Work of the week

On 24 April 2015 Chaya Czernowin’s cycle Slow Summer Stay will be performed in its entirety for the first time at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival in Germany. The three parts of the cycle, Streams, Lakes and Upstream, can also be performed as individual works.

Slow Summer Stay is inspired by two basic principles applicable to all music: motion and stillness. The combination of both of these elements leads to a new and complex unity. Though Czernowin marks her scores very precisely, she still leaves room for indeterminacy in performance, for example indicating at several points that passages should be played in ‘drunken rhythm’, meaning that the instrumentalists are to play unevenly with the ensemble.

Streams and Lakes are both scored for different ensembles comprised of the same forces: two clarinets, bassoon, percussion, guitar, piano, viola and cello. These two ensembles then come together for the third piece, Upstream, creating a work for sixteen players. In Upstream, the listener begins hearing Lakes supposedly performed again, until after twenty bars Streams simultaneously sets in. The two pieces continue running on top of each other until the work’s end. This technique is intended to create an effect like that of listening to one recording and then turning on another at the same time.

My compositions behave like they have a beginning as well as an end, but maybe they have neither. – Chaya Czernowin

The performance in Witten will bring together two ensembles and conductors: Johannes Kalitzke will conduct œnm. österreichisches ensemble für neue musik for the first piece, and Manuel Nawri with Ensemble KNM Berlin the second. The third piece will see the two ensembles join forces to create a collaborative performance.

• Chaya Czernowin - Profile


• Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik

(04/20/15)

On 19 April 2015 Schoenberg’s largest and most complex work Moses und Aron will be staged at the Komische Oper Berlin, in a production by Barrie Kosky with music conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. The opera, written between 1928 and 1932, was never finished: though Schoenberg planned to compose three acts, the final of these never reached completion.
At the centre of Moses und Aron is the conflict between the two protagonists. Moses, from the outset communicating through spoken word rather than as a singer, doubts his ability to successfully communicate God’s word to the people. On the other hand Aron, performed by a Dramatic tenor, is a very skilled communicator who understands the peoples’ need for clear and comprehensible images. However, Aron’s lack of understanding of the word of God culminates in his creation of the Golden Calf, incurring Moses’ anger, wrath and finally resignation, as depicted in his final line “O word, o word, that I lack.”

The inherent contradiction between abstract thought and its distortion through representation is a philosophical problem that underlies much of Schoenberg’s oeuvre. As a result, some interpreters have recognised aspects of the composer in his portrayal of Moses. Though Schoenberg was mostly misunderstood during his lifetime, he recognised himself to be a musical revolutionary. He said of his extraordinary role in avant-garde music:

Someone had to be it, nobody wanted to be it, so I decided to be it myself. – Arnold Schoenberg.

The original reception of Moses und Aron has always been connected with the rise of anti-Seminitism in the 1930s. Schoenberg himself only narrowly managed to escape arrest during this turbulent time, emigrating to the USA when dismissed from his positions in Germany. This new production at Komische Oper is part of a series of events marking the 70th Jubilee year of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp.

• Arnold Schoenberg - Profile


• Komische Oper Berlin

Foto: Komische Oper Berlin: www.facebook.com/komischeoperberlin/photos/

(04/13/2015)

On 11 April 2015 the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will perform the world premiere of Fazıl Say’s Chamber Symphony at Carnegie Hall, New York. The orchestra, made up of professional musicians from around the world and known for performing without a conductor, has commissioned Say to write a work about national identity – an issue close to the composer’s heart.

The result is a twenty-minute piece for string orchestra. Chamber Symphony is a work of contrasts, sometimes calm and contemplative, sometimes fast and dance-like. Say intends his music to emphasise the connections and divisions between East and West, traditional and contemporary. He employs extended techniques to create percussive effects from the conventionally classical orchestra, at times instructing the performers to strike their instruments with the wood of their bows and even their hands.

