Eschenbach conducts Schumann and Zemlinsky with the San Francisco Symphony—and an Appreciation of Zemlinsky, by Steven Kruger

Zemlinsky
Alexander von Zemlinsky


The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Saturday, May 1, 2010

Christoph Eschenbach, Conductor
Christine Schafer, Soprano
James Johnson, Bass-Baritone

Schumann, Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Opus 120 (1841)
Zemlinsky, "Lyric" Symphony, Opus 18 (1924)

The San Francisco Symphony gave two performances last Saturday night--one it may have been unhappy with--and one it may have been unhappy about.

This somewhat unusual state of affairs began with an annoucement from the stage that the concert was being delayed. I had wondered at the half empty hall, something you don't normally see in San Francisco. Dysfunction on the Golden Gate Bridge, as it turned out. A number of players were stuck and much of the audience was still in transit. Some twenty minutes later, after a number of stragglers had appeared, there was a rustle onstage, and the tall figure of Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman was received to her empty chair with considerable ribbing and fanfare. Stagehands quickly "disappeared" a chair or two at the perifery of the violins, and Maestro Eschenbach was welcomed to what would still be considered a large orchestra for Schumann. Half the audience clearly had not been so persistent in arriving.

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

Michael Miller


Creditors, The Donmar Warehouse, BAM, NYC, by Ilya Khodosh

Owen Teale and Tom Burke in Creditors (photo by Richard Termine)

Creditors

by August Strindberg
in a new version by David Greir

Directed by Alan Rickman

The Donmar Warehouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC

With Tom Burke - Adolph
Owen Teale - Gustav
Anna Chancellor - Tekla

Strindberg’s Creditors

 is a turbulent study of marriage as hell. Relationships turn vile, and contemptuous lovers hurl sarcastic barbs and accusations at one another like poisoned arrows. The fragile foundations of love crack under pressure and allegiances turn and return and turn again. The new production of this ferocious three-hander, directed by Alan Rickman, is a smart, if heavy-handed, barrage of recriminations and abuse. Insight and authentic emotion are buried beneath the avalanche of cynicism, but Creditors invigorates with its hard-boiled sexual politics and crisp articulations of hate.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Minsoo Sohn plays Beethoven, Liszt arrangements, Ravel, and Kirchner at Jordan Hall, Friday, April 30, 2010, review by Michael Miller

Sohn-minsoo
Minsoo Sohn, Pianist

Leon Kirchner, Interlude II

Beethoven, Sonata No.30 in E Major Op.109

Ravel, 

La Valse

Beethoven-Liszt, Adelaide


Schubert-Liszt, Gretchen am Spinnerade
Schubert-Liszt, Der Müller und der Bach
Mozart-Liszt, Réminiscences de Don Juan

I first heard Minsoo Sohn play at an Emmanuel Music Bach concert in January 2008, where he played with a chamber group as well as solo, in a couple of Busoni arrangements of Bach chorale preludes. I was so impressed with the musicality and seriousness of his playing, that I made a note to follow his future appearences. Although he has been very active, this has been my first opportunity to hear him play a full solo recital.

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

Michael Miller


Pearl and Stanley Goodman Latin American Collection and Recent Acquisitions from the Museum’s Latin American Collection on view at the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale May 8, 2010 to December 5, 2010.

Diego Rivera, Stone Worker, Oil on canvas, 1945, Collection of Pearl and Stanley Goodman, © 2009 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Pearl and Stanley Goodman Latin American Collection 

and Recent Acquisitions from the Museum’s Latin American Collectionon view at the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale, Nova Southeastern University, May 8, 2010 through December 5, 2010, brings together some of the most important modern and contemporary Latin American artists over the last 100 years.

This major exhibition mirrors the diverse Hispanic landscape of South Florida with influential artists from Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, El Salvador and Brazil represented among the works on view.

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

Michael Miller


In Spite of Difficulties a Glorious Ring at the Semperoper in Dresden

Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen
Dresdener Staatsoper at the Semperoper
March 10, 12, 14, and 17, 2010
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden,
conducted by Jonas Alber, John Fiore, and Asher Fisch Stage direction - Willy Decker
Stage design - Wolfgang Gussmann
Costume design - Wolfgang Gussmann and Frauke Schernau
Dramaturgy - Hella Bartnig, Klaus Bertisch

Jonas_alber

This full realization of the Ring as drama became the unifying principle of the production, as it was perhaps meant to be, but unified musical direction was lacking—the greatest challenge the participants faced—since the Music Director of the Staatskapelle, Fabio Luisi, who is now basking in adulation in New York—justifiably, as it would seem from his sensitive reading of Berg’s Lulu—summarily cancelled his engagements with the orchestra, following a set-to with the Intendant, Gerd Uecker. (We are interested in music drama here, and this is not the place to tell this unpleasant story.) In the end, Luisi was not greatly missed, although the most significant shortcomings of the Ring as a whole stemmed from the weaknesses of one of the three conductors who took over the Maestro’s responsibilities. On the contrary, the audience had ample reason to rejoice in Asher Fisch’s energetic and visceral Siegfried, and, even better, in the discovery of an extraordinary new talent, Jonas Alber, who, at 41, is little known outside Germany...

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

Michael Miller

As the final concert of the Cantata Singers' Schütz Season approaches, David Hoose talks about music in Boston, Choral music, and Bach

David Hoose
David HoosCantata Singers,

May 14, 8 pm

Heinrich Schütz:
Opus ultimum –
Schwanengesang
Psalm 119
Psalm 100
Deutsches Magnificat

On May 14 the Cantata Singers will close their 2009-2010 season, devoted to the music of Heinrich Schütz and related composers with an all-Schütz program of late works. On this occasion Music Director David Hoose chats with Michaerl Miller about music in Boston, choral music, and the Cantata Singers.


