The Profile The Life And The Faith Across The Notes in Review

The Profile The Life And The Faith Across The Notes
A Symphonic Poem written for piano, orchestra, and chorus
Mario Jazzetti, composer
The Chelsea Symphony Orchestra; New York Choral Society
Francesco Libetta, piano; Donata Cucinotta, soprano; Matt Morgan, tenor
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center; New York, NY
May 12, 2012

In a pre-concert address, Maurico Jazzetti shared remembrances of his father, Mario Jazzetti. It was obvious that he had great esteem and love for his father, and this concert was his way of sharing that with the world. Mario Jazzetti’s The Profile The Life And The Faith Across The Notes was presented. Having remarked on his dream that “this work must be played at Lincoln Center,” the younger Jazzetti must have felt great joy at making this dream a reality.

Mario Jazzetti (1915-1986) began his piano studies at age five and gave his first concert at age nine. He earned his diploma in piano in Naples and had a successful performing career in Italy in the pre- and post- World War II years.  He immigrated to the United States in 1951, where he continued his career as a teacher and performer, including concerts at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. The Profile The Life And The Faith Across The Notes was first performed in a two-piano version in 1983.  A planned orchestral version was cancelled due to Mr. Jazetti’s ill health in 1984.

Billed in the program as a symphonic poem, in the program notes as a symphony concerto, and on the Internet as a piano concerto, it is apparent that the presenter is undecided on a final designation. Despite its titles’ far-reaching ambitions, this work seems ultimately to be none of the above. One might call it a suite, but it is really a pastiche of six works, composed at different times in Mr. Jazzetti’s life and placed together. Split into two sections (four movements, followed after intermission by the last two), the six movements are meant to represent the life journey, from birth to the end of life. They are titled Ninna Nanna (Lullaby), La bicicletta (The Bicycle), Tristezza d’amore (The Sadness of Love), Gioia di una Promozione (Joy of Graduation)– La Farfalla (The Butterfly), Tragica Realta’ Della Vita (The Tragic Reality of Life, also called the War Concerto), and Ave Maria.

With one movement written in his teens (Ave Maria), another conceived during World War Two (The Tragic Reality of Life), and the rest at other times not detailed in the program notes, the work has an uneven quality as one might expect. The influences of Grieg (especially the Piano Concerto), Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt, and other romantic composers were prominent throughout in an overtly derivative manner, yet without these composers’ individual formal clarity, the effect was that of a collage. Thus, despite the organization into phases of life, there was an amorphous quality to the set. Conventional cadenza-like passagework was frequently used as thematic material, so that melodic lines become almost undistinguishable as such, while harmonic progressions bordered on the formulaic. There were, to be sure, poignant moments, but the surrounding material overwhelmed them.

Pianist Francesco Libetta was the star of the evening. Playing with great abandon, he broke a string on the Fazioli piano during The Tragic Reality of Life movement, much to the amazement of the audience. Soprano Donata Cucinotta and tenor Matt Morgan gave strong performances as well. The New York Choral Society was solid in their role – though what precisely that role was meant to be might have been clearer had there been a printed text, either in the original Italian or in translation (which was missing for the solo singers as well), a considerable omission in this case. Last, but not least, the Chelsea Symphony Orchestra was excellent from start to finish in a performance that completely outclassed another orchestra’s earlier performance of the work, as recorded in Italy (since removed from YouTube). The audience gave the performers a prolonged standing ovation at concert’s end.

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by Jeffrey Williams  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert, conductor
Christine Brewer, soprano; Jane Henschel, mezzo-soprano; Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor; Eric Owens, bass-baritone; New York Choral Artists: Joseph Flummerfelt, director
Avery Fisher Hall, New York, NY
June 26, 2010

 

Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert’s first season as the New York Philharmonic’s Music Director ended as adventurously as it had begun, with a premiere commissioned for the occasion. Both were written by Magnus Lindberg, the Orchestra’s newly-installed Composer-in-Residence; the first was titled EXPO!, the second Al largo. The composer provides the best description of his own music: “Only the extreme is interesting. Striving for a balanced totality is now an impossibility….” In Al largo—(meaning “offshore”)—a big orchestra with a huge percussion section produces a great, joyful noise with many brass fanfares and a multitude of instrumental colors, but without any discernible form or structure.

The main work on the program was well suited to demonstrate Gilbert’s ambitious, wide-ranging plans for his orchestra, and to celebrate the successful close of his first season: Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Op. 123, one of the greatest, most formidable works in the literature.

The Missa has a singular history. Begun in 1819, it was intended, in Beethoven’s words, “to contribute to the glorification of the day” when his friend and patron, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, was invested as Archbishop of Olmütz. However, the Missa was far from ready to be performed at the ceremony a year later; indeed, Beethoven wrestled with it longer than with any other composition. Not until 1823 did he consider it finished, having in the meantime written his last three piano sonatas, and worked on the “Diabelli” Variations and the Ninth Symphony.

This unusually long period of gestation and contemplation could not but affect the nature of the work. Alan Gilbert thinks that what makes it so difficult to understand and perform is, at least in part, the dichotomy between its sacred and secular elements. But one might also say that it is the music itself that baffles and overwhelms both listeners and performers. It shows Beethoven at his emotionally most profound, his spiritually most sublime, and his intellectually and technically most intractable. Everything is driven to excess: the extreme changes of mood and expression; the constant shifts of meter, tempo, and dynamics; the abrupt swings from lyricism to drama, and from humble pleading to heaven-storming ecstasy. If Beethoven had any weaknesses, they lay in his vocal writing and his counterpoint, and the Missa naturally abounds in both. As in the Ninth Symphony, chorus and soloists are driven into the stratosphere for unsustainably long stretches; the fugues – and there are many – are so complex that they seem to get tangled up like coils of barbed wire. At times, even Gilbert’s usually unfailing sense of balance and textural clarity was defeated by the dense, overloaded score.  No wonder the work is heard so rarely.

The Philharmonic’s performance must have been one of the best in recent memory. Orchestra and chorus, meticulously prepared, were precise, secure, and emotionally involved; among the vocal soloists, the soprano was outstanding; the rest were good, though not well matched: the bass and alto were too subdued, the tenor was too heroic. Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow played his big solo in the Benedictus brilliantly, but his tone was too unremittingly intense.

The concert’s real hero was Alan Gilbert. His beat, as always, was clear and decisive; his transitions and tempo changes were admirably smooth and organic; his mastery of this immensely complex score, from the smallest detail to its monumental over-all structure, was prodigious; he led his enormous forces with the natural authority born of a thorough knowledge and deeply felt love of the music.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Live from the MET: Simone Boccanegra

Live from the MET : “Simone Boccanegra”
James Levine, conductor
Placido Domingo, baritone, as Simone Boccanegra 
Adrianne Pieczonka, soprano, as Amelia
Marcello Giordani, tenor, as Gabriele Adorno  
James Morris, bass-baritone, as Jacopo Fiesco
Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY
PBS Telecast
June 20, 2010

Placido Domingo - Photo Credit Brent Ness -

All New York’s music lovers, especially those with difficulties getting around, owe a debt of gratitude to Channel 13 for its “Live from Lincoln Center” series: these telecasts are the closest they can get to the concerts and operas they love. The latest “Live from the MET” telecast, taped in February and broadcast on June 20th, presented the new production of Verdi’s “Simone Boccanegra” with Placido Domingo making his debut as a baritone in the title role. Audience expectations ran high, though Domingo has often mentioned that his vocal roots are in the middle register and blossomed into the upper one later. Indeed his voice has always had a remarkably warm, baritonal quality, and, since voices tend to darken with age, he is perhaps merely encouraging a natural vocal development. Nevertheless, after a lifetime as one of the world’s most beloved tenors, taking such a drastic step requires extraordinary courage, and its stunning success makes it an extraordinary achievement.   

Domingo’s decision to undertake his first foray into new territory in this vocally and emotionally challenging, complex role was daring but understandable. As Boccanegra, he has moved from portraying an impulsive, young, romantic tenor (like Gabriele Adorno in “Boccanegra”) to a historical character of his own age and maturity. The real Boccanegra was a famous pirate who was twice elected Doge of Genoa; in the opera, he grows from a frustrated lover determined to prove himself a worthy suitor, to an enlightened statesman determined to bring peace and justice to his people.  

Adrianne Pieczonka, Placido Domingo and Marcello Giordani - Photo Credit Brent Ness

Verdi wrote “Boccanegra” in 1857; it was a failure: audiences found Piave’s libretto confusing, and the long recitatives boring. In 1881, Verdi revised it, like many of his operas; with a lot of new music and a new text by Boito, it was a resounding success, though the libretto still had weaknesses: the characters’ actions and reactions remained baffling and unbelievable, and events predating the drama were sketched so cursorily that audiences cannot possibly grasp them. 

  

The opera takes place in 14th-century Genoa against a background of convoluted political and personal conflicts that generate misunderstandings, belated revelations and eventual tragedy. But Verdi was less interested in affairs of state than affairs of the heart, and dramatized the characters’ relationships with wonderful duets – not only between soprano and tenor in the obligatory love-duets, but also between basses and baritones in confrontations and reconciliations.  

 This is a dark opera, dramatically, visually and musically. After an orchestral prelude, played primarily by the lowest strings and winds, the curtain rises on two basses hatching a plot at night. Fiesco, the leading bass, enters, lamenting his daughter’s death. Then Boccanegra, her lover and the father of their illegitimate child, appears; Fiesco hates him, and, in a passionate duet, rebuffs his plea to resolve their enmity. Fast forward 25 years. Boccanegra discovers his long-lost daughter, Amelia; they rejoice, but he inexplicably insists on keeping their relationship secret; soon after, he learns that she loves Adorno, his political enemy. The central scene is set in the Council Chamber. The Doge is trying to persuade the fractious nobles and plebeians to make peace with each other and with Venice; when a riot breaks out in the street, he quells it by sheer force of personality. Meanwhile, Paolo, a vengeful courtier, pours poison into Boccanegra’s water-jug, initiating what must be one of the longest operatic death-scenes: after staggering around (and frequently falling) while singing incredibly difficult music, Boccanegra finally makes peace with Fiesco in another great duet.  

The production, conducted by James Levine, is most impressive—visually and musically: the scenery is simple and evocative, the orchestra is splendid as usual, though sometimes too subdued when accompanying the singers; the cast is strong. Verdi did not make things easy for the singers: several start off with a big, demanding aria, requiring some warming up. Adrianne Pieczonka is a beautiful but vocally uneven Amelia; James Morris, in excellent voice, is a majestic Fiesco, Stefan Gaertner a baleful Paolo. Marcello Giordani’s Adorno is heroic in more ways than one: it must take courage to share the stage with the singer who owned your role, yet he seemed inspired rather than intimidated. But it was Domingo who, in the best sense, dominated the stage. He inhabited his part completely, radiating a natural authority that seemed to make everyone more confident and secure. Though his top notes are understandably superior to his low ones, his voice is as focused, expressive and intense as ever. Rarely has there been a more triumphant debut.  

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Benefit Concert for Haiti

Benefit Concert for Haiti
Xu Hui, piano;
Frank Lévy, piano;
Andy McCullough, tenor
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
February 22, 2010

In the wake of Haiti’s disastrous earthquake, it is heartening to see numerous concerts by musicians joining forces to raise funds, and a recital by Xu Hui and Frank Lévy was among them. Though the audience was small, the spirit of giving was palpable.

Opening with the four-hand work, En Bateau from Debussy’s Petite Suite, the duo gave a gently lilting—if off-the-cuff—reading. Xu Hui continued in a meditative vein with Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 9, Ricordanza. It was refreshing to hear this work alone, as a special homage or remembrance, rather than as part of a barrage of blockbuster etudes. Xu Hui gave the work the sensitivity and patient lyricism it needs.

The programming of Gaspard de la Nuit by Ravel raised expectations that the evening would officially “set sail,” but tonal beauty and polish took precedence over drama here. Ondine’s vexation was subdued, and even the nightmarish visage of Scarbo took on a silky veneer. Xu Hui has tremendous potential if she widens her range a bit. To close the first half, Andy McCullough sang An American Hymn, an appropriately nostalgic song by Lee Holdridge (b. 1944, Port-Au-Prince), with Xu Hui at the piano. Though a lovely gesture, it effectively underscored the absence of other composers born in—or with connections to—Haiti; there are several other composers that could have been included to enhance the evening’s theme.

Frank Lévy’s portion of the program opened with Scarlatti’s Sonata, L. 457 in C Major, thoughtfully wrought, even if pedaling became tricky with such a resonant piano. Schubert’s Four Impromptus, Op. 90 enjoyed the command of a mature master with a marvelous ability to bend a phrase at just the right time. Liszt’s Vallée d’Obermann, commendably performed, elicited an encore of Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat, Op. 27, No. 1, which was played with breathtaking delicacy. The evening was capped off with a four-hand encore: Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance in E minor from his Opus 72.

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by Rorianne Schrade  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY