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


Two Little Battlers: Alasdair McGregor, Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, by Alan MIller

Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin in Castlecrag, 27 July 1930
Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin in Castlecrag, 27 July 1930

Alasdair McGregor, Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Penguin, 545 pp.

To disparage Canberra is every non-Canberran Australian's birthright. To many Sydneysiders and Melburnians, the bush capital, seemingly custom built for cars and the public servants they contain, is not a proper city. As with Washington, what goes on there has not helped the city's image and "Canberra" has become shorthand both for government, and for the kind of self-referential political sausage-making which thwarts true progress. During my visits to 'our nation's capital' I've often wondered if the city was the result of a scaling error; there is a weird discrepancy between what your brain envisages when looking at a map of the city and reality. All those circles which one might imagine to be urban boulevards turn out to be dusty suburban streets, their radii too large to be perceived, yet just curved enough to get the visitor well lost.

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

Michael Miller


Riccardo Chailly talks to Michael Miller about his upcoming tour of the United States with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and more.

09_gwo_rc_30
Riccardo Chailly in Rehearsal. Photo von Mothes.

Riccardo Chailly, not only one of the great conductors of our time, but one of an even smaller group who have exercised a truly formative influence on contemporary musical life through his championship of twentieth and twenty-first century music—through his many recordings, most of them for Decca, which he has produced since the beginnings of his career in the late 1970s, and through his long tenure as chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam (1988-2004), and now, since 2005, as Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. If you survey the most prominent music publications, you will find many accolades, "artist of the year," "best recording," etc., and you will find many of his recordings recommended as the best available or the "recommended choice." His fresh, individual interpretations, always based on a close study of the score, as well as his close relationship with a single recording company over many years, have resulted in recordings in which his ideas and the sound of his orchestras and their halls are communicated with exceptional vividness and presence.

Hear the podcast on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller


Boulez and Barenboim conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, Wagner and Beethoven

Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, 1948. Photo Florence Homolka.
Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, 1948. Photo Florence Homolka.

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, Conductor
Carnegie Hall, January 15, 2010

Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"
Wagner, Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Schoenberg, Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31
Encore: J. Strauss Jr., Unter Donner und Blitz, Op. 324

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Pierre Boulez, Conductor
Daniel Barenboim, Piano
Carnegie Hall, January 16, 2010

Schoenberg, Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38
Schoenberg, Piano Concerto, Op. 42
Webern, Six Pieces, Op. 6
Mahler, Adagio from Symphony No. 10 in F-sharp Major
Encore (after piano concerto): Schubert, Impromptu in A-flat Major, D. 935, No. 2

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, Conductor
Carnegie Hall, January 17, 2010

Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra
Pierre Boulez, Notations I, II, III, IV and VII
Beethoven, Symphony No. 5

Schoenberg and his two most famous pupils, Webern and Berg, appear to be everywhere this season, receiving the most polished performances by the most distinguished musicians and ensembles. This is a somewhat absurd understatement when one speaks of the likes of Sir Simon Rattle, Peter Serkin, Alan Gilbert, John Harbison, David Hoose, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, and, soon, James Levine, but polish and musicianly mastery are the bare minimum for this uncompromising music, which is difficult for the players and, at least by reputation, for the audience. It is important to realize, however, that once performances are as plentiful and as excellent as they have been in New York and Boston over the past few months, the difficulty for the listener seems miraculously diminished. I'm sure all of these conductors have given serious thought to making this body of great works accessible and appealing to concert-goers, and all of these performances have been eminently accessible, with no trace the smoothing-over or dumbing-down. 

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

Michael Miller


Boldini e gli italiani a Parigi, Chiostro del Bramante (Rome) until March 14th, by Daniel B. Gallagher

Giovanni Boldini, Self-Portrait, 1892
Giovanni Boldini, Self-Portrait, 1892

 

When Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931) first arrived in Paris in 1867, he, like many of his compatriots, did not necessarily consider it a final destination but a requisite stop on the way towards mastery of his art. Practical considerations quickly intervened. He found that making miniatures for the bourgeoning dealership him a handsome profit, something fellow countryman Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) had discovered a few years earlier. Boldini thus left Macchiaioli avant-gardism behind to paint Parisian joie de vivre.

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

Sir Colin Davis conducts James Macmillan's St. John Passion with the BSO

Sircolin
Sir Colin Davis

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Friday, January 22, 8 p.m.

