Posts Tagged ‘Munich’

Pintscher Conducts New Music

Saturday, July 29th, 2017

BRSO premieres Mark Andre’s whence … whither in the Herkulessaal

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 29, 2017

MUNICH — Not every week does the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra devote a whole program to music written since 2000. Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher’s concert July 7 in the Herkulessaal proved an exception. It began spatially, extravagantly, with his own fantasy With Lilies White (2002); progressed to a nuanced new Mark Andre work in need of an edit; and concluded, feebly it must be said, with pieces by György Kurtág and Jonathan Harvey. Along the way, the orchestra’s precision, enthusiasm, and seemingly instinctive care with color and balances brought rewards. The 20-minute fantasy, written for Cleveland and scored for orchestra with voices, sets wholly unrelated texts by Edward Paston and Derek Jarman, makes chitchat in soft percussive would-be quadrophony, and fuses stylistic gestures of the Renaissance and Baroque. If it never quite makes its point, it at least achieves handsome self-sufficiency. Vinzenz Löffel, soloist of the Augsburger Domsingknaben, and sopranos Sarah Aristidou, Anna-Maria Palii and Sheva Tehoval etched the vocal lines with varying degrees of steadiness at probably too much volume. The longer, BRSO-commissioned whence … whither (2016) charts the touch and direction of a barely audible wind, an element of Christian faith for Andre, Marc André. Strings and percussion of a large orchestra used with remarkable restraint trace sound-shadows that are broken up by abrupt or gradual, hard or soft, events to yield an intriguing sense of physical movement, crucially free of horror-movie cliché. Even the whirling bows, or Schwirrbögen, fit in snugly. The first four of Andre’s seven movements, called “sections,” present a balance of ideas and might well have made a complete work — the third rises loudly, as it were violently, at its close; the fourth hints at resolution — but the composer pushes on, stirred by the spiritual number seven, alas with duller material until a lively yet in context less innovative final section. Kurtág conveys nothing so much as desolation in his seven-minute Petite musique solennelle (2015), a harmonically cautious exercise in sour chord-clusters. Clangor at the midpoint comprises one statement of a permeating four-note figure. Brooding horns, soft trumpet lines of some grace, and reticent percussive utterances go precisely nowhere. Harvey’s … towards a Pure Land (2005) places a string group “peacefully behind the sound” of the main orchestra, endowed with innumerable percussion instruments, and proceeds to describe in sixteen minutes an active but chronically pallid arc whose center of “insubstantial pitch” is, as in the Kurtág, and in the composer’s words, “an emptiness.” There, presumably, lies the Pure Land, “a state of mind beyond suffering … revealing the meaning of Dharma,” not in the surrounding music, with its fluid, ungraspable ideas. Pintscher and BR’s players nimbly negotiated all exercises.

Photo © Bayerischer Rundfunk

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Munich-Berlin: 4 Hours by Rail

Friday, June 16th, 2017

Trains test the completed high-speed rail line between Munich and Berlin on June 16, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: June 16, 2017

MUNICH — Today Berlin got as close to Munich as Vienna already is: four hours by rail. Deutsche Bahn test-trains for the first time ran the recently completed high-speed track between the two German cities, 400 miles apart, and the company promised passenger service starting Dec. 10, the traditional date for Europe’s yearly rail-timetable updates.

The new infrastructure linking the Bavarian and former Prussian capitals was dubbed German Unity Transport Project No. 8 when first funded fully 25 years ago, soon after the DDR collapsed. Stretches of the track — between Munich and Nuremberg and between Leipzig and Berlin — have been operational for years, but missing segments have kept total travel time over six hours. From Dec. 10, three daily roundtrips at speeds of up to 188 miles per hour will originate in each of the two end-cities, in addition to slower services.

The Munich-Vienna line, a distance of 300 miles, is served by Austrian ÖBB’s Railjet trains. This journey suffers old routing and track on the relatively short haul between Rosenheim (just south of Munich) and Salzburg, but no improvements are planned to reduce the four hours it requires.

Photo © Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Candidate Nelsons?

Friday, June 16th, 2017

Cast and conductor for Rusalka in Munich in June 2017

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: June 16, 2017

MUNICH — An odd thing happened during the curtain calls last evening after a taut, riveting Rusalka here at Bavarian State Opera. The orchestra players made various signs of approval for the cast members’ work, as is customary, and then essentially none for the conductor (and leading lady’s husband). Their coolness was the more noteworthy given that Andris Nelsons was making his company debut. Cheers from the house reflected the strength of the performance.

Why would this be? Nelsons is im Gespräch for Kirill Petrenko’s job, and perhaps the players aren’t ready to have their future mapped out so soon after the Berlin Philharmonic’s poaching of their GMD. Petrenko has, after all, lifted them artistically from the twenty-year trough that was SchneiderMehtaNagano. Besides, his exit will grind along in slomo, with the vacancy not opening until Sept. 2020 and a substantial guest-conducting presence for him through the season that starts that month.

Then there is the irksome whiff of pre-planning. In 2015 the Boston Symphony Orchestra oddly replaced its two-year-old agreement with the Latvian maestro with a partly retroactive one for 2014–2022. An “evergreen” clause in this continues its effect for a defined period unless it is canceled within a stated time, ipso facto picturing such notice. Months after signing it, Nelsons moved with his daughter and wife, compatriot Kristine Opolais, the Rusalka star, to Munich’s Bogenhausen district, within walking distance of BStO, Germany’s largest opera company. (It was in opera that Nelsons launched his career, in Riga.) At the same time, he accepted a second orchestra job, with a Feb. 2018 start, in Leipzig, just three hours north of here by train.

At least one listener went to the performance not expecting revelations from the newly resident conductor. Tomáš Hanus had presented Dvořák’s score so lyrically and so urgently at the 2010 premiere of Martin Kušej’s wayward staging — which not incidentally propelled Opolais to fame, thirty years old and a year into her marriage — as well as on DVD and in seasons following, that it seemed nothing more could be said. But Nelsons remolded it entirely, galvanizing long, long, telling lines that penetrated beyond the frames of the acts and into the musical silence of intermission.

Pictured from the Dvořák cast are: Ulrich Reß, Nelsons, Dmytro Popov (a rich-toned Princ), Opolais (still an endearing Rusalka), Helena Zubanovich (a Ježibaba voiced to peel the silk off the walls), Alyona Abramova, Günther Groissböck (the almighty Vodník) and Nadia Krasteva (the enticing Cizí kněžna); front: Rachael Wilson, Tara Erraught and Evgeniya Sotnikova.

Photo © Bayerische Staatsoper

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Scrotum al factotum

Tuesday, May 16th, 2017

The Venusberg of Machines

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: May 16, 2017

MUNICH — Nikolaus Bachler’s Bavarian State Opera has been having its idea of fun with the taxpayer money it receives. In connection with a new Tannhäuser, due May 21, it commissioned for its quarterly Max Joseph magazine a discussion of Wagner’s bacchanale of distant bathing naiads and sedate sirens and downstage (dressed) nymphs. The resulting eleven-section essay by Georg Seeßlen, titled “The Venusberg of Machines,” imagines robots in place of the various classes of ladies, and to ram home this idea BStO further commissioned pictures by Piotr Wyrzykowski, the “media artist” from Gdańsk. Seeßlen’s thinking might have been anticipated by Intendant Bachler. His book credits include: The Pornographic Film (1990), Natural-Born Nazis (1996), Orgasm and Everyday Life (2000), Quentin Tarantino Against the Nazis (2010), Sex Fantasies in the High-Tech World, I to III: Do Androids Dream of Electronic Orgasms?; The Virtual Garden of Pleasures; and Future Sex in Queertopia (collectively 2012), and, his latest, Trump! Populism as Policy. Wagner’s opera will be conducted by Kirill Petrenko and staged by Romeo Castellucci, with of course a separate budget and concept. Tickets run as high as €293 using a new BStO pricing scale. Bachler is the magazine’s publisher; “overall coordination” is by Christoph Koch, the press officer.

