Renee Fleming—Vienna: Window to Modernity
May 4, 2013
Spring for Music—Buffalo Philharmonic
Orchestra
May 8, 2013
Carnegie Hall
7th Avenue and 57th
Street, New York, NY
carnegiehall.org
Carnegie
Hall’s current season winds down, with soprano Renee Fleming’s illuminating four-concert Perspectives ending as the Spring
for Music festival begins.
Perspectives artists from David
Byrne to the Kronos Quartet curate their own programs, often with music not usually
performed (although some simply regurgitate their usual repertoire). For her Perspectives, Fleming (at right) performed a joint
recital with Susan Graham, sang Blanche Dubois in the first New York
performance of Andre Previn’s opera A
Streetcar Named Desire (she also sang the 1998 premiere) and last week sang
a new work by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg with Alan Gilbert and the New
York Philharmonic.
Her
final Perspectives concert, Vienna: Window to Modernity, gives
Fleming the chance to sing chamber works she doesn’t often perform: with a
focus on early 20th century music, she will sing her beloved Strauss
but also Brahms, Wagner and Schoenberg. Along for the ride are pianist Jeremy
Denk and the Emerson String Quartet—in one of its final appearances with
original cellist David Finckel.
Fleming
spoke recently about her Perspectives
concerts.
Kevin Filipski:
How did the Vienna concert take shape?
Renee Fleming: I’ve
been exploring this period for a number of years, starting with Strauss and
Korngold. This late romantic music fits with me vocally, I speak German
fluently, and early in my Decca career I worked with producer Michael Haas, who
wanted me to record Korngold’s operas. I would have loved to have done them,
but the orchestrations are too heavy for my voice—but I have sung them in concerts.
When I saw a Korngold exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Vienna along with a fantastic
Mahler exhibit, this era really hit home. The influence that these composers
had on American composers also interested me. It was also the heyday of the
singer: the cultural importance of the opera composers and singers in this
period was beyond anything in Hollywood today.
KF: How did you
decide which songs you would include?
RF: The Emerson Quartet
and Jeremy Denk collaborations originally came from Carnegie, but it was
challenging to find appropriate music: we wanted to find music composed for
soprano and quartet, but there isn’t that much. So that was our first challenge:
the Strauss songs are rarely performed and Brahms’ songs are fragments, and
quite different than we are used to. The Weigl, Webern and Zeisl songs are not known—and
they’re really just tastes of them, since they come from larger works. So
this’ll be fun for us to do.
KF: What will
you take away from your Perspectives season?
RF: It’s been
wonderful—each project has been so different, so completely unique. Performing Hillborg’s
new work with the New York Philharmonic is a good example. It’s a substantial
work, its words and imagery are immediate and musical in their own right. I
think it’s a beautiful piece. And to finally bring Streetcar to New York—it was only one performance, but we brought
it to New York! I didn’t have any luck getting it done at the Met, so this
seemed like a good way to do it, no huge sets to construct. And what a special
pleasure to sing this opera in what’s considered the best acoustic hall in the
world. This was a fun way to do music I don’t perform very often.
The
Spring for Music festival—comprising
a week of performances by American orchestras which usually don’t play on Carnegie
Hall’s vaunted stage—begins May 6 with Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra, continues with Albany (May 7), Buffalo (May 8), Detroit
(May 9 and 10) and concludes with the National Symphony Orchestra (May 11).
Buffalo
Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) music director JoAnn Falletta (at left)—who has led the ensemble since 1999—spoke about what
distinguishes Spring for Music:
programs of exciting and rarely heard works, like the Russian pair, both pre-revolutionary
(Gliere’s massive 3rd symphony, Ilya
Muromets) and post-Soviet (Giya Kancheli’s Morning Prayers), which the BPO will play.
Kevin Filipski:
How did the BPO get involved with Spring for Music?
Joann Falletta: They
have a really different concept and they make it a very special event. They invite orchestras to apply based on what
they’re doing in terms of repertoire, and they want very unusual programming. They
liked what we are programming—especially the Gliere symphony, which is almost
like a cult piece with a lot of fans and not played very often. Our orchestra does
romantic music very well, because the acoustics in Kleinhans Music Hall lend themselves
to that. We also have a reputation for doing new music, because of our past
music directors from Lukas Foss to Michael Tilson Thomas, which is why I chose the
Kancheli work: that comes from the end of the Soviet regime, while Gliere comes
from the beginning.
KF: What
distinguishes these two works?
JF: Both pieces
seem to me mystical—the Kancheli is very spiritual in a non-sectarian way, but
it’s also quite tragic, it’s about life in the Soviet Union. And the Gliere
symphony is also mystical—a composer looking back at this 9th or 10th
century Hercules figure whom everyone in Russia knows about. The Gliere uses a huge,
lush orchestra, while Kancheli has a very minimal but powerful language. I
thought to tie these two mystics together, and it works. No one in the orchestra
has played these works before—but the whole Spring for Music concept is to take
risks, and I’m thrilled that we’re taking a chance on these works, especially
the Gliere, a long, demanding workout for the orchestra. But that’s how we grow
as musicians. And we’re recording the Gliere symphony for Naxos: they wanted us
to record it for awhile, and it worked out perfectly that we are recording it
before we perform it at Carnegie Hall.
Carnegie Hall
7th Avenue and 57th
Street, New York, NY
http://carnegiehall.org
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