Patricia Petibon / Michael Boder / Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu ALBAN BERG Lulu (mkv / 320 kbps)

ALBAN BERG (1885-1935) : LULU (2DVD)

Opera in three acts, after the tragedies Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box by Frank Wedekin. Orchestration of the third act completed by Friederich Cerha.

Patricia Petibon is Lulu to the life.

She sings Berg’s taxing music with easy, tonal beauty; the roles numerous acuti pose no problem. As The Weekend Australian observed: “Her top register, in particular, has a rich, luminous quality ... that she exploits to great effect”.

Lulu is opera’s rawest exposition of the fatal risks of untamed erotic power. No man who meets Lulu does not want her − but, like the wind, she cannot be possessed. As happens to the heroine herself, the men who attempt to subdue her, and the one woman who also adores her, are destroyed by the flip side of the life force that pours through Lulu: death.

This is one of the most remarkable productions of the 21st century – matched by the remarkable Patricia Petibon. Acclaim for this Lulu: “Using her light, supple voice like a musical instrument, Petibon slithers into each successive skin with which Olivier Py sheathes this timeless mythic character” (Le Figaro). “The French director presents a terrifying tragedy, with a colourful human circus ... Petibon has the right degree of sensuality and a highly charged style...” (Opera).

This live DVD of the Liceu’s 2010 hit production by Olivier Py also stars Franz Grundheber and Julia Juon. Michael Boder’s conducting brings out the sensuality and psychological disequilibrium of Berg’s 12-tone score.

The New York Times praised Petibon’s “earthy rawness”.

Interpreters

Patricia Petibon . Julia Juon . Paul Groves

Ashley Holland . Will Hartmann . Robert Worle

Franz Grundheber . Andreas Hörl . Silvia de la Muela

Symphony Orchesttra of the Gran Teatre de Liceu

Michael Boder

Format: mkv (Part I: 2 files / Part II: 3 files)

Language : German

Subtitles: German (Original Language), English, French, Spanish, Catalan

A co-production of the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Directed for television and video by François Roussillon. Recording : Liceu, Barcelona, 2010

2011 Deutsche Grammophon

Anne-Sophie Mutter / Lambert Orkis BRAHMS The Violin Sonatas (CD 38 / ASM35)

Anne-Sophie Mutter: The first time I came across the Brahms sonatas was very much at the beginning of my musical life, I’d just started to play the violin. I was five and a half years old, and David Oistrakh visited Basle. He was playing the three Brahms sonatas with Frieda Bauer, I was totally immersed in the music. And it was not only David Oistrakh’s personality, the warmth of sound and the lushness of expression, and of course the love for the violin, which was deepened by this concert, but it was Brahms’s music which was engraved from that moment on as something perfectly suited for the violin, understanding the singing quality of this instrument. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I started to play the Brahms sonatas. There have always been cycles in my life where I’ve dedicated time to one particular composer, like the Mozart cycle we did a few years ago, or the Beethoven cycle in ’98. So there was this period in my early teenage years where I was very dedicated to Brahms - the Violin Concerto, the Double Concerto, because I recorded them with Herbert von Karajan, and the Brahms violin sonatas.

Lambert Orkis: As far as my first experiences with the violin sonatas go, it was not so much of a listening but a playing experience. It was at Curtis. I was a young man, maybe fourteen or fifteen, and a fellow student needed a pianist to read through the “Rain” Sonata for his lesson. I went in there basically thinking I was going to sight-read this piece. And it was: Oh, my! This is more than I bargained for. Brahms’s pianism is very rich. I didn’t know then but realize now that it was very much influenced by his choral writing. The voice-leading is fantastic in Brahms. And don’t you find that these sonatas are quite different from the Beethoven and Mozart sonatas for the same combination? It’s not that there’s a lack of dialogue, but there tends to be more of a realization of what each instrument is really best at doing. And he certainly knows how to create moods using the various abilities of the instruments. You can whisper so much. The piano can whisper, too, but I also have the pedal to create this almost Impressionistic gloss. And those moments of quiet, when that whispering comes in with this kind of mist that the piano’s capable of creating, that’s Brahmsian.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Beethoven was a rotten composer for the fiddle in terms of comfort. But Brahms really knew how to embrace the violin, and he learned quite a bit from knowing Joseph Joachim from the age of twenty.

