A Tannery Pond Benefit Concert with the Young Russian Pianist Gleb Ivanov

Gleb Ivanov
Gleb Ivanov

Tannery Pond Concerts would love to have you join us at the New Lebanon home of Chris and Lois Herzeca for a private concert with pianist, Gleb Ivanov on Saturday, May 7th.  The concert will begin at 4pm followed by a reception with hors d'oeuvres and wine.

Gleb Ivanov was the first-prize winner of the Young Concert Artist competition in 2005 where he joins an impressive roster of alumni like Richard Goode,  Jeremy Denk, Wendy Chen (playing at Tannery on June 11th with Andrés Días), Carter Brey, Pinchas Zukerman, and Todd Palmer, to name but a few.  He has been winning awards on many continents  since he was 10 years old.  "This talent seems larger than life and calls to mind the legendary pianists Horowitz, Rachmaninoff, and Rubinstein" wrote The Washington Times after Mr. Ivanov's debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Seats are limited so please RSVP soon.  Tickets are  $100 / person.  All proceeds will be used to keep our concert tickets affordable and to maintain the high quality of our concerts.

Click on the photo above to visit our website for details or call 888-820-1696.

We hope to see you there.


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

Michael Miller





Ballare Con Puccini – The Australian Ballet Dances Madame Butterfly by Andrew MIller

Julie-de-costa-and-rachel-rawl
When Stanton Welch adapted Puccini's opera to the ballet 16 years ago it was his first full length work. He is now head of the Houston Ballet, and meanwhile Butterfly has played around the globe and of course has stuck in the Australian Ballet's repertoire. The ballet is neoclassical, or more accurately neo-romantic: it uses the classical ballet forms and also visions and fantastic ethereal imagery, at times within worldly and concrete settings, something ballet in particular does so well, and really is its major strength as an art form, contributing to its appealing free and unique method of story-telling. It doesn't really make sense to compare ballet to opera, I think Madame Butterfly shows why this comparison is false as it is very different from the opera, but it does seem to gain something in being a ballet — it at least becomes more refined and concentrated and, for me, Mr Welch's lyrical flowing dances add a je ne sais quoi missing from the music, but moreover it opens up possibilities in the depths of the very difficult characters. For example, Mr Welch's choreography quite masterfully uses point-of-view, especially when Cio Cio San's visions and dreams precipitate before our eyes and we sense more wholly her psyche. At other times, she turns her back on the audience or disappears in the corner of the stage and other characters' experiences and feelings take over our attention, most notably in Pinkerton's Act I solo. The ballet is also paced perfectly, flowing continuously from scene to scene and dance to dance even over a scene change in Act II, it loses nothing of the plot despite cuts in the original opera's score, but is very economical, never wasting a single step. Stylistically, the 'niponerie' lends itself well to ballet: there are many pas de chatcouru en pointe, and much character dancing, mainly for the smaller roles.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!

Alan Miller

Yuri Temirkanov Conducts the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra with Nikolai Lugansky, Piano in Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov

Yuri Temirkanov

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Monday, March 28, 2011
Yuri Temirkanov, Conducting
Nikolai Lugansky, Piano

Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18
Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade, Opus 35

A recent San Francisco visit of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, grandly led by Yuri Temirkanov and featuring Nikolai Lugansky as piano soloist, is a fine example of why one should make a point of hearing orchestras on tour.

Present-day listeners are frequently tempted to overgeneralize about music in Russia, knowing only Valery Gergiev or some of the younger conductors currently recording in the UK. Gergiev's brand of intensity sometimes invites lurid cliches about Russian "barbaric splendor." Indeed, there have been Gergiev concerts where passion seemed to destroy luster and raw perspiration carried the day---an approach more bear than bearnaise. So it is enlightening to encounter in the St. Petersburg Philharmonic the continuation of a highly charged but more patrician attitude towards music-making. One recalls that Mravinsky and his "Leningrad Philharmonic" cast a grand Karajan-like shadow over the Russian-speaking musical world for forty years. Something of that special dignity remains. Indeed, an almost nineteenth-century manner.

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

Michael Miller




Catch Me If You Can...perhaps literally...on Broadway, by Nancy Salz

Norbert Leo Butz as Agent Carl Hanratty in Catch Me If You Can. Photo Joan Marcus

Catch Me If You Can
Book by Terrence McNally
Music by Marc Shaiman
Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman
Choreography by Jerry Mitchell
Directed by Jack O’Brien

With Norbert Leo Butz, Aaron Tveit, Kerry Butler, Tom Wopat, Rachel de Benedet, Linda Hart, Nick Wyman


Frank Abagnale Jr. could be the busiest felon of our times. In 1980, he published a memoir. Stephen Spielberg made a movie based on the book called Catch Me If You Can in 2002. Next season he’s been booked for the first-ever Speakers Series at Boston’s Symphony Hall. And a few days ago on April 10, 2011, a musical version of Catch Me If You Can opened on Broadway. Oh Frank, you should have skipped the Broadway gig.

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

Michael Miller




Meet the Composer Festival at the Morgan Presents ICE and So Percussion, Thursday, April 14, 2011, 7.30pm

Composer Marcos Balter
Composer Marcos Balter

Meet the Composer Festival Presents ICE and So Percussion
Thursday, April 14, 2011, 7.30pm

The Morgan Library and Museum
225 Madison Ave
New York, NY
Tickets: $20

Meet the Composer presents a festival bringing new works by Chicago composers to New York. Chicago-based composer Marcos Balter's Aesopica revisits a selection of fables attributed to the mysterious Greek writer Aesop which, even twenty-six centuries after being written, continue to resonate with today's sociocultural issues. Commissioned by Meet the Composer and written for the members of ICE, this theatrical work is for audiences of all ages and is scored for narrator and ensemble plus electronics.
Also on the program are new works written for ICE's new music brothers-in-arms, So Percussion.

Marcos Balter (b. 1974): Æsopica (2011) WORLD PREMIERE



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

Michael Miller




ICElab: Impossible Flow | Music of Steve Lehman, (le) poisson rouge, Tuesday, April 19, 2011, doors 6.30pm/concert 7.30pm

Steve-lehman
Composer/Saxophonist Steve Lehman.

ICElab: Impossible Flow | Music of Steve Lehman

Tuesday, April 19, 2011, doors 6.30pm/concert 7.30pm
(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker Street
New York, NY
FREE admission; reservations strongly encouraged


This ICElab concert spotlights an evening-length new work by Steve Lehman, Impossible Flow, tailor-made for ICE. Long known as a virtuosic saxophone player at the center of New York's experimental jazz scene, Steve Lehman has also developed a reputation as a brilliant composer. His 2009 album Travail, Transformation, and Flow was placed on an unprecedented 30 Top-Ten lists of jazz and experimental albums around the world. Meanwhile his work with composers Tristan Murail and Anthony Braxton, and his extensive experience in electroacoustic media, have yielded a musical style at the frontiers of contemporary concert music and experimental jazz.

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

Michael Miller




The Wonder of Understatement: Eva Legêne, Wieland Kuijken, and Arthur Haas, by Seth Lachterman

Baroque Virtuosi at South Berkshire Concerts, Sunday, April 3, 2011

Jean-Marie Leclair, Sonata No. II in E Minor, for recorder and basso continuo
Marin Marais, Suite in E Minor from Seconde Livre de Pièces de Viole, for viola da gamba and continuo
Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, Pièces de Lully, for harpsichord solo
François Couperin Quatrième Concert from Concert Royaux, for recorder and basso continuo
Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonata in G Minor, S.1029, for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Sonata No. 7 in A Minor, Wq132, for recorder and basso continuo
Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio Sonata in G Major, S. 1039, for recorder, viola da gamba and continuo

Wieland Kuijken, viola da gamba
Eva Legêne, recorder
Arthur Haas, harpsichord

Kuijken
Viola da Gambist, Wieland Kuijken

A Baroque recital in the Berkshires?  Suppressing one’s yawn might seem too much of an effort.  After all, it’s the fare that provides a steady musical backdrop to the region’s musical life before, during, and after summer festivities. Accordingly, our standards for Baroque performance rise as we demand Baroque specialists who play with great musicality and historical cognizance, and have something unique to offer. It’s a tough bill, and the amateurs of the past should remain in the private chambers.  We have been lucky, though, to have attracted some of the best Baroque specialists for Aston Magna, Berkshire Bach, Crescendo, the Boston Early Music Festival at the Mahaiwe, and, of course, Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

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

Michael Miller




The Barenboim/Cassiers Production of Die Walküre to open at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 17 April. See this review of the La Scala Version as a preview.

Teatro alla Scala, 2 January 2011
Die Walküre
by Richard Wagner

Conductor - Daniel Barenboim
Stage Director - Guy Cassiers
Scene Design - Guy Cassiers e Enrico Bagnoli
Costumes - Tim van Steenbergen
Lighting - Enrico Bagnoli
Video design - Arjen Klerkx e Kurt D’Haeseleer
Choreography - Csilla Lakatos

Cast:
Siegmund - Simon O’Neill
Hunding - John Tomlinson
Wotan - Vitalij Kowaljow
Sieglinde - Waltraud Meier
Brünnhilde - Nina Stemme
Fricka - Ekaterina Gubanova
Gerhilde - Danielle Halbwachs
Ortlinde - Carola Höhn
Waltraute - Ivonne Fuchs
Schwertleite - Anaik Morel
Helmwige - Susan Foster
Siegrune - Leann Sandel-Pantaleo
Gringerde - Nicole Piccolomini
Rossweisse - Simone Schröder
Danzatori - Guro Schia, Vebjørn Sundby

In co-production with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlinand in collaboration with Toneelhuis (Antwerpen)

It is a curiosity of our times that I write this review of La Scala’s sixth and last performance of their new production of Die Walküre several weeks after audiences around the world have seen high definition video projections of earlier performances of the same production. A friend of mine residing in the Midwest has already seen it twice, but questions remain: seeing a broadcast through the eyes of video cameras is not the same as sitting in the house, with the interventions of the television director and the videographers standing between the audience and the event at La Scala. I haven't seen a La Scala broadcast, and I have no idea of their particular style, which is hopefully more straightforward than the extremely mannered — no, gimmicky — Met broadcasts.

Read the full review/preview on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller




Fisher Center at Bard presents a Weekend of Brahms, Fri-Sat, April 15-16, 2011, featuring A German Requiem under Botstein, James Bagwell, Choral Director

Johannes Brahms in 1853

Fisher Center at Bard College presents
A Weekend of Brahms
Friday, April 15, 2011 - Saturday, April 16, 2011

Johannes Brahms
Tragic Overture, Op. 81 (1880)
A German Requiem, Op. 45 (1865–68)
Tickets: $20, 30, 35

Brahms considered A German Requiem—which became one of his most beloved and frequently performed concert works—to be “a requiem for all humanity.” Preceded by a performance of Brahms's Tragic Overture, this noble and comforting masterpiece will be performed as a side-by-side concert in the Sosnoff Theater, conducted by Leon Botstein, by members of the American Symphony Orchestra, Bard Conservatory Orchestra, Bard College Chamber Singers (James Bagwell, director), Vassar College Choir, and Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir (Christine Howlett, director). Soloists: Faylotte Crayton, soprano; and Yohan Yi, bass-baritone.

Pre-concert talk at 7 pm by James Bagwell.



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

Michael Miller




Yellow Barn and the Jupiter String Quartet Explore the Beethoven Quartets Concert series in April and May 2011, in Southern VT and Amherst MA

Jupiter String Quartet: Nelson Lee and Megan Freivogel violins, Liz Freivogel viola, and cellist Daniel McDonough

Yellow Barn and the Jupiter String Quartet
Explore the Beethoven Quartets
Concert series in April and May 2011, in Southern Vermont and Amherst Massachusetts

From April 17-23, 2011 and May 24-29, 2011, Yellow Barn welcomes the Jupiter String Quartet back to Putney for a journey through one of the greatest chamber music cycles ever written. In two residency weeks the Jupiter Quartet prepares itself to perform the Beethoven string quartets, one of the defining experiences in the life of any string quartet.  The six concerts they present during their stay are given in anticipation of their performance of the complete cycle at the 2011 Aspen Music Festival.

The bustling schedule of events runs April 17 at 7:00pm (Hooker-Dunham Theater, Brattleboro, VT), April 21 at 7:00pm (Next Stage, Putney, VT), April 23 at 7:00pm (Next Stage, Putney, VT), May 24 at 7:00pm (Yiddish  Book  Center, Amherst, MA),  May 27 at 7:00pm (Next Stage, Putney, VT), and May 29 at 3:00pm (Next Stage, Putney, VT.)  Additionally, post-concert talk-back sessions with The Jupiter Quartet, moderated by Artistic Director Seth Knopp, will take place after the April 17 and May 24 performances.

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

Michael Miller