Spoils of Conquest: Crescendo Performs Latin American Choral Music (1600–2010), Saturday, April 17, 2010, First Congregational Church, Great Barrington, MA, by Seth Lachterman

Latin American Baroque music by Juan Pérez de Bocanegra (c.1598–1631), Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c.1590–1664), Gaspar Fernandes (c.1570–1629), Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco Sánchez (1644–1728), Juan de Araujo (1646–1712)

Latin American contemporary music by Javier Farías (b.1973), Raimundo Penaforte, Domingo Santa Cruz (1899–1987), Juan Orrego-Salas (b.1919), Christine Gevert (b.1964), Ariel Ramírez (1921–2010)


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An Indian Learning to Paint in the European Style, 1540

The Crescendo Choir and Vocal Ensemble
Christine Gevert, 

Conductor

Christine Gevert, the indefatigable choral conductor, early music specialist, harpsichordist, and composer, consistently makes her mark in producing unusual and meticulously prepared theme-centric vocal concerts. In the past, we’ve heard rarities of the Mendelssohns (Felix and Fannie), a U.S. premiere of Telemann’s impressive oratorio the 

Hamburische Kapitänsmusik
, and tonight, an exotic syncretism of indigenous Latin America culture and seventeenth-century western European Christianity. Acculturation and assimilation, in the wake of Spanish and Portuguese conquests, created a body of “New World” Baroque music which, while clearly bearing the harmonic, melodic, and formal structures of the invading culture, is, nevertheless, redolent of the tropics and Indian musical elements.

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

Michael Miller


The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, reviewed by Nancy Salz

Lewisbookcover
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Ir
 by Michael Lewis, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Grab a beer and a bowl of pretzels when you sit down with The Big Short by Michael Lewis. You’re not just reading a book, you’re going to a game – a big, ugly, but oh-so exciting game. Lewis reports the causes of the current financial disaster with all the passion, pacing and testosterone of John Madden calling NFL plays – not surprising from the author of The Blind Side and Moneyball. He makes a complicated story easy to understand (most of the time) and takes us inside the heads, souls and maneuverings of several fascinating players.

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

Michael Miller


Now available: "Celebrating Carter’s Century," music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

Elliottcarter
Elliott Carter

An especially exciting bit of news was tucked away in the middle of the 2010-11 season press release: the BSO’s own recording label has released as a download 

 music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. At 42 minutes, five seconds this is only a minuscule sample of that wealth of brilliant music, played by mature and forming musicians with loving commitment. In any case the price ($5.99 for MP3 and $6.99 for AIFF or WMA) is extremely modest.

We can only hope that it will be successful and that the BSO will see fit to make the entire event available. If you agree, by all means let them know it. [Contact the BSO]

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

Michael Miller


Tree to be Removed: Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness Turns 50


Five trees to be removed, Wahroonga Railway Station, April 2010


Robin Boyd, 

The Australian Ugliness, 
286 pages, Text Publishing

Robin Boyd wrote 

The Australian Ugliness
 fifty years ago. Our question is obvious: is that ugliness still with us?

EXHIBIT A: An Ugly Scene in a Beautiful Place...


A leaf blower whines as I write this. Mozart cannot be played loud enough to drown it out. No matter, it reminds me of a limpid Friday evening a few months ago. A ruddy sun sparkled on the leaves of the blue gums, the breeze was a gentle early summer whisper, an evening one could fall into like a calm sea. I could take it no longer. I traced the errant whine to the dead end of my street. After waving for a few seconds to catch my neighbor's attfention, he turned off his blower and removed his sensible hearing protection so we could have a conversation which went something like this:

"That's an awful racket you've been making. It's almost eight o'clock," I said. 

"I know it's a bad sound. I'm sorry. But it has to be done."

"You're blowing all the leaves into the street. They'll clog up the drain and Council will have to pay someone to clean them out."

"I am not aware of the technicalities of what I'm doing."

"I clear my place in fifteen minutes with a rake. You've been running that thing for almost an hour."

"Fifty minutes, yes."

"Then use a rake."

He gestured, lord of the manor, "Look at my place. You expect me to use a rake? Just look at how big my place is -- I have a cobblestone driveway."

I began walking away, "Yeah, well it's a horrible sound. It's noise pollution. And I'm sure Council will be interested in the fact that you're blowing them all into the drain."

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

Michael Miller


A Passion for Bach: a composer’s greatness shines through at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, by Amy Stebbins

Jsbach
J. S. Bach
Each spring, Easter offers us a time for family, a time for oversized rabbits, for pastel-colored eggs and for Bach oratorios. Since the 19th century, the St. John Passion (as well as the longer, more complete St. Matthew Passion) has become a holiday standard for classical music buffs with its musical retelling of the Easter story, replete with arias, ariosos, recitatives, choruses and some of the most memorable hymns in the Western canon.

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

Michael Miller


Gruberova and Haider bring back Donizetti's Roberto Devereux at the Bayerische Staatsoper

Gavaneli_gruberova
Paolo Gavanelli and Edita Gruberova in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux. Foto: Wilfried Hösl.