Lambert Orkis: However, Brahms was a pianist, not a violinist. It’s a kind of truism that Brahms’s piano writing is not necessarily pianistic. In fact, in many ways it’s considered clumsy. There are just fistfuls of notes, and they don’t serve any kind of self-glorification. Rather, it’s serving musical functions. And Brahms would send these sonatas to Clara Schumann. He really trusted her instincts. With the D minor Sonata he goes so far as to say that, if you don’t like it, I won’t play it. Of the three sonatas, that is probably the most complex for the piano, especially the first movement and the last movement.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I can’t say which of the three sonatas is the most difficult one for me as a violinist because each has its very specific characteristics, which you have to meet.

Lambert Orkis: Sometimes I hear that you’re more concerned about the G major, just from an instrument’s health point of view, whether or not you’re going to have whistles because of the humidity, dryness . . .

Anne-Sophie Mutter: That’s true, because I have to play it so delicately that the horse hair of the bow is very much under the influence of humidity.

Lambert Orkis: That influences my playing of the G major as well, the last movement with those very delicate raindrops: if the humidity rises or falls, it can really affect how the repetition on the piano works. People ask why we rehearse so much: because of these changes.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: To me, the G major holds a very special place because it’s such a private piece; it uses Clara Schumann’s favourite Regenlied punctuated theme for all three movements. Clara had just lost another child, and her son Felix had tuberculosis. So she was in a very bad state of mind, and Brahms wanted to give her this sonata to comfort her.

Lambert Orkis: He sent it to her, and apparently she was so taken with it that she was in tears.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: The A major Sonata, which was written eight years later, is much sunnier. Brahms had his eye on a soprano and was once again on vacation on Lake Thun. He was tremendously fond of composing while on holiday. All three sonatas were written in this way. The A major Sonata is very open, very joyous, the exact opposite of the G major piece, with two very difficult Vivaces and a wonderfully cantabile final movement that sounds almost like a welcome greeting to Frau Spies, whose arrival he was expecting. The D minor Sonata was begun at the same time and can be described as a concerto for violin and piano, with very dark features, almost demonic, a wonderful Adagio, an eerie Scherzo and a Presto just like a tornado, which Lambert and I regularly throw ourselves into at the end of a long evening.

Lambert Orkis: There’s more complexity in a certain way in the D minor, and maybe he’s getting more clever with the use of his materials. Brahms has always been somewhat clumsy for the piano. In the D minor Sonata he achieves his musical demands with the usual great leaps on the keys and lots of big chords. But it’s written in a much more masterly fashion. It’s as though he has finally discovered a better way of achieving his musical goals.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: For the violin I can’t say such a thing, it’s just as equally perfectly shaped, maybe because it wasn’t his instrument and Joachim was such a tremendous influence. We have played these sonatas for twenty years. Of course, my view of Brahms, my view on anything I play today has changed. I have a deeper understanding of music and, if you want it or not, life does leave its marks not only in your brain but in your heart and in your soul, the understanding of things deepens. And in the case of the sonatas I do see in the interaction between us much more awareness for details, for sound colours, for interwoven dialogues.

Lambert Orkis: We’ve learned them, we’ve lived with them, and we’ve played them on various continents together, and we go through life experience, and now we’d bring it all to this music. Brahms is a composer who’s not showing off: he’s showing life, beauty, art. It’s wonderful.

