Ian Munro and the Goldner String Quartet Play Munro, Szymanowski and Brahms, by Andrew Miller


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Ian Munro, Australian composer and pianist. Photo Musica Viva.

City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney: matinée 27 August 2011
Tours to Coffs Harbour 1 September, Melbourne 3 September, Adelaide 6 September, Perth 8 September

Karol Szymanowski
String Quartet no. 1 in C, Opus 37

Ian Munro
Piano Quintet no. 2
Dreams
II Drought and Night Rain

Johannes Brahms
Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 34

Ian Munro - piano
The Goldner String Quartet
Dene Olding - violin
Dimity Hall - violin
Irina Morozova - viola
Julian Smiles - cello

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.

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 on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!








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A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler 37: Risk and Ease: Cherubini's Medea at Glimmerglass, Handel's Orlando at Tanglewood

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Alexandra Deshorties as Medea with the Argonauts in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2011 production of Cherubini's Medea. Photo Julieta Cervantes.

Artists like Maria Callas and Vladimir Horowitz seemed to possess as part of their formidable arsenals a kind of palpable risk-taking. Could he actually play it that fast? Could she really get the high note? Alexandra Deshorties is one of these artists. Her performance in the title role of Glimmerglass Festival Opera's Medea was a real thrill-ride. She entered barely audible, and she made us listen. More than once it seemed like the role was a little much for her. But then it wasn't. Was this consciously done? Whatever it was, it made the first act of the opera riveting, not just the end. If a word doesn't make a beautiful sound, she doesn't compel her voice to make a beautiful sound. Her way of gesturing, equally unpredictable, produced visible responses in the audience members around me. In short, this is my kind of singer.

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



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McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Doing Handel’s Orlando at Tanglewood—Less is More, by Larry Wallach

Dominique-Labelle Sings Angelica in Handel's Orlando, Nicholas McGegan Conducting. Photo Hilary-Scott.

George Frideric Handel’s Orlando
Tanglewood Festival

Seiji Ozawa Hall
Tuesday August 16 2011

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco
Nicholas McGegan, conductor

Cast:
Angelica - Dominique Labelle, soprano
Dorinda - Yulia Van Doren, soprano
Medoro - Diana Moore, mezzo-soprano
Orlando - Clint van der Linde, countertenor
Zoroastro - Wolf Matthias Friedrich, baritone

Nicholas McGegan and his merry band of singers and instrumentalists rolled into Tanglewood on Tuesday night (August 16) to wrap up their tour of Handel’s great opera Orlando after taking it to Germany, Chicago, and New York City. The wear and tear of a tour were nowhere evident in their joyful presentation of music and theatrics—the performers still sounded like they were in the thrall of first love with this rich and rewarding score. The only member of the cast who seemed droopy was the Orlando of Clint van der Linde, and this was clearly the persona that he adopted for the misanthropic hero who seems to have lost touch with his inner Achilles. We had to wait for the mad scene late in the second act to see him take charge of the stage; then, if there had been any scenery, he would have chewed it up.

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








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Ten Cents a Dance—An Abstract Musical, conceived and directed by John Doyle, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Main Stage, August 11-28, by Nancy Salz


Jane Pfitsch, Malcolm Gets, Lauren Molina in a scene from Ten Cents A Dance at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photo T. Charles Erickson.

Williamstown Theatre Festival
Main Stage, August 11-28

Ten Cents a Dance

Music - Richard Rodgers
Lyrics - Lorenz Hart

Johnny - Malcom Gets      
Miss Jones 1 - Lauren Molina
Miss Jones 2 - Jane Pfitsch
Miss Jones 3 - Jessica Tyler Wright
Miss Jones 4 - Diana DiMarzio
Miss Jones 5 - Donna McKechnie
 
Scenic Design - Scott Pask
Costume Design - Hould-Ward
Musical Director/ Orchestrator - Mary-Mitchell Campbell 

The stage is stark and colddark but visible. Chairs and dozens of musical instruments sit against a circular back wall. At the right, a piano. At the left, a steep, winding staircase with a black, leafy, wrought-iron banister. It twists its way up at least two stories above the stage finally disappearing into the ceiling and a shaft of simulated daylight. We are intrigued, and Ten Cents a Dance, the third and final production on the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, has yet to begin.

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



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Fragments of a Festival, a Festival of Fragments: Festival of Contemporary Music, Tanglewood, August 3—7, 2011, by Larry Wallach

Festival of Contemporary Music, Tanglewood, August 3—7, 2011

As curated by Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938), this year’s festival featured music that spanned a half-century, weighted toward the recent past, with a significant number of older composers heard from whose names are still relatively unfamiliar. This could be taken as an effort on Wuorinen’s part to offer recompense to some of his (relatively) neglected contemporaries.

Of twenty-three composers performed, only four are 40 or younger, constituting the smallest age-demographic group. Composers in their 50’s, 60’s, and over 70’s received stronger representation. This enabled the listener to revisit the second half of the twentieth century while catching up on recent stylistic developments. The emerging picture was surprising—there was no single pattern of historical development to be perceived. The notion that musical style progresses in clear directions received no illustration; neither evolving serialism, electronics or neo-tonality predominated. mixed influences were so frequently demonstrated, including all of the above in a single work, that each composition could be viewed as sui generis, characterized by a predominating uniqueness of voice but nourished by various twentieth century stylistic trends. What Allan Kozinn, in his review of the festival (NY Times, Aug. 9) dubbed “style wars” can be declared over. Whether everyone is a potential victor remains up to the individual listener to decide.

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



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Looking Forward into the Rear View Mirror: Taxi Driver Turns 35 by Alan Miller

Taxi-driver-fascination

For a man of the 1970s, Travis Bickle spends a lot of time looking at and through screens. His world is nearly always framed, either by a movie screen, an old TV, a windshield, a shop window or a rear view mirror. As Travis would know, at the movies everything is bigger than on TV. Taxi Driver is a different film on the big screen, especially in the gleaming print released to commemorate its 35th birthday (Travis himself would be 61 in 2011, does he live in Westchester now?), but not all elements of the film grow at the same rate. As the city around Travis becomes more detailed, more luminous and seductive, the film becomes more than the tale of “God’s lonely man,” more than a prelude to violence. Taxi Driver gets pulled out of the gutter Travis is so desperate to clean.

Read the full review on New York Arts, the best of the arts in New York City!

Mozart Perfection Midsummer: Emanuel Ax performs Mozart at Tanglewood, August 7, 2011…and a Triumph for Young Bringuier, by Seth Lachterman


Pianist Emanuel Ax

Tanglewood Music Festival
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lionel Bringuier, Conductor
Emanuel Ax, Piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K.482.
Bedřich Smetana, “The Moldau” from Má Vlast
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64

While the Mozart concerto is about thirty minutes compared to Tchaikovsky’s fifty-minute symphony, its richness and diversity seem more expansive than in the Russian’s fateful masterpiece.  The E-flat Major concerto from 1785 is not the most frequently performed of Mozart’s Viennese concerti, and the innovations in outer movements are sometimes disparaged in comparison, say, to the K. 450, K.488 or K.503. No one disputes the luscious wind writing in these movements, nor the joviality of the finale that includes an interpolated menuet sounding like something from Le nozze di Figaro, which Mozart was writing at the time. Repeated hearings, though, of the first Allegro will convince anyone of its nobility, warmth, and structural ingenuity.  To my ears, the finale is pure ambrosia.

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








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Joanna Gabler’s New York

  • 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 physical reality. Since then she has visited various cities around the world—her native Warsaw, Odessa, Paris, Venice, and Rome, as well as New York, where she lived thirteen years—and looked at them afresh, with a mode of feeling and seeing that can only be expressed when she has broken down the data she has captured with her camera and reconstructed it in her own terms. Out of the forms she has recorded she creates new symmetries and color patterns which reveal the hidden life behind the plants, rocks, buildings, and objects she sees. As she works with the forms she has captured, new forms emerge, which may be totally unfamiliar in reference to the original thing as observed in the world. The viewer may may well recognize the shapes of branches by their twists and turns and their gnarled contours, but the trees are transformed into ideal symmetries or asymmetries. Some of this finished images may remind one of gemstone or a mandala, or even patterns on an oriental carpet.

    However they appear, they have traveled a long distance from three-dimensional physical reality, through Joanna's eye, through the camera lens, through the computer to the print. They have become created objects in their own right and add a new dimension to the objects they originally came from.

    In these ten views of New York, she presents her own visions, which she has developed from her experience of various familiar locations in the City.

    She makes these works available in limited edition archival inkjet prints of various sizes, from 4 x 6 in. to 60 x 80 in. and range in price from $125 to $1750.

    To purchase prints, contact Joanna at http://naturetransfigured.com. (joanna [at] naturetransfigured [dot] com)

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    Mari Andrejco’s The Belle of Amherst (a new version after William Luce’s play) at Triple Shadow in East Otis, Massachusetts, Friday-Sunday through August 28th, by Deborah Brown

    Posted by  • August 16, 2011

    Mari Andrejco as Emily Dickinson in Triple Shadow's, The Belle of Amherst

    So who was Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) really? She was the “Nobody” from Amherst, MA, the alleged half-cracked daughter of town father Edward Dickinson, who wrote nearly 1800 poems (7 published in her lifetime, but none by her initiative) and the continuing inspiration for poets, composers, writers, readers all over the world. Next to Rumi and Shakespeare, she may not only be the “Queen of Cavalry,” but assuredly the unequivocal Queen of the Pantheon.

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








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    A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler 36: Childe Maurice

    Posted by  • August 15, 2011 • Printer-friendly

    Maurice Ravel in 1930

    He comes out like Oberon, with hair of gold and a light step. It's a very careful walk he has, nothing fancy, and he sits on the bench with a kind of directness and naturalness of purpose. The first notes are the "Menuet Antique." I am sitting far away at this point, and I hear the jagged off-beats of the left hand hopping out. It takes no time to be lost in this world, a world of fantastic play and even more fantastic loneliness. Is it Jean-Yves Thibaudet, or is it Ravel? Always, when watching this pianist, I see a solitary soul. Nothing in his biography suggests this kind of singleness, far from it. So maybe it really is Ravel, dreaming in his little house, full of clocks.  When Jean-Yves got to the "Pavane," the sense of hearing an intimacy was complete. He played it at a good clip;  but its tale is far from simple, like a Matisse. Ravel's music is not child-like. It is the music of a child.

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








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