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‘Here Lies Love’: Imelda Marcos in New York
BY: Carol Rocamora
05.18.2013
How could an entire starving nation fall under the sway of a dazzling charlatan like Imelda Marcos? The disco-style poporetta Here Lies Love will seduce you in much the same way. Unfortunately, it neglects to address the greatest irony of all: what happened to Imelda after the music stopped. Here Lies Love. Concept and lyrics by David Byrne; Alex Timbers directs. Through June 30, 2013 at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette S., New York, www.publictheater.org. |
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Bedazzled CAROL ROCAMORABeware of Alex Timbers. He’s a dangerous director. He’ll lure you down to Lower Manhattan’s Public Theater with the seductive title of his new disco-style poporetta, Here Lies Love. There, he’ll get you dancing, partying and having the time of your life to music by the rocker David Byrne, formerly frontman for the Talking Heads. Only too late will you realize that, in doing so, you’ve become an accomplice to one of the 20th Century’s most infamous political regimes. For Here Lies Love concerns the dramatic rise and fall of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who reigned over the Philippines from 1969 to 1986. For the first half of this production’s wild 90-minute ride, Timbers makes you fall in love with a First Lady best remembered today for acquiring more than 1,000 pairs of shoes— not to mention at least 15 mink coats, 500 ball gowns and 1,000 handbags— while most of her country starved. Talking about shoes: Wear sneakers and check your bags at the door, because this theater has no seats and you’ll never, ever, sit down or stop moving. For this production, one of the venues of the Public Theater has been converted into a disco club– a long rectangular room featuring stages on either end, with moveable raised runways lining the sides and stretching down the center. Cinderella meets Evita As you enter, the disco ball shimmers, the music pounds, the colored strobe lights throb, and images of Imelda flash across giant screens mounted on all four walls. People are milling everywhere, and you go with the flow of it, moving with the crowd and gazing at the images above and around you. Then the DJ perched high on the balcony calls out: “Welcome to Club Millennium— we’re going to the Philippines!” As the music blasts and platforms turn, 13 performers strut out onto the runways and the show begins. Mrs. Marcos’s streamlined story— a simplistic blend of Cinderella, Eliza Doolittle, and Evita— is told in continuous music and song. It begins with a fantasy scene in the Filipino provinces, featuring an innocent little “country” flower named Imelda. A flock of damsels dance dreamily, dressed in chiffon and twirling white parasols. Whirlwind courtship The scene segues into a beauty pageant, where Imelda is crowned “the Rose of Tacloban” (and later “Miss Philippines”). “Here lies love,” Imelda sings sweetly—a sentimental motif that turns desperate as the show goes on. Platforms turn again, as we follow the upwardly mobile Imelda to Manila, where she works as a shop girl and singer, continuing her meteoric rise. She’s swept off her feet by a political candidate named Ferdinand Marcos, who marries her after an 11-day whirlwind courtship. We dance at their wedding, of course, as if we don’t know what’s coming. (Sad to say, most of the audience doesn’t.)
Dancers twirl, platforms whirl, and we dance through the ’60s as the Marcoses campaign for Ferdinand’s presidency, win it, serve two terms, and indulge in lavish excesses, like a fleet of yachts and a disco in the presidential palace. Dressed like Jackie Kennedy, Imelda wins hearts at home and abroad, her face featured on magazine covers all over the world.
Insatiable, Imelda dances on— now in a white Chanel coat, now in a white mink, a Martini in one hand and a vial of tranquilizers in another. She descends from the raised platform to walk among “her people”— the audience on the dance floor. After all, it’s not only extravagance to which she’s addicted– it’s also the public’s adulation. While she dances abroad with Yassir Arafat and Ronald Reagan, at home students protest against the regime’s greed, only to be met with police brutality. Ferdinand abolishes the free press and imprisons his opposition. Aquino, Marcos’s most outspoken critic, is assassinated. Suddenly, the disco music stops. It’s 1986, the People Power Revolution erupts, and the Marcoses flee the Philippines to the deafening sounds of whirling helicopters. Stunned to silence, the audience is frozen in place. Two singers clad in rags emerge, to sing a bittersweet ballad of the country’s newfound freedom and uncertain future. One missing piece The party is over. We file out of the theater, sobered after the orgy, guilty for our compliance in the Philippines’ troubled past.
And yet, for all its clever exposition of the roots of tyranny, Here Lies Love omits one crucial element of the story: the present. And that element might very well change our view of this otherwise sensational show.
Her own constituents, it appears, have forgotten Imelda Marcos’s story. So what does that mean, Mr. Director? Does sensation trump substance? Should we just keep dancing? ♦Respond to this Article Theater • Posted on 05/18 • More by this author |
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Verdi’s ‘Macbeth’ in Wilmington
BY: Steve Cohen
05.18.2013
With Macbeth, Verdi wasn’t merely adapting a great work of literature; he was nudging history forward in real time. Macbeth. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi; Giovanni Reggioli conducted; Cindy Du Pont Tobias directed. Opera Delaware production May 5-11, 2013 at The Grand, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington, Del. (800) 374-7263 or www.operade.org. |
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Verdi’s not so hidden agenda STEVE COHENVerdi’s Macbeth isn’t merely an operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama. It also represents Verdi’s channeling of Italy’s mid-19th Century Risorgimento, or resurgence of freedom from foreign domination. Either way, it’s an impressive work. Verdi kept a complete set of Shakespeare’s plays (in Italian translation) in his bedroom, and he used the Bard’s scripts as inspiration for three of his best operas (Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff) as well as one more that he never completed, King Lear. In each he hewed faithfully to Shakespeare’s words and figures of speech. But an equally important element in Macbeth is the parallel between Malcolm’s and MacDuff’s struggle for liberation from Macbeth and the similar struggles of Verdi’s countrymen against the Habsburgs at the time Macbeth opened in 1846. Verdi was active in the freedom movement led by Giuseppe Garibaldi; the composer’s name was used as a rallying cry by Italians who wanted their own nation under Victor Emmanuel as king. (Verdi’s name made a convenient acronym for “Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia.”)
Verdi’s operas immediately preceding Macbeth were best known for their hymns about freedom: the chorus of Hebrew slaves in Nabucco, and the chorus of Crusaders intent on liberating the Holy Land in I Lombardi. These found echoes in Macbeth with Verdi’s lament for Scottish refugees, Patria oppressa (“Oppressed homeland”).
Verdi also wrote gorgeous choruses bemoaning the murder of King Duncan in Act I and celebrating freedom at the end. And in 1865, four years after the Kingdom of Italy was established, he added a final chorus proclaiming victory over a tyrant, ”Salva, o re!” (“Hail, oh King”). Verdi wasn’t merely adapting a great work of literature; he was nudging history in real time. It can be argued that Verdi’s added choruses actually improved upon Shakespeare— not only in Macbeth, but also in Act I of Otello, where the triumphant Otello is cheered by adoring crowds, and in Act III of Falstaff, where a large throng mocks the fat knight and then sings that “everything in the world is a jest.”
Opera Delaware’s recent handsome production offered impressive sets built locally, and sensible direction by Cindy Du Pont Tobias. Unlike the Met’s new production of Macbeth, which conflates time and place and transforms the Scottish women into modern-day bag ladies, here the locale clearly was old Scotland.
