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March 2018

Musical Theater
Stephen Sondheim

Unplugged, Pared Down, Terrific: A Sondheim Tribute at Feinstein’s 54 Below

March 31, 2018Mari S. Gold

Stephen Sondheim redefined American musical theater. Fifteen of his works were highlighted by Phil Geoffrey Bond in the Sondheim Unplugged series, now in its seventh season. The evening featured Sondheim’s music and lyrics, (as well as several numbers created in collaboration with others), performed by actor/singers, several of them alums of the original Broadway shows. The singers were accompanied by masterful pianist Joe Goodrich and laced with just enough views of posters and behind-the-scenes film shots shown on monitors. The final still of Sondheim, who recently celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday, triggered tears of gratitude.
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Music
The Attacca Quartet in the Crypt. Photo Tristan Cook.

Three Recently-Founded Chamber Music Series in Manhattan: The Crypt Sessions, The ASPECT Foundation, and the WA Concert Series

March 29, 2018Michael Miller

Some of the most rewarding musical experiences I have enjoyed this season have been with small chamber organizations of recent mint. It is no coincidence that all three of the concert series feature ambitious offerings of food and drink. As Ruth Sommers, founder and director of yet another series, Festival Chamber Music, which I have already discussed in these pages, the rationale for this is as much social as culinary. She attributes the extraordinary success of her series in part to this social element, and the series discussed here are no less successful and equally lively as an environment to meet like-minded people, including the musicians. This does in fact enhance the music directly, as only conversation can. As for the food and drink, I can say all are excellent, without going so far as to review them, as if they were restaurants. The point is the social encounter, which above all helps attract newcomers to classical concerts and does wonders in making the events more relaxed and fun for everybody.
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Music
Hans Christian Andersen's "The Nightingale" performed by the Mock turtle Marionette Theatre

The 2017 Bethlehem Bach Festival in Retrospect, with a Look Forward to 2018, Marking the 120th Anniversary of the Bethlehem Bach Choir

March 26, 2018Michael Miller

I recently spent an afternoon at the 92nd Street Y, listening to Angela Hewitt play the  Goldberg Variations, the second recital of a pair which began with the First Book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The hall was packed for both concerts. The audience remained raptly silent during both. This afternoon every single member of the audience who was capable of standing was on his feet, expressing sincere gratitude for the great music they had just heard. There was a kind of religion in this, and it brought Jews, Christians, agnostics, and atheists together to hear the greatest of all music, which people who know it regard with spiritual fervor. This is the third year of Ms. Hewitt's Bach cycle, which will continue next season, overlapping with Garrick Ohlsson's traversal of the complete piano music of Brahms. That is how J. S. Bach is cultivated in the neighborhood where I live.
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Bard Music Festival
Henryk Siemiradzki, Chopin plays for the Radziwiłłs, 1829. Oil on canvas, 1887

A Look Back to the Summer of 2017: The  26th Annual Bard  Music Festival: Chopin and his World

March 18, 2018Michael Miller

I have already given a detailed account of what was (then to be) heard during the Bard Music Festival 2017, Chopin and His World, but it always seems different after one has actually experienced it all, and there were a few changes. The panel discussions were both enlightening and brilliantly organized. With some exceptions the music-making was on the customary high level, if in places more uneven than usual. What stood out was the basic experience of hearing a representative survey of Chopin's work played by a variety of pianists—superbly, for the most part, especially by the Bard regulars, notably Piers Lane, Danny Driver, Orion Weiss, and Anna Polonsky, as well as the newcomer, Hélène Tysman, who earned long and loud ovations from the audience with her brilliant performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto in F Minor, Op. 21 (1829), and Nimrod David Pfeffer, a conductor as well as an excellent pianist.
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Bard Music Festival
Henryk Siemiradzki, Chopin plays for the Radziwiłłs, 1829. Oil on canvas, 1887

The Landmarks of Chopin’s Development as a Composer, 1827-1846

March 18, 2018Michael Miller

In preparing a review of last year's Bard Music Festival, Chopin and his World, I was especially struck by the ability of a festival to present his oeuvre in such a way that the audience could clearly perceive the course of his development as a composer. Jim Samson, one of the preeminent Chopin scholars, I found, had an especially convincing view of his development, which he published in his The Music of Chopin (London, Boston, 1985). The organizers of the Board Festival presented a rather different, but not irrelevant, selection of Chopin's works. I still thought it worthwhile to put together musical illustrations to Professor Samson's outline of the points de repère, the landmarks of Chopin's development. In my review I suggest that an extra concert devoted to Chopin might fill some gaps. This offering, with multiple performances of some of the works, is more of a Chopin orgy than a concert, but you can listen anywhere and pick and choose.
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Theater
Liliana de Castro and Kevin Loreque in Rodrigo Nogueira's The Ideal Obituary

DO NOT MISS Rodrigo Nogueira’s The Ideal Obituary (at The Tank, remaining performances March 16, 17, 22, 23 and 24)

March 16, 2018Michael Miller

There are not so many opportunities left to see Rodrigo Nogueira's The Ideal Obituary (at The Tank, March 16, 17, 22, 23 and 24), and, in the interests of getting the word out as soon as possible, this review will be shorter than this rich, multifaceted play deserves. Returning home directly from the performance, I find myself buzzing with thoughts and feelings about what I have just seen. Mr. Nogueira has an impressive track record back in his native Brazil, with 15 plays and 5 musicals, as well as books and screenplays. Now he has decided to move to New York. This is his first play since his move, which he wrote in English, as a complete rewrite of a rather different play he wrote some years ago in Portuguese. He manages his adopted language brilliantly, most impressively in the doubles entendres which are not only a major part of the play's diction, but the resulting misunderstandings become pivots on which the story turns.
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Dance
Vibrer, by BalletNext. Photo Eduardo Patino.

BalletNext Plays It Safe

March 15, 2018Mari S. Gold

This company of all-female dancers, led by former American Ballet Theater principal Michele Wiles, has returned from a hiatus. The reemergence is reported to have been inspired by Wiles’ personal physical journey as a dancer through pregnancy, birth of a daughter and rebuilding her performance dance strength.
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Berkshire Review
Pappano, Argerich, and Prokofiev

Five in the Afternoon, and more…the Boston Classical Season, So Far

March 15, 2018Charles Warren

Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra, led by Sir Antonio Pappano, with guest soloist Martha Argerich, visited Symphony Hall on Sunday, October 22nd, performing at the rather unusual hour of 5 p.m. Going into the concert, I was overtaken by the suggestion of my title for this review. Thinking of Lorca and Hemingway, who between them immortalized the phrase “Five in the Afternoon,” in connection with bullfighting, I wondered if we concert goers were in for a strong flavor of doom, transcended through ritual and magnificence. No such thing. The concert was all beauty and vitality, though certainly with magnificence about it.  This stunning event was the best orchestral concert of the fall in Boston.
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