MusicalAmerica.com July 17, 2008

ASPEN, CO --“Thanks for coming, and thanks for staying,” said James Conlon from the stage, as the second half of the Aspen Festival Orchestra’s July 13 concert was about to start. He had earlier presided over the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Sarah Chang, and now chose to offer some remarks about the concert’s remaining work, Alexander Zemlinsky’s “Die Seejungfrau [The Mermaid]: Symphonic Fantasy after Hans Christian Andersen.”

The Benedict Music Tent had been nearly full for the Sibelius, and there was a modest trickle of audience attrition during intermission. But those who stayed can only have felt invigorated by Conlon’s remarks and, more to the point, by hearing Zemlinsky’s 40-minute, three-movement tone poem. Conlon’s tireless championing of Zemlinsky and other composers whose careers (and in some cases lives) were destroyed by the Nazis is well known. But actually hearing him discuss and conduct this piece was truly inspiring. He looks forward to the day, he said, when Zemlinsky is as frequently performed as Sibelius. That goal is still in the distance, but the reemergence of this composer is, in fact, progressing quite satisfactorily. When the Festival Orchestra was asked how many had played “The Mermaid” before, surely more hands went up than were expected. And the biographical facts Conlon mentioned—that Zemlinsky was Schoenberg’s brother-in-law and only teacher, that he was less than handsome but still had a romantic entanglement with Alma Schindler (later Alma Mahler), that in 1938 he left Austria for New York and died in obscurity four years later—are beginning to have a familiar ring. Zemlinsky wrote “The Mermaid” in the aftermath of Alma’s rejection of him in favor of Mahler. According to Conlon, the composer identified with the title character, whose love for the human prince she rescued from a shipwreck went unrequited. The Mermaid experiences a transfiguration into an immortal, which Conlon likened to Zemlinsky’s resolve, after the breakup, to devote himself to art. The conductor alluded to a passage midway through the second movement, which recurs near the end of the third, that symbolizes the Mermaid’s transformation, and he compared it to the Liebestod in “Tristan.” If I identified it correctly, it was a lush string passage, with harp accompaniment, in which a fervent melody is heard in the cellos. Conlon did not say so, but it may bear mentioning that the Liebestod occurs in “Tristan” at roughly the analogous structural points: at the climax of the Act 2 Love Duet and at the end of the three-act opera.

Of course, the work is only nominally about Zemlinsky; some of the music, especially in the first movement, is quite obviously descriptive of Andersen’s mermaid -- the low-pitched scales at the beginning suggesting the depths of the sea, a lovely solo violin tune probably representing the lady herself and especially the tumultuous orchestral depiction of the shipwreck. But it is better not to get too bogged down with linking music to story and instead focus on Zemlinsky’s masterful skills as a symphonist. Especially striking is the way he transforms themes. A good half dozen occur repeatedly throughout the three movements. Yet they are presented with sufficient expressive and orchestral variety so as not to seem redundant. Experiencing “The Mermaid” is a little like seeing a play in which each act traces the same action but from a different point of view. For instance, the second movement, which represents festivities in the palace of the Mer-king, at once establishes a totally new, celebratory mood, with its shimmering strings, bells, triangle and glockenspiel. Yet it also uses a fanfare theme that had previously been associated with the shipwreck. It’s all a big, lush, post-Romantic orchestral extravaganza.

Conlon, conducting from memory, masterminded a full-bodied, colorful and gripping reading that benefited from fine contributions by solo winds and strings. It is possible to imagine a performance of even greater orchestral splendor, but this one was more than enough to put the work across vivid ly. As for the Sibelius, Chang played eloquently and delved deeply into the concerto’s expressive content. The very opening solo statement started from nothing and grew into something strongly emotional. I have always found the first movement to be a rambling, even random assortment of ideas, and a very gloomy one besides -- a condition steadfastly maintained by the second movement. The rhythmically charged third movement finally gets the piece going, and Chang was often technically dazzling in it, though I have heard it played with more panache. The audience loved her performance, as well they might. But it was the Zemlinsky that made the afternoon for me.

NEW YORK TIMES Published: December 18, 2007

Much of the history of dance lies in the history of music. Now and again something happens to make us reconsider that history. One such event occurred over the weekend when, in a brilliantly enterprising program at the Juilliard School, the conductor James Conlon, the Juilliard Orchestra and Juilliard Dance presented three world premieres choreographed to long-forgotten scores, written from 1911 to 1935 by German composers whose work the Nazis had banned.

The three scores were by Franz Schreker (1879-1934), Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), and Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). Though I had heard some Zemlinsky music, Schreker’s and Schulhoff’s names were new to me. And Schulhoff’s score, “Ogelala” (Op. 53, “Ballettmysterium”), which closed the program, proved to be a major discovery and prompted the most remarkable dance.

Schulhoff, who was denied employment after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia and whose applications to emigrate were blocked, died of tuberculosis in a Nazi camp. His 1925 ballet “Ogelala,” a large-scale example of what has been called neoprimitivism, was based on Mexican themes discovered by ethnomusicological research. You can hear what it owes to the dramatic modernism of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and its (accidental) resemblance to Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” (which had its premiere a year later) and still find it a cauldron of newly exciting rhythm and varied sonority. I recommend it for consideration by any dance company with a large orchestra.

At Juilliard the choreographer Robert Battle, staging this score under the title “No Longer Silent,” rose to its demands with a dance that evoked multiple primitive rituals in complex and modern terms. From the very start he seizes attention with his skill in handling four groups moving in different rhythms, and from then on he kept his stage society compellingly — and always mysteriously — subdivided, often isolating individuals. Pounding machinelike rhythms, imagery of shame or torment and more than one self-immolating dance solo succeeded another in structures that told not one story but suggested many.

His dancers were dressed in black. Feet, hands and faces often gleamed out against the surrounding darkness. Nicole Pierce’s wide range of modern lighting effects, sometimes silhouetting the dancers and shining lights at the audience, often lighting the dancers from new angles, kept changing the drama. In the final section Mr. Battle and his dancers resorted to one or two clichés, notably the audible but stagey gasps that accompanied some “possessed” dances, and the silent scream presented by one entire group as the work ended. Nevertheless “No Longer Silent” looked better than many new stagings for major dance companies. I immediately imagined the Alvin Ailey company, for which Mr. Battle already choreographs, staging this to great effect.

For the choreographers Adam Hougland and Nicolo Fonte, the main problem was that they were staging nondance music that would have vexed the most musical of choreographers. Mr. Hougland’s “Prelude to a Drama” used Schreker’s overture to his 1913 “Gezeichneten” (“The Marked Ones”), to have its American premiere in 2010 with the Los Angeles Opera; Mr. Fonte’s “Proximity Effect” was set to Zemlinsky’s “Sinfonietta,” Op. 23 (1935). Mr. Hougland, coping with a score that has any number of climaxes in quick succession, employed dance movements and structures of routine modern-dance intensity, though with an ear that clearly responded to the music’s changing moods. Mr. Fonte’s use of stage space, dramatic physical stance and gesture, and changing subgroups brought out the Expressionist pressures in Zemlinsky’s music, but often without serious response to its detail.

At every point the Juilliard dancers looked skilled, attractive and extraordinarily committed. Mr. Conlon’s conducting of the Juilliard musicians ensured that the music was central to the experience of all three works. The ovations that followed each work peaked when the musicians and Mr. Conlon joined all the dancers onstage.

By Bryant Manning

Ravinia music director James Conlon vows to offer classical programming this summer for all tastes, but not at the expense of rediscovering forgotten music. Conlon's "Breaking the Silence" series, which explores unsung composers victimized during the Third Reich, is already positively shaping his Ravinia tenure. In Conlon's first year as music director in 2005, he presented works by Victor Ullmann and last year Erwin Schulhoff, both of whom died in concentration camps. Conlon believes this year's composer, the Austrian Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), is the greatest of all composers erased as a result of the Holocaust. Zemlinsky fled Europe in 1939 for New York, but soon contracted pneumonia and died alone three years later. Schoenberg admired Zemlinsky and prophesied that "his time will come," to which Conlon responded "now" during his brief pre-concert lecture.

The "Lyric Symphony" (1924) made its stunning CSO and Ravinia debuts Saturday night to a sparse crowd in the grand pavilion. The symphony separates into seven movements, alternately exchanged between soprano and baritone. This love story draws from various poems by Bengali writer Rabindrath Tagore, with the lovers portrayed magnificently by Christine Brewer and Bo Skovhus. While the two never harmonized, Brewer's rich Wagnerian soprano paired perfectly with Skovhus' warm baritone. Zemlinsky's semi-dissonant orchestral writing brought in influences from Debussy to Mahler while never sounding derivative.

The Beaux Arts Trio also performed an elegant reading of Beethoven's Concerto in C Major for Violin, Cello and Piano, Op. 56 ("Triple Concerto"). Cellist Antonio Meneses, violinist Daniel Hope and founding member and pianist Menahem Pressler all shone as soloists. Pressler's delicate and understated pianism approximated the pianofortes in Beethoven's time.

Friday night's concert billed popular works by Mozart and Mahler. The inclusion of the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219 ("Turkish") felt unnecessary, though (in part because Mahler's fifth is substantial enough for an entire evening). With recordings of this concerto surfacing everywhere, a live performance needs to say something fresh or should at least offer listeners a solid, animated rendition. The small orchestra's tentative opening of the first movement, allegro aperto (cheerful and open), dragged along instead of celebrating some of Mozart's happiest moments. Veteran Ravinia performer Pinchas Zukerman drew out an attractive but uninspiring sound as soloist. A few unwelcome notes in the work's cadenzas -- as written by Daniel Barenboim -- even made Zukerman inspect his instrument with puzzlement.

The CSO's long relationship with the Mahler symphonies continues with Conlon offering a multiyear cycle, with the No. 5 and No. 6 performed this summer. Friday night the Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor was superbly performed and cast a seismic quake over the calm surroundings of Ravinia. Forceful dialogue between trumpets and trombones characterize this symphony, and who better leading them than CSO brassmen, notably trumpeter Christopher Martin and trombonist Jay Friedman?

Bryant Manning is a local free-lance critic

By John von Rhein

James Conlon's "Breaking the Silence" series of works banned by the Third Reich and overlooked during the postwar years has given Ravinia audiences some minor curiosities mixed with worthwhile discoveries these past two summers. But Viktor Ullmann and Erwin Schulhoff, the previous subjects of his revival efforts, were not front-rank composers, whereas Alexander Zemlinsky, this year's honoree, was.

So Conlon's mini-Zemlinsky festival, which began over the weekend, holds a good deal of musical promise. As the main event of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's first residency weekend of the season, the conductor introduced Ravinia to Zemlinsky's best-known piece, the "Lyric Symphony."

Zemlinsky wears his debt to Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" openly. Both song-symphonies set Eastern texts (here poems by Rabindranath Tagore), alternating male and female solos. Mahler's falls into six independent sections while Zemlinsky's is structured as a continuously evolving work in seven sections. Mahler's work represents a farewell to life; the "Lyric Symphony" represents a subliminal farewell to a love affair Zemlinsky had with a much younger female student.

It was a hot night at Ravinia and Zemlinsky's overheated post-Romanticism upped the mercury more than a few degrees. The Viennese composer took the swollen rhetoric of early Schoenberg, ladling on his own saturated harmonies, sumptuously colorful orchestral writing and vocal parts of Wagnerian scope. Zemlinsky's melodies wind around shifting tonal centers but never quite blossom into memorable tunes. Lacking Mahler's musical genius, Zemlinsky's lush song-symphony is rather like a jewel-encrusted palace that houses rather nondescript furnishings.

Still, I don't wish to disparage such an alluring wallow in late-Romantic sound, especially with an interpreter of Conlon's authority and understanding in charge (he has recorded a vast amount of Zemlinsky's music for EMI), and with a virtuoso ensemble so giving as the CSO.

Christine Brewer poured out the difficult soprano solos with the huge, gleaming, unforced tones of an Isolde; she'll be back Wednesday at Ravinia for Zemlinsky's "Florentine Tragedy." Equally impressive was Bo Skovhus, who savored both lyrical introspection and dramatic ferocity in the sections for baritone voice.

Also on Saturday, it was good to welcome back to Ravinia the latest incarnation of the famed Beaux Arts Trio (joining the veteran pianist Menahem Pressler are violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses), even if its reading of the Beethoven "Triple" Concerto did not prove as vital or spontaneous as its encore, a movement of Dvorak's "Dumky" Piano Trio.

I took a pass on Conlon's Mahler Fifth Symphony Friday at Ravinia to catch an interesting choral program by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus at Millennium Park. Unfortunately, conductor Christopher Bell and his worthy forces had to battle fierce competition from helicopters, ambulances, police sirens and crowd noise from Taste of Chicago at nearby Butler Field. Ah, the delights of summer in the city!

But the Grant Parkers soldiered on, and what one could hear of the featured work -- James MacMillan's "Cantos Sagrados" ("Sacred Songs"), in its revised version for chorus and orchestra -- was impressive.

The three poems that make up the text -- by Ariel Dorfman and Ana Maria Mendoza -- concern political repression in Latin America, specifically the unidentified victims of fascist regimes who disappear without a trace.

This is powerful, even disturbing stuff, made more so by the composer's musically telling responses to the English and Latin words. Bell and friends made the score feel as stinging as a slap in the face.

By John von Rhein

If Alexander Zemlinsky's music ever is to gain the foothold in the active repertory it deserves, it needs passionate advocates.

It has found one in Ravinia music director James Conlon, who is arguing strongly for the Viennese composer's merits at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer home, where on Wednesday he led a convincing reading of Zemlinsky's luridly decadent shocker, "A Florentine Tragedy" (1915).

Based on an Oscar Wilde play, the one-act opera holds a Freudian mirror to events in the composer's life and that of his Viennese circle, including his student and lover, Alma Schindler, who dumped him to run away with Gustav Mahler. The plot suggests Zemlinsky was working out his disappointed romantic longing: Simone, a middle-age merchant who finds his wife, Bianca, is betraying him with Guido, a young prince, strangles the lover and improbably rekindles his wife's ardor.

Zemlinsky's hourlong score is very nearly a dramatic monologue for baritone, with brief exchanges between Bianca and her lover. The score's debts to Mahler and Strauss are evident in its piling up of melodramatic gestures, perfumed orchestral textures and chromatic vocal lines bathed in lush Expressionism. If you adore Strauss' "Salome" and the operas of Erich Korngold, you should adore Zemlinsky's seductive sound-world.

James Johnson spat out Simone's killer role tirelessly and effectively, while soprano Christine Brewer, as Bianca, and tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, as Guido, poured out their voices stalwartly. The three voices were unnecessarily amplified in the pavilion. Conlon was the true hero of the performance, integrating the orchestra's luxuriant, colorful but never muddy textures with the singers' arching phrases. So far his Zemlinsky fest is batting two for two.

No such luck with the concert's opening work, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which the soloist, longtime Ravinia favorite Misha Dichter, tore through seemingly on autopilot, as if he had a Metra train to catch.

The Catalan viol virtuoso Jordi Savall brought his early music group Hesperion XXI to the Martin Theatre on Tuesday for their Ravinia debut in an absorbing program of medieval songs and instrumental pieces by exiled Spanish Sephardic Jews who settled in North Africa, the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean lands during the 16th and 17th Centuries.

