Boston Baroque under Martin Pearlman play Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610

Claudio_monteverdi1
Claudio Monteverdi, Copy after a Portrait by Bernardo Strozzi

Jordan Hall, Friday, February 19, 8:00 pm

Claudio Monteverdi, Vespers of 1610

Boston Baroque
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Mary Wilson & Kristen Watson, sopranos
Derek Chester, Aaron Sheehan & Lawrence Jones, tenors
Sumner Thompson & Donald Wilkinson, baritones

As a 400th anniversary tribute to Monteverdi's Vespers, Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque have returned to one of their signature pieces. Their history with the work goes back to their early years, and their 1997 recording remains one of the most highly respected. These performances, two at Jordan Hall and one at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York were an opportunity to hear Pearlman's thoroughly researched and solid reading with a new crop of singers, most of whom are young performers from New England. Kristen Watson in particular I remember as one of many excellences in Aston Magna's Purcell program two summers ago. Her rounded tone as well as her clean articulation, as well as her intelligence and wit, were truly memorable.

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

Michael Miller


Mariss Jansons leads the Concertgebouw Orchestra with Janine Jansen at Carnegie Hall in Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, and Mahler

Janine_jansen
Janine Jansen. Photo Felix Broede.

Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor
Janine Jansen, Violin

Sibelius, Violin Concerto
Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 8 PM
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor
Jill Grove, Mezzo-Soprano

New York Choral Artists
Joseph Flummerfelt, Chorus Director
The American Boychoir
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Music Director

Mahler, Symphony No. 3

As a conductor, Mariss Jansons is not only versatile, but able to show different characters, depending on his purposes, ranging from the understated to the brilliant and exuberant. In each of the three late romantic works in the two concerts he had a clear idea of how he wanted to apply the best qualities of his orchestra. None of these pieces, no matter how much they may be admired, are especially esteemed for their economy and structural clarity, but in each case, Jansons found a true, organic solution to the composer's aims.

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

Michael Miller


Myung-Whun Chung conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in an All-Ravel Program

Myung Whun Chung


Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Sunday, March 7, 2010

Myung-Whun Chung, Conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano

All Ravel Program:
Ma Mère L'Oye (complete ballet)
Shéhérazade
Daphnis et Chloé, Suites 1 and 2
La Valse

For a good part of this reviewer's life, it would seem, the world has been waiting for a truly great International French symphony orchestra. At mid-century, a general feeling was that the Boston Symphony under Sergei Koussevitzky and Charles Munch carried the torch for French music, ably assisted by Paul Paray in detroit, Pierre Monteux wherever he could be found, and, on disc, by L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva.

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

Michael Miller


Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra play Chopin and Brahms

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Riccardo Chailly, photo von Mothes

Carnegie Hall, February 28, 2010

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly, Conductor

Fryderyk Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor Op. 11
Louis Lortie, piano

Johannes Brahms, 2. Symphony No. 2 In D Major, Op. 73

The visit of the Leipzig Gewandhaus brings to a close the series of concerts by the great central European orchestras in Carnegie Hall. (Only the Dresdener Staatskapelle was lacking, and they are scheduled to appear next season.) It is a unique pleasure to hear a comprehensive series of these great ensembles in one hall, which also happens to possess one of the finest acoustics in the world. It is also a familiar one to me, since I have been attending concerts at Carnegie since childhood, when the New York Philharmonic still played there. The restoration has impaired its full glory somewhat, but I've grown used to the sound as it is—a bit too bright, but capable of embracing the grandest orchestral tutti and projecting the finest detail of a solo instrument up to the rafters. As an environment for comparison, only Symphony Hall in Boston can rival it, but the program of visiting orchestras in Boston has sadly diminished over the years. Only the Berlin Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus have played in Boston this season. (I was only recently reminiscing with a friend about how we used to hear Cleveland and other great American orchestras, as well as Vienna and Berlin in Symphony Hall more or less annually.)

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

Michael Miller


Simon Keenlyside sings Schumann, Wolf, and Schubert at Alice Tully

Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside, baritone


Lincoln Center Great Performers
Starr Theater, Alice Tully Hall
Sunday Afternoon, February 28, 2010, at 5:00

Simon Keenlyside, Baritone
Pedja Muzijevic, Piano

Schumann, Dichterliebe, Op. 48

Wolf, Four Lieder on poems by Mörike
Gesang Weylas
Heimweh
Auf eine Christblume II
Lied vom Winde

Schubert, Nine Lieder
An Silvia
Die Einsiedelei
Verklärung
Freiwilliges Versinken
Gruppe aus dem Tartarus
Himmelsfunken
Ständchen
Die Sterne
Auf der Bruck

There could not have been a more extreme contrast between Renée Fleming's approach to Strauss' Four Last Songs, recently reviewed in these pages, and Simon Keenlyside's in this recital. For Fleming, the texts of Strauss' songs are cushioned in her gorgeous production and phrasing, while for Keenlyside the text is the beginning and end of a performance which is essentially dramatic, no matter what beautiful moments his extremely varied—and variable—voice may produce along the way, and of course these moments are entirely expressive in purpose. Acting is second nature to him. In most of his selections he created a character before he uttered a phrase.

His absorption in the text begins with his highly personal selection of his material. Among the great songs familiar to every Lied enthusiast, he has sought out relative rarities of special interest to himself. In this recital it was Schubert who furnished the opportunity. So many treasures lie hidden among his extensive vocal oeuvre that digging through his less-known songs in recital is always an exciting and fruitful endeavor.

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

Michael Miller


Maximum Stupid: Sydney's Big Barangaroo Blowup (REVISED), by Alan Miller

 

"The Master Plan suggests an architecture that, despite its scale, will not overshadow any of the spaces that are, in and of themselves, naturally beautiful. The exception to this is the library and hotel pier. A reference to tall ships that once docked at the harbour's edge and the hotel and library are expressions of the magnificent ability for a building to almost walk on water. This architecture will provide necessary markers in their own right."

-from the Barangaroo Public Display, March 2010

It's tempting to divide this article into two sections, "process" and "product" or maybe "means" and "ends." That would be the mature thing to do. Very serious people throughout the world demonstrate their seriousness with clearly labeled headings and bullet points, and very serious people are very serious about filling their days with processes, products, means and ends.

What is all this about? It's about cities and in particular the conspicuously empty 22 hectares on the western side of central Sydney called Barangaroo. Check it out on Google Earth and the site's importance is obvious. Barangaroo is the last undeveloped

 

Marianne von Werefkin: L’Amazzone dell’Avanguardia, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, closed February 14th | Berkshire Review for the Arts

Avemaria
Marianne von Werefkin, Ave Maria

Marianne von Werefkin (1869 – 1938) is one of those rare artists whose words and sketches almost tell us more about her paintings than the paintings themselves. The words are found in her Lettres à un inconnu written while travelling through Brittany, Paris, and the Provence with artist/companion Alexej von Jawlensky. The sketches, initially outlined in ink and later colored in with pastel or tempera, were her way of satiating an irrepressible “thirst for the abstract” which she subsequently expressed in her full-scale works.

This collection of fifty temperas and a dozen drawings, together with the above-mentioned sketches and portions of her diary, bring to light the charisma and intelligence that earned her such appellations as the “Russian Rembrandt” and “Amazon of the Avant-garde”. Oppressed by the limitations, tedium, and mediocrity of the external world, Werefkin relied a unique, figurative style to illustrate her love for the “things that are not”. The artist’s calling, she claimed, is to counter the reality of perceived things with the “unreal” things of the soul.


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

Michael Miller


Herbert Blomstedt conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Mozart and Bruckner

Blomstedt
Herbert Blomstedt

The San Francisco Symphony

Davies Hall, San Francisco
Friday, February 26, 2010

Herbert Blomstedt, Conductor

Mozart: Symphony No. 36 in C major, K.425, "Linz"
Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 in A major

There appears to be something of a tug-of-war going on in the world of Mozart performances.

In the ascendancy these days, self-confident revisionist scholars, seeking to sweep away Victorian accretion, place before the public spiky, twangy and fiercely rhythmical works for small forces of original instruments. Traditional Mozart conductors, on the political defensive and seemingly chastened as romantics, come to audience rescue with slightly more refined, slightly less detuned, slightly more softly sprung music for slightly larger forces. Scarcely anyone anymore, (perhaps Barenboim), will stand before 100 players and lead a symphony by Mozart or Haydn in the manner of a Bruno Walter, an Otto Klemperer, a Herbert Von Karajan or a George Szell.

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

Michael Miller


Beethoven's Third and Fourth Symphonies...Levine and the BSO, by Jan Swafford

Beethoven_30ish
Ludwig van Beethoven
Boston Symphony Orchestra

James Levine, conductor
Friday, February 19, 8 p.m.

All-Beethoven Program
Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 3, Eroica

In October 1803, Beethoven's student Ferdinand Ries wrote a publisher about the new Third Symphony: "In his own opinion it is the greatest work he has yet written. Beethoven played it for me recently, and I believe that heaven and earth will tremble when it is performed. He is very much inclined to dedicate it to Bonaparte." Ries was speaking metaphorically, and, metaphorically, he was right. In the world of music, the Third did shake heaven and earth. As the longest, most complex, most intense, most personal symphony ever written, it met the inevitable incomprehension in its first performances, but within two years some critics were calling it the greatest symphony ever written and a model for the future.

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

Michael Miller

Wild, but Not Crazy Enough: Scorsese's Shutter Island, by Alan Miller

from Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island

It's good news that somebody, let alone a director of Martin Scorsese's calibre, has finally recognized the highly cinematic creepiness of the Boston Harbour Islands. The opening scenes of Shutter Island reminded me of school excursions to those islands, which have the feel of a mid-ocean archipelago, rather than land sheltered by a harbour. Thankfully, no school excursion ever went as badly as the one on the film. I always got off the island.

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

Michael Miller