Met Opera: Un Ballo in Maschera

I went on Tuesday evening to the Met Opera for the last time this season to hear Un Ballo in Maschera.  I had already seen this production two seasons ago and had not been that greatly impressed by it, but I was looking forward to once again hearing James Levine conduct Verdi.  In the event, I was disappointed as Maestro Levine did not appear - he was, according to the stage manager, "indisposed" - and his place taken by an assistant conductor.

If the production deserves credit for one thing, it's in leaving behind the ridiculous setting in colonial Massachusetts that Verdi was forced to use in the face of the Italian censors' intransigence, first in Naples and then in Rome.  Perhaps Verdi should have been more prudent in the first place than to have built his opera on a libretto by Antonio Somma that was itself based on a historical incident of regicide.  But the 1792 assassination of Sweden's Gustav III was more than sixty years in the past by the time Verdi took up the subject and had already been used as the basis for other operas, most notably Daniel Auber's Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (1833) with a libretto by Eugène Scribe that Somma followed closely.  And there was no way Verdi could have anticipated the 1858 attempt on the life of Napoleon III by three of the composer's countrymen.  At any rate, all these complications came together to create a fiasco that saw the opera's action moved from Sweden to Poland until it was finally removed from Europe altogether and ended up, utterly improbably, in New England.  It was during all this confusion that Verdi wrote in frustration:

"From Nabucco, you may say, I have never had one hour of peace. Sixteen years in the galleys!"

None of this matters in the least, though, when listening to the music itself.  The opera contains some of Verdi's finest work.  Unfortunately, it was not done justice on Tuesday evening.  Whoever the conductor was - the stage manager had announced his name too quickly for me to catch - he was not up to the task.

As for the singers, I had seen Sondra Radvonovsky last season in the title role of Bellini's Norma and had thought her excellent in that notoriously difficult bel canto part.  Here, as Amelia, she seemed a bit off, at least at Tuesday evening's performance.  In contrast, Dolora Zajick, as Ulrica, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, as Renato, each brought years of experience to their respective parts and carried them off with all the professionalism one would expect of such fine singers.  I had heard Piotr Beczala in February in Iolanta, but he had failed to make any great impression on that occasion.  His appearance as Gustavo this season marked the first time he had sung the role at the Met.  Beczala gained some notoriety last season in Europe when he announced his refusal to ever again work at La Scala following the hostile reception he encountered there while performing in La Traviata.  He received a much warmer reception at the Met, though I am not sure it was entirely merited.

I did not care for David Alden's production any more than I did the last time I saw it.  The Met's website refers to it as "film noir-inspired."  This was pretty much the same description it applied to Mariusz Trelinski's new production of Iolanta/Bluebeard's Castle and with as little reason.  What any of these operas have to do with the gritty black & white crime dramas of the 1940's is beyond me.  The word "noir" is simply being used here for its cachet however little sense it makes when applied to these works.

Jupiter Symphony Players Perform Meyerbeer, Busch, Schulhoff, Prokofiev and Shostakovich

The Jupiter Symphony Players, in their recital yesterday afternoon at Good Shepherd Church, gave one of their more intriguing performances of the season.  Entitled Despite Tyranny, the program featured works by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Adolf Busch, Erwin Schulhoff, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The matinee began with Meyerbeer's Quartetto nel Il crociato in Egitto.  So successful was Wagner's campaign against Meyerbeer that, in all the years I've listened to classical music and opera, this is the first time I can ever recall having heard any of Meyerbeer's music performed.  What made Wagner's attack in Das Judenthum in der Musik particularly loathsome was that Meyerbeer had generously helped Wagner in the early years of the latter's career, both financially and by arranging for the premieres of his first two operas.  And Wagner was not the only one to have expressed bigotry.  Schumann too had indulged in a number of anti-Semitic attacks on the more established composer.

Il crociato in Egitto was one of Meyerbeer's earliest successes.  With a libretto by Gaetano Rossi (with whom Meyerbeer never worked again, most likely because this was the last of the composer's Italian operas), the work premiered in Venice in 1824 to huge acclaim and established the composer's reputation on an international level.  It was the beginning of one of the most successful careers in operatic history.  While in many ways innovative - the opera has been seen as a bridge between the work of Rossini and that of the bel canto composers who followed him - it was also something of an anachronism in that it was the last to include a role for castrato and the last to use the piano to accompany recitatives.  The present arrangement for obbligato flute, clarinet, violin, viola and cello was completed by Benedetto Carulli and dedicated to Conte Luigi Bertoglio.  It was so enjoyable a piece that one might very well wonder if Wagner had not after all been as jealous of Meyerbeer's talent as he was of his success.