(The conversation was recorded on 4 December 2009)

Angela Hewitt BACH Fantasia and Fugue in A minor / Aria Variata / Sonata in D Major / Suite in F minor and other works (15 / 15)

Angela Hewitt writes … On this, the last planned CD of solo keyboard works by Johann Sebastian Bach in my cycle for Hyperion, I have put together a programme of separate pieces from different periods of Bach’s life. I am well aware that there are others that I have not included, but, with the exception of The Art of Fugue and the two Ricercars from The Musical Offering (as well as the easy pieces from the Anna Magdalena Notebook), I believe these to be ‘the best of the rest’. Arranged as they are on this CD, they also show Bach’s great variety of form, style, influence and scope.

Two pieces entitled Fantasia and Fugue in A minor begin and end this recording. They probably date from the end of Bach’s stay in Weimar (1714–1717) because of their similarity to the big organ works known to have been composed at that time, and to his wonderful Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV903, for harpsichord. The first one, BWV904, does indeed seem like an organ piece at times. It is not hard to imagine the descending bass at the opening of the fantasia doubled by the pedals, giving it even more gravity and weight than it already has. (Some pianists try to imitate this by adding the extra octave, but this is a case where that can only be done with the addition of a lot of sustaining pedal, thus blurring the wonderful counterpoint.) It is marked alla breve and resembles the stile antico style of writing (the Baroque adaptation of Renaissance polyphony). The opening ritornello appears four times with three interspersed episodes, all emphasizing the contrapuntal nature of the piece. The fugue has two subjects: the first boldly characterized by leaps and punctuated by rests; the second a slow, descending chromatic scale that makes a dramatic appearance halfway through. They could not be more different. But that is exactly what Bach wants, especially when he combines the two in the final section. That way there are easily distinguishable. Making that audible to the listener, however, is not easy as his counterpoint in this case is awkward and doesn’t lie well under the fingers. It is thought that Bach was not responsible for placing these two movements together; in fact they don’t appear that way until early in the nineteenth century – and then only by accident. However, I don’t think we would realize this if we didn’t already know, as they make such good companions.

Angela Hewitt BACH The Toccatas (14 / 15)

The Toccata in C minor, BWV911 opens with a flourish, and quickly establishes the no-nonsense mood that pervades the work. A motet-like adagio then appears, the end of which returns briefly to the improvisatory style of the beginning. The rest of the toccata is taken up by one of Bach’s longest but most arresting fugues. Its very extended subject, with the teasing repetition of the opening motive, is typical of his younger years. After already going on for four pages, he introduces, after a pause, a second subject that is a terrific accompaniment to the original one, adding rhythmic impulse and excitement. Not quite content to end there, Bach returns briefly to an adagio, only to let loose in the final line with a presto descent to a low C.

The Toccata in G major, BWV916 is different from the others in that it is clearly in three movements. The opening allegro is somewhat concerto-like in its use of solo and ritornello passages. Scales, broken chords, and cascading solid chords are used to make a brilliant opener. The second movement is a lyrical adagio in E minor where a fair amount of embellishment seems to be called for. The Bärenreiter edition gives no fewer than three different versions – including one by Bach’s son Johann Christoph. The final fugue (marked ‘Allegro e presto’) is a gigue in the French style, using the characteristic dotted rhythm. Like many of Bach’s early fugues, this one has some passages that are awkward to play, yet it certainly doesn’t lack charm. At the end the texture unravels very quickly, leaving us surprised at the finish.

The Toccata in F sharp minor, BWV910 is, I think, the least well-known of the seven. It’s written in an unusual key for Bach’s time, and contains two fugues, quite different in character. After the ‘warming up’ section of scales and descending figures (which would certainly not be out of place on the organ), we come to a noble adagio that is very chromatic, the subject of which will reappear in the final fugue in a different guise. The rhythm is that of a sarabande. Bach’s embellishments seem only to be a start, and the performer can certainly add more here according to his taste. The first of the fugues is marked ‘Presto e staccato’ and its pointed subject no more than a descending scale with a short cadential trill attached. The semiquavers around it add brilliance. There is some rhythmic interest in a hemiola passage which suddenly sounds as though the time signature has switched from four to three beats in the bar. Following that, we have a rather startling section in which the same arpeggiando figure is stated 21 times in a strange series of harmonic progressions, a procedure we also find in the D minor toccata. This leads us to the final fugue in 6/8 time, where the chromatic theme of the adagio is livened up, but made to be no less expressive. Wanda Landowska writes of the toccatas as being ‘incoherent and disparate’ at first sight, mentioning this toccata as an example of that. The difficulty is in finding their shape. She goes on to say: ‘What strikes us above all is the unrelenting insistence with which Bach holds on to a motive, repeating it indefatigably on every step of the scale.’ That is certainly true, though the writing, as shown in this toccata, is nevertheless impassioned.

The Toccata in E minor, BWV914 is another well-constructed and appealing work. The main curiosity here is the origin of the concluding fugue. Large parts of it seem to be borrowed directly from an anonymous composition discovered in a Naples manuscript. The subject, which certainly has elements of the Italian violin style, is almost identical. The episodes, however, contain material by Bach that is more refined and complex than anything written by the mysterious Italian. Preceding it are three sections: a brief introduction in the lower register of the keyboard; a double fugue marked ‘Un poco Allegro’; and a cadenza-like adagio that is written over a descending bass line. The latter is marked ‘Praeludium’ in one copy made by a Bach student, which leads us to think that it was perhaps, along with the fugue, an independent composition before being recycled as part of the toccata.

The Toccata in D minor, BWV913 was possibly the first to be composed. It is one of the longest of the seven but, in a lively interpretation, holds our interest throughout. The counterpoint in its two fugues is slightly less complicated, making it easier for students to grasp. The other sections, however, require an excellent sense of timing and understanding of harmonic progressions which need to be innate. There are quick changes of mood and tempo in the opening pages, the bulk of which are occupied by a passage including the ‘sighing’ motif that was very prevalent at the time (and which we also hear in the early Capriccio on the Departure of his Beloved Brother, BWV992). Both fugues are built on fairly short subjects that stay rooted in D minor, rapidly moving from voice to voice. The concluding one is very orchestral in style, ending abruptly in the major key. In between the fugues we have another of those curious bridge passages where Bach seems to wander (as much as he ever wanders!) from key to key, repeating the same figuration. In this case the wandering has the effect of calming us down, and preparing us for the final allegro.

The Toccata in G minor, BWV915 has many distinctive features, including a cyclic feeling (the opening flourish returns at the end of the piece), and a concluding four-part fugue that obstinately remains in dotted rhythm throughout. In between we have a short adagio, and a cheerful allegro in B flat major which is in total contrast to the difficult, but very exciting fugue. Concerning the latter, only Bach could write so imaginatively on what seems at first like a very dull subject. With him, repetition of a motive only builds excitement and strength rather than causing us to lose attention. This is one fugue that, for me, is a perfect example of what the piano can bring to Bach. On the harpsichord it is relentless. On the piano one can lighten the second and fourth beats, giving the subject a welcome buoyancy which serves to enhance its power and character. The episodes can also be coloured differently, especially the one in E flat major which provides some welcome relief. The insistent character of the fugue is emphasized in a passage right before the end where part of the countersubject is presented in both hands simultaneously in parallel thirds.

The Toccata in D major, BWV912 is no doubt the most popular today. The brilliant opening bars, reminiscent of the Prelude and Fugue, BWV532 for organ in the same key, already contain a tremolo figure that will reappear later on. Then comes an allegro that happily exchanges the motifs between treble and bass. After its final flourish, Bach introduces an adagio in recitative style – the melody being interrupted by the tremolo figure, now heard as a distant murmur rather than a brilliant rattle. An expressive bridge, using the ‘sigh’ motif, leads us into a fairly tranquil fugue in F sharp minor. Another transition, this time marked ‘con discrezione’, suddenly turns into a presto in which the excitement can hardly be contained. It then breaks loose into a gigue fugue of tremendous energy and rhythm. Then Bach goes one step further and writes a truly virtuoso passage to finish with – or at least almost, as he returns to the improvised adagio style for the final cadence.

