The 2006–2007 season was typical in that many performances were bad, many more were mediocre—and some were magically right. There’s no point in dwelling on the bad or mediocre; let them return to dust. We will instead recall and salute the magically right. In our September issue, I had a piece called “Who’s Good?” The theme of the present piece may be rendered, “Who was good in the 2006–2007 season?” Needless to say, there will be some overlap—some surprises, too.

Begin with orchestras and conductors. I heard a great many of these, from all over the world. But most of the performances I wish to mention came from Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic. Maazel is an excellent “French” conductor, and he makes whatever orchestra he directs an excellent “French” orchestra. One evening, he conducted Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges, followed by Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony. The former was playful, fizzy, arresting; the latter was unapologetically grand and glorious. On another evening, Maazel conducted the Suite No. 2 from Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane, and this was positively dazzling. Months later, he conducted another Suite No. 2: from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Can music so familiar be fresh and exciting? In the right hands, yes.

One work outside the French repertory: the Final Scene from Strauss’s Salome. Maazel absolutely staggered and electrified you with this. Who was the soprano? I’m afraid it doesn’t really matter. (Nancy Gustafson.) Maazel owned this piece, conducting it within an inch of its life.

I will mention one other conductor, James Levine, who directs two orchestras: the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The latter sometimes leaves the pit for a concert stage. With the BSO, Levine conducted a major French work: Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. In it, he displayed his typical combination of discipline and imagination, common sense and musical élan. Particularly memorable was Berlioz’s horse ride into hell: gripping. Then, toward the end of the season, Levine led the Met band in Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony. In a nutshell, Levine recalled the man under whom he apprenticed, George Szell: one of the great Mozarteans. Levine is there with him.

Spend some time with pianists, beginning with Louis Lortie. I did not mention him in “Who’s Good?” and I will not make that mistake again. He gave a magnificent recital, featuring several works of Liszt. This was some of the best Liszt playing you can ever hope to hear. It was virtuosic, yes, but astoundingly beautiful, too. Also giving a magnificent recital was Piotr Anderszewski. He played the three Métopes of Szymanowski, and these were extraordinary: wizardly, weird, and wondrous. He later played one of the largest and most demanding works in the literature: Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations. In these, Anderszewski accomplished a feat of pianism.

His fellow Pole, Krystian Zimerman, played a concert with Gidon Kremer, the Latvian violinist. They played the Brahms violin-and-piano sonatas. You know the expression “Loved her, hated him” (or vice versa)? Well, Kremer had a miserable night, but Zimerman played superbly, which is why I include him here. Leon Fleisher appeared several times in New York, and I must single out his traversal of Debussy’s Cathédrale engloutie. Fleisher has never been known as an Impressionist, but a better rendering of this touchstone piece I have never heard. He also distinguished himself in Mozart’s Concerto in A, K. 414 (with the Philharmonic and Maazel). This is often a kid’s piece, favored by talented little girls in pink dresses, but Fleisher played it with the maturity of a master.

Another master—Fleisher’s exact contemporary—played with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. This was Gary Graffman, who participated in Korngold’s Suite for Piano Left Hand, Two Violins, and Cello. He also played something on his own: Leon Kirchner’s Music for the Left Hand. Graffman showed the strength, command, and flair that won him his worldwide reputation many moons ago. Another pianist with the Chamber Music Society was Gilles Vonsattel. A newcomer, Swiss-born, he had just won the Geneva Competition. And the judges had chosen well: Vonsattel is a solid, smart, and tasteful musician, reminding me some of the young Perahia.

I have mentioned a couple of pieces for the left hand. Know too that Jean-Yves Thibaudet played Ravel’s lefthand concerto, and did so electrically. (The orchestra was the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen.) Thibaudet provided a reminder of what this concerto can do. And I will end this section on pianists with an unusual tale—although not so unusual, if you know Daniel Barenboim. He is one of the most uneven musicians on earth. With Levine and the Boston Symphony, he played not one, but two concertos: the Schoenberg and the Beethoven G-major. In both of these works, Barenboim was pretty bad: sloppy, indifferent, vulgar. I was leaving the hall disgusted. But the crowd was going crazy, and I stuck around in the back, in case there was an encore to report.

There was. It was a Schubert impromptu, the one in A flat, D. 935, No. 2. And ladies and gentlemen, it was beyond good. It was heavenly, golden, sublime. I have never heard better Schubert playing, from anyone. It was as though Backhaus had come back to play for us once more. You simply never know, at least where Barenboim is concerned.

The 2006–2007 season saw scads of violinists, and very good ones—we are in a rich period for violinists. But I will mention just four to you. Two of them played the Berg Concerto: Leonidas Kavakos and Anne-Sophie Mutter. Kavakos played with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach, and Mutter played with Maazel and the Philharmonic. Their performances were not identical, but they were both first-class, bringing out the strange genius of Berg’s concerto. Christian Tetzlaff played the Ligeti Concerto (with the Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert). This is a brainy, compelling work, and Tetzlaff is a brainy, compelling work himself. Concerto and soloist were a splendid match.

I had heard Lisa Batiashvili, the young Georgian violinist, play once before, and she was all right: respectable, but nothing to write home about. So I was unprepared for how she played Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 (with the Philharmonic and Sakari Oramo). She did not put a foot wrong, and she did everything right. Like most critics, I suppose, I have heard all the violinists of my time play this concerto, and I know all the significant recordings. I cannot remember a more moving, more rattling, more fulfilling performance. You could have shaken, right there in your chair. I doubt I will ever forget it.

Miklós Perényi is a Hungarian cellist, born in 1948. With his fellow Hungarian, András Schiff, he played Beethoven’s music for cello and piano—all of it (over two concerts). Perényi is not nearly as famous as Schiff, but he left a lasting mark. He played his Beethoven with tremendous wisdom and mastery. You sensed you were in the presence of a cellist—a musician—who had reached a kind of mental or spiritual summit. A superstar cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, played Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 2 with the New World Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. That was a commendable rendering—but I include him here for the encore he played: an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile (drawn from the String Quartet No. 1). It was perfectly beautiful, free of all sentimentality.

The biggest mistake I made in “Who’s Good?” was the omission of Alisa Weilerstein. What a huge mistake, what a thunderous omission! Weilerstein is a twenty-five-year-old cellist, and she had not quite crossed my radar when I wrote that piece last summer. I know better now, to say the least. With the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, Weilerstein played the Elgar Concerto, and she played it supremely. The work had its maximum impact. More than a few cellists dropped the Elgar from their repertory when Jacqueline du Pré recorded it (with Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra). Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t mean to offend the dead, and I don’t mean to make nostalgists faint. But if anyone has ever played that piece better than Alisa Weilerstein …

Have a wind player—a clarinetist. Jose Franch-Ballester, a young Spaniard, played a recital, and he showed every gift: smarts, style, technique, charm. It is a rich age for violinists, and it is a rich age for clarinetists (not that they matter so much): Franch-Ballester is a sparkling addition to the pack.

There seemed to be a vocal recital every other day, and one of the most gratifying ones was that of Angelika Kirchschlager, the Austrian mezzo: She sang Schumann on her first half, and Schubert on her second. She sang with insight, beauty, and skill, and her accompanist, Malcolm Martineau, nicely matched her. Michael Schade also gave a lieder recital, and he, as usual, was wonderful—and Wunderlichian. (Schade too was accompanied by Martineau, a busy man.) Diana Damrau, the German soprano, was not feeling well the night of her recital—she announced so before she began. But she still sang winningly, as she cannot help doing, whatever her condition.

You may not think of Juan Diego Flórez as a recitalist—he is the king of Rossini tenors, or of bel canto tenors at large. But he proved a boffo recitalist, wowin’ ’em into the night. One of the most distinguished and cherishable evenings of the entire season was provided by Joyce DiDonato, the American mezzo. She sang a recital of Bizet, Rossini, and a trio of Spaniards: Granados, Falla, and Montsalvatge. The lady has technique and personality to burn, and she practically burned down—burned up?—Weill Recital Hall.

When the New York Philharmonic performed Handel’s Messiah, three soloists were superb (which, considering that there are only four, is a great average): A Canadian soprano named Dominique Labelle sang purely, interestingly, and touchingly; the famed mezzo Stephanie Blythe sang with conviction and soul; and a Welsh bass-baritone named Neal Davies sang rivetingly. I must also put forward the name of Brenda Patterson. A Seattle-born mezzo, she sang three Bach cantatas with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Mary Dalton Greer. Patterson is the real McCoy: a genuine Bach singer, making her a treasure among musicians.

In the field of chamber music, two different ensembles played Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, within three weeks of each other. The first ensemble consisted of Lilya Zilberstein (piano), Maxim Vengerov (violin), and Alisa Weilerstein; the second ensemble consisted of Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, and Lynn Harrell. Shostakovich’s trio is an eerie masterpiece—typical of him—and each group did it justice. A young string quartet called the Daedalus played Webern’s Langsamer Satz startlingly well. Frankly, it was perfect. And the Miró Quartet played a concert of extremely high quality. On the program were two familiar composers, Dvorák and Shostakovich, and one less familiar: Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, known as “the Spanish Mozart,” who died just shy of his twentieth birthday, in 1826.

The Chamber Music Society put on a four-concert festival of English music from the first third of the last century. I heard several fine performances in this festival, and I will single out the one of Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Trio in C minor for piano, violin, and cello—played by Ani Kavafian, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Efe Baltacigil, a young Turk (pardon the expression).

I very much wanted to include a section on new music—I heard dozens and dozens of new pieces in the 2006–2007 season. Looking back at the nine months in question, I had trouble coming up with a single piece I have a noteworthy desire to hear again. A blunter comment on the current state of affairs, I cannot make. And I make it with no pleasure whatsoever and considerable frustration.

Turn, now, to the opera house, and in particular to the Metropolitan Opera. James Levine had many tremendous operatic outings, as you might expect. I spoke earlier about his Mozart: and in Idomeneo and The Magic Flute he was exemplary. He also led a stunning—an exemplary—performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo. Still, what may take the palm is his work in Il Trittico, Puccini’s triple bill. In the first opera, Il Tabarro, Levine brought out a tension that was hard to bear. The score had murder written all over it. And the third opera, Gianni Schicchi, Levine made an orchestral tour de force. He and the Met band were colorful, crackling, and almost jazzy.

Diana Damrau had a big season in New York: There was her recital, and also her turn as Rosina in the Met’s Barber of Seville. Damrau is a splendid Rossini singer, as she is a splendid singer of much else, and she made a delectable Rosina. She was also a dazzler as Aithra in Strauss’s Egyptian Helen. Joyce DiDonato, too, had a turn as Rosina, a role the composer would have written for her, if he had known her. And, speaking of The Barber, who can top Juan Diego Flórez as Count Almaviva?

I happened to hear a hit-or-miss tenor, Ben Heppner, in peak form as Idomeneo. Two other singers shone that night as well: Dorothea Röschmann, one of the great Mozart singers of our time; and the excellent mezzo Kristine Jepson. Anna Netrebko strutted her stuff—vocally and theatrically—in I Puritani (Bellini). She is surely the most hyped singer in the world, and she usually manages to live up to it. Outstanding in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra were Thomas Hampson and Ferruccio Furlanetto, two formidable singing actors. Angela Gheorghiu was no slouch in that opera either. The Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov made an elegantly evil Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust. Matthew Polenzani showed tenorial freshness as David in Wagner’s Meistersinger. And Heidi Grant Murphy sang angelically in Gluck’s Orfeo. She ought to have, because she portrayed Amor, or Cupid.

La Gioconda (Ponchielli) requires six strong singers, and the Met had six good ones. Especially good were the women: Violeta Urmana, Olga Borodina, and Irina Mishura. They stood and sang, or, better, stood and delivered. This was grand opera in the grand fashion, the way it should be. Giordano’s Andrea Chénier brought a similar night. Heppner and Urmana starred, and they were in decent shape. But the baritone, Mark Delavan, was absolutely smoking, and so was the conductor, Marco Armiliato. In my experience, this maestro had always been sort of routine—not this night.

When I caught her, Renée Fleming was sensationally good as Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. She was simply at her best, which is an enviable best. And Ramón Vargas made a creamy and convincing Lenski. Many people said that the cast of the year was Don Carlo’s, and it was top-notch, indeed. How do you beat Johan Botha as Carlo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Rodrigo, Borodina as Eboli, René Pape as Philip, and Samuel Ramey as the Inquisitor? As good as they were—and they were marvelous—the soprano singing Elisabetta nearly stole the show: Patricia Racette.

I must mention, too, a pair of evenings furnished by the Opera Orchestra of New York, whose founder and conductor is Eve Queler. The first of these evenings gave us Donizetti’s last opera, Dom Sébastien; the second gave us L’Arlesiana, by Francesco Cilea. These operas are immensely worthy, and they deserve to be known by a wide public. Queler assembled interesting and capable casts for these shows. Dom Sébastien featured Vesselina Kasarova, the Bulgarian mezzo-soprano, whose voice is one of the wonders of the world; L’Arlesiana featured Giuseppe Filianoti, the ardent Italian tenor, and Marianne Cornetti, an American who is a classic Verdi mezzo: booming and scorching. These evenings provided great operatic satisfaction.

So, what were my favorite musical events of the year? That is pretty much impossible to say, but I’ll tell you what especially sticks with me: that Shostakovich violin concerto, performed by Lisa Batiashvili; and Alisa Weilerstein in the Elgar Cello Concerto. And, if we’re talking about favorites, I need to mention two other musical events—they fall into sort of a special category. Chanticleer gave its annual Christmas concert, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This twelve-man choir can exude a spiritual joy that is practically transforming.

Then there was this young woman named Latonia Moore. A soprano from Houston, she appeared in a couple of operas, including L’Arlesiana, discussed above. But I wish to single out her recital. Talk about exuding spiritual joy: It is almost impossible to stop smiling when this young lady is singing. She loves it so, and you must love it, too. Near the end of her program, she sang a song by James East called “He’s So Wonderful.” Sample lyric: “I’ll trust him to the end. My Jesus, what a friend!” Latonia Moore sang with a sincerity, a directness, that was over- whelming. I believe her recital was the happiest musical event of the year.

Before I sign off, a word about Slava. Mstislav Rostropovich died on April 27. He was, of course, one of the greatest musicians of our times. He was probably the greatest cellist who ever lived; he was also one of the greatest instrumentalists. People say that he did more for the cello than anyone has ever done for any instrument—and that may well be true. He was responsible for much of the cello repertory that we have now: Composers counted it a privilege to write for him. He was an excellent conductor, if an uneven one. He had no baton technique to speak of, but he could communicate his meaning. He was also a very good pianist, as he demonstrated when he accompanied his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and when he accompanied his cello students. Speaking of those students: He was a magnificent teacher. And I understand that he could compose, too (rounding out the résumé). I have not heard any of his music, but I trust a source who has.

My two strongest Slava memories: I heard him play Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante—written for him, of course—in Boston, at the time of his (Rostropovich’s) sixtieth birthday. That was in 1987. This was one of the most awe-inspiring performances I have ever heard. And I will never forget his conducting of the complete Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev again) in Washington, about a decade later.

You know that he had courage, too: He sheltered Solzhenitsyn at a time when it was dangerous and costly to do so. The author chronicles this in his masterpiece of a literary memoir, The Oak and the Calf.

Finally, I ask a question: What is the greatest recording ever made? An absurd question to ask, of course … but, gun to my head, I would blurt out an answer: Rostropovich in the Bach Suites. He delayed making this recording for many, many years, wanting to be musically, mentally, and spiritually ready. He was. The best, Rostropovich, rose to meet the best, Bach.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 25 Number 10, on page 51
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https://newcriterion.com/issues/2007/6/new-york-chronicle-19-3187

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