The Bridge Project’s Richard III, by William Shakespeare, with Kevin Spacey, at BAM, by Michael Miller


Richardiii006r_joan-marcus
Kevin Spacey as Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music - Harvey Theater. Photo Joan Marcus.

Richard III
by William Shakespeare

The Bridge Project at BAM, through March 4
Produced by BAM, The Old Vic & Neal Street

Directed by Sam Mendes
Scenery by Tom Piper
Costumes by Catherine Zuber
Lighting by Paul Pyant
Projection by Jon Driscoll

Cast:

Maureen Anderman* - Duchess of York
Stephen Lee Anderson* - Sir Richard Ratcliffe
Jeremy Bobb* - Catesby & 2nd Murderer & 2nd Citizen
Nathan Darrow* - Lord Grey & Richmond
Jack Ellis - Lord Hastings
Haydn Gwynne - Queen Elizabeth
Chuk Iwuji - Buckingham
Isaiah Johnson* - Rivers & Lord Mayor
Gemma Jones - Queen Margaret
Andrew Long* - King Edward IV & Bishop of Ely
Katherine Manners - Young Prince Richard
Howard Overshown* - Brackenbury & Keeper & Sir Thomas Vaughan
Simon Lee Phillips - Tyrell & 3rd Citizen & Norfolk
Gary Powell - Lord Lovel & 1st Murderer & 1st Citizen
Michael Rudko* - Lord Stanley
Annabel Scholey - Lady Anne
Kevin Spacey* - Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Gavin Stenhouse - Dorset & Urswick
Hannah Stokely - Edward
Chandler Williams* - George, Duke of Clarence
*indicates American member of company

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.

Richard III is The Bridge Project’s last production, and I must say that I’m sorry it’s over. As I think back over it, the performances I saw seem better in retrospect than they did immediately after the performance. Along with stupendous performances by some great actors, Simon Russell Beale above all, there were some awkwardly directed scenes and some uneven work among even leading actors—mostly the Americans, I regret to say. Yet the end result, in spite of those annoyances, was surprisingly satisfying.

Read the full review
 in New York Arts

Some Italian Wines You Should Know, by Geraldine Ramer

Terlano

La Cantina di Terlano

Looking at the Leonard Freed photographs of Italy on these pages prompted me to think about the tradition, artistry, romance and chaos of Italian wines. Italy is reputed to have the highest count of indigenous grapes of any country—estimates of upwards of two thousand—and quite a few wines are imported here that are undeservedly overlooked. The words Chianti, Barolo and Barbaresco may trip easily off your tongue, but what about Aglianico, Lagrein, Refosco or Negroamaro?

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


Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, Detroit Institute of Arts, through February 12th, by Daniel B. Gallagher

Since fully reopening five years ago after a magnificent renovation and expansion project, the Detroit Institute of Arts has emerged as the premier 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.

The DIA’s forte is no less apparent in Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus. The instalment is arranged with noble simplicity, putting all the focus on the viewing experience. Behind the economy of presentation lies an enormous amount of preparation. Mr. Salvador Salort-Pons, Curator of European Paintings, brought together art historians with Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish theologians to design an exhibition that would explore Rembrandt’s influence on the way we visualize Jesus from—literally—every angle.

The show debuted in Paris and ran in Philadelphia before moving to the Motor City, where it has met an enthusiastic response. And rightly so. Visitors have the privilege not only of seeing the “faces” of Christ that form the centerpiece of the exhibit, but also some of the most exquisite etchings and paintings ever produced. TheHundred Guilder Print, the Woman Caught in Adultery, the Visitation, and the Louvre’s Supper at Emmaus are just a few of the gems one can admire at close range (no barriers and no alarms). The six faces of Jesus, three of which are on American soil for the first time, have been conventionally catalogued as Andachtsbildes (images for private devotion), though their original purpose remains a topic of lively debate. Rembrandt broke from his predecessors and contemporaries by depicting Christ not as the divine Apollo but as a simple Nazarene, venerable not only in his passion and death but in his daily life.

The-hundred-guilder-print-chri
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Hundred Guilder Print c. 1649, etching, engraving, and drypoint on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Read the full review
 on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!








Tannery Pond Concerts Summer Schedule Announced for 2012, including the Tokyo String Quarter and Emanuel Ax, by Michael Miller

Tannery-6-2011
At Tannery Pond during a break, June 2011. Photo Michael Miller.