Angela Hewitt © 2002

Anne-Sophie Mutter / Daniel Müller-Schott / André Previn MOZART Piano Trios K. 502, 542, 548 (CD 35 / ASM35)

Anne-Sophie Mutter describes Mozart as “the composer I have grown up with, who was always there waiting for me at every juncture of my career”; and she quotes with approval Tchaikovsky’s description of Mozart’s music as “filled with unapproachable, divine beauty”. For this latest instalment of her Mozart project, conceived to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, she has chosen the three finest works among his half-dozen completed trios for violin, cello and piano. In these, he developed the medium beyond its original conception as an accompanied keyboard sonata, giving the cello and, especially, the violin a much greater degree of independence, and so putting the latter on what Ms. Mutter calls “a level of equality” with the piano. She adds: “This is Mozart writing for pure enjoyment – his own included – in the best sense of the word.”

There is a hint that Mozart might have partaken of that enjoyment as a player in the postscript of a letter he wrote to his friend and fellow-Freemason Michael Puchberg in June 1788, around the time he completed the E major Trio, K.542: “When are we to have a little musical party at your house again? I have composed a new trio!” But his relish for private music-making during his later years in Vienna must have been clouded by his recurring financial problems. The same letter to Puchberg also contains a plea for a loan to be repaid over the next year or two, and for an immediate advance to help him out of a temporary difficulty. These three piano trios were presumably composed with the primary intention of improving Mozart’s long-term financial situation, since he sold them to his regular Viennese publisher Artaria: they were issued in November 1788 as his op. 15.

In fact, this set was completed at the same time as Mozart was composing his last three symphonies, nos. 39 to 41, which may also have been written with one eye on the possibility of publication. And, with the trios as with the symphonies, Mozart seems to have gone out of his way to create a triptych of pieces with strongly defined and differentiated characters – something which he ensured not least by his choice of keys.

The first of the three, completed well before the others in November 1786, is in B flat major – a key which seems to have been something of a favourite of Mozart’s, and one which usually conveys a sense of robust well-being. An oddity of Mozart’s use of it is the number of sonata-form first movements in B flat in which the first and second subjects are closely related, but a brand new theme is introduced at the start of the development section – as happens here, with the initial idea in sweet parallel thirds dominating the opening exposition section, and a new lyrical melody on the violin at the double-bar. The slow movement, in the warm, solid key of E flat major, is in triple time; its recurring main theme begins with an upbeat of three quavers (eighth-notes), and so do the themes of the subsidiary episodes, which makes possible some neat overlapping between sections and, later, between individual phrases. The finale has a main theme in gavotte time with two crotchet (quarter-note) upbeats; as Alfred Einstein pointed out in his study of the composer, this movement begins “like the rondo of a concerto, as if with a solo passage, piano, answered by a tutti passage, forte, but without any sacrifice of the finely wrought detail of chamber music”.

The key of the second trio, E major, is rare in the classical period and has something ethereal about it, as if its distance from more common tonalities removes the music from everyday reality. In the opening movement – in a smoothly flowing triple time, like the first Allegro of the Symphony no. 39 in E flat which Mozart also wrote in June 1788 – this feeling of remoteness is pointed up by an unexpected modulation towards the end of the exposition, from B major to the more down-to-earth G major; Mozart repeats this exactly in the recapitulation, from E to C, so that we can again enjoy the surprise, and appreciate the ingenuity with which he works his way back to his tonal starting-point. The delicate central movement, in a 2/4 version of gavotte time, is in a limpid A major, with a middle section in A minor which includes a haunting series of key-changes anticipating Schubert’s poetic use of modulation. The rondo finale, with its jaunty violin triplets and brilliant piano passage-work, makes a more determined attempt at jollity than the other two movements; but even here the violin’s C sharp minor melody in the central episode strikes a note of tender seriousness which is never wholly dispelled.

