Andrew Patner: The View from Here

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'Katya Kabanova' -- beautiful sadness; recalling Soderstrom

Here is my Tuesday November 24 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday November 22, 2009, opening matinée performance of Leoš Janáček's Katya Kabanova by Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Karita Mattila (Katya, left) and Liora Grodnikaite (Varvara) perform in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Katya Kabanova at the Civic Opera House.  (John J. Kim/Sun-Times)

Sense of torch passing at Lyric's 'Katya Kabanova'

Late soprano Söderström advocated Janáček works

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Through December 12

The death Friday in Stockholm of the great Swedish soprano Elisabeth Söderström at age 82 cast a shadow and a sense of torch-passing toward Lyric Opera of Chicago's opening performance Sunday afternoon of Leoš Janáček's Katya Kabanova.

Along with Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, no one did more to introduce and cement the reputation of Janáček's dark, spiky, mature, and brilliant operas to the listening world than the enterprising and authoritative Söderström.

But it was a part of Söderström's makeup and appeal that she advocated these works with the hope that others would enter the Moravian composer's universe of folk melodies given a Modernist spin, with complex but captivating speech song of the Czech language, and doomed heroines and hard truths of love and societal norms.

The Metropolitan Opera has drawn great attention with its new production of Janáček's last opera, The House of the Dead, an adaptation from Dostoevsky. Lyric has given many of his other works and turns to another of his Russian-inspired stories, Katya Kabanova, for the first time in 23 seasons.  Written in 1921, when Janáček was 67, the opera's marriage of music, plot, and characterization in just under 100 minutes makes it a can't-miss presentation, almost regardless of how it is being handled in the opera house.

Fortunately, Lyric's production, first seen at the Met in 1991, is strong despite some ineffective directorial choices.  The singing is often spectacular, and German conductor Markus Stenz makes an excellent house début with the Janáček-friendly Lyric Orchestra.  Finnish soprano Karita Mattila is one of today's best singing actresses and while director Paula Williams (working with Jonathan Miller's production) does not always seem to know what to do with her in the title role, Mattila is incapable of giving less than 110 percent.  She never allows us to lose sympathy for the put-upon, emotionally starved provincial heroine of Alexander Ostrovsky’s Russian play The Storm.  In her second- and third-act monologues, you might be tempted to join Katya in the tragic arc of her life.

Mattila is at least matched by the American tenor Brandon Jovanovich in his Lyric début.  Too often the character of Boris, the Moscow wooer of the married Katya, is seen as a Pinkerton-like cad.  Jovanovich sees and sings him instead as a man squeezed in his own vice who truly loves Katya. Everything about his performance is a success.  Let's hear and see more of him.

English baritone Andrew Shore as Boris's uncle, the sadomasochistic merchant Dikoj, is almost frighteningly good.  While Canadian mezzo Judith Forst is a bit one-dimensional as Katya's awful mother-in-law Kabanicha, she has that one dimension of total callousness down cold.  American tenor Jason Collins, also debuting here, seems a bit misdirected as Katya's mother-crushed husband Tichon but has a nice voice. Another débutant, Hoosier tenor Garrett Sorenson, is absolutely winning as Kudrjáš, the lighthearted friend who courts Katya's foster sister, Varvara, Lithuanian mezzo Liora Grodnikaite, in a pleasant if perhaps too-girlish début.

Robert Israel's minimal sets and buttoned-up costumes are a perfect foil to Janáček's score and Stenz's careful handling of it, even if Williams does not always use the settings well or with much dramatic effect.  Somehow other issues fade away, though, and we are left after two hours (including one intermission) with only the power of this awfully sad story and this haunting, deathless music.

My (radio) guest tonight -- French-born pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Monday 23 November 2009 -- 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CST 

Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner

I talk with French-born and -trained, Los Angeles-based pianist  Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  Thibaudet was in town this month for performances of a signature work for him, the 1929-30 Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor Bernard Haitink.  You can read my Chicago Sun-Times review of that high-octane performance here. Although Thibaudet has been coming to Chicago throughout his professional career and although I have long been a fan, this was actually my first in-person interview with him.

On 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and streamed (free) on wfmt.com

and subsequently available at 

http://wfmt.com/criticalthinking

for free podcast/streaming.

See you on the radio!

Paul Lewis with the CSO -- enfin!

Here is my Saturday November 21 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday November 19, 2009, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with Paul Lewis, piano, and Christoph von Dohnányi, guest conductor.  The program repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Pianist Lewis shines in debut with CSO

From prodigy to mature artist

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

With no hype and even very little standard promotion, Liverpool-born Paul Lewis has emerged in recent years as one of the world's finest pianists.  At 37, he no longer should be judged as a "younger pianist" but simply as the great artist he is increasingly showing himself to be.

Two years ago, the shaggy-haired Lewis made his superb Chicago debut with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.  A year ago, he made his Orchestra Hall recital debut in a rich, challenging solo program.  And Thursday night, he at last played as soloist for the first time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

For those who have been following this thoughtful musician, whether live or on his many harmonia mundi label recordings, all expectations were confirmed by his playing of Mozart's A minor Concerto No. 12, K. 414. Lewis somehow marries intellectual insight with total technical command and a true soulfulness. For those new to this soft-spoken player who manages to be both a non-nonsense performer and one capable of transmitting joy and subtle humor in his interpretations, he must have been a revelation.

The K. 414 is a work filled with booby traps that only the most careful pianists can avoid.  There is an unusual back and forth between soloist and orchestra, a mixing of delicate and stirring passages, and a lightness that is deceptive in sounding easy to achieve.  Lewis navigated all of these -- and even managed to integrate his own blend of the two sets of cadenzas Mozart wrote for this 1782 work along with some of his own figurations -- as if the work were written just for him.  Audience and CSO musicians demanded several curtain calls.

Veteran German guest conductor Christoph von Dohnányi was backing Lewis every step of the way, breathing with him and shaping the reduced orchestra to match the pianist's take.  On his own, Dohnányi led a sobering -- though never dull -- performance of Bartók's 1939 Divertimento for String Orchestra, often seen, as its name indicates, as a light and joyful work.  Dohnányi, who was turning 10 when this work was written on the eve of World War II, and 15 when his own father was executed in 1945 for his role in the failed plot to kill Hitler, knows better.  It was good, too, to hear the CSO strings showing their best after the Berlin Philharmonic's famed sections played here on Monday night.

Dohnányi closed with the Schumann C Major Second Symphony, Op. 61, giving the 1845-46 Romantic work more structure than it probably has and as a result making it much more interesting and fulfilling to hear than it often is.

Berlin Philharmonic in Chicago: Once is never enough

Here is my Wednesday November 18 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Monday November 16, 2009, Orchestra Hall concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, principal conductor, in music of Wagner, Schoenberg, and Brahms.

Berlin Philharmonic in Chicago: Once is never enough

BY ANDREW PATNER

The Berlin Philharmonic has been one of the world’s greatest orchestras almost from its founding in 1882.  And since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago it has resumed its place as a national institution in a reunified city that is once again the sole German capital.

Unlike their Austrian counterparts at the Vienna Philharmonic, also a self-governing ensemble, the Berliners have based their membership on merit alone and not gender, color, or national origin.  And with an Italian, Claudio Abbado, and now a Brit, Sir Simon Rattle, as principal conductors over the past two decades, with healthy representation of women, and with the average age of players down to around 40, Berlin is truly a 21st -century international treasure.

What a shame then that Chicago has not had a chance to see and hear this sterling group in six years and that although they are touring with three programs that include all four Brahms symphonies, Monday night’s Symphony Center Presents Great Performance Series concert was their only local appearance.

That said, we might have had the best of the three programs.  Not only did it include the 1877 D Major Brahms Second but also a neglected masterwork with strong connections to the Brahmsian legacy -- Arnold Schoenberg’s revised version (1935) of his 1922 orchestration of the hypnotic 1906 First Chamber Symphony.  

For while Rattle is not always an inspiring conductor for either musicians or audiences, he has a special ability with 20th century and contemporary music and with connecting this repertoire to an elite European classical and romantic orchestra and its audience.  To hear the swirling 22-minute Schoenberg work, written less than 10 years after Brahms’s death, played with such conviction and with the rich and gleaming sound of the Berlin strings and its famously balanced wind and brass sections was a true joy and no sort of obligatory program filler.

The Brahms, too, was given a surprisingly clear and intelligent interpretation, particularly in its first three movements.  Rattle seemed to find an ability to create quiet moments and passages that reports said had eluded him in his Carnegie Hall dates in New York last week.  Only in the buoyant eruptions of the finale did he come close to indulging his tendency towards vulgar effects and contrasts.

Berlin has one of the deepest benches of any major orchestra with two or more acclaimed principals in many sections.  Still, the single performance meant that contemporary stars Emmanuel Pahud, flute, Albrecht Mayer, oboe, and Radek Baborák, horn, had the whole night off.   Co-principal horn Stefan Dohr was a special standout of those who did play.  The concert opener, Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, seemed a Rattle miscalculation, starting sloppily before coming together -- this despite a full hour of rehearsal earlier in the day.

Haitink, CSO: Bruckner 9 and Haydn Sinfonia concertante -- getting to the mountain top

Here is my Saturday November 14 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday night November 12, 2009 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with principal conductor Bernard Haitink and CSO principals as soloists.

Haydn, Bruckner magic on view as program develops

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday November 14 at 8 p.m.

