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# New York Arts

an international journal for the arts

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## Posts

- [Obituary: Michael Miller, Writer, Editor of New York Arts and Hudson-Housatonic Arts, Dies at 73](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/11/obituary-michael-miller-writer-editor-of-new-york-arts-and-hudson-housatonic-arts-dies-at-73/) - Michael James Miller, writer and arts critic, died aged 73 on November 14th, 2021, after a long illness with cancer. He was at home in North Adams, MA, his partner Joanna Gabler and youngest son, Lucas, beside him. His last word was “Peace.”
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXVII: Schmitt/Honegger, Furtwangler, Sibelius, Ondine](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/11/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxvii-schmitt-honegger-furtwangler-sibelius-ondine/) - Here is one of the strangest living bits of ceremonial history you will ever encounter, along with some fine, nearly forgotten music ever since. The year 1937 witnessed Paris’s International Exposition, the last continental world’s fair to take place before the Second World War, and something of a nervous set piece for political tensions of the day.
- [Glimmerglass 2022:	Francesca Zambello’s Final Season Ends Twelve-Year Tenure](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/10/glimmerglass-2022francesca-zambellos-final-season-ends-twelve-year-tenure/) - The sad news was released a few days ago: Francesca Zambello, the most innovative opera directors in the world, and who gave the Glimmerglass Festival its greatest years, was ending her tenue after the 2022 season.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXVI: Mozart/Muti, Gershwin/Rodziński, Prokofiev and Miaskovsky/Vasily Petrenko, Brahms/Iván Fischer, Handel/Haselböck](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/08/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxvi-mozart-muti-gershwin-rodzinski-prokofiev-and-miaskovsky-vasily-petrenko-brahms-ivan-fischer-handel-haselbock/) - Welcome to the world of unselfconscious Mozart as it once was. When this LP first arrived in record bins in 1977, there was nothing stylistically unusual about romantically phrased performances of the composer’s music, delivered by large orchestras with substantial masses of strings. Herbert von Karajan, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm, George Szell, all recorded “big” Mozart. Towards the end of the decade Josef Krips would turn out some nicely crisp late symphonies with the Concertgebouw for Phillips, a bit reduced in scale, but we were still a long way from the aggressive small dog Mozart which bites at our ankles today and answers to the word “Authenticity."
- [Commentary: What We Do](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/08/commentary-what-we-do/) - Raymond Tuttle of Fanfare raised some seldom addressed questions recently about the subjectivity of music criticism. Those questions lead to even greater mysteries, I find. It isn’t often asked, for instance, why music exists at all, but that’s surely where one has to begin, if it is to matter what we say about it.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXV: Bernstein, Barber, Crawford, Schuman, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Scriabin](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/08/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxv-bernstein-barber-crawford-schuman-rachmaninoff-sibelius-scriabin/) - I’m always intrigued when European orchestras take up the cause of American music, a simple enough notion to understand semantically but difficult at the stylistic level for continentals to adopt idiomatically. Our music’s frequent combination of seemingly naive musical prayerfulness with ungoverned explosive energy has typically left European musicians a bit puzzled, and the Teutonic world at times more than a little stiff and earnest. So I wondered about this release. Could the Swiss sashay down Broadway with that long-legged swagger and impudence implicit in so much of American life? Could Lucerne really let go?
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXIV: British Harvest—Britten, Bridge, Berkeley, Bliss, Walton, Vaughan Williams](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/05/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxiv-british-harvest-britten-bridge-berkeley-bliss-walton-vaughan-williams/) - It’s rare that a recording for strings alone wows listeners as a sonic blockbuster, but I celebrate this one from its first plucked, throbbing, filigree-laced chords. John Wilson has effectively reconstituted the Sinfonia of London, known to many in fond memory for Sir John Barbirolli’s unsurpassed 1962 LP of Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Wilson has set himself up for recording purposes in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn with stunning results. I don’t think I have ever heard an acoustic more flattering to strings. He also exercises tact in not trying to reproduce the magic of Barbirolli’s program, bringing us instead string works by four of the major “B’s” of twentieth century English music. Only Bax is missing.
- [Writing Responsibly for the General Reader:  One Music Critic’s Experiences in 1971 and in 2020](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/05/writing-responsibly-for-the-general-reader-one-music-critics-experiences-in-1971-and-in-2020/) - How should music scholars write for non-specialists? That is the wide-ranging question that Dave Hesmondhalgh raised in an essay for Naxos Musicology International in November 2019. (NMI is available to anyone who subscribes to Naxos Music Library or whose library does. Click the “Musicology” button on the left edge of the homepage.) Hesmondhalgh lays out numerous beneficial possibilities. But he passes quickly over the single most frequent form of scholarly outreach: books and articles (for newspapers, CD booklets, blogs, online magazines) that address topics likely to be of interest to many. Hesmondhalgh would place this in the category of “traditional public musicology.” He mentions two fine instances: the program notes of Donald Francis Tovey (which were then gathered into the now-classic, multi-volume Essays in Musical Analysis) and the rock criticism of Simon Frith. By profession, I am a historical musicologist. But I got my start as a writer publishing concert reviews. This was, I think, in 1967, when I was 18. At age 66 (in 2015), I began again to publish reviews on a regular basis, now focusing primarily on CDs (though I also write about some books and live performances). It occurs to me that my experiences, struggles, and doubts—or, worse, my haste and lack of doubt!—might be worth sharing here. My examples are two reviews that I wrote nearly fifty years apart and that treat one and the same work (an Offenbach operetta).
- [The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at the The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/02/glass-menagerie/) - From time to time, the American expat, no matter how unpatriotic his sentiments may be, develops a certain homesickness for his motherland. This regret may take on a gluttonous form, causing a longing for hamburgers, fried chicken, hot dogs or “freedom fries.” Being rather put off by the thought of an heart attack, I decided to feed my cravings instead by attending Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, directed by Jemima Levick.
- [From the Stalls: Handel's "Orlando" at the Scottish Opera, Edinburgh Festival Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/handel-orlando-scottish-opera-company-edinburgh-festival-theatre/) - The terrain of the Scottish Opera company is very broad and rich, and as a result, it yields some strange, glorious fruit. Georg Friedrich Haendel’s baroque opera Orlando, replete with the classic themes of love, madness and redemption, hit the stages of Glasgow and Edinburgh this February and of course, all the audience could do was sit in their seats in awe. Scottish Opera gave this 1733 baroque masterpiece a complete face lift to lighten the drab northern winter, and has garnered nothing but four-star reviews for its efforts.
- [A Few Words on the Edinburgh International Film Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/edinburgh-international-film-festival/) - Though the weather has hardly been Cannes-like in Edinburgh for the past month, the Edinburgh International Film Festival has been screening films which show that it can be just as cutting-edge as Cannes.
- [Montezuma at the Edinburgh International Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/montezuma-at-the-edinburgh-international-festival/) - Before the drawing of the curtains, five Mexicans squat on the stage, toiling timelessly, while a sixth peddles knicknacks in the stalls as though it were a plaza full of tourists with bulging pockets, which it is in a way. "Don't encourage him," one utters sheepishly as another plays patron of the quaint local arts and crafts, exported from Mexico to the Edinburgh International Festival.
- [Alex Hartley, John Stezaker, William Blake: A Stroll through Some Edinburgh Galleries - Part II of a Series, Edinburgh Walks](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/11/alex-hartley-john-stezaker-william-blake-edinburgh-galleries/) - Richard Long has observed that the best and safest way to cross Dartmoor is to walk in a straight line, but in the city things are rarely so simple. Long’s important exhibition at The National Gallery of Modern Art was postponed to another day, and I shall postpone it to a review of its own, while I follow our ramblings southwards towards the Old City, seeking out addresses my friend had given me. As sophisticated and rational as Edinburgh may be, at least the New Town, certain prospects encourage one to think of it as a city of the earth. It is mostly built of stone, after all, as neatly chiselled as it may be. As you turn the corner around the façade of the new Parliament, Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano, appears ready to swallow it up...or is that only wishful thinking? The classical structures on Calton Hill, stone-built as they are, only draw attention to the chthonic presence of the eminence on which they stand. (Like Rome, Edinburgh has seven hills: Calton Hill, Castle Hill, Corstorphine Hill, Craiglockhart Hill, Braid Hills, Blackford Hill, Arthur’s Seat.) This theme, moreover, had its way of cropping up, not only in Richard Long, but in other exhibitions as well.
- [The View from Usher Hall, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/usher-hall-edinburgh-festival/) - Our first Edinburgh Festival and our first visit to Usher Hall opened with a delightful surprise. We didn’t have to get very far into Mozart’s Idomeneo for me to realize that the acoustics of the hall are surpassingly beautiful. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, playing period instruments, and the singers floated in a warm acoustic atmosphere, but the sound was also direct and present, so that the attacks of strings and brass and the fleeting nuances of the human voice were as clear as you could want them to be. Our seats were also several rows in the Grand Circle and well covered by the level above. In most halls the sound becomes rather muffled in that kind of situation, but, when I noticed that I was surrounded by fellow critics, I assumed that the Festival media representatives knew what they were doing. More importantly I loved what I heard.
- [Hell on Earth and Hell Beyond: the Kronos Quartet in Usher Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/kronos-quartet-edinburgh-festival-vrebalov-reich-crumb/) - The greatest surprise in the Kronos Quartet's concert at Usher Hall was that this was their very first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival. I'd have thought that they'd be regulars going back many years, given their well-known mixture of daring repertory and popular appeal. For almost forty years now, they have achieved almost cult status by playing a certain kind of contemporary music: challenging works which demand concentration but which are sufficiently colorful and aggressive that they commandeer the audience's attention from start to finish.
- [Mozart’s Idomeneo with Sir Roger Norrington and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/mozart-idomeneo-norrington-and-sco-edinburgh-festival/) - Certainly one of the happiest events in the expansion of the classical repertoire in the later twentieth century has been the discovery of Mozart's first operatic masterpiece, Idomeneo, rè di Creta. Often I think it may be my favorite...until I really start thinking seriously about Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, but I can say that I feel a special passion for Idomeneo. When one reads about the conductors who have brought it into its still admittedly somewhat intermittent place in the repertory of major opera houses — first among whom is Sir Colin Davis, their passion for the work is always in the foreground. The opera itself is passionate. Mozart clearly responded strongly to the libretto, and this passion is infectious.
- [More from Edinburgh and London...and more Elgar at Bard](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/04/more-from-edinburgh-london-more-elgar-bard/) - This week more reviews from Edinburgh and London will appear, as well as from Annandale-on-Hudson, including a symposium on Anglophilia, no less. There was a fine evening of Mendelssohn with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Frans Brüggen with the distinguished young violinist Viviane Hagner, Wagner’s Siegfried, from the Royal Opera’s new Ring Cycle, which is receiving its first full performances this year, and—most British of all—the final weekend of the Elgar Festival at Bard. Reviews of several important exhibitions will follow in coming weeks: Richard Long and the Queen’s Flemish pictures in Edinburgh, and in London, the wonderful Millais exhibition at Tate Britain, al well as the major exhibition of the Queen’s Italian art, a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to see great paintings, drawings, and decorative arts rarely shown in public, including the recently “discovered” Caravaggio, which has been so much in the news.
- [Edinburgh Walks - Part I of a Series](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/11/edinburgh-walks-part-series/) - One of the most astonishing passages in Homer is the simile in Book XV of the Iliad, which describes the rapidity of Hera's flight to Olympus (Il. XV, 79ff.)...
- [Richard Long - Walking and Marking - National Galleries of Scotland 30th June to 21st October 2007 - Part III of a series (Edinburgh Walks)](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/12/richard-long-walking-and-marking-national-galleries-of-scotland-edinburgh/) - Setting off alone along the now familiar route down Henderson Row past a silent Academy, now in break, I savored a sense of purposefulness and anticipated my visit to the Richard Long show at the NGS Modern Galleries, their major exhibition of the year, open for the Festival, and an important one for Long as well. He hasn’t had an exhibition of this size in Britain in over fifteen years. I also relished another walk along the Water of Leith. Crossing unnecessarily over to elegant and brightly sunlit Dean Terrace, I crossed back at the bridge and descended into the path just before St. Bernard’s Well, a sulfurous source discovered in the mid-eighteenth century and decorously enclosed in a pump house designed by Alexander Naismyth, following the circular design of the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, a favorite destination on the Grand Tour. A statue of Hygieia stands within ten Tuscan columns, a sober northern interpretation of the original’s Corinthian order.
- [Retrospective Fragments from a Virtual 2020 - Hamelin Schubert Recital and the Parker Quartet](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/04/retrospective-fragments-from-a-virtual-2020-hamelin-schubert-recital-and-the-parker-quartet/) - The streaming experience, June 27 at 5 PM, depicted Mr. Hamelin behind a view of gray skies on a rainy seacoast day replete with undulating seagulls underscoring Schubert’s somber and dark study with the neatly folded ensemble of insouciance, ribbons of color, and fleeting flights of weightlessness.
- [Der Traumgörge: A Dark Fairytale Opera from 1907 Makes Its Way Today, on CD and in Performance](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/02/der-traumgorge-a-dark-fairytale-opera-from-1907-makes-its-way-today-on-cd-and-in-performance/) - Numerous early- and mid-twentieth-century German operas failed to reach our shores, or came but made little impact. Even today, several of Richard Strauss’s many highly accomplished and gratifying operas after Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos remain largely unknown to most opera lovers. True, their librettos are often cumbersome, wordy, or obscure, but the works are still well worth hearing and seeing—or getting to know at home through recordings and DVDs. The there’s Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who, having traveled to Hollywood to write film scores, ended up staying here because of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Yet his operas—quite successful for a time in the German-speaking lands—somehow never caught up with him in America.
- [Glimmerglass 2021 - Thinking Outside of the Box](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/03/glimmerglass-2021-thinking-outside-of-the-box/) - For over a decade I’ve covered the Glimmerglass Festival and have celebrated its ascension to an internationally lauded event under the direction of the boundlessly energetic and resourceful Franscesca Zambello. The cancelation of the 2020 season was another of many tragic cancelations of sister opera houses world-wide.
- [Berlin Philharmonic Returns with a Bite](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/02/berlin-philharmonic-returns-with-a-bite/) - Maestro Søndergård gave his all, with the Berliners spurning any sign of pandemic gloom. Of course, the program reflected the bitter irony of the variegated excesses of the 1920s. Like a dream of a pristine past, Sibelius’s Sixth, the centerpiece, stood in reflective and almost solemn relief.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXIII: Schmitt, Grainger, Delibes, Ben-Haim, Novák](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/02/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxiii-schmitt-grainger-delibes-ben-haim-novak/) - Let it never be said that French musical culture is reluctant when it comes to matters of the heart. Speaking in caricature, we incline to think of England as prudish and of Italy as choked-up and glottal-stopped with amorous emotion. The French, though, seem to be the official “culture of love," and--let’s be clear—French musical “impressionism” is largely about sex. All those satiny string breezes and quivering woodwind dewdrops mean little if we don’t imagine languid lovers at center stage. That’s what Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is all about, of course, as is Daphnis and Chloe. But there is a reserve in both Debussy and Ravel which keeps the listener at an artistic remove. No one would accuse Debussy’s Jeux or Ravel’s Mother Goose of louche sensuality. Florent Schmitt, on the other hand, like the film noir composer he could have been, is happy to confront sensual moments in real time. Schmitt’s constantly shifting rhythms mirror the quick intensity of actual emotions and thoughts, the changeable “eclectic” quality of human happenings and the physical process of sex itself. There are moments in La Tragédie de Salomé where you might as well be listening to the headboard banging against the wall.
- [Zemlinsky's Eine Florentinische Tragödie and Der Zwerg at Bard Summerscape 2007](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/09/zemlinskys-eine-florentinische-tragodie-and-der-zwerg-at-bard-summerscape-2007/) - I find myself torn between the temptation to write at length about these fascinating stage works by Zemlinsky and my responsibility to you, our readers, to let you know about this absolutely wonderful evening at the opera, so that you can grab some tickets before they all disappear. Yes, this will have to be short, and it cannot do justice to these brilliant operas or the amazing work all of those involved have put into these splendid productions. The experience was both profound and immensely entertaining.
- [Le Nozze Di Figaro at the Met](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/le-nozze-di-figaro-at-the-met/) - In Sir Richard Eyre's complex production, which premiered on opening night, September 2014, Rob Howell's rotating set looms oppressively over the Almavivas and their household, as it reaches up towards the catwalks like a cross between a spire of La Sagrada Família and a decaying oil tank. I don't say this in disparagement. The set is highly effective. Rotating as it does, it can present small rooms, like the one intended for Susanna and Figaro, larger rooms, like the Countess' bedroom, and very large spaces like the great hall, dividing the expanse of the Met's stage into a central and flanking areas, as well as some space above, when called for. We can also see from one space into another, allowing us to get glimpses of the goings-on in other parts of the building—daily life in a noblman's country residence. Its ornament suggests the Moorish, with hints more implied than defined of the Gothic and Baroque, and leans more to Lorenzo da Ponte's original indication, "il castello del Conte Almaviva"[1. sometimes replaced, as the libretto is reprinted, by Beaumarchais' "le château d'Aguas Frescas à trois lieues de Séville," accordingly translated.] than "an elegant Spanish villa." And the set tells its story...a story of decay.
- [Race and Slavery in Mozart Operas: A Letter to the New York Times](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/08/race-slavery-mozart-operas-letter-new-york-times/) - A most welcome contribution from Ralph P. Locke, Professor Emeritus of at the Eastman School of Music, an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times, directed my attention to a review and an article by Zachary Woolfe concerning recent productions he has seen in France of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Così fan tutte. The content of these articles will be clear enough from Professor Locke's letter and his own commentary.
- [Locke’s List for 2020: Major Discoveries and Pleasant Diversions in Operatic and Other Vocal Music (Plus a Ballet to a Scenario by Arthur Schnitzler)](https://newyorkarts.net/2021/01/lockes-list-for-2020-major-discoveries-and-pleasant-diversions-in-operatic-and-other-vocal-music-plus-a-ballet-to-a-scenario-by-arthur-schnitzler/) - What a strange, scary, and remarkable year 2020 has been, in all our lives! The social isolation that I have carried out pretty consistently has led me to look to music even more than usual for solace, enlightenment, and pleasant distraction. I gather that many music lovers have traveled a somewhat similar path since mid-March. My penchant for opera, and for vocal music and for the theatre generally, has led me to get to know a number of recent CD releases, many of which I have reviewed for American Record Guide or for various online magazines.
- [Coming Up on YouTube: the Bach Choir of Bethlehem's Beloved Annual Christmas Concert—Virtually—December 13th at 4pm EST](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/12/coming-up-on-youtube-the-bach-choir-of-bethlehems-beloved-annual-christmas-concert-virtually-december-13th-at-4pm-est/) - Those who have read my articles and reviews of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem's work, at least the Christmas Concert and the Bach Festival, will understand just how close these events are to the hearts, not only of inhabitants of the Lehigh Valley, but to an extensive community of Bach-lovers, former members of the local audience and the outstanding, mostly amateur choir, who have moved away, and people who have heard the Bach Choir sing once or twice, or more, and travel considerable distances to attend the concerts.
- [The Bard Music Festival at 25: Franz Schubert and his World](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/bard-music-festival-franz-schubert-world/) - My leading thought goes against much of what the Bard Music Festival and my own values, for that matter, stand for. And just read Keith Francis' provocative series, The Great Composers?, the latest installment of which has just been published. I've missed only one Bard Festival since 2006, and I've heard great music by Elgar, Prokofiev, and Sibelius. And, well, Saint-Saëns was too gifted to be great, and that really didn't interest him in any case. Of the composers included in the festival, only Wagner and Stravinsky turn up on common lists of the greatest—not that those stupid lists do anything but harm. Still, during the two weekends devoted to Franz Schubert I felt I was living with the gods, and the lingering impression of those weekends swelled accordingly.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXII: Four Austrians and a Frenchman: Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, von Einem, Rott, and Messiaen](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/11/crop-of-recordings-xxxii-four-austrians-and-a-frenchman-zemlinsky-schoenberg-von-einem-rott-and-messiaen/) - It gladdens my heart to confirm that Alexander Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid is no longer a “rescue” known only to early twentieth century enthusiasts panning for neglected musical gold. It’s too good for a fate like that. There are 11 modern versions of this work now on Naxos’s streaming site, not to mention live performances on YouTube, most of them, like this one, quite fine. The piece has arrived. It’s a fitting outcome for music which premiered in 1905 on the same program as Arnold Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and was actually preferred by the audience.
- [Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim! ...from his alma mater, Williams College](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/03/happy-birthday-stephen-sondheim-from-his-alma-mater-williams-college/) - Stephen Sondheim turns 90 today. His alma mater, Williams College, chose to honor her renowned alumnus with a musical production entitled Our Time, a Collage of Records from Williams, which brings life at the college between 1946-1950 (when Sondheim was a student there) back to life. This compilation of stories, devised Ilya Khodosh, '08, and Omar Sangare, has been chosen by current students; who, by research, selected stories to share from the stage. At the end of the show, there is also a story delivered by a video message by Stephen Sondheim, himself. Only two of the five scheduled performances took place before the spread of the Corona virus necessitated the cancellation of further performances. Happily, they were recorded on video, and Williams can now honor its son and audiences can enjoy this musical reminiscence.
- [Our Time, a Collage of Records from Williams, a 90th Birthday Tribute to Stephen Sondheim ('50) at Williams College - a Review](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/03/our-time-a-collage-of-records-from-williams-a-90th-birthday-tribute-to-stephen-sondheim-50-at-williams-college-a-review-2/) - In considering how to approach this review of Our Time, a Collage of Records from Williams, directed by Omar Sangare, Professor of Theatre, I came to the conclusion that it was imperative to concentrate not only on the title of the production, which seems neutral enough at first glance, but how it was described in the official announcement. As a co-production of the Williams Theatre Department and “Sondheim@90@Williams,” to honor the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim as an illustrious member of Williams Class of 1950[1. for which the Williams Music Department also organized a day-and-a-half symposium about the composer and his work], Our Time was presented “in celebration” of this birthday. That final phrase might lead us to expect a revue of Mr. Sondheim’s most-loved tunes with a new, student-generated book encasing them, but Our Time was nothing of the sort.
- [Tanglewood Stream Fishing 2020 Part 2: Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax Play Brahms, Beethoven, Mendelssohn](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/09/tanglewood-stream-fishing-2020-part-2/) - Ax and Ma chatted about their relationship over the years and the personal idiosyncrasies that sustain or annoy them both. To engage novice listeners, the Beethoven’s sonata became the subject of some slightly nerdy talk about the tonic-dominant-tonic arches that propelled the Beethoven’s sonata. Finally, somehow, they drifted to discussing chef Jacques Pépin’s freaky tolerance for seizing hot skillets its supposed relevance in interpreting the piano attacks in the scherzo.
- [Tanglewood Stream Fishing Part 3-Daniil Trifonov Plays Bach's Art of Fugue](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/09/tanglewood-stream-fishing-part-3-daniil-trifonov-plays-bachs-art-of-fugue/) - In making this work seem a Romantic tour-de-force, yet being true in spirit to the music’s main mission is really astonishing and tricky to pull off. Having musical taste and a keen insight to Bach’s architecture gives room for his pianism.
- [John Luther Adams' "Ten Thousand Birds" Performed by Alarm Will Sound under Alan Pierson at PS 21](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/09/john-luther-adams-adams-ten-thousand-birds-ps21/) - Elena Siyanko, Executive Director of PS21, in her introductory comments preceding Alarm Will Sound's performance of John Luther Adams' Ten Thousand Birds, said that this event has been in the works for a year. Its purpose, conceived months before there was any hint in people's minds that the performance would occur under the restrictions imposed by the pandemic which continues without an end in sight, at least in the United States. The particular features of the new performance structure and the determination and resourcefulness of Ms. Siyanko and her staff have made PS21 a pioneer in offering live performances under safe conditions. The performance of Ten Thousand Birds was intended to showcase the new PS21 and its new semi-open performance space to the public. The beautiful grounds surrounding it are in integral part of its design and function in a way quite different from Tanglewood and SPAC, where lawns simply provide expanded seating for those who prefer to be out in the open.
- [CANCELLED! "Transfiguration" goes to London. United Solo London postponed until the autumn of 2021.](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/06/only-two-days-away-two-performances-only-michael-millers-solo-play-transfiguration-at-the-metropolitan-playhouse-and-the-new-york-international-fringe-festival-october-12th-730-pm-and-13th-2/) - Meet Ralph Belard. You'll find Ralph lunching on sushi and sake—all deluxe—at his favorite harborside restaurant. His neighbors were shooting each other dead in the street this morning. He kept his cool and his life, but a guy has to move on, doesn't he? He might even deserve a little treat, just to help him get over it. Ralph never learned what made them do it. He didn't care anyway. He watched a woman and her children die. He killed a couple of men in self-defense, and he enjoyed it. Also a cat—by accident.
- [Vivica Genaux talks to Michael Miller about Acting, Regieoper, and Taking the Waters: the Interview, Part III](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/vivica-genaux-michael-miller-acting-regieoper-terme-interview-part-iii/) - Vivica Genaux has recently appeared in a George London Foundation recital at the Morgan Library, and Vivaldi's opera Ercole has recently been released in a superb recording by EMI with Europa Galante led by Fabio Biondi, in which she sings the part of Antiope. This is the third and final part of an interview held on December 13, 2011. MM I remember when I heard you in Paris in L'Italiana in Algeri—and I have to apologise that I never got a review out for that performance, which was great—but you were having some trouble at the time (At least it was announced in the house.), and all one noticed in the performance was that you were a little quiet for part of an act, and then you were right back into it.
- [DAN ROSE FACES 2020](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/08/dan-rose-faces-2020/) - Dan Rose has published another artist book. This one, FACES, is a group of invented portraits that delve into, visually fiddle with, and vainly try to comb over the thinning hair spots of robots—and ask: What are we to make of the evolving relationship between human and robosapiens?
- [Henry David Thoreau meets Raymond Chandler, Two American Eccentrics, Pt. I Introduction and review of Searching for Thoreau: On the Trails and Shores of Wild New England, by Tom Slayton](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/02/slayton_thoreau/) - As full of detail as his book is, Slayton never loses track of his purpose and his theme. He does indeed find Thoreau in the places, plants, and animals he studied. His kind of participation is not of Thoreau’s intense, totally absorbed kind, since he is basically a rationalist, but I think no one could argue with his basic tenet about Thoreau, that he was a seeker of the wild: “He was a good Romantic...but he was also a naturalist and came to understand that wildness did not have to be found only in wilderness...For him it was a pervasive quality—close to what the ancient Chinese called the Tao, the mysterious, all-encompassing force that winds the mainspring of the universe. He searched for it everywhere.” ( p. 3) Slayton constantly returns to this theme as he visits and revisits Thoreau’s haunts. whether in obvious places like the Maine woods or in heavily developed places like Cape Cod or Walden Pond. He puts it in the forefront of his conclusion, quoting Thoreau: “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild...I believe in the forest, and in the meadows, and in the night in which the corn grows.” Or as Walt Whitman said in a quotation that follows hard upon it: “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” While some may see these statements, both confessions of belief, as pure Goethe, it is enough to ponder them in themselves.
- [Paul Griffiths, The Substance of Things Heard - Writings about Music](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/03/paul-griffiths-the-substance-of-things-heard-writings-about-music/) - For most of its history music criticism has been almost as fleeting as music itself. If a person, for whatever odd reason, wanted to read a review of some past concert, it would have been necessary to consult a newspaper archive in a library, hardly a Herculean task, but an effort in comparison to the instantly-available databases we've become accustomed to in recent years. And, now that print journalism seems to be dying out, and publications like our own Berkshire Review for the Arts maintain permanent access to all published articles (and there is a readership for some of them long after the event they record) it is easier than ever.
- [Judith Freeman, The Long Embrace, Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, New York, Pantheon, 2007, 368 pp.](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/02/judith-freeman-long-embrace-raymond-chandler-woman-loved/) - Both the subtitle of Judith Freeman’s The Long Embrace: “Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved,” as well as its author’s stated purpose, lead us to believe that its primary subject is Chandler’s enigmatic older wife, Cissy. Freeman’s obsessive interest in Chandler led her to read selections from his letters, and from that she became obsessed with Cissy, with whom Chandler himself was clearly obsessed. Part of her fascination is the very paucity of information which has come down about her, only a handful of photographs and a few notes. However, Raymond Chandler himself comes first, both in the subtitle and in Freeman’s obsession, and, while Cissy is most prominently the leitmotiv which holds the book and its various themes together, we get more exposure to Chandler’s other love (in what was most definitely a love-hate relationship, as was the possibly other) the city of Los Angeles, since much of Freeman’s research consisted of finding and motoring to the many furnished houses and flats in which they lived over their forty mostly reclusive years together, and much of her text consists of personal, even intimate narrations of her experiences in these visits. In her work Freeman could not help becoming more deeply immersed in the city, which she and Chandler made their adoptive home.
- [Tanglewood Stream Fishing 2020, Part 1](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/07/tanglewood-stream-fishing-2020-part-1/) - The program in some ways reflected mood swings that strike us these days: melancholy, valediction, the hauntings of past ardors, and the impulse to get the hell out
- [Public Concerts Resume at PS21 in Chatham, New York—Second Concert: Beethoven by the Calidore String Quartet](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/07/public-concerts-resume-at-ps21-in-chatham-new-york-second-concert-beethoven-by-the-calidore-string-quartet/) - PS21 was founded by the late Judy Grunberg in 1999 with the mission of presenting advanced and diverse performances of music, dance, and theater, as well as some film screenings. Under her leadership as President of the Board, local residents and some from further away enjoyed lively summer programs performed in an ingenious plastic stage-cum-shelter in the middle of a field. Before her passing in 2019, she initiated the construction of an equally ingenious and certainly more elegant permanent structure which could be used from autumn through spring. A 300-seat theater open on three sides functions as the summer venue. Its stage house can be converted into a black box theater seating 99, providing a more intimate space for performances that need it. It was designed by a local architect, Evan Stoller, son of the legendary architectural photographer, Ezra Stoller.
- [Ian Hobson will perform a streamed recital co-presented by SubCulture NYC, Florida State University, and Sinfonia da Camera this Wednesday, July 22nd, 5:00 p.m. EDT](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/07/ian-hobson-the-internationally-lauded-pianist-will-perform-a-streamed-recital-co-presented-by-subculture-nyc-florida-state-university-and-sinfonia-da-camera-this-wednesday-july-22nd-5/) - Ian Hobson, the internationally lauded pianist, will perform a streamed recital co-presented by SubCulture NYC, Florida State University, and Sinfonia da Camera this Wednesday, July 22nd, 5:00 p.m. EDT.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXXI: Piston, Gould, Hanson, Roussel, Dukas, Strauss, Liszt. Beethoven...and Knecht!](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/07/a-crop-of-recordings-xxxi-piston-gould-hanson-roussel-dukas-strauss-liszt-beethoven-and-knecht/) - From my own perspective as a lover of Howard Hanson’s music, the best here comes last. His Fourth Symphony is subtitled “The Requiem” and was composed as a memorial to Hanson’s father. Its four movements correspond to sections of the traditional Latin mass. It was Hanson’s favorite among his symphonies, and while the melodies may not be as immediately committed to memory as those of the “Nordic” and “Romantic," the glowing consecrational quality of the work, its beautiful flow and reverential beauty, full of life and never morose, is hard to surpass in American music. The piece fades away in lovely nostalgia. Clearly Hanson knew the Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony. Like Vaughan Williams, Hanson’s music has the ability to make sadness cozy and comforting. To his credit, Kalmar turns out here a performance finer than Gerard Schwarz’s heavy-handed take with the Seattle Symphony. It’s as good as the composer’s own, and in far better sound. I vote this release a prize of my own!
- [The Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle at Carnegie Hall: Debussy, Dvořák, Schoenberg, Elgar, Bruckner, Wolf, and Mahler](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/berlin-philharmonic-sir-simon-rattle-carnegie-hall-debussy-dvorak-schoenberg-elgar-bruckner-wolf-mahler/) - A U.S. tour by one of the great European orchestras is a a costly endeavor—for everyone concerned—and, even if it is a biennial occurrence, it should be nothing less than an important event, especially in New York. I find it a severe disappointment when an orchestra offers routine programming on tour, no matter how well it shows off their glories. These are missed opportunities. The Berlin Philharmonic and their Director, Sir Simon Rattle, therefore deserve our thanks for sticking with the “curated” programming which made their last visit to Carnegie Hall such a memorable esperience. Back then, they combined a cycle of Brahms symphonies with works by Arnold Schoenberg. This year they have taken a step forward and a step back, narrowing their range, to explore the origins of the modern in music in the 1890s. On the way, they have also managed to include some of Sir Simon's signature repertoire in Elgar's "Enigma" Variations and Mahler's Second Symphony, both among the works with which he made his reputation early in his career.
- [A Peculiar Paradise: Florida Photographs by Nathan Benn, a Book and an Exhibition at the HistoryMiami Museum, closing Sunday, April 4th, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/a-peculiar-paradise-florida-photographs-by-nathan-benn-a-book-and-an-exhibition-at-the-historymiami-museum-closing-sunday-april-4th-2019/) - The subject of this interview, Nathan Benn, was very much a creature of the new generation. He was 22 when The National Geographic hired him in 1972 and 31 in 1981, when his editors sent him back to his native Florida to illustrate a feature article about its current condition in a troubled time, when the legal system was strained by drug trafficking and local citizens were challenged by a influx of refugees from the Caribbean. When he set to work, Mr. Benn began to push the Geographic’s envelope, both artistically and journalistically. His occasionally satirical social observations and gritty record of crime and law enforcement activity thrilled one of his editors but appalled another one, who was especially set in the magazine's anodyne values of the Midwest and the 1950’s.
- [Our Time, a Collage of Records from Williams, a 90th Birthday Tribute to Stephen Sondheim ('50) at Williams College - a Review](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/03/our-time-a-collage-of-records-from-williams-a-90th-birthday-tribute-to-stephen-sondheim-50-at-williams-college-a-review/) - In considering how to approach this review of Our Time, a Collage of Records from Williams, directed by Omar Sangare, Professor of Theatre, I came to the conclusion that it was imperative to concentrate not only on the title of the production, which seems neutral enough at first glance, but how it was described in the official announcement. As a co-production of the Williams Theatre Department and “Sondheim@90@Williams,” to honor the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim as an illustrious member of Williams Class of 1950[1. for which the Williams Music Department also organized a day-and-a-half symposium about the composer and his work], Our Time was presented “in celebration” of this birthday. That final phrase might lead us to expect a revue of Mr. Sondheim’s most-loved tunes with a new, student-generated book encasing them, but Our Time was nothing of the sort.
- [Florent Schmitt's "Légende" and "Oriane et le Prince d'Amour" with Debussy and Rachmaninoff—the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/03/florent-schmitts-legende-and-oriane-et-le-prince-damour-with-debussy-and-rachmaninoff-the-buffalo-philharmonic-under-joann-falletta/) - There's something about Buffalo that is forever and wonderfully 1940. The city admittedly went through a difficult patch in the last decades of the century, before emerging today prosperous and half the size it was. From an artistic perspective, though, this may not be all bad. Buffalo escaped most of the Pizza Hut architecture and cereal box skyscrapers which typically afflict American cities. Today, great colonnaded turn-of-the-century hotels, banks and office buildings still reflect iconic dignity and Dreiserian business energy upon a downtown more formal and stylistically unified than most. When it comes to its resident orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic similarly avoided an onslaught of concrete, continuing to perform in Kleinhans Music Hall, designed by the Saarinens (father Eliel and son Eero) in 1940 and declared a national landmark in 1989.
- [Evening all Afternoon:  A Chilly Season Warmed by Capital Region Classical at Union College](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/03/capital-region-classical-at-union-college-winter-2019/) - With the dreariest seasons of late fall and winter fading away, those days Wallace Stevens described as being “evening all afternoon,” a few Union offerings I attended were enough to nourish the soul to spring in which a Beethoven’s Semiquincentennial will be celebrated.
- [Michael Tilson Thomas Leads the San Francisco Symphony in Leonard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" Symphony and Mahler's Fourth](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/michael-tilson-thomas-leads-san-francisco-symphony-leonard-bernsteins-age-anxiety-symphony-mahlers-fourth/) - There is a sound you sometimes feel after midnight, high up in Manhattan. It comes from maybe thirty blocks away. Very faint. In the stillness of your mind, you know it is a lonely taxi horn dancing with the doppler effect. But in the small hours of the city, you wonder who might be riding home amongst sleeping millions, and how boozily, and what love affairs or personal dramas might now begin or end. New York is like that. In its darkness, taxis are crickets, and you listen.
- [Landscape and A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/landscape-slight-ache-harold-pinter-national-theatre/) - The observer effect. After the play Betrayal, from 1981, I lost track of Harold Pinter. London productions of his plays have the zing of authentic English irony, etched menace, and pithy delivery that doesn’t come across with American accents. One could see Pinter as an actor as late as 1995 when he appeared in the West End in a revival of an earlier work, The Hothouse. Pinter is as strange and threatening on stage as on paper, although a witty anecdote circulated around that production. Supposedly his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, phoned up the management and said, “The whole run has been so successful, Harold and I were thinking that you should have the Comedy Theatre renamed the Pinter Theater,” to which the manager replied, “Or he could just rename himself Harold Comedy.”
- [Fabien Gabel conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Dukas, Zigman, and Saint-Saëns, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano, and Jonathan Dimmock, Organ](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/fabien-gabel-conducts-the-san-francisco-symphony-in-dukas-zigman-and-saint-saens-with-jean-yves-thibaudet-piano-and-jonathan-dimmock-organ/) - Last weekend the San Francisco Symphony, surely unbeknownst, gave me a Valentine's Day card masquerading as a pair of tickets! I don't honestly recall a concert in recent years I've enjoyed more than this one. I've known and loved Paul Dukas' ballet score La Peri for more than fifty years without ever hearing it live, and as a dedicated Francophile in music, I am always delighted to hear again Camille Saint-Saëns' iconic and fascinatingly structured Organ Symphony. Add to this the fact that I grew up in the wilds of Latin America and learned to tango just about when couples abandoned cutting a rug with each other on the dance floor in favor of wriggling in place, and you can imagine how a piano concerto based on Tango would evoke a special warmth and affection in someone like me. So I am writing more as a fan than as a critic this time.
- [Ian Hobson - "Preludes, Études, Variations," Concert 1 of 6: Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Stephen Taylor](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/ian-hobson-preludes-tudes-variations-concert-1-6-chopin-rachmaninoff-stephen-taylor/) - Ian Hobson's last appearance in New York was an ambitious Brahms cycle in September-October 2013. Extending over six weeks, it offered a comprehensive survey of Brahms' solo music for piano and his chamber music for piano. I praised this enthusiastically at the time not only for the intelligence and sensitivity of the playing, but for the thoughtful programming, and the outstanding program book, with extensive essays by Paul Griffiths, O.B.E. Just last week, Ian Hobson began an equally ambitious series of six recitals, even more impressively organized, on a more abstract concept, bearing the title "Preludes, Études, Variations," continuing monthly into April 2016, with this first concert, here reviewed, at Subculture, NYC, as well as the next on December 1. The rest will continue at Merkin Hall on the Upper West Side. This series is entirely solo, accompanied only by Mr. Griffiths' incisive notes. In addition to 19th- and 20th-century classics of these three musical genres, there are world premieres of new works commissioned by Hobson for the series.
- [Ian Hobson, piano: Preludes - Etudes - Variations at Merkin Concert Hall, February 22, 2016: Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/ian-hobson-piano-preludes-etudes-variations-merkin-concert-hall-february-22-2016-chopin-debussy-rachmaninoff/) - Mr. Hobson's program, consisting of a very early work by Chopin, which he wrote as a conservatory student at age 17 and performed soon after his graduation two years later, the fifty-year-old Debussy's peak as a writer for the piano, and Rachmaninoff's final work written in Russia: in 1917, when he was forty-four, and his world was crumbling around him, as the Revolution continued its course and he realized that he would have to leave his native country, where he had friends, money, and property, and face an uncertain future as an exile, most likely supporting his family with concert tours in the United States, which he hated. All these works have their harmonic, coloristic, and emotional extremities, at points going as far as to reflect the Paganinian tradition of the demented, or diabolical virtuoso. Hobson responded to this with full sympathy in all, as well as prodigious energy.
- [Richard Wagner, I maestri cantori di Norimberga (or, rather Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Sung in Italian, Beautifully](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/richard-wagner-i-maestri-cantori-di-norimberga-or-rather-die-meistersinger-von-nurnberg-sung-in-italian-beautifully/) - Ever wanted to hear a Wagner opera performed with smooth singing: little or no barking, effortful huffing, or slow wobbling? Sure, there have been individual singers who have managed the trick, such as Plácido Domingo in Giuseppe Sinopoli’s famous Tannhäuser recording. But I mean the whole cast, from the biggest roles right down to the smallest. Well, here’s your chance: a complete Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg that is a near-constant pleasure to the ears. The only problem is that it’s sung in Italian: hence I maestri cantori di Norimbega. But don’t let that you put you off. Opera houses in many countries have developed their own national traditions of Wagner singing in the vernacular. Opera enthusiasts cherish certain recorded Wagner excerpts sung magnificently in French by soprano Germaine Lubin or tenor Georges Thill.
- [Das Barbecü at the Hill Country Barbecue Market](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/das-barbecu-at-the-hill-country-barbecue-market/) - Wagner’s Ring Cycle, aka Der Ring des Nibelungen, is a complicated, four-opera series dealing with the struggles to acquire a ring that provides the power to dominate the world. Characters including a human hero, demigod woman, King of the Gods, nasty dwarf and many others are part of the action. The entire opus lasts fifteen hours and has been the source of numerous parodies.
- [Cantata Singers & Ensemble, David Hoose, Conductor: Vaughan Williams, Imbrie, Fine, and the Premiere of Wyner's Give Thanks for All Things](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/cantata-singers-ensemble-david-hoose-conductor-vaughan-williams-imbrie-fine-and-the-premiere-of-wyners-give-thanks-for-all-things/) - For my part I could not be more pleased that the Cantata Singers, following their usual custom, have devoted this season preponderantly to the music of Ralph Vaughn Williams. Sir Colin Davis' powerful rendition of his Sixth Symphony with the BSO in 2007 was memorable, but not nearly enough to counterbalance the neglect Vaughn Williams' music currently suffers in the United States. In Boston, there is bound to be the odd choral work cropping up in one church or another or on the programs of the many secular choral groups in the area, but the Cantata Singer's focus on Vaughn Williams in their 2010-11 season is none the less welcome.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXX: Sir Eugene Goossens, Albéric Magnard, and Mahler](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/a-crop-of-recordings-xxx-sir-eugene-goossens-alberic-magnard-and-mahler/) - No sooner was Eugene Goossens knighted by the Queen of England for service to Australian music, than he wound up benighted and foolish in the hands of the immigration police. Arrested at Sydney airport for pornography in his luggage, Goossens found his international reputation shattered and life soon to end from a major fall from grace. At the time of his arrest in 1956, he was known throughout the world as a conductor, orchestra builder and composer. In a long career, starting out as a protege of Sir Thomas Beecham, Goossens had put the Rochester Philharmonic on the map, taken the Cincinnati Symphony to new heights, and made his mark as the most important performing musician in Australia, stewarding the Sydney Symphony to international prominence after the Second World War.
- [Don’t Feed these Swans: Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at the City Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/dont-feed-these-swans-matthew-bournes-swan-lake-at-the-city-center/) - From the projections of flying swans to the tragic/heroic end, this production is thrilling, unsettling, comedic and beautiful, sometimes all at once.
- [The Fellowship for Performing Arts presents Paradise Lost, by Tom Dulack inspired by John Milton, now extended through March 1, 2020](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/the-fellowship-for-performing-arts-presents-paradise-lost-by-tom-dulack-inspired-by-john-milton-now-extended-through-march-1-2020/) - It is both a sign of my respect and admiration for Mr. McLean's work and a bracing perspective that I should be singing the Fellowship's praises from a production I found problematic. Paradise Lost, described as "a fast-paced, witty and accessible modern retelling of John Milton’s classic story of humanity’s fall from grace written by Tom Dulack." One should also note the ambiguous phrase "inspired by John Milton." All the excellences of a Fellowship production were in full evidence—an impressive set, balancing cost-effective, but handsome material elements with gorgeous projections, and a superb cast who brought each turn, each phrase of the script into full life under Michael Parva's expert direction.
- [An Interview with Yehudi Wyner](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/an-interview-with-yehudi-wyner/) - Yehudi Wyner, whose career as a composer and a performing musician goes back some sixty years, finds himself entirely focused on the present at the moment, and very positively so. For one thing Bridge Records, who have issued the most substantial body of his work on CD, have released his collected sacred music, and Mr. Wyner is very pleased to have it all together in one place. Secondly, he is anticipating the premiere of a new work, a secular cantata called Give Thanks for All Things.
- [Simon Stone's Medea for Today at BAM, Closing March 8th](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/02/simon-stones-medea-for-today-at-bam-closing-march-88th/) - The play is a study in contrasts with the blindingly white stage vs. ripping, visceral emotions, a Medea for our time in which Jason is Lucas, who makes designer pharmaceuticals, and Medea is Anna, once a physician and successful head of the lab where both worked. Anna has been driven mad by rage, sparked by her husband’s infidelity. Rage and instability take over until she ends up destroying herself and everyone around her.
- [The Modus Opera Orchestra, Artistic Director and Conductor, Justin Bischof, after a Brilliant Debut, Carries On with Great Choral Works of the Renaissance](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/01/the-modus-opera-orchestra-artistic-director-and-conductor-justin-bischof-after-a-brilliant-debut-carries-on-with-great-choral-works-of-the-renaissance/) - Following the brilliant success of their inaugural concert on November 23rd of last year, the Modus Opera Orchestra, Justin Bischof, Artistic Director and Conductor, will present a choral concert including two classics of the Mass literature, Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli and Byrd's Mass Four Voices, along with premieres of three works by Dr. Bischof on February 1, 2020 at 7:30pm. This makes this group rather unique in New York, in that it offers a cappella chorus performances by its 16-person choir in addition to orchestral concerts and works for chorus and orchestra. This concert was an inauguration of an organization formed by the merger of two pre-existing groups, the Modus Opera and the Canadian Chamber Orchestra of New York City.
- [Alexander Kobrin, pianist, in Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms at Zankel Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/01/alexander-kobrin-pianist-in-beethoven-schumann-and-brahms-at-zankel-hall/) - Yamaha Artist Services take exemplary care of their protégés, and these include pianists at different stages of their careers and of many different inclinations. In Alexander Kobrin they have a pianist of the highest technical accomplishment who follows his own unique path in interpretation. Assistant Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, he was trained in his native Russia at the Gnessins Special Music School and Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov. He has achieved an outstanding record in international piano competitions, winning a gold medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. His numerous successes in competitions also include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition (First Prize), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (Top Prize), Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (First Prize).
- [Bach Two Ways: the Bethlehem Christmas Concert with Handel and Bach and a WA Concert with Webern and Bach](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/01/bach-two-ways-the-bethlehem-christmas-concert-with-handel-and-bach-and-a-wa-concert-with-webern-and-bach/) - The Bethlehem Bach Choir and their many different spheres of activity are all about J. S. Bach, but other related composers, some of whom are internationally renowned and some still in high school, are also allowed to come in. Outside of this special community, even during the time between the end of his career and the Bach renaissance of the second quarter of the 19th century, Bach was never totally forgotten. His magnetism drew in Mozart, Beethoven and others, as well as post-renaissance composers like Brahms and Bruckner...on to the 20th century in Busoni and the composers of the Second Viennese School. A little fast driving enabled me to experience both an old tradition reaching back before Mendelssohn, as well as a newer one, in which Bach could be partnered with Anton Webern—this at one of Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima's marvelous WA Concerts.
- [A Politically Correct Mikado (with a Dash of Keystone Kops)](https://newyorkarts.net/2020/01/a-politically-correct-mikado-with-a-dash-of-keystone-kops/) - This production hews to the original Gilbert & Sullivan work in many ways but takes great care not to offend as did the 2015 production which the company pulled. Instead of being transported to the fictional town of Titipu, typically introduced as the curtain rises by the men’s chorus singing If You Want to Know Who We Are, often complete with snapping fans, this version opens with a prologue in the D’Oyly Carte Company’s headquarters. The scene reveals Messrs. G. and S. with producer Richard D’Oyly Carte mulling over what will follow their current hit, Princess Ida. Inspired by interest in things Japanese, a craze that swept London in the mid-1850s, Gilbert (David Auxier who also plays Pish-Tush), sustains a minor head injury and, as though in a dream, conceives the operetta that follows.
- [DruidShakespeare: Richard III, directed by Garry Hynes at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/druidshakespeare-richard-iii-directed-by-garry-hynes-at-lincoln-centers-white-light-festival/) - Garry Hynes’ concept, which balanced respect for Shakespeare’s text with its many parallels with current events in the United States, Russia, and the UK, was, well, unimpeachable. Last year I enthusiastically reviewed a compelling, if rough and ready production directed by Austin Pendleton, which arose out of a feeling that Richard III—actually The Wars of the Roses, incorporating excerpts from Henry VI, Part 3—urgently needed to be put before an American audience for them to see the evils of contemporary politics reflected in it, no matter what limitations the situation placed on production values. The niceties of scansion and rhetoric were at times compromised by a passion to get the message across. Druid’s Richard III was impeccably, beautifully spoken, and costumed with an elegance which went against the contemporary trend towards plainness and recalled the sumptuous look of early twentieth century productions. Yet the messages were brought out with adroitness and eloquence.
- [Behind the Scenes of Broadway: "Transformations" by Broadway Close Up](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/behind-the-scenes-of-broadway-transformations-by-broadway-close-up/) - Broadway Close Up Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center December 9, 2019 Behind the Scenes of Broadway One of the many delights of Transformations, the final concert of this year’s Broadway Close Up series, was to hear so many songs that are rarely performed. It’s not that I don’t adore music from Broadway theater
- [Bard Music Festival 2019: Korngold and his World (REVISED)](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/bard-music-festival-2019-korngold-and-his-world/) - As I return to the Bard Music Festival year after year, I notice that the spaces of Olin Hall and the Fisher Center, become more crowded and sold-out notices appear ever more frequently. I also notice that I’ve seen a good many of the attendees before. There is certainly a minority who are passionately interested in one composer or his historical and cultural context and not in the others, but I am confident in saying that the core of the Bard audience consists of recidivists. Lately the choice of focal composers has shifted from the undisputed pantheon to composers who are interesting because of their cultural position in their own time. Saint-Saëns, Chávez, and Rimsky Korsakov fall into this category. The audience keeps on growing. It’s obvious that we share a broad interest in western art music, but the way in which the individual composers are presented is exploratory, and, given the presence of musicians and musicologists, bound to take a controversial course. I always leave not only knowing something I didn’t know before, but with a profound new insight, and, most important of all, questions to mull over during the months that separate us from the next Bard Festival.
- [Arts Press Events](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/arts-press-events/) - New York Arts’ Inaugural Event, a Concert of Baroque Chamber Music and an Exhibition of Old Master Drawings at the Fabbri MansionNew York Arts’ Inaugural Event, a Concert of Baroque Chamber Music and an Exhibition of Old Master Drawings at the Fabbri MansionI am very pleased to announce some exciting changes at New York Arts—or,
- [Confidence and (The Speech) and Jimmy Carter’s America](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/confidence-and-the-speech-and-jimmy-carters-america/) - The thing about Confidence (and The Speech)—playing now at the Lion on Theater Row by way of Charlotte’s Off-Broadway, a North Carolina production group that dramatizes “authentic female experiences” as well as questions of “social injustice and inequality”—is that while the play hews seamlessly close to the company’s plainly outspoken mission, it does so without ever losing its cheerful sense of theatricality. That is to say, Confidence, by Susan Lambert Hatem, is, by turns, boisterous, feverish, audacious, and utterly playful. It is nifty and important at the same time, which is to say it’s the absolute best kind of theater.
- [Bard Music Festival 2009 - Wagner and His World - August 14-16 and August 21-23, 2009: A Preview](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/02/bard-music-festival-2009-wagner-and-his-world/) - Of all the events in the year, I can't think of anything I anticipate quite as keenly as the Bard Music Festival, which is dedicated to exploring the life and works of major composers in the broad context of the culture in which they lived. The organizers accomplish this through the most diverse concert programs, as well as a series of symposia and colloquia involving prominent specialists not only in the composer in question, but in whatever tangential subjects are thought to be relevant. The Music Festival, which will celebrate its twentieth anniversary this year, has been part of a larger enterprise, Bard Summerscape, for some years, which brings in dance, theater, film, and cabaret performances, the latter in the Festival's popular Spiegeltent.
- [The Wagner Cult on Record: Tristan und Isolde](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/the-wagner-cult-on-record-tristan-und-isolde-by-huntley-dent/) - If all that mattered were the conductor, the situation would be golden. Wilhelm Furtwängler heads the list in 1952 with his much-acclaimed mono set on EMI, but at almost exactly the same time Herbert von Karajan was conducting a live performance at Bayreuth, now issued in good broadcast mono by Orfeo, that gives
- [Wagner Cult and Conductor Cult](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/05/wagner-cult-and-conductor-cult/) - Huntley Dent’s recent review of Bernstein’s Mahler and now his lucid evaluation of several recordings of Tristan und Isolde put me in mind not so much of operatic traditions as those of the concert hall, since Wagner’s music drama is so deeply rooted in the orchestra and the conductor who leads it. The modern symphony orchestra and the concert halls in which they play evolved as a substantially bourgeois institution over the course of the nineteenth century.
- [Oh no! He's not back again, is he? [revised]](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/05/oh-no-hes-not-back-again-is-he-revised/) - Herbert von Karajan, Wax Effigy in Miracle's Wax Museum. Vienna For many years Norman Lebrecht has managed to maintain an entirely undeserved amount of attention as the Thersites of the music world, the coarse, obtuse outsider, who doesn’t get the point of the war. Polemics can make almost anything interesting, even Mr. Lebrecht’s warped
- [Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen—Homeless Voices Rock a Classic Soup Kitchen](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/amahl-and-the-night-visitors-at-the-holy-apostles-soup-kitchen-homeless-voices-rock-a-classic-soup-kitchen/) - Amahl and the Night Visitors has a long history. First commissioned by NBC and performed by the NBC Opera Theater in 1951, it was broadcast live on television as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, the first opera specifically composed for American television. Composer Gian Carlo Menotti reported being inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Adoration of the Magi and specified that the role of Amahl was to always be played by a boy (not a woman although it is a soprano role.)
- [Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day, Directed by Oskar Eustis, at The Public Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/tony-kushners-a-bright-room-called-day-directed-by-oskar-eustis-at-the-public-theater/) - In the updated, powerfully heroic and human, exquisitely mournful version of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, now at The Public Theater, finding a determinable, moored center is not always an easy thing to do. For one thing, the play itself, first produced in 1985, has been fiercely summoned to the present. “Things are so bad people want to do this play!” says Xillah (an endearing Jonathon Hadary), who acts as a sort of stand-in for the play’s author and who exists in the here and now, in 2019. Then there’s his counterpart, Zillah, who, according to Xillah, was the reason the original production was not entirely successful, or as she herself tells us, “I’m this author-surrogate interruptive-oppositional someone-or-other to whom the playwright neglected to give even a trace of a backstory…” Zillah (a charming Crystal-Lucas Perry) and Xilla hover over Bright Room, debating the characters’ choices and behaviors, and creating a palpable and fluid (sometimes teary, sometimes bloody) through line from the Berlin of 1931 and 1932, where the main action of the play is set, to our own country’s current, riven, portentous moment. When he first wrote Bright Room, Kushner saw parallels between the government of Ronald Reagan and Hitler’s storming of Germany’s Weimar Republic. Now, as the Public’s artistic director Oskar Eustis, who also directed Bright Room, puts it in his Playbill note, the “warnings that seemed apocalyptic in 1985 now look remarkably prescient.” Or as Zillah, nee Kushner, says, the “NAZIS ARE IN THE FUCKING STREETS.”
- [A Fine New Recording of Korngold's Masterpiece, Das Wunder der Heliane](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/a-fine-new-recording-of-korngolds-masterpiece-das-wunder-der-heliane/) - Lovers of opera, decadence, and general excess, had reason this year to rejoice. This past summer, Bard Summerscape staged, as its centerpiece, complementary to the Bard Music Festival, Das Wunder der Heliane (The Miracle of Heliane), which is possibly the single most important work by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). And the work has now appeared in a sumptuous new recording (reviewed here) as well as in a much-praised DVD version from the renowned Deutsche Opera (Berlin), which indeed looks wonderful in this trailer.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXIX: Magnard, Bruckner, Korngold, and Vaughan Williams](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/a-crop-of-recordings-xxix-magnard-bruckner-korngold-and-vaughan-williams/) - Delving into the music of Alberic Magnard is to reach deep into the heart of French culture. Magnard was a subtle, aristocratic composer, trading in understatement. If you enjoy the delicate chromaticism of Gabriel Fauré, or Albert Roussel’s early works, such as his First Symphony, Poème de la forêt, you will love Magnard. If you are looking for the more obvious charms of Berlioz, Dukas, Franck or Saint-Saëns, you may be disappointed. Magnard is like Franck, but turned inward and away from Franck’s saccharine religiosity. Despite all the forte moments one could want, this is music best heard with the lights low and a log in the fireplace.
- [The Bard Music Festival—Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Trajectory: the Symphony in F#, Music for Hollywood, Chamber Music](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/the-bard-music-festival-erich-wolfgang-korngolds-trajectory-the-symphony-in-f-music-for-hollywood-chamber-music/) - After attending the fully staged performance of Korngold’s opera Das Wunder des Heliane and the concerts of the second weekend of the Bard Korngold Festival, I arrived a distinct sense of the shape of the composer’s career trajectory and of the development of his unique musical sensibility, one which I suspect the festival programmers might not have hoped to suggest. To the extent that Korngold’s name is familiar, it is owing to his powerful, compelling, and influential Hollywood film scores. The unique, invaluable Bard Music Festivals usually aim to take us beyond and behind the headlines associated with its central figures and to give us a means to re-evaluate them in a more nuanced way, in the context of their less familiar works as well as those of their contemporaries. In the case of my encounter with Korngold, however, the result was a strengthening of the general view that this composer was born to compose film scores.Up to now, Korngold’s non-film music has not been completely neglected.
- [A Korngold Festival! Two from the Bard Music Festival, 2019, as well as Two New Recordings](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/a-korngold-festival-two-from-the-bard-music-festival-2019-two-new-recordings/) - Not everyone agreed about the merits of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music, but he was the occasion of one of the most provocative Bard Music Festivals ever. Four of us have deliberated on either that or important new recordings, which add to our understanding of this sympathetic composer.
- [From the Lenape to the L Train: Elisa Monte Dance at the Flea Theater, November 21, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/12/from-the-lenape-to-the-l-train-elisa-monte-dance-at-the-flea-theater-november-21-2019/) - The evening was glorious with eight beautiful dancers moving effortlessly through three movements that relate to the “world’s melting pot of culture, New York City.” Before the performance started, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, the company’s artistic director, took the audience through a lot of technology involving cell phones and an app that had to be downloaded and installed on phones. It may have deepened the experience for some but I thought it awkward, unnecessary—and mostly unworkable. Millennials probably loved it.
- [James Adler, Piano A Yamaha Artist Services Piano Salon, November 12, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/james-adler-piano-a-yamaha-artist-services-piano-salon-november-12-2019/) - t's always a pleasure to attend a Yamaha piano event. Some take place in the more intimate halls around Manhattan, but most are in Yamaha’s New York show room on Fifth Avenue. The main room, where the recitals are held, has been acoustically treated, and the sound is as well-balanced and lively as many of the purpose-built auditoria in the city.
- [Sophocles' Antigone, in Japanese, directed by Satoshi Miyagi](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/sophocles-antigone-in-japanese-directed-by-satoshi-miyagi/) - Sophocles’ Antigone is a play written 2.500 years ago but in many ways relevant for today’s culture. In this performance, Greek tragedy and Japanese theater join forces to create a magical, mystic and spiritual experience of this tragedy in a show that combines Japanese culture and Greek drama. Twenty-nine actors and a director create an experience that deals with loss, memory, and duty—a performance that unites cultures, techniques and aesthetic types.
- [Pinter’s Intimate Dance of Betrayal at the Jacobs Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/pinter-betrayal/) - It may not be typical to come out of a Pinter play and have Sam Shepard on your mind. But it was Shepard—the recently deceased chronicler of a mythical but still resonant American West, whose plays used a violent poetry and choreography to tell dark, personal stories that seemed somehow to include everyone: cowboys and city people, fathers and their sons, and anybody who has ever loved not wisely but with foreboding, explosive consequences—I invoked to my companion as we exited the Jacobs Theater on 45th Street, where we had just been fortunate to witness director Jamie Lloyd’s new, bareboned revival of Pinter’s 1978 classic Betrayal.
- [Not to be missed! The newly reorganized Modus Opera Orchestra will play Beethoven, Rossini, Barber, Mozart, and Wagner at St. Anne's Church, Long Island City on Saturday, November 23 at 7 pm.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/not-to-be-missed-the-newly-reorganized-modus-opera-orchestra-will-play-beethoven-rossini-barber-mozart-and-wagner-at-st-annes-church-long-island-city-on-saturday-november-23-at-7-pm/) - Not to be missed—something new and something old! The outstanding musicians who have worked with conductor Justin Bischof for some years with noted success in New York City and Westchester county are now reorganized as The Modus Opera Orchestra, resident in St. Mary's Church in Long Island City. This coming Saturday, November 23rd, their inaugural concert will begin with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in a performance which is sure to be exciting and fresh, followed my Rossini's William Tell Overture, which is partly inspired by Beethoven's Fifth and his "Egmont" Overture. Follwing that soprano Elyse Ann Kakacek will join the orchestra for Barber's Knoxville, Summer of 1915 and an Alleluia by Mozart. The concert will conclude with Wagner's Overture to Tannhäuser. I think we may assume that the unusual sequence of works, pretty much the reverse of standard classical programming, hints at something new and extraordinary to expect from Maestro Bischof and his superb musicians.
- [Giovanni Bottesini's Comic Opera, Alì Babà (1871), Reconstructed and Conducted by Anthony Barrese at Opera Southwest](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/giovanni-bottesinis-opera-comica-ali-baba-reconstructed-and-conducted-by-anthony-barrese-opera-southwest/) - I have not yet embarked on the inevitable voyage through Conrad L. Osborne’s 827-page Opera and Opera, a report on the dire state of an art form many of us love as dearly as life itself, but Ralph Locke’s thoughtful discussion in these pages and Joseph Horowitz’s review in the Wall Street Journal have reinforced my awareness that performances like those cited by Mr. Horowitz, the Met performances of Verdi’s Otello on February 12, 1938 or Siegfried on January 30, 1937 are rarely even approximated today. However it does still happen, as it did the evening of April 28, 2018, when Pretty Yende joined Michael Fabiano in a thrilling Lucia di Lammermoor, also at the Met. One is even less likely to hear a performance of Siegfried or Otello of that caliber today.
- [Broadway Close Up: Love Who You Love, Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/broadway-close-up-love-who-you-love-merkin-hall-at-kaufman-music-center/) - This program, subtitled “a 100-year survey of gay and lesbian writers and characters on Broadway from the 1920s to 2020,” was just as good musically but more emotionally-charged than similar “Broadway tributes” at this venue. The outpouring of feelings was probably due to the subject matter—the work of gay and lesbian music makers— along with coming out stories and brief, but necessary, references to the AIDS crisis. Even though this was the second performance, the emotions felt entirely genuine and often brought cheers from the audience. The program was designed to examine the history of closeted writers and coded imagery while detailing how more open and explicit the classification became starting in the 1970s.
- [A Rare Early Attempt at Serious Opera in German: Ignaz Holzbauer's Tod der Dido (1780)](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/a-rare-early-attempt-at-serious-opera-in-german-ignaz-holzbauers-tod-der-dido-1780/) - It is perhaps hard for us to imagine what determination Holzbauer, in 1780, must have had to write an opera in German, and sung from beginning to end, on a tragic tale from classical antiquity, at a time when such topics were considered the primary province of French spoken drama and Italian opera seria. Mozart’s two German operas—The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute—are from around the same time as Holzbauer, but both are comedies, with often larky spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. (This is not to deny that both Mozart works also have dark or philosophical overtones.)
- [Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, at the Jewish Museum, New York, November 15, 2009 - March 14, 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/05/alias-man-ray-the-art-of-reinvention-jewish-museum-new-york/) - exhibition catalogue by Mason Klein; with contributions by George Baker, Merry L. Foresta, and Lauren Schell Dickens See also the following exhibition tour (from WNET, Channel 13) by Dr. Klein and this lecture. See also the Man Ray page on dadart.com, which presents invaluable visual material on the artist, created by people who knew him. In
- [The Hope Hypothesis at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, Closing November 15](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/11/the-hope-hypothesis-at-the-sheen-center-for-thought-and-culture-closing-november-15/) - Out-kafka-ing Kafka, this brisk, engaging play is a testimony to the ghastly bureaucratic nightmare surrounding the American immigration scenario. Syrian-born lawyer-to-be Amena has everything in order to become a U.S. citizen but, starting with a visit to the immigration office, things go badly.
- [OEDIPUS: Sex with Mum Was Blinding at BAM](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/oedipus-sex-with-mum-was-blinding-at-bam/) - Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex becomes an inspiration for the creation of this immersive opera—developed partly by the director at Stanford University—a musical performance that manages to mix music with new technologies and neuroscience with grace.
- [The Sydney Symphony with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Alexei Volodin in Medtner and Holst](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/the-sydney-symphony-with-vladimir-ashkenazy-and-alexei-volodin-in-medtner-and-holst-http-newyorkarts-net-28870/) - Who would ever suppose an obscure one-movement piano concerto could produce this sort of triumph? Alexei Volodin simply and unexpectedly swept away his Sydney listeners at this concert to frenzied screams with his performance of the Medtner Piano Concerto No.1. Our audience came to hear The Planets no doubt, but many just as surely emerged, like me, a dazed convert to Medtner, as if taken over by pods in my sleep from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was a stunning experience.
- [Works & Process Rotunda Project at the Guggenheim: Dance Theater of Harlem at 50](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/works-process-rotunda-project-at-the-guggenheim-dance-theater-of-harlem-at-50/) - “The arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and to hope." So said Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The company made its official New York debut in 1971 in the rotunda of New York’s Guggenheim Museum. To celebrate the Guggenheim building's 60th and Dance Theatre of Harlem's 50th anniversaries, Works & Process, the performing arts series at the museum, presented a Rotunda Project that acknowledged Mitchell’s death in September, 2018 by including a restaging of his Tones II by former DTH principal ballerina Lorraine Graves with assistance from former principal ballerina Caroline Rocher.
- [Broadway Close Up: Bound for Broadway—Ladies First](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/broadway-close-up-bound-for-broadway-ladies-first/) - Tony nominee and Emmy Award-winning singer and actress Liz Callaway hosted the evening, delighting the audience both with her presence and her acknowledgement that all of the evenings’ shows were written or co-written by women. Charming, unpretentious and funny, she launched into You Don’t Own Me, a 60s shout-out to women’s lib (although the movement didn’t hit its stride for another decade.)
- [Opera Old, New, Borrowed, Blue:  Glimmerglass 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/opera-old-new-borrowed-blue-glimmerglass-2019/) - The raucous, kaleidoscopic intertextual mash-up of Beaumarchais, Mozart, Rossini, Strauss, and Peter Weiss is grand entertainment. It is so obsessively referential to other operas and plays that the nearly three hours of puns, parodies and lampoons might be wasted on anyone other than certified opera nerds. One might believe that William Hoffman and John Coragliano overdosed on Douglas Hofstadter’s reflection on self-reflection, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Michael Zemeckis’ Future franchise films, and von Hofmannsthal/Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.
- [Only a week away! Michael Miller's Solo Play, "Transfiguration", at the Metropolitan Playhouse and the New York International Fringe Festival, October 12th (7:30 pm) and 13th (2 pm). Buy your tickets now!](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/10/only-a-week-away-michael-millers-solo-play-transfiguration-at-the-metropolitan-playhouse-and-the-new-york-international-fringe-festival-october-12th-730-pm-and-13th-2-pm-buy-your-tickets-n/) - Michael Miller's solo play "Transfiguration," winner of Best One-Man Drama at the 2018 United Solo Festival, will return to New York City on October 12th (7:30 pm) and 13th (2 pm) at the Metropolitan Playhouse as part of the 2019 New York International Fringe Festival. Gary Hilborn will repeat his award-winning performance, directed by Graydon Gund.
- [The Sydney Symphony under Vladimir Ashkenazy play Vaughan Williams and Elgar, with Andreas Brantelid, cello, at the Sydney Opera House](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/09/the-sydney-symphony-under-vladimir-ashkenazy-play-vaughan-williams-and-elgar-with-andreas-brantelid-cello-at-the-sydney-opera-house/) - Vladimir Ashkenazy is a beloved figure in Sydney, one immediately realizes, as he dashes onstage in a signature white turtleneck to lead the Sydney Symphony at the Opera House concert hall. You'd never guess this compact Conductor Laureate, with his full shock of white hair and healthy build is 82 years old. Subtract twenty and you might be closer to the truth. A phalanx of teenage girls in striped school uniforms immediately starts screaming and doesn't let up. As the evening progresses, not entirely aware of when to burst into applause, they will several times bring the proceedings to a momentary halt born of green but great enthusiasm and delight. No musician, of course, genuinely minds that sort of excitement.
- [Gary Lehman and Janice Baird Sing Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/gary-lehman-janice-baird-wagner-tristan-isolde-metropolitan-opera/) - About twenty minutes into Act II, Deborah Voigt became ill, left the stage, and the curtain was lowered. After a fifteen-minute delay, the act resumed at "Sehr lebhaft" with Janice Baird singing the role of Isolde. The evening began with Peter Gelb’s suave announcement that Ben Heppner was ill and recovering at home in Canada. He reminded the audience that only perhaps five tenors in the world were able to sing Tristan, but a replacement had been found, a tenor named Gary Lehman, who would be singing the role for the first time in public. Great promises he did not make.
- [Barenboim's Tristan at the Met with Dalayman and Seiffert](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/12/barenboims-tristan-at-the-met-with-dalayman-and-seiffert/) - Metropolitan Opera Company, November 28, 2008 Tristan.................Peter Seiffert Isolde..................Katarina Dalayman Kurwenal................Gerd Grochowski [Debut] Brangäne................Michelle DeYoung King Marke..............René Pape Melot...................Stephen Gaertner Sailor's Voice..........Matthew Plenk Shepherd................Mark Schowalter Steersman...............James Courtney English Horn Solo: Pedro R. Díaz Conductor...............Daniel Barenboim [Debut] Production..............Dieter Dorn Designer................Jürgen Rose Lighting designer.......Max Keller Last season's disastrous series of Tristan performances, of which
- [The Great French Organ Tradition: Three Concerts on Three Organs by Paul Jacobs](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/09/the-great-french-organ-tradition-three-concerts-on-three-organs-by-paul-jacobs/) - Organist Paul Jacobs, chair of Juilliard’s organ department, will perform a three-recital series in September 2019 featuring a program of works drawn from throughout the great French organ tradition. Mr. Jacobs stands out as among the organists of today for his interpretative intellect, virtuosity, and musicological learning. He opens the series performing on the Holtkamp organ in Juilliard’s Paul Hall on Tuesday, September 10, 2019, at 7:30pm. The series continues on the 1933 Aeolian-Skinner “Opus 891” at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin on Tuesday, September 17, 2019, at 7:30pm, and concludes on St. Ignatius Loyola’s 1993 Mander Organ on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, at 7:30pm.
- [Berlioz and Wagner Were Right about Spontini: Olimpie in a Stupendous World-Premiere Recording of the Paris 1826 Version](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/08/berlioz-and-wagner-were-right-about-spontini-olimpie-in-a-stupendous-world-premiere-recording-of-the-paris-1826-version/) - This world-premiere recording of the 1826 Paris version of Gaspare Spontini’s Olimpie makes a powerful case for a composer much admired in his own day and for a work that forms a link between Voltaire and the French Grand Operas of Meyerbeer, Halévy, and Verdi.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXVIII: Elgar, Holst, Tchaikovsky, Debussy...and Karl Weigl](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/09/a-crop-of-recordings-xxviii-elgar-holst-tchaikovsky-debussy-and-karl-weigl/) - The feature I applaud most in this fine new release from BIS is its pairing of Great Britain’s two most internationally popular orchestral showpieces under one baton. You would think it natural to record them together, but a quick look at Amazon reveals only Sir Adrian Boult’s recordings available that way, and these were originally sold separately, supplemented with other music. You can also find Herbert von Karajan’s The Planets accompanied by Pierre Monteux’s Enigma Variations, both performances many decades old. Even these new Andrew Litton versions were actually laid down in studio four years apart (the Elgar in 2013, Holst in 2017) but were clearly intended for this release by BIS, and both were miked in Bergen’s Grieg Hall.
- [Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/08/under-siege-by-yang-liping-contemporary-dance-at-lincoln-centers-mostly-mozart-festival/) - Hundreds of silvery scissors hang above the stage in rows, gently swaying and giving off a tinkling metal sound. These scissors have a life of their own, rising and descending, sometimes in voluptuous swoops. On the right a woman sits amidst a pile of white material, cutting the fabric into Chinese characters which she holds aloft. Each time she does this the English translation of the characters appears on screens, introducing a segment of the performance.
- [American Spring: Symphonic Landmarks from Albany and Detroit](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/american-spring-symphonic-landmarks-albany-detroit/) - A portion of the rich but sometimes neglected trove of American symphonies was given a welcome exposure during the valuable Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall in early May, thanks to the ongoing commitment to this repertory of music directors David Alan Miller and Leonard Slatkin. The beneficiary composers, Morton Gould and Charles Ives, both stand apart from the mid-century symphonic mainstream, also neglected, of Piston, Sessions, Schuman, Harris, Diamond, et al. It was a fascinating juxtaposition, particularly since Gould’s symphony has been largely absent since its premier in 1947, and most of Ives’s works had to wait lengthy intervals before receiving their first performances.
- [DAN ROSE DRAWINGS wins 2019 AIGA Award](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/07/dan-rose-drawings-wins-2019-aiga-award/) - DAN ROSE DRAWINGS, which was designed by Dan Rose in collaboration with the graphic designer Laurie Churchman and published in 2018, won an AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts, Philadelphia) award in June 2019 which came as no surprise. This is the most recent of an array of impressive artistic forays in different genres, some of which I’ve personally witnessed, and, in some cases, been lucky enough to write about or actually be a part of.
- [Derek Katz, Janáček: Beyond the Borders](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/derek-katz-janacek-beyond-the-borders/) - Whether you first became aware of the composer Leoš Janáček while seeing or hearing one of his unusual operas, operas with animal characters, moon people, or 400-year-old women, or, like me, you encountered his well-known Sinfonietta in a traditional orchestra concert, you probably instantly realized that this is a composer with his own distinctive sound and musical sensibility, neither Germanic, like Richard Strauss, Finnish, like Sibelius, or Russian, like Scriabin, to compare him with three of his immediate contemporaries. Though there are occasional echoes of Smetana and Dvořák, the nineteenth century’s two great Czech nationalists, Janáček’s music most often sounds sharply different from theirs nor does he remotely resemble his contemporaries in nearby lands. This relatively short book — about 136 page of easily readable prose — is an exploration of that sound.
- [Mark Morris Dance Group at Mostly Mozart](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/07/mark-morris-dance-group-at-mostly-mozart/) - Watching Mark Morris’ dancers swoop and soar in V, (the number five, a reference to the number of musicians playing Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat major) was entirely thrilling. There are no stars in the company so the group has to work very hard—they do but it doesn’t show. The work is a pure representation of dance integrity.
- [The Devil, Greed, War, and Simple Goodness: Ostrčil’s Jack’s Kingdom (1934)](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/08/the-devil-greed-war-and-simple-goodness-ostrcils-jacks-kingdom-1934/) - Here is a little-known opera that, like an opera by the Swedish composer Laci Boldemann that I have reviewed here, and like Ravel’s amazing L’enfant et les sortilèges, utterly bypasses the usual categories of comic and grand/tragic by cultivating instead the rich realm of fantasy and folk tale.
- [Longtime Artistic and Executive Directors of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem announce their retirement, following the 112th Bach Festival.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/longtime-artistic-and-executive-directors-of-the-bach-choir-of-bethlehem-announce-their-retirement-following-the-112th-bach-festival/) - When I was first invited to attend the Bach Choir of Bethlehem’s Christmas Concert in Advent 2014, I had no idea that that and the Bach Festival in May would become annual traditions. I believe that I have missed only one year since then, and now my wife has become as attached to these events as I am. From the gusto with which the people of Bethlehem celebrate the Christmas season, the liturgy celebrated in the local Moravian Church—which includes a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II—and the spirit of the Bach Festival, now in its 112th year, one can readily grasp the vitality of tradition in this originally German city—and it’s infectious, I can attest.
- [Amanda Selwyn Dance Theater: Crossroads at New York Live Arts](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/amanda-selwyn-dance-theater-crossroads-at-new-york-live-arts/) - Crossroads, the premiere of an evening–length work in three parts with choreography by Amanda Selwyn and company is abstract with a focus on decision-making and what an often disturbing process this is. It was exhilarating to watch the very well-tuned dancers move in solos, duets, trios, and sometimes as a complete group, each showing inner strength while maintaining an essential understanding of personal place and where their bodies fit into the space.
- [Guitarist Christoph Denoth plays South American Repertoire at SubCulture, June 10, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/guitarist-christoph-denoth-plays-south-american-repertoire-at-subculture-june-10-2019/) - To have attended Christoph Denoth’s classical guitar recital at SubCulture on Bleecker Street three nights ago is to have undergone a New York moment very particular to NoHo, the neighborhood where it was performed. Having moved to this swatch of the city three years ago, I’ve come to marvel at its odd but easy mix of strikingly disparate elements—gritty architecture, wildly colorful paintings on the sides or fronts of various buildings mixed into a motley crew of chic clubs, bars, galleries and a cheeky Underground Boxing gym on Bleecker’s easternmost end. SubCulture is a venue for any number of kinds of events and performances, cunningly aligned with the complex gestalt of NoHo for which it could be a symbol. Christoph Denoth’s recital, which is timed to attend the release of his most recent CD “Tanguero”, seemed to me to fit right into Noho and SubCulture’s complex heterogeneity.
- [Handbagged by Moira Buffini at 59 East 59](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/handbagged-by-moira-buffini-at-59-east-59/) - Anglophiles, those with a taste for recent British history and anyone who would like a look back at a non-PC world will enjoy this entertaining gabfest. Writer Moira Buffini has imagined a lengthy series of interchanges between Queen Elizabeth and her Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, sprinkling these liberally with references to events they shared. The transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, relationships with President and Mrs. Reagan, Charles and Diana’s wedding, the Falklands and a much else gets a brief look at as two Queens, (Anita Carey as Q and Beth Hylton as a younger version dubbed Liz), and two Iron Ladies, (Kate Fahy as T and Susan Lynskey as the younger Mags), meet repeatedly, talk about what passed for state business and drop asides.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXVII: Vaughan Williams, Holbrooke, Saint-Saëns, Poulenc, Alfvén, Joseph Marx](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/a-crop-of-recordings-xxvii-vaughan-williams-holbrooke-saint-saens-poulenc-alfven-joseph-marx/) - Both works here are gorgeously conceived and transparently recorded from top to bottom (and the Seventh Symphony features a convincing velvet-deep organ presence to boot). They make for a wonderful release together and a fitting conclusion to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s well-received Vaughan Williams cycle on Onyx. Spectacular as the Antartica is in Manze’s hands (and it is) it’s his performance of the Ninth Symphony which stands out for me as an even more remarkable accomplishment beyond normal praise.
- [Lone Star by James McClure at the Thirteenth Street Repertory Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/lone-star-by-james-mcclure-at-the-thirteenth-street-repertory-theater/) - It’s Angel’s Bar, a good-ole-boy hangout in Maynard, Texas with bales of hay, beer bottles, an outline of the Lone Star state on a door and graffiti on the walls. Two ragged men with battered Stetsons speak as one sloppily sweeps up escaping hay and I thought, ah, the performance. No, it was the house rules with the usual explanations about exit signs augmented with some barroom bits like “no touching.”
- [Lydia Johnson Dance at the Ailey Citigroup Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/lydia-johnson-dance-at-the-ailey-citigroup-theater/) - It was with relief that I greeted the final number on the program. Undercurrent, set to music by Henryk Gόrecki, woke up, enlivening me, the audience at large and also seemingly the dancers who had previously drifted through a series of works that I found bland and somnolent. Undercurrent raised levels of power and energy with repeated prancing steps, first danced by groups of women and later by the company’s men.
- [The Performance of Opera Today: Disease and Possible Cure—a Review of Conrad L. Osborne's Opera as Opera: The State of the Art](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/the-performance-of-opera-today-disease-and-possible-cure-a-review-of-conrad-l-osbornes-opera-as-opera-the-state-of-the-art/) - Veteran opera critic Conrad L. Osborne delivers a lifetime’s worth of keen perceptions and stern judgements, all in quirky yet compulsively readable prose.
- [Going Beyond the Impossible to the Musical: The JACK Quartet play the Complete String Quartets of Elliott Carter.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/06/going-beyond-the-impossible-to-the-musical-the-jack-quartet-play-the-complete-string-quartets-of-elliott-carter/) - The string quartet literature is notable for throwing super-complex challenges at the players; after all, this is the most cohesive medium for ensemble playing, and quartets play together for years or decades and can polish their communication and coordination skills to the highest degree. For that reason, composers have striven their utmost to present path-breaking difficulties and daring quartets to conquer them. One sub-history of 20th/21st century music has been the interplay between quartet composers and the groups performing their music. The avatar of all of this is late Beethoven, whose Große Fuge pushed the boundaries of playability in its day, and whose late quartets were composed with the skills of the Schuppanzigh Quartet in mind.
- [Nothing Here Is Real, with Mentalist Gary Ferrar](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/nothing-here-is-real-with-gary-ferrar/) - Gary Ferrer’s Nothing Here is Real is an entertaining mash-up of what he refers to as “mentalism”—magic effects, including one it-almost-doesn’t-happen card trick, and cheery, crowd-pleasing patter designed both to engage the audience and turn its collective mind where he wants it to focus.
- [The 112th Bethlehem Bach Festival: second weekend coming up, May 17 and 18](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/the-112th-bethlehem-bach-festival-second-weekend-coming-up-may-17-and-18/) - The first weekend of the 112th Bethlehem Bach Festival is behind us. Fortunately for those of us who weren't there for it the Festival has long adopted the policy of repeating the program over the following weekend, now coming up. Both weekends come close to selling out, but it should still be possible to purchase tickets for all events.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXVI: Shostakovich, Weingartner, Ibert, and Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/a-crop-of-recordings-xxvi-shostakovich-weingartner/) - Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony are in fine form here, satisfying guides, as always, in their approach to the ironies and tragedies of the Shostakovich symphonies. Indeed, now that we know him well in Boston, it has become clear Nelsons is consistent there in the way he approaches music of this kind. But he illustrates, you might say, along with special romantic insights, the sins of his virtues. Nelsons is what Sir Thomas Beecham would have called a “ritardando” conductor. One notices this not so much in tempo variance as in the tendency to prepare for and draw out a cadence. Nelsons is not slow. But one is nearly always aware of a certain smoothness in transitions from phrase to phrase and a roundedness in the brass sonority he encourages from the BSO.
- [New Camerata’s Production of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia Fits the Me Too Age](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/new-cameratas-production-of-brittens-the-rape-of-lucretia-fits-the-me-too-age/) - Benjamin Britten’s 1946 chamber opera, set in c. 600 BC when a wildly debauched Rome was under Etruscan rule, is accidentally prescient. As presented by New Camerata Opera, the work, intelligently directed by Bea Goodwin, makes the most of the abuse of male power, retelling a legend that has as much (maybe more) significance today than it ever did.
- [Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung: Design Dialogues with ISAW’s The Ancient World and the Ballet Russes at the Guggenheim](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/reid-bartelme-and-harriet-jung-design-dialogues-with-isaws-the-ancient-world-and-the-ballet-russes-at-the-guggenheim/) - The evening provided a thoroughly engaging look at the creative process as it concerns choreographers, dancers, costume designers, music and a related exhibit that examines both antiquity and its relationship to the revered Ballets Russes.
- [The San Francisco Symphony under James Gaffigan with Hélène Grimaud in  Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart and Barber](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/the-san-francisco-symphony-under-james-gaffigan-with-helene-grimaud-in-wagner-beethoven-mozart-and-barber/) - What a wonderful work is Barber's First Symphony! I will argue in a moment that it is America's greatest. If I review our program a bit backwards this time, it's because we don't hear this piece often enough—or nearly at all in San Francisco. (The last outing here was in 1963 under Howard Mitchell). But it was worth the wait, not the least because of James Gaffigan's white-hot performance. Indeed, Barber's concluding timpanic growl brought the audience to its feet screaming, a fitting wind-up for a concert of bravos, and reaffirmed our sense that James Gaffigan has become a major conductor.
- [Music in Midtown at CUNY Graduate Center: Bilitis et Babar with Paula Robison and Friends](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/music-in-midtown-at-cuny-graduate-center-bilitis-et-babar-with-paula-robison-and-friends/) - In recent years a great deal of Paula Robison’s energy has gone into training the next generation of flutists. Knowing her approach to music and many other valuable forms of thought and expression, her teaching is a humanistic education in itself. Still, she finds time to perform and record. Most recently she delighted a New York audience with her talents as a narrator—in French, on this occasion. Narration for her is a passion that goes back to her family origins, as the daughter and niece of theater people: her mother was an actress, her father a screenplay writer, and her uncle a playwright.
- [Stars Crossing in New York’s Electric City](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/05/stars-crossing-in-new-yorks-electric-city/) - It is simple enough to dismiss the once vital Schenectady New York, with the dwindling fortunes of General Electric. The town with a hard-to-pronounce name famously malapropped in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New Yorkwas once the seat of the largest employer and economic force in the upstate New York region. The fates have been unkind, and its poor environmental record coupled with challenges transitioning to renewable energy has dealt a fatal blow.
- [2017: A Film Festival Retrospective from the Northeast, above all, the Berkshire and the Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/2017-film-festival-restrospective-northeast-berkshire-nitrate-picture-show-george-eastman-museum-rochester/) - Film festivals have become an integral part of film-going life. They are no longer the preserve of industry professionals, now attended by a variety of cinephiles and even casual viewers, who may have read a title or a preview that struck their fancy. Not a few worthy films will never make it into general distribution. We take that for granted, and a festival award may be the best many filmmakers can hope for. A screening at a festival before a roomful of living humans in itself seems more tangible than a showing on cable or one of the streaming networks.
- [The 5th Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum, May 3 - 5, 2019, a Preview with a Retrospective of the 4th.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/04/the-5th-nitrate-picture-show-at-the-george-eastman-museum-may-3-5-2019-a-preview-with-a-retrospective-of-the-4th/) - In planning the Nitrate Picture Show, the richest opportunity to view vintage prints of films on nitrate stock in the world today, the organizers at the George Eastman House adopted the policy of not announcing the screening schedule in advance. One comes to the festival and views what is offered. This idea didn’t come from nowhere, since the founder and first curator of the film department at Eastman, James Card, implemented it at the Telluride Festival, which he co-founded in 1974. I was thrilled with this concept when I first attended the Festival in 2017, and it continues to hold its fascination.
- [Anne Carson's Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, a "Melologue"](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/04/anne-carsons-norma-jeane-baker-of-troy-a-melologue/) - Conflating the myth of Helen of Troy with the story of Norma Jeane Baker, aka Marilyn Monroe, is a terrific idea. Both women were revered for their beauty and lusted after by men far and wide; despite, or probably because of these characteristics, neither enjoyed a very happy life.
- [Dance x 3: Ballet Hispanico and Magritte on Hats, Isadora Duncan and the Greeks, Tap as High Art](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/04/dance-x-3-ballet-hispanico-and-magritte-on-hats-isadora-duncan-and-the-greeks-tap-as-high-art/) - Two big hits out of three made for a great evening. Sombrerisimo, a total delight, is choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, inspired by the surrealist world of René Magritte who famously painted bowler hats. The work was made originally for an all-male cast; this version turns it upside down with Shelby Colona, Jenna Marie, Eila Valls, Gabrielle Sprauve, Dandara Veiga and Melissa Verdecia pulling off a bravura number.*Dramatic and innovative, even to the point of changing her name from Angela to something more exotic, Isadora Duncan helped free ballet from restrictions and in doing so became one of the earliest proponents of modern dance. At twenty-one with very little money she sailed on a cattle boat to England and there, at the British Museum, fell for ancient Greek sculpture in a big way. The result was barefoot young women in skimpy clothing dancing with abandon—which drew huge crowds and lots of attention. *Tap dancing was once dismissed as lightweight entertainment, for example Fred Astaire, who delighted zillions of people, great art or not. Then came artists including the astonishing Savion Glover; now there is Dorrance Dance, the company that has won numerous awards for pushing tap rhythmically, technically and conceptually. Founded in 2011 by artistic director Michelle Dorrance who became a MacArthur Fellow in 2015, Dorrance Dance blows the lid off the form.
- [The Pittsburgh Symphony under Juraj Valčuha with pianist Lukáš Vondráček play Rachmaninoff and Respighi](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/04/the-pittsburgh-symphony-under-juraj-valcuha-with-pianist-lukas-vondracek-play-rachmaninoff-and-respighi/) - There's something timeless, solid and reassuring about attending a concert in Pittsburgh. The place seems contented. "The burghers are industrious" is an old fashioned way you might put it. Citizens seem to take themselves seriously. Businessmen still wear ties. Nobody pushes and shoves, the way New Yorkers do in that elbow war of a city. People make time to talk to each other in line.
- [The Hottest Picture Show: A Look at the Eastman Museum's Annual Celebration of Nitrate](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/04/the-hottest-picture-show-a-look-at-the-eastman-museums-annual-celebration-of-nitrate/) - Nitrate prints from international archives are loaned to the Museum and screened at its historic Dryden Theatre, one of only a few places left in the world where nitrate film can be legally projected due to its inherent safety risks.
