Vasari’s 500th Birthday: The Battle of Anghiari by Daniel B. Gallagher

Palazzo-vecchio_600
It’s not a matter of deciding whether to celebrate Giorgio Vasari’s 500th birthday, but where to start. The author of the Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architettori traversed the entire Italian peninsula researching his literary masterpiece, so there are many possibilities. Perhaps the most appropriate site is the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio, for it was there that Vasari made a triumphal return after two of his staunchest supporters in the city were murdered in 1530. Not until Duke Cosimo I invited him back in 1554 to decorate apartments begun by Battista del Tasso was Vasari vindicated. In typical fashion, he immediately altered Tasso’s plans, raising the ceilings to make room for imaginative frescoes based on the plan of humanist scholar Cosimo Bartoli. With the help of an eager crew of collaborators, Vasari completed the project in less than three years.

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

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2011-12 Season Schedule and Preview, by Michael Miller

Riccardo Chailly

Mark Volpe and his organization pulled off an impressive feat in creating this season at such short notice. Former Music Director James Levine submitted his resignation only after most symphony orchestras, including the BSO, have established their programming for the next season and published it to waiting subscribers. Add to that the need to corral a feasible number of potential candidates for the open position of Music Director. The Boston Symphony's 2011-12 is not only solid and nutritious, it is even rather exciting—apart from the added piquancy of the search. The fall will be mainly given over to guest conductors who have worked with the BSO for many years, or at least a few times in the past. The serious contenders for the permanent position will begin later on.

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



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Istanbul: New Wealth, New Architecture, by Louise Levathes

Istanbul Sapphire Apartments. Tabanlioglu Architects.

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.

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








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Brahms’s First Symphony: Vladimir Ashkenazy Conducts the Sydney Symphony, by Andrew Miller


This concert began with a complimentary morning tea with chocolate biscuits. Photo: Alan Miller.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House: 23 September 2011

Ludwig van Beethoven
Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus, opus 43

Johannes Brahms
Symphony no. 1 in C minor, opus 68

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Conductor - Vladimir Ashkenazy

The Creatures of Prometheus marked a happy intersection of artists in the history of ballet, being the only piece Beethoven composed specifically for the ballet, for Salvatore Viganò's 'dance-drama' which premièred in Vienna in 1801, near the peak of ballet's (neo)classical movement. Romanticism would not catch up and overthrow ballet for another generation or so, and many artists like Viganò still blew a fresh breeze of reform. He was the pupil of Jean Dauberval (known for choreographing the original version of La Fille Mal Gardée) who in turn had been the pupil of Jean-Georges Noverre, who is famous for his theoretical treatise on dance, Lettres sur la Danse which called for reform by advocating the ballet d'action: a return to a more natural kind of drama from the decorative, almost ceremonial sort of theatre of strung-together divertissements which could be very light on story and humanity. Viganò's practice of the ballet d'action, though none of his choreography survives, was said to manifest itself in a close cooperation of mime acting, dancing and music, and he did have high musical taste (later he created a larger and deeper Prometheus ballet to existing music by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weigl). Unlike Mozart, we don't have very much music of Beethoven's that was written for the theatre, but from his Prometheus score one can sense how exciting it would have been to see the curtain go up on that night of 28 March 1801. In fact it was a little cruel to play just the overture (the full piece consists of 18 scenes) and then leave listeners hanging. 

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








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San Francisco Symphony: MTT and Yo-Yo Ma in Hindemith’s Cello Concerto, with Beethoven’s Leonore No. 3 and Brahms’ First Symphony, by Steven Kruger

Paul Hindemith

The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Michael Tilson Thomas conducting
Yo-Yo Ma, violoncello

Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 3, Opus 72a (1806)
Hindemith - Cello Concerto (1940)
Brahms - Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68 (1876)

One happy consequence of San Francisco's famously late summers is the continuing presence of European visitors well into the fall concert season. Warm weather and serious indoor music are a rare mix, and this is the time of year to experience the best of both.  So it was no surprise last Saturday to encounter a happy swirl of German voices in the Davies Hall lobby.  In fairness to heresy, the French were also out in good humor--or at least the Belgians and Swiss--and for a very German program, too--not to mention unusual numbers of young Asian women, about which more in a moment.