Even the Chicago Symphony Orchestra catches its breath occasionally.  This fall has been a heavy roll of European touring, Mutimania, and four large-scale works these last two weeks under the painstaking care of principal conductor Bernard Haitink.  One had a sense that the CSO concert Thursday night at Symphony Center was more a preview of great performances to come than a fully realized achievement.

When Haitink has paired Haydn and Bruckner in the past, the two composers' visions played and even fed off of each other.  This week, the contrasts are greater, and each half of the program stands wholly alone.

Haydn's 1792 B-Flat Major Sinfonia concertante for four instrumental soloists has been a staple of orchestras eager to let their principal players shine.  The lineup of concertmaster Robert Chen, cellist John Sharp, oboe Eugene Izotov, and bassoon David McGill could hardly have been more promising: These are gifted players who love chamber-music style.  But Sharp was having an unusual off-night, and Chen, so often a master of the courtly style,  was too straightforward for Haydn's mischievousness.  Izotov and McGill spun magical threads from their double reeds, and Haitink and the orchestra were in true Haydnesque form.

Bruckner began his Ninth Symphony, in D minor in 1891 and it remained unfinished at his death at 72 five years later. Even without a final movement, it has been recognized since the 1930s as a summing up of his work and life.

The CSO's major conductors of recent decades -- Solti, Barenboim, and Boulez -- have all wrestled with this musical and spiritual testament; it's a tribute to conductors and composer that there's no single way to play this 70-minute score.  Still, whatever style is at work, there's a motor that has to hum in this piece from the earliest measures if a performance is to cohere fully.

Somehow, despite tremendous playing by this made-for-Bruckner orchestra  -- special nod to the glow of the four Wagner tubas played by members of the horn section -- and Haitink's ability to treat the most dramatic climaxes with an uncanny delicacy, that motor did not start whirring until the second-movement Scherzo. But I'll bet it will be purring full time tonight, Haitink's last CSO appearance until his much-awaited, three-week, 11-concert Beethoven Festival in June.

My (radio) guest tonight -- American conductor Erik Nielsen

Monday 09 November 2009 -- 10:45 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. CST (note later start time tonight)

Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner

I talk with Erik Nielsen, this year's recipient of a major, $25,000 career support grant for young conductors from the Chicago-based Solti Foundation U.S.  Iowa-born, Kansas-raised, Juilliard-trained in oboe and harp, Curtis-trained in conducting, Erik, 32, is in his second season as Kapellmeister of the Frankfurt Opera in Germany (and has also played harp with the Berlin Philharmonic).  He has worked closely with such conductors as James Levine and Bernard Haitink and received rave reviews from The New York Times when he stepped in for an ailing James Levine at Tanglewood last year to lead both Kurt Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahgonny and a program of two major works by Elliott Carter.  Insightful, articulate, and thoughtful, he seems an excellent choice by the Foundation.

On 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and streamed (free) on wfmt.com

and subsequently available at 

http://wfmt.com/criticalthinking

for free podcast/streaming.

See you on the radio!

CSO, Haitink, and Thibaudet: thrilling Ravel, Mendelssohn's 'Dream' in full

Here is my Saturday November 7 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Thursday November 5, 2009, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with principal conductor Bernard Haitink and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  Repeated Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday November 10 at 7:30 p.m.

 

Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet combines wild virtuosity with relaxed grace as Haitink leads CSO in complete Mendelssohn 'Deam'

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The dream times continue at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with a blissful three-man minuet of some of the world's greatest conductors making delicious music week after week.

Last month was music director designate Riccardo Muti's time and January programs will mark the upcoming 85th birthday of conductor emeritus Pierre Boulez.  The first half of November belongs to principal conductor Bernard Haitink and his unique fusion of refinement, passion, and preternatural sensitivity.

Next week's concerts hold more of Haitink's out of this world Bruckner and Haydn.  This week he ventures into other periods with Ravel and Mendelssohn.  Ravel's 1918 orchestration of his 1905 piano piece Alborada del gracioso ("Morning Song of the Buffoon") is an orchestral showpiece of longstanding.  But Haitink has no interest in the show side of pieces instead giving us the delicacy, subtlety, and even heart that defy Stravinsky's famous putdown of the French composer as a "Swiss watchmaker."  Principal bassoon David McGill offered the first of several extraordinary solos over the evening.  Although there are a number of fine players of his instrument, including his section colleagues, there's simply no other bassoonist who has his tone and line.

The soloist for the Ravel Left Hand Piano Concerto of 1929-30 was another unique instrumentalist: Jean-Yves Thibaudet has a way of combining an often wild virtuosity with an almost relaxed grace that sets him apart from many other performers of his generation.  From the first chords of this single movement work (commissioned by the wealthy Paul Wittgenstein after losing his right arm in the First World War), the Lyon-born, Los Angeles-based Thibaudet showed both a total command of the work and tremendous daring, power, and elegance.  Player and conductor were of one accord, with Haitink getting great support from principal trombone Jay Friedman in the jazz-inspired sections.  Permanent substitute contrabassoon Sue Nigro had the earth rumbling in the work's opening passages.  Thibaudet's thrilling performance was one to rank with those Robert Casadesus or Leon Fleisher.  Perhaps there will be an encore in subsequent performances.

The promoted half of the concert was the first CSO performance of Mendelssohn's complete Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opp. 21 and 61.  The 1826 Overture, a perfect work written when the composer was all of 17, has been a standard of two centuries and such sections of the rest of the score as the Wedding March took their place in popular culture when they were penned 17 years later.  While there are few conductors besides Haitink who could give this score its proper lightness and precision, I'm just not sure that an hour of this music, intended to accompany Shakespeare's play and with successful ballets set to it by George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, works as a stand-alone concert piece.  My guest compared the experience to eating a whole bowl of exquisite after-dinner mints.

But whatever the quantity, exquisite they were.  Guest flute Kersten McCall, principal of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, illuminated the overture and scherzo.  The girls of Emily Ellsworth's Anima -- Young Singers of Greater Chicago, were a wonderful chorus of fairies with young American soprano Erin Morley and mezzo Sasha Cooke their spirited leaders.  Sir Thomas Allen, the terrific British baritone, read brief excerpts of text culled from the play by the Juilliard's Ara Guzelimian.  Haitink gave each section its unique character from the moody nocturne to the protomodern funeral march and the braying dance of the clowns.

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 'Faust' 2.0 -- ups and downs but hot

Here is my Tuesday November 3 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Friday October 30, 2009, first performance by the second cast in Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Gounoud's Faust along with a note about the first cast.  There are two more more chances to see Faust: tonight/Tuesday and Saturday night November 7, both at 7:30 p.m.

 

Second cast of 'Faust' heats up the Civic Opera House

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Lyric Opera of Chicago has had a hit with its revival of audience-favorite Faust since its opening last month with rising Polish tenor Piotr Beczała, superstar bass René Pape, and thrilling soprano Ana María Martínez.

Company schedules often allow for a second cast, or at least several new singers, to step into an ongoing opera run, and young American-based singers Joseph Kaiser (above/left) and Kyle Ketelsen (below/right) are doing so for the last week of Faust as the title character and the devil Méphistophélès respectively. Although Kaiser seemed to be having some uncharacteristic opening-night jitters in his role début Friday, and Ketelsen's voice is not as large or as deep as Pape's, the two contributed to a performance that clicked more as a unity than opening night did. As more than one veteran Lyric patron observed to me, Friday night's was a "hot" performance.

As Marguerite, Martínez continues to hold the stage as singer and actress, and her duets and trios were always well-blended and convincing. Kaiser had some difficulty with his top on Friday but took to the role more securely in the last acts. Ketelsen, who will sing Mozart's Figaro in March at Lyric, moves beautifully and makes a devil of equal parts charm and dastardliness. It's a pleasure to watch these artists evolve over time. 

Much of the success here is due to the superb work of music director Sir Andrew Davis and the Lyric Orchestra in the pit.  The orchestra drives and defines this production with cues and atmospheres of humor, wistfulness, betrayal, damnation, and salvation -- each in perfect measure and in a tightly woven whole.

Mezzo soprano Jane Bunnell's comic Marthe seemed better integrated into the show this time around, and baritone Lucas Meachem's morally rigid Valentin is still stirring. But it's the whole here that is especially appealing and not just several parts.

Note: I heard from several readers about my comments on Beczała's opening-night performance.  Half agreed with me that he was just not quite where his performances elsewhere have shown he can go, and the other half disagreed, finding him close to perfection.  

Critics come to a performance with pairs of ears and eyes not substantially different from many others in the house.  We do our best to describe honestly and fairly what we hear and see, and are aware that perspectives and performances vary, and that our words can sometimes sting.

Having been wowed by Beczała in Dvořák's Rusalka in Salzburg last year, I wanted to hear him a second time in this production, but my schedule did not allow it. I very much look forward to his next appearances at Lyric.

My (radio) guest tonight -- conductor Michael Morgan

Monday 02 November 2009 -- 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CST

Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner

I talk with Michael Morgan, marking 20 seasons as music director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony.  The former longtime assistant conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim is in town to conduct the Chicago Sinfonietta tonight.  Michael is a candidate to succeed the Sinfonietta's founding music director Paul Freeman who is retiring at the end of this season.

on 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and streamed (free) on wfmt.com

and subsequently available at 

http://wfmt.com/criticalthinking

for free podcast/streaming.

See you on the radio!