A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler, 11: New Year’s Blessings and my Favorites from ‘09

Kara Cornell as Carmen

The holidays are over in my rural kingdom of music and art, and there were some blessed nights. I enjoyed particularly a cogent and real My Fair Lady

 played at the Capital Rep. This was a show that seemed like it belonged in the same universe with George Bernard Shaw. The speaking in particular was entirely believable. The Professor Higgins (Fred Rose) did not ingratiate. He wasn't charming. He had all the negative aspects of the character connected with a vocal honesty that made us wonder what Eliza could possibly see in him. I felt the tension I think the creators intended. A tough, harsh character who sings. He was in every way the best performer of this part I have seen. The Eliza (Allison Spratt) did not flounce. She didn't overdo the Cockney. One of my favorite moments, since this was a production in which the actors occasionally played their own accompaniment, was seeing Eliza standing between two upright pianos, upstage, while the men were taking credit for her success at the Embassy Ball. She looked lonely, distressed, torn, small. She also suggested, with creative risk, her growing affection for that bounder Higgins. She did this in a way that did not make sense, but still convinced, as love often does. The singing in this show was functional, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. It moved the drama forward, and it had beauty. The pace was refreshingly relaxed. Nobody was trying to sell it. It was fine.
 in the Berkshire Review for the Arts.




A Singer's Notes, 10: Menotti the Modern, by Keith Kibler

Gian-carlo-menotti_789898c
Gian Carlo Menotti

Is there any 20th century composer less comfortable to contemporary tastes than Menotti? A rehashed Romantic, they might say, before modernism even got off the ground. The victim of his greatest success, his Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.

 LikeMessiah, Amahl is nearly always performed by amateurs. Some wonderful, most B+, some awful. It requires a pre-adolescent singer of great skill.  He always steals the show. I got thinking about this last Sunday after working with my magic student Gwen on a far less well-known piece, the so-called "Monica's Waltz" monologue from Menotti's The Medium. The vocal demands are advanced. The character herself is a young and very strange woman. It is for me one of the best solo scenes in 20th century opera. It has a fluidity that hectors with great penetration the bizarre actions of the character. She causes a boy with whom she lives (both are parentless) to mime a kind of love paean to her, all of which she sings. The piece is a kind of shadow duet in which the singer must convince in both roles, the mime in only one. 
 in the Berkshire Review for the Arts.

HELP FOR HAITI: An Intimate Evening with JAMES TAYLOR at the Mahaiwe, Great Barrington

James Taylor
James Taylor

HELP FOR HAITI: An Intimate Evening with JAMES TAYLOR

All concert proceeds to benefit Partners in Health: www.pih.org Friday, January 22, 2010

No phone sales are available for this concert. Limit four tickets per person.

$1000 Golden Circle includes onstage reception with Artists

$200 Orchestra and Mezzanine

$100 Balcony

"Our hearts go out to everyone in Haiti," said Mr. Taylor. "We need to do everything we can to help the country recover after this tragic earthquake. I'm grateful to do my part and hope my neighbors here in the Berkshires will join me and be as generous as possible."

Mr. Taylor will be joined by his longtime singers Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller, his wife, Kim, and Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist Owen Young.

Partners In Health (PIH) has been working on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years. The organization works to bring modern medical care to poor communities in nine countries around the world. The work of PIH has three goals: to care for patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. Based in Boston, PIH employs more than 11,000 people worldwide, including doctors, nurses, and community health workers.

The event will be simulcast on WAMC Northeast Public Radio (wamc.org). Kim and James Taylor will match proceeds from all ticket sales.

Thoughts on Schumann and the 2nd Symphony, by David Hoose

Robert Schumann, 1850
I yearn for the day when a thoroughly sympathetic view of Schumann emerges, one supplanting the lingering idea, passed on from biographer to musician to music-lover and back, insinuating that his music, while selectively inspired, was hampered by enough contrapuntal inexperience, unevenness in motivic invention, formal insecurity, and outright incompetence in orchestration that it should not be considered in the same sphere with Chopin’s, Liszt’s, or even Brahms’s.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts


Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts

Visit our social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.






Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic in Webern, Mozart, and Schumann

Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo Chris Lee.
Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo Chris Lee.


New York Philharmonic
Avery Fisher Hall

Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 7:30 P.M.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 7:30 P.M.
Saturday, January 2, 2010, 8:00 P.M.

