US:オペラ歌手がとかく苦手とするソング・リサイタル

私が全く知らなかったことですが，何人ものdirectors がいて，その通りにやっていれば済むオペラよりも, たった１人で自分勝手に歌って，それもオペラ曲の場合，なんらかの身振りをしなければならないソング・リサイタルは，オペラ歌手にはとかく苦手なのだそうです．

現実に，有名なオペラ歌手 Anna Netrebko は，今年予定されたいたNew York リサイタルをこれで５年間で２度目になるキャンセルしてしまったそうです．
This fall Anna Netrebko seemed intimidated enough by the prospect of her New York recital debut to cancel it for the second time in five years．

そこで　The New York Times の Music Critic, ZACHARY WOOLFE が，2011年を回顧して，６人のリサイタルを挙げています．
私はオペラにはあまり関心がないのですが，６人のなかに，来春早早，東京公演予定のIAN BOSTRIDGE が挙がっていたので，ご紹介します．
なお，BOSTRIDGE の１月10日オペラ・シティでの公演チケットは，会員「得チケ」でほぼ半値で叩き売られていますから，ご関心の方にはお薦めです．

順に挙げますと，
STEPHANIE BLYTHE It was outside her usual repertory, but in February in the Allen Room this mezzo-soprano, singing with nuance and commanding tone and accompanied by Craig Terry, made Kate Smith’s pop standards songbook seem the equal of Schubert and Strauss.

DOROTHEA RöSCHMANN AND DAVID DANIELS Maybe it’s cheating to include this soprano and countertenor’s heartbreakingly elegant concert at Carnegie Hall in April; they sang not songs but Handel opera arias and were joined not by a pianist but by the Juilliard415 period orchestra. Still, this gave me as much pleasure as any performance this year.

SARAH CONNOLLY In April this mezzo-soprano brought her disarmingly natural phrasing and velvety voice to a program of Schumann and British songs at Alice Tully Hall, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau. Best of all were two songs by Ivor Gurney, performed with moving nobility.

JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO Another mezzo-soprano made an exciting New York recital debut in May at Merkin Concert Hall, accompanied by her husband, the pianist Christopher Cano. She radiated honesty and emotion in songs by Porpora, Mahler, Ravel and — fabulously — Dominick Argento (his cycle “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf”). 　このリサイタルの写真は下に掲載してあります，

IAN BOSTRIDGE At Carnegie last month this English tenor paced, grimaced, growled and soared through a moody, rangy recital that centered on Schumann’s “Dichterliebe, ” alongside the pianist and composer Thomas Adès. It was a riveting performance, vocally and physically unsettled and unsettling, with Mr. Bostridge’s fingerprints left on the Steinway to prove it.
このリサイタルはひどかったようで，喉の状態も身体の状態も苦しかったようです．それはスタインウエイに残されたポストリッジのいくつもの指紋が証明していると書いています．

MARGARET PRICE When this great Welsh soprano died in February, a friend of hers sent me a recording of a concert she gave in Toronto in 1985. It was a long, luminous program offered with great seriousness and great joy. It may be cheating again to say that one of my most memorable recitals of 2011 took place 26 years ago, but it’s the truth.
この有名歌手は２月に亡くなったのですが，彼女の友人から贈られてきた1985年のコンサートＣＤを聴いて，26年前のリサイタルが，自分には2011年のmost memorable recitals の１つになったと書いています．

 

Standouts in a Solo Setting

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

The mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano at Merkin Concert Hall in May, accompanied by her husband, Christopher Cano.

By ZACHARY WOOLFE

Published: December 16, 2011

IT seems that a recital should be a breeze for a singer. Unlike in opera, there are no ill-fitting costumes; there is no awkward directorial concept to pull off. It’s just you, a piano and the music.

But even some of the biggest, best singers struggle with recitals: the exposure, the intimacy, the need to create instant drama in an art song’s three or four minutes. This fall Anna Netrebko seemed intimidated enough by the prospect of her New York recital debut to cancel it for the second time in five years, and Jonas Kaufmann’s recital at the Metropolitan Opera was genial but distant.

It’s therefore worth celebrating the singers who made engrossing, gorgeous worlds out of just their own formal wear and the barest of supports. These were my favorites among the recitals I took in this year.

STEPHANIE BLYTHE It was outside her usual repertory, but in February in the Allen Room this mezzo-soprano, singing with nuance and commanding tone and accompanied by Craig Terry, made Kate Smith’s pop standards songbook seem the equal of Schubert and Strauss.

DOROTHEA RöSCHMANN AND DAVID DANIELS Maybe it’s cheating to include this soprano and countertenor’s heartbreakingly elegant concert at Carnegie Hall in April; they sang not songs but Handel opera arias and were joined not by a pianist but by the Juilliard415 period orchestra. Still, this gave me as much pleasure as any performance this year.

