Photograph: Umberto Favretto
In 1987, conductor Lorin Maazel created the symphonic suite Der Ring ohne Worte (The Ring with out Phrases). The title was a nod to Mendelssohn’s well-known Lieder ohne Worte (Songs with out Phrases) for piano, however the Ring was that of Wagner’s Nibelung Cycle, from which Maazel had extracted a number of the most musically important moments, stripping them—the place current—of vocal intervention. The outcome was a steady move of music, commensurate with the size of the then-newly launched Digital Audio Compact Disc and instantly recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic for the Telarc label — virtually a response to those that contemplate Wagner’s operas a sequence of musically chic quarter-hours punctuated by half-hours of boredom.
Maazel’s interventions on Wagner’s music have been restricted to cut-and-paste, with out touching the unique instrumentation. Maazel himself outlined his composition as “merely a synthesis,” devoid of any non-Wagnerian notes, meant as a listening journey that will take audiences again to the composer’s symphonic roots. Maybe that is additionally why the brand new rating hasn’t attracted a lot consideration from conductors, however it has now grow to be a spotlight of curiosity for Teodor Currentzis, the Greek-Russian conductor who in the present day is more and more arousing curiosity and enthusiasm amongst audiences along with his unconventional, unorthodox, usually exuberant and over-the-top approaches.
In his Nibelungen-esque present tour, which spans Italy and Spain (Brescia, Modena, Florence, Zaragoza, Seville, Madrid, Barcelona), Currentzis seems sleeveless, his lengthy, muscular arms swirling within the air, caressing the sound of his dazzling musicAeterna orchestra. The orchestra is fabulous in some ways, a killing machine initially based by Currentzis himself (2004) for the Novosibirsk Opera and educated over time to sort out the complete musical repertoire, from traditionally knowledgeable performances of early music to the stylistic range of the numerous types of up to date classical music.
Over 100 instrumentalists crowded onto the stage of the Teatro Comunale “Pavarotti-Freni” in Modena on 12 February, saturating the not-so-large theater corridor with Wagnerian melodies. But it surely wasn’t a single, standardized sound. The opening of the rating, for instance, retracing the primary bars of Das Rheingold, sounded unsettlingly naked, arid (chamber-like?), devoid of any actual sonic consistency. Solely because the efficiency continued did the orchestra’s timbre emerge, reaching that fullness and roundness that so appeals to essentially the most riveted audiences.
And that Currentzis’s live shows (whether or not Mozart or Mahler) interact a “bodily” listening expertise much more than a “psychological” one is made clear by the response of the devoted and enchanted spectators who observe him on his European wanderings and lavish raving applause, rapturously entranced on the finish of every efficiency. The visible dimension of every of his live shows contributes as a lot because the aural one to the creation of every efficiency as an absolute or unrepeatable occasion — although there stays a minority who continues to suspect it’s simply smoke with out hearth.
Marco Beghelli
Marco Beghelli has been frequenting opera homes for half a century. As we speak, he’s Professor of Musical Dramaturgy on the College of Bologna the place he based the Archivio del Canto by which books and paperwork on operatic singing and singers are collected
