Theatre of the World: Review of Reviews

Survey of reviews in Dutch press by Frits van der Waa:

As was to be expected, the premiere of Theatre of the World attracted national and international attention, and was generally greeted with acclaim. Most of the leading  Dutch newspapers reported on it. There was a lot of praise for the music and the performers, but less so for the libretto and the staging.

 ‘A masterfully eclectic score and one of the best works and of Andriessens late period’, writes Floris Don in NRC Handelsblad. ‘Kircher’s life is mainly an excuse to let the imagination flow as in an lsd-trip. That Audi doesn’t get further than a tangled staging were the characters too often aimlessely wander about is understandable.’

 Trouw’s Peter van der Lint points out that some scense and characters seem superfluous. ‘But for the rest Andriessen rules supreme, with music that makes a lasting impression. The weakest link is Cristina Zavalloni. Her entrances, in a floating votive picture, are marvellous, but her performance is weak, with a hoarse, bleating vibrato.’

 According to Erik Voermans (Het Parool) Kraussers libretto is ‘subtle and witty. The more pity that this wittiness is nowhere to be seen in Audi’s staging.’ He rightfully remarks that the ‘tornado’ erected bij the Brothers Quay makes it impossible to get a good view of the video projection, and thinks that Andriessen ‘brilliant score’ is ‘very heterogenous, fraught with music history, and therefore caleidoscopic’, so that the dramatic line becomes fragmented. ‘But musically, this is Andriessen at his very best, that’s for sure.’

 The critic of De Volkskrant, your present writer, voiced similar objections, but was very enthousiastic about Lindsay Kessellmann’s performance as the Boy, ‘so convincing that is it hardly credible that the person behind all the costumes and masks is a female soprano’.

 ‘This week Carré is the place to be.’ writes Francois van den Anker (operamagazine.nl). He lauds not just Kesselmann, but also Melrose and Beekman. ‘Especially during the first scenes - where the audience sometimes is at a loss which way to look - Melrose provides focus and attentio. (…) Beekman’s pope is reminiscent of the clerics in Fellini’s movie Roma. The tenor is razor sharp in his use of his almost hysterical timbre and shows an impressive expressivity, which makes him the hero of this perfomance.’

 The only Dutch critic who is not convinced by Theatre is Floris Solleveld. In his very-well balanced review on theaterkrant.nl he describes all the interesting and praiseworthy ingredients of the opera, only to establish: ‘But as a perfomance it doesn’t work. The intellectual fascination for Kircher doesn’t come across. There is no book dust here. A magical trip around the world, that the kind of thing we did in school plays.’ Nevertheless, ‘it was a moving sight, when Louis Andriessen and Reinbert de Leeuw embraced each other during the applause; two men who embody the history of the new music in Holland. But I could not avoid thinking: fifty years ago they would have bashed this.’

 The article in the German Neue Musikzeitung (nmz.de) by Frieder Reinighaus is very verbose, hard to translate and not very outspoken. By comparison Shirley Apthorp’s review in TheFinancial Times is short and to the point. ‘It is not Andriessen’s finest work’, she writes. ‘Krausser’s libretto, which veers between German, English, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and French, combines intellectual pretension with incoherence to irritating effect. Andriessen sets it with his characteristic magpie eclecticism. […] Audi tackles the piece in good faith, bringing it an earthy physicality layered with opulent imagery.’ And she concludes: ‘Somewhere between the bass guitar and synthesiser, cheesy melodies and vulgar trombones, Athanasius Kircher is left mired in his multilingual misconceptions. He is Andriessen’s Parsifal, a holy fool sent to redeem humankind on behalf of his composer, but he seems forever lost in his own journey.’

De Materie Review

De Materie, Louis Andriessen, directed by Heiner Goebbels and Peter Rundel. 

August 15, Kraftzentrale, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. Repeat .: 22, 23, 24/8.

Review by Frits van der Waa (published in Dutch in De Volkskrant, Monday, 18 August)

De Materie, Part II Hadewijch, Photo (c) Wonge Bergmann

What have zeppelins to do with the seventeenth-century naval industry, or a flock of sheep with a sonnet by the Dutch poet Willem Kloos? Nothing at all. Nevertheless, the intuitive choices director Heiner Goebbels has made in his staging of Louis Andriessen’s De Materie Copper are convincing. Goebbels, himself a composer, in a way adopts the approach of Andriessen himself, who in 1989 in this four-part piece of music theatre succeeded in connecting the most diverse musical, literary and philosophical elements in a balanced way.

On the first day of the Ruhtriennale, the six-week festival that is led by Goebbels, he treated his audience to a memorable performance. Apart from the first series of performances directed by Robert Wilson at the Dutch Opera De Materie never has been performed in staged form again, up to now. Especially in musical terms, a lot of water has passed under the bridge in those years: the performance by the Ensemble Modern Orchestra and solo and choral singers, conducted by Peter Rundel and enhanced by an excellent sound projection, transcends the already respectable level of previous performances in its rhythmic precision, homogeneity and especially in the blending of the sound colors. In addition, the Duisburg Kraftzentrale with its oversized dimensions turns out to be prove a perfect venue for the "terrible symphony orchestra" that Andriessen had in mind when creeating this work.

De Materie can be seen as an opera in which ideas rather than characters occupy the stage, as a symphony with singing protagonists or as an essay on the relationship between exact thinking, artistic intuition and human emotion: there is no doubt, though, that this work, with its vast architecture, extended arcs, and a musical substance encompassing minimal and maxinmal idioms, requires a form of dramatization, even though it holds its own as 'pure' music as well. It is remarkable that Wilson's visualization twenty-five years ago, mainly made us of a frontal plane, like a shadow play, whereas Goebbels literally goes in-depth. Astounding is the moment in the third part, De Stijl, where in the distance at the back of the hall, two dancers appear, looking so small that they,for a moment, seem little puppets. And in the very part where Wilson introduced a solo piano, moving from left to right across the stage, Goebbels, at first unnoticably, manages to shift the complete orchestra  gradually to the rear and back - a technical achievement thatis almost as inexplicable as the invisible guiding hand that herds the sheep across the plaing field.

With the exception of that swinging third part, in which three luminous discs, decked in Mondrian colors, provide a lively visual play, circling in the air, Goebbels' staging, albeit spectacular, shows marked restraint. In the second part, with the mystic Hadewych as the centralfigure, the minute variations in imagery are almost static. Evgeniya Sotnikova sings the Middle Dutch very convincingly, and tenor Robin Trischler is just as proficient in his delivery of the old-fashioned wordings of the early atomic theorist Gorlaeus. The eight singers of ChorWerk Ruhr are a perfect fit for Andriessens chanted harmonies.

From the relentless hammering in the first part to the serene bell sounds in the fourth, that burgeon to a grand crescendo, Goebels’s staging emphasizes that De Materie is a work of international scope and substance, a magnum opus that Andriessen actually has not surpassed in the intervening years, especially where it comes to the balance between rigor and playfulness, between form and content - a balance that, incidentally, just as twenty-five years ago, is disrupted by the recited monologue by Madame Curie that makes the impression of an an uncomfortable vacuum after all that went before. Inexplicable that a composer who knows so much about the power of music eventually gave primacy to the infinitely weaker force of the spoken word.

The Family Revisited, Review and Concert Video

Frits van der Waa sends the translation of his November Music concert review published in De Volkskrant on October 11th. What follows are fragments of Clazz ensemble playing live at the Dutch Classical Music Meeting - Muziekgebouw aan het IJ - Amsterdam - on October 17th 2011. "The Family Revisited"(1973-2011) and "That happens in Vietnam" are included.

Review:
Den Bosch is now the place to be for new music lovers. The annual festival November Music presents an overview of the latest developments in composed and improvised music. Incongruentially, the first evening of the festival focused on music from the past. The concert by the Clazz Ensemble, labeled His Master’s Choice, offered a concise overview of mostly older works by Louis Andriessen, at 72 still the foremost Dutch composer. The protagonist managed to slip in some new notes, though: only the evening before the concert he tossed off a new violin accompaniment for an Italian song singer Cristina Zavalloni had planned as an in-between. Typically, even a casual composition like this contains the poignant harmonies that are among Andriessens musical fingerprints. Zavalloni and Monica Germino, her peer on the violin, who did some lovely singing as well in Xenia Fragments, gave strong performances of several Andriessen compositions.
There was a real premiere as well, Monument for Graettinger, especially composed for the Clazz Ensemble. Robert Graettinger, arranger for the Stan Kentons Orchestra and composer of a few strikingly revolutionary pieces, is one of Andriessens long-standing idols. The new piece is a short but strong statement, full of gritty, complex harmonies, countrerbalanced with melancholy melodic lines. The Clazz musicians, operating on the boundaries between classical and jazz music (hence the name), had opportunity to add improvisations of their own.
One of the more substantial pieces in this program is The Family Revisited, a forceful new version of the music Andriessen wrote in 1973 for the movie The Family. Arranger Dick de Graaf took the position of the great saxophone player Piet Noordijk, deceased only a month ago, who played many solo parts in the original score. The performance was accompanied with scenes from the movie, which unfortunately turned out to be rather old hat and mainly distracted from the music.

The Family Revisited (1973-2011)




That happens in Vietnam (1972-2011)

Anaïs Nin Review

Frits van der Waa, exclusively for this blog, reports about Amsterdam performance of "Anaïs Nin":

The Dutch premiere of Louis Andriessen's Anaïs Nin was presented Thursday night in a crowded Muziekgebouw - which may be the result of the composers' appearance, the day before in the prime time show De wereld draait door. The new monodrama was performed by ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, who opened the program with Martijn Padding's Mordants en Guus Janssens Hu Hu Baley - excellent music and on a par with LA's work.

The book of Anaïs Nin is culled by Andriessen from Nin's diaries and from writings by Antonin Artaud and René Allendy, two of her lovers. She reminisces about her affairs, notably about her incestuous relationship with her own father, the composer Joaquín Nin. The role of the slightly vapid Anaïs fits Cristina Zavalloni, Louis Andriessen's muse since many years, like a glove. The only props are a chaise longue and a tea tray. Furthermore, director Jeroen de Man, added a video screen, where we can see snippets of Anaïs's past, with spoken quotations. But the audience cannot be swept away by this, because at times the 'tape' is spooled back and forth by Anaïs. In the beginning there is some interplay between music and video, but after some time the music takes over.

The score is certainly among Andriessen's finest, although the piece is at most 45 minutes long. The texture and vocal lines hark back to M is for Man, Music, Mozart (1991), but over the years Andriessen’'s style has become more supple and versatile. Helped by the 8-piece ensemble, fine musicians such as reed players David Kweksilber and Michiel van Dijk, pianist Gerard Bouwhuis and violinist Heleen Hulst, the composer suggests small orchestral miracles. At the same time, the music contains subtle traces of older music, like Weill's songs from the thirties, or American fifties' jazz. Beneath the surface, there's a lot going on, such as the wobbly, but nonetheless sure-footed octave jumps.
 Aided by the amplification, Mrs Zavalloni gives a powerful performance, although her voice isn't particularly beautiful and sometimes has a grating effect. The good thing is that the music is not 'expressive' in the classical sense, but rather straightforward, sung declamation - which doesn't prevent Andriessen from slipping in howling 'seufzers' at the great melancholy climax.
This music is thoroughly theatrical, and Andriessen employs a lot of time-honoured tricks. The most overt one is also the most effective: In the last minute the musicians stop playing, and we hear, far off, a melancholy song, accompanied by a muffled instrument - a guitar, a harp, a piano? It's an old song by Joaquín Nin, Anaïs father and lover, and it has a melancholy Andriessen probably never could have realized by himself, but which is so strongly reinforced and put in perspective by all what went before that it has become an integral part of his composition.

(The photo of Cristina Zavalloni as Anaïs Nin from the world premiere in Siena)

De Staat, Stravinsky, Adams / ACJW - Review

New York Times review of the last concert of Andriessen's Carnegie Hall residency

Photo: Brian Harkin, New York Times

More Reviews

New Yorker
The Wall Street Journal Blog

ILLUSTRATION: JOE CIARDIELLO, New Yorker

Ash, Reviews

After Saturday Making Music concert in Zankel hall has been cancelled I found those two documentary photos online:

New York Times review, April 20
New York Times review, April 19

"La Commedia" Reviews

Los Angeles Times
New York Times

Cristina Zavalloni as Dante, Walt Disney Concert Hall,  Los Angeles. Photo by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times

Jeroen Willems as Lucifer, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. Photo by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times

Cristina Zavalloni as Dante, Carnegie Hall, New York. Photo by Richard Termine/New York Times

All Stars Volkskrant Review

Frits van der Waa sends the text of his Volkskrant review of Bang on a Can recent Amsterdam concert, translated in English:

Andriessen master among minimalists
Works by Lang, Gordon, Andriessen, Moore, Wolfe and Nyman, the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
March 25, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam.

For more than twenty years there has been a lively exchange of musical ideas between New York and Amsterdam. The central figure on the Dutch side is composer Louis Andriessen. The organisation Bang on a Can, in which composers and musicians cooperate is the focus on the other side of the ocean.
The six-member core group, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, brought a handful of pieces to the stage of the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw (Music Building), including Andriessen's latest composition Life, especially written for the ensemble.
An important aim of Bang on a Can is the removal of musical boundaries. The musical DNA of the composers involved still contains considerable traces of minimal music: almost all pieces in this program consist of interweaving notes, usually with a rather static harmonic background, the basis for unfolding rhythmic and melodic patterns. All in all, the sound is often more interesting than the actual notes. Characteristic ingredients are mixtures of electric guitar and amplified cello, the acrobatics of reed player Evan Zyporyn and a - colorful - rhythm section consisting of bass, percussion and keys.
[...]
Andriessen's new work, Life, a collaboration with video artist Marijke van Warmerdam, offers tranquil images of leaves, a couple on a bench, blinds and a window. Andriessen's music for the four short parts follow the mood, and features some striking timbral combinations. This new work doesn't contain great surprises, but what Andriessen does with a handful of notes still is way ahead of the sonic carpets of his Anglo-Saxon colleagues.

Amsterdam Muziekgebouw

The Hague Hacking Reviews

Labeque sisters, Photo by David Rose

Descriptive reviews from Guardian, The Independent, Evening Standard and Telegraph. As most often is seen, reviewers are more occupied by describing formal issues, than by denoting what new work problematizes in broader context of music and culture.
Hot discussion about "The Hague Hacking" developed on rec.music.classical.recordings Google Group. Although occasionally banal, it offers more contextualization than official reviews.