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~ Posted by Charlie McCann, December 12th 2011

There's just one problem with reading Julian Barnes on Jean Sibelius: it makes you want to hear the music. And Sibelius, important as he is, isn't the kind of composer whose tunes you can necessarily rustle up in your mind's ear. Some of the works Barnes mentions on his visit to Ainola, Sibelius’s home near Helsinki, will be performed live over the next few weeks. The Violin Concerto, which he wrote the year after moving into Ainola, will be performed by Elina Vähälä in Birmingham on January 26th and in London the following day. Akiko Suwanai will also be playing the concerto in Cardiff on February 10th. The concert in Cardiff also features the last major work that Sibelius composed before his great silence descended, the symphonic poem “Tapiola”.  read more »

Lust, anguish, betrayal and murder should make for a fiery night at the theatre. But sparks don’t fly until the final moments of the Metropolitan Opera’s tepid new production of “Don Giovanni”, when a burst of real flames shoot up as the philandering Don descends to hell.
 
This is the Met debut of Michael Grandage, the Tony-award-winning artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London. His aim is to reveal the  complexities in Mozart’s dark “comic opera”, rendering the title character more than just a jovial serial seducer. But the work’s potent emotions are tamed, not stirred, in this detached, unimaginative staging.
 
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, has invited several theatre directors to stage new productions, encouraging clear storytelling that he hopes will satisfy opera buffs while enticing newcomers. But the results have been mixed, ranging from Mary Zimmerman’s unwieldy “Sonnambula” and David McVicar’s dreary “Anna Bolena” to Bartlett Sher’s engaging productions of “Barber of Seville” and “Tales of Hoffmann.”
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Anne-Sophie Mutter’s career as a violinist has been governed by the guru-pupil principle. In 1976, as a teenager, she was taken under the wing of Herbert von Karajan; in 1997, she created her own foundation, which nurtures brilliant young string players from all over the world.

The best of the current bunch will be at the Verbier Festival (July 27th) as Mutters Virtuosi, playing both on their own and with Mutter herself. She also gives a Prom at the Albert Hall, London, on September 6th, and in the winter she will have her own mini-season at the Barbican, joining the LSO to perform works including one written for her by Sofia Gubaidulina and another by the man she calls her “in-house composer”, André Previn. Which is a sweet way of saying that she was until recently the fifth Mrs Previn. Before that she had been married to a lawyer (who died of cancer) much older than herself: journalists have long feasted like vultures on her dramatic private life. Hence her hatred of press intrusiveness and her rigid control of her own publicity. But that control is constitutional, and underpins her commanding authority on stage. Her artistry, whether in Mozart and Beethoven or in the music of the contemporary composers she champions, is perfection incarnate: this youthful 48-year-old seems to live in a permanent golden age.

Verbier Festival Switzerland, July 15th to 31st.

High culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord when Verbier hosts the only classical-music festival you can reach by cable car. Since 1994, stellar musicians have been dropping their fees to wallow in this collegiate atmosphere. Maestros conduct the resident youth orchestra. World-class soloists volunteer for scratch chamber groups. Egos are left at the bottom of the mountain.

How does Martin Engstroem, the festival’s Swedish founder, pull it off? The answer lies partly in the music of the setting. Streams descant and trill along gutters between chalets; pastures clang with cow bells; the view across the valley is an alpine symphony.

Last year the pop singer Rufus Wainwright dipped his toe in Mozart. This year, as well as the pianists Lang Lang and Martha Argerich and the violinists Joshua Bell and Vadim Repin, Verbier’s siren song has lured a mind-boggling cast to its “Don Giovanni”. To get Bryn Terfel, Edita Gruberova, Rene Pape, Susan Graham and Thomas Quasthoff on one stage, an opera house would have to blow its annual subsidy. The main stage is a 1,600-capacity tent near the Au Vieux Verbier tavern; the one hazard, rain. “We’ve never cancelled a concert,” Engstroem says. “But here you never know what’s going to happen.” That’s the beauty of it.

Verbier festival  July 17th to August 2nd 

~ JASPER REES
 

Picture Credit: AP