Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená appears with baritone Christian Gerhaher and The Cleveland Orchestra led by conductor Pierre Boulez at Severance Hall this weekend.
Become a member of Kožená’s fanclub (registration is free) to take advantage of discounted CDs, signed photographs, access to correspondence with the singer, and more. Contact the Fanclub administrator: fanclub@kozena.cz
Magdalena Kožená, photo by Matthias Bothor/Deutsche Grammophon
Cleveland Orchestra violinists Miho Hashizume and Isabel Trautwein and Cleveland Orchestra oboist Frank Rosenwein joined with other professionals as well as a young student quartet for a night of chamber music in the barn at the Dunham Tavern Museum on Euclid Avenue. Read more about this Heights Arts House Concert, as reported on Lincoln in Cleveland's blog.
Miho Hashizume
Conductor/composer Pierre Boulez will participate in a talk titled "A Conversation with Pierre Boulez" on Friday, Feb. 5, at 4:30 p.m. in Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University. The talk is presented by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. Boulez will be in dialogue with Mary Davis, chair of the Case Western Reserve University Department of Music.
The program is free and open to the public. Online registration is recommended.
After a rehearsal with The Cleveland Orchestra to begin two weeks of concerts and recordings at Severance Hall in February, Pierre Boulez relaxed in his dressing room and reflected on his first impression of The Cleveland Orchestra when he conducted it in his American professional orchestra debut 45 years ago, Mahler’s reputation in France, Ravel’s use of jazz, and more. Answering questions with his characteristically direct gaze and laser-focused intelligence, Mr. Boulez, 84, had the amiable demeanor of a man who has found a comfortable place in the world.
Edited excerpts from the conversation follow.
On conducting The Cleveland Orchestra:
I remember the first time I came here, I told George Szell, with your orchestra one begins where the others are finishing. And that’s true! You can work with them. There are very few orchestras where you can work like that, so thoroughly and so intelligently and so finely also.
On Mahler’s reputation in France when Boulez was growing up:
He was not performed because of the Nazi occupation of France. In France between the two [World] Wars and even after, there was a kind of ignorance of German/Austrian tradition. The French were thinking they are much above that. They took this music with disdain, saying “That’s good for Central Europe; that’s not good for us.”
The very first thing I could adopt and understand completely [in Mahler’s repertoire] was the Lieder [such as the songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn being performed at Severance Hall], precisely because they are not complex. They are direct; they are sometimes very short. You have the mood, the atmosphere, the feeling, without having to bother with a very difficult or complex construction.
On jazz influence in Ravel:
I see very well myself the difference in the Ravel of the ’30s and the Ravel before the first World War. He shows a revolution very strongly – the influence of jazz, the influence of society of this period.
Do you think, really, that Ravel has absorbed the jazz of this period? (Boulez looks at his interviewer with a skeptical air.) No, indeed. It’s difficult to integrate popular music or semi-popular music [into] organized music, because the material of the popular music is not able to develop itself like [classical] music, which is calculated. It’s exactly like that with folk music. Folk music is not developed. It repeats itself, with some variations.
In painting [when] you see in a piece by Picasso an advertising for an aperitif you say, oh, that’s interesting ... you say that’s funny, good, that’s a quote. That’s how you think about it. And that’s the same with the jazz [in Ravel’s writing]: it’s a kind of quote.
On his reasons for returning to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major and Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, which he previously recorded with Krystian Zimerman and The Cleveland Orchestra, to record them again, this time with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard:
I liked Zimerman, I must say, very much, and I think the recordings were an achievement. But as I know different generations, I like to see how they are thinking and how they are reacting to the music. I’ve known Pierre-Laurent Aimard since he was 19 and now he’s 50 or so. [Aimard was born in 1957.] He is more intellectual – in the right sense – in his approach and … will see it in a historical context, like I do myself.
On the virtuosity in each of Ravel’s piano concertos:
“One [the G-major concerto] shows virtuosity with two hands, where he wanted to make a classical concerto, and the other one [for the left hand] brings problems he’d like to solve, to give the impression of a [pianist] with two hands using only one hand. The concerto for two hands is more of a stylistic problem. For instance, in the second movement, the slow movement, is really a kind of reflection on Neoclassicism – what is Neoclassicism? The style of variation that he used is a variation in the Mozart sense, but not with the vocabulary of Mozart.
The two hands [G major] is more calculated and on the contrary, the left hand is, despite the problem he has to solve for the one hand, more spontaneous than the other one.
On his plans as a composer after this season, which marks his 85th birthday in March, including his progress on his Notations, which he originally wrote for piano and has been orchestrating and expanding for symphonic performance:
The four first Notations [completed in 1978, revised in 1984] are successful from my point of view. They achieve what I want to achieve. I have done five; I have seven to go. So I have to go home and not conduct any concerts for a while! For more than a year. Now I can choose completely what I work on. I stay in Paris or I have a house in Germany, also. I go there, being secluded, like a monk!
In concerts February 4-7, Pierre Boulez conducts The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major and Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension, and Ibéria, from Debussy’s Images.
In addition, Boulez conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 and songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn), with Magdalena Kožená, soprano, and Christian Gerhaher, baritone, in performances at Severance Hall at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 11, Friday, February 12, and Saturday, February 13.
James Meyers, known as a Cleveland-area freelance cellist and teacher as well as a recording engineer and conductor, died on January 23. A frequent visitor to Severance Hall, Mr. Meyers brought his students to open rehearsals of The Cleveland Orchestra and had presented Concert Previews for the Orchestra. For a full story and remembrances by friends, visit the Cleveland Classical blog.