James Macmillan, 

St. John Passion
 (American premiere; BSO co-commission)
Sir Colin Davis, conductor
Christopher Maltman, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor

For more details about James MacMillan, his background, and his purposes in writing his St. John Passion, I'll refer the reader to the review of the superb LSO Live recording of the work, which I reviewed as an introduction to this concert, its U.S. premiere. MacMillan wrote the Passion as an 80th birthday tribute to Sir Colin Davis, and it was jointly commissioned by the London and Boston Symphony Orchestras. An Ayrshire Catholic of Irish extraction, James MacMillan became connected to music early, and his experience with the Passion according to St. John goes back to the traditional chanted readings of the text as part of the Good Friday liturgy. While most of the work consists straightforwardly of the Gospel narrative and the Improperia from the Roman Catholic Good Friday Mass, its selection and musical treatment are highly personal, giving it a dramatic and humanistic quality, which must please Sir Colin no end.

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

Michael Miller


Mahler and Inspiration: Benjamin Zander at Albany’s Palace Theater

Johann Strauss II,  Kaiser-Walzer

 op. 437
Gustav Mahler, Fifth Symphony
Benjamin_zanderbio-199x300
Conductor, Lecturer and Author, Benjamin ZanderBenjamin Zander, conductor

The Albany Symphony Orchestra

It might seem paradoxical that one of world’s most commercially successful “motivational speakers” and purveyors of Inspiration for the troubled masses is British-born conductor, Ben Zander. His musical specialty is Gustav Mahler, a manic-depressive genius who saw tragedy around every corner. Think of his Tragic Symphony (#6) written in the happiest days of his short life. While his music inspires us with its remarkable color and ineffable narratives, the world is always seen as through a glass darkly. Maestro Zander’s recordings of Mahler’s symphonies with the Philharmonia Orchestra have received wide praise, and it was a significant boon to have him work with the Albany Symphony Orchestra.

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

Berkshire Bach Society's New Year's Brandenburgs 2010 with Kenneth Cooper at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Kcooper
Kenneth Cooper, Founder, President, and Music Director of the Berkshire Bach Society

I always look forward to the Berkshire Bach Society's New Year's Bach concerts, this year their classic program of the Brandenburg Concertos straight through. I was especially pleased that they scheduled a third concert at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, allowing us to hear them in their full glory, that is, in a fully satisfactory acoustic, more than that, in fact, since the Music Hall offers a unique bloom all its own. It seemed a bit much at first, as the musicians pulled themselves together after Kenneth Cooper's perfectly clear initial beat in the first concerto. Everyone was quite happily together after a couple of bars, and the rest was a marvellous blend of atmosphere and clarity. In fact it was really quite a revelation to hear some passages—especially the entire sixth concerto—in this unique environment.

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

Music in a Time of Disaster...The Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Boulez, Carnegie Hall, January 16, 2010

Boulez
Pierre Boulez

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Pierre Boulez, conductor
Carnegie Hall, January 16, 2010

Schoenberg, Second Chamber Symphony
Schoenberg, Piano Concerto (Daniel Barenboim, soloist)
Webern, Six Pieces for Orchestra
Mahler, Adagio from Symphony no. 10

To hear a program of music by Mahler and the members of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern) five days after the earthquake in Haiti is to experience questions about the role that the arts, and music in particular, plays in our lives. Burke and Kant recognized two categories of artistic experience, the beautiful and the sublime, one characterized by orderliness, balance, and grace, the other by overwhelming power. Beauty is associated with the works of humans, and the sublime with the acts of nature (and/or God, depending on your persuasion). Both pieces on the second half of the Vienna Philharmonic’s program (Webern and Mahler) contained climactic moments that can only be described as devastating, as close as art can get to imparting the experience of disastrous loss. As we read the papers about the destruction of a country, we struggle to find the connection between our own lives and the unimaginable suffering and trauma being experienced by our neighbors and fellow humans. Music can help.

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

Michael Miller
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Sadness—The Cantata Singers and More, by Chales Warren

Durufle-maurice
Maurice Duruflé

Last Friday, January 15th, the Cantata Singers under Music Director David Hoose continued their season centered around the music of Heinrich Schütz, on this occasion performing at the First Church, Cambridge. This can be a problematic venue, with blurry sound, especially for solo voices. But Friday there were no solo voices, and the a capella mixed choir and eventually a small orchestra sounded fine—well balanced and clear enough, at least where I was sitting, which was fairly close. The audience was large and enthusiastic. The fine concert deserved their appreciation.

Read the full review on he Berkshire Review for he Arts