Alex Ross's Blog, page 163

Castorf oil

James Jorden, aka La Cieca, is in Bayreuth, grappling with Frank Castorf's Ring production on its last go-round. His reaction is so far not unlike mine — impressed by some aspects of the staging, maddened by others, bewildered by the inconsistency of it all. He notes the "random blocking" in certain scenes; indeed, I often had the impression that the singers had been left to fend for themselves, with the result that they lasped into stock gestures that no intelligent director should tolerate. In a blog post on Siegfried, James reports that the infamous crocodiles in the final scene no longer engage in a mating ritual — no great loss there. The crocodile business should be dropped altogether; the principal conceit of the scene, to stage this apocalyptic love sequence in the tones of a wistful art-house movie, with Siegfried and Brünnhilde seated at a café table in an empty Alexanderplatz, is strangely haunting. As so often, though, Castorf becomes bored with his own good idea.

She had a dream

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's great speech, I hope that Marian Anderson does not go unmentioned. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had first envisaged a March on Washington in 1941, two years after Anderson performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the staging of the 1963 ceremony recalled Anderson's great recital. She was scheduled to open the event with the National Anthem, but surging crowds prevented her from reaching the podium in time. She later sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." As I pointed out in a 2009 article, it is surely no accident that King ended "I Have a Dream" with a recitation of the lyrics of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee"; Anderson's singing of that song in 1939 was one of the pivotal moments in American civil-rights history, and King had remarked upon it in a speech he gave when he was fifteen years old. He was a keen opera listener, inclined more toward Italian repertory than toward W. E. B. Du Bois's beloved Wagner. In 1954, while driving to Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver his first sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King listened to Lucia di Lammermoor.

Wagner of the day: Fremstad

“The opera-glass will never betray any of Mme. Fremstad’s secrets,”
Willa Cather once wrote of the Norwegian-American soprano Olive Fremstad,
who worked her way from a little Minnesota town to the most illustrious opera stages. The phonograph betrays little more, but this inadequate souvenir of Fremstad's Isolde is still a precious thing to have.

De Profundis

The early death of Lili Boulanger, at the age of twenty-four, was one of the great losses of musical history. Her setting of Psalm 130, composed between 1914 and 1917, stands as a memorial to the terrible war whose end she did not live to see.

Wagner lists

Four New York Times critics have lists of their favorite Wagner recordings. I concur with several of the choices and understand the rationale for others. I thought I'd list a few Wagnerian touchstones of my own — purely personal selections, of course, although the first two are presented with near-dogmatic conviction. If a universal deluge were consuming my record collection and all recordings on earth, I would probably reach first for the Furtwängler Tristan.

Tristan und Isolde; Kirsten Flagstad, Ludwig Suthaus, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Blanche Thebom, Josef Greindl, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and Royal Opera House Chorus (EMI)

Der Ring des Nibelungen; Astrid Varnay, Hans Hotter, Ramón Vinay, Wolfgang Windgassen, Joseph Keilberth conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus, 1955 (Testament)

Parsifal; Jess Thomas, Hans Hotter, Irene Dalis, George London, Hans Knappertsbusch conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus, 1962 (Decca)

[Hotter was no longer in his prime when this recording was made — the 1951 live version from Bayreuth finds him at his peak — but something about the atmosphere of it is incomparable.]

Der fliegende Holländer; Hans Hotter, Viorica Ursuleac, Clemens Krauss conducting the Bavarian State Orchestra and Opera Chorus, 1944 (Preiser)

Tannhäuser (Paris version); René Kollo, Helga Dernesch, Christa Ludwig, Victor Braun, Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus (Decca)

Lohengrin; Jess Thomas, Elisabeth Grümmer, Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Rudolf Kempe conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus (EMI)

Die Meistersinger; Thomas Stewart, Sándor Konya, Gundula Janowitz, Thomas Hemsley, Rafael Kubelik conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Arts Music)

Der Ring des Nibelungen; Gwyneth Jones, Donald McIntyre, Peter Hofmann, Jeannine Altmeyer, Pierre Boulez conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus, Patrice Chéreau directing (DG DVD)

Les Introuvables du Chant Wagnérien (EMI)

Tristan und Isolde; Nina Stemme, Stephen Gould, Kwangchul Youn, Michelle Breedt, Johan Reuter, Marek Janowski conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (PentaTone)

I append this last as evidence that first-rate Wagner recordings are not extinct, although they are undeniably fewer and farther between than in the nineteen-fifties and sixties.

There's more

A disclosure from the blog : months before the lockout began, the Minnesota Orchestra Association bought up domain names that could be used by the musicians and their supporters. The registrations were for two-year terms. Drew McManus concludes: "Simply put, it is a clear indication that the employer had little to no intention for negotiating in good faith." The failure to mark these purchases as private seems indicative of the general level of competence in the current management.

Oh dear

Minor upside

The creepily leering R&B star Robin Thicke, whose song "Blurred Lines" has been accused of degrading women and condoning date rape, has inadvertently drawn attention to a composition of the same name by John Beckwith.

Alan Fletcher in Minnesota

From his eminently rational speech last night to the group Orchestrate Excellence: “I will go so far as to be definite about one
thing I believe, and that is that the current lockout of musicians should end,
and it should end unconditionally. I
have recently read the point of view that the lockout can only end as part of a
larger bargain, because the [Minnesota Orchestra] Association must have the
leverage of this tactic. And even the word ‘leverage’ in this context signals
that the plan has failed. That plan should now be abandoned ... The lockout ... is not symmetrical. Only the musicians are
living without salaries, without a means of supporting their families, without
access to the hall that is their home ... But then, the musicians must also
come to the table in earnest, and deal with who is at the table. Another side
to much poisonous rhetoric we’ve experienced is the view that the management,
or the board leadership, or both, must go, before discussions can begin for
real. A rhetoric of exclusion is a rhetoric of failure.”

The speech begins at 28:00 in the video linked above. It's a subtle, nuanced argument, resistant to soundbite-style thinking, and I'd encourage readers to listen to the entire thing. While Fletcher criticizes several of the musicians' talking points, he places more pressure on the board and management. I hope they listen. I cannot bring myself to believe — despite mounting evidence — that they actually want a drastically reduced orchestra, its assets stripped, its ambitions narrowed, its activities no longer relevant to the outside world.

The eleventh hour

Osmo Vänskä has said that he will resign from the Minnesota Orchestra if the current crisis is not resolved by Sept. 9. The latest news suggests that a resolution is not imminent. Will the Minnesota board be unhappy if Vänskä leaves? Norman Lebrecht thinks not. The group Orchestrate Excellence will host a community forum tomorrow, seeking to preserve the orchestra as a world-class ensemble. The speaker will be Alan Fletcher, whose convocation address at Aspen is worth re-reading with care. His most important thought: "Include musicians at the heart of decision-making."