Roberto Devereux

Gaetano Donizetti
Salvatore Cammarano (libretto)

Bayerische Staatsoper
Nationaltheater, March 8, 2010

to be repeated at the Münchner Opernfestspiele: June 30 and July 4, 2010

Conductor - Friedrich Haider
Stage Direction - Christof Loy
Set and costume design - Herbert Murauer
Lighting - Reinhard Traub
Dramaturg - Peter Heilker
Chorus director Andrés Máspero

Cast:
Elisabetta - Edita Gruberova
Herzog von Nottingham - Paolo Gavanelli
Sara - Sonia Ganassi
Roberto Devereux - José Bros
Lord Cecil - Francesco Petrozzi
Sir Gualtiero Raleigh - Steven Humes
Ein Page Robertos - John Chest

Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Chor der Bayerischen Staatsoper

Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux (1837) is quite a rarity, and many who are new to it might be tempted to assume that this is rather well justified. It could be said that the librettist Cammerano concocted a travesty of the story of Elizabeth and Essex, with singularly unappealing characters tied up in a knot of bad faith and vengefulness (one might equally say that of Wagner's Ring, of course), and that Donizetti glossed over it with course after course of conventional emotivity bathed in meretricious bel canto sauces. However, after seeing and hearing this at first seemingly rather strange and off-putting but passionately committed production, only the most rigidly prejudiced will refuse to admit that they have been fascinated and moved. Conductor Friederich Haider, above all, conveyed his belief in Roberto Devereux's quality and power through his deep understanding of bel canto as a psychological and dramatic idiom. In fact his contribution was equalled by the magnificent performances of Edita Gruberova and Paolo Gavanelli. Christof Loy's production, which sets the action in modern Britain, may seem perverse at first and Herbert Murauer's set and costumes singularly depressing, but eventually the distracting contemporary details vanish, as one abandons oneself to Donizetti's spell.

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

Michael Miller


BSO to release Celebrating Carter’s Century, music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter

An especially exciting bit of news was tucked away in the middle of the 2010-11 season press release: the BSO’s own recording label will release as a download Celebrating Carter’s Century, music by Elliott Carter from the 2008 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. We can only hope that the documentation of this great event will be as complete as possible.


Read the notice on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Boston Symphony Orchestra 2010-11 Season Announced, with Program Listing

Symhall2
Symphony Hall, Boston


The 2010-11 season of the Boston Symphony Orchestra will be so diverse, that I have decided simply to offer the material issued by the orchestra, which does an excellent job of covering the many diverse directions in which BSO programming is developing. As in the past, new music will be served as well as the classics. Even the much-fêted Thomas Adès will make an appearance, conducting his own music. He is not the only newcomer who will appear. The distinguished Japanese Bach specialist Maasaki Suzuki will make his BSO debut with the St. John Passion, as will Sakari Oramo from Finland, the American John Nelson, and the BSO’s new Assistant Conductor, Marcelo Lehninger. Sir Mark Elder’s return will be especially welcome, as will the regulars, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Charles Dutoit.

Music Director James Levine will revisit Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle,

 this time paired with Stravinsky’s great Oedipus Rex. Levine will also continue will his Mahler series with Symphonies No. 2, 5, and 9. He has already given superb accounts of the last of these with the BSO. Surely among the highlights will be the important concerts which will also be performed in New York at Carnegie Hall, in which Chrstian Tetzlaff and Maurizio Pollini will join Levine in Schoenberg and Mozart concertos together with a new commission from Sir Harrison Birtwistle. The question in everybody’s mind, of course, is how much of this will Levine actually conduct?
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Landscapes of the Mind at the Williams College Museum of Art, by Richard Harrington

Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest

Landscapes of the Mind

Williams College Museum of Art
January 30 through May 2, 2010

For the second time in as many years, Williams College Museum of Art is presenting a cross-disciplinary exhibition and symposium that challenges the conventional compartmentalization that has characterized educational and aesthetic definitions of math, and art or, in this instance, neuroscience, psychology, and art.

Last year’s focus on Mathematics and Art is followed up this year by Landscapes of the Mind, a group exhibition featuring installations, prints, and mixed media works that attempt to depict the workings of the brain, consciousness, and the Self both metaphorically and scientifically.

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

Michael Miller

Spring Breaks, Musical Rests: The Bard College Conservatory of Music, Sunday April 4, 2009, Seth Lachterman

Edward Elgar, In the South (“Alassio”)

, Op. 50
George Perle, Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 4 in G Major


Melvin Chen, Piano
Dawn Upshaw, Soprano
The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra
Leon Botstein, Conductor

Alassio-300x225
Alassio, on the gulf of Genoa, where Sir Edward Elgar vacationed

A warm and radiant Sunday during Spring Break might be a perfect setting for many sinful pleasures afforded to youth full of talent and vigor. Flaunting their musical physiques while engaging in a suite of strenuous works, students of the Bard College Conservatory showed little restraint in proving their almost visceral mastery. All was done with distinction, appropriate bravura, and only a bit of swagger. The selections themselves were felicitous indulgences by their respective composers: Mahler’s Fourth is the lightest and least dour of his symphonies; Elgar’s poem is a paean to southern voluptuousness (and, as well, a tribute to the tone poems of his contemporary, Richard Strauss); and George Perle’s Concerto shows how much the waking dodecaphonic theorist could dream in Ravel in his later years.  It was a “playful” afternoon, with so much young talent to admire that the occasional boisterous interpretation seemed completely in line with the mood of the day. Celebrating the spirit in beautiful sounds was as fitting a ceremony as I could imagine on such a stunning Easter Sunday. The presence of performing genius, such as that of Melvin Chen or Dawn Upshaw, made the day even more celebratory. Leon Botstein’s direction allowed these young performers to shine and impress both as individuals performers – since the three pieces sported many solo passages – and, as well, as a polished, cohesive ensemble.

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

Michael Miller