MEMETERIA by Thomas May

July 5, 2019 • 12:15 am Comments Off on Martin Fischer-Dieskau on the Art and Hard Work of a Misunderstood Profession

Martin Fischer-Dieskau on the Art and Hard Work of a Misunderstood Profession

Martin Fischer-Dieskau

I had a chance to speak with the conductor Martin Fischer-Dieskau, who takes a critical look at the hubris and mystification surrounding his profession:

For Martin Fischer-Dieskau, the two-year period since his last engagement in the USA feels like a remarkably long gap. The peripatetic maestro loves interacting with musicians and audiences around the world, so he’s excited by the prospect of returning to the New World to helm an all-Berlioz program at the Round Top Music Festival in Texas on 13 July.

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Filed under: Berlioz, conductors

July 4, 2019 • 12:01 am Comments Off on Happy July 4th

Happy July 4th

Forget about the narcissist in chief and enjoy the spirit of independence!

Filed under: holiday

July 1, 2019 • 9:57 am 1

More Than a Pretty “Song to the Moon”: Rusalka as a Dark Parable

Rusalka-Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Rusalka and Kristinn Sigmundsson as Vodník the Water Goblin in Dvořák’s-credit-Cory Weaver

Rachel Willis-Sørensen (Rusalka) and Kristinn Sigmundsson (Vodník the Water Goblin); photo (c) Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

David McVicar and San Francisco Opera have been a winning combination in recent seasons. Here’s another to add to the list along with Meistersinger and Les Troyens: the company’s staging of Rusalka in June. My review for Musical America (with another on Carmen and Orlando to follow):

SAN FRANCISCO — After he returned from his sojourn in the New World, Dvořák ceased writing symphonies and turned for inspiration to Czech legend and folklore: first, in a brilliant quartet of symphonic poems — still too infrequently programmed — and then in a pair of operas.

It’s not surprising that Rusalka, the second of these, has found its place in the international repertoire as the most popular of Dvořák’s ten stage works. Along with offering a poetic variant on a universally resonant archetype (the folktale of the mermaid), Rusalka fuses Dvořák’s disparate musical influences into a versatile musical language ideally primed for narrative effectiveness.

That said, Rusalka, which premiered in 1901, suffers from some basic dramaturgical weaknesses as well as stretches of second-rate musical inspiration. But the production presented by San Francisco Opera — only the second time Rusalka has been staged by the company — swept these shortcomings aside to reveal a richly layered and fully engaging work…

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Filed under: Antonín Dvořák, directors, review, San Francisco Opera

June 27, 2019 • 10:07 am Comments Off on John Luther Adams: Become Desert

John Luther Adams: Become Desert

Become Desert by John Luther Adams — one of his most spellbinding and innovative compositions — has just been released. Here’s my review from the world premiere by Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot last year.

It’s a rare concert when a major work of Beethoven gets upstaged. Rarer still when the music responsible for the upstaging is brand new…

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Filed under: John Luther Adams, Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony

June 25, 2019 • 11:42 pm Comments Off on Ludovic Morlot Takes Leave of the Seattle Symphony (For Now)

Ludovic Morlot Takes Leave of the Seattle Symphony (For Now)

Ludovic Morlot at his farewell Seattle Symphony concert; photo (c) Brandon Patoc

A look at Ludovic Morlot’s Seattle Symphony legacy:

SEATTLE — With the elegiac strains of the Mondscheinmusik interlude from Richard Strauss’s Capriccio as an encore, Ludovic Morlot brought his final program as music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra to an end over the weekend. Stepping back to let the spotlight fall on principal horn Jeffrey Fair during his incandescent solo was a characteristically generous touch. It reminded me of the moment at the end of his opening night concert in 2011, when Morlot descended the podium to join the violin section during Boléro — music making as a shared undertaking among equals.

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Filed under: Ludovic Morlot, review, Seattle Symphony

June 23, 2019 • 6:20 pm Comments Off on Happy Midsummer Eve

Happy Midsummer Eve

Filed under: holiday, Mendelssohn, Shakespeare

June 22, 2019 • 12:53 am Comments Off on Ludo’s Farewell Concert

Ludo’s Farewell Concert

Strauss & Dvorak Conducting It’s already here: this weekend Ludovic Morlot is leading his final performances as music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The program is characteristically enticing and original: Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde followed by a suite from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (fashioned in 1983 by Marius Constant) and the Nocturnes, and a genuine rarity: Leoš Janáček’s cantata The Eternal Gospel, written on the eve of the First World War.

I’ll be putting together some thoughts on the significance of the Morlot era in Seattle soon. In the meantime, it will be a bittersweet occasion tonight, but with the consoling thought that Ludo should be back here with some frequency thanks to his new title as Conductor Emeritus.

Filed under: Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony

June 21, 2019 • 10:01 pm Comments Off on Artistry and Humanity at the 2019 Concours Musical International de Montréal: Violin Edition

Artistry and Humanity at the 2019 Concours Musical International de Montréal: Violin Edition

My report on the 2019 Concours Musical International de Montréal:

The 2019 edition of the Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM), devoted this year to the violin, started off with added pressure – for the organisers, that is. Because of the convergence of several of the most high-profile violin tournaments elsewhere this spring – from Auckland to Augsburg, from Sendai to Brussels – the recently completed CMIM also had to compete with the competitions.

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Filed under: competitions, music news, violinists

June 20, 2019 • 8:53 am Comments Off on Anthony Davis’s New Opera The Central Park Five

Anthony Davis’s New Opera The Central Park Five

Cedric Berry as Yusef Salaam, Orson Van Gay as Raymond Santana, Derrell Acon as Antron McCray, Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson, and Nathan Granner as Khorey Wise image (c) Keith Ian Polakoff

I was privileged to have the opportunity to review the remarkable Anthony Davis’s new opera on an urgently relevant subject. The Central Park Five opened this past weekend at Long Beach Opera and will again be presented this Saturday and Sunday.

SAN PEDRO — “Now, I am awake,” the protagonists of The Central Park Five sing collectively in the Prologue. Projected headline images telescope the timeline: these are the five men of color who were accused in 1989, while still only teenagers, of the vicious beating and rape of a white woman who had gone out for a jog in Central Park…

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Filed under: American opera, Anthony Davis, Long Beach Opera, Musical America, review

June 19, 2019 • 1:58 am Comments Off on Europa: Mythos und Vision

Europa: Mythos und Vision

D9aLlu3W4AAZzbv Here’s the program book for the celebration this evening at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin of the 50th anniversary of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (my contribution starts on p. 42).