Staatsoper Hamburg. Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito. April 28, 2024.

Staatsoper Hamburg.  Parkette Links (Seat 19-8, 143 Euros).

The person in the middle of the front row (of 7) is Adam Fischer.  To his left is Sesto, and second to his right is Tito.

Story.  See previous post.

Adam Fischer - Conductor; Tito - Bernard Richter, Sesto - Michele Losier, Annio - Kangmin Justin Kim, Servilia - Katharina Konradi, Vitellia - Tara Erraught, Publio - Han Kim, Berenice - Anna Wrobel

We had seen this opera once at the Metropolitan Opera, back in 2012.  Reading over that blog entry, the conductor was Harry Bicket, and Sesto's role was sung by Elina Garanca.  I don't remember much of it.  My remarks in that entry were generally neutral, except I thought the opera was a bit long.

Certainly the performance tonight didn't feel long.  The performance started quite on time at 6 pm, and ended at 8:30 pm, and there was a 30-minute intermission in between.  By opera standards it was a short two hours.  That has to be attributed to how engaging the performance was.

A major reason for that was how well the singers did.  For the 2012 performance I recorded the confusion caused by Sesto being sung by a woman, and Annio by a countertenor.  Sitting in the Met balcony I had trouble seeing who was doing the singing.  Today I was less confused, probably because I knew the story better, and I was close enough that I could often tell which individual was doing the singing.  My other complaint with the Met performance was that Tito took forever to decide what to do with Sesto's betrayal.  Things didn't feel so tortuously protracted tonight.  Perhaps the second act was shortened, or because I was more engaged?

To say there were different sets used for the different scenes is probably an overstatement.  There is basically this "room" decorated differently to depict the different scenes.  The only "complex" element was this hole being dug, probably to represent the uncertain fate that awaited Sesto in the second act.  Four different words appeared: Delizia, Potenza, Tradimeto, and Clemenza.(delight, power, betrayal, clemency), describing the main theme of the segment of the drama.

We had seen Adam Fischer at the Met before.  He did justice - and more - to the music score.  At the Met there probably would be applause at the end of every "memorable" aria - and there were many - here Fischer seemed to strive for continuity.  His arms were up most of the time (but the audience didn't respect that!), except on a few occasions where a pause to acknowledge a great job was warranted. 

The production team also came on stage, this being the premiere for the season.

The acoustics in the hall was great.  With 1690 seats, the opera house is medium size by European standards (smallest I have been to: Zurich at 1100 seats; largest: Covent Garden at 2250 seats).  And that there were these walls behind the singers certainly helped with their sound projection.  This performance was the premiere of a 10-performance run, so I was a bit surprised that there were quite a few empty seats.  In fact I moved one seat over to have a less obstructed view of the stage.  (Northern Europe has a lot of tall people.)

The Hamburg State Opera's non-imposing exterior.  Other than the sign and the banners, it is just a building at a street corner.

Mahler was the music director of Hamburg State Opera for a few years.

The interior foyers (one on each floor) are functional, but not ornate.

View from my seat.  I moved one seat to the right and had a clear view of the stage.

The seating capacity is 1670.

Today was our last day for our trip; we would be flying back to NJ tomorrow.  We checked into a hotel near the Hamburg Airport so we wouldn't have to rush the next day.  To attend this concert would mean taking the subway (or rather the U) into town again.  Anne decided not to do it, so I went by myself.  I ate a hamburger at a nearby place before the show, and picked up a muffin at the U-station close to the hotel on my way back.

Hamburg Symphony/Chamber Music Concert. April 28, 2024.

Kleiner Saal, Laeiszhalle, Hamburg, Germany.  Empore Links (Seat 1-4, 30.8 Euros).

The quartet at the end of the concert.

Program

String Quartet F-Major, Hob. III:17 (Serenade Quartet) by Joseph Haydn.

String Quartet in A-minor, Op. 13 by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

String Quartet No. 8 in C-minor, Op. 110 by Dimitri Shostokovich.

Performers

Hovhannes Baghdasaryan, violin; Makrouhi Hagel, violin; Sebastian Marock, viola; Theresia Rosendorfer, cello.

