Gergiev's Russian Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, Le Sacre du Printemps, byt Michael Miller

Stravinsky_1930
Igor Stravinsky on the Podium

The Russian Stravinsky: A Philharmonic Festival: Program VIII

Conducted By Valery Gergiev

Avery Fisher Hall
Saturday, May 8, 2010, 11:00 am

Valery Gergiev, Conductor
Alexei Volodin, Piano

Stravinsky, Symphony In Three Movements
Stravinsky, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
Stravinsky,

 Le Sacre du Printemps

In recent years, I've had the feeling that Stravinsky, with the exception of his Sacre du Printemps

 and the vastly overplayed Pulcinella, has fallen somewhat into neglect. We rarely hear the great   choral and dramatic works likeAgon and Oedipus Rex, Mass, or even the Symphony of Psalms, not to mention the ballet, Les Noces. James Levine has a predilection for Stravinsky, and he has conducted fine performances of the Sacre and some others, but his effort has been tepid in comparison to his obsessive combing over Mahler, season after season, in preparation for the centenary of the composer's death year in 2011. Hence Gergiev's Stravinsky Festival with the New York Philharmonic is especially welcome, and I very much regret that I was not able to attend more than one of the concerts.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


The young French pianist David Fray plays Bach keyboard concerti and Schubert solo works on disc, by Steven Kruger

David Fray


J. S. Bach, Keyboard Concertos BMV 1052,1055, 1056, 1058
Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
David Fray, Pianist and Conductor
Virgin Classics CD 50999 213064 2 6

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Franz Schubert--Moments Musicaux D.780, Allegretto D.915, Impromptus D.899
David Fray, Piano
Virgin Classics CD 50999 694489 0 4

David Fray's recent appearances in San Francisco, performing Beethoven's Second Concerto, revealed him to be a refined, supple colorist. It was less immediately clear how bold or romantic, or indeed "Gouldian" Mr. Fray would turn out to be in music more fully under his own direction. These two new excellent CDs begin to answer this question, and to suggest, moreover, the birth of a fine conductor.

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

Michael Miller


The One and Only Igor: Gergiev conducts Les Noces and Oedipus Rex, by Huntley Dent

Lesnoces_nijinska


Igor Stravinsky, 

Les Noces

(sung in Russian)

Mlada Khudoley (soprano), Olga Savova (mezzo), Alexander Timchenko (tenor), Andrei Serov (bass), Svetlana Smolina, Yulia Zaichkina, Alexander Mogilevsky, Maxim Mogilevsky (pianos)

Oedipus Rex

(sung in Latin)

Sergei Semishkur (Oedipus), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Jocasta), Evgeny Nikitin (Creon & Messenger), Mikhail Petrenko (Tiresias), Alexander Timchenko (shepherd) & Gérard Depardieu (narrator)

Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus, Valery Gergiev, conductor

Stravinsky to the rescue.

In a recent interview the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, remarked that Igor Stravinsky pulled off the greatest camouflage in the history of music. He was referring to the composer’s lifelong stand that music expresses no emotions, indeed, expresses nothing except sound. Behind this mask, Salonen said, lies a man of deep feeling whose music is often as moving as any ever written. I began to think about Stravinsky and his camouflage, which has always baffled me. How could such glittering creations, each commanding your attention, whether as a shout across the primordial steppes or a murmur like the tick-tock of a mantel clock in the Princesse de Polignac’s salon, be about nothing?

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

Michael Miller


Eschenbach and David Fray with the San Francisco Symphony: Dalbavie, Beethoven, and Brahms, by Steven Kruger

Christoph Eschenbach

 

San Francsico Symphony Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
David Fray, piano

Marc-André Dalbavie, La Source d’un Regard
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 2
Brahms, Symphony No. 2

There's an improvisational mindset in the American character which can sometimes be hard on a European musician who composes according to a "system". We are a nation of pragmatic, rather than theoretical listeners. We tend to disregard instruction manuals and learn by getting behind the wheel. We expect music to be ergonomic. Dodecaphony isn't driveable, we find, so we leave it on the lot. The tires are twelve-sided, and all the knobs and levers are in the wrong places. Sorry! No sale. And now we distrust everything cerebral coming down the pike!

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

 

City of Art: The 17th Biennale of Sydney


Seagull, Cockatoo Island

12 May-1 August at Cockatoo Island, Pier 2/3, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace

The 17th Biennale of Sydney succeeds spectacularly as an act of urbanism. At a time when the practice of creative urbanism in this city finds itself uncomfortably confined between the immobile sandstone cliffs of stodgy bureaucracy and the wiles of crony developers, the real deal is most welcome, even if it is only temporary. Aside from the quality of the art, which is surprisingly high, it is clear that the Biennale organizers and curator David Elliott have succeeded in a genuine act of Urban Doing, that jolly competitor to the familiar discipline of urban planning.

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

Michael Miller


Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, at the Jewish Museum, New York, by Michael Miller

38-cover-of-photographs-by-man
Cover of Photographs by Man Ray 1920 Paris 1934, 1934. Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs Collection. © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention

exhibition catalogue by Mason Klein; with contributions by George Baker, Merry L. Foresta, and Lauren Schell Dickens

See also the following exhibition tour (from WNET, Channel 13) by Dr. Klein and this lecture.

In preparing his probing, focused, and entirely convincing examination of Man Ray, Mason Klein can hardly have been under the illusion that the artist—or his Manes—would thank him for resurrecting his persona along with his art. Indeed, the exhibition presents an irresistible case for the originality and, above all, the enduring power of Man Ray’s art to fascinate. However, in order to find his individuality, the curator found it necessary to dissect Man Ray’s life and character, which was as much a construct as any of his collages or Dada objets.

 In order to create, Man Ray had to create himself, and at times in his life this self-creation was and end in itself, even his primary expression. His invented self not only gave him a more comfortable face to present to the world, it gave him the freedom to work as an artist, just as he needed Paris as the the stage for his performance as Man Ray. Klein’s examination is anything but non-destructive. Once he has finished lifting the layers off Man Ray’s self-construction, there is nothing left. He made it all himself, asking little or no help from God or his ancestors. While I believe there is credit in respecting an artist’s vision of him or herself—good manners are not at all out of place in art history—I believe Man Ray’s unmasking was absolutely necessary in this case, in order for us to understand his art and to appreciate it with new respect, but without mythologies or adulation.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Berg's Lulu Revived at the Met after an Eight-Year Absence, by Larry Wallach

Lulu


music and libretto (1935) by Alban Berg
based on two plays by Franz Wedekind: The Earth Spirit andPandora’s Box

Metropolitan Opera, May 8, 2010
directed by John Dexter
conducted by Fabio Luisi

Cast:
Lulu - Marlis Petersen
Dr. Schön - James Morris
Jack the Ripper - James Morris
Countess Geschwitz - Anne Sofie von Otter
Alwa - Gary Lehman
Schigolch - Gwynne Howell
Animal Tamer - Bradley Garvin
Acrobat - Bradley Garvin
Painter - Michael Schade
African Prince - Michael Schade

Lulu is an enigma. It is one of the greatest operas of the 20th century. Those two observations are not as unrelated as they might appear. The truth of opera is in its musically expressed emotions; the literal stories are inherently ambiguous, open scripts available to the personalities of singers and directors for interpretation. In opera, emotional conditions are their own reasons for being; causes and explanations take second place. As a result, the ‘meanings’ of operatic plots and characters can be endlessly redefined. Lulu is a particularly active site of contention, pulling into its powerful orbit many of the aesthetic, political, and social controversies that have characterized its time and our own. The emotions embodied in Berg’s extraordinary score rock us back on our heels and at the same time ask us to examine critically ourselves and our responses, ultimately our own identities. In a way that seems almost unfathomable, Berg brings together the antinomial theatrical aesthetics of Wagner and Brecht, and leaves them to fight it out once the final curtain goes down.

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

Michael Miller


No Dudamania in San Francisco: Dudamel leads the LA Philharmonic in Bernstein and Tchaikovsky

Proms-2008-3
Gustavo Dudamel in an intense moment


The Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano

Davies Hall, San Francisco
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Bernstein, Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety”
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 in B-minor, "Pathétique"

There is a sound you sometimes hear after midnight, high up in Manhattan. It comes from maybe thirty blocks away. Very faint. In the stillness of your mind, you know it is a lonely taxi horn dancing with the doppler effect. But in the small hours of the city, you wonder who might be riding home amongst sleeping millions, and how boozily, and what love affairs or personal dramas are about to begin or end. New York is like that. In its darkness, taxis are crickets, and you listen.

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

Michael Miller


Grooves in the Mist, a Vinyl Memoir by Steven Kruger

Grooves in the Mist, a Vinyl Memoir. Collage by Steven Kruger.
 

"Somewhere around 1950," Leopold Stokowski once quipped, "recorded sound stopped being a novelty and started sounding like music."

I was reminded of this the other day, when I received from Netflix the DVD of "A Letter To Three Wives", which was filmed in 1949 and features Kirk Douglas playing the Brahms B-flat Concerto to friends on an enormous console, probably a Capehart or a Zenith "Cobramatic". At one point in the movie, he becomes miffed at someone for having broken some shellac, and we see him revealed as an early version of the classic suburban audio peacock, petulant and anxious over any flaws in his equipment.

 

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

Da Corot a Monet: La Sinfonia della Natura, Complesso del Vittoriano (Rome) until June 29th, by Daniel B. Gallagher

Alfred Sisley, Sentiero da By al Bois des Roches-Courtaut – Estate di San Martino, 1881, Oil on Canvas, 59,2 x 81 cm. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.


Impressionism is often described as an obsession with light. Indeed it was. Monet was on a frantic quest to record each and every glimmer of light that happened to strike his eye. Yet light was not the only inspiration for him and his friends. As this exhibition shows, the inspiration of nature was ever-present in their work even though its meaning for their artistry is ever-elusive. One thing everyone agrees upon is that nature was more than a ready excuse to paint en plein air

. Consensus continues to grow about the parallels between the innovative artistic language of the Impressionists and their distinctive view of nature as a dynamic equilibrium composed of countless elements held together in a tenuous harmony.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller