The big news out of the beginning of the season was the opening of a new hall “at Carnegie.” I speak of the Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall, which is the much-praised “performance space” down in the basement—the basement of the Carnegie complex. What you and I think of as Carnegie Hall is technically the Isaac Stern Auditorium. The lovely little annex upstairs is the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall. And we now have, down below, Zankel—which is also a recital hall, but a mid-sized one, seating about six hundred people. As the Carnegie brass say, the advent of Zankel “restores Andrew Carnegie’s original vision of three great stages under one roof.”
Zankel kicked itself off with what was described as a “press preview”—a concert over the noon hour for critics, music administrators, and various others. The program was an eclectic one, reflecting Carnegie’s desire to present Zankel as a place where “anything can happen.” The concert began with a blackened hall and a single spotlight onstage. Into that spotlight walked the soprano Renée Fleming, arguably the biggest star in classical music today. She sang “Shatter Me, Music,” a short, unaccompanied song composed for the occasion by John Corigliano (using a poem by Rilke). The song is angular, a little jazzy, and very American—and Fleming sang it spiffily.
Then came the pianist Emanuel Ax, for a piece by Debussy: his “Pagodes.” Ax played it decently, but the hero of this performance was Zankel Hall, as it captured what colors the pianist had to offer superbly. Then Fleming returned for a couple of songs of Strauss: one rapturous—“Cäcilie”—and the other quiet and sublime—“Morgen.” After the second song, Fleming remarked, “Real intimacy in New York City. I love it!” The audience applauded warmly, but what about the Weill hall, Renée, or, for that matter, Alice Tully (at Lincoln Center)?
At this point, a screen came down for a brief film on Carnegie and Zankel, narrated by the legendary mezzo Marilyn Horne—a woman who can speak about as well as she can sing (and she would tell you they are related, I believe). Then Fleming came back to sing the famous aria from Villa-Lobos’s Bachiana brasileira No. 5, with eight young cellos (players of the cello, that is).
From here, the program got a little funky, which, again, is a point that Carnegie’s leaders wanted to make. John Adams—Carnegie’s in-house composer—led a group of young musicians and the violinist Jennifer Koh in a piece by the late Lou Harrison: “Concerto in slendro,” which carries Indonesian influences. Then the Kenny Barron Jazz Quintet appeared for a short set, and they were followed by the Fula Flute Ensemble, a West African group.
That was the press preview. The first official concert—the start of a September-long opening festival in Zankel—was an all-Adams affair, although Adams selected none of his own music for the program. What I mean is, Adams served as conductor again, leading graduates of Carnegie’s Professional Training Workshops, gathered under the name of The Zankel Band. Carnegie is big on youth, for Zankel. The composers Adams selected were Ives, Harrison (the “Concerto in slendro,” once more), Thomas Adès, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Adès is a still-young composer—born 1971—who has been famous since he was about twenty. Adams and his charges performed Living Toys, which is described in Adès’s own biography as his “most-performed work.” It is a descendant, I suppose, of Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette”—and of Herbert’s March from Babes in Toyland! But it is not exactly a little charmer. Living Toys has a playful element, to be sure, but it is almost relentlessly cacophonous. It also suffers from some monotony. Still, the Zankel Band played enthusiastically, and the audience showered them with approval.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is best known as the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but he is a determined composer, and this concert offered his Mania, a kind of cello concerto. The piece is not so much maniacal as nervous (in the manner so favored by today’s composers). The soloist was Salonen’s fellow Finn Anssi Karttunen, for whom the piece was written. He produced a warm sound, maintained a musical poise, and met all technical challenges, which are numerous—Salonen desired to provide a channel for virtuosity.
The Emerson String Quartet dropped by—dropped by Zankel Hall, that is, on a subsequent evening—bringing with them that same Emanuel Ax. The pianist joined the quartet for the great Dvořák Piano Quintet in A major. This is one of the most delightsome pieces in the entire chamber repertory, and the Emerson plus Ax did creditably by it. The Finale, however, was a bit heavy, a bit sluggish, and a bit thick-fingered. This movement ought to take flight; these players rather kept it on the ground.
