It's been a full five years since I last wrote about this, and much has developed in the intervening time.
A certain youtuber who adores me just had a video about his belief that most of the best conductors today are women. I would not go quite that far, and I would also go further. I would say no one really knows the kind of artist a conductor will be until well after 40, but it is beginning to look very much like the future is female. Almost all of the most promising YOUNG conductors are women. When you look at the generation under forty, there's beginning to be no question. Over forty, we have these bombastic batons who sound a bit like a musical rendering of toxic masculinity. The cautiousness of their early years turned the dial all the way in the other direction. What used to be careful now sounds like rage, and suddenly we have major forces in the field like Karina Canellakis, Dalia Stasevska, Eva Ollikainen, Xian Zhang and Oksana Lyniv who sound like nothing so much as the jet set virtuosos of 50 years ago: Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Dutoit, Mehta, with their giant walls of sound that sell records by brutalizing the music.
One conductor who has disappointed me terribly in recent years is Nathalie Stutzmann. As she ascended the career ladder, she too has left her gentle ways behind for mannerism: driving Schubert without mercy, playing Brahms with heaviness and rubato that sounds more pretentious than affectionate. Singer or conductor, she is such a talented musician, it's a shame to see the gift curdle just when she made the big time.
Nathalie Stutzmann: Gentle no longer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb2GxweVEyk
Of these Orchestra with Capital O meastras, Canellakis, the American, strikes me as both the most talented and the most brutalizing. Talented, intelligent, nuanced, sure, with an absolutely massive dynamic range which she uses at every level, and as many 'wow' moments as any musician ever has. She absolutely raises the pulse, but she's utterly 'hard' like her mentor Jaap van Zweden. Even in the strings, the textures never stop sounding like cold steel. I've heard Stasevska (Ukrainian-Finnish), Zhang (Chinese) and Ollikainen (Finnish) live, and the intensity of all three was undeniably thrillng, but I struggled to hear much subtlety or care beneath it. What will they do when they're old and the galvanizing energy can't be summoned anymore? I was also there for the Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv's American debut, and she has a warm heart beneath her iron discipline, and it really is iron: not a bowstroke out of place, but there isn't much subtlety: things are often just monodynamic and unphrased. If she develops well, she could be another Jansons. If she doesn't, she'd be another Zubin Mehta. One that strikes me as a slightly deeper artist is the Estonian Kristiina Poska, who is as fiery as any of them, but is also possessed of serious thought and detail work.
Canellakis on her best foot forward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT6U8Y0u0pg
Lyniv: Iron discipline concealing sincerity and vulnerability, not much subtlety. Make allowances for the orchestra, it's a youth orchestra in wartime, but listen to the fragility of expression here. The heart breaks in the largo. Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 From the New World | Oksana Lyniv & Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Poska: Fire and subtlety. Beethoven - Symphony no. 7 - Flanders Symphony Orchestra, Kristiina Poska
But looking just a very little bit younger at those who haven't turned forty yet, and the field is much, much more promising. Look past Mirga, whom we'll talk about later, and just think of a few who seem, at least I think, like the coming best in the business.
Marie Jacquot: subtlety, glowing overtones, flowing phrases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aaXzYn86GU
The French Marie Jacquot gets mixed reviews, but nearly every video I've seen shows me that she is magnificent. No matter what the size of the orchestra, she sounds more as though she's leading a chamber orchestra than an Orchestra with a Capital O. She seems like my dear Kubelik or Ivan Fischer, if there's excitement they certainly accept it, but like them, she's going for something far more elusive. The music simply flows and glows. At least on youtube, the textures are absolutely luminescent, the phrases seem unending for minutes at a time even as they rise and fall. She seems to deliberately keep things a little loose, perhaps even a little overly gentle and smooth, but she knows that that the subtle unpredictabilities of performance are where the real music happens. Mark my words, in seventy years she will be remembered by the next generation of weirdos like us as one of the truly great artists of the podium.
Delyana Lazarova: Jacquot is for the connoisseurs, Lazarova's for the public. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtslKjYDORk
The Bulgarian Delyana Lazarova is just stepping up to the big time, but like with Marie Jacquot, we already seem to hear an artist fully formed. This is a podium artist with absolutely everything. An absolutely explosive talent full of energy, intelligence, heat and warmth, a 'complete' one who simultaneously engages nerves, mind and heart. Like K. Petrenko or C. Kleiber, when you hear her, you can feel as though you're hearing the music's absolute truth: the thing in itself. Is she that good? Well, those are once every fifty years miracles, so probably not, but obviously we'll know with time. But even if she isn't, she's going to be an indisputably major name by 2030. Listen to her in the above Beethoven 2. here's one of the few podium musicians who can sustain a risky tempo in the opening without everything slowing down, generating more fireworks than anybody since the 1950s, then give an utterly beautiful, nuanced larghetto. There are very few conductors who 'get' Beethoven 2, a work that's ostensibly sunny but is actually full of panic and rage (and comedy). I used to think there were four conductors who really 'got' it: Mengelberg, Beecham, Mitropoulos, Scherchen. There are now five.
