Er läuft wie ein offenes Messer durch die Welt: Salonen leads Wozzeck at Lincoln Center

Twentieth-century trauma: Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck
Photo (c) Lincoln Center/Stephanie Berger

The performance of Alban Berg's Wozzeck given by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia orchestra on Monday was of a lucid beauty that did nothing to diminish the impact of the work's bitter, brutal narrative. Salonen and the orchestra gave a reading of the score that was dynamically and expressively nuanced, richly textured without being dense. The relationship between orchestra and singers was symbiotic, creating an atmosphere that was unremittingly intense throughout the changes of mood between scenes. In the performance of Simon Keenlyside in the title role, the anxiety and anguish present throughout the opera seemed to find their distillation.

Opening Doors: Esa-Pekka Salonen and the NYPhil

On Tuesday night, Esa-Pekka Salonen drew from the New York Philharmonic an exceptionally fine performance, where passion and energy overflowed, but not at the expense of nuance in dynamics, tempi, and of course, in drama!  The opening piece, György Ligeti's "Concert Românesc" was overflowing with passion.  I was unfamiliar with the piece, but I'd love to hear more of it; the program note informed me of Ligeti's interest in folk music, and echoes of dancing tunes (and Alphorns!) were clearly audible.  Deliciously surprising things happened to the form, there was off-stage brass, great, vigorous playing from the entire orchestra, and delightful violin work--given the Gypsy influence, I'm tempted to say fiddling!--by Glenn Dicterow in the finale, which made me want to get up and dance.   I assumed Haydn's 7th symphony had been selected because its common title, "Le Midi," giving it a thematic link to the Bartók.  The program note was helpful here, too; apparently the symphony was composed shortly after Haydn entered the employ of the Esterházy family, explaining how he made it into a series called "Hungarian Echoes."  Salonen and the orchestra also made a good case for its inclusion as a work that, like the other two on the program, pushed the boundaries of expected form and had a lot of fun doing it.  The music was rendered with a passion, precision, and panache that Haydn certainly deserves but too seldom, I think, gets.