Author: Antony Jeffrey

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At the Kempinski Taschenberg Palais – Dresden

Above: Interior of Frauenkirche, Dresden

Arriving by coach from Leipzig we disembarked at the Kempinski Taschenberg Palais, the most perfect luxury hotel. Wandering around the ground floor is like inspecting a beautiful private gallery as you move from space to space all filled with elegant furniture, books, paintings, objets d’art. The rooms are furnished lavishly in royal blue colour schemes and are huge with massively high ceilings, all suited to the former princess who built it 150 years ago. It is a lovely city, not large, and the central area is laden with history all lovingly restored since its total destruction in 1945. The extraordinary Frauenkirche in the centre with its incredible spire is now completely restored, as are the Zwinger Palace and the Semper Oper. One of the last pieces of the puzzle is the new concert hall for the Dresden Philharmonic, now nearly complete.

Last night we saw Weber’s Der Freischutz, our last performance on this wonderful tour. A new production in the gorgeous Semper Oper, it takes a distopian view of this old fashioned woodland fairy tale, with hints of brutality and incipient fascism – a very interesting way of updating a charming period piece to make it more relevant for today.

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The legendary Gewandhaus in Leipzig

After the Matthew Passion at Bach’s own church, the Thomaskirche just over a year ago, our performance on this visit to Leipzig of Bach cantatas in the same venue by a local municipal choir was sadly deficient. Much better was an all Brahms concert at the legendary Gewandhaus with the equally legendary Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by the venerable Christoph von Dohnanyi. Beautifully shaped performances of both the Violin Concerto (again Zimmermann was the excellent soloist) and the 2nd Symphony.

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Back in endlessly fascinating Berlin

Nicole Car in Eugene Onegin

As usual Berlin is endlessly fascinating and our program has touched on all the great institutions, musical, operatic, visual arts and museums, not to speak of the delight in moving around this great city, without doubt the cultural capital of Europe these days. Highlights:

  • Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust at the Schiller Theater for the Staatsoper Berlin.
  • A balletic extravaganza of this wonderful oratorio/ opera Eugen Onegin at the Deutsche Oper starring Australian Nicole Car making her European debut as Tatiana. She was due to meet with our group at our hotel, but in her excitement about her debut, forgot and talked to us at the theatre after the performance.
  • Mariss Jansons conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a superb concert featuring Bartok’s Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta, followed by Franz Peter Zimmermann playing Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 2
  • Visit to Daniel Libeskind’s amazing Jewish Museum

Nicole Car with our group after the performance

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The Tour starts in Vienna!

Before the tour started Linda Ashford, Sally and I attended a concert of the Berlin Philharmonic visiting Vienna under Simon Rattle playing Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. Our agent Claudia had found us seats in the very back row high up at the back of the hall, miles away from the stage of this famous long narrow hall, the Musikverein. But it turned out to be one of the most overwhelming performances I can remember. The clarity and richness of the sound was extraordinary, as it the orchestra surrounded us. The performance was musically magnificent too.

The tour program starting two days later didn’t falter with highlights like:

  • a production at the Vienna State Opera of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale starring the fabulous Juan Diego Florez
  • St Petersburg Philharmonic playing Brahms and Beethoven at the Musikverein conducted by Temirkanov very efficiently like a Russian general. I found it very anti-musical
  • A glorious performance of Mahler’s Song of the Earth with Klaus Florian Vogt and Matthias Goerne and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Konzerthaus, another beautiful 19th century concert hall
  • A morning song recital in the intimate Schubert Saal of the Konzerthaus by tenor Julian Pregardien. An die ferne Geliebte by Beethoven and a bracket of Weber songs stood out in a delightful program
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The ACO at Carnegie hall

This afternoon we visited Zankell Hall, the smaller hall in Carnegie Hall for the final concert in the tour, the ACO. It was wonderful seeing out own familiar musicians in this lovely place and the star turn was the brilliant clarinettist Sharon Kam playing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Afterwards we were all invited to a great after party in their hotel, where we let our hair down with the musicians.

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Twice at the Metropolitan Opera!

We have been to the Met twice in the last few days! First for a rather old and traditional procduction of Aida, and then an anything but traditional Don Carlo in a dark challenging new production directed by Nicholas Hytner. The Met is such an exciting place to visit, just walking into Lincoln Centre with the huge round arches of the Met facing you is almost overwhelming. The theatre with its lavish foyers, obviously truly rich patrons and the vast auditorium seating nearly 4,000 people is almost twice as big as most opera houses. Nevertheless it was so well designed when rebuilt in 1966, you can see and hear almost perfectly from anywhere.

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Mahler 6 with the Boston Symphony

We are lucky enough to be in New York for ten days, and the first night could hardly be bettered. It was Carnegie Hall and the first visit to New York of the great Boston Symphony under its new musical director Andris Nelsons, the young Latvian maestro who has taken the classical music world by storm. They played the Mahler 6 like inspired angels. Nelsons throws all his energy into making the performance thrilling, sometimes grasping the railing of the podium with one hand to stop himself falling into the middle of the audience! From then it has been museums like the Frick, Metropolitan, Tenement , MoMA, Whitney, Central Park and the HighLine. Everyone is entranced by New York, even those who have been here many times

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Chicago: the great city on the lake

I was unable to leave Australia to arrive before the group in Chicago so I walked straight from the long gruelling flight into the bar of the hotel to greet all our group well into their 2nd round of drinks. It’s remarkable how the buzz of meeting a whole group of new people can energise you, despite exhaustion. They were a wonderful group of people who themselves were energised by the prospect of a couple of weeks in the great cities of Chicago and New York.

While we were in Chicago only for three days, we had a terrific program including a fascinating cruise on the river, a walk in Millenium Park, a modernistic wonder on the lake in downtown Chicago and a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s home. Our performances were:

  • Roy Kinnear’s excellent family drama The Herd at the Steppenwolf, arguably the most highly regarded repertory theatre company in the US
  • A magnificent concert at Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony playing Shostakovich 8 and my first hearing of the phenomenal young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, playing Rach 1
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The Edinburgh Festival

We have just finished four days in Edinburgh at the Festival. It is HUGE! While there are about 60 events in the International festival – what people generally refer to as the Festival, there are nearly 3,000 events in the Fringe, the extraordinary plethora of theatrical, dance and musical activity, completely unselected, that comprises the largest festival event in the world. Highlights of the Festival included:

  • Glorious performance of Monteverdi madrigals and Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda by the Concerto Italiano, simply the best ensemble in the world for the Italian baroque
  • Wandering the crowded and historic precincts of Edinburgh, grey and gloomy, but chock full of atmosphere and excitement
  • The wonderful Bernarda Fink singing Dvorak’s moving Biblical Songs with the Czech Philharmonic
  • The Royal Military Tattoo –  for the wrong reasons as we sat for nearly three hours in teeming rain while the stalward performers never batted an eyelid. Despite Edinburgh’s notoriously fickle weather, apparently no performance of the Tattoo has ever been cancelled in its 67 year history
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Whitby at the North York Moors Festival

We have been travelling for a week – first again to Stratford on Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performances of Webster’s Elizabethan tragedy The White Devil in a dubious updating of this savage and bloodthirsty play, and then a charming production of his early comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Even more enjoyable was a few days spent in the Yorkshire moors for the North York Moors Music Festival set in lovely church venues in historic towns in the moors. We stayed in a comfortable boutique hotel outside Whitby and greatly enjoyed walking excursions both in the town of Whitby and on the fabulous beaches. Three concerts in the lovely churches were all delightful and infomal. We were thrilled when at my request the artistic director Jamie Walton consented to come to the hotel to be interviewed by me for the group, only for him to arrive with the Festival’s Patron Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, an unexpected honour, whch threw me, having to dredge up from my memory impromptu, enough facts about him to conduct a credible interview!