In a world gone mad, it makes sense to be afraid, but it is the ultimate test of character to get beyond fear and take a stand for what one truly believes. This is the argument of Poulenc’s opera, “Dialogues of the Carmelites.” Premiered in 1957, it deals specifically with the fate of a group of Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution, but its theme, at once inspirational and unsettling, is universal and still relevant today.

The new Austin Lyric Opera production of “Dialogues of the Carmelites” makes a powerful case for including this opera in the repertoire.

“Dialogues” moves very slowly and deliberately through its first hour or so. Think “Parsifal,” which unfolds with similar deliberation, but if one allows oneself to be drawn into this world of faith and fear, the payoff is devastating.

From a musical point of view, the opera is a peculiar amalgam of Debussy’s “Pelleas” and Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex.” The “Dialogues” score seems to meander and the orchestral sonorities are often acerbic, but Poulenc created exactly the musical language he needed to make this particular drama fresh and credible, just as he did in “Gloria,” which similarly brings something new and beautiful to liturgical music.

In this production, Austin Lyric Opera stage director Erik Einhorn and scenic designers Harry Frehner and Scott Reid bring Poulenc’s opera to life with a minimalist imaginative touch that exquisitely complements this music.

The sets and props are sparse and appropriate, placed and moved without obstructing the narrative flow. Lighting designer Shawn Kaufman also deserves credit for his deft employment of rear lighting. The use of black curtains, mysteriously opening and closing, served to underscore the spiritual elements of the drama. The production was created originally for the Calgary Opera, but what we saw in Austin was perfectly suited to the work and to the house.

The music onstage is dominated by the women (photo: above right) who sing the roles of the Carmelite nuns. Quite simply, they were first-rate. For an opening night, the level of ensemble precision was remarkable.

It is somewhat unfair to single out individuals in such an ensemble effort, but Sheila Nadler as the dying Prioress in Act One – she has sung this role in more than twenty productions of the opera – gave a heart-rending performance, and Jennifer Check as the new Prioress sang with moving eloquence toward the end of Act Two. Emily Pulley (photo: right) as Blanche has the largest role and her personal crisis is at the heart of the opera. She gave a compelling performance and her voice is clearly first-class. Pulley was originally to have played Madame Lidoine, the new Prioress, but the change in casting proved quite satisfactory. Richard Buckley conducted with authority and sensitivity.

Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” was Austin Lyric Opera’s last production of the season, following on equally fine presentations of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Rossini’s “Cinderella.” For next season general director Kevin Patterson has chosen Puccini’s “La Boheme,” Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” and a real novelty, Chabrier’s “The Star” (L’etoile).

Paul E. Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar,” and “Sir Georg Solti: His Life and Music,” both available at Amazon.com.

Photos by Mark Matson

Classical Music Blogs

Conductors come and go, but it is always a thrill to see one who really makes a difference. At the beginning of this season, Jaap van Zweden assumed the music directorship of the Dallas Symphony (DSO) and musical life in Dallas has not been the same since.

Jaap van Zweden is not your Hollywood central casting conductor – in fact if you met him on the street you might mistake him for a wrestler or a weight-lifter – but conducting has less to do with how you look than what you can do with an orchestra.

Maestro van Zweden is obviously a driven man and he expects that same drive from his players. At the concert I attended, there was no one sitting back and taking it easy. Instead of the lazy, half-hearted bowing one sees so often in string sections, every man and woman was bowing as if their lives depended on it. Not since Sir Georg Solti commanded a podium have I seen such intensity from a conductor.

The maestro’s message to the players? Music is serious stuff – I stayed up all night to figure this piece out and the least you can do is practice every waking hour until you are able to play it perfectly! Then we will start to work on interpretation and phrasing.

As it happens, earlier in his career, van Zweden did play under Solti and other great conductors when he was concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, recently voted the number one orchestra in the world by a group of respected luminaries; he learned the repertoire as a player in a world-class orchestra and he also learned what it takes to make music at the highest level. He has clearly brought that attitude to Dallas and the DSO players seem to like it a lot.

What I heard at the Myerson Symphony Center was remarkable by any standard and as a glimpse of things to come, it was tremendously exciting.

The concert was a somewhat belated New Year’s celebration, loosely modeled on the annual event by the Vienna Philharmonic broadcast worldwide. This means music by the Strauss family, and it also means finishing up with the likes of the “Blue Danube Waltz” and the “Radetzky March.” To give the occasion an American flavor, van Zweden ended the evening with Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and earlier had presented Leroy Anderson’s somewhat dated novelty piece, “The Typewriter.”

Stokowski’s Orchestration of Pictures Rivals Ravel
The tour de force of the evening was Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano piece, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” There are those who still wonder whether Stokowski actually wrote the many transcriptions attributed to him. There is strong evidence that much of this work was really done by Lucien Cailliet, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Stokowski era (1912-1936). The fact is that this orchestration is a fine alternative to the famous Ravel arrangement of the Mussorgsky original.

One of the devices Mussorgsky used to link the ‘pictures’ (by the composer’s friend Victor Hartmann) depicted in the piece is the ‘promenade” – walking music, if you will – as the visitor strolls from one exhibit to another in the gallery. The piece begins with just such a promenade and in the Ravel version, it is given to a solo trumpet. It is one of the best-known passages in classical music.

The Stokowski version starts quite differently, with rich and dark sonorities in the string section (with some reinforcement from an organ), and in the performance by van Zweden and the DSO one was taken aback by the weight and opulence of the sound. This was the special quality of the hall yielding to a conductor skilled at eliciting the sound he wants from an orchestra. The performance went on from there to surprise and thrill us with playing of razor-sharp precision and a vast range of color.

Curiosities abound in Stokowski’s version of “Pictures.” Nearly always, Stokowski chose instruments and combinations of instruments far removed from the Ravel version. In several sections of the score, however, he seems to be saying – ‘Ravel’s choice of instrument was so inspired and so right I couldn’t possibly do better’; ergo,  both the Ravel and Stokowski orchestrations feature a solo saxophone in ‘Il Vecchio Castello’ and a solo trumpet in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle.’

Jaap van Zweden, DSO & Myerson Symphony Center – Triumphant Trio!
I look forward to returning to Dallas for more music-making from Jaap van Zweden and his newly-galvanized Dallas Symphony. I’ll certainly have a lot more to say about van Zweden, but I can’t emphasize enough that Dallas has one of the world’s great concert halls.

There are only a handful of concert halls in North America that come anywhere close to the quality of the Myerson Symphony Center. What makes it great? In a few words – the sound jumps off the stage and involves the listener. The sound enhances the timbre of every instrument in the orchestra and makes them sound well together. It helps too that the Myerson looks so good inside and out, and that you can get a good meal there!

Later this year, the Myerson will be joined by the new Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre just across the way. Within the span of a few blocks, one can also enjoy the treasures of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.

This is the Dallas Arts District, a work in progress for many years but now coming to completion. Big D is about to become bigger and better than ever.

From Triumphant Trios to Cuatro Leches at La Duni – Dallas Delights!
It is not in the Arts District, but La Duni, a Latin Café on Mckinney – where the Cuatro Leches cake alone would keep me coming back – is one of the places we always visit on our return trips to Dallas, where we lived several years.

There is much more to savor at La Duni, however, than cake; for example,  several dozen kinds of coffee,  and a wide variety of amazing tortas (sandwiches), including our current favorite – the ‘Choripan’ with Argentinian sausage, avocado and manchego cheese stuffed in a fresh popover and served with yucca fries!

La Duni’s McKinney Street location opened in 2001 with founders Espartaco and Dunia Borga at the helm, and there are now two other locations in Dallas. Word on the street – actually, from one of the La Duni staff members – is that within a year or so, there will be a La Duni in Austin. Great news for Austinites, like us!

Paul Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar”; “Sir Georg Solti: his Life and Music,” and “Stokowski” (Spring 2009), all available at http://www.amazon.com. 

Classical Music Blogs  

It was a clever idea for Austin Symphony (ASO) music director Peter Bay to preface a rare performance of Miklós Rózsa’s Violin Concerto with some of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. Rózsa was born in Budapest and makes use of Hungarian folk music in his concerto. The major work on the program was Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, a work that has no apparent Hungarian connection. But who can be sure? Besides twenty-one Hungarian Dances and eleven Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs), not to mention the “Rondo alla Zingarese” from his G minor Quartet, Brahms had Hungarian music in his blood.

