Bomarzo tra il Santo Biscotto e la Fava Marxista, by Michael Miller

Biscotto_anselmo_500
Il Biscotto di S. Anselmo

My days in Bomarzo in 2009 did not show the town at its most industrious...or, on the contrary, perhaps it did. The end of April and the beginning of May mark holiday season in this medieval hill town of fewer than 1800 inhabitants. The third weekend of the month and the weekdays that lead up to it mark the festival of the local saint, Saint Anselm of Bomarzo, the 25th also being the national holiday of the Liberation. The following weekend embraces May Day, the international celebration of the working man and woman, which needs no explanation. A young person asked me why we don't celebrate this holiday in the United States, conjuring up old photos of the police and the National Guard in my mind.

Read the full essay on the Berkshire Review, an International journal for the Arts!






Blanche Moyse Chorale Presents an All-Schütz Concert: Friday, May 13 in Bellows Falls & Sunday, May 15 in Brattleboro

Blanche_moyse_chorale

the Blanche Moyse Chorale, an affiliate of the Brattleboro Music Center, will present “Der Geist Spricht” (“The Spir

it Speaks”) on Friday, May 13, 8 pm in Bellows Falls and Sunday, May 15, 4 pm in Brattleboro.

Under the direction of Mary Westbrook-Geha, the Chorale will perform a varied program of sacred works by a single composer: the German baroque master Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672).  While this program will obviously appeal to confirmed Schütz lovers, it will also appeal to anyone who appreciates a rich choral sound and finely crafted harmonic and rhythmic tapestries.

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




French Government Awards Chevalier in Order of Arts and Letters to Richard Rand

Richard Rand, Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator of Paintings at the Clark. Christophe Guilhou, the Consul General of France in Boston

Richard Rand, Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator of Paintings at the Clark. Christophe Guilhou, the Consul General of France in Boston

The Government of France awarded Richard Rand a Chevalier in its Ordre des Arts et Lettres during a ceremony yesterday at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Rand is the Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator of Paintings at the Clark. Christophe Guilhou, the Consul General of France in Boston, made the presentation in recognition of Rand’s significant contributions to promoting French art and culture.

The Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) was established in 1957 and is awarded by the French Minister of Culture to recognize eminent artists, writers, and scholars for their efforts in promoting the awareness andenrichment of France’s cultural heritage throughout the world. Rand was inducted as a knight in the Order.

Read the full announcement on The Berkshire Review, and International Journal for the Arts/

Australian 21st Century Chamber Music and More with the Eggner Piano Trio, by Andrew Miller

The Eggner Trio: Christoph (piano), Georg (violin), and Florian Eggner (cello). Photo: José Rodriguez.

Eggner Piano Trio
City Recital Hall, Angel Place: 18 April 2011
organized by Musica Viva

Joseph Haydn
Piano Trio in C, Hob.XV:27

Ian Munro
Tales of Old Russia
Vassilisa and the Baba Yaga
The Snow Maiden
Death and the Soldier

Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, opus 92

The Eggner Trio:
Christoph Eggner - piano
Georg Eggner - violin
Florian Eggner - cello

For their Australian tour, the brothers Eggner's trio has chosen a quite diverse group of pieces. Their manner of playing unites them so that it doesn't seem so important that one piece is Australian, another Austrian and another French, but that each is trying to express something in its own unique way. Likewise the Eggner Trio "contains multitudes," each brother having quite a different style, manner and approach to the music. I believe the fact that they're brothers contributes to their success as a chamber group — as a piano trio in particular, in whose peculiarities they seem to rejoice — in the way such different personalities, united only by underlying genetics, can coexist and cooperate in unpredictable ways.

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

Michael Miller





Yundi! …and the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt: Tchaikovskian Antics and Solid Sibelius, by Steven Kruger


Li_yundi_01-2
Yundi, Pianist

The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Herbert Blomstedt, Conducting
Yundi, Piano
Saturday, April 2, 2011

Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Opus 23 (1875)
Sibelius - Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 43 (1902)

Benchmarks for success may sometimes change. But vanity itself never changes. Indeed, tact appears to be the ancient art invented to deal with it. And in the concert world, as elsewhere, self-satisfaction frequently begins with a name. These days, sometimes just one.

More than a century ago Sir Edward Elgar, then just and justly becoming famous, expressed modest hope that a letter addressed to "Edward Elgar - England" might one day reach him. He lived eventually to experience this level of renown, but without seeking it. In more recent times, a publicity-conscious world could identify "Lenny" by first name alone, though Bernstein ultimately came to find indignity in his nickname. So within the changing parameters of fame, one wonders what Sir Edward would have thought of "Lindsay" and "Britney" and "Yanni," and of the recent PR truncation of Yundi Li to "Yundi"? And how harshly should we assess the notoriety of a young pianist apparently more interested in being Tweet-memorable than musicianly?

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

Michael Miller





Yuri Temirkanov conducts the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra with Alisa Weilerstein, Cello, at Carnegie Hall

[caption id="attachment_11269" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Johannes Brahms"]Johannes Brahms[/caption]

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Alisa Weilerstein, Cello

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Prelude to Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
Dmitri Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No. 1
Johannes Brahms - Symphony No. 4

Within the past eighteen months, nearly all of the great European orchestras have brought their unique tradition of playing, characteristic sound, and, in some cases, significant programs, to Carnegie Hall. New Yorkers and whoever travelled to the City to hear these exceptional concerts were rewarded with the authentic sonority and tradition many of them know well from recordings, visits to the home halls, and, of course, past visits to Carnegie. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic brought something else along with them, so it seemed: their own acoustic. Their playing was enveloped in a unique atmosphere, recalling somewhat the archetypal Russian birch forest in a mist, not that there was any deficiency in clarity. They produced a cohesive sound, in which we were not so much aware of a characteristic quality of the individual sections, as of the various choirs contributing a subtle timbre to a whole. As for that mistiness, I imagine it had something to do with letting the reso nance of the instruments, especially the strings, die out naturally over the rests. It should probably be no surprise that the musicians and their conductor, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, brought this off so easily in a strange hallâ€"but they’ve been to Carnegie before, of course.

I’ve been keen to hear Yuri Temirkanov for some time, but cancellations and travels didn’t permit that until now. He was conducting Mahler and Russian music in January in Rome with the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, but I couldn’t be there on the right dates. He is, as Music Director of the Teatro Regio di Parma, a well-loved and admired figure in Italy. In any case, after reading Steven Kruger's review of one of Temirkanov's concerts with St. Petersburg in San Francisco and the report of the impression his Brahms Fourth made on Charles Warren, another contributor to the Review, I felt compelled to take the opportunity to hear it in New York. I was not disappointed.

Temirkanov has been in his position with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic since 1988, which should assure one of some unanimity between him and the orchestra, and that was apparent throughout the evening. The Philharmonic's peculiar blendedness and their approach to phrasing and melodic line is something they have developed over years. It would take some delving into recordings for me to compare Temirkanov's Philharmonic with that of his legendary predecessor, Yevgeny Mravinsky. I'll take it as it is for now. He dispensed with a baton, leading the musicians with an understated intertwining of both hands, sometimes indicating a beat, usually relying on a more agogic gesture. With this, always seeming to proceed from a serene, understated core, Temirkanov spun wonderful extended lines of melody and inner voices. I would not hesitate to say that of living conductors he is the master of the long line, of organically breathing expression. This will invite comparison with Wilhelm Furtwängler, of course, and I'm usually sceptical of such comparisons, because contemporary critics and musicians rarely understand what Furtwängler was really about. Daniel Barenboim's devoted study of Furtwängler's compositions (which should be better known) and conducting, is quite at odds with his own musical instincts, which are entirely different. Barenboim has been saved by the strength of his own musical personality. If this were lacking, he might have developed into a mediocre imitator. As it has turned out Barenboim has given the world his own idiosyncratic approach. He is by no means the equal of Furtwängler, but he is an interesting voice in the orchestral world of today. Temirkanov evoked Furtwängler for me rather more immediately, although he is himself quite a different personality. There is that fundamental modesty and understatement that has nothing in common with Furtwängler's emotional intensity. Under Temirkanov, the affect of the music, far from s haking the listener by the shoulders or even confronting him face to face, seems rather to come to him indirectly, from behind, laying an affectionate hand on him, and subtly communicating the deeply moving essence of the music. I was most conscious of this in the Brahms. The Rimsky-Korsakov and the Shostakovich showed other aspects of their music-making, also interesting and compelling.

The Prelude to the Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh is a rich and absorbing work for a six-minute curtain-raiser, but it is limited by its original function. Not a fully-developed overture in the classical or romantic sense, it effectively sets a folkloric-mystical scene for the ensuing opera. Its brevity fits the context, and perhaps it hints at some of the spare compositional methods that were to emerge in the generation of Rimsky-Korsakov's pupils, but I did think the program had room for something more substantial. Still, the orchestra's ability to create fields of tone and mood around the closely blent colors of the score, as they played it, was pleasing. The composer's bird calls seemed perfunctory and even irritating. It's not a masterpiece, but I imagine it's an effective warm-up for the orchestra, helping them to attune themselves to the acoustics of the halls the visit on tour.

For Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto, the orchestra chose to collaborate with one of the rising stars among young American musicians, Alisa Weilerstein. Although she made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in October 1995 at the age of 13, her regular appearances with major orchestras and in major venues are relatively recent, but her position as a cello virtuoso and an outstanding interpreter of the repertoire seems already secure. She is surely destined to become one of the best. The daughter of two distinguished musicians and teachers, pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein and violinist Donald Weilerstein, she has played as part of a family trio for some years. She is a strong personality, to say the least, and was most definitely the center of attention in the concerto, although there was plenty of room for the audience to enjoy the fine writing for winds in the piece, so eloquently played by members of the orchestra, above all, Igor Karzov, the first horn. In his review of the St. Petersburg's performance of Scheherazade in San Francisco, Steven Kruger noted a trace of the sweet vibrato traditional in Soviet orchestras before they began to travel more in the world. Mr. Karzov avoided this in the Shostakovichâ€"which is only appropriate. This was, on the other hand, a rather romantic interpretation of the work. Ms. Weilerstein has restrained somewhat the emotional gestures and facial expressions she indulged in a  few years ago, and her playing was technically rigorous, with perfect intonation and absolute control of the difficult part Shostakovich wrote for Mstislav Rostropovich. Here, it was more apparent than ever that the composition reached its most expressive and beautiful level in the slow movement and the long cadenza that followed, even to the point that the energetic final movement seemed to me rather superfluous. It seemed as if Shostakovich had tacked it on to balance the first movement and please Soviet critics, and his working ou t of the four-note motif in both seemed heavy-handed. I couldn't help wondering if the concerto mightn't have been more effective, if it ended, most unclassically, with the cadenza, but Shostakovich would never have done that. The great composer's inspiration was in fact erratic, and the late 'fifties was a particularly difficult time for him, both personally and politically. There is a striking drop in substance between the two inner movements and this one; on the other hand, that final movement makes its point through its occasionally biting irony, and that seemed to be absent in Ms. Weilerstein's otherwise compelling performance.

Brahms' Fourth Symphony is a supreme masterpiece that looks forward to the twentieth century as well as backward to Bach and his predecessors. Within Brahms' own range of expression it has the monumentality of the First, the lyricism of the Second and Third, as well as a lapidary concision all its own. Without Brahms' example the passacaglia/chaconne would not have become such an basic chestnut for the Second Vienna School. We enjoy it as much for its logical cohesion as for the rich harmonies which transport us to private, meditative corners of our own psyche. It is a wonderful thing if a conductor can expand the music through broad, flexible tempi, but it is a disaster if tempo fluctuations disrupt the flow of the music or expressive phrasing the cohesion of its line and texture. Temirkanov's understated, but richly nuanced interpretation met all of these challenges triumphantly.

The imposing double-basses of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic added a tenebrous substratum to the atmospheric glow of the the higher instruments. Brahms' gorgeous cello and viola parts flowed in and out of the overall texture without breaking their unanimity with the rest of the orchestra, and the winds were similarly cohesive. The orchestra's sound was expansive, and Temirkanov's vision of the work was grand as well as elegiac. He place no stress on clarity in the orchestral textures, but everything that was important could be heard. From the opening  dialogue of sinking and rising two-note figures, Temirkanov extended the line into long phrases of great expression and nobility. In its discreet way this was a very deeply felt reading. Temirkanov's tempi were indeed quite flexible, but the ritards and accellerandi were beautifully shaped and controlled, even to the Furtwänglerian stringendi toward the end of the first and the fourth movements. This was the most obvious r eflection of Furtwängler in the performance, but it seemed entirely natural and unlike a self-conscious hommage.

Temirkanov adopted a very broad pace in the slow movement, allowing it to breathe, and expand to a slow, meditative ramble without actually approaching stasis. He really gave this movement its full value, reminding us that it is one of the greatest slow movements following Beethoven's Ninth. The Scherzo was a delightful surprise. All too often this music can seemviolent and anything but cheerful, but Temirkanov really seemed to relate to the music in a joyous way, and the Philharmonic, following his fast pace with more cohesion than precision, softened its insistent rhythms into an appealing dance-like measure. This was really one of the most successful executions of the movement I have heard. The fourth movement, the great chaconne followed all'attacca. While each eight-bar variation was clearly set apart, they were more like continuous waves in a single movement of the tide. In spite of his marked feeling for the gentler aspect of Brahms' music, this was absolut ely Allegro energico e appassionato, as Brahms indicated. While never entirely standing out as soloists like the winds in an American orchestra, the winds asserted themselves through the orchestral blend in the variations. The flute solo was subtly phrased, again not seeming so much a solo against an accompaniment as part of a texture. Most astonishing of all was the rich amber color of the variation that ensues at E in the score, in which trombones and bassoons carry the melody, immediately joined by the horns. Temirkanov stretched this out most beautifully. After intense stringendos, coming later than in Furtwängler, the chaconne came to its powerful and abrupt ending. This was, in color, design, and insight, the most satisfying reading of the Brahms Fourth I have have heard live.