Hear the podcast on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Matt Haimovitz and his all-cello ensemble, Uccello, to play at four local venues and in New York City in May

Matthaimovitz-flowers
Matt Haimovitz, Cellist


Renowned for his fascinating and far-reaching musical adventures and fearlessly virtuosic performances -- whether in a club or on one of the world’s great stages -- cellist Matt Haimovitz harnesses his eight-piece ensemble of “cello warriors” (San Jose Mercury News), Uccello, for a new program of jazz classics in original arrangements by Rome Prize-winning composer David Sanford. In works by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu), Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn and other jazz legends, the cellos wail, slide, and swing in an all-new big band sound.

The program will be heard on Saturday, May 8 in Hudson, NY at Club Helsinki

 and May 9 at 2pm at Saratoga, NY’s Caffè Lena. Haimovitz and Uccello then come to Western Massachusetts for two benefit concerts in support of area hunger-relief organizations, The Food Bank and Rachel’s Table. The concerts, sponsored by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, take place at Glenbrook Middle School in Longmeadow on May 12 and at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst on May 13. On May 17, they bring the program to New York City for a performance with the New York Cello Society. The cellists return to Montreal at the end of the month to record the new program for release this fall on Oxingale Records.

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

Michael Miller


Minsoo Sohn will play Beethoven, Liszt arrangements, Ravel, and Kirchner at Jordan Hall, Friday, April 30, at 8 pm.

Sohn-minsoo
Minsoo Sohn, Pianist


Program

L.Kirchner: Interlude II
Beethoven: Sonata No.30 in E Major Op.109
Ravel: La Valse

Intermission

Beethoven-Liszt: Adelaide
Schubert-Liszt: Gretchen am Spinnrade
Schubert-Liszt: Der Muller und der Bach
Mozart-Liszt: Reminiscenes de Don Juan

Minsoo Sohn is "an artist, a man who will create a life in music, find listeners, and reward them", describes The Boston Globe. Known as a pianist with poetic fire and comprehensive versatility, Sohn is widely gathering praises from critics and audiences alike for his masterful virtuosity and artistic expression, creating performances rich in deep emotion and musical intelligence. Following his New York debut recital at the Carnegie Hall, New York Concert Review wrote “Sohn is a pianistic phenomenon and musical enigma, ..surmounted every imaginable and some unimaginable instrumental challenges with breath-taking ease, his affinity for the style -its phrasing, melodic contours, confident virtuosity- was complete.”

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

Michael Miller


Pristine Audio brings back the Salle Pleyel of 1929/30: Pierre Monteux Conducts Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps, Ravel, etc. by Michael Miller

La Salle Pleyel

Orchestre Symphonique de Paris
Pierre Monteux, conductor
Recorded in 1929 and 1930

Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps

Ravel: Le petit poucet (Ma mère l’oye)Coppola: Interlude dramatique

Coppola: Interlude dramatique

Chabrier: Fête Polonaise (Le Roi malgré lui)

Ravel: La valse

The special sound of the Orchestre de Paris playing in the splendid Salle Pleyel was still fresh in my ears, when the announcement of latest crop of releases from Pristine Classical arrived, offering recordings of Pierre Monteux conducting the "Orchestre Symphonique de Paris" in the Salle Pleyel itself. The most important of these extremely rare 78 sets, made between January 1929 and February 1930, is a complete Sacre du Printemps, the earliest of the seven live or studio recordings which have been released of Monteux performances. These recordings, made only a few years after the Salle Pleyel opened, bring us within two decades of the historic 1913 premiere with the Ballets Russes. Monteux’s authority in this score was never tarnished, and the performances from the end of his life are as vital as this early effort and are still revered today. Like the later ones, this performance is marked by its flow and coherence—a complete grasp of the shape and drama of the great ballet, which give the performance a sense of unity, without compromising its angular rhythms and its vivid, often harsh colors and textures. You will never hear a more musical Sacre than any of Monteux’s recordings.

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

Michael Miller


Orchestre de Paris: Blomstedt and Mustonen in Stravinsky and Bruckner

Igor Stravinsky and Anton Bruckner

L'Orchestre de Paris
Herbert Blomstedt, conductor
Olli Mustonen, piano
Salle Pleyel, March 25, 2010

Igor Stravinsky, Concerto for Piano and Winds
Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 5

I'm always delighted to attend any concert under Herbert Blomstedt, who fortunately conducts the Boston Symphony quite often, both in Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, where he is especially valued, not only as a conductor, but as a teacher at the Tanglewood Music Center. At 82, after an impressive career as music director of several great orchestras, including the Dresdener Staatskapelle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the San Francisco Symphony (all of which have been received a good deal of attention on the Review of late...look soon for a review of the partially great Dresden Ring). After Steven Kruger most perceptively reviewed his Bruckner Sixth with the San Francisco Symphony, I was lucky enough to catch up with Maestro Blomstedt in Paris, where he conducted Bruckner’s pivotal Fifth Symphony. I was also fortunate to have a brief, informal chat with him after the performance, as well as with the brilliant soloist, Olli Mustonen, who is less well known than he should be, because, like Sibelius, he spends a good deal of his time in rural Finland, enjoying family life and composing. After this concert, he was looking forward to going home to his wife and his week-old son.

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

Michael Miller