The four “Emersons” had opened the concert with Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5, one of that composer’s greatest quartets (which is saying something). The four played with sensitivity and wisdom, and I should single out the second movement, marked Largo: Cantabile e mesto. This last word means “sad,” not a mood commonly associated with “Papa” Haydn. But this composer—like all people—felt and expressed a great many moods, not just joviality (consider the awesome depths of The Creation, for example). The Largo features striking, ghostly modulations; Haydn, as is his wont, finds magic within orderliness.
The other work on the program—the middle work (for the concert ended with the Dvořák)—was Ned Rorem’s String Quartet No. 4. As you may recall from the second half of last season, this is a Rorem year, as the composer turns eighty during it. (It is also, more prominently, a Berlioz year—the bicentennial of that composer’s birth.) In the String Quartet No. 4, Rorem offers pictures at an exhibition: and it is a one-man show. The composer names ten movements after paintings by Picasso. The first is “Minotaur,” anxious, restless. Then comes “Child Holding a Dove,” tender (and “French,” as Rorem likes to describe his writing). “Acrobat on a Ball” is wonderfully goofy and sly. And “Still Life,” gently rocking, manages to bring a painting to “life” while keeping it “still.” Amazing. The high point of this quartet, or suite, is the eighth section, “Self Portrait,” which is utterly engrossing—close to devastating. Rorem’s opus, on the whole, feels a little long to me, and slightly unvaried toward the end. But it is a noteworthy achievement.
The last Zankel event that I will address is a concert by James Levine and his Met Chamber Ensemble. These musicales have traditionally been held in the Weill Recital Hall, and they will be again—as also, alternatively, in Zankel. On this particular occasion, Levine surrounded himself with some of his favorite musicians and composers. The program began with Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, K. 498. This gave Levine a chance to show off his great clarinetist Ricardo Morales, who played with his usual marvelous sound and silky-smooth, ever-flexible technique. Next came a song-cycle by Elliott Carter called In Sleep, in Thunder, which sets six poems of Robert Lowell. The composer, rather touchingly—and encouragingly—was present. He composed this cycle in 1981, when he was a mere pup of seventy-three. Carter looks as though he has barely lost a step.
In Sleep, in Thunder calls for a tenor and fourteen instruments, and the singing was done by Matthew Polenzani, who is a real up-and-comer—at least as far as Levine is concerned. Actually, he has already up and come. Polenzani is everywhere this season, including on “all three stages at Carnegie,” as his bio notes. Some weeks after this Met Chamber Ensemble event, he gave a solo recital in the big hall—Isaac Stern Auditorium—with Levine at the piano. In the Carter, Polenzani displayed his light, pleasant voice and his reliable vocal control. If I may borrow from sports talk, this is a man who “sings within himself.”
Next appeared another Levine-favored singer, Jennifer Welch-Babidge, who in this period happened to be starring in Lucia di Lammermoor at the New York City Opera. Welch-Babidge, a soprano from North Carolina, performed brief vocal works of Anton Weber: his “Five Canons,” Op. 16, “Three Traditional Rhymes,” Op. 17, and “Three Songs,” Op. 18. She sang these in exemplary fashion, applying bel canto technique as much to Webern as to Donizetti. She was, as we have come to expect, both agile and strong. She was also accurate and fearless. Webern’s music involves enormous leaps, and notes far, far above the staff. Welch-Babidge handled it all with aplomb.
Then James Levine concluded the evening—or late afternoon—with an account of Brahms’s Serenade No. 2 in A major. It was warm, settling, nourishing—Brahmsian.
Over at the New York Philharmonic, Maestro Lorin Maazel is back for his second season. As regular readers may recall, I was deeply skeptical when this orchestra booted Kurt Masur—its music director of eleven years—and replaced him with Maazel, a brilliant but often mystifying and frustrating musician. But Maazel’s first season was almost invariably interesting and often compelling, heightening anticipation for the second season.