There was a splendid encore, "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations, played with great solemnity and a rich, tawny sonorityâ€"enough to humble any British conductor or orchestra. Need I say how much I'd like to hear Maestro Temirkanov and his orchestra play the entire work?

Pieter Wispelwey plays Haydn's Cello Concerto in C with the Sydney Symphony, by Andrew Miller

Cellist Pieter Wispelwey played the Haydn Cello Concerto No 1 on a 1760 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini cello.

Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall: 15 April 2011
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Serenade in E flat for wind octet, K375

Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 49 in f minor
Cello Concerto No. 1 in C, Hob. VIIb:1
Cello Concerto No. 2, single movement (as encore)
cello-director - Pieter Wispelwey

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Oboist Diana Doherty led the first piece, the Mozart wind octet with a string bass, wood wind and horn players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A fine group of musicians who did shine in recent large symphonic performances, especially Mahler's Sixth, it is nonetheless good they had the chance to play as a chamber group without a conductor. One might think the piece might be a little too intimate for the large symphonic hall, and it is occasional music composed for a specific room in a specific nobleman's palace, like many of Mozart's serenades, sinfoniettas, divertissements, cassations etc.

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

Michael Miller





Pollock Matters, The McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, September 1-December 9, 2007 REORGANIZED

Lee Krasner, Mercedes Matter, Jackson Pollock, Herbert Matter

One of our most read articles since its publication in two parts in the winter of 2007-08 has been Michael Miller's review of the controversial exhibition of the small paintings discovered by Herbert Matter's son Alex in a storage locker. Interest has become particularly lively in the past few weeks, and it seemed advisable at this point to consolidate both parts into one article, now available at this link:

http://berkshirereview.net/2007/12/pollock-matters-mcmullen-museum-art/

If you have the old URLs bookmarked, please replace them with this one. The old postings have been permanently redirected to the new URL


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

Michael Miller





Les Arts Florissants perform Actes de Ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau at Tullyscope, by Michael Miller

Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (Dijon 1683- Paris 1764)

Les Arts Florissants perform Actes de Ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau at Tullyscope
Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie, conductor
Emmanuelle de Negri, soprano
Hanna Bayodi-Hirt, soprano
Ed Lyon, tenor
Alain Buet, bass

Two Actes de Ballet by Rameau
Anacréon
Pigmalion

Tully Scope has so far included a vast range of different kinds of music considered of especially vital interest today. On Saturday evening William Christie, the ebullient adoptive Frenchman from Buffalo and Les Arts Florissants introduced historically-informed performance to the mix, as well as another element that has been missing so far: light entertainment. It was about time for some music that was primarily designed to amuse...but to entertain intelligently, of course, because, as light and amusing as Rameau's balletic-operatic entertainments were, the wit of his librettists' manipulation of classical literature and myth was subtle and enlightening. The lightness of the proceedings was also apparent in the delightful moments when Mr. Christie's vigorous enjoyment of Rameau's dance measures recalled Sir Thomas Beecham's concoctions after Handel. Although here the orchestrations and the instruments were authentic and the understanding of baroque music far more sophisticated, these moments remind one that Sir Thomas, for all his anachronism and vulgarity, was often not too far off the mark in spirit.

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

Michael Miller





Tennessee Williams at 100, Two Early Impressions: Vieux Carré from the Wooster Group and Streetcar at Williams, by Michael Miller

From the Wooster Group's Production of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré

There can be no doubt that Tennessee Williams was the preeminent American playwright of his time—at least for a period which, sadly, covered only eighteen years of his life, beginning with his first great Broadway success, "The Glass Menagerie" in 1944 and ending with his last great Broadway success, "The Night of the Iguana," in 1962. Between those years Williams wrote a series of profound, deeply-affecting works, in which a heady atmosphere originating from his deep southern origins proved irresistable to New York critics and audiences, not to mention certain Hollywood producers and enough people in-between to bring him wealth and celebrity. After "Night of the Iguana," it all ended as swiftly as it began. His later productions irritated critics and audiences with their lush language and melodrama, if it made much of an impression on them at all. The reasons are clear enough: there was a marked decline in the quality of his work, brought on by an excess of drugs and alcohol. On the other hand, it's worth remembering that the early sixties was a time of important changes in society and taste, which favored the cold, jagged edges of, to name one example, Edward Albee, whose career was reaching its peak in "Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf" just at that time. Williams spent the last two decades of a life which extended on to 1983 as a marginal figure in the theatrical world, most directly engaged in struggling to survive his demons.

Read the full review on the The Berkshire Review, an International journal for the Arts

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