Andrew Patner: The View from Here

Evgeny Kissin in recital: again among the greats -- My Sun-Times review

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Monday April 29, 2013

Evgeny Kissin once again proves he’s an heir to keyboard greats

BY ANDREW PATNER

In some ways, what Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin is doing at 41 is more astonishing than what he was sharing with a jaw-dropping world as a 12-year-old and teenager in the 1980s.

He was a prodigy, without question, whose débuts in concert and recital around the world and live recordings were events. But Kissin has not only continued to play with formidable technique and intelligence as an adult, he has restored the idea of the pianist as a star, and as a star based on actual playing, not on glitz, flash, hype, or hair gel, concepts apparently wholly alien to him.

He plays whatever he wants and wherever he wants, with much of his schedule announced through 2016. And he wants to play the great programs in the tradition of his fellow Russians and Russian émigrés and to play them in concert halls for focused fans. He is an ambassador for something seen as old -- unamplified Western art music played live and with seriousness -- that in his case becomes new for each cycle of listeners. Parents and grandparents with young children in tow were in abundance Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall. There was no sense of duty in the air, whether on the part of the charges or their minders. Just keen focus and joy.

Two things stood out Sunday in a program the pianist is touring all season and will bring Friday to New York’s Carnegie Hall. The first was his traversal in the first half of Beethoven’s last of 32 piano sonatas, the C minor, Op. 111 of 1821-22. This is a work that perhaps more than any other requires the highest physical and intellectual skills in tandem, the province of a select echelon of probing artists such as Brendel, Kempff, Arrau, Richard Goode, and Stephen Kovacevich, and not necessarily those identified more as showpiece virtuosos.

Kissin, at least for these 25 minutes, joined their ranks. He saw not only each of the two unique movements whole but the connections between them, too; gave each of the contrasting variations in the second movement its technical due yet also made their connections seamless. Because you never had a moment’s doubt that this summary work was going to flow fully and unchecked, you could actually take time to watch Kissin’s choices in fingering, hand coordination, and pedaling -- none for show, but all good to have as road maps if one suddenly awoke with superhuman keyboard skills. Thomas Mann devoted a whole chapter of his great novel Doctor Faustus to this sonata. This was a performance that showed you why, structurally and philosophically.

As a complement to this achievement, to close the recital’s second half, Kissin took up what is seen almost solely today as a gymnastic crowd-pleaser, Liszt’s mid-19th century Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 in C-sharp minor, and reminded the audience of what we’ve missed as such works have been sidelined or played only with circus style. Along with his second encore (of four!), the same composer’s F minor Transcendental Étude No. 10, this is where Kissin showed how no one since Horowitz can play these sorts of pieces impeccably and so musically. Breathtaking stuff.

The opening 1790 Haydn sonata (in E-flat) mostly served to introduce Kissin’s fascination with how the hands can be used and how throwing their synchronization off just slightly can illuminate melodic and linear development. Four Schubert Impromptus (1827), two each from the D. 935 and D. 899 sets, had great charms and showed insights into achieving certain sounds and colors. Kissin is not at all alone, though, in trying to fit these individual pieces together into some type of a suite. I took them each as they came, one at a time.

In Florida, Kissin, who at times has given a dozen or more encores as an afternoon turns into evening, reportedly played none for some reason. In Boston last week, he gave five. Here, with occasional displays of his small smile, after opening with Sgambatti’s “Mélodie” transcription from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and the aforementioned Liszt étude, there was Liszt’s embroidery on Schubert’s “The Trout”; and although the audience ovations showed no signs of diminishing, as a closer, Chopin’s D minor 24th Prélude from Op. 28, its final low Ds saying, “I’m done.”

The recital, as all of his performances this season, was dedicated by Kissin to the memory of his father, Igor Kissin, a retired engineer, who died last May in New York at 77.

