Music: In Halls Great and Small

Salzburg, Austria

Four months ago, I reported in these pages from the Salzburg Easter Festival. Basically a weeklong affair, that is a mere bagatelle — a warmup for the main event, namely the summer festival. This festival stretches for five weeks, and features elite musicians from the world over. Elite patrons, too — and economic woes seem not to have stopped them much. The gowns, jewels, and cummerbunds are still in place.

Have a sampler of the festival — beginning with the Vienna Philharmonic, which played a concert one Monday night in the Great Festival Hall. The Vienna Phil. is lord of Salzburg, at least during the summer: They have their residence here. The Berlin Philharmonic is onstage for the Easter Festival.

On this particular Monday night, the big work was the Symphony No. 6 of Bruckner. This is probably the least performed of Bruckner’s nine symphonies, along with the Second: and there is no reason for it. It is a masterpiece, with a particularly sublime slow movement, and the Vienna Philharmonic did full justice to it (to the entire symphony, that is). This orchestra is made for Bruckner: with famously rich strings, though strings that can add a growl, when wanted. As for the brass, they are unerring, most of the time, and they are also unblaring: They get volume with no offensiveness whatsoever.

There is simply no weak chair in this orchestra. Just when you think these guys might be a touch overrated, riding on the reputation built up over decades: They’re not.

On this occasion, they were led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Fabulous Finn, or Flying Finn, or whatever other moniker you may choose. He is, as a rule, a pretty cool customer: brisk, no-nonsense, exact. And these qualities served Bruckner well. Salonen did not do much luxuriating, or any; but there is luxuriating built into the symphony, if I may put it that way. The performance as a whole was tight as a drum — but that slow movement breathed beautifully. The Finale may have been a speck fast, and a speck cold. But that it was stirring, no one can deny.

A few nights later, Patricia Petibon sang a recital in the House for Mozart (as the Little Festival Hall was recently rechristened). Petibon is a French soprano: and this was not a typical recital. No, it was a staged one, a directed one: one with acting and props and so on. Apparently, Petibon thought that a traditional recital was not enough: There needed to be a visual or theatrical element to jazz it up. What a disturbing thought: There is nothing more powerful or “impactful,” as moderns say, than a traditional song recital, when ably done.

She began with Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise,” during which she slunk around, mysteriously (and comically). After this piece, her accompanist set a metronome in motion; Petibon turned it off. Then some chimes came out, and Petibon was creating New Age effects (or something). She launched a group of Copland songs — actually, some old American songs, arranged by Copland. During “At the River,” Petibon stood on a little platform with fake sunflowers in front. This little set was framed by marquee-style lights. When it was time for “Ching-a-ring Chaw,” the accompanist donned an Indian headdress. And Petibon took to shootin’, like Annie Oakley.

Forgetting the theater, how did she sing? There were moments when I had a wicked thought: “Perhaps she is doing all this other to distract from her singing.” She was carelessly free with tempo — maybe she needed that metronome — and too many of her high notes were low (unsupported, thus dipping). But Petibon is a good singer who will have better nights, in addition to less ludicrous ones. Her entire concept is, to me, absurd, pretentious, and unnecessary. This is something the kids in the University of Michigan Music School would have cooked up, in the early 1970s, amid clouds of marijuana smoke. The operafication of a song recital is grotesque. And the constant intrusion of the visual — you could even say the assault of the visual — is a threat to music in general.

Oh, Jay, you might say. Lighten up. This was just an experiment — a jeu d’esprit, not the end of Western civilization. You may be right. Then again, you may not.

The very next night, in the same house, we had a song recital — a real song recital — by Magdalena Kožená, the Czech mezzo-soprano. She had a high-class (and presumably high-paid) accompanist, Mitsuko Uchida, the veteran concert pianist. Salzburg is a place for such happenings. Kožená was at her best, and that is very good indeed. In varied repertoire, she displayed a wide range of colors and other interpretive necessities. Her concentration never wandered — and as a result, yours didn’t either. Her Frauenliebe und -leben (Schumann) was a true cycle, not merely a group of disparate songs.

And here is an example of her cosmopolitanism, or adaptability: When she turned to a Debussy set, she was a true French singer. That is musical intelligence, or sympathy. “La Chevelure” is one of the sexiest songs in music. And Kožená sang it with erotic deliciousness. Her first encore was “Der Nussbaum” (again, Schumann), which was also a favorite first encore of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who was the supreme singer in Salzburg for years. Kožená sang it both purely and emotionally — a neat trick.

Let me venture into touchy territory — almost verboten territory: Kožená lisped, heavily, throughout the night. In 20 or so hearings, I had never heard her do this. It happens. It makes Purcell’s song “Sweeter than Roses,” for example, kind of a problem. Last season, I heard Olga Borodina lisp throughout the Verdi Requiem. She had never done that before, in my hearing — she may never again (in my hearing). Writing in her memoirs, Beverly Sills told us that she was subject to fits of lisping. They just came; then they went. One night, while she was lisping, Julius Rudel, in the pit, laughed and laughed — making her, onstage, laugh too.

Anyway, a mystery, this — and, as I said, not really to be talked about.

Care for a dose of opera? Rossini once made a statement about his posterity. He said (something like), “I hope to be survived by Act III of Otello [yes, he wrote one too], Act II of William Tell — and all of The Barber” (of Seville). How about Moïse et Pharaon, which is to say, Moses and Pharaoh? The Salzburg Festival revived it, under the baton of Riccardo Muti, the Italian Stallion. Muti regards this opera as Rossini’s greatest work, along with William Tell. It is a quirky opinion, but a defensible one.

And, in the pit, he proved a strong exponent of the work. He conducted with spine, alertness, balance, and energy. There was energy in the executive, as Hamilton might have said. The Vienna Philharmonic played splendidly — though not especially Italianately, did this consummate Bruckner orchestra. A woman can never be too rich or too thin, we hear. Can an orchestra be too rich or burnished in sound? The chorus of the Vienna State Opera performed splendidly too — and Rossini makes the chorus a major player in this opera.

Salzburg had arranged an excellent cast of singers, and I will mention just one: Eric Cutler, a youngish American tenor. He was both lyrical and heroic, creamy and clarion — you don’t get that in every singer. He should have a fine career. But will his simple American name be a hindrance? Would he be better off as “Giovanni Martinelli” or “Fritz Wunderlich”? This is an old, old question — dating from the beginning of the American involvement in opera — and it is amazing that the question endures in 2009. But, according to those who should know, it does.

The production of Moïse et Pharaon was by Jürgen Flimm, who is also the artistic director of the Salzburg Festival at large. In the opera, he dressed the Children of Israel as Hasidim, with prayer shawls and all. Whether this was appropriate or wise — those Israelites no doubt looked Jewish. In written materials surrounding the opera, Flimm stressed a connection between Moïse et Pharaon and the present-day Arab–Israeli conflict. He said that you could not stage Moïse et Pharaon — not now — without reference to that conflict. Some cannot, it is true.

There is always politics at the Salzburg Festival, as I have written before — politics of a particular kind. Salzburg managed to turn Der Freischütz, Weber’s (Christian) opera from 1821, into an anti-American spectacle. Last season, Flimm did a public reading with Vanessa Redgrave: of poems written by terror detainees in Guantanamo.

Daniel Barenboim has been here this summer, bringing with him his general Barenboimness. (I should mention that he accompanied Anna Netrebko in a song recital, and did so commendably.) And I will tell you about a surprise hit, or semi-hit, of the season: Luigi Nono’s opera, or quasi-opera, Al gran sole carico d’amore (In the Bright Sunshine, Charged with Love).

Nono was an Italian composer who lived from 1924 to 1990. He wrote Al gran sole in the mid-1970s, when he was a member of the Central Committee of the Italian CP. The work is an example of the old “theater of consciousness.” It is, broadly speaking, a meditation on Communism. Salzburg touted Al gran sole with a line from Che Guevara, establisher of the Cuban gulag, and pinup for a billion T-shirts: “Beauty is not opposed to revolution.” How has that worked out in practice, when revolution is of the Guevara kind?

A final word: Salzburg literature calls Luigi Nono “certainly the most important Italian composer of the past century.” That is debatable. But even if it’s true, I think of a famous line of Bill Buckley’s, uttered in a similar context: “Isn’t that on the order of celebrating the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas?” Italian composition has seen better centuries.