May at La Monnaie
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May at La Monnaie
Sunday 29 April 2012
An exciting month of May @ La Monnaie | De Munt
May at La Monnaie
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Orlando furioso - Musical Theatre
Orlando furioso - Musical Theatre
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Orlando furioso - Musical Theatre
B'Rock debuts in de Munt / la Monnaie
B'Rock debuts in de Munt/la Monnaie
B'Rock in the press
Following our debut on the Telemann Festtage in Magdeburg (With timpani and trumpets!), B'Rock was reviewed positively in the international press:
'What a closing concert! Consistently stylish, elegant and with a unique peculiar sound (...) Rodolfo Richter played Telemann's atmospheric music with a well balanced temperament and intelligent wit.' - VOLKSSTIMME 20.03.2012
'Watching an orchestra like this perform, one realizes that a conductor with a baton would be completely obsolete. Richter led his colleagues as first violinist, with precise bowings, subtlety and an eye for detail.' - DAG OG TID 30.03.2012
B'Rock debuts in de Munt/la Monnaie
This week baroque orchestra B'Rock, led by René Jacobs, debuts in de Munt/la Monnaie. In the 'Operahouse of the Year', they are invited for 'Orlando' of G.F. Haendel. The use of period instruments conducted by the great Haendel expert and baroque specialist René Jacobs goes hand in hand with the contemporary interpretation of stage director Pierre Audi.
Handel wrote this 'opera seria in tre atti' for only five soloists when he was at the height of his opera career. The libretto tells the story of Orlando (Bejun Mehta), who is desperately in love with the pagan princess Angelica (Sophie Karthäuser), who is in turn in love with an African prince; in this hopeless situation Orlando is driven to madness from which only the magician Zoroastro (Konstantin Wollf) can save him.
World première on the 19th of April in de Munt/la Monnaie in Brussels.
Performances until the 11th of May. More info...
Orlando in audio and video...
*Check out the video and photo website of de Munt/La Monnaie: MyMM
*Radio broadcasting: on Klara (28/04) and Musiq'3 (13/05)
*Video broadcasting: on Mezzo HD (26/04, 19:00)
*Follow Orlando on Facebook: Become friends with B'Rock and/or Like de Munt/la Monnaie...
More Orlando in the Munt...
Check out the side programs of the Munt, related to Orlando:
*A NIGHT AT THE OPERA: special ticket formula for young people under the age of 30.
*INSIDE THE MUSIC: Meeting with René Jacobs, who gives some insight into the scores.
*A STAGE WITH A VIEW: Lecture by the Pakistan/British writer Tariq Ali about the 'Orlando' figure.
B'rock | ezine
Sunday 15 April 2012
Kasper Holten's Lohengrin opens in Berlin - Intermezzo
April 15, 2012
Kasper Holten's Lohengrin opens in Berlin
Wings and nighties all present and correct. Tonight is the premiere of Kasper Holten's first production since he became Director of Opera at Covent Garden - but it's not in London.
The Deutsche Oper Berlin's Lohengrin features in the title role Klaus Florian Vogt, who stepped in at late notice to replace Marco Jentzsch. Ricarda Merbeth is Elsa, Petra Lang is Ortrud, Gordon Hawkins is Telramund and Albert Dohmen is Heinrich. More photos below.
All photos (c) Marcus Lieberenz / Deutsche Oper Berlin
Kasper Holten's Lohengrin opens in Berlin - Intermezzo
Friday 13 April 2012
Orlando @ La Monnaie | De Munt
Full-throated Baroque
Apr 10, 2012
With their mythological characters and interminable plots, Handel’s operas seem aeons away from our modern sensibilities. And yet we seem to be having a love affair with this podgy German émigré who took the London music world by storm in the first half of the 18th century. Or not so much with the man as with his music, an inexhaustible trove of rousing choruses and gorgeous, hummable arias.
“Handel is a superstar,” says conductor René Jacobs. “Like Rossini, he wrote singers’ opera, a big hit with people who love beautiful singing. Then there’s the exoticism of the high voice – he composed a lot for castrati. The mere mention of his name on an opera programme these days almost guarantees that tickets will sell out fast.”
Jacobs should know: he has performed in and conducted dozens of Handel’s works and is at it again this month with a new production of Orlando at La Monnaie. Our meeting takes place after an early rehearsal with the singers and Pierre Audi, the French-Lebanese director who has devised the bold, modern staging. Most conductors step in a few weeks later, when the orchestra starts to be involved, but Jacobs, a fastidious perfectionist, makes a point of attending all rehearsals. “Orlando is one of Handel’s top five operas, and he wrote forty,” he says, visibly tired after the day’s work but relaxed and friendly. “He seems to have given it his very best, perhaps because it’s the last one he composed for the famous castrato Senesino. It’s part tragedy, part comedy – but comedy in the good sense; the kind that you get in the Mozart and Da Ponte operas, where you laugh – or smile, rather – but with a bitter edge.”
It is for Mozart that Jacobs is probably best known these days; he has recently recorded a much-lauded series of the composer’s operas on the Harmonia Mundi record label. His home turf, however, is the Baroque repertoire. He was part of a handful of musicians, several of them Flemish, who spearheaded its rediscovery in the 1960s and 1970s and resuscitated historic sounds and performance techniques.
This will be his first stab at Orlando as a conductor, though he did sing the main role once back in his days as a countertenor. He switched to full-time conducting in the 1980s but the singer in him remains strong: an exacting conductor of voices, he usually works with a small group of hand-picked soloists who share his high technical standards and interest in text – and who are willing to put up with his notorious tantrums. The countertenor Bejun Mehta and the sopranos Sophie Karthäuser and Sunhae Im, who will perform the main roles here, are straight out of his stable of young protégés. This will be his first collaboration with both Audi and B’Rock, the young and energetic Belgian ensemble that will join him in the pit.
Orlando is the story of a man who falls into a jealous fury when he hears that the woman he loves is in love with someone else. He goes off on a rampage, forgets who he is and mistakes people for what they’re not until he is finally brought back to his senses by a wise old magician. Eighteenth-century Londoners would have been familiar with this swashbuckling romp, a free reworking of Ariosto’s Renaissance epic Orlando Furioso that was very much in the collective psyche at the time. “Many composers wrote operas about the story of Orlando,” says Jacobs, who recently revived another one, Haydn’s lovely Orlando Paladino. Part of the appeal may well have been the formal freedom that the theme of madness allowed. Even Handel, who most of the time adhered to a strict compositional style, produced some astonishingly unfettered music in one famous scene.
Jacobs, too, will give his imagination free rein. That’s what he always does: an avid researcher who’s extremely well informed about period practices and composers’ views, he sees it as his musical duty to bring in more instruments, add ornaments and generally rough up the letter of a score, always in order to reveal its deeper spirit. It’s a maximalist approach that has earned him a fair amount of criticism, mostly from Britain and the US. But to most people who’ve listened to his CDs or heard him live, it feels utterly refreshing.
“Baroque opera,” he tells me, “gives more freedom than later opera. In the nineteenth century, everything, down to the smallest detail, was written down. Wagner wasn’t counting on performers to add their creativity to his. He saw himself as a god, and you can’t add anything to God’s creation. But that wasn’t at all the case in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera, which is why I find this kind of music more modern and more democratic.”
Jacobs grew up in 1950s Ghent. Around the time he started singing in the boys’ choir of Saint Bavo’s cathedral, he had his first encounter with the world of theatre. His father, a shy hardware store owner, gave him a miniature theatre he’d built himself, complete with puppets and booklets containing stories to act out. The toy soon became the centre of young René’s universe. He bought more puppets and invented more stories, enlisting the help of his two younger sisters. Later, he studied classics at Ghent University mostly to please his parents, who insisted he get a ‘real’ degree. “I plunged into Greek tragedy,” he remembers. “At the time, I thought none of this made much sense – all I wanted to do was music. But now I am glad I did. Everything in opera goes back to that.”Today, he is largely a product of those early influences: a consummate musician, a dyed-in-the-wool theatre man and a classical scholar who sets extremely high standards for himself and others. One thing that saddens him is “the lack of culture of today’s opera-goers. I’m afraid,” he sighs, “that in a couple of generations there won’t be anyone in the audience who’s read Homer – not even in translation!”
It is one of Jacobs’ poignant ironies that, in spite of all the mounting honours and acclaim, he seems to feel increasingly misunderstood and isolated. Not many people, for instance, share his interest in libretti and recitatives. “I am not against cuts,” he says, “but they need to be done properly. When I see the way some directors cut recitatives in the middle of a line or by moving lines around, it makes me think of an inept surgeon bungling an operation, where the patient bleeds to death!”
He seems disappointed by the conservative turn the music world is taking, and also by the fact that Baroque music, by becoming mainstream, has lost some of its edge. Although he’s not nostalgic for the clunky sounds and foggy tunings of early Baroque revival orchestras, he does miss that exciting time of discovery when he could unearth operas by Cavalli or Scarlatti and have them performed and recorded. “Handel is all well and good,” he says, “but it is getting harder to propose works that aren’t already part of the repertoire. Baroque opera is becoming popular and that’s a good thing. But there’s a danger that we’ll end up always hearing the same pieces.”
I seem to have caught him in a gloomy mood, but if his plans after Orlando are anything to go by, he should soon be back to his ebullient and adventurous self. First he’ll be off to Berlin to perform Emilio de Cavalieri’s La Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo, an extraordinary musical allegory believed to be the first opera ever composed. Then he’ll be overseeing the release of his CD La Finta Giardiniera, the latest in his Mozart series, for which he has used a late and little-known version of the score that “Mozart would have been happy with”. The next time we will see him in Brussels will be in September, when he conducts Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion at the Klarafestival. This is the piece that first persuaded him to become a musician when he sang it as a child in Ghent. He will be leading his beloved Akademie für alte Musik Berlin and Rias Kammerchor, a 36-strong choir with a crisp and shimmering sound.
Some musicologists and performers argue for the use of four, or at the most, eight, choristers in Bach’s Passions as more authentic, but Jacobs won’t hear of it. “That may have been what Bach did, but is that what he wanted? I think not: he was always pleading for more means and more singers. And he wasn’t alone: many of his contemporaries expressed similar ideas, although no one put it as sweetly as Benedetto Marcello, who wrote in a preface to some his own cantatas, ‘God is happy with a small gift. But of course, he prefers a bigger one.’” I have checked the quote and the actual phrasing is a little different. But Jacobs captured its spirit just right.
PERFORMANCES
René Jacobs conducts Handel’s opera ‘Orlando’ at La Monnaie
April 19-May 11
www.lamonnaie.be
Full-throated Baroque | Xpats | The Bulletin
Thursday 12 April 2012
Wednesday 11 April 2012
The Libretto That Started a Revolution - NYTimes.com
PARIS — “La Muette de Portici,” an opera by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, changed the course of history in more ways than one. Its 1828 premiere in Paris initiated a new and distinctly French operatic genre known as grand opera, with historical subjects drawn from modern Europe and scenic effects that took stage spectacle, always dear to the French, to dazzling heights.
The Libretto That Started a Revolution - NYTimes.com
The Libretto That Started a Revolution - NYTimes.com
Monday 9 April 2012
Sergey Khachatryan keert terug naar het Paleis met zijn zus Lusine
Sergey Khachatryan keert terug naar het Paleis met zijn zus Lusine
De eerste laureaat van de Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd 2005, Sergey Khachatryan, speelt opnieuw in de zaal waar hij de overwinning behaalde. Zijn zus Lusine begeleidt hem op piano. Ze stellen een meeslepend recital voor, met onder meer werken van twee Armeense componisten.
Maandag 23.04.2012 20:00
Paleis voor Schone Kunsten - Henry Le Boeufzaal
Sergey en Lusine Khachatryan © Serge Derossi - Naïve Vijftien was Sergey Khachatryan toen hij in 2000 de eerste prijs won op de Sibeliuswedstrijd. Vijf jaar later deed hij die prestatie losjes over tijdens de Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd. Het prille succes verzekerde hem van een plaats op de internationale podia. Zijn geliefde recitalpartner is zus Lusine, een getalenteerde pianiste. Hun grote liefde voor muziek houdt hen samen, en dat al sinds hun kindertijd. Het woord ‘verbondenheid’ volstaat niet om hun verstandhouding te beschrijven…
Programma
Sergey Khachatryan viool
Lusine Khachatryan piano
Sergey Khachatryan viool
Lusine Khachatryan piano
Johann Sebastian Bach Partita voor viool nr. 3, BWV 1006
Eugène Ysaÿe Sonate voor viool, op. 27/2
Vardapet Komitas Zeven Dansen voor piano
Arno Babadjanyan Sonate voor viool en piano
Prijs€ 52,00 – 42,00 – 32,00 – 16,00
CoproductieBOZAR MUSIC │ Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd
Prijs€ 52,00 – 42,00 – 32,00 – 16,00
CoproductieBOZAR MUSIC │ Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd
Steun
Info & tickets+32 (0)2 507 82 00
• Geboren in 1985 in Jerevan (Armenië). • Wint in 2005 de eerste prijs van de Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd. • Concerten in Europa, de Verenigde Staten en Japan met o.a. de volgende orkesten: de BBC Philharmonic, de NHK Symphony, de New York Philharmonic, de Berliner Philharmoniker. • Nam deel aan de festivals van Ravinia en Blossom, Mostly Mozart in New York en het White Nights Festival in St.-Petersburg. • 2011-12: de Bamberg Symphoniker o.l.v. Herbert Blomstedt, wereldpremière van een concerto van Arthur Aharonian met het Amsterdam Sinfonietta… • Recentste discografie (Naïve): Bachs Sonates en partita’s (2010). • Speelt op de Guarneri ‘Ysaÿe’ uit 1740, in bruikleen van de Nippon Music Foundation. • www.sergeykhachatryan.net
Lusine Khachatryan, piano
• Geboren in 1983 in Jerevan (Armenië). Talrijke onderscheidingen. • Speelde samen met het Orchestre Régional de Cannes, het Sinfonia Varsovia, het Armeens filharmonisch orkest, het Nationaal orkest van Ecuador… • Uitgenodigd op verschillende festivals (ChopinjaarinJerevan, het Edinburgh International Festival…).• Speelde samen met haar broer Sergey in de grote concertzalen: Wigmore Hall (London), Théâtre du Châtelet, Louvre en Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Parijs), Tonhalle (Zürich), het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten (Brussel), Hoam Art Hall (Seoul), Oji Hall (Tokio), Carnegie Hall (New York). • Discografie samen met haar broer Sergey: sonates van Franck en Sjostakovitsj (Naïve, 2008). • www.lusinekhachatryan.com
Terugkeer naar het schitterende begin
Sergey en Lusine Khachatryan hoeven niet meer voorgesteld te worden aan de vaste bezoekers van BOZAR. Ze stonden er al twee keer op het podium, in 2006 en in 2010, en zorgden voor vuurwerk met sonates voor viool en piano van Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann en Franck. Vandaag keert het duo – broer en zus – terug naar de oorsprong: eerst naar Bach, wiens geest de voormalige laureaat van de Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd is blijven vergezellen. Vervolgens naar de dans, die altijd al een van de krachtigste leidmotieven van de instrumentale muziek is geweest. Ten slotte naar de Armeense muziek, met Babadjanian en Komitas, van wie de Première Danse pour piano afkomstig is uit Jerevan, net zoals de muzikanten van deze avond. Het resultaat is een programma vol Kaukasische folklore, met een schitterende en nooit oppervlakkige virtuositeit, die het verband tussen de geniale Eugène Ysaÿe en zijn ‘obsessie’ Bach blootlegt. Om de avond compleet te maken, speelt Sergey Khachatrian op een prachtig instrument dat in 1740 vervaardigd is door een van de beroemdste Italiaanse vioolbouwers uit de 18e eeuw en een tijdgenoot van Stradivarius, Giuseppe Guarneri des Gesù – de viool was trouwens in het bezit van Ysaÿe zelf op het toppunt van zijn roem (vanaf 1896). De componist betitelde die viool trouwens als zijn “trouwe levensgezel” in een inscriptie op het label van Guarneri. Het perfecte instrument voor het perfecte programma.
(Alexandra Gelhay)
BOZAR: Sergey Khachatryan keert terug naar het Paleis met zijn zus Lusine
BOZAR: Sergey Khachatryan revient au Palais avec sa sœur Lusine
Le premier Lauréat du Concours Reine Elisabeth 2005, Sergey Khachatryan, est de retour dans la salle qui l’a vu triompher. Sa sœur Lusine l’accompagne au piano. Ils proposent un récital passionnant qui comporte notamment des œuvres de deux compositeurs arméniens.
Lundi 23.04.2012 20:00
Palais des Beaux-Arts - Salle Henry Le Bœuf
Sergey et Lusine Khachatryan © Serge Derossi - NaÏve Programme
Sergey Khachatryan violon
Lusine Khachatryan piano
Johann Sebastian Bach Partita pour violon n° 3, BWV 1006
Eugène Ysaÿe Sonate pour violon, op. 27/2
Vardapet Komitas Sept Danses pour piano
Arno Babadjanyan Sonate pour violon et piano
Eugène Ysaÿe Sonate pour violon, op. 27/2
Vardapet Komitas Sept Danses pour piano
Arno Babadjanyan Sonate pour violon et piano
Prix€ 52,00 - 42,00 - 32,00 - 16,00
CoproductionBOZAR MUSIC | Concours Musical International Reine Elisabeth de Belgique
Soutien
Info & tickets+32 (0)2 507 82 00
Biographies
Sergey Khachatryan, violon
• Né en 1985 à Érevan (Arménie). • Nombreuses distinctions dont le Premier Prix au concours Reine Elisabeth en 2005. • Concerts en Europe, aux États-Unis et au Japon avec des orchestres comme le BBC Philharmonic, le NHK Symphony, le New York Philharmonic, le Berliner Philharmoniker, … • Participation à des festivals comme ceux de Ravinia et Blossom ainsi que le Mostly Mozart Festival de New York et les Nuits Blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg. • 2011-12 : le Bamberg Symphoniker s.l.d. de Herbert Blomstedt,, création mondiale d’un concerto d’Arthur Aharonian avec l’Amsterdam Sinfonietta… • Dernier enregistrement (Naïve) : Sonates et Partitas de Bach (2010). • Joue sur le Guarneri « Ysaÿe » de 1740 prêté par la Nippon Music Foundation. • www.sergeykhachatryan.net
Lusine Khachatryan, piano
• Née en 1983 à Érevan (Arménie). Nombreuses distinctions. • Prestations avec l´Orchestre régional de Cannes, le Sinfonia Varsovia, l’Orchestre philarmonique arménien, l´Orchestre symphonique national d´Equateur… • Est invitée à participer à de nombreux festivals (Année Chopin à Erivan, l’Edinburgh International Festival…). • Joue avec son frère Sergey sur des scènes réputées comme le Wigmore Hall (Londres), le Théâtre du Châtelet, du Louvre et le Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris), le Tonhalle (Zürich), le Palais des Beaux-Arts (Bruxelles), le Hoam Art Hall (Séoul), le Oji Hall (Tokyo), le Carnegie Hall (New York). • Discographie avec son frère Sergey : sonates de Franck et Chostakovitch (Naïve, 2008). • www.lusinekhachatryan.com
Un retour aux sources éclatant
Nul besoin d’encore présenter Sergey et Lusine Khachatryan aux habitués des planches bozartiennes. Cette scène, ils l’ont déjà foulée par deux fois : en 2006 et en 2010, électrisant l’auditoire dans des sonates pour violon et piano de Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann et Franck. Aujourd’hui, le duo fraternel amorce un retour aux sources : à Bach d’abord, dont le spectre n’a cessé d’accompagner l’ancien lauréat du Concours Reine Elisabeth. À la danse ensuite, qui de tous temps constitua l’un des leitmotivs les plus puissants de la musique instrumentale. À la musique arménienne enfin, aux côtés de Babadjanian mais aussi de Komitas dont la Première Danse pour piano est originaire d’Yerevan, tout comme les musiciens de ce soir. En résulte un programme pétri de folklore caucasien, d’une virtuosité éclatante mais néanmoins jamais superficielle, qui met également en exergue les liens et influences unissant le génial Eugène Ysaÿe à Bach, son « obsession ». Afin que la cohérence soit complète, Sergey Khachatrian nous fait le bonheur de jouer sur un magnifique instrument fabriqué en 1740 par l’un des plus illustres luthiers italiens du XVIIIe siècle et contemporain de Stradivarius, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù – violon ayant appartenu à Ysaÿe lui-même lorsqu’il était au faîte de sa gloire (à partir de 1896). Le compositeur le qualifia d’ailleurs de « fidèle compagnon de [sa] vie » dans une inscription qu’il fit graver sous l’étiquette de Guarneri. L’instrument parfait pour le programme parfait.
(Alexandra Gelhay)
BOZAR: Sergey Khachatryan revient au Palais avec sa sœur Lusine
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