The New York Philharmonic’s season was to have begun with a “gala” concert featuring the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, a longtime friend and favorite of the Philharmonic’s director, Kurt Masur. But then came September 11, and, as so many have been saying, “everything changed.” The Philharmonic instead presented a performance of the Brahms Requiem, a Masur specialty, and well-suited to the occasion. Large flags have been hanging outside all the Lincoln Center buildings. The mood has been patriotic, somber, slightly tense, appreciative—indeed, different.
The next concert was a subscription concert, featuring the Rückert Lieder of Mahler and the Franck Symphony. In front of the podium was a microphone, and when Masur stepped up to it, he said, “I’m sorry to have to talk to you again” (given that he had addressed the audience before the Requiem performance). Two days before this subscription concert, the violinist Isaac Stern—a beloved figure in the music world, and in New York especially—had died. Masur paid tribute to him, recounting a fascinating story. In 1970, Stern and Masur were to have performed together—the Beethoven concerto—in Rio de Janeiro. But Stern said to him, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized you were German, and I have pledged not to perform with a German. I’m sorry.” Ten years later, however, Stern had a change of heart, ringing up Masur and asking, “Would you play the Beethoven with me?” This touched Masur deeply, and he of course quickly agreed. Stern’s death, said Masur, left “a painful, empty place” inside him, and he “dedicated” the evening’s concert to Stern, asking, first, for a moment of silence.
The program began with a work by the contemporary Japanese composer Somei Satoh, the Kisetsu for Orchestra, one of the many pieces commissioned by the Philharmonic in 1999 for the coming millennium. Masur is interested in things Japanese; it would be appropriate to mention in this context that his wife, in fact, is Japanese. The Satoh piece is minimalist, bleak, and hopeless (Happy 2000!). It is a moonscape, consisting of murmurings and pained cries from the strings, occasionally interrupted by a gong. It was well-paced, well-judged, and well-served by Masur. Yet the stark fear and anxiety expressed by the piece borders on the (unintentionally) comical—Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is a chirpy madrigal by comparison.
The soloist in the Mahler was to have been the Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, but she was indisposed. In her place was an American mezzo, Susanne Mentzer, who has been shining in recent seasons in both opera and song. The Rückert Lieder are one of the most profound and touching song cycles in the repertory, and the young woman handled it admirably. She has a rich, distinctive voice that you may not call pretty or beautiful, but that is undeniably effective. It has a bottled sound to it. In the song “Liebst du um Schönheit,” Mentzer was robust and a little operatic, which isn’t necessarily wrong. The wind players, sadly, were sub-par, with sloppy onsets and weak tones. Mentzer is perhaps especially well-suited to “Um Mitternacht,” as she does indeed have a midnight voice, with that dark quality, and a throb. Masur’s accompaniment, however, was lacking in character, and there were some truly ugly sounds coming from the French horns. Mentzer’s final A, on the syllable “nacht,” was drowned out, which was a shame.
The greatest, most immortal of the Rückert songs is the final one, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” and Mentzer sang it with both sensitivity and a welcome straightforwardness. She is a singer of granite control and solid musical instincts. She gave the piece a little more drama than it might have, and a little less detachment than is ideal—this was a rather earthly “Ich bin.” But it convinced. I might mention that it would have been nice to hear the closing “t” sound on the final word, “Lied.”
For the Franck Symphony, Kurt Masur is just the right man, because he is expert at reining in blowzy, Romantic pieces. Sure enough, he applied his usual Classical discipline to the Franck, the briskness or compactness that his critics despise. The orchestra was soaring, tight (in the good sense —not loose), and moving. In the wrong hands, this piece is flabby, but in Masur’s it was rigorous and rather impressive. Many years ago, there was an LP with the delightful title “Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music.” The album contained showpieces, essentially. Well, Masur might be called a conductor of big, sprawling, slightly unwieldy Romantic pieces for those who aren’t so sure about big, sprawling, slightly unwieldy Romantic pieces—Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, for example. On this night, never had Franck sounded more like Beethoven, but he was none the worse for it.
The present season is Masur’s last with the Philharmonic. How different the Franck Symphony under his successor, Lorin Maazel, would be! With his tendency to fuss and deaden, he could very well bring out the worst in the piece. Masur, however, did with it about as much as a conductor can —and still that was barely enough.
Among the Metropolitan Opera’s first offerings was Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Unfortunately, however, the Met’s director, James Levine, was not in the pit—he is an especially fine conductor of this opera, as evidenced by his recording for Deutsche Grammophon, boasting the lineup of Mirella Freni, Anne Sophie von Otter, Neil Shicoff, and Thomas Allen. Leading the Met performance was Vladimir Jurowski, born in Moscow, raised in Germany, and the new director of the Glyndebourne Festival. He gave a less than favorable impression, with blunt, dull, indifferent conducting, and a shaky hand on the wheel. In the first act in particular, entrances were uncertain, and coordination between stage and pit—and even within the pit—was wanting. Worse, Tchaikovsky’s splendid Act I chorus was without joy, that excited joy it ought to have. It was hard to believe that this chorus could be rendered so dully. At certain points, one wondered whether the performance had been rehearsed.
But things got much better, Jurowski settled down, and the evening finished strong, which is certainly preferable to the opposite trajectory. A Norwegian soprano with the lovely name of Solveig Kringelborn was a worthy Tatiana. She has a good voice, which she deploys well, and she is exceptionally smart about dynamics—for instance, her soft singing is superb. She keeps the air moving through her sound, making it alive and interesting, and allowing a phrase to be properly completed. She acted the part well too, portraying the hesitancy, giddiness, anguish, and composure of this most endearing character. Tatiana’s sister, Olga, was sung by the Swedish mezzo Katarina Karnéus, who was solid and tasteful.
The principal men were Marcello Giordani and Thomas Hampson. Giordani, who makes a very Italianate Lenski, had a bad start, with lots of bumps, scratches, and other imperfections. He has no lower register to speak of. But, like the conductor and the performance itself, he rebounded, in more than enough time for his big aria, which, though a little rough, was respectable, heartfelt, and sincere. The Italianate ring in his upper register is most effective. As for Hampson, he is a wonderful Onegin, suave, musical, intelligent, and always, it seems, well-prepared. The man is an actor, too, capable of defining a scene or a mood merely with his walk, or his posture. He knows that Onegin is not a bad man, but more like a pitiable fool.
Lesser parts should not go ignored, as they can make or break an operatic performance—they can certainly enhance or detract from one. The Met’s hires were first-rate, with the veteran Russian mezzo-soprano Irina Bogatcheva, now a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, making a memorable Filippyevna (Tatiana’s nurse). Another veteran, the British bass Robert Lloyd, stopped the show—quite literally —with Prince Gremin’s statement, late in the opera. Such a dignified, rich-voiced presence, Lloyd.
Extra-musical elements deserve mention too, in part because they are perhaps not so much extra-musical as complementary. The sets, for example, were beautiful, simple, and imaginative. They were also quite spare, with some scenes containing nothing at all except high white walls. The stage direction, too, was notable—as when Onegin went through the stages of being dressed after killing Lenski in their duel. All in all, a mixed but satisfying night in the opera house, with a work whose appeal doesn’t, probably cannot, stale.
Two nights later, the Met offered a Mozart lineup that was about as strong as can be fielded today, for Idomeneo. Back in the pit was Levine, an excellent start. And then there were Dawn Upshaw (soprano), Carol Vaness (another soprano), Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), and Plácido Domingo (tenor—Helden, lyric, and otherwise). Domingo, of course, was the king, Idomeneo, and this is one of the greatest, most rewarding roles in the tenor repertory. It is certainly Mozart’s grandest role for tenor, a vocal range that he did not always put centerstage. Luciano Pavarotti, several seasons ago, conquered the part, proving—though no proof should have been necessary—that he is a musician of considerable intelligence and depth, not merely a vocal phenomenon who wows ’em in soccer stadiums.
