Beethoven under the stars - A kiss for all the world

What has more than 8,000 feet, thrives on heat and humidity, and loves Beethoven’s 9th?

Why, it’s the audience attending Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first gig at the Mann Center in Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park!

More than 4,000 attendees were recorded at the SRO event June 24, though it’s hard to keep track of seated patrons when there is wine, beer, and Rita’s Ice to purchase in the open-air lobby.

Events at the Mann are festive occasions, and one does not hold performers to concert-hall standards, but Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra did very well. From his opening words, clearly visible and heard via two large screens and speakers on both sides of the stage, the conductor set the tone for an evening of inspiration and perspiration. It’s as close to camping as classical music lovers generally get, but comfortable and fun in a way that classical music can and should be.

The first half of the program featured Yannick conducting the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra in Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. Nice work, youth, and a performance worthy of a mature professional ensemble. But the fact that the Philadelphia Orchestra was not to play this work seems to have been a closely guarded secret. I was as surprised as anyone to discover that talented young people would be performing, not the orchestra I expected to hear.

The Overture was followed by a lively rendition of four sections of the Philadelphia Community Mass, an imaginative work that merges contemporary musical riffs with the classical structure of the Latin mass. This was conducted with grace and fervor by Nolan Williams, Jr., featured an impassioned Philadelphia Community Mass Choir. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more of this Mass and more from Dr. Williams in the greater Philadelphia community, and that’s a good thing.

Of course, the reason most of us attended this Monday night concert was to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra perform the Ninth Symphony of the creative genius Nézet-Séguin rightly called the greatest symphonic composer of all time. And you can also refer to him as the greatest creator of string quartets, piano sonatas, and a few other genres.

One of the charms of hearing the orchestra in an alternative venue was the change in perspective. From where I was sitting (in the green seats under the awning), the performance looked like an animated conversation between Yannick and principal timpanist, Don S. Liuzzi. Both men, wearing white, have a commanding presence and infectious energy. Their powerful gestures reinforced the centrality of percussion to this fiery musical experience, that starts with a throaty murmur in the first movement, percolates in the second (taking every repeat), and rises like a sweet permeating perfume in the third. The fourth movement, of course, is a universe in itself.

The performance of the entrance of the main tune in the fourth movement had to be the softest I’ve ever heard, making the later shouts of jubilation all the more intense. As befits a conductor seasoned in the ways of opera, Nézet-Séguin sculpted the dynamics and drama of the work to bring out maximum contrast and development.

Things that could have been better? A more pronounced articulation of the shocking discord that appears twice in the opening (it was hard to hear over the timpani). I suspect the heat and humidity also weighed heavily on the quartet who sang just before the final chorus.

All in all, however, it was a captivating night. At the conclusion, a shower of glitter and balloons fell on the jubilant audience, followed by fireworks, and I couldn’t help but hope the great Master was looking down from heaven, hearing restored, with a kiss for all the world.

Harvard Square article on Invictus book launch

Here is a link to a fabulous article on the launch of L.L. Holt's Invictus in June 2019:

https://litvote.com/invictus-launch/

Romeo & Juliet & Tristan & Isolde

by Linda Holt

I had the great pleasure (April 5, 2019) of hearing the entire Romeo and Juliet ballet of Sergei Prokofiev, in a revelatory performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The sold-out concert took place in Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, Pa. This is a rare treat, and I say this as someone who has never cared for the suite distilled from the lengthy ballet score. The suite is a lop-sided synopsis, the complete ballet a universe rich in feeling, a treat for the brain, and dynamically adventurous.

While normally complete ballets work best supporting a dance production, this is not necessarily the case with Romeo and Juliet. The score was bounced around among Soviet dance companies in the 1930s before finding a site for its premier in what was then Czechoslovakia. Prokofiev is an elusive creator, his compositional identity morphing from hard-edged modern to dewy-eyed traditionalist. It’s all tangled in the sounds that Romeo and Juliet make. And yet we hanker for a visual element, some physicality of expression.

To provide this without becoming a ballet where we would do more watching and less listening, the Orchestra turned to another Philadelphia company, JUNK, an edgy dance troupe founded by Brian Sanders that defies easy categorization. Think of it as a marriage of Pilobolus-style dance, Cirque-du-Soleil aerial gymnastics, with shades of performance art.

JUNK performers--the men frequently bare-chested in jeans, the women in fluttering chemises--appear in scarcely a third of the more than 30 thematic sections of this four-act production. This allows the Orchestra to claim center stage, and that it does very well. Nézet-Séguin and the musicians have become comfortable with each other during the seven years of their partnership. There is a depth and maturity to this performance, leaving no doubt that the music itself is center stage no matter how heart-stopping the acrobatics on a small platform behind and above the Orchestra.

Yet it was impossible to look anywhere else whenever the athletic performers, more muscular than many winners of Olympic gold, whirled around poles suspended like trapezes, or, in the case of Julia Higdon as Juliet, climbed a rope suspended from the ceiling with the agility of a South Sea islander. Each set piece was more impressive than the previous. Higdon and her partner, Teddy Fatscher as Romeo, expressed the yearning but also the fulfillment of desire, becoming one body, one spirit, one artistic entity, whether dancing, kneeling in prayer, or awakening after a night of love.

As I inhaled the music and felt my heart lifted by these gifted performing artists, I recalled a performance of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, that I attended last September at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Philippe Jordan, who is conducting the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan this spring, including last week’s simulcast of Die Walküre, elicited a large, commanding sound, redolent of brine and the sea, from the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris. This is the celebrated Peter Sellars production fusing live opera with cinema, but there is so much more.

In Tristan, the story unfolds as a symbolist, black-and-white film on a large screen behind the singers, Martina Serafin as Isolde and Andreas Schager as Tristan. In the film, two unidentified actors portray the doomed couple. The use of film allowed the singers to focus entirely on music, and also permitted the presentation of something few opera singers would care to incorporate in their performances: full frontal nudity.

Unlike the JUNK production, the lead film performers were not superhuman physical specimens. In fact, their undeveloped bodies and plain features underscored the vulnerability of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary web of desire.

The film began with two figures walking toward us from afar, slowly disrobing, and interacting with various symbolic depictions of water, later candles and fire. Yet the relationship between the two protagonists, whether in film or through some of the most heavenly music ever composed, remains one of tenderness rather than explosive passion, of mature affection, not adolescent intensity. Poison may destroy the body in all its frailty, but love remains eternal, like the rolling sea so eerily omnipresent in Bill Viola’s video artistry.

With both productions, it was clear that the music directors honored and respected the composers’ original intentions even as new visual material was incorporated. This will be key to the success of similar innovations to come.

Photos: Above, Brian Sanders of JUNK (photo by Steve Belkowitz). Below, photo from the Bill Viola video for Tristan und Isolde, Peter Sellars production (photo by Charles Duprat).