MEMETERIA by Thomas May

September 10, 2016 • 11:00 am Comments Off on New Season, New Intendant at Luzerner Theater

New Season, New Intendant at Luzerner Theater

Luzerner Theater transformed into a space inspired by Shakespeare’s Globe: iamge by David Röthlisberger

Lucerne Festival isn’t the only arts organization to have introduced major leadership changes this year: down the Bahnhofstrasse from the KKL and the train station, the 39-year-old Peter von Benedikt has just begun his tenure as new Intendant of the Luzerner Theater (aka Stadttheater Luzern).

The original 19th-century institution opened in 1839 with (what else?) Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell. The Luzerner Theater now ranks as the oldest still-operating repertory theaterin Switzerland (offering a varied season of opera, ballet, plays, etc.).

After being gutted by a fire in 1924, the theater reopened in 1929; it has been renovated since — including in a recent rethink for von Benedikt’s first season. Among his plans are experimentation with new spaces, new reconfigurations of the theater.

The native Kölner von Benedikt arrives with impressive credentials and has a notable passion for opera. He was part of the directing team for the world premiere of Péter Eötvös’ operatic treatment of Angels in America, and in 2011 he won the Deutscher Theaterpreis Der Faust as best director in the music theater category for his staging of Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960.

Nono was von Benedikt’s choice as well to open his first season with a new production of the Italian composer’s Prometeo: A Tragedy of Listening from 1984 — talk about challenging your audience!

The choice is also unusual in terms of the relatively small space (400-plus seats) for a work that’s encountered (when it is encountered live) mostly in concert halls. For this production von Benedikt had the theater reorganized to mimic the multi-level Globe theater of Shakespeare’s day — and to encourage an intimate, “egalitarian” experience of Nono’s remarkable, one-of-a-kind music theater.

A Summer of Changes in Lucerne

This coming weekend brings the close of the Summer Festival in Lucerne. Along with the usual Stendhal Syndrome-inducing concentration of great artists and great art, the 2016 edition introduced two major changes — if not exactly paradigm shifts — to Lucerne Festival’s organization and overall character: the inauguration of Riccardo Chailly as new Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, succeeding the late Claudio Abbado, and, in the wake of Pierre Boulez’s death, the first Lucerne Festival Academy under new leadership, with Wolgang Rihm as Artistic Director and Matthias Pintscher as Principal Conductor.

Michael Cooper reports in The New York Times on how the Lucerne Festival is “reinventing itself”:

But behind the scenes, the Lucerne Festival, an increasingly important part of the classical music ecosystem, was being forced to reinvent itself. Within the past couple of years, the festival has lost not one, but both of its guiding artistic lights: Mr. Abbado died in 2014 at 80, and Mr. Boulez this year at 90. Their losses pose a challenge at a moment when Europe’s leading summer festivals hotly compete for artists, audiences and prestige.

Cooper also wrote about the 2016 Lucerne Festival theme of women in music, interviewing four of the eleven female conductors who appeared on the podium there this summer: Barbara Hannigan, Marin Alsop, Susanne Mälkki, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

And here’s a European perspective from one of the German-speaking world’s major music critics, Christian Wildhagen (who wrote his dissertation on Mahler 8, the work with which Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra opened the festival last month):

Niemand sei «in der Gewalt seelenvollster, rauschendster, visionärster Musik dem Himmel näher getragen worden» als Mahler, schwärmte Ernst Bloch in seinem Buch «Geist der Utopie». Eine Aufführung der 8.Sinfonie wäre indes nicht komplett, wenn auf diesem Weg nicht auch ein paar Unzulänglichkeiten Ereignis würden.

Filed under: conductors, Lucerne Festival, music news

September 6, 2016 • 7:17 pm Comments Off on Cells of Life

Cells of Life

Charles Jencks’s incandescent mounds at Jupiter Artland.

Filed under: art, photography

September 5, 2016 • 4:48 am 1

Richard III, Rock Star

I was very fortunate finally to have a chance to catch up with Thomas Ostermeier’s acclaimed production of Richard III the Schaubühne — not in Berlin, but at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Much has been made of Ostermeier’s highly original direction as a saturated, intensified portrait — a Machiavellian mirror — of the title anti-hero. That of course has been facilitated by the exciting, controversial translation/adaptation/condensation of the German text prepared by company dramaturg Marius von Mayenburg.