The baritone Grant Youngblood— who has sung at the Met, but not in roles as starry as this— made a world-class Macbeth, with a fine, well-projected voice and an appealing ability to convey the conflict between his ambitions and his conscience. It’s still hard to believe the speed with which Macbeth decides to assassinate King Duncan, not to mention the wholesale murders he orders as the story progresses— but that’s Verdi’s fault, not Youngblood’s. As Lady Macbeth, Courtney Ames, emerged as a force to be reckoned with— not only in the plot but as an exciting new personality in the world of opera. Her youth and attractiveness masked her malevolence, yet she sang with a fierceness that accentuated her evilness, only to exhibit pathetic vulnerability in her last-act sleepwalking “mad aria.” Lady Macbeth is an extremely difficult role; it even intimidated Maria Callas, and it played a role in her firing by the Met’s boss, Rudolf Bing, in 1958. Yet Ames sailed into the part fearlessly, almost recklessly— just like Lady Macbeth, come to think of it. Her top notes soared above all the rest of the ensemble, just as Verdi intended. Classic opera house Ben Wager, a 2009 graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, made an appealing Banquo; his farewell aria to his son was one of the production’s highlights. Giovanni Reggioli conducted with an appropriately restless surge that built up the tension of the story and the music. This company performs in The Grand, a beautiful small house (capacity about 800), modeled after Europe’s classic theaters. Its intimate size might not suit a later Verdi opera like Aida, which sometimes calls for large animals onstage, but its ambience is perfect for 18th- and 19th-century operas like this one. ♦Respond to this Article Music & Opera • Posted on 05/18 • More by this author |
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Philip Dawkins’s ‘Failure: A Love Story’
BY: Jane Biberman
05.18.2013
Failure: A Love Story is an enchanting poetic fable in which members of the Fail family make the most of life‘s tragedies by spinning their own narratives to turn back the clock. Failure: A Love Story. By Philip Dawkins; Allison Heishman directed. Through May 26, 2013 at Azuka Theatre, 1636 Sansom St. (215) 563-1100 or www.azukatheatre.org. |
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A whimsical survival course JANE BIBERMANLife is a journey, death a destination. Failure: A Love Story is an enchanting little poetic fable in which the Fail family negotiates its short but happy trip. As the title suggests, none of the characters actually achieves the desired consummation; but they do enjoy some romance during their brief earthly sojourn. The time is 1900, 1928 and several years before, after and in between. The scene is The Fail Clockworks, established by an immigrant couple in 1900 near the docks in Chicago. The quirky action jumps back and forth in time like a clock gone haywire, or like life itself, lived in the present and past simultaneously (since memory colors experience). Search for love This is a lighthearted production, notwithstanding the premature demise of the Fail sisters Nelly (Mary Beth Shrader), Jenny June (Tabitha Allen) and Gertrude (Isa St. Clair). Only the two men in their lives survive into old age: John N. Fail (Brendan Dalton), who is washed up on shore as a baby and adopted by the Fail household; and Mortimer Mortimer (Kevin Meehan), the earnest gentleman caller who loves each of the sisters in turn. A marvelous cast of young actors briskly directed by Azuka Theatre’s resident director, Allison Heishman, double as narrators, enacting the scenes and stories of their past lives in keeping with what Heishman calls “the hidden love story of our play, the love of telling stories.” Here the stories include Mortimer Mortimer’s bittersweet fruitless search for love, the affecting loneliness of his “almost brother-in-law,” John N. Fail, Nelly’s silly but fetching girlishness, and Jenny June’s boldly optimistic goal of swimming across the rough and freezing waters. River of time Other important if inanimate characters occupy this household as well: a few birds, a snake named Moses and a dog called Pal, each ingeniously made from fabrics. A scarf and a jacket take on many guises. A long and wide sheath of blue cloth assumes the principal role of the river of time that sweeps away lives and years. (It’s actually Lake Michigan in its earliest form.) Music too, emanates from an old Victrola, and some vintage songs, like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” add nostalgia for past eras. Since the passage of time is the recurrent theme, clocks and timepieces abound in Lindsay Meyer’s minimal but effective set. If Philip Dawkins’s script contains a few too many time-related puns, they are easily forgiven. The lighting by Robin Stamey, the costumes by Amanda Sharp and the sound by Toby Pettit all contribute to a memorable evening whose theme— storytelling as a key to surviving human tragedy— resonates long after the play ends. ♦Respond to this Article Theater • Posted on 05/18 • More by this author |
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Rattle and Hannigan with the Philadelphia Orchestra
BY: Robert Zaller
05.18.2013
Simon Rattle, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra’s penultimate concert of the season, reminded us that it’s easier for a visiting conductor to choose the road less traveled than for the helmsman of the Orchestra, for whom the risk of empty seats is not to be taken lightly.
Philadelphia Orchestra: Anton Webern, Passacaglia, Op. 1; Alban Berg, Three Fragments from Wozzeck; György Ligeti, Mysteries of the Macabre; Beethoven, Symphony #6 in F, Op. 68 (“Pastorale”). Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Simon Rattle, conductor. May 16-18 at Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Broad and Spruce St. (215) 893-1999 or www.philorch.org.
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From the sublime to the macabre ROBERT ZALLERThe Philadelphia Orchestra’s season is winding down. It begins a month later than the New York Philharmonic’s and ends a month sooner, a reminder of the Orchestra Association’s continuing financial woes. This year has marked the beginning of Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s tenure as music director, a generally successful one artistically. Some of Nézet-Séguin’s preferences have started to become clear. He seems fond of requiems, one hopes without undue symbolic implications. Otherwise, however, his programming choices have fallen decidedly on the safe side. There is financial calculation in that, too. There is also a cost. The point was driven home for this reviewer by Sir Simon Rattle’s second concert with the Orchestra, the penultimate one of the season. Rattle put together a varied and idiosyncratic program. He tends to do that, but then it’s easier for a visiting conductor to choose the road less traveled than for the helmsman of the Orchestra, for whom the risk of empty seats is not to be taken lightly. Wagner’s shadow Rattle opened the concert with two ill-fated composers from the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern and Alban Berg. Webern, stepping outside for a smoke in occupied Vienna at the end of World War II, was killed by an American soldier for violating a curfew. Berg died of a bee sting. Fate has an odd sense of humor. Webern began as a post-Romantic composer before adopting Schoenberg’s 12-tone system of composition and becoming a musical pointillist whose mature works, employing the sparest of textures, all run under ten minutes in length. Webern did write a symphony, which he believed would be a full-length work requiring a good half hour to perform. It actually clocks in at less than a third that time. When Webern is performed, it is most often his early, pre-serialist Im Sommerwind, a warm and ingratiating work that makes no heavy demand on the listener. Rattle chose the less frequently played Passacaglia, Op. 1, a ten-minute score that, beginning with the softest of pizzicati, deploys a large orchestra with great virtuosity and assurance. Wagner lurks heavily in the background, and there are accents of Scriabin and Reger. It’s the kind of densely weighted and perhaps overwrought work in which tonality appears to be torn apart like taffy. One can well imagine a young Stravinsky resolving to write music as completely unlike it as possible. The later Webern did as well, although he never quite left Romanticism behind— rather, he miniaturized it. Still, the Passacaglia is worth the occasional hearing: Stokowski premiered it with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1927, but it wasn’t heard again until Mark Wigglesworth (another visiting conductor) performed it in 1999. Everyman of the Great War The Passacaglia was followed by the Three Fragments from Berg’s opera Wozzeck, one of the essential dramatic works of the 20th Century. The Fragments were not arranged from the opera subsequent to stage performance, but were extracted and performed prior to the premiere in 1925. They focus not on Wozzeck himself, the hero whom Berg conceived as the Everyman of World War I, but on his suffering mistress Marie and her child. In a way, the Fragments represent a re-imagination of the work as a whole, in which the music is employed to highlight the female protagonist. When heard at a distance of nearly nine decades, it fuses musical Expressionism with the lushness of a post-Romantic orchestra. If Stravinsky set out to be the anti-Wagner, Berg turns Wagner on his head in another way, using the Wagnerian orchestra not to depict the heroes and gods who represent bourgeois society in distress but that society’s proletarian victims. Hannigan transformed The coloratura soprano Barbara Hannigan, in blond tresses and a sweeping gown, sang Marie sensitively, though she seemed insufficiently miked at times. The great orchestral crescendo in which the music rises above the action of the drama to a tragic apotheosis was shiveringly good. After intermission, a transformed Hannigan came out in a jet-black wig and Weimar cabaret costume to match— a black leatherette overcoat, tight black sheath and spiked heels— to perform another operatic excerpt, this time from György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, which depicts an apocalyptic dystopia. Such a genre had a long pedigree; Wozzeck might be considered an example from a certain angle, and certainly Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Vikto Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, a work composed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp by a composer who perished in Auschwitz. Ligeti, who is probably best known for having (involuntarily) supplied music for three Stanley Kubrick films (most notably 2001), was himself a Holocaust survivor as well as a denizen of Stalinist Hungary, which would have offered him copious material. Podium fight The Mysteries of the Macabre is a nine-minute romp in which Hannigan offers a bizarre Sprechstimme of nonsense phrases, squawks, pips and vocal leaps that make her absurdist character— a chief of police— sound like Mozart’s Queen of the Night on LSD. While singing the notes on perfect pitch, Hannigan discards her coat, pushes Rattle off the podium to mock-conduct a parody of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, and gets booted off in turn by the maestro. The music supporting these goings-on, rendered by a chamber-sized complement heavy on percussion, was witty and surprisingly delicate. A concert performance of the entire opera in its 1997 revision was offered three years ago by the New York Philharmonic. It would be nice to hear the Philadelphians take a crack at it— or, better yet, to have a full operatic staging— but I keep forgetting that Philadelphia isn’t New York; it’s Paris. There was method in Rattle’s seeming madness, not only in continuity of theme between Wozzeck and Mysteries of the Macabre, as this excerpt was titled, but in the careers of the three modern composers, for Ligeti had started out as a 12-tone disciple before moving through the experimentalism of the Stockhausen school and finally settling on the atmospheric soundscapes that attracted Kubrick, and on which Ligeti’s reputation for the moment chiefly rests. Idiosyncratic Beethoven The program concluded with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, a work from another sonic world entirely. The period instrument revival has meant a leaner, more classical approach to Beethoven in general, but Rattle took the reverse tack, reading the score backwards through the prism of Wagner and Richard Strauss. The result, with blended tones and a marshaling of Romantic effects, was more like a four-movement tone poem than a work composed while Haydn was still alive. It wasn’t everyone’s Beethoven, to be sure, but the Kimmel Center audience loved it. The Pastoral is a score unlike any other Beethoven symphony, with its lyric warmth and proto-Romantic scene painting. Rattle wanted to make us see it as a model for the Forest Murmurs from Siegfried or the Strauss Alpine Symphony, and he made his case, even at some expense to an ideally balanced presentation. Good news What, though, is an “ideal” Beethoven? If we can look back to see Beethoven as a bearer and re-shaper of the classical tradition— the period instrument approach— why can’t we see him as an influence in turn on even late Romantic composers? The one thing we’ll never be able to do is to hear Beethoven as his first audience did in 1808 at that titanic concert that featured the premieres of both the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, as well as the Choral Fantasy. We must hear with our ears, not theirs, and that means with everything that has come since Beethoven as well as all that went before. A weak horn entrance in the third movement of the Beethoven aside, the Orchestra gave Rattle everything he wanted by way of a burnished, responsive tone. The good news is that, in its first year since bankruptcy, the Orchestra is still a glorious instrument, the best efforts of its administration to destroy its cohesiveness and morale notwithstanding. Nézet-Séguin must be given some credit for this recovery, but the chief reason is the pride and professionalism of the musicians themselves. Performing under duress, with reduced wages and benefits, they have still maintained the Orchestra as one of the world’s premier cultural institutions. Would that the city itself were worthy of its treasure. ♦ Respond to this Article Music & Opera • Posted on 05/18 • More by this author |
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May Letters: Follow your dream…
BY: Our readers
05.18.2013
Readers respond about following one’s dream, doctors vs. lawyers, the Gosnell abortion case, PIFA’s publicity machine, Mozart and the Masons, George W. Bush’s library, Rufus Wainwright, arts fund-raising, South Pacific, the Terry Williams case, The Master, and the future of Classical music.. |
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Follow your dreams?
Re “To follow your dreams, or play it safe?” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—
...and the British Medical Journal lists some 40 physicians who gave up the scalpel for the pen. They— and we— are probably better off for their decision. Among them are Somerset Maugham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton, Anton Chekhov and A.J. Cronin.
Doctors vs. lawyers
Re “Doctors vs. lawyers,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—
Way to go, Dan. Broadcast this beyond Broad Street. We,too, were fired up by the Ken Burns documentary on the Central Park Five.
As a lawyer, I serve clients— and, truth to tell, when something cannot be settled, I have confidence in juries of 12.
Thank you, Dan, for your article on “Doctors and lawyers.” Adversarial confrontation is no way to build healthy community. Societies that devolve into “us” and “them” are certainly not going to achieve any sense of community and will most likely rely on some false sense of “law” to keep order, leading inevitably not to a community of compassion but a state of totalitarianism.
For what it’s worth, only 17 of the 39 men who drafted the Constitution were lawyers.
I couldn’t agree with you more on your doctors vs. lawyers take. It’s one of the reasons I got out of law. There are many creative solutions to legal problems, but the adversary process gets in the way.
Comparing the lack of progress in the law to that of medicine seems to me to be confusing art with science. Law is a slowly evolving body of rules concerning the varieties of human behavior. It is aided (and occasionally misled) by science, but its foundational discipline is ethics. Modern medicine is based on the work of biologists and chemists, and developed by medical researchers rather than actual practitioners. As Dan points out, the law has had its own remarkable growth. But you can’t hope to cure human misconduct the way you can cancer, and justice is often a matter of balancing interests rather than producing clear-cut and unambiguous results.
The claim that “the medical profession today stands on the threshold of eliminating most human diseases and possibly even death itself” has been made many times over the past century and more. The end of all infectious disease, the end of cancer, the end of heart disease— the annals of medical science are as notable for the bold announcements as for the signal failures.