- [Classics Declassified: Leon Botstein's Tour of the Beethoven Symphonies with the ASO at Peter Norton Symphony Space, New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/10/classics-declassified-leon-botsteins-tour-of-the-beethoven-symphonies-with-the-aso-at-peter-norton-symphony-space-new-york/) - [Show as slideshow] In the classical music world today, there are many educators, but few as witty as Leon Botstein, or as learned. He rightly stressed the emotional and ethical "colors" of tonality, the influences on the work in question, the analogy between classical structure and the rhetoric of the eighteenth century novel, and chose
- [W. B. Yeats and Ireland: Photographs, Music, and a Reading, with Dorien Staljanssens, James Cleveland, and Lloyd Schwartz](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/12/yeats-ireland-photographs-music-reading/) - In the spirit of the Twelve Days of Christmas as a time for quiet reflection and a turning inwards, we'd like to offer a gift of a recording of New York Arts's second performance event, held on June 1, 2013, at 7 pm, in connection with my own exhibition of photographs of Western Ireland at the Centerpoint Gallery in New York City: a reading/concert in which the acclaimed poet, Lloyd Schwartz, Senior Classical Music Editor of New York Arts, read poems by W. B. Yeats with interludes of traditional Irish music played by Dorien Staljanssens, flute, and James Cleveland, fiddle.
- [Sir András Schiff leads the San Francisco Orchestra in Bach and Mendelssohn](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/sir-andras-schiff-leads-the-san-francisco-orchestra-in-bach-and-mendelssohn/) - Let it never be said that an evening of Lutheran virtue makes for date night in San Francisco. Absent last Friday from our grey-haired audience huddling into its winter coats were the backless dresses and sculpture-worthy flashes of leg which usually cheer the frisky. Two gay men I passed in the crowd were no happier about it: "Bach only brings out the old men," sighed one ruefully. But there was a fascination for me in what turned out to be a solid, indeed old-fashioned evening of Victorian-style uplift. In particular, I was eager to encounter live Mendelssohn's Lobgesang Symphony-Cantata ("The Song of Praise"), sometimes called his Second Symphony. It was composed in 1840 to celebrate Gutenberg's invention of moveable type (ed.), but receives here its first San Francisco performance.
- [The Frog and Peach Theater Company presents Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Sheen Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/the-frog-and-peach-theater-company-presents-shakespeares-twelfth-night-at-the-sheen-center/) - The founders of Frog and Peach, Lynnea Benson and Ted Zurkowski, began the company with the goal of making Shakespeare “playful and down to earth,” i.e. accessible to all. This is a great idea, and undoubtedly their group has introduced many people to the Bard but in this case it doesn’t make a great production.
- [Stockbridge: Summer 1966—A memoir of the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s inaugural season](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/stockbridge-summer-1966-a-memoir-of-the-berkshire-theatre-festivals-inaugural-season/) - Stockbridge: Summer 1966 A memoir of the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s inaugural season — Episode I The Berkshire Playhouse in the 1930s, before it became the Berkshire Theater Festival. Meetings with Remarkable Men (and Women) In 1965 I had been in New York City for two years, having come down the Thruway from Honeoye Falls, NY,
- [Bach 25 and Star Dust by Complexions Contemporary Ballet at the Joyce Theater. Closes March 3.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/bach-25-and-star-dust-by-complexions-contemporary-ballet-at-the-joyce-theater-closes-march-3/) - When the curtain went up on Bach 25, some of the audience gasped as it seemed as though the dancers were nude. Not so—their sculpted, athletic bodies are clad in Christine Darch’s minimal costumes and set off in bronzy lighting by Michael Korsch making them look like living sculpture. The thirty-minute piece passed in an instant as the dancers stretched in thrilling poses, sometimes alone and other moments in twos and threes. This is a very contemporary work with clean line and deep pliés as well as twisting, flickering, arms and hands that lend humor.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXV: Gliere, Respighi, Lortzing, Antheil, and Wagner](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/a-crop-of-recordings-xxv-gliere-respighi-lortzing-antheil-and-wagner/) - Reinhold Glière was fortunate to thrive under Soviet Communism. A long-limbed bardic style, featuring haunting melodies evoking the Russian ecclesiastical past, ruffled no political feathers. Nor did velvety explorations of Scriabin-influenced chromaticism. He was never purged. But Glière paid a price for fame in the world of democracy and commerce, it would seem. His greatest work, the 1912 Mahler-length Symphony No. 3, “Il’ya Muromets”, was deemed “too long” for the concert hall in America. To ensure its presentation, Leopold Stokowski persuaded the composer to pare it down drastically, and it was in this incomplete condition that the work took root in Philadelphia and in American ears.
- [Poor Behavior, Written and Directed by Theresa Rebeck at the New Ohio Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/poor-behavior-written-and-directed-by-theresa-rebeck-at-the-new-ohio-theater/) - Teresa Rebeck, writer of Broadway’s Bernhardt/Hamlet, NBC’s Smash and more, is one talented lady but her film directorial debut, Poor Behavior, left me scratching my head. Set in a Vermont country house, it deals with two couples from New York spending the weekend together. Everyone drinks a lot and fights incessantly, goading one another into increasingly bad behavior. However, not one of the characters is very interesting nor are the barbs they trade particularly clever.
- [Le Salon du Dessin 2012 - UPDATE: Jorinde Voigt has won the Contemporary Drawing Prize of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Art Foundation.](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/salon-du-dessin-2012-preview/) - Knowing the Salon du Dessin at first hand, and contemplating its 2012 iteration, I find myself thinking back on on the world of master drawings as it was when I first entered it in 1980 and how it has changed over the years. Attended by over 13,000 people in 2010, the Salon is a large, public event which spans five days. It brings together the larger part of the world's curators, scholars, collectors, and dealers in the field in a busy, but rarely overcrowded public space, the Palais de la Bourse. One can survey the available stock at the dealers' stands, attend conferences, lectures, and guided tours, visit exhibitions at the Bourse and at Paris museums, as well as satellite enterprises around the Hôtel Drouot, where drawings can be had at auction, and further afield. There is a wealth of opportunities to learn about drawings, as well as to collect them. In 1980, no one thought that a fair of this size might ever exist in the field, and in its early years, during the 1990s, no one ever thought it would grow to these dimensions.
- [Tevye Served Raw, at the The Playroom Theater, Closes February 13th, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/tevye-served-raw-at-the-the-playroom-theater-closed-february-13th-2019/) - Before we thrilled to Fiddler on the Roof there was Sholem Aleichem, the most beloved Jewish writer of the modern age who produced short stories, plays, literary criticism and more. Tevye Served Raw distills these, concentrating on the Tevye the Dairyman stories, to remind us of the essential sweetness-cum-pathos of Aleichem’s life and his genius.
- [Christian Reif leads the San Francisco Symphony in Strauss, Lutosławski, and Prokofiev, with Johannes Moser, cello.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/christian-reif-leads-the-san-francisco-symphony-in-strauss-lutoslawski-and-prokofiev-with-johannes-moser-cello/) - I'm often struck, when I attend concerts, with how much it matters what we see happening onstage. Ears aren't everything. And sometimes they are not enough. This is doubly true if an audience is presented with the sort of modern music which trades in humor, sly remarks, and attitude, like the Lutosławski Cello Concerto, which received its San Francisco premiere this week nearly fifty years after it was composed. I'm happy to report the concerto was a triumph worth the wait, but its success with our audience was to a large degree determined by the mini-skit taking place onstage. Fortunately, Christian Reif and Johannes Moser are natural comedians, sufficiently so to dispel any notions that Germans are too uptight to be funny! And our close sight lines in Davies Hall, where it is easy to witness a performer's face, surely played a part in what almost amounted to a Saturday Night Live routine.
- [What’s Great About Gatsby? Elevator Repair Service performs Fitzgerald's novel in its entirety, as Gatz.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/02/whats-great-about-gatsby-elevator-repair-service-performs-fitzgeralds-novel-in-its-entirety/) - Reading a book is a solitary, intimate experience in which the reader sets the pace and imagines the characters as he or she sees them. Listening to a book is another way to appreciate a work, sometimes influenced by the narrator’s voice. Gatz, as created by Elevator Repair Service, uses an unprecedented approach, staging the book as it is read in its entirely. The performance begins when an anonymous office worker sits at a desk in a grungy office and, while waiting for his computer to boot, idly picks up The Great Gatsby and starts reading it aloud. The worker slowly takes on the character of Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age novel, who reads every word of the book including the “he/she saids” for a marathon six hours. Bit by bit, the other office workers assume the rest of the characters although the bulk of the effort falls to the staggeringly good Scott Shepherd.
- [Real, a Masterpiece by Rodrigo Nogueira, at the Tank, closing January 20th.](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/01/real-by-rodrigo-nogueira-at-the-tank-closing-january-20th/) - Rodrigo Nogueira, who is already well-established in his native Brazil as a major playwright, also active in cinema and television, introduced himself to New York audiences last spring with his play, The Ideal Obituary, which I reviewed enthusiastically. Now, just at the beginning of the new year, he is back, with another offbeat and absorbing creation, Real. In The Ideal Obituary Mr. Nogueira explored the stranger workings of the human mind. He showed us how the well-intentioned efforts of a loving husband to cure his wife’s severe depression ironically led the couple to a more functional and seemingly happier situation which eventually passed through the most basic laws of morality up to a life or death decision. The human mind and soul follow their own irrational logic.
- [Eulogy to a Muse: About Alice at the Theater for a New Audience. Closes February 3, 2019](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/01/eulogy-to-a-muse-about-alice-at-the-theater-for-a-new-audience-closes-february-3-2019/) - “I wrote everything for Alice,” said Calvin Trillin about his wife, a remarkable woman who was, in addition to her many impressive credentials, his muse. Trillin recounted a great deal about his life with Alice in memoirs, articles and books but the transformation of his sentiments from written work to this two-character play has both up and downsides.
- [Piano Recitals in New York, Autumn 2018—a Retrospective](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/01/piano-recitals-in-new-york-autumn-2018-a-retrospective/) - I have been on something of a musical diet this season, and the concerts I have attended have been few, including piano recitals, which have proven nonetheless wide in range, with newcomers to the city as well as the quintessential New Yorker, Richard Goode, and the continuation of Angela Hewitt’s transcendent Bach Odyssey, which has been the lodestar of my musical life for some years now. All have had something memorable to offer, especially Ms. Hewitt, and I have very little to grumble about, unless it is the smartphone-addicted audience at Daniel Ciobanu’s recital, who seemed to have no idea of what a classical concert entails in terms of how to enjoy the music and how to allow others to enjoy it as well.
- [A New York Orchestral Retrospective, mostly Autumn 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/01/a-new-york-orchestral-retrospective-mostly-autumn-2018/) - Not so long ago I read a note by a European string player who was a young student in the 1890s. He observed that gut strings were universal before the First World War. When they began to appear in the first decade of the twentieth century, they were considered functional but inferior, and mainly used by students. Wartime shortages then made them a regrettable necessity for working professionals and orchestras. I haven't had a chance to investigate this properly, but the source is unquestionable. Wind instruments constantly evolved and were "improved" over the course of the nineteenth century, with its genius for mechanical inventions. This gives us an idea of when and how this crucial divide separated modern musicians and audiences from the techniques and sounds of earlier composers—meaning Mahler, not Mozart. There is still some general idea in the mind of the public that historical instruments and performance practices concern primarily music of the Baroque and Classical periods, but musicians have been applying the fruits of performance history to Romantic music for over twenty years—with gratifying results.
- [Artist Pamela Talese talks to Michael Miller about her recent exhibition, The Third Rome: Allegorical Landscapes of the Modern City, at the Robert Simon Fine Art, Nov.-Dec. 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2019/01/artist-pamela-talese-talks-to-michael-miller-about-her-recent-exhibition-the-third-rome-allegorical-landscapes-of-the-modern-city-at-the-robert-simon-fine-art-nov-dec-2018/) - The distinguished old master dealer, Robert Simon, held his first exhibition of a contemporary artist this past November and December. Entitled The Third Rome : Allegorical Landscapes of the Modern City, it was devoted to the current work of Pamela Talese, a Brooklyn-based painter known for her haunting views of gritty industrial sites around the Navy Yard and Red Hook. Brought to Rome for the first time in twenty-two years by a fellowship at the American Academy and following up a suggestion by an architectural historian she met there, she began to explore more recent neighborhoods outside the historical center. By “more recent,” I mean areas developed in the 1920s and 1930s, that is, the Fascist Era. Exploring the neighborhoods on her bicycle with her painting box and folding easel strapped on, Ms. Talese felt attracted to certain buildings that stood out for their clean, simple lines and elegant design. These were prime examples of Fascist architecture—modest, functional residential edifices, utilitarian civic structures, and a few public buildings. Virtually none of these appear in the surveys of Fascist architecture—with one notable exception, the Foro Italico (formerly called the Foro Mussolini).
- [Shakespeare in Rome: Come vi piace at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/shakespeare-rome-come-vi-piace/) - If you ever need proof of Shakespeare’s universal appeal, stop by Rome’s Globe Theatre. Within a single evening you’ll be convinced that the Bard, disarmed of dactylic hexameters, can still speak to everyone and anyone. All the more so to Italians when it comes to As You Like It (Come vi piace). Their temperament — irascible, passionate, effusive — stands opposite that of the English but squares precisely with what Shakespeare wanted to lampoon in this subtle masterpiece. Rosalind (Melania Giglio) is so sickly in love with Orlando (Daniele Pecci) that she can barely maintain her act as “Ganymede” in his presence. Duke Frederick (Nicola D’Eramo) hates his brother (also played by D’Eramo) so fiercely that anyone who reminds him of Duke Senior is mindlessly banished from the dukedom. Silvius (Patrizio Cigliano) dotes on Phebe (Barbara Di Bartolo) so cloyingly that the audience would gladly join her in strangling him if only he weren’t so hysterically funny. Each character is a caricature of Italian emotional excess, and no one can make fun of emotional excess better than the excessively emotional Italians.
- [Tod Machover’s Schoenberg in Hollywood, by the Boston Lyric Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/tod-machovers-schoenberg-in-hollywood-by-the-boston-lyric-opera/) - The Boston Lyric Opera recently completed its very successful run of Tod Machover’s new opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, libretto by Simon Robson. Returning from out of town, I was fortunate to attend the final performance, Sunday, November 18th.
- [Autumn Music in Boston, 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/autumn-music-in-boston-2018/) - Schoenberg in the opera often mentions Mahler, and we see his name projected on the back screen—a great Austrian Jewish composer who preceded Schoenberg in coming to America. Since James Levine’s day, the Boston Symphony has not given us Schoenberg (though Verklärte Nacht or the Five Pieces for Orchestra, or Gurrelieder might seem a good fit for Music Director Andris Nelsons). But the BSO does consistently perform Mahler, and in recent weeks gave us the huge, choral Second (Resurrection) Symphony and the tuneful and popular Fifth (whose Adagietto for strings is used so poignantly in Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice).
- [Admire the Scenery: ZviDance, New York Live Arts](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/admire-the-scenery-zvidance-new-york-live-arts/) - Notes for Bears Ears say the piece aims to raise awareness of the current controversy surrounding Bears Ears National Monument in Southern Utah. While designated as a National Monument by President Obama, Bears Ears is now a symbol of the Native American struggle as a result of the current Administration's attempts to reverse Obama's designation.
- [Wings and Voices to Match: Soharmoniums Women’s Choir at Merkin Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/wings-and-voices-to-match-soharmoniums-womens-choir-at-merkin-hall/) - If angels wore dark blue and carried music scores they could be the Soharmoniums. This all women’s chorus brightened the stage fifty-strong and filled the ears of the audience. A beautifully blended vocal group, it added to the pleasure to see them in uniform dress so that the eye was not distracted and all attention could be focused on their entirely delightful offerings.
- [Paradise Not Found: "Utopia" by Valerie Green/Dance Entropy at Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/paradise-not-found-utopia-by-valerie-green-dance-entropy-at-danspace-project-st-marks-church/) - The work asks “what does Utopia mean to you?” The standard definition of Utopia is an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. What I saw was seven dancers, (five women, two men), in vaguely Greek white costumes dancing with long, cylindrical poles. The dancers gave the premise a good try but the end result was bland. The poles, made by visual artist Keren Anavy, as well as the “rocks” that later became lighted headdresses, took over. The dancing seemed in service to the props so the concept of exploring a “perfect place” got lost in the shuffle. In fairness, there wasn’t much shuffling but rather too many repetitive, unimaginative steps with a few lovely interludes, notably when a man and woman briefly danced a tender pas de deux and later when the troupe ran in place with the poles serving as trees flanking each dancer.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXIV: Rued Langgaard, Ruth Gipps, Hubert Parry, Vilhelm Stenhammar, and Witold Lutosławski](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/a-crop-of-recordings-xxiv-rued-langgaard-ruth-gipps-hubert-parry-vilhelm-stenhammar-and-witold-lutoslawski/) - “Let me please introduce myself. I am a gentleman of wealth and taste. And I laid traps for troubadours….” So goes the Rolling Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil. Danish audiences never quite knew what to make of Rued Langgaard, at once romantic composer and obsessive throwback to apocalyptic Christianity. His Sixth Symphony, officially termed “The Heaven-Rending,” later came to be known as “The Antichrist.” The Danes, hearing the struggle in his music and perhaps a bit fundamentalist at the time, were never sure on which side Langgaard stood! Langgaard was passionately convinced Satan operated in modern life as power behind the scenes, devilishly pulling the strings of music, culture and government—and was ultimately responsible for the First World War. A special culprit and convert to this evil, in Langgaard’s eyes, was Carl Nielsen, the celebrated Danish composer of his day, whose modernism and humanism Langgaard alternately copied and excoriated. These views and other personal eccentricities, plus music which over time gradually became episodic and minimalistic, ensured Langgaard would remain unpopular in his home country.
- [The Utah Symphony with Andrew Litton, conductor and Philippe Quint, violin in Bernstein, Corigliano, and Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/the-utah-symphony-with-andrew-litton-conductor-and-philippe-quint-violin-in-bernstein-corigliano-and-tchaikovsky/) - There's something a little otherworldly and disorienting about Salt Lake City, I'm tempted to say, especially if you aren't Mormon or familiar with the ways of the LDS Church. It's unusual to encounter a spotless downtown in any American city, of course, but you do wonder at times if Salt Lake is a Hollywood set designed to make one's own sense of human imperfection uncomfortable. Utah, in general, is almost too beautiful to be real—but the city is curiously empty—even in the Bermuda shorts weather of late October. Immensely wide, perfectly laid-out avenues are nearly people free. (The "don't walk" signs count down from 30). There are few homeless people visible, though sometimes they are the only citizens seemingly present, horizontal black marks visible on distant sidewalks.
- [Man and Monster—A Dark Comedy: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde at the Soho Playhouse, closing December 15](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/man-and-monster-a-dark-comedy-dr-jekyll-mr-hyde-at-the-soho-playhouse-closing-december-15/) - Start with the title: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: A Comedy. Indeed, this production, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s anything-but-amusing novella, has many funny (and even more quirky) moments beginning with the opening scene in which Jekyll and an unidentified woman watch a fumbled public execution. The particular, wacky charm of the show stems from the fine interplay between Burt Grinstead, playing Jekyll and Hyde and Anna Stromberg playing everyone else—Jekyll’s maid, Poole; a London Bobbie, Jekyll’s friend and many other characters, each identified by a single costume piece or prop. Grinstead and Stromberg also wrote the script that centers around duality and the nature of morality while Stromberg directed.
- [Hello to a World at War: The Hello Girls, 59 East 59, November 30, 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/12/hello-to-a-world-at-war-the-hello-girls-59-east-59-november-30-2018/) - Technically The Hello Girls were the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, telephone switchboard operators who were sworn into the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I. The corps was formed in 1917 by General John Pershing in hopes of improving the state of communications on the Western front. Over 7,000 women applied but only 230 of them, many former switchboard operators, all bilingual, actually went to France.
- ["Home," by the Gibney Dance Company at The Theater,  November 16, 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/home-by-the-gibney-dance-company-at-the-theater-november-16-2018/) - Both “Imprint Ghosts” and “Menagerie” were world premieres. “Menagerie,” the second piece, is described as a “strange or diverse collection of people or things in a household unit.” It was also said to be made for 6 dancers; 5 roses, 4 FREEDAS, 3 hundred unicorns, 2 co-creators and 1 home. I have no idea what a FREEDA is nor, beyond the dancers, did I see any of the other items. What I observed was a self-indulgent work with a group of dancers in black lace tops moved around with devices that vaguely resembled ironing boards and metal poles. I feared for their safety—might the man who thrust his head through the “machine” get stuck?
- [Actor Gary Hilborn and Playwright Michael Miller received the Award for Best One-Man Drama at the United Solo Closing Gala for "Transfiguration."](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/actor-gary-hilborn-and-playwright-michael-miller-received-the-award-for-best-one-man-drama-at-the-united-solo-closing-gala-last-night-transfiguration/) - We are delighted to announce that actor Gary Hilborn and playwright Michael Miller received the Award for Best One-Man Drama at the United Solo Closing Gala for "Transfiguration."
- [L'École Returns to Inspire New Yorkers](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/lecole-returns-to-inspire-new-yorkers/) - The knowledge fairy of L'École School of Jewelry Arts is dazzling New York City with a special, memorable experience through a two and half weeks selection of courses, conversations, and exhibitions at the Academy Mansion, 2 East 63rd Street. The three exhibitions — “Daniel Brush: Cuffs and Necks,” “Through the Eyes of a Connoisseur,” and “The Fabulous Destiny of Tavernier’s Diamonds: From the Great Mogul to the Sun King” — are free to the public.
- [The Dessoff Choirs: Requiem for Whitman at The Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, November 11, 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/the-dessoff-choirs-requiem-for-whitman-at-the-basilica-of-st-patricks-old-cathedral-november-11-2018/) - The Dessoff’s core group of about forty singers was in great form, presenting a short work by Bach followed by William Shuman’s Carols of Death and then As Adam Early in the Morning, a world premiere by Douglas Geers as the first half of the program. The second half consisted of Messa di Requiem, composed in 1923, by Ildelbrando Pizzetti.
- [Inside the Wild Heart by Group.BR. Closing November 18, 2018.](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/inside-the-wild-heart-by-group-br-closing-november-18-2018/) - I’d be very much inclined to discuss this fascinating, moving, strange—and important—two hours of immersive theater, spread across some twenty spaces from the first to the third floor (as well as a mezzanine) of a townhouse not far from Gramercy Park, but it is supposed to close on November 18, and I feel I owe it to its creators and our readers to get the word out. This magical spectacle has been over three years in development, and I’m sure the organizers, Group.BR, led by Artistic Director Andressa Furletti would like as many people as possible to see the fruit of their hard work and curious imaginations.
- [Works & Process Rotunda Project at the Guggenheim: Michelle Dorrance with Nicholas Van Young](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/works-process-rotunda-project-at-the-guggenheim-michelle-dorrance-with-nicholas-van-young/) - A visit to the Guggenheim Museum usually involves walking up or down (I vote for top down) the winding ramp viewing art. Last night spectators lined the ramps to watch Michelle Dorrance and a group of black-clad performers push wooden platforms across the floor and make sounds by hitting the top of the ramp with sticks—sticks that made sounds but nonetheless sticks.
- [Hidden Gems from Broadway Close Up at the Kaufman Music Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/hidden-gems-from-broadway-close-up-at-the-kaufman-music-center/) - If you’re going to take a tour of Broadway musical theater numbers, you could find no better guide than Sean Hartley. Hartley, the host of the performance, is the director of the Theater@Kaufman, the musical theater division of Kaufman Music Center. He knows the history and entertaining ins and outs of the genre and presented them with insight and wit. On top of that, he can sing as he ably demonstrated in Anyone Can Whistle from the show of that name by Stephen Sondheim.
- [TRANSFIGURATION RETURNS! On November 15 at 7:30 at Theatre Row as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/11/28122/) - Plays, which happen in real time amidst a live audience who have assembled at a specific time to experience the performance, are inextricably interwoven with events and ideas of the moment. Austin Pendleton, for example, devised his brilliant conflation of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III (to return to the stage at the Theater for a New City, December 3, 4, 5) in the shadow of the botched U.S. election of 2016 and installation of criminal elements in the highest tiers of government. This kind of inspiration is anything but uncommon.
- [WAGNER: Lohengrin under Rudolf Kempe from Bayreuth, 1967](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/wagner-lohengrin-under-rudolf-kempe-from-bayreuth-1967/) - The names of Belfast-born soprano Heather Harper and Kansas-born tenor James King may not resonate for younger music lovers, but they sure do for folks my age. Harper was the glowing, nimble soprano in Colin Davis’s renowned 1966 recording of Handel’s Messiah and in Davis’s top-flight recording (ca. 1978) of Britten’s Peter Grimes, featuring Jon Vickers. James King was a steady, sturdy singer, though less magical in sound than Harper. Among his memorable recordings are Das Lied von der Erde (with Fischer-Dieskau, Bernstein conducting) and Solti’s Ring Cycle (in which he sang Siegmund to Régine Crespin’s utterly lovable Sieglinde).
- [Pablo Heras-Casado leads the SF Symphony in Debussy, Ravel, and Bartók, with Javier Perianes, Piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/pablo-heras-casado-leads-the-sf-symphony-in-debussy-ravel-and-bartok-with-javier-perianes-piano/) - Pablo Heras-Casado Davies Hall, San Francisco October 20, 2018 The San Francisco Symphony Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor Javier Perianes, piano Ravel - Alborada del gracioso (1918) Bartók - Piano Concerto No. 3 (1945) Debussy - Ibéria (1908) Ravel - Boléro (1928) Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado is fascinating to watch, and I don't just mean in
- [Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard by NYGASP](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/gilbert-and-sullivans-the-yeoman-of-the-guard-by-nygasp/) - The Yeomen of the Guard by NYGASP. Photo William Reynolds. The Yeoman of the Guard New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players The Kaye Playhouse October 28, 2018 I Have a Song to Sing,O! Yeoman of the Guard is often heralded as one of W.S. Gilbert’s finest scores with its many fluctuations between joy and
- [The Young and Young at Heart: Jerome Robbins' "Fancy Free" at the American Ballet Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/the-young-and-young-at-heart-jerome-robbins-fancy-free-at-the-american-ballet-theater/) - As part of ABT’s Women’s Movement, an ongoing initiative to support the creation, exploration and staging of new works by female choreographers, the first ballet of this matinee performance was Le Jeune, choreographed by Lauren Lovette. Ten dancers from the ABT apprentice group and the ABT Studio Company danced the ten-minute long work displaying some of their considerable abilities. The arabesques, turns and lifts were lovely if not inspiring, as were the young performers. However, the music, Equus by Eric Whitacre, is awful—bombastic with many switches of rhythm that go nowhere. Lovette is credited with “costume concept” which sounds like she thought of dressing the women in pink with belts and the boys in black—again, perfectly fine but hardly revolutionary. Still, the dancers were lively, energetic and full of promise.
- [My Parsifal Conductor by Allan Leicht at Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater at the West Side YMCA](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/my-parsifal-conductor-by-allan-leicht-at/) - As I wrote and revised this review. The news of the terrible shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh unfolded, reminding us that there is nothing funny about anti-Semitism. Following the hijacking of the US government in the 2016 election, so many topics any of us might use in black or tasteless humor have lost their potential for even sardonic laughter. These are grim times. (My Parsifal Conductor was clearly not made for them.) But we mustn't forget the power of satire in emergencies like the present one. As artists, it is our duty to keep people awake, and laughter, especially painful laughter, is one way to accomplish that.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXIII: Barenboim's Brahms, Orozco-Estrada's Strauss, Szell's Walton and Stravinsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/10/a-crop-of-recordings-xxiii-barenboims-brahms-orozco-estradas-strauss-szells-walton-and-stravinsky/) - If I tell you here is the side of Brahms which kept a score of Parsifal open on his piano, I think we are more than halfway to understanding what Daniel Barenboim has tried to do with this composer and now achieves more fully and authentically than in his Chicago Symphony cycle recorded for Erato several decades ago. The Staatskapelle Berlin has always been a Brahms orchestra of the old school, as Otmar Suitner’s 1984 digital cycle for Berlin Classics, recorded in the Lukaskirche, wonderfully demonstrated, but Barenboim has maintained and encouraged its nutty/creamy sonority to new levels of evocative lushness and subtle woodwind tone coloration. He doesn’t aim to compete for brilliance with the Berlin Philharmonic. Indeed, the sound here boasts a theatrical darkness and elision, first, foremost and nearly always. I imagine this still resembles the burnished sonority my German father heard in Berlin before the First World War.
- [Moving Bodies at Theater for the New City,  Closes September 16th](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/09/moving-bodies-at-theater-for-the-new-city-closes-september-16th/) - Emilie du Châtelet was born in Paris in 1706, in an era when women were raised to be ornamental wives and mothers. Luckily for her and for the ages, she was educated by her father, a high official in the court of Louis XIV, and showed a strong interest in and an aptitude for science and mathematics at a young age. The play centers on the difficulties of being a woman intellectual in a time when being a wife—and often a mistress—were what counted. We see Ėmilie and Voltaire, her lover, in various situations as well as Ėmilie and her husband, the Marquis du Châtelet, who was conveniently absent a great deal of the time due to his position in the French army. Ėmilie also dallies with Pierre-Louis Maupertius, in actuality a scholar although portrayed here as a young courtier.
- [Sir Donald Sinden's Enchanted Tour of the Great West End Theatres: the First Installment](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/03/sir-donald-sinden-enchanted-tour-great-west-theatres/) - Of all the places frequented by humankind, the theater must surely be the one where we are most vital. Forget playing fields, museums, churches, mountain tops, bedrooms, and all that. One might say the proof is that they are so often inhabited by ghosts, as Sir Donald Sinden is always careful to note in the delightful series of documentaries about the theatres of London's West End he and his son Marc are in the process of creating. (Ten have been finished so far. There will be forty in all.) The thing is that even if there is no haunting, one should take due note and make some attempt to identify the personage—usually an actor or manager, or both in one. Or perhaps all we need to do is be aware of how we feel, body and soul, after a truly excellent performance on stage. Never have I felt more alive than after a great evening or afternoon in the theatre. There words, gestures, and humanity become lifeblood.
- [More United Solo Performances: Award-Winners Grace Kiley and Tim Collins, as well as Heather Ehlers and John Jiler](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/united-solo-award-grace-kiley-tim-collins-heather-ehlers-john-jiler/) - With one hundred productions spread over five weeks, I rather doubt that anyone has seen all of the United Solo Festival. After the sessions I previously reported on, I returned for one show I didn't want to miss, Tim Collins' On the Outskirts of Everything and Heather Ehlers' Spin, and later for the final weekend, when I managed to take in yet another show, John Jiler's Ripe, as well as the United Solo Awards Ceremony. It may sound like an especially wheezy cliché to praise a contemporary institution for carrying on a tradition of the Greeks, who, in religious ritual, presented competitions and awards of many sorts, but there seems something essential in this characteristically Greek custom, that strengthens the artists, the organizers, and their audience, making the muscles spring, the brain ignite, and the blood flow with an electric thrill.
- [Stephen Porter played late works by Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and Debussy at the House of the Redeemer in Manhattan, Thursday May 1, at 7.30 pm—a presentation of New York Arts](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/stephen-porter-piano-late-works-beethoven-schubert-chopin-debussy-house-redeemer/) - We were extremely proud to present, as our single concert of this season, a piano recital by Stephen Porter, a musician of supreme intelligence, sensitivity, and learning. His pianism is equally developed on the fortepiano as on the modern fortepiano, and we are fortunate that his curious ear for historical instruments has drawn him to the unique qualities of the House of the Redeemer's Grotrian-Steinweg grand in the intimate acoustics of its Library.
- [New York Arts' Inaugural Event, a Concert of Baroque Chamber Music and an Exhibition of Old Master Drawings at the Fabbri Mansion](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/new-york-arts-inaugural-event-a-concert-of-baroque-chamber-music-and-an-exhibition-of-old-master-drawings-at-the-fabbri-mansion/) - I am very pleased to announce some exciting changes at New York Arts—or, rather, the restoration of a program included in our initial mission statement. There it said that New York Arts would "no longer be only a critical arts journal, but a sponsor of exhibitions, concerts, and other performances." This began with an invitational event combining a showing of old master drawings and a concert of baroque music (Bach, Handel, Telemann, et. al.) played by Paula Robison, Kenneth Cooper and others in the Fabbri Mansion (House of the Redeemer) on the Upper East Side. There followed another multi-disciplinary event, a reading of poems by W. B. Yeats, Lloyd Schwartz, Senior Editor at New York Arts, one of America's outstanding poets, who has done extensive research on Yeats, with traditional Irish music for flute and fiddle in conjunction with an exhibition of Michael Miller’s views of the Irish landscape, monuments, and people at the Centerpoint Gallery in Chelsea. Back at the Fabbri Mansion, there was an admirable recital by Stephen Porter on the mansion's Grotrian-Steinweg (ca. 1900), entitled "Late Style," with works by Debussy, Beethoven, Chopin, and Schubert.
- [Laci Boldemann’s Svart Är Vitt  Sa Kejsarn (Black Is White, Said the Emperor): A Family-Friendly Fable from Sweden (1965)](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/08/boldemanns-black-is-white-said-the-emperor-a-family-friendly-fable-from-sweden-1965/) - We normally think of operas as being serious or comical. But a number of operas—some familiar, others forgotten—are neither of these. Instead, they are fantastical, dealing with such things as the fairy world and sorcerers, or with the world of dreams. One of the best such works is Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (which might be freely translated as “The Boy Who Meets Objects and Creatures that Magically Begin to Speak and Dance”), which has recently been blessed by two astounding new recordings (conducted by, respectively, Stéphane Denève and Mikko Franck).At the present site I have recently reviewed a very engaging Czech opera by Otakar Ostrčil, based on a quasi-folktale by Tolstoy, in which the Devil seeks to seduce three brothers into serving his own destructive ends.
- [The Wars of the Roses (Shakespeare's, Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III), directed by Austin Pendleton, starring Matt de Rogatis, at the 124 Bank Street Theater—Closing  August 19th](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/08/the-wars-of-the-roses-shakespeares-henry-vi-part-3-and-richard-iii-directed-by-austin-pendleton-starring-matt-de-rogatis-at-the-124-bank-street-theater-closing/) - The violent reign of Richard III was a popular subject from the time of Henry VIII on, according to the several chronicles and plays that preceded Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard III (ca. 1592), and his own play was an immediate success with the public, as the five quarto editions published before his death attest, and has continued to be a favorite until the present day—not least because of the rich meat it provided for star actors, from Richard Burbage on. Popularity creates expectations. Richard's opening monologue is one of the purple passages that sticks in the mind of even the most casual Shakespearean, and Shakespeare gives some hint of the story's rootedness in the minds of his audience by meticulously chronicling all ten of Richard's most heinous murders, recapping them in Act V in the successive entrances of their ghosts. Even though some of Shakespeare's predecessor felt no compunction to be so thorough, he felt the need to satisfy his audience's appetite for guilt and gore with each and every one of them, and that may well have been one of the keys to the play's success.
- [Glimmerglass 2018:  Sense and Centennials in the Field of Dreams.](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/08/glimmerglass-2018-sense-and-centennials-in-the-field-of-dreams/) - In the heat and humidity of July, which was unmitigated in tranquil Otsego county, the Glimmerglass Festival proved, yet again, that opera and musical theatre can coexist and beat the Arts-in-the-Trashcan odds in today’s society. So much of Glimmerglass’s success must be conceded to Francesca Zambello’s untiring, hands-on management and her supreme skill in selection, execution and coordination. The topic du jour in beds and breakfasts throughout Cooperstown this year is classical opera’s fate in the coming years. Most opera houses in the U.S. are in dire straits: talk of the Fall of Opera is bruited about the Metropolitan Opera in the wake of administrative cataclysms and scandals; small, independent opera houses are clinging on with white nails suffering from dwindling endowments and audiences.
- [Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Bridge Project at BAM](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/03/shakespeares-the-winters-tale-bridge-project-at-bam/) - The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare A Bridge Project production at BAM, directed by Sam Mendes Simon Russell Beale - Leontes, King of Sicily Michael Braun - Dion, Lord of Sicilia/Florizel Morven Christie - Perdita/Mamillius Sinéad Cusack - Paulina, wife to Antigonus Richard Easton - Old Shepherd/Time Rebecca Hall - Hermione Josh Hamilton
- [The Landmarks of Chopin's Development as a Composer, 1827-1846](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/the-landmarks-of-chopins-development-as-a-composer-1827-1846/) - 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.
- ["Before We’re Gone" at the 13th Street Repertory Theater Company](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/07/before-were-gone-at-the-13th-street-repertory-theater-company/) - This is a muddle from start to finish, laced with clichéd language and performances. The “action” shifts between a California motel room and a hotel room in Reno, Nevada, centering around Kate Maguire, a hugely successful playwright. At least we’re told she’s successful: how anyone who says things like “you have to write what is cut into your own heart” can write well beats me. Kate isn’t the only caricature in this work: Richard, the too-naïve- to- be- true A/C repair man who yearns to write plays and struggles with being a seminarian studying for the priesthood, and Rich’s father/Kate’s agent/Kate’s long-time squeeze and—hold on, it’s true—an actual Father complete with brown robe and rope belt are equally one dimensional. Kate is played by attractive Leenya Rideout; Rich by John Zdrojeski and the others by Jay Russell. Emily Juliette Murphy handles small roles as Kate’s mother, a motel clerk and a waiter.
- [On a Clear Day You Can See Forever at the Irish Rep, extended to September 6](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/07/on-a-clear-day-you-can-see-forever-at-the-irish-rep-extended-to-september-6/) - The nicely slimmed-down production of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever at Irish Rep is a tidy delight. The show has been revived numerous times since originally opening in the fall of 1965; along the way it has lost several songs (with good reason—they were terrible) and had several interpretations including one by The Vineyard Theater at Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theater that changed the female lead to a gay male. Other versions have added or subtracted characters who weren’t central to what has to be called the “story line.”
- [The Saintliness of Margery Kempe, by John Wulp—Saint or Diva?](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/07/the-saintliness-of-margery-kempe-by-john-wulp-saint-or-diva/) - Margery Kempe, as portrayed by the excellent, feisty Andrus Nichols, would indeed try the patience of a saint. Nichols, part of the splendid cast of The Saintliness of Margery Kempe, plays the title role which is loosely based on the real fourteenth century woman who wrote what is often considered the first English language autobiography, abandons her husband and six children, (the real Kempe had fourteen), to find herself in the larger world.
- [Two Remarkable Men: Konrad Oberhuber and Nicholas Hlobeczy](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/10/two-remarkable-men-konrad-oberhuber-and-nicholas-hlobeczy/) - Last month two remarkable men died, Konrad Oberhuber on September 12 and Nicholas Hlobeczy on the 14th. Since they both exercised a similar beneficent influence on the world through art—and on me personally, I think it fitting to honor them together. They were on the surface quite different. One was a prominent curator and art historian, a specialist in the Italian Renaissance and in the art of drawing; the other was a photographer and poet, vividly familiar and loved by those who knew him and his work.
- [Can statistics and digitized procedural rules create reality in the arts...perhaps with a bit of Barnumesque assistance? The Official Recommendations of Florens 2010...](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/florens-2012-recommendations-2010-personal-commentary/) - It seems right to begin by grounding whatever else I have to say in the recommendations of Florens 2010. Since much of this will be discussed at Florens 2012. I’ve entered my thoughts simply as comments on the thirteen proposals of 2010. Some of these mention examples from my experiences in the U.S. While the U.S. scored quite well in the Florens 2010 surveys, there is no reason why it should be considered exemplary. The arts struggle there as much as anywhere, although there are a variety of resources to support it. The Tanglewood Music Festival is without a doubt the most important summer music festival and school in the country. They have just published their attendance figures for this past summer, the summer of their 75th anniversary celebrations, and it is makes for depressing reading. The most popular classical concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra — and these were the cornerstone of the founder, Serge Koussevitzky’s vision for the festival — ranked ninth below eight pop concerts and semi-popular ceremonial events. Even with an array of private and corporate donors at hand and painstakingly cultivated, the arts have to work hard in the New World to survive and risk compromising their mission.
- [The target areas established by Florens 2010 and proposals for solutions](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/florens-2012-target-areas-2010-proposals-solutions/) - Much of the report on Florens 2010 deals with analyses of the kind of data we associate with audience surveys. The data a statistical, and in digesting them, the authors work with quantified phenomena that can be consistently compared. The methods, which are clearly described, reflect standard methods and different studies are brought in for comparison.
- [Petition Madness in the Art World...SECOND REVISION! More Petitions and a Modest Proposal...](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/italy-berlin-new-york-art-tourism-protests-petitions/) - Since the Mona Lisa affair was reported, other petitions and protests have emerged. Earlier this month (September 17) the protests agains the huge cruise ships that pass through the lagoon in Venice were renewed with vigor. The invaluable Tomaso Montanari has organized a petition against the privatization of the Brera in Milan. At the beginning of the month, in the United States, the New York Times demoted Allan Kozinn, one of its more intelligent music critics, who has been writing for them since 1977 and a staff member since 1991. He is now a "general cultural reporter." Norman Lebrecht, who announced the bad news, received an avalanche of mostly angry and disgusted comments. Petitions were organized on Facebook, urging the Times to change their mind...but to no avail. Kozinn's gone. For some years it has been hard to imagine that once upon a time Paul Griffiths wrote music criticism for The New York Times, and both he and Andrew Porter for The New Yorker.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXII: Atterberg, Frommel, Walton, Elgar, and Roussel](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/06/a-crop-of-recordings-xxii-atterberg-frommel-walton-elgar-and-roussel/) - Amusingly, this parses out to us a bit like Sir Edward Elgar gone Hollywood in the more outgoing moments. The music gleams from below as it strides forth on buttered strings and brass. The slow movement has a mesmeric, rocking, floaty quality which seems never to end and then does…”unfinished.” For a finale, Atterberg necessarily cannot evoke what Schubert did not write, so we encounter a rather haltingly fugal enterprise at first which gathers steam until we are going full tilt in the triumphant manner of Richard Strauss meets Copland. Yes, I know. What on earth does that sound like? Well, the final march is treated in the Shostakovich/Tubin/Copland manner, but the propulsive tune itself is essentially the nervous last movement fugal subject from Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica. You will have to listen to it to know! And the bumptious bells-and-whistles ending is worth the price of admission.
- [The Man Who Had All the Luck, by Arthur Miller](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/02/man-who-had-all-luck-arthur-miller/) - Arthur Miller’s earliest play to run on the Broadway stage, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), began in the form of a novel – his student, friend and biographer Christopher Bigsby tells us in his pre-show talk on January 20. Over the course of four years, Miller wrote several drafts, unsure how best to present his themes; through which medium? through which plot? should there be an enlightened redemption or a tragic fall for his hero? From 1941 he began working the “fable” into a play. In late 1944 it arrived at the Forrest Theater, where it ran for three days and four performances before being called off the stage, a failure, though recognized by many critics as a promising indication of good work to come.
- [Kids' Night Out: Ballet Tech Kids Dance at The Joyce Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/06/kids-night-out-ballet-tech-kids-dance-at-the-joyce-theater/) - The young dancers of Ballet Tech are a remarkable bunch—poised, fluid, comfortable in sneakers or pointe shoes and full of joy in movement. As wonderful as I found the dancers, I was not delighted with Elliot Feld’s choreography finding it highly repetitive with the same steps repeated one dancer after another. Perhaps this is deliberate, to allow each dancer a shot at the identical move or does it stem from the misguided idea that these students can’t handle more complex steps? The music selections were almost as annoying—by the third “Irish jig” my ears went on hold.
- [Oy Vey in Spades: New Yiddish Rep presents Hanoch Levin's The Labor of Love](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/06/oy-vey-in-spades-new-yiddish-rep-presents-hanoch-levins-the-labor-of-love/) - You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s and you don’t have to be Jewish or speak Yiddish to enjoy The New Yiddish Rep’s production of The Labor of Love. This is a tale of existential angst although the play boils down to a man who is bored with his wife of thirty years and thinks he wants to leave her. For the umpteenth time.
- [Where Words Fail, Music Speaks: SoHarmoniums—In Between: Sounds and Spaces](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/06/where-words-fail-music-speaks-soharmoniums-in-between-sounds-and-spaces/) - Said Hans Christian Anderson. Indeed, sixty women singers can make a lot of joyful noise. Among the many pleasures of listening to the SoHarmoniums is their eclectic repertoire which, on the night I heard them, ranged from classic American spirituals to a piece without lyrics to an international tango written by an Italian composer with words by an Uruguayan poet and a strong Spanish feel. Top it with the closing number, Hooked on Classics, that merged ten famous classical pieces (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Rossini’s Carmen Prelude, the 1812 Overture, etc.) adding entertaining words and give this group and their leader additional points for showing their sense of fun.
- [An Announcement—New Developments at New York Arts: the Resumption of our Performances and Exhibitions](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/new-developments-new-york-arts-performances-exhibitions/) - New York Arts program of multidisciplinary events will begin again with increased frequency and energy. In addition to the diverse events—in some cases combining different arts, following the interests of the magazine: music, opera, theater, dance, art, photography, architecture and urban design, local history, and food and drink—there will also be traditional concerts like Stephen Porter's, theatrical performances, readings, exhibitions, and symposia. Our new program will begin immediately with a private workshop reading of a new play. Our publication will offer articles amplifying these events and the issues they raise, as well as the familiar reviews and interviews related to local as well as national and international performances and exhibitions.
- [Bach's Mass in B Minor with the New York Choral Society and Orchestra under Music Director, David Hayes](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/bachs-mass-in-b-minor-with-the-new-york-choral-society-and-orchestra-under-music-director-david-hayes/) - The New York Choral Society, which has provided New Yorkers with a wonderful variety of mainstream and neglected choral works. Alongside Beethoven's Ninth, Brahms' German Requiem, and Berlioz's Grande messe des morts, their recent programs have included Hindemith’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus, Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum, MacMillan’s St. Luke Passion (New York premiere), Mendelssohn’s Paulus (St. Paul), and Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony. Next season we have Tippet’s A Child of our Time, Finzi’s Requiem da Camera, Honegger’s Le roi David, and Randall Thompson’s Requiem to look forward to. One can only admire their comprehensive representation of the choral repertoire.
- [Stéphane Denève Leads the San Francisco Symphony in Ibert, Saint-Saëns, Connesson, and Respighi, with Cellist Gautier Capuçon](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/stephane-deneve-leads-the-san-francisco-symphony-in-ibert-saint-saens-connesson-and-respighi-with-cellist-gautier-capucon/) - There's much to be said for keeping personal politics away from concert music. Composers know this. Audiences prefer pictorialism and evocation to propaganda. That's why they are in the hall. Even Shostakovich, chronicler of Soviet political events, composed that way. But not all critics have the self-discipline to leave smug prejudice at home. The San Francisco Chronicle's local reviewer, who normally precedes New York Arts into print and shall be nameless here, launched an atavistic attack this week on Stéphane Denève's program choice of Respighi's Pines of Rome, calling the work "proto-fascist" and condemning it's march up the Appian Way as an appeal to nationalist sentiment. How ridiculous!
- [Grazie, Milano! Three Restaurants](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/grazie-milano-three-restaurants/) - Although like most Italians Milanese breakfast on the run, they always make time for a good lunch. At Salumentaria di Parma, the wine comes in small bowls, the coffee in shot glasses and the crowd, many of them local professionals, pile in starting at noon. As the name suggests, inspiration for the food is that of Parma in northwest Emilia-Romagna, home to the richest tract of farmland in Italy. Parma is associated with parmigiano reggiano, prosciutto and pasta with emphasis on filled versions such as tortellini, tortelli and ravioli, all of which are part of the restaurant’s offerings. Verdi was a regular at the original location in Parma; in tribute, his music fills the air.
- [Women’s Work: Ariel Rivka Dance with Amy Marshall Dance Company](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/womens-work-ariel-rivka-dance-with-amy-marshall-dance-company/) - As part of a celebration of women, this program of about empowering female expression featured work choreographed and mostly performed by women. For me, the three most successful pieces were Ne Me Quitte Pas, a modern apache duet with Chad Levy and Alyssa Weidman; Shakambhari, a full-throttle, almost-Bollywood-style, turquoise-and-orange swirl and No Exit, a pure rush of movement danced all out by Levy, Weidman, Lisa Borres, Caitlin Sheppard, Julia Neto, Jillian Foley and Parker Heren.
- [A Crop of Recordings XXI: Brahms, Pierné, and Mahler](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/a-crop-of-recordings-xxi-brahms-pierne-and-mahler/) - It’s good to have Brahms symphonies from the Boston Symphony once again. They sound right, with caveats. A full cycle hasn’t been a reliable tradition since Koussevitzky. Charles Munch recorded only three of the symphonies on LP in Boston. Erich Leinsdorf did produce as set, but Seiji Ozawa recorded merely the First in 1977 for DGG, and Bernard Haitink’s Philips CDs from the early nineties disappeared pretty much as soon as they were released. There were no BSO Brahms symphonies released by James Levine with the orchestra during his tenure. The Boston Symphony has always been a European-leaning ensemble, less “Hollywood” in sonority than the Philadelphia Orchestra and minimally “Broadway” in energy compared with the New York Philharmonic. Symphony Hall’s burnished acoustic, a byproduct of sonic archery from its cupids in alcoves, its high ceilings and a pliant wooden floor, is a conspirator in this and ideally suited for Brahms.
- [A Little Cuckoo and a Lot of Noise: Aristophanes' The Birds at St. Ann's Warehouse](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/a-little-cuckoo-and-a-lot-of-noise-aristophanes-the-birds-at-st-anns-warehouse/) - Noisy, energetic, sometimes exuberant and frequently chaotic, it’s hard to encapsulate this performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse. It was also difficult to follow the actors as the “supertitles” were on screens on either side of the stage requiring me to move my eyes away from the Greek-speaking performers. (That the words on the titles were often ahead of the action also didn’t help.)
- [San Francisco Symphony Resident Conductor Christian Reif shines in Wagner, Liszt, and Holst, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano.](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/san-francisco-symphony-resident-conductor-christian-reif-shines-in-wagner-liszt-and-holst-with-jean-efflam-bavouzet-piano/) - A number of years ago now-disgraced Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit brought down the house at Davies Hall with Holst's The Planets. I recall that evening well, a grand traditional performance. On a recent Sunday, though, San Francisco's Resident Conductor, 28 year-old German-born Christian Reif, did better than that. He not only delivered a white-hot account of Holst's interplanetary suite which will play well on Jupiter once the sounds get there. He jump-started what I hope will be a major career. As local music patrons are aware, Michael Tilson Thomas will be leaving our orchestra after another season. Under the circumstances, every guest conductor looms large in the institutional gimlet eye. Leonard Bernstein's conducting career, after all, rocketed when Bruno Walter caught a bout of the flu. Christian Reif's renown may well benefit from Charles Dutoit's bout with moral turpitude....
- [Sancho: An Act of Remembrance at The National Black Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/sancho-an-act-of-remembrance-at-the-national-black-theater/) - The ticket for Sancho: An Act of Remembrance pictures the character, hand upraised, above the phrase: “By fortitude, not fate, go I.” That neatly nails the saga of Charles Ignatius Sancho, born into poverty on a West Indian slave ship, who rose to become a composer, writer, businessman and possibly the first black man to have voted in England.
- [New York Theater Ballet REP at Florence Gould Hall, April 27, 2018: A Centennial Bow to Jerome Robbins](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/05/new-york-theater-ballet-rep-at-florence-gould-hall-april-27-2018-a-centennial-bow-to-jerome-robbins/) - New York Theater Ballet aims to reexamine classics with a fresh, contemporary look. In this case, most of the evening was a celebration of Jerome Robbins’ Centennial showcasing Septet, Rondo and Concertino. Both Septet and Concertino are performed to music by Stravinsky; the former to Reduction for Two Pianos and the latter to Concerto for String Quartet and Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo. All three ballets are plotless and were danced in simple, unadorned costumes on a bare stage. Florence Gould Hall is small so the audience is close to the dancers and exposed to the bare bones of performing including rosin squeaks and sometimes heavy landings although Steven Melendez managed to make his light, a fine achievement for a good-sized, athletic man.
- [Justin Bischof to Conduct Mozart's Requiem at the Church of the Epiphany, East 22nd Street and Second Avenue, Sunday, May 6 at 4pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/justin-bischof-to-conduct-mozarts-requiem-at-the-church-of-the-epiphany-east-22nd-street-and-second-avenue-sunday-may-6-at-4pm/) - Justin Bischof will close the season of the Friends of Music at the Epiphany with Mozart's Requiem. This should be a moving performance, as well as a muscular, clearly defined and structured one. Don't miss this opportunity to hear a fully-realized playing of this beloved work!
- [The Enigma of the Male Gaze: Lar Lubovitch Dance Company 50th Anniversary Season at the Joyce Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/the-enigma-of-the-male-gaze-lar-lubovitch-dance-company-50th-anniversary-season-at-the-joyce-theater/) - Lar Lubovitch has been making dances for fifty years creating a body of work that holds up well. Although it doesn’t always thrill it’s solid, well-danced and can be gripping.
- [Come celebrate William Bolcom's 80th birthday with an all-Bolcom program at Merkin Hall, Sunday, April 29, 2018  |  8:00pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/come-celebrate-william-bolcoms-80th-birthday-with-an-all-bolcom-program-at-merkin-hall-sunday-april-29-2018-800pm/) - The illustrious American composer William Bolcom is about to celebrate his 80th birthday! In his honor there will be a full program of Mr. Bolcom’s chamber music, including the world premiere of his Dark Dreams that will Not Disappear, commissioned and performed by violist Jacob Adams and pianist Angela Drăghicescu for this occasion.
- [Eve Beglarian: Songs from A Book of Days at the Morgan](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/eve-beglarian-songs-from-a-book-of-days-at-the-morgan/) - To call composer/performer Eve Beglarian inventive is to undercut her gifts and reach by a great deal. Winner of the 2017 Herb Alpert Award in Music for her “prolific, engaging and surprising body of work,” her Book of Days, presented as an adjunct to the Morgan’s exhibit, Now and Forever: The Art of Medieval Time, on view until April 29, 2018, is her effort to make a piece of music for every day of the year. Twelve of her one hundred thirty-two finished pieces were on the program.
- [Preview: Spit & Vigor's Moth & Flame—FINAL WEEKEND, Friday and Saturday, April 20-21, at Balcony Theater at the Center at West Park 165 W 86th Street](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/preview-spit-vigors-moth-flame-final-weekend-friday-and-saturday-april-20-21-at-balcony-theater-at-the-center-at-west-park-165-w-86th-street/) - A full review of this remarkable two-person play will appear in May. Since the final performances take place this weekend, Friday, April 20th and Saturday, April 21st, I offer this very brief account to urge readers not to miss this fascinating experiment in parallel lives—the lives of artists, a category of humanity that Plutarch passed over.
- [The 2017 Bethlehem Bach Festival in Retrospect, with a Look Forward to 2018, Marking the 120th Anniversary of the Bethlehem Bach Choir](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/the-2017-bethlehem-bach-festival-in-retrospect-with-a-look-forward-to-2018-marking-the-120th-anniversary-of-the-bethlehem-bach-choir/) - 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.
- [San Francisco Symphony, Edward Gardner, conductor, Simon Trpčeski, piano, play Tippett, Gershwin, and Rachmaninoff](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/04/san-francisco-symphony-edward-gardner-conductor-simon-trpceski-piano-play-tippett-gershwin-and-rachmaninoff/) - Though Michael Tilson Thomas doesn't step away from our podium officially until the summer of 2020, his recently announced departure ensures every guest conducting week at the San Francisco Symphony between now and then amounts to a job interview for the Music Directorship. English conductor Edward Gardner, current Music Director of the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway and a frequent recording artist for Chandos with British orchestras, surely had this possibility in mind for his impressive debut program here last week: a shrewdly chosen British signature piece; a bow to MTT's New York Broadway roots with Gershwin, and Rachmaninoff's final blockbuster, written in America. He brought the house down.
- [Unplugged, Pared Down, Terrific: A Sondheim Tribute at Feinstein’s 54 Below](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/unplugged-pared-down-terrific-a-sondheim-tribute-at-feinsteins-54-below/) - 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.
- [Three Recently-Founded Chamber Music Series in Manhattan: The Crypt Sessions, The ASPECT Foundation, and the WA Concert Series](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/three-recently-founded-chamber-music-series-in-manhattan-the-crypt-sessions-the-aspect-foundation-and-the-wa-concert-series/) - 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.
- [R. C. Sherriff's World War I Classic, Journey's End, on Broadway](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/03/r-c-sherriff-journeys-end-broadway-2007/) - For the fourth time now, Eve Queler, Conducter Laureate of the Opera Orchestra of New York, will bring Richard Wagner's third opera, Rienzi, to life. That is the only word for it, because her 1980, 1982, and 1992 performances of the rarely-performed opera were terrific hits among critics and audiences. Curiously for concert performances they had the impact of great spectacles, with choirs marching through the aisles and trumpets spread about the hall. Although, as always, Ms. Queler's focus was always on the music, she captured some of the spectacle of the first performances.
- [A Look Back to the Summer of 2017: The  26th Annual Bard  Music Festival: Chopin and his World](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/a-look-back-to-the-summer-of-2017-the-26th-annual-bard-music-festival-chopin-and-his-world/) - 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.
- [DO NOT MISS Rodrigo Nogueira's The Ideal Obituary (at The Tank, remaining performances March 16, 17, 22, 23 and 24)](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/do-not-miss-rodrigo-nogueiras-the-ideal-obituary-at-the-tank-remaining-performances-march-16-17-22-23-and-24/) - 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.
- [A Crop of Recordings XX: Gardner Read, Bruckner, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, and Pfitzner](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/steven-krugers-hall-of-fame-review/) - If you ever wondered who stole a Paderewski Prize from under the nose of Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony, here is the culprit, and here is the work that did it. It’s better than you think. Gardner Read (1913-2005) seems to have been one of those composers who wins competitions and gets punished by history for it. His music skirts the wild edges of the safe and known. Dismissed by Copland as “too romantic,” Read has largely been forgotten.You can find three of his symphonies on YouTube. But although the composer lived until his nineties in Manchester-by-the Sea, Massachusetts, I had never heard a note of his music before curiosity about the Second Symphony drove me to the bizarrely wonderful and nightmarish work it turned out to be.
- [BalletNext Plays It Safe](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/balletnext-plays-it-safe/) - 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.
- [Five in the Afternoon, and more...the Boston Classical Season, So Far](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/five-in-the-afternoon-and-more-the-boston-classical-season-so-far/) - 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.
- [Balanchine’s Eternal Present: The Photographs of Paul Kolnik](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/balanchines-eternal-present-the-photographs-of-paul-kolnik/) - Before the talk, for which photographer Paul Kolnik was joined by former New York City Ballet principal Darci Kistler, we had the pleasure of viewing Kolnik’s captivating pictures in a downstairs gallery. Kolnik, who has chronicled NYCB for forty years, is indeed a master and his pictures of dancers and choreographers past and present are gems.
- [A Flood of Unfamiliar Operas by Rossini, Saint-Saëns, and Others, Now on CD](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/flood-unfamiliar-operas-rossini-saint-saens-others-now-cd/) - Over the past year or so (2017), an unusually large number of fascinating and rarely performed operas were made available, mostly for the first time ever, on CD. NewYorkArts/Berkshire Review for the Arts has asked me to share some of my delighted discoveries from this flood of new arrivals, as well as—in separate articles—my (rather lengthy and detailed!) reviews of two contrasting operas that seem to me particularly worthy of discovery:
- [A Master Already at 23: Vincenzo Bellini’s Adelson e Salvini, Now Superbly Recorded](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/master-already-23-vincenzo-bellinis-adelson-e-salvini-now-superbly-recorded/) - This past year, I was privileged to get to review a flood of wonderful CD releases of little-known operas. I summarize my impressions of fifteen of these in a separate article here. But I feel that two of these unfamiliar works deserve special discussion because the quality of the music—and its dramatic applicability—so surprised me: the recent adaptation of the beloved novel Jane Eyre, by a composer I had never heard of, John Joubert; and, the work discussed below: Bellini’s first opera, composed during his last year as a conservatory student and already showing remarkable mastery. Indeed, there were not one but two big discoveries for me in this CD recording: Bellini’s first opera (here receiving its first fully adequate recording) but also and Enea Scala (seen at left in the photo above), a splendid, heroic high tenor who can perform the extensive coloratura fluently.
- [A Brilliant, Touching Adaptation: John Joubert’s Opera Jane Eyre, Finally (and Finely) Performed and Recorded](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/03/brilliant-touching-adaptation-john-jouberts-opera-jane-eyre-finally-finely-performed-recorded/) - I had never heard a note by John Joubert (1927- ) before. Critics have often praised his works for organ and for chorus. Several of his hymns and carols are widely known. Joubert, I have now learned, was born in South Africa but received his training in England and has made his long and continuing career there, mainly in Birmingham. (His last name comes from a French Huguenot ancestor.)
- [Justin Bischof to Conduct Strauss Metamorphosen and Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony at the Church of the Epiphany on March 1, 2018, at 7 pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/justin-bischof-conduct-strauss-metamorphosen-shostakovichs-chamber-symphony-church-epiphany-march-1-2018-7-pm/) - The Canadian-American conductor and concert organist, Justin Bischof, whose performances of Beethoven's Seventh and Ninth Symphonies impressed me greatly last year, has returned to New York City after several years working in Westchester County, where he successfully designed and funded a splendid mid-sized organ at the Church of St. James the Less in Scarsdale and led numerous concerts with the Canadian Chamber Orchestra of New York. Recently he conducted an outstanding concert with William Byrd's Mass in Four Voices and Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli. Now, he moves to the 20th century with two of its greatest works for chamber orchestra, Richard Strauss's Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings and Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, which is in fact Rudolf Barshai's arrangement of the composer's String Quartet No. 8.
- [A Different Russian Direction ](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/different-russian-direction/) - Czech-born choreographer Dušan Týnek founded his eponymous company in 2003 and has received numerous accolades for his intelligent craftsmanship and striking imagination. Both talents and more were on view at the world premiere of Anna, inspired by Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, rendered as an expression of the novel and not a literal re-telling. An evening-length work, the story is a springboard to an examination of impressions of love, infidelity and gender norms within narrow social conventions.
- [Café des Artistes: a Piece of New York History](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/cafe-des-artistes-new-york-howard-chandler-christy/) - So much has been said about the current craze for restaurant-going by people who are striving to understand it, either for enlightenment or profit, that it seems a truism to observe that a visit to a restaurant is a kind of travel, not entirely ersatz, but something between dreaming of Capri in an armchair and jumping on the train to Fire Island. The decorator has provided the sets, the chef a motive for going there, the staff a supporting cast; the diners at the table have their relationships, their hierarchy, and their desires, and, if the evening out is going to be any fun, they’re ready to play their roles. Dining out is also a self-generated theater, the ultimate interactive entertainment. It can be a journey in time, as well as a mildly-imagined land travel. Most people will go out for something old just as readily as something new, although the longevity of restaurants is tenuous enough these days to put that in question.
- [Back to Syracuse. Musicals Tonight! present Rogers & Hart's The Boys from Syracuse](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/back-syracuse-musicals-tonight-present-rogers-harts-boys-syracuse/) - The Boys from Syracuse originally opened in 1938 and has since been revived numerous times. This version resets the musical, which has one of the best scores ever with gems including Falling in Love with Love, Sing for Your Supper and This Can’t Be Love, in a gay, campy world with an almost all-male cast plus one, lone woman.
- [Herbert Blomstedt leads The San Francisco Symphony in a rare Swedish masterpiece, Stenhammar's Symphony No. 2 in G minor.](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/herbert-blomstedt-leads-san-francisco-symphony-rare-swedish-masterpiece-stenhammars-symphony-no-2-g-minor/) - One could wait a lifetime for this concert! I nearly did. And while Herbert Blomstedt is in his 90s now, you can only suppose—lucky man to be Swedish—he didn't spend as many years wondering what the Stenhammar Second Symphony would sound like in concert. Wilhelm Stenhammar is Sweden's greatest composer, after all, not without honor in his own country, like Vaughan Williams in England or Martinů in the Czech Republic. But it has taken time in the modern era to recognize which quieter and deeper voices from a nation's immediate past are the ones we will take to heart internationally. I can only thank Blomstedt profoundly for carrying this symphony on his guest-conducting rounds. Senior conductors can be influential that way. Erich Leinsdorf adopted the Martinů Fourth Symphony in his later years, and the work is now well established in concert halls far and wide. One hopes for a similar outcome here.
- [New York Theater Ballet, REP, at  Florence Gould Hall, February 9, 2018](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/new-york-theater-ballet-rep-florence-gould-hall-february-9-2018/) - The title of Optimists, choreographed by Gemma Bond of American Ballet Theater, didn’t tell me anything but the dancing, by Amanda Treiber and Erez Milatin, did. The piece is exciting and filled with action with the pair swooping and diving to Piano Sonata no.8 Opus 84 by Prokofiev. Elegant and spare with powerful bodies they move with confidence, Treiber and Miltatin have made this exhilarating piece their own and it was a joy to watch.
- [The Only Jealousy of Emer by W. B. Yeats, directed by Ray Yeates—Origin 1st Irish Theatre Festival 2018 at Torn Page/Apartment 929—EXTENDED 2/17-2/18](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/the-only-jealousy-of-emer-by-w-b-yeats-directed-by-ray-yeates-origin-1st-irish-theatre-festival-1018-at-torn-page-apartment-929/) - Whether one reads W. B. Yeats' The Only Jealousy of Emer as a closet drama or sees it in a convincing (indeed outstanding) production like the one mounted by Torn Page Apartment 929 this winter, one gets a strong feeling that the action and speech are unfolding on two levels: the mythic and the experiential, i.e. biographical, in relation to Yeats. As stated in the program note, "Yeats is a poet as much of fact as of feeling. Every work of his has a source—whether from folklore, legend, mythology, the occult, or history: each a source that for him had a definite objective reality. The demands of this world and of that other world of Yeatsian spiritual reality often conflict. His verse play The Only Jealousy of Emer, particularly in its early drafts, offers a vivid portrayal of such a struggle."
- [Soaking WET, Program A at the West End Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/soaking-wet-program-west-end-theater/) - What was supposed to be a three-work evening turned into two as an injury forced cancellation of the intended middle piece, The Bind. The two works on view, presented by different choreographers, were so entirely different from each other—in mood, feel, point of view and music—it made for a slightly jarring combination.
- [Stephen Hough, Piano, at Carnegie Hall, January 30, 2018: Debussy, Schumann, and Beethoven](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/stephen-hough-piano-carnegie-hall-january-30-2018-debussy-schumann-beethoven/) - Stephen Hough remains one of the most engaging personalities in the world of virtuoso pianists. He makes his wide range of interests—literary, visual, and religious—known to the world at large with grace and modesty, out of a genuine desire to contribute things that others with find enjoyable or helpful. He is even able to compose pieces, mostly of a light nature, which he sometimes interjects into his concert programs. Early in his career he built a reputation with his impressive technique, as he built a list of outstanding recordings of forgotten concerti and solo pieces which were too difficult for others to learn for the rare occasions on which they would be called for in concert. In recent years he has turned more to established classics in his concert programs, approaching them with a consistent style founded on attractive tone and a vision of the coherence of the works he plays.
- [Two Superb New Recordings of a Ravel Operatic Masterpiece: 1. Stéphanie d’Oustrac Singing L’heure espagnole (with an alert Shéhérazade as bonus) 2.  L’heure espagnole, with the magnificent Gaëlle Arquez](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/two-superb-new-recordings-ravel-operatic-masterpiece-1-stephanie-doustrac-singing-lheure-espagnole-alert-sheherazade-bonus-2-lheure-espagnole-wit/) - The two works on this CD make an apt and welcome pair. First we have Ravel’s sumptuous three-song cycle about the mysteries of love and fantasies of exotic lands. Then we have his one-act opera that takes place in a land that, to French people at the time, was beckoningly exotic, and whose title might be freely translated “The Nutty and Delightful Things That Can Happen in Spain in Just One Hour.” The opera presents some quick-moving events in the lives of a clockmaker’s wife and the four wildly different men with whom she is variously involved (one being her husband). The CD is officially vol. 4 of a series covering Ravel’s “orchestral works,” a phrase that here clearly means “works with orchestra.” (The two piano concertos and Tzigane are presumably scheduled for some future volume.) The Stuttgart orchestra plays very capably throughout, but the star of the CD is mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d’Oustrac.
- [Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/05/berlioz-les-troyens-a-concert-performance-and-a-symposium/) - Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordings are still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career.
- [Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens, Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine, conductor](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/05/hector-berlioz-les-troyens-boston-symphony-orchestra-james-levine-conductor/) - Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordingsare still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career. Expertise in Berlioz seems to be a prerequisite for the job. Yet, this is the first complete performance of Les Troyens by the foremost Berlioz orchestra in America, which in the past has only played brief excerpts, above all the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from Act IV. Hence these concert performances of Parts I and II on following weeks, culminating in a complete performance on Sunday May 4, are in fact landmarks.
- [“Fired” Treasures from Around the Globe: The New York Ceramics & Glass Fair at the Bohemian National Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/fired-treasures-around-globe-new-york-ceramics-glass-fair-bohemian-national-hall/) - The New York Ceramic and Glass Fair, at Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, is packed with historic and contemporary works that span five centuries and come from all over the globe. This is the only fair of its kind in the United States specializing in ceramics, pottery and glass from the 17th-21st centuries. The show is chock full of works ranging from modern studio pottery to 18th century Staffordshire with everything in between, and attended by collectors, curators and just plain people who enjoy looking at beautiful and/or interesting objects.
- [Sheila, a Production Sponsored by A. R. T. /New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/sheila-production-sponsored-r-t-new-york/) - It’s September 1987 in a modest home somewhere. Press information says that “Gloria opens her door to the woman she hasn’t seen since she disappeared from home ten years ago. Mary sees the face that has haunted her memories of childhood and dreams of womanhood.” In the performance I saw, Mary called Gloria by different names and the early relationship between them was never clarified. That’s not all that was confusing in Sheila that began with a fifteen-minute scene in which “Gloria” moved around the set in very dim light (I thought perhaps the table lamp had malfunctioned) and did nothing other than painstakingly open an orange juice carton. This segment was so slow and pointless it was like watching a theater class exercise in sustaining a moment.
- [Intimate Heroism: Vermeer in His Time and Beyond](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/intimate-heroism-vermeer-time-beyond/) - Thirty years ago, I wrote a poem that ended, “I’ve never lived in a city without a Vermeer.” My cities were, by pure coincidence, New York and Boston. But my interest in Vermeer borders on obsession, and I’m still wrestling with why his paintings are so particularly seductive to me. There’s always the ravishing beauty of the painted surface, the elegance of structure and detail, but also the balance of bravura and a kind of restraint—the way the usual mundane, anti-heroic subjects of Dutch genre painting, however beautiful they are in the work of his contemporaries, take on qualities of the spiritual and even the heroic, qualities that are more like—and sometimes equal—the more overt aspects of spirituality and heroism in, say, Rembrandt. “Rembrandt ist Beethoven, Vermeer ist Mozart,” I overheard someone say to herself looking at a Vermeer. (Could we add Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy? Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman? Or Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell?) That complicated combination of dazzle and modesty may be an essential difference between Vermeer and his contemporaries, including Rembrandt.
- [Inbal Segev talks to Michael Miller about Christopher Rouse's Cello Concerto, Coming Up February 10 and 11th at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/inbal-segev-talks-michael-miller-christopher-rouses-cello-concerto-coming-february-10-11th-troy-savings-bank-music-hall-baltimore-symphony-orchestras-new-music-festi/) - Last month I had the pleasure of chatting with Inbal Segev, a young cellist from Israel, who has been making a mark in contemporary music and the classics. She was discovered by Isaac Stern as a high school student in Israel, and he arranged for her to come the United States to study at Yale and Juilliard. On this occasion we talked about her upcoming performance of Christopher Rouse's cello concerto with the Albany Symphony under David Allan Miller and a very interesting—and successful—contemporary music festival sponsored by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Marin Alsop. It held its inaugural season just last summer.
- [Battleground, by Ryan McNamara](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/battleground-ryan-mcnamara/) - Out of This World in More than One Way It’s hard to imagine Ryan McNamara’s Battleground performed anywhere but in the Guggenheim Museum’s subterranean theater—in fact, McNamara himself says that the “sci-fi cosplay house-music ballet-battle” fell into his mind the moment he saw the space. All nine performers are credited with creating the work in collaboration with McNamara and they use every inch of the theater—stage, aisles, balcony, columns, choir loft and areas the audience traverses to reach their seats. “Don’t get up, “I cautioned my companion, “or you’ll be in it.”
- [Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/12/rosenkavalier-royal-opera-house/) - his latest ROH Rosenkavalier has so far had middling reviews, many focusing their criticism largely on the production, which originated in 1984 under the late John Schlesinger and here directed by Andrew Sinclair, which they believe to be showing its age. It has been revived many times, and therefore probably dulled by overfamiliarity for some, but to this first-time viewer it seemed understandable that the company would wish to extract the maximum mileage from it—perhaps a lull before an exciting new production comes storming in to mark the opera’s 100th anniversary in 13 months’ time?
- [An Autumn of Pianists in New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/pianists-new-york-fall-2017/) - My own fall season of piano recitals began on a high point with Gilbert Kalish's appearance at The Concerts at Camphill Ghent. (This is the only concert I shall discuss that did not take place within the confines of Manhattan, although one might in a stretch consider Ghent as local in some indirect way, since it is a mere fifteen minutes drive outside Hudson, and Hudson is surely a colony of New York City, tossing together traits of Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and the Upper West Side. Click here for a more general account of the concert series.) Here Mr. Kalish played the sort of carefully pondered, intelligent program he has been known for since the 1960s.
- [Heavenly lengths...yeah! Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs discuss Steffani's Niobe and the future.](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/heavenly-lengths-yeah-paul-odette-and-stephen-stubbs-discuss-steffanis-niobe-and-the-future/) - There is a lot of talk about long operas these days, in the light of the Boston Early Music Festival's triumphant production of Steffani's Niobe, Regina di Tebe, which, as cut by the directors, lasted about 3 hours 45 minutes; and now an important revival of Rossini's Guillaume Tell is coming up, which also promises to be a long evening, potentially as long a five hours. Huntley Dent has just reviewed Henrik Ibsen's early rarity, Emperor and Galilean, presented by the National Theatre, London, with the play's two parts of four hours each reduced to a single evening of three and a half hours. It seems this goes against the modern grain, although blockbuster movies tend to be long and certain genres of popular novels very long. Yet Francesca Zambello, in her interview with Seth Lachterman for the Review, pointed out her concern to keep the Glimmerglass production of Carmen within temporal bounds that would be acceptable to a wide audience (in actuality 2 hours, 50 minutes, with intermissions, which is pretty well standard), and length is usually the first thing an operatic neophyte complains about.
- [The Thinking Virtuoso Pianists play in New York, Part I: Hamelin and Hough](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/03/thinking-virtuoso-pianists-hamelin-hough/) - There was a time when the virtuosity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seemed on the wane. Vladimir Horowitz was perhaps the one who ushered it out slowly, over more than one temporary withdrawal from performing and growing criticism of his magisterial approach, as it fell out of fashion. On the other hand, pianists of his generation, like Louis Kentner, and younger pianists like Alfred Brendel and Leon Fleisher, who were technically the equals of Horowitz, chose to focus on purely musical values, using their powerful techniques to bring difficult, but less pyrotechnic works to audiences, for example, the more serious Liszt, Schubert’s late sonatas, and Beethoven’s Op. 106, the “Hammerklavier,”
- [A Crop of Recordings XIX: Dvořák, Strauss, Brahms, Holst, Schmidt and Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/crop-recordings-xix-dvorak-strauss-brahms-holst-schmidt-elgar/) - Here is really lovely Dvořák: fresh and natural, gorgeously recorded—and with something new to say. That’s rare for the symphony, which has been captured for presumed immortality by every orchestra on earth—and dutifully miked from nearly every row in every concert house. There’s a New World for every taste in approach and sonic perspective.
- [Barangaroo: Not so Fast?](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/barangaroo-not-so-fast/) - The saga of Sydney’s Barangaroo has finally reached the point where its twists and turns are no longer predictable. The developer Lend Lease and its resolutely faux design, once paced to a seemingly unassailable lead by a compliant government and a shameless PR operation, has punctured a tire. Without a spare tube or pump, they wait by the side of the road for a team car which itself has been totaled. Meanwhile “sandal-wearing, muesli-chewing, bike-riding pedestrians” are gaining fast. No one knows how many kilometres there are to go. Consider recent events:
- [Giovanni Simone Mayr’s Remarkable Medea Opera, Superbly Performed](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/giovanni-simone-mayrs-remarkable-medea-opera-superbly-performed/) - Medea in Corinto (Medea in Corinth, 1813 and much revised over the course of the next ten years) was Mayr’s best-known opera and remained a repertory staple for a time even after his death. It has been revived frequently in our own day, especially in Italy, where audiences can of course follow the plot and shifting emotions without recourse to supertitles.
- [The Home  Place by Brian Friel, New York Premiere, at  the Irish Repertory Theatre, closing December 17.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/home-place-brian-friel-new-york-premiere-irish-repertory-theatre-closing-december-17/) - You have five more days to see—or to see again—the New York premiere of Brian Friel's late masterpiece, The Home Place, in its extended run. Between the rich language of the play—subtly heightened, but idiomatic to contemporary ears and sounding entirely convincing in the mouths of Irish and Anglo-Irish English-speakers of 1878—James Noone's evocative set, the unfailing precision and feeling of the actors, and Charlotte Moore's crisp direction, it provided the most absorbing and moving evening in the theater of the year.
- [Complexions Contemporary Ballet at the Joyce Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/complexions-contemporary-ballet-joyce-theater/) - The evening’s big attraction was Star Dust, a ballet tribute to David Bowie. But to reach that gem, the audience first had to deal with Gutter Glitter, an “abstract landscape of contrasting ideas,” the first installment of choreographer Dwight Rhoden’s Collage Series. To recognize the dancers as extraordinary is an understatement. However, the work was disjointed and danced to music that didn’t connect to it, especially the bits that sounded (intentionally) like broken glass. The movements, with many enormous extensions and sinuously stretched arms and legs, didn’t make me see or understand what was meant by “discovering the light in darkness.”
- [Two New Releases of Lohengrin, part 1: Knappertsbusch’s Only Recorded Lohengrin, Available for the First Time](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/two-new-releases-lohengrin-part-1-knappertsbuschs-recorded-lohengrin-available-first-time/) - Hans Knappertsbusch was one of the most renowned Wagner conductors who ever lived. His recordings of Parsifal, especially, are near-legendary among confirmed Wagnerians. It was thus with some excitement that I opened a new 3-CD set from Orfeo, consisting of the first release ever of any performance of Lohengrin conducted by the conductor sometimes known among musicians and opera-goers as “Kna.”
- [Two New Releases of Lohengrin, part 2: Mark Elder, in a Live Concert Performance from Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (2015)](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/two-new-releases-lohengrin-part-2-mark-elder-live-concert-performance-amsterdams-concertgebouw-2015/) - There have been dozens of capable, and more than capable, recordings of Lohengrin. Among the most-often praised are the Sawallisch/Bayreuth (1962), Kempe (1963), Solti (1985), and Abbado (1991). Recording a major Wagner opera involves heavy costs that a record company may be unable to recoup. Hence the appeal of recording a concert performance. This CD set was edited from two such performances in Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw (literally: “concert building”) on December 18 and 20, 2015. The performance was semi-staged, i.e., done without costumes and sets. Some evocative lighting was employed. Characters made entrances and exits through various doors, and characters and (I gather) brass players appeared on balconies.
- [Tennessee Williams at 100, Two Early Impressions: Vieux Carré from the Wooster Group and Streetcar at Williams](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/tennessee-williams-at-100-t-vieux-carre-wooster-group-streetcar-williams/) - From the Wooster Group's Production of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré [table id=1 /] There can be no doubt that Tennessee Williams was the preeminent American playwright of his time—at least for a period which, sadly, covered only eighteen years of his life, beginning with his first great Broadway success, "The Glass Menagerie" in 1944 and
- [Achim Freyer's Rocky Horror Ring takes over Los Angeles!](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/achim-freyers-rocky-horror-ring-takes-over-los-angeles/) - Dressing up in a monkey suit is a time-honored profession in Hollywood. Many is the young actor or layabout who has earned a few dollars by dressing up as a gorilla — or Batman or Chewbacca — and going out into the streets with pamphlets to spread the good news about some new deli or used car lot or strip show. For a while, gorilla suits were popular in the studios as well. (That’s a whole genre that’s almost entirely forgotten today.) I reflected on this, as, on the eve of Das Rheingold, I drove along Sunset Boulevard, observing the crowds of tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, along with a group of people dressed up as comic book heroes who were available to pose with the visitors. I wondered if any of them thought about the impoverishment of the imagination that these comic book figures have brought to the movies. Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, and Bette Davis all created characters in their own way, even if they remained recognizable as themselves in their parts. We know what to expect from Batman and Darth Vader simply by their costume, their design, or merely the outline of their shadow on a fictitious pavement. Characterization and acting are superfluous, even though some of these characters have human vehicles, who are dutifully provided with origins, relationships, and dilemmas, by screenwriters who know that they can only sink so low.
- [Lully and Quinault's Atys: Christie and Villégier's Historic Production of Les Arts Florissants Revived at BAM for its 150th Anniversary](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/lully-quinault-atys-christie-villegier-bam-arts-florissants/) - The Brooklyn Academy of Music, chose to open their 150th anniversary celebrations with a more recent, but no less historically significant commemoration, and typical of the innovative, constantly exciting work BAM has been doing since the 1960s. This was nothing less than a “recreation,” as the program calls it, of Jean-Marie Villégier’s watershed production of Lully’s Atys, with music by Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. This production, organized by the Paris Opera to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Lully’s death, went through 70 performances between its premiere in December 1986 in Prato, and its second revival in 1992, closing finally at BAM after its second run there.
- [Two’s Company: Broadway’s Greatest Duets, November 16, 2017, at Merkin](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/twos-company-broadways-greatest-duets-november-16-2017-merkin/) - The program, presented in association with One Day University®, didn’t exactly live up to the “great” part of its name as host, Sean Hilton, made clear in his introduction explaining the focus was on “underrated duets.” Exactly right and very interesting—and often fun—to hear music that the enthusiastic audience wasn’t fully familiar with.
- [Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen from Glyndebourne: Semi-Opera Made Whole, at Last](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/henry-purcells-fairy-queen-from-glyndebourne-semi-opera-made-whole-at-last/) - The life and career of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), the colossal figure who dominates the history of English music, occurred at the chronological mid-point of the Baroque, a period whose leading and most distinguishing genre is opera. And yet, opera never took root as a native product in English cultural soil. For that it had to wait until Purcell’s distant successor, Benjamin Britten, appeared on the scene two hundred and fifty years later. Twenty years after Purcell’s death, Handel arrived with his succession of exotic opera singers: Italian divas and castrati who swooped in like birds of paradise warbling their outlandish roulades and then vanished. The taste for such entertainment lasted at the most 25 years. Meanwhile, Purcell wrote only one true opera, a tiny gem that was held to be the only crown jewel for centuries, the miniature Dido and Aeneas of 1689. (John Blow’s fine companion piece, Venus and Adonis of 1701, still has not established itself in the canon.) And it was written for a girls’ school run by a dancing master, or at least its first documented performance occurred in this context.
- [Ruth Sommers' Festival Chamber Music, a Concert Series at Weill Hall (Carnegie Hall) — an Introduction](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/ruth-sommers-festival-chamber-music-concert-series-weill-hall-carnegie-hall-introduction/) - Just about a year ago I had the pleasure of discovering a New York chamber music series I hadn't heard about, Festival Chamber Music, when I came to hear Mohammed Fairouz’s No Orpheus (2009) for Mezzo Soprano and Cello, settings of poems by our Senior Editor of Art and Music, Lloyd Schwartz, who had made the trip down from Boston to read his texts before they were sung. He has heard several performances of this work since its premiere, and he was well pleased with the work of Christine Antenbring, mezzo-soprano and cellist Ruth Sommers, noting the strong differences in the performances of the work he had heard. One might be tempted to consider the use of a solo cello to do the job of a piano a gimmick, but in fact it convinced me from the very beginning—thanks to a great extent to Ruth Sommers’ eloquent, colorful, many-sided, but disciplined playing.
- [A Crop of Recordings XVIII:  Honegger, Bernstein, Rachmaninoff, Smetana, Vaughan Williams](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/crop-recordings-xviii-honegger-bernstein-rachmaninoff-smetana-vaughan-williams/) - This is the most fascinating Honegger CD I know—brought to us with foundation-shaking percussion, virtuoso string and brass playing—and astonishing podium originality. Mario Venzago is a Swiss conductor who has recorded the Bruckner symphonies, some of them with this same Bern Symphony—sounding world class here. He’s the sort who takes chances with tempo, the way Bruckner conductors are either admired or forgiven for doing.
- [Legends & Visionaries—The New York Theatre Ballet at the Danspace Project](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/legends-visionaries-new-york-theatre-ballet-danspace-project/) - New York Theater Ballet continues to forge ahead. Now in its thirty-ninth season, NYTB brings new ways to look at classics together with the opportunity to see work by up-and-coming choreographers. Legends & Visionaries, presented as a tribute to the late David Vaughan, dance archivist, historian and critic, began with sweetly moving remarks by NYTB company founder and artistic director, Diana Byer, Vaughan’s friend and mentee.
- [Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Sir Antonio Pappano, conductor, with Martha Argerich, piano, at Carnegie Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/orchestra-dellaccademia-nazionale-di-santa-cecilia-rome-sir-antonio-pappano-conductor-martha-argerich-piano-carnegie-hall/) - Musical triumphs, like Tolstoy happy families, tend to be alike. But celebration usually breaks out following a performance, not before! I've only once witnessed the sort of screaming, foot stamping, room shaking reception Thursday's Carnegie Hall audience accorded Martha Argerich, and that was in anticipation of Sir Georg Solti's Mahler with the Chicago Symphony in the late 1960s. And fair to say, though "Solti! Solti!" always made for a great chant, screams for Argerich lasted longer. Even Karajan enthusiasts were less tireless, back in the day.
- [Donatello in Motion - A Spiritello Rediscovered, at the Moretti Williams Gallery, 24 East 80th Street, New York City, CLOSING November 25](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/donatello-in-motion-a-spiritello-rediscovered/) - In an art world teeming with crass nouveaux riches grabbing trophies at auction for insane prices, once prominent dealers in prison, ArtBasel Miami, and the "Da Vinci" industry, it is deeply comforting to find an enterprise like Andrew Butterfield's refreshingly sober, but gorgeous and energizing exhibition of a single work of art: a spiritello (more commonly called by its 16th century name, "putto") which he found, eventually purchased, and now presents to the public with a carefully researched, modestly proposed attribution to Donatello (Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, Florence, 1386 or 1387 to 1466), the greatest of Italian sculptors of the Renaissance—I have always preferred his work to Michelangelo's. As a teenager I made my way around the David in the Bargello with my father, and we both agreed it was superior to Michelangelo's, and, as much as I've admired Michelangelo's sculpture, and written about it, I still consider Donatello to the greater of the two. If Dr. Butterfield's exhibition achieves nothing else, it pinpoints the reasons why Donatello is in fact the greatest and most influential sculptor of the Italian Renaissance.
- [Jakub Hrůša and Piotr Anderszewski reach a high level with the San Francisco Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/27294/) - 2017 certainly seems to be a season for auspicious debuts and returns at the San Francisco Symphony! No sooner do we calm down slightly from Krzysztof Urbański's Polish Lancer charge upon the Shostakovich Tenth, than it's gobsmack-time once again from Eastern Europe: Jakub Hrůša's levitating debut in a mostly Czech program few will forget!
- [Krzysztof Urbański and Augustin Hadelich impress with the San Francisco Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/krzysztof-urbanski-augustin-hadelich-impress-san-francisco-symphony/) - You never know when San Francisco will prove even weirder than you think, but Fleet Week is surely a good candidate for strangeness at the symphony. The US Navy's Blue Angels air ballet is a reliable tourist magnet when it comes to town, drawing unaccustomed crowds far and wide, and some visitors, suitably strafed and deafened, wind up at the symphony. This explains Bermuda shorts and flip flops in Saturday's audience and a tendency to applaud in the wrong places. I'm not sure it explains an ill-tempered dowager who shouted her disapproval of the music and had to be removed. Nor did anyone, official or otherwise, manage to decode bizarre noises repeatedly emanating from, well. somewhere....I get ahead of myself. It was an interesting evening!
- [Glimmerglass 2017: Opera in Angustiis: Commentaries for our Troubled Times in Stunning Glimmerglass Season  Siege of Calais](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/27275glimmerglass-2017/) - The late Donizetti masterpiece, L'assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais) is a rarity indeed, even in Europe. Four years after the first performance, l’assedio was not performed again until 1990. One hundred and eighty-one years after its premiere in 1836, this Glimmerglass production marked the American premiere. During its composition, Donizetti had struggled with it and bent operatic conventions to seek performances in Paris. Ultimately, the opera was a tactical failure and Donizetti wound up with two versions, with an unequal number of acts. In preparation for this production, Francesca Zambello and Joseph Colaneri worked on a new performing edition that tightened loose ends and yielded a satisfactory, if not compelling, conclusion. Some ballet music was lost in the cuts, but dance (to curry favor with French opera goers) would be an awkward addition to the nobility and gravity of the plot. In the Zambello/Colaneri conclusion, the final exculpation of six sacrificial hostages was emotionally and musically heartrending.
- [Vespers Cantata: Hesperus is Phosphorus by Lewis Spratlan Reviewed - Performed by The Crossing at Park Avenue Christian Church, June 5, 2012](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/vespers-cantata-hesperus-phosphorus-lewis-spratlan/) - Lewis Spratlan, Composer Vespers Cantata: Hesperus is Phosphorus by Lewis Spratlan Earlier this month an important new work by Lewis Spratlan was premiered under the auspices of the Phildelphia- based contemporary music groups, the Network for New Music and The Crossing, first at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia and a few days later in New York City, at Park Avenue Christian Church, which supports an especially lively music program. Many readers will recognize Mr. Spratlan as the composer of Life is a Dream, an opera based on Calderón de la Barca's classic play, which has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and received a brilliantly successful premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2010.
- [Lewis Spratlan's Opera "Life is a Dream" Premiered at the Santa Fe Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/lewis-spratlans-opera-life-is-a-dream-premiered-at-the-santa-fe-opera/) - The story has been well told in the musical press by now about the delay in production of Lewis Spratlan’s great opera Life Is a Dream — commissioned in the late 1970s by an opera company that went out of business before the opera could be produced; rejected numerous times by other American and European companies; awarded the Pulitzer Prize a decade ago for a concert performance of Act II; more rejections for a full staging… Congratulations and thanks are due at last to General Director Charles Mackay and the Santa Fe Opera for taking a new look at this work, seeing its intrinsic worth and its great potential as staged music drama, believing in it, and now giving it a committed and brilliant production. This occasion is a triumph for all concerned. Here palpably, for the eyes and ears and mind, is one of the great American operas, one of the great modern operas, one of the great operas.
- [A Weekend with Pierre Boulez...and Debussy, Duckworth, Beethoven, and Paavali Jumppanen, Pianist](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/weekend-pierre-boulez-debussy-duckworth-beethoven-paavali-jumppanen-pianist/) - When I approach a review, I usually try to objectify it in some way, especially if it's about familiar music, not only in recognition of the the fact that I'm writing for a public readership, but also in recognition of the discrete nature of a work of art as an entity created by an individual working under a specific set of historical circumstances, even if it dates from two months ago. Boulez's Répons is very much rooted in such a situation in 1981, with its connection to the history of electronic music—then still fairly young—and the foundation of IRCAM, an event which gave electronic music formal institutional support in Europe. However, my personal response to hearing it at the Park Avenue Armory was especially strong, and in this review I will stay with that.
- [The Third United Solo Theater Festival at Theatre Row off  Time Square: a Chef, Self-Help Sleazoids, and a Spirited Gal from Texas](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/united-solo-theater-festival-theatre-row-time-square-chef-selfhelp-sleazoids-spirited-gal-texas/) - October and November are now firmly established as solo theater season in New York. United Solo, now in its third year, has grown by one third—to over 100 performances over a five-week period, from October 11 to November 18, 2012. Artistic Director Omar Sangare has been one of the leaders in solo theater for many years, not only in his native Poland, but in the US, where he has lived and worked since 2005, and he has attracted a stream of applications from solo practitioners all around the world, making United Solo the largest and best event of its kind.
- [The Sixth Concert Series at Camphill Ghent is about to begin with a Recital by Pianist Gilbert Kalish](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/the-sixth-concert-series-at-camphill-ghent-is-about-to-begin-with-a-recital-by-pianist-gilbert-kalish/) - The Sixth Concert Series at Camphill Ghent, Gili Melamed-Lev, Director In my preview of last year's concert series, I believe I may have used some culinary metaphor to characterize the general tendency of the programming. While you will hear some short, not always trivial pieces thrown in for fun, one can rely on serious taste
- [Bizet's Carmen at the Boston Lyric Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/bizets-carmen-boston-lyric-opera/) - The Boston Lyric Opera has left its long-time, unsatisfactory home in Boston’s Shubert Theater. This season each production will be mounted in a different space, and the Boston Globe reports that BLO has joined some other local theatrical groups to bid for ongoing use of the fine Colonial Theater (now owned by Emerson College) when it is restored and reopens in a year or so—seems an outcome to be wished for. Meanwhile, BLO has started its current season with Bizet’s Carmen in the Opera House on Washington Street, once home to Sarah Caldwell’s highly creative Opera Company of Boston, in recent years home of the Boston Ballet and site of a never-ending stream of very popular traveling Broadway musical productions. The Opera House is a grand space with good acoustics, a broad stage, sizeable orchestra pit, and adequate lobby space on two levels. It is good to see and hear opera staged here once again.
- [Openings: Boston Musica Viva plays Boulez, Marteau sans maître, and Nelsons and the BSO present Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/openings-boston-musica-viva-plays-boulez-marteau-sans-maitre-nelsons-bso-present-richard-strauss-der-rosenkavalier/) - One hoped and expected there would be performances of Pierre Boulez pieces in Boston this season to honor this great musician who died last winter. The Berlin Philharmonic, hardly a local group, will play one piece on its visit here in November. I don’t see anything else on the horizon. So, many thanks to Boston Musica Viva, our fine contemporary music ensemble now in its 48th year, for opening its season with Boulez’s perhaps most significant work, Le Marteau sans maître (The Hammer without a Master, 1954-57).
- [Boston Symphony Orchestra: Looking Up](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/boston-symphony-orchestra-looking/) - Writing here recently about last season at the Boston Symphony, I had recourse more than once to the phrase “just notes going by” in response to Andris-Nelsons-led performances that I did not like (I did praise a number of performances as well). I am happy to say that I think no one would say “just notes going by” about the recent, September 28th concert which opened the orchestra’s subscription series for 2017-2018. First, Nelsons and the orchestra and soloist Paul Lewis presented a definite view of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G-major, Opus 58; they had something to say with it. And the large Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 (“The Year 1905”) which followed, seemed to come into its own and express itself as fully as one could imagine.
- [Dvořák's Grand Opera, Dimitrij, at Bard](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/dvoraks-grand-opera-dimitrij-bard/) - The word has been that Antonin Dvořák’s grand Opera, Dimitrij is a lost and rediscovered masterpiece. Whatever one thinks of it musically, dramatically, or politically, it is clear that the reasons for its neglect arise from its faulty transmission. Dvořák had great hopes for it. He thought it might be his ticket to international fame as an opera composer. Unfortunately—it turns out—the influential music critic, Eduard Hanslick attended the premiere in Prague...and liked it very much—both score and libretto—and wrote a highly positive, intelligent review. He made certain criticisms, however, which Dvořák took very seriously, especially because of Hanslick’s praise and his position as the most influential critic in Vienna, the Hauptstadt of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For Dvořák Vienna was the first step to international recognition, and he desperately wanted a production there.
- [A Handful of Last Season's Orchestral Concerts in New York—All Worth Remembering](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/handful-last-seasons-orchestral-concerts-new-york-worth-remembering/) - Even the most independent of us can't hear everything one might like to. In New York, choices must be made, usually based on what one thinks is most important, and often enough what is important has nothing to do with music. Family obligations kept me away from Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, although he was in his prime repertory for his final US appearances with the orchestra, and sheer surfeit diluted my enthusiasm for Gergiev. He is not the only friend of Vladimir Putin's to be accused of spending too much time on the golf course, and it shows in his wayward performances. What I did manage to hear brought discovery in conductors of exceptional ability I hadn't heard before and some new music, as well as measures of excitement, admiration, and boredom.
- [Provincetown: Selections from the Julie Heller Gallery at the Elisabeth Ivers Gallery, NYC, April 15 – June 4, 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/provincetown-julie-heller-gallery-elisabeth-ivers-gallery/) - Karl Knaths (1891-1971), Provincetown Houses and Weirs, 1930, Watercolor and chalk on paper, 12 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches. Provincetown: Selections from the Julie Heller Gallery April 15 – June 4, 2011 Opening Reception: Thursday, April 14, 6-8pm ELISABETH IVERS GALLERY 508 West 26th Street, Suite 6D New York, New York 10001 Milton
- [Verlaine and Ten Composers: Exquisite Poetry, Exquisite Singing, Exquisite Playing](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/verlaine-ten-composers-exquisite-poetry-exquisite-singing-exquisite-playing/) - Back in the LP days, if a singer wanted to show some sophistication, s/he sometimes put out an album of songs by famous composers set to the poems of one poet: for example, Phyllis Curtin’s much-admired 1964 disc of Debussy and Fauré songs to poems by Verlaine, with pianist Ryan Edwards (available now as a CD from VAI).
- [Paavali Jumppanen, Pianist, Talks to Michael Miller before his Recital at the Frick Collection, Sunday, October 8, at 5 pm.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/paavali-jumppanen-pianist-talks-michael-miller-recital-frick-collection-sunday-october-8-5-pm/) - I'm very pleased to present this interview with Paavali Jumppanen, who will be playing a recital at the Frick Collection this coming Sunday, October 7, 2017, at 5 pm. He will play works by three composers he has studied in particular depth over many years: Beethoven, Debussy, and the William Duckworth (1943-2012).
- [Soaking Wet with the Beyond the Bang Group at the West End Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/soaking-wet-beyond-bang-group-west-end-theater/) - First up, an entirely delightful amuse-bouche minus title or program reference with Jeffrey Kazin, co-producer of The Bang Group, clapping the rhythms and Chelsea Ainsworth in pointe shoes tapping to the beat. As Kazin clapped an elaborate pattern Ainsworth echoed it; the couple then moved from the feet up the body incorporating other takes on percussion as she drummed on his torso and he slapped the ground. Juilliard grad Ainsworth was back in Two is You and deserves a shout-out for her expressive approach that maximizes every step.
- [Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolors at Bowdoin College, May 03, 2017 - September 03, 2017](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/draw-500-years-drawings-watercolors-bowdoin-college-may-03-2017-september-03-2017/) - Between the limits of the discipline, as it is taught in graduate schools, and the structure of museological functions, exhibitions of drawings usually adhere to a restricted range of formats, which, while continuing to be viable for institutions and the public and useful for scholars in the field, can be felt as constricting for those who conceive and execute them. The scope of drawings exhibitions can be determined by time and/or place (stylistic categories), or an artistic personality (monographic), or collection ("Treasures on Paper from..."), and perhaps a few others. When a curator is faced with such a project, he may may find himself wrestling with an urge to break the mold and create something new.
- [Living While Dying](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/living-while-dying/) - According to choreographer Maria Bauman, the work is a meditation on various kinds of endings, positive and negative. Bauman, Gibney Dance’s 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence, says she feels charged with alive-ness while at the same time embracing the paradox of multiple deaths happening every moment; dying and dying and dying is the result of dancing that paradox.
- [Overeager: One Night Only (running as long as we can) — Monica Bill Barnes and Company at the WP Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/overeager-one-night-running-long-can-monica-bill-barnes-company-wp-theater/) - first saw Monica Bill Barnes performing Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio show and was charmed. Besides their obvious physical skills, Barnes and her sidekick, Anna Bass, were full of humor with an underlying sweetness pleasantly at odds with their somewhat tough physiques and staccato moves. Then I participated in The Museum Workout, following Barnes and Bass through galleries, up and down stairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a group of us running and stopping to pump arms along the way which was an entertaining experience if not my ideal approach to enjoying art.
- [A Crop of Recordings XVII: Dvořák, Ravel, Lalo, and Manén...with Some Classical Favourites for Hallowe'en!](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/crop-recordings-xvii-dvorak-ravel-lalo-manen-classical-favorites-haloween/) - Every time I hear the Czech Philharmonic properly recorded I’m reminded what a glorious orchestra they are—overdue for appreciation. The ensemble recently signed a major contract with Decca and released Dvořák symphonies and concertos on CD, led by Jiří Bělohlávek. There’s also a complete Tchaikovsky project in the works from Semyon Bychkov. And now we have this beautiful take on the Slavonic Dances, captured without compromise.
- [The Berlin Painter and His World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C. at The Princeton University Art Museum, closing Sunday, June 11, 2017 (REVISED)](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/berlin-painter-world-athenian-vase-painting-early-fifth-century-b-c-princeton-university-art-museum-closing-sunday-june-11-2017/) - Of all the exhibitions in the New York area this season, Princeton's The Berlin Painter and His World is the richest in aesthetic pleasure, methodological sophistication, and intellectual liveliness. Not only will visitors enjoy the handwork of one of the greatest Greek artists of the Late Archaic Period, they will experience a panorama of ancient Greek mythology, religious practice, athletic and military activities, and sympotic customs, that is, the etiquette and enjoyment of the all-male drinking parties that were the major nucleus of Athenian social life after the great annually-recurring festivals of their gods and heroes. These windows which provide such a vivid view on the outer and inner lives of the Athenians were painted on the surfaces of pottery turned with the beautiful red clay of Attica...
- [Ups and Downs of the Boston Music Season, mostly Boston Symphony with Andris Nelsons, 2016-2017](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/09/ups-downs-boston-music-season-mostly-boston-symphony-andris-nelsons-2016-2017/) - The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2017 Tanglewood Music Festival, very successful by many reports, has just concluded, with the new season in Boston to begin very soon. I offer here the perspective of a look back at the preceding season in Boston, commenting mostly on BSO, but also a few other events. I was able to attend only one Tanglewood concert this summer: the impressive concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, conducted by BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons, with a large, excellent cast. A good sign for the future.
- [New York Un-Seen: A Gallery](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/new-york-unseen-photographed/) - [Show as slideshow] When you walk the streets of New York, do you see strange things? Do the familiar signs, window displays, and doorways that structure reality for us because of our needs and desires disappear every now and then, leaving nothing but some mundane phantasm that was there all the time,
- [Joanna Gabler's New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/joanna-gabler-new-york/) - [Show as slideshow] Joanna Gabler, after many years of working as a painter in oils—a medium she continues to explore—and in straight photography, first attempted to combine her different visions in digital photography in 2008. Using common editing tools in her own original way, she attempts to extract the unseen energies behind
- [Music in a Time of Disaster...The Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Boulez, Carnegie Hall, January 16, 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/01/music-in-a-time-of-disaster-the-vienna-philharmonic-conducted-by-pierre-boulez-carnegie-hall-january-16-2010/) - Pierre Boulez Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Pierre Boulez, conductor Carnegie Hall, January 16, 2010 Schoenberg, Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38 Schoenberg, Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (Daniel Barenboim, soloist) Webern, Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 Mahler, Adagio from Symphony no. 10 in F-sharp Major To hear a program of music by Mahler and the members
- [Urban Planning: A Manifesto](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/08/urban-planning-a-manifesto-2/) - The people of New South Wales have been anticipating the upcoming state election almost since the last election four years ago, never a good situation. As regular readers of our dispatches from Sydney know, the soon to be defeated Labor Government has for the past sixteen years, with its inimitably bland, shiny-suited glee, trashed poor old Sydney. A place which with the slightest effort could be the most beautiful city in the world has instead deteriorated into a kind of Los Angeles without a Raymond Chandler, a Melbourne without intricacy, a Singapore without ambition. One of the most urgent tasks facing the next state government will be the reform of NSW’s broken planning system, a system I saw in action (if that is the right word) during the disillusioning two years I spent in a cubicle at the NSW Department of Planning.
- [The Bard Music Festival 2017: Chopin and His World—a Preview](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/08/bard-music-festival-2017-chopin-world-preview/) - Many of us who attend the Bard Music Festival look forward to it with the same warm anticipation we once looked forward to Christmas. Two weekends are packed with music, much of it we've never heard before, some of it great, some good, some interesting. There are panel discussions and lectures to help tie it all together, usually pitched at a general educated audience, but always with surprises and things one didn't know before. And there is a feast of discussion, with the musicians, with the speakers, and with each other. It's not so much that there is music to be enjoyed and a historical context to learn: through the immersion in immediate, live concerts and contact with knowledgeable humans a unique experience emerges in which we can live this whole of sensual and intellectual pleasure, analysis, and a direct understand of the cultural and social whole in which the music was created. The difference between this and the traditional sources of background information available to concertgoers—i.e. program notes—is like a month in Paris against a travel brochure.
- [The Three Musketeers at The Classical Theatre of Harlem](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/08/three-musketeers-classical-theatre-harlem/) - It’s all for one and one for all in Classical Theatre of Harlem’s (CTH) The Three Musketeers written by Catherina Bush as adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Under the sky at the wonderful Richard Rogers Amphitheater in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park, the cast sings a little, dances a little, crosses swords a lot and generally has a good time.
- [Dvořák's Rare Grand Opera, Dimitrij, Coming Up at Bard Summerscape, beginning July 28 [REVISED]](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/dvoraks-rare-grand-opera-dimitrij-coming-bard-summerscape-beginning-july-28/) - Bard Summerscape visitors have much to look forward to in this year's fully-staged production of Dvořák's rarely performed grand opera, Dimitrij. For this ambitious work Dvořák set a Russian subject, the unhappy fate of the false pretender, Dimitrij, who appeared after the death of Boris Godunov, presenting himself as the son of Ivan the Terrible. The libretto was by Marie Červinková-Riegrová, one of the preeminent Czech librettists of the time, the deeply educated daughter of leading Czech politician František Ladislav Rieger, and a granddaughter of the famous historian František Palacký. In her libretto, which advisedly took liberties with historical accuracy, Dimitrij was a young Russian serf who was taken up by Poles and brought up to believe that he was in fact the son of Ivan. Hence in this opera, he is the innocent victim of ruthless Poles, eager to destabilize Russia. He is unhappily married the the Polish Princess Marina, who is merely interested in using him for her own national and personal ends.
- [Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, and Pity in History by Howard Barker at the Potomac Theater Project (PTP) at the Atlantic Stage 2](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/arcadia-tom-stoppard-pity-history-howard-barker-potomac-theater-project-ptp-atlantic-stage-2/) - “Words, words, words,” intoned My Fair Lady’s Henry Higgins. If words are not your thing, this production is not for you. However, if you love language, humor and magnificent intelligence, don’t miss it.
- [A Crop of Recordings XVI: Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius and the First and Second Symphonies played by the Berliner Staatskapelle under Daniel Barenboim](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/elgar-dream-gerontius-first-second-symphonies-played-berliner-staatskapelle-daniel-barenboim/) - If Gerontius died today, it would probably be at a hospital with no Cardinal Newman to record his passing and no Sir Edward Elgar to create his beautiful dream of a masterpiece. And, one supposes too, there’d be no Daniel Barenboim to bring the work to Germany so powerfully as he does here, details and quibbles to follow. We don’t immortalize last words and thoughts the way we used to.
- [The Best Show in Town! Spoon River, from Soulpepper of Toronto](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/best-show-town-spoon-river-soulpepper-toronto/) - At some point, as I savored my memories of Soulpepper's musical, Spoon River, I succumbed to the temptation to give this review the title you see above. As I began to put words together on my screen, I thought with regret of TFANA's close-to-perfect Measure for Measure over in Brooklyn. But somehow this banal phrase, which does Soulpepper's brilliant creation sincere but unworthy honor, jumped out of its hole, and I can't chase it away. I hope I can do Soulpepper true justice below.
- [A Room with Two Views: Campra and Handel at the Boston Early Music Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/room-two-views-campra-handel-boston-early-music-festival/) - Two large-scale vocal works were presented at BEMF on successive nights (Wednesday and Thursday, June 14 and 15), one a work of music theater, merging opera and ballet; the other devotional but in the musical language of opera absent the staging. Composed within nine years of each other, they offer contrasting perspectives of Italian music and culture from the points of view of a French and a German composer. Both were clearly besotted with Italy, one responding to the carnival spirit of Venice with its light-hearted approach to life, love, and entertainment; and the other situated at the center of the sober religious and devotional culture of Rome. Experiencing these two works back-to-back and interpreted by many of the same performers provided a wonderfully condensed testament to the multidimensional attractions and influences that Italian opera radiated at the turn of the 18th century.
- [MOMIX dance Opus Cactus and more at the Joyce.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/momix-dance-opus-cactus-joyce/) - The desert blooms in wondrous ways with all manner of flora and fauna in Momix’ Opus Cactus, conceived by Moses Pendleton. The company members, self-described as “illusionists” are as athletic as Olympians. During the performance they appear as giant saguaros, tumbleweeds, fire dancers and a four-person, slithering Gila monster, with all these figures emerging from an ingenious use of costumes, lighting, and the human body. Mostly it’s about the suppleness of the dancers (though some argue that this isn’t exactly dance) and their staggering physicality. Very creative costumes and lighting also contribute.
- [Amy E. Gustafson, an Important New Pianist, at Florence Gould Hall, Playing an Exceptional 9-foot Yamaha](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/amy-e-gustafson-important-new-pianist-florence-gould-hall-playing-special-9-foot-yamaha/) - One of the gratifying trends in recent piano recitals has been the interest in Debussy's most ambitious piano compositions, above all Book II of his Préludes. In the past few years I've reviewed penetrating, deeply considered realizations of these subtle and complex sound-poems by Ian Hobson and Stephen Porter, which were among the most significant piano recitals I heard at the time. Marc-André Hamelin also included a characteristically brilliant and subtlety tinted and shaded reading of Images, Book I. It was a rich season for Debussy.
- [Vasily Petrenko leads the SF Symphony in Glinka, Lalo, and Rachmaninoff, with Joshua Bell, violin](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/vasily-petrenko-leads-sf-symphony-glinka-lalo-rachmaninoff-joshua-bell-violin/) - I don't know how many in the audience had ever heard anything like it, a symphony dragging itself to a conclusion like a wounded beast over shrieking strings, bass drum rolls gone mad, brass, cymbals and tam tam flashing like jaws and teeth. And then, there was that set of hall-flattening final chords, like crates dropped on the stage, followed by silence for five seconds, broken only by a quiet "Jesus!" under someone's breath. Welcome to the Rachmaninoff First Symphony!
- [A Crop of Recordings XV: Bizet, Brahms, Dvořák,and Jongen!](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/07/crop-recordings-xv-bizet-brahms-dvorakand-jongen/) - As well-written program notes remind us here, Georges Bizet was an unlucky man. Chain-smoking killed him at 36. He died thinking Carmen a failure. And his Symphony in C went unknown and unheard until Felix Weingartner unearthed it eighty years later at a 1935 concert in Basel. None of this gets in the way of the fact that the piece is memorable from beginning to end, even if similarities to Gounod’s symphony are a bit on the suspicious side. Bizet’s own symphonic effort was catalysed by the experience of transcribing Gounod’s work for two pianos. At times one can hardly tell the two pieces apart.
- [The 36th Bloomsday at Symphony Space, 2017](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/36th-bloomsday-symphony-space-2017/) - The thirty-sixth celebration of Bloomsday at Symphony Space, originally conceived by SS ‘s late founder, Isaiah Sheffer, was a fitting tribute to Ulysses and its author, James Joyce. With a projection of Joyce’s face looking down on either side of the stage, the audience reveled in panel discussions; music including a beautiful rendition of Love’s Old Sweet Song, as discussed by Molly Bloom in the book and a “Whirlwind Tour through all 18 Episodes.” This Joyce fest offered something for even the most die-hard fan.
- [Elgar's The Apostles, with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/elgars-apostles-leon-botstein-american-symphony-orchestra-carnegie-hall/) - I was tempted to preface this review of this rarely performed oratorio by Sir Edward Elgar with a harangue about the neglect of British music in this country, but I was pleasantly surprised to look over the upcoming Tanglewood schedule, and to find that British music and Sir Edward will be rather well served this summer
- [David Curtis, Music Director of the Orchestra of the Swan, talks to Michael Miller](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/david-curtis-music-director-orchestra-swan-talks-michael-miller/) - ome months ago New Yorkers enjoyed an opportunity to hear a gifted young American pianist, Thomas Nickell play Mozart's Concerto in A Major, K. 414 and a new concerto by a living English composer, David Matthews, supported by a splendid chamber orchestra in the best English tradition, The Orchestra of the Swan, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, conducted by its founder, David Curtis. They received an especially warm response from their sold-out hall, and they have every reason to come back. This will occur in early June 2018. Meanwhile you can listen to David Curtis talk about chamber orchestras, The Orchestra of the Swan in particular, and English music, which, I believe has been rather neglected on these shores in recent years.
- [Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin in the First Complete Cycle of Bruckner's Symphonies in the U.S., with Mozart Concertos for Piano, Winds, and Strings](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/daniel-barenboim-staatskapelle-berlin-first-complete-cycle-bruckners-symphonies-u-s-mozart-concertos-piano-winds-strings/) - We New Yorkers are fortunate in enjoying annual visits from the greatest European and American orchestras, and even more fortunate when these visitors offer a residency or at least what some people like to call a "curated" series of concerts. In most instances these take place in Carnegie Hall. Beyond the privilege of hearing different groups under different conductors in the same familiar acoustic—fortunately one of the highest order—a more extended and coherent journey through the classical repertoire justifies the effort and expense of the tour. The brilliant 2010 series built around Beethoven and the Second Viennese School, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, with the podium shared by Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim, stands out as a telling example.
- [Justin Bischof conducts the Canadian Chamber Orchestra of New York City in Beethoven's 7th and 9th Symphonies](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/justin-bischof-conducts-beethovens-7th-9th-symphonies-canadian-chamber-orchestra-new-york-city/) - Justin Bischof, who has built a reputation as a brilliant church organist and choirmaster, has found characteristically ingenious ways to integrate his passion, symphonic conducting, with his duties as Director of Music at The Church of St. James the Less in Scarsdale as well as an admirable local charity, the "Transforming the Lives of Children through Music" Benefit, netting over $400,000—and growing—which has enabled over 425 at-risk inner-city children to attend a life-altering summer camp in recent years. The latter benefit concert is traditionally The Canadian Chamber Orchestra of New York City’s (CCO/NYC) seasonal culmination. Dr. Bischof founded the orchestra to enhance the presence of his fellow Canadian musicians in the New York Area. Through these ambitious enterprises, he has enriched the musical life at his church beyond any reasonable expectation for a suburban parish and served an admirable program for enhancing the lives of underprivileged children. And Bischof is as passionate about the charity as about the great music he conducts to further the cause. The powerful performance of Beethoven's Ninth we heard was deeply moving, as it should be, but I was even more moved by the fine young people who gathered before that to sing simple choruses.
- [Aston Magna Music Festival 2017 - A Preview](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/aston-magna-2017/) - The Aston Magna season, the 45th(!), is almost upon us. We can look forward to an extended schedule, adding fifth and sixth weekends at the Brandeis and Great Barrington venues, which is no longer on the Simon’s Rock campus, but at the recently renovated Saint James Place.
- [Legacy 36 Celebrates the Stars—A Line of Former Rockettes](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/legacy-36-celebrates-stars-line-former-rockettes/) - The famed Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, that high-kicking, glam- or- bust line of tap dancing women, began in St. Louis as the Missouri Rockets. The troop was brought to New York City to perform at the Roxy Theater where they were known as the Roxyettes and then, as part of the Christmas spectacular, came to Radio City, where they were rechristened The Rockettes.
- [Willy Decker's Ring at the Semperoper in Dresden: Jonas Alber and Asher Fisch Excel on the Podium](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/05/glorious-ring-semperoper-dresden/) - This full realization of the Ring as drama became the unifying principle of the production, as it was perhaps meant to be, but unified musical direction was lacking—the greatest challenge the participants faced—since the Music Director of the Staatskapelle, Fabio Luisi, who is now basking in adulation in New York—justifiably, as it would seem from his sensitive reading of Berg’s Lulu—summarily cancelled his engagements with the orchestra, following a set-to with the Intendant, Gerd Uecker. (We are interested in music drama here, and this is not the place to tell this unpleasant story.) In the end, Luisi was not greatly missed, although the most significant shortcomings of the Ring as a whole stemmed from the weaknesses of one of the three conductors who took over the Maestro’s responsibilities. On the contrary, the audience had ample reason to rejoice in Asher Fisch’s energetic and visceral Siegfried, and, even better, in the discovery of an extraordinary new talent, Jonas Alber, who, at 41, is little known outside Germany
- [Charles Dutoit conducts the San Francisco Symphony with Emanuel Ax, piano, in Sibelius, Mozart, de Falla, and Debussy](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/06/charles-dutoit-conducts-san-francisco-symphony-emanuel-ax-piano-sibelius-mozart-de-falla-debussy/) - If you ever wonder how Sibelius' music seems to come in two styles, one bardic, noble, warmly patriotic and slightly thumpy; the other austere, cerebral, craggy and interplanetary, think Karelia. This is the eastern portion of Finland near the White Sea, where ancient forms of native song and poetry still obtained at the turn of the last century. As Vaughan Williams scoured England for folksong and Bartók transcribed them in Hungary, a similar romantic enthusiasm for Finnish roots swept young Finns of the day. Karelianism, it was called, and Sibelius' suite derives from the music he wrote for the Karelia Pageant of 1893, which represented something of a culmination of the movement. The opening "Intermezzo", otherwise a contradiction in terms, was in fact used to separate two tableaux within the festivities.
- [Mozart's Requiem Revealed: Georg Friedrich Haas's 7 Klangräume zu Mozarts Requiem played by the Argento Contemporary Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor, with the Andante for flute and orchestra, K. 315 with Paula Robison](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/georg-friedrich-haas-7-klangraeume-mozart-requiem-argento-contemporary-ensemble-michel-galante-paula-robison/) - Performances that are enlightening to the point of changing our attitudes about the textual and performative conventions of a major work or transforming the way we listen to it are extremely rare. That's a good thing, in fact, because audiences, who really should be more open to innovation than they are, need and are even entitled to at least some of the comfort tradition offers—not forgetting Otto Klemperer's famous dictum on the subject...Certain performance traditions change every generation, others perhaps twice as often, yet others less often. The Argento Chamber Ensemble's recent performance of Georg Friedrich Haas's 7 Klangräume zu den unvollendeten Fragmenten des Requiems von W. A. Mozart was just such a performance. The composer responsible for the 7 Klangräume, or Seven Soundspaces, Herr Haas, the Argento musicians, and their brilliant conductor, Michael Galante, can share the honors for bringing us Mozart's Requiem in a new form, adopting a principle which should be even obvious, but which seemed unthinkable because of the consolatory nature of the work and the comforting influence of tradition in its reception. Both the editorial treatment and the performance came together to create an exhilarating new image of the work.
- [The Bethlehem Bach Choir: Christmas Concerts in Advent; Bach Festival, with a Performance of the Mass in B Minor in May](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/bethlehem-bach-choir-christmas-concerts-advent-bach-festival-performance-mass-b-minor-may/) - These weeks following following Easter have proven rich in musical events that transcend the usual rationales behind public performances, usually having something to do with attracting large crowds to hear prestigious musicians in prestigious venues, or the annual ritual of Handel's Messiah or one of Bach's Passions. I'm thinking of special occasions, either serving some higher human purpose or deeply rooted in the culture of a particular place—for example, a recent performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Westchester County, which was not only outstanding in itself, but held to benefit an especially inspiring cause...of which more in another place soon. I've already written about the special power of the Bach performances in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which have continued under various local auspices since at least 1823.
- [Serenade for Haiti, Directed and Written by Owsley Brown, at the Berkshire International Film Festival, June 3](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/serenade-for-haiti-directed-and-written-by-owsley-brown-at-the-berkshire-international-film-festival-june-3/) - Among the rich offerings of the 2017 Berkshire International Film Festival, one of the most fascinating and important films will be Owsley Brown's documentary, Serenade for Haiti. The film could be described as an extended visit to the École de Musique Sainte Trinité in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Mr. Brown, who had made other films about music and its role in human society and spirituality, first visited the school in 2006, and was, as he has said, "greatly affected by what [he] found there."
- [Limón Dance Company, Joyce Theater, May 2, 2017](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/limόn-dance-company-joyce-theater-may-2-2017/) - This program combines the contemporary with the classics in the first Joyce season under the Company’s new artistic director, Colin Connor. The final work of the altogether gripping evening was made in 2016 with choreography by Kate Ware. Night Light is partly set to the Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin from Biber’s “The Rosary” Sonata and partly to “A Song for Mick Kelly.” The athletic dancers, some of the women wearing what closely resembled black two-piece ‘bathing suits;’ the rest of the group in flowing dark and royal blue tops, weave and leap, almost fighting one another. The work is powerful and haunting. The other 2016 dance, Corvidae, choreographed by Mr. Connor, turns the dancers into Corvids, i.e., crows and ravens, who have been seen throughout the ages as messengers. The dark lighting and black costumes gave the six dancers an edge of menace further expressed by darting, flicking movements.
- [Silver Stream - Short Film: Grace Kiley - Writer, Director & Actor - Kickstarter Campaign ends on May 22!](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/silver-stream-short-film-grace-kiley-writer-director-actor-kickstarter-campaign-ends-may-22/) - Diagnosed with a progressive illness at the time of her daughter's birth, Anna made the decision to give her daughter, Una, up for adoption when she was just 2 weeks old. Twenty-seven years later, Anna feels compelled to contact Una in order to pass on her inheritance, "some good and some not so good." Anna's illness has begun to affect her daily function. She assumes her daughter was raised by the privileged family who adopted her, but soon discovers a very different story.
- [Deborah Stone: Still Exactly Where I Belong, at Don't Tell Mama](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/deborah-stone-still-exactly-belong-dont-tell-mama/) - I never seem to get to jazz and cabaret performances very often, but Deborah Stone’s performance, Still Exactly Where I Belong, at Don’t Tell Mama was memorable, and I’ll be ready for her next appearance, probably in the fall. This was a gem of charm, intimacy, and meticulous musical preparation combined with a personal, heartfelt relationship to the songs. Ms. Stone is a versatile artist, having interwoven careers as and actress, singer, and above all dancer. All were active—and interacting—in her show
- [Tracy Letts' August: Osage County at Williams, directed by Omar Sangare](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/tracy-letts-august-osage-county-williams-directed-omar-sangare/) - Every spring for some years now the brilliant Polish actor-director-playwright-poet Omar Sangare has created extraordinary productions at the ‘62 Center for the Performing Arts with his acting students at Williams College, and they keep on getting better. All of them have been highly unusual. There was a double-cast A Streetcar Named Desire: by that I mean that it was performed by two separate casts almost, but not quite simultaneously. Far from an weird distraction, the device emphasized the universality of the play...and gave the many interested student actors a chance to perform. There was Gombrowicz’s classic proto-absurdist farce, Princess Iwona, which was also performed on Broadway.
- [August: Osage County by Tracy Letts](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/06/august-osage-county-tracy-letts/) - As I mulled over the play I had just seen, the much-acclaimed August: Osage County, over some bad, overpriced feijoada, I found myself probing around for just what had been lacking in the evening. I left the Music Box Theater thinking that it was perhaps not that strong a play. I liked its length (or perhaps out on the Plains people would conceive it as breadth) and its rambling quality. Most of its dozen characters were unattractive in one way or another, but I’d grown fond of them over the past three hours. On the other hand, I perhaps felt mildly frustrated that I didn’t know more about the characters, that too much was left open. (I won’t retell the story here. If you can’t quite follow the following streamof dysfunctional relatives, you should see the play or read it. You won’t regret it.) I found myself wondering what brought Bev together with Violet in the the first place. There must have been something, before the pills and the alcohol took over.
- [The Ensemble for the Romantic Century presents The Dreyfus Affair at BAM](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/ensemble-romantic-century-presents-dreyfus-affair-bam/) - The Dreyfus Affair feels very appropriate in today’s xenophobic, anxious times. Combining live orchestral music, singing, spoken word, projections and elaborate period costumes , the production relates the chilling story of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a decorated French Jewish officer, who was falsely accused of high treason, arrested, speedily tried, convicted and imprisoned on the hell-hole of Devil’s Island. Written by Eve Wolf and directed by Donald T. Sanders, this multi-media production illuminates the 1894 events that had a decades-long reverberation in the political landscape of France and the rest of the world and still reverberates.
- [Fabio Luisi conducts the San Francisco Symphony with Igor Levit, piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/05/fabio-luisi-conducts-the-san-francisco-symphony-with-igor-levit-piano/) - Do Robert Schumann, a fabulous pianist, a conductor almost named "Fabulous" and the youthful Richard Strauss make for spring-evening concert perfection? Well yes, unless the evening is balmy.
- [The Rape of Europa, the Movie, a Neverending Story of Art Looting: Crimes of greed, pride, falsehood, and hypocrisy in the art world](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/rape-europa-nazi-art-looting-restitution/) - Ronald Lauder and Maria Altmann before Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
- [Rascals, an Inspired Restaurant and Performance Space in the Crossgates Mall, Albany (Permanently Closed)](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/rascals-an-inspired-restaurant-and-performance-space-in-the-crossgates-mall-albany/) - (Permanently Closed) In cooking, as in any art, you have to know the rules—the more profoundly the better—to break them. While en route, appropriately enough, to Albany, I heard a radio interview with the manager and the chef of a new restaurant near the University of Albany. As I threaded my way through the rolling hills and forests that separate the capital of New York State from the Berkshires, slowing in all the notorious speed traps, I found this interview unusually absorbing. The chef, Nicholas Armstrong, was impressively articulate about the science of cooking
- [Meet the Key Pianists Concert Series with a Memorable Recital by its Founder and Director, Terry Eder](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/04/key-pianists-concert-series-terry-eder/) - I'd like to harken back to another recent piano recital in Weill Hall, in which its fine Steinway was brought into a sound world quite different from those of Christina Kobb and Thomas Nickell, whom I heard play shortly before the artist in question—Terry Eder, a New York pianist who specializes in Hungarian piano music, beginning with Liszt, and including Dohnányi, Bartók, and Kodály.
- [A Crop of Recordings XIV: Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Brahms, and Wagner](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/04/crop-recordings-xiv-richard-strauss-bruckner-brahms-wagner/) - Here is a really lovely performance of Ein Heldenleben, perfectly recorded in Frankfurt’s Alte Oper. From the very first note—that rich ocean-liner steam whistle signifying a voyage through life—it’s satisfying—if, that it is—you like things a bit understated. You are sitting about row “K,” and the orchestra is laid out before you at a slight distance. Listeners familiar with the many videos of this orchestra on YouTube will not be disappointed at the fine balances and purring nature of the sound. This is a satiny, swift reading, gently beautiful, supple and romantic in an undemonstrative way. It reminds me of Reiner’s and Kempe’s versions, both of which bring the piece home similarly at around 45 minutes.
- [Kino!2017, a Festival of German Cinema at the Sunshine, Closes on April 6](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/04/kino2017-festival-german-cinema-sunshine-closes-april-6/) - For its fourth season as an independent festival, Kino!2017, has moved to everyone's favorite art house, the Sunshine Cinema, as congenial a venue as possible for the screenings and the inevitable lively discussion around them. Curated by New York film professionals—distributor Meghan Wurtz, journalist Karl Rozemeyer and festival consultant Marian Masone, Kino!2017 presents twelve feature-length films, including one North American premiere, five US premieres, four East coast premieres and two New York premieres, plus the Next Generation Short Tiger 2016 selection.
- [Thomas Nickell, Piano, and The Orchestra of the Swan, David Curtis, Conductor, in an Original Program of Mozart, Messiaen, Nickell, Cowell, Britten, David Matthews, and Wagner/Liszt](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/thomas-nickell-piano-orchestra-swan-david-curtis-conductor-original-program-mozart-messiaen-nickell-cowell-britten-david-matthews-wagnerliszt/) - At 18, Thomas Nickell, even in a world populated by numerous prodigies who began to play in public at very young ages, still deserves to be considered a young, emerging artist, and this concert showed him to be a notably mature and tasteful one. He is currently a student at the New School, Mannes College of Music, studying piano and composition, both with equal seriousness. He has already played programs in concert and with orchestra in the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Chicago, and has been honored as a Steinway artist and is represented by Alexander & Buono International. The concert, a repeat of his London debut, gave the full house something else to be grateful for: a visit from an outstanding British chamber orchestra—in this instance all strings—The Orchestra of the Swan, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, under the direction of its founder and music director, David Curtis, who is as enterprising and personable as he is musical.
- [Pianist Christina Kobb plays Schubert, Robert and Clara Schumann, Grieg, and Liszt in her Carnegie Hall Debut](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/pianist-christina-kobb-plays-schubert-robert-clara-schumann-grieg-liszt-carnegie-hall-debut/) - I recently heard three piano programs, almost back-to-back, in Weill Hall. Each pianist produced a strikingly different sound from the same instrument, Weill's beautiful house Steinway. The pianists and their programs were so very different that it is not so very difficult to resist the temptation to discuss them in a single review, although there are some common threads, for example Romanticism and Schubert. In fact, you'll find I'm writing rather a lot about those subjects at the moment.
- [Mind AND Matter: Sam & Dede, or My Dinner with André the Giant at 59 E 59](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/mind-matter-sam-dede-dinner-andre-giant-59-e-59/) - True story: Irish writer Samuel Beckett, who lived most of his life in France, met and befriended the son of a neighbor, a very large young man known as Andre the Giant. Beckett drove Andre, called Dede, to school in his truck because Dede’s huge size made riding the regular school bus impossible. During the drives together, Beckett and Andre spent a lot of their time talking about cricket.
- [Emmanuel Villaume leads the Prague Philharmonia in Smetana and Dvořák, with Gautier Capuçon, cello](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/emmanuel-villaume-leads-prague-philharmonia-smetana-dvorak-gautier-capucon-cello/) - must have been in a Fantasia mood for this program—funnybone at the ready. There was something cartoon-friendly about the array on stage Sunday afternoon—an orchestra half the usual size—an enormously tall conductor in black maitre d' tails with a huge bald head, black goatee and a tiny baton—a remarkably small cellist by his side. Were we about to hear a concert in caricature by the Katzenjammer Kids? It would seem so. My bad!
- [Manfred Honeck talks to Michael Miller about Mahler, Bruckner, and Conducting](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/manfred-honeck-talks-michael-miller-mahler-bruckner-conducting/) - Anyone who has heard Manfred Honeck conduct his own Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Heinz Hall or in their exemplary recordings on the Exton and Reference Recordings labels will know what a treasure he is for the world of music. This week he will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto with Inon Barnatan and Mahler's First Symphony. He has made something of a speciality of this composer, a fellow Austrian. His recorded cycle with Pittsburgh now includes Symphonies No. 1, 3, and 5. Maestro Honeck also has special insight into the work of Anton Bruckner, another fellow Austrian. He has so far recorded Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and looks forward to recording the Ninth. In this interview you will learn something about the care and intelligence he puts into preparing his performances and his particular feeling for these great composers.
- [Three Concerts at Camphill Ghent, two Past, one to Come](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/three-concerts-at-camphill-ghent-two-past-one-to-come/) - Off-season musical life is not as thin in the Hudson Valley as it is in the Berkshires, but, whatever the general situation, the Concerts at Camphill Ghent, founded and directed by pianist Gili Melamed-Lev, stand out for their exceptional quality, one month after another. As I have mentioned elsewhere, these concerts, which usually sell out weeks before the concert date, take place in the intimate performing arts hall of Camphill Ghent, a residential community for elders in Chatham, New York. This particular article will offer a preview of the upcoming March concert, which is actually based on an abbreviated version of the program the Lev-Evans Duo played at a house concert in Stockbridge last month, and reviews of two previous concerts at Camphill Ghent.
- [Sibelius I: Bard Music Festival 2011 - Jean Sibelius and his World](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/bard-music-festival-2011-jean-sibelius/) - One shouldn’t let anything get in the way of a Bard Music Festival—and the surrounding Summerscape opera, play, and dance performances, etc., least of all one’s preconceptions about composers. In one case only, Prokofiev (Bard Festival 2008), I approached the Festival with thoughts of taking a mildly rebarbative medicine, but I soon learned how wrong I was, thanks to the Russophile enthusiasm of my friend, Robert Kurilla, who has written about Prokofiev in the Review, and, of course, the lectures and programs of the Festival itself. In Prokofiev’s case the problem was that his best known works give an extremely limited, really inaccurate, idea of him and that his best work is little-known and rather challenging.
- [New York Theater Ballet at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/03/new-york-theater-ballet-92nd-street-y-harkness-dance-festival/) - One of the pleasures of this presentation was its immediacy as the small setting brought the dancers very close to the audience. To the performers' credit, the strain and difficulty of executing many challenging positions and lifts rarely showed.
- [Die Geierwally at the Bromberger Waldbühne in Bromberg, Austria](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/09/die-geierwally-at-the-bromberger-waldbuhne-in-bromberg-austria/) - Like the great migrations of the blue whale, the antelope, and the noble Canadian goose, come summer, European theater-makers flee the theater-laden capitals in flock and head to the countryside to make theater for the rural folk. So during my sojourn in Vienna, I too, took wing to the small hamlet Bromberg in search of the city’s thespians. An hour outside the city, I found the Bromberger Waldbühne, an outdoor theater with a sea of tables and benches for beer, goulash and chatter.
- [Martin McDonagh at his Beginnings and Today: The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Druid at BAM and Hangmen Projected.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/martin-mcdonagh-beginnings-today-beauty-queen-leenane-druid-bam-hangmen-projected/) - I only managed to get to The Beauty Queen of Leenane on its very last day at BAM, a Sunday matinee—in fact Super Bowl Sunday. This momentous annual event seemed to have little effect on McDonagh fans, and BAM's Harvey Theater was nearly full. The audience was of more than the usual interest, because, as the play took its course, many members of the audience seemed to know what was going to happen in advance. Only the special decorum of legitimate theater seemed to prevent some of them from calling out the lines ahead of the actors, as was the practice of denizens of the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square at the Study Period screenings of Casablanca. These people had seen the show at the BAM run at least once before, and in many cases, I'm sure, back in the late 1990s, when it catapulted its author Martin McDonagh to fame and fortune. On the other hand, the audience was alive to the affecting events in the story, gasping or ahhing at unpleasant turns of events, as they unfolded.
- [Ibsen, Strindberg and their Acolytes - a Retrospective](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/ibsen-strindberg-acolytes-retrospective/) - The double bill of early plays by Eugene O’Neill, brilliantly directed by Alex Roe, which recently closed at the Metropolitan Playhouse, appears as the answer to a question posed by another double bill (of sorts, one would have to say, since they are paired in repertory but not in a single performance) presented by the Theater for a New Audience of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) and Strindberg’s The Father (1887), and it makes sense to discuss them all together. The question is, “What next?”
- [Félicien David's Herculanum at the Wexford Festival: Opera Grand and Melodious](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/felicien-davids-herculanum-wexford-festival-opera-grand-melodious/) - Music festivals often pride themselves on reviving works that, for whatever combination of reasons, have fallen out of the repertory. One important French grand opera of 1859, Herculanum, by Félicien David, got its first recording two years ago and reached the opera stage—for the first time in nearly a century—at Wexford Festival Opera this past October. Reviewers of the recording, including New York Arts contributor Ralph P. Locke, were struck by the melodic richness of the music, the keenly characterized solo roles, and the imaginative use of orchestra and chorus. Reviewers of the Wexford production were more muted, though perhaps the low-budget and curiously updated production had something to do with that. Locke, who is a professor emeritus of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, contributed an essay to the WFO’s program book that gives a sense of this fascinating work. We reprint it here with the festival’s kind permission.
- [A Crop of Recordings XIII: Richard Strauss, Hans Rott, Alberto Ginastera, Robert Schumann, and Gabriel Fauré](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/crop-recordings-xiii-richard-strauss-hans-rott-alberto-ginastera-robert-schumann-gabriel-faure/) - This is a groundbreaking recording—and a wonderful one! I first became aware of Elektra on an old Fritz Reiner/Inge Borkh LP of excerpts. The unusual violence of Strauss’s harmonies appealed to my teenage ears. Not long after, Georg Solti taped the complete opera, though without, I felt, the same crushing power from the podium as Reiner. But the sound of the orchestral score remained with me, and I always hoped someone would put together a suite. It’s taken 54 years in my case—but here it is!
- [Christina Kobb Talks to Michael Miller about Historical Keyboard Technique](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/christina-kobb-talks-michael-miller-historical-keyboard-technique/) - The Norwegian pianist and scholar Christina Kobb came to wider attention in the United States when a New York Times writer picked up an article in a Scandinavian science magazine about neurological research carried out on her to analyze her movements as she played an electronic keyboard using modern and nineteenth century technique, which she has researched in her dissertation.
- [Keys to Romance, the Carnegie Hall Debut of Pianist Christina Kobb, Weill Hall, February 24, 2017](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/keys-romance-carnegie-hall-debut-pianist-christina-kobb-weill-hall-february-24-2017/) - On February 24 at 8PM, DCINY presents 19th-century piano technique expert Christina Kobb in a performance of her program titled Keys to Romance. The Norwegian pianist and scholar makes her Carnegie Hall debut performing an evening of Romantic piano works by Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Grieg, and Liszt.
- [The Young Pope HBO limited series. Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/young-pope-hbo-limited-series-written-directed-paolo-sorrentino/) - The Young Pope, widely greeted and at the same time widely dismissed as merely a visual spectacle, actually accomplishes something considerably deeper. It does for the papacy what Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) did for the decaying Ching dynasty and what Roberto Rossellini’s The Rise of Louis XIV (1966) did for the Sun King. In a lavish, slow-motion ritual where the protagonist is encased in a cocoon of surreal pomp and majesty, The Young Pope brings to bear the full panoply of cinema to ask how human existence created such a bizarrely inhuman situation.
- [The Museum Workout, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/02/museum-workout-monica-bill-barnes-company-metropolitan-museum-art/) - I saw Monica Bill Barnes & Company a few years ago when the troupe performed Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host which I found very entertaining. This experience was just as engaging but in a very different way. About fifteen women gathered before the museum opened and were ushered to the Education Area to put away coats and anything else we'd brought. We were told to wait "and stretch if you like." After a brief introduction from Robbie Saenz de Viteri, the company's Creative Producing Director, we were led to the foot of the great stairs where Monica Bill Barnes and her longtime dance partner, Anna Bass, both in sequined gowns and sneakers, greeted us.
- [Riccardo Chailly talks to Michael Miller about his upcoming (2010) tour of the United States with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and more.](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/02/riccardo-chailly-interview-michael-miller-2010-us-tour-leipzig-gewandhaus-orchestra/) - Riccardo Chailly, not only one of the great conductors of our time, but one of an even smaller group who have exercised a truly formative influence on contemporary musical life through his championship of twentieth and twenty-first century music—through his many recordings, most of them for Decca, which he has produced since the beginnings of his career in the late 1970s, and through his long tenure as chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam (1988-2004), and now, since 2005, as Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. If you survey the most prominent music publications, you will find many accolades, "artist of the year," "best recording," etc., and you will find many of his recordings recommended as the best available or the "recommended choice." His fresh, individual interpretations, always based on a close study of the score, as well as his close relationship with a single recording company over many years, have resulted in recordings in which his ideas and the sound of his orchestras and their halls are communicated with exceptional vividness and presence.
- [Glimmerglass Festival 2016 - Opera for the Inner Birdwatcher...and the Rest of Us!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/glimmerglass-festival-2016-birds/) - Rossini’s sinfonia/overture has survived as a concert favorite, even while the opera itself is rarely performed. Following a sequence of military music (the opera premiered shortly after the Napoleonic Wars), all becomes light and air. The sly sounding “magpie” theme, which ensues, was famously used in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and is currently heard as the theme music to cable TV’s channel, Classic Arts Showcase. During the overture we are given a pantomime with Ms. Gillentine’s stylized nest forming a striking mise-en-scène.
- [Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill, North Carolina - Two Orchestras, East and West](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/01/memorial-hall-chapel-hill-north-carolina-two-orchestras-east-west/) - I had the pleasure of visiting Chapel Hill at a festive, eclectic time early last December. It was exam week at the University of North Carolina. This won't quite be a review as a result—more a series of hopeful impressions from that impressive musical crucible. Old friend Tonu Kalam, who leads the UNC Orchestra, and new wife Karyn Ostrom, who plays violin in it, pulled out all the stops for my visit. In the course of several days, I took in Kalam's orchestra at rehearsal and concert, witnessed a conducting class, attended a student chamber recital and heard the China Philharmonic perform a new concerto written for UNC pianist Clara Yang. I came away impressed, as I always do at UNC, rejuvenated by the high level of musical interest and talent at play on campus.
- [Bill Charlap with Carol Sloane at Jazz Standard](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/01/bill-charlap-carol-sloane-jazz-standard/) - To call Bill Charlap and Carol Sloan total professionals is damn with faint praise. Both Charlap, a jazz pianist who is a two—time Grammy Award nominee, and Carol Sloan, whose song styling has, if anything, gotten even more deft and luxurious over the years, made the kind of music that doesn't come out to play very often.
- [Bill Viola: The Moving Portrait: Smithsonian: National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, November 18, 2016 - May 7, 2017.](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/01/bill-viola-moving-portrait-smithsonian-national-portrait-gallery-washington-dc-november-18-2016-may-7-2017/) - Bill Viola, one of the most sought-after artists internationally, early selected a contemporary medium to address broad humanistic questions. Embracing global perspectives that include Christian theology, Zen Buddhism, and Islamic Sufi mysticism, his videos address our hybrid existence as matter and thought, our memories, empathy with others, and transitions through birth, death and aging. Organized by Asma Naeem, curator of prints, drawings and media art, in consultation with Viola’s creative partner, Kira Perov and the Bill Viola Studio, the exhibition displays eleven works that span the artist’s early career to the present. Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, expressed his delight in inviting “visitors to enter the museum’s newly created media galleries to experience portraiture in its most telling and current form: moving revelations of the human body and spirit that befit our digital age.” In the accompanying 20-page brochure, Naeern provides a contextualizing overview; the artist comments simply on the action in each piece. The viewer is encouraged to make associations, a direction Viola advocated in an earlier interview: “images have their life because they’re untethered and free floating” (video: Bill Viola and the making of Emergence by Mark Kidel, 2003).
- [New Ohio Theatre presents George & Co. in HOLDEN, written and directed by Anisa George](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/01/new-ohio-theatre-presents-george-co-holden-written-directed-anisa-george/) - J. D. Salinger has been dead for seven years, and his admirers have long given up hope of an unpublished masterpiece emerging from the bunker in which he spent the greater part of his last forty years, struggling with drafts, ideas, and obsessions. His much-publicized life in isolation, where he vainly attempted to wring out another success of the order of The Catcher in the Rye acquired a universality as a Promethean myth of the agonies of the creative life. Whether the artist manages to keep inspiration alive or has in truth dried up, life is by no means easy. Salinger's was a particularly American myth, foreshadowed by Ernest Hemingway and his decline in his later years and perhaps Melville, by those would discount Pierre and The Confidence-Man.
- [Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Cheek by Jowl, at BAM](https://newyorkarts.net/2017/01/shakespeares-winters-tale-cheek-jowl-bam/) - The Winter’s Tale has had a checkered career over the centuries. Its bipartite structure, with two lines of action, separated by many years, of strongly contrasting character offended the Aristotelian canon all-too-blatantly for the classicizing generations of the Restoration and Enlightenment. Acts I through III have every promise of ending with the most bitterly tragic outcome. This current is diverted to a happy ending in the last two acts, introduced by yet a third genre, the pastoral, in a staged enactment of a sheep-shearing festival. When the play began to find its way to the stage in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, producers and actors saw in it a vehicle for over-the-top, classically inspired spectacle, as well as one of the great Shakespearean roles, Leontes, who is Iago and Othello rolled into one. It provided a powerful vehicle for Garrick, Kemble, and Kean. And three rich female roles as well, None of which were lost on the great actresses of the past 250 years.
- [Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale at the Old Vic: The Bridge Project Revisited](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/08/shakespeares-winters-tale-bridge-old-vic/) - I've gone to a lot of Shakespeare this summer, four plays in a month, but nothing had me more curious than the Old Vic's transatlantic production of The Winter's Tale. It's one half of the Bridge Project, which combines British and American actors in productions that appeared first in New York and now in London. Winter's Tale alternates with Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, and although various critics prefer one over the other, all agree that Simon Russell Beale, as King Leontes, has been stellar. He would almost have to be, given the impossibility of the role. Othello's jealousy seems improbable to many, spurred as it is by a stolen handkerchief embroidered with strawberries, but Iago's malice ignites it and keeps it burning.
- [Please give generously to support our publication and our events!](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/donations-new-york-arts-berkshire-review-publications-concerts/) - Please give generously to support The Arts Press publications, New York Arts and the Berkshire Review! Help us pay our writers, present our events, and bring you the best writing on the arts we can create.
- [2016 in retrospect — The Bard Music Festival: Giacomo Puccini and his World](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/2016-retrospect-bard-music-festival-giacomo-puccini-world/) - If advance gossip is any indicator, this year's Bard Festival, devoted to Giacomo Puccini and his World, was one of the most controversial. "Puccini! Controversial!" You say, "There's not really enough in him to have a controversy about, is there? Those sappy tear-jerkers speak for themselves." In fact there was a lot of grumbling. Some festival regulars stayed away, or dragged themselves to only one concert, the one that included pieces by Dallapiccola, Pizzetti, and Petrassi. Even with these absentees the Festival sold out, or came close to selling out. Most of the concerts and the panel discussions were packed.
- [The Dessoff Choirs' Messiah Sing, 2017, Malcolm J. Merriweather, Music Director, Conducting](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/dessoff-choirs-messiah-sing-2017-malcolm-j-merriweather-music-director-conducting/) - For me, the holiday season is officially here when I sing the Messiah, George Frederic Handel's oratorio composed in 1741 that has become one of the most performed works in Western choral music. This year I was fortunate enough to join the Dessoff Choirs under the direction of Malcolm J. Merriweather, Musical Director. Some of the group that assembled at Union Theological Seminary regularly sing with Dessoff; others, like me, were rank amateurs whose voices have darkened over the years but whose enthusiasm remains robust. It doesn't matter in the least and there are enough strong voices to mask any missed notes from people like me.
- [A Crop of Recordings XII: D'Indy, Roussel, Stravinsky, Schreker, Prokofiev](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/crop-recordings-xii-dindy-roussel-stravinsky-schreker-prokofiev/) - Vincent d'Indi in 1910 D’INDY Symphony No. 2. Souvenirs. Istar. Fervaal: Prelude • Jean-Luc Tingaud, conductor; Scottish National Orchestra • NAXOS 8.573522 (80:03) As I soak-in timeless Wagnerian caresses from D’Indy’s Fervaal Prelude, it strikes me I’d be happy in D’Indy’s rather normal dream world—but not in Wagner’s! Many post-Wagnerian French composers had
- [Manchester by the Sea, Written and Directed by Kenneth Lonergan](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/manchester-sea-written-directed-kenneth-lonergan/) - A plot about the walking wounded is an indie staple, and Manchester by the Sea wears no external garb beyond the stereotype. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) isn’t an Iraq War vet or a widower whose dead wife has left him bereft. At first we don’t know why he’s wounded—the opening scenes are of a taciturn, truculent janitor in a small apartment building in Quincy, outside Boston. Lee is thirty-something, scruffy, eyes averted, and armed with a huge chip on his shoulder that causes him to lash out at a bitchy tenant with a defiant lack of remorse. In his psyche the tarp is nailed down at all four corners unless a gust of wind flaps one up.
- [Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, with Philip Seymour Hoffman](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/paul-thomas-anderson-master-philip-seymour-hoffman/) - Apocalypse then. As an act of recollection, The Master captures the Fifties with perfect pitch, all the more remarkable because the film’s creator wasn’t there. Two stories collide from opposite directions. One is the story of an invisible man, a World War II veteran who never recovers from combat. The other is a charlatan savant skimming the gullible and rising to become a cult leader, the Master of the title. One life has slipped through the cracks, as adrift as Okies in the Dust Bowl but desolately lonely. The other life is a round-the-clock power play to grab the golden ring.
- [I Giullari di Piazza and Alessandra Belloni to Perform  La Cantata dei Pastori (The Shepherd's Cantata) at the Theater for the New City, December 16-18, 21, 22](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/giullari-di-piazza-alessandra-belloni-perform-la-cantata-dei-pastori-shepherds-cantata-theater-new-city-december-16-18-21-22/) - Come back in time to Southern Italy with Alessandra Belloni and I Giullari di Piazza, the renowned Italian music/theater/dance company, when they present their traditional Southern Italian "La Cantata dei Pastori," (The Shepherd's Cantata) a musical family holiday delight, at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Streets). Five performances, December 16 & 17 at 8 PM; December 18 at 5 PM; December 21 & 22 at 8 PM. Starring as Mary in this unique production is the internationally renowned singer, percussionist, author, and director, Alessandra Belloni, an acknowledged authority on traditional Southern Italian arts, co-founder of I Giullari di Piazza (The Jesters of the Square), and solo guest performer in venues around the world.
- [B. F. Kiefrich, Spam Artist, Remembered](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/12/b-f-kiefrich-spam-artist-remembered/) - You may wonder about my interest in this traditional American delicacy. It comes not from the interests I share with Sgr. Rossini, but from my experiences as a curator in the Cleveland Museum of Art. As my colleagues and I pushed papers and watched western civilization melt into Lake Erie, a remarkable artist from Akron came to our attention. This artist, who worked under the name B. F. Kiefrich, produced sculptures from Spam®, among them an exquisite gilt miniature Book of Hours, known as the Codex Spambergensis and a porcine version of Nefertiti’s lips.
- [Sir Simon Rattle's Farewell Tour with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra: Two Concerts in Davies Hall, San Francisco](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/sir-simon-rattles-farewell-tour-berlin-philharmonic-orchestra-two-concerts-davies-hall-san-francisco/) - It was a tease this time—opening with minimalist Boulez. But it was worth it. Anyone growing up past mid-century recalls an era when whole portions of the German symphonic experience were seeming property of the Berlin Philharmonic and its legendary conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Put a Berlin Philharmonic LP of Brahms, Strauss, Beethoven or Bruckner on the turntable, and the golden DGG logo virtually guaranteed this orchestra would sound richer, probe more deeply than any other and elicit sheer heft without parallel. No string or brass section would glow as beautifully or emit more power. If that didn't convey authority, as it surely did to anyone with good ears, Karajan's mesmeric space-commander hair, ascetic tunic and "visionary closed eyes" (interesting notion, that) encouraged along the way our notion of insights to be found within—most of them worthy and real.
- [Artist's Books by Dan Rose; Arbitrary Pleasures-Plaisir Arbitraire, Photon Ecstasy (HD 7924) at the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/artists-books-dan-rose-arbitrary-pleasures-plaisir-arbitraire-photon-ecstasy-hd-7924-van-pelt-library-university-pennsylvania/) - Arbitrary Pleasures-Plaisir Arbitraire is the most recent exhibition of artist's books by Dan Rose with a performance by New York Composer-Performers l’Artiste ordinaire (Melissa Grey & David Moneau). Through Dan Rose’s initiative, the Kislak Center has now acquired the collected papers of Harry Matthews the first American member of Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Oulipo, a group of mostly French avant-garde novelists and poets who invented or revived techniques that influenced the trajectory of 20th and 21st century literature.
- [A Generous Collection of Works by Marie Jaëll from the Centre de Musique Romantique Française (Palazzetto Bru Zane, Venice)/Ediciones Singulares](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/generous-collection-works-marie-jaell-centre-de-musique-romantique-francaise-palazetto-bru-zane-veniceediciones-singulares/) - Lovers of nineteenth-century music will want to know about the remarkable work of the Centre de Musique Romantique Française. The Center, founded in 2009, is run primarily by scholars from France but is located in Venice, at the Palazetto Bru Zane. It engages in research—and provides financial support—for concerts, opera performances, print publications, and numerous recordings. Many of these recordings are multiple-CD sets that come with a small hardbound book containing—in French and English—informative essays and sung texts and translations. The Center organizes these CD/book combinations into three categories: “French Opera” (11 releases so far), “[Composer] Portraits” (3 releases), and “Prix de Rome” (6 releases—compositions written by student composers at the Paris Conservatoire, such as the young Debussy). All the CD/books are produced and published by the Center itself, but Amazon.com and other record distributors tend to refer to them, instead, by the name of the firm that manufactures the book: Ediciones Singulares (El Escorial, Spain).
- [Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic: A musical experience of a lifetime](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/rattle-berlin-philharmonic-boston/) - After the stunning concert with Simon Rattle leading the Berliner Philharmoniker at Boston’s Symphony Hall—Pierre Boulez’s scintillating Éclat followed (without intermission) by Mahler’s black sheep Symphony No. 7—I couldn’t stop shaking. There’s a lot of good music in Boston, but this was different—on a whole other level. And the audience knew it, felt it. Wasn’t it just what we needed to hear after the bruising election? People were not only cheering but weeping and hugging each other.
- [We Remember, The Dessoff Choirs](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/remember-dessoff-choirs/) - To say that the performance, on the eve of the presidential election, honoring President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was outstanding is a gigantic understatement.
- [Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the San Francisco Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/pablo-heras-casado-san-francisco-symphony-2/) - Pablo Heras-Casado. Photo © Fernando Sancho. Davies Hall, San Francisco October 19, 2016 The San Francisco Symphony Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor Alisa Weilerstein, cello Mozart — Symphony No. 29 in A major, K.201 (1774) Schumann — Cello Concerto in A minor, Opus 129 (1850) Dvořák — Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Opus 70 (1885) Pablo
- [A Crop of Recordings XI](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/crop-of-recordings-11/) - Dvořák DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 and Op. 72 Complete • Antal Dorati, conductor; Minneapolis Symphony • MERCURY LIVING PRESENCE 4343842 (68:00) It would be hard to suppose people don’t dance with so much vigor as in the past, but you’d be tempted to think so hearing these white hot versions of the Dvořák Slavonic
- [Danielle Kipnis' Matters of Facts at the Center for Performance Research](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/danielle-kipnis-matters-facts-center-performance-research/) - Matters of Facts, a multimedia performance, incorporates dance, music both live and electronic, projections, video and snippets of news as broadcast during and after WWII.
- [Bravo to Melvin Stecher and Norman Horowitz for their admirable New York International Piano Competition](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/11/bravo-melvin-stecher-norman-horowitz-admirable-new-york-international-piano-competition/) - Almost any seasoned music lover will at some time complain about the globally-renowned musicians who play at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall, or Tanglewood. You’ll hear that the players in this orchestra or that are cynical and bored, that a particular violinist over the years has developed into a parody of herself, or that a certain pianist is going through a dry period and that the life has gone out of his playing. The most efficacious antidote for that malaise is to seek out young musicians who are still enthusiastic and still believe that they have to do their best all the time. We are all thrilled by the brilliant young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center.
- [Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama at the Argentinian Consulate](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/anabella-lenzudancedrama/) - Anabella Lenzu describes herself as a dancer, writer and choreographer to which should be added bringer of joy. Argentinian-born Lenzu, who has lived and worked in Italy, Chile, New York and elsewhere, presented a retrospective from her last ten years of work.
- [The Concerts at Camphill Ghent 2016 - 2017: Season Opening Concert Coming Up, October 15, 3pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/the-concerts-at-camphill-ghent-2016-2017-season-opening-concert-coming-up-october-15-3pm/) - A relatively new chamber music series in our area, The Concerts at Camphill Ghent, extending through the rather sparse autumn through spring months, has just recently come to my attention, and it looks well worth a season subscription. Every concert is compelling, and they all fit together as a whole. Clearly some strong consideration has gone into the selection of both the music and the musicians. The series was founded and is managed by a musician, the outstanding pianist, Gili Melamed-Lev, who oversees the programming and participates extensively herself. This is by no means exceptional in itself, but the particular stamp she has put on it stands out.
- [Intimate Conversations, Bach and Beyond:
 Bach, Kabalevsky, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, and Telemann — Kenneth Cooper and Friends at Camphill Ghent](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/intimate-conversations-bach-and-beyond
-bach-kabalevsky-stravinsky-mendelssohn-telemann-kenneth-cooper-friends-camphill-ghent/) - It is perhaps best to begin this review with a word of practical advice. This concert was sold out. The hall at Camphill Ghent is rather small. Seating is general. So for future events, you would do well to buy your tickets early and to arrive early. But that should be no hardship. It will give you all the more opportunity to meet members of the Camphill Ghent community and others who live in the area, and that can only add to the pleasure of the concert. As far as seating goes, all the instruments in this program, with their wide but compatible range of color and dynamics came through with clarity, warmth, and strength, and I got the impression that that obtains in every part of this intimate space.
- [Patrick Dougherty’s Stickworks Augments the Experience of Fall in Massachusetts](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/10/patrick-doughertys-stickworks-augments-experience-fall-massachusetts/) - Patrick Dougherty has been making popular installations over a 30-year career in the tradition of Earthworks. Raised and educated in North Carolina (he resides in Chapel Hill), he began with a hand-crafted house in the 1970’s and a decade later was showing human stick figures positioned or standing in chairs. His first works were displayed in art galleries and at art centers before he became engaged with architectural follies that are often massive structures that leap from tree to tree, cover facades of buildings, or stand as independent houses or similarly monumental forms. His output in the past decade numbers nine to ten installations a year—each occupying about three weeks of uninterrupted effort. As well as the hundreds of sculptures in the United States, his work has been enthusiastically received internationally in almost every country in Western Europe as well as Japan and South Korea.
- [Women in Motion presents Soaking Wet](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/women-motion-presents-soaking-wet/) - Of the three works presented as Part B of Soaking Wet's Women in Motion series, the second offering, “Felt Shirt,” choreographed by Brynne Billingsley together with dancers Jenny Campbell, Amy Larson, and Kristen Rizzuto, was the winner.
- [Nadejda Vlaeva plays piano music by Vladimir Drozdoff and Sergei Bortkiewicz, with Schubert and Liszt at Zankel Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/nadejda-vlaeva-plays-piano-music-vladimir-drozdoff-sergei-bortkiewicz-schubert-liszt-zankel-hall/) - A plentiful audience at Zankel Hall last week enjoyed Nadejda Vlaeva’s program of attractive salon pieces by two forgotten Russian éxiles, Vladimir Drozdoff (Saratov 1882 -New York 1960) and Sergei Bortkiewicz (Kharkiv 1877-Vienna 1952), and a colorful Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt (a rarely played one)—all introduced by one of Schubert's most profound sonatas, the G Major, D. 894, sometimes known as the "Fantasie," a name given it by its first publisher because of its meditative first movement. There could be no doubt that the curtain-raiser was the most significant work on the program, but the centerpiece was nonetheless the selection of shortish rarities by the two Russians. Their music has much in common. Both are rooted in the nineteenth century, with little or nothing traceable to the musical trends that emerged after 1910, or later. Although they were younger than Rachmaninoff, who was plagued by his own conservatism, their music is even more retardataire. This is not in itself a fault, although one can understand why their music failed to reach a wider audience in the age of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Both Drozdoff and Bortkiewicz were undoubtedly fine craftsmen and showed a deep understanding of the piano in the great Russian tradition.
- [A Crop of Recordings X](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/crop-recordings-x/) - This CD has already become a favored and frequented member of my collection. Chandos has a long and successful history of recording the BBC Philharmonic, but this is the first recording I’ve encountered from their new venue in MediaCity, Salford. I’m happy to report that the transparency, fine balances and smooth listenability of the old Studio 3 are alive and well in the new facility. And the performances, under recently appointed Music Director Juanjo Mena, are as idiomatic and atmospheric as one could hope for.
- [The Life Ecstatic: Judith Schaechter at Claire Oliver Gallery, 513 West 26th Street. New York, Sept 9 - October 22.](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/life-ecstatic-judith-schaechter-claire-oliver-nyc/) - All artists strive to depict the human condition; Judith Schaechter does this in a series of extraordinary narratives in stained glass that address life, consciousness, and the unending richness of created form. A recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts awards as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, Schaechter teaches in the Craft and Material Studies department at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Her recent show at Claire Oliver Gallery focuses on flight and space, actual or imagined in new and brilliant ways. Birds rule throughout! Schaechter admits that she has recently become a bird watcher although she always enjoyed animals, even as a teenager. She confides that a bird’s shape is appealing—a living form but without the complex appendages of arms and legs (hard to draw).
- [​Thorns of the Crown, Choreographed and Staged by Ramon Oller](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/​thorns-crown-choreographed-staged-ramon-oller/) - The phrase “less is more," attributed to many sources, is very appropriate for Thorns of the Crown. The dance is vaguely about royal power—wanting it, getting it, losing it. This is a strong theme but the piece is a potpourri of steps, sounds, ideas, music and musical styles and would be stronger had it focused on fewer. Sounds include clashing swords and whinnying horses with snatches of spoken Shakespeare including Macbeth and Hamlet, with “To Be or Not to Be” voiced by Kenneth Branagh. Music runs the gamut from quasi- (or perhaps genuine) ecclesiastical to medieval selections to pipes and flutes to a blend of original compositions by composers Thomas Lentakis and Bruno Axel with too-abrupt shifts that are jolting.
- [Macbeth—An original ballet by Francis Patrelle Adapted from the Play by William Shakespeare](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/macbeth-original-ballet-francis-patrelle-adapted-play-william-shakespeare/) - Macbeth, by Francis Patrelle Macbeth An original ballet by Francis Patrelle adapted from the play by William Shakespeare Kaye Playhouse September 15, 2016 A balletic retelling, Dances Patrelle sets Shakespeare's Macbeth to a recorded, patchwork score by Tchaikovsky. In the early scenes, performances are pale with repetitious choreography but the work picks up steam
- [Mozart Dances by the Mark Morris Dance Group at Mostly Mozart, Lincoln Center, August 26, 2016](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/09/mozart-dances-mark-morris-dance-group-mostly-mozart-lincoln-center-august-26-2016/) - Many choreographers go out of their way to avoid the music of Mozart fearing their work won't (or can't) approach the same level of artistry. Happily, Mark Morris is not among them. His Mozart Dances, originally commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna and London's Barbican Centre ten years ago, has dancers swirling and bouncing through a piano sonata and two piano concertos, almost all with the inspired touch of two masters.
- [Picholine](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/03/picholine/) - It didn't take long for Picholine, after it opened in October 1993, to acquire the reputation and aura of an institution. Its original decor included old master paintings and tapestries or reasonable facsimiles of them, chandeliers, and heavy moldings—which made it look as if it had been there forever. While this interior may have conjured up some idea of a Provençal estate, the region is now present primarily in the subtle color scheme of the fabric-covered walls, which recall the variegated tints of the picholine olive: purple, grey, boysenberry and so forth. Chef/proprietor Terrence Brennan had the rooms entirely redecorated in 2006, producing a quieter, simpler, darker interior, which also looks as if it had been there forever, but also looks thoroughly fresh and up-to-date.
- [A Crop Of Recordings IX](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/08/crop-of-recordings-9/) - Johannes Brahms BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1. 4 Ballades • Paul Lewis (piano), Daniel Harding, conductor; Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra • HARMONIA MUNDI HMC902191 (70:09) Call me a fool for love, but I’ve been listening raptly to this CD for days without entirely understanding why. A full explanation only dawns on me now. The Brahms
- [Discoveries and Restorations from Universal Pictures at MoMA, beginning with King of Jazz](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/discoveries-restorations-universal-pictures-moma-beginning-king-jazz/) - Dave Kehr, the curator of MoMA's fascinating series of recently rediscovered and restored films from Universal Pictures, has decided to bookend the month-long event with musicals, the last genre most people would associate with the studio that produced Dracula and Frankenstein. It begins with the much-anticipated premiere of the restoration of King of Jazz (released April 19, 1930), a musical review dominated by the expansive figure of Paul Whiteman, the band leader, today best remembered as the patron of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The audiences at the two sold-out screenings this past Friday and Saturday—at least on Saturday, when I was present—applauded with a warmth that went beyond the aesthetic or the historical. Each one of the twenty individual acts in the movie received its own applause, as if we were back in a vaudeville house of yesteryear. We even laughed at the jokes, some of which were decidedly musty.
- [A Crop of Recordings VIII](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/07/crop-recordings-viii/) - “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.
- [Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at Glimmerglass](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/07/sondheim-sweeney-todd-glimmerglass/) - 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 …”
- [Where’s Charley? by George Abbott and Frank Loesser at City Center Encores!](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/wheres-charley-by-george-abbott-and-frank-loesser-at-city-center-encores/) - Sometimes it can be the simplest gesture that tips off an audience they’re in for a theatrical treat. In the recent City Center Encores! revival of Where’s Charley? the clue took place in the opening quartet in which two young couples alternated in duet. When they weren’t singing, the performers pulled their chests up high, linked arms and bounced subtly and elegantly on their toes in time to the music. Here was imaginative choreography where an understated move (think Fosse’s hat-tilt) said everything! Here were singers who could dance! With just one exception, the entire performance lived up to its early promise of stylish fun.
- [Catch Me If You Can...perhaps literally...on Broadway](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/catch-me-if-you-can-perhaps-literally-on-broadway/) - Norbert Leo Butz as Agent Carl Hanratty in Catch Me If You Can. Photo Joan Marcus Catch Me If You Can Book by Terrence McNally Music by Marc Shaiman Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman Choreography by Jerry Mitchell Directed by Jack O’Brien With Norbert Leo Butz, Aaron Tveit, Kerry Butler, Tom Wopat,
- [Where’s Charley? by George Abbott and Frank Loesser at City Center Encores!](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/wheres-charley-by-george-abbott-and-frank-loesser-at-city-center-encores-2/) - Rob McClure and Ensemble in "Where's Charley?" New York City Center. Photo Joan Marcus. Where’s Charley? at City Center Encores! New York City, March 16-20, 2011 Based on Brandon Thomas’ Charley's Aunt Book by George Abbott Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser Cast: Sebastian Arcelus, Jeff Brooks, Rebecca Luker, Dakin Matthews, Rob McClure, Howard
- [Stephen Sondheim's Follies at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/sondheim-follies-broadway/) - Musical jelly beans are scattered all over Broadway. If well done, these shows are colorful and fun to eat. They taste good going down, give you a temporary high but ultimately are empty calories. They leave you with nothing. Then there’s the current revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. You might not be able to hum all its songs as you exit the theatre, but you’ll surely be thinking Sondheim, feeling Sondheim. And for many days to come you’ll be reflecting on all he has to say about human follies, relationships and, depending on your age, your own life choices
- [Chaplin the Musical, at the Barrymore Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/chaplin-musical-barrymore-theatre/) - Rob McClure as Charlie Chaplin. Photo © 2012 Joan Marcus. Chaplin Barrymore Theatre Rob McClure - Charlie Chaplin Jim Borstelmann - Alf Reeves Jenn Colella - Hedda Hopper Erin Mackey - Oona O’Neill Michael McCormick - Max Sennett, Charlie Chaplin Sr., McGranery Christiane Noll - Hannah Chaplin Hayley Podschun - Mildred Harris Zachary Unger -
- [A Revised Brigadoon: An Important Musical Theater Milestone](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/revised-brigadoon-important-musical-theatre-milestone/) - Sacrilege! Impertinence! Brigadoon, that beloved 1947 Golden Age musical about a Scottish town that awakens only once a century, has been rewritten! Ignoring silent protests and fears of Brigadoon fans everywhere, the Goodman Theatre of Chicago is presenting a new production with a new book. Hold on to your bagpipes—they made it even better.
- [On the Town – How To Do It Right](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/on-the-town/) - On The Town, Leonard Bernstein’s first musical, opened on Broadway on December 28, 1944, during WWII. The show began then and now with the Star Spangled Banner to honor country and the armed forces.
- [Saturday Night, Stephen Sondheim’s 1954 Musical](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/saturday-night-stephen-sondheim-1954-musical/) - Stephen Sondheim was just 24 years old when he wrote three songs on spec for the Broadway-bound musical Saturday Night. It became his first post-collegiate musical. The show, based on the play Front Porch in Flatbush by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein never made it to Broadway – then or now. Death, disease, and lack of funding all got in its way. The late 1990s saw both a London and Chicago production. In February of 2000 the show finally had its New York premiere to celebrate Sondheim’s 70th birthday. By then he had written Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984) and Into the Woods (1987) to name a few.
- [A Reimagined Side Show Returns to Broadway](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/reimagined-side-show-returns-broadway/) - The original Side Show was an anomaly on Broadway. Although it opened to rave reviews in 1997, it was a mega-flop. Hardly anyone wanted to see a show about “Siamese” twins, freaks, and it closed after only 122 performances and a $6.8 million loss. Now Side Show has been totally reimagined with a new director, a new choreographer, and several new songs. The show has evolved. And so has its audience. We’re a more diverse, open, and tolerant society with a much broader definition of “normal.” The headline of the original review in The New York Times said “Illuminating the Freak in Everyone.” The perspective of that headline today would surely change the words to “Illuminating the Humanity in …”
- [Comden and Green's On The 20th Century Revived by the Roundabout, with Kristen Chenoweth, Peter Gallagher, and Andy Karl](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/20th-century-roundabout-kristen-chenoweth/) - A main curtain that challenges the Chrysler Building in Art Deco beauty. Four luggage-tossing, red-capped porters who tap dance and sing their way across the stage. Then the big reveal of the huge 20th Century Limited train itself—blue-gray metallic, slanted out toward the audience under the black iron and glass ceiling. Surely this set, which appears only once in the show, is the most magnificent Broadway has seen in years.
- [A new Golden Age Broadway musical — An American in Paris at the Palace Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/04/an-american-in-paris-palace-theatre/) - It could have been created during the Golden Age of Broadway, so seamlessly integrated is the extraordinary, ballet-driven musical An American in Paris. The George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin score would have been enough by itself. Add to that the dancing, singing, acting, lighting, costumes and scenery (which seems to dance as well) all built on the vision of the newest brilliant choreographer-director, and the effect is overwhelmingly thrilling. Welcome to the age of Christopher Wheeldon on Broadway.
- [Something Rotten at the St. James Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/04/something-rotten-st-james-theatre/) - You’ll get a kick out of Something Rotten if you brush up your Shakespeare once you decide whether you want to be or not to be in attendance. If you get what’s going on in the previous sentences, then Something Rotten may be a show for you. It is packed with inside jokes — Shakespearean jokes, musical theatre jokes, gay jokes, feminist jokes, Jewish jokes, Puritan jokes, rock star jokes, star-crossed lover jokes and some just plain jokes. More than any show in recent memory your enjoyment of Something Rotten depends on where you’re coming from.
- [A Musical Version of Doctor Zhivago at the Broadway Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/04/musical-version-doctor-zhivago-broadway-theatre/) - It begins with a funeral. It ends with a funeral. In between are jarring gun shots, explosions, fire, war, revolution, murder, suicide, blood, death—and everywhere passion, passion for a loved one, passion for a cause, passion for a home. The story of Doctor Zhivago, adapted from the movie based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, is huge, sweeping in scope. Even with a few lovely musical moments and some fine performances, this is a heavy, heavy evening in the theater.
- [Finding Neverland —a New Musical at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/04/finding-neverland-musical-luntfontanne-theatre/) - How much Peter Pan is too much Peter Pan? We’ve been inundated for decades. The Mary Martin Peter Pan was later followed by Cathy Rigby in the same show. Then came Peter and The Starcatcher, “a grown-up’s prequel to Peter Pan.” This past holiday season Peter Pan was performed live on television. Somewhere in there was the movie of Finding Neverland and now —the Broadway musical based on that movie.
- [Fun Home at Circle in the Square Following a Long Run at The Public Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/fun-home/) - It’s not what you would expect of a Broadway musical. No dancing-singing chorus. No chorus, actually, and barely any real dancing. But singing? Oh yes. Wonderful singing that projects Alison Bechdel’s story with moving honesty, deep-felt emotion and palpable joy. We alternate among three stages of Alison’s life, her pre-teen years, her college years and her adulthood looking back on her childhood and family.
- [The King and I in Revival at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/king-revival-vivian-beaumont-theatre-lincoln-center/) - Is a puzzlement – why Barlett Sher and Michael Yeargan, the Tony award winning director and set designer of South Pacific, respectively, would create such a sparse scenic design for The King and I. The stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre is over 3,500 square feet – and much of the time (in the palace and in the forest) all we see on the large portion that thrusts out into the audience is a black floor with a lonely actor or two singing upon it.
- [HAMILTON: An American Musical — at the Richard Rodgers Theatre following its premiere at the Public Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/hamilton-american-musical/) - It is daunting to attend Hamilton. The expectations are overwhelming: Raves in all the papers including two in the New York Times – and rap! All the songs and dialogue are in rap, that popular and often angry form of music, where every other word rhymes with truck, and the melodies are few and far between. What is a classical music lover to do? If one loves Hamilton, will it be true love or is one just going along with the crowd? If one doesn’t love it, is one incapable of expanding one’s horizons?
- [Daddy Long Legs, a Musical, at the Davenport Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/daddy-long-legs-musical-davenport-theatre/) - Daddy Long Legs has tiptoed into the 2015-2016 New York theater season. It’s amazing that anyone knows about this show, and yet the word has gotten around: Daddy Long Legs is an enchanting chamber musical.
- [Fiddler on the Roof: In Revival—Again!—at the Broadway Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/fiddler-on-the-roof-in-revival-again-at-the-broadway-theatre/) - Why would anyone want to attend yet another revival of Fiddler on the Roof? Since its premiere in 1964 it has had five major Broadway revivals and who knows how many regional theatre, school and amateur productions. Millions of us have seen this show or its film version at least once. So—you want to know why go again? I’ll tell you why.
- [“She Loves Me” at Roundabout’s Studio 54, until June 12](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/loves-roundabouts-studio-54-june-12/) - The great challenge of any musical revival is ourselves—specifically, our memories of the cast we first saw, the scenery and costumes. It’s even worse if we have a cast album and know by heart not only the words and music, but also the musical dynamics, phrasing and inflections. This is the challenge I faced attending the final preview the current Roundabout revival of She Loves Me. Will it be as good as I remember?
- [Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/shuffle-along-music-box-theatre/) - Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre. Photo © Julieta Cervantes. Music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake Original book by F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles Book by George C. Wolfe Musical Supervision, Arrangements and Orchestrations by Daryl Waters Scenic Design by Santo Loquato Costume Design by Ann Roth Lighting Design by Jules
- [So You’re About To See Hamilton …](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/youre-see-hamilton/) - 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.
- [No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming by Howard Baker by the Potomac Theater Company, Closing August 7](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/07/no-end-blame-scenes-overcoming-howard-baker-potomac-theater-company/) - A Scene from No End of Blame at the Potomac Theater Project. Illustration by Gerald Scarfe. Photograph by Stan Barouh. 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
- [Music of the Other Germany: American Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/02/music-germany-american-symphony-orchestra/) - Leon Botstein attracted an impressive crowd to Avery Fisher Hall on the afternoon of Sunday, January 25, to hear him conduct the ASO in a program of extremely obscure music: orchestral works from "the other Germany," that is the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990), or East Germany. It is most unjust that this music is as neglected as it is today, since every work on the program was soundly constructed and interesting, even astonishing at times. All were worth a second or a third hearing, or even more. Fortunately most of the works on the program are available on CD.
- [John Pizzarelli: Too Marvelous for Words](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/07/john-pizzarelli-jazz-standard-nyc/) - 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.
- [Best Concert of the Year?](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/best-concert-year/) - 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.
- [Juraj Valčuha conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, and Webern](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/jury-valcuha-conducts-san-rrancisco-symphony/) - 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?
- [A Crop Of Recordings VII: Music of Walton, Zemlinsky, Goldmark and Ibert](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/crop-recordings-walton-zemlinsky-goldmark-ibert/) - 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.
- [Katona József Theatre, Budapest, at the Lincoln Center Festival: Ivanov by Anton Chekhov](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/07/katona-jozsef-theatre-budapest-lincoln-center-festival-ivanov-chekhov/) - We seem to be enjoying a Chekhov renaissance at the moment. I feel extremely fortunate to have seen all major plays within less than a year, and one of them twice! All of these productions had their flaws and misjudgements, but they were all excellent nonetheless. As a whole, they showed that American and British directors are freeing themselves from tradition and are confident with taking risks in seeking out a harder, more contemporary edge and in exploring Chekhov's evanescent transformations of tragic and comic moments. It is easier to translate words and sentences, even subtle ones, than it is to bring humor into a foreign idiom.
- ["Vienna, City of Dreams" in New York: Four Orchestral Concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/03/vienna-city-dreams-york-orchestral-concerts-vienna-philharmonic-carnegie-hall/) - Nowadays, visiting orchestras often play two or three concerts in New York, and, best of all, these are sometimes "curated" into themed series, like the VPO's under Boulez and Barenboim a few years ago. This year, Carnegie Hall is presenting an exceptionally ambitious event, Vienna, City of Dreams, which goes beyond the Vienna Philharmonic's unprecedented seven-concert series of symphonic and operatic works, and includes chamber music concerts, contemporary music, symposia, film screenings, and a few events including the visual arts, including Vienna Complex, a contemporary group exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum, which has organized most of the events outside Carnegie Hall itself, although no significant exhibitions of the art of the periods represented by the concerts at Carnegie Hall. (The other piece of Vienna in New York, the Neue Galerie, is offering nothing but limited free tours for ticket holders and discounts in their gift shop.) Theater and literature went virtually unrepresented. (A Viennese theater festival, including the Burgtheater, would have been welcome—magnificent, even.) A language barrier in our day of ubiquitous supertitles?
- [Dawning of a New Age of Digital Photography at AIPAD Show](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/04/digital-photography-aipad/) - New York dealer Robert Burge, who specializes in 20th century photography, described this year’s three-day AIPAD fair, which concluded April 7 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, as “more buoyant than previous years.” “Contemporary photography is always a tougher sell than well-known vintage work,” he said, “but people were buying, writing checks. There was less talk about spousal approval…” Now in its 33rd year, The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) annual exhibition attracted 82 dealers from around the country and a smattering of foreign cities, including London, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Osaka, and Jerusalem. The show traditionally has strength in fine, museum-quality vintage prints, but the show-stoppers this year were primarily contemporary photographs, many the product of digital manipulation, which seems to have moved into a new phase with gimmickry giving way to photographs that more closely resemble fine art—and are stunningly beautiful. The images are fresh and original and, indeed, visitors responded with their wallets.
- [Robert Gardner, Human Documents: Eight Photographers](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/robert-gardner-human-documents-eight-photographers/) - This handsome, modestly (and conveniently!) -sized book was put together with a light, subtle hand, artists' hands, and the reader will be immediately seduced by the striking photographic work which is its primary raison d'être, but Human Documents: Eight Photographers was founded on a precise argument, which Robert Gardner makes quite clear with his spare, patrician prose in the introductory essay. Eliott Weinberger introduces variations on it (as well as further points of view of his own) in his supplementary essay, "Photography and Anthropology (a Contact Sheet)." The book is intended to bear witness to the connections between photography and anthropology, and both Gardner and Weinberger discuss the historical background to this inevitable, but not always easy relationship.
- [The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Donato Cabrera, conductor, with Chen Zhao, violin, and Katie Kadarauch, viola in Mason Bates, Mozart, and Bartók](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/san-francisco-symphony-youth-orchestra-donato-cabrera-chen-zhao-katie-kadarauch-mason-bates-mozart-bartok/) - Mason Bates will surely forgive us--if I suggest the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra out-deviled everyone at this concert! For a Saturday afternoon in May, Davies Hall was well attended, with a more jovial parental buzz than usual. Lots of children were in the audience. Hope springs eternal they won't fidget--utopian when dealing with three-year-olds inclined to crawl. One of the forward boxes resembled a puppy-pen throughout, with lots of motion, aleatoric burbling and various appendages attempting to escape the banister. But no matter.The music won.
