Two irreplaceable European top orchestras with a Strauss champion and a Verdi veteran: September is also the harvest season for classical music. Many orchestras now make the annual tour of the most important halls of Western Europe. Of course: in 2023 this will happen with sustainability awareness. Where possible, travel is by bus and train. But what really stood out this week was the old argument in favor of tours: what a pleasure to sharpen your ears to completely different sound cultures on successive evenings.
If concert halls book expensive foreign top orchestras, the halls must be full. The result: orchestras often travel with the repertoire in which they excel. During his time as chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra (1987-2004), Riccardo Chailly already stood for a handful of very strong Verdi operas. With the choir and orchestra of La Scala – together almost 200 musicians strong – he now performed the program that he also selected for his 70th birthday earlier this year. and released on CD: choirs and overtures from Verdi’s operas.
Delivered in a plotless polonaise, the scenes formed a sharply played, hyper-theatrical hurdle that made you dizzy with all the emotions – the multifaceted effectiveness of Verdi’s opera music does not slacken for a second. Highlights were the pieces from the late operas. The complex darkness of Don Carlo for example, with its menacing male choir from which one honeyed cello solo rose like a dove of peace. And then the bouncers still had to come: the gypsy choir (from ‘Il Trovatore’), the triumphal march (from ‘Aida’) and ‘Viva Simon’ (from Simon Boccanegra) with the alarming rattle of a tubular bell. But what will remain memorable is, in addition to Chailly’s impeccable sense of theater, the finesse of the choir: you won’t hear such razor-sharp Italian diction anywhere else.
Melancholy
Conductor Christian Thielemann (63) tapped from a completely different perspective on Thursday with his Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden (anno 1548). Thielemann – German, Karajan fan, reportedly strict and perfectionist – is one of the best conductors in the world, not necessarily one of the most docile or progressive. But whatever has been said about him, anyone who loves orchestral music should take note that he will give conducting master classes with the Concergebouw Orchestra in June. Who knows, maybe Thielemann will reveal how to do that, conjuring up an orchestral sound that, in two seconds, sounds as melancholic as yesterday’s champagne, or like a photo album of a world that no longer exists.
Thielemann cherishes a fascination for the instrumentation art of Richard Strauss. This translates into a Strauss mastery unmatched by any other living conductor. How falling drops very gradually announce the approaching storm, how breaking light at sunrise creates clarity in a previously pre-earthly, amorphous tutti sound: this Alpensinfonie made you understand how Strauss should sound. There was exalted organ rapture, fresh walking enthusiasm, suspense (diverging woodwind melodies). And there was a brilliant veneer over the entire string sound, which gave the sound something nostalgic.
As a prelude, Janine Jansen soloed in an elegant reading of Mendelssohns Violin concerto. The deep, velvety warmth of her tone remains unique, which sank into and rose above the orchestra without effect.
But that Strauss, that was something unheard of.