A panoply of interesting concerts

There´s such a multitude of concerts in our city that I´m hard put to keep up. Here´s a selection of worthwhile experiences in recent weeks.

In Easter Week and for the seventh consecutive year took place "El Camino del Santo-Música Clásica en San Isidro", led since its inception by pianist José Luis Juri. This year each concert was dedicated to one composer. I chose two: Beethoven and Boccherini (the others: Mozart by the Orquesta Académica del Teatro Colón, Brahms by Gintoli and Panizza and Chopin by Lavandera).

Beethoven was played by Juri, Pablo Saraví (violin) and Gloria Pankaeva (cello) and the venue was the Colegio San Juan el Precursor, which lies just in front of the left side of the Cathedral at San Isidro. You take a walk along two tiled sides of the four enclosing a lovely open-air patio, and you then find yourself in a rather big hall (about 400 capacity?) with pretty decent acoustics.

The programme varied the textures: the lovely "Spring" Sonata for violin and piano, the "Moonlight Sonata" por piano and the early but splendid Trio Op.1 Nº3, already quite Beethovenian. The "Spring" Sonata was played with much charm and accuracy; the "Moonlight" had a few slight problems but was good; and the Trio was excellent throughout. The ideal encore was new to most of the public: the one-movement Trio in B flat major, G154, WoO39, light and exquisite, dated 1811.

Luigi Boccherini was a very talented Classicist, one of the best chamber music composers of his time, but his sacred music is little-known; that´s why I was very interested in his Stabat Mater, offered Midday at the Cathedral, which looks beautiful after a well done recent renovation. The work dates from 1781 in its first version (the one we heard) and lasts 41 minutes. Boccherini wasn´t dramatic, and although the music is very pleasant to hear, the starker aspects of the text are skimmed over in favor of nicely professional music. It was marvelously sung by Soledad de la Rosa, and very correctly played by the historicist string quintet Tempo Barocco led by violinist Fabrizio Zanella.

As readers are aware, I am a firm admirer of the Academia Bach, organized by Festivales Musicales, whose very soul was and is Mario Videla, now in its 32^nd. Season (!). The venue, as usual, was the Iglesia Metodista Central, with its perfect acoustics. This year the emphasis is put on the relationship between Johann Sebastian and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose birth tercentenary is being feted. As usual in the Academy´s concerts, Videla gives an explanation of the occasion´s characteristics, and this time he gave learned and fascinating details about the importance of CPE Bach as a composer and as the great custodian of his father´s scores

The Symphony Wq (the Wotquenne catalog) 182 Nº3, for strings and continuo, is a pure example of the "Sturm und Drang" artistic revolution (think of Haydn´s Symphonies Nos. 44 to 49) with its inklings of the future Romanticism. This CPE style had great influence on Mozart.

The CPE side continued with two short motets Wq 208 1 and 2 (premiere) with texts by Christian Gellert, a severe poet. The choir was supported by continuo and the sound has stronger liens to the Baroque than the symphony.

Finally, the very developed Oboe Concerto Wq 164, with brilliant solo work by that grand veteran, Andrés Spiller. The Soloists of the Academy were in resplendent form throughout this section, and their old friends, the GCC- Grupo de Canto Coral directed by Néstor Andrenacci, were their stalwart and reliable selves in the motets.

The main glory of the Academy has been the premiere of dozens of Johann Sebastian´s cantatas. They now added a short (17 minutes) but fascinating one, Nº 26, "Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig" ("Oh, how ephemerous, how vain"). The anonymous text is appallingly gloomy ("everything that we see will fall and expire") but the music is marvelous. The initial chorus has an imaginative orchestration with unusual three oboes and an intricate texture, whilst the long tenor aria is a devil of a piece, one of the greatest technical challenges of the Baroque for the singer.

Tenor Pablo Pollitzer may not have an ingratiating timbre but he does show an amazing command of florid singing, including admirable breath control. The other soloists, from the choir, were in a lower level, but the GCC and the players were very good under the stylish conducting of Videla.

Curiously someone had the bright idea of offering the National Symphony and the National Youth Choir (Néstor Zadoff) to Videla for a wonderful combination of Carl Philipp Emanuel´s Magnificat and Johann Sebastian´s Easter Oratorio. This happened just days before the Academy´s concert and it came out as a combination of masterpieces sung and played at a high level and as a splendid prelude to the Academy´s cycle.

One bad point: the resonant acoustics of the church San Benito Abad, an ample venue where only slow music played softly is heard cleanly. I found unnecessary some intercalations of extraneous polyphony by the Coro Nacional de Niños, although they sang nicely. The mixed choir and the orchestra were in very good form under the positive conducting of Videla. Attractive solo singing by de la Rosa, countertenor Pehuén Díaz Bruno and baritone Alejandro Meerapfel, whilst Pollitzer was a bit rough.

For Buenos Aires Herald

A panoply of interesting concerts

            There´s such a multitude of concerts in our city that I´m hard put to keep up. Here´s a selection of worthwhile experiences in recent weeks.

            In Easter Week and for the seventh consecutive year took place "El Camino del Santo-Música Clásica en San Isidro", led since its inception by pianist José Luis Juri. This year each concert was dedicated to one composer. I chose two: Beethoven and Boccherini (the others: Mozart by the Orquesta Académica del Teatro Colón, Brahms by Gintoli and Panizza and Chopin by Lavandera).

            Beethoven was played by Juri, Pablo Saraví (violin) and Gloria Pankaeva (cello) and the venue was the Colegio San Juan el Precursor, which lies just in front of the left side of the Cathedral at San Isidro. You take a walk along two tiled sides of the four enclosing a lovely open-air patio, and you then find yourself in a rather big hall (about 400 capacity?) with pretty decent acoustics.

            The programme varied the textures: the lovely "Spring" Sonata for violin and piano, the "Moonlight Sonata" por piano and the early but splendid Trio Op.1 Nº3, already quite Beethovenian. The "Spring" Sonata was played with much charm and accuracy; the "Moonlight" had a few slight problems but was good; and the Trio was excellent throughout. The ideal encore was new to most of the public: the one-movement Trio in B flat major, G154, WoO39, light and exquisite, dated 1811.

            Luigi Boccherini was a very talented Classicist, one of the best chamber music composers of his time, but his sacred music is little-known; that´s why I was very interested in his Stabat Mater, offered Midday at the Cathedral, which looks beautiful after a well done recent renovation.  The work dates from 1781 in its first version (the one we heard) and lasts 41 minutes.  Boccherini wasn´t dramatic, and although the music is very pleasant to hear, the starker aspects of the text are skimmed over in favor of nicely professional music. It was marvelously sung by Soledad de la Rosa, and very correctly played by the historicist string quintet Tempo Barocco led by violinist Fabrizio Zanella.

            As readers are aware, I am a firm admirer of the Academia Bach, organized by Festivales Musicales, whose very soul was and is Mario Videla, now in its 32^nd. Season (!). The venue, as usual, was the Iglesia Metodista Central, with its perfect acoustics. This year the emphasis is put on the relationship between Johann Sebastian and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose birth tercentenary is being feted. As usual in the Academy´s concerts, Videla gives an explanation of the occasion´s characteristics, and this time he gave learned and fascinating details about the importance of CPE Bach as a composer and as the great custodian of his father´s scores

            The Symphony Wq (the Wotquenne catalog) 182 Nº3, for strings and continuo, is a pure example of the "Sturm und Drang" artistic revolution (think of Haydn´s Symphonies Nos. 44 to 49) with its inklings of the future Romanticism. This CPE style had great influence on Mozart.

            The CPE side continued with two short motets Wq 208 1 and 2 (premiere) with texts by Christian Gellert, a severe poet. The choir was supported by continuo  and the sound has stronger liens to the Baroque than the symphony.