Compared to our recent experience sitting in the back of the Main Hall, today's was much better

I feel I need to repeat that I am not a chamber music person every time I write about chamber music.  However, I must say today's concert was great, even though I had little knowledge of the three pieces performed.

Haydn's quartets have a distinctive feel to them.  They generally sound more complicated than his symphonies (even though quartets have fewer parts), and make one wonder if Haydn indeed was more than 20 years Mozart's senior.  The slow movement contains a lovely, and well-known, melody.  Another example of a well-known quartet melody is from Tchaikovsky's First String Quartet.  (It was quite difficult to recall how the Tchaikovsky sounded while listening to Haydn's.)  The quartet lasted about 15 minutes.  Haydn's compositions sometimes are numbered using the "Hoboken" system (as in the Program), but this is also known as Op. 3, No. 5.

Mendelssohn's is a solid composition that allowed great interplay among the string players.  I did say I don't know much about chamber music, didn't I?  That didn't stop me from enjoying the performance.

The Shostakovich quartet isn't as gripping as some of his other works. (I would probably have a different assessment if I had read up on the work before the performance.)  However, he used repeatedly the "Shostakovich Theme" that I first heard in the cello concerto, and in this piece - it seems - more frequently and with more variations.  Embarrassingly I have not heard the theme in other works by the composer.  The Wikipedia on this theme (D-S-C-H) lists eight compositions of Shostakovich's where this theme was used, and mentions it is used in all the movements in this quartet.

Entrance to the Kleiner Saal is at the other end of the building.

Not sure who these people are.  The small plaque has the name of the sculptor; if it lists the names of the people depicted, the print would be too small for me to read anyway.

This hall seats 639 people (per web search).  It has a simple elegance to it.

Even with all these misgivings (i.e., inadequacies on my part), this was an enjoyable concert.  Our seats were in the first row of the balcony.  Anne chose to sit further back by the aisle to accommodate her mobility problems.

Today was Hamburg Marathon day, so many buses were not running.  We walked to the Baumwell U-station to catch the train, but had trouble getting the bus on the way back.  It was easy enough to catch a taxi using the Uber APP.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Alan GIlbert, conductor; Thomas Hampson, baritone. April 27, 2024.

Grosser Saal at Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg.  Orchestra (Section 13E, Seat 5-1, 107 Euros).

Gilbert acknowledging Hampson at the end of the Walt Whitman Songs by Kurt Weill.  Hampson sang from amidst the orchestra.

Program

Adagio for Strings Op. 11 (1936) by Samuel Barber (1910-1981).

Songs My Mother Taught Me (1895) by Charles Ives (1874-1954).

Tom Sails Away (1917).

Memories: a. Very Pleasant; b. Rather Sad (1897).

The Housatonic at Stockbridge (1921).

The Things Our Fathers Loved (1917).

(Arranged for Orchestra by Toshio Hosokawa)

Four Walt Whitman Songs (1942-1947) by Kurt Weill (1900-1950).

O Captain! My Captain

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Dirge For Two Veterans

Come Up From the Fields, Father.

Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) fur gemischten Chor a cappella Op. 13 (1907) by Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951).

Symphony No. 4 (1910-1925) by Ives.

The Elbphiharmonie website has an English page.  The programs handed out the concert were in German only, but the lyrics in the Ives and Weill songs were in English, which helped.

Listed Artists

Prague Philharmonic Choir

Ulrike Payer - piano; Dalit Warshaw - theremin; Lukas Vasilek - choir rehearsal; Gregor Mayrhofer - Co-conductor.

A major reason we chose Hamburg as a stopover is to see if Elbphilharmonie lives up to its fame or notoreity.  Fame is because of the claim that the sound is amazing, with every seat engineered to "perfection" (my words, I also heard every seat would have a great sound); notoriety because the project went way over budget, from the original estimate of 80M to 240M Euros to a final cost of between 800 to 900M Euros (depending on the source).  And I am not sure if that's the entire project or just the concert halls portion of it.

Let's first dispense with the sound aspect.  Of course all concert halls sound "real" as we hear real players performing, but I must say it also felt intimate and immediate (two adjectives that come to mind, but don't exactly describe how I heard the orchestra).  And without the "sterility" I sometimes use to describe the sound at Carnegie Hall.  Even though we were about 3 floors up from the stage, we still felt very close to it; that may also explain the sound.

The last time Barber's Adagio for Strings left a strong impression on me was in a Japanese production of MacBeth.  As in the other piece in that play, Faure's Requiem, the music brought on incredible sadness, probably enhanced by the events happening on stage.  Tonight's performance still set the dark (again my vocabulary fails me) tone for the evening.  I was surprised that a full orchestra (the string sections, anyway) was used for the performance, and it felt just right.

Any hope that we would find redemption was quenched by the two groups of songs.  The lyrics are in English, and printed in the program (otherwise in German), that helped drive the sadness home.  The Whitman songs were sung in the order 2-1-4-2, so the last one sung before the intermission was the Dirge for a father and a son.  The other songs all spoke of death.  They were written during the civil war.

Thomas Hampson is usually very dependable.  He was standing among the musicians while he sang, and I had some trouble with picking out his voice.  Anne said she could hear him well.  Since I also have problem picking out the violas, perhaps I am losing that range in my hearing.  For the passages I heard well, he was good at bring out the emotion.

After Barber's Adagio for Strings.

After the Songs by Ives.  Hampson can barely be seen in this photo.

Peace on Earth was intended as an uplifting composition, it is also Schoenberg's last tonal piece (tonal is relative, of course).  After its composition, Schoenberg concluded that it was an illusion.  One might give up, but the Program Notes stresses the importance of repeating these words.

The piece is sung without accompaniment (although the first performance did use an orchestra).  The Prague Philharmonic Choir consisted of about 60 members, evenly divided between men and women.  The were seated in the section behind the concert stage, I wonder if that was always the intention, or an oversight on the part of the designer.

One could argue Ives' Fourth Symphony contains no emotional message.  It was an exercise in composition, very complex composition at that.  The Prelude does include the chorus, and contains the words "Trav'ler, yes; it brings the day, Promised day of Israel.  Dost thou see its beauteous ray?"  Interesting words, but I don't see how the words set the tone for the rest of the composition.

A huge orchestra was used.  I can only point out some observations I made during the concert.

The most noticeable aspect was the use of a "co-conductor."  On many occasions he would conduct together with Gilbert, but in a different rhythm.  For example, Gilbert might do 4-beats while Mayrhofer would do 3.  I assume the individual sections knew whom they should follow.  (I do wonder if a conductor can keep 3/4 and 4/4 time simultaneously.)  The other would be use of some musicians in the balconies.  There were two pianos, one was center-stage, and the pianist got her name in the program.  The theremin is not an instrument one sees often, it's quite eerie that sound is produced by hand gestures rather than physical manipulation of the instrument.

The second movement "Comedy: Allegretto" lived up to its name.  The audience applauded when that movement ended.  Generally Gilbert seemed to frown on such interruptions.

The four movements are (1) Prelude: Maestoso; (2) Comedy: Allegretto; (3) Fugue: Andante moderato con moto; and (4) Finale: Very slowly - Largo maestoso.

"Peace on Earth" was Schoenberg's last tonal piece.  The choir sang without accompaniment.  Here Gilbert greeting the Rehearsal conductor after the performance.  One can also see the huge orchestra (at least the instruments and seats) to be used for Ives's Symphony No. 4.

I think the people standing in front at the conclusion of Ives's Symphony are (from left) Theremin player, Principal Piano (2 pianos were used, second piano may have two players), Co-Conductor, Choir Rehearsal Director.  It's quite a large ensemble, and complicated music.

It was an overall enjoyable concert, regardless of the acoustics.  Or the acoustics helped, who knows.  One thing I do feel is that Gilbert has found his new home very comfortable.  His contract with the Orchestra has been extended through 2029.

The Main Concert Hall occupies the center of the new building.  On the left is the Westin Hotel, and on the right are residential apartments.

Taken with wide angle from where we sat.  The projection on the roof is a reminder that tonight's concert is the (second) opening concert of the Hamburg International Music Festival.

The concert hall occupies the 11th to the 16th floors (my guess).  It is 60 steps from the foyer on the 8th floor to the first level of the auditorium.  Or one can take a lift to the 13th floor (that's where our seats were).

These "cells" all look different.  I do wonder the science and art of the design.

I got to the 15th floor for this shot of the auditorium.  The design isn't symmetric.

One of the few openings (balconies) in the entire building.

We are staying in the Westin, also located in the same building, so one could say it was easy to get to the concert hall.

Hamburg Symphony. Sylvain Cambreling, conductor; Martha Argerich, piano. April 25, 2024.

Laeiszhalle Grosser Saal, Hamburg, Germany.  2. Rang/Galerie Links (Seat 5-6, 9.9 Euros).

Anne sneaked in a photo of Argerich doing an encore (Third movement of Ravel's piano concert in G).

Program

Philippe Boesman's Chambres d'a cote

Maurice Ravel's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major

Sergei Prokofiev's Suites from "Romeo and Juliet" op. 64 (excerpts)

One major reason we are in Hamburg for a few days is to attend a concert at the Elbphilharmonie.  We managed to get tickets for only one concert at the venue (as usual, hesitation was the culprit).  We did get tickets for two concerts at Laeiszhalle - the venue before Elbphilharmonie came into existence.  This one in the large hall, and a chamber concert in the small hall this coming Sunday.  I am also thinking of going the Hamburg Opera Sunday evening, even though we are flying back to NJ the following morning.

As I am also trying to record the "travel" aspect of this trip, I am a bit pressed for time to write my impressions of these concerts, so here we go ... Not being able to find a program for this concert helps as I don't need to digest and react to it; all I plan to do is write what comes to mind.

First note the ticket price, not even 10 euros.  The most expensive tickets sold for 62.70 Euros, so the concert was not expensive.  But 9.9 euros.  When we got to our seat, we found out the section is behind these arches which severely limited visibility of the stage.  The photos included in this entry were made with me standing up.  We moved to different seats, but they were all "bad."  A friend used to say they went to concerts for the real time sound, I had to try to adopt that attitude today.  In my defense ... One, those were probably the only seats left when I tried to book, I might have chosen the aisle seats for ease of access, but they were blocked most by the arches; Two, who would have thought of such a design?  There are examples of old concert halls built without such huge arches.

Laeiszhalle was first augurated in 1908.

When seated, our seat in the Gallery afforded a very limited view of the stage.  And this is before people sat down.

Front of hall.

Back of Hall.  Seats behind the arches have a very limited view of the stage.  The auditorium seats over 2000.

The Boesman piece can be characterized as a sound experiment.  There are quite a few sections to this (about 20 minutes) piece, with each exploring a different effect created by different voices and techniques.  It was quite interesting.

A while back I was confused about Gershwin's piano concerto, and concluded soon after it start that it was not Ravel, somewhat to my credit.  I must say Ravel's concerto can easily be confused with Gershwin's, especially the first movement.  (I vaguely remember Ravel visiting Gershwin at some point.)

The definitive performance of this concerto was by Yuja Wang a few years ago (with the London Symphony at NJPAC).  It "broke the code" and I have since come to understand and appreciate the piece.  Argerich's performance certainly was good, but didn't add new insight into the piece, and the "message" wasn't as clear as Wang's performance (or how I remember it).

She performed two encores.  The first one was with the orchestra, and for a while I thought it was composed by Gershwin, and that would have been a natural thing to do.  When I turned on the Google APP, it returned the third movement of Ravel's concerto.  Well ... this was one of the few instances an encore actually was a repeat.  She played a solo piano piece as her second encore.  The Google APP returned Arthur Rubinstein's Fantasiestucke, Op. 12: Traumes Wirren.  Let's go with that.

The concert concluded with excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suites, I take that to mean the conductor selected different movements from the several Suites Prokofiev constructed.  The individual movements are quite familiar, I wish I had a listing of what they were so I can imagine along.  (Or, having heard this so many times, I should know the scenes depicted in the numbers.)  It was clear there were two families, things were tender, things got violent, and death ensued.

A rather small ensemble was used by Boesman to produce some very interesting sounds.

At the conclusion of the concert.  The Hamburg Symphony calls Laeiszhalle its home, and Cambreling is the music director.