Picture © Piotr Wyrzykowski

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Plácido Premium

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017

Plácido Domingo

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: May 2, 2017

MUNICH — Like the miracle of compound interest, Bavarian State Opera’s pricing can chart smartly upwards when you’re not watching. The company sells using an astounding total of 128 price points — the product of eight price categories for its National Theater home and sixteen sliding scales. Things get interesting when the scale changes, which is usually, but not always, in single increments. Take La traviata. Today’s performance sells for a top price of €132 and a low of €10 for a no-view score seat, with six categories in between. Pertinent detail: Leo Nucci, 75, sings Giorgio Germont. But next month the same opera has a €264 top, a low of €20, and corresponding increases in the middle categories of as much as 130%. Same leading lady. Same chorus and orchestra. Same conductor. Same production. Pertinent variance: Plácido Domingo, 76, sings Giorgio Germont. Who would have thought the cold old paterfamilias could make such a difference? Apparently he does. To be sure, the costly performances (on June 27 and 29) are part of the Munich Opera Festival, when a small adjustment is customary. What amazes is a scale shift of four levels in this case. Separately, completely separately, June 29 will in all likelihood mark the erstwhile tenor’s farewell to this city, at least as far as staged opera goes. No announcement has been made, of course. But there it is. Sonya Yoncheva sings Violetta, Charles Castronovo is Alfredo, Andrea Battistoni conducts. Domingo made his BStO debut on Jan. 22, 1972, as Puccini’s Rodolfo.

Photo © Chad Batka

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Spirit of Repušić

Monday, April 24th, 2017

Ivan Repušić

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: April 24, 2017

MUNICH — It was a short courtship by recent standards. Dalmatian conductor Ivan Repušić (pr. REP-oosh-itch), 39, debuted with the Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester in a concert La rondine in Oct. 2015, returned for a gala two months later and signed his contract* last June. His background, happily, is stable: general music director of Staatsoper Hannover, in a relationship dating back to 2010, and chief conductor since 2005 of the Zadarski Komorni Orkestar (by the sapphire waters of Dalmatia’s coast: no fool he).

Before stepping as Chefdirigent into Ulf Schirmer’s big shoes this fall, he agreed to fashion an MRO Paradisi gloria program March 17 here at the Herz-Jesu-Kirche: Respighi’s Concerto gregoriano (1921) and the Duruflé Requiem (1947) — not the most obvious repertory from which to judge a conductor but a thoughtful and satisfying journey unified around chant and modal harmonies.

Repušić built tension in both works, attending to dynamics and stressing the flow of ideas where he could. In the “concerto,” this produced a structure greater than the sum of three perilously disparate movements and gave his unassuming violin soloist, Henry Raudales, a basis for tracing the rhapsodic lines assertively as well as ethereally, even if the church space somewhat diffused the instrument’s sound.

In the Duruflé, it meant a bold performance grounded in lyrical contrasts and vying choral and orchestral assertions. The BR Chor served the divine rhetoric with verbal clarity and sure intonation. The MRO strings played passionately (for the concerto too), the brass gloriously. Max Hanft managed the demanding organ part with aplomb despite his equipment’s relatively muted colors. Mezzo-soprano Okka von der Damerau applied her magnificent voice to the Pie Jesu but, alas, conveyed little of its meaning. Ljubomir Puškarić’s firm and focused baritone, on the other hand, found a wealth of plaintive expression in his brief solo duties.

[*One downside of the haste is that he is not fully available for his debut season, as announced at a Pressekonferenz April 26 to formally introduce him. Only five Repušić concerts are slated in Munich for 2017–18: another gala, a family program of symphonic dances, a concert performance of Luisa Miller, and two Paradisi gloria programs. The church plans, in a series created by Marcello Viotti, continue the Respighi-Duruflé eclecticism: Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and Variations on God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, together with Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms; and a pairing of Kodály’s Psalmus hungaricus with his Budavári Te Deum, sung by the Hungarian Radio Choir, no less. Separately at the conference, the MRO’s new website was launched and we learned some trivia: the orchestra is 32% women; the longest service among active members is 41 years; the mean age is 44; and the oldest played instrument was made 312 years ago. Schirmer, absent, received a warm round of applause from the 100 or so assembled journalists for his eleven years of MRO work.]

