Verbier tent
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.
Back from Verbier. Here's a picture of the scene outside the concert tent the other night. The tent in the picture is the Cafe Schubert, where lectures and pre-concert talks are held. It's quite some setting for music...
The quality of the performances was, as usual absolutely incredible (with one scarey exception). The highlights of our all-too-brief stay were Leonidas Kavakos, Mischa Maisky and Elena Bashkirova playing the Schubert B flat Trio; and Thomas Quasthoff, accompanied by Evgeny Kissin, singing a selection of dark-hued Schubert with a power and empathy that were positively spine-chilling.
During less than 48 hours we experienced all of this and much more. Cello masterclass with Ralph Kirshbaum, lunch & interview with the fabulous Kavakos (stopping on way into street cafe to say hi to Vengerov a few tables away), mountain cable car & glorious walk, amazing concert with Mozart played by Michala Petri, Janine Jansen, Julian Rachlin & various others, a scrumptious fondue, the Quastoff/Kissin gig and the most extraordinary party I've ever been to...
The only upset was a cellist called Alexander Knaizev, who - despite having Kissin as his pianist - gave the most horrible performance of sonatas by Franck and Shostakovich. I disgraced myself by getting the giggles, but I don't think I was the only one. He made the recent affectations of Anne-Sophie Mutter seem like reasonable interpretations. Half the audience loved it; many others fled the moment the Franck was finished. I hung on for the Shostakovich in case it improved, but it didn't.
Some claim to like his 'intensity' - but if someone TALKED to you like that, constantly fortissimo, milking E-V-E-R-Y W-O-O-O-R-D F-O-R M-A-A-A-A-A-A-X-I-M-U-U-U-M E-M-O-T-I-O-O-O-O-N A-A-A-A-L-L T-H-E T-I-I-I-I-M-E W-I-T-H-O-U-U-T A-N-Y V-A-R-I-E-T-Y-Y-Y-Y, you would either think they were crazy or you'd go crazy yourself. Sorry, but that's not intensity. It's emotional claptrap and it has nothing, but NOTHING, to do with Franck, let alone Shostakovich (and this guy, being Russian, should at least have known better there). Plus it takes some doing to make an audience come out of a cello recital in a tent feeling as if their ears have been assaulted by an electric guitar. I was particularly disappointed because I've heard some of his recordings and liked them very much, including his solo Bach.
Anyway, win some, lose some... Verbier is beautiful, thrilling and -given the amount of serious dosh there - remarkably human. This was my fourth visit (and Tom's first) and I hope I'll be able to go back next year.
I'm now about to do extra time on the exercise bike to burn off some of that fondue...
4 comments:
Welcome home, Jessica! Verbier sounds like a dream. Maybe next year some of us out here will download the press pass application and join you there! That'd be fun ...
Re the nightmare part, it's an unfortunate fact that a certain generation of Russians performers have this tendency towards extreme melodrama. The style of musical pacing that leads one's mood to swing relentlessly back and forth from a deep sleep to the urge to axe murder the performer.
Seriously, I can recall a great many Russian singers, recorded and live, living and dead (I'm not naming names), who sang literally with that same L-O-O-K A-T M-E I A-M E-M-O-T-I-N-G! approach, compounded with unconscionably poor diction in their own native language! It's simply excruciating.
Hopefully, a new generation will come along and give us a break!
People in Russia (both men and women) tend to be very emotional, and not afraid to show it. If Russians did not show their emotions when performing to other Russians they might not be rated very highly. Those Russians who are appreciated in the West are probably those who have spent much of their lives in the West.
Give the poor guy a break; at least he has not left Russia for richer pickings (though with this reception he might not want to...)
Yes, but he IS a new generation...that's what's so scary.
True, true about Russians being emotional and not afriad to show their emotions. No argument there, none at all. In fact, I wish they would actually do so, please, show us some real emotion instead of that horrible wooden acting!
It may be that they are still using stage acting training from a century ago, before a camera could pan in and catch any sublety of emotion, when big gestures were necessary to be seen from the nosebleed sections.
Still, somehow, the Russian Greats of literature like Pushkin and Tolstoy and many others, managed to capture the subtlety of human emotion in writing, and indeed Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich captured human emotions exquisitely well in opera. The emotion is there in the music, its just being hobbled by this old style interpretation. That is the real frustration.
NB to Operaphiles It could be argued that the intonation patterns in the Russian language were never so well matched to music as in Shostakovich's operas. You have to know the language to appreciate this, but believe me its there. I would put The Nose up against Lady Macbeth any day. And truly, who among us could resist the youthful pain in Tatiana's Letter Scene?
What we're asking for is New Great Russian Singing, on the opera stage and in the recital hall, for by now we've all more than had our fill of the wooden grandstanding.
If he's a professional, wants a major career bringing the Russian music to life for us here in the West, he will surely seek and find the inspiration and mentors he needs.
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