Tannery Pond Concerts has announced the schedule for the summer of 2012. As always it is a stimulating brew of diverse groups and repertory. This year looks like a string quartet year, with the Harlem String Quartet, the Brentano String Quartet, and the legendary Tokyo String Quartet in there last year before two of long-term members, violist Kazuhide Isomura and second violinist Kikuei Ikeda, retire in June, 2013. The Tokyo Quartet have set an example in technical precision, disciplined, finely-judged interpretation, and a rich palette of colors since their foundation in 1969.

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


Tanglewood 75th anniversary season tickets on sale as of Sunday, January 29: Season Preview and Concert Schedules, by Michael Miller

Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky celebrating his 74th birthday with Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss

Tickets went on sale for the Tanglewood 75th anniversary season, Sunday, January 29, 10:00 am attanglewood.org, 888-266-1200, or Symphony Hall box office in Boston, Massachusetts

Last November Mark Volpe, Managing Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator, and members of the orchestra presented the 75th anniversary season of the festival in a low-key event, which, as relaxed and friendly as it was, brought back memories of old Boston in its restraint. No one attempted to hide his pride in this important anniversary of what is undoubtedly the key music festival in North America, but nobody did anything that would be out of place at the Somerset Club either.

One could say the same thing about anniversary programs at Tanglewood. To observe that the season, which includes hommages to programs performed at the first festival, as well as some important new commissions, is not terribly different from any other season in memory is to recognize how faithfully the festival has remained true to its traditions and founding purpose—one entirely rooted in music, largely conceived by Serge Koussevitzky. The guiding has been relatively simple, bringing together the central works of the classical orchestral repertoire with new music, much of it commissioned by the Boston Symphony and most of it American. If in later years solo recitals, chamber music, and opera joined this, the work of the BSO remained at the core. Like every Tanglewood Festival since the beginning, the 75th anniversary season will include a wealth of the classics and a choice lickings of the new.

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








Heart of the City: Union Square, San Francisco, by Steven Kruger

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A Union Square Collage by Steven Kruger

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.

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








Richard Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer: the beginning of Marek Janowski’s Historic Series of Concert Performances of the Ten Mature Operas and Music Dramas, by Michael Miller

Janowski
Marek Janowski

Richard Wagner
Der fliegende Holländer WWV 63

Matti Salminen - Bass (Daland)
Ricarda Merbeth - Soprano (Senta)
Robert Dean Smith - Tenor (Erik)
Silvia Hablowetz - Mezzo-soprano (Mary)
Steve Davislim - Tenor (Steuermann)
Albert Dohmen - Bass-baritone (Der Holländer)

Rundfunkchor Berlin
Chorus Master - Eberhard Friedrich

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
conducted by Marek Janowski

Pentatone PTC 5186400
DSD recorded

Live recording of the concert performance in the Berlin Philharmonie on 13 November, 2010

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..."

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


Harbison’s Symphony No. 6 premiered by the BSO under David Zinman, also Weber, Strauss, and Beethoven’ FIrst Piano Concerto with Andsnes, by Charles Warren

Johnharbison-profile
John Harbison

Boston Symphony Orchestra, January 12, 2012
David Zinman conducting

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano
Paula Murrihy, mezzo-soprano

Weber ‑ Overture to Euryanthe
Beethoven ‑ 
Piano Concerto No. 1
Harbison ‑ 
Symphony No. 6 (world premiere; BSO commission)
Strauss ‑ 
Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks

David Zinman led this weekend’s Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, where the big event was the world premiere of John Harbison’s Symphony No. 6, commissioned by the BSO and capping its survey of the Harbison symphonies last season and this. Zinman is a fine conductor, and all went well. He is not a great cultivator of sound or of refined playing, but he has a remarkable sense of musical structure; makes clear, sharp phrases; and sustains a strong rhythm, complex when need be. He opened with Weber’s Euryanthe Overture, which sounded fresh and interesting in Zinman’s hands. It is basically a traditional sonata-form piece, but with unusual moves in development of material, and so made a good prelude to an evening of such music. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C followed, with soloist Leif Ove Andsnes giving what might be called a “nice” performance—nice tone and phrasing, all a bit polite and restrained, not fully letting go with Beethoven’s prankishness and oddity. After the first two movements, Andsnes came to life more in the rambunctious finale, bringing some bite to his enunciation of the much repeated rondo motif. Pianist and conductor worked well together, Zinman and the orchestra always pointed and flexible. In this piece again, as with the Weber, we were given some classicism with a personal inflection.