Editor’s comment: I reacted precisely the same way in 1993 when, in an interview, the biotechnology venture capitalist Wallace Steinberg suggested to me that the benefits of extended longevity would outweigh the disadvantages. “The reason why the planet is in such bad shape,” he contended, “is that all of its people are biologically immature”— that is, people die “just as they are reaching the height of their experience.” A more mature world population, he argued, would approach many problems (including overpopulation) more intelligently than we do now. Meet me in a hundred years and we’ll see if he was right. (Steinberg, incidentally, died in his sleep at the age of 58.) Kermit Gosnell’s abortion case
Re “The Gosnell trial and the abortion debate,” by Robert Zaller—
Robert Zaller writes, “Barbara Ehrenreich, a writer I generally respect, once likened terminating an unwanted pregnancy to removing a tumor. Whatever a fetus is, though, it isn’t a tumor. I can state this from personal experience, having been one myself.”
I knew Dr. Kermit Gosnell and worked closely with him at Germantown Hospital during his internship and my second year of pre-med at LaSalle College. I was an IV tech; Dr. Gosnell was my direct supervisor on multiple patient cases.
Robert Zaller replies: I state a fact and not a judgment when I say that I am personally unacquainted with poor women, the point being precisely that I am in no way qualified to pass judgment on them. It is also a fact that women who seek late-term abortions tend to be poor, for the very reasons Ms. Duffy indicates. If abortions are to be provided, it is only fair that they be provided for everyone by qualified persons under proper conditions.
Methinks Mr. Zaller doth protest too much (reply, above). He isn’t just implying that abortion is murder; the very phrasing of his question makes clear that, in his worldview, abortion is murder— the rights, safety and health of the living woman carrying the fetus be damned.
Robert Zaller replies: We are dealing with an extraordinarily, perhaps uniquely difficult issue of balancing rights, which the most extreme views on both sides of the question refuse to recognize.
PIFA’s publicity machine
Thanks for Alaina Mabaso’s enlightening ”Woe to Journalists at an arts festival.” She confirms my long-held suspicion that here in Philadelphia the “energy” in creation of marketing and public relations materials is valued far more than devotion to integrity of the “product,” which in this case is the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
Alaina Mabaso replies: Not everything about the festival was a disappointment; I saw a lot of worthwhile work at PIFA. But I felt that the festival’s marketers failed to produce a viable uniting theme.
The City Paper’s article, “Deconstructing PIFA,” explained how a “team of human beings could have cranked out so many press releases.” The first iteration of PIFA in 2011 spent 40% of its $10 million budget on marketing. If we assume that to be true for the 2013 iteration, then about $2 million of the $5 million budget was spent on marketing. That buys an awful lot of marketing. And as usual with PIFA, most of the local artists got diddlysquat.
Editor’s note: The writer is a founder and co-director of Headlong Dance Theater. Dafni Camerota of the Kimmel Center says the non-profit arts sector has never paid “millions of dollars” for PR alone; “not even close.”
I love the jaunty mood of this commentary. And I’m impressed that anyone can keep the wolf from the door writing arts reviews. Good job!
I read with pleasure and interest Tom Purdom’s review of Orchestra 200l’s recent presentation of Crumb and Gorecki. His point about the PIFA festival ostensibly bringing recognition and publicity to small organizations like Orchestra 2001, Network For New Music, Dolce Suono, 1807 & Friends, etc. is alas not borne out by their actions.
Editor’s note: The writer is a composer as well as a board member of Orchestra 2001.
Tom Purdom replies: I think we’re all disappointed in the second PIFA. A Philadelphia arts festival should draw attention to the breadth and depth of the artistic wealth available in the city. The first festival did that. This one didn’t.
Alaina Mabaso’s commentary says that the Kimmel Center charged journalists for food and drinks during the PIFA 2013 press preview event, which is incorrect.
Re “Mozart, the Masons and the wages of secrecy,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—
Dan’s gift at clarifying neglected episodes in American history (remember his recent take on the Vail of Tears of dispossessed American Indians forced to flee west?) is a unique blessing in these United States of Amnesia.
There are so many places you could go with that theme: secret men’s groups; our forefathers as Tribesman by any other name. The “work” origins of the Masons, as opposed to the philosophical beliefs of the Masons, point to a Marxist view of securing workers’ rights first above all else.
George W. Bush’s library
Re “A pyramid rises in Texas,” by Robert Zaller—
Robert Zaller replies: Sandra Day O’Connor may regret the vote that gave us George W. Bush— hers— but she was overheard to say after the election that it would be a disaster if Al Gore became president. When this comment became public, she was urged to recuse herself from Bush v. Gore, but she refused. Rufus Wainwrght
Re Steve Cohen’s review of Rufus Wainwright—
Steve Cohen replies: Ms. Verona is correct. Rufus did perform Garland’s program of 26 numbers from April 23, 1961, in other concerts and on records. At Verizon Hall he sang 15 of them. I should note that he added several excellent encores of non-Garland songs, joined by singers Melody Moore, Katheryn Guthrie and by tuba player Scott Devereaux on “Oh, What a World,” which was written by Wainwright. South Pacific, transposed?
Re Steve Cohen’s review of South Pacific in Wilmington—
Steve Cohen replies: I didn’t have my pitch pipe with me, but the song certainly sounded higher and brighter. That’s meant as a compliment to Sharon. The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization has told me that the only licensed version of “Some Enchanted Evening” is in C major, with the top, pay-off note being an E, but they are aware that many performers have transposed it upwards. Conversely, some singers make both of the last two notes, on the words “her go,” a C instead of the written C going up to E. Terry Williams case
Robert Zaller’s three-part series on the Terry Williams case (Sept.-Oct. 2012) is interesting to me, and he does a nice job of pointing out subtle facts in Williams’s life history. Zaller also pointed out somewhat accurately why Williams’s accomplice, Marc Draper, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as a first-time offender with no prior criminal history. There will be another day in the not so distant future where more of the truth will be told about this unfortunate crime, and I hope Mr. Zaller will shine the light on the injustice done to me in addition to Terry Williams.
Editor’s comment: Marc Draper has a website at timeservedformarcdraper.com. ‘The Master’
Re the reviews of The Master by Susan Beth Lehman and Robert Zaller (October 2012)—
Classical music: Dead or alive?
Re “Classical music: Dead or alive?” by Maria Corley (September 2012)—
Respond to this Article Letters • Posted on 05/18 • More by this author |
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To follow your dream or play it safe?
BY: Dan Rottenberg
05.14.2013
When a teenager dreams of becoming a famous performer, how should a parent respond? Maybe that’s the wrong question. |
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We’re Number Ten! Our contributor Maria Corley, makes (I think) a passable living in music as a concert pianist and teacher. Now her 16-year-old daughter Kiana harbors dreams of becoming a famous singer like the TV contestants who leap from obscurity to stardom by dazzling judges on “The Voice.” Maria’s quandary: Should she encourage her daughter’s fantasies or squelch them? (See “The fallacy of ‘The Voice’.”) Maria’s conclusion: Encourage Kiana to pursue her dream, but make sure she has a backup plan.
I’m a parent who’s been there and done that, so allow me three observations.
1. This isn’t an either/or deal. Throughout her school years and even into college, my younger daughter was bound and determined for a career on the stage. She possessed multiple talents— actress, pianist, tap dancer, director. In high school she worked with a New York casting director and won second prize in a national scholastic playwriting contest. Nevertheless, virtually all of our friends and relatives urged us to discourage her. The odds against her dream scenario, they said, were overwhelming— and that being the case, why not spare her the aggravation and heartbreak, not to mention the huge ensuing psychotherapy bills? My wife and I, virtually alone, disagreed. She’s got to chase her dream, we felt. If the dream turns out to be untenable, she’ll get it out of her system. But if she never even tries, she’ll be wondering “What if?” for the rest of her life. (My daughter did ultimately make a career in show business— not on stage, but as a TV writer, and only after several unexpected career detours. You can’t know what life will offer you unless you take the first step.) Backing into dance 2. Plan B isn’t merely an alternative to Plan A— it’s a critical element to the success of Plan A. Single-minded artists and entertainers tend to be boring and self-absorbed people, and it shows in their work. That’s why you see so many movies and plays about making movies and plays— because many entertainers and writers don’t know anything else. As a college student, Riccardo Muti majored in philosophy, not music— a choice that has enriched his work as one of the world’s greatest orchestral and operatic conductors. The poet Wallace Stevens and the composer Charles Ives both pursued day jobs as insurance executives. Bernard Jacobson, former music critic of the Chicago Daily News and program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra (and occasional BSR contributor), studied philosophy, history and classics at Oxford and never took a musicology course in his life. (Check his C.V. here.) Or consider the unlikely career path of Merrill Brockway, who presented many of the 20th Century’s greatest dancers and choreographers on the Public Broadcasting series “Dance in America.” Brockway, who died earlier this month at age 90, began studying piano when he was seven. In the Army during World War II, he served as a driver for a chaplain and provided music for the chaplain’s services. He subsequently earned a master’s degree in musicology, but after realizing he would never be a professional classical pianist, in 1953 he took a job moving scenery at WCAU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia. Within a year the station made him director of its educational and children’s programs. But dance remained far off his radar screen until a Columbia classmate took him to see Martha Graham. “I saw a tiny lady dancing a solo,” Brockway recalled in his 2010 memoir, Surprise Was My Teacher. “She grabbed my gut, swung it around, tossed it in the air, slammed it to the ground, then tenderly picked it up and cradled it. I would be, forever, Martha Graham’s disciple.” Graham, in turn, was attracted to Brockway by his expertise in TV, which she and other choreographers saw as a way to reach larger audiences. “Dance in America” had its premiere in 1976, when Brockway was 53. The rest is history. As the British physician and essayist Havelock Ellis put it, “The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product.” Tripped up by ego 3. Winning is overrated. Talent contests like “The Voice” and “American Idol” package themselves as all-or-nothing affairs with one winner and many losers. It’s a format designed for maximum drama but bears no application in the real world. (Van Cliburn’s youthful triumph at the Tchaikovsky Competition turned out to be the high point of his career.) I’ll give the final word to Jack Farber, the chairman of CSS Industries, whose memoirs I edited a few years ago. Farber, who describes himself deprecatingly as a “corporate garbage man,” spent more than 40 years acquiring dead or dying companies, repairing them and selling them for a profit. It’s unglamorous work, which explains why you probably never heard of Farber or CSS. Some of the companies Farber took over were run by egomaniacs guided by the philosophy that “If you’re not Number One in your field, it’s not worth doing.” Farber’s rejoinder: “This wasn’t my philosophy, to put it mildly. I hate to lose, but my aspirations don’t require me to be Number One. As I had observed even as an adolescent, it’s simply not possible to be the best at everything you do; the world has plenty of room for Number Two or Three, or even Ten— or even people who come in last, if they’re trying. This ‘Number One’ rhetoric may work at pep rallies and sales conferences— to fire up a team to win a game or reach a revenue goal— but any effort to remain Number One over the long term is to me a futile waste of energy that could better be put to other uses.”
So, yes, follow your dream. If you expose it to reality, reality may pleasantly surprise you. But you’ll never know unless you try.♦ Respond to this Article Editor's Notebook • Posted on 05/14 • More by this author |
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Tempesta di Mare: Four Baroque entertainments
BY: Tom Purdom
05.14.2013
Baroque music languished in the 19th Century because it seemed tame next to Beethoven or Brahms. It was merely entertainment— albeit for musically sophisticated audiences, as Tempesta di Mare reminded us. Tempesta di Mare: Purcell, Suite from The Fairy Queen; Telemann, Burlesque di Quixotte; Charpentier, Incidental Music for La Malade Imaginaire; Rameau, Ballet Music from Pygmalion. Emlyn Ngai, Concertmaster. May 11, 2012 at Arch Street Friends Meeting, Fourth and Arch Sts. (215) 755-8776 or www.tempestadimare.org. |
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Music, entertainment— or both? TOM PURDOMBaroque music languished in obscurity between 1800 and 1950 because it failed to satisfy the expectations aroused by 19th-Century orchestral music. It didn’t thunder like Beethoven, nor did it convey profound emotions with big masses of sound, like Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Much of Baroque music can best be described as entertainment. But it was entertainment created for highly civilized people with solid musical backgrounds. Tempesta di Mare devoted its last concert of the season to four examples of Baroque entertainments. A role for Louis XIV Telemann’s orchestral piece, Burlesque de Quixotte, is one of my all-time Baroque favorites. The American Society of Ancient Instruments used to play it every now and then with five viols and a harpsichord. Tempesta’s 20- piece orchestra, complete with woodwinds and percussion, magnified the humor in Telemann’s mock charges and gallops. The Don’s sighs for Dulcinea acquired extra pathos when they were produced by woodwinds instead of strings. Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Charpentier’s The Imaginary Invalid were both court entertainments. The Fairy Queen was a masque— a mixture of speech, song, dance, costumes and spectacle that flourished in England in the 16th and 17th Centuries. The Imaginary Invalid was a comic ballet, a form invented by Molière that often included a role for Louis XIV. Rameau’s Ballet Music from Pygmalion was a theater ballet based on the story of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in a love with a statue that Cupid brings to life— a story that achieved some fame in the20th Century as My Fair Lady. Hypochondriac as doctor The French pieces contain passages that can only be appreciated if you know the story. In The Imaginary Invalid, for example, the hypochondriac sees so many doctors that he receives a medical degree, and Charpentier provides a special Air for Curtsying for the medical personnel who congratulate him. But most of the suites consist of airs and dances capable of standing alone. The impresarios behind the productions seized every opportunity to introduce crowd-pleasers like Moorish dancers, dancing monkeys and a generous assortment of hornpipes, jigs and rondos.
Tempesta di Mare’s musicians once again wielded their period instruments with skill and grace, without benefit of a conductor. These were all ensemble pieces, with no solo roles, but I especially liked the passages for multiple sopranino recorders and the percussion contributed by Michelle Humphreys. And I was fascinated by the way an orchestra without a single brass instrument somehow managed to create the illusion that trumpets were concealed in its midst.
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Yannick conducts Mahler and Hilary Hahn (2nd review)
BY: Tom Purdom
05.14.2013
Yannick Nézet-Séguin probed beyond the obvious in Mahler’s First Symphony, but I wish he’d pushed Hilary Hahn to play a less predictable work.
Philadelphia Orchestra: Mahler, Symphony No. 1; Korngold, Violin Concerto I D Major; Richard Strauss, Love Scene from Feuersnot. Hilary Hahn, violin; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor. May 3-5, 2013 at Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Broad and Spruce Sts. (215) 893-1999 or www.philorch.org.
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Mahler’s message: Who needs transitions? TOM PURDOMUnlike the critics Dan Rottenberg refers to in his recent BSR review, I was never puzzled by the hodgepodge of moods and orchestral effects in Mahler’s First Symphony (and most of his others). On the contrary, that hodgepodge is one of the qualities that attracted me to Mahler. I reacted that way, I think, because I’m a reader who grew up in a time when writers had realized that modern audiences value economy and pace. We don’t need transitions. Just type in a line break and hop us to the next interesting bit. That doesn’t mean that every scene must involve a car chase or a gunfight. The next bit can be a touch of comedy, a character portrait or a glob of sentimentality. Just make it interesting. And different. As Mahler usually does. Dan hears Mahler’s First Symphony as a forecast of the tragedy that hit Europe in 1914. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t think of it that way, but I’m content with a less specific viewpoint. I’ve always preferred the idea that Mahler’s symphonies create whole worlds, in the same way a sprawling novel captures all the moods and contradictions that form the untidy panorama of human life. Why Europe imploded I would also disagree with Dan’s contention that the old European order fell because it was afflicted with a “rotting infrastructure beneath the surface grandeur.” Many people felt life was getting better in the Belle Époque, and they had every reason to think the forward movement would continue. It was derailed by a military catastrophe that took place for many reasons. One of the most important was the long period without a general European war, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the mobilization of 1914. Without the firsthand experience of such a war, the political and intellectual leaders of the period found it easy to glamorize war and convince themselves it would be quick and cheap.
As American military officers like to put it, they had never seen a sucking chest wound.
Interesting as all that is, I didn’t leave the Kimmel Center pondering Mahler’s worldview. For me, the most interesting aspect of that Philadelphia Orchestra program was Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s conducting. Most conductors can wow the audience with the symphony’s big finish, in which the reinforced brass section stands at the back of the stage, sailing fanfares across the rest of the orchestra. Yannick proved once again that he can lead the orchestra through the parts of Mahler’s landscape that require sensitivity and precision. Mahler wrote for big orchestras, but he didn’t use them merely to make loud noises. He used them as a big palette that offered him an infinite number of combinations. In the second movement, for example, Yannick displayed a clear grasp of the way Mahler mixes basses, winds and violins.
The Philadelphia Orchestra needed an exciting young conductor, and Yannick is surely filling the demand. But Orchestra patrons should all be grateful that the management signed a musician who can provide something more than sizzle.
Any concert that features a Mahler symphony automatically becomes a major event. Add an appearance by the violinist Hilary Hahn and you get two major events on one ticket. In this case, Hahn’s choice of concertos produced an event that was a bit less major than it could have been. In his after-concert chat with the audience, Yannick said Hahn gave him a choice of three concertos, and he picked Korngold’s because he felt it fit with the rest of the program. It’s a difficult piece, Yannick said, and Hilary Hahn has been championing it. Korngold wrote the concerto in 1945, after a long period as a top movie composer. It’s a good piece and Hahn, as I expected, got as much out of it as any soloist could. But it follows a predictable arc, like a script that includes everything the audience expects. I would have been happier if Hahn had played something with more bite and individuality, like one of the Shostakovich concertos.
For me, the high point of Hahn’s appearance was her encore: a slow movement from one of Bach’s pieces for unaccompanied violin. I’ve never heard anyone play Bach that lyrically, and she did it without adding anything that sounded false or excessive.♦ Respond to this Article Music & Opera • Posted on 05/14 • More by this author |
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Learning to love ‘The Avengers’
BY: Alaina Mabaso
05.14.2013
The mindless “Avengers” films and their various comic-book spinoffs have already wasted hours of my life at a cost of hundreds of dollars, and there’s no end in sight. On the other hand, they may have saved my marriage.
Iron Man 3. A film directed by John Favreau. For Philadelphia area show times, click here.
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What I did for love ALAINA MABASOOn our way to see The Avengers last year, my husband and I did a little avenging of our own— avenging the high cost of food at the movie theater. Between us, we smuggled in a package of dried mango strips, a bag of sour gummy worms, a king-sized peanut M&M’s, a bag of Trader Joe’s popcorn, and a ham and cheese hoagie with pickles. Hey, that movie is long. And really, even before we sat down for The Avengers, I could never have predicted just how much time I would be spending with comic book characters like Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America and Thor. But as the credits rolled for Iron Man 3, which opened earlier this month, I finally realized that instead of graduating from the world of Marvel comics, I have become its Sisyphus. I was like a girl who doesn’t understand the difference between a wedding and a marriage. I couldn’t fathom the scope of the relationship I’d just entered. Nazis run amok The Hulk in 2003 (starring Eric Bana) and The Incredible Hulk in 2008 (starring Edward Norton) were like warning shots. Two years later, I sat through all 124 minutes of Iron Man 2 in good grace. 2011 was a banner year: We saw Captain America (set in the 1940s, starring Chris Evans as a super-soldier endowed with the moral complexity of Lassie) and Thor (in which a leonine Chris Hemsworth plays the hammer-wielding Viking god of the title). So far, the Avengers have fought a fire-breathing interstellar robot, a whip-wielding, parrot-loving Russian, run-of-the-mill terrorists, Frost Giants, a diabolical chairman, the Norse god Loki, and a fearsomely red Nazi who runs amok, even by World War II standards, and tries to obliterate every city on earth. Are you with me so far? Unanswered questions Now it turns out that all of these films (aka “the Marvel Universe”) were but prequels to a grand finale, The Avengers, in which the heroes would unite to save planet Earth. Unfortunately, I was at a bit of a disadvantage going into The Avengers, since I fell asleep at the end of Captain America and Thor and, consequently, missed the climactic plot details. I also annoyed my date by speculating about niggling details: How does Iron Man deal with international airspace regulations? How come The Hulk’s explosive growth shreds all of his clothes except for his pants? Why do citizens of the mythic realm of Asgard speak English (with vaguely British accents, to boot)? In these days of austerity and tightfisted bankers, who the hell funded that city-sized flying aircraft carrier-cum-laboratory and its invisibility shield? Rescuing New York In The Avengers last year, a dour, brawny Mark Ruffalo appeared as my husband’s favorite Avenger— our third Bruce Banner (aka The Hulk) in a decade. Even I found the movie funny, well-paced, exciting and much more character-driven than most action films. And ol’ Captain America delivered my favorite line of the whole film, to the inscrutable archer Hawkeye (he hasn’t had his own movie) as they’re about to rescue New York City from an inter-dimensional alien war-zone: “Do you have a suit?” Because what else do you need to know about your compatriots on the eve of battle?
But now that I comprehend the extent of the franchise, the key question remains: How many more Avengers movies must I endure? Let us do the math and consider the variables.
In the world of Hollywood Avengers, not only does each comic character get his own trilogy; The Avengers itself is the first of three films starring the superheroes as a team. If we assume that Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk gets three more films in which to grossly exaggerate the elasticity of men’s pants, and— oh, dear God— if Hawkeye has his own trilogy in the works, that’s 12 more Avengers films, in addition to the eight I’ve seen since 2003. And it could be worse. The Spider-Man trilogy (with Tobey Maguire as the eponymous arachnid hero) opened in 2002 and wound up in 2007, supposedly. But in 2012, the lithe Andrew Garfield, in gravity-defying post-Twilight-era hair, appeared in a “reboot” called The Amazing Spider-Man. That movie had more loose ends than U.S. immigration law— yeah, we’re looking at a whole new trilogy. So why do I do keep going? Have I no self-control? It’s not like Iron Man’s blasters are pointed at my head when I walk into the theater. I could stay home and watch Jane Austen’s Persuasion on DVD.