 

 

Chicago Opera Theater & Piazzolla's "Maria de Buenos Aires": a lot of layers -- My Sun-Times review

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Monday April 22, 2013

Photo: Liz Lauren

Chicago Opera Theater singers, musicians carry Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Maria’ in overdue Chicago debut

Last performance: Sunday April 28, 3 p.m. Harris Theater

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Chicago Opera Theater continues its new “more of the different” mission in dramatic form under general director Andreas Mitisek with the much-belated Chicago première of Astor Piazzolla’s 1967-68 “tango operita” Maria de Buenos Aries, which received an enthusiastic ovation at its Saturday night opening at the Harris Theater.

Perhaps because it was long linked to dance more than opera -- as recently as last month it was presented in New York at the new music basement nightclub (le) poisson rouge -- this continuous 75-minute work, conceived and developed in Buenos Aires and neighboring Uruguay by Piazzolla with the poet Horacio Ferrer, somehow has eluded Chicago stages despite a long vogue for the composer’s “nuevo tango” style since at least the late 1970s.

Piazzolla himself made his Chicago debut on bandoneón -- the concertina-like instrument at the heart of the tango -- at the Park West in 1989, a year before a debilitating stroke in 1990 that led to his death at 71 in 1992. Classical champions of his works, which musically extend the traditional popular dance and song form, have included the Kronos Quartet and violinist Gidon Kremer. And Piazzolla’s fellow native Argentinian Daniel Barenboim, while music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, had an international hit CD of trios in 1996 including a number of the composer-performer’s “new tangos.”

For Maria’s local launch, Mitisek has brought a reconceived staging that was a success at his Long Beach Opera in January of 2012. Without changing music or Spanish-dialect lyrics, Mitisek took Ferrer’s magical realism story -- with its heavy, often overly symbolic language -- and shifted it from the 1930s and 1940s Buenos Aires demi-monde of prostitutes, pimps and tango clubs to the period of Argentina’s brutal “Dirty War” of 1976-1983, when a military junta turned on its own citizens.

At least 13,000 Argentinians from all walks of life were “disappeared” by the military -- some say as many as 30,000 -- in a campaign of kidnapping, torture, murder, and both child abduction and infant abduction from the wombs of “disappeared” women. The election of Pope Francis, former archbishop of Buenos Aires and a leading Jesuit there during the period, has called coincidental attention to this dark and still not wholly addressed era.

The new setting is delivered dramatically with multimedia visuals and full use of the large stage and proscenium at the Harris. Mitisek, who also conducts and designed the production, enlisted highly capable video (Adam Flemming) and lighting (Dan Weingarten) artists from his Long Beach team, and the visual effects are powerful, from a vanishing “wall” of the individual “disappeared” to cages of real and metaphorical hells. A non-speaking actor, Mark Bringelson, is chilling as an officer who leads a silent squad of government rapists and torturers.

How does this work with an at least overtly apolitical story of a young woman “born on a day when God was drunk” with “three nails in her throat” who embodies, through prostitution and broken hearts, the lowlife existence of the tango world, dies for it, and through rebirth, somehow redeems it? Not at all as far as I could tell. But the performances are so powerful and the music so well-executed (and, frankly, Ferrer’s writing is so often over-the-top and almost at a Mad Libs level of imagery; the original staging even had a chorus of psychoanalysts!) that it’s best just to give yourself over to both sides of the presentation.

The strong cast also carries over from Long Beach (and all are acceptably amplified). Young California contralto Peabody Southwell is Maria in spirit, body and deep, dark voice. Mexican-American baritone Gregorio Gonzalez uses his spectacular voice to offer all shades of Maria’s lover/husband/widower. Lecturer-actor Gregorio Luke of Mexico City is a strong presence in the speaking role of the older, recollecting lover. Eight dancers from Chicago’s Luna Negra Dance Theater, choreographed by their Spanish artistic director Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, move atmospherically behind a scrim.

The bravura nine-member ensemble of strings, flute, piano, and percussion is highlighted as it should be by the bandoneon, here in the hands of Italian-American virtuoso Pietro (Peter) Soave. Mitisek and all of the players keep the tight line of the various tango, milonga. and waltz settings at all times, but it is the growling, tunefulness and even crying of the bandoneon that moves and even tells the story. A shame that Soave was not given a curtain call.

Maria’s 14 varied musical sections never really knit fully into a theatrical work -- like a blues, a brief tango, by its nature, tells a whole story -- and Piazzolla never created another full stage piece, but this is a strong if at times perplexing creation.

 

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Dresden Staatskapelle, Christian Thielemann, and Lisa Batiashvili at Chicago's Orchestra Hall: welcome returns -- My Sun-Times review

Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Monday April 15, 2013

Thielemann, Dresden Staatskapelle make a welcome return to Orchestra Hall

Batiashvili's Brahms violin concerto astonishes

BY ANDREW PATNER

Wireless communication meant that the world was too much with many of us, late and soon, on Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall. Just before the much-anticipated Dresden Staatskapelle concert and the long-awaited return to Chicago of its new principal conductor Christian Thielemann, e-mail brought news of the death the night before of trumpet legend Adolph “Bud” Herseth, 91, a Chicago Symphony Orchestra fixture over six decades.

Then, by intermission, Twitter carried word from the London Symphony Orchestra that the widely revered Colin Davis, laureate conductor of the Dresdeners, had just died at 85. That both men were true professionals and that the Staatskapelle is in its 464th(!) year of performing certainly underscored how the show goes on. Orchestras are like that. A name holds and despite the regular turnover and the passage of time, traditions continue and an identity persists.

In the case of Dresden, that identity was preserved in the last century in a complex tradeoff that found the city and its orchestra both behind the Iron Curtain and in a topographical “valley of the blind” without access to West German broadcast television and popular culture. Its rich, deep and warm string sound remains unique, its highly personalized wind -- especially in its pinched just right oboes -- and gentle horns are welcome markers. And its major daily work as an opera orchestra gives it a flexibility that when combined with the relative youth of its current roster and the evident energy of those players make them a conductor’s dream.

Thielemann, who turned 54 this month, has had his battles in previous positions at the former West Berlin Deutsche Oper and the Munich Philharmonic. But he told me in an interview Friday that he knew as early as his first guest conducting with Dresden in 2003 “that this could be a real home for me.” When things ended with Munich, and the Staatskapelle and its previous conductor Fabio Luisi split unhappily, Thielemann and Dresden were ready to start together this season. The position also gives him a smaller and quiet base, away from the daily politics of Bayreuth and the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, whose calendars hold him for many weeks each year. And, through a set of totally unforeseen events, the Thielemann-Dresden team is now the center of the spring Salzburg Easter Festival, abandoned by Berlin after almost 40 years. Their first run, last month, was a box office and critical success.

In the 1990s, it looked as if the United States, and especially Chicago and New York, would be a major part of Thielemann’s professional life. Two subscription weeks with the CSO and a Meistersinger at Lyric were electrifying, as were three different Richard Strauss productions at the Metropolitan Opera. But personal and political issues arose and Thielemann’s career in Germany (he is a native and lifelong Berliner) and Austria took off dramatically. It was fitting that this return to North America and first trip here with Dresden started in Chicago.

An all-Brahms program let all parts of this new team show their chops. Virtuosity matched with warmth; energy was coupled with detail. Watching the trumpets in the Academic Festival Overture sitting in Herseth’s old seats had both an eerie and invigorating quality. The great D Major Violin Concerto brought a third eloquent partner, Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, for as fine a live performance of the work that I can recall. Her playing arose from the orchestra sound and was never imposed upon it. She had a combination of strength and intimacy that brought David Oistrakh to mind. That she plays a 1715 Stradivarius that belonged to Joseph Joachim, the dedicatee and first performer of the concerto, added yet another line of underscoring to the pervasive sense of continuity. There was constant listening and communication between soloist, conductor, and orchestra, and details and Romantic emphases often brushed past emerged clearly. Even the odd little Busoni cadenza, a dialogue with timpanist Thomas Käppler, fit perfectly. A 1990s alumna of Ravinia’s Steans Institute (then using her given name, Elisabeth), Batiashvili made her CSO debut in Highland Park 13 years ago with Christoph Eschenbach. She needs to be a part of our lives here again.

At times the E minor Fourth Symphony seemed to have almost too much energy. But Thielemann and his crew made this driving version cohere and even gave one of the most convincing, well-delineated, Andante moderato movements imaginable. What occasional raggedness there was felt more like celebration and personality. The large audience went fairly wild and an obviously very happy Thielemann -- a tall and big man -- bounded back on to the stage and with a large grin, spun around and called up a spirited encore of the Prelude to Act 3 of Wagner’s Lohengrin. It’s a shame that we did not also get the second program of the Bruckner Eighth Symphony that Carnegie Hall will have later this week. But it was good to see these artists in top form here, so well connected with each other, and reminding us, through that great optimist Brahms, that life rolls on.

 

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CSO and Riccardo Muti: Bach B minor Mass: high aims, not quite realized -- My Sun-Times review

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Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com, Friday April 12, 2013

Muti, CSO aim for heavenly heights in Bach’s Mass in B Minor, but don't quite hit them

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Few works are more esteemed as grand contributions to Western civilization than Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

Neither Protestant nor Catholic, the work is universal, though the Latin language and some structure comes from the latter tradition. (Bach, however, was a devoted Lutheran.) Written in parts over 35 years with no plan that it would be performed in Bach’s lifetime, it was directed to a posterity of unknown distance. (It sat in drawers for more than a century after Bach’s 1750 death before receiving its first full performance.) It sums up and weaves together the styles, scoring and experiments of Bach’s full career with lessons from his keyboard, chamber, orchestral, choral and vocal music integrating harmony, counterpoint and invention.

But is grand enough when reviving this work? For Riccardo Muti, returning to concerts as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time since September, grandeur seemed to be the chief goal Thursday at Symphony Center, but solemnity and anonymity reigned for much of the time. And a long time it was, too, two hours and five minutes, plus a full intermission. (It was last heard here in 1990, under Sir Georg Solti.)

Muti has spoken, insightfully and humorously, about the need to navigate between doctrinaire ideas of “historic performance” of earlier music and grandiose cathedral performances with hundreds of choristers and players. But the issue here was not the types of strings or bowing or the size or restriction of the sound of each instrument — areas where Muti’s call for a middle ground, embodied here by 85 singers and an orchestra of 55, makes great sense. But the so sober, museum-like presentation too often lacked the very liveliness and personal connection that the long-experienced conductor contends “period performances” miss.

Bach front loads the five-part work with a lengthy Kyrie, compact in text, but thick with choral and orchestral writing. Here, this set a weighty tone that dominated the first half, including the second-part Gloria. After the break, Muti’s ideas and practice came together much more fully on the nine sections of the Credo. The CSO Chorus, prepared by its director Duain Wolfe, had often been uncharacteristically muddy up to that point. It now came fully alive, and Muti delivered the central “Et incarnatus est,” “Crucifixus” and “Et resurrexit” — the core of the Christian creed — in all three dimensions with incarnation, the nail hammers of crucifixion and the glory and splendor of resurrection essentially enacted. That same spirit and execution was present in the well-known concluding “Dona nobis pacem.” One wished that this feeling could be projected back through the full two hours-plus. Perhaps it will be during the work’s remaining performances.

Orchestral clarity and articulation were there at all times. And solo parts were enviable and more both on their own and while interweaving with the four vocal soloists. Principal flute Mathieu Dufour is always worth the price of admission alone, and oboe d’amore players Eugene Izotov and Scott Hostetler and bassoonists David McGill and Dennis Michel matched him in insight and tenderness. Horn Daniel Gingrich and concertmaster Robert Chen offered elegance and a certain stateliness. The continuo accompaniment of cellist John Sharp, bass Alexander Hanna, organist David Schrader and harpsichordist Mark Shuldiner also embodied Muti’s ideas with supportive style.

Vocal soloists reflected Muti’s preference for lesser-known young European singers, in this case, mezzo Anna Malavasi and soprano Eleonora Buratto (both Italians), and Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu and Czech bass-baritine Adam Plachetk. One can understand why “stars” as used by Carlo Maria Giulini, say, in his well-known recording, do not appeal to Muti for a devotional and ensemble work such as this. But the general lack of distinction and the failure of the two women singers to demonstrate any personal connection with the essential poetry they were singing (Pirgu and Plachetk fared better) also kept this major performance achievement from reaching heavenly heights.

 

 

 

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