- [The Bard Music Festival and SummerScape Opera 2016: Puccini and his World, with Pietro Mascagni's Iris](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/06/bard-music-festival-summerscape-opera-2016-puccini-world-pietro-mascagnis-iris/) - The Bard Music Festival, every year since 1990, offers music-lovers a splendid gift in its weekends of immersion in the music of some major composer and others related to him, the intellectual and artistic life of his time, and the legacy that connects us to it all. It equally presents us with a powerful challenge—a challenge to overcome our preconceptions about this partly familiar, partly unfamiliar music, chiefly the product of famous composers. In some cases we discover that a composer's most popular music is not in fact his best, and our estimation of him rises significantly, as in the case of Sibelius and Prokofiev, or in others, like Schubert, we can become acquainted with genres like the part song, which have fallen out of the repertory because the social context for their performance has become obsolete. Many music-lovers divide Franz Liszt's output between serious music of high quality and shallow, flashy display pieces. Again, the Bard Festival challenged its audiences to reconsider.
- [Edvard Munch: Alone in the Crowd](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/edvard-munch-alone-crowd/) - Though it is difficult to determine when exactly Edvard Munch was first exposed to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, one cannot help but think of Existential philosophy’s mustachioed poster boy when considering the Norwegian painter’s work. As with Nietzsche, Munch’s public legacy is colored by an emphasis on his psychological torments and eventual nervous breakdown. His acutely personal exploration of formidable themes such as angst, vulnerability, sin, and alienation only amplify the connection.
- [King Charles III - A future history play by Mike Bartlett, Music Box Theatre, New York (11/01/2015 - 1/31/2016)](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/king-charles-iii-mike-bartlett-new-york/) - When Mike Bartlett conceived the idea for this play, according to an article he wrote about it in The Guardian, his thoughts centered on the figure of Prince Charles at "the moment Charles takes the throne, and how his conscience would lead him to refuse to sign a bill into law. An epic royal family drama, dealing with power and national constitution, was the content, and therefore the form had surely to be Shakespearean." He was not approaching it with any particular ideas about monarchy, or the royal family, or the state of Britain. He was thinking, not as a political creature or a satirist, but as a playwright. From this mindset, it immediately occurred to him that the form had to be Shakespearean, down to the blank verse—and this terrified him, because he had virtually no experience with the meter, or with any verse.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/support-new-york-arts-berkshire-review/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/support-york-arts-berkshire-review-4/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/support-york-arts-berkshire-review-3/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/support-york-arts-berkshire-review-2/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/support-york-arts-berkshire-review/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/support-new-york-arts-berkshire-review-2/) - Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.
- [Istanbul: New Wealth, New Architecture](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/istanbul-new-wealth-new-architecture/) - As I stepped into the 47th floor garden room of a new luxury apartment in Istanbul, a cool breeze caught my hair and made the curtain in the sitting room behind me billow like a sail. Suddenly feeling uneasy, I grabbed hold of the sliding glass door. I was inside, correct? There wasn’t a wide-open window nearby I could fall out of? The sensation I had was that I had just walked onto the windy veranda of a country house or a boardwalk by the beach. The breeze ebbed and flowed, moving the trees and shrubs in the garden. The air felt fresh and clean and at least 5 degrees cooler than the crowded sidewalks below at street level.
- [Un Vaisseau fantôme inoubliable à Montréal...mais comment tuer Senta?](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/un-vaisseau-fantome-inoubliable-a-montreal-mais-comment-tuer-senta/) - Le but principal de cet article et de louer jusqu’au cieux une représentation tout à fait remarquable—inoubliable, dirais-je—du premier oeuvre canonique de Wagner, mais c’est bien une mise-en-scène contemporaine—une mise-en-scène laquelle rend justice aussi bien à la problématique sociale de 1840 qu’a celle de nos jours—surtout à propos de la rôle des femmes dans la famille, le mariage, les moeurs bourgeois, et l’argent. Dans ce contexte le problème qui me frappe d’abord est celui de la mort de Senta, parce qu’il semble que les metteurs en scène de nos jours se sentent fort mal à leur aise avec sa mort telle que Wagner l'avait conçue, où elle se jette dans les flots tourbillants nordiques. S’agit-il de la vraisemblance, du goût, ou bien des frais toujours montants de l’assurance qui découragent la saute d’une soprano importante même d’une distance de deux mètres? Voyons.
- [Richard Long, Heaven and Earth, at the Tate Britain, 3 June – 6 September 2009](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/richard-long-heaven-and-earth-at-the-tate-britain-3-june-6-september-2009/) - A curious map hangs in the second room of Heaven and Earth, the new Richard Long exhibit at the Tate Britain in London, which opened on June 3. From afar, the map of Dartmoor Forest in southwest England resembles strategic battle map, with four concentric circles drawn atop a specific area, perhaps suggesting a target. The map, however, exists as a simple record, a history, of a walk Richard Long took thirty-seven years ago. “A Walk of Four Hours and Four Circles, England, 1972,” the caption reads. Each of the circles on the map represents Long’s self-imposed paths for his walk and do not necessarily symbolize dominion.
- [Ballet to Broadway: Christopher Wheeldon with Rita Moreno](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/ballet-broadway-christopher-wheeldon-rita-moreno/) - The evening as billed suggested that Mr. Wheeldon would be the center of attention which, given the raves for American in Paris on Broadway, was understandable. Unassuming and polite, Wheeldon spoke of his family's love of all things theatrical and about their taking him, quite young, to a Gershwin concert which he was prepared to hate but found he adored.
- [Jeannette Sorrell, Music Director of Apollo's Fire: The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, talks to Michael Miller](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/07/jeannette-sorrell-apollos-fire-cleveland-baroque-orchestra/) - Just yesterday I had the pleasure of talking with Jeannette Sorrell, Music Director of Apollo’s Fire, the highly acclaimed period orchestra based in Cleveland, where she founded it twenty-three years ago. Today, rather like the venerable Cleveland Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire tours extensively in North America and Europe, bringing Ms. Sorrell’s warm, expressive vision of Baroque playing to both seasoned and neophyte audiences. Tomorrow, July 2, she will lead them at Tanglewood in a program called “Bach’s Coffee House,” referring to the Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, where first Georg Phillipp Telemann and later Johann Sebastian Bach organised free public concerts. The program will include excerpts from Telemann’s incidental music to Don Quixote, Bach’s Fourth and Fifth Brandenburgs, and short pieces by Handel and Vivaldi.
- [Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More: Photographs and Traveller, a film by Alen MacWeeney (UPDATED, including audio: Traveller Liam Weldon sings "The Blue Tar Road")](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/irish-travellers-tinkers-no-more-photographs-and-traveller-a-film-by-alen-macweeney-updated-including-audio-traveller-liam-weldon-sings-the-blue-tar-road/) - In his important collection of anthropological photography, Robert Gardner made clear the connection between the ethnographer's record of life in western Papua or Ethiopia and the photojournalist's observation of downtown Barcelona or Dallas. Alen MacWeeney's Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More is one further document in this fluid branch of study. The travellers were and still are a constant presence in Ireland, where MacWeeney was born and raised, although, at least in the 1960's when these photographs were made, a largely unseen one—this is, on purpose. A professional need, it seems, sucked Alen MacWeeney into their society, and he remained, to observe and experience it in depth. Now, after some forty years, this experience has been made public.
- [Ariel Rivka Dance 9th Season Festival—A Mixed Bag of Modern Dance: Works by Ariel Grossman, Pascal Rioult, Heidi Latsky and Elisa King](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/ariel-rivka-dance-9th-season-festival/) - Strong women are the hallmark of this modern dance program featuring works by Ariel Grossman, Pascal Rioult, Heidi Latsky and Elisa King. Male dancers also take the stage, notably in Grossman's Variations on a Box, the final piece, and one of the most powerfully engaging, as the dancers push and shove one another, abruptly fall to the ground, rise and move as a group with small, shuffling steps.
- [South of Gold Mountain  by H.T. Chen & Dancers](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/south-gold-mountain-h-t-chen-dancers/) - The history of the Chinese in the American south prior to World War lI is an under-told story that South of Gold Mountain seeks to rectify. Using images, recorded voices, music and dance, H.T. Chen & Dancers set out to show the collective journey of a group of people who quietly made a big difference to their communities.
- [A Crop Of Recordings VI: Symphonic Works by Strauss, Prokofiev, Mahler and Sibelius](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/crop-recordings-vi-symphonic-works-strauss-prokofiev-mahler-sibelius/) - There is nothing more cozy and comfortable in the symphonic canon than the harmless narcissism of Strauss’s “domestic” symphony, originally titled “My home. A symphonic portrait of myself and my family.” Just how tasteful it all is has been a subject of debate ever since 1903, of course. As Peter Ustinov famously said of the composer: “I knew I wouldn’t like his wallpaper.” As it turned out, he didn’t.
- [A Crop Of Recordings V: French Rarities by Emmanuel, Saint-Saëns, Chausson, Bizet, Magnard, Duparc and Berlioz](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/recordings-french-rarities-emmanuel-saint-saens-chausson-bizet-magnard-duparc-berlioz/) - Every so often a release comes along which serves to remind listeners that a particular national repertory is not always so well known to us as we think. Not all beloved works cross the pond. This has a lot to do with immediacy and easily recognizable, iconic tunes.
- [Alan Gilbert Conducts the New York Philharmonic at Davies Hall, San Francisco](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/05/alan-gilbert-conducts-new-york-philharmonic-davies-hall-san-francisco/) - Alan Gilbert conducts New York Philharmonic. Photo © Chris Lee. Davies Hall , San Francisco The New York Philharmonic Alan Gilbert, conductor May 6, 2016 Beethoven---Egmont Overture, Opus 84 Beethoven---Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92 ***** Sibelius-------Symphony No. 7 in C major, Opus 105 Sibelius-------Finlandia, Opus 26 "My God!", I thought. "They're killers"!
- [Experiments of the Ordinary: Giorgio Morandi at the Center for Italian Modern Art](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/experiments-ordinary-giorgio-morandi-center-italian-modern-art/) - All accounts suggest that the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) enjoyed a life of uninterrupted calm and isolation. Introverted by nature, Morandi spent his entire lifetime in Bologna, in the same apartment no less, and was dubbed il Monaco due to his almost monastic reclusiveness. He tended to paint at home, either in his bedroom or an adjoining studio, committing himself almost exclusively to the natura morta, or still life.
- [Even a Shrew Just Wants to Have Fun](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/shrew-queens-company/) - Elisabeth Preston (Petruchio), Catherine Talton (Hortensio) and Laura E. Johnston (Gremio) in the Queen's Company's Taming of the Shrew. Photo © Bob Pileggi. Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare The Queen's Company at The Wild Project Directed by Rebecca Patterson April 23, 2016 This production, by an all-female classical theater company, is an all-out
- [Circo de la Luna at the Baruch Performing Arts Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/circo-de-la-luna/) - Circo de la Luna. Photo © circodelaluna.com Circo de la Luna Baruch Performing Arts Center Choreography by Pedro Ruiz Directed by Mark Lonergan April 22, 2016 Compelling Contemporary Circus Powerful Flamenco guitars, a strong singer and aerial artists add up to a modest yet striking performance highlighting things basic to the Spanish soul. If some
- [I Will Look Forward to this Later at the New Ohio Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/will-look-forward-later-new-ohio-theater/) - James Himelsbach, Edward Bauer and Ben Beckley in I Will Look Forward to this Later. Photo © Nick Benacerraf. I Will Look Forward to this Later New Ohio Theatre presents The Assembly production April 9, 2016 Bitter Legacy At the beginning of I Will Look Forward to this Later, (a title the author should consider
- [Edwin Outwater Conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Weber, Saint-Saëns, Busoni and Hindemith](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/04/edwin-outwater-san-francisco-symphony/) - Edwin Outwater. Photo © edwinoutwater.com. Davies Hall, San Francisco January 29, 2016 The San Francisco Symphony Edwin Outwater, Conductor Stephen Hough, Piano Weber — Oberon Overture (1826) Saint-Saëns — Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Opus 103, Egyptian, (1896) Busoni — Music from Turandot Suite, Opus 41 (1905) Hindemith — Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber (1940) Programming is an
- [Julliard Dances Repertory 2016](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/julliard-dances-repertory-2016/) - Jerome Robbins' Moves from Julliard Dances Repertory 2016. Photo © Rosalie O'Connor. The Julliard School Peter Jay Sharp Theater Saturday, March 26, 2016 I've seen many professional dance companies that aren't in a league with what went on at the Saturday evening performance of Julliard Dances Repertory 2016. Many of these young people appear ready
- [A Crop of Recordings IV: Enescu, Suk, Poulenc, Martinů, Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/recordings-enescu-suk-poulenc-martinu-tchaikovsky/) - As collectors know, exploring outside the basic repertory is often both frustrating and rewarding. The search for significant neglected music, one learns early, is not so easy as it appears. Many worthy pieces one falls in love with turn out to be partial works of genius, with uninspired moments we choose to forgive, defects of length and proportion, or performing requirements condemning them to obscurity.
- [Danish Solitudes:  Vilhelm Hammershøi at Scandinavia House, closes March 26, 2016](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/danish-solitudes/) - Widely recognized in Europe during his lifetime and engulfed by obscurity for decades thereafter, today the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) is primarily considered to be a “painter of tranquil rooms.” “Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor,” one of twenty-four paintings displayed in an intimate recent exhibit at New York’s Scandinavia House, is an archetypal Hammershøi work. A solitary woman hunches over a table with her back to the viewer, her identity and activity unclear. Daylight pours through a large central window, leaving a slanted, luminous grid ghosted on the floor. While the subject matter is characteristic of the period—paintings of bourgeois women and interiors were both immensely popular in 19th century Denmark—the approach is defiantly atypical.
- [The San Francisco Symphony: Herbert Blomstedt, conductor; Maria João Pires, piano, in Beethoven and Bruckner](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/03/san-francisco-symphony-herbert-blomstedt-conductor-maria-joao-pires-piano-beethoven-bruckner/) - It was a surrealistic night. Every so often a trip to the symphony is like that. It had oddities—both nice and annoying. First-off, I thought, ninety seems to be the new seventy. And seventy surely is the new fifty. As Herbert Blomstedt came onstage, he didn't look eighty-nine, that's for certain! Just slightly snowier than last time. Tall, eager, ambassadorial as ever—Blomstedt led the evening without baton and the symphony from memory—an incredible feat with this edition.
- [Revivals Past 2015, Part I: The Roots of English Theater — Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine at TFANA](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/marlowe-tamburlaine-tfana/) - can think of one, perhaps two or three people, who might possibly know all the theaters in New York City. I certainly don't, although I make it my business to know as many as I can. It really is quite an active scene, with more new plays than one can keep track of, much less attend...even works improvised in front of our eyes, but this all rests on a bedrock of revivals, which may be in the minority, although they seem to flourish everywhere. There is always the question of how good the new shows actually are and whether the the revivals are filling a yawning gap. If you talk to actors and directors, you’ll consider the issue seriously. You'll find the entire mixture in New York Arts—good, bad, and indifferent—with a healthy component of revivals, ranging from high-profile visiting companies, for example Sophocles' Antigone with an internationally-celebrated star to the Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group's unforgettable production of a lesser-known play by Euripides in ancient Greek. In this retrospective article, I'd like to discuss a few productions and a few companies which have brought me particular pleasure over the past year. Their productions were important enough, in their different ways, and excellent enough, to make a difference in how I view our theatrical landscape. What they all share is a deep devotion to serving the text and historical character of the works they produce, whether they are classics or long-forgotten obscurities.
- [Sylvia Milo's The Other Mozart returns to New York, with Ms. Milo alternating with Samantha Hoefer as Nannerl Mozart](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/sylvia-milos-mozart-returns-york/) - October 14, 2015 - January 18, 2016 The Players Theatre 115 MacDougal Street, NYC (Third floor - no elevator) Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/943472 $45, $50. Student Rush tickets $15, at the door. After a successful series of runs in London, Estonia, Munich, Salzburg, and New Orleans, writer-actress Sylvia Milo's brilliant portrayal of Wolfgang Amédée Mozart's Sister Nannerl is back in New York. If you missed in the summer of 2014, here is your chance! Click here for Michael Miller's review.
- [The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Pinchas Zukerman, conductor and violinist, at Davies Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/royal-philharmonic-orchestra-pinchas-zukerman-san-francisco/) - I missed hearing the Royal Philharmonic last February in London. But while there, I found myself often reminded of the problems British orchestras and audiences face. Festival Hall, which once sounded like a pretty good hi-fi system, disposed of its Helmholtz "resonators" in a recent renovation and in so doing lost half its reverberation time, however artificial. It now sounds like NBC's late unlamented Studio 8H.
- [François-Xavier Roth with the BSO in January, with solo turns from Elizabeth Rowe (flute), Jessica Zhou (harp), and Renée Fleming (soprano)](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/francois-xavier-roth-bso-gossec-mozart-beethoven-stravinsky-dutilleux/) - The Boston Symphony Orchestra started the new year well with two programs under the direction of guest conductor François-Xavier Roth, who hails now from Cologne and is very active in Europe, much sought after. Conducting without baton, vigorous and engaged, Roth holds the players’ attention and gets what he wants. Orchestra and audience alike feel caught up in an unusually tense and purposeful address to the music at hand.
- [Utility: Mundane Made Meaningful — Closes at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater February 20, 2016](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/utility-mundane-made-meaningful/) - Hats off to playwright Emily Schwend who, aided by an excellent cast, manages to make an eighty-five minute script about nothing in particular hold our interest—almost all the time. In a small Texas town, Amber, (Vanessa Vache) struggles to keep her family fed and provide a few nice moments like a birthday party for her eight-year old daughter. Amber works two jobs that don't make ends meet and has an on-going sparring war with her mother, Laura, hilariously played by Melissa Hurst.
- [Recordings III: Ives, Copland, and Ginastera](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/recordings-ives-copland-ginastera/) - What does the music of Charles Ives sound like with an Australian orchestra and a British conductor? Different, one is tempted to to say, but not really. We’ve become used to our Ives done New York style, with Broadway snap and brass. No one gets that wrong. But Ives was a New Englander, and the disruptive elements in his music have perhaps been overstressed. He always explained that bits of band marches and Americana in the Second Symphony were present to remind him of his youth, not shock Horatio parker, his music teacher. And the famous razzy “non-chord” at the end was meant to evoke dance bands sending everyone home with a screech--not annoy the professor!
- [Boston and Berlin at Carnegie in 2015](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/02/bso-boston-bpo-berlin-carnegie-2015/) - The fall 2015 orchestral season at Carnegie Hall was dominated by the Boston Symphony Orchestra's traditional three-concert visit, this time in October, and a five-concert traversal of Beethoven's symphonies by the Berlin Philharmonic under their outgoing principle conductor/artistic director, Simon Rattle. Both had their joys and peculiarities, but only Berlin confronted us with any actual disappointments.
- [The New Contemporary at the Art Institute of Chicago. Reopened December 2015.](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/new-contemporary-art-institute-chicago/) - For a museum that bills itself encyclopedic, the Art Institute of Chicago was long lacking a comprehensive contemporary section to complete its smorgasbord of the world’s greatest art. Last April, plastics tycoon Stefan T. Edlis and his wife Gael Neeson changed all that with a gift of forty-four pieces by such recognized names as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and several others. These works are currently on display in the Modern Wing of what TripAdvisor has dubbed “the world’s best museum.” The Institute’s pledge to display the works rather than pack them away was “an offer I could not refuse,” Edlis stated, leaving him and the general public equally happy. Edlis, although still in good health, wanted worthy homes for his extensive collection while still alive. These forty-four works now rest comfortably on the “Big Shoulders” of his adopted hometown.
- [Hangmen  by Martin McDonagh, at Wyndham's Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/mcdonagh-hangmen/) - After a stunning stretch of plays set in the West Country of Ireland, the playwright Martin McDonagh found himself saddled with literary freight. Could he—or did he even want to—extend the legacy of Irish drama into unforeseeable territory? From Yeats onward, the audience for Irish drama had quaffed a brew of poverty and poetry, blarney and eloquence, myth and the kitchen sink. Suddenly, like the young Sam Shepard and his equally meteoric rise, McDonagh found a style no one anticipated, as viscerally violent as Shepard's, as psychologically edgy, and as recklessly antagonistic toward the audience's comfort zone.
- [Krzysztof Urbański Debuts with Emanuel Ax and the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto and Dvořák's "New World" Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/krzysztof-urbanski-debuts-emanuel-ax-san-francisco-symphony/) - This was an old-fashioned program — the kind audiences like. Two grand and tuneful symphonic works. A venerated pianist. The debut of a young matinee idol conductor. And last but not least, total absence of any threatening nouvelle cuisine for the ear. So how did it go, this debut?
- [Husbands and Sons by D. H. Lawrence, National Theatre, London—until Feb. 10](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/lawrence-husbands-sons-national-theatre-london/) - Down in the pit. The misery of being a woman in Nottinghamshire back when coal was king forms the preoccupation of Husbands and Sons, a composite of three one-act plays by D. H. Lawrence. Before they were rediscovered and staged, Lawrence’s dramas were an obscure part of his output, and now they risk being too dated to be vital. Like early Eugene O’Neill, the stage-minded Lawrence of 1911 to 1913, when these plays were written, aimed at naked social realism. The women trapped by brutal husbands working in the colliery stand on the brink of ruination from mining accidents, impending strikes, the cruel work hours that destroyed men’s bodies, and always the shadow of poverty.
- [Marek Janowski Leads the San Francisco Symphony in Pfitzner's "Palestrina" Preludes and the Beethoven Fourth and Eighth Symphonies](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/marek-janowski-leads-the-san-francisco-symphony-in-pfitzners-palestrina-preludes-and-the-beethoven-fourth-and-eighth-symphonies/) - Marek Janowski always brings a convincing German something to our orchestra. Polish born, Janowski was raised in Germany and reigns at the Berlin Radio Symphony--indeed is known throughout Europe for his Wagner, Bruckner, Schumann and Beethoven. He's even managed to elicit convincing Bruckner from the Suisse Romande in Geneva--that alone surely worth some nation's Legion of Honor--and every so often does the rounds instructively with us. This time Pfitzner was the centerpiece.
- [Nicolai's Merry Wives at the Boston Midsummer Opera and Tanglewood Tales: Jurowski and Koenigs Tell the Whole Story](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/08/nicolai-merry-wives-boston-midsummer-opera-tanglewood-jurowski-koenigs/) - It was James Levine’s many cancelations that most directly led to his (perhaps forced) resignation as the Boston Symphony Orchestra music director in the spring of 2011. But Levine has no monopoly on health problems and accidents. The glow of the two superlative concerts I attended at Tanglewood (July 19 and 20) was clouded over by the startling announcement that Levine’s young and healthy replacement, 34-year-old Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, was unable to conduct the July 27 Verdi Requiem, his first scheduled concert since his appointment, because he had suffered a “severe concussion” after being “struck in the head by a door that unexpectedly swung open at his residence in Bayreuth, Germany.”
- [True Romance on Screen: Todd Haynes' Carol...with a Sideglance at the Latest from Spielberg & Hanks](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/todd-haynes-carol/) - True Romance. The essence of Carol, a film much lauded but low grossing (which has become the norm for prestige films at Oscar season) is that it is a lesbian love story as Eric Rohmer might have conceived it and Alfred Hitchcock might have photographed it. The plot is slender. At Christmas around 1950 Carol Aird, an unhappy housewife on the verge of divorce (Cate Blanchett), feels an immediate attraction to Therese Belivet, a much younger sales girl in a New York department store (Rooney Mara). Poised between upper-middle-class privilege of the period, swathed in mink, and her sexual loneliness, Carol initiates a love affair that quickly takes us into literary territory, with the visuals doing much of the poetic writing, in the “camera-pen“ tradition that French critics admired in great American movies.
- [Rodin: The Evolution of a Genius, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts until March 13, 2016](https://newyorkarts.net/2016/01/rodin-the-evolution-of-a-genius-at-the-virginia-museum-of-fine-arts-until-march-13-2016/) - Auguste Rodin is one of those institutional artists, whose last name has become synonymous with a distinctive​ kind of art, much the same as Donatello or Rembrandt, but Rodin: The Evolution of a Genius, currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, is as remarkable as it is unexpected. While it covers the salient points in Rodin’s oeuvre, the focus here is neither marble nor bronze, but rather the humbler medium of plaster. The underlying thesis is that Rodin was more of a modeler than a carver, a practice reflecting the nature of the art market in his day as well as the sculptor’s natural inclination. Created jointly by the Musée Rodin in Paris and the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal, the exhibition showcases two hundred works that emphasize Rodin’s pivotal place in the grand tradition of sculpture, between the worlds of Michelangelo and of Brancusi.
- [Vermeer’s Astronomer at the MFA](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/vermeers-astronomer-at-the-mfa/) - The distinguished senior curator of European paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Ronni Baer, has put together a compelling and instructive exhibition of 17th-century Dutch art (mostly oil painting) that focusses on complex layers of social class (Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, through January 18; which then reopens on February 20 for three months at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, MO). There isn’t a painting in the show without interest, including a heaping handful of out-and-out masterpieces: early Rembrandt, Hals (in both intimate and heroic—or mock heroic—mode), Ruysdael (those bleaching fields near Haarlem under an enormous cloud-filled sky), de Hooch (that radiant courtyard; that dim geometrical interior), Ter Borch (those glittering satins; that velvety cow suspiciously eyeing a nearby axe), a Van Dyck, and a crisp, penetrating Thomas de Keyser portrait of the Dutch statesman, poet, and musician Constantijn Huygens, father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens, who discovered the rings of Saturn—a big discovery for me.
- [The Year that Was: Boston Classical Music in 2015](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/boston-classical-music-2015/) - The major news from Boston was the ascendancy of Andris Nelsons, firming up his place as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which included a quickly agreed upon three-year extension of his contract into the 2020-2021 season. This announcement was soon followed by the less happy surprise for Bostonians of Nelsons also accepting an offer from the eminent Leipzig Gewandhaus, the orchestra whose music director was once no less than Felix Mendelssohn, to take on that very position, beginning in the 2017-2018 season, thus dividing the loyalties of the young maestro (who just turned 37), though evidently with the possibility of collaborations between the two orchestras. (Remember when some people were complaining about James Levine dividing his time between the BSO and the Metropolitan Opera?)
- [Hagoromo - a Dance/Opera Premiered at BAM, November 3, 2015](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/hagoromo-bam-whelan-michalek-davis/) - BAM's New Wave Festival, from the effervescent anticipation in the lobby to the usually outstanding, rarely boring activities on its stages, must surely be one of the most upbeat environments one can find in New York. One event among those I attended stood out, because of the particular excitement of the capacity audience: the world premiere of Hagoromo, a multi-media work combining dance, puppetry, singing, and instrumental performance—all so artfully combined that the rest of the theatrical ensemble, sets, lighting, and costume, sprang into life in a rare way. The performance made itself felt in the audience before it even began. It was a diverse crowd, a bit different from what one routinely observes at BAM, certainly better dressed than usual. It seemed that this performance exerted an equally powerful attraction on fans of dance, contemporary music, and even fashion, lured by the costumes of the designer, Dries van Noten.
- [A Crop of Recordings II: Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Schmitt, Magnard, and Beethoven](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/a-crop-of-recordings-ii-elgar-rachmaninoff-strauss-schmitt-magnard-and-beethoven/) - About a year ago Sarah Connolly, Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony brought us rich rolling Sea Pictures as part of their Gerontius CD set for Chandos. In that voluptuous traversal Sarah Connolly sings like the golden girl who would be queen. This is grand Elgar in the tradition of Janet Baker, where soft low notes yearn and consecrate. At times the “r”s roll and things veer imperial. But there is another, more intimate way to woo these chords. It struck me immediately. Alice Coote nearly whispers the music to you like a woman in love. It isn’t a question of volume, of course. Coote sings all the dynamics as written. It’s her manner, so personal, so confessional. It matters less that her voice is slightly lighter than Connolly’s or that the orchestra’s pulse is less nautical. This isn’t tourist Elgar. This is three o’clock in the morning Elgar. And at that hour intimate tears are welcome.
- [A Crop of Recordings I: Shostakovich, Scriabin, Schönberg, Nielsen, Brahms, Strauss, and a Piano Recital](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/recordings-various/) - Steven Kruger—with the kind permission of Fanfare Magazine—here begins a series of reviews of recorded music. All these are from CDs and SACDs, but of course the download is rapidly becoming a more important source for recordings. Of course the rest of us will be chipping in as well!
- [Yefim Bronfman plays Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas at Carnegie Hall: Program I](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/yefim-bronfman-plays-prokofievs-piano-sonatas-at-carnegie-hall-program-i/) - Yefim Bronfman is one of the names that comes up when a pianist asks "What are the highly regarded recordings of Prokofiev's piano works?" Embarrassingly, I had not visited those recordings, but was lucky enough to witness his performance of the composer's piano sonatas at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on November 13. This program included the first half of Prokofiev's contribution to the form, with the other half to be performed at Carnegie on separate occasions next year.
- [The Nutcracker, from Company XIV: Red, Hot and (Pretty) Blue](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/the-nutcracker-red-hot-and-pretty-blue/) - Take The Nutcracker standard and blend with a dash of Sally Bowles, a soupçon of Marie Antoinette, a pinch of dominatrix and a lot of spangles and you have the basis of the 2015 iteration of Company XIV's Nutcracker Rouge. Everyone wears heels; in many instances, no one wears a lot else if you discount the G-strings, glittering codpieces and pasties. It's a lot of fun watching the company prance through bits of this naughty-with-a-wink version of the classic Nutcracker with other fairy tales thrown in. There is some actual dancing including the opening, a vaguely Coppelia-ish number with one dancer in pointe shoes clad, as is her partner in Harlequin-like costumes.
- [Bernini Sculpting in Clay, at the Met, closed Jan. 6 2013; at the Kimbell, Fort Worth, February 3 – April 14, 2013](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/bernini-sculpting-clay-metropolitan-museum-kimbell-fort-worth/) - Fig. 6. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Angel with the Superscription, 1667–68. Terracotta. Detail. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alpheus Hyatt Purchasing and Friends of the Fogg Art Museums Fund, 1937.67 Bernini Sculpting in Clay The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York October 3, 2012 – January 6, 2013 Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
- [Jacob's Ladder](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/a-singers-notes-119-fall-festival-shakespeare-and-company-2015-jacobs-ladder/) - Great musical communities are very like a ladder, the humblest freshman at conservatory, right up to the geniuses at the top. Music students have a natural capacity to worship great artists. First, there is a sense of wonder that a human being can do something so beautiful with a piece of wood or a small muscle in the throat. Then they become familiars—a lesson every week, maybe eventually a first-name basis, maybe not. Then the blessed few climb, some all the way to the top. When I was in school in Boston, the rare ones at the top included the genius Seiji Ozawa, the other genius Gunther Schuller, and the late lamented concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Silverstein.
- [Kiki Smith at the IFPDA Print Fair](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/12/kiki-smith-ifpda/) - At the IFPDA Print Fair on Saturday, November 7 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, curator Wendy Weitman spoke to Kiki Smith about what informs her printmaking practice and its inherent connection to her sculptural work. Smith’s popularity was obvious in the line of people that snaked through the entrance hall of the Park Avenue Armory, waiting to enter the Board Officers’ Room to hear her speak. Extra chairs were set up in additional rows to accommodate the crowd, while many still stood along the walls. Smith and her multidisciplinary practice have been dissected and examined time and again throughout her decades-long career. She is a sculptor, a printmaker, a photographer. She is innovative and unconventional.
- [Yan Pascal Tortelier leads the San Francisco Symphony in a French Program: Bizet, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano, and Jonathan Dimmock, organ](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/25535/) - Yan Pascal Tortelier was levitating with exuberance last Friday. Every good conductor shows passion, of course, even those untempted by choreography. But audiences love the ones who take to the air and defy gravity—most famously Leonard Bernstein, who did so wildly and erotically—but also the occasional anomaly. I once witnessed long-gone Swedish conductor Sixten Ehrling, famously reserved, conduct Respighi's Roman Festivals in his seventies, leaping about the Carnegie Hall stage like a red devil from Hades. Only the trident was missing.
- [Opera Houses in the City, Part I: The Palais Garnier (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/opera-garnier-english/) - Imagine a peacock at the Paris Opéra. Having taken the Métro eastwards from his digs in the heavenly Parc de Bagatelle, he passes the intermission munching an eight euro canapé. As we stare at the cultured bird, we find his feathers blurring into the architecture. Does the peacock, we wonder, prove that ornament is hard-wired into nature? This is not a “modernist” bird, a bird with clean lines and sharp edges like an Australian King Parrot. Like the Garnier, the patterns of the peacock’s plumage are subtle and layered, they seem to curl in on themselves until, through modern eyes, it is difficult to read in the ornament anything but beauty itself. This is a particular kind of beauty, one which provokes émerveillement rather than analysis.
- [Les opéras dans la ville, première partie: le Palais Garnier (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/opera-garnier-francais/) - Imaginez un paon à l’Opéra de Paris. Après avoir emprunté le Métro de son nid au parc Bagatelle, il passe l’entr'acte en mangeant un canapé de huit euros. Lorsque nous regardons cet oiseau cultivé, ses plumes commencent à se mêler avec l’architecture de Charles Garnier. Le paon est-il la preuve que l'ornement vient de la nature? Certes, il n’est pas un oiseau “moderniste,” ses couleurs ne sont pas aussi nettes, aussi précises que, par exemple, le perroquet roi d’Australie. Son plumage est comme le Palais Garnier, subtil, dépendant des effets de la lumière et son grain, autant que de la couleur. Pour nous dans le monde contemporain, les bâtiments si ornés sont quelquefois difficile à lire. Cette architecture d’autrefois excite les sentiments flous, l'émerveillement plutôt que l’analyse.
- [“Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia” August 18-February 15 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/americas-world-discovers-asia-august-18february-15-museum-fine-arts-boston/) - There have been a number of excellent reviews of this exhibit, especially Holland Cotter's early piece of August 27 in The New York Times. We still have several months to profit from “Made in the Americas.” My comments are prompted by my deep gratitude as a non-specialist for an exhibition that reinforces a new paradigm of art historical and critical thinking, even as it continues a tradition of a major museum able to bring an eye-popping collection of exquisite works heretofore not seen together. Dennis Carr has formed an intellectually rich exploration of global communication vital to the early modern era. Via a wide display of different media—textiles, furniture, metalwork, painting, ceramics, and inlay—we explore the relationship among the cultures of the Americas as the crossroads of Europe and Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- [José Limón International Dance Festival at the Joyce](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/jose-limon-international-dance-festival/) - The Limón Dance Foundation was founded in 1946 and remains very relevant especially in some of the pieces that made up Program D of the International Dance Festival at the Joyce Theater.
- [The Other Mozart, written and acted by Sylvia Milo - at the HERE Arts Center, NYC, June 22 - July 12, and the Monomaffia Festival in Estonia](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/mozart-written-acted-sylvia-milo/) - One of the most remarkable theatrical presentations I saw in 2013, continuing on at various theaters in the United States and Europe, is Sylvia Milo's The Other Mozart, a rich one-woman play she has conceived, written, and plays in, about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sister Anna Maria, or Nannerl, as she was known in the family. Today it is easiest to identify her as "Mozart's sister," since even specialists know her mainly as one of the composer's closest confidantes and correspondents. They shared parents, provincial Salzburg, travels, musical gifts, and scatological humor. While "Wolfi," as she calls him, went to Vienna to seek his fortune in the odd limbo between musical servant, entrepreneur, and stable employment, at least in a preliminary form—which is what was available to him at the time, she accepted the conventional prescriptions of her father. A child prodigy at the keyboard, her musical scope became severely limited once she reached marriageable age. Music became an ornament rather than a profession for her; she had to learn housekeeping—all to attract a husband. At the late age of thirty-three, she was finally married to a husband chosen for her by father Leopold and lost whatever was left of her continually diminishing self-determination.
- [MTT leads the San Francisco Symphony in Ravel Rossini, and Respighi, with Daniil Trifonov Playing Chopin's Second Piano Concerto](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/mtt-leads-san-francisco-symphony-ravel-rossini-respighi-daniil-trifonov-playing-chopins-piano-concerto/) - Daniil Trofonov Davies Hall, San Francisco September 26, 2015 The San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor Daniil Trifonov, piano Ravel - Menuet Antique (1895/1929) Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Opus 21 (1830) Rossini - Overture to The Silken Ladder (1812) Respighi - Roman Festivals (1928) I confess I found myself
- [The American Ballet Theater's 75th Anniversary Performances](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/american-ballet-theaters-75th-anniversary-performance/) - The centerpiece of the evening was Monotones I and II, set to music by Eric Satie with choreography by Frederick Ashton. Each Monotone is a pas de trois; one for two women and a man; the other for two men and a woman with II made first. Both pieces look very simple but they aren't, as each contains a lot of arabesques and attitudes as well as other moves requiring hard-to-sustain balances. The dancers stand out from the background lit by Michael Korsch—the first group in yellowish-green from neck to toes; the second in white, both with what look like squashed bathing caps adorned with jewels on their heads. (Originally, the head coverings were different and, apparently, more stylish.) The piece is classic and remote; at times the dancers made me feel they were under the sea, moving their arms and legs against the weight of water.
- [Half Moon Bay by John Jiler](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/11/half-moon-bay-john-jiler/) - A man and a woman, Richie and Pam, presumably somewhere in their early thirties, that is, just at the point in life where their next successful projects will bring them to a prominent and prosperous stage in life, decide to get married. They seemed full of love and enthusiasm for one another, as well as the impending event. Their friends are full of love and enthusiasm for them, above all, Richie's best friend and best man, Tom, a lawyer, a rather hard-nosed, cynical lawyer, and a loner. He seems perfectly likable and basically all right, but he has difficulty forming close relationships with women. He hasn't met one yet who finds him attractive, it seems. But the story is not about him, he is there to tell the story, as a sort of chorus-participant, sometimes in dialogue with the other characters, sometimes engaging the audience directly, sometimes narrating and responding rather like a sports announcer. The story is about love. As Tom begins the play, "I want to tell you about love." ...and mainly about his friend Richie, who is a love fiend, or so it should say in his obituary, as Tom informs us: "Because that’s what drove him. Like the wind drove the old ships. He thought everything else was irrelevant."
- [The Bach Choir of Bethlehem's Upcoming Season, with a Backward Look at the Bach Festival in May 2015](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/bach-choir-bethlehems-upcoming-season-bach-festival-2015/) - The Bach Choir of Bethlehem surely must be one of the most extraordinary musical institutions in the world. Situated a small city with an important industrial history, now entirely in the past, the Bach Choir has a tradition connecting it with a point in the performance history of Bach's music which antedates the Mendelssohnian Bach Revival by six years. Bethlehem can also be proud that this venerable institution did not emerge from the indulgences of the city's wealthiest families, but from the religious traditions of the Moravian Protestants who settled there in the 18th century. Following the precepts of Martin Luther, they held their musical traditions in high esteem.
- [Bard Music Festival 2015: Carlos Chávez and his World, Weekend I](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/bard-music-festival-2015-carlos-chvez-world-weekend/) - As the Bard Music Festival has sailed through the great names in European and American music over the past twenty-five years—although there are some people who don't like Elgar, Liszt, or Wagner, and some who doubt Saint-Saëns' or Sibelius' importance (if they attended the Festival they left with their minds changed)—the focal points of the festival have been generally unchallenged. This year, with Carlos Chávez, the first composer from south of the border, there has been more debate. Many attendees—and especially non-attendees—questioned the worthiness of Carlos Chávez as a subject. He is largely forgotten, and many of those who do remember him, do not think of him kindly. Even Leon Botstein himself expressed a critical attitude towards Chávez,
- [Vivica Genaux in Conversation with Michael Miller: A Podcast](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/09/vivica-genaux-interview-michael-miller/) - Vivica Genaux. Photo Harry Heleotis. The distinguished mezzo-soprano, Vivica Genaux, who just sang Arsace in Rossini's Semiramide at the Caramoor Festival to great acclaim, very kindly agreed to an interview. We talked about a great many things, from her fondness for Caramoor (This will be her fifth complete opera performance there.) and her future plans
- [The Music of Mozart's Last Months: La Clemenza di Tito at Emmanuel, Die Zauberflöte at Salzburg under Furtwängler, 1951, and Beecham's Requiem from Pristine.](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/mozart-clemenza-tito-zauberfloete-requiem/) - The primary occasion for this writing was Emmanuel Music's fine performance of Mozart's last opera, La Clemenza di Tito, under Music Director Ryan Turner. However, two extraordinary recordings of works Mozart composed during those busy final months of his life have appeared, as downloads from Pristine Classics, and they are not only magnificent in themselves, but they provide an enlightening context for this somewhat elusive opera seria. These recordings are of the legendary 1951 Salzburg performance of Die Zauberflöte under Wilhelm Furtwängler in the spectacularly improved sound we have come to expect from Andrew Rose, and a magnificent studio recording of the Requiem under Sir Thomas Beecham from 1954-56.
- [Paul Taylor: Creative Domain, a Documentary by Kate Geis](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/paul-taylor-creative-domain-documentary-kate-geis/) - Paul Taylor, one of the great modern masters of dance, is in his eighties and still hard at work. This documentary takes us inside the artist's creative process. It's a fascinating journey even though I couldn't explain it (and neither, it seems, can Taylor.)
- [Lisa Lewis' "Schooled," at the Soho Playhouse — closes October 17](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/lisa-lewis-schooled-soho-playhouse-closes-october-17/) - A jaded film professor and two students form a love and work triangle in Schooled, winner of the 2015 NY International Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award for Playwriting and part of the Fringe Encore Series at Soho Playhouse. Claire (Lilli Stein) is a smart young woman marked by her hard life background, Jake (Stephen Friedrich) plays her boyfriend born into wealth and privilege, a guy to whom everything has always come easy. The play, written by Lisa Lewis and very well directed by James Kautz, delves into the lengths we go to get ahead as the students compete for the same grant to make a film.
- [The United Solo Theatre Festival 2015: Two Reviews and an Exhortation](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/united-solo-theatre-festival-2015-revues-exhortation/) - The sixth United Solo Theater Festival has already been underway for over three weeks, but it will continue on up to November 22, offering an even greater wealth and variety of stage work than its predecessors. When its founder and artistic director, Omar Sangare, first considered the name, I was sceptical, but I'm happy to say that I've been proved wrong many times over. The name actually describes the nature of the festival to perfection, for every autumn, Dr. Sangare and his team unite the world of solo theater, bringing together over 150 fiercely independent actors, playwrights, directors, and other theater workers at Theatre Row from Canada, Australia, Ireland, the UK, Poland, Romania, all over the United State, and other countries.
- ["The Box Officer" (Shown at Sunshine Cinema, October 9 - 11, just before the midnight screenings of "Taxi Driver") is now on You Tube.](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/10/box-officer-sunshine-cinema-october-9-10-midnight-screenings-taxi-driver/) - Don't miss Lucas Miller's The Box Officer, a lightning-fast, side-splitting "hommage" to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, to be premiered just before Sunshine's special midnight screening of a newly restored print of the 1976 classic Friday, Saturday and Sunday, October 9 through 11. Just what happens when the dark passions of the streets of New York invade the four walls of a cinema?
- [The Bard Music Festival 2015: Carlos Chávez and His World, a Preview](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/bard-music-festival-2015-carlos-chvez-world/) - This is the first Bard Music Festival, Carlos Chávez and his World, to be devoted to music from south of the border. Up here, Central and South Americans were much more prominent in the classical music world in Chávez's time (1899-1978) than they are in the present. Today most concert-goers see this music through the window of Gustavo Dudamel and all his good works, and El Sistéma from which he emerged, is all the rage among music educators, possibly destined to become something like a Suzuki method of the twenty-first century.
- [Frank Salomon talks to Michael Miller about the upcoming seasons for Musicians from Marlboro, the People's Symphony Concerts, the Schneider Concerts, and more](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/09/frank-salomon-talks-michael-miller-upcoming-season-musicians-marlboro-peoples-symphony-concerts/) - Frank Salomon at his desk, with end-of-season tributes. Photo 2015 Michael Miller. Listen to the interview: http://newyorkarts.net/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/Frank_Salomon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:33 — 34.0MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS This was yet another splendid summer at Marlboro. For sixty-four years now, first under the direction of Rudolf Serkin, then under Richard Goode
- [MTT and Yuja Wang play their European Tour Program at Home: Bartók and Mahler](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/09/mtt-yuja-wang-play-european-tour-program-home-bartk-mahler/) - Naked came the pianist! Or so it nearly seemed, as Yuja Wang made her way to the Davies stage last Saturday. This young performer always serves up classic delicacy spiked with erotic undulation. But nothing quite led us to expect the peek-a-lot raspberry dress, with its hip-high slit, diamond glam panels and full expanse of leg seen from the bench. This was nearly Bartók in a bikini. But nobody was complaining. Europe, take note. In America, all is not prudery!
- [From Summer Opera...an Answer to the Opera Houses' Predicament?](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/summer-opera-caramoor-donizetti-bard-weber-smyth-rochester-carnegie-hanson/) - Permit me to indulge in a one-sided argument…or a rant, as I believe it's called in the blogging world—which is not ours at New York Arts and The Berkshire Review! Opera in the United States is particularly unsettled at the moment, if not in trouble. Both audiences and sources of funding are on a downward curve, although the better-managed companies seem to be coping. The biggest beast of all, The Metropolitan Opera, compromised by the bad judgement of its General Director, Peter Gelb, is the most worrisome of all.
- [Summer Russians: The San Francisco Symphony
, Edwin Outwater, conductor
 Conrad Tao, piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/summer-russians-san-francisco-symphony-edwin-outwater-conductor-conrad-tao-piano/) - There is a special feeling at Davies Hall in summer. The weather is balmy, if we are lucky. The sun is still up as the concert begins. But our hair is let down. Children are present, and young people dot the aisles in remarkable stages of undress. The air of eager informality is like a visit to the movies—minus the smell of popcorn. And, musically speaking, here we sometimes get the chance to hear romantic rarities we secretly love.
- [Friends and Foes of the Enlightenment:  Glimmerglass 2015, Fortieth Anniversary Season](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/glimmerglass-2015-fortieth-macbeth/) - Shakespeare's stygian supernatural tragedy, replete with witches, paradoxical prophesies, grisly murders and ghosts, was embraced enthusiastically by Verdi. He made the following remark: "This tragedy is one of the greatest creations of man." His enthusiasm for the play and his own adaptation never waned. The original Italian four-act 1847 score was heavily revised in 1865, the latter version used a libretto in French and was in five acts. This 1865 revision really has the most compelling music for Lady Macbeth and the chorus, the latter carrying much of the weight of the opera. In fact, the choruses throughout Macbeth show Verdi at his most innovative and are on the par with those in his Requiem. Tonight's performance followed the revised version, sung in Italian, with the laudatory reinstatement of “Mal per me che m'affidai,” Macbeth's stunning final aria from the original.
- [Tanglewood in Wonderland: The 2015 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/tanglewood-wonderland-2015-tanglewood-festival-contemporary-music/) - This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood was celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding, by legendary BSO Music Director Serge Koussevitzky, of the Tanglewood Music Center, one of the great arts educational projects in this country and still going strong. Curated by composers and Tanglewood gurus John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and Oliver Knussen (who couldn’t attend or conduct as scheduled because of a visa problem), it was on the whole one of the livelier festivals—more focused if not quite as eclectic.
- [Summer Operas: Opposite Poles at Bard SummerScape and Boston Midsummer Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/summer-operas-poles-bard-summerscape-boston-midsummer-opera/) - If I were one of those opera aficionados who thrives on adding unusual operas to a list, I’d be in heaven. I saw two opera productions this summer — not by Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, or Mozart, but by Friedrich von Flotow and Edith Smyth — and I’d never seen either of them before. One of them was typical summer entertainment, a light and charming comedy, in a modest, stripped down production; the other just the opposite — a grim tragedy that looked as if a lot of money had been thrown at it.
- [Making Child’s Play of Homer](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/08/making-childs-play-of-homer-glimmerglass/) - The work progressed from heroic numbers like “Sing to me of Odysseus,” to the blunter plaint, “Face it, he’s never coming home!” Engaging young audiences has become essential for classical music to survive in a world where digital immersion of immediacy of effect raises the aesthetic threshold.
- [Judith & Vinegar Tom, a Double Bill by PTC/NYC (Potomac Theater Project); through August 9](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/07/judith-august-9/) - Judith: A Parting from the Body by Howard Barker, is based loosely on the Biblical tale of this woman's heroism as depicted by artists through the ages including Artemesia Gentileschi, Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Gustav Klimt. In Barker's rendition, Judith, played by Pamela J. Gray, comes to the tent of Holofernes, wiry Alex Draper, accompanied by The Servant, brought to life by the excellent Patricia Buckley and garbed somewhat like a modern Orthodox Jewish woman in black hat and pearls. In this version, the fatal encounter is a complex duel of seduction and deception that requires the audience to stay alert as the narrative is challenging. We know how the story ends but, at times, aren't sure it will move along the traditional directions as the actors lie to one another often leaving truth in doubt.
- [The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra at Davies Hall gets ready for its European tour](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/07/san-francisco-symphony-youth-orchestra-davies-hall-ready-european-tour/) - I had the good fortune of catching the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra by the tail last month, just as they set out on their tenth European tour. The orchestra has been wowing audiences at the Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw and the Mariinski ever since 1986. I suspect they will make a similar impact this time, under the baton of Donato Cabrera, who also stewards the Las Vegas Philharmonic and California Symphony these days.
- [Opera Boom: Lots of opera in Boston, but how much was really good?](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/07/opera-boom-lots-opera-boston-good/) - I need more than two hands to count the number of operas I’ve attended in Boston so far this year. Two productions by the Boston Lyric Opera, our leading company; nine (four fully staged) by our newest company, Odyssey Opera; a brilliant concert version by the BSO of Szymanowski’s disturbing and mesmerizing King Roger; all three of Monteverdi’s surviving operas presented by the Boston Early Music Festival, performed in repertory for possibly the very first time; a rarely produced Mozart masterpiece, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in a solid and often eloquently sung concert version by Emmanuel Music; the world premiere of Crossing, 25-year-old Matthew Aucoin’s one-act opera about Whitman in the Civil War, presented by A.R.T.; and the first local production of Hulak-Artemovsky’s Cossack Beyond the Danube, the Ukrainian national opera, by Commonwealth Lyric Theatre (imaginatively staged and magnificently sung). Not to mention several smaller production I couldn’t actually get to—including an adventurous new work, Per Bloland’s Pedr Solis, by the heroic Guerrilla Opera, which I got to watch only on-line, and Boston Opera Collaborative’s Ned Rorem Our Town (music I’m not crazy about, but friends I trust liked the production). A lot of opera! But how full is the cup?
- [Emmanuel Music, with Andrew Rangell, Piano, at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/07/emmanuel-music-andrew-rangell-piano-rockport-chamber-music-festival/) - It is always a pleasure to be in the Cape Ann harbor town of Rockport and to attend musical events in the beautiful Shalin Liu recital hall with its glass wall looking out to sea. The June 26th concert provided a striking contrast in styles of Baroque era music, with works of Bach and Handel, respectively, in the two parts of the program. The listener was invited into an emotional journey from darkness to light.
- [Word, Image, and Deed A review of Michael Phillips’s presentations on William Blake. June 28-29, 2013, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/07/michael-phillips-william-blake-college-holy-cross-worcester-ma/) - How do we access the past? The viewer of contemporary art is invariably ensconced in, if not assaulted by, the strategies of artist, gallerist, and critic setting a work in terms of the present. The viewer, even the neophyte, invariably is attuned to the content of the discourse—racial memories of South Africa, female experience in the United States, sexual identity, response to AIDs, poverty, or age, in term that resonate with lived, personal experience. How does an exhibitor or critic bridge the cultural gap that so actively stands between our present and our past, especially with artists outside of the mainstream?
- [BEMF 2013: Review: Feeling the Elephant’s Ear](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/07/bemf-2013-wallach/) - No one can review the Boston Early Music Festival. Critics must select what time, physical energy and mental attention allow from the one hundred and forty plus musical events, exhibition offerings, lectures, etc, that are encompassed by the official festival and its very prolific offspring on the “fringe,” whose events are included in the official program book. (Schlepping the 300 + page book to events gets to be another physical challenge.) This assessment of the scope, size, and character of the event is based on random selection and personal bias. As a keyboard player, I favored keyboard events to the point of taking in a series of concerts rather than running from one venue another. In a few cases, I wanted to see performances by people I know. I also seem to have listened to a lot of Bach. From this random sampling, I hope to convey something of the range of performers’ skills, repertory, ideas, and innovations attached to the concept of “Early Music” in this year’s festival. But this report is only the elephant’s ear; others will have to deal with the rest of the creature’s anatomy.
- [More on Harbison's Gatsby](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/08/harbison-great-gatsby-miller/) - My collleagues have already written extensively about Emmanuel Music's performance of John Harbison's opera, The Great Gatsby, both at Jordan Hall and at Tanglewood. I won't attempt a full review, but I would like to share a few thoughts about the opera and the performance, both of which I heartily admired. As performed this year at Emmanuel Church and Tanglewood, Gatsby embodied some of the best and most characteristic traditions of American opera—the setting of classic literary texts (a speciality of Mr. Harbison's) and the mixture of popular musical and theatrical elements with an infrastructure of the most cultivated and rigorous compositional technique.
- [An Interview with Wu Han and David Finckel: Life after the Emerson Quartet and an Upcoming Concert at South Mountain Concerts](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/09/interview-wu-han-david-finckel-life-emerson-quartet-upcoming-concert-south-mountain-concerts/) - Along with the retirement of the Tokyo String Quartet, the departure of David Finckel from the Emerson Quartet has been one of the most discussed events in the world of chamber music over the past eighteen months or so. As people who have heard their concerts know, both David Finckel and the Emerson Quartet, now with the British cellist, Paul Watkins, in place, are as rich as ever in their contributions to our well-being as humans. Wu Han and David Finckel spoke with me just today about their new post-Emerson life, which allows David to travel and play more regularly with Wu Han as a duo and as a trio with Emerson violinist Philip Setzer, who will join them at the venerable South Mountain Concerts on Sunday, September 29, 2013. They will play Beethoven Op. 1, No. 2, Shostakovich's Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67, and Dvořák's Trio in E Minor, Op. 90, the "Dumky." I hope you enjoy our conversation about their past, present, and future as much as I did.
- [Rienzi, non piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/09/rienzi-piano/) - For Bostonians, getting to hear a live performance of Wagner’s ambitious third opera, Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (“Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes”) was surely a once in a lifetime experience, which is what Odyssey Opera, Boston’s newest opera company, must surely have been counting on. Too bad that even in Wagner’s bicentennial year, and for the landmark inauguration of a new company, only some 600 of Jordan Hall’s 1013 seats were filled (the top ticket price was $200) for Rienzi’s Boston premiere, in a complete concert version. But those present certainly got their money’s worth (and probably so did the local restaurants, which filled up during the two-hour dinner break in between the two parts of the five-hour opera).
- [The Cantata Singers Open their 50th Season](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/09/cantata-singers-50/) - The Cantata Singers, one of Boston’s most cherished musical organizations, opened its 50th season September 20th at Jordan Hall with a presentation of its very first program from all those years ago: three Bach cantatas. The audience was large, and people were issued ribbons of various colors to indicate how many years one went back with the organization. Many loyal audience members were present, former singers and musicians with the group, and people otherwise involved in its support and management. There was a feeling of love in the air.
- [Zauber-less Flute: the Boston Lyric Opera’s late Mozart](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/10/mozart-magic-flute-boston-lyric-opera/) - I’ve always thought it was a terrible idea to stage opera overtures. The music is there to help set the mood for what’s to follow, to allow you to open the magic casements of your imagination and picture for yourself what’s going to happen later—and for the only time to concentrate completely on the music itself. But these days, it’s almost impossible to see any opera performance that doesn’t have a staged overture, and all too often the staging has nothing to do with the music we’re hearing (last season’s Boston Lyric Opera Flying Dutchman was one of the worst offenders in this regard). But it turns out there’s something even worse than staging an overture, and it happened at the Lyric’s new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, at the Shubert Theatre, closed October 13).
- [Boston's Fall 2013 Round-Up](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/11/boston-fall-2013-roundup/) - This year will, as everyone hopes, be the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s last season without a music director — at least for another five years. Andris Nelsons has been signed up, and although he’s conducting only two BSO subscription programs this entire year, he’ll be really and officially taking charge next fall. His photo is already on the cover of the BSO program book, with the title “Music Director Designate.”
- [Andris Nelsons Conducts in Boston: BSO Fall Concerts Plus András Schiff Recital](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/11/andris-nelsons-bso-andras-schiff/) - Andris Nelsons has now made his first appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra since being appointed its new Music Director. He will return for one concert in the spring and then assume full duties next fall. On October 17th, he was welcomed very warmly with a standing ovation, and at the end of the evening received another, well deserved one for a very effective performance of Brahms’s Third Symphony.
- [Literally operatic: Two Boys at the Met plus opera in Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/12/muhly-two-boys-britten-beeson-thomson-janacek/) - A few minutes after the final curtain of Two Boys descended, after composer Nico Muhly received his ovation and joined the cast for their curtain calls, I think I figured out the true nature of this opera. This was the first main stage Metropolitan Opera production of the estimable Met/Lincoln Center Theater New Works program. Two Boys has been in the works for over five years, and had its world premiere at the English National Opera in 2011. The Met has given it serious encouragement and high-end attention. The opera has a libretto—based on an actual crime in 2001, in Manchester, England—by playwright Craig Lucas, a Pulitzer and Tony finalist; was directed by Tony Award-winning Bartlett Sher (South Pacific); and conducted by David Robertson, music- director designate of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a musician especially admired for his performances of contemporary music. The intricate production design by Michael Yeargan, which includes a gloomy police office with overhead fluorescent lights, and projections of computer screens and internet chat rooms (by 59 Productions), is certainly not cheap looking (as was Yeargan’s set for one of the Met’s few other premiere’s in recent decades, John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby). Care and money had clearly gone into this production.
- [Sacred and Profane](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/12/sacred-profane/) - “Lizzie Borden took an axe/And gave her mother forty whacks…”—so begins the old rhyme about the 1890s murder case in Fall River, Massachusetts. Both stepmother and father were killed. Though Elizabeth Borden was cleared of the crime in a jury trial, artistic treatments of the case have assumed her guilt, notably Agnes de Mille’s ballet of 1948, Fall River Legend, and Jack Beeson’s opera Lizzie Borden of 1965. There are films and television series, some realized, some still in the planning stage.
- [Good Times, Bum Times: Last Year in Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/12/music-2013-boston-lloyd-schwartz/) - Stephen Sondheim’s lyric from Follies seems especially suitable for this past year in Boston, and for the classical music world in general. There was a lot of terrible news: the folding of the New York City Opera, the cancellation of Minnesota Orchestra concerts and the ensuing resignation of Osmo Vanskä, the music director who put it on the map (even George Mitchell couldn’t make peace between labor and management). The worst thing to happen to Boston, especially for the arts, was the sudden shutdown of its most important weekly newspaper, The Boston Phoenix (I’m biased, of course, having written for the Phoenix for some 35 years). With only a day’s notice, some wonderful writers were suddenly out on the street, and the go-to place for listings and reviews became the sound of silence.
- [Nachtmusik: Sondheim, Anne Hutchinson, Denk, Levin, and Abbado](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/02/nachtmusik-sondheim-anne-hutchinson-denk-levin-abbado/) - The title A Little Night Music is only the first of the many inspired elements of Stephen Sondheim’s inspired 1973 musical version of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (or, more correctly translated, I’m told, Smiles of the Summer Night—i.e., the night of the summer solstice). Of course it calls up both Bergman’s most subtle comedy as well as Mozart’s most famous serenade. And although Sondheim’s stream of waltzes and other triple-meter dances more directly evolves from Viennese operetta than Viennese opera, there’s a consistent Mozartian elegance and chiaroscuro to this work. The high water mark of Sondheim’s career was probably in the 1970s, the decade of Company (1970), Follies (1971), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Sweeney Todd (1979), all collaborations with director Hal Prince. Everything that followed was more problematic, although many admirers would add Into the Woods (1987) to this list, and I’d also include the moving Passion (1994). Sondheim himself regards his Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park with George (1984) as his best work.
- [Boston Symphony Orchestra—Life in Winter: Poga and Ohlsson, Eschenbach, and Haitink](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/02/boston-symphony-orchestra-poga-ohlsson-eschenbach-haitink/) - On January 25th the Boston Symphony Orchestra and assistant conductor Andris Poga completed a series of concerts that, to judge by that final evening, made for one of the season’s high points. Mr. Poga completes his term with BSO this year and moves on to take over the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra in his native Riga. He is an imposing figure onstage—vigorous but not flamboyant, authoritative in his gestures—and on this occasion showed a remarkable inwardness with all the music he conducted.
- [Better on Paper? Gerald Finley’s Winterreise, Kirill Gerstein’s Piano Recital in Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/02/paper-gerald-finleys-winterreise-kirill-gersteins-piano-recital-boston/) - I can’t think of any musical event this season I was more looking forward to than Canadian baritone Gerald Finley singing Schubert’s Winterreise at Jordan Hall (February 7), and I’d been almost equally excited about hearing Russian-born pianist Kirill Gerstein return to Boston for a full length Jordan Hall piano recital (January 31). Both concerts were sponsored by the Celebrity Series of Boston, and both sounded great on paper.
- [B-List Works Shine Forth at Symphony Hall. Andrew Davis leads the BSO in Vaughan-Williams, Prokofiev (with Yuja Wang), and Rimsky-Korsakoff](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/andrew-davis-bso-vaughan-williams-prokofiev-yuja-wang-rimsky-korsakoff/) - The oeuvre of the each of the greatest, most familiar composers can be imagined as a personal cosmos, a collection of works of great power and quality, spanning a wide range of style and expression. Mention of their names is almost enough to arouse expectations of music belonging on the A-List. Other significant but less ubiquitous composers can be known to concert audiences through small numbers of repeatedly performed works that possess an identifiable sound, style, and mood. Less familiar but important works by two such composers, Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Serge Prokofiev, received fine performances by the Boston Symphony in late March, along with an A-List favorite by Rimsky-Korsakoff. These works gave audiences a chance to savor some less familiar, even surprising sides of their composers’ artistic personalities, and to provoke curiosity about what other works by these composers might be lurking in the shadows of the B-List.
- [Pianissimo: Memorable keyboard art by Russell Sherman and Marc-André Hamelin and chamber music by the Takács and Borromeo String Quartets trigger some personal reminiscences](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/pianissimo-memorable-keyboard-art-russell-sherman-marcandr-hamelin-chamber-music-takcs-borromeo-string-quartets-trigger-personal-reminiscences/) - This season marked the 75th Anniversary of the Celebrity Series of Boston, founded by Aaron Richmond, whose widow, Nancy Richmond Winsten, sponsors the piano events and is still a familiar attendee. I have a deep sense of nostalgia about the Celebrity Series. The very first concert I ever attended in Boston was with the Budapest String Quartet (my favorite quartet) in 1962. It was my first year of graduate school (I was a very young grad student) and I was living on a $1500 a year scholarship. I had neither time nor money for anything as frivolous as a chamber music concert. But I had to go. The Jordan Hall box office told me the performance was sold out... unless I was willing to take a cheap stage seat. So there I was, sitting a few feet away from the Budapest Quartet playing Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert. It remains one of the greatest concerts I ever heard in my life.
- [Handling Handel: Mark Morris’ Acis and Galatea, plus more Handel, Monteverdi, BLO’s I Puritani, the Met’s Cenerentola, and other adventures in opera-land](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/handling-handel/) - The Mark Morris Dance Group was back in Boston with the East Coast premiere of a major new work, Handel’s ravishing pastoral opera Acis and Galatea, under the aegis of the Celebrity Series of Boston, one of the co-commissioners. I loved it. Or to put it more accurately, I’m in love with it, and saw three of its four performances at the Shubert Theatre. Morris has now staged several complete operas and one Handel oratorio. At least two of these are generally regarded as his masterpieces: Purcell’s one-act opera, Dido and Aeneas (1989), in which all the singers are offstage and the dancers play the main characters; and Handel’s L’Allegro,il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1988), in which the singers are also offstage, and there are no characters. But in Rameau’s delectable Platée (1997) and in Morris’s productions of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Handel and Haydn Society, 1996; the Metropolitan Opera, 2007), singers played the leading roles and appeared on stage along with the dancers.
- [Crowned: Opera Odyssey’s June Festival, plus Guerilla Opera and Commonwealth Lyric Theater, and OperaHub](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/crowned-opera-odysseys-june-festival-guerilla-opera-commonwealth-lyric-theater-operahub/) - For a city that hasn’t seemed very welcoming to opera, Boston has had a lot of opera going on lately. Since Opera Boston closed on January 1, 2012, there’s been only one major opera company left, the Boston Lyric. But last fall, Gil Rose, former music director of Opera Boston, returned as the head of an important new company, Odyssey Opera, leading a rare performance in concert of Wagner’s first opera, the epic Rienzi. It was a critical success, and now, at the intimate BU Theatre, Odyssey has let its other shoe drop with two programs of fully staged smaller-scale but equally unusual repertoire: Verdi’s second opera, Un giorno di regno (King for a Day), the first of his only two comedies and one of the biggest flops of his entire career; and a double bill of Mascagni’s even rarer “lyric scene,” Zanetto, last seen in Boston in 1902, when Mascagni himself brought it on an American tour (and was thrown into the Charles Street jail for not paying his company), and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s 1910 farce, Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna’s “secret” being her unladylike addiction to cigarettes).
- [Living “City”! ...at Odyssey Opera, Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/korngold-tote-stadt-odyssey-opera/) - SOLD OUT! The signs taped to the front doors of Jordan Hall told a rare story for Boston’s classical music scene. Odyssey Opera began its second season with a hit on its hands—the Boston premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), a romantic work now best known for a soaring soprano aria, “Marietta’s Lied,” a favorite of any diva who can sing a high C on pitch (and some who can’t).
- [Warm welcome: Andris Nelsons takes charge of the BSO](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/andris-nelsons-takes-charge-bso/) - A Gala concert at Symphony Hall marked the first time Andris Nelsons led the Boston Symphony as its 15th Music Director (at Tanglewood this past summer, he was still Music Director Designate). He of course received a warm welcome from the audience—a standing ovation—as warm as the ovations that greeted Seiji Ozawa and James Levine. Since Levine resigned in 2011 for health reasons, BSO subscribers and attendees have been longing for someone to be in charge.
- [Richard Goode Plays Beethoven's Last Three Sonatas and Bagatelles, Op. 119 at Jordan Hall, Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/richard-goode-plays-beethovens-last-three-sonatas-bagatelles-op-119-jordan-hall-boston/) - This was a great recital—almost. Richard Goode played the last three Beethoven piano Sonatas and a set of late Bagatelles, and was quite convincing, even revelatory, with all the material except the final Sonata, the forbidding Opus 111. This last came off well, it felt meant—and all those difficult notes were well articulated—but the full emotional daring of the piece was not quite there.
- [The BEMF Chamber Operas 2014: Pergolesi's La serva padrona and Livietta e Tracollo](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/bemf-chamber-operas-2014-pergolesi/) - Pergolesi’s comic operas sound remarkably modern—which is to say, like Mozart. Recognizably human characters go through recognizable experiences, singing out their feelings very directly, which the music embodies in fluidly changing tempos and moods, stretching of harmony, changes of key and orchestral color. Much is accomplished through musically creative recitative—a half-spoken way of proceeding—as well as through song proper and duets (there are only two singers in each of these operas, though also some designated silent performers, to which this production added a few dancers). It is like Mozart, but sets the procedure for opera ever since, even Verdi’s with their heroic figures, Wagner’s with their gods and goddesses, Berg or Britten with their neurotics. Characters live, feel, and think—and sing—and the music moves quickly and supply and thinks, as it were, with them.
- [Andris Nelsons in Boston...with Two Superb Concerts under the BSO's New Assistant Conductor, Ken-David Masur, and an Appreciation of James Levine](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/andris-nelsons-bostonwith-superb-concerts-bsos-assistant-conductor-kendavid-masur-appreciation-james-levine/) - Andris Nelsons has garnered a lot of attention during his first season as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—much coverage in the local and even national press; receptions for the public and an exhibition with a talking hologram at Symphony Hall; placards on buses around Boston and in the subway. He threw out a ball for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The BSO organization wants him talked about by the man and woman on the street—especially the younger set. It remains to be seen whether a new younger audience will be drawn to the BSO. Eventually, it’s the music that will matter, not publicity.
- [The Winter of Our Discontent: Classical Music in Boston ](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/winter-discontent-classical-music-boston/) - As everyone in New England knows, this winter was one long slog. But significant musical events actually got to take place, and some of these have been exceptional. But many have been frustrating and disappointing.
- [2015 Glimmerglass Preview: Verdi, Vivaldi, Mozart and Bernstein, April 19, Germantown, New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/2015-glimmerglass-preview-verdi-vivaldi-mozart-bernstein/) - Lucking into one of the first few nice days of a late spring, I attended the annual Glimmerglass Festival kickoff, hosted at Midwood, the secluded Germantown home of philanthropist Joan K. Davidson. This beautiful Sunday afternoon offered the enticements of the summer opera fare in Cooperstown along with hors d'oeuvres and wine. Francesca Zambello, the transformational Artistic & General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival, invited several young artists, veteran performers, and composers to further the cause.
- [Excitement at the Boston Symphony—Lots of It! But Questions Remain](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/excitement-boston-symphony-nelsons-shostakovich-beethoven/) - The perfect word to describe Andris Nelsons’ conducting is “exciting.” He elicits spectacular playing from the Boston Symphony and knows how to mold the sound of the orchestra to his taste. The strings now sound rich, deep, and solid rather than airy, transparent and elegant, as was their traditional, French–flavored style. This works well in a German-Russian program; I am curious to hear what they (Nelsons and the orchestra) will do with canonical French material such as the orchestral works of​ Ravel.
- [Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and L'Orfeo by BEMF at Jordan Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/06/monteverdis-vespers-1610-lorfeo-bemf-jordan-hall/) - The recent biennial weeklong Boston Early Music Festival (June 14-21) drew unusual attention for presenting full stagings of all three of Monteverdi’s surviving operas (Orfeo, The Return of Ulysses, The Coronation of Poppea) plus the Vespers of 1610. This in addition to the Festival’s usual 9 a.m. to midnight concerts of a great variety of music from the Middle Ages to Bach, featuring noted performers from all over the world. Enthusiasm ran high all week and audiences were large, especially for the Monteverdi events.
- [Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at Lincoln Center, June 14, 2015](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/06/alvin-ailey-american-dance-theater-lincoln-center-june-14-2015/) - The evening's first piece, “Toccata,” is part of a longer work, Come and Get the Beauty of it Hot, created by Talley Beatty in the 1960s. The dance is described as “set in the streets of New York” and has a jazzy feel that reminded me of West Side Story although with a more classic look and feel. Set to music by Grammy Award-winning Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, the piece incorporates ensembles, duets and trios with a "big" finish when the girls leap—almost sail—into the men's arms with their own arms outstretched. The whole is fun but not very arresting, almost like a series of class exercises.
- [New Chamber Ballet, Miro Magloire, Artistic Director, Choreographer, at the City Center, Studio 5](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/06/chamber-ballet-miro-magloire-artistic-director-choreographer-city-center-studio-5/) - The modest setting: a large practice studio at City Center with the room's reversed big-bowl chandeliers providing the "lighting;" the audience on folding, metal chairs. German-born Miro Magloire was everywhere at once; welcoming the audience, providing background before each of the six offerings and repositioning the grand piano and music stand. Magloire's company, New Chamber Ballet, is small with five dancers and often a guest artist; pianist Melody Fader whose brilliant playing enhanced three pieces and violinist Doori Na who played the other three.
- [Introducing Weiyin Chen, who will play Bartók, Marc Neikrug, and Schubert at SubCulture on June 13](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/06/introducing-weiyin-chen-play-bartk-marc-neikrug-schubert-subculture-june-13/) - Last January I heard part of quite a thrilling chamber concert at SubCulture. The Mirò Quartet, which I have reviewed favorably in the past, excelled themselves in an all-Brahms concert with a young Taiwanese-American pianist I had not heard before, Weiyin Chen. Her playing showed maturity, a deep identification with the music, in this case Brahms' Piano Quartet in C Minor and Piano Quintet, an extensive range of color and feeling, strength, and seriousness. The Mirò played with a electric intensity I've not heard from them before. This was in fact the second concert of a three-part debut series she has organized for SubCulture.
- [Charles Dutoit conducts The San Francisco Symphony in Stravinsky, Elgar, and Mussorgsky/Ravel, with Gautier Capuçon, Cello](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/06/charles-dutoit-conducts-san-francisco-symphony-stravinsky-elgar-mussorgskyravel-gautier-capuon-cello/) - It's hard to recall a time when Stravinsky's music carried with it the suggestion of impossible modernism. But it did—once. The appearance of Petrouchka on TV in 1960 made the viewer feel quite daring, I remember. It was "dissonant.” And the Rite of Spring, with all those purpose-led insect lives and braying jurassic fossils was just plain intimidating. Little did we know then that dinosaurs were merely large chickens and Stravinsky himself, if not exactly a pussycat, then about as threatening as a Russian wolfhound on Stupid Pet Tricks.
- [Aeschylus' Oresteia at Bard, translated by Ted Hughes, directed by Gregory Thompson](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/08/aeschylus-oresteia-bard-summerscape-ted-hughes-gregory-thompson/) - If I was at all distracted during the three intensely focussed performances at Bard's Fisher Center, it was to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. Gregory Thompson's production of Aeschylus' Oresteia seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience—a satisfactory production of ancient Greek drama in English. In fact it was more than satisfactory—far ahead of anything else I have seen. In fact if I have to qualify my estimate of its success in any way, it is for purely technical reasons: Mr. Thompson concentrated on the surviving element of of Aeschylus' work, the text, and ignored dance and music almost entirely. On the other hand he was perfectly right in deciding on this solution. Whatever dance and music one might bring in would be either an insufficiently documented reconstruction or a modern recreation in a modern idiom, and Aeschylus' verse is sufficiently rich and complex to make it advisable to concentrate on that alone. Every actor delivered Ted Hughes' lucid, noble, and colorful English with supreme clarity and ease, so that the audience could make close contact with the meaning and beauty of the language, as well as the elegance and expression of the actors' delivery. The power of this brilliant production lay in its honesty and directness.
- [Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina Revisits the Met after 13 Years](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/mussorgsky-khovanshchina-metropolitan-opera/) - Even if the performance had not been as great as it was, we both, as newcomers to Khovanshchina, would have left the Met in a state of uncritical awe. Mussorgsky's historical tragedy, although the composer left it unorchestrated and unfinished at his early death, leaving a great deal of work for others, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich in their separate efforts, has all the potency the greatest music and the most powerful human drama can lend it—all within a setting of the grandest spectacle. As the Met presented it earlier this month, its four and a half hours sped by, as we followed the hopeless and ultimately disastrous adventures of key players of various factions in the unstable years of Peter the Great’s minority. Even Mussorgsky's finished opera, his acknowledged masterpiece, Boris Godunov, does not leave us with such an overwhelmingly cathartic effect as the inexorable succession of assassinations, executions, and suicides with which Khovanshchina concludes. Mussorgsky, who wrote the libretto as well as the music, seems to have captured the tragic essence of history in it. There was a specific reason why the final effect of the Met performance was so moving, but to explain it, a little background is in order.
- [Vasily Petrenko Conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Barber, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich, with Sa Chen, Piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/vasily-petrenko-conducts-san-francisco-symphony-barber-rachmaninoff-shostakovich-sa-chen-piano/) - Concerts this good have become our norm and good fortune in twenty-first century America—especially in San Francisco. We are used to charismatic conducting, to fine piano debuts, to engaged orchestral playing and the rediscovery of great neglected symphonies. What differs from time to time is the realization that a performer may not only be accomplished, or even inspiring, but one of a kind. I begin to think Vasily Petrenko is such an artist.
- [Euripides' Ion in Ancient Greek, by the Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/05/euripides-ion-ancient-greek-barnard-columbia-ancient-drama-group/) - Even if the performances of the Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group were half as good as they are, we'd have to be grateful to them for even attempting to perfom ancient theater in the original language as something more than an academic exercise. For quite a few years now, the Matthew Alan Kramer Fund has enabled Barnard and Columbia students to offer these productions with some resources for costumes, sets, etc., but the essential ingredient in their success (Tthey usually sell out) is the passionate dedication and hard work of all involved—above all the student actors, who often rise to a level far beyond what we normally expect from even the most serious efforts of colleges and universities. Beyond youthful energy and enthusiasm, an impressive concentration of solid Greek, close, intelligent study of Euripides and his text, and, above all, theatrical talent brought this rarely performed—rarely even read—masterpiece to life.
- [Vivica Genaux, to appear with Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi at Carnegie Hall, on Thursday, Feb. 2, talks to Michael Miller, Part 2 of 3](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/vivica-genaux-europa-galante-fabio-biondi-carnegie-hall-michael-miller-part-2/) - MM: Harnoncourt will have the Concertgebouw...and I think maybe he started with the Vienna Philharmonic having them use gut strings... VG: Good for him. MM: And approaching a period style. I should think that would be a great—how do you say?—experience for orchestral musicians, to have them rethink their playing a bit and so forth. There's not much interest in that in the U.S. VG: But I think it’s also...It depends on who does the approaching, I mean Harnoncourt, you can’t argue with him; he’s such an institution in Austria, and then also you were saying, that in Europe in general he’s just...he’s untouchable. He’s brilliant and...
- [Ballet Hispanico at the Joyce Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/04/ballet-hispanico-joyce-theater/) - his program, divided into three sections, showed the company in very different lights. Up first, Show. Girl, with choreography by Rosie Herrera, costumes by Diana Ruettiger and lighting by Joshua Preston, uses the "Cuban cabaret ethic" to put forth dances that don't have much relationship to each other. Show. Girl opens with a line of women in columnar pink dresses with deep slits on both sides, moving rhythmically to silence other than the occasional slaps they give themselves. It's a bit unsettling. After a time, they sing a banal song about a turtle and move in the creamy light, posing for one another and the audience.
- [No-Win Productions presents the World Premiere of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, FJF, at the New Ohio Theater, February 28 - March 21 (closed)](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/nowin-productions-georg-buechner-woyzeck-fjf-new-ohio-theater/) - Georg Büchner, in Germany, is considered one of the nation's greatest writers, and their most prestigious literary prize is named after him. However, productions of his plays are rare in this country, most likely to be found on university and college campuses—even during the bicentenary of his birth in 2013. That is why I was so especially keen to see the No-Win Productions' staging of his most famous play, Woyzeck, in Jeremy Duncan Pape's adaptation, entitled Woyzeck, FJF (the protagonist's initials).
- [Leila Josefowicz plays Shostakovich and Schubert at Wigmore Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/leila-josefowicz/) - The hollow man. Shostakovich was demoralized and spent after suffering a serious heart attack in 1964. The politically craven Symphony No. 12 and the politically courageous Symphony No. 13 had dangled him between the two poles of his nature. A visit from Benjamin Britten revived his spirits in 1967, and two years later Shostakovich produced one of his late masterpieces, the Violin Sonata, a severe work based, after Britten’s instigation, on the twelve-tone system. But as with Agon, which is twelve-tone but sounds every note like Stravinsky, the sonata’s gray, spare lament could have come from nobody but Shostakovich. It exhausts an audience, even the redoubtable Wiggies (that is, the faithful patrons of Wigmore Hall) but when a committed soloist plays it, a soul beats loudly inside the enervating despair.
- [New York City Opera Renaissance Gala Tribute to the Late Julius Rudel and Fundraiser](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/new-york-city-opera-renaissance-gala-tribute-julius-rudel-fundraiser/) - The demise of New York's beloved City Opera seemed sudden and bizarre—and so painful to opera lovers in the City, that many lost sight of what a long process it was. The board's bad decisions went back around a decade. The company's deficits climbed, and its endowment was repeatedly raided. There was time to change things, and the warning signals were unmistakable. The late Gérard Mortier's innovative spirit and visibility may have been an asset, but he was hardly famed for his thrift. In the end they couldn't afford even to get him started. When the NYCO couldn't meet the budget they had agreed to offer him, he backed out. His replacement, George Steel, had similar artistic inclinations.
- [Michael Tilson Thomas conducts The London Symphony Orchestra in Colin Matthews, Gershwin (with Yuja Wang), and Shostakovich](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/michael-tilson-thomas-london-symphony-orchestra-colin-matthews-gershwin-yuja-wang-shostakovich/) - If you feel pursued by good luck, do we call it paranoia? This is the question I must answer lately, since it seems the London Symphony has chased me down in San Francisco—to my great delight! Just a month ago, I had the good fortune of hearing Sir Mark Elder lead the orchestra in a solid Pathétique at the Barbican. By the time my visit was over, I had experienced the Berlin Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, the Philharmonia and the London Philharmonic, as well. What puzzled throughout all this listening was the difficulty of telling the orchestras apart in London's Barbican and Festival Hall, clinical modern venues with limited reverberation and bass.
- [Before Bach: Late Renaissance and Early Baroque Music at Carnegie Hall — a Month-Long Series in April and May](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/bach-late-renaissance-early-baroque-music-carnegie-hall-monthlong-series-april/) - For years, New York City seemed to have missed out on the extraordinary efflorescence of research, study, and practice, which has made historically informed performance such an essential part of music-making in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The early music scene was hardly non-existent, but it was thin in comparison to centers like Boston, London, Amsterdam, and Paris, patronized by a small band of enthusiasts who at one time actually looked the part, crowding into Manhattan’s less fashionable churches in colorful woolen tunics, knitted caps, and Earth Shoes. There don’t seem to be many of those people left around, and a much larger range of audiences, spanning all age groups, now hear historical performances in the major venues, especially Carnegie Hall
- [Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/paul-taylor-american-modern-dance/) - Although the three works, Rite of Spring, Company B and Piazzolla Caldera that made up the evening are very different in style and tone, they are equally compelling.
- [Stephen Porter plays Debussy's Preludes, Books I and II at SubCulture, New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/stephen-porter-debussy-preludes-subculture-new-york/) - One can't say that performances of both books of Debussy's Preludes are absolutely unheard of, but they are sufficiently uncommon for Stephen Porter to deserve our admiration for his courage and enlightenment in offering them in the form he did. Not only did he perform both books in their entirety from memory, he prefaced each with a piece from Debussy's earlier Images, in order to prepare the audience, and included engaging discussions of the composer and the works, not only providing us with background, but preparing us to listen, to enter Debussy's particular world of sounds.
- [Christian Baldini conducts the San Francisco Symphony in John Luther Adams's The Light that Fills the World; Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Schumann and Brahms, with Anne-Sophie Mutter](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/christian-baldini-san-francisco-symphony-john-luther-adams-michael-tilson-thomas-schumann-brahms-anne-sophie-mutter/) - This week's program at Davies Hall had a split personality. Young contemporary music specialist Christian Baldini was onstage to lead the opening work, The Light That Fills the World, by Alaska composer J. L. Adams. Michael Tilson Thomas then conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the Brahms concerto and Schumann symphony.
- [Rattle leads the Berlin Philharmonic through Sibelius's symphonies at the Barbican](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/rattle-berlin-philharmonic-sibelius-symphonies/) - The best part of a love affair, wrote Georges Clémenceau some hundred years ago, is the moment you are climbing the stairs. It was, one hopes, not a cynical remark but a commentary on the pleasures of anticipation. I thought of this last month as I negotiated stairs at London's Barbican Centre. A visit by the Berlin Philharmonic is always, if not a love affair, then certainly a thrill. But the otherwise admirable and much used Barbican is a windowless maze, and climbing the various levels can make for the seeming triumph of cluelessness over romance.
- [Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra at Davies Hall, San Francisco](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/nezet-seguin-rotterdam-san-francisco-prokofiev-ravel/) - In the first hundred years of our still budding love affair with Maurice Ravel, his orchestral works have come to us from many directions. But despite our familiarity, Ravel's music remains enigmatic beneath its surface appeal. There is something "film-noir" about it. We are in a mystery. The lady has shown up at the detective agency wearing a veil....and one suspects it might take a Frenchman to lift it without getting his face slapped.
- [Hotel Elefant's "speakOUT," featuring composer Paola Prestini](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/hotel-elefants-speakout-featuring-composer-paola-prestini/) - Hotel Elefant's spring concert continues their third season theme "speakOUT," representing artists who are utilizing music to reflect on issues both personal and political. Not only will the program “speakOUT” by focusing on these issues, but the program itself will raise its voice by featuring an all-female cast of composers, presenting innovative work by featured composer Paola Prestini along with emerging composers Lainie Fefferman and Leaha Maria Villarreal. The ensemble will perform Prestini’s Yoani, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, including a brand new movement from the work, and Inngerutit; the world premiere of Lainie Fefferman’s Hotel Elefant-commissioned piece Impostor Syndrome; and the world premiere of Leaha Maria Villarreal’s This is How We Love.
- [Madame Cézanne and “The Truth in Painting”](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/03/madame-czanne-truth-painting/) - The poet Rainer Maria Rilke saw the retrospective of Paul Cézanne at the 1907 Autumn Salon in Paris. Overcome by Cézanne’s “infinitely responsive conscience,” recognizable in the painter’s shifting fragments across the canvas, he returned to the exhibition daily until its close. In his writings on the exhibition, Rilke’s most jubilant praise was lauded to Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair (ca. 1877).
- [Injustice for All: Lucy Thurber's The Insurgents at the Labyrinth Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/lucy-thurber-the-insurgents-at-the-labyrinth-theater/) - very character in The Insurgents, a new play by Lucy Thurber at The Bank Street Theater, is or has been disenfranchised. Sally Wright, played by Cassie Beck, has lost her athletic scholarship and returns to a dead-end, no hope town in the rural Northeast, joining her father, a drinker and womanizer and her brother who can't get anything right.
- [Sviatoslav Richter (1915 - 1997) on Disc: Hunting the Snark](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/sviatoslav-richter-recordings/) - Angelic demon. Two musical instruments rise above all others in their humanity — the violin, because it comes closest to imitating the singing voice, and the piano, because it comes closest to conveying human nature. As human nature is vast, so is pianism. You can sequester yourself from territory that is too hot, cold, angry, lustful, domineering, or terrifying. Some pianists base their whole career on safely walling off the troubling aspects of human perversity (Alfred Brendel comes to mind, with his ability to make even Liszt wipe off his shoes at the door), while only one has been courageous enough to venture without a care into heaven and hell.
- [Hugh Leonard's Da, Revived at the Irish Repertory Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/hugh-leonards-da-revived-irish-repertory-theatre/) - After its impressive fall production of Conor McPherson's Port Authority (2001), the Irish Rep has moved on to an older play from an older generation, Hugh Leonard's Da (1978), which was a huge success in New York and on a ten-month American tour, winning all three of the major Best Play awards in 1978, the Drama Desk, New York Drama Critics' Circle, and the Tony. It premiered off-off Broadway, soon transferred to the Morosco Theatre on Broadway (which fell prey to the wrecker's ball shortly afterwards) and almost became a New York institution over its 687 performances. It was made into an American film in 1988, with Martin Sheen playing Charlie opposite Barnard Hughes, who created the role of Da on stage.
- [Ballet 422, a Film by Jody Lee Lipes at Lincoln Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/ballet-422-film-jody-lee-lipes-lincoln-center/) - Just after Justin Peck goes on stage to acknowledge the applause as the choreographer of Paz de la Jolla, a new ballet, he leaves and goes backstage. He walks to a small dressing room where he takes off his dark suit, puts on makeup and his costume and, responding to the PA summoning dancers to the stage, goes back downstairs to perform in another ballet.
- [Scriabin lives again at Carnegie Hall! With Mendelssohn, Debussy, Brahms, and Schumann. Riccardo Muti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Yefim Bronfman](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/scriabin-mendelssohn-debussy-brahms-schumann-bronfman-carnegie-muti-cso/) - One can't help feeling mildly shocked when one realizes that the Chicago Symphony is now alone among the great American orchestras in employing one of the great senior conductors as Music Director. Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco is close to him in age, but nowhere near him in authority. Franz Welser-Möst has something like authority, but not the age, and one might say that his conviction in following his own lights has not quite developed into the kind of authority conductors like Muti and Chailly command.
- [In Praise of Herbert von Karajan, with a Selective Critical Discography](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/05/praise-herbert-karajan-selective-critical-discography/) - My immediate reaction to Michael Miller's commentary on the Karajan centenary [Oh no! He’s not back again, is he? - May 2, 2008] was rather choleric, but I've settled down a bit since then and can write this from a relatively balanced perspective.
- [Old Master Drawings, the successor to The Drawing Site, is now online.](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/old-master-drawings-the-successor-to-the-drawing-site-is-now-online/) - Isidoro Bianchi, Study for a Ceiling Decoration: Detail of a Caryatid Old Master Drawings, the successor to The Drawing Site, is now online. In it, Michael Miller offers articles about the history of drawing, the history of collecting, a reference work on the materials and techniques of drawing, and a page of news in the
- [Arnulf Rainer: der Übermaler, Alte Pinakothek (Munich), closed September 5th, 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/arnulf-rainer-der-uebermaler-alte-pinakothek-munich/) - I have long deemed Munich’s Alte Pinakothek one of the most underrated museums in Europe. Thanks to aristocratic connoisseurs like William IV, Maximilian I, and Ludwig I, the city now boasts an outstanding collection of Renaissance, Dutch, and Flemish masterpieces. The museum is well complimented by Alexander Freiherr von Branca’s Neue Pinakothek and Stephan Braunfels’s Pinakothek der Moderne since 2002. In fact, these robust institutions have allowed Munich’s Kunstareal to rise above the current economic crisis as promising young talent finds a slow but steady stream of patrons.
- [Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots: French Grand Opera Comes to Bard.](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/08/meyerbeers-les-huguenots-french-grand-opera-comes-to-bard/) - The summer festivals have been proceeding creditably, but now the Important Events are beginning to turn up, mostly in New York State, it seems—not that a cycle of Beethoven violin sonatas by Christian Tetzlaff isn’t important! First came the Oresteia at Bard, then Rossini's rarely performed Semiramide, and now, once again at Bard, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Probably the most popular opera of all during the nineteenth century (It exceeded 1,000 performances at the Paris Opera), it fell rapidly from favor with, it seems, the First World War.
- [Lohengrin Revived at the Lyric Opera of Chicago](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/lohengrin-revived-at-the-lyric-opera-of-chicago/) - This year’s production of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin was only the second mounted by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in its history. The Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal have been seen multiple times on Wacker Drive since the 1950’s, but what is usually thought to be Wagner’s most accessible opera was not performed until 1980, a pedestrian premiere memorable only for Eva Marton in her prime as Elsa. The psychological complexities of the later works have generally commanded more attention in the post-war musical world, and the fairy-tale Lohengrin inevitably began to seem old-fashioned, a victim of jokes about Slezak and Melchior hauled upstream by swan boats. But Wagner achieved in Lohengrin a purity of lyric expression, both tender and ardent, not found in any of his other compositions, and always a pleasure to encounter again. Perhaps rightly, it was the Italianate Lohengrin of Plácido Domingo in 1984 that drew the serious attention of New York audiences back to the piece, and then Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt in the controversial 1998 production conceived by Robert Wilson. That staging cut through accumulated theatrical tradition by adopting a highly stylized Kabuki-like form, both in the sets and the singers’ movements. (Ben Heppner has claimed that his vocal problems began with this production and the unnatural singing positions he was forced into.) What Lyric Opera audiences saw in February and March was, as is usual in Chicago, hardly so challenging.
- [Uncle Vanya, Maly Theatre, BAM, NYC](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/uncle-vanya-maly-theatre-bam-nyc/) - Time passes so slowly in the Maly Theater's production of Uncle Vanya, as souls pace the width of a sparse, unforgiving stage, that tensions and grievances dissipate into the ether, or else sink like dead weight. For characters flush with passion on the hottest day of summer, the air is cool and still with inertia. This production bares its soul when it just lets its characters be, enunciating the language, allowing itself to breathe and become suspended in the byt, the banality of everyday existence.
- [My (Trite) Old Kentucky Home](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/02/trite-kentucky-home/) - Kentucky Cantata by Paul David Young is supposed to be about issues of important issues of our time including violence against women, race and immigration. However, it doesn’t rise to the importance of these.
- [Richard Linklater's Boyhood](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/richard-linklaters-boyhood/) - When The Who named their landmark 1979 album The Kids Are Alright, it was an anthem of baby boomer self-confidence. Boomers were more than all right—they knew without being told that they would one day be in charge of everything. Great expectations formed a generational bond going back to the cradle. As applied to the insecure Gen X adults who populate Richard Linklater's widely acclaimed but elusive film Boyhood, the album would be called "Are the kids alright? How the fuck should I know? I can barely run my own life." Born between the early Sixties and early Eighties, Gen Xers shunned baby boomer values. They defined themselves by being cool with underachievement. Without knowing how it happened, some drifted like tourists inside their own lives.
- [Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra Perform Brahms' First and Third Symphonies](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/01/ivan-fischer-budapest-festival-orchestra-perform-brahms-symphonies/) - Think what you will about San Francisco, but nobody ever said it was Hungarian! You might have been fooled yesterday at Davies Hall, though, rubbing elbows with an enthusiastic elderly audience assembled for Iván Fischer's Budapest Festival Orchestra. Sunday attendees do normally look a bit older, retired Stanford and Berkeley faculty perhaps, in from the suburbs. But during the week, a twenty-something dating crowd prone to show off its legs and neck in the corridors, leavens the age mix. This time the young were missing. (Their loss!) There was something very "1956" and central European about the crowd, right down to the fuzzy coats and orange hair.
- [Richard III by William Shakespeare, directed by Miles Potter – until September 25, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Ontario](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/richard-iii-by-william-shakespeare-directed-by-miles-potter-until-september-25-tom-patterson-theatre-stratford-shakespeare-festival-stratford-ontario/) - In 1953, the town of Stratford, Ontario inaugurated its annual Shakespeare Festival with this very play directed by Tyrone Guthrie and starring Alec Guinness. This year Seana McKenna takes on the title role, adding—as husband and director Miles Potter explains—“one more layer of artifice on Richard.” With over twenty years of experience at Stratford, McKenna hardly needs an excuse to play the part. Yet I understand the public’s demand for an explanation.
- [Rockwell Kent and the Cape Cinema Mural](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/rockwell-kent-and-the-cape-cinema-mural/) - Part of the Cape Cinema’s appeal comes from the high contrast between outside and in. The church-like exterior is patterned after the nearby town of Centerville's Congregational Church. The murals you might expect inside–of a Puritan religious gathering or colonists working–are instead of exuberant figures dancing across the ceiling. Within the space of a few feet, just by crossing the lobby, we travel from stern New England to lush Art Deco. Dennis's Cape Cinema is open year round, in the summer months for art-house movies and some live concerts and in the winter for Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performances. The movies are selected by Eric Hart, the cinema's manager, and George Mansour. Mansour has been booking art-house films for more than forty years and is a consultant for the Angelika Cinemas.
- [Wagner, Tannhäuser Overture. Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 - the BSO's first recording under Andris Nelsons](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/01/wagner-tannhauser-overture-sibelius-symphony-no-2-bsos-first-recording-andris-nelsons/) - I don’t think I have heard the Boston Symphony sound this full and deep since Koussevitzky. This CD inaugurates Andris Nelsons’ era at the helm of the BSO and signals a reinforcement of the orchestra’s considerable strengths in the more brooding side of the continental repertory.
- [You Can't Take It With You](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/cant-take-hart-kaufman-broadway/) - James Earl Jones, Kristine Nielsen, Franz Kranz, Will Brill, Annaleigh Ashford, Patrick Kerr and Mark Linn-Baker in You Can't Take It With You. Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You first premiered on Broadway in late 1936, midway through FDR’s first term in office and still the Great Depression. The
- [Boyhood: An Intimate Epic](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/boyhood/) - If Richard Linklater were anonymous, like one of those painters who never signed their work, maybe he’d be known as The Master of the Gimmick. His first film, Slacker, tracked talk like a contagion or a unit of currency as it passed from one character to another, beginning with himself. Boyhood, his latest film, was
- [Bar Boulud, Passport to Burgundy at Lincoln Center](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/05/bar-boulud-passport-to-burgundy-at-lincoln-center/) - The first thing one notices entering Bar Boulud is the complete absence of any trace of the economic downturn. Thank God, too! (Forget your troubles, come on, get happy!) Elegant and chic, sleek and moderne, everywhere the fashionable thirty- and forty-somethings were enjoying themselves over bottles of wine and charcuterie, as if it were April in Paris. It‘s so chic, it feels like the set of a Carlo Ponti film. With the full house we encountered at 10.30 on a Monday evening, there was just enough room for Monica Vitti or Virna Lisi to totter through the crowd in a scant cocktail dress and stiletto heels.
- [Opera and Passion: Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Early Music Festival, and Odyssey Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2015/01/opera-passion-boston-lyric-opera-boston-early-music-festival-odyssey-opera/) - Is there a more passionate art form than opera? In what other mode is the uninhibited expression of feeling—tragic or comic—so central? More central than reason. Given the emotional liberation of great music, what can in a mere plot description appear to be absurd (a woman tossing the wrong baby into a fire; a “fallen woman” sacrificing her entire future and the happiness of her lover for the sake of her lover’s respectable sister; a man killing his best friend in a duel because he has flirted with his girlfriend; a nobleman secretly meeting his own wife in disguise—madness, murder, and deception) can become through music profound and moving, Revelation and Catharsis.
- [Leonard Freed, The Italians - exhibition now at The Leica Gallery, New York, until August 9, 2014](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/leonard-freed-the-italians-leica-gallery-nyc/) - Leonard Freed, The Italians, Quantuck Lane Press, 2011, exhibition now at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere through May 27, 2012. The great documentary art photographer's warm-hearted, but sharply observed takes on Italian life between 1956 and 2005 appear in 190 superb duotone illustrations. With an introductory essay in English and Italian by Berkshire Review/New York Arts editor, Michael Miller. The selection of images in the book and in the exhibition was made by Freed's widow, Brigitte and James Mairs, editor at the Quantuck Lane Press. The Italian edition, which is also bilingual and virtually identical, is distributed by the local organizer, Admira.
- [The Mikhailovsky Ballet to visit New York—at the Koch Theater, November 11-23, 2014](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/mikhailovsky-ballet-visit-new-york-koch-theater-november-11-23-2014/) - Get ready for a great dance experience via the Mikhailovsky Ballet, a company that combines classical tradition with a modern look, arriving at Lincoln Center's Koch theater for an all-too-short engagement beginning November 11, 2014 and ending November 16.
- [Susanna Mälkki conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Griffes, Bartók, and Brahms, with Jeremy Denk, Piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/susannah-malkki-conducts-san-francisco-symphony-griffes-bartk-brahms-jeremy-denk-piano/) - I had several motives in attending this concert. Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki is a fast rising star in the classical world, recently appointed Music Director of the Helsinki Philharmonic. I was eager to hear the rarely performed Griffes tone poem, a brilliant programming move. (We need to experience more "A" pieces from obscure composers of the past, I frequently argue.) And I was curious to see how Jeremy Denk would interact with Mälkki, since both musicians are of the brisk, sparky sort. The concert did not disappoint.
- [An Irish Christmas: a Musical Solstice Celebration, from the Irish Arts Center, at Symphony Space](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/irish-christmas-irish-arts-center-symphony-space/) - One can be thankful that it really is possible to ignore the worst excesses of the Holiday Season if one stays away from Midtown and shuns the Media, but it is discouraging to realize that many of the traditional aspects of it which give us the reassuring glow of tradition are in fact clichés, worn-out, empty rituals we attend because there's nothing better around. A few brass instruments and kettledrums in church don't really make a difference. A recent weekend in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, however, showed how lively the Season can be, if one really understands its importance, like the Moravian Protestants who make the Star of Bethlehem their central symbol, celebrate with a gusto seldom found anywhere else, from earnest in the pews to some prodigious eating and drinking.
- [The Bach Choir of Bethlehem's Christmas Concert, a Review and Interview with Music Director Greg Funfgeld—to Air on Christmas Day at 8pm on WWFM](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/bach-choir-bethlehem-christmas-concert-review-interview-greg-funfgeld/) - Where was the first documented performance of a Bach cantata in this country? Where were the St. John Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, the B Minor Mass, and the Art of Fugue first performed complete here? Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
- [Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo: Men in Tights (and Toe Shoes)](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/02/ballets-trockadero-monte-carlo-men-tights-toe-shoes/) - Men in tights, dancing on point, corsets squeezing not-so-tiny waists, savoring their moments as heroes, and yes, heroines—an oxymoron, a cross-dressing incarnation of Robin Hood, a Chelsea nightclub dream-come-true, or simply a fantasy? Would you buy all four.
- [Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane at The Young Vic](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/martin-mcdonagh-beauty-queen-leenane-young-vic/) - Desperate measures. Because anarchy and rebellion are the brutal threads that run through modern Irish history, you’d expect the same from its literature. But the greatest Irish writers going back to Yeats and Joyce have avoided Soviet-style social realism. Some have kept their distance from Ireland altogether, including London-born Martin McDonagh, the greatest writer about the Troubles who never experienced them first hand. They are the toxic air he breathed from a distance but still choked on.
- [John Hurt in Krapp's Last Tape from the Gate Theatre, Dublin, at BAM](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/john-hurt-krapps-tape-dublin-gate-theatre-bam/) - It occasionally strikes me, to my own bemusement, that walking along a street on an average day, I might have in my pockets as many as three devices capable of recording pictures, even moving pictures, and perhaps two for recording sound. Modern technology has given ordinary people—anyone—an unprecedented ability to make precise literal records of what can be heard and seen at any given time and place. Using a device smaller than my hand I can create a seamless journal of sound, text, still images, and movies, if I choose, but I refrain. I rarely put these capabilities to use—only if there is something extraordinary...like the bizarre Australian accent of a tour guide on the Palatine last year, as he spun absurdities to his rapt crowd. (I wasn't fast enough...) I am wary of these literal records. Are they the death of memory? Even during my undergraduate years, when the goings-on had every appearance of memorable times, I eschewed keeping a diary, taking notes, or even taking pictures. If I ever wrote about those times, I wanted to write from memory, with all its confusions and conflations, believing that someone else would be keeping an accurate chronicle of events to rescue me, if I needed it.
- [Philadelphia, Here I Come! By Brian Friel at Donmar Warehouse](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/philadelphia-here-i-come-friel-donmar/) - The old sod. No one ever asked for Delta blues to be any sadder or Irish drama to be any more Irish. As art it feels totally transparent. You get the impression that the scripts are achieved by walking down any Dublin street with a tape recorder, and the casts tumble out of a city bus at the back door of the next theater. This naturalness has the effect, strange as it sounds, of making the whole audience feel Irish by intermission. I thought I heard people around me saying "boyo," "mammy," and "What are you blatherin' on about?"
- [John Banville talks to Michael Miller about Love in the Wars, his English adaptation of Kleist's Penthesilea](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/john-banville-talks-michael-miller-love-wars-english-adaptation-kleists-penthesilea/) - John Banville and Michael Miller discuss Love in the Wars, his free English adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's play, Penthesilea, with a digression about the rest of Mr. Banville's work, before returning to the play, which will receive its world premiere at Bard College Summerscape. Kleist's theatrical ambition was to fuse Greek tragedy with Shakespearean "burlesque." The work shows his pessimistic world view spiced with black Prussian humor.
- [John Banville's Love in the Wars after Kleist's Penthesilea at Bard Summerscape](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/john-banvills-love-wars-kleist-penthesilea-bard-summerscape/) - If one has read one's Classics, or has acquired a passion for ancient literature later in life and has read, say, Homer and the tragic poets with some attention, or, perhaps I should say, is older than fifty, one, in some human situation, whether intimate, passionate, urgent, or trivial, will occasionally get an uncanny feeling that one is living out Greek myth—that under one's skin Achilles, Hermes, or Thetis are making us act and speak from within, as if we twenty-first century humans were nothing more than costumes for some drama of great antiquity that plays itself out continuously over millennia in strands intertwined with other narratives. Is this fate, or archetype, or merely common or garden human nature, observed as keenly by Homer, Pindar, and Euripides as by Dickens, Nietzsche, or Proust?
- [riverrun runs wild in Brooklyn, with performance artist Olwen Fouéré](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/riverrun-runs-wild-brooklyn-performance-artist-olwen-fouere/) - You've doubtless read somewhere or another or heard someone say that our relationship to novels is much like our relationships to people (our relationships to their authors, living and dead, are a whole other thing). That may sound trite, but it has its degree of truth. In no case is it so true as in the case of Finnegan's Wake. In most cases James Joyce's last novel is like some celebrity academic, who jets constantly between, say, Paris and Berkeley, but never crosses our path. Others may have approached the great man at the podium after a lecture and tried to ask a private question, only to be
- [A Year of Beckett in New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/beckett-new-york/) - This is probably the best occasion for me to come out of the closet and confess my secret vice—a mild fondness for the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. A viewing of NYGASP's The Yeomen of the Guard with an entirely unvictorian companion set me to thinking about certain genres of theatre and opera in which performance practices are prescribed by tradition or even some legal entity. NYGASP is well-known for throwing in a few uncanonical details, but basically they cleave to D'Oyly Carte's no longer legally binding restrictions, because their audience of devotees expect that—in fact they derive great pleasure from stage routines which have no meaning whatsover in contemporary theater outside of a G & S. Perhaps the tastes of loving audiences have proven more binding than the D'Oyly Carte copyrights.
- [The Bark and the Tree, by and starring Vivian Nesbitt United Solo Prizewinner 2013](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/bark-tree-starring-vivian-nesbitt-glory-united-solo/) - Vivian Nesbitt, born in Ohio and currently active in Albuquerque New Mexico, where she is Director of the Sol Acting Academy, studied acting in New York, and has been working in theater for many years as an actor, writer and teacher. Her play, The Bark and the Tree, is substantially autobiographical, but it transcends her personal perspective and the specifics of her own life into potent themes, like what is passed down in families, ancestry, history and its deliberate remaking, one's debt to the past, art, creativity, and, ultimately, our spiritual lives, which form a continuum beyond life and death. She addresses all this from deep personal experience, which gives all these different aspects of her play substance and ballast, so that one would have to be a total clod, or stone drunk, not to be engulfed by her story and enlightened by it. You know what it's like when the faeries and leprechauns come out. I assure you there are none of them here.
- [Port Authority, by Conor McPherson, with Billy Carter, Peter Maloney & James Russell, by the Irish Repertory Theatre, New York](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/port-authority-conor-mcpherson-irish-repertory-theatre-new-york/) - There seemed something symbolic in the front doors and lobby of the DR2 Theatre, temporary home of the Irish Repertory Theatre. As one walks in off the street, one finds a shallow vestibule followed by another shallow space occupied by the ticket office and the concession stand, liberally stocked with alcohol, as it should be in an Irish theater, after two or three steps, a small waiting room, then down a short black corridor into the auditorium. I don't think I've had quite that sense of openness and accessibility before in entering a theater. Irish theater is everywhere, and, apart from being a powerful force simply on the quality and scope of the work that's being done, it is open and accessible to all. New York continues to be in the thrall of the London stage, as always, and certainly not for the worse, but when London comes to these shores, as in last winter's visit of the Globe company, the event is highly publicized, tickets are expensive and hard to get, and the Broadway theaters claustrophobic, as New Yorkers crowd in to contemplate Shakespeare and his heirs as if it were the theatrical equivalent of the Crown Jewels. It seems like two different worlds.
- [Mikhailovsky Ballet Performs The Flames of Paris](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/mikhailovsky-ballet-performs-flames-paris/) - Move over Les Miz! The Flames of Paris is an opulent, highly muscular, charged ballet that's mass entertainment complete with sward-fighting, clog dancing, folk music and enough revolutionary zeal to please any audience. It also makes the French Revolution look like an event that took place between dessert and coffee – no guillotines, no blood and almost no tragedy if you don't count the two on-stage deaths that register more as plot lines than emotional grabbers.
- [The Nutcracker, A Valentina Kozlova Dance Conservatory Performance Project](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/nutcracker-valentina-kozlova-dance-conservatory-performance-project/) - This version of the beloved holiday classic, The Nutcracker, is less a focus on technical brilliance and more a charming family event with a host of young (and very young dancers). I went with two teenage girls, both veterans of other performances including the iconic New York City Ballet version. We agreed that the dancers worked hard and danced their little hearts out and that a huge amount of time and effort, to say nothing of a lot of rehearsals, went into the performance.
- [The Elephant Man at the Williamstown Theatre Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/the-elephant-man-at-the-williamstown-theatre-festival/) - For several years now, one of the joys of the Williamstown Theatre Festival has been the revivals of obscure, but cherishable British plays of the 1960's and 70's, David Storey's Home, for example or Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms, to name two examples. Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man is a late (1979) product of the period, even if it is by no means obscure today, thanks mostly to David Lynch's remarkable film (1980), and even if it was written by an American.
- [What is and what might have been: More Nelsons at the BSO, Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/12/might-nelsons-bso-chailly-leipzig-gewandhaus-orchestra/) - I couldn’t have been more eager to hear Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on their return visit to Boston, part of an American tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of the “Peaceful Revolution” that began in Leipzig in October 1989 and a month later led to the fall of the Berlin wall. Chailly continues to be one of most significant and enriching conductors of our time, and it was profoundly frustrating that, in January of 2012, heart problems prevented him from making his long overdue BSO debut (conducting, among other things, Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps). This cancellation also put him out of the running as a possible replacement for James Levine as BSO music director. There was no way the BSO would risk hiring another music director with health problems. And yet, apparently recovered, here he was in Boston.
- [Eloquent Nude, a film: Edward Weston & Charis Wilson](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/06/eloquent-nude-a-film-edward-weston-charis-wilson/) - When I was still quite young, my father gave me, along with the use of his old Leica, a copy of an illustrated history of photography. I was fascinated by the book, but above all by the chapter on Weston and the famous photograph of Charis lying on the sand dune, the simplest of them. I thought it the best photograph in the book and returned to it over and over again. I don’t remember the year exactly, but I was probably of an age when no hint of sex would have gone unnoticed. I remember distinctly that I saw no such associations in the image. It struck me as essentially chaste—an example of the formalism which I thought was the essence of great photography. I was inspired in this view, of course, by that very image, as well as the peppers, which seemed to me to be more overtly sensual than the nudes. It was only later that I learned that the subject was Weston’s wife, and still later that I learned something about what their relationship was like. I still think that the photograph is severe and formalistic to the point of the visionary. Weston’s work was one thing and his life another.
- [Meeting Charis](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/12/meeting-charis/) - I met Charis Wilson last summer at her friend Don’s house in Northern California. Charis, 94, wore black pants and a purple sweater and sat sprightly in a wheelchair. Her short hair was straight, smart, and delicate. She wore a purple headband and two bright blue hair combs. I immediately recognized her luminous face from Edward Weston’s photographs, taken over 70 years ago.
- [pianoSonoma, a Unique Music Festival in the Sonoma Wine Country](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/pianosonoma-unique-music-festival-sonoma-wine-country/) - I have just recently learned about a different kind of music festival, pianoSonoma, which convenes annually in late July and early August at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, under the benevolent guidance of Co-Founders and Co-Directors Michael and Jessica Chow Shinn, both faculty members at the Juilliard School. People attend music festivals for different reasons, most of which are passive, unless they happen to be Tanglewood Music Center Fellows or "young professionals" at Marlboro. They go as members of the audience to hear star musicians they would not normally find in their area, or they like to continue their experiences at Carnegie or Davies Hall in some pleasant rural setting suitable for a summer holiday. Their active participation is usually limited to laying out a picnic, consuming it, a listless read of tedious program notes, uncritical applause, and coping with post-concert congestion in the parking lots, especially after a manifestation of Lang Lang or Yo-Yo Ma.
- [Michael Mazur: Stoneham Zoo (1976-1979) at the  Ryan Lee Gallery, closing November 15, 2014](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/michael-mazur-stoneham-zoo-1976-1979-ryan-lee-gallery-closing-november-15-2014/) - There are only two days left to view an important exhibition of oils and pastels by Michael Mazur (1935-2009) at the Ryan Lee Gallery. In 1976 Mazur, at a time when he was forty-one and his career was reaching a substantial level, found himself drawn to Stoneham Zoo, which was in a rather derelict state at the time, if I remember correctly, and decided to create a series of works in the monkey cages there. It reminded him of work he had done in mental hospitals as a student and teacher, both offering art therapy and drawing the patients, which he saw more as inmates, people in captivity. As he developed this theme in his work, he began to draw more from memory. Around 1976 and in recent years he had been working concentratedly both with narrative scenes and with landscape. He approached the monkey cages with these three pursuits in mind.
- [Seneca Rides Again! James Romm, Dying Every Day - Seneca at the Court of Nero](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/seneca-james-romm-dying-every-day-seneca-nero/) - I was seduced into reviewing this book by a very upbeat and encouraging event at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street—an institution from which little encouraging has emerged in recent years. (Opponents of the obscene plan to gut the stacks and set up an Internet café in their place should remain on the watch!) Following an afternoon of research, during which I learned that in mid-nineteenth century Providence, Rhode Island purveyors of "healthy, hungry leeches" and tamed performing grizzly bears had more visibility in the marketplace than calligraphers, I felt drawn to a conversation between James Shapiro, the Columbia Shakespearean, who has written numerous well-received books on and around WS, and James Romm of Bard College, the author of a new book about Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, Dying Every Day - Seneca at the Court of Nero. Both have been fellows of the New York Public Library's Cullman Center, Shapiro wrote his splendid Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, surely the best treatment of the topic ever, while a Fellow, and Romm now follows him with his contribution to the "Seneca Problem."
- [The Bridge Project's Richard III, by William Shakespeare, with Kevin Spacey, at BAM...with a backward look at the Donmar Warehouse King Lear](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/richard-iii-shakespeare-kevin-spacey-bridge-project-bam/) - This production of Shakespeare’s Richard III has reached BAM after a sold-out run at the Old Vic and a tour which included Epidavros, Istanbul, Naples, Sydney, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, and San Francisco, among others. This reminded me of the sort of thing the British Council does, but of course this Shakespearian globe-trotting was a private enterprise, funded largely by Bank of America and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. And course the whole point of the production’s parent organization, The Bridge Project, was to combine British and American casts. Perhaps there should be an organization beyond the British Council to cultivate, study, and promote the global English language, as it used on the streets and in literature around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Guyana, and others. And the way English is behaving in the physical and cyber-world today, it may need some international body to encourage it in good manners, kicking it under the table, when it starts to monopolize the conversation.
- [Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra play Chopin and Brahms at Carnegie Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/03/riccardo-chailly-leipzig-gewandhaus-orchestra-chopin-brahms-carnegie/) - The visit of the Leipzig Gewandhaus brings to a close the series of concerts by the great central European orchestras in Carnegie Hall. (Only the Dresdener Staatskapelle was lacking, and they are scheduled to appear next season.) It is a unique pleasure to hear a comprehensive series of these great ensembles in one hall, which also happens to possess one of the finest acoustics in the world. It is also a familiar one to me, since I have been attending concerts at Carnegie since childhood, when the New York Philharmonic still played there. The restoration has impaired its full glory somewhat, but I've grown used to the sound as it is—a bit too bright, but capable of embracing the grandest orchestral tutti and projecting the finest detail of a solo instrument up to the rafters. As an environment for comparison, only Symphony Hall in Boston can rival it, but the program of visiting orchestras in Boston has sadly diminished over the years. Only the Berlin Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus have played in Boston this season. (I was only recently reminiscing with a friend about how we used to hear Cleveland and other great American orchestras, as well as Vienna and Berlin in Symphony Hall more or less annually.)
- [Chailly, Lortie, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra play Beethoven at Symphony Hall; Levine All-Beethoven with the BSO](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/chailly-lortie-and-the-leipzig-gewandhaus-orchestra-play-beethoven-at-symphony-hall/) - A couple of years ago the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and conductor Riccardo Chailly visited Boston and gave a wonderful Symphony Hall concert of Richard Strauss tone poems. The orchestra, with a lot of young members, played splendidly, with great group spirit. And Chailly gave extraordinary purpose and meaning to the music. He and the orchestra under his leadership showed care and commitment with every bar, every note, and fashioned each piece into a compelling organic whole. Wow! one felt. Friends of mine in New York heard the same program a week later there and had much the same reaction.
- [In Memoriam Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/11/memoriam-rafael-fruhbeck-de-burgos/) - I should kick myself now for not having gone backstage to say hello...you can lose people from sheer timidity, after all. And agents aren't supposed to be timid. Last December, I found myself in Los Angeles. The trip was a vain attempt to escape the cold. And it would ultimately yield nothing but tooth-chattering selfies at deserted beaches all the way down the coast. But I did have the opportunity to hear iconic Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Rimsky-Korsakoff"s Scheherazade and an early Haydn symphony. Both performances were classic, warmhearted Frühbeck in his comfort zone. I wrote-up the concert at the time, and a review can be found here. But I had no idea this would be Frühbeck's last week with the Philharmonic, nor that six months later he would be dead from cancer at eighty-one. He did seem a bit frail and tired, so I had thought better than to go backstage and disturb him. But now he's gone, of course...
- [Production Notes: Woody Allen's Bop Decameron in Rome](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/woody-allen-bop-decameron-rome/) - Woody Allen is in Rome shooting his latest production, The Bop Decameron. Italian newspapers have been brimming with “Where’s Woody?” stories, and tourists and citizens have been tweeting their sightings. Woody is very popular in Italy and while this is his first Rome-set picture, he has been a frequent visitor in the past with his New Orleans jazz band. in tow. The Bop Decameron will be structured into four vignettes, two of which will be in Italian. Yesterday, Woody shot at Piazza Mattei with a predominantly Italian cast and crew. Jim Jarmusch used the same location in the Rome segment of Night on Earth, starring Roberto Benigni, who is also signed on for The Bop. Other cast members include: Penélope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, and Woody Allen himself.
- [Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/edward-steichen-in-high-fashion-the-conde-nast-years-1923-1937/) - This important exhibition of Edward Steichen's fashion and celebrity photography for Condé Nast, which will close soon in Toronto and continue on to Fort Lauderdale and Kansas City, emerged from an earlier, ambitious survey of his entire career, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography, also organized by Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and the Musée de Élysée. While researching that exhibition, the curators, William Ewing and Todd Brandow, discovered two thousand vintage prints from Steichen's years at Vogue and Vanity Fair in the Condé Nast Archive, where they were catalogued and preserved to museum standards. These had never been exhibited before and presented an opportunity not to be missed.
- [Arts Events at Columbia](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/arts-events-columbia/) - [iframe: src="http://www.columbia.edu/events/today.html" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="800" scrolling="yes"]
- [Event Calendar at the Yale School of Music](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/event-calendar-yale-school-music/) - [iframe: src="http://music-tickets.yale.edu/single/EventListing.aspx" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="800" scrolling="yes"]
- [Judith Schaechter: Dark Matter](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/judith-schaechter-dark-matter/) - We are mesmerized. The polished sheen of the glass radiates colors as intensely as jewels. A myriad of forms in kaleidoscopic transformation suggest at once flowers, sea urchins, snowflakes, or bacteria. Crystalline circles like flowers or alabaster Easter eggs multiply in extravagant exuberance. Tree branches, undulating snakes (or are they veins?) spread across the profusion.
- [John Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/john-adams-death-klinghoffer-metropolitan-opera/) - No one was trembling in their seats at the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer on October 20. Taking no chances, the police presence outside the hall was considerable, and if you made light of it, the box office manager was quick to frown. “It’s for your own protection, sir.” But how can this Mayfly of a contretemps be seen as anything inflammatory? Every lens you view it through is skewed. A woman was introduced at the rally outside (protesters had been squeezed into the tiny strip park that separates Lincoln Center from Broadway) as a heroine for Israel. Through a bullhorn she shouted that “Peter Gelb, a Jew, has brought danger to all of us.” It would take the thinnest of skins and hottest of heads to remotely believe such a charge.
- [Reflections on the Elgin Marbles](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/09/reflections-on-the-elgin-marbles-by-huntley-dent/) - Rescue or looting? It’s disturbing to visit the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, I find, because the eye notices their wreckage and beauty at the same time. One empire, the Ottoman, ignored the Parthenon as art, affixing a minaret to it and using it as a mosque. This neglect was probably better than the pillaging that another empire, the British, did after 1801, when Lord Elgin chivvied a document from the Turkish sultan that may or may not have allowed him to hack off and cart away half the friezes, pediment statues, and intermediate sculptures along the roof edge, or metopes. Elgin “rescued” enough precious art to strip the temple fairly bare. When he was nearly broke in 1816, the British government bought the marbles, after a queasy debate in Parliament that ended, basically, with “they’re ours now, nobody else can have them.”
- [The Opening of the New Acropolis Museum, Athens](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/06/the-opening-of-the-new-acropolis-museum-athens/) - Today, the New Acropolis Museum opens in Athens, Greece. It is positioned 300 metres from the Acropolis itself, so that visitors will be able to see it – the source of the objects before them – from the windows of the museum.
- [Rossini's Tancredi at Opera Boston](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/10/rossinis-tancredi-at-opera-boston/) - Among the many things I admire about Opera Boston is the consistency of their priorities. A great deal of care and expense goes into casting vocally and dramatically excellent singers appropriate for their roles. Music Director Gil Rose maintains a strong orchestra, and he is an impressive musician and conductor in his own right. Budgetary restrictions are more apparent in sets and costumes—this in turn touches the stage direction as a whole. In last year's season, for example, the first act of Der Freischütz was perfectly viable, while the Wolf's Glen scene was pretty much a shambles, a seemingly a desperate attempt to make the most of inadequate resources with precious gimmicks. Opera Boston's production last spring of Shostakovich's The Nose was more successful: brilliant stage and costume design and brilliant direction were noticeably, but acceptably compromised by budget limitations. As impressive as the intelligent programming and musical results are, a hint of well-intentioned "making do" remains in the physical production, and that was painfully apparent in Opera Boston's recent production of Rossini's youthful opera seria, Tancredi.
- [Pollock Matters, The McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, September 1-December 9, 2007](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/12/pollock-matters-the-mcmullen-museum-of-art-boston-college-september-1-december-9-2007/) - Herbert Matter recalled that in 1942, when they first met over dinner, Jackson Pollock said to him, “It’s a really wonderful time to be living.” He added,“That gave us plenty to think about the rest of the evening.” I wonder how many people would say that today. For my part, after rehearsing a string of problems and miseries irrelevant to the present topic, the amazing exhibition, Pollock Matters, which closes this Sunday (December 9) at the McMullen Museum of Boston College, I would say that we take controversy too seriously. As the debates among the presidential candidates drivel on in equivocation, and the incumbent goes about his work of ruining the country, those Americans who are interested in one of their country’s greatest painters may or may not find themselves sufficiently clear-headed to realize that this exhibition has been so much wrapped up in controversy, that few see its real issues or even care about them. It concerns the discovery of a cache of small experimental works, according to a label made by their owner, Herbert Matter, in 1958, the work of Jackson Pollock, and the collision of the discoverer, Matter’s son, Alex, with the blue-chip institution established by Pollock’s widow.
- [Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, Detroit Institute of Arts, through February 12th](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/rembrandt-and-the-face-of-jesus-detroit-institute-of-arts-through-february-12th/) - Since fully reopening five years ago after a magnificent renovation and expansion project, the Detroit Institute of Arts has emerged as the premiere institution when it comes to displaying and labelling artworks for the twenty-first-century public. Pieces in the permanent collection are labeled with clear, concise descriptions that encourage visitors to look closely but to think for themselves. They provide essential information without insulting the viewer’s intelligence. It is not uncommon to see complete strangers, often with disparate backgrounds in art, standing in front of a picture and discussing it at length. You cannot help but come away from the DIA feeling you have engaged art rather than having absorbed a lot of information about art.
- [Richard Wagner, The Valkyrie, Virginia Opera Center Stage, Richmond](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/richard-wagner-the-valkyrie-virginia-opera-center-stage-richmond/) - Virginia Opera has built a reputation for solid productions of opera, featuring young voices under the baton of distinguished conductors like Joseph Rescigno. Its new production of The Valkyrie by Richard Wagner is no exception to that rule. Rescigno, who studied under Erich Leinsdorf, has a strong affinity for the sound and architecture of Wagnerian motifs and produced remarkably fine tones and ensemble playing from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. The orchestral component became increasingly dominant for Wagner in the Ring and Parsifal, and it was good to have such a fine standard of strings in this production. The singers, too, gave vocal performances of a uniformly high quality in a production by Lillian Groag that did not impose too much of a “thesis” on Wagner’s mythopeic creation, allowing visual tableaux and lighting to point the story. The Richmond venue was the old Carpenter Theatre, a 1920s, Alhambra-style cinematic confection; wide and shallow, it conveyed a sense of intimacy despite its 1800-seat capacity. The production was a fast-paced event, which at three hours (including a 25-minute intermission) was shorter than Gone with the Wind! And what could be wrong with that? My only caveat is that this was not Wagner’s Die Walküre, which unfolds leisurely over more than four hours, but rather a radically reduced fumet of the original. While that may be a plus for many modern opera-goers, it is manifestly not what the composer intended.
- [Late Raphael at the Prado, Madrid (until September 16th, 2012)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/late-raphael-prado-madrid/) - If we think of Raphael today—and that is a big “if”—our mental picture is probably of a painter of Madonnas or, perhaps, of the Raphael of his first Roman frescoes, which long epitomized academic art at its best. But these are works associated with the early to middle periods of the painter’s brief life (1483-1520) and do not tell the whole story of his evolution, one of the most remarkable in the history of western art. The splendid exhibition now on show at the Prado gives us a glimpse of the greatness Raphael achieved in his last decade even though it does not fully answer the question of who Raphael really was.
- [Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle at Carnegie Hall, October 2014 — The Russians win.](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/berlin-philharmonic-rattle-carnegie-hall-october-2014-russians-win/) - The periodic visits of the Berlin Philharmonic are events most New York music lovers look forward to with keen anticipation, not least myself. I'd even have gone to the Carnegie Hall Opening Night Gala, if that were their only concert in the City this season, to hear the Bruch Violin Concerto and Anne-Sophie Mutter once more, but fortunately that was not necessary. The following evening they played the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, one of his works I particularly admire and enjoy, and the complete Firebird, only excerpted in the gala program, and that second program offered more. In fact they played four concerts at Carnegie and one at the Park Avenue Armory, a very earnest one, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, complete with costumes and staging by Peter Sellars.
- [Esa-Pekka Salonen and Leila Josefowicz in Salonen's Violin Concerto, with Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin and Stravinsky's Complete Firebird](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/esa-pekka-salonen-and-leila-josefowicz-in-salonens-violin-concerto-with-ravels-tombeau-de-couperin-and-stravinskys-complete-firebird/) - This concert was without a doubt one of the great events of the season, whether in Boston or New York, and certainly a high point in the BSO's unexpectedly patchy year, at least as far as guest conductors were concerned, which seemed almost miraculous on paper, given the short notice allowed by James Levine's final health setback, but in practice greatly curtailed by the cancellation of some the most distinguished conductors. Riccardo Chailly's coronary ailment forced him to cancel his two concerts and effectively put him out of the running for the empty music directorship. Andris Nelsons rather strangely decided to go on paternal leave barely more than a month before his scheduled concert. Ill-health made it necessary for Kurt Masur, one of the great interpreters of the Missa Solemnis, to back out of his engagement while already in rehearsal. It was, to say the least, reassuring to find Esa-Pekka Salonen appearing as scheduled with violinist Leila Josefowicz in an advanced stage of expectancy, much to the delight of her many fans in the audience.
- [MTT Conducts Johann Strauss Jr., Richard Strauss, Charles Ives, Lukas Foss, and György Ligeti](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/mtt-conducts-johann-strauss-jr-richard-strauss-charles-ives-lukas-foss-gyorgy-ligeti/) - It would be hard to peg with certainty the guiding concept in Michael Tilson Thomas' recent choral program for the San Francisco Symphony. As so often with MTT, the selections appear a sophisticated grab bag. But intuition suggests the topic of nature and the metaphysics which spring from appreciating it. Thomas' introductory remarks for each piece certainly leaned in this direction. Mounting the podium, he reached for his mike and held it like a weapon overhead. This can often result in a verbal concert and the disapproval of old ladies in the audience. But the nature of the music was such that his remarks were appreciated and not too long.
- [The great Composers? Part V: Schickele Mixed Up](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/10/great-compsers-part-v-schickele-mixed/) - It has been observed that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. Duke Ellington said that if it sounds good it probably is good. Peter Schickele, the well-known avatar of P. D. Q. Bach (1807-1742), dedicated his weekly radio programme, Schickele Mix, to the principle that all musics are created equal, so you might think that he doesn’t believe in the good and the bad. Each episode is a light-hearted, although somewhat heavy-humored, presentation of diverse musical excerpts loosely connected by a musical, historical or literary thread.
- [Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Artistic Director: 2012 Season Preview and Concert Schedule (*REVISED WITH CONCERT SCHEDULE*)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/sydney-symphony-orchestra-2012-season-preview-vladimir-ashkenazy-artistic-director/) - It was good news that Vladimir Ashkenazy renewed his contract as artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra through 2013. 2012 will be his fourth season with the SSO and the orchestra's 80th anniversary. The Maestro will spend four months in Sydney conducting the orchestra himself in the summers at either end of the year, opening in February with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and ending in December with a concert performance of Tchaikovsky's opera Queen of Spades. In his Mahler cycle especially, ending this year, Ashkenazy has shown how he is as excellent an interpreter of symphonies as of piano music, with an attention to detail and rapport with the musicians which brings out their best and an approach to the music which is genuine and strongly felt yet restrained, coming from a deep respect for and empathy with the composer. As a master pianist, he has a natural talent for choosing soloists — especially pianists — not least including 2011 invitees and collaborators Jean Efflam-Bavouzet and Stephen Osborne. As a complement to his good judgement, the Sydney Symphony's expansion into organizer of international soloists' recitals was an excellent idea, giving us concert goers a chance to hear the soloists on their own, after their concerti with Ashkenazy. These recitals brought some wonderful and seldom heard music to Sydney in 2011, though there is some repetition in 2012's programs of certain pieces by Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt.
- [The Australian Ballet's 50th Anniversary Season - 2012 Season Preview and Schedule, David McAllister, Artistic Director [*UPDATED* with new anouncements]](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/australian-ballet-50th-anniversary-season-preview-schedule/) - The boronia and the pink eriostemon are at the height of their bloom, most of the wattles are just finishing, the parrots, lorikeets and galahs are busy eating and nesting while the magpies are belligerent again and the air has taken on that warm, sweet, dusty polliniferous fragrance of spring. At least it has in this neck of the woods around 33 degrees South, but it isn't so unlike May in New England. It was when these times came around my piano teacher in school would drop everything to play something with sharps — nothing too hairy, G or D or A major, say. As spring suggests sharps, seeming to say 'up,' so does ballet. In the classical technique one seems to dance always thinking 'up': relevé, sauté, piqué, even in a simple run across the stage or studio, the feet press up, up, up. Even standing in place, the hips tip up and the body seems to lift buoyantly. Even coming down from a jump, the feet and legs push up as the dancer lands. A dancer maintains a respectful and gentle relationship with the ground, as the surfer to the sea. Naturally, it is spring the Australian Ballet announces its new season and we turn our thoughts to a new year of ballet, but those already looking for wildflowers in the Bush need not turn their heads far.
- [The Greatness of Reger—as Revealed by Paul Jacobs, Organist, at Juilliard](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/greatness-reger-revealed-paul-jacobs-organist-juilliard/) - The new season began for me with a recital which was exemplary in every way. The music-making was on the highest level, and the program was was astutely chosen for a clearly defined purpose with which no music-lover could take exception. Paul Jacobs made in absolutely clear in his rather extensive, but never tedious addresses to the audience that he had two missions in mind: 1. to bring the organ recital back into mainstream concert-going 2. to promote the music of a great composer who is neglected by performing musicians and audiences alike. The organist's jocularity only made his passionate belief in these causes all the more poignant.
- [Mostly Mozart, Hold the Mozart: the International Contemporary Ensemble and Ellie Dehn perform Fujikura, Zorn, Lucier, and Messiaen at the Park Avenue Armory](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/mostly-mozart-international-contemporary-ensemble/) - ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) has become a fixture at what might once have been considered and unlikely event, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. In recent years it has devloped into a more eclectic sort of festival, grounded in the music of Mozart as always, but including baroque and classical music played on period instruments as well as contemporary music. Within a few weeks Mostly Mozart provides a condensation of our musical interests today. It is especially welcome to get some taste of the rich contemporary music life in the City, when it inevitably thins out for the summer, as composers, many of whom teach for a living, go off to the country or an arts center to compose, perhaps with a visit to the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood or some other opportunity to congregate with colleagues and hear each other's work.
- [Letter from Sydney: Post-APEC Ruminations](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/09/letter-from-sydney-post-apec-ruminations/) - As you may or may not have heard, last week was a strange one here in Sydney. The arrival of twenty world leaders and George Bush’s mountain bike warranted the erection of a five kilometre fence around certain grade A, mostly waterfront, parts of the central business district. There was debate and consternation, protest and, unexpectedly, pro-Bush counterprotest. While Bush rode his bike on my local trails, the leaders of countries like Chile and South Korea were unable to travel to the suburbs to meet their countrymen and women living in Australia. Then a group of comedians, one dressed as Osama Bin Laden, breached the exclusion zone in a fake Canadian motorcade. Which was funnier, the stunt itself or the pundits who insisted it wasn’t funny?
- [ O Joy O Rapture Unforseen! The Australian Election: Howard and the Liberals Out, Rudd and Labour In](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/04/australian-election-howard-liberals-out-rudd-labour-in/) - Did it really happen? Is he really gone? The anxiety, the fear campaign, the year of a hundred opinion polls; they’re all over. John Winston Howard, Liberal, former member for Bennelong, George W. Bush’s “man of steel,” the most willing of the coalition, Australia’s second longest serving and most conservative Prime Minister, suffered a
- [Two Little Battlers: Alasdair McGregor, Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/02/alasdair-mcgregor-grand-obsessions-life-work-walter-burley-griffin-marion-mahony-griffin/) - To disparage Canberra is every non-Canberran Australian's birthright. To many Sydneysiders and Melburnians, the bush capital, seemingly custom built for cars and the public servants they contain, is not a proper city. As with Washington, what goes on there has not helped the city's image and "Canberra" has become shorthand both for government, and for the kind of self-referential political sausage-making which thwarts true progress. During my visits to 'our nation's capital' I've often wondered if the city was the result of a scaling error; there is a weird discrepancy between what your brain envisages when looking at a map of the city and reality. All those circles which one might imagine to be urban boulevards turn out to be dusty suburban streets, their radii too large to be perceived, yet just curved enough to get the visitor well lost.
- [Maximum Stupid: Sydney's Big Barangaroo Blowup](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/03/sydney-big-barangaroo-blowup/) - "The Master Plan suggests an architecture that, despite its scale, will not overshadow any of the spaces that are, in and of themselves, naturally beautiful. The exception to this is the library and hotel pier. A reference to tall ships that once docked at the harbour's edge and the hotel and library are expressions of the magnificent ability for a building to almost walk on water. This architecture will provide necessary markers in their own right." -from the Barangaroo Public Display, March 2010
- [Tree to be Removed: Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness Turns 50](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/australian-ugliness/) - Robin Boyd wrote The Australian Ugliness fifty years ago. Our question is obvious: is that ugliness still with us? EXHIBIT A: An Ugly Scene in a Beautiful Place... A leaf blower whines as I write this. Mozart cannot be played loud enough to drown it out. No matter, it reminds me of a limpid Friday evening a few months ago. A ruddy sun sparkled on the leaves of the blue gums, the breeze was a gentle early summer whisper, an evening one could fall into like a calm sea. I could take it no longer. I traced the errant whine to the dead end of my street. After waving for a few seconds to catch my neighbor's attfention, he turned off his blower and removed his sensible hearing protection so we could have a conversation which went something like this:
- [City of Art: The 17th Biennale of Sydney ](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/05/sydneybiennale/) - The 17th Biennale of Sydney succeeds spectacularly as an act of urbanism. At a time when the practice of creative urbanism in this city finds itself uncomfortably confined between the immobile sandstone cliffs of stodgy bureaucracy and the wiles of crony developers, the real deal is most welcome, even if it is only temporary. Aside from the quality of the art, which is surprisingly high, it is clear that the Biennale organizers and curator David Elliott have succeeded in a genuine act of Urban Doing, that jolly competitor to the familiar discipline of urban planning.
- [Barangaroo Revisited: ‘And Here’s a City I Prepared Earlier...’](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/barangaroo-revisited/) - Barangaroo developer Lend Lease has released a revised plan for the site. The fact that it is an improvement on their previous proposal is like saying Burger King is better than McDonalds, perhaps true, but surely there are better hamburgers in the world. Sydney city councilor John McInerney is probably right to suggest that Lend Lease has pulled an inverted bait-and-switch of the ‘propose something outrageous and the less outrageous thing you planned all along will seem reasonable’ variety. Ironically, by improving some of the original design’s worst excesses -- for example, the “exclamation mark” hotel has been reduced in height and does not project as far into the harbour -- its fundamental flaws are more glaring than ever.
- [Unforeseen Unforeseen Circumstances: The Fall of Kevin Rudd](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/kevin-rudd/) - For a White House in need of a few moment’s levity, recent events in Australian politics might have provided an opportunity for a bit of fun. A meeting was planned between the Australian prime minister and President Obama after the G20 meeting in Canada next week. A supreme prank could have been devised whereby the president’s aides agreed not to mention Australia and somehow deprived their boss of any news thereof, surely not too difficult with more pressing business at hand. On the day of the meeting, the Oval Office door would have opened and instead of his good mate Kevin Rudd, in would walk a smiling redhead, Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Alas this prank will never come to pass. Obama thankfully seeks out his own news, and in any case after this week of extraordinary upheaval in Australian politics, the newly sworn in Prime Minister Gillard is far too busy to travel overseas.
- [An Opera House, Judged: Ken Woolley’s Reviewing the Performance](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/woolley-opera-house/) - “What’s that thing?” -A boy points out the Sydney Opera House to his grandmother, overheard on a train crossing the Harbour Bridge, 21 July 2010. During a recent screening of Rear Window at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, I became preoccupied by the audience’s reaction. For me, Rear Window was a “gateway” film, an open door into the beautifully fraudulent world of cinema. I had not seen it for a long time, and watching a good 35mm print with an intelligent audience was a good chance to assess its true impact. In the cinematic canon, if such a thing exists, Rear Window seems to have come to rest partway along the spectrum between familiar, comforting films, say, It’s a Wonderful Life or Gone With the Wind, and perpetually unnerving experiences like, to name two of the blackest noirs I’ve ever seen, Scarlet Street or Detour. Films in the former category tend to generate formulaic responses which paper over any disturbing themes, and allow the work to be arranged as part of the cultural furniture. Films from the bad part of town, by contrast, refuse enclosure in a tidy package. Beyond whatever unsavory aspects of human nature they might reveal, these disturbing films demand to be viewed at 1:1 scale, as though for the first time, every time (this is not a simple distinction between blanc et noir, when Swing Time screened at the Gallery the week after Rear Window, any stirrings of featherbed nostalgia among the audience were quickly overcome in the presence of 103 minutes of sublime cinematic bliss). Rear Window retains characteristics of each extreme. Jimmy Stewart’s voyeurism now seems relatively innocent, at least compared to what people are into these days. The audience reacted to his obsessive nosiness with the same sighing, nostalgic little titters emitted by a gaggle of thirty five year olds watching The Breakfast Club. At the same time, certain moments of Rear Window remained shocking, particularly Stewart’s almost brutal coldness to Grace Kelly. Perhaps every classic film might be found somewhere along this imaginary line between Scarlett’s Tara and Ann Savage’s consumptive cough in Detour.
- [Wake in Fright’s Aggressive Hospitality](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/wake-in-fright/) - Wake in Fright is not a film about the 2010 Australian federal election (that one might be called Lie Awake in Despair), but it is a film which says uncomfortable things about Australia, and therefore is not entirely unrelated to this winter of political discontent. It lays waste to the cherished Australian ideal of mateship and beyond that specific cultural provocation, it can be seen as a film about friendliness in general. Many places are described as friendly, without the further interrogation which might reveal the differences between, say, the way people are friendly in northeast Ohio, and they way they are friendly in Istanbul. The study of friendliness is rich territory for art and the fact that nearly everyone in Wake in Fright could be described as friendly is disturbing indeed.
- [Australia Says No, Thanks: the Election of 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/australia-says-no-thanks/) - Three weeks after deposing Kevin Rudd, as though ticking off another item on her to-do list, Julia Gillard called a federal election (one of only three winter federal elections in Australian history). I can’t summon the heart to give much of an account of the five week campaign which followed, especially since the twist in the story only came once the votes began to be counted. You really had to be here. The campaign was truly godawful, a complete extinguishing of the hope which had seen Kevin07 elected three years before. Both major parties pandered to the same focus groups in the same few marginal electorates. They peddled small bore middle class welfare and indulged trumped-up fear; they blandly appealed to the most disgracefully narrow-minded tendencies in the darkest marginal corners of the Australian electorate, the people who fear their leaf blowers will not be powerful enough to defend their McMansions against Taliban invasion. It was easy to to believe that the entire country had become, as one correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, a Boganocracy.
- [Le Nozze di Figaro in Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/le-nozze-di-figaro-in-sydney/) - I usually don't like to pick favourites, but of the Mozart operas it's hard to deny Le Nozze di Figaro. As such it has become familiar without become at all tired, and has probably sublimated a rather particular image of itself in my mind's eye and ear. The story of love giving way to jealousy, and then despair, and finally forgiveness, under the roof of an aristo ripe for Revolution, is bound to develop a thin farcical crust, but it never seemed a straight comedy, let alone a farce, to me. The characters are so genuine, even the myriad of supporting roles are so strong, that it's easy to sympathise with their harrowing trials. I see the opera more as the Orpheus and Eurydice story with a happy ending which makes sense. It also lovingly portrays the noble and logical humanist belief that (to paraphrase John F. Kennedy) it is not impossible for human beings to solve problems that they themselves created. No parts for any God or gods nor even Cupid here. This production, directed by Neil Armfield perhaps wasn't exactly my idea of Figaro or quite sat on my sense of humour, but it did try some new things. Armfield does try to play it for laughs by filling the opera with over-the-top physical comedy, but he often risks hamminess. It is hard to keep up that kind of farce for over three hours and he doesn't always succeed in creating dark comedy in putting a fluff of laughter on violent, frightening or dark situations. He never ruins the comedy intrinsic to the libretto or the music, in fact at his best moments he even compliments this by adding detail to the scene with subtler acting in the background.
- [Opera Australia's Der Rosenkavalier](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/opera-australias-der-rosenkavalier/) - Though one hundred years old and a comedy set in 1740's Vienna, Der Rosenkavalier is still fresh. This is partly because the opera is timeless because, as Robert Gibson and Andrew Riemer's interesting program notes point out, it is an anachronistic mixture of different bits of Viennese cultural. For instance one can nitpick the fact the romantic waltzes Richard Strauss incorporated into the opera's music and plot wouldn't exist until the 19th Century (they were barely dancing l'Allemande with linked hands in the mid 18th Century). Thus the opera is about as logical and historically accurate as a myth is -- it is a rich Dobos torte (whose recipe Dobos donated to the Budapest Pastry and Honey-bread Makers' Guild five years before the opera's première, for what it's worth) of many integrated layers, some chocolate, some nutty, some sugary, and some disturbing, ashy and mawkish. Present also is something of Sigmund Freud's contemporaneous Vienna, not just in the way we see how his patients' inherited neuroses manifested themselves some generations prior, but also as psychology as one of the last frontiers of the enlightenment. The famous final duet is to be sung "träumerisch": the young hero Octavian sings "Ist ein Traum..." just as the "secret of his dream is revealed" (see photo of tablet below). He wakes up from the intense love affair with the Marschallin and realises the true nature of his feelings. This happens only after he has convinced his rival the Baron Ochs of his insanity by simulating hallucinations in a kind of upside down abreaction in the form of a Viennese masked ball. Octavian awakens to the realisation that his love for the Marschallin is "mere" warm friendship and discovers true love for the young Sophie who is fresh from the convent. He had refused to face the dawn in Act I, but by Act III he comes to act on the dreams, or at least the strange events, of the intervening scenes in which he undergoes two transformations to the opposite sex, encounters a symbolic silver rose, tries to duel Ochs and sets up said masked ball, before fixing his and Sophie's lives. Octavian, knightly and hot headed though he is, has a manly grace. He forsakes brute force in the end to find a third alternative to his problems, which should be relevant today when the beastly Baron Ochs' style of greed of is often valued over character, civility and proper thinking. Or at least relevant to those who more reasonably mistake romantic love for friendship or believe one necessarily precludes the other for all time.
- [Fellini and Rigoletto](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/fellini-and-rigoletto/) - In a way this production is better Fellini than Fellini. Allowing influence from his films without being overly enamoured of them, Director Elijah Moshinsky manages to draw the opera into the modern era while intensifying Verdi's tight drama. It would have been easy to let the great filmmaker's sardonic sense of humour to infiltrate the opera and mock or belittle the characters to avoid falling too deeply into them, but on the contrary, the company seemed almost always to be sensitive to the characters. Verdi's creation is remarkable how it holds such an intense dramatic tension for so long and with a story which could easily seem an uphill slog. He also manages somehow to keep some sympathy for Rigoletto and ambiguity for the Duke despite their despicable actions. As for the curse, though it is Monterone who first vocalises it, it is really Rigoletto who brings it down on himself.
- [A Grand Tour Part 4: Urban Limericks ](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/a-grand-tour-part-4-urban-limericks/) - A famous flâneur and me, Sat down one day for tea, He observed with a grin, That the the line is drawn thin, Between cities which look and which see.
- [200 years in a Day: Sydney Open 2010 ](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/sydney-open/) - Sydney Open is one of the best things you can do in this town. Organized by the Historic Houses Trust every two years, the event allows access to more than fifty important Sydney buildings, many of them normally off limits to the public. A City Pass allowed access to dozens of building in downtown Sydney, as well as properties run by the Trust, which are well worth visiting at any time of year. I purchased a City Pass and planned my route carefully, like a marathon runner at a free buffet, to take in as much as possible, from sandstone Georgian to High Tech and beyond. The buildings covered virtually every period of Sydney’s post-1788 history, and present a golden opportunity for a cheap and cheerful romp through the history of the city’s architecture.
- [It's Twilight Time With the Australian Ballet](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/twilight-time-australian-ballet/) - The Australian Ballet presents three short recent ballets which would seem at the surface to have nothing in common. In At the Edge of Night, first performed in 1997, but last performed 11 years ago, Stephen Baynes sets an impressionist ballet to seven preludes by Rachmaninov. The choreography, set design and costumes share the sensibility of the music, rolling subtly between nostalgia, longing, pining, contemplation, mild remorse, occasionally melancholy, ambivalence, poignant joy and other emotions only the piano can give a name. The brand new ballet, Halcyon by Tim Harbour, sets the Greek myth of Halcyon and Ceyx to dance with original music by Gerard Brophy. It is a particularly relevant myth about love oppressed by religion. The last ballet is Molto Vivace again by Stephen Baynes, first performed in 2003, but completely different in tone. It sets a light-hearted rococo comedy to Handel. All three are liminal, either touching, delving or diving into where phases change. We meet frontiers either as precise as the sea's surface, or as blurred as half conscious memories, or as completely black and mysterious as that between life and death and the other.
- [Haydn the Philosopher...at the Pinchgut Opera, Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/haydn-philosopherpinchgu/) - The Orpheus and Eurydice tale never really spoke to me, as it is now accepted in Ovid's version. I was fed it over and over again through school, but always felt manipulated by Eurydice's double death, which the storyteller designed to be super affective by describing their ardent love with so much intensity. It is really a quadruple death since the two lovers become so absorbed into one another, one's death is the other's; all pathos is destroyed in the end and the story goes beyond mere tragedy. The pivotal twist caused by Hades' rule forbidding Orpheus to look back at Eurydice as they leave the underworld is arbitrary and puritanical; placing such negative importance and obsessively focussing on a simple and natural physical movement is a hallmark of Puritanism and conservative Catholicism. Also, the Eurydice in Ovid's myth is a very weak character, only existing to be a victim. In fact, according to Robert Grave (The Greek Myths, 1960), Eurydice's death and the the lovers' rendez-vous in the underworld is a late addition to the myth of Orpheus, priest of Dionysus, resulting from misinterpretations of paintings depicting Dionysus' harrowing of the underworld to rescue his mother Semele, a journey on which Orpheus accompanied him to charm Hecate and the spirits of the dead. Eurydice herself is a literary descendant of the more ancient queens, whose sacrifices were sometimes poisoned with snake venom. The barbaric Dorians who invaded Greece from the north several centuries after the fall of Knossus may have made many brutal additions to myths, like the double death. They imposed their patrilineal customs and changed the native myths to suit by depreciating women. The more ancient version does end with Orpheus' death by Maenads tearing him limb from limb, but this somehow makes more sense, like Le sacre du printemps, on a mystical level, something which attracted Yeats, whose plays A Full Moon in March and The King of the Great Clock Tower were based on Orpheus' Irish counterpart King Bran.
- [An English-Glaswegian Nutcracker in Australia](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/nutcracker/) - To create a seamless, whole Nutcracker, Peter Wright and John Macfarlane have married the ballet's greatly varied styles, scenes and tones, with their own greatly varied décors, colours and styles while melding reality with fantasy. Not fantasy in the sense it's often used these days to describe something frivolous and unreal, but the act of creating a subworld (to refer to Tolkien's On Fairy Stories) full of wonder, inspiring curiosity with a self-propagating energy and its own internal logic or rules which allows more than the mere prosaic "suspension of disbelief," but draws us in, absorbs us, allowing us to keep our belief and private imagination intact as we participate. And it leaves a piece of itself with us for a long time afterward. Their ballet is naturalistic too, certainly organic, as if it grows and comes alive, the décors and costumes showing a deep observation and understanding of nature, often recalling Robert Herrick's poem Delight in Disorder. Each scene changes naturally and smoothly with the music, lightly carrying and passing on the momentum of wonder however great the change in tone. Recognizable historic and stylistic fragments — subtle but familiar images or patterns — thread through the piece. They deftly weave many other threads through the whole ballet to connect discrete dances and divertissments and make them seem all of a piece. Fore example, Clara dances in almost every scene, adapting to and relishing the different styles of the Spanish, Chinese, Flower Fairy etc. dances while retaining her character's personality.
- [Frank Gehry in Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/frank-gehry-in-sydney/) - A year ago, when Frank Gehry was commissioned to design the new business school for the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) he was asked if he liked the proposed site. His response — “I like the problem” — was both diplomatic and revealing, for UTS, the youngest of Sydney’s four major universities, exists in a part of town with a lot of likable problems. Like NYU, UTS is an urban university with no real campus. This lack is no problem if you have a Washington Square Park, an expansionist attitude and a Greenwich Village to compensate, but UTS is stuck in a defiantly unlovely part of Sydney. Even if it had the beautiful lawns and gracious old buildings of the nearby University of Sydney, UTS would struggle to maintain a physical identity among the dense but generally mediocre surroundings to the west of Central Station. In a sense UTS’ problem is a condensed version of central Sydney’s more persistent malaise; it is not a place where people linger. While Gehry might seem an obvious choice for any university looking to promote, as the current jargon goes, “stickiness,” UTS and Gehry are in fact an ideal match. As his now-unveiled design for what will be known as the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building reveals, he has solutions to their problems.
- [Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/01/madama-butterfly-sydney-opera-house/) - One could say that Madama Butterfly is a distilled and simplified presentation of the stereotypical opera plot. It is a romance told very straight with spurning, madness leading to the female lead's suicide with good songs and a bit of exoticism, but it lacks the twists in the plot which Mozart's operas have (at least Donna Elvira tries to chase down Don Giovanni) to deepen the characters' relationships. This leaves all the characterization to the music and I don't think Puccini's is up to it. Cio-Cio-San is too pathetic and doormat-ish and it's hard to feel into her character when the music doesn't sink deeply enough into the listener to help them understand her or link her into the greater universe. Perhaps that is unfair to the music since the libretto and story itself doesn't give much to go on to divine her motivations, but Puccini did choose the story. Pinkerton too isn't exactly 4-dimensional. He is a cad with neither redeeming qualities, magnetism nor charm. Having said that, the opera can be enjoyable at some level if, as in this case, the music is well played and sung, making the more dragging parts of Act II bearable, though this enjoyment was marred by a certain noisy leading tenor.
- [Carmen in a Sydney High Summer](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/01/carmen-sydney-opera-house/) - Carmen by Georges Bizet. Sydney Opera House, 24 January 2011. Guillaume Tourniaire, Rinat Shaham, Richard Troxell, Teddy Tahu Rhodes
- [Mozart and Britten by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/mozart-britten-sydney-symphony/) - I have heard it lamented "O, if only Mozart had written 25 violin concertos in the 1780's and only 5 piano concertos." Notwithstanding the alternate universe where Mozart lived to 89 and wrote many of each, the D major concerto for piano and violin, as Philip Wilby reconstructed it in 1985, goes some way to consoling the lamenting violinist. Mozart began composing the fragment (which W. J. Turner in his 20th century biography, disappointed not to have more of it, called a "remarkably fine work") sometime during his month-long stay in Mannheim in 1778 on the way back to Salzburg from Paris. Whereas Mozart wrote the 5 violin concertos for himself to play, this concerto he intended for another violinist, Ignatz Franzl, probably intending to perform the piano part himself; he wrote to his father just before leaving Paris that he wanted to give up playing the violin. This was at a weighty juncture, or at least a phase change, in Mozart's life often implicitly or explicitly considered the fulcrum between "early Mozart" and "late Mozart." Indeed the double concerto shows some of the Mozartish profundity and ecstasy of the later piano concertos while still having much of the humor, play and levity of the young Mozart.
- [Tangled in Webs](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/tangled-in-webs/) - For a long time I was afraid of spiders. My arachnophobia was only cured by moving to a Sydney, a place where some spiders can actually kill you. With the potential of an evil looking funnel web spider under the refrigerator, it seemed silly to recoil at a daddy longlegs. At this time of year — mid-late summer — nonlethal arachnids begin to dominate the bush. With a copious supply of rain earlier this summer, the spiders got an early start. Going down to pick up the paper in the morning means coming back with a web across your face; the same encounter on a bike ride or run is even more unpleasant, especially if you end up eye to eyes with the angry arachnid and its demi-deliquescent protein breakfast. It is one of those moments when you wish nature spoke English — “I’m sorry, but it’s not like wrecking your web gave me any pleasure...”. As the summer progresses we adjust to one another, or they to us; the smarter spiders learn to build their webs up high, with the greatest eight-legged engineers weaving the lowest edges of their webs just above the head of the tallest human.
- [Ray Chen, Peter Oundjian and the Sydney Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/chen-oundjian-sydney-symphony/) - It can sometimes seem like a scalping to play an opera overture as a concert piece, but Maestro Oundjian's apparent delight in Berlioz' music overcame any such qualms. They played the piece as if it were self-contained with a closer-than-usual study and without the anticipation or apprehension of the visual elements of theatre. It can be nice to hear an overture without the distraction of a rising curtain. It also served nicely as a relatively lighter prelude to the Brahms and Tchaikovsky. The precise stops and timing of the silences were very satisfying (and provided an interesting test of the hall's acoustical decay time — the sound taking about 3 seconds to decay but fairly evenly across the pitches). The Sydney Symphony brought across the vivid orchestration as effortlessly as singing.
- [A Better Barangaroo (Updated)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/a-better-barangaroo/) - In this town called Sydney there is this crazy idea that wrecking a beautiful city in the name of economic growth somehow makes the city big time, that slippery oxymoron, a 'global' city. Instead of building places which promote beauty, sustainability and public participation we get the kind of 'built profit' which is too witless to even be kitsch. It's the Australian Ugliness on steroids, everywhere, as charmless and unimaginative as it is profitable. Even the greediest New York developer would never expect to build a forty five storey hotel in the East River, let alone the Hudson, and yet exactly such a monstrosity has been approved for construction in Sydney Harbour, at Barangaroo, the ne plus ultra of Sydney urban planning disasters. Now a group of over fifty eminent Sydney architects, planners and academics has produced an alternative design for the site.
- [State of Siege, a New Documentary on Sydney's Destruction](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/state-siege-sydney-destruction/) - Having spent the afternoon before this one-off screening at the Nicholson Museum of ancient art, in their new re-presentation of their Egyptian collection through the eyes of Herodotus, I came across this quotation: "Cheops brought the country into all sorts of misery. He closed all the temples, then, not content with excluding his subjects from the practice of their religion, compelled them without exception to labour as slaves for his own advantage. Some were forced to drag blocks of stone from the quarries in the Arabian hills to the Nile, where they were ferried across and taken by others, who hauled them to the Libyan hills. The work went on in three-monthly shifts, a hundred thousand men in a shift. It took ten years of this oppressive slave-labour to build the track along which the blocks were hauled — a work, in my opinion, of hardly less magnitude than the pyramid itself. "The Egyptians can hardly bring themselves to mention the names of Cheops and Chephren [his successor], so great is their hatred of them; They call the pyramids after Philitis, a shepherd who at that time fed his flocks in the neighbourhood." Will we still despise the New South Wales government in 2000 years? It doesn't seem so very far fetched. At least Cheops had a sort of vision, the pyramids have a certain stark beauty of their own and they draw many wealthy tourists. The eagerness to destroy and thugishness of the current NSW government is extreme and is it really so much worse to steal people's labor than their homes? For that's what we witness in this new documentary. As the environmentalist, bushwalker and businessman Dick Smith points out in his interview, rezoning a person's land is tantamount to stealing it because they will have no choice but to sell to the developer who puts up two ugly apartment blocks on either side of them. After food and water (and nowadays we are forced to add) clean air, shelter is the most basic human need. Interfering with people's homes thus pokes even deeper into the human psyche than the layer where Freud put his conception of the libido. The lower levels of government (state, province, local) affect our lives directly in a way the feds cannot. The wonder is that many in NSW aren't angrier.
- [Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Play Mahler's Sixth; Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Liszt's Second Piano Concerto](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/vladmir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-mahler-sixth-jean-efflam-bavouzet-liszt-concert/) - In a way it is pointless to try to write words on music like this, but here goes anyway. It doesn't really help to read glib selective quotations from even the composer describing the music, sometimes in a single word, "tragic," "fate," "Heldenmord" fail to do justice while missweighing one idea, like a greedy fruit grocer. The Mahlers deep and checkered feelings about his Sixth Symphony are clearer from this quotation from Alma Mahler's memoirs, even if it does sound ambiguous or contradictory at one level:
- [Urban Planning: A Manifesto](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/urban-planning-a-manifesto/) - The people of New South Wales have been anticipating the upcoming state election almost since the last election four years ago, never a good situation. As regular readers of our dispatches from Sydney know, the soon to be defeated Labor Government has for the past sixteen years, with its inimitably bland, shiny-suited glee, trashed poor old Sydney. A place which with the slightest effort could be the most beautiful city in the world has instead deteriorated into a kind of Los Angeles without a Raymond Chandler, a Melbourne without intricacy, a Singapore without ambition. One of the most urgent tasks facing the next state government will be the reform of NSW’s broken planning system, a system I saw in action (if that is the right word) during the disillusioning two years I spent in a cubicle at the NSW Department of Planning.
- [Jean-Efflam Bavouzet Piano Recital: Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner and Debussy ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/jean-efflam-bavouzet-piano-recital-beethoven-liszt-wagner-debussy/) - When speaking of modern music, it may be the complexity of rhythm or harmony of the piece in question, a lack of memorable melodies or it may be a simplicity in the rules implicitly underlying the piece, which only makes the freeness of the music seem complex to the listener's higher faculties when they try to analyze it. Just as a thing can be understood intuitively or felt strongly to be so which the thinking, rational part of the mind finds impossible to prove, or can only justify after much difficulty. Some point to Debussy's L'après midi d'un faune as the first usher of 20th Century music.
- [Purcell and Handel with Andreas Scholl & Co.](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/purcell-handel-andreas-scholl/) - Most seem to agree musical historicism can go too far: imagine a Plymouth Plantation-style re-enactment of a concert of Baroque music with the audience coming and going, eating picnics in the gods, a musician wearing a modern watch dismissed as a "farb." Luckily most musical historicists are more practical and flexible. For this concert the hall lights stayed up, which is a nice touch, even if electrics are not as pretty as the candle-lit halls of days past. Unfortunately, and I assume unintended by the musicians, the audience did come and go in between the first several songs, which not only rudely made the musicians wait but disrupted the flow of the program, and one woman, having missed three or four songs, came clumping down the wood-floored aisle in high-heels making an incredible noise. More cheerfully, Mr Scholl had the audience join in on the refrain of Purcell's Man is for the Woman Made, which, according to Mr Scholl, is what Purcell intended when he originally composed it, for light relief in the theatre. And it did provide some short refreshing relief among the quite serious music in this program.
- [Handel's Partenope in Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/handel-partenope-sydney/) - Though perhaps not one of Handel's finest operas, Mr Alden's production of Partenope plays up its farcical tendencies past the point of ridiculousness and vulgarity and never really climbs out of the dishwater. A farce, even the silliest one, is still emotional, in fact it depends on emotions, however simple, to work, but it becomes cold when played as a series of jokes without wit. In addition, for some cheap intellectualism, Mr Alden imposes references to Man Ray's surrealist photography, but forced without honest reason, onto an opera which doesn't even have any interest in being surreal, they become clunky and arbitrary.
- [British Liaisons: The Australian Ballet Flowers From Its British Roots](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/british-liaisons-australian-ballet-british-roots/) - Australia and Britain have particularly close artistic ties, cooperatively sharing artists, as is well documented in the British Liaisons program, along with fascinating pictures. For example, the Irish Briton Ninette de Valois, who helped found the Royal Ballet, sent expertise to many countries in the form of dancers and teachers from her company, Peggy van Praagh in Australia's case, and she also traveled much herself, for example to Turkey and the Yugoslav nations to help set up their national ballet companies. De Valois also gave Robert Helpmann opportunities to use his acting and dancing talent after he came to England from Australia as a young man. Not mentioned in the program, de Valois in 1928 commissioned a score from the avant garde Australian composer Elsie Hamilton for her ballet The Scorpions of Ysit, though the original failed at the time, it would be interesting to restore it. A good 21st Century example is Peter Wright and John MacFarlane's (an Englishman and Scot respectively) Nutcracker, which is also now in the Australian Ballet's repetoire. In any case, the three ballets in this program, all from British choreographers, give a much more articulate description of modern artistic collaboration with Britain and show off its diversity. In addition, this program offers an opportunity to hear well played 20th century music that is not often heard.
- [Trash Talk: Griffin’s Willoughby Incinerator Revived  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/trash-talk-griffins-willoughby-incinerator-revived/) - Between 1930 and 1938, Walter Burley Griffin and Eric Nicholls designed thirteen municipal incinerators in various Australian cities. Built in the heart of the Great Depression, these odd little buildings must have been a creative and financial godsend for Griffin, an architect whose splendid dreams were too often thwarted by unsplendid clients. The incinerators, which often sat in suburban streets, were ‘green’ infrastructure avant la lettre, fascinating both as urban history and as a possible model for the urban transformations required by the 21st century.
- [Photography and Place at the Art Gallery of NSW](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/photography-and-place-agnsw/) - The Australian landscape seems to require photography. The question of who, how, where, how often and why thankfully remains open, at least among the eighteen photographers included in Photography and Place at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Australia, so conflicted about cities, is one of the most urbanized societies on earth, a situation which makes the looming question of the landscape all the more urgent. Wilderness will aways dominate the continent, never allowing settlements to be interspersed as they are in the United States or Europe. The land provokes sentimentality, poetry and bitterness. In the heart of the cities which cling to the coastal fringe, it can seem another universe until a dust storm, fire, flood or the daily violence of the sunlight reminds us of nature’s nonnegotiable and indifferent presence.
- [Rafael Bonachela and Jacopo Godani with the Sydney Dance Company](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/rafael-bonachela-jacopo-godani-sydney-dance-company/) - Contemporary art has been around long enough now to be no longer necessarily contemporary with the present day and likewise Avant-Garde seems sometimes more a style than an attitude or movement. Contemporary dance, as free and expressive as it generally is, sometimes feels held back by its stock of conventional movements and gestures. These movements are becoming less and less abstract even if they can be expressive and exhilarating and every good choreographer has their own touch with them. Of course classical ballet has its own stock of traditional steps, but these are meant to blend together smoothly; in a way the ultimate aim of the choreographer and dancer is to meld these individual steps together into the transitionary movements to become a single fluid movement and an expression of a whole more than the sum of its steps. The audience forgets to see or analyze the steps as separate.
- [Ballare Con Puccini - The Australian Ballet Dances Madame Butterfly](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/australian-ballet-dances-madame-butterfly/) - When Stanton Welch adapted Puccini's opera to the ballet 16 years ago it was his first full length work. He is now head of the Houston Ballet, and meanwhile Butterfly has played around the globe and of course has stuck in the Australian Ballet's repertoire. The ballet is neoclassical, or more accurately neo-romantic: it uses the classical ballet forms and also visions and fantastic ethereal imagery, at times within worldly and concrete settings, something ballet in particular does so well, and really is its major strength as an art form, contributing to its appealing free and unique method of story-telling. It doesn't really make sense to compare ballet to opera, I think Madame Butterfly shows why this comparison is false as it is very different from the opera, but it does seem to gain something in being a ballet — it at least becomes more refined and concentrated and, for me, Mr Welch's lyrical flowing dances add a je ne sais quoi missing from the music, but moreover it opens up possibilities in the depths of the very difficult characters.
- [Pieter Wispelwey plays Haydn's Cello Concerto in C with the Sydney Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/pieter-wispelwey-haydn-cello-concerto-sydney-symphony/) - Oboist Diana Doherty led the first piece, the Mozart wind octet with a string bass, wood wind and horn players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A fine group of musicians who did shine in recent large symphonic performances, especially Mahler's Sixth, it is nonetheless good they had the chance to play as a chamber group without a conductor. One might think the piece might be a little too intimate for the large symphonic hall, and it is occasional music composed for a specific room in a specific nobleman's palace, like many of Mozart's serenades, sinfoniettas, divertissements, cassations etc. Mozart in his letters often sounds nonchalant, though honestly so in a modest manner, when he describes composing such pieces, making a few florins on the side while traveling to a larger city or waiting for his next chance to write an opera. But he really put as much into them as a symphony and this octet is especially sublime. The musicians seemed to play it with a sense of occasion, since it did quite nicely fill the hall and being such danceable music, not even in just the minuet movements, the performance strongly evoked the ballroom, and a very tasteful one.
- [Australian 21st Century Chamber Music and More with the Eggner Piano Trio](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/australian-21st-century-chamber-music-eggner-piano-trio/) - For their Australian tour, the brothers Eggner's trio has chosen a quite diverse group of pieces. Their manner of playing unites them so that it doesn't seem so important that one piece is Australian, another Austrian and another French, but that each is trying to express something in its own unique way. Likewise the Eggner Trio "contains multitudes," each brother having quite a different style, manner and approach to the music. I believe the fact that they're brothers contributes to their success as a chamber group — as a piano trio in particular, in whose peculiarities they seem to rejoice — in the way such different personalities, united only by underlying genetics, can coexist and cooperate in unpredictable ways.
- [Towards Bikeopolis, Part 1](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/towards-bikeopolis_1/) - One recent morning I witnessed a rare sight; two children, almost certainly brother and sister, were riding their bikes to school. They wobbled along the sidewalk of a busy road. The boy pedaled ahead on his BMX while the girl’s bike was too big for her, its chain rusted to the point where, rather than shift gears, she walked the slightest rise. Commuters alone in their cars sped by on the way to work, their kids’ schools, gym or supermarket. This being outer Sydney, the street made not the slightest accommodation for the two kids and their healthy, intrepid mode of transportation.
- [CAPIThetical Competition Celebrates Canberra's 100th Birthday](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/capithetical-competition-celebrates-canberras-100th-birthday/) - The question of Canberra remains, if not the most urgent, one of the most interesting in Australian urbanism. The city was shaped by its time, sited to placate a rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne which still exists and a threat of Russian invasion which now seems unlikely. For all who have ever found themselves haunted by the place, either in the form of nightmares or dreams, the launch of the CAPIThetical, “a competition for a hypothetical Australian capital city,” is exciting news. CAPIThetical is timed to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the capital design competition in 2012, and is backed by the federal and ACT governments, the Australian Institute of Architects and a gaggle of universities and professional organizations.
- [Towards Bikeopolis, Part 2: The Berkshire Review Guide to Enjoying your Bicycle ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/towards-bikeopolis-2-guide-to-enjoying-your-bicycle/) - What follows are highly subjective opinions about the highly subjective subject of bicycles.
- [Protest the University of Sydney's Book Cull: Mass Book Borrowing Bonanza and "Read-In," 18 May](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/university-of-sydney-book-borrowing-bonanza/) - In order to protest the University of Sydney's planned culling of half a million books from its library, a "book borrowing bonanza and read-in is planned for 18 May at 1pm in the Fisher Library Foyer. The university announced this week that it would be getting rid of the books in order to make room for a coffee cart and other indispensable paraphernalia of 21st century university life.
- [Mahler's Ninth. Vladimir Ashkenazy Conducts the Sydney Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/mahlers-ninth-vladimir-ashkenazy-conducts-sydney-symphony-orchestra/) - Richard Strauss once wondered about Mahler, to his face I believe, 'Why don't you write an opera? You could write such a good opera since you've put on so many at the Wiener Staatsoper.' He didn't understand and Mahler got pretty angry. In a way Mahler's symphonies are operas without singers, a sort of total art, in a subjective sense — if that term doesn't require total sensory stimulation — with vivid use of color and articulate deep expression. The level of abstraction attained by giving up words and human voices enabled him to express more faithfully what really gripped him. The Ninth, like all good symphonies, even more so for Mahler's but especially in his Ninth, it is a multitude of contents, often all at the same time — ambiguity and paradox seem easily expressed, even refined in Mahler. Vladimir Ashkenazy's and each of the instrumentalists' attention and care for each melody, theme, chord and layer in the music make this so clear even as the complexity of the music seems to nourish them; they generously create something fascinating and consoling to listen to — in fact partly because of its complexity it sticks with the listener long afterward.
- [Two Hearts, Four Hands are Better Than One: Two Piano Recital with Pascal and Ami Rogé](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/two-hearts-four-hands-two-pianos-pascal-ami-roge/) - While a piano soloist has special control over their music, and complete polyphonic music at that, that is to say melody, harmony and range and all the parts or 'voices' where contrapuntal, and this endows the pianist also with solitude, there is a romance fundamental to piano music, the two hands creating a relationship and complementing each other, at the very least in register. Piano music for 'four hands' is then even more romantic, the chamber music-wise relationship of the two musicians, the complexity of the music and the ease with which it can slip into a thick intensity, a knife's edge from chaos, the twice infinity combinations of expression, unanalyzable on the fly and loss of a degree of control, leave even more to faith, and make this music an especially creative performing art form. This is partly why Mozart called the organ the 'king of instruments,' though a pair of pianos of course has fewer stops, it is capable of greater percussion and so a peculiar rhythmic sense which the organ can't express in the same way. On top of all this, Pascal and Ami Rogé chose some very difficult music for this concert, which showed off their technical ability, but more importantly gave them the material to produce a vivid operatic sound, singing duets in their fingers while playing the orchestra part as well.
- [Beethoven's Last String Quartet, Mozart, the Renaissance and Ian Munro with the Brentano String Quartet](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/beethoven-last-string-quartet-mozart-renaissance-ian-munro-brentano/) - The string quartet often served as a kind of guinea pig for composers' experimentation and innovation, especially in the Classical period, and the peculiar bright, sometimes astringent (generally in a good way) sound of this arrangement of instruments foreshadows that of 20th Century Music. (Scientifically, this sound partly owes the violin's unique quality that its first harmonic can be louder than the fundamental, though this depends a great deal on personal style). A good example is perhaps Mozart's String Quartet no. 19 in C major K465, dubbed 'Dissonance,' which many balked at when first played. Mozart and Haydn, and later also Benjamin Britten, were keen violists, and they sometimes played the alto part in their own and their friends' works, entrusting the first violin to a professional musician while retaining some control over the piece's early performances. Perhaps if Schoenberg could have participated in the first performances of his atonal music it would have had more early success.
- [New Faces Choreograph for the Australian Ballet in 'Bodytorque' (CORRECTED)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/new-faces-choreograph-australian-ballet-bodytorque/) - The Australian Ballet has of course a long history of commissioning new works, often from Australian choreographers. For the last several years, the Company has encouraged this activity under the 'Bodytorque' moniker — five dancers from the company with an interest in choreography are given the opportunity to create a short (15-20 minute) ballet with dancers from the company, which they produce for the general public in a smaller theatre (smaller than the opera house, anyway) — a safe enough environment for experimentation. We balletomanes get the opportunity to see fresh creativity and serious, experimental modern ballet choreography and dancing, as well as what the future holds for the larger national company. This year's program is certainly varied in inspiration and execution even though, or perhaps because the scale of the productions is small. Some have plots and some have concepts, more like 'interpretive dance,' if I can use that term without a negative connotation.
- [Fauré's Requiem as Theatre: Stephen Baynes Choreographs the Australian Ballet](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/faures-requiem-theatre-stephen-baynes-choreographs-australian-ballet/) - Resident Australian Ballet choreographer Stephen Baynes just in the act of choosing Fauré's Requiem mass for a new ballet for the (Australian) Federation Centenary in 2001 clearly stated his concept. He bravely steered to a huge and personal topic in creating a ballet around death with that intimate choral music, and his keen understanding of the music and inventive choreography insure that neither the dancing nor the musical elements step on the other's toes, as it were. On the contrary the close marriage of choreography and music, though of course not written with the slightest intention for the ballet, sets it as an excellent example of 'old' music though already near perfect, benefiting from the added dancing, the choreography finding new depths, no deeper or shallower than the music's alone, but different depths found only in theatrical arts. Indeed, Stephen Baynes' ballet introduced me to new approaches to Fauré's music. Beyond Bach, the other ballet in this all-Baynes double bill showing only in Melbourne, is powerful enough to stand alongside Requiem with neither overshadowing the other. It is almost abstract and shows a deep love for history and J. S. Bach.
- [The Kaldor Family Collection at the Art Gallery of New South Wales](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/kaldor-family-collection-art-gallery-of-new-south-wales/) - What does a landlocked museum do when thirty-five million dollars worth of contemporary art, much of it larger than a bread box, falls into its lap? Such was the happy conundrum of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which has just unveiled the John Kaldor Family Collection to the public. If I call the Gallery’s architectural solution the institutional equivalent of refurbing the basement of a Boston three decker to house returning in-laws, then I mean that as high praise of the Gallery’s willingness to make the most of what they have. The AGNSW’s situation, surrounded by inviolable parkland and very much heritage listed, has required an economical use of space in its subsequent expansions, which trade big architectural gestures for a seamless flow between old and new. The Kaldor Collection is now housed in former storage space on the third basement level, now renovated by architect Andrew Andersons, designer of the Bicentennial wing in which it sits, to open up 3300 square meters of new gallery space, essentially an additional floor. Though the Kaldor Collection leaves the Gallery’s appearance unchanged, the sudden materialization of arguably the greatest collection of contemporary art in Australia will certainly change the institution for good.
- [East and West: 1 Bligh Joins Sydney's Big End of Town ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/east-and-west-1-bligh-joins-sydneys-big-end-of-town/) - No matter how many corners they cut, cities find it hard to outrun their pasts. Early decisions, however casual, however pragmatic, have a way of getting written in stone so that even long after these stones have tumbled, their consequences remain in the correspondence between certain cardinal directions and certain values. However subtle the reality on the ground, north, south east and west take on indelible local meanings. If you stand on George Street and look east down Bridge Street in downtown Sydney, it is easy to perceive the original topography of Sydney Cove, or Warrane as it was known to the Gadigal people. Bridge Street dips down toward Pitt Street and then rises up more steeply toward the Botanical Gardens at the top of the ridge. Along the low point ran the Tank Stream, now covered over, Sydney Colony’s first supply of fresh water and the reason why the city is where it is.
- [A New Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: Sign the Petition Calling for an Open Competition (UPDATED)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/australian-pavilion-venice-biennale/) - The good news is that the Australia Council for the Arts has announced plans to build a new Australian pavilion in Venice, the bad news is that it plans to choose a design based on an invited competition. This is an invitation to mediocrity, which is coming out of our ears at the moment. A new biennale pavilion would seem to be the ideal excuse for a big public competition, which in my opinion should be open to artists as well as architects. As a brief, a biennale pavilion is not exactly the Large Hadron Collider. Australia was lucky to score one of the last sites left in the Giardini, and what gets built there ought to be be surprising, delightful and provocative. Australians love their sheds, and an open competition would be an opportunity to build the Ur-Shed, the mother shed, as it were. If you agree, then please sign the petition set up by OpenHAUS.
- [The Barangaroo Review: Your concerns are important to us but we do not share them](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/08/barangaroo-review/) - The results of the “short, sharp” review into Sydney’s Barangaroo development project have been released in the form of an 87 page report in which the word “outcome” appears 88 times. Though all sides have declared some version of victory in its wake, it is hard to see the report as anything other than a final rubber stamp for the developer Lend Lease. Whatever its misgivings, the report requires no modifications to the current plans. Any critique is blunted by a salad of weasel words and praise for the “world class people working on Barangaroo.” Whether or not anyone has the power to undo this mess, it’s clear no one has the guts.
- [Pre-Raphaelite Drawings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/08/pre-raphaelite-drawing-art-gallery-new-south-wales/) - Pollinated with the spirit of the Renaissance, spring-like, fresh and full of individual passion and wonder, the Pre Raphaelites went back to a state of painting when the Renaissance was in its stride if not its prime. Rather than seeing painting as a continuous development up to their own day, they when back to an approach and a world view at a point when art knew where it was going, striving toward a most sublime peak, a peak attained perhaps twice in western human history. The Pre Raphaelites took as their teachers and masters those of Titian's, Michelangelo's and Raphael's and via intelligent imitation that went beyond mere copying they progressed, very roughly speaking, through the styles of the Italian Renaissance, and at times managed to break free of their teachers' styles. They even wrote poems too. One can see something of this progression in the quite broad and thorough collection of their drawings and watercolors currently on display in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, most of which come from the Tate and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
- [Ian Munro and the Goldner String Quartet Play Munro, Szymanowski and Brahms](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/08/ian-munro-goldner-string-quartet-munro-szymanowski-brahms/) - The series of concerts of chamber music organized by Musica Viva this year continue with an exploration of, and this time a new commission by, Australian pianist and composer Ian Munro. He has created his second piano quintet (the first composed in 2006 was called Divertissement sur le nom d'Erik Satie) from two earlier works: Dreams, his winning contribution to the 2003 Queen Elisabeth International Competition for Composers, originally meant to be a first movement to a full piano concerto and Drought and Night Rain, originally written in 2005 for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and originally meant to be a beginning to a full symphony. Though it would be nice to hear these symphonic works complete in their own right, Munro has sewn them together skillfully into a chamber music piece. Really this is no different from what Prokofiev did to compose the Romeo and Juliet ballet music, which has a life of its own, so reuse of already composed ideas should not necessarily raise negative thoughts. Munro himself joins with the Goldner String Quartet which is lead by Dene Olding, who often plays first violin in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, also conducting the SSO earlier in the year, to play his new piece, but we also get the opportunity to hear the Quartet on its own.
- [Brahms's First Symphony: Vladimir Ashkenazy Conducts the Sydney Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/brahms-first-symphony-vladimir-ashkenazy-conducts-sydney-symphony/) - For the Brahms First Symphony, Ashkenazy used the orchestra's fine clarity to illuminate the ideas in the score, loyally keeping a certain respect for the composer, though his conducting was in no way conservative or overly careful, enough so that it made me wonder again why some people call Brahms 'autumnal.' Perhaps this clarity of playing which articulates each note also allows Ashkenazy the fine control he needs for his well-defined ideas of interpretation which come across to the listener so plainly.
- [The Willoughby Symphony Orchestra Plays at Sydney's Newest Concert Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/willoughby-symphony-orchestra-play-sydneys-newest-concert-hall/) - The Willoughby Symphony, founded in 1965 and based in Sydney's northern suburbs, played the first concert in their new hall. It is an exciting occasion to christen a new concert hall and I marvel at it all the more that it was built in Sydney's North Shore where new building is almost exclusively in the form of hideous apartment blocks which have destroyed many of the area's old gardens and once contiguous tree canopy. The 1000-seat hall is part of a whole culture house called The Concourse, which also has a 500-seat theatre, some impressive-sounding rehearsal space and the new home of the area's borrowing library. Willoughby Council deserves credit for pulling this off when the New South Wales state government one level up cannot manage anything like it for Barangaroo, right next to Sydney's downtown, let alone the second, Frank Gehry-designed opera house that's begging to be built there. But I mustn't be negative; this isn't the occasion.
- [Mark Wigglesworth, Stephen Hough and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra play Lutosławski, Mozart and Dvořák, and a Note on the Separateness of Math and Music ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/mark-wigglesworth-stephen-hough-sydney-symphony-orchestra-lutoslawski-mozart-dvorak-separateness-math-music/) - Witold Lutosławski when he conducted himself preferred programs consisting solely of his own music to avoid entrapping the audience members who just wanted to hear again a classic (invariably put at the very end) and to encourage listeners who wanted to hear his music. However cynical you want to be about making the audience sit through avant-garde music to get to the ultra-popular Dvořák's Ninth Symphony, this was actually an adventurous program in being such a mixture. Risking the melomanic equivalent of the bends, somehow just avoided by virtue of the performance, specifically the Sydney Symphony's style and close cooperation with visiting Britons Mark Wigglesworth and the very intelligent and feeling pianist Stephen Hough, the musicians made it all seem to hang together naturally, if loosely.
- [Why I am a NiMBY*](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/why-i-am-a-nimby/) - Three times in the past month, The Sydney Morning Herald, the city’s broadsheet of record by default, has published a particularly irritating kind of article on urban density. To paraphrase Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), this is not just a matter of chance. These articles, by the paper’s two resident economists and sole architecture critic, represent a disturbing and powerful tendency to treat cities as economic entities, blobs on a map rather than physical spaces. They don’t realize that you can’t extrude spreadsheets into skyscrapers. Help! The Borg economists are eating Sydney.
- [The Multifaceted Piano Sonata: Stephen Hough's Recital of Sonatas](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/multifaceted-piano-sonata-stephen-hough-recital-sonatas/) - Stephen Hough says that he chose this program to be one of strange sonatas, which is altogether fitting for Liszt's 200th birthday. The program, consisting entirely of sonatas — no préludes, études or the like (not counting the three encore pieces) — might theoretically have been stranger with, say, one of Pierre Boulez's sonatas, but Hough seems to have been after a more subtle variety of strangeness. A sense of mystery and a very personal quality, very expressive of the internal world marry these pieces under Hough's playing. The honesty and faithfulness to the Truth in his playing brought the music close to poetry. Though making music and poems are not the same or even parallel activities, the word 'sonata' shares an etymology with 'sonnet', the stem son- having to do with sound, and, as Stephen Hough points out in the program note, a sonata is sounded rather than sung, the piano having to make do on its own without words. Hough also pointed out in his short speech in-between the Beethoven and his own piece (usually I'd be against spiels in amongst the music, but Hough is a very good public speaker, thoughtful an interesting, with the voice of a 1930's radio presenter), that Liszt, whose birthday fell on the very day of this recital, invented the concept and the word 'recital' as a sort of pure recitation of music of a single musician. Thus, though sounded and not sung there is the similar expectation in the audience, the similar solitude of the performer as in a poetry recitation, far from a mere reading, but an honest expression of the sonata as if it were naturally being created then and there, as Hough says 'as if the notes were still wet on the page.' Mozart wrote something similar once, that the height of piano playing is to play as if you had composed the music yourself.
- [Alan Miller, a New York Arts / Berkshire Review editor, wins the Architect's Journal Writing Prize](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/alan-miller-new-york-arts-berkshire-review-editor-wins-architects-journal-writing-prize-2/) - The winner of the inaugural AJ Writing Prize in association with architecture practice Berman Guedes Stretton has been announced, and New York Arts / Berkshire Review editor Alan Miller has won the prize over six finalists who were chosen from 91 entries to the contest which was launched in June to find the best up-and-coming architecture critic aged under 35.
- [Wind Quintets and Octet by Milhaud, Taffanel, Reinecke with the Sydney Omega Ensemble in the Utzon Room](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/wind-quintets-octet-milhaud-taffanel-reinecke-sydney-omega-ensemble-utzon-room/) - In the interstices of the Sydney Opera House, between the Opera Theatre, the famous steps up to the podium and the stage door loading dock, is the Utzon Room looking out to the east over Sydney Harbour. Jørn Utzon redesigned the former "reception room" with a mind for its use for chamber music and recitals (he also redesigned the Western Colonnade to welcome theatre goers into the playhouse theater, though unfortunately not the Opera Theatre itself). The Utzon Room magically feels at once like a natural sandstone cave and a modernist version of an English drawing room. It is cozy, long relative to its depth and ceiling height (though not at all cramped being about 3 meters high) with plate glass windows about the height of a person stretching the length of the room facing east, looking across Wahganmuggalee (Farm Cove) with the Botanic Gardens, the sandstone ledges by Mrs Macquarie's Chair and the industrial iron architecture of Garden Island navy base behind. Opposite the windows, along the other length stretches Jørn Utzon's tapestry Tribute to CPE Bach, its islands of clear and vivid secondary colors complement the pale gray cement ceiling beams which hold up the Opera House above. These beams run the length of the roof, sloping at the end right to the floor, supporting the outside steps, gradually tapering and changing shape as they do from decahedral to rectangular. The musicians stand in front of the window, facing the tapestry which no doubt has a strong favorable effect on the acoustics. Thus the room, also seeming, like a sandstone cave, much older than it really is, has more than its fair share of atmosphere and gravitas, especially for a Sydney concert hall, and could risk overshadowing its musicians in a way, for example, the City Recital Hall at Angel Place could not. The acoustics are very clean and balanced across the spectrum, contributing to the clean, lucid, rounded sound of the ensemble and although the view of the Harbour shows constant maritime activity, no noise gets through the windows, even when an enormous cruise ship floated by (albeit under tug) or one of the hooning speedboats which give joy rides to tourists.
- [The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Led by Riccardo Minasi Plays Vivaldi, Zelenka, Sardelli, Fasch on Period Instruments](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/australian-brandenburg-orchestra-riccardo-minasi-vivaldi-zelenka-sardelli-fasch/) - The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra specializes in playing Baroque music on period instruments, though they often include earlier 16th and later 18th century music too, but for this program they have taken a cross section of late Baroque Italy and Germany selecting pieces all from the 1720's and 1730's (or in a similar style). They have also invited Roman violinist Riccardo Minasi to direct and conduct the orchestra with a program of interesting Vivaldi concerti as well as the much more obscure Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was only rediscovered around the middle of the last century, though his 300th birthday in 1979 passed without any celebration from the recording industry (according to Early Music). A Bohemian originally, Zelenka played double bass for the Dresden court orchestra, later composing for the royal chapel, then for a short while acting as Kapellmeister. The ABO plans to play a bit more of his music next year, a sample of his church music. They have also announced for their 2012 season Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in concert, which is wonderful news for Sydney operaphiles who now at least have three operas to look forward to next year — L'Orfeo, Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades with Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony and the Pinchgut company's production in December. Baroque music, especially in the serious and exuberant way the ABO plays it, is lively, vigorous and sanguine but without violence or forcefulness. In this way Baroque music has much to teach humanity of the 21st Century.
- [Sculpture by the Sea](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/sculpture-by-the-sea/) - Nearly to the point of self-parody, Sculpture by the Sea is the quintessential Sydney art exhibition. Every spring for fifteen years, the cliff top walk between Bondi and Bronte beaches has become an appropriately sculptural place to view sculpture. The weathered sandstone of the cliffs, sometimes smooth and rounded, sometimes broken and angular or pitted with lacy indentations, is already a kind of found sculpture, its grace clashing with the boxiness of so much Sydney architecture. Along the two kilometer walk, itself one of the city’s unmissable experiences, are a variety of natural “galleries” — works can be perched amidst the mineral minimalism of the cliffs with ocean as backdrop, tucked into lush grottoes on the inland side or clustered in the parks and beaches, either on the sand, on trampled lawns or along concrete paths. Everywhere, limpid sunshine pours down, mercilessly chiseling the surfaces of the works.
- [Sabine Meyer and the Modigliani String Quartet Play Music by Mozart, Schumann and Ian Munro](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/sabine-meyer-modigliani-string-quartet-mozart-schumann-munro/) - The Modigliani String Quartet has quite a definite personality as a musical ensemble and so has Sabine Meyer in her playing. This is perhaps part of the reason they get along so well together in performance. The differences in style and color of each member of the quartet, though not great, are enough to create a consistent pellucid ensemble sound — one can hear straight through to the bottom of the music like a pristine glacial lake. Sabine Meyer's tone slipped in without a splash, though caused interesting ripples, without any sense of the strings merely 'setting off' a soloist, rather her clarinet combined when the music so called for to shade the sum color of the ensemble or conversed with the quartet on equal terms, and the musicians were always looking, glancing, listening closely to one another. The group did sound perhaps as if they would prefer a somewhat brighter acoustic, but they made the best use of the City Recital Hall (which was certainly adequate either way). Their tempo changes were always well judged to let the sound rebound — however dim on its return —, catch up, and shade in the sound and their pauses and silences were perfectly judged to satisfy the local drama and drift of the melodic structure of the music while allowing as best one could hope for for the fast-fading ring of the hall.
- [The Australian Ballet Dances a Renovated Merry Widow](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/australian-ballet-dances-renovated-merry-widow/) - The Merry Widow as a ballet was invented by the Australian Ballet and it has their spirit written all over it: irreverence without sarcasm or cynicism, joie de vivre and any feelings of desperation generally surmountable. It was Robert Helpmann's brainchild, the Australian actor and dancer who got his launch in the 1930's in Ninette de Valois' Sadler's Wells company becoming a very fine dancer especially in the character and demi-character rôles and a legendary Shakespearean actor too. The idea to make the famous operetta into a ballet came in 1975 when Helpmann was the Artistic Director and the Australian Ballet was only 13 years old and in a bit of a financial pickle. The Merry Widow on the one hand was created to be popular and bring in some money from the box office and succeeded in this, but it was really a very ambitious and visionary idea for it was the company's first new full length ballet, a genre Ninette de Valois, speaking from experience, emphasized as very important for a growing company to undertake — in the full 'three act' ballet in the imperial Russian and earlier French tradition a company must tell a single story over an entire evening. The way Hynd, Heeley and Lanchbery went about putting the idea on the stage goes far beyond mere populism which they knew wouldn't have helped the young company at all.
- [Mahler's Second Symphony: Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Complete Their Mahler Cycle](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/mahler-second-symphony-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-complete-cycle/) - If a person did come to understand the true nature of reality and the universe, why we exist and die and how we exist after, if they could answer in one the curious person's every "why?" in the endless chain, could that thought even be solidified into words? or even rarefied into music? If it could these words would at best be the ultimate "inarticulacy of the new"; or if this person glanced off some truth tangentially and put it into words they would sound like a madman or a prophet or at best a poet. Is music any more articulate than words here? Music is more articulate perhaps in its being more akin to the primary "image" of a thought before it is put into words — prose words anyway — it need not commit itself to one of the set of concrete objects or abstract concepts allowed by language. Then again I don't want to do language a disservice since it can deal in these images, especially in poetry, and anyway music is like language in that there is a certain grammar of sounds which make musical sense; an infinite freedom amongst all the audible sounds would lead to infinite chaos, or at least just bad music. This is not how music evolved in any case, but instruments can say things outside of words' ken (and vice versa).
- [Picasso at the Art Gallery of New South Wales](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/picasso-agnsw/) - Amidst recent debate over whether the “blockbuster” art show is dead, alive, dying, waning or mutating, it takes a blockbuster to appreciate the value of a blockbuster. This is especially so in Australia, whose several fine museums all started collecting way too late to acumulate many of the great masters. As Edmund Capon said in a recent interview, the quirky array of names along the sandstone frieze of the Art Gallery of New South Wales — Raphael, Michael Angelo (sic), Bellini, Titian — are aspirational, a list of all the artists whose works “we don’t have.” He didn’t add that we never will have them, but there is a poignance to that list of names in bronze, a reminder of one “tyranny of distance” which was untraversable at the time of the gallery’s construction and remains so. Whether or not one of Australia’s mining billionaires ever finds the taste and generosity to buy one of our public galleries some minor Titian, Capon, retiring after thirty very successful years as director of the Gallery, can now justifiably brag that he leaves it “full of Picassos.”
- [Vivaldi's Griselda From the Pinchgut Opera of Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/vivaldi-griselda-pinchgut-opera-sydney/) - "Modernized Opera" can sound a little scary, especially if implicitly (mis-)associated with the term "upgrade" which came out of Hollywood and Silicon Valley almost simultaneously in the last several years. Perhaps this is why some people are so against it: it sounds as if their changing the notes to modern notes! Or completely reversing the tone of the opera in some sardonic way. Operas should not be modernized because they are old but because it makes sense to do so. The two terms in quotes shouldn't be associated at all: the former is a style, the latter a consumerist slogan and a euphemism for dumbing-down. Bringing the action of the opera into the present either explicitly or in some less realistic or even abstracted way, where there is a motivation, can be a wonderful thing and be high art. When the imagery the designer and director create make poetical and musical sense in the way it unfolds through the piece, with its own internal logic compatible with that of the music, it is a wonderful thing and there is no reason modern images are necessarily excluded from this (there is the problem of literal contradictions in the libretto, references to "pastorella" or "boschi" or "selva" in an opera taken to the modern inner city, but those are a separate matter).
- [Jonathan Nott Conducts the Sydney Symphony in Brahms, Brett Dean and Schubert  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/jonathan-nott-sydney-symphony-brahms-brett-dean-schubert/) - Jonathan Nott has a light touch. The subtlety and clarity he encourages from each instrument, treating each with equal importance, allows in a way the music to speak for itself. He does not try to do too much to put his impression on the piece. His conducting is particularly sublime in the very soft sections of the music where he is not afraid to bring the sound level down to a barely audible level, but still with great clarity and texture. In this way the Violin Concerto, "Lost Art" by Brett Dean is well suited to his style. The Australian composer was commissioned to write the piece in 2007 by the Cologne Philharmonie and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic for Frank Zimmermann to whom the piece is dedicated. It is now heard for the first time in Sydney.
- [Graeme Murphy Choreographs a New Romeo and Juliet for the Australian Ballet ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/graeme-murphy-choreographs-new-romeo-juliet-australian-ballet/) - William Shakespeare, though he did not of course invent all his stories, rather drawing them from history or myth, makes them seem like his in his vivid tellings. His characters gain real personalities by virtue of the dense poetry but also from their actions and behavior in the plays and the strong linkages of cause, motivation, effect, imagery and expressive action from foot to foot, line to line, scene to scene and act to act give the plays strong coherence through the internal logics, whether ‘real’, poetical, linguistic or dramatic. In a phrase, he had a sense of theater, he magically created real worlds, not just existing in his private imagination, but in seemingly solid words and acting which create in the theater believable atmospheres of battle, or forest serene or sinister, or anything else from any part of the world. Perhaps most of all the stories we grant Shakespeare possession of that of Romeo and Juliet. Ballet has a history of borrowing Shakespeare’s pieces, though it may seem self-defeating to leave the Bard’s words and take only the story, many are successful as theater in their own right, perhaps because they avoid a direct translation into mime and movement rather taking across the essence of their drama and characters.
- [Osmo Vänskä and Alisa Weilerstein Collaborate with the Sydney Symphony — Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Beethoven ](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/osmo-vanska-alisa-weilerstein-sydney-symphony-tchaikovsky-prokofiev-beethoven/) - Inviting guest musicians Osmo Vänskä and Alisa Weilerstein to the Sydney Symphony makes an artistic match the muses approved of, not to mention the heavens. They only came for three performances in Sydney, and how they found time to rehearse this dense program thoroughly is a mystery to me, though a shared musical spirit and understanding seemed to be on their side in this performance. It was a rare conjunction of various uncontrollable elements. The program too is very interesting. The Sydney Symphony has found a 'new' Tchaikovsky piece, apparently never having played Voyevoda before, and has not played the Prokofiev sinfonia concertante for 40 years. Beethoven is always interesting (at the very least), but here we have a unique interpreter of his symphonies in Vänskä, who seemed even to find in Beethoven hitherto unheard connections to Prokofiev.
- [A Christmas Australis with Real Music with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/christmas-australian-brandenburg-orchestra-choir/) - Having grown up in the northern hemisphere, the winter Christmas is ingrained in me, but the event is fundamentally connected to mid-winter. The pagan winter solstice festival with its strong connection to nature, namely the Sun, a celebration of the days starting to lengthen and a new year beginning, is tied to Christmas as the scriptural imagery is compatible with the older ritual’s. Zeus, Dionysus, Apollo, and Mithras are all also alleged to have been born on the (northern) winter solstice and St. Chrysostom said of the timing of the Nativity in the 4th Century ‘while the heathen were busied with their profane rites the Christians might perform their holy ones without disturbance’ but also thought it a suitable birthday for the ‘Sun of Righteousness.’[1] In that sense it naturally and intuitively doesn't feel like the right festival for the southern hemisphere's summer solstice. So unique traditions evolve here and the more appealing ones are strongly connected to nature — spending all your time outside enjoying the long daylight while it lasts, roses blooming, surfing, eating seafood, fresh fruit, especially cherries, etc. —, but still are colored by the northern traditions. With his Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Sydney's main squeeze for Baroque music and period instrument lovers, Paul Dyer provides the best music for this austral summer solstice Christmas, music which makes natural and festive sense. It is very serious, 'scholarly' music, but with the artistic spirit of the Baroque steeping it, it has a bright festive sunny quality too, especially in the style of their playing. Dyer has assembled a varied program of traditional carols played very thoughtfully, Spanish popular music from the 16th Century, late Baroque instrumental music and early Baroque motets and more recently composed pieces. Somehow Dyer's enthusiasm, sense of occasion and serious-festive-art approach to music allows all this to hang together comfortably.
- [The Best and Worst of Sydney Urbanism, 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/best-worst-sydney-urbanism-2011/) - Unlike movies or the performing arts, architecture is not seasonal. There is no year end rush in which all the Gehrys and Koolhaases are “released,” no popcorn summer in which the Barangaroos and Ground Zeros of this world try to blow out our eye sockets with their empty spectacle. Cities just go on and on; one must make an effort to pick a moment and look back if we are ever to figure out just what on earth is going on.
- [Dance at the Sydney Festival - Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet's 'Babel', Martin del Amo's 'Anatomy of an Afternoon' and Gideon Obarzanek's 'Assembly'](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/dance-sydney-festival-cherkaoui-jalet-babel-del-amo-anatomy-afternoon-obarzanek-assembly/) - Parody as a technique of satire ought to suit theatrical dance well. Irish poets, known as some of the greatest masters of this form, in imitating and reversing the meter of their victim’s poems in order to devastate them are said to have used the same technique as Russian witches: "they walk quietly behind their victim, exactly mimicking his gate; then when in perfect sympathy with him suddenly stumble and fall, taking care to fall soft while he falls hard." [1] Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet's piece Babel (words) takes on the modern world, in a deliberate mixture of satire, serious avant-garde dance, science fiction, declamatory monologues and something bordering on a three-ring circus.
- [The Sydney Festival: 'Buried City' By Raimondo Cortese at the Belvoir St Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/sydney-festival-buried-city-cortese-belvoir/) - The Belvoir St Theatre is undergoing renovations — there is a hole in the outside wall over the sidewalk (walking past which an hour so before a performance you can hear rehearsals floating out, or are they angry builders?) with a scaffold around it covered in green mesh and playbills. A sign claims that their fascia needs repair, but it works all a bit to well with this their current production. I suspect they punched a hole in the wall for added realism — perhaps a sort of Method for set design? Either way, the play's set inside is a very realistic construction site: a climbable scaffold covers the back walls of the theatre, opening seamlessly onto the real scaffold outside which is used for as a backstage. The "wing" leading to the back stage is merely the hole in the wall opening out over the street. Loudspeakers play traffic noises inside the theater as the audience comes in to find their seats, continuing over the beginning of the play proper. Dust and detritus spread across the stage with beer and liquor bottles and milk crates, and there is a little tin site office behind the audience with a light on and a security guard inside. Besides that we are outdoors but there are no trees or vegetation to speak of. The only bit of nature is the real sunset pouring in from outside (the "curtain" rises at 8pm but it is summer — Sydney Festival time), coinciding with nightfall in the play; was that currowong singing bedtime outside for real or did it come from the speakers? The only other half way natural thing on the stage is a water tap, which becomes useful later on, like the fountain in a rustic village, the characters go to it to dunk their heads to sober up, fill water pipes for hashish, or just to fill bottles or kettles.
- [The 100th Birthday of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: The Sydney Theatre Company Celebrates With Something Different ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/100th-birthday-bernard-shaws-pygmalion-sydney-theatre-company/) - Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton as artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company saw fit to bring out a new, modern, almost experimental approach to Shaw's most popular play for its 100th birthday. To speak of the birth of a play, or any piece or performing art, is tricky. Shaw wrote the play in 1912, but the words on in the script are no more the play than those of a poem are the poem or a score the piece of music. Even in Shaw's case where the sounds of the words are so important and the characters' accents are all precisely set out — the drama depending almost as much on the raw sounds than their words' meanings — not to mention Shaw's preface to the play and his (I think purposefully prosaic) postscript-sequel, there is still room left for at least subtle variations in interpretation. With all these pieces of information specifying Shaw’s intentions and the precise and definite stage directions, the play is already especially alive on the page, but still much of the gestural and body language and movement, which is very important to language, is left open. For all this definiteness, the end is so ambiguous, and as a "romance", itself a very broad term, it is more akin to, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne's species of romance. From a character's point of view it is almost easier to find oneself in a tragedy and leaving one’s problems behind at the end.
- [Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Embark On Their 2012 Season with Beethoven's Choral Symphony and Strauss' Metamorphosen ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-beethoven-choral-symphony-strauss-metamorphosen/) - To open the Sydney Symphony's 2012 season and the year of their 80th birthday, Vladimir Ashkenazy. artistic director and chief conductor, has put together a generous program of powerful German music. Beethoven's Ninth finds itself played to mark great occasions, the reopening of Bayreuth in 1953 comes to mind and its own creation came at the end of decades of war in Europe. The Sydney Symphony has not played it for five years — for their 75th anniversary — so it would feel now about due for their attention. The piece is so famous and familiar, though, even as an occasional performance, there is the risk of over familiarity. With so much wonderful inherited music and worthy current music and music which would potentially exist given the opportunity of performance, should the Ninth, or any piece, be played if the performance cannot discover anything new in the piece? For the listeners, they can always seek out new aspects of the piece since one's disposition and experience in life effect one's ears so strongly, but it helps to have musicians, like Ashkenazy, full of ideas. "Occasion" implies some shared new experience anyway. But on the other hand, the earthly specificity of an occasion can in a way put a drag on a sublime performance of the Ninth. It is such spiritual, metaphysical music, rooted in itself, in this way a universal piece, somehow worldly events seem to anchor it in time and space in an uncomfortable way, paradoxically perhaps. As a birthday party for a very fine and healthy symphony orchestra with surely many more anniversaries ahead of it, the occasion here did not "get in the way," as it were, very much, rather the music tended to come first, as it should. A symphony orchestra is after all a selfless crew in many ways.
- [Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Sydney Symphony and Stephen Kovacevich Play Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and Strauss' Alpensinfonie ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-kovacevich-beethoven-fourth-piano-concerto-strauss-alpensinfonie/) - Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra continue with the second in their triptych of Beethoven-Richard Strauss concerts which opens their 2012 season. Maestro Ashkenazy, their artistic director for the past few years who usually conducts himself several concerts at the beginning and end of the season (the Eternal Summer!), and the SSO seem to have established a warm and close rapport and respect, to judge from the jocular, playful exchanges and inaudible banter he shares with the orchestra members after the music, shaking hands with all the front-row strings after every concert, as well as from the fine and detailed interpretations they create together. Stephen Kovacevich brought a remarkable like-mindedness to this partnership. He also brought a complimentary attitude so that the concerto was a conversation beyond words between individual beings. The sound of his piano and what Kovacevich expressed therein had a remarkably immediate, very close presence, where often there is a wider gap between a guest soloist-virtuoso and the audience. Similarly the orchestra had a generous and open pellucid quality — not ever quite the homogeneously mixed and integrated sound of cogs in the the romantic-orchestral apparatus, nor exactly a contrasty orchestra of soloists, but something in-between those extremes and something else entirely which preserved the instruments' characteristic timbres, at least section-wise, in an even-handed balance, a sound which can speak coherently in many different ways all at once. Kovacevich got through his childhood concert début some 60 years ago and so has nothing to prove, and his performance with Ashkenazy, himself a pianist, and now a conductor, of great experience, had deep maturity, but also at the same time a playful child-like quality, a surface insouciance rather more interested in the details and problems in the music which matter.
- [The Sydney Omega Ensemble and Gerard Willems Play Wind and Piano Works by Jolivet, Beethoven and New Australian Music by Luke Styles](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/sydney-omega-ensemble-gerard-willems-jolivet-beethoven-luke-styles/) - The Sydney Omega Ensemble, as fairly young musicians, though with three members of the SSO's wind section, in no way without experience, with help from the non-profit Ars Musica Australis, enjoys commissioning and playing new pieces from young Australian composers. They do so in many of their concerts, taking the tactic of mixing them in a program with traditional composers, rather than the all-together contemporary music festival approach. Even if the new pieces are only short, it obviously adds variety for the audience and players and fills in some of the difficult gap between conservatory student concerts and festivals and the commissions of more established composers by Musica Viva (for new chamber music) and the SSO, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian Ballet, etc. for new orchestral works, the orchestral works usually coming from the same handful of Australian composers. So it is a valuable little institution David Rowden, the Ensemble's artistic director, founder and clarinetist, and company have run over the past few years.
- [Rare Vivaldi Concerti with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Guest Violinist Federico Guglielmo](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/vivaldi-concerti-australian-brandenburg-orchestra-federico-guglielmo/) - For a long time I was put off Vivaldi by the incessant repetitions of the Four Seasons on the local classical radio station. This was of course unfair, but it can be tricky to find performances of many of his other several hundred pieces (not least in Venice itself), and in fact the frequently encountered way of playing Vivaldi, with a certain edge, a forthright, frenetic sort of energy, which may display the technical virtuosity to maximum effect, is unfair too. Australian Brandenburg Orchestra artistic director and harpsichordist Paul Dyer and guest violinist and director Federico Guglielmo have constructed a program which is remarkably varied — indeed to present a program devoted to a single composer (or an exhibition devoted to a single artist) only really works with and artistic personality capable of a varied outlook lest we become oppressed by the artist's obsessions. Some of these concerti have not been published and clearly the two musicians have put much deep thought and research into their performance. Here is a Vivaldi with subtlety of expression, which also puts to good use all of this orchestra's skill across the instruments without showing off. All the concerti are "for several instruments" with some instruments re-apearing as soloists with a consistent personality and characteristically written parts, but with something quite different to say in each concerto. The program is carefully arranged in a kind of cycle, giving the sense of music taking us on a journey.
- [Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Strauss' Zarathustra, Brahms' Violin Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili, Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/beethoven-strauss-zarathustra-brahms-lisa-batiashvili-vladimir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony/) - The concert pulled us away from a particularly beautiful sunset over Sydney with Cray-Pas pink-crimson streaks and squiggles and a new moon following closely behind the sun, sparing us the feeling of mono no aware of a finished sunset. Zarathustra gave us maybe a more conventional sunset's "riot of color", or rather sunrise, to complete Vladimir Ashkenazy's three concert series of Germanic music which opened the Sydney Symphony's 2012 season. This small selection of major Strauss symphonies if not totally satisfying and complete in itself, gives one an urge to seek out more Strauss in order to seek out more in Strauss. Then again symphonic music can be enjoyed as a riot of marvelous sounds. Ashkenazy's pairings in the three concerts of a tightly formed Beethoven piece — The Ninth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Coriolan Overture, respectively — with a more spread-out Strauss piece (with the exception of Metamorphosen), perhaps more fun to conduct than to listen to at times, and the music with Vladimir Ashkenazy's enthusiasm for it, speaks for itself and justifies itself. Anyway, it is hard to speak generally about Strauss since he is quite varied even within one piece.
- [Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Strauss' Zarathustra, Brahms' Violin Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili, Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/beethoven-strauss-zarathustra-brahms-lisa-batiashvili-vladimir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-2/) - The concert pulled us away from a particularly beautiful sunset over Sydney with Cray-Pas pink-crimson streaks and squiggles and a new moon following closely behind the sun, sparing us the feeling of mono no aware of a finished sunset. Zarathustra gave us maybe a more conventional sunset's "riot of color", or rather sunrise, to complete Vladimir Ashkenazy's three concert series of Germanic music which opened the Sydney Symphony's 2012 season. This small selection of major Strauss symphonies if not totally satisfying and complete in itself, gives one an urge to seek out more Strauss in order to seek out more in Strauss. Then again symphonic music can be enjoyed as a riot of marvelous sounds. Ashkenazy's pairings in the three concerts of a tightly formed Beethoven piece — The Ninth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Coriolan Overture, respectively — with a more spread-out Strauss piece (with the exception of Metamorphosen), perhaps more fun to conduct than to listen to at times, and the music with Vladimir Ashkenazy's enthusiasm for it, speaks for itself and justifies itself. Anyway, it is hard to speak generally about Strauss since he is quite varied even within one piece.
- [A Small Oboe Festival: François Leleux and the Sydney Symphony Play Bach, Ravel and Mozart](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/oboe-francois-leleux-sydney-symphony-bach-ravel-mozart/) - Leleux had put together a program of classics, well known but in playing he brought them a freshness and bright enthusiasm as if encountering them for the first time. He played, in both senses of the word, in an unlabored way even in the more difficult sections, even while his technique proved his mastery of the instrument and all the work and practice that entailed. His honest and lively playing was infectious. The musicians seemed not like performers set up on stage and weighted by everyone's eyes and ears and expectations set on them, but they gave the impression of artists playing music for its own sake in private, the listeners seemed not exactly an audience but more invitees to share in the experience, the exploration of the music anew.
- [Matthias Pintscher, Guest Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Play Stravinsky, Ravel and Pintscher](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/matthias-pintscher-sydney-symphony-stravinsky-ravel/) - Before Diaghilev decided to bring Russian art to the west, starting with his exhibition of Russian art in Paris in 1906, in 1908 bringing Chaliapin to Paris to sing Boris Godinov, and then his formation of the Ballets Russes, first performing in Paris in 1909, unadulterated, purely Russian art was little known or appreciated outside asia. Vast Russia, except for its toe in Europe was perhaps considered something of a cultural backwater in Europe. Diaghilev didn't hold back in bringing this unadulterated Russian art, also discovering and hiring young or little known artists — like Stravinsky — and this was part of his art's huge appeal in west to this day. So when Stravinsky visited the far, far East — Australia — in 1961, it was perhaps not so far from his roots nor so incongruous. Traditional indigenous Russian or central asian art was often an influence in the set designs and style of Bakst, Benois, Golovin, Roerich and the others, costumes sometimes used original traditional textiles (like the ikat fabrics bought from nomadic traders at St Petersburg markets for the costumes for the Polostvian dances from Borodin's Prince Igor), the choreography was sometimes classical in the best Petipan Franco-russian tradition preserved in the imperial Maryinksy school, but was often entirely new in style, especially Vaslav Nijinsky's for the Rite of Spring, though often borrowing from traditional, indigenous Russian dance, as in Firebird and Petroushka. Western audiences seemed unconsciously to understand this bizarre new art and went crazy for it, famously starting riots and booing, also becoming most fashionable tickets to have.
- [Rafael Bonachela and the Sydney Dance Company in a New Work Called "2 One Another" ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/rafael-bonachela-sydney-dance-company-2-one-another/) - Bonachela's new creation begins with calm, silent (without even music) gesturing from the whole company gathered on stage. The gestures seem as organized and complex as a sign language but are not really comprehensible except for a gist, at least not until later, a bit like when a (wild) parrot lands on your balcony railing and starts chattering to you, very slightly reproachful when you don't give the proper response in the same language. For the first half, the dancers wear plain gray body stockings of varying length with vivid lime green zippers up the back (see photo), almost as if they were wind up toys or soft animals with music boxes. The scene gives way to a more frenetic one with unsettled, fraught music, more electronic sounds, sometimes recalling a jackhammer, or thunder, or like some science fictional machine. Even where the music sounds a bit video gamish and repetitive, the choreography manages to retain its humanity, though the movements can be combative — the high sudden kicks give a little jolt of comic bookishness and though this movement is used too often so its effect is diluted, the dancing manages to veer away from falling into any such mundane tendency. In fact, the piece has much more to it generally than these stylized fights, as alarming and sensational as they are. The movements are rarely naturalistic, only in brief lingering gestures or flashes — a reach towards the other partner, a quarter roll prostrate on the floor, a weightier dropping movement of despair or just release or what have you, or letting the other partner, both man and woman at different times, provide all of the support. The photos here give a very good feel of the work, though it is not so posed as they might lead one to think; theses "poses" are fleeting. Where there is a clichéd gesture — an unsubtle one-shoulder shrug, a splayed crouch, one of those exaggerated martial arts-style high kicks — it is very brief and there is so much going on at once in the multiple groups of dancers so often on the stage, each has their own steps and movements in the detailed and intricate choreography.
- [Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Play Prokofiev with Behzod Abduraimov, Berlioz and Elliott Gyger](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/vladimir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-prokofiev-behzod-abduraimov-berlioz-elliott-gyger/) - This fascinating and varied program, each piece using equally colorful but very different orchestras and very different forms and structures, shows us some of the breadth of the Sydney Symphony. Their style is nimble enough to express itself in multifarious ways and Ashkenazy's style and approach to symphonic music is well suited to the three pieces. To mark the occasion of the orchestra's 80th anniversary, they have done something special in commissioning themselves a new piece by way of an open competition. Elliott Gyger's entry was chosen, and though only alloted a short amount of time to fit into this larger program of more familiar pieces, it does rather expand under the intensity of its short broken up motifs and its varied colors, sounds and textures, qualities Ashkenazy, at least as a conductor, seems to relish. The piece's title refers to the SSO's origin as a radio orchestra formed along with the Australian Broadcast Corporation in 1932. Gyger says he used an ensemble of 17 instruments, the same in the original 1932 radio orchestra, which for his "dialogue" are spread through the larger orchestra: three violins, viola, cello, bass, two each of trombones, trumpets and clarinets, a horn, sousaphone, piccolo, piano and percussion.
- [Elena Xanthoudakis Sings Rare Romantic Lieder with Jason Xanthoudakis, Clarinet and Clemens Leske, Piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/elena-xanthoudakis-rare-romantic-lieder-jason-xanthoudakis-clemens-leske/) - With an impressive list of singing competition wins and opera roles, not least her brilliant Eurydice and Sibyl in the Pinchgut Opera's production of Haydn's opera of the Orpheus myth L'anima del Filosofo in 2010, Elena Xanthoudakis is now directing her energies toward researching and rediscovering Romantic Lieder written for trio, here soprano, clarinet, and piano, and she is doing done so in style with a definite passion for the genre, which is fitting to the original spirit of the music. The trio have recorded a CD called "The Shepherd and the Mermaid" of some of their finds (which I haven't yet heard) and here perform the songs on it, including parts of Franz Lachner's version of von Chamisso's Frauenliebe und -leben cycle better known perhaps in the Schumann version and perhaps even the Loewe version. They are also publishing these pieces in print under the Kroma Editions name so all can have the opportunity to play them, obviously many of these are not on the usual free sheet music sites on the 'net, having had to be dug out of libraries in London and Vienna, and some (according to Xanthoudakis) have never been recorded.
- [Virtuosity and More in Behzod Abduraimov's Piano Recital](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/virtuosity-behzod-abduraimov-piano-recital/) - Having already played the Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto three times with Vladimir Ashkenazy last week, Behzod Abduraimov played this one-off recital, and a grueling one it was. It is a very nice idea, though, for the Sydney Symphony to arrange these solo recitals of some of their visiting pianists (there will be three more recitals this year) as we get a chance to hear more of their personal character than is expressed in the big symphonic concert hall with the orchestra. As the Symphony's artistic director and chief conductor, and moreover as a great pianist himself, Ashkenazy has invited or at least agreed to play with, some wonderful and characterful pianists, especially Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Stephen Hough last year. Behzod Abduraimov who only made his first tour a few years ago (with Ashkenazy and the SSO, as it happens), has a very definite style which he expresses always without reserve, his interpretations always having clarity. Even if it is different from your own thoughts or interpretation of a piece or from your favorite pianists (he is very different from Horowitz, though I believe the comparison has been made in the past) his style is strongly magnetic and his interpretations convincing enough to draw one into his musical world, and it is of course healthy and fun to hear new and varied interpretations of old favorites.
- [Three New Ballets to Open the Australian Ballet's 50th Anniversary in Sydney ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/three-new-ballets-infinity-australian-ballet-sydney/) - With the Evening Star just about to set, hanging a little above a Harbour Bridge pylon, and, by the second interval, a waning gibbous moon rising through a back-lit bank of cloud, so the Sydney season of the Australian Ballet opens, with three new short ballets. They cover a broad range, like three points of a very large triangle, showing some of the versatility of the company. The Narrative of Nothing as the name implies is an abstract ballet, mostly. The Australian Ballet along with the BBC and the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra, has commissioned from Australian composer Brett Dean "Fire Music", a new score specially for this ballet, and the music and lighting contribute almost as major a part as the dancing.
- [The Tinalley String Quartet's Unique Voice: Bach, Haydn, Shostakovich and Beethoven](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/tinalley-string-quartet-bach-haydn-shostakovich-beethoven/) - The chamber music fairy can touch any group anywhere, it seems, whether or not they have masses of recordings with prestigious labels, or a 'high profile' (in fact I don't think she even reads the newspaper or listens to recordings). Even so, the Tinalley String Quartet knows their music backward and forward, as if there were no phrase or note they hadn't rehearsed, discussed or thought about, or just intuitively understood on the moment. They are a very tight group, the sum total of their sound shows care and understanding, as if their feel for and ideas of the music span it vertically, horizontally and diagonally on any diagonal the composer cares to involve, particularly so in the Bach Art of Fugue pieces and the fugal last movement of the Haydn quartet. The close acoustic of the room only reveals the nuanced detail in their ensemble sound and the unique colors and textures of their group's voice, very sonorous and woody, rounded and well seasoned, rich, but one where all the instruments are clear and yet combine into something greater than the sum of its parts. The favorable acoustic of the smallish room helps, and I suspect chamber music, especially the string quartet, often comes across more strident in tone than the ideal intentions of the artists when played in a larger concert hall shared with orchestras, but a small room like the Utzon Room would only reveal flaws or empty spaces in an inferior group or a less thoughtful and personal interpretation. Here the room was merely complementary, as if just subtly lifting something already there. It was a remarkable mature performance for any group, let alone one so young (founded in 2003 at the University of Melbourne) with musicians as young as they are (all in their late 20s or 30s), but one isn't really aware of such mundane temporal qualities when they play.
- [The St Lawrence String Quartet and Diana Doherty on Oboe, Play Music by Haydn, Dvořák and Mozart and Contemporary Music by Matthew Hindson and Gordon Kerry](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/st-lawrence-string-quartet-diana-doherty-mozart-kerry-hindson/) - Such a broad range of small detail, an infinite diversity of subtle variations in tone, attack, dynamics etc., more than is practical even for a composer to write into a score, is possible, even common on the string instruments, especially the violin, and it seems to be much easier to find violinists capable of nuanced playing than any other instrument, flute, horn, oboe, for example, though maybe not piano, though these instruments are not directly comparable. The string quartet then presents so many musical possibilities not to mention possible combinations of musical personalities, for both the performer and composer, and such opportunities for experimentation with the genre's huge density of detail, relative speed of composition, and fantastic possibilities at the frontiers of musical sound. It is easy too to compare a symphonist's writing string quartets to a painter's drawing of finished studies, and this tradition continues, even if new symphonies and operas are relatively rare, as we see here in this program which includes the newish work by Gordon Kerry whose pieces, like Ian Munro's last year, will feature in most of this year's chamber music concert tours organized by Musica Viva.
- [The Australian Ballet Dances John Cranko's 'Onegin'](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/australian-ballet-john-cranko-onegin/) - When John Cranko came to England from South Africa in 1946 at the age of 19 to learn at the Sadler's Wells School, Ninette de Valois recognized and watered his talent, putting him to work the same year creating ballets for her Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet. She gave him opportunities and encouraged him to create at a time when she herself, though an excellent and very thoughtful choreographer in either a modern or the traditional styles, found herself with less and less time while seeing to her companies, schools and dancers and artists. De Valois made him resident choreographer of the company for the 1950 season. Cranko's earlier work seems to show his comedic bent, e.g. Pineapple Pole (1950), and in his collaboration with Benjamin Britten in Prince of the Pagodas (1957), though by 1958 showed his full dramatic sense in creating his own version of Romeo and Juliet for Milan, which is now in many companies' repertoires. In 1960, he left England to direct and choreograph the Württemberger Staatstheaterballett in Stuttgart, though only 33 years old, after remounting Prince of the Pagodas. His dramatic sense and keenly observed characterization, his talent for telling a story led him on to 'adapt' to, perhaps more to metamorphose into ballet, the literary giants, finding inspiration in unexpected places: Pushkin-Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin (Onegin, 1965) and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1969).
- [The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Plays Johann Sebastian Bach and His Contemporaries](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/australian-brandenburg-orchestra-bach/) - Paul Dyer says he sees playing Johann Sebastian Bach as the "ultimate experience for a musician," rightfully so, the same goes for a listener too, and in naming his orchestra after the most famous of Bach's instrumental works, he puts his money where his mouth is, but more importantly so in the fine, detailed playing, expressiveness and unforced enthusiasm, which show much care and thought in the preparation of this program. Sydney perhaps is not and never claimed to be a great Bach town, but either way, as a lover of his music, I can feel sorely deprived of him, despite the odd performance on period instruments or otherwise over the last two years. So it felt like a parched walker coming upon a water-hole to hear a program where the whole first half was devoted to Bach and the rest to contemporary (with a small 'c') music. The ABO has pulled out many of the stops (within reason), assembling a larger-than-usual group of 10 violins, four violas, three cellos, one bass, two flutes, three oboes, one bassoon, two horns, three trumpets, theorbo, timpani, organ and harpsichord, as well as a choir of about 35, though of course not all of these for all pieces.
- [Trio Dali On Their Australian Tour Play Gordon Kerry, Maurice Ravel, Franz Schubert](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/trio-dali-gordon-kerry-ravel-schubert/) - In the broad diversity of chamber music genres, the piano trio is particularly full of character, though perhaps sometimes implicitly considered less pure than its cousin the string quartet. The trio is a strange, asymmetrical animal, even lopsided, though not the less graceful, very colorful for its simplicity, with an a priori transparency thanks to the extreme contrasts between the instruments. With all the instruments so plainly audible all the time, their relationships are so much more ambiguous than soloist and accompaniment, the musicians' playing becomes very soloistic by necessity. There never seems to be a leader in a trio, they are individualistic, preferring a kind of mutually controlled anarchy. Each instrument sounds very much at home in its part; a compositional idea is either suited the grouping or it isn't, and when it is, it is unmistakable. The breadth of range — in pitch, timbre, and others — of this little group can be astonishing, while the texture is far from smooth. Excellent musicians can meet one another halfway and make very tight, solid sounds, but naturally there is a certain jazzy friction from the natural gaps in the texture, the gulfs between the characteristic sounds of the three instruments; it is no wonder the trio is so popular for making Jazz. Where the colors of a string quartet can be rich, deep, muted or vivid, the trio is pastel.
- [The Sydney Theatre Company Plays Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/sydney-theatre-company-dylan-thomas-under-milk-wood/) - It is no easy task to stage a radio play, or even a "Play for Voices." We're not talking about, say, making a dreadful Hollywood movie, or even a schlocky 1950's film of War of the Worlds; in Under Milk Wood nothing happens. That's not so much even the main difficulty, though, as is presenting something to the eye which complements Dylan Thomas' "prose with blood-pressure," an actor's doing things — or choosing to stay immobile — and creating activity in a sensible way without stepping on the imagination's toes. Something similar goes for the cooperative efforts of the costume, set, and music. One way might be to make a sort of symphonic concert out of it, in three movements: night, day, and evening, the actors using their voices mainly with minimal secondaries of costume, gesture, lighting and music, a verbal analogue to a recital or concert. The other extreme might be to turn it into a 'proper play,' with with changing sets of Coronation Street
- [The English National Ballet On Tour Spreads The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Festivities ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/english-national-ballet-tour-sydney/) - They dance with a keen sense of drama with a very fine feeling for the gestures on which a ballet turns. They have a special sense for the overarching form and thrust of the choreographer's idea for each piece they danced, so the build-up of dramatic tension could be gradual, the feelings brought to each movement fitting and those important gestures could fit in in a restrained, even understated way. The dancers tend to give as much attention to their port à bras, which was very plastic, very tactile, as if pushing against the thickness of the atmosphere around them, as their leg- and foot-work, also with a careful attention to line, especially in the groupings at the cadence of a scene. They are extremely absorbing, giving something much more than the display of a Gala performance, despite the over-excited opening night audience.
- [The Museum of Contemporary Art Opens a New Wing (and an Old Debate...)  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/mca-sydney/) - Circular Quay is Sydney’s great public space, but it is no Piazza San Marco. The presence of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge at opposite ends of the magnet is powerful enough to allow the eye to glide around the curve past the decent, mediocre and bad architecture in between. In such an enchanted context even the Cahill Expressway, an elevated freeway which runs along the southern foreshore, is somehow not as egregious as Boston’s Central Artery was before it was chopped down. Instead of ancient stones, there is water, the one inlet out of the harbor’s dozens chosen for European settlement, now teeming with ferries and tourist boats promising varying doses of adrenaline. However unrepresentative of the unruly metropolis which spreads from here in all directions, Circular Quay hints at the dream of its city, the city’s best version of itself, the city Sydney could one day be.
- [The Takács Quartet Visits Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/takacs-quartet-sydney/) - I've written many times about musicians' giving spiels before they play and how intrusive this can be on the music by denying that important transition from the audience's excited chatter as they find their seats, to the musicians' walking on, to the silence before the first note. These spiels are very different from the pre-concert talks which are common now and elective, take place well before the actual concert, and can be informative. Here was a more egregious example — first violin Edward Dusinberre gave an entire short lecture before the Janáček and Britten quartets, complete with short musical excerpts just before they hoed into the actual piece. Then Gordon Kerry himself was brought on to talk about his piece just before they played it. I think even a "modern audience" can take its music straight and have a fighting chance of understanding it. The lecturing seemed to throw them off, the words over-specifying and materializing the music, being too heavily prosaic for the music to bear, though perhaps jet-lag and fatigue from touring, or just a bad day contributed, but it was disappointing that the music of this usually very fine group sounded so flat.
- [Altogether Now: the 18th Biennale of Sydney](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/altogether-now-the-18th-biennale-of-sydney/) - A good biennale dances a tricky pas de deux with its theme. Too little constraint lands us in Charles Foster Kane’s warehouse, too heavy a curatorial hand stifles the unruliness which is contemporary art’s great charm. The curators of this year’s Biennale of Sydney, Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster, have taken an inquisitive approach to their theme. If all our relations sets itself up against a modernist heroism which must by now be as rickety as a leaky curtain wall, its pluralism does not mean anything and everything and isn’t it so groovy we’re all connected all the time? In their curatorial statement Zegher and McMaster place their biennale within “a renewed attention to how things connect” which is already at large in the world. Bad connections spark and sputter all over the place, while good ones, we hope, form in the shadows or underground, always in resistance to the dark force of an individualism of consumers instead of individuals. all our relations is not the same as “let’s get together and feel alright” and it is not, as some feared when the theme was first announced, a rejection of the visionary in favor of a dull but worthy collectivism. Both extremes are too easy, as is most territory in between.
- [Chamber Sextets and Octet by Spohr, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky With The Sydney Omega Ensemble](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/chamber-sextets-octet-spohr-beethoven-tchaikovsky-sydney-omega-ensemble/) - Stepping down a semitone at a time starting from Spohr's E Major, seeming to gravitate to the famous Tchaikovsky sextet in D Minor, this group of young musicians brings quite an ambitious program. Despite some uneven playing of the first piece, they became stronger and stronger to give a very satisfying take on the last.
- [Developers’ Rule: A New Plan for Planning in New South Wales  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/planning-new-south-wales/) - A true story: one day at the New South Wales Department of Planning two planners are talking about different theories of urban planning. ‘Neoliberal planning,’ the first says, “that’s what we do.” “No kidding,” the other replies. “No kidding” might be replaced by “yer darn tootin” after the release of the NSW Government’s A New Planning System for New South Wales – Green Paper. If the title doesn’t quite grab you, a new planning system, however boring, will have a far greater impact on people’s lives than more juicy topics like a new Museum of Contemporary Art or a new pavilion for the Venice Biennale. Planning is the most visible juncture at which architecture meets politics, and what the Government is proposing is interesting for the way that it reveals urban planning as the point where conservatism begins to conflict with itself, where a libertarian sensibility runs counter to pro-business economic rationalist conservatism. The development industry is not quite a friend of the invisible hand; it does best when certain freedoms are curtailed. This was shown most clearly in the US by the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which expanded the Constitution’s “Takings Clause” (“nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”) to allow governments to claim eminent domain for purposes of private redevelopment.
- [The Bangarra Dance Theatre Dances 'Terrain' ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/bangarra-dance-theatre-terrain/) - Nature doesn't really impose physical restrictions on our free will, but rather demonstrates the movements best suited to us; these too are the most beautiful. They are not an imposed law but very much individual. There is an ingenuity to discovering them and in so doing one pushes against them, but the effortful courage of pushing them can be a misplaced nobility, and while there is a certain inherent dramatic tension there, it can become awkward. There is a certain quality in today's contemporary dance style, though there are many original variations and exceptions, which is hardly naturalistic in the way it pushes the extremes of human ability. The Bangarra Dance Theatre is in a unique position in urban Sydney, close to the Contemporary Dance World (sometimes called a "Mafia," but let's try to be positive), but also with close ancestral ties which give them access to the preserved ancient Australian arts which developed in unique ways in their isolation.
- [The Famous Five Play Brahms: The Tinalley String Quartet Plays with Kristian Chong](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/brahms-tinalley-string-quartet-kristian-chong/) - In this the last performance of this program, the Tinalley String Quartet with their usual polish and serious, concentrated approach dipped into distant points in, without any futile attempt to span, romantic chamber music. The all minor key pieces each stood out distinctly by virtue of the composers’ individual emotional and intellectual language, while comfortably yoked together under the Tinalley’s distinctive voice. The subtler sense of humor, perhaps broader range of experience held in Brahms’ music made a very satisfying conclusion to the evening fitting so well the group’s very human tone — warm, but well-rounded and very clear, though at the same time they have a certain relaxed attitude, coloring the group tone as fits the music and their idea of the whole, rather than scrabbling for fleeting spectacle, which makes the performance very memorable. Kristian Chong, the invited pianist, got along very well with the group. Managing to get a remarkably sultry tone out of his Steinway, he seemed to expand the existing coloring of the group for that grand Brahms’ quintet, contributing as much oscuro as chiaro. No multiple-source fluorescent globes here. In the more individualistic writing which brings out each five of the players at some point, each showed an unforced and personal expression yet were always aware of the quintet as an expressive instrument in which their individual thoughts would fly on, the larger group picking up and carrying on the curve of their solo line.
- [Gluck, Hummel and Haydn Concertos with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and  Keyed Trumpeter Gabriele Cassone](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/gluck-hummel-haydn-australian-brandenburg-orchestra-keyed-trumpet-gabriele-cassone/) - The first three programs of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra this year have made a nice historical progression from the late Baroque of Vivaldi, to that of central Europe and England with Bach, Zelenka and Handel, now to the late classical period. The fortepiano has come out to replace the harpsichord and the orchestra grown with thicker string sections and clarinets to bring us Haydn and the Italian trumpet virtuoso Gabriele Cassone. For the Haydn G major Symphony, the so-called "Surprise," Paul Dyer conducts from behind the fortepiano bench, and lays chords oftentimes too while using his body and shoulders to conduct. Though we can catch at times some of the period reproduction fortepiano's beautiful sonorities, it is too large a hall really to do it justice and often it gets swallowed in the orchestra, but no matter, that is not its purpose here, though it does make a slight difference in color. What is important is that with the larger (late) classical orchestra, the conductor is necessary and conductorly music-making is readily audible here. With more dynamic possibilities from the backed-up strings, and timpani, and opportunities to use them thanks to Haydn (not to mention Gluck!) — and Maestro Dyer (though he never gives himself the label “conductor”) does know how to use it — the orchestra adapts naturally and readily to the new-sounding late 18th century palate. The strings have more solidity, they are still clear, very precise, with guest concertmaster Madeleine Easton leading them with her beautiful playing, but with more structure, polished but with a fine texture by virtue of the gut strings and the varied shapes and sizes of the violins. The orchestra is set up with cellos on the left next to the first violins, and basses, violas and second violins on the right, horns on the back left, trumpets (natural baroque ones) on the back right with the woodwinds in between.
- [A Subtler Dance — Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's 'En Atendant' and 'Cesena' at the 18th Sydney Biennale](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/de-keersmaekers-en-atendant-cesena-sydney-biennale/) - If all sound comes from movement, and all music comes from sound, then all music comes from movement — and so does all dance. Music is defined also by its silences and its spaces — or rather time — left around the notes, but as John Cage so eloquently expressed, silence is not nothing, even if it does not solely belong to the piece of music, neither to the musicians, their instruments nor the composer. There is always "movement" in a general, figurative, sense, in an attentive audience, within their minds, their beating hearts, their souls set vibrating — if one can still hear the trepidation of the spheres over the barbaric post-industrial noise of the world. Dance too, similarly or sympathetically, but perhaps not identically, has stillness (despite the multi-modal thrill of the Waltz) sometimes not even with a pose, as we see in En Atendant and Cesena, where the dancers are often merely left as if a scattered handful of sand or the denizens in their place, and neither does this stillness preclude "movement" in the broader, non-scientific sense (though to be fair to science, even in mathematics, the derivative where it equals zero still exists).
- [Monteverdi's L'Orfeo with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/orfeo-monteverdi-australian-brandenburg-orchestra/) - L'Orfeo is a performer's piece. Composed at a time when the composition of music meant something quite different to what it does now, or in the 19th Century, though certain aleatory pieces of the 20th Century left very much of the act of creation to the performer these do seem to be considered somewhat freakish by many — to many programmers of concerts and some in audiences in particular — and popular opinion now gives very rigidly defined roles to composer and performer, to the point that many expect a very narrow field of professional activities of each. Perhaps it is partly the force of professional specialization which seems so strong nowadays, especially in the sciences. We wouldn't want to turn into a race of Fachidioten, though.
- [Hannu Lintu Conducts the Sydney Symphony in Dutilleux and Beethoven, and Angela Hewitt Plays Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/hannu-lintu-sydney-symphony-dutilleux-beethoven-angela-hewitt-mozart/) - In Henri Dutilleux's Mystère d l'instante for 24 strings, cimbalom and percussion it is easy to dwell on the cimbalom as a freak in the concert hall, but Hungarian Xavér Ferenc Szabó introduced it to the symphony orchestra in the 19th century when it was essentially gypsy folk music instrument and later Zoltán Kodály used it in the 20th century in his symphonic music. The instrument is far older, a sort of piano before the keyboard and related mechanism were invented, probably used in the middle and near east in ancient times, coming west not too much later. One music historian describes its sound "rather like a piano that has taken its clothes off!" That gives the cimbalom an unfair primitive appearance, its construction no doubt demands as much care and refined techniques as any to sound so convincing next to the usual bowed strings. It no doubt strikes the ears of a modern audience accustomed to symphonic music as antique or near eastern, at least exotic, but I don't think Dutilleux intended to make any such avant-garde statement for its own sake, and the piece certainly doesn't have the form of a concerto. Rather I think he wanted a windless orchestra, a study in strings, without even much plucking, mostly bowing and tapping, if we can think of the percussion instruments as two dimensional strings.
- [The Kuss Quartet and Naoko Shimizu Play Quartets and Quintets by Mozart, Brahms, Kurtág and Gordon Kerry](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/kuss-quartet-naoko-shimizu-mozart-brahms-kurtag-kerry/) - It is always fun when a new string quartet comes to town, especially when they bring strange and different music with them. György Kurtág is not very strange, but nonetheless somewhat rare around here, and more importantly excellent listening, so I'm grateful to the Kuss Quartet for bringing it, even if short, though holding its own among the more usual fair. And the encore of Mozart's Cassation in C was entirely beyond the call of duty in such an enormous and dense program, especially considering the concentrated, caring manner of their playing.
- [Why I am a Whinger](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/sydney-whinger/) - My reaction to the release of what Infrastructure NSW calls a 20 Year State Infrastructure Strategy was what I am going to call an epiphany. It was almost nothing, certainly born as much out of laziness as principle, more the morbid blue glow of the florescent lights in Sydney’s new made in China train carriages than an incandescent halo centered over the head. To decide ‘I shall have a cheese sandwich for lunch’ would be both more useful and more profound than my realization that I can’t, or won’t, or don’t want to write about Sydney’s boring and intransigent problems anymore.
- [Dvořák and Shostakovich with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony, Jian Wang, Cello, Plus Some Extra Cellomania](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/dvorak-shostakovich-vladimir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-jian-wang/) - Is Dvořak, to paraphrase Dr. Leonard McCoy, really that beautiful? Really so much more beautiful than other music you've heard? Or is it just that it acts beautiful? If it comes down to the performance to go more than skin deep, the musicians must play very convincingly indeed. Beauty in music has proven to be diverse. For a sound to be music rather than mere sounds, however pleasing, the it needs the broadest possible aesthetic idea of beauty. An ugly sound, it has been pointed out, can be "beautiful" if used so fittingly by a composer that nothing but that sound could be desired at that point in the music. For human beings, this has included the rasping shawms and the regals, and the augmented fourth of the middle ages and renaissance, the harsh use of the usual orchestral brass by Mahler, and all the freely used ugly sounds and outbursts in 20th century music and its terrible dissonances. I would draw the line at physically painful sounds, either through loudness or shrillness or both, as ugly in a destructive way, and so incapable of beauty, even betraying the faith of the listener who trustingly opens their ears to the music, though some do seem to find pleasure in the ginormous 19th century organs played at full volume with all the stops out. Free expression in a musician or a composer can be beautiful in itself, of course, though when that expression becomes gratuitous or self-indulgent, or sentimental (which can betray a certain narrow emotional rigidity) or arbitrary (which can betray a self-imposed or self-persuaded intellectual rigidity) it can become ugly. Music in a straight jacket can be ugly too. A masterful fugue in transcending any thought of a dichotomy between these two extremes can be most beautiful of all.
- [Originality and Humanity: Anthony Marwood, Violin, Aleksandar Madžar, Piano, Play Beethoven, Debussy and Schubert](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/aleksandar-madzar-anthony-marwood/) - Huntley Dent has written on these pages “two musical instruments rise above all others in their humanity — the violin, because it comes closest to imitating the singing voice, and the piano, because it comes closest to conveying human nature.” So in the simple pairing of the two, a pair of thoughtful and sensitive musicians can ‘say’ more while ‘speaking’ less than many symphonies. Such are Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madžar, who play with such humanity to a listener, with originality and directness, with much thought and care. They play with emotional directness even while bravely and generously plumbing the emotional complexity and ambiguity of the difficult music they have chosen.
- [Cage in the Can: A John Cage Centenary Festival at the Sydney Opera House with Bang on A Can All-Stars](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/john-cage-centenary-sydney/) - Who is John Cage? Does it matter? At a certain point music must “speak” for itself, allow the musician to interpret the music and the listener to have the pure experience. It can be useful and interesting to have “background” whether historical or technical, as Mark Stewert gave a little of in his introductory spiels before he played, particularly when that information helps people with the music. But often with Cage’s music so much of the idea is in the concept, in the construction that there’s a risk that the listener thinks they’ve “got it” before a note is played. This, and the strong tendency toward cult worship of Cage, is ironic considering his is so often performer’s music. Cage’s cleverness is often overemphasized, he seems either to be taken too seriously or too facetiously, which threatens to reduce his pieces to one-liners, something he seems to have reliably avoided. His music seems more composed to help people to think on their own about music, any music, without drifting between clichés and received wisdom in a deoxygenated modern world. From sometime in the 19th century, music started to come about which anyone could listen to and appreciate intuitively without any training or “background” except maybe literacy and some emotional intelligence, whereas before the French Revolution a Baroque composer could expect a great deal more technical musical knowledge from the audience. One hopes music can transcend or make a false dichotomy intuition versus intellect (nowadays maybe more a corporate misunderstanding of Carl Jung’s types, anyway the “debate” is sophomoric). John Cage’s music, and other experimentalists’, seems often explained and even appreciated from pure intellect, whether using mathematical or philosophical or religious principles, music you “get” just from the score and it’s always trippy. Music, the thing, whatever it is, you listen to while the musicians interpret and play, in the end “paints” it own background and has to be taken as the thing in itself. Cage’s music is music because it can stand on its own, make its own background even when it comes from nowhere. Mozart’s music came from nowhere and he was no innovator. As far as we know he walked about with music coming to him, the more he wrote the more came, and to ask: where did it come from? how did he think up such music? is like asking how space or time can be infinite, how a four dimensional universe can be expanding, how can we have free will, or what happens after death.
- [Herr Stadler's One and Only Basset Clarinet Resurrected: Craig Hill Plays Mozart’s Concerto, also Mozart's Violin Concerto with Madeleine Easton and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides on Period Instruments of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/mozart-basset-clarinet-craig-hill-madeleine-easton-mendelssohn/) - It wouldn't necessarily be very difficult for historic performance practice to degenerate into the "flavor of the month" endlessly seeking novelty, ironically enough, in newest old bizarre instrument never before heard by modern ears, or into a cliquey "earlier than thou" competition. Perhaps we are just beyond this stage, or perhaps the 20 years since Pamela Poulin’s exciting discovery of the appearance of Anton Stadler’s basset clarinet — we haven’t found a surviving original specimen of the ephemeral instrument — has given time for experimentation and to rediscover the technique and the soul of the instrument and the “novelty” part has worn off a bit. The beauty of the basset clarinet’s voice, not so much unfamiliar or even unique, as even more clarinetish than a usual clarinet, is exactly fitting to Mozart’s music, giving a fascinating insight into the idea that a period’s instrumentarium exactly befits the period’s music, and the question whether the instruments evolve to fit the new music or the music evolves to take advantage of the new instruments, or both at once. The clarinet generally speaking having such a “normal” tone between the extremes of the more penetrating and sharp older cousin oboe and small-bird-like ancient cousin flute, fills in an aching space in the orchestra and makes it hard to believe (in retrospect) that it became a regular in european orchestras as late as it did. Indeed Mozart’s life coincided with this change. His letters home from Mannheim, where he first encountered clarinets in orchestral music, read like a revelation he was so enthusiastic about them, and he immediately took to composing in the new woodwind texture. Anton Stadler (his son Johann played the other clarinet in some of Mozart’s symphonies, as in Mozart’s last public concert in early 1791) as a friend and “early adopter,” or perhaps only adopter, of the basset clarinet, such a perfect solo instrument, too perfect, at least for its virtuosic possibilities but more importantly for its expressive voice, no doubt created inspiration and opportunity to write a concerto for it. It is also thought that Mozart and Stadler intended a basset clarinet for the clarinet quintet of two years before (K. 581). Perhaps a shade of that original inspiration sparks performers today. Mozart hadn’t written a concerto for three years (the last piano concerto K. 595 was probably begun in 1788 and finished in late 1790[1. see H. C. Robbins Landon’s 1791: Mozart’s Last Year]), having practically “perfected” the piano concerto (but no doubt he could have had more ideas, judging from the depth of those he wrote), the following concerto turned out to be for clarinet. If the violin concerto would take the 19th century to “perfect” — according to conventional wisdom anyhow — Madeleine Easton’s performance of Mozart’s third violin concerto brought that notion into question (see below). And between the very human piano and violin, it is not common to hear concertos for the stringless family, so it is surprising and amazing to hear such a satisfying concerto for clarinet, as satisfying as any for piano or violin, or at the least it distracts a listener from making the comparison. This is in a large way due to the presence of the resurrected basset clarinet in such a deeply satisfying performance with such a close, understanding rapport between the less familiar clarinet and the more familiar orchestral members.
- [The Sydney Symphony Becomes Opera Impresario with a Memorable Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky in Concert](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/sydney-symphony-opera-queen-spades-tchaikovsky/) - Tchaikovsky wrote Queen of Spades, in 1890, and one other opera, Iolanta, in 1891, near the end of his life after having promised never to write another opera because of the unpopularity of The Sorceress (1887). For theatre, these were very fertile years for Tchaikovsky. The Mariinksy first performed Sleeping Beauty in 1890 and Nutcracker in 1892. He wrote Queen of Spades at a Mozartean rate in Florence where it is said he composed the music faster than his brother Modest wrote and sent the libretto scene by scene. Perhaps living in Florence gave him enough distance from the darker, more repellent aspects of the story to avoid getting run down by it, but anyhow it seems a strange subject for him to choose, especially surprising to hear the incredibly lyrical music he created for it. The antihero Hermann is repellent, but for some of the beautiful music Tchaikovsky gave him, yet even so Hermann’s are not as beautiful as Don Giovanni’s arias (and duets), but I don’t believe Tchaikovsky thought or intended his music to be as beautiful as Mozart’s.
- [Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Mini Festival Opens with Manfred and Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto, Scott Davie, Piano ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/vladimir-ashkenazy-sydney-symphony-tchaikovsky-rachmaninoff-scott-davie/) - Rachmaninoff’s 4th Piano Concerto didn’t deserve to be cut. It seems to have received, in any version, the homeric epithet “Rachmaninoff’s least popular” since it wasn’t popular at the première (1927) and wasn’t much more loved after the revisions (1928 and 1941), but this is perhaps as much due to the immense and perennial popularity of the 2nd and 3rd as any intrinsic quality of the 4th, and the unpopular label seems now to be beginning to give the original version a little bit of underdog cred. The original longer version was only published in 2000, and this performance, according to the Sydney Symphony, is the first of this version in Australia. It is a fascinating case of audience expectations based on a composer’s perceived style and the composer worrying too much about pleasing them. Luckily the original was not lost. Even so it is not very long, though it does have a leisurely, operatic quality to its pacing, almost a Mahlerian pace, but with its drama turned in, more psychological and untidy than the other concerti, and so it is not as exciting as the other concerti. It does not have too solid a form holding it together, it doesn’t tell a ‘story’ with beginning middle and end as the others do more obviously. It is not linear, or at least it is taller than it is long with all those enormous, thick, rich chords which defy a simple analysis and the long runs of impossibly fast notes which are not exactly melodic — maybe more harmonic as they ring in that resonant Steinway piano — but the melodies in the piece with the exception of the opening one are more like fragments of leitmotif without staging to help explain them. The opening theme returns here and there but it seems odd in its return, almost an interruption of the of the pensive, contemplative revery of the music, almost like the sudden landing of an eagle, or an angel, or a strange golden shaft of light. But the 20th century romantic music doesn’t need a strict form since Rachmaninoff’s concept is not architectural or plastic. The wonderful thing about music is that you don’t have to worry whether it will stand up.
- [An Awesome Trek Through the Cosmos with the Pinchgut Opera’s ‘Castor et Pollux’ by Rameau](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/pinchgut-opera-castor-pollux-rameau/) - Back in the day, when music in the theatre manifested itself dramatically as dance and singing together — specifically ballet and opera — it did so in a myriad of different forms. Though we now call them opera-ballets (or even just operas), they can be difficult to imagine now that the two art forms are not only separate themselves, but tend to have separate audiences in many cities, sharing only their theatre in common. Conveniently, but unfortunately, the choreography has been lost in all cases and the works are revived as what we now call opera in the main. A dance of course is much more difficult to write down than music — though written music is not itself trivial, in fact, baroque composers had no desire to write down every note, and quite a bit of the creative act we now assign to composers was originally given to musicians and singers, ornamentation in particular, were and are very important and in most cases these improvisations were not thought to be written down since that would defeat their whole purpose of expressive dramatic spontaneity. These baroque operas, even the French ones of Lully and Rameau in which the dancing is particularly important, are first and foremost watched and listened to today as opera, even when some care, attention and time are given to recreating the choreography.
- [Christmas Music As It Was Meant to Be: Noël! Noël! with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/12/noel-australian-brandenburg-orchestra/) - The stuff of music is not stuff. Music’s physical presence, like dance’s too, is gone forever almost as soon as it is played. As Christmas and the planet Earth become more and more burdened with stuff, permanent stuff at that — at least permanently in the landfill — and people seemingly more and more frantic that they’re not spending enough money, you can feel more and more by contrast how music had to have such an enormous part of the festival. To fill an honest need of another person you love is another thing, but even if there is a physical thing involved, it is not the thing itself but the love to which the thing is a mere shadow and the mutually filled need itself. Carpeting one’s wants and feelings of insufficiency with stuff will always miss.
- [Dancers Go 'A-Fugeing': The Sydney Dance Company With the Australian Chamber Orchestra (Amplified!) in ‘Project Rameau‘](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/11/sydney-dance-company-australian-chamber-orchestra-project-rameau/) - If the fugue is the highest form of counterpoint it’s because it is truly an art. No one would deny that fugues do not write themselves, yet they are based on simple, sincere imitation, the first, most obvious ingredient one hears, yet the freedom of the voices is the fugue’s sina qua non. Different voices “speak” their individual melodies, and miraculously the result is not only coherent but harmonious too, and, at least under the masters, such harmonies! From one point of view the fugue is the highest composer’s art, even over-specified, yet it is a form-texture deriving from the performer’s highest art, improvisation, the fantasy. The fugue is in a way the quintessence of music, taking something which initially seems rigid and rule-bound, well, at least over-obedient, and sheds those rules completely to become free and creative, the fundamentally horizontal linear elements become nonlinear, sounding just as sensible vertically; sound, a dumb mathematical, physical process obeying laws of time and space, is refined into an art which can speak directly to something deep inside a warm human being. So the fugue, even as theoreticians have for centuries tried to define it and the rules of its creation (without much success), culminating in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Traité d’harmonie (1722), at the end of which he discusses fugues and how they are written, finally saying they cannot be reduced to general rules, except “le bon goût ou la fantasie.” J. S. Bach in turn put it most aptly of all... in his music.
- [Bellini, La Sonnambula at the Met with Dessay, Flórez, and Pertusi, dir. Zimmerman](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/04/bellini-la-sonnambula-met-dessay-florez-pertusi-zimmerman/) - Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez argue in Bellini's La Sonnambula at the Met Metropolitan Opera House March 14, 2009 La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini libretto Felice Romani Amina - Natalie Dessay Elvino - Juan Diego Flórez Rodolfo - Michele Pertusi Lisa - Jennifer Black Teresa - Jane Bunnell Alessio - Jeremy Galyon Notary
- [Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/three-acts-two-dancers-one-radio-host/) - At one point in the entirely delightful Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, Ira Glass observes that Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass imbue their performances with personality just like “real people” as differentiated from more typical dancers with bland facial expressions who spin around. Bingo. This hybrid of two art forms, dance and radio, is like nothing I've ever seen, and I doubt that anyone else in the large Town Hall audience has either.
- [Summer Retrospective: Donizetti and Verdi at Caramoor 2014 (with a look back to 2013)](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/donizetti-verdi-caramoor-2014-look-back-2013/) - The lattest upheavals in San Diego and New York have, as you might expect, stirred up another raft of "death of opera" articles in the press. Clichéd automatic reactions to what may be symptoms of something larger or may not were common enough before the digital age, but, since all it takes is to get a reader to click on a headline to accomplish something positive (as it seems) the constant repetition of dire news has become a reality of a decidedly Pavlovian sort, since the Net is interactive, is it not?
- [The young French pianist David Fray plays Bach keyboard concerti and Schubert solo works on disc.](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/david-fray-bach-keyboard-concerti-schubert-impromptus-moments-musicaux/) - David Fray's recent appearances in San Francisco, performing Beethoven's Second Concerto, revealed him to be a refined, supple colorist. It was less immediately clear how bold or romantic, or indeed "Gouldian" Mr. Fray would turn out to be in music more fully under his own direction. These two new excellent CDs begin to answer this question, and to suggest, moreover, the birth of a fine conductor.
- [Walton's Violin Concerto and Holst's "The Planets" at the San Francisco Symphony with Dutoit and Barantschik](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/02/walton-violin-concerto-holst-planets-san-francisco-symphony-dutoit-barantschik/) - 1939 must have been the year neoclassic front ranks gave up on William Walton. Here was the "English Stravinsky", who had burst forth with silvery elbow-wit in "Facade" and scandalized church officials in "Belshazzar's Feast.” More recently, his First Symphony had transformed telegraphic rhythm into sheer motorized power, gleaming and heartless. (only the finale, composed late and omitted at the premiere, had hinted at something more sensual and cinematic) The earlier Viola Concerto had parsed-out like the cleanest Hindemith, moving because of its beauty, but bereft of the senses.
- [Herbert Blomstedt conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Mozart and Bruckner](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/03/herbert-blomstedt-san-francisco-symphony-mozart-bruckner/) - There appears to be something of a tug-of-war going on in the world of Mozart performances. In the ascendancy these days, self-confident revisionist scholars, seeking to sweep away Victorian accretion, place before the public spiky, twangy and fiercely rhythmical works for small forces of original instruments. Traditional Mozart conductors, on the political defensive and seemingly chastened as romantics, come to audience rescue with slightly more refined, slightly less detuned, slightly more softly sprung music for slightly larger forces. Scarcely anyone anymore, (perhaps Barenboim), will stand before 100 players and lead a symphony by Mozart or Haydn in the manner of a Bruno Walter, an Otto Klemperer, a Herbert Von Karajan or a George Szell.
- [Myung-Whun Chung conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in an All-Ravel Program](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/03/myung-whun-chung-orchestre-philharmonique-de-radio-france-ravel/) - For a good part of this reviewer's life, it would seem, the world has been waiting for a truly great International French symphony orchestra. At mid-century, a general feeling was that the Boston Symphony under Sergei Koussevitzky and Charles Munch carried the torch for French music, ably assisted by Paul Paray in Detroit, Pierre Monteux wherever he could be found, and, on disc, by L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva.
- [Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in San Francisco play Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/gergiev-mariinsky-orchestra-san-francisco-rachmaninoff-matsuev-shostakovich/) - This week, the touring Mariinsky Orchestra, led by the ubiquitous Valery Gergiev, performed two evenings at Davies Hall in San Francisco. The first program, which I did not hear, was devoted to Prokofiev ballets and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. The second, more intriguing to me, presented Shostakovich's enigmatic final symphony, as well as an opportunity to assess the Rachmaninoff artistry of Denis Matsuev, who is being hailed these days as a pianist in the Horowitz tradition.
- [Eschenbach conducts Schumann and Zemlinsky with the San Francisco Symphony—and an Appreciation of Zemlinsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/05/eschenbach-schumann-zemlinsky-san-francisco-symphony/) - The San Francisco Symphony gave two performances last Saturday night--one it may have been unhappy with--and one it may have been unhappy about. This somewhat unusual state of affairs began with an annoucement from the stage that the concert was being delayed. I had wondered at the half empty hall, something you don't normally see in San Francisco. Dysfunction on the Golden Gate Bridge, as it turned out. A number of players were stuck and much of the audience was still in transit.
- [No Dudamania in San Francisco: Dudamel leads the LA Philharmonic in Bernstein and Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/05/dudamel-la-philharmonic-bernstein-tchaikovsky/) - There is a sound you sometimes hear after midnight, high up in Manhattan. It comes from maybe thirty blocks away. Very faint. In the stillness of your mind, you know it is a lonely taxi horn dancing with the doppler effect. But in the small hours of the city, you wonder who might be riding home amongst sleeping millions, and how boozily, and what love affairs or personal dramas are about to begin or end. New York is like that. In its darkness, taxis are crickets, and you listen.
- [Eschenbach and David Fray with the San Francisco Symphony: Dalbavie, Beethoven, and  Brahms](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/eschenbach-david-fray-san-francisco-symphony-dalbavie-beethoven-brahms/) - There's an improvisational mindset in the American character which can sometimes be hard on a European musician who composes according to a "system". We are a nation of pragmatic, rather than theoretical listeners. We tend to disregard instruction manuals and learn by getting behind the wheel. We expect music to be ergonomic. Dodecaphony isn't driveable, we find, so we leave it on the lot. The tires are twelve-sided, and all the knobs and levers are in the wrong places. Sorry! No sale. And now we distrust everything cerebral coming down the pike!
- [Musical Life in San Francisco: Yuja Wang, Michael Tilson Thomas, and the SF Symphony play Poulenc, Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, Ravel, and Stravinsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/yuja-wang-michael-tilson-thomas-san-francisco/) - Michael Tilson Thomas may sometimes over-program his orchestra and over-instruct his audiences, as locals will attest, but a cooperative sunset, a dazzling young Chinese soloist in a red dress, and a frothy line-up of arch and knowing pieces helped transform last Thursday evening's SF Symphony concert into something of a summer gala.
- [SF Symphony: Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Berlioz, with Sasha Cooke, mezzo, and Jonathan Vinocour, viola ](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/sf-symphony-michael-tilson-thomas-berlioz-cooke-vinocour/) - With the conclusion of last week's Symphony performances, the official concert year in San Francisco has come to a vivid but unexpected close. Normally, at this time of year, one anticipates listening to a monumental end-of-season work, but logistical difficulties this time prevented the orchestra from putting on Berlioz's elaborate dramatic symphony, Romeo et Juliette. Not to worry!
- [San Francisco Symphony with Alondra de la Parra conductor and Joyce Yang, piano in Glinka, Rachmaninoff, and Mussorgsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/san-francisco-symphony-alondra-de-la-parra-joyce-yang-glinka-rachmaninoff-mussorgsky/) - Summer concerts in the city are frequently revealing in their own several ways. A quick look around Davies Hall last Friday would have reminded locals that there is no need to escape San Francisco in July. Many of the regular faces were present, and so, too, were throngs of young couples in from the suburbs. In the shirt-sleevy dusk, Van Ness Avenue and its many venues seemed the focal point of date night. The line for will-call tickets snaked around the block.
- [Music@Menlo, The English Voice: Britten, Walton, and Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/music-menlo-english-voice-britten-walton-and-elgar/) - The saving grace of "music for children,” I find, is that it is never really composed for children, but about them — or more usually about the part of us which traffics in irony, yet yearns to remain simple and pure. There are few lullabies effective for sleep which would long engage an adult mind, so I know Sasha Cooke will forgive me for saying that her stunningly effective rendition of Britten's Charm of Lullabies last Tuesday at Music at Menlo, outwitted Morpheus.
- [MTT leads the San Francisco Symphony in Harrison, Copland and Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/09/michael-tilson-thomas-san-francisco-symphony-harrison-copland-tchaikovsky/) - Several solid hits and a bit of a bunt. That's how it seemed last Saturday at the San Francisco Symphony. Returning from a recent European tour, Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra set before the Davies audience three American works that played brilliantly to his strengths and temperament, and a performance of the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony which brought the house down, but seemed a touch undetailed.
- [Semyon Bychkov and Kirill Gerstein with the SF Symphony in Ravel, Rachmaninoff, and Walton](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/semyon-bychkov-kirill-gerstein-sf-symphony-ravel-rachmaninoff-walton/) - This week's concerts at Davies Hall marked a welcome return to the podium of Semyon Bychkov, who has become a favorite with San Francisco audiences in recent seasons. Mr. Bychkov has entered the admirable ranks of unattached guest conductors who travel the world conducting only the music they love, and the happy results are palpable. This year, his passion is the Walton First Symphony, and our audience is all the richer for what his advocacy has found in the music.
- [Two at Davies Hall: San Francisco Symphony/Conlon; Staatskapelle Dresden/Harding](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/san-francisco-symphony-conlon-staatskapelle-dresden-harding/) - A tale of two orchestras, two conductors, two soloists, several accents, two continents... Indeed. Two recent musical evenings, performed back to back by our own San Francisco Symphony under James Conlon, and by the legendary Dresden Staatskapelle, on tour with Daniel Harding, were highly revealing of the differences which can still exist in the identity, tradition and manner of orchestras. By programming emotionally mainstream works, containing few neuroses or cataclysms, both conductors necessarily brought the focus of the audience's attention to beauty of execution, national perceptions of orchestral warmth and tone painting, and to their own manner of leadership.
- [Michael Francis debuts with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/michael-francis-debut-san-francisco-symphony-orchestra/) - One of the consolations of living in a successful middle-class society, I think, is to experience the evaporation of self-consciously plug-ugly proletarian art and music. Many of the last century's early musical compositions seem today unnecessarily obsessed with wheezing 'round the campfire, banging on pots and pans, or otherwise ramming washtub crudities down the listener's throat. Even where it isn't that obvious, the blue-collar bias can be detected: "Barefoot Songs" by Tubin. "Hammersmith" by Holst, Milhaud's "Le Boeuf sur le toit,” and of course, almost everything by Copland. Just under the surface of most music from the 1920s and 30s, you could say, lies a post office mural. And like post office murals, sometimes it is great art, sometimes propaganda, and sometimes just not worthy of restoration.
- [MTT conducts the San Francisco Symphony: Schubert, Richard Strauss](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/mtt-san-francisco-symphony-schubert-richard-strauss/) - Michael Tilson Thomas was looking hard for insight in Schubert last Saturday. He found it in words, if not in the music. Indeed, you might say he chose the first Entr'acte from Rosamunde for an illustration of his point. As a young man, Thomas managed to alienate the Boston Symphony for decades by talking too much, and the tendency to lecture and otherwise condescend to his audiences from the podium still remains. This time, though, the music happened to be rather forgettable, and Thomas' remarks about it more interesting. The Entr'acte seems to be part of a dry run for Schubert's "Unfinished," and MTT correctly pointed out that its harmony is headed in the direction of Mendelssohn and Schumann.
- [MTT conducts the SF Symphony in Cowell, Mozart (with Gil Shaham), and John Adams' Harmonielehre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/12/mtt-conducts-san-francisco-symphony-cowell-mozart-gil-shaham-john-adams-harmonielehre/) - Last week's program at the San Francisco Symphony carried a sense of celebration with it. John Adams was in attendance, giving luster to the orchestra's new performance and recording of his "Harmonielehre" under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. (Edo De Waart taped the piece in his final year as Music Director, when Adams was composer-in-residence.) There has always been a tendency to rally around the orchestra in San Francisco — cultural boosterism being one of the old-fashioned charms of this now rather important city, which sometimes still thinks of itself as a town and behaves like one in its enthusiasms — and John Adams is a local hero in the orchestra's history. But the spontaneous applause I heard on Saturday seemed to go beyond these boundaries. It is a though, from the standpoint of an audience, Adams were being hailed for having rescued contemporary music — and indeed, he just may have.
- [Beethoven makes an all-too rare visit to San Francisco: Marek Janowski leads the San Francisco Symphony in the Symphony No. 4 and Piano Concerto No. 3, with Juho Pohjonen](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/01/beethoven-marek-janowski-san-francisco-symphony-juho-pohjonen/) - It was good to have Beethoven back, last week at the San Francisco Symphony. Marek Janowski, like Kurt Masur before him, brings the German repertory to San Francisco from an authentic sensibility and a lifetime of devotion. It was a pleasure to hear our orchestra — so vibrant in Mahler, American music and the Russians — snap back into the German sonority on cue and play convincingly the music that most groups once considered their bread and butter.
- [Zubie Baby! Reputation and Reality: Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic at Davies Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/03/zubin-mehta-israel-philharmonic-davies-hall/) - Zubin Mehta showed his maturity as Music Director of the Israel Philharmonic at Davies Hall, San Francisco.
- [Yuri Temirkanov Conducts the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra with Nikolai Lugansky, Piano in Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/st-petersburg-philharmonic-temirkanov-lugansky-san-francisco/) - recent San Francisco visit of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, grandly led by Yuri Temirkanov and featuring Nikolai Lugansky as piano soloist, is a fine example of why one should make a point of hearing orchestras on tour. Present-day listeners are frequently tempted to overgeneralize about music in Russia, knowing only Valery Gergiev or some of the younger conductors currently recording in the UK. Gergiev's brand of intensity sometimes invites lurid cliches about Russian "barbaric splendor." Indeed, there have been Gergiev concerts where passion seemed to destroy luster and raw perspiration carried the day---an approach more bear than bearnaise. So it is enlightening to encounter in the St. Petersburg Philharmonic the continuation of a highly charged but more patrician attitude towards music-making. One recalls that Mravinsky and his "Leningrad Philharmonic" cast a grand Karajan-like shadow over the Russian-speaking musical world for forty years. Something of that special dignity remains. Indeed, an almost nineteenth-century manner.
- [Yundi! ...and the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt: Tchaikovskian Antics and Solid Sibelius](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/yundi-san-francisco-symphony-blomstedt-tchaikovsky-sibelius/) - Benchmarks for success may sometimes change. But vanity itself never changes. Indeed, tact appears to be the ancient art invented to deal with it. And in the concert world, as elsewhere, self-satisfaction frequently begins with a name. These days, sometimes just one.
- [Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony in Mahler's 9th](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/michael-tilson-thomas-san-francisco-symphony-mahler-9/) - Mahler's Ninth Symphony stood alone last Thursday at Davies Hall, as the San Francisco Symphony prepared for its European tour. It has become normal practice to schedule this work with a long, rather liquid "intermission" preceding it, instead of any music. And audiences intuitively understand why. They have signed on for an emotional catharsis.
- [Michael Francis conducts the San Francisco Symphony: Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Rachmininoff and Beethoven with Lisitsa and Buechner](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/michael-francis-san-francisco-symphony-mussorgsky-rimsky-korsakoff-rachmininoff-beethoven-lisitsa-buechner/) - If the ebullience surrounding every squeak made by the San Francisco Symphony last Friday and Saturday is any measure, the orchestra's summer season is in fine hands. On the podium for much of the month has been Michael Francis, and waiting in the wings pianists Valentina Lisitsa and Sara Davis Buechner, all to dazzle and command in their own ways. About which more in a moment. Summer concerts are a special art and a fine test for the temperament and ability of musicians. While accuracy and sight-reading abilities reflect the latter, there is a special dimension of celebration and showmanship involved, and the treacherous challenge to popularize without diminishing. So it is a delight to report that the programs I attended in Davies Hall sported no colored lights, no floral wreaths, trotted out no talkative or, worse, awkward masters of ceremony, and contained no "special occasion" works of dubious provenance. Just classic music, and very well played it was. Remarkably so, with what must have been little rehearsal.
- [The New York Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert, conductor; Yefim Bronfman, piano; at Davies Hall, San Francisco, play Dvořák, Lindberg, and Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/the-new-york-philharmonic-alan-gilbert-conductor-yefim-bronfman-piano-at-davies-hall-san-francisco-play-dvorak-lindberg-and-tchaikovsky/) - Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. Photo Chris Lee. Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. Photo Chris Lee. The New York Philharmonic Alan Gilbert, conductor Yefim Bronfman, piano Davies Hall, San Francisco Sunday, May 13, 2012 Dvořák - Carnival Overture, Opus 92 Lindberg - Piano Concerto No. 2 Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4 in F
- [Blomstedt and Hadelich with the SF Symphony...Hats off to collaboration? Or, tell me it isn't so!](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/blomstedt-hadelich-sf-symphony/) - The San Francisco Symphony Davies Hall, San Francisco Saturday, April 20, 2013 Herbert Blomstedt, conducting Augustin Hadelich, violin Beethoven - Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61 (1806) Nielsen - Symphony No. 5, Opus 50 (1922) Hats off to collaboration? Or, tell me it isn't so! I didn't know quite which to think on April 20th,
- [Martin Helmchen Debuts with the SF Symphony. Yan Pascal Tortelier Conducts Berlioz' Roman Carnival, the Schumann Concerto and Dvorak's Symphony No.7](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/11/martin-helmchen-debuts-sf-symphony-yan-pascal-tortelier-conducts-berlioz-roman-carnival-schumann-concerto-dvoraks-symphony-no7/) - "This is such a wonderful program!" gushed the volunteer showing me to my seat. She had already heard Thursday's concert and clearly looked forward to the repeat in a beatific mood. It made me reflect. Although audiences are more comfortable about being "educated" to a new piece these days – and the new pieces have become more accessible and performance-worthy – there is something to be said for not entering the concert hall as a captive. For once, our orchestra was simply going to play music we all know and love – and try to make us love it more. They succeeded. And it made for a satisfying evening.
- [Jaap Van Zweden and Simone Lamsma Stun in SF Symphony Debuts](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/02/jaap-van-zweden-simone-lamsma-stun-sf-symphony-debuts/) - Jaap van Zweden | Photo: Bert Hulselmans Davies Hall, San Francisco The San Francisco Symphony Friday, February 14, 2014 Jaap van Zweden – conductor Simone Lamsma – violin Mozart – Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, K.384 (1782) Sibelius – Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47 (1904) Tchaikovsky---Symphony No. 4 in F minor,
- [Vilde Frang Amazes. Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Satisfy.](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/03/vilde-frang-amazes-yuri-temirkanov-st-petersburg-philharmonic-satisfy/) - Here in San Francisco we are fortunate to experience in fairly rapid succession the world's great violinists, especially the young ones rising. (And sometimes the older ones falling: Pinchas Zukerman's recent rough and scrapie visit with the Royal Philharmonic was disappointing—a soaring career tumbling for the nets). But it has generally been a feast: James Ehnes, Simone Lamsma, and now Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, just to name a few. Given the level of excellence these days, it is sometimes hard to pick a winner and know what winning means. All are remarkably good. But I'll go out on a limb here.
- [The San Francisco Ring, 2011 - Donald Runnicles, Conductor, Francesca Zambello, Stage Director](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/wagner-ring-des-nibelungen-san-francisco-zambello/) - When any object is taken apart and reformed, does its substance remain what it was in the beginning? Nothung, Siegmund and Siegfried's magical sword, proves stronger for having been shattered and forged anew. Does the Rhinegold itself acquire new properties through being the fatal, world-dominating ring, or when the Rhinemaidens receive it at the end of Götterdämmerung, has it the same intrinsic properties it did when Alberich stole it “twenty hours ago,” as Anna Russell clocked it? Director Francesca Zambello, in her Americanized Ring Cycle, three-quarters of which were co-produced by Washington Opera, forged something new and wondrous from Wagner's tremendous and often toxic masterwork. Not every bit of Wagner's original symbolism reintegrates seamlessly into the newly fashioned work, and occasional cognitive dissonance results. Frankly, Wagner's own sprawling cosmology—one part German myth, one part creative genius, one part tortured personal psychology—leaves many questions unanswered and any number of unresolved contradictions and loose ends. In San Francisco, the director and her designer colleagues shaped a remarkable production that transcended its occasional awkward moments and that touched the heart in ways I've never known this uniquely ambitious epic work to do before. The striking and varied stage pictures are the work of Michael Yeargan, the always illuminating costumes are by Catherine Zuber, the colorful, refreshing, and often exquisite lighting is by Mark McCullough. The many projections, used as backdrops and show curtain, were created by Jan Hartley. I didn't find every element equally successful, but I left the theatre believing that this production had the mystical power to make the world a better place. The staging is that good.
- [Vasily Petrenko and Joshua Bell in a Russo-English Program with the SF Symphony: Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, and Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/vasily-petrenko-joshua-bell-sf-symphony-shostakovich-tchaikovsky-glazunov-elgar/) - Hats off, ladies and Gentlemen! A conductor! And a great symphony! Vasily Petrenko's recent electrifying week with the San Francisco Symphony reminds the listener that Gustavo Dudamel is not the sole "conducting animal" to be found on the musical circuit these days. Esa-Pekka Salonen coined the term a while back, with the impassioned Venezuelan in mind. And indeed, Dudamel is the sort of refreshing performer who has the winds jumping to their feet like jazz musicians and bass players twirling their instruments. He is all about emotion as vitality. But physically, apart from the energy with which he beats time, his manner is unremarkable. The fascination of Petrenko, by contrast, is his ability to reflect every quivering moment of the music somewhere on his face or body, as though he were a disembodied hologram. We joke about people who are "double-jointed." But Vasily Petrenko might as well be quadruple-sprung and then some...this is a man who'd have no trouble tapping three heads, rubbing five tummies and signalling with numerous eyebrows at the same time!
- [Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic at Davies Hall in San Francisco: Adams, Chapela, and Prokofiev...Dudamania lives!](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/dudamel-la-philharmonic-san-francisco-adams-chapela-prokofiev/) - Once upon a time, not too long ago, listeners might have resisted accepting on credit the notion of a conductor performing new music charismatically. For many decades, full-house audiences (at those moments desperately wishing themselves sparse) tended to squirm patiently through modern works, waiting for ever more elusive harmony or so much as a symphonic phrase, the experience more to be withstood than understood. Dodecaphonic compositions, in particular, constituted toll-booths on the musical freeway: to be bought off as taxation, passed-through and, if lucky, forgotten. Certainly not to be loved.
- [Ludovic Morlot conducts the BSO in Harbison, Ravel, and Mahler at Davies Hall, San Francisco](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/ludovic-morlot-bso-harbison-ravel-mahler-san-francisco/) - Not since the Dresden Staatskapelle last played here has an event exuded a like aura of serious appreciation. Despite its current state of unsettled leadership, the Boston Symphony represents a substantial portion of America's iconic musical past, and you had the feeling on Wednesday that some very proper Bostonians, themselves virtual institutions, had emerged from public obscurity to render homage. Indeed, it was almost disturbing to witness the age of the audience, which in San Francisco tends to be youngish and oriented to date-night. The young, of course, ever perceive disapproval on the faces of the old, though this can be an inadvertent byproduct of trying to focus uncooperative eyes. Some of us in our sixties ruefully begin to notice this. But my imagination wasn't prepared for the scene in the lobby, where a thousand apparently scowling octogenarians patrolled the halls like alligators—-peering challenges into the not-quite-recognized faces of enemies. Thank heavens for the rejuvenating waters of music!
- [Heart of the City](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/heart-of-the-city-union-square-san-francisco/) - A successful public space, they say, is one where the citizens block the steps. So suggested urbanologist Lewis Mumford nearly a hundred years ago. I'm not certain he would have had San Francisco's busy Union Square in mind, but he may have, even then. What Mumford never envisaged, surely, was the odd and telling assemblage of human beings who make the Square the center of their lives and a Rorschach test for the character of one of America's great cities. I am one of them. For those of us living downtown, it is the front yard.
- [Blomstedt Returns to the San Francisco Symphony in Tchaikovsky and Bruckner Fifths; Garrick Ohlsson Plays Mozart Piano Concerto K. 271](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/blomstedt-san-francisco-symphony-tchaikovsky-bruckner-fifth-garrick-ohlsson-mozart/) - Imagine an apocryphal New Yorker magazine cover depicting an evening at the symphony. Onstage sits the pianist, a tall figure in black, motionless at his instrument but for the whir of fingers. The lacquered piano lid conceals a conductor's head and body, but black arms and a baton poke sideways from it, indicating his presence. The audience is attentive and faces forward. But somewhere near row X, a grey-haired woman lies prostrate on her back, motionless in the aisle. Nobody seems to notice, except for a patron a few rows beyond. His head is turned sideways and one eyeball bulges with amazement and alarm. That eyeball is mine.
- [The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Riccardo Muti Visit San Francisco: Honegger: Pacific 231, Bates: Alternative Energy, Franck: Symphony in D-minor](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/chicago-symphony-orchestra-riccardo-muti-san-francisco-honegger-bates-franck/) - Choose wisely what and how you imitate.... This may be the composer's lesson to take away from last Tuesday's much anticipated San Francisco visit by the Chicago Symphony, led by Riccardo Muti. Though Muti's program concluded traditionally, with the Franck Symphony in D-minor, the first half of his concert was devoted to two pieces which undertake, with differing levels of success, the engineering of musical expression through depiction.
- [God Rocks the House in San Francisco and Palo Alto: Verdi's Requiem with the SF Symphony and Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila with the West Bay Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/verdi-requieum-sf-symphony-saint-saens-samson-et-dalila-west-bay-opera/) - San Francisco sustained two palpable if not destructive earthquakes (3.9 and 4.0) on Thursday October 20th, and the memory lingered with me for a performance of the Verdi Requiem on Friday the 21st with the San Francisco Symphony and for a matinee performance of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila with the West Bay Opera on Sunday the 23rd in Palo Alto.
- [San Francisco Symphony: Arabella Steinbacher plays the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto; Charles Dutoit conducts Stravinsky and Bartók.](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/san-francisco-symphony-arabella-steinbacher-tchaikovsky-violin-concerto-charles-dutoit-stravinsky-bartok/) - Her view of the Tchaikovsky was a fraction slower than the usual ones built around the big tuttis—but all the better for the subtlety this permitted. There were literally moments when the orchestra, playing as quietly as it knew how, could not match her for delicacy. One of the mesmerizing features of Arabella Steinbacher's stage presence was the way she swayed to the orchestra—leaning slowly to one side for several bars, then slowly back the other way for an equal number of bars—a mesmerizing dance to the orchestra's basic pulse. It kept all eyes on her. Indeed, the absence of any sudden movements was the captivating feature of her presence. Just to lower her head and look down could be measured in the bar lines and pulse of the music. This special elegance has already been noted elsewhere in her career and and compared to the special dignity of Grace Kelly. I must say I concur. There are worse characterizations than for a violinist to be known as "Her Serene Highness."
- [American Mavericks at Davies Hall: the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas and Friends Play Cage, Foss, Cowell, and Ruggles](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/american-mavericks-davies-hall-san-francisco-symphony-michael-tilson-thomas-cage-foss-cowell-ruggles/) - Revolutions, the saying goes, are frequently revisited as farce. If only one knew it at the time! In the ferment of the 1970s, a seeming battle to the death played itself out among advocates of dodecaphonic music and the apostles of deconstructed "happenings.” Both insurgencies would ultimately lose. But the arrogance of the revolutionaries was no different in music from what it would have been in politics. The average listener hoping for Brahms found himself besieged in those days—contemptuously marginalized in either camp—-and marked for replacement. That is always the frightening dimension of revolution: the smugness of the cook breaking eggs for the new omelette—-and the suspicion that you may be one of the eggs.
- [Susanna Mälkki conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Grisey, Prokofiev, and Sibelius, with Horacio Gutiérrez, piano](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/susanna-malkki-san-francisco-symphony-grisey-prokofiev-sibelius-gutierrez/) - Music making, one supposes wryly, can sometimes be a battle of influences. In this instance, simply put, how does one reconcile late romantic Sibelius with the compositional methods of Pierre Boulez? The very thought might give one chills.... I was intrigued to hear IRCAM's Susanna Mälkki recently, and not simply to touch base with the new generation of influential women at the podium. I wanted to experience how her musical approach would walk the line between cerebral pointillism of the Boulezian sort and the kind of broad Barbirollian phrasing favored by Leif Segerstam, with whom she studied. Mälkki was one of the principal cellists in the Gothenburg Symphony — for Sibelius lovers a considerable entry on the romantic side of the ledger — but I find myself disappointed to say that in this instance the French modernists appear to have won most of the battles of influence.
- [The New York Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert, conductor; Yefim Bronfman, piano; at Davies Hall, San Francisco, play Dvořák, Lindberg, and Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/new-york-philharmonic-alan-gilbert-bronfman-davies-hall-san-francisco-dvorak-lindberg-tchaikovsky/) - I caught recently one of the concerts given in Davies Hall by the New York Philharmonic, my old hometown band, as part of our 100th Anniversary Season. It was enough to set me thinking again about the role a good hall plays in shaping the fame of an ensemble. Fifty years of struggle with the Lincoln Center acoustic has clearly left its mark on the New York orchestra's reputation — though I must say not on the quality of its playing — which remains stunningly world class. But one is surprised to find in the sonority a burnished warmth and tonal delicacy similar to that of the Cleveland Orchestra. Understated tonal virtues have seldom been possible at Broadway and 65th Street. At least in the way we think of the orchestra. But they were notable here and speak well of Alan Gilbert's Music Directorship.
- [Mozart's Magic Flute, a New Production at the San Francisco Opera, designed by Jun Kaneko](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/mozart-magic-flute-new-production-san-francisco-opera-jun-kaneko/) - A new Magic Flute production premiered in San Francisco on June 13. With a solid musical basis and a fairly shipshape theatrical pacing, the strongest impressions were made by designer/artist Jun Kaneko and soprano Albina Shagimuratova as the Queen of the Night, both making their SFO debuts.
- [Nixon in China at the San Francisco Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/nixon-china-san-francisco-opera/) - There was a moment when American opera companies faced greater challenges both producing and selling contemporary work, but could still be relied upon to produce the 19th century classics with success onstage and at the box office. Maybe the training and experience of musicians onstage and in the pit has finally caught up with the calendar. Maybe a newer idiom is less of a reach than the older one and the cultural displacement and carnage of the two World Wars has finally separated us from traditions of bel canto. Perhaps as listeners we hold different expectations of singers in contemporary work than we do of singers in Puccini, Verdi, and Bizet. For whatever reason, the production of Nixon in China currently gracing the stage of the San Francisco Opera is the most stylistically coherent achievement of their summer season and is bringing in audiences. Much praise to all concerned.
- [Verdi's Attila at the San Francisco Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/verdi-attila-san-francisco-opera/) - The pleasures to be had from a performance of Verdi's Attila are a unique blend: one third Macbeth, one third Nabucco, and one third summer-camp hayride. The staging of San Francisco Opera's ultimately satisfying revival occasionally reaches ill-advisedly towards something more sophisticated. When it does (i.e. all of Act III), um...er... one must close one's eyes and think of Italy, because the visual results are mind-bogglingly annoying and meaningless. Happily, the exhilaration of this early Verdian work — led with commitment and panache by SFO music director Nicola Luisotti — transcends the needless awkwardness of the staging. Attila isn't the most memorable score in the world, but it is pure, if unrefined, Italian opera. It allows singers to strut their stuff, to sing and emote with extravagance, and it makes for a great “coming attractions” reel for the masterpieces Verdi had yet to compose.
- [The Philadelphia Orchestra at Davies Hall — A Great Legend Intact — Two Concerts](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/philadelphia-orchestra-davies-hall-legend-intact/) - The Philadelphia Orchestra always WAS the sexiest! Back in the publicity heyday of art music and the aftermath of Toscanini, Americans knew their five orchestras. It went like this: in Boston you listened to Charles Munch for Gallic excitability. In Chicago, Reiner ruled with a heart of stone but turned out warmer central European renditions than Toscanini had. You flocked to Bernstein for eruptive passion and disreputable energy in New York. And at Severance Hall, in a state of penance, you submitted to the owlish purges of George Szell. But nothing seduced the listener so much as The Philadelphia Orchestra, under the direction of Eugene Ormandy.
- [Michael Francis Conducts the San Francisco Symphony in "My Classic Americana," with Pianist Charlie Albright in His San Francisco Debut](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/michael-francis-san-francisco-symphony-classic-americana-charlie-albright/) - It's silly season again at the San Francisco Symphony! A quick report from the front. And a debut teaser for later. Do we have a new Horowitz? In perfect weather, with no need for a sylvan retreat, we San Franciscans simply shine a colored spotlight on the Davies Hall organ pipes in July, and Presto, music becomes festive! "My Classic Americana" is one of several programs containing well-known works Michael Francis has been leading this summer, with super zest and limited rehearsal. At times he's got us clapping along in such good spirits, we might as well be at the Albert Hall Proms. The young Englishman has now conducted several summer seasons in San Francisco and is a great hit with our audience, bringing just the right touch of knowing wit, uncomplicated musicality, good spirits and schoolboy snark to the proceedings.
- [The San Francisco Symphony Opens its New Season with Semyon Bychkov](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/10/san-francisco-symphony-semyon-bychkov/) - There is always something a little peculiar about opening week at the San Francisco Symphony. Audiences have been away for the summer and are distractible. The orchestra may sound a bit less used to itself than usual. Sunlight in the lobby is still too bright for anyone to settle down. And programming commonly amounts either to a Gala smorgasbord or a visit to Denny's, but seldom manages subtlety for musical gourmets. No different this year, but with a few wacky touches from the peanut gallery — about which more in a moment.
- [Renée Fleming Joins the San Francisco Symphony in Music of Debussy, Holloway and Canteloube](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/02/renee-fleming-san-francisco-debussy/) - Here we are, a hundred years later, and so much of Claude Debussy's music still beguiles with its freshness! As Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony through an accomplished performance of Jeux last Sunday, I was reminded how much the daily bread of sound in our own lives comes from Debussy's late style.
- [Charles Dutoit and James Ehnes with The San Francisco Symphony in Ravel, Lalo, and Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/03/charles-dutoit-james-ehnes-san-francisco-symphony-ravel-lalo-elgar/) - Edward Elgar The San Francisco Symphony Davies Hall, San Francisco Friday, February 1, 2013 Charles Dutoit, conducting James Ehnes, violin Ravel - Rapsodie espagnole (1908) Lalo - Symphonie espagnole,Opus 21 (1874) Elgar - "Enigma" Variations, Opus 36 (1899) One of the delights in having Charles Dutoit make a guest appearance with our orchestra is
- [Benjamin Grosvenor Plays Ravel with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony. Romeo and Juliet from Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and a Dash of Stravinsky](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/benjamin-graosvenor-mtt-sf-symphony-ravel-romeo-juliet/) - Indian summer is a favorite time of year in San Francisco. The city's deceptively cutting winds give way to something approaching balminess. And one gears up, if not for romance, then surely for a new Symphony season to warm the heart, excite the pulse and remind one that art is the password to beauty's permanence. I've often commented about the happy spirit of our symphony...and do so again. There exist surly orchestras, whose players sit looking for all the world as though they'd gladly wring the conductor's neck as play for him. (These tend to be Russian!) But before I'm accused of national prejudices, I should point out, as an old New Yorker, that the New York Philharmonic is quite capable of gathering onstage looking as though they'd like to kill each other! Perhaps it is Panglossian naïveté to think comity reigns here, but it certainly seemed so on Saturday.
- [The Other Mozart, written by Sylvia Milo - performed by the Austrian actress Julia Rosa Stöckl at the HERE Arts Center, NYC](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/other-mozart-sylvia-milo-julia-rosa-stoeckl-here-arts-center-nyc/) - Six of the performances in the summer run of Sylvia Milo’s The Other Mozart were performed by the Austrian actress, Julia Rosa Stöckl. It was fascinating in itself to see the play performed by an artist other than the author, and above all by a countrywoman of Nannerl Mozart herself. As at the other performances the house was almost sold out, and Ms. Stöckl received a resounding ovation for her elegant and psychologically penetrating performance.
- [Lorin Maazel: a Few post Mortem Memories and Reflections](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/09/lorin-maazel-memories-reflections/) - I wish I had thought of it first: "The Man Who Knew Too Much.” That was how the papers received Lorin Maazel's death. And it’s a telling remark for anyone who reminisces about the conductor. Maazel was a genius who solved differential calculus problems for fun. He bored easily, was prone to arrogance, and it became his tendency to pull music around until it interested him again. This did not always work with audiences. At times the music could sound like an equation, itself.
- [Richard Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer: the beginning of Marek Janowski's Historic Series of Concert Performances of the Ten Mature Operas and Music Dramas](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/richard-wagner-der-fliegende-hollaender-marek-janowski/) - Since his renowned 1980-83 recording of Wagner's Ring with the Dresdener Staatskapelle, Marek Janowski has acquired a cult following, especially in Wagner, not unlike Jascha Horenstein or Reginald Goodall. His steady, active tempi and decisive phrasing evoke an older performance style which goes back, it is thought, to the days of Richter, Seidl, and Mottl. Janowski, when asked if he studied historical performances of Wagner expressed his devotion to Wilhelm Furtwängler and an admiration for the Bayreuth performances of Hans Knappertsbusch, which, he points out, are not at all as slow as is generally thought. Janowski's own mentor in conducting was Wolfgang Sawallisch, who left an easily noticeable mark on Janowski's mature style as a conductor, with his restraint and and constant vigilance over orchestral balances, as well as the balance of dramatic flow and structure. In fact, there is a good deal in common that one can hear in the performance under consideration and Sawallisch's 1961 Bayreuth performance. "Ein guter Meister..."
- [Katharina Wagner's Die Meistersinger, now in its Fourth Year at Bayreuth](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/katharina-wagner-meistersinger-bayreuth/) - I won't even say that I wish that, in beginning with Katharina Wagner's production of Die Meistersinger, I was starting on a cheerful note. Nothing of the kind. Katharina has studiously avoided her great grandfather's romanticized Nürnberg, where great artistic, literary, and musical achievement lurked around every corner, where the citizens dressed colorfully, where the men engaged in witty exchanges, while the girls joyfully gave themselves over the dancing, if not to their young men, at every opportunity. She has, rather, chosen to focus on the repressive nature of this conservative society, as embodied in the guild system, the obsessive power of routine in daily life, its neuroses, and, yes, its nightmares. Having a certain penchant for black humor and oddity, I entered with pleasure into my five-hour visit to this frightening and pitiable world, and I laughed, quite a bit, which, I should hope, is the desired result of any Meistersinger production. If my laughter was a trifle sour at times, it's not entirely alien from the sarcastic wit of Wagner's libretto. Hence, I am pleased to say that Katharina Wagner won her war, buoyed up by a splendid vocal, orchestral, and comedic performance, which had its own vigorous life, no matter how strange the goings-on on stage. And, if one is open-minded enough not to resist these, one can expect to gain a fair bit of insight into human nature, history, and Richard Wagner's comic masterpiece.
- [Neuenfels' Lohengrin at Bayreuth - 2010 / 2011: a (P)review](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/08/neuenfels-lohengrin-bayreuth-2010-2011/) - I was no less fascinated than any writer by the troops of rats Hans Neuenfels mustered for his production of Lohengrin, which premiered last year (2010). It isn't fair or even intelligent to focus on the most obvious twist in his Neuenfels' vision of Wagner's first grail opera, but Neuenfels turned the rodents loose on us as bait, and in the world of theater, it is only right to jump on it with all the alacrity of one of the rats, when he or she sniffs some appetizingly ripe garbage—or bacon, as Herr Neuenfels has said. And I don't mention this to demean the rats, Neuenfels clearly did not intend them as red herrings, but as an intellectually nutritious and tasty Vorspeise.
- [Richard Wagner, Parsifal, directed by Stefan Herheim and conducted by Daniele Gatti, Bayreuther Festspiele (2010 Performance Reviewed)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/09/wagner-parsifal-herheim-gatti-bayreuth-2010/) - Ritual is everywhere in Wagner's operas and music dramas. He even has his way of transforming crucial events in his stories into quasi-rituals through symbolism. Ritual is even more pervasive in his final work, his Bühnenweihfestspiel, Parsifal, which is in itself a ritual. The highly ritualized routines of the Grail knights connect their lives and the events of the drama with the continuum of the Grail's history, back to the Last Supper. Their actions are highly deliberate, replete with the significance of faith and tradition. This creates a quasi-monastic environment in which life unfolds slowly, largely ceremonially, on the structure of a time-honored schedule, in which history and precedent are always present. The narrative unfolds with notable simplicity in terms of what occurs on stage, while beneath it, the backstory related in monologues seethes with incident, conflict, and misfortune. In addition to this dramatic foreground purified of trivialities, there is the pure transparency of Wagner's score, consisting of simple thematic material set with surpassing clarity, delicacy, and harmonic subtlety. In this way Parsifal lives up to what we have been conditioned to expect from the late work of a great artist, and this is what we see and hear on the stage, if Wagner's stage directions are observed.
- [Elgar Conducts Elgar: Enigma Variations; Symphony No. 2 in Acoustic Recordings, 1920-25, Splendidly Remastered by Andrew Rose of Pristine Classical](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/elgar-enigma-variations-symphony-2-acoustic-recordings-pristine/) - There is fascination here—on many levels. "Within these grooves", I am tempted to say, though one's gratitude this time is for the cleaning crew. Pristine has already given us some remarkable technical restorations of the Furtwangler discography. Encountering now these listenable and vivid performances by Sir Edward Elgar, recorded into acoustic horns at the near infancy of the art, is to know the best sort of alliance between digital wizardry and artistic judgment.
- [Mozart and Yellow Warblers:  Recent Performances of the  Piano Concertos on Disc (Part I of a Series)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/mozart-piano-concertos-new-performances-part-1/) - While spending almost twenty years closely listening to Bach's more than two hundred cantatas bewildered some of my friends would decry my project and say, "They all sound alike - how can you tell them apart?" These people, sophisticated music lovers who simply did not care for the Bach vocal repertory, refused to admit they glossed over these works in a superficial way. To my ears, of course, each and every cantata had uniqueness that clearly articulated it from the rest of the pack. Yes, there were many structural similarities, and Bach's musical language is the unifying tongue, but, to say Bach's cantatas all sounded alike seemed heretical, born of inferior taste and auditory skills. Years later, when I started watching birds, I came upon the family of yellow warblers, illustrated in Roger Tory Peterson's definitive field guide. Boggled by the subtle markings which distinguish these birds, it seemed that page after page pictured the same damned bird, and I recalled my friends' remarks about Bach's vocal works.
- [New York Arts' Recommended Books and Classical Recordings 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/new-york-arts-holiday-gift-list-books-and-classical-recordings/) - I should most likely not distract you from giving a subscription to The Berkshire Review as a holiday gift. We need subscriptions to carry on our work, but there are a few items that have come in for review that I can warmly suggest as excellent gifts. These are not systematic, and they are not always serious, but we do recommend them. Some of them will be reviewed in detail over the following weeks.
- [Robert Schumann, The Complete Works for Piano Trio - Christian Tetzlaff, violin; Tanja Tetzlaff, cello; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano, on EMI Classics](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/robert-schumann-complete-works-piano-trio-christian-tetzlaff-tanja-tetzlaff-leif-ove-andsnes/) - A close look at the notes for this 2-disc set will give one some insight into the splendeurs et misères of the contemporary classical recording industry. A grant from Fond for lyd og bilde, the Norwegian arts organization, and Leif Ove Andsnes' Gilmore Artist Award funded this recording, making it possible for a major commercial label, EMI, to release a recording of comparatively little-known music by a great composer, played by internationally renowned musicians. Mr. Andsnes owns the copyright and has licensed the recording to EMI. Presumably the recording company didn't think that the famous names sufficed to counterbalance the obscurity and dubious reputation of the music, for unfortunately the trios, especially the second and third, were lumped in with the rest of what the older literature considered "bad Schumann," commonly disparaged as unmelodic, difficult, and confused. The rediscovery of these fascinating and very beautiful works has been one of the great pleasures of the past twenty years, once musicians learned how to play them and audiences, still slowly and partially, have learned how to listen to them.
- [Grooves in the Mist — a Vinyl Memoir: Part I](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/grooves-in-the-mist-vinyl-memoir-hifi-stereo/) - "Somewhere around 1950," Leopold Stokowski once quipped, "recorded sound stopped being a novelty and started sounding like music." I was reminded of this the other day, when I received from Netflix the DVD of "A Letter To Three Wives", which was filmed in 1949 and features Kirk Douglas playing the Brahms B-flat Concerto to friends on an enormous console, probably a Capehart or a Zenith "Cobramatic". At one point in the movie, he becomes miffed at someone for having broken some shellac, and we see him revealed as an early version of the classic suburban audio peacock, petulant and anxious over any flaws in his equipment.
- [Grooves in the Mist - A Vinyl Memoir, Part II](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/grooves-in-the-mist-part-ii/) - Earlier in this backward glance, I tried to revive a feeling of what it might have been like to have a phonograph in one's life. Looking over it, a reader may sense that the 78rpm record was a fragile blessing at best, while perhaps understanding why even today a child would appreciate it. We left off in the early 1960s, where, one might suppose, the advent of the stereo LP solved everything! By then, I had decent quality electronics, and even the admiration of screech resistant female ears. This isn't to say I was always so terribly thrilled with the outcomes, myself. The great curse of the phonograph, of course, was its tracking ability, surface noise and distortion. It was one thing to chisel a groove, another for your needle to follow it. Recordings were quite dynamically limited in those days, but even so, the Empire 108 cartridge simply would not track, even at 3 grams pressure, the first tutti in Klemperer's Philharmonia Schumann Fourth. It wasn't until 1963 and the Empire 880, that a cartridge could be expected to follow every groove. I was fairly happy with the bass performance of my Lafayette speakers, though. That year Charles Munch's famous recording of the Saint-Saens "Organ" Symphony on RCA was very much a sonic standard, and I was happy to note I could hear the 32cycle organ pedal tones in the slow movement.
- [The One and Only Igor: Gergiev conducts Les Noces and Oedipus Rex](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/stravinsky_les_noces_oedipus_rex_gergiev/) - In a recent interview the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, remarked that Igor Stravinsky pulled off the greatest camouflage in the history of music. He was referring to the composer’s lifelong stand that music expresses no emotions, indeed, expresses nothing except sound. Behind this mask, Salonen said, lies a man of deep feeling whose music is often as moving as any ever written. I began to think about Stravinsky and his camouflage, which has always baffled me. How could such glittering creations, each commanding your attention, whether as a shout across the primordial steppes or a murmur like the tick-tock of a mantel clock in the Princesse de Polignac’s salon, be about nothing?
- [Pristine Audio brings back the Salle Pleyel of 1929/30: Pierre Monteux Conducts Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps, Ravel, etc.](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/pristine-audio-salle-pleyel-pierre-monteux-stravinsky-sacre-du-printemps-ravel/) - The special sound of the Orchestre de Paris playing in the splendid Salle Pleyel was still fresh in my ears, when the latest crop of releases from Pristine Classical arrived, offering recordings of Pierre Monteux conducting the "Orchestre Symphonique de Paris" in the Salle Pleyel itself. The most important of these extremely rare 78 sets, made between January 1929 and February 1930, is a complete Sacre du Printemps, the earliest of the seven live or studio recordings, which have been released of Monteux performances. This brings us within two decades of the historic 1913 premiere with the Ballets Russes. Monteux’s authority in this score never diminished, and the performances from the end of his life are as vital as this early effort and are still revered today. Like the later ones, this performance is marked by its flow and coherence—a complete grasp of the shape and drama of the great ballet, which give the performance a sense of unity, without compromising its angular rhythms and its vivid, often harsh colors and textures. You will never hear a Sacre more musical than any of Monteux’s recordings.
- [Now available: “Celebrating Carter’s Century,” music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/bso-celebrating-carters-century-music-by-elliott-carter-from-the-2008-festival-of-contemporary-music-at-tanglewood/) - An especially exciting bit of news was tucked away in the middle of the release: the BSO’s own recording label, will release as a download Celebrating Carter’s Century, music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. We can only hope that the documentation of this great event will be as complete as possible.
- [Beethoven at 8,000 Feet: David Finckel and Wu Han's ArtistLed Recording of Beethoven's Cello Sonatas and Variations](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/12/david-finckel-wu-han-artistled-recording-beethoven-cello-sonatas-variations/) - With David Finckel and Wu Han's program of Beethoven Cello Sonatas at Union College coming up, I thought it a good idea to take a look at their recording of Beethoven's complete Cello works, which I'd never heard before. I was even surprised to learn that it dates back to 1997, making it one of the earliest recordings they made on their pioneering label, ArtistLed. Like today, they functioned as the producers of the recording, and Da-Hong Seetoo, the extraordinary sound engineer, who works with personally modified hardware and software, made the recording. They purposely chose Harris Hall at Aspen, Colorado as the venue, because they were struck that its particular acoustics were ideal for recording Beethoven. "Built from wood, with a high ceiling, it has a resonance which is warm, clear and brilliant.
- [Remembering Ormandy – In Case You Were There, Too](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/01/remembering-ormandy/) - Even before this 10-CD commemorative set was issued, I noticed a wash of nostalgia for Eugene Ormandy among baby boomers. He was inescapable for that generation, the progenitor of hundreds of LPs, only a sampling of which are contained here. Ormandy became Leopold Stokowski’s associate conductor at the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936 and succeeded him two years later, beginning an unparalleled run of 44 years as music director before retiring in 1980, a reign no one will ever duplicate, or would want to. During that time Ormandy led the orchestra between 100 and 180 times a year. That, too, is a staggering statistic given that modern music directors, in their eagerness to spread themselves globally, are essentially long-term guests who drop in to visit their home orchestras for as little as a quarter of the regular season.
- [Hector Berlioz, L’enfance du Christ, Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/12/berlioz-enfance-christ-colin-davis-lso/) - Sir Colin has a long history with L’enfance du Christ. He made his first recording of it in 1960 at the age of 34. It was well-received in its time and is still respected today, but the current performance, part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s brilliantly successful series of live concert recordings made in the renovated and sonically improved Barbican Hall, is an absolute triumph.
- [G.F. Handel, Messiah (Dublin Version, 1742) The Dunedin Consort and Players](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/messiah_dunedin/) - Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices and the other is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1946 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
- [G. F. Handel, Messiah, Sir Colin Davis, LSO](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/messiah_davis/) - Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006, the other a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1945 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
- ["Music for a Time of War" - The Oregon Symphony under Carlos Kalmar play Ives, Adams, Britten, and Vaughan Williams on a Pentatone Release...Highly Recommended!](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/music-for-a-time-of-war-oregon-symphony-carlos-kalmar-ives-adams-britten-vaughan-williams/) - The Review has quite a backlog of recordings piled up, and we hope to make our way through as many as we can. I especially wanted to make note of this full concert recording by the Oregon Symphony, not only because our own Steven Kruger wrote the perceptive and witty program notes, but because of its exceptional musical quality and its truly extraordinary recording. A multichannel recording from Pentatone Classics, which released the Berlin concert performance of Der fliegende Holländer under Marek Janowski reviewed a few months ago, it amazed me with its timbral and spatial naturalness. It most definitely belongs in the reference collection of any audiophile, whether they are inclined to multichannel playback or not. I listened to it in stereo on headphones, using an SACD-compatible player.
- [Farewell to Tankred Dorst’s Bayreuth Ring](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/tankred-dorst-bayreuth-ring-2010/) - As much as I might enjoy the paradox in seeking out real situations that recall a work which is for many the ultimate in escapism, I admired Tankred Dorst's efforts to bring Wagner's mythology into our own world. Dorst recognizes that mythology and the divine are present everywhere, largely because of the consistency of human behavior.
- [Gil Rose talks to Michael Miller about contemporary music, BMOP, and the Opera Boston premiere of Madame White Snake](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/02/gil-rose-interview-michael-miller-contemporary-music-bmop-madame-white-snake/) - Gil Rose is best known for his leadership of two high-profile Boston organizations, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), one of the major supporters of contemporary music in America, and Opera Boston, which specializes in musically outstanding performances of operatic masterpieces which have been neglected by the mainstream houses. I know I'll be eternally grateful to him and Opera Boston for my first opportunity to see Weber's Die Freischütz, universally regarded as a seminal work in the history of opera and a great one, but rarely performed today. Just last year there were Shostakovich's The Nose, and Rossini's Tancredi, and now Opera Boston's first commission of a new opera, Zhou Long's Madame White Snake.
- [Proms 2011 – a personal preview by Gabriel Kellett: Royal Albert Hall et alibi, 15 July - 10 September, 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/bbc-proms-2011-a-personal-preview-gabriel-kellett/) - I'm in two minds about the Proms tradition of always allotting significant programming space to composers with major anniversaries. It's transparently a fairly arbitrary device to make the programmers' jobs much easier and minimise the thorny problem of personal taste entering the decision-making process; on the other hand, without it we would never get three concerts this year featuring one of my favourites, Percy Grainger (died 50 years ago). In particular, the late night Prom on 2 August including Kathryn Tickell and June Tabor, celebrating the folk music Grainger was inspired by, is to me one of the most interesting this year.
- [The Amazing Daniil Trifonov with The Russian National Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/02/daniil-trifonov-russian-national-orchestra-giancarlo-guerrero/) - One of the joys with a visiting orchestra is to experience new sonorities—to be swept richly downward, perhaps, to unanticipated string depths—to hear brass playing grainier or more golden than you thought possible in the hall—or wind passages lighter and more personal than you might have dreamed. More importantly, you come to sense the ensemble's psychology, as individual in its way as the conductor's. Listen to an orchestra like the Mariinsky, and you experience shivers of delight. How Russian it seems!
- [Boston Early Music Festival to Present a Marc-Antoine Charpentier Double Bill at Jordan Hall, Sat. Nov. 25 and 8 pm and Sun. Nov. 26 at 3 pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/bemf-marc-antoine-charpentier-jordan-hall/) - Surely one of the great joys of being a music-lover in the present day is our rediscovery of French Baroque opera—not to mention the Italian and German masterpieces with which the Boston Early Music Festival has regaled its audiences over three decades. The amazing resurrection of Les Arts Florissants' legendary 1985 production of Lully's Atys this year brought that home. (They are now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.) BEMF had produced Rameau's Zoroastre in 1983. After that 18 years passed until they returned to French opera in their 2001 production of Lully's Thésée, followed by Psyché in 2007. While these four represent the most public strain of opera in Paris, the grand spectacles produced either under royal patronage or at the Opéra, BEMF's chamber opera series has provided a window on the smaller-scale, more private sort of performances cultivated by Marie de Lorraine, the Duchesse de Guise, with music by her house composer, Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
- [Charpentier's  La Couronne de Fleurs and La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers by the Boston Early Music Society](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/charpentier-couronne-fleurs-descente-dorphee-enfers-bemf/) - Boston Early Music Festival’s presentation of two Marc-Antoine Charpentier chamber operas took us from the playful, elegant, high baroque world of the court of Louis XIV, into something more serious and grave, and then back out again. First we were given most of La Couronne de Fleurs, a Pastoral probably not meant for full staging, where Flore, goddess of spring—well sung, and acted with spirit, by soprano Mireille Asselin—summons up the season and then proposes to shepherds and shepherdesses a contest to praise Louis XIV’s military triumphs, the winner to receive the crown of flowers of the title. After the conventional tributes are made, the production turns to the short opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, presenting it as a further entry in the poetic contest, though this is done a bit awkwardly, since the piece does not refer to Louis. The Orpheus opera seems not to have been finished by Charpentier, having only two acts instead of the usual three, and stopping with the beginning of Orpheus’s ascent from the Underworld with his lover Euridice rescued from death. We do not get the familiar incident of his prohibited looking back at her and thus permanent loss of her.
- [Welsh National Opera's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, by Richard Wagner](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/wagner-meistersinger-wno/) - "Sachs, mein Freund!" Bryn Terfel has sung extracts from Hans Sachs's music for years, and the character always seemed well suited to his warm voice and air of easy humanity. But he didn't unveil the complete role until this season, in the very production of Die Meistersinger that visited the Proms last night. Terfel proudly puts Welshman after his name, and he promised the country's National Opera that they would get his first Sachs. Six thousand listeners in Albert Hall spent most of the afternoon and evening for the privilege, just over six hours (imagine the ones in the arena who had to stand), with scarcely a handful leaving early. Terfel raises sheep at home, and it takes a golden fleece to hear him in Covent Garden, the Met, or Salzburg. Here he was cheap as chips but musically priceless.
- [Simon Rattle Conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Love Scene from Roméo et Juliette and Wagner's Tristan, Act II](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/rattle-tristan-orchestra-age-enlightenment/) - Point taken. Whenever period orchestras venture far beyond the Baroque, they have something to prove. But at last night’s concert of Wagner and Berlioz by the esteemed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, some of the proof was self-evident. Banished completely are the intonation problems that plagued such ensembles in the past; one felt secure in the technical abilities of every section; the wind soloists played as expressively as anyone could wish. London is a center for period performance, which has become beloved. Sir Simon Rattle has conducted Act II of Tristan, in concert with the forces of Berlin and Vienna, but it’s good to be flexible, and since he enjoys a long-standing rapport with the OAE, they were a comfortable fit.
- [George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, National Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/major_barbara_national_theatre/) - The long nights are already on the wane, but one leaves the theatre with a glow on the horizon, and a newspaper can be read outdoors well after nine o’clock.Fresh off the plane (i.e., as grungy as five-day-old socks) I tried not to go groggy at the National Theatre’s production of Shaw’s Major Barbara. Putting on a play by Shaw is like sticking your head out of a foxhole to see who shoots. Nobody could be more fusty and out of favour (perhaps the two Barries, James and Philip), but the London critics were mostly happy and none were snarky.
- [Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm, Almeida Theatre, Islington](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/rosmersholm/) - Far from celebrating our independence day, the British are probably trying to forget America and the whole era when Tony Blair was Bush’s poodle. After a miserably cold, damp spring, there was a national scare over strawberries – specifically, that the crop would go moldy and rot in the fields. Strawberries and cream are de rigeurfor finals at Wimbledon. Now it’s finals weekend and the berries came through. But there’s a smell of black mold seeping out under the doors of the tiny Almeida Theatre in Islington. Ibsen is afoot, and the fate of souls is being tossed around on stage like a medicine ball. A very heavy medicine ball.
- [Anthony Neilson, Relocated, at the Royal Court Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/relocated/) - Clouds over Sloane Square, and the posh and spicy girls known as Sloane Rangers weren’t tramping around with a slew of shopping bags over their arms. Or not that I could see two days ago.A wag has renamed them the trustafarians, which seems to be sticking. I had a drink with a new friend named Warwick and told him that he and I were the only two people in the bar named after castles. “Presumably,” he said.We had met while waiting to troop into the tiny, dark, primitively ventilated Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre to be assaulted by Relocated, a stage provocation that has divided the critics while scaring off the public.
- [That Face at the Duke of York's Theatre by Polly Stenham](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/that-face-duke-yorks-theatre-polly-stenham/) - Tube riders litter the train with newspapers, which other riders pick up to alleviate their boredom. Coming home last night I saw a grisly headline on one of these throwaways, “Sixth Stab Murder in Week of Death.” In London? The first sentence of the story was horrifying. “A schoolboy has been stabbed to death with a foot-long knife by a gang of thugs in south London.” It was within memory that a single shooting death made national news. Compared to America, the UK is still a kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb. Verbal and psychological violence are another matter.
- [Under the Blue Sky by David Eldridge at the Duke of York's Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/under-blue-sky-david-eldridge-duke-yorks-theatre/) - Love goes ka-boom. I read an interview with a young playwright, David Eldridge, who was asked about current conditions in the British theater. At 27 he had a precocious smash hit at the Royal Court in 2000 with Under the Blue Sky, a study in three scenes of romance and sexual frustration among secondary school teachers. The subject sounds deadly, and one can understand why five London theatres originally turned it down. The commercial West End trembles like melting marmalade when faced with serious dramatic writing, and the pay for playwrights is criminally low, to the point that talented ones scrounge for a living, even after having a hit. (I’m reminded of the improbable moment when Sam Goldwyn brought the poet-playwright Maurice Maeterlinck from Paris to Hollywood. Goldwyn’s familiarity with Maeterlinck’s masterpiece, Pelleas et Melisande, was dubious. The work to be adapted for the big screen was a strange naturalist treatise, The Life of the Bee. After reading the first draft of the script, Goldwyn rushed out of his office screaming, “My God, it’s about a bee!”)
- [Tennessee Williams' Spring Storm at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/tennessee-williams-spring-storm/) - Not out or proud. In his mid-twenties Tennessee Williams went to a playwriting workshop in Iowa and produced a nearly three-hour-long drama that was caustically received by his tutor and fellow students. Chagrined, he consigned it to the bottom drawer while mining many of its motifs for his acknowledged masterpieces, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Nothing more was heard of Spring Storm (1937) until twenty years after Williams’s piteous accidental death in 1983. Salvaged from his archived papers, the play was given a reading in New York and a couple of regional stagings, to no great acclaim. Critics called it intriguing juvenilia.
- [Women Beware Women, by Thomas Middleton at the National Theatre of Great Britain](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/women-beware-women-thomas-middleton-national-theatre-great-britain/) - Motiveless malignity. It’s hard to transport one’s mind back far enough to empathize with Jacobean drama, when immorality masqueraded as the It Thing, as if a casual rape was merely the aperitif before fine dining. Today we have summer movies, admittedly, where mass carnage goes down well with popcorn and no harm done. We aren’t frightened or disgusted by how many people the Terminator terminates. Two minutes after leaving the theatre we return to our moral selves. Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (1621), in a stirring revival at the National Theatre, affords an equally mindless vacation from morality. But it wants to be more adult. With an aristocratic audience to please and no Hollywood ratings agency, Middleton could add salaciousness and bawdry to the max. The popcorn has been sprinkled with wormwood and gall.
- [Love the Sinner, by Drew Pautz at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/love-the-sinner/) - Good enough for God? Church attendance has been declining in Britain, and in the rest of Europe, for almost two generations, so a play about the irrelevance of God hardly touches a burning nerve. When Canadian-born playwright Drew Pautz chose this theme for Love the Sinner, mounted on the National’s tiny Cottesloe stage, most reviewers showed indifference. The play’s themes were called muddled, and as often happens, the artist was blamed for the critic’s refusal to think. Pautz has updated a respectable genre, the drama of ideas, which fostered another argument about God and human affairs, Shaw’s Saint Joan. Shaw could count upon solid religious conformity as a backstop for his secular ripostes. Today, the orthodoxy has swung so far in the other direction that Love the Sinner includes a major character whose attitude is “God? Are you kidding? Put that Bible down right now.”
- [The Late Middle Classes at Donmar Warehouse](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/the-late-middle-classes/) - Secrets and lies. Simon Gray had a late-career flop in 1999 with The Late Middle Classes, a comic drama which closed out of town before reaching the West End. It’s not hard to see why. Delicate musings about pedophilia don’t mix well with japery at the post-war middle class and its lawn-tennis-with-drinks-at-five airs. Every character is ready to explode with repressed impulses that are either nasty, immoral, or illegal. The resulting brew sits uneasily between art and entertainment. What audience, exactly, was it intended to find?
- [Through A Glass Darkly, Almeida Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/through-a-glass-darkly-almeida-theatre/) - Woman on the verge. I came to the Almeida Theatre with doubts about staging an Ingmar Bergman script. Not that the writing wouldn‘t be deep enough but that the stage would be too shallow. Bergman‘s true religion was light (as he makes clear in his compelling autobiography, The Magic Lantern), and it plays a pivotal role in Through a Glass Darkly, his 1961 study of a young woman‘s seduction by madness. For Karin, the light is alive, full of voices, beckoning her into a realm of reality where the angels dwell. Bergman conducted much the same search, minus the angels. But can we fully imagine the kingdom of light without Bergman’s camera?
- [Beyond the Horizon, by Eugene O'Neill at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/beyond-the-horizon-eugene-oneill-national-theatre/) - Hard scrabble. America’s two greatest playwrights, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, both met horrible ends that mirrored their world views. O’Neill, the tragic fatalist, was imprisoned by Parkinson’s disease, struggling to finish his last masterpiece in a crabbed, undecipherable hand. Williams, the perfumed fantasist of flesh, waned in a haze of drugs and alcohol (he died, with pathetic ignominy, by choking on the cap to a medicine bottle). They shared the same dread of life‘s inexorable cruelty. Williams was perhaps the more coyly sadistic artist. He lets his characters lull themselves in a warm bath of delusion until it’s time to destroy them. O’Neill is more cold-eyed and frank. In the current revival of his early success, Beyond the Horizon, magnificently brought to life on the Cottesloe stage of the National Theatre, the three main characters descend into bitter disillusionment while watching every inch of their slide. They grow to have some pity for each other but none for themselves.
- [Danton’s Death by Georg Büchner, directed by Michael Grandage, at the National Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/dantons-death-georg-buechner-national-theatre-london/) - Bloody philosophes. The French Revolution was not the most monstrous of its kind. In World War II Hitler beheaded more people with portable guillotines in Vienna than the tumbrels delivered in Paris. But it survives as a lasting emblem of the fall of reason. That the society of Voltaire and Diderot could descend into the mindless savagery of the Reign of Terror prefigured Freud’s gloomy conclusion that civilization is a thin veneer painted over atavistic brutality. In the shattering drama, Danton’s Death, the point is made more trenchantly when the hero declares that sanity itself is a fragile construction, a bubble that bursts when the true nightmare of life reveals itself. This was essentially the world view of Georg Büchner — we see it reinforced in his better-known Woyzeck (largely thanks to Alban Berg's operatic adaptation as Wozzeck), in which the schizophrenia of a common soldier is played upon by the equally mad but socially acceptable devices of his superiors.
- [La Bête by David Hirson at the Comedy Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/la-bete-comedy-theatre-london-2010/) - The muse unleashed. The wildest frolic in London is being had by Mark Rylance the first moment he wanders onstage as Valere, a street clown in 17th-century France. In his hand he clutches a glass of red wine and two pieces of green melon. A broken pheasant plume in his hat trails behind. Within thirty seconds he has burped, farted, spit, dribbled melon seeds on his chin, and retired to a commode, after which he wipes his bum with loose pages from a rival writer's manuscript. For Valere is, unbelievably, a poet and playwright brought to farcical life as a bulging-eyed creature out of Hogarth – or as Rylance plays him, an entire menagerie of Hogarthian sots and loons. He commences on a rapid-fire soliloquy in rhyming couplets that lasts, without taking a breath, for twenty-five minutes.
- [Spur of the Moment at the Royal Court Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/spur-of-the-moment/) - Her dark materials. I’m sure that the parents of Anya Reiss are bursting with pride that their daughter has written an acclaimed debut play, Spur of the Moment, at the unheard-of age of seventeen. But aren’t they horrified, too? As staged by the adventurous Royal Court Theatre, whose young writers program nurtured Reiss, the play is Ozzie and Harriet Burn in Hell. Their precocious offspring wasn’t just listening at doors to what the adults were squabbling about. She was prying into their psyches with sharpened tweezers, as coldly objective as Nabokov with his butterflies skewered and pinned on a board. Mums and dads across the land must be applying double insulation to their bedrooms.
- [Arthur Miller's All My Sons at the Apollo Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/all-my-sons/) - Missing in action. A play is greatly fortunate when it receives a performance better than it is. The current revival of Arthur Miller’s family drama from 1947, All My Sons, needs that kind of help. You hear hollow echoes throughout of socialist catch phrases and pat Depression-era notions about the working Joe as mythic hero. Money stinks. Bosses are glint-eyed bastards. In the Soviet system such virtuous cant was backed up by totalitarian terror: if you didn’t write a paean to the crews who built a new dam in Omsk, the secret police were ready to stimulate your inspiration with a midnight visit. Miller wanted to be a good leftist and a great writer at the same time. We can be thankful that his artistic ambitiousness won out. Otherwise, All My Sons would be like a Christmas pudding studded with thumbtacks — as it is, the action stops for mini sermons on one-worldism, war profiteers, the corrupting decay of capitalism, and so on. Finger wagging isn’t helpful when you aim to be the working-class Sophocles. Who cares if Oedipus paid his charioteer a decent wage at the crossroad to Thebes?
- [Gardenia at Sadler's Wells](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/gardenia-at-sadlers-wells/) - Gardenia Les ballets C de la B Sadler's Wells June 30, 2011 Gardenia at Sadler's Wells | Photograph: Tristram Kenton Gaga ladies. Unless you are a devotee of drag icons from yesteryear, those who populate the stage at Sadler's Wells might be a head trip. There are eight, although one is billed as a "real"
- [Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/ibsen-emperor-galilean-national-theatre/) - Grand mal Caesar. As an example of a mountain bringing forth a mouse, nothing is more perfect than reviewing an exhaustingly long, exhaustively serious drama. When the reader hears that the subject is the foibles of organized religion, the boat has sunk before the first torpedo is fired. Nevertheless.
- [A Delicate Balance at the Almeida Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/a-delicate-balance-almeida-theatre/) - Shaken and stirred. The mid-century denizens in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance must have seemed immortal at the time, 1966, when the play was premiered. They are Dorothy Parker's gin-soaked contemporaries, morphing into Stephen Sondheim's ladies who lunch. Along with their Wall Street-country club husbands, they prowled the veldt from Westchester to the Upper East Side, confident that they were at the top of the food chain, putting down stakes at a private table at "21" and needing only a five-to-one martini in their canteens, seven-to-one if the terrain got rocky. Brought back as the cast of the hit retro TV series, Mad Men, this New York City type arouses nostalgia, but Albee experienced the real thing—and his reaction was pitiless.
- [The Cherry Orchard at The National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/the-cherry-orchard-national-theatre/) - Old shoes re-souled. There's a silent background to The Cherry Orchard for anyone born during the Cold War. The theme of social change, ambiguously written by Chekhov, took on a ferocious literalness after 1917. The niceties of the play are overshadowed by our knowledge of show trials, pogroms, and Soviet monsters to come. With all of that gone up in smoke, we find ourselves starting over. Now the opposite dilemma has appeared: what to do with a Russia sliding into irrelevancy? Putin is barely a mini-me compared to Stalin. The whole society, soaked in vodka and oil revenues, has been drained of significance: terror, class war, an ancien regime, elegiac memories, idealism, and even apparatchiks — all those soulful overtones gone flat-line.
- [Schiller's "Luise Miller" at the Donmar Warehouse, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/schiller-luise-miller-donmar-warehouse-london/) - Star-crossed Geliebte. The trouble with taking Shakespeare as your model is that you can't hide it and you will always be in his shadow. In 1784, writing his third play, Friedrich Schiller remixed the ingredients of Romeo and Juliet to concoct his perfervid tragedy, Luise Miller. Two lovers die by drinking poison at the end, and there are contending fathers, anguished partings, and extravagant avowals of undying passion ("undying" seems to be an automatic death sentence in the theater). Without the poetry, Shakespeare loses an immeasurable amount, but the twenty-four-year-old Schiller was left with a template for doomed romance. He made extraordinary use of it, and although Luise Miller contains no Mercutio, emotions get so capriciously out of hand that it can seem as if everyone on stage is a Mercutio.
- [A Woman Killed with Kindness at the National Theatre, reviewed by Huntley Dent](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/a-woman-killed-with-kindness/) - Too clever by halves. Although T.S. Eliot was describing Marlowe's once popular, now buried play, The Jew of Malta, when he dubbed it a savage farce, the phrase is a wide paintbrush for Jacobean tragedy, whose absurd motivations, wildly outsized emotions and sheer body count tempt us to burst out laughing. One of the breeziest writers of the day, Thomas Heywood, shuffled genres like a card sharp, and there's no reason to believe that he took his most famous tragedy, A Woman Killed With Kindness (1603) too seriously. There's not much reason to revive it either, except as a study in stage contraptions antecedent to the great age of folderol bien fait in the Victorian theater, which gave us masterly contrivers like Scribe, Sardou, and the like.
- [April De Angelis' Jumpy at the Duke of York's Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/april-de-angelis-jumpy-duke-yorks-theatre/) - Preggers. A bloke in a certain frame of mind, namely male, might wonder why he is sitting at Jumpy. April De Angelis' new play, beginning its West End run after a success at the Royal Court, is very witty but also very hen-partyish. When the women in the audience laugh knowingly at a line like, "Is she metal-pausal?" some men might wince. Their eyes are likely to avert when a whoop goes up at the sight of a hunky young man entering stage left, starkers, except for modestly covering himself down there. This isn't gender neutral comedy, and the territory it covers — the generation gap between a middle-aged mother and her mouthy sixteen-year-old daughter — has a case of galloping cliche.
- [The Royal Shakespeare Company's Julius Caesar](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/rsc-julius-caesar/) - Capitol crime. Julius Caesar isn't a juicy play. The poetry occupies a narrow range between nobility and a bad conscience. Very little is inward. The famous speeches are public oratory, not soliloquies on the order of Hamlet. It's the only play of his that could be read from a teleprompter. Only Mark Antony turns to the audience to share a confidence, after he has fawned before the conspirators who killed Caesar yet secretly abhors them. The central role is that of vacillating Brutus, who seems like a dry run for the truly tragic Coriolanus. For these reasons, a great production must make ancient Romans more than stuffed shirts in togas enacting potted history.
- [Timon of Athens at The National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/timon-of-athens-national-theatre/) - Gnawing the flesh. It was the best of Timon; it was the worst of Timon. Reducing a stage production to one sentence rarely does it justice, but the National Theatre’s new, wildly popular Timon of Athens, mounted as a showcase for London’s favorite actor, Simon Russell Beale, wins the best and worst prize on several counts. It takes the messiest of Shakespeare’s late plays, a nasty, grinding parable about misanthropy, and delivers a glittering first half that is unexpected magic before the genii departs and we endure the dismal gray of the second half.
- [London Symphony Orchestra, The Barbican, Sir Colin Davis conductor, Nikolaj Znaider violin: Jan Sibelius, Les Océanides, Violin Concerto, Symphony No 4](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/sibelius_lso/) - Ugliness, thy name is Barbican. No other great orchestra has been miserably consigned to a concrete mausoleum of art except the London Symphony. I went to hear them last night in an all-Sibelius program under Sir Colin Davis. One approaches the Barbican by trudging through an underpass with four lanes of traffic two feet from your elbow and banks of jaundice-colored sodium vapour lamps overhead. The building itself looks like something airlifted intact from East Berlin. The architectural style is a spawn of Brutalism, a masochistic favourite with the British in the post-war era, but without being quite as punitive.
- [Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/ariadne/) - What better way to anticipate the Fourth of July than spending time with Richard Strauss, who fiddled while the Nazis burned Europe? He languished in apparent dotage as the Yanks stormed the beach at Normandy. Suddenly the first oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra showed up at Strauss’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. Then a uniformed GI, the oboist commissioned a concerto from the snowy-haired, stork-like composer, and a minor masterpiece was born.
- [The English National Ballet at the Southbank Centre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/english-national-ballet/) - Walking across the Charing Cross footbridge, wishing the Thames didn’t look muddy no matter how blue the sky, I spied what looked like a Safeway supermarket attempting liftoff from the opposite shore. Actually, it was Royal Festival Hall. The building consists of a multi-storied cube topped with a plain barrel vault. You’d never suspect the interior was devoted to music and dance – it could easily be a widget factory. But gratitude is due the city planners, who plunked RFH down in 1951 when the South Bank was littered with little else but closed factories and depressing detritus from the war. This year the hall reopened after expensive refurbishment, with public promises that its bad acoustics had been remedied.
- [A Visit to the Tate Modern](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/tate_huntley/) - Oh, that this rain would end! I dried my socks by stepping into the Tate Britain this afternoon.The museum collection is divided into three parts – the glorious, the dull, and the querulous. The glorious, all those luminescent Turner paintings, went on tour this year, so the mobs aren’t in attendance. The management left a few strays lingering in various galleries (like the sublimely bucolicGolden Bough and a Venetian water scene where only an outlined gondola betrays that Turner wasn’t painting a celestial city), and these left-behinds glow like yellow sapphires. The dull part of the Tate consists of traditional British paintings, large rooms hung double-decker style with portraits of horse-faced lords and their pale, powdered ladies. I have to squint to read the labels, so it’s work to separate the Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, and Van Dycks from the acreage of peerage that surrounds them. If I sound captious, it’s because the third portion of the Tate Britain, devoted to modern art, exasperated me.
- [Gustavo Dudamel leads the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra at the Proms ](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/08/gothenburg-symphony-proms/) - Wunderkindfest. Unless you are a stubborn opinionator, performances can confuse you at times. I was flummoxed last night at the Proms by Gustavo Dudamel and his Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, in a concert I was expecting to enjoy, though not to the utmost. The Berlioz Symphonie fantastique wore out its welcome many years ago, and only a brilliant performance can redeem it for me. That Dudamel did not deliver. Sparkling as he is in the bright media limelight, the skyrocketing young Venezuelan has to have the goods, too. In this case, his reading was flat, disjointed, and plodding, with a drawn-out Scene aux champs that lasted long enough for Madame Defarge to knit a quilt. The guillotine movement that followed was coarse and blatty, which is how the whole reading went, either in slow mo with exaggerated emphases or sped up recklessly. Dudamel’s inability to sustain tension in soft passages, one of the most blatant failings in a bad conductor, shocked me.
- [Susan Graham Sings French Songs at Cadogan Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/09/susan-graham-french-songs-cadogan-hall/) - Matinee musicale. On a sunny day off Sloane Square, it was a perfect idea to skip lunch and listen instead to an hour of French songs. The singer was Susan Graham, the acclaimed Texas-born mezzo who has made a speciality of this repertoire, like Frederica von Stade before her. Ever since the Twenties, when young expatriates travelled to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, there's been a preference in New York and Boston, now rather slim, for chansons over lieder. Graham has made a recording of songs by Ned Rorem, who duplicates the ephemeral delicacy and finely etched sophistication found in Ravel, Poulenc, and Debussy. The virtues of the French art song are either delectable or debatable, depending on your orientation. Paris or Vienna? I lean so far to the latter that I hesitated about going to hear Graham's recital, but I knew her singing would be very accomplished, so I took my seat in the front row at Cadogan Hall.
- [Temirkanov and the Philharmonia in Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/temirkanov-philharmonia-tchaikovsky-prokofiev/) - Remains of the day. The socialist romance still lingers around Royal Festival Hall, whose lower reaches are done up with cafes and bars open to the outside, welcoming jostling crowds in flip flops and t-shirts. Concertgoers gingerly thread their way through this perpetual beach party, trying not to look elitist in polished brogues and Stella McCartney tops. I was defying jet lag to hear the elegant Philharmonia play its last concert of the season under Yuri Temirkanov, and happily, the music delivered even more than it promised. Temirkaonov and his younger peer, Valery Gergiev, are the twin pillars of post-Soviet conducting. For any rival to poach on their private reserve – all of Russian orchestral music – runs the risk of serious embarrassment.
- [Daniel Harding, Renaud Capuçon, and the LSO play Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Bruckner’s Seventh](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/daniel-harding-renaud-capucon-lso-bruch-violin-concerto-1-bruckner-symphony-7/) - Dandies and philosophers. I hate the use of the word “warhorse” to describe beloved music that is taxed by being overly familiar. But almost nobody refers to the Bruch violin concerto in any other way. It’s a frayed Victorian valentine, relying on luscious melody, the scent of heliotrope, and moonlight over the Tyrol as its claim to fame. The young French violinist Renaud Capuçon accepted this without a blush or smirk. He was determined to give a reading as gorgeously romantic as taste would allow. His success centered on a honeyed but never syrupy tone. More than that, he knew how to blend into the orchestral strings, which served not to drown him out but to amplify his sound. (Here I think Capuçon was taking advantage of the three years when he served as first among equals as concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.)
- [Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the English National Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/the-pearl-fishers/) - Not enough pearls. It has become fashionable for opera houses to invite movie directors in for some cinematic sprucing up, hence Rigoletto turned into a Don Corleone clone, Die Zauberflote with puppetry courtesy of The Lion King, and so on. But when English National Opera invited independent filmmaker Penny Woolcock to stage George Bizet’s rarely seen Pearl Fishers, she didn’t look to Hollywood for inspiration but rather to something like a public service message from UNICEF. When the curtain rose we had been helicoptered to Ceylon, the right setting but updated and now seriously impoverished. On a wharf lapped by the sea were jammed native washer women wringing out their bright saris, sadhus bathing from a bucket, Hindu devotees performing temple rites, and anonymous stragglers emptied out of a kebab shop on Brick Lane. When two Western tourists show up handing out alms, they get eager takers. I stared doubtfully. Exotic doesn’t mean Third World. But Woolcock had no political agenda. The extras mingled in Franco Zefferelli fashion, pretending to occupy themselves with everyday life despite the presence of opera singers quayside.
- [Bernstein's Mass at the Royal Festival Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/bernstein-mass/) - “My time will come.” This, the most famous quote from Gustav Mahler, wouldn’t seem apt for the music of Leonard Bernstein. His time was now, over and over, whatever decade from the Forties to the Eighties one is talking about. But there were dips in his meteoric trajectory, and Mass, which opened Kennedy Center in 1972, was a drastic one. Reviews weren’t merely dismissive; they expressed embarrassment for the composer, who leapt from his pedestal as an icon of classical music into the arms of hippies, flower children, and the Age of Aquarius. The work owed a distressing amount to Hair, the musical, and less obviously to Benjamin Britten and Bernstein’s own earlier works. As a spectacle, it combined the liturgy of the Latin Mass with episodes of the mob (updated with tie-dye, peasant blouses, and afros) jeering at the Church and belief in God generally. Bernstein wasn’t, shall we say, the most obvious candidate for a work of Christian devotion, and with eyes averted from the schlocky libretto -- crafted by Broadway baby Stephen Schwartz, who was young but no wunderkind-- the composer’s admirers chose to bury Mass as an ecumenical mess. The prevailing wisdom was that this, too, shall pass.
- [Mozart's Idomeneo at the English National Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/mozart-idomeneo-english-national-opera/) - Virtue rampant. It’s something of a drawback when an opera has no characters, but this wasn’t always so. At the height of the 18th century’s classical style, an emblem would suffice, or a slightly animated statue. In Mozart’s Idomeneo something like the ideal is achieved. No one is really flesh and blood but rather personified virtues: Nobility caught between Filial Devotion and conflicted love from Chaste Constancy and Heartfelt Passion. Or as the playbill has it, Idomeneo, king of Crete, is trapped by a vow to Poseidon to sacrifice his son, Idamante, while two women pine longingly, Ilia, a captured princess of Troy, and the infamous Electra, daughter of Agamemnon. These pawns on the Greek chessboard were available to any dramatist or poet of Mozart’s day, to be shuffled through the paces of opera seria, the musical equivalent of high tragedy.
- [Pavel Haas Quartet at Wigmore Hall: Haydn and Shostakovich](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/pavel-haas-quartet-wigmore-haydn-shostakovich/) - Day for night. The young Pavel Haas Quartet from the Czech Republic, has been winning prizes and rave notices for eight years now, the flicker of an eye in the usual lifespan of renowned string quartets. We are in the midst of a glut of rising young ensembles of this kind, but the Pavel Haas sets itself aside. It doesn't come on stage dressed in matching black Dolce & Gabbana or play with the impersonal precision of a machinist shop. Their style is a throwback to the forceful, romanticized sound of Russian groups like the Beethoven, Borodin, and Shostakovich Quartets. Like the last, they took their name from a modern composer. Pavel Haas (1899-1944) died at Auschwitz and has a noted place in Czech music. The group has recorded his three string quartets, which were the impetus for choosing Haas's name, we are told, rather than as a statement about the Holocaust.
- [Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Albert Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/simon-boccanegra-royal-albert-hall/) - Streaks of gold. Among Verdi operas that connoisseurs treasure but not the general public, Simon Boccanegra stands high. In the modern era there have been perhaps two worthy recordings and very occasional stagings. Yet suddenly Boccanegra is everywhere, thanks to the decision by Placido Domingo to take on a baritone role. Last night at the Proms he scored a spectacular success, with popping flashbulbs and shouting worthy of the World Cup. Verdi was a confirmed atheist, but if his shade survives, it must have been astonished – the reception was far wilder than the one accorded to Die Meistersinger the night before.
- [Two Song Recitals: Mark Padmore and Felicity Lott](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/padmore-and-lott/) - Sterling or plate? Great singers will always be rare, and if they take up German lieder, their scarcity reaches the vanishing point. In the opera house one never has to worry about a shortage of cheers from, well, people who don’t know any better. But lieder aficionados are specialists. A singer faces a hall, usually small, packed with sharp tastes and sharper tongues. I am of that breed. It’s not something I care to put on my resume when I give an account of my soul to Saint Peter, but no doubt I’ll make a remark about the acoustics in Paradise and spoil my chances anyway. Acoustically, London has some fine small halls, the most golden being Wigmore and Cadogan, the latter a miraculous accident when it opened in the nineties, since the building’s original use was as a Christian Science church. London appears equally lucky in the number of dedicated song recitalists it contains, but there’s the rub.
- [Mahler: Symphony No.8 in E flat major, 'Symphony of a Thousand'](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/mahler-symphony-of-a-thousand/) - Sacred monster. This year’s Proms season began with the Mahler Eighth, which is like having the Queen Mary tootle up the Thames for the first day of Henley. (To let us down gently, we get Die Meistersinger tomorrow night and Simon Boccanegra the night after that – no musician in London will go without a paycheck this week.) In the bad old days all of Mahler’s symphonies were accused of being freakishly outsized, but only this one, to my mind, qualifies. One longs for it to be smaller, even when the chorus is only six hundred strong, as it was last night, well short of the eight hundred or so it would take to qualify as the “Symphony of a Thousand” – to be fair, the nickname was added by an imaginative impressario. The symphony has trouble getting ashore, but worse than that, Mahler’s conception is self-defeating.
- [Paavo Järvi at Royal Albert Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/paavo-jarvi/) - Punchy, zingy, raspy, and rushed. By far the most erratic concert of the summer season was delivered at last night's Prom where Paavo Jarvi brought his small band of Bremen town musicians (that is, the well-regarded Deutsche Kammer-Philharmonie Bremen). When Haydn made his second celebrated visit to London in 1794, he employed an orchestra of up to eighty musicians playing before crowds of perhaps a thousand. So it's pure affectation to ask forty musicians to play two of Beethoven's most powerful works, the Violin Concerto and Symphony no. 5, in the yawning spaces of Albert Hall, which seats over six thousand. In the name of period style we were treated last night to three double basses, all but unheard beyond the first few rows. They might as well have sawed the air.
- [Sondheim at 80 - excerpts from Sondheim Works](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/sondheim-at-80-excerpts-from-sondheim-works/) - Master of all trades. Stephen Sondheim’s career has been a slippery alloy of brilliance and spite. The brilliance is entirely his; the spite seeps from Broadway‘s “vultures, hangers on, and harbingers of bad news.” The quote is from a BBC interview this spring, indicating that at 80, Sondheim either feels the old barbs or is reconciled to being the perpetual outsider. His melodies can be as sweet as cream toffee, but you have to walk over broken glass to get to them. Addicted to puzzles and word games, he inserts them liberally into his lyrics, which are never for the dull witted. Before him, the American musical was a national pastime. Show tunes made the top 40, and everyone knew the numbers from Oklahoma. (In Sondheim, the corn is as high as a salamander‘s eye.) Even Kurt Weill cottoned that he had to transform the scabrous ironies of his Berlin work into something anodyne and folksy once he crossed the Atlantic. Sondheim alone was willing to write with a razor and strop. The way that critics reviled him, you’d think he filched the champagne from Die Fledermaus and substituted cyanide.
- [Henry Moore Exhibition at the Tate Britain](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/henry-moore-exhibition-tate-britain/) - Ship of state. In his long lifetime, which spanned the buggy whip and the atom bomb, Henry Moore’s sculptures were never derided for being “lumpy, swollen, etiolated, hunched, extruded, squashed, and dismembered” by anyone who championed modern art. Such disdain has been saved for our time. The quote is from a London daily's art critic on the opening of Tate Britain’s large Moore exhibit, and she has no patience for the artist’s repetitiveness, lack of originality, overproduction (the museum culled over a hundred sculptures and drawings from a possible 11,000), endless borrowing from his betters (particularly Picasso), ubiquity as a favorite of corporations and colleges that need to art up the place (my college boasts a large, expensive Moore outside my old dorm), and so on. Such are the whines of twerpdom, which every iconic artist endures as the generations change. The only exception I can think of is the Teflon-coated reputation of Cezanne.
- [Valery Gergiev, BBC Proms 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/valery-gergiev-bbc-proms-2010/) - Capo di tutti capi. If you must have a gang invade your turf, let it be a gang of scintillating Russian conductors. The UK is in that enviable position - for some reason the Russians haven’t made real inroads in America - and Valery Gergiev in particular has London at his feet. All but the critics, that is. They are grumpy about Gergiev, and admittedly he is a grandstander. His first concert this summer was a program of almost amusing arrogance as he led the World Orchestra for Peace in the Mahler Fourth and Fifth symphonies. One knew in advance that it would be too much of a glorious thing. The mega-wattage of the orchestra, which draws its roster from the great orchestras of the world (even the back bench violins are first and second desk players at home) insured an evening of thrills. This ad hoc ensemble premiered in 1995, the brain child of Sir Georg Solti, who wanted it to symbolize harmony among all peoples. High-flown sentiments, but on the rare occasions when the World Orchestra assembles, with Gergiev now at the head, even the citizens of Berlin and Vienna have to take notice. This is orchestral playing of sizzling virtuosity.
- [David Robertson, BBC Proms 2010](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/robertson-bbc-proms/) - The buddy system. Last night’s Prom was as close to an all-smiles evening as one could hope for with rain pouring down all day. David Robertson, although known as a champion of contemporary music, programmed two easy pieces, the Barber Violin Concerto, which is about as challenging as a box of caramels (very delicious caramels) and the Sibelius Second Symphony, a sure-fire hit in Nordic-friendly Britain. There are so many stories of promising American conductors who falter in middle age (Robertson turned 52 last month) that I was eager to hear him a second time. The first was with the Boston Symphony some years ago. Before I register my impressions, however, there’s a spic-and-span back story to his career — apparently this man has left behind him a trail of good will wherever he goes. He looks fit and friendly, with flat gray hair and the long face of a Yankee banker sitting for a Copley portrait. Born and raised in Malibu — not an arduous beginning, one assumes — Robertson was educated at the Royal Academy of Music. This tie to London glided into becoming the chief guest conductor of the BBC Symphony, which he presided over last night with happy faces all around. Robertson even entered the thorny patch that is the Ensemble Intercomtemporain in Paris and was cheered on despite having no ties to its founder, the formidable Pierre Boulez. Robertson preferred to conduct John Adams instead, and he got away with it.
- [Rembrandt in London: Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries at the National Gallery](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/09/rembrandt-close-examination-fakes-mistakes-discoveries-national-gallery-london/) - Fortune and men’s eyes. Rembrandt, like Beethoven, has had the good fortune of familiarity breeding deeper admiration. Contempt was never a possibility. The same can’t be said for Raphael and Rubens, who have suffered scorn — and still do — interspersed with worship. But there has never been a masterpiece by Beethoven that was later attributed to a much lesser composer like Czerny or Spohr, while this happens regularly to Rembrandt. London is one of the great storehouses of Rembrandt paintings, along with New York and Amsterdam, and one can find works here that were lauded in the past but now are relegated to Gerard Dou (who?) or Jan Lievens (never heard of him). Among art experts both are respectable craftsmen, perhaps far better than that, but footnotes to a footnote when it comes to a titan like Rembrandt.
- [Esa-Pekka Salonen and Christian Tetzlaff in Bartók with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/bartok-salonen-tetzlaff-philharmonia/) - The saint of Bleaker Street. Morose, manic, and methodical. They all alliterate with Magyar, the Hungarian spirit that ran through Bartók, and each term applies to his music. But the saddest match would be martyr. In God’s calculus of gifts, to those who suffer most, the most is given. Bartók’s soul must have believed in that formula. Like the other two titans of modernism, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, he was triply alienated, being a genius, an expatriate, and a logician of the abstruse. All three composers were forced to deal with their complex fates, yet Bartók made of his a via dolorosa.
- [Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream with the English National Opera](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/britten-midsummer-nights-dream-english-national-opera/) - Feral fairies. Anyone afraid of a sugar overdose had nothing to worry about at the English National Opera's fiercely odd production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a company that often traffics between radical and gimmicky, every once in a while being capable of acts of metamorphosis. In this case the director, Christopher Alden, seems to have taken his cue from the first sound we hear: slithery glissandos in the lower strings that introduce the fairy world not with whimsy and a twinkle but a wave of sea-sick nausea. In a daring move, the entire production metastasizes from the queasiness of that sound. The initial effect was to travesty Shakespeare's magical comedy — audience members who stalked up the aisle before the first act ended clearly didn't appreciate such high-handedness — but the music has never sounded so disturbing, or so convincing.
- [Maurizio Pollini Plays Chopin, Debussy and Boulez](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/pollini-projec-chopin-debussy-boulez/) - Lion in winter. Concert audiences now whoop and whistle for their artists, and I couldn't help but wonder how this affects Maurizio Pollini. At sixty-nine, he has been before the public for fifty years, ever since winning the Chopin International Competition in 1960 at the age of eighteen. His white hair is wispy on top (this is art, so let's call it an aureole). He still walks briskly to the piano and hits the first keys with unnerving alacrity. When Rosa Ponselle made her London debut, the veteran diva Nellie Melba gave her a friendly warning: nothing but nothing could induce British audiences to give a standing ovation. Dame Nellie was reportedly quite put out when her young American rival earned a standing ovation at Covent Garden every night. Pollini earns the same, even when he ends his program, as he did last night, with Boulez's fearsome Piano Sonata no. 2. One way to insure that posterity will consider you a fool is to mock modern music, but in the annals of unapproachable and uningratiating works, the Boulez sonata must attain a kind of summa.
- [Elisabeth Leonskaja Plays Schubert at Wigmore Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/elisabeth-leonskaja-plays-schubert-wigmore/) - Borscht and tears. It's always fascinating — and enigmatic — to hear what a pianist will do with Schubert. The scores have few markings to lead the interpretation, and Schubert's balancing act between simplicity and subsumed emotions is precarious. For a long time he wasn't given the benefit of the doubt when it came to the basic issue of whether he knew how to write for the instrument. His sonatas, early and late, are marked by repetitiveness, peculiar key changes and abrupt mood swings that can seem eccentric, unless you accept that a genius knows what he's doing even if we sometimes don't. Beethoven tests a pianist's moral character; Schubert tests a pianist's ability to solve riddles.
- [Lars Vogt plays Janáček, Schubert, and Beethoven Op. 111 at Wigmore Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/lars-vogt-janacek-schubert-beethoven-wigmore-hall/) - Worldly wise. I have enough concerts at Wigmore Hall under my belt to qualify as a Wiggie (not that I could ever vote Tory), if it's not too cheeky to nickname the knowing regulars at this, the best hall in London. The seating capacity is only 540, a minnow that would disappear in the maw of Albert Hall, so the stars who appear here do it for love, not to mention the warm, enveloping acoustic—this must be the closest that a Pollini or Tetzlaff comes to singing in the shower. We are just a week past Pollini's recital in Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, but the chills and tingles he failed to supply, sadly, came with a rush at Wigmore last night.
- [Diane Arbus at the Tate Modern](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/diane-arbus-tate-modern/) - Camera obscura. Despite its conversion into the hippest museum in London, the Tate Modern's massive ugly building, unmistakably an old power station, could otherwise be one of Blake's dark Satanic mills. In that guise it's the perfect setting for three rooms lined with photographs by Diane Arbus. There would seem to be nothing new to say, or think, about Arbus's scalding vision. She roamed the ordinary New York of commuters and shoppers, and yet somehow simply to have her eye settle on strangers transformed them.
- [Rubens in London](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/rubens-london/) - Titian, Rembrandt, and who? Several years ago I read an assessment of Peter Paul Rubens in the New Yorker which called him "history’s chief painter’s painter," while snatching back the compliment in the next breath, dubbing him "the leading pictorial decorator, propagandist, and entertainer for a Catholic Europe." Since depreciation is more fun than appreciation, the magazine's art critic says, of Rubens' female nudes, "all that smothering flesh, vibrantly alive but with the erotic appeal of a mud slide." As zingers go, here's another goodie: "Nor do Rubens’s characters appear significantly more intelligent than his farm animals."
- [First Night of the Proms 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/bbc-prom-1-2011/) - Check the odometer. The Proms deserve a jolly rev up when they start, and after 117 summer seasons, it was a fresh young pianist, Benjamin Grosvenor, who provided it. At nineteen, he came out in a casual shirt looking like a college freshman who might be spending his vacation as a pizza delivery boy or valet parking attendant. Those attendants are notorious for taking Porsches and Jags for a quick spin, returning them with hot wheels. Grosvenor had his chances with Liszt's Piano Concerto no. 2, but he returned it respectfully to its owner. He displayed glittering fingers and a beguiling soft touch at the beginning, but this work is faux art, setting a mood simply to tease the audience before the fireworks display.
- [Prom 4: Havergal Brian's Symphony No 1 "The Gothic"](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/prom-havergal-brian-symphony-gothic/) - OMG! The appearance of Havergal Brian's "Gothic" Symphony is like the biblical Leviathan surfacing in Hyde Park. It's epochal. The buses lined up behind the monster aren't full of gawkers but the assembled forces needed to perform the work, not counting trucks loaded with 32 timpani, eight brass choirs, a horde of extra offstage trumpets, and more — much, much more. Choruses throng from all points of the compass. Somewhere at the musicians' union a shop foreman is screaming into the phone, "Don't tell me we've run out of ophicleides and sarrusophones! This is apocalypse!" Oh wait, it was Berlioz who calls for ophicleides and sarrusophones. But some wisp of his spirit hovered over Stoke-on-Trent when the very, very dotty composer, Havergal Brian, was born in 1876.
- [The French Orchestra at the Proms: Myung-Whun Chung Conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/french-orchestra-proms-myung-whun-chung-conducts-orchestre-philharmonique-radio-france/) - Whee! Paree. A general moaning arose from music reviewers, starting around forty years ago, about French orchestras. They no longer sounded French. No more pinched oboes being played through the nose. No more horns sounding as if they were warbling underwater or inbred with the saxophone clan. No more lean, on-the-dot precision in the strings. As they lamented this loss, the same bemoaners forgot that they once carped about the very sound that was fading away. Uncharacteristically, the French were listening.
- [Prom 13: Verdi's Requiem](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/prom-13-verdi-requiem/) - Temporary immortality. The Verdi Requiem is an event, a masterpiece, an emotional catharsis, but also an old shoe. Well worn by dozens of recordings since two great ones, by Toscanini and De Sabata, started the grooves turning, it hasn't been saved from familiarity by being magnificent, any more than the Grand Canyon has. What do you do to breathe life back into music that has been worn down by so many feet? (I apologize to readers who feel that I'm asking the equivalent of "Caviar again? Didn't we have that yesterday?")
- [The English National Ballet's Tribute to Roland Petit](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/english-national-ballets-tribute-roland-petit/) - Stilettos, ready! To keep the audience entertained, the postwar French choreographer Roland Petit resorted to high jinks, low jinks, whatever jinks he could summon. He's a one-man, nonstop coup de theatre. Petit's women, long-legged and aloof, aren't asked to be graceful so much as dangerous and strange: they slither, prance and stamp, opening and closing their knees in insectoid twitches and mechanical jerks. It's as if they are perched on high-heeled toes. The men must earn advanced degrees in acrobatics (with post-graduate liniment for their abused muscles) to perform Petit's Cirque de Soleil cartwheels, tumbling, and feats of strength (such as forming a human bridge for the ballerina to stretch out on — at least she doesn't walk over it in stilettos). These antics were on display in a triple bill mounted by the ever-ebullient English National Ballet, the romping younger sibling of the Royal Ballet, which soberly covets its right of primogeniture.
- [Prom 15: Liszt's Faust Symphony, Kodály and Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/prom-15-liszt-kodaly-bartok/) - Loved to dearth. Without remembering any legal documents I signed that had Satan written in the small print, just when I forget how tawdry and thin Liszt's Faust Symphony is, it comes around again and I give it another chance. Too late. I hear the old guy cackle and the doors of Albert Hall clanging shut. The only way to overcome the symphony's clattering banality is for the conductor to bash the score within an inch of its life. The thing won't die — no fear of that — and if there is truly inspired leadership, as from Leonard Bernstein and Jascha Horenstein in their classic recordings, the music will bring genuine pleasure, like the circus.
- [Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh at Wyndham's](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/abigails-party-mike-leigh-wyndham-london/) - Gin and it. There are cocktail parties, and then there are cocktail parties. Dramatists like to use them as a trope for the viral malaise that has infected middle-class life. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the unraveling of a marriage is x-rayed with malicious glee, while in the sedate confines of The Cocktail Party T.S. Eliot takes up his familiar, morose theme of "shoring up fragments against our ruin," giving us hints of the Alcestis of Euripides so that the failed marriage at the heart of the play has mythic resonance. (Albee seemed to stretch for all-American resonance by naming his duelling couple George and Martha, although the relevance to George and Martha Washington never hit home for me — history is the last thing one thinks about as the air blisters and boils in the play.)
- [Prom 54: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Frederick Delius and Shostakovich](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/prom-54-davies-delius-shostakovich/) - Resistance movements. It didn't take long for everyone to realize that they had a musical star in Vasily Petrenko, the boyish thirtysomething conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He debuted with them in 2004 at the age of 28 with brilliant promise. No one spoke of promise after a concert or two; they were already floored. One of a star's perks is a roaring welcome at the Proms. You'd have thought at the end of their concert two nights ago that the orchestra had just played Crown Imperial rather than the angst-ridden Shostakovich Tenth.
- [BBC Prom 63: Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/bbc-prom-63-rattle-berlin/) - Three-star chef. Life may not be a box of chocolates, but the Berlin Philharmonic is, and during their first visit to Royal Albert Hall this Proms season, Sir Simon Rattle made gestures that were like plucking nougatine from a dazzling array of sweets. He beams as he conducts, looking seraphic in a nimbus of snow white hair, and why not? At his disposal is an instrument of unparalleled virtuosity, and he sometimes puts his hands down at his side, gazing in rapt appreciation. If his interpretation should falter, the orchestra will carry the music along as if on a flying carpet. I can imagine someone tiring of London without tiring of life. No one who loves music could tire of the Berliners.
- [Children of the Sun at the National Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/children-sun-national-theatre/) - Molotov cocktail hour. Writing a three-act play while imprisoned under orders from the Czar probably wasn't as romantic as it sounds. But when the play is as good as Gorky's Children of the Sun (premiered in 1905), the feat is impressive, all the more because it took him only a month. Gorky means "bitter" in Russian, and he had taken it as his pen name when producing reams of revolutionary journalism on behalf of the rising Bolsheviks. Yet this particular play isn't bitter, revolutionary, or tilted toward gritty realism the way The Lower Depths is. That earlier play made Gorky world famous, luckily for him, since it took a protest by eminent foreign writers to coax the Czarist police to release him from the Peter and Paul Fortress, his new play drying on the page.
- [Shostakovich's Rediscovered Opera 'Orango' and the Fourth Symphony in London](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/shostakovich-orango-fourth-symphony-london/) - By the skin of his teeth. As a bizarre offshoot of the workers' paradise, Soviet ideology boasted of creating a New Man, with possible help from the apes — before DNA was discovered, crackpot experiments that involved interbreeding humans with lower primates were conceived. The only success was fictitious, a creature named Orango who began life as a French journalist before being injected with chimpanzee serum. He is the sullen, furry anti-hero of a satirical opera begun by Shostakovich in 1932, and although the weirdness of the libretto may have been a stumbling block, another was probably political: Orango spoofed the decadent West (the creature uses his intelligence to become a stock market manipulator but retains a King Kong-like appetite for blondes). Did Orango's brutish manners shave a bit too close to Stalin? Or did he dangerously mock the promise of a New Man?
- [Vladimir Jurowski Conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Prokofiev and Shostakovich  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/jurowski-london-shostakovich-prokofiev/) - Crossing the color line. In the twentieth century Russian music became a standoff between revolution and counter-revolution, the irony being that the White Russian composers who fled the Bolsheviks were the true revolutionaries while the Reds who stayed to endure Soviet rule were forced to toe the line of backward-looking conservatism. But the music isn't easily color-coded. Vladimir Jurowski led a concert of neoclassical Stravinsky and romantic Prokofiev that betrayed almost no revolutionary instincts, ending with the painful wail of the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony, whose Soviet credentials were never pure enough to satisfy the apparatchiks of the Composers Union.
- [Damien Hirst Retrospective at the Tate Modern](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/damien-hirst-retrospective-tate-modern/) - No British artist in living memory has achieved the glaring notoriety of Damien Hirst. As a teen-ager his idea of a fun photo was posing next to the swollen head of a corpse in a morgue. In the photo he grins with crazy intensity, and ever since then his aim has been to dazzle with disgust. One imagines that he wanders the streets in an acid-green spotlight waving off paparazzi the way Orestes waved off flies. In fact, flies figure into several of Hirst's pieces. One is an installation in which maggots are eating a skinned cow's head. Another is a black disc mounted on the wall made of resin and squashed houseflies. The repellent is Hirst's muse.
- [Turner at the Tate  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/turner-tate/) - A penny for the old guy. The original London Eye wasn't a Ferris wheel on the Thames but J.M.W. Turner, whose visual genius and all-encompassing vision engulfed everything in its path. Until the electroshock treatment applied by Francis Bacon, generations of British painters were subsumed by him. Paying obeisance to the great man is both a duty and a delight when visiting Tate Britain, and now the Turner galleries have been completely rehung for the first time since the mid-Nineties.
- [The Proms: Haitink and Perahia with the Vienna Philharmonic](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/haitink-perahia-vienna-philharmonic-proms/) - Perennial spring. The Vienna Philharmonic never wants for love and respect, being showered with both almost beyond measure. Their PR department must consist of an answering machine that says, “Thanks for adoring us. Maybe we’ll call you back.” Since their principal season is spent in the opera house, the Philharmonic gives few orchestral concerts compared with the world’s other premiere ensembles. After earning raves and an audience hanging from the rafters at the Proms this summer, these august visitors were described by one London critic as “lifetime members of the high table.” It’s become de rigeur to carp about the absence of women in the orchestra (I counted three), but otherwise, a critic might as well push a macro key on his computer set to endless praise.
- [BBC Proms 67 and 69: The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/bbc-prom-67-69-leipzig-chailly/) - Rocky road. Rebuilding an orchestra is one of the most complex tasks imaginable, requiring delicate negotiations as well as sometimes abrupt firings, a soothing hand with the musicians' pride but also a new broom to sweep out the old dust. Riccardo Chailly, who at 69 is an eminence on the podium, set out to renew the venerable Leipzig Gewandhaus, historically the orchestra of Mendelssohn. Languishing behind the Iron Curtain after World War II did them no good, however, and where the Dresden Staatskapelle managed miraculously to keep up world-class standards, the Leipzigers weren't so lucky. I didn't hear them during their long dark period, but the recordings that came West were nothing special, except in Mendelssohn.
- [Re: Incarnation - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/uncle-boonmee-who-can-recall-his-past-lives-apichatpong-weerasethakul/) - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, by Gabriel Kellett
- [The Tree of Life, by Terrence Malick](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/the-tree-of-life/) - First disobedience. Sticklers are fond of pointing out that Proust was not remembering things past but in search of lost time, as the original French title says. So is Terrence Malick. His most Proustian film to date is The Tree of Life, which is now awing and stumping audiences, trailing a Palme d'Or from Cannes in its processional through movie houses where most of the audience, children of Star Wars and Scooby Doo, stand as amazed as Nebudchadnezzar reading God's message in fiery letters. The film is autobiographical and philosophical, like Proust's A la recherche, and just as maannered in its stylized language, although in this case the invented diction is visual.
- [A Woman Killed with Kindness at the National Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/a-woman-killed-with-kindness-national-theatre/) - Whether or not Charles Lamb was over-generous in calling Heywood “Shakespeare in prose”, it quickly becomes evident watching Katie Mitchell’s production of his best work A Woman Killed With Kindness (first performed in 1603) that neither director nor cast have much faith in his literary merits. Frenetic stage action across an expensively exquisite split-set by Lizzie Clachan and Vicki Mortimer aims to literally bulk out what the company clearly believes is an insubstantial text, one merely possessing salacious plot elements for a prurient modern audience seeking high-brow soap-opera. In the comfortable house to the right we have the unhappy marriage of John Frankford and his wife, destroyed by her infidelity with their houseguest, Wendoll, while she is heavily pregnant. To the left, in a grander but colder manor, Anne’s brother Sir Francis Acton engages in an altogether less lusty and consenting relationship with Susan, the woman he is offered as compensation for bailing her murderer brother Sir Charles Mountford – by Charles himself.
