![Esa-Pekka Salonen [Photo by Clive Barda courtesy of Fidelio Arts]](http://www.operatoday.com/esa-pekka-salonen-1.gif)
14 Nov 2012
Wozzeck at UC Berkeley
At this famous bastion of intellect the biggest drama was the parking. Though the football stadium may have been stuffed, Zellerbach Hall was not.
Recently in Performances
ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude
English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
Love, always: Chanticleer, Live from London … via San Francisco
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).
Dreams and delusions from Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
Treasures of the English Renaissance: Stile Antico, Live from London
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
A wonderful Wigmore Hall debut by Elizabeth Llewellyn
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
The Sixteen: Music for Reflection, live from Kings Place
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
Iestyn Davies and Elizabeth Kenny explore Dowland's directness and darkness at Hatfield House
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
Paradise Lost: Tête-à-Tête 2020
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
Joyce DiDonato: Met Stars Live in Concert
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Where All Roses Go’: Apollo5, Live from London
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields 're-connect'
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
Lucy Crowe and Allan Clayton join Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO at St Luke's
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
Choral Dances: VOCES8, Live from London
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Royal Opera House Gala Concert
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
Fading: The Gesualdo Six at Live from London
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen at the Oscarshall Palace in Oslo
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Precipice: The Grange Festival
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
Monteverdi: The Ache of Love - Live from London
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
Music for a While: Rowan Pierce and Christopher Glynn at Ryedale Online
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
A Musical Reunion at Garsington Opera
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Performances
An appearance by London’s famed Philharmonia orchestra starring in one of opera’s most riveting theater pieces (an avowed intellectual masterpiece as well) might well have generated sufficient advance excitement to fill the hall. Sad to say, come to pass, not a lot of excitement was created in the hall either.
The Philharmonia’s claim to fame is its conductorial pedigree more so than its sound — Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karijan, Ricardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Christoph von Dohnányi. And now Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, well known locally as one of the L.A. Phil’s wunderkind (with Rattle and Dudamel).
The no-longer-young maestro did deliver splendidly on what we came for — the three stupendous B’s after Marie is murdered grew to unequaled quivering force, and the masterful, musically riveting Invention in D minor led to the superbly delivered, tonally pure “hop hop” repetitions that end the opera (how did excellent boy soprano Zachary Mamis so securely find those incredibly high pitches?). All these were wonderful, uniquely Salonen moments.
The maestro made a good case for Wozzeck as an orchestral showpiece, marking solid beats to expose the shape and rhythms of the abstract structures that construct acts I and II, reserving his serpentine hand movement to motivate elaborations of color in the too few moments of orchestral solo. As Berg’s score is cerebral Salonen’s delivery too was cerebral, may we say cold, even uninvolved in the opera’s dramatic exposition.
Berg’s score, an opera, is far more than pure music. It is the physical atmospheres in which the Wozzeck tragedy unfolds. Without Berg’s prescribed physical production (sets, lights, costumes) an orchestra acting alone takes on the enormous burden of creating complex atmospheres. This began to occur somewhat in the second act in the public scenes, and took hold in the third act when Berg’s more formal structures gave way to free musical invention. Here Salonen followed suit with a freer dramatic involvement.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is known for the warmth of its strings, an attribute that is not really present in the Wozzeck atonalities. Yet the strings of this orchestra made a startling showing in projecting the nervous attitudes that Berg created and the still youthful maestro elicited. The youth (relative) of the players was evident, dominated by the nearly electric presence of 30-year-old German concert master Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay.
Spreading the Philarmonia Orchestra on the stage rather than, let’s say, cramming Berg’s sizable orchestral requirements into a pit engendered a clarity of instrumental tone, and a transparency of sound that exacerbated Salonen’s coldness. At the same time however it redeemed the coldness into a musical and instrumental purity that made this very fine orchestra great, and made it the star of the show, as intended.
The assembled singers included several distinguished artists. All were quite capable of fulfilling their role, here primarily to fill the musical space Berg’s score demands. With no overview of the opera other than that imposed by the maestro it became however a mere reading of the text. Then there was the unfortunate idea that some staging was needed, when in fact a purely concert performance would have complemented the performance by the orchestra.
The singers apparently attempted to move and emote as they saw fit. This resulted in some strange solutions to entrances and exits, motivations and discoveries. Unfortunately this British bred Wozzeck did not attempt to compete with the semi-staged operas recently attempted by the L.A. and N.Y. Philharmonics, endeavors that sensibly enough involved opera directors. And by the way when are opera companies going to start staging symphonies?
This Wozzeck in Berkeley was the full musical nine-yards. The UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus acquitted itself handsomely (a few missed pitches), the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs marched on and did its duty, and members of the UC Berkeley Symphony well managed the off-stage banda and most of the on-stage banda (the clarinet player was from the Philharmonia).
Michael Milenski
Cast and Production
Wozzeck: Johan Reuter; Marie: Angela Denoke; Drum Major: Hubert Francis; Andres: Joshua Ellicott; Captain: Peter Hoare; Doctor: Tijl Faveyts; First Apprentice Henry Waddington; Second Apprentice: Eddie Wade; Idiot: Harry Nicoll; Margret: Anna Burford; Marie’s Child: Zachary Mamis. UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus. Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. Members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. The Philharmonia Orchestra. Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen. Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, California. November 10, 2012.