Next was Busch's Seven Bagatelles, Op. 53a (n.d.).  If any musician deserves to be regarded as a hero, it's certainly the violinist Adolf Busch.  In 1933, shortly after Hitler had risen to power in Germany, Busch gave up a successful career in that country and moved to America as a protest against Nazism and all that it stood for.  As an article in the Wall Street Journal points out:

"What makes this act so significant is that Mr. Busch was the only well-known non-Jewish German classical musician to emigrate from Germany solely as a matter of principle—and one of a bare handful of non-Jewish European musicians, including Arturo Toscanini and Pablo Casals, who resolved to stop performing there for the same reason."

It was a stand that was to cost the virtuoso musician a great deal.  Although he went on, together with his son-in-law Rudolf Serkin, to found the Marlboro Music Festival, he never achieved in America anything like the popularity he had once enjoyed in Europe.  Yesterday afternoon's performance was the first opportunity I'd had to hear any of his music.  It was difficult, though, to gauge the composer's abilities from these brief works.  They had already ended even before one had had a chance to listen closely.

Following this work came Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet (1923).  Schulhoff was one of the more interesting intellectuals to inhabit Europe between the two world wars.  A student of both Max Reger and Claude Debussy, he gained recognition early on for his musical talents and, before having been conscripted into the Austrian army in 1914, appeared destined for a successful career.  His military service radicalized him, however, and turned him into a fervent Socialist.  Once the war had ended, he came under the influence of German Expressionism as well as Dadaism.  In the company of Georg Grosz, he began in the 1920's to frequent jazz clubs where he occasionally found employment as a pianist.  During this period he also wrote atonal music and corresponded with Alban Berg.  None of this, least of all the fact that he was a Jew, endeared him to the Nazis.  Schulhoff was arrested in Prague in 1939 and died of tuberculosis in the Wülzberg concentration camp three years later.

The present piece, a bizarre parody of the Baroque dance suite, was playful and fun loving.  It consisted of five movements, each of which corresponded to a different dance form - a Viennese waltz, a serenade, a Czech polka, a tango and a tarantella.  Schulhoff's Dadaist leanings were very much in evidence in these idiosyncratic pieces of which I thought the tango was the must successful.  Fittingly enough, the work was dedicated to Darius Milhaud who shared the composer's love of jazz and whose own music was rather unorthodox.

The recital continued with a performance of Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34 (1919) for clarinet, string quartet and piano.  The composer wrote the work during his not particularly successful American sojourn as a commission from a Russian sextet called the Zimro Ensemble.  Prokofiev was handed a booklet containing "Jewish folk songs" whose provenance has never been satisfactorily established, and he worked from that.  It's doubtful the composer had any real interest in the project other than the fee he was to be paid.  He completed the commission in only a couple of days and afterwards never had anything very good to say about it.  In spite of this, the work was well worth hearing.  It was vintage Prokofiev and, if not the composer's greatest work, still a fascinating adaptation that showed how adept he was at transforming an unfamiliar source into his own idiom.

After intermission, the program concluded with Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 (1944).  Like the Prokofiev sextet, this work too contained Jewish themes, most notably in the use of klezmer music in the final movement.  But Shostakovich's interest in this material was far more sincere than was Prokofiev's and he later employed Jewish themes in several other compositions as a muted rebuke to the anti-Semitic campaigns instigated by Stalin.  (Coincidentally, Shostakovich too possessed a booklet of Jewish folk songs and used it as the source for his 1948 song cycle entitled From Jewish Poetry.)  The trio had a posthumous dedication to Ivan Sollertinsky, artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic and a close friend of Shostakovich.  It was Sollertinsky who on his travels procured for the composer scores by Kurt Weill and Ernst Krenek as well as the uncompleted manuscript of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.  

The work itself was a masterpiece and undeniably one of Shostakovich's greatest chamber works.  From the opening chords of the dark and brooding first movement, it held the audience spellbound.  Especially poignant were the Jewish tunes contained in the final movement.  The trio was written while World War II was still raging and news of the Holocaust was only just becoming known.  The bleak despairing music contained far more than just a eulogy for a cherished friend; in it could be heard echoes of the anguished cries of those innocent victims who perished at the hands of the Nazis.  The work was played extremely well by Alexander Kobrin (piano), Philippe Quint (violin) and David Requiro (cello).