Mozart entered the last of the three trios in his catalogue of his works in July 1788 – less than a month before his last symphony, the so-called “Jupiter”, which is in the same open, serious, ceremonial key of C major. The first movement of the Trio indeed shows some affinities with that of the Symphony, in its strong opening gesture, followed by a gentle answer, and in the restlessness of its development section. The slow movement, like that of the Symphony, is an Andante cantabile in F major and in 3/4 time; its serene flow is merely ruffled by patches of lightly touched-in demisemiquavers (thirty-second-notes), but is disturbed for a moment by the sternly dramatic octaves after the half-way double-bar. The last movement, rather than adopting the sonata form and fugal texture of the “Jupiter” finale, is a rondo in dancing 6/8 time – though it is still closely worked in the manner of the Symphony, with the arpeggio figure of the main theme passed round all three members of the ensemble almost to the end.

Anthony Burton

Angela Hewitt BACH Goldberg Variations (13 / 15)

At the outset we hear the Aria; the G major Sarabande 3/4 from ‘Anna Magdalena’s Notebook’. This has an elaborate treble line, already a variation above the bass. Tovey observed of the Aria: ‘Its phrasing is as uniform as a chess-board; and if its harmonies had not a one-to-one correspondence with each variation, the form would be lost.’

Variation 1 3/4 is a duet with a quaver figure in the left hand, a semiquaver in the right, and the two interchanged. Rosalyn Tureck sees it as ‘an archway’ to the subsequent unfolding of Bach’s vast, expressive structure. With Variation 2 2/4 Bach introduces a delicate three-part cantabile; the upper parts pursuing a imitative dialogue, at variance with the bass line.

Variation 3 becomes the first of Bach’s canons; his canon on the unison 12/8. A trio with even-handed upper parts; these voices cross paths and through the bass its harmony is kept in motion. A constant overlapping of entries characterizes the ensuing four-part 3/8 fugal discourse with a sole three-note figure and its inversion.

The next, extrovert 3/4 duet called for two keyboards ‘a 1 Clav’ and ‘a 2 Clav’ as Bach originally dictated (Balthasar and Schmid) in his reference to the seperate manuals. A bouyant variation with frequent crossing of hands.

Variation 6. At the Canon on the second 3/8 we are on serene territory while upper discords resolve naturally to a third against a striding bass.

There follows a thematic duet 6/8; Bach’s sole variation in the manner of a binary gigue; commonly an animated fourth movement of the classical French-style suite.

Variation 8—yet another duet 3/4, originally assigned to the second manual. The first pair of statements are eventually inverted.

Bach’s ‘Canon in the third’ 4/4 is an essay in consonance with the bass more unconstrained, yet still making regular reference to the original harmony.

Variation 10 is a four-part fughetta 2/2. The four-part bass theme reminds us plainly of Bach’s harmonic starting point.

More outwardly virtuosic duet writing 2/2 characterizes Variation 11.

With the Canon in the fourth 3/4 entries are re-ordered and themes capriciously inverted in the latter half. Here the inversion is as clear and expressive as its original form. Bach must have smiled inwardly at his tacit, jestful approach to the prevailing formal structure.

In his embellished aria for Variation 13 Bach proceeds 3/4 with a rich, lyrical upper statement and the lower accompanying voices doubled; its style is ornamental throughout.

The 14th Variation is an outgoing duet calling for dazzling fingerwork 3/4. Each of four statements is eventually inverted.

With the Canon in the fifth and inversion 2/4 the work has deepened and a more elegiac note appears. This more sober, strongly emotional, chromatic writing finishes not on the conventional tonic, as one might expect, but on the fifth; ascending as one commentator remarks ‘into silence’.

