Concert - Jaroussky - Baráth Emőke - Budapest

Countertenor.

Opinions are divided about them even today when the catch-on of Early Music in the New Age has altered the views on classical music.

For it is against nature. 

Counter-tenor used to be the privilege of the castrated. Got it??? They did it to them so that their voice remain thin and high and soprano-like. 

Horrendous, isn’t it? 

Narrow range of voice and sharp and everything - why should a man sing like this? And, ouch, he must be that, Oh, my God, why are men like this allowed on stage?

Yeah. 

Men should be men, 100 kg and hairy and alpha male; no problem if he is a bad-smelling lout and a drunkard and keeps belching and has no idea which poet or painter Handel was but he is good at pushing the horn and all the girls around him.

Luckily, it is the year of 2018 already; the 300 years left out of the kingdom of the counter-tenors is oblivion. For things are in the right place on today’s broad horizon. They are even almost the biggest stars in Early Music.

Philippe Jaroussky - you can learn everything about him with a few clicks. He is among the best in the world, no doubt, whatever the concert tonight is going to be like.

It is just fine to see that all the 1700 tickets were sold in the Palace of Arts months before the concert. Snobbery has started to change to the need of genuine quality in Hungary where we have a semi-desert in Early Music.

The other performer is Emőke Baráth. She’s been known by the public for a few years only; her career is beautifully upright. She shines.

It is a huge thing, it is amazing. [She is Hungarian.] It is like a Hungarian racer in Formula I or if the Hungarian football team was in the final of the World Championship. Yeah. Early Music, yes, fine indeed but a concert in the Palace of Arts is stone-hard show business; we shouldn’t live in a fool’s Paradise, it’s a very tough world, in a word, it’s far from a jam session. 

In the same ring with Jaroussky for good reason, it’s gonna turn out soon.

Youngsters, a new generation, a new approach. The orchestra, Ensemble Artaserse, is their own band, well-known from their records.

Start.

This Palace of Arts, it’s not to my liking. For it’s a factory. A culture hypermarket. A rootless, gigantean underground garage top. Sort of abnormal.

Yet.

It’s sophisticatedly elaborated. If we have never been to Venice we might as well say that it’s good looking. And the atmosphere is fine. The technical background is really high quality; you don’t experience this kind of silence too often. The sonority is good too even if the manor hall is simply too big for this kind of music.

Handel arias handily interconnected almost like a chain. 

How? Well, by concerto grosso movements which are my all-time favourites. A movement, a section or a few beats.

The sonority is fine. 

The ensemble is very good. 

The violin section is astonishing, we have no such thing; it turns out in a minute.

The singers? Well, one is better than the other, take my word for it.

Philippe is a genuine big volume voice. It’s the first time I have listened to him live. I have heard him a lot in records; he is excellent there too, but the richness of the tones is striking here, yes, it is something we wouldn’t associate with counter-tenors. He treats the ornaments as a piece of cake, no any acrobatics rather a real spoken language. 

This man is full of music, no question.

Emőke, all ours, enters in a perfect black fretty outfit like a Queen. She casts a look of greeting at us, the audience, just a flash, then she slowly elevates us with her voice, her soul and the whole of herself. She’s amazing. The house filling the place to-hear-Jaroussky is left breathless.

Then Philippe’s aria again, marvellous, it is the right word, then a female solo again, then a few duets, there’s some special beauty in them; the harmony of the two of them is just perfect. It’s so touching when after a sorrowful complaint in a complicated love story they hold each other’s hands a bit - it’s so moving …

Their voices soar up to the skies, finely filling this nice airplane silo hall.

The music is just fine. The flooding of the Italian Mediterranean colours into the misty Albion: it is Handel. The melodiousness reminds of Vivaldi, the harmonies accompany the lyrics almost syllable for syllable according to the tractates of Nuove Musiche. 

