Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the TMC Orchestra in Mahler’s Third Symphony at Tanglewood, by Larry Wallach

Karen Cargill-sings with the TMCO and Michael Tilson Thomas. Photo Hilary Scott.

 

Saturday, July 17: Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Karen Cargill, alto
with the American Boychoir and the Women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz and John Oliver, conductors.

The French philosophe Fontanelle famously asked “Sonate, que veux-tu?” in response to the new popularity of a purely instrumental form that asked that the audience do nothing more than sit and listen: “Sonata, what do you want from me?” Hearing Mahler’s extraordinary, gargantuan Third Symphony, one is tempted to repeat the question. What indeed is demanded from the listener by this veritable barrage, this unprecedented outpouring of the full spectra of sounds and noises, human emotional conditions, evocations of life forms from flowers to angels, plumbed philosophical depths, musical allusions encompassing inchoate mutterings, crude military assaults, the most naïve and artless melodies, state-of-the-art sophisticated harmonies, an off-stage post horn, a marriage of a poem by Nietzsche and German folk lyrics, a chorus of boys and women that sings for less than four out of the ninety minutes of the work, pre-echoes of Sousa marches and pop tunes (Sammy Fein’s “I’ll be seeing you…”; Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”; the Beatles “Yesterday”), deliberate references to Beethoven, Wagner, and for all I know, even Brahms? Judging from the enthusiasm of its response last Saturday night, whatever it was that the audience was actually imagining or experiencing provided it with a full measure of gratification. But the question remains, what was the composer after: “Mahler, que veux-tu?”

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller

Opening Night at Tanglewood: Michael Tilson Thomas serves Mahler and the BSO most splendidly in the “Resurrection” Symphony, by Michael Miller

Michael Tilson Thomas leads the BSO in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 on Opening Night. Photo Hilary Scott.


Opening Night at Tanglewood
Friday, July 9, 8:30 p.m. Shed
Mahler, Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”

I. Allegro maestoso. Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck
II. Andante moderato. Sehr gemachlich
III. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
IV. Urlicht. Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht
V. Im Tempo des Scherzos. Wild herausfahrend

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Layla Claire, soprano
Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor

On taking my seat in the Music Shed, I was surprised to see the gentlemen of the BSO in shirtsleeves — and it was a pleasant surprise. Their playing of Mahler’s Second was very much a shirtsleeves sort of performance, and that was also a pleasant surprise. I’ve heard that Michael Tilson Thomas had very little rehearsal time for this concert. This made itself heard, I thought, in a certain lack of concentration in the fifth movement — entirely unlike the first three movements, which were intensely focused, if anything. Even with this proviso, the performance was an impressive success. MTT took charge of the orchestra with total confidence and produced his personal sound and interpretation from the orchestra with authority and conviction — and it was precisely this that made the performance so outstanding.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Thornton Wilder's Our Town A co-production of Walking the Dog Theatre and PS21, by Michael Millerpost

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Our Town, Walking the Dog Theatre Company.

Thornton Wilder's 

Our Town

A co-production of Walking the Dog Theatre and PS21
Wednesday, July 15, 2010 - through August 1
Directed by David Anderson
Lighting: Deena Pewtherer
Music: Jonathan Talbott
Costumes & Set: Katie Jean Wall

Featuring Eddie Allen*/David Anderson/Ralph Bedard/Benedicta Bertau/Paul Boothroyd/Bethany Caputo*/Parker Cross/Steve Dahlin/Luke Hildreth/Griff Jurchak/Jan Jurchak/ Luca Pearl Khosrova/John Scott Legg/Lael Locke/Robert Ian Mackenzie*/Morgana/Andrew Rosenberg/Nancy Rothman*
*Member, Actors' Equity Association

Guest starring as Professor Willard for one night only: Frank Serpico

In the past week I have seen three plays, and each has been a play about community and/or family: Ödön von Horváth’s Judgment Day,

 part of Bard’s Summerfest, John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, and the quintessential play of small town America, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Horváth presents a small town as well, an Austro-Hungarian community poisoned and corrupted by its own preferences, which are fickle, of course, because the preferences depend on rumour and whim. Six Degrees of Separation explores an even scarier community, the impersonal environment of Manhattan, where standing, one thinks, has to be maintained on a daily basis, if one doesn’t want simply to disappear from the world. Our Town’s reputation as an American classic which resonates the true spirit of the simple life of rural New England has remained almost inviolable, although it is the work of a cosmopolitan homosexual who grew up in an intellectual mid-western family. His American simplicity came from his friend Gertrude Stein, not an intimate acquaintance with life in the Monadnock region. We accept it as a play that rings true, but, knowing that Our Town is anything but a series of impressions of the playwright’s youth in southern New Hampshire, I still find that Wilder can still get his audiences to meet him on his own terms. He is looking at his characters and their environment from a certain metaphysical distance.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


A Singer's Notes by Keith Kibler 18 Give My Ears a True Face: murderous amplification in Berkshire theatres!

Harriet Harris and Jeff McCarthy in Barrington Stage Company's "Sweeney Todd" - Music Murdered? Photo by Kevin Sprague.


I would like to say something about Barrington Stage's "Sweeney Todd" and the singing therein, but I feel prevented from doing so mainly because of some wires and gadgets.  The amplification in the show was so extreme that most of the ensemble singing was close to distortion. I think some of the singing in the show was quite good, even excellent, but I didn't really hear it. When one hears only a disembodied voice coming from God knows where, one doesn't see the face of the singer the same way. Hearing and seeing are not disconnected. There seems to be a plague creeping up on us. Everything on stage must now have a little boost. I think the excellent companies in our county should trust us.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Pavel Haas Quartet at Wigmore Hall: Haydn and Shostakovich

The Pavel Haas Quartet

Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76 no. 2 "Fifths"

Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57

Pavel Haas Quartet:
Veronika Jaruskova, Eva Karova, violins

Pavel Nikl, viola  Peter Jarusek, cello

Khatia Buniatishvili, piano

Day for night. The young Pavel Haas Quartet from the Czech Republic, has been winning prizes and rave notices for eight years now, the flicker of an eye in the usual lifespan of renowned string quartets. We are in the midst of a glut of rising young ensembles of this kind, but the Pavel Haas sets itself aside. It doesn't come on stage dressed in matching black Dolce & Gabbana or play with the impersonal precision of a machinist shop. Their style is a throwback to the forceful, romanticized sound of Russian groups like the Beethoven, Borodin, and Shostakovich Quartets. Like the last, they took their name from a modern composer. Pavel Haas (1899-1944) died at Auschwitz and has a noted place in Czech music. The group has recorded his three string quartets, which were the impetus for choosing Haas's name, we are told, rather than as a statement about the Holocaust.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Pavel Haas Quartet at Wigmore Hall: Haydn and Shostakovich

The Pavel Haas Quartet

Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76 no. 2 "Fifths"

Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57

Pavel Haas Quartet:
Veronika Jaruskova, Eva Karova, violins

Pavel Nikl, viola  Peter Jarusek, cello


Khatia Buniatishvili, piano

Day for night. The young Pavel Haas Quartet from the Czech Republic, has been winning prizes and rave notices for eight years now, the flicker of an eye in the usual lifespan of renowned string quartets. We are in the midst of a glut of rising young ensembles of this kind, but the Pavel Haas sets itself aside. It doesn't come on stage dressed in matching black Dolce & Gabbana or play with the impersonal precision of a machinist shop. Their style is a throwback to the forceful, romanticized sound of Russian groups like the Beethoven, Borodin, and Shostakovich Quartets. Like the last, they took their name from a modern composer. Pavel Haas (1899-1944) died at Auschwitz and has a noted place in Czech music. The group has recorded his three string quartets, which were the impetus for choosing Haas's name, we are told, rather than as a statement about the Holocaust.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Mozart’s Idomeneo at the English National Opera

Idomeneo
An Opera in three acts, by W.A. Mozart
English National Opera
18 June - 9 July 2010

Cast:
Idomeneo – Paul Nilon
Idamante – Robert Murray
Elettra – Emma Bell
Illia – Sarah Tynan
Voice of Neptune – Pauls Putniņš