SARAH CONNOLLY In April this mezzo-soprano brought her disarmingly natural phrasing and velvety voice to a program of Schumann and British songs at Alice Tully Hall, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau. Best of all were two songs by Ivor Gurney, performed with moving nobility.

JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO Another mezzo-soprano made an exciting New York recital debut in May at Merkin Concert Hall, accompanied by her husband, the pianist Christopher Cano. She radiated honesty and emotion in songs by Porpora, Mahler, Ravel and — fabulously — Dominick Argento (his cycle “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf”).

IAN BOSTRIDGE At Carnegie last month this English tenor paced, grimaced, growled and soared through a moody, rangy recital that centered on Schumann’s “Dichterliebe, ” alongside the pianist and composer Thomas Adès. It was a riveting performance, vocally and physically unsettled and unsettling, with Mr. Bostridge’s fingerprints left on the Steinway to prove it.

MARGARET PRICE When this great Welsh soprano died in February, a friend of hers sent me a recording of a concert she gave in Toronto in 1985. It was a long, luminous program offered with great seriousness and great joy. It may be cheating again to say that one of my most memorable recitals of 2011 took place 26 years ago, but it’s the truth.

US Los Angeles からの Best in classical music in 2011

Los Angeles 紙のBest in Classical music ですが，なんと世界規模にまたがっていますし，ご丁寧にWorst まで挙げています．

・最初に，世界各地で新しいコンサートホール，オペラハウスが出来たことを挙げています．
日本ではそれほど大した震度ではなかったはずの川崎ミューザが，他のホールが大震災の後，一斉に当ホールは耐震設計ですから．．．といっているのに，あえなく天井が落下して未だに無残な姿をとどめていますが，．．もっとも，まずはパイプオルガンに覆いを作って，温度，湿度管理を始めるそうですが．．．半年も放っておいてからで大丈夫なのでしょうか？
a splendid string of new concert halls and opera houses, many with distinguished architecture and acoustics. That began in January with the visionary New World Center in Miami Beach, Fla., and continued with halls in Reykjavik, Iceland; Helsinki, Finland; Kansas City, Mo.; Montreal; and, in our area, Aliso Viejo. Still to come: On Wednesday, Zubin Mehta opens the New Opera Theater in Florence, Italy, that will be a snazzy new home for the city’s famed Maggio Musicale festival.

・The anxiety in classical music is, as it is everywhere, about money. Combine the world’s poor economy and over-assertive populism with sometimes poor arts management (the Philadelphia Orchestra), and we see symphony orchestras and opera companies struggling. But we also see others, particularly those boldly committed to progress and innovation, thriving.

１．Those include the 10-best-list-topping Los Angeles Philharmonic — which performed, on average, a new or contemporary work (many being commissions) every week of its Walt Disney Concert Hall subscription season — and Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony.

２．LA Phil でずば抜けていたのが
Best most surprising symphony performance: Returning to the L.A. Phil, its laureate conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen made Shostakovich’s incoherent-seeming Fourth Symphony a searing, soul-wrenching experience that left audiences shaken and amazed.　下に  Esa-Pekka Salonen　が指揮する写真が掲載されています．凄まじいばかりの演奏だったようですね．羨ましい限りです．

３．Best performance by Gustavo Dudamel: The highlight of the L.A. Phil’s “Brahms Unbound” festival was his profoundly spiritual performance of Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony.　ここでは，かの有名な Gustavo Dudamel が登場しています．

４．Best debut(s): A three-way tie among the vibrant French early music specialist Emmanuelle Haïm at the Los Angeles Philharmonic; German director Christof Loy, who was responsible for Los Angeles Opera’s delectable production of Rossini’s “The Turk in Italy”; and, also at L.A. Opera, the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo in Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.”　と３者タイとして挙げています．

５．Best proof that Shakespeare didn’t say it all, whether he wrote his plays or not: The collaboration among director Peter Sellars, the African musician Rokia Traoré and novelist Toni Morrison in “Desdemona,” at Berkeley, turned the afterlife of Othello and Desdemona into a true transmigration of souls.
これは話が大きすぎて，訳しようがありません．

６．Best opera production: Sellars rendered Handel’s “Hercules” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, a wake-up call about the experiences of American war veterans.