Carnegie Hall: Richard Goode Performs Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy and Schumann

On Friday evening at Carnegie Hall, pianist Richard Goode performed in recital as popular a program as one could imagine.  There were no surprises, only renditions of familiar works by classical music's best known composers - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy and Schumann.

Of all the piano recitals I've heard this season, this was the one I'd been looking forward to most.  I've seen Richard Goode many times over the past few decades and have always appreciated the straightforward, no-nonsense manner with which he approaches whatever works are to be performed.  He invariably displays great sensitivity as well as total respect for the composer's intentions.  This past October, I even attended the first part of a master class at Mannes in which he provided an in-depth analysis of the problems faced by a musician when first attempting a given piece of music.  It was an enlightening experience that helped me better understand what I hear at the recitals I attend; it also revealed the difficulties faced by any pianist when he or she sits down at the keyboard.

The program opened with Mozart's Adagio in B Minor, K. 540 (1788).  The work is something of an enigma in that it not only was composed as a standalone piece but was also the only keyboard work the composer wrote in the key of B minor.  Mozart ordinarily made use of the minor keys to express intense emotion and it may be the work was written, at least in part, as a testament to the personal anguish he felt in witnessing his prospects in Vienna, originally so promising, decline so precipitously in the final years of his life.  In this view, the B major ending could then be seen as representing his hope for a positive resolution to his problems.

The Mozart was followed by Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp Major, Op. 78 (1809), nicknamed "à Thérèse" for its dedication to Thérèse von Brunswick whose sister Josephine is often conjectured to have been the composer's "Immortal Beloved."  This is a very short and compact work that, like the composer's final sonata, the Op. 111, consists of only two movements.   The music is characteristic of Beethoven's "heroic" middle period and if it at times conveys a sense of lightheartedness that may have to do as much with the composer's new found financial security as with the pleasant memories of the summer weeks spent in the company of the Brunsviks in Hungary.

Next was Brahms's Klavierstücke, Op. 76 (1871-1878).  This is a collection of eight piano pieces written by Brahms over the course of several years.  In titling the anthology "Piano Pieces," the composer was obviously trying to avoid any programmatic associations.  In taking this route, Brahms consciously distanced himself from the approach taken by his one-time mentor Schumann whose solo piano works invariably followed some form of extra-musical program.  This may have been an indication that Brahms finally considered himself to have come into his own (his first great success, A German Requiem, had had its premiere in 1869), but it may also have been that he simply wished to call attention to the music rather than to any outside associations that might be attached to it.

After intermission, Mr. Goode returned to play Debussy's Children's Corner (1908).  The work was written as a present to the composer's three year old daughter Claude-Emma who was to die tragically at age 14, only a few months after Debussy himself.  It is a playful work filled with the echoes of childhood and much different from the more impressionist works Debussy composed during this same period (it preceded the first book of Préludes by two years).  The final piece, Golliwogg's Cakewalk, in fact contains not only elements of ragtime but even a parody of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The program concluded with Schumann's Humoreske in B-flat Major, Op. 20 (1839).  So varied are the moods of these pieces - joyous moments followed by those of the deepest despair - that it's tempting to see in them portents of the composer's approaching madness.  In fact, in describing the work in a letter to Clara, Schumann himself wrote, "All week I've been sitting at the piano and composing and writing and laughing and crying, all at the same time."  That pretty much sums of the spirit of the work.

While it was thoroughly enjoyable to hear such tasteful renditions of old favorites as were performed here, one would have wished that a few less familiar pieces had been included.  It is recitals and concert performances that offer non-musicians the best opportunity to become acquainted with the less frequented corners of the repertoire.  While I realize that programs at Carnegie Hall are selected with at least one eye on ticket sales, I nevertheless feel the musicians have an obligation to audiences to provide them with something new to carry away with them once the performance has ended.  At last season's Carnegie Hall recital, for example, Mr. Goode gave a brilliant rendition of Janáček's On an Overgrown Path, a work that I couldn't recall ever having heard before and that I thought truly worth experiencing.  Though I'll continue to attend the pianist's recitals no matter what music he chooses to play, I do hope next season's program is a bit more adventurous.

