The New Yorker - 18.11.2019

(nextflipdebug2) #1

78 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2019


Bullock applied her expressive intelligence to Schumann’s “Dichterliebe.”


MUSICAL EVENTS


SORROWFUL SONGS


Julia Bullock and Christian Gerhaher bring fresh approaches to classic lieder.

BY ALEX ROSS


ILLUSTRATION BY AMY MATSUSHITA-BEAL


A


decade ago, Jane Moss, the ar­
tistic director of Lincoln Center,
launched the White Light Festival,
intending to foster a reflective, spir­
itually tinged mode of spectatorship
in an age of digital frenzy. The festi­
val’s name came from a remark by the
composer Arvo Pärt: “I could compare
my music to white light, which con­
tains all colors.” Initially, the concept
inspired a few giggles around town; one
heard the title pronounced in a breathy,
yoga­ instructor murmur. Yet Moss was
prescient in how she analyzed the cul­
tural landscape of the early twenty­first
century. At a time when many people
clung to naïve notions about the lib­


eratory capacities of total connectivity,
she spoke about the damage that social
media and mobile devices were doing
to our inner lives. Now we know bet­
ter how a constant flow of informa­
tion can obscure, rather than sharpen,
our perceptions. Conversely, a period
of contemplative distance can put re­
ality in sharp relief. The arts are never
simply a refuge from worldly complex­
ities. Even the purest, most ethereal
work—an abstraction by Geneviève
Asse, a string quartet by Linda Catlin
Smith—can leave us in a state of vul­
nerable awareness.
Moss’s approach to musical presen­
tation may sound quietistic, but it has

often challenged the age­old, trance­
inducing routines of classical perfor­
mance. Both at White Light and at
other Lincoln Center series, Moss has
encouraged experiments in the theat­
ricalization of concerts and recitals.
Peter Sellars directed the Berlin Phil­
harmonic and the Berlin Radio Cho­
rus in a majestic staging of the “St. Mat­
thew Passion.” Jochen Sandig made
use of the same chorus in a solemn
fantasia on Brahms’s “German Re­
quiem.” Schubert’s “Winterreise” has
been the focus of two productions: one
by William Kentridge, with the bari­
tone Matthias Goerne; another by Katie
Mitchell, with Mark Padmore singing
Schubert songs and Stephen Dillane
reciting Samuel Beckett. Some of these
affairs have succeeded more than oth­
ers, but all have yielded images that
linger in the mind.
Mitchell’s latest contribution to
White Light, “Zauberland,” has a heady
conceit. Once again, a canonical song
cycle is at the heart of the undertak­
ing: “Dichterliebe,” Schumann’s emo­
tionally fractured exploration of poetry
by Heinrich Heine. “Zauberland,”
meaning “magic land,” comes from
Heine’s “Aus alten Märchen winkt es,”
about the longing for fairy­tale realms.
In a program note, Mitchell proposes
that one such oasis is the classical tra­
dition itself, which is “trying to hold
global change at bay.” Mitchell, in col­
laboration with the playwright Mar­
tin Crimp, creates a framing narrative
about a Syrian­born opera singer who
has gone into exile in Germany. In what
appears to be an extended dream se­
quence, the singer’s memories of per­
forming Schumann mingle with trau­
matic impressions of her earlier life.
The Belgian composer Bernard Foc­
croulle supplies music for Crimp’s texts,
which flesh out the story.
The piece was designed as a vehi­
cle for the lavishly gifted young Amer­
ican soprano Julia Bullock, who has
made her name mainly in new music.
I have encountered Bullock in major
works by John Adams—“El Niño,”
“Doctor Atomic,” “Girls of the Golden
West”—and in Tyshawn Sorey’s “Perle
Noire,” a meditation on the life of Jo­
sephine Baker. The revelation of “Zau­
berland” was to hear Bullock apply her
rich­hued voice and expressive intelli­
Free download pdf