Music Highlights for 2008...

Its that time of year when everyone seems to have a list of something to display. Here's mine fot the past musical year....in the USA and Europe.

1. Joyce DiDonato at Rose Hall, Lincoln Center
This was my first chance to hear this amazing American mezzo-soprano live.
This is a stunning voice..supple,beautiful mid-range, and glorious top...one almost feels she is a lyric soprano at times. But the darker side of her voice keeps her firmly in the mezzo range, even if it is hard to believe the bravura that she dispatches coloratura passages in Rossini. Her Rosina in "The Barber of Seville" is unsurpassed today, and her Octavian in "Der Rosenkavalier" is no less exciting. On the Web I also heard a superb Donna Elvira from "Don Giovanni" at Covent Garden. Her career is based more in Europe than America, but that is changing rapidly with an appearance with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, a tour de force concert of Handel mad scenes ... "Furore" ..again at Carnegie, and an appearance with the New York Philharmonic all upcoming in the first part of 2009.
Perhaps I am just prejudiced, but she is a hometown girl, growing up in Kansas City in the same neighborhood I lived in from age 13 on. In any case, a major American artist in her prime.

2. Karita Matila as "Salome" from the Met (Theatercast)
This was possibly the most direct portrait of depravity I will ever experienced. The white heat of the Richard Strauss score met its match in this performance. It is hard to call it that...it was in truth a complete identification with the role. Not only was it vocally superb, it was an acting triumph. The sheer physicality of her interpretation left one stunned and drained. She dominated the stage, covering every square inch of it with her athletic movements...seeming at times like a demented tiger on the loose. After being presented with the head of John The Baptist, she ended up in a crazy ecstasy, lying flat on her back with her head hanging into the orchestra pit. At the close everyone sat frozen in their seats, unable to get up.

3. Berlin Philharmonic "Scharoun Ensemble" at the Zermatt Festival, Switzerland
Two performances stood out this August at the Zermatt Festival. First was the Schbert Octet for Strings and Winds, a work that I heard many years ago at the Aspen Festival, and had not heard since. Written in 1824, this is a huge six movement work of enormous emotional range. Some feel it was a preparation work for his Symphony in C Major "The Great" which he began shortly after composing this octet. It was full of the long lines and varied harmonic questings that dominant his style in his late works. What struck me in this performance was the sheer joy in the work, and how closely the Berlin Philharmonic players identify with Schubert's style. The second performance was Schoenberg's "Verklarte Nacht" in its original version for small chamber ensemble. The sheer intensity of the writing was virtually laid bare, and the beauty of the individual lines came through with a completely different aspect than in the big orchestral version. In this case, less was much, much more.

4. Martha Argerich performing Beethoven Concerto No.1 from Lugano Festival.
Heard in live performance over NPR, Argerich amazed with the freshness, directness, and sheer musicality she brought to this often neglected work, more in the student's domain today then the artist's. This tempermental artist, who often cancels at the last minute, is completely at home at her own piano festival each June in Lugano, Switzerland. What strikes me about a performance such as this is how immediately the attention is focused, and how the energy never flags. She seemed to relish what others often neglect: the constant need for surprising dynamics, the eveness of finger passage work, and the courage to make it into a really big work, with an amazing cadenza at the close of the first movement. It is startling to realize that someone you heard at the start of their career in the late 1950's, is now a matronly woman with long gray hair!

5. Tchaikowsky "Fourth Symphony" with New York Philharmonic conduced by Lorin Maazel, London Proms. BBC
Always controversial, Maazel has lead some superb performances during his final days with the NY Phil. Although the English critics hated this performance, I was galvanized by the vituosity of the orchestra, and how Maazel drove them to a frenzy. Thats always a problem between the USA and the UK. The English get very uncomfortable with such vigor and unabashed emotion. Maazel let them have it between the eyes, even though their eyebrows had long since fallen off by the last movement.
A stunning performance of "Die Walkure" from the Met Opera, which drew lavish praise from the critics, confirmed the fact that Maazel was overlooked for two decades there, and could have been of much greater use. Very sad, and rather typical when you become controversial.