https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGxhzDyH5zc&list=OLAK5uy_l05kod5LkedDpfIasjmRpmGKvgYvWEqas&fbclid=IwAR0whVFBI3oIfMuEfgLxrF1KMOg_bs0EhcG33dOsOBhG0wvrWqQD86zkpR4
Here is my favorite 20th century work as we have never, ever, EVER heard it - idiomatically played and sung with security, freshness, and freedom as it never even has by any Czech forces, and only thus far approximated only by Rattle's own earlier recording in English. There will never be a greater performance of this eternal work (audio, that doesn't count Walter Felsenstein's visual miracle). Just the very act of putting on the new recording by the conductor of my old favorite recorded performance breaks the obvious Wagner fever I've had for the past month since watching Kirill Petrenko's new Tristan.
My Wagner obsession is is a diseased fascination with a musical black hole. I can't imagine that Wagner is not the world's vastest creative genius, bar none. His art is far too sublime to ignore, but far too loveless to love. I claim this for none but myself, but Wagner's is a sublimity which gifts me neither joy nor tears, merely awe. But Janacek, rather, is always a seven letter word for joy and grants instant 'black dog relief.'
And I don't give a shit what anybody else thinks, I know a maestro when I hear one and however flawed he is, maestro has no meaning if Simon Rattle is not just that. Like Leonard Bernstein before him, he is of a different and newer worldview than many of his peers; one much more in keeping with the globalized direction of today's world in which breath of repertoire and programming from concert to concert matters more than any one interpretation.
It's not that Rattle hasn't achieved lots of amazing performances, he most certainly has, but they're not usually in the 'standard' repertoire in which conductors are most judged. Like Bernstein but to an even greater extent, if you're to judge Rattle by his Beethoven symphonies he seems above average but nothing extraordinary and the attention he garners is surely maddening if those are the recordings upon which people focus... But whereas we find Bernstein's greatness in larger-than-life environs of Mahler and similarly extravagant works, Rattle's greatness is generally to be found on a slightly more human scale. Like Bernstein, he does 'the giant stuff' magnificently. The only Mahler symphony he doesn't do wonderfully is 2, the one he's famous for... but otherwise, his true fach is 'modern classics': Jeux, Sibelius 5 and 7, Schoenberg's Five Pieces and Pierrot, L'Enfant et les sortileges and Mother Goose, Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Apollo, King Roger, etc... he has so internalized the world of 20th century repertoire that he brings to it a gloriously romantic, 19th century freedom, and a lot of people don't know how to deal with that kind of weird hybridization. Surely, if people can appreciate the Wagnerized Mozart of Beecham and Davis, they can appreciate the Wagnerized Ravel of Sir Simon. Rattle's great gift is finding the 19th century within the 20th century.
Obviously though, what matters as much as the conductor is the orchestra. Vixen is so full of pauses with no singing, and Rattle's LSO matches Mackerras in Vienna character for character, oddity for oddity. Mackerras, being Mackerras, will of course be more incisive and tidy. He will make more of the odd sounds, but Mackerras's strict classicism never permits him an indulgent enough hand to lay into the aching poignance of Janacek's melodies and harmonies the way Rattle or Kubelik do. No one will ever excel Mackerras in Kata or the Glagolitic Mass, but Vixen now belongs to Rattle forever.
Obviously, Lucy Crowe is not going to be able to keep up with the virtuosity and native phonetics of Licia Popp, but the Vixen is in many ways more a master of ceremonies (or a maitre d'...) than a star turn. It's a thankless part, whose singer has to convincingly act like an animal far more than she ever gets to sing. Both the gamekeeper and the poacher get to strut their stuff far more than the Vixen or fox ever do, and of course, Gerald Finley doesn't disappoint. But listen to all the character singers around her: listen to the comic relish with which Peter Hoare tears into the Rooster or Jan Martinik into the Badger - that is the kind of singing that truly makes this opera come alive.
Why, why, oh why, is Rattle leaving the LSO? This is the best thing he's done since... I don't know if he's ever done anything on this level. The Berlin Philharmonic would never be satisfied with anything but a Furtwangler zombie (maybe they should have voted Danny...), and it is extraordinary how close-to-well it worked out considering the odds against Rattle there. Now he's going to Munich, where he will be similarly pummeled for the tragedy of not being Mariss Jansons. I understand Brexit is a nightmare, but having heard them live, the LSO commit to Rattle as orchestras allow themselves just a few times every generation. It is yet another would be golden age over before it began in the sad history of orchestral performance.
Perhaps golden ages, in arts, politics, science, or sports, are great because they are rare, but it does not make their paucity any less sad. Recordings like this one come to us as a reminder of how wonderful life could be, and yet, look at the subject matter of Vixen - we would not know what to do with a life better than the ones we have. Life is meant to be bittersweet, and moments like this one arrive to remind us of how beautiful life can be amid its sadness.
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