Juilliard Piano Recital: Chopin's Legacy

The concept behind Wednesday's late afternoon piano recital at Paul Hall was simple enough - a performance of a work by Chopin followed by that of a composer whom he had inspired or who had simply chosen to work in the same genre.  The full program, which differed slightly from that originally announced on Julliard's website (Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor was eliminated from the performance), was as follows:

CHOPIN Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, Op. 51 | Joey Chang, piano
FAURÉ Impromptu No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 25 | Chi Wei Lo, piano

CHOPIN Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 55, No. 2 | Rachel Breen, piano
SCRIABIN Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9, No. 2 | Christine Wu, piano
LIEBERMANN Nocturne No. 4, Op. 38 | Michael Lenahan, piano

BRAHMS Ballade in G Minor, Op. 118, No. 4 | Suejin Jung, piano

CHOPIN Étude in A-flat Major, Op. 10, No. 10 | Juliann Ma, piano
DEBUSSY Etude Pour les notes répétées | Juliann Ma, piano
SAINT-SAËNS Étude en forme de Valse, Op. 52, No. 6 | Tristan Teo, piano

CHOPIN Mazurkas in A Minor and F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, Nos. 1 and 3 | Ryan Reilly, piano
ADÈS Two Mazurkas, Op. 27, Nos. 1 and 2 | Han Chen, piano

CHOPIN Fantaisie in F Minor, Op. 49 | Maxwell Foster, piano
SCRIABIN Fantaisie in B Minor, Op. 28 | Gabrielle Chou, piano

It was an interesting concept, but in the end I found it much easier to appreciate each work on its own merits rather than to seek correspondences among the composers.  It was simply too problematical to determine the extent to which a given composer may or may not have been influenced by Chopin in the writing of his own work.

Not surprisingly, the pieces I found truly compelling were in those genres I already most admired when listening to Chopin's music.  Foremost among these were the nocturnes.  Though I've never been able to distinguish within them any echoes of the Bellini arias Liszt claimed were present, I've always been moved by their introspective character and the delicacy with which they evoke a contemplative mood in the mind of the listener.  Their form had already been fully developed by the Irish composer/pianist John Field by the time Chopin began to write his own, and it would have been interesting to have heard one of Field's pieces played alongside Chopin's at the recital.  As it was, though, the nocturnes selected to accompany Chopin's 16th provided an excellent choice.   Scriabin's nocturne for the left hand has long been a favorite.  It was completed by the composer in 1894 after he had injured the right side of his collar bone while practicing Balakirev's Islamey in an attempt to outdo fellow Moscow Conservatory student Joseph Lhévinne (who later went on to teach at Juilliard).  Though many pianists take the easy way out and perform the piece with both hands, at this recital Christine Wu stayed true to the spirit of the work and gave a tour de force rendition using only her left hand.  The work which followed, a nocturne by Juilliard alumnus Lowell Liebermann, was one that I had never before heard, and I was extremely impressed by both the composition and the expert playing of Michael Lenahan who turned in one of the best performances of the afternoon.

The other Chopin work I'd looked forward to hearing was the Fantaisie in F minor.  It could be argued that in its rejection of formal rules and set format (it consists of only one movement), the fantasy was the ultimate musical expression of the Romantic temperament.  And that's no doubt the reason the genre holds such appeal for audiences.  Written in 1841, Chopin's piece followed closely in the tradition of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Schumann's Fantasie in C major composed only five years earlier in 1836.  Pianist Maxwell Foster here gave an outstanding interpretation that I thought was worthy of comparison to the Claudio Arrau recording to which I most often listen.  The work with which it was paired, Scriabin's 1900 Fantaisie in B minor, shared its lush romanticism and was fully in keeping with the character of the earlier piece.  It was given a virtuoso rendition by Gabrielle Chou whom I had observed during intermission jumping up and down by the side of the stage to pump herself up for the performance.

Juillard415 Chamber Recital at Holy Trinity Church

Yesterday, the Julliard415 gave its final noontime performance of the season at Holy Trinity Church.  In honor of the occasion, the period instrument ensemble gave a full 1 1/2 hour recital that featured works by several of the most important composers of the Baroque and Classical periods - Biber, Buxtehude, Fasch, J.S. Bach, Zelenka, Haydn and Mozart.