Words are nicely translated and projected; e.g., ‘If I had a thousand hearts I would give you all of them’, they seem a bit simplistic. It makes me wonder that people, as many as here, in the past and today take pains to gather together to listen to he seems to have turned away from her a bit but he does love her indeed rather than the other lady …

They are singing in front of the orchestra; it is not semi-scenic but only a quarter-, but when they are pretentiously playful, Emőke rushes out hysterically, Philippe is left there at a loss, he is asking Heavens where his loved one’s heart is going to turn, that is, what does this Woman want again - then it becomes clear that it is Opera indeed, and it’s a great thing, and the audience has been incapable of getting bored of these rush-outs for as long as 400 years. 

The two voices are hand in hand; I come to the realisation that after Emőke's aria Philippe’s master-ornamentations seems to be a bit mannered, I know, yes, that it is an intentional manoeuvre, then vice versa, the other one is to my liking, so the equality is nicely and sensitively balancing the entire performance.

A huge applause at the end, they have a few words to say before the encore, Philippe first: he is thankful, how nice the hall is and he appraises the orchestra, Emőke and the audience, he has a truly male speaker-voice and he is extremely attractive, really, the whole man as he is, he is much to my liking. 

Emőke has less to say, a bunch of flowers is thrown to her by a brave man (the only brave man) from the balcony, a bit clumsy as the bunch almost fell on the bassoonist’s head but he was not laughed at all,… well, in the end, with the flowers in her hand she said that she was grateful to all of us and that they had been on tour with this performance but here in Budapest, we cannot even imagine what it means for her,...

...and she stopped speaking and I could see tears in her eyes although I had a seat far from her and a big applause again and I was left up in the air even on my way home on M7 road in the pitch dark at midnight, I speeded like a helicopter….

*         *         *

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

Händel: Ariodante, HWV 33

- Overture

- Qui d'amor nel suo linguaggio

- ... Prendi da questa mano

Händel: Lotario, HWV 26 - Scherza nel mar la navicella

Händel: a-moll concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 4 - Larghetto affettuoso

Händel: Parnasso in festa - Dopo d'aver perduto... Ho perso il caro ben

Händel: a-moll concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 4 - Allegro

Händel: Almira, HWV 1 - Geloso tormento

Händel: Julius Caesar, HWV 17 - L'aura che spira

Händel: D-dúr concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 5 - Largo

Händel: Rodelinda, HWV 19 - Io t'abbraccio

Händel: D-dúr concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 5 - Nyitány

Händel: Xerxész, HWV 40

- Troppo oltraggi la mia fede

- Se bramate d'amar chi vi sdegna

Händel: g-moll concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 6 - Larghetto

Händel: Julius Caesar, HWV 17 - Che sento? Se pietà

Händel: c-moll concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 8 - Andante - Allegro, Adagio

Händel: Ariodante, HWV 33 - È vivo ancora... Scherza infida

Händel: Scipione, HWV 20 - Scoglio d'immota fronte

Händel: A-dúr concerto grosso, op. 6, No. 11 - Allegro

Händel: Ariodante, HWV 33 - Bramo aver mille vite

Baráth Emőke

Philippe Jaroussky

Ensemble Artaserse:

violins

Raul Orellana

Petr Ruzicka, Giorgia Simbula, Patrick Oliva, José Manuel Navarro, Koji Yoda, Paula Waisman, Katia Krasutskaya

mélyhegedű

Marco Massera, Ignacio Aranzasti Pardo

cello

Elisa Joglar, Ruth Verona

doublebass

Guillaume Arrignon

harpsichord

Yoko Nakamura

theorba

Miguel Rincon Rodriguez

oboa

Guillaume Cuiller, Vincent Blanchard

bassoon

Nicolas André

Palace of Arts, Budapest

2018. September 13.

__________________________

Thank you for the images.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16

Nuove Musiche - Rolf Lislevand

The entire blog expounds one sole and relatively short period, namely the first third of the 17th century.

What is so important in this era onto which a complete collection of records can be construed?

Has Bach nearly fallen into oblivion in the Early Music horizon of record publishers?

This period is a sensitive transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque. Something is borne and something is terminated, is it? This is what the miracle lies about.

Truly, this is not the case; it is a lot more complicated.

A lot more.

It is a bit like when two layers grind along, generating all sorts of turbulence, making the passengers in the plane pale by weird split-offs of the flow and stream. Albeit there was some wind of an odd direction and temperature. New winds are blowing. 

We have a nice [Hungarian] language, do we?

What’s more, it was not a mandatory evolutional step in society or music history as we learn it from academic books but it was a well-conceived and pre-planned action. It was a wanted manoeuvre in music philosophy.

All leads to Firenze where culture blossomed at in unimaginable heights. A society of the many was Camerata Bardi, actually a parlour with all kinds of performances in the evenings and occasionally. The members included philosophers, architects, painters, businessmen, historians, clerical leaders, politicians and their flatterers, and loads of musicians and composers.

Antique pieces of art were being re-discovered as in vogue during the Renaissance, but, take care, music-wise it is the very end of the Renaissance. It is clear that the boundaries of the periods are not clear at all.

The Camerata Bardi proclaimed that “the music of the era is fundamentally unsuitable to express human relations either upwards to Heaven or toward one another”.

Therefore, they created, in theory, the music that they called Nuove Musiche.

Slowly yet steadily we come to the record as it bears this title.

Indeed, the then fashionable Palestrina-type polyphony was suitable to express emotions only limitedly.

This novel music became the accompanied monody, a lot simpler thing than this repelling so-called vocation. Only one line remained of the parts, usually the topmost, and below it a bass accompaniment which always holds a mirror at a distance of a fine sound, it did become basso continuo. Thus the one single melody could faithfully follow the lyrics, practically, syllable by syllable, so the text became prima again just like in Hellenic times. 

Do you remember? It was the aim of Camerata, indeed.

And it did get started, including the Opera as well, which punctually follows the principles laid down even today, after 400 years, and it hauled at least ¾ of the classical music repertoire of the following centuries. And many more things … for instance, In the House of the Rising Sun  on guitar …

Among the theorist-composers Caccini had the greatest role. He, being a requested expert, created a precise tractate, he even touched upon the techniques of breathing.

The new music spread like wildfire working its way out of Italy; three opera houses were built in Venice in 15 years out of the void.

And the audience?

They simply got crazy. People flooded into the opera houses and they played music in small circles too, at home, following the new style. 

Fantastic masterpieces were borne the time.

I love them so much.

When the strong metaphysics of the Renaissance still exists.

Maybe you know this story - it is good old evidence in the Early Music academies.

Rolf Lislevand knows it too, he even put it down in the booklet, not because he wanted to be included in Wikipedia but he wanted us to understand his story which he tells us in this album. 

For Lislevand took a very brave turn pursuing a beautiful idea.

The brevity is as much to my liking as the record itself. 

This is why this article is being written.

He asks me if we know similar stories from the near past.

We know one for sure.

The basics of today’s performing Early Music were established by a few thinkers, composers, music-theorists and musicians some 40 years ago in Europe. Do you remember the contemporary instruments, 415 mean tone, the old sources, the old depictions of instruments, the gut-strings, the tabulatures, the viola da gamba itself and who Harnoncourt was?

The Early Music academies set off in this direction. The 3rd generation is producing their records, and the new Early Music became such a big success that they must be the last active actors of the dying record industry.

In this record Lislevand does nothing but return to Camerata’s Firenze and play the composers clustering there in his way as we can hear it.

The eyebrows are lifted in astonishment - it is an adaption then, a bit better than the Classics in disco rhytm…

Well, nope.

Extreme ignorance which slowly breaks up at the Bach-grey clouds - is not an excuse for such a big mistake.

Well, the reception of the CD was a little bit mixed; understanding and outcasting…

ECM is a contemporary music publisher so it shows that it is not the cake of Baroque Highlights.

For Lislevand makes a  really smart argument: Let us observe how it all started 40 years ago? Everyone basked in the sea of Romanticism and we had to struggle out of it step by step; the performances we are happy about today are merely the gradual face lifts of the old recitations one after the other. 

The human mind is able to make comparisons only, we compare everything to everything. It simply does not work that in 1980, in the air smelling Mendelssohn we suddenly play Vivaldi like in 2015. He was not played like that indeed, so we should not go back to Firenze, a restart from 40 years ago is sufficient … it is another branching this way, which may be parallel with what is in vogue right now…

It is said that there is some inner voice in a few musicians who devote all their life to sound it. 

Rolf and some jazz musician friends of his gathered together with this thought in mind to make the record on an autumn afternoon in Oslo.

All of them are practicing improvising blokes, and, here comes a branch of Harnoncourts’ tractate. For Pellegrini and Foscarini and later Gaspar Sanz did recommend improvisation even in the first phase of learning, then even more, all the time, whenever it was possible, and mainly during the performance.

Listening to the record I can see that there is no mock modesty here indeed. The flouncing of the improvisations in a bound form is amazing. 

It touches me. 

What is this form? For instance, toccata, long before Bach and Vivaldi were born, when it was not a structural enforced pressure but what the word truly means, touching, a definitely special word because it also means an extraordinary point in time, the moment when the hand touches the string, when silence becomes non-silence, when something steps out of non-existence. 

And when the audience is touched inside.

Or Passacaglia which gives the structural frame of the whole record. What is it indeed?

It is the old Spanish theatrical accompaniment insert, perhaps we know it, but how come it is here, well, yes, you make the right guess, it comes from the New World, where the Mexican origin competes with the ancient culture remnants of the natives of Africa, well, it is just fine that this slave stuff beats up the dust on European blue-blood noble stages…

E-moll Passacaglia obviously changes to the song Con qué la Lavare, it cannot be anything else, for it is very much the same; I admit that it is strange for me too. What is weird is not the way it sounds but where I have put my ears so far, it hasn’t rung the bell until now, 7 cm between the two CDs on the shelf, what a big gap in our head, as if we were afraid to notice things, almost ridiculous…

The modern forms of Kapsberger and Piccinini are being re-sequenced. What the toccata desires after being finished, they continue from that point. 

Frescobaldi’s Aria is a response to the fact that it is poetry indeed that shows the right direction at the meeting point of the music and the lyrics.

And in Frescobaldi’s Passacaglia the last word is echoed, addio, Arianna’s soprano is very nice, it is a truly pretty farewell.

Owing to today’s authentic playing of Early Music. 

Or due to our prejudices?

Or simply because of our very kind record at this moment around midnight?

Heiligenblut, 2017, August
at 1200 m AMSL

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

___________________

Thank you for the images.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-8a-8b-9-10-11-12-12a-13-14-15-16-17 

Monteverdi: L'Orfeo - concert - L'Arpeggiata

Budapest.

King Spa. 

It is old, 500 years old, dilapidating, clean but a bit crumbling all over, water is leaking all around the place with taps and fittings from before the War for sure. 

However, an amazing beauty pervades. Incomparable colours and shades. Dim lights, semi-darkness, and a hasp of sunshine through the orifice of the dome like a light sword just much longer. 

We are sitting in the hot water and I am trying to find out why I am so much fond of L’Arpeggiata?

The name, maybe, for it reminds me of my favourite composer, Kapsberger who composed Toccata Arpeggiata which touched even Christina just as much as she chose the name for the ensemble.

They released loads of records you cannot even enlist. All started with early dances, Tarantella and Chaconne, on the sensitive borderline of Renaissance-Baroque, then, in the following years, the horizon widened genre-wise too; Monteverdi was followed by Purcell and Handel, jazz and even several sorts of folk music from all over Europe, the Mediterranean and the Orient.

What matters, however, is the All’Improvviso record. I do not mean the music which became a legend later but I mean an invisible look. It is in the case, under the CD; it is hardly noticeable, almost impossible to take a picture of but the main point does come through.

A young skinny girl with a fringe and an elderly musician with a grey beard are in the pic; Christina is explaining something away intensely, Gianluigi Trovesi, the jazz-clarinettist is watching, smiling softly, he will just not scratch his head thinking what this is all about, how he is getting amid Early Music again, what this woman wants him to do. Clarinets come in the scene only 100 years later, Christina is gleaming with sparks in her eyes albeit you cannot see it in the pic. What you can see is that she conceived everything and no need to fear, it will be all right. Remember what a success Tarantella was.

Then these records gently shook the entire playing of classical music in Europe and brought Early Music in fashion nobody could ever think of. Monteverdi, Cavalieri and Caccini became genuine stars, the audience was crazy about them, the youth listened to long forgotten composers almost never heard before. New generations started to imitate the ensemble the best singers in the world joined if for one recording.

What the secret was is hard to tell. 

Perhaps the unbelievable sensitivity with which Christina took care of the instrumentation or the hidden content which she seduced out of these early melodies or perhaps the reconsideration of the music improvisation or the upfront turning against the apathetic, lethargic and audience-slaying performance of classical music, the squared sonatas, nerve-killing fugues and horrendous symphonies we receive loads of.

Then years passed, the thin chick with a fringe became a serious woman; L’Arpeggiata derailed off this special rail, there is some topsy-turvies in the repertoire but she left the legendary records with us; I paid for a second-hand Tarantella SACD so much I do dare to tell, the first track of the Landi album makes my heart throb even today … I am so much fond of this ensemble that Handel goes wild is bullshit, I do not recommend it to anyone, yet, I do not mind and do not offend them, let them go wherever they wish to, no one should interfere; as for me, they might as well play electric rock or Stockhausen, it will not alter my love of them.

Today, however, there is something grave going on.

Monteverdi and Orfeo - the very first milestone in Baroque music and the world of opera -the origin, the singularity.

The Palace of Arts, [Budapest], the building itself, the inner space give me mixed emotions. Outside the colour illumination is extremely crappy, the auditorium is far too big, albeit it is alright inside and we are sitting in a very good seat at the stalls, in the middle of the first quarter.

Start.

Well-known and familiar melodies which provide the frame of one of the most famous love stories of mankind. Some weirdly special feeling right from the first seconds. The instrumentation and expression make me feel that the upholstery has got ripped on the horizon and we can look out at some distant lands.

How Christina lured these wind instrument players to herself I know not but I have never heard the first fanfare part like this; I was shivering. 

Then Emőke Baráth walked in nicely, yes, our Emőke [she is Hungarian] in a fretted outfit as Musica and sang the introduction to what we are going to hear in an angel’s voice.

Then the story got started. Also, a series of amazement. The two violinists, they are playing so much differently from the other violinists of the rest of the orchestras that here comes the part of the secret. Fine, punctual, nicely elaborated, dot dot dot, however, somewhere deep inside there is some ebullience, something disquietingly beautiful. It is striking in the record as well. The continuo line is very intense; two keyboard instruments, violas da gamba, a harp, a theorba, a guitar, all subordinated under the lyrics, bear in mind that it is the famous Nuove Musica where the lyrics is not pinned onto the notes like one part of the many but it is the Prima, and, indeed, it will turn out that it is extremely relevant.

The back row, Nymphs, Shepherds and others; unexpectedly brilliant solos were heard from here, of course, it is easy this way that singers as good as Vincenzo Capezzuto are standing waiting for their short part.

Orpheo, a Mexican-French tenor, Rolando Villazón was not to my liking at first for he pushed it very Italian, big opera-like, intensely, high-spiritedly; it is too early at this point, it should be this way 150 years later, I thought, he should be singing a bit more gently.

But then came the messenger telling us what had happened to de Euridice, and Orpheo set off to the Underworld; I made a full slew-round, albeit the voice remained nearly the same. 

Why? 

Because as he is standing in front of Charon doing his best to be let in, he is playing nicely, then whining and sawing the air and shouting that he does want to follow his beautiful Euridice and why he is not allowed to for he loves her so much and he will take her out for sure and it did not change even when Hope dropped his hand and waved good-bye, understand? To set off somewhere with no hope - who could do it today? It moved me so deeply.

The story that a man loves a woman so much that he follows her to the Underworld has amazed people for 2000 years and has made them shiver; yes, it amazes these 1700 spectators in the Palace of Art even today.

Then the begging gets a response. Metaphysical infiltration is gradually becoming more and more concentrated. Orpheo wants the Gods to feel sorry for him. If you pursue something very hard it has clear cross-modulations in invisible Higher Worlds. And yes, Pluto’s wife says: this Thracian man in love wants the woman so much that we should find out how he can get her back …

The music follows the more and more complex lyrics, the spirituality in full fidelity just like Camerata Bardi imagined the comeback to Antique traditions in Firenze.

Orpheo, the tenor Villazón is simply excellent. There are fine whiffles and nice melody arches in the music, and again, the tooters, I have never heard something like this. Charon, a weakling thin man, John Taylor Ward, he has such powerful voice that the audience is rumbling with appreciation. The soloists are coruscating, all of them are singing by heart, they are actually playing.

The continuo is so perfect that I am getting the hang of why this monody was such a big success in the old Venice and why a complete novelty was borne for which no name was conceived out of the blue and thus it remained to be called the opera. 

The Opera.

Then comes the climax, the well-known paradox of turning back or not, which has long shown the bitter example of how hard it is to go forward, not to look back trembling whether it is going to be fine this way, what people say about us, rather, do it, proceed straight ahead.

Thousands of books have been written about the unavoidable failure. It is far too serious. It is a bitter pill for us, men. That we will lose any way or another; that Amor’s command is stronger than Pluto’s prohibition and that Emőke, that is, Euridice, before she falls back to the darkness whispers beautifully: “You lost me with your excessive love”.

Then, in the end, after great sorrow, Apollo, Benoit Arnoult, whose voice took me aback, lifts Orpheo beside himself. 

Here Monteverdi attenuated the story as we know that Orpheo, wishing to forget about his sorrow, made love with all sorts of women - Nymphs, Maenads who, feeling that their glorious cavalier is still in love with that bi..h Eurydice even while making love with them, they hate her a lot, and ripped him apart and threw him into a deep crevasse. Then they cleared  their hands by the water of Helicon river, and legend says, Helicon was so ashamed of it that its water disappeared from the course…

But now he is sitting next to Apollo and drums and rattles are playing with the hailing choir and the ladies start dancing gently on the stage, the violins are crying and laughing at the same time, the orchestra is playing so nicely that the women in the audience are swallowing their tears, the men are heavily embarrassed and a few people almost jump onto the stage from the first rows at the very end of the performance.

Standing ovation, the Palace of Art is close to collapsing, and, Christina finally turns back as she was directing back to us, she is glowing, I could see the same look in her eyes as in the inside of the record; 15 years have passed and nothing has changed and I think it is going to stay like this forever and ever.

*         *         *

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

_______________
Characters:
Orpheus
Rolando Villazón
Eurydice, Musica, muse of music
Emőke Baráth
Messenger of nymphs
Giuseppina Bridelli
Proserpina
Céline Scheen
Nymph, Hope
Benedetta Mazzucato
Shepherd
Vincenzo Capezzuto
Shepherd, Echo, Soul from the underworld
Aidan Coburn
Shepherd, Soul from the underworld
Jeffrey Thompson
Apollo, Soul from the underworld
Benoît Arnoult
Charon, Shepherd, Soul from the underworld
John Taylor Ward
Pluto, Soul from the underworld
Dingle Yandell
Participating:
Ensemble L'Arpeggiata (diir.: Christina Pluhar)

Budapest, Palace of Arts, 10 March, 2018

_______________
Thank you for the images
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7a-7b-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16