A Crop of Recordings VIII

Music

A Crop of Recordings VIII

July 30, 2016Steven Kruger

“If only I had known it could be done like this!” So enthused Brahms the first time he heard Dvořák’s Cello Concerto—then as now probably the greatest work for cello and orchestra ever written. “If only Brahms could hear this performance,” I’m tempted to say! Thomas Dausgaard seems to have a musical green thumb. Touch something and it springs to life with unexpected flips of energy and color—Schubert and Schumann Symphonies with his Swedish Chamber Orchestra only among the most recent successes.

Berkshire Review

Greer Grimsley in the title of The Glimmerglass Festival production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." Photo Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at Glimmerglass

July 23, 2016Nancy Salz

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is dark, dark musical theatre. A vengeful barber returns to Victorian London, slits the throats of those who have wronged him and with his accomplice turns their bodies into the stuffing of meat pies. Todd’s London is as menacing as he is …

“There’s a hole in the world Like a great black pit And it’s filled with people Who are filled with shit And the vermin of the world inhabit it …”

Theater

No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming by Howard Baker by the Potomac Theater Company, Closing August 7

July 20, 2016Mari S. Gold

No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming
by Howard Baker

Potomac Theater Company
Directed by Richard Romagnoli
July 13, 2016

Art and Censorship

How important is freedom of expression to an artist? When censorship is imposed, is artistic talent enhanced …

Music

John Pizzarelli: Too Marvelous for Words

July 9, 2016Mari S. Gold

John Pizzarelli displayed his brilliance as a guitar player along with his pleasant, delightfully unremarkable voice and ample personal charm at Jazz Standard, the venue tucked under Danny Meyer's Blue Smoke. The wonderful evening would have been even more so if Pizzarelli had incorporated slightly fewer anecdotes and stabs at humor as these made him come off as trying a tad too hard--he's such a fine musician, his talents need no embroidering.

Berkshire Review

Best Concert of the Year?

June 30, 2016Charles Warren

Boston has had a very good music season since the first of the year. Notably, Andris Nelsons has established himself ever more fully as leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. After a triumphant concert performance of Strauss’s Elektra in the fall, Nelsons came back with especially strong accounts of three large-scale symphonies: the Shostakovich Eighth in March, and the Bruckner Third and Mahler Ninth in April. All were brilliantly played by the orchestra, which seems to have accommodated itself to Nelsons very well.

Music

Juraj Valčuha conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, and Webern

June 28, 2016Steven Kruger

There are all sorts of motivations for going to a concert. As a former conductors' agent, I was curious to learn what Juraj Valčuha would be like in person. (I missed his SFS debut here a few seasons ago.) Valčuha is a forty-year-old Slovakian rapidly climbing the guest-conducting and music directorship career ladder. He is currently in charge of the RAI Orchestra in Torino, but has appeared by now with most of the major European and American ensembles. So what would he sound like?

Berkshire Review

A Crop Of Recordings VII: Music of Walton, Zemlinsky, Goldmark and Ibert

June 22, 2016Steven Kruger

It has taken time for Sir William Walton’s Second Symphony to find a secure place in the repertory. But I think this new CD from Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony fully confirms its place in the canon and right to be there. Walton is the sort of artist, like Oscar Wilde, who interests sociologists, because he hides depth in the shallows.

Musical Theater

Christopher Jackson as George Washington in "Hamilton". Photo Joan Marcus.

So You’re About To See Hamilton …

June 17, 2016Nancy Salz

In the five seconds it takes Baby June to sing out Gypsy’s “Let me entertain you. Let me make you smile,” Lafayette in Hamilton’s “Guns and Ships” will have sung “I’m takin’ this horse by the reins makin’ redcoats redder with bloodstains. Lafayette. And I’m never gonna stop until I make ‘em drip, burn ‘em up and scatter their remains, I’m Lafayette” That’s 9 words for Gypsy versus 32 words for Hamilton, nearly four times as many. Granted, “Guns and Ships” is one of the faster songs, but know this: there are about 24,000 words in Hamilton according to the book, Hamilton The Revolution. That’s more than The Merchant of Venice! So if you think you’re going catch all the words when you see the show without a bit of study, think again. Even with headphones or sitting right under a speaker (where I sat), you will miss a lot. With Hamilton, you won’t want to miss a thing.