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


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Walker Evans, Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead, 1936

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.

Read the full notice and hear the interviews on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Norfolk Chamber Music Festival Season Preview and Concert Schedule 2012, by Michael Miller

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Norfolk Music Shed at Night. Photo © 2008 Michael Miller.

This year, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the festival of the Yale School of Music, will offer yet another rich season of music played by the young artists of the Yale Summer School of Music, as well as a weekend series featuring the most renowned international artists associated with the Yale School of Music. It will begin with a weekend of new music from Martin Bresnick’s New Music Workshop on June 29 and 30. Most importantly, it will offer the main local opportunity to enjoy the final season of the great Tokyo String Quartet, as I have mentioned in my review of their appearance earlier this month at the Tannery Pond Concerts. The distinguished Artis Quartet from Vienna and theKeller Quartet, from the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, will also play. 

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


The Museum of Contemporary Art Opens a New Wing (and an Old Debate…) by Alan Miller

Mca-circular-quay-side-2

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.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

Verdi’s Atilla at the San Francisco Opera by David Dunn Bauer

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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.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

The Tokyo Quartet make their final appearance at the Tannery Pond Concerts with Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Debussy in Minor Keys, by Michael Miller

The Tokyo String Quartet in the First Congregational Church, Stockbridge. Photo © 2012 Lucas Miller.

Tannery Pond Concerts
The First Congregational Church, Stockbridge
Saturday, June 16, 2012, 7 pm

The Tokyo String Quartet
Martin Beaver, Violin
Kikuei Ikeda, Violin
Kazuhide Isomura, Viola
Clive Greensmith, Violoncello

Haydn – String Quartet in G minor (“The Rider”), Opus 74, No. 3
Mendelssohn – String Quartet in E minor, Opus 44, No. 2
Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, Opus 10

By now everybody knows that the renowned Tokyo String Quartet will retire at the end of the 2012-13 season. The quartet was founded in 1969 at the Juilliard School of music by graduates of the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members had studied with Professor Hideo Saito, who left a profound mark on their approach to music. They came to New York for further study with members of the Juilliard String Quartet. Since then, as one of the first Asian performing groups to acquire an international reputation, they have not only set the example for Japanese musicians in the world at large, they have set an international standard for chamber music playing and the string quartet in particular. The extraordinary efflorescence of string quartets today doubtless owes much to their example. Their playing has been distinguished by its beauty of tone, accuracy of intonation, and precision of ensemble, but, for all this perfection, they never fail to project a fully thought-out and felt conception of the composer’s intentions and the inner content of the music. Their playing is never dry, detached, or emptily virtuosic, and I have never left one of their performances feeling they had failed to go the limit with the music at hand.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Nixon in China at the San Francisco Opera by David Dunn Bauer

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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 19thcentury 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.

Read the full review at the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

Nixon on China at the San Francisco Opera by David Dunn Bauer

Nixon-sfo21
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 19thcentury 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.

Read the full review at the Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

Borromeo String Quartet conclude their Traversal of the Beethoven Quartets at the Gardner Museum with Nos. 13 – 15, by Michael Miller

The Borromeo String Quartet. Photo Eli Akerstein.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Calderwood Hall
Sunday, April 15, 2012

Borromeo String Quartet
Nicholas Kitchen, Kristopher Tong, violins
Mai Motobuchi, viola
Yeesun Kim, cello

The Complete Beethoven String Quartets, Part V

Ludwig van Beethoven
Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op 132
Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op 131
Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major (with the Große Fuge), Op 130 and 133

For a writer it is almost as daunting to write about Beethoven’s late quartets — which are pretty much the greatest music we have — as it is for musicians to play them. The depth of human experience and height of musical thought they hold is beyond anything else. Experiencing human expression at this level is something like looking straight into the sun: a few seconds can blind one for a few minutes; longer exposure can blind one permanently — or, in relation to the quartets, perhaps substitute the word “change” for “blind.” That is, the sort of change Sophocles’ Oedipus underwent in putting out his eyes and setting out in the wanderings that took him to Colonus. Beethoven in fact depicts this kind of human transformation literally in the third movement of his A Minor quartet. If one listens to Beethoven’s late quartets with attention, it is impossible to be casual about art, life, or illness.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Mozart’s Magic Flute, a New Production at the San Francisco Opera, designed by Jun Kaneko, by David Dunn Bauer

The Magic Flute: Heidi Stober (Pamina) and Alek Shrader (Tamino). Photo by Cory Weaver.

San Francsico Opera
The Magic Flute
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, music
Emanuel Schikaneder, libretto
(Sung and spoken in English)

Pamina – Heidi Stober
Tamino – Alek Shrader
Tamino – Nathaniel Peake – July 6, 8

Papageno – Nathan Gunn
The Queen of the Night – Albina Shagimuratova *
Sarastro – Kristinn Sigmundsson
First Lady – Melody Moore
Second Lady – Lauren Mcneese
Third Lady – Renée Tatum
Papagena – Nadine Sierra
Monostatos – Greg Fedderly
The Speaker – David Pittsinger
First Spirit – Etienne Valdez
Second Spirit – Joshua Reinier
Third Spirit – John Walsh
First Armored Man – Beau Gibson
Second Armored Man – Jordan Bisch

Conductor – Rory Macdonald
Director – Harry Silverstein
Production Designer – Jun Kaneko
Lighting Designer – Paul Pyant
Chorus Director – Ian Robertson
Choreographer – Lawrence Pech

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.

Always accurate in intonation, Shagimuratova dazzled in her first aria and unleashed an Elettra-like fury in her second, earning the only true “aria ovation” of the night. The applause after Der Hölle Rache lasted long enough that she could have re-entered for a diva bow and an encore had she been so inclined. Vocally she so dominated the evening, I was disappointed she didn’t.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


The English National Ballet On Tour Spreads The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Festivities by Andrew Miller

Enb-swan-lake
The English National Ballet's Daria Klimentová and Vadim Muntagirov in the pas de deux from Swan Lake. Photo by Lightbox Photography.

The Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney: 8 June 2012
continues in Sydney until 17 June.

Choreography – George Balanchine
Music – Igor Stravinsky
Lighting – David Mohr
Staging – Annette Glushak

Apollo – Vadim Muntagirov
Terpsichore – Daria Klimentová
Polyhymnia – Anaïs Chalendard
Calliope – Adela Ramírez

Trois Gnossiennes
Choreography – Hans van Manen
Music – Erik Satie

Adela Ramírez
Fabian Reimair
Kevin Darvas – piano

Manon (Act I pas de deux)
Choreography – Kenneth MacMillan
Music – Jules Massenet, arr. Martin Yates
Set and costumes – Mia Stensgaard
Lighting – Mikki Kunttu
Staging – Monica Parker

Manon – Elena Glurdjidze
Des Grieux – Arionel Vargas

Swan Lake (Act III grand pas de deux)
Choreography – Marius Petipa
Music – Tchaikovsky
Design – Peter Farmer
Lighting – David Richardson

Odile – Daria Klimentová
Siegfried – Vadim Muntagirov

Suite en Blanc
Choreography – Serge Lifar
Music – Edouard Lalo, arr. Gavin Sutherland
Staging – Maina Gielgud

Sieste – Kei Akahoshi, Jia Zhang, Senri Kou
Pas de Trois – Shiori Kase, Zhanat Atymtayev, Max Westwell
Serenade – Senri Kou
Pas de Cinq – Kei Akahoshi, Guilherme Menezes, Vitor Menezes, Ken Saruhashi, Laurent Liotardo
Cigarette – Elena Glurdjidze
Mazurka – Yonah Acosta
Pas de Deux – Daria Klimentová, Vadim Muntagirov
Flute – Anaïs Chalendard

The Willoughby Symphony Orchestra
Gavin Sutherland – conductor

The English National Ballet, founded in 1950 as the London Festival Ballet (so just slightly past its own diamond anniversary) by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin from the touring company they put together the year before, right away found itself a niche in the balletomaniac city amongst the Sadler’s Wells companies (one soon to be the Royal Ballet), then dancing in the Sadler’s Wells Theatre and Covent Garden, and Ballet Rambert, as well as all the foreign companies, the Ballets des Champs Elysées of Boris Kochno and Roland Petit who regularly visited London, and many other visiting companies. No doubt this is thanks in part to the experience and enormous artistic talent of the founders, but they were keen to invite outside talent to create and dance in new works as well as the classics, namely Markova’s version of Giselle, The Nutcracker, Coppélia, Les Sylphides, Don Quixote, Études of Harald Lander (featuring as principal Lander’s second wife, Toni Lander) and reviving with Nicholas Beriosoff the early works of Fokine. The new works could be quite experimental and use previously unknown choreographers. The Festival Ballet made a name for itself dancing summer seasons at Royal Festival Hall, and also touring often the UK and to Europe. Markova left the company after a couple of seasons, but, according to Arnold Haskell, they had several very good ballerinas though not a single big star, and many strong male dancers in its first years, having assembled a company of English, Russian and Danish dancers. Nowadays, they still have a niche, retaining their summer season, dancing in larger, less conventional concert halls, namely Royal Albert Hall, and touring often (self-evidently) all the world over, and above all in their unique style of dancing and interpreting the classics. The company is extremely diverse, with dancers from many parts of Eurasia, especially the east, and the Americas, from many different schools (though the company does have their own school attached) and this seems to be a major strength.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!