Mendelssohn & Mozart: coral-sinfónica, Natal na Gulbenkian

Coro Gulbenkian
Orquestra Gulbenkian
Michel Corboz [ Maestro
Ana Quintans [ Soprano
Katalin Halmai [ Meio-Soprano
Jan Kobow [ Tenor
João Fernandes [ Baixo

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Salmo 42, op. 42, “Wie der Hirsch schreit“
. Wie der Hirsch schreit
. Meine Seele dürstet nach Gott
. Meine Tränen sind meine Speise
. Denn ich wollte gern hingehen
. Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele
. Mein Gott, betrübt ist meine Seele
. Der Herr hat des Tages verheißen seine Güte
. Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Missa em Dó menor, K.427
. Kyrie
. Gloria
. Laudamus te
. Gratias
. Domine Deus
. Qui tollis
. Quoniam
. Jesu Christe
. Credo
. Et incarnatus est
. Sanctus – Hosanna
. Benedictus – Hosanna

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A música para coro, solistas e orquestra de Mozart e de Mendelssohn é uma das especialidades de Michael Corboz. É também um dos seus prazeres do ponto de vista interpretativo, embora o seu repertório se estenda ao longo de toda a história da música. Assinalando a proximidade da quadra natalícia, o maestro suíço irá dirigir o Coro e a Orquestra Gulbenkian, dando a ouvir o Salmo 42, de Mendelssohn, e a Missa em dó menor, de Mozart.

Estarão com eles no palco, assumindo o papel de solistas, Ana Quintans, Katalin Halmai, Jan Kobow e João Fernandes. As duas primeiras solistas já se apresentaram na Fundação em temporadas passadas, assim como João Fernandes, bolseiro da instituição e um dos cantores mais promissores da sua geração. A estreia do tenor Jan Kobow em Lisboa vem precedida por uma carreira impressionante nos domínios do Lied, da ópera e da música religiosa.

Admirado por Schumann, o Salmo 42 conta-se entre as obras mais belas de Mendelssohn, sendo ainda uma das mais emocionantes composições de tema religioso de todos os tempos.

A Grande Missa, de Mozart, por seu turno, está ligada à sua querida Constanza, para quem a parte de soprano foi concebida. A partitura, porém, nunca foi concluída, embora tivesse chegado a ser apresentada em Salzburgo em Outubro de 1783, ainda durante a vida de Mozart. Encerra-se assim, com a audição de uma das obras-primas do compositor austríaco, o ciclo que, ao longo deste ano, têm vindo a assinalar no Grande Auditório o 250º aniversário do seu nascimento.

Das Rheingold do teatro São Carlos na 2:

Na televisão na 2: "O Ouro do Reno"
de Maio/Junho passados no São Carlos.

Sexta 15, 23h30 - making-of e transformações no teatro.
Domingo 17, 24h00 - a ópera gravada no teatro de São Carlos.

As horas do anúncio e do site (00h45) não coincidem no Domingo.

Oedipus Rex (1927), Igor Stravinsky

T. N. São Carlos, 20 a 22 de Dezembro de 2006.

Direcção musical Donato Renzetti
Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa

Coro do Teatro Nacional de São Carlos
maestro titular Giovanni Andreoli

Ópera-oratória em dois actos.
Libreto de Jean Cocteau segundo Sófocles.
versão de concerto

Voz recitante
Fanny Ardant

Oedipus
Will Hartmann

Creonte/Mensageiro
Keel Watson

Jocasta
Mariana Pentcheva

Pastor
Pedro Chaves

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[wikipedia]
Oedipus rex is an "Opera-oratorio" by Igor Stravinsky scored for orchestra, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbe Jean Daniélou into Latin (the narration, however, is performed in the language of the audience). The work is sometimes performed in the concert hall as an oratorio, as it was in its original performance in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on May 30, 1927, and its American premiere the following year given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Glee Club; it has also been presented onstage as an opera, the first such performance being at the Vienna State Opera on February 23, 1928. It was subsequently presented three times by the Santa Fe Opera in 1960, 1961, and 1962 with the composer in attendance.

Stravinsky's music is an example of neo-classicism. He had considered setting the opera in Ancient Greek, but decided ultimately on Latin, in his words "a medium not dead but turned to stone."

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Plot synopsis

Act I

The Narrator greets the audience, explaining the nature of the drama they are about to see, and setting the scene: Thebes is suffering from a plague, and the men of the city lament it loudly. Oedipus, king of Thebes and conqueror of the Sphinx promises to save the city. Creon, brother-in-law to Oedipus, returns from the oracle at Delphi and declaims the words of the gods: Thebes is harboring the murderer of Laius, the previous king. It is the murderer who has brought the plague upon the city. Oedipus promises to discover the murderer and cast him out. He questions Tiresias, the soothsayer, who at first refuses to speak. Angered at this silence, Oedipus accuses him of being the murderer himself. Provoked, Tiresias speaks at last, stating that the murderer of the king is a king. Terrified, Oedipus then accuses Tiresias of being in league with Creon, who he believes covets the throne. With a flourish from the chorus, Jocasta appears.

Act II

Jocasta calms the dispute by telling all the oracles always lie. An oracle had predicted that Laius would die at his son's hand, when in fact he was murdered by bandits at the crossing of three roads. This frightens Oedipus further: he recalls killing an old man at a crossroads before coming to Thebes. A messenger arrives: King Polybus of Corinth, who Oedipus believes to be his father, has died. However, it is now revealed that Polybus was only the foster-father of Oedipus, who had been, in fact, a foundling. An ancient shepherd arrives: It was he who had found the child Oedipus in the mountains. Jocasta, realizing the truth, flees. At last, the messenger and shepherd state the truth openly: Oedipus is the child of Laius and Jocasta, killer of his father, husband of his mother. Shattered, Oedipus leaves. The messenger then reports the death of Jocasta: she has hanged herself in her chambers. Oedipus broke into her room and put out his eyes with her pin. Oedipus departs Thebes forever as the chorus at first vents their anger and then mourns the loss of a king they loved.

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[by Robert Craft, about Naxos recording]
Stravinsky conducted the first performance of Oedipus Rex (1925-1927) in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, on 30th May, 1927, in a double bill with Firebird, in which George Balanchine danced the rôle of Kastchei. Composers—Ravel, Poulenc, and Roger Sessions among them—were the first to recognize it as Stravinsky’s most powerful dramatic work and one of his greatest creations. After hearing Ernest Ansermet conduct it in London, February 12, 1936, the young Benjamin Britten noted in his diary:

‘One of the peaks of Stravinsky’s output, this work shows his wonderful sense of style and power of drawing inspiration from every age of music, and leaving the whole a perfect shape, satisfying every aesthetic demand … the established idea of originality dies so hard.’

Leonard Bernstein may have been the first to identify the principal influence on the music:

‘I remembered where those four opening notes of Oedipus come from… And the whole metaphor of pity and power became clear; the pitiful Thebans supplicating before their powerful king, imploring deliverance from the plague … an Ethiopian slave girl at the feet of her mistress, Princess of Egypt … Amneris has just wormed out of Aida her dread secret … Verdi, who was so unfashionable at the time Oedipus was written, someone for musical intellectuals of the mid-’20s to sneer at; and Aida, of all things, that cheap, low, sentimental melodrama. [At the climax of Oedipus’ “Invidia” aria] the orchestra plays a diminished-seventh chord … that favorite ambiguous tool [i.e., tool for suggesting ambiguity] of surprise and despair in every romantic opera … Aida! … Was Stravinsky having a secret romance with Verdi’s music in those super-sophisticated mid-’20s? It seems he was.’ [Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1973]

Bernstein might also have mentioned the debt to Verdi in Jocasta’s aria and her duet with Oedipus. A photograph of Verdi occupied a prominent position on the wall of Stravinsky’s Paris studio in the 1920s, and on his concert tours he would go out of his way to hear Verdi operas, to the extent of changing the dates of his own concerts, as he did in Hanover in December 1931 for a performance of Macbeth. In the early 1930s he wrote to one of his biographers: “If I had been in Nietzsche’s place, I would have said Verdi instead of Bizet and held up The Masked Ball against Wagner”. In Buenos Aires, in 1936, Stravinsky shocked a journalist by saying: “Never in my life would I be capable of composing anything to equal the delicious waltz in La Traviata”.