The work comprises three movements: Introduction, Nocturne and Finale. Referencing the composer’s Turkish heritage, the introduction is in 7/8 metre and the energetic final movement features an imitation of typical Roman-Turkish dances. Asked what home means to him, Say states:

Increasingly, home to me is music. I have always thought that a city is part of a country, a country is part of the world, the world is a planet and part of our solar system, and the solar system is part of the Milky Way. Everything is interconnected. – Fazıl Say

Following the premiere, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will tour Chamber Symphony throughout Europe to cities including Bologna, Cologne, Heidelberg, Berlin, Innsbruck and Budapest. Fazıl Say will accompany them on the tour as the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major.

• Fazıl Say - Profil


• Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

(04/07/15)

On 3 April 2015 Michael Tippett’s fourth opera The Ice Break will be staged in a new production by Graham Vick and the Birmingham Opera Company. Andrew Gourlay will conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, who appear alongside a chorus of 150 amateur singers from the Birmingham area.

Premiered in 1977 at the Royal Opera House in London, The Ice Break portrays four ethnically and socially diverse protagonists caught in the midst of an increasingly violent conflict between two rival gangs. The work is a study of human relationships and personal identity, and explores our duties to one another in society. Though the libretto - also written by Tippett - is often turbulent, fraught and bloody, the composer’s message is ultimately humanitarian:

Splintered and rich in reference as Tippett’s operas are, in their music and in their text, they carry at their heart a glowing confidence in the power of human beings to find a centre, and from that centre to sing. – Paul Griffiths

The Ice Break runs until 9 April at the B12 Warehouse in a promenade-style performance. On 9 April, Birmingham Opera Company Chorus are hosting a symposium ‘Breaking the Ice’ to discuss the role of social responsibility in the arts.

• Michael Tippett - Profile 


• Birmingham Opera Company

Photo: SIMBA / www.utsa.edu

 

Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Ich wandte mich und sah an alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne (Ecclesiastical Action) is the composer’s final work, completed just five days before his death. Premiered in the concert hall in 1972, it will receive its first scenic performance on 27 March 2015 at the Oper am Dom, Cologne, with narrators Jörg Rätjen and Stephan Rehm, bass soloist Bo Skovhus and the Gürzenich Orchestra directed by Gabriel Feltz.

The work features material from two very different literary sources melded to create an auditory collage: verses from the Old Testament and excerpts from Dostoyevsky’s "The Brothers Karamazov". Zimmermann’s pluralistic style is clearly displayed by the combination and confrontation of musical and narrative elements, an effect that is accentuated by his detailed performance instructions in the score:

Both speakers shout at random: Riches, self-destruction, extinguish each other. While shouting, they mime and express themselves with acrobatic motions. The percussion section beats wildly and chaotically on its instruments.

Unusually for Zimmermann the work contains only one musical quote, which appears at the end in the form of the Bach chorale "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort". The line "It is enough: Lord, if it pleases You, then release me" connects this last work with his early Violin Concerto from 1950, which ends with the same passage. Here the text is particularly poignant given the imminence of the composer’s death.

Ecclesiastical Action will be performed four more times until 6 April, followed by performances with the same orchestra of the Violin Concerto from 17 to 19 May 2015 in the Cologne Philharmonie. Zimmermann’s centenary will be celebrated in 2018, with several major anniversary events already in production.

• Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Profile


• Opera Cologne


• Cologne Philharmonie

While working on his opera Die Tragödie des Teufels (2009), Peter Eötvös became increasingly interested in the character of Lilith, Adam’s alleged first wife. It is from this work that the idea of Lilith as protagonist originated, which grew to become the opera Paradise Reloaded (Lilith). Completed in 2013, the work will receive its German premiere on 21 March 2015 at Theater Chemnitz in a production by Helen Malkowsky and directed by Frank Beermann.

As well as providing the idea for Paradise Reloaded (Lilith), Die Tragödie des Teufels also formed the basis of the libretto, with additional text by Eötvös, his wife Mari Mazei and the librettist Albert Ostermaier. After being banished from paradise, Lilith makes a pact with the devil to win back Adam and destroy Eve. The two women are dichotomous: Eve as Adam’s caring and subordinate wife, Lilith striving for independence and equality with him. Although the idea of emancipation is closely associated with the Lilith myth, Eötvös takes a more philosophical approach to the narrative:

My opera is not about equal rights of men and women, but the development of society and civilization with Lilith, instead of Eve, as its starting point. – Peter Eötvös

Paradise Reloaded (Lilith) will run at Theater Chemnitz until the end of April. Following immediately on from this, Eötvös’ new one-act opera Senza sangue will receive its world premiere on 1 May 2015 at Cologne Philharmonie, performed by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert.

• Peter Eötvös - Profile


• Theater Chemnitz


• Cologne Philharmonie

Photo: Neue Oper Wien / Armin Bardel

(03/16/2015)

Christian Jost’s new opera Rote Laterne ("Red Lantern") will receive its world premiere on 8 March 2015 at Opera Zurich in a production directed by Nadja Loschky. The opera, with a libretto written by Jost himself, is based on the Chinese writer Su Tong’s novel "Wives and Concubines" depicting a girl broken down by the concubine system in 1930s China. The novel was turned into a successful film of the same name.

The subject of Asia has been a recurrent theme in Jost’s compositional career. He has long-established connections with Chinese orchestras and more recently was Composer in Residence in Taipei during their 2012-13 season. In several of his works Western musical training is merged with his passion for Eastern musical traditions – with Rote Laterne a prime example. The work is part of an opera trilogy together with Die arabische Nacht and Rumor, and in a theme common to Jost’s operatic output, the key role is played by a young woman typified by her modernity.

Song-Lian is the opera’s protagonist who marries into the traditional Chinese household of Master Chen as his fourth wife. In this remote and competitive house the ultimate goal is to be favoured by the Master, a status signified by the red lantern. Each time the lantern shines in front of one of the wives’ rooms, she climbs one step higher in the hierarchy of the house. Song-Lian however, refuses to accept a life where her sole aim is waiting for the lantern:

Song-Lian has more ambitious aims than merely succumbing to the finely spun web of intrigue and passion of Master Chen. The year she spends with him becomes a nightmare in which the seasons alter as they please and lust and jealousy dictate the hours of the day. As if in a dream she falls into a sequence of events, realising that the secret to her world lies at the bottom of a well. – Christian Jost

Later in March another work by Christian Jost will receive its world premiere: his BerlinSymphonie performed by the Konzerthausorchester under the baton of Iván Fischer on 20 and 21 March 2015 at the Berlin Konzerthaus.

• Christian Jost - Profile


• Opera Zurich


• Konzerthaus Berlin

Photo: Opera Zurich / Monika Rittershaus

(03/02/2015)

Hans Werner Henze’s children’s opera Pollicino opens at the Teatro Goldoni in Florence on 24 February 2015, conducted by Alessandro Cadario with the Orchestra del Conservatorio L. Cherubini di Firenze and the Coro di voci bianche Associazione Landini.

Based on a libretto by Giuseppe Di Leva, the idea for Henze’s Pollicino came from the most innocent of sources: the energy and playfulness of a group of children, the young ensemble “Concentus Politianus”. He wrote the opera for this group, who performed the world premiere in 1980 in their hometown of Montepulciano, Italy. Though the plot is reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel, Henze also incorporates elements of political theatre and the resulting opera, performed by children for children, is intended to both teach and entertain. There are very few adult vocal parts, and in the orchestra pit children play recorders, guitars, violins and Orff instruments. The music itself, however, is far from childish, featuring several forms of aria, ensemble parts and orchestral interludes such as the march, waltz and tango. This stylistic range requires considerable understanding of musical form from the children, and learning to achieve this is at the centre of the opera.