One of the most brilliantly effective choices — apparently a spontaneous decision arrived at during the course of rehearsal, according to Ostermeier — was to streamline the litany of climactic battles into a sequence of Richard fighting with himself, up to his inglorious demise.

This portrait approach was also made possible only through the weird, cultish charisma and electrifying stage presence of Lars Eidinger as a maniac-depressively embittered Richard. Not an “evil” character, according to Ostermeier, so much as one who makes the workings of power and its aggrandizement theatrically transparent, naked.

“The play is not about evil as such,” says Ostermeier, “but about participation in power, the exclusion of an outsider and the manipulation of others’ antipathies. In this respect it does have significant political implications.”

Eidinger’s matchless account requires intense physical acting, stamina, singing, and clownish, stand-up improv with the audience — the humor was particularly well-pointed, not a cop out (with a delightful exchange accusing a prematurely exiting patron of being rude when he claimed he was heading “to the toilet”).

But that’s not to shortchange the contributions of the rest of a stupendous ensemble cast. Percussionist Nils Ostendorf contributed an excellent, live-wire score, which interpolated some fascinating touches (like an intensely repeated loop that segued in and out of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”).

Filed under: directors, Schaubühne, Shakespeare

September 4, 2016 • 1:36 pm Comments Off on Der Freischütz

Der Freischütz

Filed under: photography

September 3, 2016 • 1:46 am Comments Off on The Legend of Sawney Bean

The Legend of Sawney Bean

sawney-bean

The things one learns while traveling…. This made for some good tale-spinning while visiting Edinburgh:

The story of Sawney Bean is one of the most gruesome Scottish legends, the plot of which would not look out of place in any modern horror/slasher movie. Evidence suggests the tale dates to the early 18th century.

more on the gruesome legend of the Bean clan

Bonus scare:

Filed under: miscellaneous, travel

September 2, 2016 • 2:53 am Comments Off on Adventures with the Seattle Symphony

Adventures with the Seattle Symphony

The September 2016 issue of Gramophone is out and contains my feature on innovations at the Seattle Symphony in the era of Ludovic Morlot.

Filed under: Gramophone, Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony

September 1, 2016 • 2:39 am Comments Off on Olga Neuwirth’s New Percussion Concerto for Lucerne Festival

Olga Neuwirth’s New Percussion Concerto for Lucerne Festival

Last weekend at Lucerne Festival brought the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s latest major orchestral work: a percussion concerto titled Trurliade – Zone Zero (which references one of the Austrian composer’s sources of inspiration, the sci fi master Stanisław Lem). The soloist was Victor Hanna, and Matthias Pintscher conducted the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy.

Trurliade was the eighth in the ongoing Roche Commissions series, which picks from the leading composers at work today to commission a new orchestral work every two years, which is then premiered at Lucerne Festival. Neuwirth has also been serving as this year’s composer-in-residence at the Festival, which is focusing on the theme of women in music.

Neuwirth is a genuinely fascinating, one-of-a-kind composer who has created especially striking works of music theater (including collaborations with fellow Austrian and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, an operatic treatment of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and a “musicstallation” in homage to Herman Melville, among others).

In her Neue Zürcher Zeitung review, Michelle Ziegler writes:

Trotz der plastischen Anlage geht Neuwirth mit den Bezügen und Zitaten in ihrer «Trurliade – Zone Zero» ungemein feinsinnig um. Sie lässt die Zahnräder der Orchestermaschinerie zwar wie geschmiert laufen, verliert sich aber nie in einem vorhersehbaren Trott. Sie fügt Geräusche nicht zur Show ein, sondern findet im Klang der Schrottobjekte einen poetischen Zauber. Damit hat die Komponistinfür ihre zweite Residenz beim Lucerne Festival ein wunderbar persönliches, zugleich tiefsinniges und erfrischendes Werk geschaffen.