Other influences besides Verdi’s are apparent. The “Gloria” chorus at the end of Act One, the Messenger’s music, and the a cappella choral music in the Messenger scene are distinctly Russian, but the genius of the piece is in the unity that Stravinsky achieves with his seemingly disparate materials.

Genesis Suite (1945), uma colaboração musical

Arnold Schoemberg: I. Prelude

Nathaniel Shilkret: II. Creation *

Alexandre Tansman: III. Adam and Eve *

Darius Milhaud: IV. Cain and Abel

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: V. The Flood

Ernst Toch: VI. The Covenant (The Rainbow) *

Igor Stravinsky: VII. Babel

* Orchestrations reconstructed by Patrick Russ.

T. N. São Carlos, 20 a 22 de Dezembro de 2006.

Direcção musical Donato Renzetti
Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa

Coro do Teatro Nacional de São Carlos
maestro titular Giovanni Andreoli

Interpretação musical em sete partes dos primeiros onze capítulos do Livro Génesis.

Voz recitante
Fanny Ardant

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[about Naxos recording]

In 1944, one of the 20th century’s most audacious musical enterprises came to fulfillment among the celebrated community of European émigré composers living in Los Angeles. Nathaniel Shilkret, director of “light music” at RCA Victor Records, conductor and noted film composer, invited six other composers to collaborate with him on a large-scale musical pageant for orchestra, chorus, and narrator that would portray highlights from the Book of Genesis. The creative partners, each of whom contributed one movement, included several of the musical luminaries of the time: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, self-exiled from Italy, Darius Milhaud (France), Alexandre Tansman (Poland and France), Ernst Toch (Austria), and the two diametrically opposed, acknowledged leaders of 20th-century music, Arnold Schoenberg (Austria) and Igor Stravinsky (Russia). (Dress rehearsals of the work had to be arranged so these two “arch enemies” would not meet, but the unthinkable actually occurred and the principals stood on opposite sides of the hall!)

This singular work, entitled Genesis Suite, was performed only once, in 1945, by the Janssen Symphony Orchestra at the Wilshire Ebel Theatre in Los Angeles; the following week, a privately-funded recording was made at RCA in Hollywood. More than a decade later, a catastrophic fire in Nathaniel Shilkret’s home destroyed all the performance materials. Only Stravinsky and Schoenberg kept copies of their individual movements; the scores and instrumental parts for the five remaining sections were presumed lost forever. Over the years, however, interest in this unusual historic work was kept alive, and in 1998 the Milken Archive investigated rumors that some of the Genesis manuscripts had been rediscovered. Musicologist James Westby had, in fact, found handwritten orchestral scores of the Milhaud and Castelnuovo-Tedesco movements filed at the Library of Congress, as well as condensed musical sketches that only partially indicated the instrumentation for the contributions by Shilkret, Tansman, and Toch. The Milken Archive then commissioned Patrick Russ, one of Hollywood’s most respected orchestrators, to reconstruct those three fragmentary movements, using the sketches and the original private recording to discern the composers’ intentions. Finally, the five “missing” movements were fully prepared in a performance edition by the Milken Archive and “re-united” with the existing Stravinsky and Schoenberg scores. The entire historic work was then recorded in Berlin with Gerard Schwarz conducting the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Ernst Senff Chor, with actors Tovah Feldshuh, Barbara Feldon, David Margulies, Fritz Weaver and Isaiah Sheffer performing the narration.

As Mr. Westby, whose commentary is included in the liner notes for this recording, remarked: “It was a project in which the "high art" of European émigré composers converged with the dynamo of American popular culture—art negotiating with kitsch . . . In retrospect the work does have a surprising historical cohesion. It can be seen as a representation of mid-century sensibilities—the buoyant optimism of America just at the end of the Second World War and before the advent of the cold war. It was an artistic and historical moment that was ripe for unusual confluences… ”

Genesis Suite, which the original program note characterizes as “a partly descriptive, partly psychological” illustration of biblical text, begins with Schoenberg’s Prelude, an atonal vision of primordial chaos that ultimately resolves to C major, and proceeds with the stories of the creation of the world (Shilkret), Adam and Eve (Tansman), and Cain and Abel (Milhaud). A dramatic highpoint is reached in The Flood by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, with its unmistakable parallels with the cataclysmic international situation in 1944. The following movement, The Rainbow/The Covenant by Ernst Toch, expresses the spirit of hope, and the work concludes with Stravinsky’s vision of The Tower of Babel and the dispersion of peoples across the earth.

Although the movements were composed independently of one another and the contributing composers represent divergent musical styles, the work displays an overarching unity imposed by the spoken narrative, as well as by its evocative atmosphere. Musical symmetry is present as well, ironically provided by the two declared “enemies.” In Schoenberg’s Prelude, the chaotic pre-Creation world is ordered by a 12-tone row, and builds into a double fugue which, according to the composer, reflected the difficulties of creation. In the Babel movement that concludes the work, Stravinsky contrapuntally constructs the Tower and then destroys it, returning to the chaos with which the work began nearly an hour before.

Contributing composer Alexandre Tansman recalled that Shilkret, who commissioned Genesis Suite, clearly conceived of work "cinemagraphically, as an external synchronization of a text with a musical atmosphere." Indeed, several of the composers who participated in this project wrote extensively for film after settling in Los Angeles: Toch earned several Academy Award nominations for his nearly 20 scores; Castelnuovo-Tedesco had a 15-year association with major studios and taught such noted contemporary film composers as Henry Mancini, André Previn and John Williams; and Shilkret produced several dozen film scores.

While all participating composers except Stravinsky were Jewish, they varied widely in the degree of their connection to and active participation in their ancestral heritage. It is generally agreed, however, that several of them experienced feelings of recommitment to Judaism after arriving in this country, and were moved to create both sacred and secular works with Jewish connections during their American years.

The underlying themes of exile and destruction that anchor several of the Genesis stories―the expulsion from Eden, the alienation from community in Cain and Abel, and the destruction of man’s earthly home in the Flood―paralleled the experience of these composers forced to leave their homelands and cultural milieu, with the promise of redemption in the sanctuary offered by the new world.

Plus ou moin l'infini - Companhia 111

Novo-Circo
CCB, 13 a 17 de Dezembro de 2006

“Plus ou moins l’infini”, a última produção de uma trilogia sobre o espaço. Na matemática, a linha encontra-se compreendida entre – infinito e + infinito. É daí que nasce este título, que faz também referência às regras dos limites. As linhas serão contínuas ou descontínuas, rectas ou curvas, sólidas ou imateriais, no exterior ou no interior do corpo, visíveis ou invisíveis, mas todas elas móveis. Uma parte do trabalho será sobre o movimento das linhas no espaço. Uma outra parte confrontará a linha e o homem. Por último, tratar-se-á das metáforas construídas com linhas, com o tempo ou as gerações. A pesquisa da companhia neste espectáculo funda-se nas possibilidades que o malabarismo oferece, no sentido próprio e no sentido figurado.

Unreal ~Sidewalk cartoon Bernardo Sassetti

Teatro São Luiz
14, 15, 21, 22 e 23 de Dezembro de 2006

Ora bem…

Na península de Quasi-algures, numa altura em que as modas se confundem ou deixam (por isso) de ser moda, vamos conhecer Ernesto Ductilo Benito – primeiro administrador de uma fábrica de cooperação e recuperação, na região demarcada de Cidadânia-a-nova. Um dia, o bom Ernesto encontra seis dos seus operários de fabricação em série misteriosamente empoleirados em estranhas máquinas, produzindo sons musicais de nível estético apreciável, que nunca imaginara possíveis nas suas instalações fabris.

Deste pequeno episódio, nasce-lhe o entusiasmo, a ideia e o sonho de rearmonizar o Domínio da Música – sua principal herança de família, agora convertido num reino de anarquia, onde todos os estilos musicais se (con)fundem numa enorme sarrafusca.