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Overall, I enjoyed the concert, even though I had a limited view of the musicians, and the sound reaching my seat wasn't ideal (I am sure).

We ate at a Japanese restaurant before the concert.  It was close to 10 pm when we got back to the hotel.

Orchestre National Avignon Provence. Jochem Hochstenbach, conductor. April 23, 2024.

Auditorium-Orchestre National de Lyon.  First Balcony (Seat E91, 15 Euros).

Program

Brahms Serenade No. 1

I could find little information on the concert.  We didn't notice any programs being offered at the venue.  Perhaps the rather long introductions at the beginning is how it is done?

Not much information on the front of the ticket either.  Mar = Mardi, Tuesday.

The Lyon Orchestra wasn't performing during the two days we were in town.  When I found out this concert was on, I walked over to the concert hall (about 30 minutes) to buy two tickets.  They were all priced at 15 Euros for the event.  I was told there were only a few seats left in this section, yet there were many empty seats in the auditorium.  (To be fair, an audience size the NJ Symphony would love to have.)

Some gentleman came on stage to introduce the orchestra and the conductor, as far as I can tell, as he said it all in French.  When it came time for the conductor to speak, he apologized for not being able to speak in French, and spoke English instead (interpreted into French).  He described Brahms's hesitation in composing symphonies, and called his early orchestral compositions serenades.  He further described the movements and played short excerpts to illustrate his points before settling in to perform the entire piece.

The acoustics in the hall was good, even though we sat on the left side of the auditorium.  The serenade consists of six movements, and has a strong pastoral feel to it (an idea the conductor emphasized by asking the horn to play a few measures).

The outside of the auditorium.  It looks like it could use some maintenance.  Wikipedia refers to this as Auditorium Maurice Ravel.

The inside is fine.  The acoustics is good.

Brahms completed the first serenade in 1858, and the first symphony in 1876.  Brahms's composition style clearly matured considerably in the intervening two decades.  If I didn't know what I was listening to, I wouldn't have guessed Brahms, and certainly not a symphony he composed.  Nothing wrong with that, sometimes a dose of light music will do the job, and that's the intention of today's program.

On the way back, Anne was sure someone (a young girl) tried to put her hand in her coat pocket.  There is much talk these problems have moved to smaller cities as well.  It was close to 8:30 pm when we got back to the boat, the restaurant managed to find something for us to eat.

Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Lorenzo Viotti, conductor. April 15, 2024.

Main Hall, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.  Orchestra (Seat 20-23, 72.5 Euros).

Program

Mahler's Symphony No. 9.

When I booked the ticket for this concert Anne decided not to go because of her worries about jet lag and physical exertion. Jet lag has not been too difficult for either of us, and Anne felt quite good physically yesterday - our first day of arrival.  By then, however, the concert was sold out.  Before we got to Amsterdam, we didn't realize the tram stops from the hotel to the concert hall were practically door-to-door.

As I described in the last entry, I didn't feel the acoustics of the concert hall was particularly amazing.  For today's concert the orchestra sounded good enough, but the clarity I expected wasn't there.

Of course this is a difficult Mahler piece to interpret, both for the orchestra and for the listener.  What is undisputed is that this is Mahler's attempt at portraying the struggle between life and death.  By this time he had been diagnosed with an incurable heart problem, so unlike the Tragic Symphony - dark but not clear whether Mahler had specific events in his mind - death was clearly a presence throughout the ninth symphony.  Or was it?  While it is easy to argue life and death can be linked with the first and last movements, it is debatable, and often debated, what the significance of the middle movements are.

An issue of more interest to musicologists is if this is actually Mahler's tenth symphony, despite himself calling it the nineth.  He had earlier called "Das Lied von der Erde" a symphony.  He did not get to hear this symphony during his life time.  A performance can last from 75 to 90 minutes, today's was on the shorter side.

What a piece of music says depends on the artists as well as the listener.  Take the silence at the end of the first and fourth movements: does it signify nothingness, or entry into an unknown realm?  While Mahler the atheist might not have believed in a conscious afterlife, he could still be trying to portray a "circle of life" situation.  The loud passages: are they celebrations of life, or screaming at fate and the unfairness of it all (atheists still have a sense of cosmic fairness, I imagine).  The conductor did hold his position for a long time after the symphony ended, I think the tentative clapping of a few audience members finally broke the "spell."

A particular interpreter may have a specific interpretation of the piece, but should he tell the audience?  Or should it simply try to look at the piece as absolute music and let the listener extract what he wants to hear from it?

Today's performance didn't answer any of the questions I have about the piece.  A great performance would still allow the listener to construct a message.  I have been able to do so with many of Mahler's symphonies, but not tonight.  So my remark is not particularly unfair to the music director.

For completeness, the movements of the symphony are (1) Allegro comodo; (2) Im Tempo eines gemachlichen Landlers, Etwas tappisch und sehr derb; (3) Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig; and (4) Adagio.  Sehr langsam und noch zuruckhaltend.

Viotti is the NL Philharmonic's music director, and he is all of 34 years old.  His name may lead one to think he is Italian, but he is Swiss.

Drinks are again included with the ticket price.  Since there was no intermission, they were available after the concert as well.

Both concerts offered free drinks.  Here they are on offer after completion of the symphony as there was no intermission.

Tram No. 12 got me back to the hotel in no time.

Concertgebouw Orchestra. Emmanuelle Haim, conductor; Lenneke Ruiten, soprano. April 14, 2024.

Main Hall, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Orchestra (Seat 13-32, 97.25 Euros).

At the conclusion of the concert.

Program

Concerto grosso in G major, op. 6, No. 1 by Handel.

Suite nr. 3 in G (from Water Music, HWV 348-350) by Handel.

Suite (from 'Dardanus') by Rameau.

Cantate 'Il delirio amoroso,' HWV 99 '(Da quel giorno fatale)' by Handel.

A program - available in Dutch only - costs 3 Euros.

We are going on a river cruise in France, and decided to tag on "pre-" and "post-cruise" visits to Amsterdam and Hamburg, partly/mostly for the opportunity to visit concert halls in the two cities.

Concertgebouw shows up in many lists as one of the top concert halls in the world, and the current NY Phil music director Jaap van Zweden started his music career as the concertmaster of the (Royal) Concertgebouw Orchestra (at age 19, the youngest ever).  For our Amsterdam stay I would attend two concerts.  Anne also came to this one, and I would come by myself to a second one.

Except for the Water Music piece, I am not familiar with the Handel pieces on today's program.  They are all accessible enough.  I was surprised at how long the cantata was, and that the soprano sang a considerable amount.

I didn't find the Rameau piece particularly interesting, that's probably due to lack of preparation on my part.

The orchestra used for the concert was small: 7 first violins, for instance, so I didn't get to hear what a full orchestra would sound like.

A performer has to walk down a stair case for the performance and the curtain call.  In this case the soprano Lenneke Ruiten.

The conductor and the soloist had to walk down a stair case, rather long at 20 to 25 steps.  For today the two women had no problem, but I can imagine some of the older performers (Mehta and Blomstedt come to mind) must dread having to come up and down, more than once because of the curtain call.  The orchestra members climb up a set of stairs to get to the podium, so there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get there.

I didn't buy a program because it costs 3 euros, and is available only in Dutch.  It did contain the lyrics translated from Italian to Dutch and Spanish (if I heard it right).  On the other hand, drinks are included in the ticket price, and there is no limit to numbers of drinks (wine, juice, and soft drinks).  The main stations were quite busy, but I came across one in the back that was quiet.

Typing this a week later, and having attended both concerts, I remember remarking to myself "what is so great about the acoustics?"  While there was nothing wrong with it, I didn't find the sound particularly clean, or the instruments (including the voice) sounding particularly refined.

The Concertgebouw is located in the museum area, right next to the van Gogh museum.

On the side are names of different composers.  The hall seats about 2,000 people.

There were a few scattered empty seats.  As I type this entry I found out I had booked seats that were one row apart (both aisle), but just assumed they were adjoining.  No one tapped on my shoulder to complain, either we lucked out, or the seat holder was polite and found another seat.

We got into Amsterdam yesterday.  This morning we visited Rijsmuseum.  I was surprisingly awake for the concert.