７．Best-dressed pianist: The L.A. Times’ spicy photo of Yuja Wang in her revealing little orange dress at the Hollywood Bowl went viral as the blogosphere bloviated about the appropriateness of this and that, somewhat obscuring her electrifying performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.
これは前に天才ピアニストの写真入りでご紹介しました．

８．Best vocal performance under trying circumstances: Baritone Nicholas Isherwood opened every raw nerve with his starkly honest and cathartic solos in György Kurtág’s death-haunted “…pas à pas — nulle part…” when he gave the work’s U.S. premiere, for the Monday Evening Concerts, on the night his mother died.　
Baritone Nicholas Isherwood　は母親が亡くなった夜に，György Kurtág’s death-haunted “…pas à pas — nulle part...”　を好演したそうです．

９．Best old-timers: The 91-year-old Ravi Shankar gave a glorious Disney recital, and Elliott Carter celebrated his 103rd birthday in New York with premieres of several (yes, several!) new pieces.　アメリカの音楽家は長命のようです．

１０．Best reason to laugh through hard times: Igudesman and Joo, the funniest (and most accomplished) musical comedy act since PDQ Bach, shook the Broad Stage with so much hilarity that they did double duty testing the young theater’s earthquake preparedness.　コメディで，シアターの耐震性をテストしたというのですが，日本ではコメディどころではなかったですね！

Worst:  Worst new opera: Christopher Theofanidis’ empty Sept. 11 tear-jerker, “Heart of a Soldier” at San Francisco Opera, with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s offensive “Anna Nicole” as runner-up at Royal Opera in London.
これも日本訳は困難です．

 

 

 

 

2011 year in review: Best in classical music

December 14, 2011 | 11:22am

Photo: Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Dec. 2.
Credit: Jay Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

The good signs for the future of classical music this year have been a splendid string of new concert halls and opera houses, many with distinguished architecture and acoustics. That began in January with the visionary New World Center in Miami Beach, Fla., and continued with halls in Reykjavik, Iceland; Helsinki, Finland; Kansas City, Mo.; Montreal; and, in our area, Aliso Viejo. Still to come: On Wednesday, Zubin Mehta opens the New Opera Theater in Florence, Italy, that will be a snazzy new home for the city’s famed Maggio Musicale festival.

The anxiety in classical music is, as it is everywhere, about money. Combine the world’s poor economy and over-assertive populism (the minister of culture in Finland chose to attend a sporting event rather than the opening of the country’s major new concert hall, which was an international event) with sometimes poor arts management (the Philadelphia Orchestra), and we see symphony orchestras and opera companies struggling. But we also see others, particularly those boldly committed to progress and innovation, thriving.

Those include the 10-best-list-topping Los Angeles Philharmonic — which performed, on average, a new or contemporary work (many being commissions) every week of its Walt Disney Concert Hall subscription season — and Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony.

Best most surprising symphony performance: Returning to the L.A. Phil, its laureate conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen made Shostakovich’s incoherent-seeming Fourth Symphony a searing, soul-wrenching experience that left audiences shaken and amazed.

Best least surprising symphony performance: Valery Gergiev has given great Tchaikovsky performances for years, but nothing was preparation for the way he got four Tchaikovsky symphonies to erupt with elemental volcanic power in his appearances with his Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra at the Segerstrom Concert Hall.

Best performance by Gustavo Dudamel: The highlight of the L.A. Phil’s “Brahms Unbound” festival was his profoundly spiritual performance of Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony.

Best debut(s): A three-way tie among the vibrant French early music specialist Emmanuelle Haïm at the Los Angeles Philharmonic; German director Christof Loy, who was responsible for Los Angeles Opera’s delectable production of Rossini’s “The Turk in Italy”; and, also at L.A. Opera, the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo in Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Best proof that Shakespeare didn’t say it all, whether he wrote his plays or not: The collaboration among director Peter Sellars, the African musician Rokia Traoré and novelist Toni Morrison in “Desdemona,” at Berkeley, turned the afterlife of Othello and Desdemona into a true transmigration of souls.

Best opera production: Sellars rendered Handel’s “Hercules” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, a wake-up call about the experiences of American war veterans.

Best-dressed pianist: The L.A. Times’ spicy photo of Yuja Wang in her revealing little orange dress at the Hollywood Bowl went viral as the blogosphere bloviated about the appropriateness of this and that, somewhat obscuring her electrifying performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.

Best vocal performance under trying circumstances: Baritone Nicholas Isherwood opened every raw nerve with his starkly honest and cathartic solos in György Kurtág’s death-haunted “…pas à pas — nulle part…” when he gave the work’s U.S. premiere, for the Monday Evening Concerts, on the night his mother died.

Best old-timers: The 91-year-old Ravi Shankar gave a glorious Disney recital, and Elliott Carter celebrated his 103rd birthday in New York with premieres of several (yes, several!) new pieces.

Best reason to laugh through hard times: Igudesman and Joo, the funniest (and most accomplished) musical comedy act since PDQ Bach, shook the Broad Stage with so much hilarity that they did double duty testing the young theater’s earthquake preparedness.

Worst new opera: Christopher Theofanidis’ empty Sept. 11 tear-jerker, “Heart of a Soldier” at San Francisco Opera, with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s offensive “Anna Nicole” as runner-up at Royal Opera in London.