Inspirado pelos estudos musicais de sua bisavó Antónia, aconselhado por um sábio bruxo, Retortilho Castraz, e apoiado por um génio inventor, Mestre Ramalho Solau, Ernesto transforma aqueles operários em luminosos Elementos de Sciências Musicais, rumo ao conturbado Domínio da Música.

Unreal – um hino ao desenvolvimento da classe dos trabalhadores, artífices e operários por conta d’outrem: música; visão; imaginação; entrega; solicitação; aventura; mistério; paixão; “Indumentária”; desventura; solicitação; desenvolvimento; entrega; música; visão; delírio; falácia; zombaria e… experiências científicas na península de Quasi-algures.

Bernardo Sassetti, 2006

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Ficha artística
Música original e arranjos (2005/2006) Bernardo Sassetti.
Intérpretes ao vivo Drumming [GP], Perico Sambeat~, Alexandre Frazão, José Salgueiro, Rui Rosa, Bernardo Sassetti e músicos convidados.
Participação especial Beatriz Batarda.
Filme/cartoon musical realizado por Filipe Alçada e Bernardo Sassetti.
Animação de Filipe Alçada, baseada na história original e no trabalho de fotografia e patchwork (2003/06) de Bernardo Sassetti.
Lançamento do livro Unreal ~ Sidewalk cartoon pela Quasi Edições; direcção de Jorge Reis-Sá.
Foyer do São Luiz: exposição dos painéis fotográficos que deram origem a Unreal ~ Sidewalk cartoon.

Grande Dança em 2007

Companhia Sasha Waltz & Guests
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin - Vocalconsort Berlin
Dido & Aeneas
Centro Cultural de Belém
Março 2007, 2 e 3
Em Dido & Aeneas, a coreógrafa alemã Sasha Waltz, expoente máximo da última geração do Tanztheater, encena a conhecida ópera de Henry Purcell, de 1689, numa abordagem que associa os diferentes níveis de representação, música, texto e dança, sem deixar que nenhum deles domine o outro.
A história de Dido & Aneas, inspirada na Eneida de Virgílio (canto IV), protagoniza a luta entre o amor e o dever com Tróia e Cartago como pano de fundo. Uma tragédia manipulada desde o Olimpo a que Sasha Waltz acrescenta a inquietação do movimento numa perspectiva contemporânea.



Pina Bausch
Teatro Camões
Abril 2007, 5 a 8
Für die Kinder von gestern, heute und morgen
Ein Stück von Pina Bausch



Bill T. Jones
Blind Date
Centro Cultural de Belém
Maio 2007, 4 e 5
Nas mãos do coreógrafo americano Bill T. Jones (1952), a dança torna-se um instrumento extraordinário para sondar as grandes questões da vida e viajar em direcção à compreensão. Neste novo trabalho de uma noite, Blind Date explora temas como o patriotismo, a honra, o sacrifício e o trabalho dedicado a uma causa maior que nós próprios – valores quase perdidos no mundo moderno.
Dotados de uma técnica invulgar, os 10 bailarinos desta companhia multicultural – que em breve completa 25 anos e que inclui bailarinos da Turquia, China e México – contam histórias pessoais e movimentam-se num cenário sensorial de cores primárias, imagens de vídeo e influências musicais provenientes de todo o mundo. Como num “blind date” (encontro às cegas), sabedoria e eloquência encontram um fundamentalismo embrutecido nesta explosiva meditação sobre forças e crenças opostas.
O resultado é uma experiência de dança/teatro multifacetada, que “ao combinar preocupações políticas e morais com ingenuidade coreográfica e aptidão teatral”, é “ao mesmo tempo comovente, sexy, divertido, profundo e triste”.
John Rockwell, The New York Times

Música em São Roque 2006

antepenúltimo, 9 de Dezembro de 2006

Coro do T. N. de São Carlos
Música portuguesa de Natal dos séculos XVII e XVIII

Obras de João Domingo Bontempo, Requiem

Kodo Yamagishi, órgão / baixo contínuo
Giovanni Andreoli, direcção