Photo © Künstleragentur Seifert

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State Mute on Ticket Handicap

Monday, March 13th, 2017

Ludwig Spaenle, Bavaria’s Culture Minister

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 13, 2017

MUNICH — Bavaria’s Culture Ministry declined to comment last week on the handicapping of online ticket buyers by Bavarian State Opera, one of the entities it supervises.

In theory the Bavarian State Ministry of Education and Culture, Science and Art, to give it its full name, supports culture and the arts “in all regions of Bavaria,” spending $534 million yearly to this end. (California, for context, spends $12 million on the arts.)

But the opera company’s handicapping, which began with the 2016–17 season, drastically narrows the chances for Bavarians outside Munich to buy seats below €100 to Staatsoper performances in heavy demand. This obviously affects Americans and other distant buyers as well.

Intrepid readers can follow the handicap, without registering, next Tuesday, March 21, at 5 a.m. EDT (2 a.m. PDT), when online sales start for BStO’s new Tannhäuser. The production opens May 21, conducted by Kirill Petrenko.

Ludwig Spaenle, Bavaria’s busy Kultusminister, is pictured.

Photo © Jens Renner

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Chénier Due in Video-Stream

Monday, March 13th, 2017

Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann in Andrea Chénier in Munich

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 13, 2017

MUNICH — Philipp Stölzl’s new and relatively sane production of Andrea Chénier will be video-streamed Saturday by Bavarian State Opera as part of a regular free service.

— when: 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT), March 18, 2017
— where: https://www.staatsoper.de/tv.html

Omer Meir Wellber brings his inimitable visceral leadership to Giordano’s verismo score. Anja Harteros and Luca Salsi make role debuts as Maddalena di Coigny and Carlo Gérard, while Jonas Kaufmann sings the conflicted poet.

At yesterday’s premiere, Harteros’ Mediterranean temperament and absorbing, opulent tones recalled the work of Renata Tebaldi.

Photo © Wilfried Hösl

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Mahler 10 from Nézet-Séguin

Thursday, March 9th, 2017

Veronika Eberle rehearsing Berg in the Herkulessaal

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 9, 2017

MUNICH — Making a taut and impassioned case for Mahler’s Tenth Symphony (1910) here at the Herkulessaal Feb. 17, Yannick Nézet-Séguin still rather confirmed Leonard Bernstein’s dictum that the composer “had said it all in the Ninth.” Mahler’s inspiration sustained itself, as tidily executed by the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, until after the second group of mortifying drum strokes, about a third the way through the 25-minute Finale. Then the emptiness he sought to convey played out only too literally: ashen recollections of earlier material, mostly from the opening movement, really running on empty. This was Cooke III; we know the composer’s substance in the Finale, not what he might ultimately have achieved with its form. The evening began with Berg’s Violin Concerto, Dem Andenken eines Engels, courtesy of Veronika Eberle (pictured in rehearsal). Sadly the partnership with the visiting Canadian yielded only a tepid traversal of this wondrous 1935 score, for all the beauty of her tone and obvious commitment. Both works were livestreamed and remain, for now, accessible online. Nézet-Séguin recorded the symphony in Montreal in 2014 with his Orchestre Métropolitain.

Photo © Bayerischer Rundfunk

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Staatsoper Objects to Report

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

Parkett section of the National Theater in Munich

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 7, 2017

MUNICH — Without citing an error, Bavarian State Opera claimed last month that the report here about its handicapping of online ticket buyers contains “false statements” but at the same time said it would “leave it as it is.”

The report, based on research by people using two standard browsers and separate Internet connections as well as on written and informal input from BStO itself, was forwarded to the opera company when published, on Feb. 22, with an invitation to make corrections. BStO’s claim was in turn followed by a request “to be specific about any inaccuracy.”

Bavarian State Opera confirmed the handicapping in January. An artificial delay is “activated” when events in heavy demand go on sale, postponing the moment the online buyer “gets access” (while in-person selling proceeds).

The handicapping has never been announced by the company but has been deviously justified. It is misleading in its screens, wastes customers’ time, and for seats below €100 virtually guarantees failure. Out-of-town buyers are especially hurt, being most dependent on this route to tickets. BStO’s online box office is robustly powered by CTS Eventim.

Photo © Wilfried Hösl

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