The program opened with Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Harmonia Artificiosa-Ariosa No. 3 in A major (1696) for two violins, cello, lute and harpsichord.  Biber, who was himself one of the great violin virtuosi of the seventeenth century, introduced a number of innovations in composing music for that instrument.  His passacaglia in the Mystery Sonatas, for example, was one of the first pieces ever written for solo violin.  In the present work, he made use of the technique of scordatura in which the music is written as though for a normally tuned violin even while the instrument's actual pitch has been tuned differently.  Adding to the difficulty such a situation obviously presents to the performer is that in this case the work was also a canon in which the two violins were separated by an interval of four bars.  Considering the difficulties they faced, the two violinists at this performance - Nayeon Kim and Toma Iliev - were amazingly proficient and handled the complexity of their parts with total poise.

Next was Dieterich Buxtehude's Trio Sonata No. 3 for violin and viola da gamba in A minor, BuxWV 254, Opera prima (c. 1694) followed by Johann Friedrich Fasch's Sonata for Violin, Oboe, Bassoon and Continuo, FaWV N:F4 (n.d.).  After these two pieces came Bach's Sonata sopr'il Soggetto Reale from Musicalisches Opfer BWV 1079 (1747). The Musical Offering, according to legend, was written in response to a challenge given Bach by Frederick the Great to write a six-voice fugue on a theme chosen by the king.  Bach did succeed in improvising a three-voice fugue (his performance before the king was one of the few occasions on which he was known to have played the pianoforte) and upon his return home fulfilled the king's request through his completion of the Ricercar a 6 that is central to the entire work.  In this particular trio sonata, the third of the work's five sections, the king's theme does not appear until midway through the second movement.

The Bach was followed by an improvisation that had been coached by faculty member Noam Sivan and that featured Melanie Williams on flute and James Kennerley on harpsichord.  The point of an improvisation is to display not only the ability of the musicians on their respective instruments but their inventiveness as well.  I had previously heard improvisations coached by Noam Sivan at Juilliard's past two Chamberfests and had been greatly impressed by what the musicians had succeeded in accomplishing on those occasions.  Here the improvisation was in four movements of which the most interesting to me was the second movement fugue described by harpsichordist Kennerley as follows:

"It [the fugue] aims to imitate the Italianate North German fugues that one finds in the work of Handel, Bach and others, most characteristically represented by the repeated notes in the opening theme and the lively chains of suspensions in the free voices."

Also of note was the slow third movement that allowed Melanie Williams the opportunity to display her mastery of the flute.  She was definitely one of the most accomplished performers on that instrument I've heard in recent memory.

After the improvisation came Jan Dismas Zelenka's Trio Sonata No.3 for violin, oboe, fagot and Basso Continuo in B flat major (n.d.) and then Bach was again featured in a performance of the Allegro from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050 (1721).  What was most noticeable about this music was the way in which the harpsichord, after having been used as little more than accompaniment to the flute and strings for the greater part of the movement, suddenly came into its own as a solo instrument toward the conclusion.  James Kennerley was again the harpsichordist and handed in a bravura performance of the cadenza.

After these works, the attention shifted from the Baroque to the Classical as the movement Un poco Adagio Affettuoso from Haydn's String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4 (1772) was performed.  Haydn is usually portrayed as a somewhat stuffy old man in a periwig (the appellation "Father of the String Quartet" only adds to this image of advanced age) who composed dry, carefully constructed classical pieces that served as models for both Mozart and Beethoven.  But this is unfair.  In a piece such as this, clearly indebted as it is to the influence of the Sturm und Drang movement then sweeping through Europe, he appears rather to be anticipating the Romantic tradition.  Surely even Schubert never wrote a work so filled with ardent feeling as this movement.  Near the end, the sotto voce repetition of the theme conveys a powerful emotional impact that, as the Program Notes point out, completely overwhelms the listener.  As for the performance itself - featuring Edson Scheid and Anna Lester, violins; Marie Daniels, viola; and Sarah Stone, cello - I was lucky enough to have heard the Orion Quartet, consisting of four of the world's foremost Haydn specialists, perform several of that composer's works (including the Op. 20, No. 5) this past season and thought the present rendition fully worthy of comparison to those performed by the more experienced ensemble.

The program concluded with the opening movement Allegro vivace assai from Mozart's String Quartet No. 14 in G major, K.387 (1782) nicknamed the "Spring."  This was the first of the composer's six "Haydn Quartets" dedicated to the master with whom he sometimes played quartets himself (with Mozart on viola and Haydn on violin).  In it he paid homage to the man who more or less established the form of the string quartet as we now know it and at the same time displayed his own genius for innovation.  The work was performed exceptionally well by Chloe Fedor and Toma Iliev, violins; Bryony Gibson-Cornish, viola; and Alexander Nicholls, cello.