Part of the answer is that marital moviegoing is a two-way street: My husband tolerated Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre for my sake, so I indulge his Avengers addiction.
Recently a female friend confided that, as a “Christmas present,” her husband had agreed to accompany her to a single “complaint-free” movie— that is, she could choose it, and he would not grouse bitterly over her choice. But when she cashed in her voucher, it turned out she didn’t enjoy the movie all that much, and spent the second half of it unhappily reflecting that she had wasted her Christmas gift, because hubby wouldn’t give her a second chance. Somehow, her story made me unutterably sad. When I do the math, I see that my husband and I have spent almost $200 on Avengers movies since 2003. And if my preliminary projections are correct, they’ll cost us at least $264 more before they’re through (not including snacks, of course). But when you consider that a single hour of marriage counseling can cost up to $200, tickets to see the Avengers begin to look like a steal. To me, superheroes offer little more than an endless, noisy stream of robots, soldiers, aliens, explosions and labored battleground repartee. But when my husband can hold my hand while he watches Loki promise the Tesseract to the Chitauri aliens in exchange for the subjugation of planet Earth, he feels loved. And isn’t that what marriage is all about? So we’ll be stocking up on movie snacks for many years to come. ♦Respond to this Article Books & Movies • Posted on 05/14 • More by this author |
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Rattle and Lang Lang with the Orchestra
BY: Robert Zaller
05.14.2013
A varied program by Sir Simon Rattle included a most peculiar linking of the Sibelius Sixth and Seventh Symphonies. The histrionic Lang Lang, conversely, is beginning to appreciate that the music is more important than the musician.
Philadelphia Orchestra: Sibelius, Symphony No. 6 and 7; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3; Norman, Unstuck. Lang Lang, piano; Simon Rattle, conductor. May 9-11, 2013 at Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Broad and Spruce St. (215) 893-1999 or www.philorch.org.
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Lang Lang grows up ROBERT ZALLERSir Simon Rattle, once assiduously courted by the Philadelphia Orchestra, usually packs the house when he returns. When Lang Lang accompanies him, a sellout is assured. I’ve had issues with both artists in the past, but mostly they were spot-on in their collaboration on Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. The last time I’d heard Lang, in 2009, he turned in a travesty performance of the Chopin Second Concerto that was all about calling attention to his prodigious technique at the expense of any coherent and minimally respectful projection of the music. (For my review of that concert, click here.)
This Beethoven Third included sudden shifts in tempo and dynamics, some more persuasive than others, but also welcome signs of a maturing artist who puts the music first.
Virtuosity aside, Lang brings two formidable assets: a powerful and commanding tone that gives the Romantic piano its full due and cuts through almost any orchestral texture, and a remarkable clarity of voicing that came through despite a generous application of pedal. The right-hand trills he brought off were remarkable on both counts, but Lang showed delicacy and restraint in the concerto’s Largo movement as well. It may take Lang a while to fully work out the kinks and acknowledge that the music is the boss. Only when you’ve learned that lesson do you earn the right to put your own individual stamp on it. But when a pianist’s technique puts one in mind of a Horowitz, one is dealing with a major talent. The Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin called attention to Lang’s continuing habit of facing the audience. When I saw that in Lang’s previous Chopin performance, I took it for mugging, not to say smirking. This time around, I thought it might have reflected concentration, although Dobrin remains annoyed by it. In either case it’s distracting, and won’t be missed if Lang can dispense with it. Rattle’s accompaniment was flexible enough to frame the Concerto while accommodating the occasional pianistic eccentricity, and the two men joined for an encore— Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, #1— that was delightful in its ebullience, and showed Rattle no slouch at the keyboard himself. Lang’s exuberance was also infectious. All will be well when he takes more joy in the music than in himself. That was the case here. Puzzling title The program opened with a ten-minute work by Andrew Norman with the awkward title of Unstuck. Norman, a Brooklyn native who was present for the performance, explained the provenance in program notes by reference to a line in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five that had helped him over a compositional block, but that made it no less odd—maybe a misspelling of the German Urstuck, as my inner editor suggested to me? As for the music, it showed a brilliant grasp of orchestral writing that gave the Orchestra a chance for some virtuosity of its own, and Rattle performed it with precision and élan. The substance of the work was another matter. Since it was alternately very loud and very soft with no gradation in between, it didn’t project much more than a bundle of effects (rather like Lang Lang’s 2009 Chopin). Norman said that the insight Vonnegut gave him was that a work didn’t have to cohere. Dubious advice, I’d have to say. Maybe Norman should try reading another novelist. Frankenstein monster The second half of Rattle’s program consisted of what the program indicated as back-to-back performances of the Sibelius Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, which turned out to be joined at the hip since Rattle, startlingly, launched into the one-movement Seventh without pause, as if it were the Sixth’s final movement. The program, while not announcing this novel idea, seemed to make some argument for it, noting that Sibelius himself had observed that both symphonies were conceived simultaneously while he was still working on his revisions to the Fifth Symphony. The trouble is that the two works, while perhaps fraternal twins, are very different symphonies. The Sixth has always been the ice maiden among the Sibelius set, more a suite-like set of tone poems than a work that exhibits dramatic urgency. The music is lovely, but probes mood rather than depth. The Seventh, on the other hand, is the most focused of all the Sibelius compositions. By casting it in a single movement— a radical innovation, later adopted by the Roy Harris Third and Seventh Symphonies, and by Miaskovsky in his 21st— it emphasized tightness of conception and construction. It belongs, obviously, on its own, and whatever pedagogic purpose may be served by juxtaposing it with another work, it’s not an appendage to anything. Beethoven tried it Efforts like this have been made before, for example in trying to “complete” Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with an add-on choral movement from another composition. Then there’s the example of Beethoven’s Op. 130 Quartet, which originally had the Grosse Fuge as its final movement before his publisher talked him into composing an alternate movement more in keeping with the rest of the work. Nowadays the Op. 130 is most often performed in this latter version, although occasionally an ensemble will revert to the original. In this case, however, it’s the composer himself who gives warrant. None exists for splicing two Sibelius symphonies together. As a listener, I could only roll with the punches. In the event, both symphonies were very well performed, with Rattle bringing out the Wagnerian horn sonorities in the Sixth with special emphasis and giving a warm, burnished sound to the Seventh. The Orchestra was glorious. What Sir Simon couldn’t do, though, was make his musical Frankenstein work as a whole. It’s a shame that Sibelius never was able to write an Eighth Symphony. But that’s hardly a reason to reduce his output to six. ♦Respond to this Article Music & Opera • Posted on 05/14 • More by this author |
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Musicians from Marlboro at the Perelman
BY: Robert Zaller
05.14.2013
In a concert of highly contrasting works by Stravinsky, Britten and the young Johannes Brahms, the young Musicians from Marlboro played as if they’d been together for years. A happy audience dispersed to face, alas, Philadelphia’s annual summer chamber music drought. Musicians From Marlboro: Stravinsky, Concertino for String Quartet; Britten, Third Quartet; Brahms, Piano Quartet in A. May 8, 2013 at Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center, Broad and Spruce Sts. (215) 569-8080 or www.pcmsconcerts.org. |
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A feast before the famine ROBERT ZALLERMusicians from Marlboro is a movable feast that features 25 young artists selected by the Marlboro Festival’s directors, Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida, to tour the U.S. with concerts that run the gamut of the classical repertory and offer a wide range of chamber formats. The recital was the group’s third visit to Philadelphia since October. Despite the changing cast of characters— which means, among other things, that the performers lack the easy familiarity that comes only with being part of an established group— Marlboro maintains a very high standard, and it brought off a challenging program with vigor and panache. Igor Stravinsky isn’t particularly noted as a chamber music composer, which has always struck me as a bit odd, given his penchant for clear sonorities and distinctly articulated musical lines. His 1920 Concertino for String Quartet, a highly compressed work (only six minutes long), shows what Stravinsky might have produced had he devoted more time to writing for four strings. Does music express emotion? It’s a taut, aggressive work with stabbing chords, fierce interplay, and no concession to the lyric qualities of stringed instruments: Stravinsky even insisted that the first string not be bowed, to remove any temptation in that direction. No one was writing music like this, but its astringency was soon picked up by Bartok and others. Stravinsky famously said that music expresses no emotion. Well, yes— music is a succession of individual notes that express nothing except in the context of other notes, just as reading a dictionary of all the words used by Shakespeare in Hamlet does not get you the play itself. In the 1950s, a group of composers took Stravinsky at his word and produced music according to mathematical formulae without regard for the actual sound it made. No one listens to it today.
