フランシス、キーンリサイド
エッカ・ペッカ・サロネン指揮フィルハーモニア管弦楽団
ニューヨーク公演
エイヴリー・フィッシャー・ホール
2012.11.18 マーラー 交響曲第9番
2012.11.19 ベルク ヴォツェック（コンサート・スタイル）
サイモン・キーンリサイド、ヴォツェック
アンジェラ・デノケ、マリー
ヒューバート・フランシス、鼓手長
他
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来年2月に来日するサロネンのプログラムにはないものだと思いますので、この週末と月曜日にあったサロネンのニューヨーク公演よりちょっと書いておきます。
NYTのレビューはヴォツッェクのものです。
アウトラインだけメモしておきますので、全文訳はお任せします。
この公演はニューヨーク・フィルハーモニックの本拠地エイヴリー・フィッシャー・ホールでおこなわれたもの。オペラハウスはお隣ですので、このホールではコンサートスタイルの公演です。Opera in concertということになります。
まず、オペラは非常にドラマティックで直感的、音源としてカール・ベームとフィッシャー・ディースカウのものや、レヴァインの昨年のメト上演、等々紹介しております。
そしてサロネンの棒については、この指揮者兼作曲家が作曲したような素晴らしい内容と紹介しております。
演奏は約90分で幕間に相当する部分は短いブレークのみ。
歌は、キーンリサイドほめまくりで、彼がいたからほかのみんなも素晴らしかったという話になります。2008年2009年と場数を踏んでいるので問題なし。
デノケ、フランシスも概ね好評。
演奏中、退場した聴衆もいたけれど全体反応としてはものすごいオベーション。
オーケストラのフィルハーモニア管はマーラーの9番では今一つでほかのオケの方が上ということもあろう。でもこのヴォツッェクは素晴らしかった。
ところでマーラーの9番の公演は、一か月におよぶリンカンセンターの第3回ホワイト・ライト・フェスティバルの最終公演との事。演奏会にタイトルがついているようで、
On Departing
日本でも副題付きの演奏会があるが、同じコンセプトなのだろうか。個人的にはわずらわしいだけなんだが、どうなんだろう。
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November 20, 2012
Haunted Soldier, Demeaned Anew
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
The performance of Berg’s “Wozzeck” at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday night was called an opera in concert. But the impressive cast, headed by the baritone Simon Keenlyside in the title role, and the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who drew an intense, harrowing and, finally, deeply poignant performance of this landmark work from the Philharmonia Orchestra, were not about to let the confines of the concert format inhibit them. This was as dramatically visceral an experience of Berg’s masterpiece, completed in 1922, as you will have in any opera house.
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That it took place the day after Mr. Salonen led the Philharmonia in an organic and pulsing account of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at the hall suggests that things are going very well for this important London orchestra since Mr. Salonen became its principal conductor and artistic adviser in 2008. The Mahler program on Sunday afternoon, titled “On Departing,” was a fitting conclusion to Lincoln Center’s third White Light Festival, the monthlong series of programs exploring spiritual dimensions in music.
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In the period following the 1925 premiere of “Wozzeck” in Berlin, its champions tended to treat Berg’s pungently chromatic and lushly atonal music as an extension of the late-Romantic language of Wagner and Mahler, as in the conductor Karl Bohm’s classic 1965 recording, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Wozzeck.
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James Levine, one of the work’s finest interpreters, who last conducted “Wozzeck” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2011 (and is scheduled to lead it next season), also captures the Wagnerian resonances of the music while bringing lucid textures and disciplined execution to his performances, like the expert interpreter of contemporary music he is.
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Mr. Salonen’s approach emphasized the score’s modernism while still bringing out its remnants of late-Romantic yearning and gnashing Expressionist power. Mr. Salonen thinks of himself, rightly, as a composer who conducts. He led “Wozzeck” with such purpose, direction and precision that you might have thought he had composed it.
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This three-act opera of roughly 90 minutes (played here, as is common, with only brief breaks between acts) flowed with uncommon urgency, a miracle of compact dramatic storytelling and exploration of the unconscious. The inspired Philharmonia players were with Mr. Salonen all the way.
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Wozzeck, an impoverished soldier living in a garrison town with his common-law wife and illegitimate son, is becoming a signature role for Mr. Keenlyside, who was fresh from his triumph as Prospero in Thomas Ades’s opera “The Tempest” at the Met.
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One of the most charismatic actors in opera, Mr. Keenlyside was a haunted Wozzeck in a daringly modern production at the Paris National Opera in 2008. If Monday night’s performance had the feel of a lived-in staging, that was probably because Mr. Keenlyside, along with several members of this cast, had taken part in a semi-staged presentation, with costumes and videos, that Mr. Salonen conducted with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2009.
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Mr. Keenlyside’s essentially lyric baritone voice may be a little light for the music. At times on Monday, during anguished outbursts, he sounded as if he were pushing his sound. But he brought intense expressivity to every line and captured the tormented character’s volatile mood swings.
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From the moment he appeared in the opening scene, when Wozzeck shaves the Captain for whom he performs menial tasks, Mr. Keenlyside embodied the character. Obviously, in this concert performance he did not actually shave the Captain (the tenor Peter Hoare). But he brushed off the Captain’s jacket and straightened his hair, sometimes tottering on his feet as he nervously used one leg to scratch an itch on the other.
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As the moralizing Captain, Mr. Hoare lectured Wozzeck for living in an unwed state with Marie, and delivered lines in a haughty, bright tenor. Mr. Keenlyside just took it, looking the essence of a beaten-down man.
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The soprano Angela Denoke, who sang Marie in that 2008 Paris production, gave a haunting, vulnerable portrayal. Her voice is sizable, focused and richly colored. Among other standouts in the excellent cast were the bright tenor Hubert Francis as the preening, self-assured Drum Major; the lyric tenor Joshua Ellicott as the decent Andres, Wozzeck’s only friend; and the husky-voiced bass Tijl Faveyts as the doctor who pays Wozzeck to be a guinea pig in quack medical experiments. The always strong Westminster Symphonic Choir took part in the short but crucial choral scenes.
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The ovation was tremendous. During earlier breaks between acts, a number of people in the audience left the hall. In a strange way, I am almost glad that “Wozzeck” still drives away some listeners. This great work should never become too palatable.
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The Philharmonia may not be all Mahler buffs’ idea of an ideal orchestra for their hero’s symphonies. Other ensembles might have brought more sheer richness and depth and glowing string sound to Mahler’s 80-minute Ninth Symphony.
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But, as with “Wozzeck,” Mr. Salonen conducted the score like an insightful composer. The pacing and shape, the way Mahler develops the musical materials ? all this came through with freshness and clarity. And in the sublime final Adagio, especially the hushed moments of the ending, when the music seems unwilling to trail off, the performance achieved Mahlerian transcendence.
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This score was an obvious candidate for a festival exploring spiritual realms in music. But “Wozzeck” could also have been included. Any work that penetrates the human condition with such wrenching honesty fits my definition of spiritual.
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