Variation 16 is a bold, massive, French-style overture 2/2, still in binary form and generally regarded as Bach’s preparatory nod toward part two of the Aria and Variations. In strict form, as introduced by Lully (1685), the variation opens with dotted rhythms and ends with an accelerated fugue, in this instance the 3-part fughetta 2.

A straightforward yet highly complex duet 3/4 forms Variation 17.

It is followed by Bach’s Canon in the sixth 2/2. As the canonic parts move in sixths with the pause of a minim, accents of the upper parts are reversed. Resulting suspended discords give variation 18 a distinctive harmonic ‘thumbprint’. The polyphony is further ‘clarified’ and the Variation’s original bass also evident within the canonic lines.

In the trio 3/8 of Variation 19 brief figures (quaver and semiquaver) are periodically interchanged as the Variation progresses.

Bach’s duets become increasingly virtuosic as Variation 20 demonstrates. This one 3/4 has fast semiquaver triplets in two of its three sets of figures.

Canon in the seventh. A gentle, contemplative mood 4/4 is established as the closely-spaced parts succeed one another.

Variation No 22 is a four-part fugue 2/2; its guileless motif builds up with inexorable, structural splendour to full, ringing chords.

An exuberant, comic duet 3/4 with dashing double third and double sixth figures; Variation 23 includes tongue-in-cheek mordents and sobriety is cast to the winds.

Canon in the octave 9/8. This rural theme and answer proceeds with an aura of timelessness, while the melody moves to adjacent notes.

Variation 25: this highly charged G minor Variation 3/4 is a powerful, profoundly tragic utterance. A further embellished aria: the brilliant, chromatic bass structure and the unusually specific treble melody interact with unsettling intensity, almost threatening tonal stability.

Bach combines both duet and trio 3/4 in his 26th Variation. A two-part Sarabande is woven around with coursing triplet figurations.

Here, with the final Canon in the ninth 6/8 the bass is silent; the mood relaxed.

Both No 28 3/4 and the following Variation anticipate the work’s conclusion. Here the part-writing is supplanted in part by complex two-part embellishments. Karl Geiringer notes that this Variation and No 29 appear to anticipate a nineteenth-century style of keyboard writing.

With the penultimate Variation excitement is further heightened in chord sequences and fleet-fingered one-part passages.

Variation 30. At this point we might reasonably expect to discover a canon at the 10th. Instead Bach confounds and delights with his Quodlibet, a divertissement on popular tunes, rounding off the work in a genuine mood of humour and congeniality. It recalls the social fun enjoyed by the Bach family and their friends. The principal quodlibet tunes are German folksongs: ‘I have not been with you for so long’ and ‘Cabbage (Kraut) and turnips (Ruben) have driven me away’. The German saying ‘Durcheinander wie Kraut und Rüben’ can also mean ‘in complete confusion’ and some commentators believe this more idiomatic translation is clear evidence of Bach’s own (intentional) hearty laughter when recollecting the complexity of all that precedes his quodlibet.

Beneath the fugal treatment of these folk tunes Bach returns to his original bass. In doing so he leads listeners back to that generating Aria, the life source from whence these encompassing Variations stemmed and to which they now return. Finally, via immeasurable complexities, their wellspring is enhanced and re-invested with a profound, affirmative sense of renewal. For many listeners these closing sequences are the work’s most surpassing.

from notes by Howard Smith © 1992

Gustavo Dudamel / Los Angeles Philharmonic THE INAUGURAL CONCERT (mp4 / AAC 320 kbps)

LOS ANGELES — That Gustavo Dudamel began his tenure as the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with a free concert last Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl, a multicultural community love fest, will always be a point of pride for citizens here.

Mr. Dudamel’s much-anticipated official inaugural came on Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a formidable program with Mahler’s First Symphony and the premiere of a new work by John Adams. This was a black-tie gala, complete with a red- carpet procession of celebrities and patrons, and a South American-themed post-concert dinner in a makeshift tent set up outside the hall, smack in the middle of South Grand Avenue.

