I failed to enter that last evening we went to a recital of various singers from our church choir singing contemporary songs by New York composers. Our choir singers are just great and that's why our choir is so good. Lots of talent.
Senza Sangue and the New York Philharmonic: 'It's a very intense piece'
This weekend, sonic-thrillseekers in New York can take temporary leave of Brooklyn’s avant-noise dens, since Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall is likely to be the place where the most stylistically “extreme” experiments occur.
On Friday and Saturday, the New York Philharmonic will unfurl the American premiere of Senza Sangue (Without Blood), an explosive work by the contemporary Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös, on a bill that also includes Schubert’s unfinished symphony. Eötvös’s one-act opera, which is based on themes of wartime violence drawn from Italian writer Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same name, is just the latest in a series of aggressive modern orchestra pieces that the Philharmonic has excelled in during the tenure of music director Alan Gilbert.
For many in the Philharmonic audience, the dissonances that abound in Eötvös’s sound-world will amount to something of a stretch. The style will also be relatively new territory for one of the Philharmonic’s guest vocalists in this piece: Anne Sofie von Otter. Though the mezzo-soprano has a storied history of engagement with a diverse range of repertoire – including contemporary works – one thing you don’t find much of in her large discography is Euro-modernism after Karlheinz Stockhausen (with whom Eötvös worked, over the course of several decades).
In an email exchange that followed the world premiere performance of Senza Sangue in Germany last week (at the tail end of the Philharmonic’s well-received European tour), Von Otter reflected on her own journey with the opera. Of Eötvös and Gilbert, she indicated that they likely settled on her because “they were looking for a ‘ripe’ but fully functioning” mezzo-soprano. “The script says ‘elderly’ and I am getting there slowly,” she wrote – appending that observation with a smiley-face emoticon.
“As you say, I have a wide repertoire,” Von Otter added, in acknowledgement of a question that cited her past collaborations with Elvis Costello and the jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. And yet: “Eötvös’s music took a long time to become familiar with. The first months I worked on it, it felt kind of new every time ... Finally, I am now beginning to hum phrases of it in the shower, and the sounds of the orchestra helped enormously, of course. He is quite [a virtuoso] in his use of the instruments – the sounds and dramatic effects he writes and wants.” A 90-second audio clip of the Cologne premiere, provided by the Philharmonic, hints at a few of the modes Eötvös employs. (Though Senza Sangue features an Italian libretto, the performances this weekend will also feature English-language text, projected above the stage.) Against nervy writing for strings, Von Otter’s character (“the Woman”) questions baritone Russell Braun (“the Man”) about the casus belli that motivated a past act of violence. At the 57-second mark in the clip, there’s a hint of absurdist irony – communicated through Von Otter’s vibrato – that accompanies the Woman’s question, which, in English, reads as: “Does this seem like a better world?” Soon after, Von Otter’s character employs a bit of accusatory shout-singing, during a portion that translates to English like so:
Now you should be able to speak this word: revenge. You were killing for revenge, You were all killing everyone for revenge.”
“To combine singing and dramatic speaking [is] not so easy,” Von Otter says. She also cites her recent experience at the Royal Opera, in the Brecht-Weill music-drama The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, as a valuable experience that has helped her navigate similar challenges in Eötvös’s one-act.
“The piece is not at all easy for the two singers,” Von Otter says of Senza Sangue. “[It’s] hard to find the pitch; you have to work it into the voice, unless of course you happen to have perfect pitch, which I don’t. It helps that I am no stranger to singing fairly straight [and] not applying vibrato to every note. And also that I enjoy declamatory music, like Monteverdi and early Baroque or French music ... If you are a juicy bel canto singer at heart, then this is not for you, I think.” Still, while allowing that a premiere performance is always “a bit like walking on thin ice”, Von Otter pronounced herself encouraged by the reaction to the Cologne premiere. “It seemed to go down well with the audience; they clapped for a long time! It’s a very intense piece for sure!”
Like the stylistically game mezzo-soprano, the New York Philharmonic knows there’s a virtue in staying flexible, too. Which is why you’ll only have two chances to catch Senza Sangue, on 8 and 9 May. For most of the following week, the Philharmonic will offer a programme that has the orchestra playing along with a series of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Nothing wrong in that. (Seriously, families: Take your kids to the Warner Bros exhibition, and get them accustomed to the concert hall.) But it does mean that those interested in bolder fare only have a limited window during which to act.
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