Director: Katie Mitchell
Conductor: Edward Gardner

Virtue rampant. It’s something of a drawback when an opera has no characters, but this wasn’t always so. At the height of the 18th century’s classical style, an emblem would suffice, or a slightly animated statue. In Mozart’s Idomeneo something like the ideal is achieved. No one is really flesh and blood but rather personified virtues: Nobility caught between Filial Devotion and conflicted love from Chaste Constancy and Heartfelt Passion. Or as the playbill has it, Idomeneo, king of Crete, is trapped by a vow to Poseidon to sacrifice his son, Idamante, while two women pine longingly, Ilia, a captured princess of Troy, and the infamous Electra, daughter of Agamemnon. These pawns on the Greek chessboard were available to any dramatist or poet of Mozart’s day, to be shuffled through the paces of opera seria, the musical equivalent of high tragedy.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Jeremy Denk, piano, at Tannery Pond Concerts, Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 8 pm

Jeremy Denk and Christian Steiner in Rehearsal. Photo © 2010 Leslie Teicholz.


Jeremy Denk, piano
at Tannery Pond Concerts, Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 8 pm

Johann Sebastian Bach, Toccata in D major, BWV 912
Johann Sebastian Bach,  Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910

Franz Liszt,  Après une Lecture de Dante:  Fantasia quasi Sonata

György Ligeti, Études  Livre 1
Désordre (Disorder) (Molto vivace, vigoroso, molto ritmico)
Cordes à vide (Exhausted Chords) (Andantino con moto, molto legato)
Touches bloquées (Blocked Keys) (Presto possible, sempre molto ritmico)
Fanfares (Vivacissimo, molto ritmico, con allegria e slancio)
[Arc-en-ciel (Rainbow) (Andante molto rubato, con eleganza, with swing)]
Automne à Varsovie (Autumn in Warsaw) Presto cantabile, molto ritmico e flessibile
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111

I was not the only member of the Tannery Pond audience who has been following Jeremy Denk’s career with some avidity. He played there a few years ago, accompanying Paula Robison (who preceded Denk this summer) with quite a different group of colleagues. This particular gentleman, however, had heard him elsewhere, in his general concert-going, and, like me, instantly beame a Denkist — or perhaps we should call ourselves Denkonians, to avoid confusion with that particularly odious and venal branch of the medical profession.

My entry into the fold occurred at the Liszt Festival at Bard College, when I heard Mr. Denk perform the Liszt B minor Sonata. (He teaches there.) This seemed to me at the time, although I’ve heard some important pianists perform the work, including some great Lisztian intellectuals, like Kentner and Brendel, to be a supreme statement of the work. (Yes, somehow — most likely due to Liszt’s own exceptional intelligence and the literary culture he had acquired — at least some of his music is intellectual music, although he worked very hard at developing quite a different persona in his earlier career.)

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


The Late Middle Classes at Donmar Warehouse, by Huntley Dent

Helen McCrory and Laurence Belcher in The Late Middle Classes

The Late Middle Classes

By Simon Gray

Directed by David Leveaux

Donmar Warehouse

Secrets and lies. Simon Gray had a late-career flop in 1999 with 

The Late Middle Classes
, a comic drama which closed out of town before reaching the West End. It’s not hard to see why. Delicate musings about pedophilia don’t mix well with japery at the post-war middle class and its lawn-tennis-with-drinks-at-five airs. Every character is ready to explode with repressed impulses that are either nasty, immoral, or illegal. The resulting brew sits uneasily between art and entertainment. What audience, exactly, was it intended to find?

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Through A Glass Darkly, Almeida Theatre, London, by Huntley Dent

Adapted by Jenny Worton from the film by Ingmar Bergman
Directed by Michael Attenborough
Almeida Theatre, London
10 June - 31 July 2010


Dimitri Leonidas (Max) and Ruth Wilson (Karin) in Through a Glass Darkly | Photo: Simon Annand

Woman on the verge. I came to the Almeida Theatre with doubts about staging an Ingmar Bergman script. Not that the writing wouldn‘t be deep enough but that the stage would be too shallow. Bergman‘s true religion was light (as he makes clear in his compelling autobiography, The Magic Lantern

), and it plays a pivotal role inThrough a Glass Darkly, his 1961 study of a young woman‘s seduction by madness. For Karin, the light is alive, full of voices, beckoning her into a realm of reality where the angels dwell. Bergman conducted much the same search, minus the angels. But can we fully imagine the kingdom of light without Bergman’s camera?
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller