Coming up: Porgy and Beethoven
THE NEW YEAR brings an Austro-German bounty from the OSM and others, while the Opéra de Montréal extends its Gershwin run
The first column of the year is a good one to make resolutions. Such as: Do not plan to hear Kent Nagano and the OSM in Madrid on March 20, the same night that Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic are in Montreal. Or vice versa.
Actually, this conflict is not impossible to resolve, since the OSM will perform Mahler’s Seventh Symphony three times in Montreal (Feb. 5, 6 and 15) and once in Vienna (March 17) before landing in Spain. Perhaps by then I shall have had enough of this score, one of the most gloriously daffy (and difficult) of the 20th century.
The start of 2014 looks good in general for lovers of Austro-German symphonic fare. Nagano gives us Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Symphonies along with the Fourth Piano Concerto (Radu Lupu, soloist) from Tuesday to Thursday. Will the first and second violins be divided stereophonically in the Maison symphonique, or clustered traditionally on the left of the conductor?
The Las Vegas line at press time was 5 to 4 for divided violins. Nagano has been remarkably protean in matters of Beethoven interpretation, starting his Montreal tenure in whippet-lean Tafelmusik mode and moving incrementally toward a mightier and more red-blooded (which is to say, more convincing) perspective on the composer.
There is more Beethoven from the OSM on Feb. 19 as resident conductor Nathan Brock leads the Fifth Symphony in a Beyond the Score multimedia presentation involving analysis and narration in the first half by actor-pianist Jean Marchand. Ticket prices for this exercise in adult education, at $32 to $71, are relatively humane. The less good news is that the presentation is in French only. Beyond the Score is a concept developed by the Chicago Symphony. It is not as though English materials are unavailable.
At any rate, Yannick NézetSéguin (whose mike-in-hand commentary is always bilingual) will perform Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony with his Orchestre Métropolitain at the Maison symphonique on the afternoon of Feb. 9, prior to a run of the masterpiece with the Philadelphia Orchestra starting on Feb. 20. Back in Montreal, Alexis Hauser and the McGill Symphony Orchestra offer the Fourth in Pollack Hall on Feb. 27 and 28. We cannot say Beethovenians are ill served.
Brucknerians (all of whom are Beethovenians anyway) can look forward to Hauser and McGill presenting the rarely programmed Second Symphony on Feb. 3 and 4 in Pollack Hall. And Jean-Marie Zeitouni, the music director of I Musici de Montréal, will be conducting Bruckner’s Ninth this coming Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately, these performances are with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. As for YNS, he leads the Vienna Philharmonic through the formidable Eighth Symphony on April 6, a Sunday. This concert starts at 11 a.m. in the Vienna Konzerthaus, which leaves open the possibility of getting back over the Atlantic to start work, fresh as a Brucknerian daisy, the following morning. Sounds like a joke, but this is how Bruckner people think.
Closer at hand is New Jersey, where Jacques Lacombe is turning his New Jersey Symphony Orchestra into a formidable Austro-German instrument this month, starting Thursday with Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies (plus the U.S. première of a cello concerto by André Previn, with Daniel Müller-Schott as soloist). On Jan. 17 he gets into Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Elizabeth Bishop, mezzo-soprano, and Russell Thomas, tenor) in a program that includes the U.S. première of Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto. On Jan. 24, watch out for Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony, arguably the biggest purely symphonic piece in the repertoire. I have reserved my suite at the Newark Hilton.
Each of these programs is given three times, at various venues around the state (although the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark is generally viewed as the headquarters). One is led to conclude that Lacombe is doing well as NJSO music director, a position he occupied in 2010. When the Opéra de Montréal adopted its compact schedule of four performances in eight days, Saturday to Saturday, the company held out the option to add a performance in the event of extraordinary advance sales.
This is what has happened in the case of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which will be performed on Monday, Feb. 3 as well as on Jan. 25, 28 and 30 and Feb. 1.
Note that in accordance with the traditional requirements of the Gershwin estate, all the stage performers (led by Jonathan Lemalu as Porgy and Measha Brueggergosman as Bess) will be black. Choral duties are handled by the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir. Wayne Marshall conducts the OSM.
Squeezed between the last two Porgy performances is a recital by the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann. This OdM presentation (with the Orchestre Métropolitain) on Feb. 2 starts at 2 p.m. in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, where Porgy is being performed.
Will Kaufmann sing Puccini, Bizet, Massenet, Mascagni, Ponchielli and Wagner in the comfortable surroundings of Catfish Row? If not, the stagehands might have some extra work.