Unforeseen Unforeseen Circumstances: The Fall of Kevin Rudd, by Alan Miller

Prime Minister Julia Gillard leads her first cabinet meeting, 25 June 2010


For a White House in need of a few moment’s levity, recent events in Australian politics might have provided an opportunity for a bit of fun. A meeting was planned between the Australian prime minister and President Obama after the G20 meeting in Canada next week. A supreme prank could have been devised whereby the president’s aides agreed not to mention Australia and somehow deprived their boss of any news thereof, surely not too difficult with more pressing business at hand. On the day of the meeting, the Oval Office door would have opened and instead of his good mate Kevin Rudd, in would walk a smiling redhead, Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Alas this prank will never come to pass. Obama thankfully seeks out his own news, and in any case after this week of extraordinary upheaval in Australian politics, the newly sworn in Prime Minister Gillard is far too busy to travel overseas.

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

Michael Miller


Musical Life in San Francisco: Yuja Wang, Michael Tilson Thomas, and the SF Symphony play Poulenc, Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, Ravel, and Stravinsky

Yuja-wang-1-sm1
Yuja Wang


The San Francisco Symphony

Davies Hall, San Francisco
Thursday, June 17, 2010

Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor and Piano
Yuja Wang, Piano

Poulenc, Sonata for Piano Four Hands (1918/1939)
Stravinsky, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1929)
Villa-Lobos, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 (1945)
Ravel, Piano Concerto In D major for the Left Hand (1930)
Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps

Michael Tilson Thomas may sometimes over-program his orchestra and over-instruct his audiences, as locals will attest, but a cooperative sunset, a dazzling young Chinese soloist in a red dress, and a frothy line-up of arch and knowing pieces helped transform last Thursday evening's SF Symphony concert into something of a summer gala.

I had the good fortune of sitting next to a rather starchy woman of the "old school,” who called to mind Mary Tyler Moore at her most forbidding. She wasn't thrilled to see that the concert was about to begin from a stage bereft of players.

"If he reaches for a microphone, we're in trouble," she said, laconically.

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

Michael Miller


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

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Denk on the Upper West Side


Jeremy Denk, piano, to play at Tannery Pond, 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
Gyorgy Ligeti, Etudes  Livre 1
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111

Concert begins at 8pm. Doors open at 7:30pm
Saturday, July 03, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Tannery Pond Concerts
New Lebanon, NY 12125

Phone: (888) 820-1696
Website: www.tannerypondconcerts.org
E-Mail: info@tannerypondconcerts.org

On Saturday, July 3rd, the brilliant pianist and writer Jeremy Denk will perform a varied program which touches on many of his extremely broad interests, from J. S. Bach to Ligeti with Beethoven in the center. His performances of the Liszt Sonata in B minor and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier

 Sonata, Op. 106, are among the best I’ve ever heard—which bodes well for the important works by those composers he’ll play at Tannery Pond: the Fantasia quasi Sonata, Après une Lecture de Dante, and the Piano Sonata Op. 111. His performances are noted for their intellectual rigor, supreme virtuosity, wit and imagination. He has reached a wide audience accompanying the popular violinist Joshua Bell in recital. I personally never miss a Denk performance if I can possibly help it.
Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Vermont Hippies from the Seventies! Photographs by Peter Simon and Rebecca Lepkoff at the Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT

Hippies-running-rebecca-lepkof
Hippies Running, by Rebecca Lepkoff (1970-1971)


Vermont Hippies from the Seventies,

 an exhibit of some forty photographs of southern Vermont will be on view at the Vermont Center for Photography, 49 Flat Street, Brattleboro, July 2 to August 1. Since the 1930s Vermont has been a magnet for urban émigrés searching for their own Edens. During the 1970s, veterans of the peace and civil rights movements settled into nontraditional households. Outwardly, they were distinguished from their Vermont neighbors by their progressive views, long hair, and unconventional clothing. The repercussions of this influx of counter-culture is still strongly felt in Vermont today, even thought the photographs make it look like  so long ago. Michael Havey, a VCP Board Member said, "This exhibition will make you smile, or cringe, or even laugh out loud."
Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Lincoln Center Festival, 2010, July 7-25: Season Preview and Program

Alessandro Averone (standing), Fulvio Pepe, Giovanni Visentin, Luca Iervolino, and Carlo Bellamio in Peter Stein's production of Dostoyevsky's The Demons. Photo Andrea Boccalini.


LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 

2010 will run from JULY 7 to July 25

10 premieres and debuts, 45 performances over 18 days

Governors Island to be Site of Two theatre Presentations: North American Premieres of The Demons, a 12-hour Marathon by Peter Stein Based on Dostoyevsky’s Novel, and North of Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s Production of Teorema From

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Film and Novel

Varèse: (R)evolution, the complete works featuring Maestro Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic; International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Led by Steven Schick; So Percussion; Bass-baritone Alan Held; and Others

Celebrated Directors Simon McBurney and Yukio Ninagawa Return With New Works

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray and New York Premieres by Choreographers Saburo Teshigawara and Pichet Klunchun

Master Puppet theatre Artist Rezo Gabriadze’s Ermon and Ramona (North American Premiere) Salvatore Sciarrino’s Chamber Opera, La porta della legge, Based on Kafka Text (U.S. Premiere)

The Blind Boys of Alabama Curate a Three-Concert Series Featuring Dr. Ralph Stanley, Yo La Tengo, Aaron Neville, Hot 8 Brass Band, Joan Osborne and Others

Voodoo/funk group Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou From Benin (U.S. Debut) and Serbian Rock/punk Group, Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra (U.S. Debut)

There has already been a lot of talk about the wonderful things to come at the Lincoln Center Festival next year. The Cleveland Orchestra will begin a biennial four-day residency in New York, where, as their recent concert under Maestro Franz Welser-Möst showed, they have a large and enthusiastic following. They will not be taking this lightly. Their four concerts will feature symphonies 5, 7, 8, and 9 of Anton Bruckner, and Welser-Möst will be teaching a master class on Bruckner at Juilliard.

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

Michael Miller


Barangaroo Revisited: ‘And Here’s a City I Prepared Earlier...’ by Alan Miller


Lend Lease's revised Barangaroo plan, looking north from Darling Harbour


Barangaroo developer Lend Lease has released a revised plan for the site. The fact that it is an improvement on their previous proposal is like saying Burger King is better than McDonalds, perhaps true, but surely there are better hamburgers in the world. Sydney city councilor John McInerney is probably right to suggest that Lend Lease has pulled an inverted bait-and-switch of the ‘propose something outrageous and the less outrageous thing you planned all along will seem reasonable’ variety. Ironically, by improving some of the original design’s worst excesses --  for example, the “exclamation mark” hotel has been reduced in height and does not project as far into the harbour -- its fundamental flaws are more glaring than ever.

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

Michael Miller


Das Rheingold initiates the Opéra nationale de Paris' Ring Cycle at the Bastille, by Michael Miller

Revolution breaks out in the Paris Opera's Das Rheingold


Richard Wagner, 

Das Rheingold

Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan, Conductor
Günter Krämer, Stage Direction

Although Wagner, never able to give up his bitterness over the failure of Tannhaüser,

 may have taken nothing but bitter memories of Paris to his grave, his later music, including the Ring, enjoyed a devoted and extensive following in France. At last year’s Bard Festival André Dombrowsky explored the popularization of his music through simplified piano arrangements for domestic use, and Larry Bensky discussed Wagner’s role in Proust’s life and imagination. The French can look back to distinguished tradition in Wagner production, and today Wagner is as alive in Toulouse and Lyon as it is in Paris. Nonetheless, productions of the Ring have been rather sparse at the Paris Opera: the first, sung in French translation and conducted by André Messager, did not occur until 1911 (Rheingold 1909). The second, this time in German and conducted by one of the most authoritative German Wagner conductors, Hans Knappertsbusch, came forty-four years later, in 1955! There was Peter Stein production of Das Rheingold in 1976 under Solti, which never developed into a full Ring Cycle. The Ring production initiated by this Rheingold is a historical first, as the first production of the work for the Opéra Bastille, which opened in 1989, and the first complete Ring by the Paris Opera since 1957. With a German production team and a Swiss conductor, Philippe Jordan, 35, who is now concluding his first season as Music Director, the Paris Opera continues its post-war tradition of gathering its Wagnerian talent east of the Rhine. (It is worth noting at this point that Pierre Boulez, one of the great living Wagner conductors, has never conducted the Ring in his native France.)
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Milan - San Remo, by Luca Guadagnino, reviewed by Alan Miller

Guadagnino-i-am-love-300x225

I am Love's indestructible Recchi family

I am Love (2010), directed by Luca Guadagnino

By the end of Luca Guadagnino’s opulent revival of the family melodrama, no member of its fabulously wealthy Milanese family has revealed themselves quite as completely as the deceptively austere palazzo in which they live. It is an unusual house; enormous, urban and clad in a 1930s rationalist facade which conceals a feast of opulent but simply ornamented surfaces. The difference between its interior and exterior tells us most of what we need to know about its inhabitants. To an even greater extent than the Sirk and Visconti melodramas which it evokes, the story of I am Love depends on the details of inanimate objects  -- clothes, cities, buildings and, above all, food.

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

Michael Miller


James Levine cancels his Tanglewood engagements, with an updated 2010 Season Preview, and a Backwards Look at 2009

Jameslevine

The news I have been expecting has now officially arrived:

BSO announces changes to 2010 Tanglewood schedule.

James Levine will withdraw from his concerts with the BSO and Tanglewood Music Center due to further recuperation time needed after recent back surgery.

Michael Tilson Thomas will lead the BSO opening night performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 on July 9, and Stravinsky’s 

Symphony of Psalms
 and Mozart’s Requiem on July 16, as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 on July 17.

Christoph von Dohnányi will conduct the staged Tanglewood Music Center Production of Strauss’s 

Ariadne Auf Naxos 
on August 1 And 2.

Johannes Debus will have his BSO Debut, conudctin Mozart’s 

The Abduction From Seraglio
 on July 23

Hans Graf will lead the BSO in program of marches, waltzes, and polkas by the Strauss Family on July 25 .

An announcement about substitute conductor for program of Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Soprano Hei-Kyung Hong on July 31 will be forthcoming.

These and other changes have been entered in the season schedule below.

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

Michael Miller


Changes and Passages, by Michael Miller

In Long Island City, 1993. Print © 2010 Michael Miller.


As sundry acts of God and man are manifested, unexpected changes, substitutions, and permanent transitions abound.

I can’t resist beginning on a happy note: The Berkshire Review for the Arts

 has exceeded 1,000,000 hits. The numbers game is not our priority here at The Review, but a million is a significant and symbolic number in the esoteric world of Internet traffic statistics.

But to move immediately to the grim side of things: in New York Tepper Galleries has suddenly and unceremoniously closed its doors, ending a ritual of discovery and hope for denizens of the New York art and antiques world. Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, where I write these words, the design and antiques quarter on and around Melrose looks like a ghost town, there are so many boarded-up windows and for rent signs. Whatever economy fed their business still hasn’t come back. Also, the television series, Law and Order, is to be terminated, eliminating a major source of income for the actors who populate the summer festivals in the Berkshires. Law and Order, soap operas, and restaurants keep our Serebryakovs, our Aguecheeks, and our Miss Prisms alive from September to June, and we can only hope it doesn’t plague our creative economy too severely.

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

Michael Miller