- [Degas and The Ballet: Picturing Movement: 
Royal Academy of Arts, London
, September 17 – December 11th](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/degas-ballet-picturing-movement/) - Can anything new be said about Degas and the dance? Those beautiful pastels and oils of rehearsal studios, those figures framed by stage flats, the three-dimensional sculptures have all passed into the canon of art history, and they are as inseparably linked to Edgar Degas as are the subtexts of voyeurism and misogyny. But the Royal Academy’s current exhibition, Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, aims for something new as its subtitle suggests. Of course, there is plenty to delight the eye with a spread of some eighty-five works by one of the most idiosyncratic of Impressionist artists, and the range of major loans—especially from private collections—is staggering as is the quality of the selection. This bounty is not surprising, given that Richard Kendall, probably the doyen of Degas specialists, is the chief curator;” yet what makes this exhibition stand out among the generality of shows on Degas is that it contrives to mount two exhibitions at once: one on the artist’s obsession with the ballet and ballerinas, the other about the nineteenth-century’s obsession with deciphering locomotion.
- [Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, The National Gallery of Art, London, November 9, 2011 – February 5, 2012](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-court-milan-national-gallery-of-art-london/) - The crowds begin as one approaches the rear of the building: a long line, snaking back on itself contains those hopeful of gaining one of the 500 tickets on sale each day; further on, is a smaller queue of the luckier ones who had snapped up all the online tickets during the first three days of sale. Overall, the crowds are well behaved—for this is England—and approach their goal with good humor and a touch of the spirit of Dunkirk as they descend upon the National Gallery’s runaway success, Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan. It is not a large show, only some sixty paintings and drawings, but then Leonardo only began a score of paintings in a career spanning four decades. Of those paintings, fifteen autograph works survive, and four of these are generally deemed incomplete. To assemble almost every surviving painting from Leonardo’s Milanese period in London is a notable achievement, and these works are supplemented by others associated with his followers and sometime collaborators in the most sustained period of productivity in the artist’s life.
- [Glyndebourne's Swinging Marriage of Figaro at the Proms](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/marriage-of-figaro-glyndebourne/) - Let's do the twist! The Count sports a Sgt. Pepper mustache and velvet brocade bell bottoms. The Countess is dressed in a caftan that looks like William Morris wallpaper. Cherubino wears a skin-hugging flowery shirt. Yes, Glyndebourne has dared to set The Marriage of Fiagro as a romp through London in the swinging Sixties, and after holding your breath for the first ten minutes, it begins to work because it's funny — a ridiculous sartorial period marries into the world of Marie Antoinette. Like a drunk uncle at the wedding, the swingers loosen everybody up. Once Countess Almaviva stops feeling sorry for herself and begins to frug — or is it the swim? — infectious absurdity wins the day.
- [Peter Grimes, Prom 55, London 2012](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/britten-peter-grimes-london-2012/) - Noble and/or savage. In this Olympic summer the Proms have been lavish with opera productions, and I suppose the sheer Englishness of Peter Grimes made it an automatic choice. The production, done in concert without sets, came from the English National Opera with most of the original cast intact – it was first staged in 2009 – and was conducted for beauty and precision by the ENO's music director, Edward Gardner. I'm getting the bare bones out of the way because it's hard to revisit Britten's seminal opera – the one that ratified his status as the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell – without feeling queasy.
- [Patrick Keiller: The Robinson Institute at Tate Britain  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/08/patrick-keiller-robinson-institute-tate/) - Occasionally I've thought that in my role as The Berkshire Review's 'London correspondent' I ought to focus sometimes on things that are more culturally British; unfortunately, I just don't think much of British culture generally, and with the Olympics now here, decimating arts funding and forcing friends and colleagues of mine out of their homes due to massive rent increases, I feel arguably less inclined than ever to take up the baton for this country.
- [Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Siegfried, Royal Opera House Covent Garden under Antonio Pappano with John Tomlinson as Wotan](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/10/richard-wagner-ring-des-nibelungen-siegfried-royal-opera-house-antonio-pappano-john-tomlinson/) - When, in my review of his recent performance to Haydn’s Creation, I was reflecting on Sir Colin Davis’ career, I mentioned the Ring Cycle he conducted at Covent Garden in 1976. I thought that Siegfried was the most successful of the performances, because Sir Colin seemed to have fallen in love with its spectacular score. In no other work are the beauties of Wagner’s composition so constantly and so openly present. As I sat raptly in my seat, the orchestra and all the wonderful qualities Sir Colin could reveal in it were without a doubt the focus of my attention. And so it is for most of us in most performances, past or present, whether it is Furtwängler, Knappertsbusch, Solti, Böhm (whose splendid Bayreuth performances, available on Philips, should be better remembered), Boulez, or Levine. The orchestra functions as storyteller—a surpassingly eloquent one, with all the resources of Wagner’s musical imagination.
- [A Note from Bayreuth](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/a-note-from-bayreuth/) - I had originally planned this commentary simply to let you, our readers, know about the changes in our usual coverage for the remainder of the summer: Larry Wallach, Seth Lachterman, and Keith Kibler will bravely continue their coverage of summer festivals in the Berkshires and Hudson Valley, while I visit Bayreuth, to review the entire 2010 season: Tankred Dorst's production of the Ring, along with the controversial productions of Parsifal (Stefan Herheim, 2008), Die Meistersinger (Katharina Wagner, 2007), and Lohengrin (Hans Neuenfels, 2010). I left my rat-catching gear at home, not wishing to incur overweight charges and thinking it might be cheaper simply to purchase the necessaries here, but all the ratting supply stores in Bayreuth are sold out of equipment, and I realize that I simply have to remain unrattled, while the rodents run free.
- [Stephen Sondheim's Road Show at Menier Chocolate Factory](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/stephen-sondheim-road-show-menier/) - Music at the close. The adage is leave 'em wanting more, not less, but Stephen Sondheim has barely skirted the latter fate. At eighty-one, he's been erratically revising a problem child since 1999 that is now called, blandly, Road Show. Under various uninspired titles — Wise Guys, Gold!, and Bounce — the musical flipped and flopped around the country from Chicago to New York and Washington D.C. At every step of the way Sondheim, being Sondheim, attracted the biggest names to direct and star, including Hal Prince and Nathan Lane. But no luck.
- [Prom 26: Debussy, Dutilleux, Ravel - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Donald Runnicles, Lynn Harrell, cello](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/08/prom-26-debussy-dutilleux-ravel-bbc-scottish-symphony-orchestra-runnicles-harrell/) - First off, a confession. Such, such are the joys of London transport that I arrived too late for the start of the Debussy, and was therefore not admitted till after the Prélude had finished. I have heard tell that there is a species of journalist that in this situation would confer with its fellow hacks and evaluate the consensus on the missed performance, before compiling a description along these party lines as though it were its own opinion. Fortunately, I am not that kind of journalist and would therefore not have the effrontery to hoodwink my innocent readers in this way. (Those of a political disposition have my full permission to consider the preceding sentences trenchant topical satire rather than pointless filler.) At least I can confirm that wherever the sound dissipates to in the Albert Hall's less-than-princely acoustic, it is not through its double set of side doors off the auditorium, which yielded up nary a note in the five minutes-plus I was stood outside awaiting entry.
- [Orchestral Mass at St. Paul's: Haydn's Nelson Mass and a Visit to the Wallace Collection](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/07/st-pauls-london-haydn-nelson-mass-wallace-collection/) - Tiziano Vecellio, Perseus and Andromeda, 1556, The Wallace Collection. During the Reign of Terror, refined Parisian ladies attended balls wearing a thin red ribbon around their necks in place of jewels, to signify the guillotine in a graphic way. (I forget if they were pro or con.) Mass executions and blood in the street are
- [The Pollini Project: Chopin, Debussy, Boulez, Royal Festival Hall, June 28, 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/pollini-project-chopin-debussy-boulez-royal-festival-hall-kellett/) - This was originally intended to be the penultimate programme of Pollini's five-concert Project spanning the gamut of keyboard repertoire from Bach to Boulez (albeit with a large Classical Period-sized gap), but has been postponed for a couple of months due to illness. In my opinion this has made for a more fitting end to the series, not only following chronological order but also concluding by challenging the audience with something 'modern' rather than the obvious crowd-pleasing Chopin of what became the fourth Project concert. Appropriately, this concert in fact draws a connection, perhaps not immediately obvious, between the hugely different Chopin and Boulez.
- [London Sinfonietta: Xenakis – Architect of Sound, London Sinfonietta and André de Ridder at the Southbank Centre's Ether Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/london-sinfonietta-xenakis-architect-of-sound-london-sinfonietta-de-ridder-southbank/) - The Southbank's annual Ether Festival, exploring innovative and multi-disciplinary approaches to contemporary music, includes this year a Xenakis weekend (perhaps timed to mark the tenth anniversary of the composer's death), of which this concert is a part; following the Barbican's "Total Immersion" day dedicated to him two years ago, there seems to be a bit of a vogue for Xenakis in London at the moment. I'm no aficionado, but have always been intrigued by his unique background as an architect and mathematician who applied the same structural principles to composition, and grateful that the resulting music doesn't sound remotely as sterile as one might imagine — in fact far less so, to my mind, than what one might call the pseudo-mathematical approach of total serialism.
- [The Pollini Project – Stockhausen, Schumann, Chopin, Royal Festival Hall May 25, 2011](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/pollini-project-stockhausen-schumann-chopin-royal-festival-hall-london/) - More years ago than I care to remember (OK, about ten), Edward Moore, my piano teacher at university, told me he used to be a great fan of Maurizio Pollini, but had grown disenchanted with him because he thought his playing had become completely dry, overly safe and devoid of emotion. Perhaps because he was by far the best teacher I'd ever had, I took this opinion seriously and allowed it to influence my perception of Pollini ever after, remaining a devout sceptic despite his evidently immense popularity.
- [London Sinfonietta perform Louis Andriessen's Anaïs Nin and De Staat at Queen Elizabeth Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/05/london-sinfonietta-louis-andriessens-anais-nin-de-staat-queen-elizabeth-hall/) - Years before I ever picked up any of their books, I was fascinated by the idea of the 'Lost Generation' of American writers in Paris between the World Wars; now that I've actually read The Great Gatsby, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and even a couple of Anaïs Nin's books (Gertrude Stein's going to have to wait, though), I felt I couldn't pass up the chance to hear this UK premiere of the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's piece inspired by Nin's relationships with several of her many lovers from that time—among them her father.
- [Sergio Tiempo at Queen Elizabeth Hall: Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, and Ravel](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/sergio-tiempo-queen-elizabeth-hall-beethoven-liszt-chopin-ravel/) - As usual for me, this was a concert I chose for the repertoire rather than the performer – three of my favourite composers and one (Liszt) I want to investigate further. It's always been pretty much just about the music(, man...), a philosophy I'd like to outgrow. There's not many 'artistes' in classical music that I feel either enthused or knowledgeable enough about to call myself a fan of yet, but one exception is Martha Argerich, who has consistently championed Sergio Tiempo and regularly performs with him. Based on this knowledge and what I'd gathered about him from reading snippets here and there, I went into his debut Southbank performance, part of their International Piano Series, with hopes that he had some of the mercuriality and fire that I love in Argerich.
- [Angela Gheorghiu at the Royal Festival Hall - Introducing our new London correspondent, Gabriel Kellett](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/11/angela-gheorghiu-royal-festival-hall/) - The recent news of Angela Gheorghiu’s impending divorce from Roberto Alagna may give some clue as to why this performance, part of the South Bank’s second ‘International Voices’ season, was postponed from its planned date of 2nd October. In the interim she has also, in the role of her accompanying tenor, swapped the American up-and-comer James Valenti, due to co-star with her in next year’s Covent Garden La Traviata, for her compatriot Marius Manea, who she has performed with several times already this year. The conductor Ion Marin made it three out of three for Romanians in the principal roles of the evening, here conducting the Philharmonia.
- [London Sinfonietta play Reich and Adès, Royal Festival Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/02/london-sinfonietta-reich-ades-royal-festival-hall-london/) - This is the first of a series of London Sinfonietta concerts to be guest conducted by Adès over the next month, including touring performances outside London where his piano concerto In Seven Days is coupled with a different Reich piece, Music for 18 Musicians. It was less than 18 months ago that the Sinfonietta performed that work at the Southbank Centre with a live relay open to all in the foyer, which proved very popular; rather than have to match that performance, I think they have made a canny programming choice by enticing some of the potential new audience gained by that concert with a less famous piece by the same composer. The combination of two Biblically-inspired pieces in this concert is also arguably a more interesting and appropriate pairing.
- [Twentieth Century Rocks at LSO St Luke’s: Guildhall Ubu Ensemble play Adams, Boulez, Varèse, and Zappa](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/twentieth-century-rocks-lso-st-lukes-guildhall-ubu-ensemble-adams-boulez-varese-zappa/) - It was the title of the concert that first caught my eye, a pun and a gratuitous film reference joined in unholy wedlock, with no objections raised from my pew. Then I noticed the performers. The Guildhall Ubu Ensemble are apparently no mere youth orchestra composed of Guildhall students, but “the musicians of tomorrow playing the music of our time.” I would condemn the arrogance and dubious accuracy of that statement, were I not too busy praising the superb choice of name and happily envisaging a future where all musicians pretend to be influenced by seminal proto-Surrealist literature.
- [Mozart and Da Ponte's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Bayerische Staatsoper](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/mozart-le-nozze-di-figaro-bayerische-staatsoper/) - Many of my most memorable early operatic experiences came from the Bayerische Staatsoper, either from when I was a student or a somewhat underoccupied summer intern in public relations. It's been all too long since my last visit, not to mention my last look at the Aigina pediments or the great Dürers in the Alte Pinakothek. In operatic terms the work of the Staatsoper is very much on this level. Hence, I'll not soon forget this three-day orgy, which began with a fine Nozze di Figaro, continued with Donizetti's Roberto Devereux with none other than Edita Gruberova as Elisabetta, and concluded with an important premiere, Peter Eötvös' and Albert Ostermaier's Die Tragödie des Teufels, an impeccable performance in a spectacular staging.
- [Gruberova and Haider bring back Donizetti's Roberto Devereux at the Bayerische Staatsoper](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/gruberova-haider-donizetti-roberto-devereux-bayerische-staatsoper/) - Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux (1837) is quite a rarity, and many who are new to it might be tempted to assume that this is rather well justified. It could be said that the librettist Cammerano concocted a travesty of the story of Elizabeth and Essex, with singularly unappealing characters tied up in a knot of bad faith and vengefulness (one might equally say that of Wagner's Ring, of course), and that Donizetti glossed over it with course after course of conventional emotivity bathed in meretricious bel canto sauces. However, after seeing and hearing this at first seemingly rather strange and off-putting but passionately committed production, only the most rigidly prejudiced will refuse to admit that they have been fascinated and moved. Conductor Friederich Haider, above all, conveyed his belief in Roberto Devereux's quality and power through his deep understanding of bel canto as a psychological and dramatic idiom. In fact his contribution was equalled by the magnificent performances of Edita Gruberova and Paolo Gavanelli. Christof Loy's production, which sets the action in modern Britain, may seem perverse at first and Herbert Murauer's set and costumes singularly depressing, but eventually the distracting contemporary details vanish, as one abandons oneself to Donizetti's spell.
- [Le tour de Guimardia (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/guimard-francaise/) - À ses devantures les pulls en cachemire aux couleurs des macarons. Derrière leurs digicodes ses hameaux reposants. Dans ses urnes les trois-quarts des votes pour Sarkozy. Cachés dans leurs Maseratis ses enfants habillés en noir. Le seizième arrondissement de Paris est en effet une péninsule entre le bois de Boulogne (qui lui appartient) et la Seine. Une frontière invisible le cerne, une petite résistance entre l’arrondissement et sa ville. On peut y retrouver les bâtiments de Perret, de Sauvage et (bientôt) de Gehry mais le seizième est le lieu de notre planète avec la plus grande concentration des bâtiments de Hector Guimard (1867-1942). Le seizième est à Guimard ce que Oak Park est à Frank Lloyd Wright, mais on peut y voir les bâtiments de toutes les périodes de sa carrière, de 1891 à 1927. Parmi ces bâtiments il y a bien des autres qui soutient la proposition, discutable j’espère, que le seizième soit l’arrondissement le plus intéressant sur le plan architectural. Après sa annexion à Paris en 1860, l'urbanisation arrivait au seizième pendant les années de Hector Guimard, une époque de plusieurs modernismes. À Paris un nouveau éclectisme architectural a commencé à résister l’Haussmannization épuisée. L’Art nouveau ne peut pas décrire l’ensemble de l’architecture de ces années, ou même l’architecture de Guimard lui-même, qui changeait au fil du temps. Puisque sa architecture n’était pas influente par rapport aux modernismes des années suivantes, l’oeuvre de Guimard vive trop souvent aux musées plutôt que dans les rues. Bien qu’il était une impasse dans l’histoire de l’architecture, qui ne veut pas habiter une telle ruelle.
- [The Tour of Guimardia (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/09/guimard-english/) - In its shopfronts cashmere sweaters the colors of macaroons. Behind their digicodes its reposing hameaux. In its ballot boxes three out of every four votes for Sarkozy. Hidden in their Maseratis its children dressed in black. The sixteenth arrondissement of Paris is a peninsula between the Bois de Boulogne (which belongs to it) and the Seine; there is the slight feeling of a border crossing, of breaching a feeble forcefield, upon entering or leaving. One can find here the works of Perret, Sauvage and, soon, Gehry, but it is the section of the Earth’s surface with the greatest concentration of buildings by Hector Guimard (1867-1942). The seizième is to Guimard as Oak Park is to Frank Lloyd Wright, except that it contains works from all periods of the architect’s career, from 1891 to 1927. Along the way one passes other buildings which support the contention, inherently arguable and worth arguing, that the sixteenth is the most architecturally interesting arrondissement. Annexed to the city in 1860, the seizième grew up in what we might call, with light apologies to Robert Caro, The Years of Hector Guimard, a complex, under-appreciated and richly contested period in the history of modern architecture. A new eclecticism began to rebel against the last moments of a played-out Haussmannization. Many modernisms were in play. Art Nouveau, which seems barely able to contain Guimard’s work, let alone the output of the entire period, may now seem the stuff of coffee table books, a particularly beautiful dead end, a fashion, a decorative style, but its surviving remnants hint of an influence more spiritual than physical.
- [Women Abandoned and Operas Revised for Better and Worse:  Glimmerglass Opera, 2014 (Part 2)](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/glimmerglass-american-tragedy-madama-butterfly-opera-2014-part-2/) - Naxos in Ms. Zambello’s staging appears to be a fictional town in upstate New York. Theodore Dreiser’s grim tale, An American Tragedy is set in the Greek-name Lycurgus (ironically, the lawgiver of Sparta) N.Y., another fabrication making one believe that upstate New York might be perceived as a birthplace of tragedy, pace Nietszche. Tobias Picker’s original operatic adaption of Dreiser’s novel was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and premiered in 2005. Francesca Zambello directed this version which was fairly well received. Since then, both Mr. Picker and librettist Gene Scheer have been steadily revising the original, mostly by broad-stroke cutting. In celebration of Mr. Picker’s sixtieth birthday, this latest edition premieres at Glimmerglass this season, again under the aegis of Ms. Zambello and directed by Peter Kazaras. The essay in the program provided by Thomas May give strong hints as to the intentions of the current revision. Giving us these clues is sensible since many of us (myself included) never saw the longer 2005 production. Dreiser’s tale is based on a lurid real-life murder in 1906, People v. Gillette. Chester Gillette (Clyde Griffiths in Dreiser’s novel), a worker in a skirt factory in Cortland, N.Y. (about two hours west of Glimmerglass), killed another employee, Grace Brown (Roberta Alden in the novel), who he had impregnated.
- [Charles Dutoit triumphs in Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony, with Kirill Gerstein in Beethoven](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/charles-dutoit-shostakovich-tenth-symphony-san-francisco/) - There's no question that the San Francisco Symphony is one of our great American orchestras. I go to as many of their Carnegie Hall concerts as I can, and if these are not a consistent joy, it has nothing to do with the musicians' capabilities, rather with the vagaries of Michael Tilson Thomas's talents and tastes—of which more later. The concert I am reporting on had little to do with MTT beyond his successful maintenance of Herbert Blomstedt's discipline.
- [Women Abandoned and Operas Revised for Better and Worse:  Glimmerglass Opera, 2014 (Part I)](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/glimmerglass-2014-part-1/) - Whether by intention or not, each of the three brilliant productions at Glimmerglass this summer feature profligate cads driving themselves and the women they profess to love to suicide, murder, and, in one case a "transformation" for the better. As well, each opera represented the finalizing of a revisionary work in progress by composer
- [Wind and Tree, a Three-screen Dance-video by Abe Abraham](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/08/wind-and-tree-a-three-screen-dance-video-abe-abraham/) - The three screens turned out to each be the size of a household flat-screen TV so I was a little taken aback having somehow expected to find three huge screens but no matter. Jack, a performance space, consisting of a large room with three of its four walls covered in tinfoil, made an unorthodox, but rather appropriate venue for this very avant-garde film which runs 45 minutes.
- [Mélisse - Distinguished French Cooking in Santa Monica](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/08/melisse-restaurant-santa-monica/) - Mélisse is now celebrating its tenth anniversary. At its location only a few hundred yards from the Santa Monica Pier, it has the feeling of a neighborhood institution, but not the honky-tonk neighborhood of Ye Olde King's Head and similar establishments along Santa Monica Boulevard and the beach — rather Brentwood and Beverly Hills, to which it is directly linked on its corner of Wilshire Boulevard. Since its beginnings, its founder, Chef Josiah Citrin and his staff have earned it two Michelin stars. The dining rooms have also been renovated into their present elegant and extremely soothing state only a few years ago.
- [The Best French Movie in Decades - The 2008 Tour de France](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/08/tour-de-france-2008/) - It was a childhood case of chicken pox which first introduced me to the Tour de France. The year was 1989, fortunately a very choice vintage indeed, in which Minnesota's Greg Lemond clawed back 58 seconds between Versailles and Paris to defeat the hapless Parisian ex-dental student Laurent Fignon. I remember my confusion, a common response among those new to the Tour, as to which of the two was actually the Frenchman.
- [Collection Robert Lebel: Old Master and 19th-century Drawings , Sotheby's Paris, Auction, March 25, 2009](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/03/collection-robert-lebel-old-master-19th-century-drawings-sotheby-paris/) - Whenever a work of art changes hands there is always a story behind it. When a collection appears on the market an entire lifetime emerges, or, in the case of figures like Robert Lebel (1901-1986), a chapter in history. In the catalogue to the sale of his old master drawings, Sotheby's manages to condense Lebel's extraordinary range of interests and experience into a single paragraph. To say that he "defied classification" is not an exaggeration. An art historian and collector, he wrote essays, novels, as well as the first biography of Marcel Duchamp. He was a friend of André Breton, Max Ernst, and Jacques Lacan. During the Second World War the circle went into exile in New York, where Matta, Tanguy, and Claude Lévi-Strauss joined them. At this time Lebel acquired as special interest in American Indian art, especially Eskimo art. His pioneering collection of Eskimo masks was sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 2006. Now Sotheby's has dispersed his important collection of old master and 19th-century drawings.
- [Orchestre de Paris: Blomstedt and Mustonen in Stravinsky and Bruckner](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/04/orchestre-de-paris-blomstedt-olli-mustonen-stravinsky-bruckner/) - I am always delighted to attend any concert under Herbert Blomstedt, who fortunately conducts the Boston Symphony quite often, both in Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, where he is especially valued, not only as a conductor, but as a teacher at the Tanglewood Music Center. At 82, after an impressive career as music director of several great orchestras, including the Dresdener Staatskapelle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the San Francisco Symphony (all of which have been received a good deal of attention on the Review of late...look soon for a review of the partially great Dresden Ring). After Steven Kruger most perceptively reviewed his Bruckner Sixth with the San Francisco Symphony, I was lucky enough to catch up with Maestro Blomstedt in Paris, where he conducted Bruckner’s pivotal Fifth Symphony. I was also fortunate to have a brief, informal chat with him after the performance, as well as with the brilliant soloist, Olli Mustonen, who is less well known than he should be, because, like Sibelius, he spends a good deal of his time in rural Finland, enjoying family life and composing. After this concert, he was looking forward to going home to his wife and his week-old son.
- [Das Rheingold initiates the Opéra national de Paris’ Ring Cycle at the Bastille](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/06/das-rheingold-wagner-ring-opera-national-de-paris-bastille/) - Although Wagner, never able to give up his bitterness over the failure of Tannhaüser, may have taken nothing but bitter memories of Paris to his grave, his later music, including the Ring, enjoyed a devoted and extensive following in France. At last year’s Bard Festival André Dombrowsky explored the popularization of his music through simplified piano arrangements for domestic use, and Larry Bensky discussed Wagner’s role in Proust’s life and imagination. The French can look back to distinguished tradition in Wagner production, and today Wagner is as alive in Toulouse and Lyon as it is in Paris. Nonetheless, productions of the Ring have been rather sparse at the Paris Opera: the first, sung in French translation and conducted by André Messager, did not occur until 1911 (Rheingold 1909). The second, this time in German and conducted by one of the most authoritative German Wagner conductors, Hans Knappertsbusch, came forty-four years later, in 1955! There was Peter Stein production of Das Rheingold in 1976 under Solti, which never developed into a full Ring Cycle. The Ring production initiated by this Rheingold is a historical first, as the first production of the work for the Opéra Bastille, which opened in 1989, and the first complete Ring by the Paris Opera since 1957. With a German production team and a Swiss conductor, Philippe Jordan, 35, who is now concluding his first season as Music Director, the Paris Opera continues its post-war tradition of gathering its Wagnerian talent east of the Rhine. (It is worth noting at this point that Pierre Boulez, one of the great living Wagner conductors, has never conducted the Ring in his native France.)
- [Roland Petit with the Paris Opera Ballet](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/roland-petit-paris-opera-ballet/) - In the decade after the second world war, Paris and London, in addition to the big national companies, supported a myriad of small and prolific ballet companies. One of these was Boris Kochno's Ballets des Champs-Elysées. Kochno had been Serge Diaghelev's secretary in the Ballets Russes days, so in a way it was he who inherited the Ballets Russes tradition in Europe while Colonel de Basil and Serge Denham's two respective Ballets Russes spin-offs were still touring the US and Australia. Kochno, as artistic director, founded the company with writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer and choreographer Roland Petit, who had trained in the Paris Opera Ballet School and danced in the corps de ballet until the Liberation. In 1948 Petit started his own small company, the Ballets de Paris, which only lasted a few years, but managed to cause great excitement in Paris and travelled well to London. Indeed, he worked with Margot Fontaine several times. We don't often get to see his ballets nowadays (though there are also a great many other modern ballets from those years, even some of Michel Fokine's, that don't get much air either), but the Paris Opera Ballet is currently showing three of Petit's short pieces, Le Rendez-vous (1945), Le Loup (1953) and Le Jeune Homme et La Mort (1946) which have been in the national company's repertoire since 1992, 1975 and 1990 respectively.
- [A Grand Tour, Part 1: The Digital Flâneur](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/a-grand-tour-part-1-the-digital-flaneur/) - Like cats chasing tails, all that is urgent in contemporary discussions of the city circles around the topic of density. While this makes it easy to define the shape of the boxing ring, it doesn’t set the rules of the fight, and boy oh boy is density ever a fight. Here in Sydney urban planning discourse feels like a nightmare dreamed in a fever, a chase scene in which it is impossible not to run in circles, slowly. As someone who cares deeply about Sydney’s future, it was a sweet relief to leave Smug City for a few weeks to see how they make cities in Europe.
- [A Grand Tour, Part 3: Some Cool Buildings  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/11/a-grand-tour-part-3-cool-buildings/) - Urban planning is a sound and necessary activity, but you can’t eat a menu, right? Buildings, trees, curbstones; it is particularity which makes a city and in the end it takes physical objects to settle arguments about what is good, bad and weird in architecture. In that spirit, here are some buildings good enough to eat.
- [Métro insolite de Clive Lamming](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/metro-insolite-de-clive-lamming-francais/) - Il y a une espèce de ville, familière mais séduisante, qui résiste aux écrivains lorsque ses charmes ne produisent aucun manque des lecteurs. Paris, bien sûr, est suspect numéro un dans cette parade d’identification. La risque pour les écrivains, périlleux, est d'être bouleversé par la ville et ses histoires, réduit à un discours à la fois vague et, souvent, gnangnan(La Société Américaine de la Mauvaise Ecriture de Venise existe à célébrer ce vaste genre de littérature). Paris est trop, toujours trop, et c’est peut-être cet excès qui exige un microscope au lieu d’un appareil Imax. C’était l’idée de Georges Perec dans son fameux Tentative d’Epuisement d’un lieu Parisien, un livre comme liste de tous ce qui se passait dans un petit coin de la ville. Métro insolite est beaucoup plus pratique, mais c’est aussi une espèce d'épuisement de l'inépuisable.
- [Métro insolite by Clive Lamming (English translation)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/06/metro-insolite-by-clive-lamming-english/) - There is a type of city, familiar but seductive, which resists writers even as its charms produce no shortage of readers. Paris, of course, is the number one suspect in the line-up. Overwhelmed by the city and its stories, writers run the perilous risk of being reduced to that style which is simultaneously vague and soppy (The American Society for the Promotion of Bad Writing About Venice was founded to celebrate such writing). Paris is too much, always too much, an excess which perhaps demands a microscope rather than an Imax camera. This was George Perec's approach in his famous Tentative d’Epuisement d’un lieu Parisien, a book as list of all that happens in one little corner of the city. Métro insolite is much more practical, but it too is an attempt to exhaust the inexhaustible.
- [Le Tour de France 2011 (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/le-tour-de-france-2011-english/) - The Tour de France, like a moon landing or shuttle mission, is a kind of performance art. The route is predetermined, but the scenario which plays out on the roads of France is always unpredictable. The majority of the Tours since I started paying attention in 1989 have been dominated by the likes of five time winner Miguel Indurain and seven time winner Lance Armstrong, interspersed with brief interregnums. If we are lucky, the 2011 edition, the greatest I have seen without a doubt, will be remembered as the Tour which broke this “star-system.” It is certainly the first truly post-Armstrong, and post-Armstrongian, race.
- [Le Tour de France 2011 (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/07/le-tour-de-france-2011-francais/) - Le Tour de France, comme un voyage à la lune ou une mission de la navette spatiale, est une espèce d’art performatif. Le parcours est dessinée, mais un scénario imprévisible se déroule toujours sur les routes de France. La plupart des Tours de France depuis j’ai commencé à faire attention en 1989 étaient dominés par les grands champions comme Miguel Indurain (cinq maillots jaunes) et Lance Armstrong (sept), avec les brefs interrègnes. Le Tour de 2011, possiblement le meilleur, est peut-être le Tour qui rompra cette modèle de “star-système.” C’est le premier Tour vraiment post-Armstrong, post-Armstrongiste. Grace peut-être au dessin supérieur des routes français, le parcours du Tour n’est pas le plus difficile des trois grands tours (de la France, l'Italie et l'Espagne). Si le Giro d’Italia, incroyablement dur dans les années recentes (deux ascensions de Mt. Etna dans une journée!?) est une sorte de free jazz, le Tour de France est peut-être un big band de Glenn Miller: structuré, populaire, avec ses conventions familières et ses variations subtils entre les éditions qui se produit des énormes différences de scénario. Le parcours et les ambitions des 198 coureurs créent des histoires grands, petits et insolites, surtout cette année.
- [La France en relief au Grand Palais (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/la-france-en-relief-grand-palais-version-francais/) - Les élèves d’architecture apprennent bien vite la valeur des maquettes. Quoique rien peut évoquer la vérité d’un dessin comme une maquette, surtout pour le grand public, la vie d’une maquette est souvent triste et court. Après la grande épreuve devant les profs, les morceaux de carton et de bois si précisément ciselés pendant les nuits blanches s'écroulent lentement dans les ombres des placards et des greniers. Les maquettes sont trop délicates pour un monde construit en 1:1. Après la poussière, la poubelle.
- [La France en relief at the Grand Palais (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/la-france-en-relief-english/) - Architecture students quickly learn the value of a good model. Although nothing expresses the true intention of a design as well as a model, especially for the general public, the life of a model is often sad and brief. After the big presentation day, the little pieces of cardboard and wood, so carefully carved during too many all-nighters, begin to deteriorate in closets and attics. Models are too delicate for a world built at 1:1. Once dust starts to appear, the garbage can soon follows.
- [Mais qu'est-ce que c'est devant le Louvre?](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/louvre-affiche/) - Mais qu'est-ce que c'est devant le Louvre? Une soucoupe volante ou un peu de Venise à Paris?
- [Marcel Storr, Bâtisseur visionnaire, version française](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/marcel-storr-batisseur-visionnaire-version-francaise/) - On dessine les villes pour des raisons pratiques ou visionnaires. D’habitude, les “bâtisseurs” se préoccupent des villes qu’on peut bâtir, où on peut vivre. Comme à New York, où il n’y a pas de différence significative entre les dessins de Hugh Ferriss et les tours Chrysler ou Empire State, à Paris la différence entre la ville existante et la ville visionnaire est peut-être moins nette qu’ailleurs. Les interventions de Haussmann étaient, pour le mieux et pour le pire, des rêves personnels d’une imagination percée par les boulevards parfaits. La démarche Haussmanienne était une réponse aux des exigences pratiques, mais elle exprimait une esthétique très personnelle, encore plus que les projets de Robert Moses à New York. Paris comme elle fut transformée pendant le Second Empire, ou même certains des grands projets parisiennes des 1980s ne sont pas trop loin des dessins d’un visionnaire comme Marcel Storr. Considérez La Bibliothèque François Mitterand, un édifice d’autant plus bizarre pour son rationalisme simulé. Une fois bâtis ces projets montrent les joies et les périls de l’urbanisme visionnaire.
- [Marcel Storr, bâtisseur visionnaire, English Version](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/marcel-storr-batisseur-visionnaire-english-version/) - One draws cities for practical and for visionary reasons. Whatever they may draw as preparation, usually builders are preoccupied with cities that can be built and lived in. As in New York, where there is not much difference between the drawings of Hugh Ferriss and the Chrysler or Empire State buildings, in Paris the difference between the visionary city and the one which exists is less clear than in other places. Haussmann’s projects were, for better and worse, the personal dreams of an imagination pierced by perfect boulevards. The Haussmannian approach was a response to practical needs which nonetheless expressed a very particular aesthetic, more even than the projects completed by Robert Moses in New York. The transformations which took place in Paris under the Second Empire, or even some of the grands travaux of the 1980s, were not far from the drawings of a visionary such as Marcel Storr. Consider the Bibliothèque François Mitterand, a strange building all the stranger for pretending to be rationalist. Once built these projects show us the joys and perils of visionary urbanism.
- [Une nouvelle exposition permanente à la Pavillon de l'Arsenal (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/arsenal-francais/) - On arrive dans une ville, et comment la comprendre? C’est toujours plus petite ou plus grande, plus bruyante ou plus calme qu’on l’avait entendu. On recherche, instinctivement, l’histoire des lieux. À Paris, la Pavillon de l’Arsenal vient de refaire leur exposition permanente, Paris, la métropole et ses projets. À Paris les plusieurs musées, au moins les musées nationaux, s'emboîtent comme les rames du Métro. Le Musée d’Orsay (aussi renouvelé) commence où finit le Louvre dans l'année révolutionnaire de 1848, et puis le Centre Pompidou continue des 1914 à nos jours. Mais avec tant des musées il y a toujours les rames qui restent, libres peut-être. qui restent, libres peut-être. Pour les amateurs de Paris il y a le Musée Carnavalet de l’histoire de la ville et sur le plan architectural et urbaniste nous avons l’Arsenal et la Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine au Trocadero. Par rapport au Trocadero, l’Arsenal s’agit plus de Paris et en particulière sa architecture moderne et contemporaine.
- [A New Permanent Exhibition at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal, Paris (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/02/arsenal_english/) - One arrives in a city and what to make of it all? Everything is either small or larger or noisier or quieter than you expected. In reaction, one seeks out the history of a place. In Paris, one of the best places to start to understand the city’s architectural history is the Pavilion de l’Arsenal, which has recently redone its permanent exhibition, Paris, la métropole et ses projets. One of the unique aspects of Paris is the way the many museums, at least the national ones, are meant to fit neatly together like Métro carriages. The Musée d’Orsay (freshly renovated) takes over from the Louvre in the revolutionary year of 1848, followed in turn by the Centre Pompidou and so on. But there are always pieces left over, with enough overlap to resist any amount of fist pounding. For Paris enthusiasts there is the Musée Carnavalet on the history of the city and for architecture and urbanism there is the Arsenal and the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine at the Trocadero. In comparison, the Arsenal is more contemporary, more open-ended, more Paris-focused and perhaps less concerned with monumentality.
- [La peau de cet oignon est délicieuse: les leçons de la Rue Rebière (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/rue-rebiere-version-francaise/) - Si Paris est une ville qui, grâce à ses fortifications successives, imite la forme d’un oignon, le site du nouveau îlot expérimental dans la rue Rebière au dix-septième arrondissement de Paris serait la dernière membrane avant la peau. Le site est 620 mètres de long sur 12.6 mètres de large, coincé entre la Cimetière des Batignolles et la rue Rebière, une rue peut-être trop timide ou même grincheuse à admettre les rues transversales. Au nord du cimetière gronde la Périphérique sur un viaduc et sur l’autre côté de la rue est le lycée Balzac, un bâtiment pas terrible, mais pas terriblement accueillant. C’est, en bref, exactement le genre de site à séduire un jeune architecte, particulièrement pour les logements et surtout les logements sociaux.
- [The Skin of this Onion is Delicious: Learning from Rue Rebière (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/rue-rebiere-english-version/) - If Paris is a city shaped like an onion, formed of concentric rings as fortifications have been demolished and extended, then the site of the new îlot expérimental on Rue Rebière in the 17th arrondissement is the thin membrane just beneath the outer skin. The site is 620 meters long and only 12.6 meters wide, wedged between the Cimetière des Batignolles and the rue itself, which is what one might call a quiet street, or perhaps one too shy or cranky to admit cross-streets. Beyond the cemetery the Périphérique roars along a viaduct while on the other side of the street stands the rather impassive Lycée Balzac, not awful, not particularly inviting. It’s exactly the sort of unlovely site a young architect ought to love, particularly for housing, particularly for the social housing which has now been built here.
- [Doisneau: Paris Les Halles at the Hôtel de Ville (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/doisneau-paris-les-halles-english/) - To judge from the enormous queue in front of the Hôtel de Ville to get into this magnificent exhibition of Doisneau’s photographs, there remains a Les Halles shaped void in the Parisian heart. There is perhaps no real place in Paris which exerts such fascination as the memory of Les Halles, “le ventre de Paris.” Of all the wounds inflicted on the city during the same period, from the rive gauche expressway (1967) to the Tour Montparnasse (1973), perhaps none was so psychically damaging as the closing of Les Halles in 1969. There was something intimate about this particular blow; it was literally a punch to the stomach, a bureaucratic meddling with the primal, particularly in France, human need for nourishment.
- [Doisneau: Paris Les Halles à l'Hôtel de Ville (version française)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/03/doisneau-paris-les-halles-francais/) - Devant l’Hôtel de Ville l’énorme file d'attente pour cette exposition magnifique des photos de Doisneau atteste qu’il reste toujours un trou des Halles béant dans le coeur parisien. Probablement aucune autre lieu parisien soustrait autant de fascination que la mémoire des Halles, “le ventre de Paris.” Peut-être la différence entre la fermeture des Halles en 1969 et les autres blessures urbaines de cet époque, parmi eux la voie express rive gauche (1967) et la tour Montparnasse (1973), est sa qualité autant psychique que physique. Cette perte avait quelque chose d’intime, une véritable tape au ventre par les fonctionnaires anonymes contre le besoin humain de la nourriture.
- [Les opéras en contexte, deuxième partie: l’Opéra Bastille (version française) ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/opera-bastille-francais/) - What does it matter what you say about buildings? Est-ce qu’il existent des bâtiments mauvais ou médiocres qui nous fascinent quand-même? Je ne parle pas des “guilty pleasures,” une tendance devenue si quotidienne qu’on peut voir Plan 9 from Outer Space à la Cinémathèque Française. Je parle, bien sûr, de l’Opéra Bastille, une édifice qui résiste à chaque tentative de la décrire ainsi.
- [Opera Houses in the City, Part II: The Opéra Bastille (English Version)](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/04/opera-bastille-english/) - What does it matter what you say about buildings? Is it possible to be fascinated by a building without thinking it very good, or even without knowing whether it is good or not? I’m not talking about the architectural equivalent of a guilty pleasure, a treat which would have to be triple-Z grade lousy indeed to cause genuine shame in a time in which you can watch Plan 9 from Outer Space at the Cinemathèque Française. I’m talking of course about the Opéra Bastille, a building which this sentence will not even attempt to sum up.
- [Quelques parcs parisiens (version française) ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/paris-parcs-francais/) - Les parcs m’intéressent plus que les bâtiments. Les parcs sont imprévisibles, ils évitent la politique des auteurs qui entravent l’architecture. L’auteur d’un parc n’est jamais plus puissant que la nature qui a toujours son mot à dire à travers les ans et les saisons. Les parcs viellissent un peu comme les êtres vivants. Un bâtiment est souvent plus beau le jour de son achèvement alors que un parc flambant neuf a ses meilleures années à venir, comme Ronald Reagan a dit à propos des États-Unis. Je ne seriais pas surpris si la plupart des meilleurs souvenirs des citoyens se passent dans les parcs. Ils semblent quelquefois les plus joyeux endroits de nos villes—et peut-être les derniers. Les parcs encouragent une ampleur de sentiment qu’on ne retrouve que rarement dans les rues. Dans le parc un coureur peut pousser son corps au maximum lorsque un pique-niqueur passe la journée en regardant les fourmis volant les miettes de pain. Dans le parc, tout le monde est riche.
- [Some Paris Parks (English Version) ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/05/paris-parks-english/) - Writing about parks is more fun than writing about buildings. Parks are unpredictable, not so harnessed to the auteur system as buildings. The designer of a park is never so powerful as nature, who always has her say at the drawing board. Many building are most beautiful on the day they are finished but a brand new park, as Ronald Reagan said of the USA, has its best days ahead of it. Depending on how well they are built, buildings deteriorate or age while parks grow like living creatures from one day to the next and across the seasons. I would bet that many city-dwellers’ happiest memories take place in parks. They seem to be the most, and perhaps the last, mirthful places left in today’s cities. Rather than the ritualized coffee-drinking and passeggiate of the piazza, parks encourage an amplitude of movement and feeling. Down at the park a runner might push himself to exhaustion, a picnicker might scrub time watching an ant abscond with a crumb. Beyond their ecological benefits, parks are essential to our own well-being, our dignity even. In a park, as in a library, everyone is rich.
- [La Nuit des Musées, Paris](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/la-nuit-des-musees-paris/) - Each year, there is a cultural event in Europe, La Nuit des Musées, when for one Saturday night in mid-May participating museums throughout Europe are open free and late. If you are in Europe in May it is an event definitely worth investigating, if not for the opportunity to enter museums free of charge then for the sheer experience of some of the world’s most famous museums after hours, surrounded by more locals than tourists. Another plus is that as part of the event, many of the museums have special events, such as concerts and guided tours. Attending, however, requires special planning. Paris, the city where I was located during their La Nuit des Musées, had 45 participating venues with 179 events. I utilized roughly the entire time span of the event, 6pm – 1am, and managed four venues.
- [Paris aime la photographie I](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/paris-loves-photography/) - Although Photo Month in Paris is November, exhibitions of emerging and renowned photographers seem to take place regularly throughout the city. If you are traveling to Paris, here are a few that will take you off the hard worn museum path and are worth the exploration. Perhaps the premier outlet for photography in Paris, and an important venue for experimentation in the medium throughout Europe, is the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Situated conveniently between the Pont-Marie and the St. Paul metro stops, it is just a block’s walk north from the Seine. Through mid-June, there are a variety of solo photo exhibitions on each of the gallery’s floors.
- [Paris aime la photographie II](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/paris-loves-la-photographie-ii/) - The exhibition of Joel-Peter Witkin at the Bibliothéque Nationale is not a retrospective, but an arresting exploration of the photographer’s work over three decades. In collaboration with Witkin, the curators of Enfer ou Ciel (Heaven or Hell), on view until July 1, compare many of his most fascinating and well-known images to the library’s exquisite and significant collection of prints. Placed in an art historical context of similar imagery found in the prints of such artists as Albrecht Durer, José de Ribera, Rembrandt, Francesco de Goya, and Pablo Picasso, Witkin’s work is thus tangibly embedded within a tradition of symbolism and mythology, and the pondering of the human condition and its spiritual dimensions by great masters of Western art.
- [Must Paris Reconquer the Seine?  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/paris-seine-english/) - The global city is an oxymoron. No one lives there. Any decent-sized city is an intensely local argument generating machine and the way in which cities fight about architecture is as revealing as the materials of their curbstones. These arguments are unfolding history. It’s worth paying attention to whether they are depressing or enlivening, who participates in them and for what reasons. In the midst of relentless planetary crisis, these juicy little local fights can seem unimportant. A dispute such as the current one about the future of the banks of the Seine might seem indulgent until one remembers the hardly old but nevertheless a bit out of fashion adage about thinking globally and acting locally. Aside from what they can teach us, local questions provide a bastion of the real against all the gloppy, terminally imprecise words about global this and global that. At a certain point the urge to turn away from the virtual and toward the animal, the mineral and the vegetal becomes overwhelming and probably healthy. Perhaps the only way to overcome, or at least hide from the hegemony of numbers will be, like Laurel and Hardy taking the sea air in Saps at Sea (1940), to seek out familiar places where the discourse suits us.
- [Faut-il reconquérir la Seine?  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/paris-seine-francais/) - La ville mondiale est un oxymoron. Personne n’y habite. Une grande ville est, parmi autre choses, une usine qui fabrique les polémiques locales et la façon dont ces disputes se déroulent est aussi révélatrice des différences entre les villes que les matériaux de leurs trottoirs. Ces arguments sont une histoire vivante. Quoiqu’ils peuvent sembler sans importance par rapport aux crises mondiales sans fin, il vaut la peine de les faire attention. La controverse à Paris autour de la réaménagement des voies sur berges de la Seine peut sembler indulgente si on ne souvient pas l’adage, pas tout à fait à la mode, de penser global agir local. Ces polémiques locales ont beaucoup à nous apprendre mais leur plus grand valeur est comme un bastion contre l'imprécision des discussions incessantes des questions mondiales. Le désir de virer vers l’animal, le végétale et le minérale plutôt que la virtuelle est quelquefois irrésistible et probablement bon pour la santé aussi. Le seul moyen d'échapper ou de se cacher du règne des chiffres est peut-être, comme Laurel et Hardy cherchent l’air frais du mer en Saps at Sea (1940), de retrouver les lieux familiers ou la conversation est intéressante.
- [Paris aime la photographie III](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/paris-aime-la-photographie-iii/) - When walking into Paris’s first retrospective exhibition of the photographs of Eva Besnyö at the Jeu de Paume, I was met with three mysterious images, visually linked by their askew perspectives. One is a self-portrait of Besnyö, who was born in Budapest in 1910 and broke free of Hungary’s provincial constraints to become a Berlin-based photographer at the young age of 20. The image of the woman in the portrait looks, in a word, contemporary. Unconventionally beautiful, Besnyö looks intensely into her medium format camera, hair tousled as her neck cranes above the view finder to which she is acutely focused, projecting an image of herself as an intense, slightly bohemian artist at work. Besnyö orchestrated this image of 1931 so that the viewer looks up to her from down below, and thus elevated before us is a powerful figure who directs our gaze and controls her own image long before similar strategies were conceived by feminist artists of the 1960s. It is from this point that the viewer commences into an exhibition of 120 prints by a photographer who has been given too little attention.
- [Seven Ways to Improve the Tour de France  ](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/07/2012-tour-de-france/) - I wouldn’t go so far as the three-time world-champion Óscar Friere, who reckons that the Tour de France is “the most boring race of the year” — has he ever watched the Tour of Qatar? — but this year’s race did make me wonder how many more like it the old institution can take. Institutionalization is the Tour’s great burden, or at least its double-edged sword. For the casual fan it is the ‘race of record,’ cycling itself. Those who follow the sport more closely understand that while the Tour is undeniably the most competitive, and therefore the most prestigious, among the three Grand Tours of Italy, France and Spain, it often not the most interesting.
- [A Shakespeare Double-Bill at the American Ballet Theater: Ashton's The Dream and Ratmansky's The Tempest](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/shakespeare-doublebill-american-ballet-theater-ashtons-dream-ratmanskys-tempest/) - ABT's The Dream is highly poetic, romantic and vaguely Victorian. It differs from the version presented by the New York City Ballet in that it is only one act and has a somewhat different story line as well as highly contrasting choreography. (I confess to a preference for the NYCB version, but so be it.) Herman Cornejo was unquestionably the star of the performance, a magical, energetic Puck whose leaps are astounding. He spins so brilliantly I couldn't tell how many rounds he made; took to the air as though truly born an elfin sprite and displayed a keen a sense of humor. Oberon was danced by Cory Sterns in place of the injured David Hallberg. In one charming moment, Oberon partnered Puck; when the sprite leapt into his master's arms, the audience let loose a collective chuckle. This Oberon, regal and compelling, does some of his own dirty work, sprinkling the love charm into Titania's eyes so that when she awakens she is entranced by Bottom, complete with ass's head, and danced with panache by Blaine Hoven.
- [Kevin Newbury talks to Michael Miller about his production of Weber's Euryanthe at Bard Summerscape](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/kevin-newbury-michael-miller-weber-euryanthe-bard-summerscape/) - For its annual opera, Bard Summerscape has chosen Carl Maria von Weber's seldom performed masterpiece, Euryanthe. Der Freischütz had been a great success at the Kärtnerthortheater in Vienna at its premiere in 1821, and the impresario Domenico Barbala lost no time in asking Weber for another opera of the sort. Weber, however, wanted to compose something different. He wanted to grow beyond the popular Singspiel alternation of spoke dialogue and sung numbers in favor of a freer flow of recitative, sung dialogue, and arias. Weber had considerable difficulty in deciding on a libretto, and he eventually persuaded Helmine von Chezy to take on the job—against her protests. She wrote the libretto for Schubert's even more unsuccessful Rosamunde at the same time. Both premiered in 1823.) Euryanthe's failure in spite of Weber's splendid music is generally blamed on the poor quality of Chezy's verse and the involved, hard-to-follow plotline. Over the years, Euryanthe receives only occasional performances, but it has also aquired a passionate cult following, mainly on the basis of the excellent 1975 recording with the Dresdner Staatskapelle playing under Marek Janowski, and Jessye Norman and Nicolai Gedda, among the cast. Director Kevin Newbury and his team have worked hard to overcome Euryanthe's challenges, as Mr. Newbury likes to call them, and his discussion of them in this interview gives us every reason to be optimistic.
- [Five Memorable Evenings at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/07/montreal-chamber-music-festival/) - The Montreal Chamber Music Festival offers an irresistable combination of weekend jazz with weekday classical concerts. Within this the Festival organizers, principally the founder and director, Denis Brott, a professor at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, construct the programs around a few themes, including lunchtime Bach concerts, great Canadian pianists, and the Israel Connection, which brings young Israeli musicians to Montreal. For logistical reasons, I had to concentrate on the classics and the latter two categories. For me it was time for Beethoven and Schubert, and I was also attracted by the participation of a brilliant young violinist, Giora Schmidt,
- [More on Klinghoffer, Gelb, and the Met at Sea](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/klinghoffer/) - In the affair over John Adams' opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, the participants have succeeded in making themselves look very bad indeed, above all Abe Foxman of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and whatever kindred organizations which have not been specified in the reports—with Peter Gelb straggling obsequiously behind them. It is appalling that a special interest group can dictate what a major arts institution can present to the public, and that the chief officer of the institution should accept it so easily. Peter Gelb stated that the cancellation of the HD transmission was necessary to save the production itself at the Metropolitan Opera—which implies that the revered old house operates under the external control of groups like the ADL, which likes to consort with governments on a quasi-equal footing, but which exercises no legal power equivalent to that of a national government, certainly not that of the United States or Israel.
- [The Klinghoffer Question](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/klinghoffer-question/) - The most recent piece of bad news in the opera world is that the Metropolitan Opera has succumbed to pressure from several Jewish organizations and cancelled the international Live in HD telecast and radio broadcast of its new production of John Adams’s complex and controversial 1991 opera/oratorio The Death of Klinghoffer—which is about the Palestinian terrorist attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. And because Adams, librettist Alice Goodman, and stage director Peter Sellars had the chutzpah to dramatize the points of view of the terrorists as well as the victims, some people, including Leon Klinghoffer’s two daughters, felt the opera was anti-Semitic.
- [Savion Glover's OM, at the Joyce Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/savion-glover-om-joyce-theater/) - Savion Glover's newest production, OM, is as much a mystical experience as a dancing one. The performance, which spans about seventy minutes with no intermission, begins with a lengthy jazz recording of what I think is Calling by Kenny Garrett, very improvy -sounding and full of saxophone. During this pre-performance period, the audience views the front of the stage lined with small bulbs that seem to flicker in the half-light with a head of Buddha on one side. Finally the curtain is raised, revealing the stage set with hundreds of candles of all sizes, and photos of Glover's spiritual mentors, some dance figures like Gregory Hines and others more spiritual like Gandhi. I'm not sure where Michael Jackson fits in. Glover, minus his trademark dreads, stood on a small platform in the center where he remained for the entire performance.
- [Thank you!!! Because of your donations New York Arts now qualifies for grants from private and government foundations.](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/09/message-publisher-berkshire-review-qualify-grants-private-government-foundations/) - Thanks to the generosity of some of our readers, we are now eligible for grants from private and government foundations, which are as crucial to our public programs of concerts, exhibitions, and readings, as they are to vitality of New York Arts and The Berkshire Review. Of course your generosity at any level is warmly appreciated. But please continue your support! Private donations are essential to our ongoing operations, and foundations look for private community support in considering the awarding of grants.
- [John Douglas Thompson's Magnificent Louis Armstrong in Satchmo at the Waldorf — Last Performance June 29!](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/john-douglas-thompson-satchmo-waldorf/) - John Douglas Thompson's brilliant performance as Louis Armstrong in Terry Teachout's Satchmo at the Waldorf was one of the great moments of Shakespeare and Company's 2012 season. As we rose from our seats after the performance, my companions and I were emotionally drained, that is, deeply moved, and we agreed that the play and its message were important. With John Douglas Thompson on stage the whole experience seemed overwhelming and beyond criticism. Yet shortly after the performance, an encounter with some of those responsible brought me down to earth and forced me to enunciate the flaws I'd noticed in as succinct and helpful a way as possible. The lighting needed polishing, mostly simplification, as did the play itself. Satchmo just got a little too busy with his tape recorders at points, symptomatic of a deeper problem in the narrative process of this extended monologue and the protagonist's relation to the audience. There were and are other problems, which I'll discuss later. Thompson's acting was so powerful that one had to dig beyond it to get at these. There were only a few moments when it was tangible on stage.
- [Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Balanchine's choreography at the New York City Ballet with Karinska's Costumes Restored](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/mendelssohns-midsummer-nights-dream-balanchines-choreography-york-city-ballet/) - A Midsummer Night's Dream deals with totally unrealistic events including crossed lovers, magic spells, and meaningless arguments. The performance by the New York City Ballet with Balanchine's original choreography integrates broad comedy with magnificent dance for a hugely satisfying evening.
- [Young, Gifted, and Playing Strads...or, It Doesn’t Get Any Better than This!](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/wmp-strad-for-lunch/) - If you’re convinced you’ve visited every major live-performance venue for the best in classical music in New York City, well, music-lovers, have I got good news. I’m happy to announce another cardinal direction to add to your compass rose (besides Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the 92nd Street Y), start heading South. Yes, South! Serious chamber lovers, violin aficionados, and Maverick Festival-ers can now put Workshop for Music Performance (W.M.P.) Concert Hall on your radar for exquisite classical music. It’s a hidden gem on a short not-so-hidden block on East 28th (between Madison and Park) across from the CBS News building. If you’re in the neighborhood at 12:30 on a Monday, drop in to a wonderful concert series called “Strad for Lunch.”
- [King Lear at the National Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/06/king-lear-national-theatre-london/) - One of the odd and unique interesting qualities of King Lear is its fantastic and vague setting in prehistoric Britain, that Shakespeare chose a tale of a king you couldn’t find in a list of the Kings and Queens of England, even while he gave the play something of a history play shape, with British Kings and princes, crises of succession and fighting with each other and France. But it isn’t a history play, it's based on a britannic myth that was already a myth in the middle ages, and the play is set around about some time in the misty, undocumented bog before Ethelwulf, Egbert and Offa, and after Arthur, but perhaps not, maybe it predates the Romans, maybe even the Celts? It's in a parallel timeline no doubt.
- [George Eastman House Light & Motion Gala, May 5, 2014, at Three Sixty° in Tribeca](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/george-eastman-house-light-motion-gala-5-2014-sixty-tribeca/) - My direct experience with the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, to give it its full name, began with their latest major restoration project, the recently rediscovered footage Orson Welles shot for the cinematic interludes in his Mercury production of Too Much Johnson. Apart from being a tour de force of conservation, the project underscored one inspiring aspect of the institution. George Eastman House is a museum, but, unlike virtually all art museums, which pride themselves on avoiding acquisitions in compromised condition, it actively seeks out films in need of conservation—that being its primary function, both to fill in the documentation of the history of photography and cinema, and to make lost works of art available to the public. This activity justifies itself of course, but its importance is heightened by the fact that motion pictures in particular were not considered worthy of preservation.
- [Macbeth](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/macbeth-patrick-stewart-rupert-goold-bam/) - Macbeth, The Three Witches Arrive Chichester Festival 2008 Production, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2/12-3/24/08 Rupert Goold- Director Anthony Ward - Designer Howard Harrison - Lighting Designer Adam Cork - Music & Sound Designer Lorna Heavey - Video & Projection Designer Cast: Paul Shelley - Duncan & A Scottish Doctor Patrick Stewart - Macbeth
- [The American Ballet Theater Offers The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/06/abt-sleeping-beauty/) - A Scene from The American Ballet Theater's 2006 La Bayadère Have you ever forgotten something existed until, in a single, unexpected moment, you are reminded of it in a burst of splendor? Your senses rushed and awakened, a lightning bolt of recognition blazing from top to tail, urging you to store this moment in the
- [Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic play Brahms and Schoenberg at Carnegie Hall](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/11/sir-simon-rattle-and-the-berlin-philharmonic-play-brahms-and-schoenberg-at-carnegie-hall/) - Sir Simon Rattle Carnegie Hall, November 11-13, 2009 1. Berliner Philharmoniker Sir Simon Rattle, Music Director and Conductor Brahms-Schoenberg, Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 Brahms, Symphony No. 1 2. Berliner Philharmoniker Sir Simon Rattle, Music Director and Conductor Evelyn Herlitzius, Soprano Schoenberg, Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9b Schoenberg, Erwartung Brahms, Symphony No. 2 3. Berliner
- [Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic in Webern, Mozart, and Schumann](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/01/alan-gilbert-conducts-the-new-york-philharmonic-in-webern-mozart-and-schumann/) - Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo Chris Lee. New York Philharmonic Avery Fisher Hall Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 7:30 P.M. Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 7:30 P.M. Saturday, January 2, 2010, 8:00 P.M. Alan Gilbert, Conductor Leif Ove Andsnes, Piano Webern, Im Sommerwind Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488 Webern, Symphony,
- [CUNY Music in Midtown: Paula Robison presents Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Thurs. Dec. 2, 1:00 pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/04/cuny-music-in-midtown-paula-robison-schoenberg-pierrot-lunaire/) - Carol McGonnell, clarinet/bass clarinet; David Fulmer, violin/viola; Paula Robison, Sprechstimme; Katherine Chi, piano; Eric Jacobsen, cello; Sooyun Kim, flute/piccolo; Paula Robison presents Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21| Music in Midtown at the Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center December 2, 2010 Sooyun Kim, flute/piccolo Carol McGonnell, clarinet/bass clarinet David Fulmer, violin/viola Eric Jacobsen, cello
- [The New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert Music Director, 2009-2010 Season Preview](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/the-new-york-philharmonic-alan-gilbert-music-director-2009-2010-season-preview/) - Music Director Alan Gilbert The New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert Music Director, 2009-2010 Season Preview Opening Night Gala: Magnus Lindberg, Messiaen, and Berlioz Avery Fisher Hall Free Open Rehearsal, 9:45 A.M. Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 7:30 P.M. Live From Lincoln Center Alan Gilbert, Conductor Renée Fleming, Soprano Magnus Lindberg Expo (World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commission)
- [Lincoln Center Festival, 2010, July 7-25: Season Preview and Program](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/01/lincoln-center-festival-2010-july-7-25-season-preview-and-program/) - Alessandro Averone (standing), Fulvio Pepe, Giovanni Visentin, Luca Iervolino, and Carlo Bellamio in Peter Stein's production of Dostoyevsky's The Demons. Photo Andrea Boccalini. Lincoln Center Festival 2010 will run from JULY 7 to July 25 10 premieres and debuts, 45 performances over 18 days Governors Island to be site of two theatre rresentations: North American
- [The UNC Symphony Orchestra's Award-Winning Performance of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, Tonu Kalam, Conductor](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/12/unc-symphony-orchestra-rachmaninoff-symphonic-dances-op-45-tonu-kalam-conductor/) - The UNCSO was the 2012 first-place winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Performance—College/University Division for this performance under Music Director Tonu Kalam.
- [Extraordinary Brahms and Shostakovich from Tonu Kalam and the UNC Symphony Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/03/extraordinary-brahms-shostakovich-tonu-kalam-unc-symphony-orchestra/) - It's not our custom to review performances we post, but I will say a few words about this concert. Brahms's Third Symphony is notoriously difficult to perform successfully. I have heard great conductors fail in it. The Toscanini story is famous. None of his NBC Symphony performances quite gel, and there was always much discussion about why this particular symphony, which seemed so well-suited to his temperament evaded him, until his splendid performance with the Philharmonia Orchestra became generally available as a recording many years after his last visit to London at the very end of his career. The puzzlement about Nelsons' recent performance with the BSO is another case in point. Tonu Kalam has no such problem here. By adopting a gentle, lyrical approach to the work, Kalam achieves a performance that is musically and emotionally coherent—one of the finest I've heard.
- [Sergey Taneyev's Oresteia at Bard — a Review](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/09/sergey-taneyev-oresteia-bard/) - In his introductory lectures, Leon Botstein is almost always engaging and enthusiastic, except when, to make an instructive point, he discusses music he knows to be inferior , and then he is at least amusing. However, before the Sunday matinee of Taneyev's Oresteia, he conveyed a certain Cheshire Cat-like excitement, as if he had something really exceptional in store for us. The air in and around the Fisher Center was charged, and one could feel it. We were not disappointed.
- [Joanna Gabler,  "Emigrés - Where is Home?" at Gallery Ehva, Provincetown: October 25-November 5, 2013 - Opening Friday, October 25, 6-8 pm](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/10/joanna-gabler-emigrs-home-gallery-ehva-provincetown-october-25november-5-2013-opening-friday-october-25-68-pm/) - Joanna Gabler, Transcape, 2013. Archival pigment print. Joanna Gabler, "Emigrés - Where is Home?" at Gallery Ehva, Provincetown: October 25-November 5, 2013 - Opening Friday, October 25, 6-8 pm. 74 Shank Painter Road Provincetown, MA 02657 (508) 487-0011 [Show as slideshow] On view in the Gallery Ehva in Proveincetown is “Nature Transfigured,” an exhibition of
- [Festive Cooking: the Search for Authentic British Lasagne](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/12/festive-cooking-authentic-british-lasagne/) - On this ship I am Cook. Hence my activities on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are customarily pretty well established. I may experiment with the stuffing, or we may find some exciting novelty, like Holy Smokes’ fabulous smoked turkeys, but that doesn't bring any major variation in the drill. I've even grown more efficient over the years, so that's it's not particularly laborious anymore. In parallel with these prescribed actions, my mind spends Thanksgiving in a mildly crazed reverie of a nostalgic or wistful bent—at least it has been so since 2004, when, as I was readying to make my initial attack on the bird, the telephone rang, with a journalist at the other end, who asked if I would answer a few questions about an elementary school classmate of mine who was in the political spotlight at the time. The journalist seemed personable and serious, and I found myself happy to talk to him, the cordless phone cradled on my shoulder, as I seasoned the turkey and put it in the oven. He'd spoken to a good many others—school friends I remembered, others I'd forgotten...teachers as well, including our inspiring Latin teacher, Joe Agnelli, who helped set me off on a long voyage in Classical waters, the ancient world—the other hemisphere of history. The family thought I was crazy to talk on the phone like that, but there seemed no reason not to, as long as I had the use of my hands.
- [Brasserie Jo Boston Back in Form Again. Highly Recommended!](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/10/brasserie-jo-boston-colonnade-hotel/) - Years ago it was pretty much unthinkable to dine after an evening concert in Symphony Hall, unless you happened to find a Hayes Bickford that was open all night. It's still not easy to find a place where you could relax and converse for a couple of hours without feeling rushed, much less being surrounded by floor sweeping, the overturning of chairs, and a glaring waiter. I do know a few places in the neighborhood that are open late, but I wouldn't recommend them. Brasserie Jo, however, is one restaurant—a five minute walk away—where I'd feel comfortable settling in after a concert. The main menu remains available until 11 pm Monday through Saturday, and a bar menu takes over until 1.30 am. It's also worth noting that lunch is served until 3 pm—a small blessing for us tardy folk and busy guests in the Colonnade Hotel.
- [Ruth Reichl, Ellen Doré Watson, Patty Crane, Francine Prose, and Elizabeth Graver respond to Walker Evans' "Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead" now posted on the new Gastronomica online..with interviews with Darra Goldstein and Hannah Fries](https://newyorkarts.net/2012/06/walker-evans-kitche-wall-alabama-farmstead-gastronomica/) - As part of the second annual Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, Orion and Gastronomica co-hosted a reading featuring renowned food writer Ruth Reichl, poets Ellen Doré Watson and Patty Crane, and fiction writers Francine Prose (finalist for the National Book Award) and Elizabeth Graver. Their contributions have now been posted on the new Gastronomica site as a Web exclusive.
- [Throes Theater Company presents the Spalding Grey-inspired Halfway through the Story of Our Life](https://newyorkarts.net/2014/05/halfway-through-the-story-of-our-life/) - The amazingly talented Alexandra Zelman-Doring’s latest creation is a comic investigation of identity that brings three actresses, three musicians and three composers together for an engaging hour of music and verse. From Ms Doring — “The search that ensues when “we wake to find we have been living in a dream we chose to call “reality.” Why are we as we are? Who is the “persona” that builds up in and around us?”
- [Eastman Studies in Music from The University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer publish their 50th volume and then some](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/03/eastman_studies/) - In February the University of Rochester Press published the 50th volume in its acclaimed series. The book is entitled Eastman Studies in Music: Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations(edited by Jack Douthett, Martha M. Hyde, and Charles J. Smith). "When we began, I didn't dare dream that this could happen," says Ralph Locke (pictured right in front of the URP offices), a professor at the Eastman School of Music for more than 30 years and series editor since 1994. "We started producing two books a year, and now we are up to seven and growing, which means we can publish books on a range of topics and reach a wider spectrum of the reading public."
- [Markand Thakar, Looking for the "Harp" Quartet, An Investigation into Musical Beauty](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/11/markand-thakar-looking-for-harp-quartet-investigation-into-musical-beauty/) - One thing you will not find in this rather brief (210pp.) but concentrated book is a recommendation of what recording of Beethoven's "Harp" Quartet to buy, or a reminiscence of some outstanding performance of the work. When first perusing the book, I was naive enough to think that some bit of this kind of information might crop up in an appendix or in a footnote. But no, the only performances of the quartet mentioned in the book are nameless ones at the beginning—one great, one mediocre, and one terrible—as well as a performance by music students, which still remains in the future at the conclusion of the narrative part of the book. The only complete analysis of the quartet as entire movements, in fact, occurs out of order: first the Adagio ma non troppo in the final section of Chapter Eight, and the rest in the appendix, which is a discussion of certain musical forms: dance form, theme and variations, sonata form, and fugue, which means that the Scherzo (third movement), finale, and first movement are discussed in that order, following other examples of their forms. There is no fugue in Op. 74—although there is one in the first movement of Op. 131, which is analyzed. Hence you should not expect to find Tovey-like analyses of the "Harp" Quartet either. You may reasonably conclude that this book is not really about the "Harp" Quartet, but about the "looking for" it—the search musicians and listeners become enmeshed in once they become conscious of a work they believe to be a great one, a classic...or perhaps, less promisingly, a teacher tells a student that it is part of the basic repertory and assigns it to study for performance.
- [It’s All in the Presentation: A New Look at Schopenhauer](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/06/presntationnew-look-at-schopenhauer/) - Schopenhauer’s saying that “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will” has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others. —Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (1940)
- [Thinking Mann](https://newyorkarts.net/2010/03/anthony-mann/) - I learned how to make movies from Anthony Mann: why the shots, how the shots, traveling shots, location shots, strategies and techniques in editing -- he was my sense of movement. -Wim Wenders Mystery is at the heart of all that is appealing about movies; and Anthony Mann, born Anton or Emil Bundsmann in 1906 or 1907, is one of cinema's mystery men, as well as one of its few thinking men. He remains unfairly neglected, in part because he came to prominence sometime after the shiniest years of the golden age.
- [Leonard Freed and Italy: The Element of Time](https://newyorkarts.net/2011/10/leonard-freed-italy-element-of-time/) - “There is a mathematical grid in the photograph. There is a rhythm.”1 While reading an interview between Leonard Freed and Nathalie Herschdorfer,2 my attention was caught by a comment Freed made on the connection between his photos and time: “The thing I am trying to get into my photographs is the element of time.”3 These words sparked in me a succession of observations on the Italian Images Project, which I will present in the following paragraphs.
- [20th Century Works of Art on Paper, Bloomsbury Auctions, New York June 3rd, 2009, 2:00 p.m.](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/05/20th-century-works-of-art-on-paper-bloomsbury-auctions-new-york/) - Martin Lewis (1881-1962), Relics (Speakeasy Corner) (M.74) Drypoint, 1928, signed in pencil 20th Century Works of Art on Paper Bloomsbury Auctions, New York June 3rd, 2009, 2:00 p.m. tel +1 (212) 719-1000 www.bloomsburyauctions.com Next month Bloomsbury will offer an extraordinary breadth of material, mostly prints, but also a few drawings, as well as a decorative
- [Siegfried at L'Opéra national de Paris](https://newyorkarts.net/2013/05/siegfried-opera-national-paris/) - L'Opéra national de Paris, like most of the major opera houses around the world, with the notable exception of Bayreuth, have been building their new production of the Ring work by work over several years. I attended their Rheingold in 2010 and reviewed it in the Berkshire Review. Although I found the proleptic reference to Albert Speer's Germania questionable, I rather liked Günther Krämer's production at the time (The current French approach to Wagner favors native Germans both on the stage and behind it.); I was pleased with the cast; and I was deeply impressed with Philippe Jordan's conducting. The son of the renowned Swiss Wagner conductor Armin Jordan, he has an individual and thoroughly grounded vision of Wagner, which he can only have developed on his father's knee. Now three years later, on the eve of the Opéra's complete performances of the Ring in June, I saw and heard the same intelligences and imaginations take on Siegfried, often considered the most difficult of the music dramas as far as audience involvement is concerned, for reasons that are both obvious and bemusing.
- [The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre, London](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/10/the-importance-of-being-earnest-at-the-vaudeville-theatre-london/) - When one is in town, one amuses oneself; when one is in the country,one amuses other people. Oscar Wilde, from The Importance of Being Earnest It was with this truthful witticism in mind that I withdrew myself from the unpleasant drudgery of a Wednesday evening to “Bunbury” along to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of
- [Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Thierry Fischer, Conductor play a Haydn Mass and Beethoven's Fifth at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/10/scottish-chamber-orchestra-thierry-fischer-haydn-mass-beethoven-fifth-queens-hall-edinburgh/) - The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1974, has enjoyed a world reputation for some time now for the work they have achieved over the years under Sir Charles Mackerras, who still conducts the orchestra on occasion. And they are anything if not versatile, playing a repertory spanning the Baroque and the contemporary. Saturday evening they were in their Classical mode, playing Haydn and Beethoven with a slightly relaxed compliment of original instruments (i.e. cellos on pins and metal flute alongside gut strings, natural horn and trumpet, etc.) under the direction of the brilliant Swiss conductor, Thierry Fischer. The evening was a splendid success, full of imaginative insights and intense music-making. The orchestra and singers seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience, a special distinction for Mr. Fischer, who conducts without a baton, using vigorous, occasionally extravagant gestures, which never failed to bring the musicians together in committed playing and tight ensemble.
- [Frans Brüggen, Viviane Hagner, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in an All-Mendelssohn Concert at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 10/18/07](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/10/frans-bruggen-viviane-hagner-scottish-chamber-orchestra-mendelssohn-edinburgh/) - One doesn’t often encounter all-Mendelssohn programs. If I were to find one in the Tanglewood season, I’d suspect it was a somewhat excessive gesture towards the more conservative members of the audience. On the other hand, from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Frans Brüggen, who has maintained a long-term relationship with the orchestra over the years, it meant a fresh look at three important works by a towering figure in nineteenth century music. Our view of Mendelssohn is still colored by the popular conception of him as a genial, highly privileged composer of tuneful works, who sadly died at the young age of thirty-eight. In truth, he was, both as a composer and a conductor, an extremely influential leader in the highly theoretical and factionalized world of Romantic music, the central figure in the more conservative, “classizing” group based in Leipzig.
- [Edinburgh Walks - Part I of a Series](https://newyorkarts.net/2007/11/edinburgh-walks/) - One of the most astonishing passages in Homer is the simile in Book XV of the Iliad, which describes the rapidity of Hera's flight to Olympus (Il. XV, 79ff.): but went back to tall Olympos from the mountains of Ida As the thought flashes in the mind of a man who, traversing much territory, thinks of things in the mind’s awareness, ‘I wish I were this place, or this’, and imagines many things; so rapidly in her eagerness winged Hera, a goddess. —trans. Richmond Lattimore
- [Black Watch from the Natonal Theatre of Scotland](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/04/black_watch_lm/) - The Iraq War is an infuriating abomination and I am more than happy to see anything that attacks it. I am also, as it happens, not against seeing fine theatre. Therefore, I was delighted to see two birds killed with one stone at the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of the Edinburgh Festival hit Black Watch at the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (SECC) in Glasgow, as the play continues its tour through the UK, and then on to North America. [Since its first performance at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 in an unused drill shed, Black Watch has played before sold out audiences and won numerous awards, not only the Fringe First, but South Bank Show Award for Theatre, the Critics’ Circle Awards (to John Tiffany as Best Director) and others. It played to sold-out audiences at St. Ann’s Warehouse,Brooklyn in October-November 2007, and will return there in October 2008. - ed.]
- [The Edge of Love](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/06/the-edge-of-love/) - Lucas Miller reviews the Gala show of the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival, directed by John Maybury and starring Keira Knightley, Siena Miller and Matthew Rhys.
- [Edinburgh International Film Festival, 2008](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/06/eiff_intro/) - Cinema is without doubt the most popular art of our modern world. Museums are visited primarily by duty-plagued tourists; popular music is but a clamourous ruckus; books are an entertainment sadly lost on many, and fine theatre is a luxury, which cannot be easily reached by the provincial. Film is entertaining, cheap, and easily accessed by folk of both urban and rural habitations. It is an art of swift movement which appeals to our poor attention spans. Most contemporary films are trivial and pointless, but others may contain great profundity and meaning. Both have their place, making cinema the pinnacle of modern popular culture.
- [Goodnight Irene Directed by Paolo Marinou-Blanco](https://newyorkarts.net/2008/09/goodnight-irene-directed-paolo-marinou-blanco/) - Robert Pugh, photo Valentina Bonizzi Director: Paolo Marinou-Blanco Cast: Robert Pugh, Nuno Lopes, Rita Loureiro An exotic place, an eccentric character and enticing story make Goodnight Irene an excellent motion picture – perhaps the best shown in the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Robert Pugh brilliantly plays an aging actor, expatriate and drunkard called Alexander
- [Tons of Money](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/02/tons-of-money/) - Lucas Miller reviews this amusing farce of the 1920s, revived and adapted by Alan Ayckbourn, at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh.
- [William Douglas Home's Lloyd George Knew My Father](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/03/william-douglas-homes-lloyd-george-knew-my-father/) - Lucas Miller reviews this revival of William Douglas Home's 1972 play at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh.
- [Going to the Dogs: The Dogs & Bramble Bar, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/04/the-dogs-bramble-bar-edinburgh/) - Lucas Miller's notes on The Dogs and Bramble Bar as an Edinburgh institution.
- [Blue, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/04/blue-restaurant-edinburgh/) - Lucas Miller reviews this Edinburgh restaurant, ideally positioned with close proximity to that city's most important venues for theatre and film.
- [Save the old Odeon cinema building on Clerk Street in Edinburgh!](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/05/save-old-odeon-cinema-edinburgh/) - First known as the New Victoria, the cinema was built by William Trent in 1930. It houses a magnificent auditorium with Scotland’s largest and grandest proscenium arch. The sidewalls have niches with sculptures of the muses of art, music and drama (designed by the artist Beattie), and the ceiling is studded with stars that represent the Milky Way.
- [The Saint, Edinburgh](https://newyorkarts.net/2009/05/saint-restaurant-edinburgh/) - The people behind the Bramble Bar & Lounge have recently opened a restaurant called The Saint on Saint Stephen Street in Stockbridge. Like Bramble and The Bailie (a fine pub on the western corner of the same street, great for an after-dinner dram), The Saint is located in the underground level of a Georgian building, typical of Edinburgh's New Town which is renowned for such spaces.

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- [printmaking](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/printmaking/)
- [Will Barnet](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/will-barnet/)
- [Wolf Kahn](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/wolf-kahn/)
- [American colonial history](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/american-colonial-history/)
- [erotica](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/erotica/)
- [Jane Austen](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jane-austen/)
- [John Steinbeck](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/john-steinbeck/)
- [Andy Warhol](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/andy-warhol/)
- [drawings](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/drawings/)
- [Edward Hopper](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/edward-hopper/)
- [etching](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/etching/)
- [intaglio](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/intaglio/)
- [James Whistler](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/james-whistler/)
- [Jasper Johns](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jasper-johns/)
- [John Sloan](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/john-sloan/)
- [lithograph](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/lithograph/)
- [Martin Lewis](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/martin-lewis/)
- [prints](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/prints/)
- [hand-colored print](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/hand-colored-print/)
- [Henry James](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/henry-james/)
- [Hudson River School](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/hudson-river-school/)
- [landscape](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/landscape/)
- [Charlotte Bronte](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/charlotte-bronte/)
- [collecting](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/collecting/)
- [first editions](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/first-editions/)
- [Peyraud](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/peyraud/)
- [Samuel Johnson](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/samuel-johnson/)
- [Saint-Saëns](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/saint-saens/)
- [Franck](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/franck/)
- [Delage](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/delage/)
- [Bizet](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bizet/)
- [Berliner Philharmoniker](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/berliner-philharmoniker/)
- [Sir Simon Rattle](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/sir-simon-rattle/)
- [Dvořák](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/dvorak/)
- [Elgar](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/elgar/)
- [Kiki Smith](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/kiki-smith/)
- [Neuberger Museum of Art](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/neuberger-museum-of-art/)
- [SUNY Purchase](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/suny-purchase/)
- [Erin Courtney](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/erin-courtney/)
- [13P](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/13p/)
- [Ken Rus Schmoll](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ken-rus-schmoll/)
- [Ftizcarraldo](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ftizcarraldo/)
- [Werner Herzog](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/werner-herzog/)
- [Klaus Kinski](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/klaus-kinski/)
- [Buran Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/buran-theatre/)
- [The Brick](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/the-brick/)
- [Williamsburg](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/williamsburg/)
- [Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/amsterdam-baroque-orchestra/)
- [Ton Koopman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ton-koopman/)
- [Teresa Wakim](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/teresa-wakim/)
- [Bogna Bartosz](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bogna-bartosz/)
- [Tilman Lichdi](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/tilman-lichdi/)
- [Klaus Mertens](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/klaus-mertens/)
- [drawing materials and techniques](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/drawing-materials-and-techniques/)
- [old master drawings](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/old-master-drawings/)
- [curatorial services](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/curatorial-services/)
- [publications](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/publications/)
- [research](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/research/)
- [Michael Clark](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/michael-clark/)
- [Choreographer](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/choreographer/)
- [Whitney](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/whitney/)
- [Biennal](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/biennal/)
- [Provocateur](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/provocateur/)
- [San Francisco Symphony](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/san-francisco-symphony/)
- [Michael Tilson Thomas](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/michael-tilson-thomas/)
- [Carl Ruggles](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/carl-ruggles/)
- [Charles Ives](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/charles-ives/)
- [Henry Brant](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/henry-brant/)
- [American Mavericks](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/american-mavericks/)
- [Khovanshchina](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/khovanshchina/)
- [Anatoli Kotscherga](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/anatoli-kotscherga/)
- [Olga Borodina](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/olga-borodina/)
- [Kirill Petrenko](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/kirill-petrenko/)
- [August Everding](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/august-everding/)
- [Ming Cho Lee](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ming-cho-lee/)
- [Edgard Varèse](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/edgard-varese/)
- [Henry Cowell](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/henry-cowell/)
- [St. Lawrence String Quartet](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/st-lawrence-string-quartet/)
- [Joan La Barbara](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/joan-la-barbara/)
- [Meredith Monk](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/meredith-monk/)
- [Jessye Norman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jessye-norman/)
- [Jesse Stiles](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jesse-stiles/)
- [Yuval Sharon](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/yuval-sharon/)
- [avant-garde music](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/avant-garde-music/)
- [Moondog](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/moondog/)
- [Museo di Roma in Trastevere](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/museo-di-roma-in-trastevere/)
- [Admira](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/admira/)
- [Bard College Summerscape](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bard-college-summerscape/)
- [Fisher Center](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/fisher-center/)
- [Erica Schmidt](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/erica-schmidt/)
- [Peter Dinklage](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/peter-dinklage/)
- [Russian theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/russian-theatre/)
- [Weegee](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/weegee/)
- [audience behavior](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/audience-behavior/)
- [etiquette](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/etiquette/)
- [concerts](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/concerts/)
- [Panoply Performance Laboratory](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/panoply-performance-laboratory/)
- [Austrian wines](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/austrian-wines/)
- [Bourgueil](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bourgueil/)
- [cabernet franc](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/cabernet-franc/)
- [Chateauneuf-du-Pape](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/chateauneuf-du-pape/)
- [Chinon](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/chinon/)
- [Grüner Veltliners](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/gruner-veltliners/)
- [Loire](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/loire/)
- [Zweigelt](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/zweigelt/)
- [Lewis Spratlan](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/lewis-spratlan/)
- [Park Avenue Christian Church](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/park-avenue-christian-church/)
- [Network for New Music](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/network-for-new-music/)
- [Donald Nally](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/donald-nally/)
- [Bartolo di Fredi](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bartolo-di-fredi/)
- [gold ground panel painting](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/gold-ground-panel-painting/)
- [Siena](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/siena/)
- [Museum of Biblical Art New York](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/museum-of-biblical-art-new-york/)
- [Bruce Boucher](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bruce-boucher/)
- [University of Virginia Art Muceum](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/university-of-virginia-art-muceum/)
- [Tchaikovsky](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/tchaikovsky/)
- [Yefim Bronfman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/yefim-bronfman/)
- [Davie Hall San Francisco](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/davie-hall-san-francisco/)
- [Ballet de L'Opéra de Paris](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ballet-de-lopera-de-paris/)
- [The Australian Ballet](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/the-australian-ballet/)
- [TAO Dance Theater](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/tao-dance-theater/)
- [Bangarra Dance Theatre](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bangarra-dance-theatre/)
- [Graeme Murphy](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/graeme-murphy/)
- [Stephen Page](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/stephen-page/)
- [David Page](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/david-page/)
- [Steve Reich](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/steve-reich/)
- [Wayne McGregor](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/wayne-mcgregor/)
- [Pina Bausch](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/pina-bausch/)
- [Roland Petit](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/roland-petit/)
- [Maurice Béjart](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/maurice-bejart/)
- [Serge Lifar](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/serge-lifar/)
- [Lalo](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/lalo/)
- [Jean Coralli](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jean-coralli/)
- [Jules Perrot](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jules-perrot/)
- [Adolphe Adam](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/adolphe-adam/)
- [Tao Ye](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/tao-ye/)
- [Australian Art](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/australian-art/)
- [Incubator Arts](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/incubator-arts/)
- [NYC](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/nyc/)
- [Theresa Buchheister](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/theresa-buchheister/)
- [Sarah Graalman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/sarah-graalman/)
- [Podcast](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/podcast/)
- [Ersel](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ersel/)
- [Enrica Viganò](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/enrica-vigano/)
- [David Eagleman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/david-eagleman/)
- [Wallace Shawn](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/wallace-shawn/)
- [Adrienne Rich](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/adrienne-rich/)
- [Richard Feynman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/richard-feynman/)
- [A.R. Ammons](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/a-r-ammons/)
- [Wallace Stevens](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/wallace-stevens/)
- [Doxology](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/doxology/)
- [Magnificat](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/magnificat/)
- [L’Antiquaire & The Connoisseur Inc.](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/lantiquaire-the-connoisseur-inc/)
- [dealer exhibitions](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/dealer-exhibitions/)
- [art auctions](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/art-auctions/)
- [paintings](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/paintings/)
- [sculpture](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/sculpture/)
- [Isidoro Bianchi](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/isidoro-bianchi/)
- [Bernardino Licinio](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/bernardino-licinio/)
- [Michael Miller Lucy Vivante Fine Arts](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/michael-miller-lucy-vivante-fine-arts/)
- [Ewa Podleś](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ewa-podles/)
- [Jessica Pratt](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jessica-pratt/)
- [Michael Spyres. Will Crutchfield](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/michael-spyres-will-crutchfield/)
- [Davide Livermore](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/davide-livermore/)
- [Rossini Opera Festival](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/rossini-opera-festival/)
- [Pesaro](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/pesaro/)
- [silent film](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/silent-film/)
- [digital animated sets](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/digital-animated-sets/)
- [Regietheater](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/regietheater/)
- [Regnault](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/regnault/)
- [Chabrier](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/chabrier/)
- [Henri III](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/henri-iii/)
- [Thaddeus Strassberger](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/thaddeus-strassberger/)
- [Soave](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/soave/)
- [Spanish wine](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/spanish-wine/)
- [Veneto](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/veneto/)
- [Philadelphia Orchestra](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/philadelphia-orchestra/)
- [Stéphane Denève](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/stephane-deneve/)
- [Yannick Nézet-Séguin](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/yannick-nezet-seguin/)
- [Yo-Yo Ma](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/yo-yo-ma/)
- [David Robertson](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/david-robertson/)
- [Saratoga Performing Arts Center](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/saratoga-performing-arts-center/)
- [SPAC](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/spac/)
- [Gore Vidal](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/gore-vidal/)
- [The Best Man](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/the-best-man/)
- [French grand opera](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/french-grand-opera/)
- [Ellie Dehn](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/ellie-dehn/)
- [John Tessier](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/john-tessier/)
- [Jennifer Holloway](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jennifer-holloway/)
- [Calderón](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/calderon/)
- [Alan Paton](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/alan-paton/)
- [David Fallis](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/david-fallis/)
- [John DeMain](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/john-demain/)
- [Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/justice-ruth-bader-ginsberg/)
- [Kurt Weill](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/kurt-weill/)
- [Maxwell Anderson](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/maxwell-anderson/)
- [Meredith Willson](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/meredith-willson/)
- [Nader Abbassi](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/nader-abbassi/)
- [Sienese painting](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/sienese-painting/)
- [Black Death](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/black-death/)
- [Adoration](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/adoration/)
- [New Jerusalem](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/new-jerusalem/)
- [Florens 2012](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/florens-2012/)
- [French music](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/french-music/)
- [Danny Driver](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/danny-driver/)
- [Jann Pasler](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/jann-pasler/)
- [Joaquin Phoenix](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/joaquin-phoenix/)
- [L. Ron Hubbard](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/l-ron-hubbard/)
- [Paul Thomas Anderson](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/paul-thomas-anderson/)
- [Philip Seymour Hoffman](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/philip-seymour-hoffman/)
- [Scientology](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/scientology/)
- [Balanchine](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/balanchine/)
- [New York City Ballet](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/new-york-city-ballet/)
- [Gesualdo](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/gesualdo/)
- [Edward Albee](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/edward-albee/)
- [Amy Morton](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/amy-morton/)
- [Steppenwolf](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/steppenwolf/)
- [Minsoo Sohn](https://newyorkarts.net/tag/minsoo-sohn/)

## Picture tag

- [Omar Sangare](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/omar-sangare/)
- [Tennessee Williams](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/tennessee-williams/)
- [WilliamsTheatre](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/williamstheatre/)
- [auto graveyard](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/auto-graveyard/)
- [Cadillac](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/cadillac/)
- [reflections](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/reflections/)
- [abstract](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/abstract/)
- [objets trouvés](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/objets-trouves/)
- [boiler](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/boiler/)
- [New York City](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/new-york-city/)
- [basement](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/basement/)
- [residential building](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/residential-building/)
- [15 East 89th Street](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/15-east-89th-street/)
- [architecture](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/architecture/)
- [rooftop](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/rooftop/)
- [water tanks](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/water-tanks/)
- [Piazza Navona](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/piazza-navona/)
- [Bernini](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/bernini/)
- [terracotta](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/terracotta/)
- [Ireland](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/ireland/)
- [Dingle Peninsula](https://newyorkarts.net/ngg_tag/dingle-peninsula/)