Alan Gilbert, Conductor
Leif Ove Andsnes, Piano

Webern, Im Sommerwind
Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488
Webern, Symphony, Op. 21
Schumann, Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61

Unfortunately I was not able to attend Alan Gilbert's first concerts of the season, and this was my first experience of his work with the New York Philharmonic. I did hear his guest concert with the Boston Symphony last spring—a major event, as it included his magnificent Ives Fourth. It happens that both the Boston and the New York program were quite similar and revealed similar qualities in Gilbert's conducting, although his approach was quite different. Both included a little-known early work by a major twentieth-century composer, and a concerto with a highly-respected pianist, as well as a symphony—eccentric symphonies in both cases, I'm tempted to add...

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

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

tel. 413.458.2244

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.







Avatar, A ‘Papier Mâché Mephistopheles’ | Berkshire Review for the Arts | Comment

http://berkshirereview.net/2009/12/avatar-review/

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

tel. 413.458.2244

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.







Music Small and Large, Boston, Fall 2009, by Charles Warren

Harbison

John Harbison, Composer/Conductor

Boston is full of excellent musicians who give concerts in various configurations of established chamber music groups, early and new music groups, and orchestras of various kinds other than the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and of course in solo recital. For musical performance and presentation of a great range of music, we are blessed in Boston. In early October I attended my first concert by the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, playing at the Goethe Institute on Beacon Street, where the large high-ceilinged double parlor makes a great venue for music, with a rich, resonant, vivid sound right to the back, though with small chairs all on one level and on this occasion a packed house, it was hard to see. I was attracted by the program, featuring the Debussy Cello Sonata and Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I just wanted to hear these works—it had been a while. It was a splendid concert, and too bad for me just coming to the Chameleon group, which has been thriving here for a dozen years. The concert opened with a Mozart violin/viola Duo, K. 423 in G Major, beautifully played by Kristofer Tong and Scott Woolweaver. This elegant, intricate music made a good opening to the rest of the program. Mozart mattered to Chopin and to the French in a way that Beethoven and others in the Germanic tradition did not.

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

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.







David Hoose talks to Michael Miller about his education, about conducting and conductors, the BSO, Seiji Ozawa, James Levine, and Gustavo Dudamel

David Hoose
David Hoose

David Hoose continues his conversation with Michael Miller about his education, about conducting and conductors, the BSO, Seiji Ozawa and James Levine.

Hear the podcast on the Berkshire Review for the Arts.

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

tel. 413.458.2244

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.





Tannery Pond 2010, the Twentieth Anniversary Season, with a look back at 2009


Christian Steiner, director of the Tannery Pond Concerts, with Nikolai, the Sealyham Terrier

Over the past few years, my enthusiasm for the Tannery Pond Concerts has been no secret. Where else can you hear a unique combination of the most celebrated soloists and chamber groups together with handpicked young musicians of extraordinary promise? And in a handsome Shaker tannery from the early nineteenth century with glorious acoustics. All this thanks to its director, Christian Steiner, who as the most prominent photographer of musicians and singers has unique access to information. Also, as a musician from a musical family, he has superb taste. Very few concerts ever disappoint there, and none are simply routine. For my part I can only be grateful for the discoveries I've made there. Beyond this, next summer will be special, since Tannery Pond will be celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Mr. Steiner has put together an exceptional season.

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

Calder, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome), until February 14th, by Daniel Gallagher

Alexander Calder, Red Panel

Alexander Calder, Red Panel

Alexander Calder’s (1898-1976) acceptance of the prize for sculpture at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952 forged a bond of friendship with a country he had admired for some time. He was especially close to art connoisseur Giovanni Carandente, who sadly passed away last June 7th while working furiously on the catalogue for this exhibit. Carandente is largely to thank for introducing Italy to the radical idea that art could break forth from closed frames into three-dimensional space and engage the surrounding environment by contrast and analogy. Carandente’s keen interest in urban sculpture boded well for Calder, whose “Teodelapio” (1962) outside the Spoleto train station ignited a passion for public art in Italy that endures even today. His friendship with Carandente expanded the possibilities for his prodigious output, leading him to design several opera sets for theatres across Italy. Although Calder declined the Medal of Freedom offered him by President Gerald Ford on political grounds, he went on to accept several degrees honoris causa from prestigious Italian universities.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts