Sommernachtskonzert 2024 – Works by WAGNER; SMETANA; VERDI; HOLMES; KHACHATURIAN; SHOSTAKOVICH; KALMAN; J. STRAUSS II– Lise Davidsen, soprano/ Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/ Andris Nelsons – Sony 19802802502 (79:00 – complete content listing below) (8/30/24)****:
Recorded 7 June 2024, the grand concert of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert at the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park marks the 20th anniversary of the series and the second appearance of conductor Andris Nelson. Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen makes her debut at these concerts, singing one aria each from Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino. The program also celebrates the bicentennial of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana with three of his works.
Wagner’s huge scale of composition sets the tone immediately, with the ubiquitous Ride of the Valkyries from Act III of Die Walküre, energetic and dire enough in its 1870 depiction of the eight, mythic female warriors in their transport of fallen heroes to Valhalla. A brightly toned soprano, Lise Davidsen, intones Elisabeth’s greeting to the Hall of Song in Act II of the opera Tannhäuser, joyful in her anticipation of seeing the titular minstrel since his unexpected return to the Wartburg Castle. Davidsen’s closing “Sei mir gegrüsst” enjoys a ringing fervor.
From Smetana’s epic 1882 cycle of symphonic poems, Ma Vlast, we hear another concert staple, Vltava, the Moldau, the mighty river, from its incipient rills to the throbbing waterway to Prague. The VPO woodwinds enter the E minor rivulets with perky energy, accompanied by plucked strings, which quickly swell into the main theme in major. Nelsons nurtures’ the theme’s course through Bohemian meadows and forests, feeling the very air of a national yearning for freedom. The VPO horns ring with a forest hunt’s fervor and sense of pursuit. The country dance, a wedding polka, resounds with muscular virility. The night scene always evokes the most nuances from the orchestral ensemble which performs it, whether or not one cares to envision water nymphs in their delicate, lunar frolic. The horn ostinatos prove sumptuous as the motion continues towards the St. John Rapids. The confluence of the potent motions of the river and its passing of the High Castle Vyšehrad never fails to achieve a mystical apotheosis, and the Vienna audience well appreciates the event, even as the mighty river passes away into the distant horizon.
The relatively unfamiliar Polka from the 1874 comic opera by Smetana, The Two Widows, depicts a dance (of some three minutes’ length) staged by peasants in the spirit of unity with the landed gentry. The blend of winds, brass, and strings in national folk rhythms proves endearing, if not memorable. More virtuosic in every detail, the Dance of the Comedians from the1866 opera The Bartered Bride, Act III, generates the acrobatic gestures with a facility we well know from interpreters like Rafael Kubelik and Istvan Kertesz. Nelson’s dizzy energy proves no less flamboyantly effective.
Verdi’s opera La forza del destino has occupied a place with the Vienna Philharmonic since 1863, although the original score proffered a short prelude, which the now-familiar Overture superseded around 1862. The powerful Overture presents most of the thematic motifs in the story, including the notion of Fate, as embodied in brass and bassoons, then following the character of Leonora, her lover Alvaro’s encounter with Carlo, the plaint of Leonora’s prayer in Act II, and a later duet. Soprano Davidsen sings the impassioned wish for the release of death from Act IV, “Pace, pace, mio Dio!” The plea, intoned from Leonora’s lonely cell, brings an ironic catastrophe, since it will be her own brother’s hand that ends her life. The VPO harp adds the touch of delicate pathos requisite to the tragic effect.
Augusta Holmes (1847-1903) remains known for a body of work that includes cantatas, symphonic poems, and operas, all conceived under the spell of Richard Wagner. The Franco-Prussian War inflamed Holmes’s own national fervor, and her 1888 Ludus pro patria (Patriotic Games) includes an erotic instrumental interlude, A Night of Love, marked Andante amoroso, meant as a practical means to re-populate France with a race of new warriors. Whether one concurs with Saint-Saens that her music exhibits “excessive virility” of style may forgive the many passages in this episode that compete with Massenet and Saint-Saens himself for a sweeping, chromatic lyricism.
Two Russian selections conclude the formal part of the concert, the first of which is the spectacularly popular Sabre Dance from Khachaturian’s 1942 ballet Gayane, in its satiric bombast. The lumbering but graceful Waltz – Allegretto poco moderato from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety-Orchestra, betrays a mocking tone in its gaudy lilts. The two encores pay due homage to Vienna itself: Emmerich Kalman’s 1915 operetta The Gypsy Princess offers one aria for soprano Davidsen, a coloratura vehicle that allows her to sail in csardas heights previously attained by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Miliza Korjus. Finally, Nelson brings us a tenderly lush rendition of Johann Strauss II’s 1873 Wiener Blut Waltz, meant to celebrate the wedding of the Emperor Franz Joseph I‘s daughter Archduchess Gisela Louise Maria and Prince Leopold of Bavaria. The piece has come to define the aristocratic grace of the Austro-Hungarian epoch, its generous sense of humane gesture. The splendid finale, replete with drum-roll, absorbs a dazzled audience into the coda.
–Gary Lemco
Schönbrunn Sommernachtskonzert 2024 =
WAGNER: Die Walküre: Walkürenritt; Tannhäuser: eia, Dich, teure Halle, grüß ich wieder;
SMETANA: Má vlast, II. Vltava, “The Moldau”; The Two Widows: Polka; The Bartered Bride: Dance of the Comedians;
VERDI: La forza del destino: Overture; La forza del destino, Act IV: Pace, pace, mio Dio!
HOLMES: La Nuit et l’Amour: Ludus pro patria: La nuit et l’amour;
KHACHATURIAN: Sabre Dance from Gayane;
SHOSTAKOVICH: Waltz No. 2 from Suite for Variety Orchestra;
KALMAN: Die Csárdásfürstin: Heia, heia, in den Heimatland;
J. STRAUSS II: Wiener Blut, Op. 354