How Hungarian are Brahms’ “Hungarian” Dances?
Peter Bay chose to program just three of the Hungarian Dances and only the ones that Brahms orchestrated himself from pieces originally composed for piano duet. To my mind these pieces best reveal their charm when they are played by two people – preferably very good friends – seated at one keyboard. But it is understandable that Brahms wanted to capitalize on the popularity of these pieces by making them available for performance by symphony orchestras. Incidentally, the discussion still rages as to whether the music Brahms used as the basis for his dances were really gypsy rather than Hungarian. The consensus is that the music Bartók and Kodály later uncovered in their travels through rural Hungary was both much more authentic and more complex.

Hungarian-Born Miklós Rózsa Prolific Composer of Movie Music
Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995) may have been born in Hungary but he lived most of his life in Los Angeles writing music for the movies. He was very good at it too and his skills contributed greatly to the success of films such as “Ben Hur,” “Spellbound,” “Double Indemnity,” “Quo Vadis,” and even the Steve Martin comedy “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” But Rózsa wrote important concert music too. When Leonard Bernstein made his legendary debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1943 there was a Rózsa work on the program: Theme,Variations and Finale Op. 13. And it was Jascha Heifetz who encouraged Rózsa to write his Violin Concerto and gave the first performance in 1956 with the Dallas Symphony.

At the time Rózsa was at the height of his career as a film composer. Not surprisingly, the Violin Concerto does sound a lot like film music of the period. It has soaring romantic melodies and lush orchestration. What’s more, Rózsa borrowed chunks from the Violin Concerto for the film score he composed in 1970 for “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.” Not that there is anything wrong with that. The Violin Concerto is a well-made and very attractive piece that deserves a place in the repertoire. And Robert McDuffie is just the man to play it. He recorded it in 1999 for Telarc and lately he has been playing it all over the world, including on a tour with the Jerusalem Symphony.

McDuffie Dazzles with Tone & Technique in Rózsa’s Violin Concerto
There are certainly Hungarian elements in the Violin Concerto but they are not the gypsy elements popularized by Brahms. Rózsa makes use of the pentatonic scale and some rhythmic devices characteristic of some Hungarian folk music. But it would be misleading to say that the concerto is “based” on Hungarian folk music. It has a character all its own. When the music is not lyrical it is often virtuosic in the extreme, especially in the thrilling codas closing the first and third movements. I had never heard McDuffie live before and I was immensely impressed by his superlative playing and commanding presence. I was also amazed by the volume of sound he produced. After just a few concerts in the still-new Long Center it is impossible to say what the hall is contributing to the music. But it seems that the hall is very flattering to the sound of a solo violin. In any case, let’s hope that McDuffie returns soon. He is a wonderful artist. And let’s not forget conductor Peter Bay’s contribution to the success of this performance. He and the ASO were with McDuffie every step of the way.

A Scholarly Reading of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4
The concert concluded with Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in a performance that sounded well-prepared and very satisfying on its own terms. Peter Bay gave us a scholarly view of the score, paying careful attention to balances – the low-lying flute solo in the fourth movement came through beautifully – and maintaining forward motion. Over the years orchestras have grown larger and conductors have tended to make Brahms symphonies richer and more powerful than they were in the composer’s lifetime. We know that at the first performances a much smaller string section was used. On the other hand, orchestras play in larger halls today and perhaps they need to produce a bigger sound for the music to make the same effect.

Orchestral Seating Plans & the Search for an Ideal Sound

Bearing all of these issues in mind I personally would still like to hear a more robust sound in the Brahms symphonies. Perhaps the acoustics of the hall were not entirely sympathetic to the conductor’s approach. Peter Bay and the ASO might want to experiment with different seatings. For this concert the double basses were lined up on the extreme right of the stage and from where I sat they hardly projected at all. Perhaps they could be moved to the left side facing out for better effect. The timpani was placed at the right rear of the orchestra and the sound was distant and muffled. Similarly, the trumpets seemed to disappear in the climaxes. In such matters Leopold Stokowski provides a useful role model. He never stopped searching for better seating plans for his orchestras. He realized that every hall is different, and that there is nothing scientific about the traditional orchestral seating. The point is to try to find the ideal sound for every piece in every place. We can’t do much to physically change concert halls after they have been built but we can certainly try to make them sound better. And Stokowski was legendary for making orchestras sound wonderful.

Paul E. Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar” and “Sir Georg Solti: his Life and Music,” both available at http://www.amazon.com/. For more about Paul E. Robinson please visit his website.

Classical Music Blogs