Fin-de-siècle fantasies: Renee Fleming, Jeremy Denk, & the Emerson Quartet

Adele Bloch-Bauer I: Gustav Klimt, 1907

Saturday, May 4 saw the last night of Renee Fleming's "Perspectives" series at Carnegie Hall, and its inventive programming and insightful delivery spoke well both for the artist and for the series concept. The selection and arrangement of pieces resisted any teleological or excessively literal interpretation of how the music represented the window to modernity of the program's title. Intricately interwoven, the selections proved mutually illuminating, with several texts in multiple settings, and sensibilities and styles ranging from the full, complex romanticism of Brahms through the lush sensuality of Strauss and Wagner to sharp minimalism. Two of the composers (Wellesz and Zeisl) were new to me; another reminder of the extraordinary artistic ferment of Vienna around the turn of the twentieth century. The artistry of Fleming, Denk, and the Emerson Quartet was likewise not merely intelligent, but itself creative.

Modernism, Morbidity, and Eroticism with the NYPhil and Deborah Voigt

Arnold Böcklin, Der Toteninsel (New York version, 1880)

The musicians of the NYPhil are back in town and, under the baton of David Robertson, were in excellent form on Friday night, giving an intriguing program of Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, and Schoenberg.  And before I give my impressions of the proceedings, I would like to step onto a metaphorical soapbox for a moment and deplore the fact that the hall was far from full. Advance student tickets were available; there was a week-of special price offer for all e-mail list subscribers for any seat in the house. This is the NYPhil, people! You know, one of these world-class institutions this city does so much boasting about. I sat in the orchestra, with a fifteen-dollar ticket that I knew I'd only have to buy fifteen minutes before the bell. You're neglecting your arts organizations and depriving me of my traditional student-hardship narratives! And more importantly, you're missing out!  On Friday, we got three pieces from the tumultuous early years of the twentieth century, passionate considerations of nothing less than matters of life and death. Oh, and sex. That too.

Schauerlich und süß: Pierrot Lunaire & L'Histoire du Soldat

"What an amazing score! An orchestra of five musicians. Sounds appeared, which never were heard before. Sometimes it sounded like an orchestra of 100." --Otto Klemperer on Pierrot Lunaire

"So sure was Schoenberg's touch in his incubus of a clown that it is as if the Pierrot into whom he breathed life has gone on to shape his own history, to frighten us into believing that he emerged from nowhere, has no ancestors, no attachments and, most provocatively, cannot die." -Jonathan Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire

Via Entartete Musik

It turns out that Schoenberg's music itself is far less intimidating to me than musicologists who write about it. I got myself a whole stack of books out of the library, and kept finding alarming utterances along the lines of "Indeed, this can seem thorny and impenetrable..." (Yes, the Really Shameful Confession here is that the only Schoenberg works I'd previously heard live were his first chamber symphony, some cabaret songs, and Pelleas und Melisande... nothing thorny and impenetrable.) So I looked at Schoenberg and his World, and Inside Pierrot Lunaire, and listened to the Sinopoli recording, and headed off to hear it on Saturday with great excitement, but also a certain amount of fear and trembling. Thanks to Operamission, I had a great time soaking it all in, along with a fierce rendition of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, and the rest of the audience in the space at the Gershwin Hotel seemed to as well. [Update: video of the performance is available here.]

Winterweihe: Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall

The United States Postal Service has its unofficial credo to motivate it; opera fans have... well, what makes them opera fans.  Snow descending on New York City and making me very relieved to be safely home via a still-functioning subway could not deter the diva-devotees who packed Carnegie Hall for Renée Fleming's recital.  I have to confess that I couldn't call myself a diva-devotee, but I was not about to miss a program of Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Korngold, R. Strauss, and a new Brad Mehldau cycle with Rilke texts (detailed program notes here.)  I'll state my biggest reservation at the outset: I kept losing Fleming's consonants, and I found this both distressing and frustrating.  Carnegie Hall generously provided their usual texts and translations, but still.  I don't know whether this is an issue of general Textdeutlichkeit, or a peculiarity of phrasing, because I experienced a shadow of the same problem with the English-language songs.  Fortunately, this did not vitiate Fleming's ability to communicate musically, and I was impressed both by the bold program, and by Fleming's commitment to the emotional arc of the selections.