For all of Mr. Dudamel’s innate abilities to connect with audiences and inspire young people, he was hired to conduct a major American orchestra. The 10-minute ovation that erupted at the end of the Mahler made clear that supporters of the Los Angeles Philharmonic are thrilled with their new 28-year-old music director. But this was an exceptional and exciting concert by any standard.

Making a telling artistic statement, Mr. Dudamel began his tenure conducting the premiere of the new Adams piece, “City Noir,” a bustling, complex 35-minute work in three movements: the final panel in a triptych of orchestral works inspired by what Mr. Adams calls the “California experience,” its “landscape and its culture.” (The first two are “El Dorado” and “The Dharma at Big Sur,” a violin concerto.) 

The piece was suggested, Mr. Adams has written, by the richly evocative books on California’s social history by Kevin Starr, especially a chapter called “Black Dahlia,” which explores the sassy, shoddy and sensational era of the 1940s and ’50s, which gave rise to film noir. It is not easy to evoke the milieu of an era in music. But this score was also inspired by jazz-inflected American symphonic music of the 1920s through the ’50s, from Gershwin to Copland to Bernstein, something that is a lot easier to evoke.

Mr. Adams does so brilliantly in this searching, experimental de facto symphony. The first movement, “The City and Its Double,” begins with a wash of orchestral sound, murmuring motifs and rhythmic shards. Scurrying figurations break out and whirl around, getting stuck in place one moment, spiraling off frenetically the next. Is this harmonically astringent be-bop or weird echoes of a Baroque toccata?

Eventually the violins begin a winding, sometimes aimless-sounding episode of fitful, churning lines. Mr. Adams has become a master at piling up materials in thick yet lucid layers. Moment to moment the music is riveting. Yet, as in some other Adams scores, I found it hard to discern the structural spans and architecture of this one.

The pensive second movement, “The Song Is for You,” with its hazy sonorities, slithering chords, sultry jazzy solos and undulant riffs, does somehow convey California. The third movement, “Boulevard Night,” begins languorously but soon erupts, all jagged, quirky and relentless. Call it “The Rite of Swing.”

Mr. Dudamel, gyrating on the podium and in control at every moment, drew a cranked-up yet subtly colored performance of this challenging score from his eager players. He seemed so confident dispatching this metrically fractured work that I was drawn into the music, confident that a pro was on the podium.

Like Mr. Dudamel’s Beethoven Ninth at the Hollywood Bowl, the Mahler performance was not what you might expect from a young conductor. For all the sheer energy of the music-making, here was a probing, rigorous and richly characterized interpretation, which Mr. Dudamel conducted from memory. The suspenseful opening of the first movement, with its sustained tones and cosmic aura, had uncannily calm intensity. But when bird calls and genial folk tunes signaled the awakening of nature, the music had disarming breadth and guileless tenderness. And Mr. Dudamel was all ready-set-go when Mahler’s wildness broke out.

In the rustic second movement, he captured the music’s beery, galumphing charm, and milked the Viennese lyricism with the panache of a young Bernstein. He and his players uncovered the slightly obsessive quality of the songful slow movement, with its droning repetition of tonic-dominant bass patterns. And he viscerally conveyed the fits and starts of the mercurial finale, building to a brassy climactic fanfare almost scary in its ecstasy.

The musicians were with him all the way, though the playing was rough at times, with patchy string tone and scrappy execution. For all the important accomplishments, of Mr. Dudamel’s predecessor, Esa-PekkaSalonen, he was not the most gifted orchestra builder. The vitality of the playing was always inspiring. No one wants the slick virtuosity that some orchestras are content with. Still, Mr. Dudamel and his players may have work to do.

At the end, as a confetti shower of Mylar strips fell from the ceiling, Mr. Dudamel returned to the stage again and again. But he never took a solo bow from the podium. Instead, he stood proudly with his players on stage. (By Anthony Tommasini / Published: October 9, 2009/ New York Times)