Domingo, too, is an intelligent and deep singer, and his grasp of the role was sure. Not only is he a signal Otello, Chénier, Siegfried, and Parsifal, but he also can be a compelling Mozartean and even Handelian. I have remarked in these pages before that Domingo has an astonishing ability to defy age, and that ability becomes yet more astonishing with every passing year. His singing in the Mozart was smooth, kingly, and knowing. His phrasing was creamy—Domingo-esque—yet Classical. Odd to say, but he seems a better singer now than he was twenty years ago, not only in interpretive wisdom, but in raw vocal production. He performed virtually without effort. Occasionally he was pinched in the upper and upper-middle registers, but this hardly mattered. Domingo is an Idomeneo whom Mozart would applaud.
Dawn Upshaw, singing Ilia, was a success—clear, lively, convincing. Her recitatives were both musical and dramatic, not mere filler. The care she took with them, and the naturalness she had about them, were exemplary. Her soprano is full-bodied and light at the same time (a full light body, if you will). She has always been a fine Mozartean, as she happened to prove last season at the Met, in Cosí fan tutte. Upshaw tends to behave herself in Mozart, shedding the cutesiness and interpretive blips that mark and mar some of her work in the song literature. Susan Graham was the young prince, Idamante, and in the last few years she has become a Most Valuable Player of the operatic world. Like Susanne Mentzer (with whom she is sometimes confused), she is an American mezzo of great versatility and reliability. Her singing of Idamante was strong and purposeful. She had a few worrisome moments at the top of her range, but in general she was rock-solid, as has come to be expected.
Carol Vaness is by now a veteran, and has been associated with Mozart’s music all her career. Over the years, she has learned a lot, about many aspects of the voice and of opera, and it all showed in her singing of Elettra. Her technique is quite secure. She did not go for beauty of sound, for this is not the role for that. It is a role for letting it all hang out, vocally and dramatically. Elettra, after all, is a cousin of Strauss’s Elektra, making for a time of some abandon. Vaness’s characterization was terrific, as her princess—losing out to the sweet Ilia—was stylish, conniving, and pathetic. The aria “O smania! O furie!”—a mini-mad scene—was both passionately and accurately done.
As for the maestro, he exercised his usual command over the stage, pit, and score. The opera was by and large suffused with majesty, high purpose, and, where called for, romantic tenderness. The choruses were all elegant and apt. The quartet in Act II, featuring the four principals, was especially satisfying. Disturbingly, though, several sections of the opera were too slow, dragging, particularly a couple of Ilia’s arias. Much of the last act was hampered by slowness, verging on the soporific. It is not like Levine to lose focus or energy—but his was nevertheless an Idomeneo to salute.
The second week of October had the Philharmonic giving an exceptionally appetizing program: a Mozart concerto with Alicia de Larrocha, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, both presided over by the guest conductor, André Previn. Thus did each musician play to his strength, or certainly to a major one.
The concerto was that in D major, K. 537, nicknamed the “Coronation.” De Larrocha is an instantly recognizable pianist, not least in Mozart: the rhythm is arresting; the scales and other passagework are sort of detached, chubby, without much legato, but definitely in balance, every note making sense in relation to the others. De Larrocha’s playing is often “percussive,” to put it in a negative way, or “sharply delineated,” to put it in a more favorable one. The trills, too, are utterly distinctive—with lots of air between the notes—and the octaves are solid and bracing. Here is a pianist with many signatures.
She is almost eighty now, the stately, modest queen of the world’s pianists. Her performance was rather tired, or routine. Yet the second movement (marked by a publisher “Larghetto”) was beautifully and lovingly shaped: it was playful and almost peasant-like, but also regal and dignified. The pianist contributed some really crystalline passages, to go with some thudding ones. The entire movement reaffirmed the specialness of de Larrocha.
And the Rachmaninoff Second reaffirmed that André Previn is one of the great Romantic conductors in the world today, when he is on, as he was this night. His engagement with the score was passionate and intelligent, both natural and learned. With his baton, Previn breathed magnificently all the way through, a master phraser. The Philharmonic strings, particularly in their unison playing, were splendid. The horns were terrific. In the famous, beloved slow movement, Previn was perhaps slower than was absolutely wise, but he kept breathing, and the concluding Allegro vivace was full of vigor, lushness, and glory. Previn is one of the greatest conductors of Elgar ever (along with the Three Bs of the British baton: Beecham, Boult, and Barbirolli); his way with Rachmaninoff is outstanding, too.