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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Pre Raphaelite Drawings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, by Andrew Miller

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J. Thompson after William Holman Hunt, 'The Lady of Shalott,' Tate, London.

The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite designs, studies & watercolours
at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 4 September 2011

Pollinated with the spirit of the Renaissance, spring-like, fresh and full of individual passion and wonder, the Pre Raphaelites went back to a state of painting when the Renaissance was in its stride if not its prime. Rather than seeing painting as a continuous development up to their own day, they went back to an approach and a world view at a point when art knew where it was going, striving toward a most sublime peak, a peak attained perhaps twice in western human history. The Pre Raphaelites took as their teachers and masters those of Titian's, Michelangelo's and Raphael's and via intelligent imitation that went beyond mere copying they progressed, very roughly speaking, through the styles of the Italian Renaissance, and at times managed to break free of their teachers' styles. They even wrote poems too. One can see something of this progression in the quite broad and thorough collection of their drawings and watercolors currently on display in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, most of which come from the Tate and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

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








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Pre Raphaelite Drawings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales by Andrew Miller

Thompson-after-holman-hunt-lad

Pollinated with the spirit of the Renaissance, spring-like, fresh and full of individual passion and wonder, the Pre Raphaelites went back to a state of painting when the Renaissance was in its stride if not its prime. Rather than seeing painting as a continuous development up to their own day, they when back to an approach and a world view at a point when art knew where it was going, striving toward a most sublime peak, a peak attained perhaps twice in western human history. The Pre Raphaelites took as their teachers and masters those of Titian's, Michelangelo's and Raphael's and via intelligent imitation that went beyond mere copying they progressed, very roughly speaking, through the styles of the Italian Renaissance, and at times managed to break free of their teachers' styles. They even wrote poems too. One can see something of this progression in the quite broad and thorough collection of their drawings and watercolors currently on display in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, most of which come from the Tate and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

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

The Barangaroo Review: Your concerns are important to us but we do not share them by Alan Miller

Barangaroo-clyde-reserve

The results of the “short, sharp” review into Sydney’s Barangaroo development project have been released in the form of an 87 page report in which the word “outcome” appears 88 times. Though all sides have declared some version of victory in its wake, it is hard to see the report as anything other than a final rubber stamp for the developer Lend Lease. Whatever its misgivings, the report requires no modifications to the current plans. Any critique is blunted by a salad of weasel words and praise for the “world class people working on Barangaroo.” Whether or not anyone has the power to undo this mess, it’s clear no one has the guts.

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

A Tale of Two Conductors (and Two Pianists, Two Concertos, Two Symphonies): Graf and Eschenbach with the BSO in Mozart, Mahler, and Brahms, with Orion Weiss and Peter Serkin , by Larry Wallach

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Gustav Mahler on the podium.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood:
Friday, July 29
Hans Graf, conductor, Orion Weiss, piano soloist.
Mozart - Piano Concerto no. 25 in C, K. 503
Mahler - Symphony no. 5

Saturday, July 30
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor, Peter Serkin, piano soloist.
Brahms - Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor, op. 15
Symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98

The dual nature of the contemporary orchestral concert experience was clearly displayed last Friday and Saturday nights by the Boston Symphony concerts at Tanglewood. Each offered its own image of how an audience can interact with familiar works. Each featured a central European conductor leading core repertory: one concerto and one symphony each, all works familiar to habitual concert-goers. Each pair of pianists and conductors exhibited strongly-marked contrasts. Both concerts were satisfying, but in very different ways and to markedly different degrees.

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








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Touch(ed) by Bess Wohl, directed by Trip Cullman, Williamstown Theatre Festival, August 3-14, 2011, by Michael Miller

Posted by  • August 9, 2011 • Printer-friendly

Merritt Wever, Lisa Joyce, Michael Chernus in Touch(ed) at Williamstown Theatre Festival. PhotoT. Charles Erickson.

Touch(ed)
by Bess Wohl
directed by Trip Cullman
Williamstown Theatre Festival, Nikos Theatre
August 3-14, 2011

Creative Team:
Scenic Design - Andromache Chalfant
Costume Design - Emily Rebholz
Lighting Design - David Weiner
Sound Design - Jill BC DuBoff
Production Stage Manager - Hannah Cohen
Production Manager - Jeremiah Thies

Billy - Michael Chernus
Kay - Lisa Joyce
Emma - Merritt Wever

Touch(ed) is a terrifically effective and well-constructed play by a young actress and playwright who has managed to gather an impressive amount of experience in some very good places: after Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she has spent four previous seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Company. Director Trip Cullman [third WTF season] is a Yale School of Drama graduate, as is Emily Rebholz, costume designer. Andromache Chalfant hails from Tisch, and actor Michael Chernus [second WTF season] from Juilliard. There was a tightness and consistency about the various elements of this show that made me wonder about the connections among the principal creative forces. There is something seriously encouraging about such a successful creation coming from top Northeastern schools. It doesn't always happen.

