The annual Waldbuhne (‘forest stage’) concerts are Berlin's answer to Vienna's New Year concerts. Each sees the same orchestra, in this case the Berlin Philharmonic, under a different guest conductor each year, and in both cases the results prove eminently collectable on DVD. These summer Berlin events, however, held outdoors in front of a beer-can-waving, T-shirt-clad crowd, are greatly preferable to their staid Viennese equivalent. Paradoxically, this is because the choice of music reflects a more serious set of assumptions.
Taiwan's Jingo is currently issuing the concerts from 1992 to 2003 and, judging from a random sample, the artistic level is high. Full-length symphonic works are often included — Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto on one, Richard Strauss's Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel on another. And in the same way that the Vienna concerts all include regular popular favorites, so too these Berlin ones all end with Berliner Luft, with the audience joining in, dancing round waving sparklers, and the rest.
Most attractive by quite a long way of the items I've watched is the 1999 concert conducted by James Levine, with Ben Heppner as special guest. The kindly face of Levine always guarantees a good DVD, if only because you know he'll break out into open jollity sooner or later. Dubbed “A Romantic Opera Night,” it's in reality all Strauss and Wagner. Heppner is in exceptionally good voice, and indeed this would be an ideal vehicle for demonstrating just what an extraordinary heroic tenor he is.
He opens with three Strauss songs, then goes on to In fernem Land from Wagner's Lohengrin, Walther's Prize Song from Meistersinger, and the Italian tenor's aria from Rosenkavalier, often thought of as pastiche but here rendered very lovingly. In every case Heppner demonstrates extraordinary generosity. This is Levine's characteristic quality as well, and you can clearly see how amazed Levine is by his performance. Heppner's a leonine figure to look at, too — with his hair sleeked back and dressed in many layers of formal attire. Wonderful as Levine always is, this is very much Ben Heppner's DVD.
When they come to Berliner Luft, rather than attempting to conduct, Levine simply stands still, an American letting the Berliners get on with it, orchestra and rampaging audience together.
The entire situation tends to highlight the character of the guest conductors. Seiji Ozawa, for example, virtually dances his way through the 2003 jazz-oriented evening, mainly of Gershwin, with the Marcus Roberts Trio as special guests, whereas Zubin Mehta appears rather taken aback by the 1997 event he presides over (without printed music) — an evening of Russian pieces, with Daniel Barenboim at the piano.
Second best to the Levine concert I found to be the 1998 one of Latin American music, again with Barenboim, and John Williams as guest soloist. You get Rodrigo's Concerto Aranjuez complete, and the orchestra are visibly (and rightly) impressed by Williams' self-effacing musicianship.
Gounod's Faust needs radical treatment if it's to be made to appeal today. Ken Russell, the celebrated UK filmmaker from the 1960s, had a go for the Vienna State Opera in 1985, and the result has just been issued on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. Marguerite (Gabriela Benackova) is bizarrely made into a nun, with no clear benefits to the story, and although Francisco Araiza turns in a fine performance as Faust, as does Ruggero Raimondi as Mephistopheles, nothing can alter the ponderous sentimentality of the music. The Walpurgis Night ballet scene, which you would have thought suited Russell's talents, is cut. Even so, if you want a DVD of Faust this one will probably do as well as any other.
Amadeus is a DVD sampler put together by Deutsche Grammophon to mark Mozart's anniversary year. It's almost entirely opera, and begins with Furtwangler conducting the Don Giovanni overture back in 1955 — all you see is the conductor from front and back, with no orchestra close-ups, though surprisingly it is in color. The best tracks follow immediately -- Bryn Terfel as the Don in the Metropolitan Opera version of 2000 conducted by Levine.
This column has sometimes been unfair to Terfel, usually on account of his antics in concert performances. There's no risk of such things here, and he delivers an absolutely stunning portrayal of Giovanni as a gross seducer whose lasciviousness pours off him like fat off a joint of meat. Hei-kyung Hong makes a perfect foil as Zerlina, as does Rene Fleming as Donna Anna.
There's much else to enjoy, notably excerpts from the wonderful Ponnelle film of Figaro [reviewed in Taipei Times August 4, 2005], an aria by Kurt Moll as Sarastro from the Metropolitan's 1991 Zauberflote designed by David Hockney, and another from their 1982 Idomeneo featuring Luciano Pavarotti — both of these last items with Levine in charge. Where would we be without him?
Very moving too is a sonorous and heart-felt extract from Bernstein conducting the Requiem. All in all, this excellent, cheaply priced DVD is a real bargain.
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
It took 12 years and months of standing in the same mountain location for director Liang Chieh-te (梁皆得) to capture a few seconds of footage: Taiwan’s largest resident raptor locking talons with its mate and spinning through the air in a courtship ritual. With only about 1,000 left in the wild and very short flight windows, the mountain hawk-eagle remains among Taiwan’s most elusive birds. The species generally produces only one offspring per year. Using forest cameras, the film crew and research teams document the arduous process the monogamous pairs go through for the chick to hatch and grow up, weathering
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