Period instrument performances are often thought to be of solely academic interest and of appeal only to those with a scholarly interest in the history of Baroque music.  That was hardly the case at this performance.  Instead, it proved to be a highly enjoyable recital for anyone with the least appreciation of chamber music.  All the players yesterday were top level musicians and astonishingly adept at their instruments.  I felt fortunate to have heard them.

Carnegie Hall: Boston Symphony Performs Beethoven and Shostakovich

On Thursday evening, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its new music director Andris Nelsons, performed an unusually long program that featured works by two very different composers - Beethoven and Shostakovich - and included an appearance by the celebrated violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

The evening began with Shostakovich's Passacaglia from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (1934).  I had attended a production of the full opera at the Met in November and had been duly impressed by the composer's achievement.  Before then, I had known Shostakovich primarily through his chamber works and symphonies.  But that he also had a flair for the dramatic could easily be seen from his skillful adaptation of the Leskov novel.  What was most revealing in it was the sympathy Shostakovich displayed toward his heroine Katerina, an attitude entirely absent from his nineteenth century source.  It's ironic that the composer came close to being executed by Stalin for his composition of a work in which he expressed such sympathy for the downtrodden proletariat.  If the Soviet authorities were able to see in Katerina's character only degeneracy, Shostakovich at least showed an awareness of the conditions that had driven her to such extremes.  One of the unusual features of the opera was the use of orchestral interludes interspersed among scenes of action and dialog as a means of connecting the scenes to one another and providing continuity.  Of these passages, the Passacaglia was the longest and most dramatic; it came at the crucial moment when Katerina had moved to a new level of iniquity through the brutal murder of her father-in-law Boris.  Though Shostakovich had cast the music in the form of a Passacaglia, its jarring almost melodramatic sound was as far from the familiar Baroque form as one could imagine.  As such, it formed a counterpart to the blaring dissonant music that accompanied Katerina's and Sergei's violent lovemaking at the conclusion of the preceding act.

The next work was one of the most famous ever written for violin, Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 (1806).  Although it's difficult to believe now, so popular has the work become, it was a signal failure at its premiere and remained relatively unknown until revived by Mendelssohn (with Joachim as soloist) in 1844.  The initial lack of success may have been due to Beethoven's tardiness in completing the score.  It's said that the work's dedicatee, Franz Clement, received his copy so late that he was forced to sight read his part at the premiere.  Fortunately, the soloist at this performance was much better prepared.  I first heard Christian Tetzlaff several seasons ago when he performed the Ligeti Violin Concerto with the ACJW Ensemble under the baton of Simon Rattle.  Last season, I heard him again, this time with Orpheus, in a performance of the Joachim Violin Concerto.  Although Tetzlaff has been criticized at times for a lack of feeling in his playing, I found him on both the above occasions to be intelligent and sympathetic to the composers' intentions.  Personally, I do not care for a great deal of flamboyance or show of emotion when listening to music.  I much prefer to hear an artist who can present to the audience in coherent fashion the ideas a given composer is seeking to express.  I thought Tetzlaff succeeded brilliantly in doing so in this piece.  He was in full control throughout the length of the work and at its conclusion brought the audience to its feet for a standing ovation.  The cadenza he played in the first movement was his own adaptation of that which Beethoven had written for the alternate version for piano and orchestra, the Op. 61a.

After intermission, the program concluded with another piece by Shostakovich, the Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 (1953).  As the symphony's premiere took place only nine months after the death of Stalin, many commentators have given in to the temptation to see in it, particularly in the pounding second movement, a portrait of the dictator or at least references to the composer's feelings toward him.  Shostakovich's supposed memoir Testimony, a posthumous work whose authenticity has been vehemently challenged, in fact contains the statement:

"I did depict Stalin in my next symphony, the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin's death and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It's about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that's the basis."

Somehow, this all seems a bit too neat, especially as there is some evidence that Shostakovich began work on the symphony at a much earlier date.  While no doubt the composer, along with countless other Soviet intellectuals, breathed a sigh of relief in seeing such an oppressive a regime finally come to an end, it is not necessary to look for so exact an analogy.  Though Shostakovich may very well have used the composition as an opportunity to reflect on the series of privations he had been forced to endure in the course of his career - the musical signature DSCH, so often repeated in the third and fourth movements, can be interpreted as a testament to his resilience - in the end the work is an intensely personal piece whose full meaning could only be known to the composer himself.