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








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Bryn Terfel sings Schumann, Finzi, and Ibert at the Ravinia Festival, August 2, 2011, by David Kubiak


Bryn Terfel

Ravinia Festival
Martin Theater
August 2, 2011

Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone
Brian Zeger, piano

Robert Schumann, Belsazar Liederkreis, Op. 39
Die beiden Grenadiere
Mein Wagen rollet langsam
Gerald Finzi, Let Us Garlands Bring
Jacques Ibert, Chansons de Don Quichotte 

I well remember the 1992 Ravinia Festival, when I bought a ticket for the American debut recital of a singer I had read about, a Welsh farmer’s son who was creating a considerable stir in Europe. Although he had made a few recordings, they were not easily accessible in this country, and I came into the concert hall not having heard a single note sung by the then 27 year old Bryn Terfel. The program was simple and serious: Schubert’sSchwanengesang in the first half, and in the second the Op. 39 Liederkreis of Schumann. A huge man with shoulder length blond hair strode on stage followed by his pianist James Levine. The visual effect itself was striking enough—a Viking in full evening dress. I think that my jaw did actually drop at the first line of Liebesbotschaft: “Rauschendes Bächlein so silbern und hell.” The timbre of the voice was absolutely gorgeous and absolutely unique, dark and round and plummy, but with a cut and edge that filled every corner of the theater, the vocal equivalent of Chambertin from a great year. Never had I heard mezza voce singing of such beauty and technical command in these cycles—no question of its being falsetto; at the same time the sheer amplitude of sound in a song like Der Atlas was overpowering. Unique too was the way the voice got around the words. This is a quality that goes beyond German diction (which was perfect), but has to do with how vowels and consonants are formed and their relationship to the rhythmic flow of the music. One of the encores was Schubert’sLitanei, and I recall thinking that there could never have been a more beautiful “ee” vowel in the opening: “Ruh’n in Frieden… .” Welsh songs were among the encores, unknown to the audience, but sung with a melancholy loveliness and unaffected sincerity that had people at the end of the evening on their feet shouting bravo with tears running down their face.

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



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Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Vespro della Beata Vergine, under Kent Tritle, at the Berkshire Choral Festival, by Keith Francis


Domenico Tintoretto and Jacopo Tintoretto, Coronation of the Virgin, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
Vespro della  Beata Vergine (Vespers of 1610)
Berkshire Choral Festival
Stewart Center at Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts

Molly Quinn, soprano
Kathryn Lewek, soprano
Jason McStoots, tenor
Steven Fox, tenor
Richard Giarusso, baritone
Matt Boehler, bass

Chorus of the Berkshire Choral Festival
Springfield Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Kent Tritle

In his study of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, John Wenham quotes the musicologist Denis Arnold:

“No doubt all professions have their hazards; and for the student of Monteverdi the principal one is surely that musicological Lorelei, the Vespers (of 1610, of course). To edit it is to receive the kiss of death as a scholar. To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends. Even to avoid joining in the controversy is to find oneself accused of (i) cowardice, or (ii) snobbishness, or (iii) sitting on the fence, or (iv) all three.”

What is it that makes the Vespers so problematical? A brief historical background will help the reader and listener to understand.

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








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Prom 26: Debussy, Dutilleux, Ravel – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Donald Runnicles, Lynn Harrell, cello, by Gabriel Kellett

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Henri Dutilleux

Prom 26: Debussy/Dutilleux/Ravel
Royal Albert Hall
August 3 rd, 2011

Debussy - Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Dutilleux - Tout un monde lointain...
Ravel - Boléro
Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé

Lynn Harrell, cello
Edinburgh Festival Chorus
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Donald Runnicles

First off, a confession. Such, such are the joys of London transport that I arrived too late for the start of the Debussy, and was therefore not admitted till after the Prélude had finished. I have heard tell that there is a species of journalist that in this situation would confer with its fellow hacks and evaluate the consensus on the missed performance, before compiling a description along these party lines as though it were its own opinion. Fortunately, I am not that kind of journalist and would therefore not have the effrontery to hoodwink my innocent readers in this way. (Those of a political disposition have my full permission to consider the preceding sentences trenchant topical satire rather than pointless filler.) At least I can confirm that wherever the sound dissipates to in the Albert Hall's less-than-princely acoustic, it is not through its double set of side doors off the auditorium, which yielded up nary a note in the five minutes-plus I was stood outside awaiting entry.

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








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She Stoops To Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, directed by Nicholas Martin, Williamstown Theatre Festival, by Michael Miller

Kristine Nielsen in a scene from She Stoops To Conquer at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photo T. Charles Erickson.

She Stoops To Conquer
by Oliver Goldsmith
directed by Nicholas Martin
Williamstown Theatre Festival
July 27-August 7, 2011

Creative Team:
Scenic Design - David Korins
Costume Design - Gabriel Berry
Lighting Design - Ben Stanton
Sound Design - Drew Levy
Dialect Coach - Louis Colaianni
Production Stage Manager - Lauren Kurinskas
Production Manager - Jeremiah Thies

Cast:
Tony Lumpkin - Brooks Ashmanskas
Miss Hardcastle - Mia Barron
Diggory/ Sir Charles - Richard Easton
Miss Constance Neville - Holley Fain
Mrs. Hardcastle - Kristine Nielsen
Charles Marlow - Jon Patrick Walker
George Hastings - Jeremy Webb
Mr. Hardcastle - Paxton Whitehead

As the run of Oliver Goldsmith's comic masterpiece, She Stoops to Conquer,draws to a close, by all means rush to catch it while you can. You will see an endlessly amusing and enlightening classic, a handsome set, and a cast of highly talented actors, including WTF favorites like Richard Easton, Paxton Whitehead, and Brooks Ashmanskas. The production is fast-moving—at the cost of some excessive trimming—and funny, as a good part of the audience found it. That said, it is a far-from-perfect production, in fact it is seriously flawed, but that shouldn't stop anyone from seeing the show and enjoying it. There is a lot to enjoy, and much of the audience laughed uproariously at Kristin Neilsen's wildly exaggerated portrayal of Mrs. Hardcastle. You may even find that you are among them.

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



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