Joana Mallwitz: Pure light and agility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcWIdZz4C44
The German Joana Mallwitz is about the most un-German conductor there's ever been. Everything is champagne-like, effervescent and fun, but also artful, sometimes stunningly so. One would think that a conductor this propulsive would be utterly without substance (I'm looking in the direction of the Met...), but like Charles Munch, there is a breathtaking amount of thought and nuance going into what seems like an unreflective entertainer. Every few seconds there seems to be a subtle rubato or accent that catches your breath.
Han-Na Chang: The rare soloist who's just as great a musician when she picks up a baton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9svn1d1Kao&list=PLRFYPLKjaThtJ_Dn4ZL7M8COaTVo7w_ey&index=22
Then there's the slightly older Han-Na Chang, whose musical bona-fides were proven long before she took up the baton as one of the great cello soloists of her generation. I heard broadcasts and youtubes of her doing Tchaikovsky 5 and 6 and they absolutely stunned me. Any idiot can pick up a baton and get a standing ovation in Tchaikovsky, but her's was actually individuated, with a newly minted detail in every bar. Her Tchaikovsky was both the composer's, and unmistakably her own. After hearing that, I was sure she would be able to do more serious repertoire just as well. I was right. Go on youtube, find her doing Mozart or Beethoven. This is still greatness, mixing old fashions and new, coming up with her own interpretations. Like Leonard Bernstein, she might be a little ostentatious in both interpretation and podium manner, but beneath the flamboyance is very real musicmaking.
Ariane Matiakh: Wit and irony flitting between light and dark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWDIwsfgQnE
Another slightly older one is the French Ariane Matiakh. Like Mallwitz, she is a lighthearted one, but with Lazarova's fire, and a very sophisticated tongue-in-cheek pointedness to her phrasing: not quite mannered, but the phrases are deliberate enough that you sense a darkness underneath her lightheartedness. There seems to always be some instrument playing staccato within the general legato, accents within the quiet passages that are surprisingly strong. Everything seems to surprise with her. I can't wait to hear her in one of the big Mozarts. She reminds me a bit of Beecham.
There are others of course: the interesting but hyperactive Anna Bihlmaier, the extremely Italian in both name and style Speranza Scappucci, the Norwegian Tabita Berglund who has genuine heart but not much in the way of detail. In part 2, we'll talk about the great hopes of the field and the weight of expectations on them: Mirga, sure, but also Elim Chan, more about Mallwitz and Lyniv, we'll talk about Simone Young and Susanna Malkki and what expectations did to them, and, god help us, we'll even talk about Marin Alsop.
We'll talk about Joanne Faletta sometime still: the patron saint of underrated composers of every era and country. Others care about headlines, she cares about music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEYukjiGMxQ&list=OLAK5uy_lsJvWAnnLIJwDCm7MdixhaVyh-RdWdEg8
-----------------------------------------
The problem every woman conductor faces is the problem present in every line of work for celebrity entertainers, only in this case, having broken a glass ceiling, you needn't be a true celebrity to undergo the same problems. You have to develop artistically under scrutiny. The scrutiny comes both from terrible sexism, and from the very people most rooting for them to succeed. The expectations on them are not just to score a victory for women, or to prove chauvinists wrong, the expectation is to let your excellence speak not just for yourself but for all those who were denied your opportunities before you? In a sense, even your victories aren't allowed to be your own.
How many among us can properly flourish in that environment? What steel do you have to be made of to not get dizzy in the highest climbs? Can a musician made of less than steel flourish in it? Will that fortitude show up in their work? Will it make them less sensitive?
The one who was supposed to be the next Lenny, Mirga Grazynte-Tyla, is clearly not made of steel. She walked away, probably to raise her kids. She now appears as seldomly as Carlos Kleiber, and generally plays music like Weinberg and Kutavicius nobody else plays. Good for her. This is the life she wants, this is the music she wants to do. She's a much better musician because of it. So many celebrities are not the artists they should be, because when you're a celebrity, you don't have permission to fail, you don't have permission to risk. Celebrities fail all the time, but when they fail in the public eye, they usually learn the lesson to always be cautious: do not be yourself, be who the public or the handlers want you to be. Rarely after the public notices them does an artist get better than they were before they were truly famous, and a lot of them get worse. Even if an artist is merely eminent in their field, it's very different from being a celebrity. A celebrity cannot fail without humiliation, risk becomes harder, and if you don't risk, you don't learn. Furthermore being a touring musician is not a life, whatever genre. You stay in hotels, you go to restaurants, you meet fans, you meet colleagues, but you don't have family or friends close enough that their conversation accompanies your daily life. When her kids are grown, maybe she'll come back, and the experience of a real life will come out in her musicmaking. It already is.
