Chamber Orchestra of Europe – musicophilesblog – From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms

Lisa Batiashvili playing Brahms at Tonhalle Zurich – Fantastic

5 fantastic female violin players

So, this was supposed to be just a concert report about last night at Tonhalle Maag in Zurich. But please allow me a small parenthesis.

These days we’re extremely lucky, as we have many outstanding classical music artists that are currently active. I’ve already written about my Top 10 Favourite Classical Pianists some time ago, but I’ve never done the same for the violin.

Right now, there are about 5 female violinists that I truly admire, all of which are world-class. I had seen Alina Ibragimova earlier this year already, and had the pleasure of seeing Lisa Batiashvili for the first time last night.

But then, innocently enough, there was a little sign post in front of the Tonhalle Maag building, announcing Julia Fischer playing Mendelssohn’s violin concert at the very same Tonhalle in about a month time. The ticket office was open, so I obviously got tickets for that one as well. I don’t know why I haven’t written about Julia Fischer on this blog yet, but I’ll start a post on my top 10 favorite violinist soon, she’ll be in there.

So I was joking to the guy at the ticket office, if now I could only see Isabelle Faust and Janine Jansen live this year as well, I’d finally have covered all my favorite players. And then I realised, that was exactly what I had to do. So while waiting for the gates of the Tonhalle to open, I bought tickets for Isabelle Faust with the Akademie für Alte Musik playing Bach concertos, and I now just need to pick one of Jansen’s great concerts this year (Sibelius, Brahms, Berg, some chamber music in Verbier, there’s a lot of choice).

Let me close the long parenthesis here, but one of my new year resolutions was to see more live concerts. I started well, but slowed down in recent month. (By the way, I completely missed writing about seeing Aracadi Volodos live some months ago, my bad)

But now it looks like it is going to be a really good year now!

Lisa Batiatishvili, Antonio Pappano, Chamber Orchestra of Europe – Ligeti & Brahms – May 23, 2018, Tonhalle Maag, Zurich

So, now let’s get to the concert itself.

The Chamber Orchestra is a great ensemble, especially under an outstanding conductor.

Antonio Pappano really is one of those great conductors. I’ve written about him already twice on this blog, and in both cases we’re talking about 5 star albums. First his great Aida, and then even more relevant for last night’s performance, the Brahms violin concerto with Janine Jansen.

So while the orchestra and the soloist is different, I already had some idea how Pappano would potentially approach the orchestral part of this great violin concerto. Obviously, here we had the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and not his own Accademia di Santa Cecilia, but it was clear that Pappano and the orchestra knew each other well, as they are currently touring all over Europe with this program.

But first things first, the program started with Ligeti’s Concert Românesc. I must admit I had no idea what to expect, as I mentioned previously on this blog, I’m really not very knowledgable with classical music after 1920. I barely ever venture beyond the safe bets of Bartok, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev.

I was very positively surprised. The short work really is a firework of musical ideas and energy. I definitely need to check out more of Ligeti, one more (rather late) new year resolution then.

But now to the Masterpiece of the evening, the Brahms violin concerto.

I really had high hopes for this. As mentioned above, Pappano had already shown with Jansen that he really knows this work, and Batiashvili earlier recording of the Sibelius violin concerto with Oramo is one of my favourite versions on disc.

I was a little hesitant though as I’m not such a big fan of the only time Batiashvili recorded this concerto before, with Christian Thielemann in Dresden. I mean, it’s not bad, but something always felt slightly off. By now I feel this slightly off thing actually was Thielemann, not Batishvili (I never was a fan of Thielemann in the first place).

Luckily, no Thielemann here, just Pappano. What did we get?

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To make it short: an outstanding experience. Pappano and the COE put in an amazing energy and pleasure, and Batiatishvili really played with all her heart. This was BIG Brahms, and it really was the full Cinemascope experience of this masterpiece.

The overall concert was so outstanding, that even the iPhone that was ringing TWICE! in the handbag of the elderly lady just in front of me didn’t spoil the experience (she clearly probably just received this phone and had no idea how to even switch off the sound).

The Tonhalle audience agreed, this was one of the most overwhelming applauses I’ve seen from in Zurich. We got treated to a nice encore.

I was even thinking, maybe I should just leave during the break, I cannot get any better.

I probably should have. After the break, we got Brahms’ Serenade no. 1. And I must admit I really don’t get why you can schedule Brahms most boring orchestral work EVER after the masterpiece of the violin concerto.

It really wasn’t the fault of Pappano and the COE not putting in an effort. This was am excellent performance on par with my current reference, Riccardo Chailly with the Gewandhaus.

But still I really think the serenades were nothing but trial works for his real symphonies, and I rather would have had ANY other Brahms orchestral work, even the rather silly Academic Festival overture, than this.

Nevertheless, this was truly an evening to remember!

Now I’m looking forward to Julia Fischer and Herbert Blomstedt.

Nézet-Séguin’s Figaro – Nice, but lacking some sparkle

I don’t regularly write about opera, as I don’t really consider myself an opera expert. I come from instrumental music, and tend to judge operas much more on the orchestral performance than on the singers.

But then again, occasionally there are operas I really care about and therefore feel comfortable enough sharing my impression. My favorite opera composer by far is Mozart, and I’ve mentioned Jacobs’ beautiful Idomeneo in My Must Have Mozart Albums.

Furthermore, there is one more five star rating opera review, Nézet-Séguin’s Cosi Fan Tutte, recorded live in Baden-Baden. Cosi is my absolute favorite Mozart opera, closely followed by Le Nozze di Figaro.

So as you can kind of guess, when Nézet-Séguin’s Figaro was very recently released, I clicked buy pretty much instantaneously.

Le Nozze di Figaro – Nézet-Séguin (Deutsche Grammophon 2016)

Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro - Yannick Nézet-Séguin - Chamber Orchestra of Europe 24/96 Deutsche Grammophon 2016

Maybe I should have used my streaming subscription first.

No, that’s a bit harsh, I don’t expect to regret the purchase. It’s just that after the great Cosi I just expected more. I expect drive, lightness, sparkle! Just what the libretto of this slightly silly story requires.

And what we get here is slightly different. Nothing really wrong, beautiful singers, and the COE plays well, but there is the certain “Je ne sais quoi” missing.

I mean, we have with Thomas Hampson and Sonya Yoncheva a beautiful Almaviva couple.

However, both Pisaroni and Karg convince me a bit less. They sound a bit too much Belcanto, and not enough Mozart, if you know what i mean.

And even Nézet, who usually plays so energetically, just takes a slightly lower, heavier tone here with the COE. Nuances, I admit, but I still rather go back to Jacobs, Erich Kleiber, or James Levine at the Met.

I’m curious to hear if these are only my personal impressions, or if you share them. Please agree or disagree with me in the comments section!

My rating: 4 stars (it is still very much worth owning, may just not be the best out there)

You can find it here (Qobuz) and here (Prestoclassical)

UPDATE Aug 15: Gramophone agrees with me in their September 2016 issue, saying that “the drama slips through his [Nézet-Séguin’s] fingers at some places.

May The Wind Be Gentle – Nézet-Séguin’s Cosi Fan Tutte

Three HUGE gaps to fill on my blog: haven’t yet written about Mozart, haven’t talked about a single opera, and haven’t yet mentioned one of my favorite young conductors, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. How convenient is it that I can fill all three gaps in one go, with Nézet-Séguin’s 2013 recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe of Cosi Fan Tutte.

Me and Opera

Some introductory words first: my background is certainly much more in instrumental classical music than in opera. I can “blame” my parents in a way, they constantly listened to classical music at home, so I grew up with pretty much the entire classical spectrum in my young ears. However, both don’t like opera, so I had to acquire that taste myself much later. To this day, the first thing I’ll notice on an opera recording, is the orchestral playing. So my judgment is heavily biased to this part. I’m much more tolerant to individual slightly weaker singers. I know true opera buffs are singers first, orchestra second.

Nézet-Séguin and Mozart

These days, there are hardly any new opera recordings released. You can’t blame the music industry, the cost of an opera production is huge obviously, and the returns in the shrinking classical market are not what they were in the heydays of “Perfect Sound Forever” when everybody re-bought everything on CD; or even in the great 50s-60s, when all the great operas were all recorded for the first time in Stereo on LP, and many of these recordings are still of reference quality. Luckily, the young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin got a deal with Deutsche Gramophon to record 7 Mozart operas. DG is piggy-backing here on existing performances at the Baden-Baden festival. So far, they have released 3, Don Giovanni, Die Entführung aus den Serail (to be released these days), next will be Le Nozze di Figaro (can’t wait) which is being recorded these days.

Thus Do All Women (no shitstorm please, it’s just the English translation of the title)

I just love Mozart’s operas. They are among the most beautiful things he’s ever written, and to me THE best operas out there. Cosi has a very special place in my heart. The story is obviously a bit silly and potentially slightly sexist, but who cares with this kind of music. And luckily my Italian is bad enough that I can switch it of and don’t have to follow the lyrics if I don’t concentrate on it. There are so many beautiful parts, I can’t even list them all. So let me just stick to my favorite part of all, the Terzettino “Soave Sia Il Vento”, gentle be the wind. where the two female protagonist wish their male companions smooth sailing in their fake trip to war. This could easily be among my top10 most beautiful musical pieces ever (actually I’ve just written a post about just that here).

Nézet’s Cosi

What is there to say about this particular recording? Well first of all, the orchestral playing of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is outstanding. So as said above, this already gives me 80% of what I’m looking for in Opera. Nézet is consistent with his typical style, which can be summarized as “reasonably fast” and most of all “tight” (not sure if I’m making sense here), in a nutshell, he’s always in control, and there is always great tension. Personally I like all the protagonists singer here, although I’ve seen several reviews criticizing Roberto Villazon especially. That said, Gramophone had this album shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards.

Overall rating: 5 stars

You can download the album here (I recommend the 24/96 high-res version) or buy the physical CD here.