            Finally, the very developed Oboe Concerto Wq 164, with brilliant solo work by that grand veteran, Andrés Spiller. The Soloists of the Academy were in resplendent form throughout this section, and their old friends, the GCC- Grupo de Canto Coral directed by Néstor Andrenacci, were their stalwart and reliable selves in the motets.

            The main glory of the Academy has been the premiere of dozens of Johann Sebastian´s cantatas. They now added a short (17 minutes) but fascinating one, Nº 26, "Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig" ("Oh, how ephemerous, how vain"). The anonymous text is appallingly gloomy ("everything that we see will fall and expire") but the music is marvelous. The initial chorus has an imaginative orchestration with unusual three oboes and an intricate texture, whilst the long tenor aria is a devil of a piece, one of the greatest technical challenges of the Baroque for the singer.

            Tenor Pablo Pollitzer may not have an ingratiating timbre but he does show an amazing command of florid singing, including admirable breath control. The other soloists, from the choir, were in a lower level, but the GCC and the players were very good under the stylish conducting of Videla.

            Curiously someone had the bright idea of offering the National Symphony and the National Youth Choir (Néstor Zadoff) to Videla for a wonderful combination of Carl Philipp Emanuel´s Magnificat and Johann Sebastian´s Easter Oratorio. This happened just days before the Academy´s concert and it came out as a combination of masterpieces sung and played at a high level and as a splendid prelude to the Academy´s cycle.

            One bad point: the resonant acoustics of the church San Benito Abad, an ample venue where only slow music played softly is heard cleanly. I found unnecessary some intercalations of extraneous polyphony by the Coro Nacional de Niños, although they sang nicely. The mixed choir and the orchestra were in very good form under the positive conducting of Videla. Attractive solo singing by de la Rosa, countertenor Pehuén Díaz Bruno and baritone Alejandro Meerapfel, whilst Pollitzer was a bit rough.

For Buenos Aires Herald

“Rigoletto” and “Carmen” in refreshing traditional presentations

            Thirty years ago I wouldn´t have included in the title of this article "refreshing traditional presentations", simply because even the most audacious ones (some exceptions apart) respected the libretto. Of course there are many ways of doing something right, and the stagings had leeway for imagination, but the essential thing was that looking at a photograph you knew which opera was depicted; now frequently you don´t. And young people were given reasonably faithful images of what the composer and his librettist specified.

             Now teenagers are offered complete travesties, and  their ignorance doesn´t allow them to realise that something´s rotten in the state of Denmark. For humanistic subjects are relegated in school  and few parents are able to give them what the studies don´t (often they know as little as their children). Generations that are now over fifty should know better, but often think that "you have to go with the times" and that "if this is trendy in Europe and accepted there, it should be here as well". So kudos to people doing opera here that show some common sense and offer us productions that aren´t insulting.

            As I am a veteran, I certainly don´t need yet another "Rigoletto" or "Carmen", but at least I went away from two recent productions with some pleasure instead of strong irritation.  Of course, private companies must make ends meet and this is increasingly difficult in a crisis-ridden Argentina with dwindling sponsors, so they tend to go to surefire hits. Thus "Rigoletto" at Juventus Lyrica´s 15^th season at the Avenida, or "Carmen" by the Ensamble Lírico Orquestal at the Auditorio de Belgrano.

             I believe "Rigoletto" to be the best of the so-called Verdian Popular Trilogy, the others being "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata". Three marvels, no doubt, but dramatically and musically  "Rigoletto" is the most advanced.

            This "Rigoletto" had two excellent points: the natural interrelation of  characters as marked by producer Ana D´Anna and the lovely Renaissance costumes of Ponchi Morpurgo as spruced up by María Jaunarena. But I desagree with the heavy wooden unit set of Gonzalo Córdova, which is neither evocative of the Duke´s palace (it is a must visit if you go to Mantova) nor does it separate the street from the inside in the Second Act; and though his lighting is adequate for the dark needs of certain scenes, the joyful beginning of the First Act certainly needs more light.

            In just four performances there were three casts; I went to the first one. Baritone Ernesto Bauer showed considerable progress in musical line and volume from earlier performances in other parts; he was always musical, expressive and thoughtful (forget enormous voices of superhuman expansion such as Cornell MacNeil). After some initial stridency, Natalia Quiroga Romero was a positive Gilda; by the Fourth Act she had found not only a softer voice and better line, but also touching inflexions. Sebastián Russo, tall and slim, looks the Duke´s part, and he has some agility as well as good highs, but he had trouble in maintaining a consistent musicality.

            A new name, Felipe Cudina Begovic, showed a good bass voice as Sparafucile. Nicolás Secco was a rather strained Monterone. Griselda Adano has the right looks for the seductive Maddalena and sang well. The others were in the picture: Tamara Odón, Juan Font, Maximiliano Agatiello, Juan Pablo Labourdette and Ivana Ledesma. The choirs in this opera are only for men, and were quite satisfactory (Juan Casasbellas prepared them). The hero of this interpretation was Antonio Russo, who in his late seventies looks admirably fit and phrased with unerring vision, even if the orchestra had some smudges.

            Last year the Ensamble Lírico Orquestal led by Gustavo Codina had offered a concert version of Bizet´s "Carmen" at the Auditorio de Belgrano. This time it had a production, and the orchestra  accompanied from the stalls. The Auditorio doesn´t have a pit, but the first four rows were occupied by the orchestra (of course, the seats were taken away) and it worked well, for after about 30 precipìtous steps from on high, the first rows go UP, not down. It doesn´t seem to bother the players. So it seems in a way that we have an alternative venue for opera.

            "Carmen" is generally offered now with the Guiraud recitatives, much better here than the original opéra-comique with spoken parts, for very few are able to deliver decent French; singing masks defects.

            Enrique Folger is a redoubtable José, intense and dramatic. Mariana Rewerski has the looks but not the tragedy for the title role and her voice lacks real mezzo color. Cecilia Layseca was a tasteful though small-voiced Micaela, and Sebastián Angulegui was a poor Escamillo. Very good the Frasquita of Ana Laura Menéndez, less so the Mercedes of Milagros Seijó. First-rate the smugglers Sebastián Sorarrain and Sebastián Russo, and Claudio Rotella as Zúñiga.

            Codina led an orthodox "Carmen" with a correct small orchestra; the choirs were middling. The best aspect of the staging was the adequate costumes of Mariela Daga;  Raúl Marego (producer and stage designer) gave a pleasant image of the proceedings within the libretto indications. A pity that the hall was very hot, the timings went awry both before the opera and in the intervals, and the lighting was mournful during the latter. But the place was full and the show was roundly applauded. There were only two performances.

For Buenos Aires Herald

The Big Three launch their seasons

             Late April is the usual launching time for the seasons of the Big Three, and so it was again this year. The Mozarteum Argentino, with its two series at the Colón, presented the Munich Chamber Orchestra with trumpet soloist Hakan Hardenberger;  the brilliant duo made up of Boris Belkin (violin) and Michele Campanella (piano), began the Nuova Harmonia activity at the Coliseo; and the choir Musica Quantica made its presentation for Festivales Musicales at the Auditorio de Belgrano.

            The Munich Chamber Orchestra was here three years ago for the Mozarteum. Then and now, their assertive concertino Daniel Giglberger practically officiates as "conductor" with body language from his post. In fact  they are not a true chamber orchestra, which should include winds and be able to play the Haydn and Mozart symphonies, but a string ensemble, though larger than the Baroque ones. For a total of 21 we heard eleven violins, four violas, four cellos and one bass, plus one piano used in a modern work (the same artist also played the harpsichord in a Baroque piece).

