Has Lahav Shani already made himself immortal in Rotterdam?

Sooner than hoped, the Rotterdam Philharmonic has to look for a new chief conductor again. Lahav Shani, who had a dream start in Rotterdam in his late twenties in 2018, will start working with the Munich Philharmonic from September 2026, while also keeping his orchestra in Jerusalem. Just before the corona outbreak, Shani extended in Rotterdam, up to and including the 2025-2026 season, and it will therefore remain there. Eight years is of course a respectable time, shorter than predecessor Valery Gergiev (1995-2008), almost comparable to Yannick Nézèt-Seguin (2008-2018). Still, it seems a bit short, partly due to the pandemic break. But who knows: Yannick accelerated to international stardom in his last Rotterdam years. Emotionally, Shani hasn’t made herself immortal yet.

Which does not alter the fact that he also led excellently in an original Hungarian program on Friday. Shani has already shown an affinity with Bartók’s music. His only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s keepis a sultry one-act play that you rarely hear – although last year the National Youth Orchestra coincidentally also gave a wonderful performance with it.

At one hour, the opera is just too short to fill an evening, and it is also difficult to combine. Then a ruse was invented in Rotterdam. By way of overture, the orchestra played the legendary in a large line-up Atmospheres (1961) by the idiosyncratic modernist György Ligeti, a groundbreaking work with which he introduced a completely new way of composing. Atmospheres is noted in hyperdetail, but reaches the ear like a grandiose bellows of sound: a series of slowly swelling thunderclouds, outwardly motionless, but vibrant inside. From the first monumental cluster agreement, Shani struck a good balance. He made the horns rise shrilly into the thin air and the basses rumble abyss.

Read also: ‘Lahav Shani stops as chief conductor in Rotterdam and moves to Munich‘

Seven closed doors

The eerie atmosphere, on a dark stage with only a dusty spotlight on Shani, turned out to be a seamless prelude to Bluebeard’s dark fortress and Bartók’s delightfully multifaceted music. The story, based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, gets a psychological twist in the version by librettist Béla Balázs. Bluebeard’s new wife Judith knows the rumors about his previous wives and is determined to look behind the seven doors that Bluebeard keeps closed for her. He keeps asking her if she doesn’t want to go back to her family and fiancé, but Judith stays – even if she has seen the torture chamber behind the first door.

Mezzo Claudia Mahnke and baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle sang from memory and interpreted their characters with verve. Initially somewhat stereotyped: Judith as an emotional woman, torn between curiosity and love; Bluebeard gruff, gruff, stoic. It is precisely the slow, almost static tension arc (a nice parallel between the works of Ligeti and Bartók) that would have benefited from the sharp eye of a director. Shani also limited the orchestra too little, so that Mahnke and Kränzle – no small voices – had difficulty reaching the audience.

But as more doors opened (each with its own color in Paul van Laak’s lighting plan) and fate became inevitable, the chemistry between the lovers grew and the coordination with the orchestra also improved. The ecstatic pre-apotheosis, when Judith has opened five doors and a manic Bluebeard still believes that will be enough, was beautiful. The lake of tears behind the sixth door palpably dashed all hope to the ground. The run-up to the last door, behind which Judith had long suspected Bluebeard’s previous lovers, was very strong: hypothermic, ominous and moving. If those women turn out to be alive, Bluebeard will be really scary.

Also read the review: ‘Lahav Shani shows fine Bartók antenna‘

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