Why I am a Whinger by Alan Miller

Eastern-distributor

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.

Read the whole article on The Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

The Kuss Quartet and Naoko Shimizu Play Quartets and Quintets by Mozart, Brahms, Kurtág and Gordon Kerry by Andrew Miller

Moon-over-dark-buildings

Jenö Szervánszky. Moon over Dark Buildings.
Oil on board. ca.19??
20 x 15cm
Private collection
View over the rooftops from the artist’s apartment in Danjanich utca, Budapest.


City Recital Hall, Sydney: 29 September, 2012

The Kuss Quartet
Jana Kuss – violin
Oliver Wille – violin
William Coleman – viola
Mikayel Hakhnazaryan – cello

with
Naoko Shimizu – viola

Gordon Kerry – String Quintet (2012)
Mozart – String Quartet no. 21 in D major K575
György KurtágOfficium Breve in Memoriam Andreae Szervánszky, opus 28
Brahms – String Quintet no. 2 in G major, opus 111

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.

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

The San Francisco Symphony Opens its New Season with Semyon Bychkov by Steven Kruger

4pp-fabrizioferri

Semyon Bychkov. Photo by Fabrizio Ferri.


The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Saturday, September 8, 2012

Semyon Bychkov, conductor
Pinchas Zukerman, violin

Wagner – Overture to Tannhauser (1845)
Bruch – Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 26 (1866)
**********
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Opus 64, (1888)

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.

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

Baroque for Barack, a Musical Fund Raiser in Great Barrington, Oct. 20, 2012. Don't miss it! Get your tickets now. It will sell out. - Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts

Petition Madness in the Art World…SECOND REVISION! More Petitions and a Modest Proposal…by Michael Miller

A cruise ship enters the Giudecca. Photo © 2011 Michael Miller.

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. The decades when cultural events were so fashionable that these mainstream publications thought it worthwhile to employ writers of exceptional learning and talent are long gone. 

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







Hannu Lintu Conducts the Sydney Symphony in Dutilleux and Beethoven, and Angela Hewitt Plays Mozart’s D Minor Piano Concerto by Andrew Miller

1006560-henri_dutilleux

Henri Dutilleux in 1993. Photo © Ulf / Gamma


Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House: 21 September 2012

Henri DutilleuxMystère de l’instant
Mozart – Piano concerto no 20 in D minor, K 466
Angela Hewitt -  piano
Beethoven – Symphony no 4 in B flat, opus 60

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu -  conductor

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!”1 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.

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

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra by Andrew Miller

Orfeo-e-eurydice

Orfeo and Eurydice, and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Photo by Steven Godbee.

L’Orfeo, Favola in musica

Music by Claudio Monteverdi

Libretto by Alessandro Striggio

City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney: 19 September 2012

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra on period instruments
Paul Dyer – Artistic Director, conductor, harpsichord and organ
Brendan Ross – staging
Justin Nardella – styling and costumes

Markus Brutscher – Orfeo
Sara Macliver – Eurydice and La Musica
Fiona Campbell – La Messaggiera and Proserpina
Wolf Matthias Friedrich – Caronte and Plutone
Ninfa – Siobhan Stagg
Apollo – Morgan Pearse
Eco – Robert Macfarlane
Choro di Pastori – Robert Macfarlane, Richard Butler, Tobias Cole, Morgan Pearse
Choro di Ninfe – Sarah Ampel, Anna Sandström, Paul Sutton, Nick Gilbert, Richard Butler
La Speranza – Tobias Cole
Choro di Spiriti Infernali – Paul Sutton, Nick Gilbert, Tobias cole, Richard Butler, Morgan Pearse

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.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international Journal for the arts!

TMC Nights, 2012, including the Festival of Contemporary Music, by Michael Miller

Seiji Ozawa Hall. Photo © 2012 Michael Miller.

The Boston Symphony played a few brilliant concerts in the shed in this anniversary year — not least Charles Dutoit’s two days of Berlioz, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, but the real excitement came from Ozawa Hall, as the TMC Fellows played with the full excitement of youth in a series of demanding concerts, all weighted towards the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in consistently stimulating and coherent programs, divided between the regular TMC schedule and the Festival of Contemporary Music. This was, in addition, the most satisfying FCM since the Elliott Carter Tribute, because the selection of composers not only had its own coherence in Oliver Knussen’s experience and taste; he had the wisdom to restrict the number of composers, so that we could hear more than a single work by the less familiar of them. Unfortunately the Festival was scheduled a week later than usual, creating a conflict with the first weekend of the Bard Festival, and I didn’t get to hear as many of the concerts as I’d have liked. I hope that the postponement of the FCM was due to the Tanglewood 75th anniversary celebrations and that it will return to its usual slot in the first week of August. There are plenty of people who are interested in both Festivals, and they shouldn’t have to make a choice.

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







The Tour of Guimardia (English Version) by Alan Miller

Port-dauphine-4

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.

Take the whole tour at The Berkshire Review, an international journal of the arts!

Le tour de Guimardia (version française)

Port-dauphine-4

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 pour Guimard ce que Oak Park est pour 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 d’autres qui soutiennent la proposition, discutable j’espère, que le seizième soit l’arrondissement le plus intéressant sur le plan architectural. Après son 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 son architecture n’était pas influente par rapport aux modernismes des années suivantes, l’oeuvre de Guimard vit trop souvent aux musées plutôt que dans les rues: il était une impasse dans l’histoire de l’architecture, qui ne veut pas habiter une telle ruelle.

Prenez la ballade guimardienne au Berkshire Review!