The music was remarkable not only for its inherent beauty and variety but also for what it told us of the transformative effect one culture can have on another when they commingle.

Using viols, flutes, drums and other instruments ranging from the zither-like santur to the oud (Arabic lute), the songs, ballads and instrumental pieces formed a fascinating musical mosaic of the Sephardic diaspora, brought to life with such skill and vitality by the seven Hesperion musicians as to speak with astonishing immediacy to the rapt audience that packed the recital hall.

To everything she sang, soprano Montserrat Figueras, the group's co-founder along with Savall, brought a hauntingly beautiful voice that played across the music like sunlight glinting on the Aegean. Driss El Maloumi deserved his hearty ovation for the rhythmic and microtonal intricacies of his oud playing. But each Hesperion musician is a virtuoso in his or her own right, playing with an improvisatory freedom that belied the discipline underneath. In all, a glorious jam session of ancient music.

Having just rehabilitated Schumann's unfairly neglected Paradise and the Peri, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed a service at least as important yesterday with its first local performance of Edgard Varèse's orchestral monstrosity, Amériques, since the 1926 premiere here under Leopold Stokowski.

The Kimmel Center audience was, to put it politely, rather less charmed than at last week's Schumann. But if Varèse's revolutionary orchestral fervor doesn't inspire some level of audience resistance, the piece has been too quiet - which it wasn't at yesterday's exhilarating, convincing performance. The composer's dense, beyond-The-Rite-of-Spring language screams with an imagination that's never been surpassed. And some listeners will always be put off by the police siren that runs intermittently through the piece.

The performance's instigator was guest conductor James Conlon, who is rarely without a significant cause. In his charming, informative preperformance talk, he placed the music chronologically in the burgeoning post-World War I metropolis of New York City, even to the point of identifying zoo sounds in the sprawling orchestral score.

Given the music's density and individualism, any reasonably convincing performance of Amériques is a heroic act (which would count out the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's surprisingly lifeless recording under Pierre Boulez). This one went well beyond that, thanks to Conlon's know-how. Galvanizing the personalities within the Philadelphia Orchestra usually involves finding ways for them to live up to their sonorous reputation, and indeed, Conlon's approach was based on keen, precise orchestral colors that were very much the provenance of the Fab Philadelphians. With special ownership of the piece established, a performance of special clarity emerged. The piece could be easily followed as a succession of fantastic outbursts grouped around a solo flute ritornello. My previous encounters with the piece have been on recordings, but Friday's performance showed that Amériques absolutely needs to be heard in person. These sounds don't take well to any sort of containment.

If Amériques is destined to remain on the fringes of the orchestral repertoire, it's due to the lack of an organizing principle strong enough to hold the outsized sonorities that the composer so audaciously created. But the piece at least found a far more congruent program companion than I'd ever guessed: Ravel's La Valse. Often shortchanged in rehearsal because it's heard so often, La Valse received a marvelously thoughtful performance full of myriad details that often go unheard, revealing the piece as a quarry of sounds less dense, more tonal, but clearly in reaction to a 1920s world similar to Varèse. Having suggested that Ravel was depicting the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Conlon gave his performance a strong Viennese accent.

Hélène Grimaud's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor") was the concert's most conventional attraction. And even though Grimaud has been heard in more scintillating form, her Emperor wasn't conventional or routine. She's possibly incapable of that. Her legato line never becomes too velvety, thanks to her Gallic sense of clarity, and never ceases to reiterate the hard-won qualities of Beethoven's inspiration. I love the way she organized the first movement with each of the piano's more introspective moments arriving with increasing quiet and slowness. Oddly, her concert garb - bare shoulders, pantaloon slacks - seemed more appropriate for a hot summer night at the Mann Center. But on gray December days, we can pretend, can't we?