Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Carnegie Hall: Vienna Philharmonic Performs Wagner

The Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Valery Gergiev, arrived in New York City this past weekend for a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall.  This is one of the world's greatest orchestras and its annual visits are always among the most highly anticipated events of the season.

On Friday evening, WQXR broadcast the first of these concerts.  The program included Wagner's Overture to Der fliegende Holländer, Debussy's La Mer, and finally Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.   I had heard earlier this month a broadcast performance of the composer's original piano version of this last work and found it far preferable to Ravel's interpretation.  It is ironic that Mussorgsky, who so promoted the Russian national spirit in his music, should have had his most famous work transformed by Ravel into an elegant crowd pleaser that is at times more French than Russian in its sensibilities.

After having heard the broadcast concert, I went on Saturday evening to Carnegie Hall to hear the orchestra perform live a program that once again featured the music of Wagner and Mussorgsky alongside a new work by the contemporary Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth.  Before entering the hall, I had to pass a line of protesters who found Gergiev's close friendship with Putin objectionable.

The program opened with the Prelude to Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina (1872-1880).  Along with his fellow members of the "Five" Mussorgsky was, as mentioned above, a nationalist and a great proponent of returning to original native sources in Russian art.  The plot of Khovanshchina was one that would have held great personal meaning for him as it told the story of the late seventeenth century struggle of the old guard against the Westernization attempted by the young tsars Ivan and Peter and their regent sister Sofia.  The strife that forms the plot of the opera is, however, not in evidence in the Prelude which Mussorgsky described in a letter as: "Dawn over Moscow, matins with cock-crow, the patrol, the taking down of the chains."  This was a lyrical poetic piece of a type one does not usually associate with Mussorgsky.

This short introduction was followed by the New York premiere of Neuwirth's Masaot / Clocks Without Hands, a 2013 work that had been co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall.  Ms. Neuwirth provided the following description in the Program Notes:
"Masaot / Clocks Without Hands can be seen as a poetic reflection on how memories fade. The piece combines recurrent fragments of melodies from different places and experiences from my grandfather's life. It is a 'shaped stream of memories.'"
Though the work had originally been commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mahler's death, there was little in it reminiscent of that composer's genius though at times the finale did seem a parody of the Ninth Symphony's rondo-burleske.  In general, I did not find this work particularly successful; and, judging from their reaction, neither did the rest of the audience who sat patiently through the 25 minute work and then politely applauded the composer as she took her bow onstage.

After intermission, the orchestra returned to perform the highlight of the evening - selections from Wagner's Götterdämmerung (1876), the final opera of the Ring cycle. The pieces chosen were "Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey," "Siegfried's Death and Funeral March," and "Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene."  Though orchestral excerpts from the Ring are always popular since they provide a series of highlights to those unable or unwilling to sit through the full four-opera work, they can never render the intense emotional impact that comes from hearing these long operas on four consecutive evenings until the fall of Valhalla that ends the saga finally provides the audience its catharsis.  Reducing these works to a "greatest hits" format violates everything the composer was striving for in designing Bayreuth as the total theater in which to showcase them.  That being said, this was nevertheless a powerful moving experience.  Rarely have I heard Wagner's music so well performed as it was by the Vienna Philharmonic Saturday evening.  Gergiev's conducting was a tour de force.  The soprano who sang Brünnhilde’s part - Wagner specialist Heidi Melton whom I had never before heard - did an excellent job in conveying the character's searing emotion as she prepared to follow Siegfried in death.

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