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France - Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 6 in A major, WAB 106
Forget all the Weinberg for a moment, magnificent as it is. Listen to her in this border piece of the trad rep, Bruckner 6, and don't be fooled by the brisk tempo in the first subject. I used to think MGT was as vapid as most of the other musicians who lived their whole adult lives as celebrities. Then she walked away and my jaw dropped to the floor: my god, a real person whose family matters more to them than fame! This is a genuine person with real concerns. While Karina Canellakis's musicmaking sounds compressed into tubes, MGT sounds now like a real voice, singing out. It's steady, not much rubato, but it sounds all the more genuine for its steadiness. Barring one awkward tempo switch at the end of the first movement, it's as inevitable as a cathedral arch: serene, delicate, yearning, at times even ecstatic. If Giulini did Bruckner 6 around 1970, it might sound like this. It's not exactly the way I prefer, I prefer a slightly more flowing tempo in the second movement, but it's great even so. There are as many ways of being a great artist as there are works of art, and if this is the artist MGT becomes, she will both be one of the great podium artists of all time, and be an entirely different kind of one than people want from her. Let people go to YNS for speed and volume, let people go to Dudamel for emotion and passion (assuming he keeps improving...), let people go to Petrenko for immutable truth, but let Mirga be the one to console them. We are still waiting for the woman who will take us to the height of emotional vulnerability the way that (to me) the most necessary artists do: artists of a long proud line like Giulini and Lenny. You know it when you hear it, and you need to know what it means to live a real life with all its setbacks and tragedies. Artists used to live through wars and unmedicated illnesses, you don't learn that from a luxury seat on a plane.
Elim Chan conducts Brahms - Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op 98
A similar weight of expectation is currently on the Hongkonger, Elim Chan. I wasn't impressed by her. I thought she was quite mid and bland. There's youtube videos of her virtuoso repertoire by rote, with nothing really to say or contribute. Then I heard her do Brahms 4, and in this much more emotionally sophisticated piece than Scheherazade or Tchaikovsky 5, she utterly rose to it. All kinds of titans get tripped up by the latter two Brahms symphonies (don't ask me who, you'll disagree of course), but she achieved what they did not. It was a little too virtuoso and brilliant at times, but mostly in the scherzo which is already a little virtuoso and brilliant. To my ears, Brahms 4 is one of the most emotionally sophisticated works of art in the world, it goes through the motions of dance rhythms while its heart breaks, and Chan seemed to completely understand it.
Whether you're in classical, jazz or rock, probably even hip-hop, if you want a big celebrity career, you have to do the splashy stuff that gets you noticed and gets the audience to their feet in a second and a half. But if that's the majority of what you're doing, how do you get the necessary experience with the truly deep works of art which can't depend on adrenaline to get their message across? What separates truly great artists from the second tier is what they can do when they can't hide behind adrenaline.
Having heard that Brahms 4, there is no question in my mind that Chan is capable of artistic perception and achievement at the highest level, but can she repeat it over and over again. Sources tell me the Cleveland Orchestra, arguably the most probing ensemble of musicians in the world, is seriously looking at her for their next director. If she can't repeat that level of artistic understanding over and over again, it's going to be a disaster. Apparently she hasn't even presented a work of new music to them yet. All the good will in the world will not allow her that kind of on the job training without Cleveland spitting her out.
An incredibly warm and fiery Sibelius 5 that's in danger of flying apart from first bar to last: Sibelius: 5. Sinfonie ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Dalia Stasevska
Apparently Dalia Stasevska is being looked at too. I find this a little comical because Cleveland is the most precise, fastidious ensemble in the world, and having heard Stasevska, she is a musician who operates entirely on adrenaline and cares about precision about as much as Elon Musk. There can be no more terrible temperamental fit in the field. Stasevska has a lot of good qualities, but she's become an out and out Russian-style romantic like Yevgeny Svetlanov or Yuri Temirkanov for whom every moment is a chance for extravagent passion, and her performances take such enormous risks that the ensemble seems to fall apart just as often.
https://youtu.be/CoKE3WIEOvs?si=TnKAB_SPJQgD0jNW&t=2088
If they want a woman who's ready for it, look at Oksana Lyniv. Is Lyniv a true great? No, not yet at least. But neither was Welser-Most when he came. There are better women conductors out there, but not with that level of experience, not with that amount of time spent learning away from widespread scrutiny, and not with priorities so similar to Cleveland's. She is precision with heart: simultaneously cold and warm just as they are. Absolute precision, terraced dynamics with not much phrasing, but a truly long line and warm sound all the same. She's not the very best out there, while MGT and Chan may eventually be that, but she's ready and can rise to the occasion. There are better candidates out there, but if they want a woman, she's the one they should pick, and the musical partnership could flourish magnificently.
No comments:
Post a Comment