The composer has written an intriguing program note introducing her new concerto:

This is why the title of the piece refers to Stanisław Lem’s Trurl’s Machine. With his warning against unfreedom, Lem in turn alludes to George Orwell’s novel 1984. In Lem’s story the machine designed by Trurl insists on its mindless and inflexible assertion: “Two plus two is seven.” In Orwell’s book the apparatus of power demands obedience through re-education, propaganda lies, and surveillance by illogically claiming that “two plus two is five” – until the individual complies with the stipulations of the regime and gives up thinking. The regime “teaches” renegades and dissidents to love Big Brother by using cruel methods of torture. The protagonist, already demoralized and worn down mentally and physically through continual re-education measures, nevertheless does not give up the fight and becomes dangerous to the Party when he dares to express (mathematical) facts: “Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two is four.” And he does so even though, according to Orwell, the loudspeakers keep demanding over and over again that everyone accept whatever Big Brother defines as true, including that two and two is five. This phrase represents the obedience required by an ideology in contrast to rational facts and truth.

Filed under: commissions, Lucerne Festival, Olga Neuwirth

August 30, 2016 • 2:40 am Comments Off on End of the Runnicles Era

End of the Runnicles Era

The conductor Donald Runnicles concluded his tenure with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on the last day of the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival with a performance of Schoenberg’s epic Gurre-Lieder at Usher Hall.

The gargantuan forces needed bring to mind the festival atmosphere Mahler’s Eighth Symphony also evokes. Here’s a sampling of the reviews:

And so this concert summed up the kind of playing that he and this orchestra have developed together – a rich glow at the heart of the strings and a capacity to turn on a dime and power up almighty sounds.

–Kate Molleson in The Guardian

Runnicles is particularly well known for his interpretations of the core Austro-German Romantic repertoire, so Gurrelieder plays to his strengths. Under his baton Schoenberg’s ripe score yields up its influences. There is Wagner in the love music, of course, but also Bruckner in the solemnity of the Wood-Dove, Beethoven in the nature-painting and, of course, Mahler in the scale and structure. That scale could be pretty overpowering at times, and not just in the final, overwhelming greeting to the sun that ends the work. The sweep and surge of the love music was intoxicating, as was the wall of brass and percussion that accompanied the chorus’ romping as the hellish riders. What was most striking, however, was the way Runnicles repeatedly brought out the delicacy of the orchestration.

–Simon Thompson for Seen and Heard International

[Schoenberg’s] mega-cantata Gurrelieder, was the vehicle chosen to whisk us off on such a glorious journey, driven by the massively-inflated forces of the BBC Scottish Synphony Orchestra, a male-dominated Edinburgh Festival Chorus, five soloists and speaker, all under the towering leadership of maestro Donald Runnicles, and formulated by a musical language gathering up the scraps of Wagner, colouring them with whole-tone harmonic treats from Debussy, sweeping up Mahler in its tracks before opening the gates to teasers of the world-changing Schoenberg-to-come.

–Ken Walton in The Scotsman

This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Friday 16 September at 7.30pm.

Filed under: conductors, Runnicles, Schoenberg

August 28, 2016 • 12:55 am Comments Off on Common Ground at Maxim Gorki

Common Ground at Maxim Gorki

Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater launched its season last night with a reprise of the acclaimed Yael Ronen production Common Ground.

Exploring with the aftermath of the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, it’s the kind of ensemble piece that Gorki has made a signature.

Reviewing n earlier version of the work-in-progress two years ago, critic Anne Peter noted:

Ronens Theater weiß es nie besser und hält sich nicht heraus. Sein Trumpf ist Selbstironie. Immer befragt es auch die eigene Perspektive, stößt sich und uns auf unsere eigenen Widersprüche, ohne dabei mit irgendeiner “richtigen” Haltung vor unserer Nase umherzuwedeln. Kaum der Rede wert, dass bei dieser vom Publikum ausgiebig bejubelten Premiere noch nicht alles wie am Schnürchen lief, mancher Satz verhaspelt wurde. In einer Zeit, in der Europa auseinanderdriftet und sich entsolidarisiert, populistischer Nationalismus vielerorts erschreckend hoch im Kurs steht und die Ukraine ganz konkret vor einer möglichen Teilung steht, beschert uns Yael Ronen einen brennend wichtigen Abend.

If anything, Common Ground is proving even more relevant for the Europe of 2016.

Filed under: Maxim Gorki Theater, theater

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