 8 and 9).
Clarinetist Jörg Widmann’s seven-scene opera Babylon is a fall commission of the Bavarian State Opera, Germany’s largest and busiest opera company. Nagano conducts, as part of his last season, and Carlus Padrissa, who last year introduced a circus-tent Turandot, has been entrusted with the stage action (première Oct. 27).
Several of the season’s productions will be streamed at no charge here, starting with the Widmann on Nov. 3. Hanus follows his persuasive (and filmed) Rusalka of two years ago with a revival of Jenůfa (from March 6) as well as a new Richard Jones production of Hänsel und Gretel (première March 24). Constantinos Carydis, among the company’s other worthy conductors — and indeed winner of its first Carlos Kleiber Prize — is absent from the 2012–13 slate, effecting a sabbatical.
The smaller but versatile Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz company enters a second season as refugee while its genial home undergoes construction work. Not all the substitute venues are ideal, but at the Cuvilliéstheater a Don Pasquale (première Oct. 25) should bring smiles. Franz Hawlata sings the title role; mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender serves as régisseuse.
This company labors under a mixed mandate, complementing the Bavarian State Opera with Baroque and rare operas but also catering to a broad audience with operettas and musicals, at times amplified. Its orchestra copes gamely with the assortment, its singers less well.
Alexander Liebreich’s ongoing leadership of the “MKO,” aka Münchener Kammerorchester, has been yielding tidy ensemble and a crisp image for the chamber-sized group.
Subscription concerts at MKO’s base, the Bayreuth-Festspielhaus-like Prinzregententheater, habitually pair old and brand new, as on Oct. 18: Salvatore Sciarrino’s L’ideale lucente e le pagine rubate (2012) and Beethoven’s music for Egmont. Or Dec. 13: Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (old) and a Helena Winkelman piece jointly commissioned with Musica femina München.
Guest conductors, in contrast, are what enliven the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Ranked highly for its expertise and drilled weekly for clean-as-a-whistle broadcasts, the BRSO perseveres under monochrome directorship.
Antonini, Rattle, Haitink, Muti, Harding, Gilbert, Robertson, Salonen, Chailly, and Metzmacher are names implying color in upcoming programs. The season splits as usual between the modest shoebox Herkulessaal, part of Munich’s Residenz arts complex, and the city-operated, fan-cum-vineyard Gasteig hall, where only the intra-ensemble sound travels properly.
The adventurous Münchner Rundfunkorchester, a second “BR” (Bavarian Radio) ensemble, devotes much of 2012–13 to oddball concert opera — Franz Lachner’s Catharina Cornaro ? — when its exploratory funds would go further in orchestral music, and better balance the BRSO.
Welcome projects include a German-language take on Hindemith’s FDR oratorio When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloom’d (May 3), which may find its way to disc alongside this orchestra’s Echo-winning 2005 recording of Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend by Hartmann (who wove the Whitman elegy into his own First Symphony).
Playing standards have been high under Künstlerischer Leiter Ulf Schirmer. He stepped into the shoes of the late and lamented Marcello Viotti (of Met fame) in 2006, but has separately now assumed both musical and (yes) managerial duties at Oper Leipzig.
Still under radio auspices, the BR Chor supports both of the above orchestras. Alert, flexible singing and an affable leader in Dutchman Peter Dijkstra place this group among Germany’s best large choirs, with perhaps only Leipzig’s MDR Chor ahead in precision. Certainly it draws the better Munich choristers, those disinclined to strip down to their underwear, smear paint on their bodies, or strike mindless poses, as repeatedly required of their colleagues in local opera companies.
BR Chor concerts this season, in the group’s own series, include Mozart’s C-Minor Mass (Nov. 24) and a well-cast Matthäus-Passion (Feb. 16) at the Prinzregententheater and Herkulessaal, respectively.
The Munich Philharmonic seemed to want to dive off a cliff three years ago when its management publicly bickered with its greatly-in-demand music director Christian Thielemann, effectively losing him, and just eight months later chose Lorin Maazel as his successor. (One tabloid reported Thielemann’s salary to be EUR 800,000.)
Those twin decisions are now home to roost, as the 82-year-old American unfurls his inaugural season. Maazel, whose work ethic can only be admired, appeared artistically drained in interregnum Gasteig programs ten months ago — and in music in which he long ago excelled, such as Debussy’s La mer.
This orchestra will gain the most if Munich ever does build a proper concert hall, as recently championed by Bavarian Minister for Science, Research, and Art, Wolfgang Heubisch. Today, as a city-run ensemble, it is confined almost entirely to the Gasteig’s infamous fan.
Less glamorous, though certainly busy, the Münchner Symphoniker offers concert series at the acoustically preferable Prinzregententheater and Herkulessaal. Georg Schmöhe is Chefdirigent; pianist Philippe Entremont serves as Ehrendirigent.
In 2011 this orchestra undertook a long U.S. tour devoted to movie music. This season at home it offers an all-Beethoven program (Jan. 27 and 28) and a mostly Haydn evening (March 20) as part of a generally conservative lineup.
Tags: Alan Gilbert, Allianz, Anja Harteros, Audi, Babylon, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera, Bavarian State Orchestra, BMW, BR Chor, BR Klassik, Brigitte Fassbaender, Bruno Walter, Carlus Padrissa, Christian Thielemann, Constantinos Carydis, David Robertson, Don Pasquale, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ferenc Fricsay, Gasteig, Hans Knappertsbusch, Herkulessaal, Jenůfa, Jörg Widmann, Kent Nagano, Linde, Lorin Maazel, Marcello Viotti, MDR Chor, MKO, Münchener Kammerorchester, Münchner Symphoniker, Munich Philharmonic, Munich Times, Orlande de Lassus, Peter Dijkstra, Prinzregententheater, Régietheater, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti, Richard Jones, Richard Strauss, Salvatore Sciarrino, Siemens, Simon Rattle, Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, Tomáš Hanus, Turandot, Ulf Schirmer, Wolfgang Heubisch, Wolfgang Sawallisch
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