            Hardenberger was brought by the Mozarteum 21 years ago and his comeback was very welcome, for the Scandinavian is certainly one of the best  trumpeters in the world and I found him in full form. He intervened in the second and third scores of the First Part and chose two opposing styles: the Baroque represented by Georg Philipp Telemann´s splendid Concerto in D, TWV 51:D7; and modernism by André Jolivet´s Concertino for trumpet, piano and strings, an eclectic piece of much imagination. His playing was admirably clean, with  beauty of sound, precise articulation and sensitive phrasing; he was well abetted by the Orchestra and pianist Jean-Pierre Collot.

            The ensemble by itself gave us the one-movement Symphony Nº 10 for strings by Felix Mendelssohn, written with astonishing precocity at 14 (1823) in a predominantly classical style with some Romantic inklings.

            Interestingly, they started and ended with Twentieth-century Hungarian composers: Sándor Veress (1907-92) was a disciple of Béla Bartók, as his "Four dances of Transylvania" prove; they are light, well-wrought and pleasant. As to Bartók´s Divertimento, it may be the best string piece of his time, with a density of thought and composing mastery that goes beyond the genre. The encore is probably the one that should win the Guinness record of performances: the third movement of Mozart´s Divertimento K.136.

            The group is very professional and has a high degree of accuracy. The interpretations are orthodox, though I miss at times some electricity.  Munich is a very musical city and they are good ambassadors.

            Both Belkin and Campanella have had ample and important careers; it was predictable that their recital would give us two hours of musical pleasure. They played a lovely programme of traditional features: Mozart´s Sonata Nº 26, K.378, one of his best; that epitome of singability, Schubert´s "Duo" Sonata Op.162, D.574; and the wonderful Franck Sonata, with its combination of cyclic construction, deep Late Romantic feeling and inventive counterpoint. The encores were equally beautiful: Schubert´s final movement from his Sonatina Op. 37/3, "Allegro moderato"; and Beethoven´s "moto perpetuo" third movement of Sonata Nº 8.  In other words, a whole programme of sonatas without the violin display pieces; both partners were absolute equals.

             These players have a mature conception of the works, based on full-range techniques and knowledge of styles. It is always comforting to hear this sort of music-making. My reservations are minimal: Belkin´s timbre not quite settled in Mozart, a few circumstantial slips from Campanella. But this is nitpicking for it was a first-rate night.

            Since last year Festivales Musicales is barely hanging on to be still considered as one of the Big Three, for sponsorship has dwindled and with it the money to bring over foreign artists. Their formula has changed: they used to be adventurous, now it´s famous repertoire mostly by selected Argentine artists. I do hope the situation will eventually bring us back to their former ways.

            Musica Quantica is a very good chamber choir molded by Camilo Santostefano into a tight, disciplined unit, able to give us very refined shades of vocal color. Their programme for the First Part included some pieces I had heard from them last year in the Midday Concerts at the Gran Rex, but it was interesting to meet them again at the Auditorio de Belgrano.

            They started with Johann Sebastian Bach´s  double-choir motet "Komm, Jesu, komm", with Manuel Adduci (viola da gamba) and Leonardo Petroni (organ). Two Romantic motets followed: Mendelssohn´s "Warum toben die Heiden" and Josef Rheinberger´s "Anima nostra". Then came what for me was the zenith of the evening: Britten´s complex tripartite "Hymn to Saint Cecilia" on elaborate poems by W.H.Auden.

            Two contemporaries completed the First Part: the fascinating "Leonardo dreams of his flying machine" by Eric Whitacre and the repetitive "De profundis" by the Filipino John Pamintuan.

            Dare I say it, I am no fan of the "Misa criolla" by Ariel Ramírez, to my mind overpraised and oversung. This group gave it a very Northwestern view, which I think is suited; two baritones and a tenor were the soloists, but one of the former had the larger share and sang very "jujeño". Several singers accompanied with charango, guitar, winds and percussion.

            Encores: Piazzolla´s "Fuga y misterio", and "El guayaboso" by the Cuban López Gavilán. Musica Quantica is certainly one of our best choirs nowadays.

For Buenos Aires Herald

The first Verdi and the fourth Wagner

            The two greatest names in opera converged recently. La Plata´s Argentino offered Richard Wagner´s "Der Fliegende Holländer" ("The Flying Dutchman"), whilst a relatively recent private group, the Compañía Lírica G.Verdi, gave  at the Avenida the long-awaited revival of Giuseppe Verdi´s "Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio".

            The main news at La Plata was the very fact that the season began. "...Holländer" had a welcome local premiere last year after having been scratched in 2002; 2013 was a time of terribly low productivity and constant troubles for the Argentino.

            This year rumors of grave difficulties were again to the fore, and the revival of the same production of "Holländer" coincided with changes at the helm. Out went Leandro Manuel Iglesias as General Administrator and Sergio Beros replaced him; the latter had worked with Jorge Telerman when he was mayor of our city; Telerman is now the President of the  Instituto Cultural that oversees the Argentino, and Beros was  the Executive Secretary of the Institute. On the other hand, the worthy Guillermo Brizzio, who was Director of Artistic Programming, is being replaced by Gabriel Senanes, who was the Colón´s Artistic Director during an uneven period (Telerman had named him). Time will tell if these changes will be positive.

            This "Holländer" repeated Louis Désiré´s wrong-headed production,  revived by Lucía Portela. Again we had the ridiculous toy boat, the incomprehensible goings on during the Overture, the unacceptable presence of Senta during the First Act, and so on...

            I liked the decision to maintain Wagner´s first version, in one long act instead of three; it lasts about two hours and a half, similar to "The Rhinegold". The continuity was maintained with skill by the young Argentine conductor Federico Víctor Sardella, who in 2010 studied German opera (and "Holländer" in particular) with a Mozarteum  scholarship in Berlin. He has talent and good sense, and apart from some low horn and trumpet croaks the Orchestra responded well.

            The Argentino´s excellent choir, now under Hernán Sánchez Arteaga, was reliable as always. The ghost choir of the Dutchman´s ship had an off-stage eerie sound; it seemed recorded, which would be alright in this particular case.

            I am of two minds about the Dutchman as sung by the Argentine Héctor Guedes, who has a long European career. The voice has problems: it spreads in high notes, sounds unpleasant in the low register, and intonation is sometimes awry (granted, Wagner´s melodic lines are very difficult). On the other hand, he has authority and presence.

            As last year, Mónica Ferracani was a wonderful Senta: apart from not being blonde, as the libretto wants, everything is perfect: her tall, commanding beauty; the perfectly projected full voice; the conviction of her interpretation. Erik, her suitor, was sung with much intensity by Enrique Folger. Daland was again taken acceptably by Víctor Castells. Claudia Casasco was a correct Mary, and Patricio Oliveira a vocally miscast as the Steersman as well as a clownish interpreter.

            When will we hear and see the first three operas in the Wagnerian canon? Please, programme "Das Liebesverbot", "Die Feen" and "Rienzi" (we only had a badly truncated concert version of the latter)!

            In these last few years, instead, we heard and saw the first three Verdian operas; "Nabucco" (the third) is by now a staple, but "Un giorno di regno" (the second) was premiered in 2012, and now we had the revival of "Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio" (the first), only offered in 1939 during the Colón Spring season commemorating the centenary of its world premiere. "Oberto" had been announced last year by the same group; however, they had to postpone it for this season.

            This year they billed it at first as a premiere, and when they were advised in a musical forum that the Colón had already done that, they changed it to "complete version, Argentine premiere".   I sent them mails indicating that their version is indeed complete, for I checked it with the excellent Marriner recording, but neither they nor I could find concrete evidence about whether the Colón´s premiere had cuts; so I believe they can´t support their claim. Nevertheless, I´m very happy they put it on stage, for it was a necessary and interesting experience.

            Mind you, it is a first step in a long road and far from the quality of "Nabucco". Of course, the 26-year-old Verdi has influences (Bellini, Donizetti, Mercadante) but in the best fragments you already find the Verdian style, especially the trio and the great "concertante", though there are good moments in some of the arias.