Thursday evening was the first opportunity I'd had to hear the BSO in several years; I'd somehow forgotten how great an orchestra it is.  The ensemble gave a tight, controlled performance of three very complex pieces and succeeded beyond my expectations.  This was the first time I'd heard music director Andris Nelsons, and I thought very highly of his work - he knew exactly what sound he wanted and managed to elicit it from the orchestra without any undue effort.  I would strongly recommend attending a BSO performance if one has the chance.

Juilliard Chamber Recital: Paul Frucht, Shen Yiwen and Dvořák

Yesterday afternoon, Juilliard staged the final chamber recital in this season's Wednesdays at One series and made use of the occasion to showcase two of the winning compositions from the 2014 Gena Raps competition.  Ms. Raps, who studied piano under Artur Balsam, is a Juilliard graduate and a member of the Mannes faculty.

The first piece was the world premiere of "Levity" for Piano Trio by Paul Frucht.  This was a thoroughly modern piece that could perhaps best be described, at least in the absence of any program notes, as peripatetic.  That anyway was the word that came to my mind as I sat listening.  In keeping with its title it was an upbeat and energetic piece that was quite enjoyable to hear.  Though the piano part did not always appear completely integrated with that of the strings, that impression may only have resulted from my ignorance of the composer's intentions.  The music was very ably performed by the Hsin Trio consisting of Sissi Yuqing Zhang (violin), Yin Xiong (cello) and Han Chen (piano).  I had seen these same performers just last month at another Wednesdays at One recital, though I don't believe they had at that time formally named themselves as a trio.  On that earlier occasion, they played the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50.  At both performances they were coached by Joseph Lin (violin), David Finckel (cello) and Joseph Kalichstein (piano).

The next work was another world premiere - Four Chinese Brush Paintings by Shen Yiwen - and was much more traditional than I had anticipated.  The composer was very successful in using Western instruments to create sounds that one could readily associate with historical Chinese music (or at least this foreigner's concept of such music) and therefore by extension with Chinese artwork as well.  This was especially fitting as a reverence for the past lies at the heart of Chinese art; painters often work with historical subjects as a means of demonstrating a continuity with those artists who have preceded them.  Before beginning the work, violist Gregory Luce remarked that none of the four movements have titles because brush paintings are what the viewer observes them to be.  He may here have been referring, at least in part, to the concept of du hua in which the content of a given work is secondary to the associations to which it alludes.  In this manner an artist can stir the heart of the viewer by referring in his painting to a prior image which made use of the same or similar content; the recollection of the earlier work is intended to create a more intense emotional impact.  The performers here were the Aeolus Quartet, Juilliard's graduate resident string quartet, whose members include Nicholas Tavani (violin), Rachel Shapiro (violin), Gregory Luce (viola) and Alan Richardson (cello).  I had an opportunity to hear these musicians in recital last May at this same venue and was very impressed by their rendition of works by Haydn and Ravel.  They are on a par with, if not superior to, a good number of more established ensembles that I've heard over the years.

The program closed with one of Dvořák's most popular chamber works, the Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (1891), nicknamed the "Dumky."  As I had just heard on Monday afternoon a performance by the Jupiter Players of the same composer's String Sextet in A major, Op. 48, I had a unique opportunity to witness the manner in which Dvořák's use of East European folk sources, here most obviously the Ukrainian dumka, evolved over the years in which he continued to compose chamber music.  Only months after having written this piece, he would travel to the United States where he would be exposed, with the assistance of Harry Burleigh, to the Afro-American folk tradition and would in turn incorporate elements of that music in his chamber works as well, most notably in the "American Quartet," Op. 96.  The musicians were the Hyon Trio; the ensemble consisted of Julia Ahyoung Choi (violin), Jennifer Yunyoung Choi (cello) and Kevin Ahfat (piano).  Like the performers on the previous two pieces, these were exceptionally talented individuals.  The strings were particularly impressive in the second movement adagio in capturing the lush sensuality of Dvořák's music, and I thought the pianist's facility at the keyboard remarkable throughout.  They were coached by David Finckel and Vivian Weilerstein.