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








A Singer's Notes by Keith Kibler 44: New Year’s Day in the Hall with Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann_sebastian_bach1
Johann Sebastian Bach by or after Elias Gottlob Haussmann. Coll. William H. Scheide, Princeton, NJ.
Something is happening with increasing frequency in Baroque performance practice these days. A kind of third way has emerged. It would be wrong to call it a half-way house; it's something more like a suite of rooms each with its own individual slant. The poles are a die-hard kind of historical accuracy, rigid in its orthodoxy, and now pretty much a retro activity, or large opulent orchestras playing Baroque music, if they play it at all, with a 19th-century approach. What seems to be nascent these days is a kind of third way: modern orchestras, even large ones, performing with a much greater sense of tonal and rhetorical knowledge of 18th century style. Nikolaus Harnoncourt started this when he recorded the Beethoven symphonies with a modern orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, but used brass instruments which were tricked out in the 18th century way. It has continued, nay flourished, in the 21st century, especially in the symphonies of Beethoven again, where its main defenders have been Osmo Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra and Paavo Järvi with the Chamber Orchestra of Bremen. These are players using the modern style but with a believable, not-manufactured Baroque sound. Most recently Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have released a full set of Beethoven symphonies where something of this third way may be heard. These forces have also recorded the Bach Passions and the Brandenburg concertos with modern instruments, but sounding stylistically informed.

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


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’

Assembly-hooligans
Chunky Move, the Victorian Opera and the Sydney Phiharmonia Choirs "hawling like brooligans" in Gideon Obarzanek's Assembly. Photo by Jeff Busby.

Babel (words)
Sydney Theater: 11 January 2012

Choreography - Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet
Visual Concept & design - Antony Gormley
Lighting - Adam Carrée
Costumes - Alexandra Gilbert
Music Adviser - Fahrettin Yarkin
Dramaturgy - Lou Cope
Assistant Choreographer - Nienke Reehorst

Dancers and Actors (Eastman) - Navala Chaudari, Francis Ducharme, Jon Filip Fahlstroem, Damien Fournier, Ben Fury, Kazutomi Kozuki, Christine LeBoute, Moya Michael, James O'Hara, Helder Seabra, Ulrika Kinn Svensson, Darryl E. Woods

Music - Patrizia Bovi, Mahabub Khan, Sattar Khan, Gabriele Miracle, Shogo Yoshii

Anatomy of an Afternoon
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House: 12 January 2012

Concept and Direction - Martin del Amo
Choreography - Martin del Amo and Paul White
Dancer - Paul White
Composer - Mark Bradshaw
Lighting designer - Matthew Marshall
Musicians - Jacob Abela (celeste), Andrew Smith (saxophone), Marcus Whale (saxophone and laptop)
Production manager - Mike Smith
Costume consultant - Rani Patience
Producer - Viv Rosman (Performing Lines)

Assembly
City Recital Hall, Angel Place Sydney: 13 January 2012

Director & Choreographer - Gideon Obarzanek
Music Director - Richard Gill
Lighting Designer - Nick Schlieper
Costume Designer - Harriet Oxley
Set Designers - Gideon Obarzanek & Chris Mercer
Assistant Choreographer - Stephanie Lake
Assistant Music Director - Daniel Carter

Dancers (Chunky Move) - Sara Black, Nathan Dubber, Benjamin Hancock, Alisdair Macindoe, Lily Paskas, Harriet Ritchie, James Shannon, Frankie Snowdon

Principal singers (The Victorian Opera) - Casselle Bonollo, Olivia Cranwell, Frederica Cunningham, Tobias Glaser, Jeremy Kleeman, Matthew Thomas, Daniel Todd

Guest Singer - Queenie van de Zandt

Sydney Philharmonia Choirs

Music-
Io Tacero - Gesualdo
Amicus Meus - Victoria
O Vos Omnes - Victoria
Hear My Prayer - Henry Purcell
Ave Verum - Plainchant
Video Caelos Apertos - Plainchant
Christus Surrexit - Plainchant
My World Is Empty Without You - Holland B/Dozier L/Holland E

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.

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