When children act, sing and make music, they create and listen to sounds that they will encounter time and time again in their musical lives. They accept the sounds of the music when they play it, when many adults would disregard them as odd. Children aren’t aware of the judgements adults instate onto contemporary music. – Hans Werner Henze

Henze worked closely with the children in his composition of Pollicino, tailoring it to their musical skills and incorporating their ideas. In this way the opera treats its young performers very seriously: one of the main reasons for its ongoing success. Pollicino will run at the Teatro Goldoni until 28 February 2015.

• Hans Werner Henze - Profile


• Florence Opera

Photo: National Theatre Weimar / Anke Neugebauer

(02/18/2015)

This month, the University Theatre in Boston, MA will stage Peter Eötvös' opera Angels in America in a production by Jim Petosa and directed by William Lumpkin, running from 19 to 22 February 2015.

Angels in America received its world premiere in 2004 in Paris, around twenty years after the events depicted in Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of the same name on which the opera is based. The story explores the hysteria surrounding AIDS in mid-1980s America through the lives of a group of flawed, interconnected characters. Though Kushner’s script comments heavily on the politics of the time, Eötvös' version is far more concerned with the fantastical elements of the play: his original attraction to the material was based on the omnipresent visions and hallucinations of the protagonists. These visions become central to the opera and its depiction of the emotional turbulence of the characters and their relationships.

In search of suitable musical material for the opera Eötvös and his wife Mari Mezei, who wrote the libretto, watched several Broadway performances – the showtunes were a huge influence on the sound of the opera, to which Eötvös added jazz and rock elements, references to Jewish music and recordings of everyday sounds. The resultant score is actively antithetical to the drama of the libretto and the severity of the plot:

It could have been indigestible were it not for Eötvös' intelligently constructed hybrid of musical theatre and opera. Of course one can imagine the narrative’s disillusioned existentialism with matching music. But the longer you listen, the more pleasing Eötvös' musical effect becomes: his clever, ironic way of playing and toying around, rather than throwing the music in your face. – Hans-Jürgen Linke (Frankfurter Rundschau)

Another of Eötvös' operas Paradise reloaded (Lilith) will receive its German premiere at Theater Chemnitz under the baton of Frank Beermann on 21 March 2015.

• Peter Eötvös - Profile


• Boston University Theatre


• Theater Chemnitz

Photo: Frankfurt Opera / Monika Rittershaus

(02/17/2015)

On 14 February 2015, a new production of György Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre will receive its premiere at Aalto-Musiktheater in Essen, Germany, directed by Mariame Clément and with music conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk.

Le Grand Macabre received its world premiere in 1978 in Stockholm. Ligeti himself called it an “anti-anti-opera”, referring to his simultaneous adherence to and distancing from operatic conventions. He does in some ways obey the rules of opera writing: the text can be clearly understood and the plot is defined within scenic limitations. However, Ligeti also consciously advocated the concept of breaking with opera’s traditions:

I was thinking schematically about creating comic events on stage, and the music was also supposed to be immediate, ridiculous, exaggerated, colourful and insane. The novelty of this music theatre shouldn’t manifest itself in the formalities of the production, but in the inner core of the music. – György Ligeti

Ligeti plunges into creating his vision from the outset: the opening prelude for twelve car horns shows what kind of musical excesses the audience can expect from Le Grand Macabre. The music accompanies and catalyses the events on stage, resulting in a celebratory overload of the senses. However, the anarchy in the orchestra pit is not simply a means to an end. Ligeti never loses track of the narrative plot of the opera, an approaching apocalypse in the fantasy world of Breughelland:

It is the calculating artistry that keeps the Grand Macabre with all its different ingredients in check. Transparency is created by consciously incorporating the details into the bigger picture. It allows us to realize the remarkable, macabre gravity of the situation that is part of the hilarious ambiguity of the opera. In the end, it leaves us with not only delight, but also an unpleasant feeling. – Ulrich Dibelius

Following the premiere, Le Grand Macabre will run in Essen until the 20 March. More information about the work and other opera heavyweights is available in the current issue of schott aktuell: Giants of 20th Century Opera.

• György Ligeti - Profile


• Aalto-Musiktheater Essen

Photo: Graz Opera / Dimo Dimov

(02/06/2015)