            I won´t mince words, the libretto (by Antonio Piazza as revised by Temistocle Solera) is deplorable, telling a  Medieval story of love and vengeance in primitive terms. But Verdi´s ability to extract dramatic force from unpromising material is already there.

            I was well impressed by the vigor and clarity of Ramiro Soto Montllor´s conducting, especially as he had a lot of previous work to make sense of poor orchestral parts; apparently there´s a need for a critical edition. Both the 33-strong Orchestra and the 34-voice Chorus collaborated with enthusiasm though they have some way to go in purely technical matters.

            The production by Adriana Segal (advised by Lizzie Waisse) respected time (1228) and in very general terms, place (Bassano, Ezzelino´s castle and surroundings). Mariela Daga is an experienced hand at period costumes. Stage designs were middling (Mariano Campero and Juan Bautista Selva). The supertitles were untidy and there was nary a word about the opera in the hand programme.

            Sabrina Cirera dominated the cast with her fierce, dramatic Leonora (the first of three in Verdi´s career!).  I liked Nora Balanda´s personality and vast range as Cuniza. The men were in a lower level: Walter Schwarz (Oberto) has a good line but little volume, and tenor Pablo Selci (Riccardo) is afflicted with a bleat, though he sang resolutely.

            But reservations apart, an A for will and hard work.

For Buenos Aires Herald

Homage to Gelber, the Phil´s season

            Argentina currently has three famous septuagenarian pianists: Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim and Bruno Leonardo Gelber. All three were child prodigies, so they are having enormous careers.  As you probably know, Barenboim enticed Argerich for a musical meeting last year, and this season they will be playing together in BA in August. It  will be an undoubted hit.  But previously Gelber has received a well-deserved homage by AMIJAI, who invited him for an all-Beethoven sonata programme. So we have the rare conjunction of all three in 2014.

            Gelber has always had the hindrance of the polio that attacked him in his young years, but his iron will fought the consequences and (as is the case of Perlman) he had a very intensive career with much traveling over the decades. His repertoire has been mainly German: Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann. Maybe he has restricted himself too much, insisting on some works exaggeratingly and being reluctant to explore the Twentieth Century, so his revelations  were in the field of interpretation but not in the expanding of repertorial views. However, e.g.,  whilst he may have played the Brahms Concerti too often, I can think of no other Argentine artist that has offered them so resplendently.

             A reviewer´s painful duty is to say his truth (not necessarily  the reader will agree) and I must say that in recent years Gelber´s physical problems in my view have affected his playing, especially the thickening of the fingers, so that he has lost agility and clarity of articulation. Listening to him I feel a heaviness that goes beyond the always rotund character of his playing of the great Beethoven middle-period Sonatas in earlier days; they certainly must sound in many passages granitic and powerful, but now I heard an unevenness of weight, the left hand often overpowering the right. The beautiful new Steinway of AMIJAI can take it, but the imbalance didn´t work positively for it diminished the quality of the phrasing in some passages.

            Mind you, I´m writing about a great pianist receiving a merited homage ( a plaque was presented to him at the end with words by Eugenio Scavo, Artistic Director of the institution). But the fact is that I found him more convincing in the slower and lighter music than in the turbulent, fast passages of Sonatas Nos. 14, "Moonlight", 21, "Waldstein", and 23, "Appassionata". And, except for a blurred passage in the trio of the Scherzo, I enjoyed most the Sonata Nº 15, "Pastoral", where the sensitive phrasing and the beauty of the sound were fully those of the masterful Gelber. Many other passages of the other sonatas impressed me as well, but there were smudges and hesitations. Anyway there´s no gainsaying the vast and extraordinary trajectory of the artist, certainly one of the best musical ambassadors we´ve had through the decades.

            Ira Levin has shown his talent in recent years both in opera and in concert. In the third evening of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic´s subscription series he displayed his capacity in four different fields: conducting, piano playing, arranging and composing. He started with the world premiere of Rachmaninov-Levin´s "Four pieces for orchestra", a misnomer in the sense that they are originally piano or vocal scores orchestrated by Levin. He chose interesting and little-known pieces: "Etude" is on the Etude-tableau Op.33/5; "Vesper", in fact a Russian Ave Maria, comes from the Vespers Op.37; "Prelude" is based on Op.32/10; and "Humoresque", light and brilliant, originated as the "Morceau de salon" Op10 Nº5. The orchestrations sound very well and the Phil was on its toes.

            Mozart´s Piano Concerto Nº 14, K.449, isn´t played often. It´s in Mozart´s own words "one of very peculiar characteristics", with quirky subjects and modulations. Levin both played and conducted very professionally, but I disliked some modernisms in his own cadenzas, especially considering that for the first movement we have one by Mozart. His encore was both spectacular and flabbergasting, for I can think of nothing more opposed to Mozart´s style: Liszt´s long Tarantella from "Venezia e Napoli" (an appendix to the series "Years of Peregrination").  But the man can really play virtuoso piano.

            Dvorák´s Seventh Symphony is  his most Brahmsian and dramatic; experts believe it´s his best score on this form. Although there was some acid on the general sound, the reading was intense, concentrated and logical.

            On the following date Enrique Arturo Diemecke was back, and I welcome that he conducted a great choral-symphonic creation, for this has been a notoriously weak field in the Diemecke years.  Again I was impressed by his fabulous memory, for he used no score as he traversed Brahms´ "German Requiem", about 75 minutes of dense, beautiful Romantic music on texts from both Testaments in Luther´s translation. And his reading was quite traditional, obtaining from both the orchestra and the combined choirs a noble Romantic mahogany-hued sound.

            The work is predominantly choral, as four fragments are purely for massed voices and the others alternate the soloist (baritone or soprano) with the choirs. On the occasion, Miguel Ángel Pesce combined the 73 voices of the Asociación Coral Lagun Onak with the 35 of Cámara XXI for a grand total of 108, really huge. They sang as one, with well-trained voices and sane phrasing. Carla Filipcic Holm was exquisite in her intervention, whilst Lucas Debevec Mayer (replacing the announced Fernando Radó) sang with great expression but not without effort.

For Buenos Aires Herald

Is a Summer Season possible?

            For those of us who are veterans with long memories, the answer is yes: a Summer Season is possible. In fact, we had it during decades, until wrong thinking obliterated them. Those seasons were never international, exceptions apart. But they did alleviate the warm musical desert of summertime, were most welcome and attracted crowds. Even this sad Colón we are going through tried it for a very limited time at the Centenario Amphitheatre some years ago.

            This year there was a positive but little-known contribution from the new Usina del Arte, and it was a step in the right sense: some varied concerts of good quality. And a quartet of ancient music concerts in Northern Greater Buenos Aires   also helped. But both things were much too little, and too late in the season. A lot more could be done and from various angles. The Colón started late with repeats of last December´s "Swan Lake" and one Philharmonic concert.

            Let´s see. What are the problems? Well, the essential one is that public institutions with orchestras, choruses or ballet ensembles all have an extended holiday period such as Europe  certainly doesn´t have. And they are sacrosanct as acquired rights. But there are ways to circumvent it without affecting those rights.

            Musicians always complain that they don´t earn enough, so they should welcome -after reasonable rest- any possibility to increase those emoluments, provided (if they are ethical) that the project seems viable and has quality. There is also the matter of cooperatives in which the artists involved take it upon themselves to assume at least part of the risk, for otherwise we again have the difficulty of obtaining sufficient sposorship.

            Mind you, in the good ol´ times the Colón managed to observe the extended holidays and even so in the 60´s  the Colón Chamber Opera provided as much as three brand new productions from late February to the end of March. They really worked then, but an expert was in charge: Enzo Valenti Ferro. And they were offered in air-conditioned theatres. There´s no reason for not replicating this nowadays.

            Before air conditiong, the Colón gave open-air Summer Seasons, first at the Sociedad Rural, then at the Centenario Amphitheatre, until it burnt down. But after a prolonged lapse of time opera returned (without the Colón´s auspices) at the Centenario, and I especially remember a talented version of Gluck´s "Orfeo ed Euridice" with Bernarda Fink. At the Anfiteatro, local casts in popular operas prevailed, at low prices. Quality wavered, though the general result was positive. I believe the installations at the Centenario would be amenable to opera, operetta and zarzuela, plus ballet and concerts,  with local artists, if orchestras and choruses could be assembled under contract. And I think they could be.

             Other places in the city could serve for ballet and some operas with lesser requirements. I remember seeing opera at the Rosedal or at the Av. Alvear´s curving ascent from Libertador. And chamber music could be offered at many venues with air conditioning.

            Dreaming is cheap, but I believe that if enough people put their mind to it a grand Summer Plan could contain: 1) Big popular operas for which we have the singers, 2) Chamber operas; 3) Operettas and zarzuelas, very adequate for the light Summer times; 4) Symphonic concerts with an intelligent selection of good light classical music, such as Fiedler´s Boston Pops used to do (most of it never gets played for programmers wrongly think they shouldn´t be included in the other seasons of the year). Plus chamber and instrumental music, and ballet.

            Firmly backed financially by enlightened sponsors, such projects must be put in experienced hands leading mostly young talented people that aren´t in the major orchestras and professional choruses. They would provide very welcome experience and funds to such people, and would give some necessary joys to city dwellers that can´t travel and believe, as I do, that culture is a fulltime thing. In Europe they have no problem, they can make their trajectory through an enormous maze of Summer Festivals of the most varied types. Here, the Sahara with very few oases...

                                                           ***

            A postcript on two different subjects. You may remember the case of Claudio Espector as coordinator of the children and youth orchestras of our city; a couple of months ago I denounced the intention of the Macri Government to demote him from his post with no good reason, as he was staunchly defended by our musical milieu for his positive work of many years. Well, now a judge has ordered that Espector should be reinstalled at his post. I hope this will be the end of a silly and unfair conflict.

            A press conference recently presented a plan for the sprucing up of the Coliseo. What we saw was two immaculately white foyers (ground floor, first floor) looking very clean and very cold, as a freshly conditioned hospital. It isn´t to my liking but others may feel differently. We were told that the first lap of renovation had also included some improvements in the stage facilities, but they weren´t specific about it. There will two more periods in succeeding years until the renovation is complete, but all was very vague. I do hope they will ameliorate the flies and deepen the stage so that operas with big choirs can be staged. They have a 100-player pit already.

For Buenos Aires Herald

“Caligula”, revulsive opera by Glanert: was it necessary?

            It is a fact that the Colón´s season is very restricted: just eight operas when we used to have eighteen back in the Sixties. This should change, but there´s no sign of any amelioration. So the rate of turnover is miserably low, and the Colón is very far from the standard of any of the other great opera theatres of the world. The result: much lower culture.This is why each choice has great weight.

             Although I found that "Caligula", by Detlef Glanert, has certain interesting aspects, I believe that it would be justified if we would still be offering the wealth of choice we had fifty years ago, but not now. Indeed, let´s circumscribe the field to Twentieth-Century German-Austrian opera, and this is what we find: the Colón has never offered full-evening operas by the two greatest German authors other than Richard Strauss: Paul Hindemith and Hans Werner Henze. And you could add other worthwhile creators such as Gottfried Von Einem, Werner Egk, Aribert Reimann.

            But since "Caligula" has been on offer, let´s see what it gives us. It is based on a magnificent play by Albert Camus, profusely staged in BA, with such artists as Ignacio Quirós and  Imanol Arias; in TV with Duilio Marzio and Alfredo Alcón.   The French original was adapted as a German libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel. The opera has been staged only in Frankfurt (2006) and London (2012, in English, by the English National Opera). Here, of course, it was done in German.  By the way, there´s a porn film on "Caligula" with no less than Malcolm MacDowell and John Gielgud!

            The four acts last two hours and here it was given with one interval. The composer is a disciple of Henze and has written about a dozen operas, although he has also created symphonies, concerti and chamber music. He has a strong ear for effect, and in fact it was the orchestration that attracted me, rather than the vocal writing, generally nondescript, with the exception of an attractive introspective trio.

            The libretto is convincing in the first two acts, but notoriously declines in the third and fourth. Intermittently, when it stays close to Camus, we hear violent and tremendous phrases, some of them memorable. It is a curious thing that this hideous Emperor hasn´t attracted more composers, and paradoxically the only main one I can recollect is Fauré, one of the meekest temperaments, who wrote incidental music to Alexandre Dumas´ play (that intrigues me).

            The same deplorable decision I recently commented on for concerts is now applied to opera: the audience is given a miserable slim programme that only has the cast and the plot; otherwise it has to pay  50 pesos for the complete programme, in this case full of relevant information and even the libretto. It includes a revealing interview with Glanert plus the list of his operas,  words by Camus himself, and especially the terrifying portrait of Caligula by Suetonius in his "Life of the twelve Caesars".

            Camus stresses that his work is by no means philosophical; instead, it is a portrait of unbridled power used in the worst way. What Caligula does seems irrational to onlookers but not to him: he does what he pleases uncontained by any moral issue. Incestuous libertine, murderer to the point of genocide, nevertheless two people remain loyal: his wife Cesonia (who he will eventually strangle) and the slave Helicon. The light of Caligula´s life was his sister Drusilla, and after her death his behavior changes totally; her phantom (materialized during the opera as a fully naked figure) deambulates during the four acts. Only Quereas, the State´s Procurer, understands fully Caligula´s character: he can tell the truth to the Emperor for he knows that it makes no difference: Caligula would kill him anyway.  It´s surprising that Caligula would have accepted that nickname ("little boots") instead of his true name, Caius  Caesar. 

            The opera starts with a desperate shout for Drusilla´s death and a fortissimo 25-tone chord and finishes with the Emperor killed by a crowd; for the self-deified Caligula forgot that if he was free to act, so was his people. I have always felt what a curious destiny the Roman Empire had: at the moment of its greatest glory it had the two nastiest dictators, Caligula and Nero.

            The Colón production gave us good interpreters and two valuable singers: the countertenor Martin Wölfel and the mezzosoprano Jurgita Adamonyté (debuts). Two artists from the London production learnt their parts in English: the protagonist, Peter Coleman-Wright, and Yvonne Howard as Cesonia (both made their local debut); not interesting vocally, they were very convincing as actors, although Coleman-Wright lacks the "physique du rôle": a portly fiftyish man isn´t the right image for a man who died at 30 years-old.

            Argentine singers filled their parts adequately: Héctor Guedes, Víctor Torres, Fernando Chalabe and Marisú Pavón. Lara Tressens exhibited her marvelous beauty as Drusilla. Although it avoided excesses of gore and sex, I disliked the production by Benedict Andrews, taken from the English National Opera, with a boring unit-set of a Roman stadium by Ralph Myers and mostly ugly modern clothes by Alice Babidge plus voyeuristic presence of unnecessary people and scenes that were lukewarm dramatically.

            No doubt the heroes of the night were the splendid Orchestra, admirably conducted by Ira Levin, and the very good choir under Miguel Martínez.

For Buenos Aires Herald

Our main orchestras show their paces

            As I was traveling, I missed the first subscription concert of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the Colón. But I have references of what happened. First, we were supposed to have Bernhard Klee as the conductor, but somehow the artist didn´t come. A pity, for it would have been one of the very scarce debuts of this season, and Klee has a substantial career.  As usual, the Colón gave no explanation.

            He was substituted by Ira Levin, well-known here in recent years. Fortunately the soloist was maintained, the talented Karin Lechner in Mendelssohn´s First Piano Concerto. And there was a good change in the first score of the programme, for the charming but overplayed "Fledermaus" Overture by Johann Strauss II was put aside, and Levin conducted an interesting and rarely played piece, Wagner´s "Faust Overture". Brahms´ Second Symphony wasn´t changed.

            The second concert had Enrique Arturo Diemecke, again Principal Conductor for this season,  at the helm, and there were two distinct levels of quality in a run-of-the-mill programme. Russian pianist Leonid Kuzmin came back after a long time and played Beethoven´s Fifth Concerto, "Emperor". 

            Kuzmin did have some nice quiet moments but this is a majestic work; it needs strength and very precise articulation; there were too many smudges as well as rather wan passages. And the orchestra played negligently; Diemecke was uncharacteristically  nonchalant.

            But things changed in the second part, for Diemecke has always been a relevant Richard Strauss conductor, and this is the year of the 150^th anniversary of the composer´s birth. The chosen pieces are quite well-known but no less pleasant to hear. As a colleague said, after the end of the Second Part, in it "we had an orchestra", and it responded beautifully in "Till Eulenspiegel´s merry pranks" and in the Suite from "Der Rosenkavalier" (except in the latter for a horn croak).

            The opera is an absolute marvel, but the suite, done much later, though wonderful most of the time, does have some bad joins and I dislike the tumultuous ending, instead of the delicate and tasteful one of the opera.  Diemecke was brilliant as well as flexible and humorous in both works, as well as tender in the Trio or gloriously schmaltzy in Ochs´waltz.

            But there was a novelty that gave me a bad case of anger: traditionally the hand programme was part of the usher´s tip; now we have two "models": one is the usual, with full biographies and comments on the scores; the other is ultraslim and only offers the bare facts. For the "usual", you will now have to pay 50 pesos plus tip; as it has no less than ten adds, its cost is surely covered. As the tickets are quite expensive for a country in the middle of a crisis, the new procedure seems to me unwarranted and wrong. I, as reviewer, get it for free, but my anger is on behalf of the music-lovers at large.

            I have written often about the shortcomings of the National Symphony (Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional): not the players, which are generally quite good, but their mismanagement by the Nation´s Cultural Secretariat decade after decade. This year is more of the same: free concerts (which diminishes any orchestra) in their main cycle, not only on the secondary venues; only a couple of foreign conductors (why should they

accept to come when they don´t get paid?); rather poor programming (they always pay late the rented scores which means that some editors refuse to collaborate), including conceptual errors such as the programmes dedicated to Bacalov and Waldo de los Ríos, not worthy of such an honor; underuse of voted funds, as has happened in recent years.

            Apart from being absent in their first two concerts (the first, a pop open-air concert at the Villa 31! ; the second, all-Russian, at the Bolsa de Comercio), I had to miss their third one, also at the Bolsa, for it clashed with "Anna Bolena". Last Sunday I wanted to go to a very special concert, for the programme was the Berlioz Requiem, famous for its huge forces: a full orchestra augmented by 4 bands, plus a big chorus and a tenor soloist. The open-air venue was chosen for political reasons: the Regimiento de Patricios, for it was attended by the Minister of Defense and the Army Chief; indeed, it was a solemn celebration of April 2, and the same work had been offered in recent years at other places such as Mar del Plata with identical purpose. And it was to be televised, including our Hymn and the "Canción a la bandera" from Panizza´s "Aurora", sung of course by Darío Volonté.

            But rain intervened, and the concert was postponed for the following Monday, and at 8 p.m., not 7. I was there early, so I saw and heard the sound tryouts.  And apart from the lack of style of Volonté in Berlioz, all went smoothly if you accept open-air sound (microphones were well-adjusted but there was a continuous low rumble of traffic).

            Guillermo Becerra conducted with full control and excellent phrasing; the National Symphony was splendid and it was admirably abetted by the four bands from the Army, the Marine and the Air Force. The choirs sang powerfully  the difficult score: Coro Polifónico Nacional (Roberto Luvini) and Coro Nacional de Jóvenes (Néstor Zadoff). The incredibly inventive music was well served.

For Buenos Aires Herald

BAL´s “Anna Bolena”, a travesty of bel canto values

             Gaetano Donizetti´s "Anna Bolena", composed when he was 33, was already his 32nd opera. And it became his first great success, as well as starting the trilogy of British Queens, continued with "Maria Stuarda" and ended with "Roberto Devereux".  The decline of Donizetti´s star during the "verismo" years  was followed after WWII with a revival of many unduly forgotten titles. For "A.B.", the triumph of Callas and Simionato in 1957 with Gavazzeni´s conducting and Visconti´s producing was instrumental in providing a model for future revivals. Later Callas recorded marvelously the final scene, a masterpiece.

            By the time it arrived at the Colón in 1970 I was thoroughly familiar with the music, and I enjoyed it hugely in the beautiful production of Margherita Wallmann with Nicola Benois´ fantastic stage designs evoking powerfully the times of Henry VIII. And the cast was important, with Elena Suliotis, Fiorenza Cossotto, Gianni Raimondi and Ivo Vincò, plus the thorough conducting of Oliviero De Fabritiis. Still later the vinyls of the complete "A.B." were edited here, with Beverly Sills, Shirley Verrett, Stuart Burrows and Paul Plishka, conducted by Julius Rudel. I also had the pleasure of seeing it at the now-disappeared New York City Opera, with Olivia Stapp and no less than Samuel Ramey as Henry.

            The Colón didn´t return to the piece (in fact, it has miserably neglected the Donizettian repertoire since then). But about eight years ago, there was a decent production presented elsewhere by Adelaida Negri where the style was respected both vocally and stagewise. Negri´s voice had its problems; however, the lady looked regal and she sang with true understanding.

            All this is by way of giving a background to the certainly awaited revival by Buenos Aires Lírica (BAL) at the Avenida, starting its season. The opera has a libretto by the celebrated Felice Romani, based on "Enrico VIII ossia Anna Bolena", by Ippolito Pindemonte, and "Anna Bolena" by Alessandro Pepoli: two Italian sources for an English historical libretto. But in fact what we have leaves aside the political aspects to concentrate on an alcove plot: quite simply, Henry has grown tired of Bolena and now covets Jane (Giovanna) Seymour, who will become his third queen after Ann´s decapitation. She is falsely accused of adultery with an old flame, Percy; and Romani adds a subplot with the page Smeton caught red-handed with Ann´s portrait in his (her, for it is a mezzo trouser role) hands. 

            The music is melodious and acquires true dimension in the great Ann-Jane duet and in the ample final scene. Done with dignity and taste, it can provide a fine night at the opera. Alas, this wasn´t the case. The distortion of bel  canto values by the producer Pablo Maritano was so deep that the dramatic or tragic instances became ridiculous, and it fatally affected even the considerable quality of singing of the three female singers. Indeed, Ann smirked her way almost to the last minute, Jane was endowed with what looked like Minnie Mouse ears  and Smeton seemed attacked by delirium tremens.

            The men, excepting Lord Rochefort (Ann´s brother) fared much worse. Henry looked like a Mafia don in absurd white costume, and although the Henry of that time wasn´t yet obese, he certainly wasn´t thin. And poor Percy, certainly not helped by his short stature, was so horribly marked by the producer that his acting seemed that of a spastic, provoking suppressed mirth in the spectator in all the most dramatic moments.