That season opened with a gala concert purveying Verdi and Tchaikovsky. The guest soloist was Samuel Ramey, the bass from Colby, Kansas, who sang arias from Simon Boccanegra, Ernani, and Don Carlo. Ramey is no spring chicken, and for several seasons he has suffered from some wobbles. But his solid training and consistent professionalism have kept him in good stead. He displayed secure intonation and a wide vocal range (just a half step shy of two octaves). Musically and dramatically, he retains all his authority —more, perhaps. King Philip’s lament from Don Carlo was heartrending, leaving a lump in the throat (ours, that is).
Maazel had his orchestra firing on all cylinders: in two overtures of Verdi—those to La Forza del Destino and I Vespri Siciliani—and in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. I know, I know: That old warhorse again, the Tchaikovsky? The ultimate “gala piece”? Yet if a conductor and an orchestra accord it its due, it has all the thrill it ever had. And that is what Maazel and the New York Philharmonic did: accord it its due. This was a stirring, dynamic Fifth, superbly shaped and executed. Oh, sure, the conductor indulged in some of his usual idiosyncrasies, including the smothering of phrases with micromanagement. But one gets used to that in Lorin Maazel, even as one gets used to—say—the breathy mannerisms of Renée Fleming, a great singer.
In the following concert, Maazel led off with a new symphony by Stephen Hartke (a California composer of about fifty). This was his Symphony No. 3, which employs a vocal quartet and a poem from an unknown eighth- or ninth-century Anglo-Saxon poet: “The Ruin.” The Philharmonic commissioned Hartke to write the piece for the second anniversary of September 11. The composer is deeply interested, and steeped, in the medieval, and this symphony has obvious medieval influences and echoings. It is skillfully conceived, blending harmonies and dissonances, and leaving an overall effect of elegy.
In the second half of the program, Maazel delivered a Mahler Fifth—tight, bracing, unsentimental, unneurotic. Un-Bernsteinian, in a word. Some may complain, and have complained, that Maazel can be a little cold, and this is true. But his straightforwardness can act as a tonic, and he is willing—most of the time—to let Mahler (for example) speak for himself.
The Philharmonic was not through with its excellent playing, in these initial weeks of the season. One of the orchestra’s subscription series boasted The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s kaleidoscopic shocker from 1913. This is the sort of piece that Maazel should eat up, and eat it up he did. The dense score’s challenges were hardly challenges at all to him—and the orchestra responded faultlessly. Before the intermission, Maazel had led an equally masterly performance of Strauss’s Don Quixote, in which first cellist Carter Brey was the main soloist. Prior to entering orchestral life, Brey had a prominent solo career, and his turn in the Strauss reminded us why. He sent a gorgeous tone through the hall, and his technique is so assured, one can simply sit back and enjoy his musical approach. He was every inch his “character,” Don Quixote, comporting himself like a singer.
Before we get to the Metropolitan Opera, shall we have a word about the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center? The big news here is that the Society’s longtime artistic director, David Shifrin, will step down at the end of this season. (On the side, Shifrin is one of the best clarinetists—and best instrumentalists—in the world.) It is my hope that he will, at some point, take up the baton, as he is a lavishly talented and brainy musician, and the world is not overrun with good, or even competent, conductors. But what Shifrin has planned for himself in the years to come, I have no idea.
The Society’s opening, gala concert offered two famous and beloved serenades for strings: the one by Dvořák and the one by Tchaikovsky. Like the Tchaikovsky Fifth, these works are subject to hackneying, and they need to be treated with care—with sincerity, wisdom, and heart. The twenty-one who came together to form the Chamber Society’s little orchestra were largely successful in this, even if their ensembleship was faulty and their execution somewhat ragged. It was a pleasure to see, in the lead violin’s chair, Joseph Silverstein, the violinist-turned-conductor who has been a fixture on the musical scene for as long as most people can remember. He began his career about 1950.
The Met’s season opened with something important: Renée Fleming’s first Violetta in that house. Fleming is one of the most important sopranos of our time, and she is an important soprano historically; Violetta—from Verdi’s Traviata, as you know—is a crucial soprano role. The American diva scored an undisputed success, although she did not have as fine a first act as she might have: She was not completely secure in her voice or in her technique. But she got better and better, delivering vocal thrills and a dramatic portrayal that touched the heart of this singular character.
Fleming’s Alfredo was Ramón Vargas, a Mexican who is one of the Great Tenorial Hopes, in (sad) anticipation of the retirements of Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo. Vargas made an impressive Alfredo, dispatching his aria—“De’ miei bollenti spiriti”—with style and confidence. Practically stealing the show, however, was Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the “Siberian tiger.” This great baritone was a first-class Germont, proving, once more, that he is among the most accomplished Verdians we have. The Act II exchanges between him and Fleming were memorably poignant.
In the pit was Valery Gergiev, the Metropolitan Opera’s principal guest conductor. (Levine, having sat out Opening Night, would appear the next night, for a sublime and mesmerizing Tristan und Isolde.) Gergiev was not at his best for Traviata, allowing rhythmic tentativeness and imprecision, for example. Less than a week later, he was back for the revival of the company’s triple bill called Stravinsky. This is an evening—or afternoon—consisting of The Rite of Spring, Le Rossignol (the composer’s “lyric tale in three acts”), and Oedipus Rex, that peculiar “opera-oratorio,” as Stravinsky labeled it. Two seasons before, the Met had revived its French triple bill, Parade, which brings you Satie, Poulenc, and Ravel. Both productions are satisfying on many levels, not least the visual.
The Rite was danced by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, with choreography by Doug Vallone. That choreography was full of primitive writhings, fightings, and gropings —I thought of the California recall election, which was going on at the same time. The orchestra’s traversal of the score did not have the polish, virtuosity, and élan of the New York Philharmonic’s. But, as an acquaintance of mine pointed out, Maestro Gergiev’s role was slightly different from that of Maestro Maazel: The former was leading the Rite in ballet performance, while the latter had the luxury of a purely orchestral performance—no dancers in mind. By this argument, Gergiev was required to be more measured and less dazzling.
Le Rossignol—based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen—is, quite simply, one of the most exquisite things you will ever witness in an opera house. The Met’s sets and costumes are by David Hockney, and the choreography is by Sir Frederick Ashton. The leading roles of the Fisherman and the Nightingale are both danced and sung. In this revival, they were danced by two of the most worshiped ballet stars in the city: Damian Woetzel and Julie Kent. Thus did the New York City Ballet (Woetzel) lie down with the American Ballet Theatre (Kent). Both dancers were their almost eerily composed selves.
Singing those roles at the back of the orchestra pit were an English tenor, Barry Banks, and a Russian soprano, Olga Trifonova. Each was elegant and radiant—exactly right—with Trifonova exhibiting more strength than you might expect in a nightingale. This was not Jenny Lind; or, rather, it was Jenny Lind with some muscle tone. Gergiev conveyed this gentle, lulling score marvelously, and the entire performance had the quality of a star-lit dream.
As for Oedipus Rex, it had its primal pulse and drama, with outstanding singing by Stephanie Blythe, the Jocasta. This American mezzo not infrequently sounds like Marilyn Horne, and, in my experience, she had never sounded more Horne-like—not a bad way to go, as Horne was a Jocasta par excellence.
Carnegie Hall—Carnegie Hall proper, which is to say, Isaac Stern Auditorium—opened its season with three concerts by the Kirov Orchestra, conducted by … Valery Gergiev, who else? This man fairly owned New York: opening night at the Met, opening night at Carnegie Hall. Lorin Maazel is lucky he got to preside over opening night at the New York Philharmonic. The Kirov’s first concert featured Maxim Vengerov as soloist, in Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, what I would call a “serious showpiece” for violin. Vengerov is as talented and natural as anyone in music, and he managed to milk the Lalo for all it was worth, without descending into vulgarity. A truly musical person cannot be vulgar, no matter what the score or occasion. After intermission, Gergiev served up Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, which was not super-transporting, but adequate. The society crowd that populated the hall adored it.
So, Carnegie Hall was off—but overshadowed, curiously enough, by the hoopla over Zankel, a splendid addition, to be sure. And one more thing: We are to pronounce the name of this hall “Zan-KELL.” The tendency, however, is to pronounce it “ZAN-kil.” Will the public cooperate? The original pronunciation is “Car-NAY-gie,” but we long ago fell into “CARN-ih-gie.” Which is fine with me. With you too, I expect.
