Gil Rose talks to Michael Miller about contemporary music, BMOP, and the Opera Boston premiere of Madame White Snake

Rose_portrait2
Gil Rose. Photo Liz Linder.

Gil Rose is best known for his leadership of two high-profile Boston organizations, theBoston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), one of the major supporters of contemporary music in America, and Opera Boston, which specializes in musically outstanding performances of operatic masterpieces which have been neglected by the mainstream houses. I know I'll be eternally grateful to him and Opera Boston for my first opportunity to see Weber's Der Freischütz,

 universally regarded as a seminal work in the history of opera and a great one, but rarely performed today. Just last year there were Shostakovich'sThe Nose, and Rossini's Tancredi, and now Opera Boston's first commission of a new opera, Zhou Long's Madame White Snake.

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

Michael Miller


Renée Fleming, James Levine, and the Boston Symphony in Berg, Richard Strauss, and Mahler, by Michael Miller

Wunderhorn
Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ed. 1874, frontispiece

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Friday, February 12, 8 p.m.
James Levine, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano

Berg, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
Strauss, Four Last Songs
Mahler, Symphony No. 4

Before getting into the program in detail, it's worth noting that here again the BSO and New York Philharmonic programs overlap. While Levine in the Berg Three Pieces is returning to repertoire with which he has been closely associated for many years—music inspired by the composer of the main work, Gustav Mahler—Gilbert approached the same work as part of his ongoing exploration of the Second Vienna School, which has enriched his programming throughout the year, and, I'm sure, will continue throughout his career.

Often, hearing the BSO at Symphony Hall is a spatial experience. Berg's fragmented scoring of longer sections among disparate choirs of the orchestra created an almost eerie effect of coherent music dismembered and spread over a vast space. Levine's fairly deliberate tempi made sure that there was plenty of space and atmosphere around the every phrase, chord, attack, or stroke of the percussion. The detail in the percussion in opening bars was astonishing, and the performance continued in this way throughout. An unerring sense of the longer and shorter shape of the music was combined with meticulous attention to sonorities and textures, and all this was enhanced by the superb playing of the Boston Symphony. We were constantly aware of its Mahlerian origins as well as of everything that was different, everything that was most characteristically Berg, for example his ferocious vivisection of a military march in the final piece.

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

Michael Miller


The Short, Fast Life of Jonathan Van Allen by Nancy Salz

Jonathanjpegrv

Jonathan Van Allen’s family and staff had no time to grieve. The day after he was killed in an early morning, one-car accident they had to put on an elegant wedding reception at a restaurant that would soon be Jonathan’s third in South Berkshire County.

The reception was for the son of Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, whom Jonathan, 24, had befriended four years earlier under unusual circumstances: He waited on Chairman Bernanke’s table at Pearl’s, the same restaurant he was in the process of buying.

Somewhere between “Good evening. May I start you off with a drink?” and “Thank you for coming,” Jonathan had added Bernanke to his growing group of admirers. Perhaps Jonathan eloquently described an unusual wine or a special entrée.  Although he drank little and ate even less, Jonathan made it his business to discover everything he could about fine wine and food. However, he never patronized with his knowledge. Rather, he shared.

Frequent patrons, of which I was one, would enter Jonathan’s Bistro in Lenox – his first restaurant, opened in October, 2006 when he had just turned 22 – become seated at one of its seventeen tables and feel immediately enveloped and comforted by the warm, coffee-colored walls. At some point during their meal Jonathan would come over to chat. Sometimes he would even get down on his knees so he could talk eye-to-eye. He couldn’t wait to point out the latest items on his menu and ask what you thought. He might even dash for a glass and pour his newest wine so you could taste it.

Of course by sharing Jonathan was also getting “buy-in”: He was making his patrons into advisers, psychological “partners” in his restaurant. Although he truly enjoyed engaging people, underneath he was all business.

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

Michael Miller


Walton's Violin Concerto and Holst's "The Planets" at the San Francisco Symphony with Dutoit and Barantschik

Alexander Barantschik, Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony


The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Saturday, February 13, 2010

Charles Dutoit, Conductor
Alexander Barantschik, Violin
Women of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Ragnar Bolin, Director

Sir William Walton, Violin Concerto
Gustav Holst, Suite For Orchestra,"The Planets"

1939 must have been the year neoclassic front ranks gave up on William Walton. Here was the "English Stravinsky", who had burst forth with silvery elbow-wit in "Facade" and scandalized church officials in "Belshazzar's Feast.” More recently, his First Symphony had transformed telegraphic rhythm into sheer motorized power, gleaming and heartless. (only the finale, composed late and omitted at the premiere, had hinted at something more sensual and cinematic) The earlier Viola Concerto had parsed-out like the cleanest Hindemith, moving because of its beauty, but bereft of the senses.

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

Michael Miller


Vintage Beethoven, and a Rare Bruckner Varietal at Bard College, February 6, 2010

Beet_bruck-300x178
Lugwig van Beethoven and Anton Bruckner

American Symphony Orchestra
Leon Botstein, Conductor
Sosnoff Auditorium, Fisher Hall, Bard College
Saturday, February 6, 2010

Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 3 in D Minor (1873 version, "The Wagner Symphony")
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (“Eroica”)

One uses “memorable” sparingly, lest the older we get, and the further from the experience, the greater the potential for despair in our failing grasp of that memory’s vital immediacy. We might, with Wordsworth, bemoan “the glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore.” However, Saturday’s concert at Bard has been placed, albeit precariously, in my ever-reduced, non-volatile memory as a treasured event. Leon Botstein’s performance of Beethoven’s Eroica

 was one of transcendent clarity, color, and musical balance. I believe the members of the American Symphony Orchestra were aware of how well they played, and how convincingly Mr. Botstein’s interpretation was executed. Given the reserve of Mr. Botstein’s thoughts regarding the first two Beethoven symphonies, performed earlier this fall, the question lingered as to how the quintessentially Romantic Eroica would fare. Using an ensemble scaled to intended proportion, but without period instruments, this Third never lost a mote of its rhetorical vigor or sonic weight. While coloristic nuances abounded in the Funeral March, the sense of the tragic was never tilted, nor was it hyperbolized. The Scherzo was absolutely perfect, and the Finale’s variations were richly narrated, chameleon-like in their differentiation, and powerfully projected to the very end. It was difficult to sit without stirring in the rousing coda. Mr. Botstein and the ASO tonight have reached beyond regional, national, or temporal excellence.

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

Michael Miller


Mezzo-Soprano Kara Cornell and the Hubbard Hall Opera Theater between Carmen and Hansel

Carmen_kara
Kara Cornell as Carmen at Hubbard Hall, 2009

Kara Cornell, who sang and acted such a brilliant Carmen at Hubbard Hall last summer, and I recently shared a pleasant Australian blend at the Wine Bar on Lark in Albany, where we reminisced about Carmen

—actually Peter Brook's La Tragédie de Carmen, and talked about next summer's production, Humperdinck'sHansel and Gretel, in which, as Hansel, she will make a total about face from the dangerous gypsy. Considering Kara's vivid and very funny Cherubino in the Capital Opera's Nozze di Figaro last summer, she should be equally successful as the pre-pubescent wood-cutter's boy. Knowing stage director Dianna Heidman's sophistication and originality, I can foresee that Hansel and Gretel will go well beyond the usual family entertainment.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


The Boston Symphony in the New Year: Levine Returns, by Michael Miller

James Levine with the BSO. Photo Michael Lutch.

The Boston Symphony began the new year with a reduced ensemble, brilliantly conducted by the early music specialist Ton Koopman. The orchestra didn't attempt gut strings or period winds and percussion in any way, but the players responded intuitively to Koopman's brisk tempi and sprung phrasing, resulting in a satisfyingly vigorous, if not quite revelatory Haydn Symphony No. 98, the last of his first set of Salomon symphonies, followed by Yo-Yo Ma's exuberant, somewhat exaggerated performance of Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, a most welcome and impeccably played symphony by C. P. E. Bach, and a very beautiful Schubert "Unfinished," limpid in texture and phrased with fine taste and feeling. I'll say more about this in the context of Alan Gilbert's almost simultaneous concert, which also paired Schubert's Eighth with a Haydn symphony of an entirely different kind.

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

Michael Miller


Vivica Genaux in Conversation with Michael Miller: Our First Podcast - Potentially problematic file fixed

Vivica_genaux_green
Vivica Genaux. Photo Harry Heleotis.


The distinguished mezzo-soprano, Vivica Genaux, who just sang Arsace in Rossini's Semiramide at the Caramoor Festival to great acclaim, very kindly agreed to an interview. We talked about a great many things, from her fondness for Caramoor (This will be her fifth complete opera performance there.) and her future plans to baroque performance practice, 

Regieoper,
 the famous castrato Farinelli, gender and trouser roles (a speciality of hers), her teachers and favorite colleagues, the composers who have most shaped her career—Rossini, Handel, and Johann Adolf Hasse—as well as her fondness for her native state, Alaska, and the opportunities it gave her in finding a place in the arts.

In recent years Ms. Genaux has been much more active in Europe than in North America (She lives in Italy.), but she retains an avid following the in the US, and her recitals and operatic appearances are always sold out. The excerpts from Arsace's recitative and aria, "Eccomi alfine qui in Babilonia", which begins and ends this interview, will explain why.

Listen to the podcast on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


David Hoose, Music Director of The Cantata Singers, Boston, talks to Michael Miller: broken podcast link fixed!

David Hoose. Photo Michael Lutch.

The Cantata Singers of Boston will begin their 2009-10 season on November 6 at Jordan Hall with a concert combining:

Heinrich Schütz, Musikalische Exequien

 (1636)
Hugo Distler, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Op. 12, no. 1 from Geistliche Chormusik
Arnold Schoenberg, Friede auf Erden
J.S. Bach, Cantata BWV 8,
“Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?”

Click here to listen to The Berkshire Review Podcast II: David Hoose Talks to Michael Miller (ca. 23 min.)

Click here for Michael Miller's review of the concert.

This thoughtful and lively program of Baroque and modern music is typical of the Cantata Singers, who in recent years have been building their season programs around a single composer, this year Heinrich Schütz, the greatest predecessor of the central figure in the group's mission, Johann Sebastian Bach.

This gave me an opportunity to continue our podcast series in conversation with David Hoose, the Cantata Singers' Music Director for the past 26 years. Since then Mr. Hoose has been one of the central figures in the Boston music scene.

Hear the podcast on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Sitting under the Piano, by Keith Kibler


It is a dark object that keeps its softness, a ponderous roof, and a gentle. When you sit under the piano, you must be small. From there the world is a theatre. You watch unobserved, the darkness is a cushion, the piano is a mother. Can you remember being held in its arms and looking out ? Music comes out of it. The music is always played by your mother. Its sounds are too complex to offer a play opportunity to a child. No questions are asked about where the music comes from. All you can see of your mama is her feet on the pedals, and any kid knows that they don’t make any music. So where does it come from?

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

Michael Miller