            Maritano has explained in an interview that his view of the piece is violent and from the start he portrays Henry has a sadistic s.o.b. of unbridled lascive instincts; Jane is certainly impressed by his animal side and in the last instance her remorse gives way before her sensuality and the offered pomp and power. Of course, Henry was a complex man and he had drastic methods of doing things, but the times of constitutional monarchy are still far off during his reign; he was ruthless but  also a man of refined tastes, who composed and spoke good French. Maritano certainly gave instructions to his team and Sofia di Nunzio´s incredible accoutrements for the King and for Percy aren´t completely her fault. The producer even brought photographers to close one of the scenes.  The scarce stage designs of Andrea Mercado give little ambience to the action. The whole thing lacks taste, sense of drama and I would even say knowledge of time and place. The nadir was the scene of a hung stag dripping blood whilst Ann sang along.

            The good things were the singing as such (forget the drama) of Macarena Valenzuela, certainly a fine voice, but don´t compare with Callas or Sills! Florencia Machado was quite intense as Jane, the best artist of the night. The debut of Luciana Mancini (she is Chilean) as Smeton showed a well-timbred voice skilfully used. The men were another story. Except Walter Schwarz as a fluidly sung Rochefort, I got little pleasure musically either from Christian Peregrino (a big bass voice but with woolly intonation) or from Santiago Ballerini, where only his facility to reach high notes was a plus; I heard  badly managed phrasing and a timbre with little beauty.

             Further good points were the conducting of Rodolfo Fischer and the correct singing of the choir (Juan Casasbellas) but they couldn´t save the night.

For Buenos Aires Herald

Sad stories about orchestras and institutions

 

            High culture isn´t immune to political and economic factors; their institutions don´t inhabit a preserved oasis of calm, sane ideas and illuminated sponsorship. I will tell you four stories, and to my mind all are rather sad.

            By now it´s common knowledge that Venezuela, incredible as it may seem in the disastrous country of Chávez, has been perfecting for three decades the best system in the world of children and youth orchestras, symbolized by the superb top of the pyramid, the Simón Bolívar led by Gustavo Dudamel. Mario Benzecry has long been an admirer of the Venezuelan model and he founded twenty years ago the Orquesta Juvenil Libertador San Martín; he had to wait all that time to finally obtain a national subsidy last year; a hurrah for his constancy. And an admirable girl called Valeria Atela, my disciple in musical criticism, founded fifteen years ago the Orquesta Escuela de Chascomús, now the best of several provincial projects. So the idea has taken hold. And the enterprising Andrea Merenzon has organized huge international meetings of children and juvenile orchestras in such places as Iguazú or our Luna Park.

            You might wonder, what´s sad about all this? On the contrary, although we are far from Venezuela´s prowess, these are good steps. But the main effort in our capital is now being undermined by the Macri government, and that´s what I want to stress.

            The Buenos Aires Program of Children and Youth Orchestras started about fifteen years ago, created by pianist Claudio Espector following the ideas of Maestro José Antonio Abreu, the soul of the Venezuelan project. The consistent work of Espector has been widely praised by the musical community, and last year the City Legislators declared him Distinguished Cultural Personality; the day before Christmas a massive mobilisation gave him total support in front of the Ministry of Education.

            Why? Because Soledad Acuña, Undersecretary of Educational Equality and overseer of the orchestral program, wants to fire him as coordinator of the project. Her reason: they have a different outlook (she doesn´t specify) on the social educational aspects, not solely the musical. But she is accused by parents and teachers of suspending concerts and workshops, reducing food and cutting the budget for   instrument repair and replacement.

            There is now an impressive number of these orchestras so markedly social : 16, with 1700 pupils between 6 and 18-years-old. Eduardo Ihidoype, who had been the Director of the Colón´s Instituto Superior de Arte during recent years, was named Director of the Operative Management of Music for Equality. There are also several string and tango orchestras as well as so-called Orchestras of Associated Management with foundations. According to the Ministry of Education, all this is in addition, not replacement, of the children and youth orchestras.

            But Espector is angry and he says "they want to break up the effort of 16 years of development";  he adds that the lives of many boys have been positively changed.  The basic principles must be preserved: musical formation, social inclusion, artistic development. Will they be? And why is this attack on the founder supported by the Minister of Education?

            Another sad story concerns the Orquesta Estable de la Radio y Televisión Pública Argentina, a  little-known organism that has existed for the last nine years but is now endangered. In Europe such orchestras have a long tradition and some of them are world-class, such as the Bavarian Radio Orchestra (which will visit us this year).  Veterans such as myself remember fondly the Orquesta de Radio del Estado doing splendid work in the Fifties and Sixties with first-rate foreign conductors, until the Illia Government suppressed it. Currently Radio Nacional has a small chamber orchestra of good standard.

            The OERTPA should have had enough budget and support to have quality seasons with classic repertoire, but it has been poorly treated and in recent months the conflict has come to a boil. It is a 50-player  orchestra with some players of distinction, such as the concertino Gabriel Pinette and the hornist Silvia Lanzón.  Tristán Bauer, who controls it, has decided to disregard the claims of the players, who point out the incongruity of being called "Estables" but having no normal recognized rights. Bauer has put them in the condition of an "eventual" orchestra with no set plans, just a step away from dissolving it. They deserve the solidarity of other orchestras and of musical criticism and I wish them well. Bauer is being shortsighted and unfair.

            My final two cases are of a different kind: private institutions that either have called it quits or are evaluating doing so. The Pilar Golf Concerts have been the best of the "Gran Buenos Aires", providing quality artists and programmes for the last decade to residents of the area; now, with the lowest of profiles and no announcement, the organizers have decided to close shop. I won´t be the only one that will regret it: the place is beautiful and the music was worthwhile.

            For twenty years Susana Santillán has sustained La Scala de San Telmo, offering hundreds of concerts and giving priority to the promotion of young talents. The hall is very small and that was always a problem, acknowledged by a parallel series, "La Scala fuera de La Scala", where bigger venues were host to established artists. Now she is pondering whether the results vouchsafe going on, discouraged by very poor attendance at the San Telmo house. I hope that she will persist, maybe changing some aspects of programming.

For Buenos Aires Herald

Operatic paradox: production crisis, glamorous new houses

            Readers of the Herald know that I disagree with the by now lengthy trend of conceptual operatic production, a plague that started about thirty years ago and has contaminated opera houses all over the world. I am deeply convinced that it is ruining the art of opera and provoking in many people a mass exodus from live opera. However, there´s a substantial number of opera lovers (generally under 50) that support this development and consider that it has renovated what they think would otherwise be a dying art. I strongly believe they are wrong and I will try to  express my reasons in this article.

            From its inception opera has found its essence in telling a story through the combined resources of instruments and voices, plus proper scenery, costuming and lighting. By "proper" I mean "adequate to the times that are evoked". And even in the remote times of the late seventeenth-century/early Baroque Camerata Fiorentina, the aim was to obtain as inclusive a work of art as possible. Greek mythology, not Late Italian Renaissance, was what inspired those pioneers, as vouchsafed by such early creators as Jacopo Peri ("Euridice", 1600) and Claudio Monteverdi, author of the first truly successful opera: "La favola d´Orfeo" (1607). However, of course they weren´t classic Greeks and their views of Arcadic Greece were those of the Florentine and Mantuan intelligentsia.

            As Baroque opera matured, favorite subjects of "opera seria" were those of historical Rome and Persia along with mythological Greece, whilst current history was neglected to avoid censure. But the eighteenth-century "opera buffa" -both in the Baroque and in the Classical period- came close to the people first with short "intermezzi" (Pergolesi´s "La Serva Padrona"), later with full-evening comedies (Paisiello´s very successful "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" from 1782 antecedes Rossini by several decades): opera catered both to popular and aristocratic tastes and audiences.

            And so it continued to be as the language of music evolved and became ever more complicated during the ninetenth-century: Wagner gave us Medieval life with "The Mastersingers" or a huge Tetralogy of mythical German times (the "Ring") whilst bringing chromaticism to the very limits ("Tristan and Isolde"); meanwhile Verdi brought to us Babylonia or Egypt but was censored when he wrote about relatively recent magnicide in"Un Ballo in Maschera". There was another more revealing case of censorship: "La Traviata" was a true revolution for it was about a courtesan of Verdi´s time; at the première the librettist had to transport the story to the early eighteenth-century and only later was he allowed to offer it as inspìred by Dumas Fils´ "The Lady of the Camelias".

            Late Romantics as Puccini gave us wildly different locales and periods: Paris in the 1840s ("La Boheme"), early 1900s Japan ("Madama Butterfly"), the Pope´s Secret Police in Napoleonic times ("Tosca"). And so did Richard Strauss (Greek "Elektra", eighteenth-century Vienna in "Der Rosenkavalier"). But Berg´s "Wozzeck" (1925) was stark contemporary drama (Büchner´s amazing original, from 1836, was fully relevant in Berg´s time) with twelve-tone music, and from then on, although there were skilled practitioners of older styles as Menotti, things changed forever.

            You may think that I´m giving you a potted history of opera, but I needed this to give valid examples. In WW II´s postwar times one singer-actress changed the stand-up-and-sing school: Maria Callas. But she didn´t do it alone: Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli were those that were essential in the enormous change which I fully back: Visconti in "La Traviata" and Zeffirelli in "Tosca" demonstrated with Callas that opera was important as drama, not just as a vehicle for singers.  Visconti´s "Traviata" showed the right way: an absolutely precise evocation of Paris in the 1840s down to the minutest detail, and within it an immensely moving love story: he gave us the mores of the times, and she offered the most heartbreaking interpretation within the purest singing. And so did Zeffirelli´s uncannily true "Tosca": Toscas usually come on stage majestically, but not Callas: she was what Puccini wanted, an anguished jealous woman trying to find her supposed rival.

            On the other extreme, Wieland Wagner  revolutionised the staging of his grandfather´s operas by abstract symbolic designs and perfect lighting. But Wieland died and his brother Wolfgang innovated in the wrong way: Patrice Chéreau´s "Ring" was the starting point of the current trend, with Wotan in smoking and Siegfried´s anvil a modern factory. "Concept" staging was born...and we never recovered.

            The culprit is today´s a-historic generations; they believe only the present matters and don´t realize a glaring truth: the present is this very instant and all the rest is the past: unless we understand this we dont have a future. The fascinating thing about opera is that we are submerged into different cultures: Pharaonic Egypt ("Aida"), Napoleonic-era Rome ("Tosca"), Renaissance Mantua ("Rigoletto"), Medieval Flanders ("Lohengrin") and an enormous etcetera.

             Why are young people impressed by meticulous evocations of Medieval times in TV such as "Game of Thrones" or by Tolkien´s world but reject the same principle applied to opera? It makes no sense, but producers and opera directors, unfortunately promoted by many colleagues of mine and audiences that want to seem progressive, do enormous cultural crimes. Cleopatra as Evita, Rigoletto in Las Vegas, our last dictatorship in the Ring, the Madonna in full frontal nakedness (Bieito´s version of "Pepita Jiménez")...there´s no end to monstrous distortion. This is not opera.

            Producers aren´t authors: they are interpreters of the libretto, as conductors are of the music. Now if a production accords with the libretto it is panned by critics and some audiences! This is a sick society. You can be innovative but faithful, and this is the essential point.

For Buenos Aires Herald

“Bloody daughter”, candid analysis of Martha Argerich

            "The Martha Argerich case"  might be an alternative title of "Bloody daughter", the documentary by Stéphanie Argerich programmed at the MALBA cinema for January and February Saturday nights. Indeed, her mother´s enigmatic personality, always so elusive and fascinating, needed this personal view, certainly interesting not only for music lovers but also for the public at large.

            Now in her early 70s, she holds a unique place in the world of piano interpretation. Child prodigy, and then prodigious adolescent, her concerts amazed the great European centers and as she came of age she recorded the first of many magnificent records for Deutsche Grammophon. She had all the qualities:  acute intelligence, lovely tone, a fantastic mechanism of seemingly inexhaustible possibilities and a sense of style which allowed her to adapt mercurially to authors as different as Chopin and Prokofiev.

            At the time (the Sixties) some very conservative critics felt she was too free and were disconcerted by her immense stamina and the electricity that emanated from her, but once and again she was capable of catching the essence of very simple and easy music quite as easily as the most virtuosic, and both the public and the reviewers soon adopted her. She was a force of nature.

            At that time she visited Buenos Aires in 1965 and I had the great pleasure of interviewing her; although she was shy and disliked talking about herself, she was pleasant and charming, and after an hour it seemed I had known her for years. She gave their due to her teachers (Scaramuzza, Gulda, Madeleine Lipatti) and in a very characteristic phrase she said that she played before older pianists (Stefan Askenase) but also of her own generation (Fou Ts´ong) because interpretations are always improved by the exchange of views with other pianists.

            Later, in June 1967, I had an informal chat over dinner with Argerich and her then husband, conductor Charles Dutoit, after a concert for the Prague Spring Festival, and she was completely relaxed. Others have complained of her boorish ways, and I suppose that her moods have varied widely, so I may have been lucky, but I can only report that her charisma is great.

            But let´s go back to Stéphanie Argerich. You may think that the rather startling title of the movie refers to the mother-daughter relationship, but when about half of the picture has elapsed you will learn that "bloody" was used as a curious tender epithet by Stéphanie´s father, pianist Stephen Kovacevich (Bishop Kovacevich in the early stages of his career), and there are several long sequences between them, including the rather harsh one about why he never recognised her.

            Stéphanie has two half-sisters: Annie Dutoit and Lyda Chen. The latter was the unplanned issue of a shared night between Martha and a Chinese musician. So you see that Martha´s private life was unstable and sometimes stormy. But this film is astonishing, for Stéphanie managed to convince her mother to expatiate freely on various matters (often not musical), vanquishing her notorious secretiveness and showing her indecisions frankly. And considering that her three daughters have had long periods of incommunication with their mother, it is rather wonderful to find them all together and feel that there´s real love among them all.

            Stéphanie evokes her infant years following her mother in tours, and vintage clips of Martha´s interpretations are moving for those spectators that admire her (as I do). Mind you, Martha has always had a deep insecurity and stress before a concert; once she is in front of the public it doesn´t show, and she plays with adamant firmness. It is interesting that this is vouchsafed by her longtime agent, who appears in some sequences.  And it explains that strange syndrome; after her youthful years, she no longer offered recitals nor did she record piano solo scores: she exclusively played concerti with orchestra or chamber music with friends. No other world class pianist has managed to keep a high-profile career without solo recitals! A great pity,  for her recitals were marvelous and her solo records are few.

            Talking about music Martha isn´t articulate, she even thinks that nothing useful can be said about it, that you just have to feel it; curious, because her interpretations have always been deeply thought out. She admits a tendency to fast tempi (and age hasn´t abated that trait) but keeps coherence at all speeds.  The film has some serious omissions: it is good that it concentrates on the mother-daughter relationships, but it should at least mention some of her great friendships, such as the De Raco-Lechner family, who live next door to her in Brussels. And it would be nice to see her talking with some of her musician friends who play with her (e.g., Nelson Freire, Misha Maisky, Gidon Kremer).

            The film is reasonably well made, and gives us an honest glimpse of the private Martha, who now looks her age. It is dated 2012, before the memorable encounter Barenboim-Argerich in Berlin.  Martha was seriousy mistreated by the Buenos Aires Philharmonic years ago in the last Argerich Festival, and it took some years to convince her to come back; but when she did last year, she played in Rosario and Paraná, not here. Now music lovers can look forward to appreciate that formidable combination next August at the Colón: two great Argentines will play together for the first time here.

For Buenos Aires Herald