Thomas May's Blog, page 9
October 29, 2024
Two Faces of Romanticism: A Recital by Yulianna Avdeeva

Yulianna Avdeeva‘s Sunday afternoon recital at Benaroya Hall seemed to be timed especially well: The New York Times published a story that day about the unexpected find of a waltz by Chopin. Her refined interpretations of that composer suggested how much remains open to discovery, even in the case of long-familiar pieces.
Avdeeva burst on the scene when, at the age of 25, she took the gold medal in the 2010 Chopin Competition (the first woman since Martha Argerich to have garnered the award). She recently released Chopin: Voyage, an album focused on late works that he composed while surrounded by nature, which the Moscow-born pianist recorded in the idyllic setting of Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana. She performs widely across Europe but still seems to be something of a well-kept secret in the US. On the basis of Sunday’s performance, I certainly hope that changes.
Though for years they lived just a few minutes away from each other by foot in Paris, Chopin and Liszt inhabit such strikingly different worlds that it was fascinating to find them juxtaposed on Avdeeva’s program, with one half devoted to each composer.
She began with Chopin, lingering on the first note as she launched into the Op. 30 Mazurkas, as if preparing to whisk us away from ordinary life. In his 1851 biography of Chopin (likely co-written with his Polish mistress, Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein), Liszt ascribes to Chopin’s mazurkas “the most delicate, tender, and evanescent shades,” evoking impressions that are “purely personal, always individualized and divided.”
Each of the four mazurkas in the Op. 30 set, which Avdeeva played without breaks, indeed seemed to be a separate microcosm rather than another elaboration on a type. Her management of micro-transitions, of the slightest fluctuation of mood, was especially impressive. Even in the more assertive No. 3 in D-flat, an inner melancholy shaded the echoing phrases.
Avdeeva maintained a spirit of improvisation while executing compelling and clearly thought-out ideas about each piece with breathtaking precision.
The Op. 60 Barcarolle in F-sharp major suggested an idealized singer in a state of ecstasy – a melody beyond human reach yet fallible with emotion, as far as could be from mechanical virtuosity.
Avdeeva spun out the sense of mystery and enigmatic wandering that makes the Op. 45 Prelude in C-sharp minor so beguiling, while the Scherzo No. 3 (in the same key) abounded in well-judged contrasts and textural control.
It was above all in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22, that Avdeeva revealed new facets. Her Chopin involves such complex, meticulously articulated gradations of weight and light that you realize how much variety lives within a single miniature – not just Schumann’s “cannons buried in flowers” in the case of Op. 22, but an entire epic encompassing heroic adventures and bravely intimate confessions. Rhythmic and dynamic nuances are a special forte with this pianist, who is equally subtle in she staging of rubato and crescendo.
Avdeeva then turned from Chopin’s lyric poetry to the mystical, tormented Romanticism of his far longer-lived peer, Franz Liszt – and showed that she had a great deal to say on that score as well. Her combination of two late-period, avant-garde works from 1885 with the B minor Sonata – all played seamlessly, as if transcribing a single brooding meditation by the robed, solitary Abbé – proved intriguing.
On the one hand, with the Bagatelle sans tonalité and Unstern! – Sinistre, the difference and distance from Chopin could not have been more pronounced. Avdeeva seemed to depict a stark search for threads of meaning amid Liszt’s harmonic vagaries, stalled by abysses of silence. The effect was utterly mesmerizing.
When she arrived at the B minor Sonata, Avdeeva drew on the full arsenal of her stupendous technique to portray an intense psychic drama. The Benaroya Steinway resounded with the most thunderous playing of the afternoon, but Avdeeva also relished Liszt’s celestial harmonies and gossamer ornaments, articulating with a scintillating transparency that recalled Chopin – and what Liszt admired in Chopin’s playing. Her two encores once again confronted the two personalities, offering prismatic accounts of Chopin’s Op. 42 Waltz in A-flat major and the Concert Paraphrase Liszt made from Rigoletto.
review (c) 2024 Thomas May All rights reserved
October 28, 2024
“Tristan und Isolde” at San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
I reviewed San Francisco Opera’s new production of Wagner’s endlessly fascinating masterpiece for Opera Now:
An extraordinary thing is underway at San Francisco Opera: by taking on one of the major works of the wizard of Bayreuth each season, music director Eun Sun Kim has set about establishing herself as a formidable young Wagnerian….
October 24, 2024
Jerod Tate’s Chickasaw Opera: “Loksi’ Shaali”
The world premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate‘s opera Loksi’ Shaali’ (Shell Shaker), will be presented on Sunday, 27 October, by Canterbury Voices and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City. TianHui Ng conducts this groundbreaking work – the first opera composed entirely in an American Indian language (Chickasaw).
Tate channels the rich cultural heritage of the Chickasaw people in this choral and orchestral composition narrating the journey of the Chickasaw-Choctaw migration.
The opera tells the story of a Chickasaw girl named Loksi’ (Turtle) as she transforms from a troubled girl into a confident young woman. Tate underscores the significance of embracing identity and honoring sacred traditions, and he illustrates how simple acts of kindness can transform the world.
You can find a synopsis here.
October 16, 2024
Nietzschean Virtuosity: Salonen’s Cello Concerto

For The Strad, I interviewed San Francisco Symphony principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis about his upcoming performances of the Cello Concerto by his orchestra’s music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen:
Now in his third full season as the San Francisco Symphony’s principal cello, Rainer Eudeikis makes his solo debut with the orchestra on 18-20 October in a work by the orchestra’s music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen: the Cello Concerto written by the Finnish composer-conductor for Yo-Yo Ma, who gave the world premiere in 2017. …
October 12, 2024
Conclusion of Dallas Symphony’s Concert “Ring”

Last May, I covered the launch of Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony’s concert presentation of Wagner’s Ring cycle with performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. I returned recently to attend the continuation of their bold adventure with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Here’s my report for Classical Voice North America:
DALLAS — Having left Brünnhilde deep in slumber at the end of Die Walküre last May, Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony returned to awaken her this month with their continuation of the Ring in concert at their Meyerson Symphony Center home. They presented Siegfried on Oct. 5 and Götterdämmerung on Oct. 8, thereby scaling an Everest normally considered the domain of opera companies. Between Oct. 13 and 20, the adventure will be repeated — this time with the usual interval of just a few days separating the four operas.
October 11, 2024
Re-opening of San Diego Symphony’s Indoor Concert Hall at the Jacobs Music Center

I reported for Musical America on the much-anticipated return to San Diego Symphony’s downtown home in a former cinema palace. Acoustical and architectural renovations have yielded a game-changing space for the orchestra — and the city — according to music director Rafael Payare:
SAN DIEGO—The San Diego Symphony’s concert on September 28 wasn’t just another opening….
October 9, 2024
Philharmonia Northwest Opens Its Season with “Origin Story”

Seattle-based Philharmonia Northwest opens its season — and introduces its new music director, Michael Wheatley — on Sunday 13 October with a program titled Origin Story. The concert takes place at 2pm at the Shorecrest Performing Arts Center.
Wheatley has chosen four works central to his musical identity, beginning with Wojciech Kilar’s celebration of the folk traditions of Poland’s Tatra Mountains in Orawa. Seattle Symphony violinist Elisa Barston will be the soloist in Dvořák’s Romance in F minor and Ravel’s dazzling Tzigane.
The second half of the program will present soprano Ellaina Lewis in her Philharmonia Northwest debut as the soloist in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, the last of the so-called Wunderhorn symphonies. Lewis, who is known locally for her appearances in Seattle Opera’s Blue and Porgy and Bess.
Following the concert, Michael Wheatley will appear in a Q&A talk-back with the audience.
Tickets here.
October 4, 2024
“The Handmaid’s Tale” at San Francisco Opera

Some thoughts for Musical America on San Francisco Opera’s fall production of The Handmaid’s Tale:
SAN FRANCISCO—It was at the turn of the millennium that composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley adapted The Handmaid’s Tale into an opera. These days, however, their version of the dystopian novel Margaret Atwood published in 1985 seems ominously closer to an opera ripped from the headlines than a cautionary tale …
September 25, 2024
Julia Bullock Launches Artist Residency at Cal Performances

Julia Bullock is the 2024–25 season Artist in Residence at Cal Performances. Her first appearance in that capacity is in a collaboration with her colleagues in the American Modern Opera Company (also known as AMOC*, of which she is a founding member) for a boldly original staged production of Messiaen’s Harawi, which was premiered in the summer of 2022 at the Festival Aix-en-Provence and subsequently toured across Europe. The performance takes place on 27 September at Zellerbach Hall.
I wrote about this extraordinary artist and her fascination with Harawi for Cal Performances:
The first time Julia Bullock heard Harawi, Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle from 1945, she recalls that both the poetry and the music “shook me to a fundamental core … even though I didn’t fully grasp the depths of the content and the references on first listen….”
September 24, 2024
“What Belongs to You”: Garth Greenwell on the Opera Stage
In the years since Garth Greenwell published his 2016 debut novel, What Belongs to You, the 46-year-old novelist, poet, critic, and teacher has established himself as one of the most distinguished American writers at work today.
Garthwell, who at one point studied voice at the Eastman School of Music, is deeply knowledgable about opera and also writes fascinating and highly worthwhile music criticism. His own work will now be the subject of literary and music criticism alike, thanks to composer David T. Little’s adaptation of What Belongs to You to the opera stage.
Little adapted his own libretto from Garthwell’s text and has collaborated with the legendary choreographer Mark Morris as stage director and conductor Alan Pierson to reframe the novel for the opera medium.
What Belongs to Me “tells the story of a man caught between longing and resentment, unable to separate desire from danger, and faced with the impossibility of understanding those he most longs to know,” says Garthwell. Adds Little: “The story is specific and personal, but the experience Greenwell describes is universal: the search for self and the desire to belong amidst loneliness and enduring heartbreak.”
In his New York Times preview, Joshua Barone describes Little’s musical response to the material: “There are flashes of rock, but it is largely inspired by Monteverdi and Schubert, as well as John Dowland, Giovanni Valentini and Gérard Grisey, taking cues from the Renaissance through the 20th century. There is even some Britten. Little called it all ‘a constellation of influences’ shaped by the material.”
“At its most shocking, Little’s music calls on the instrumentalists of Alarm Will Sound to sing, acting as a chorus to embody the hustler Mitko and the protagonist’s father during two pivotal, terrifying moments.”
The world premiere will be performed on 26 and 28 September at the Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond.
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