Evaluating a musical season is quite similar to the evaluation that some make – rather intimately – each year-end between expectation and its fulfillment. The difference is that the fulfillment of what an individual professes to have promised is deceptively limited to 12 months, although it comes from before and continues after, while a season has only one year left; It’s the only thing he has.
In other words: Did the soloist selected for 2025 live up to this option? Has the planned opera found its audience? The list could be continued. In February or March 2025 we had these promises; Now in December we have to see how many and which ones have been fulfilled.
We can start with the first question, whether the soloist adhered to it. One case: in mid-June he performed at the Teatro Colón Yuja Wang. It’s not a difficult case, because Yuja Wang’s background works to her advantage: she does what she wants, and what she wants, she does well. This time, however, it was, if possible, bolder. Nobody would touch that Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2, by Chopin and the First concert for piano and orchestraby Tchaikovsky. Nobody except Yuja Wang, and she did it, this time with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It became clear once again that Wang has a sensitivity that goes beyond the limits of virtuosity and shines down to the last detail.
Something not very different from what happened to the German violinist Antje Weithaas in his lecture together with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra from Amsterdam, directed by Alessandro Di Giacomo, for Argentine Mozarteum. Weithaas’ performance was memorable in two very different pieces: Tziganeby Maurice Ravel, and the Concerto for violin and string orchestra in D minorby Mendelssohn. As different as the virtuosity it requires.
There is no such thing as truly one-sided virtuosity, one might say. There were none in Wang or Weithaas, nor in Nadine Sierra still in Nelson Goernertwo more outstanding musicians from last season. In her concert, the North American soprano, who had already been adopted by the audience in Buenos Aires as her own, slipped from Rossini to Villa-Lobos, via Verdi and Puccini, without any breaks in style, but at the same time made each style her own. Goerner, for his part, exhumed the latent – and not so latent – classicism in Chopin with the group Festival Strings Lucerne Second piano concerto. The comparison of Goerner’s reading with that of Yuja Wang was thus made possible, it was said in the same language.
These names – these varieties of virtuosity – could be joined by more from 2025; We could imagine chamber virtuosity such as that exhibited by the members of the orchestra Divan Orchestra, with Michael Barenboim front (they offered a very inspired version of this octet by Schubert) or that by Fauré Quartet, with his Brahman program.
The lyrical season was very balanced. The arch that opened Aida and concluded with The Traviata had two moments that cannot be overlooked: the return to Colón de Salome, by Richard Strauss (in a setting by Bárbara Lluch and under the musical direction of Philippe Augin) and, very uniquely, the local premiere of Billy Budd, by Benjamin Britten; This opera dates from 1951 and it’s really strange that so much time had to pass. In any case, the waiting time was generously compensated Director by Marcelo Lombardero, directed by Erik Nielsen and the voices of Toby Spence and Sean Michael Plumb. They are rightly added to these titles I Puritani, in the hands of Maurizio Benini and the soprano Jessica Pratt, and the baroque party that Veronica Cangemi He put it together with teacher Andrea Marcon.
As has been the case for some time, the performances from the Stable Orchestra and Stable Choir were equally solid throughout the lyrical season. This is worth insisting on at the end of a year that has celebrated the 100th anniversary of the stable bodies of Colón and, in the case of the orchestra, it now has Alejo Pérez as chief conductor.
In yours History of the Teatro Colon, Roberto Caamaño noted that the creation of the stable bodies “represented the realization of one of the aspirations that had been considered fundamental for Colón since 1908, to become an institution with a regular and permanent function.” This is one of those expectations whose fulfillment does not fit into a season, but without which neither the seasons nor their promises are possible.
Nadine Sierra, Soloist, conclusion of the Aura cycle at the Teatro Colón.
Yuja Wang (piano and direction) with the Mahler Chamber Orchestraat the Teatro Colon.
Antje Weithaas (violin and direction) with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. Mozarteum Argentino, in the Teatro Colón.
Nelson Goerner (piano) and Lucerne String Festival. Mozarteum Argentino, in the Teatro Colón.
Billy Budd (Opera by Benjamin Britten. Musical direction: Erik Nielsen. Director: Marcelo Lombardero). At the Teatro Colon.
*According to critics Pablo Gianera, Cecilia Scalisi, Pablo Kohan and Helena Brillembourg.
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