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








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Brahms’s First Symphony: Vladimir Ashkenazy Conducts the Sydney Symphony by Andrew Miller

Opera-house-tea

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.

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

The Apollo Trio at the Meeting House, New Marlborough play Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Dvořák, by Keith Francis

Dmitri Shostakovich

The Apollo Trio at the Meeting House, New Marlborough
Saturday, September 17
Curtis Macomber, violin; Michael Kannen, cello; Marija Stroke, piano

Beethoven – Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 44
Shostakovich – Trio in E Minor, Op. 67
Dvořák – Trio in E Minor, Op. 90, “Dumky”

This recital was part of New Marlborough’s enterprising “Music and More” series, directed by Harold F. Lewin and now in its twentieth year, which has certainly succeeded in its stated intention of “bringing a diverse and distinguished group of authors, actors, musicians and films to the Berkshires.”

Beethoven completed the Variations, Op. 44 in 1792, long before he undertook the task of setting the world to rights. It is remarkable that a year after Mozart’s death and while Haydn was regaling London with a succession of masterpieces, this young man of twenty-two could write music that sounds like Beethoven and could not be mistaken for a product of either of the two older masters. The variations are by turns elegant, soulful, sparkling and exuberant, and the performance characterized them beautifully.

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








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Music at the Schools: Concert Schedules and more at New England Colleges, Universities, and Conservatories [EXPANDED]

The New England Conservatory, Boston, in a vintage postcard
See the expanded listings on the Berkshire Review!

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

Twitter: @berkshirereview

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Paula Robison and Katherine Chi to play a free concert at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, by Michael Miller

Paula Robison

Paula Robison, flute
Katherine Chi, piano
NEC’s Jordan Hall, September 25, 2011 - 2 pm

FREE

Paula Robison, who occupies the Donna Hieken Flute Chair on NEC's faculty, presents a recital in collaboration with pianist Katherine Chi '89 M.M., '92 A.D., '11 D.M.A. In addition to works for flute and piano, both artists will perform unaccompanied works for their instruments.

Griffes - Poem for flute and piano

Three Tone-Pictures, Op. 5, for solo piano

Lanier - Wind Song for solo flute

Taffanel - Fantasy on Themes from Weber's Der Freischutz, for flute and piano

Franck - Sonata in A Major for flute and piano

I don't mind confessing that I never fully appreciated the flute until I heard Paula Robison play the instrument. The range of color and expression she can create with it are truly astonishing, and she has the ability to make every note count, as Pablo Casals could, and a few of the very best of the musicians who have passed through Marlboro.

On Sunday she will play for her students and colleagues at the New England Conservatory, as well as the rest of us, and I think that will bring a special sense of occasion—not that that is ever lacking at any of her concerts. Lately she has been venturing out into other forms of expression, notably the Sprechstimme in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, in which she has also played the flute part. As when she plays her flute, she approaches this with terrific concentration and fanatical preparation.

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








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Porgy and Bess at the A.R.T. – Opera as Broadway Musical, by Charles Warren


Porgy and Bess at American Repertory Theater. The Card Game. Photo Michael J. Lutch.

Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater production of Porgy and Bess, bound for Broadway later in the fall, makes for an evening of very professional, polished theater, with a compelling dramatic presence on the part of the two principals. It is altogether not as moving or exciting as it should be—more of that later. But the show is attractive in many ways, and on the official opening night, September 1st, the audience leapt to its feet at the end and applauded long and hard. Everybody onstage sings and dances very well, and everything is carefully coordinated and flows easily along (choreographer: Ronald K. Brown). Natasha Yvette Williams as Mariah the imposing senior woman in the African-American "Catfish Row" community, and David Alan Grier as Sportin’ Life, the outsider prosperous drug pusher, were especially vivid among the supporting cast—Grier did mesmerizing and almost show-stopping turns with his numbers "It Ain't Necessarily So," speaking against religion and conventional morality, and "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York," seducing Bess away at the end. But all the cast were focused and effective when coming to the fore—Nikki Renée Daniels as Clara opening the piece singing "Summertime" with a real infant in her arms, or Bryonha Marie Parham as Serena, widowed by a violent crime and turning to religion.

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








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