Stravinsky certainly didn’t write that way. His Concertino contains plenty of concentrated thought and feeling, although it’s not reducible to anything but itself. Music isn’t a denotative language (onomatopoeic essays like The Flight of the Bumblebee notwithstanding). If Stravinsky had to think of himself as a cold fish to write music that delights the mind and nourishes the spirit, so be it.
The four young female performers— Bella Hristova, Danbi Um, Hsin-Tun Huang, and Angela Park— attacked the Concertino with zest, and then returned to perform a diametrically different work: Benjamin Britten’s Third Quartet. It’s a concert rarity, but then none of the Britten quartets gets much attention on this side of the Pond. Since it’s a work that requires multiple hearings, it was a fortunate happenstance that it appeared last fall as well in a performance by the Takacs Quartet. Both the earlier performance and this one were sensitive and probing. Britten was in failing health when he composed the music in 1975; he died the following year. As I noted in a previous review, the Third Quartet exudes a valedictory feel, much like the late quartets of Shostakovich that served in part as Britten’s model. The two composers shared a deep kinship, although not a note written by either could be mistaken for the work of the other.
Stravinsky wanted his music to be immediately accessible in the sense that it’s all out there at once, with a minimum of shading and no portamento. Britten’s music, especially in this work, is all about personal expressiveness, although this most reticent of composers rarely wears his heart on his sleeve. The textures are spare, sometimes to the point of ethereality.
From a formal point of view, Britten’s Third Quartet has a classic five-movement structure in the manner of Beethoven’s A minor Quartet and the Bartok Fifth, with two scherzi separating a first movement framed by duets in every possible combination, a slow movement featuring a solo violin, and a Recitative and Passacaglia that fades away quietly at the end. It’s indeed music that, as Britten himself puts it, “ends with a question”— the same question posed by Shostakovich in his last Quartet, composed in the year previous to the Britten Third, and also lapsing into what seems a terminal silence at the end. It is not only the question that seems most obvious— what lies beyond the grave for those facing it?— but also a retrospective issue: What has a life meant as it reaches its term?
Britten provides some clue in the quotations and passages of yearning from his opera, Death in Venice, which haunt the Third Quartet. Shostakovich did something similar in quoting the love aria from his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in his Fourteenth Quartet. Britten would have known this work and appreciated its coded meanings for his good friend.
The recital concluded on an altogether different note, as the anxious tensions of Stravinsky and Britten gave way to the largely sunny amplitude of the young Johannes Brahms. Brahms was 28 when he completed the Piano Quartet in A, Op. 26, actually the last of his three essays in the form (although the third one bears the opus number 60.) Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Op. 47, would have been an obvious precursor, along of course with the two Mozart Quartets K. 478 and K. 493. But the Brahms Piano Quartets set the Romantic standard. Like all of his larger-scaled chamber works, it has symphonic scope, although in fact it’s perfectly suited to the precise instrumental combination for which Brahms designed it. Arnold Schoenberg made that point in a disastrously negative way with his misconceived orchestration of the G minor Piano Quartet, Op, 25.
The Brahms A major is set in four spacious movements that spanned 50 minutes in the Marlboro’s unhurried performance. Schubert’s music was just being rediscovered, and in some instances played for the first time in the 1860s, and Brahms’s chamber works display a similar breadth.
It’s healthy music in the most positive sense, with none of the brooding that characterized some of Brahms’s later work, but with the meaty intellectual substance that marks almost all of it, as well as a through-composed style in which rhythmic and thematic germs persist from movement to movement. It was a perfect work, in short, to close a chamber music season of many and varied pleasures. Of the performers, only violist Hsin-Tin Huang returned from the first part of the program, with Emilie-Ann Gendron and Gabriel Cabezas filling the other string chairs, and Matan Porat the very able pianist. Philadelphia could certainly use more art music over the summer, but the Philadelphia Orchestra turns into the Philly Pops over those months, and the season of drought is nearly upon us. Of course, you can always trek up to Vermont and hear the Marlboro musicians in their native habitat. There’s plenty of good music around. Just not much of it here. ♦ Respond to this Article Music & Opera • Posted on 05/14 • More by this author |
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Bruce Graham’s ‘North of the Boulevard’
BY: Steve Cohen
05.11.2013
Bruce Graham has written so many plays that it may be appropriate to describe his work as facile. But his last two works provide credible characters wrestling with difficult decisions. North of the Boulevard. By Bruce Graham; Matt Pfeiffer directed. Theatre Exile production through May 19, 2013 at Studio X, 1340 South 13th St. (at Reed). (215) 218-4022 or www.theatreexile.org. |
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Bruce Graham grows up STEVE COHENBruce Graham has written so many plays that it may be appropriate to describe his work as facile. But facile doesn’t necessarily mean superficial.
Graham conceives working class protagonists who use vernacular that his audiences, especially in Greater Philadelphia, recognize. In the process, he forges a link between his characters and his audience. That might seem like pandering, but in these last two plays, at least, a more substantive form of communication is taking place. Unwelcome minorities In North of the Boulevard, the protagonist Trip seethes in helpless frustration because his part of town— the gritty Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby— has gone to hell. Unwelcome minorities and foreigners have taken over his streets and the schools. Public officials are corrupt. He can’t afford to move to a better neighborhood “north of the boulevard” (in this case, MacDade Boulevard). He feels frustrated: “A man works, he ought to get something back,” he says. Urban decay is familiar territory, yet Graham here presents a series of twists. Surprising developments (that would be spoilers if disclosed in advance) lead to confrontations among men who’ve remained friends since elementary school. The plot unfolds in the language of ordinary guys, even as my logical mind tried, and failed, to find holes in the intricacies of their schemes. As in The Outgoing Tide, crucial decisions are made not just by the protagonist but also by those closest to him. The drama centers on drawing the assemblage into a consensus. As portrayed by Scott Greer, Trip is a strong moral compass. Lindsay Smiling and Brian McCann are convincing as his friends; so is Bill Rahill as McCann’s alcoholic father. Unanswered questions Nor does the play’s conclusion tie everything up in a facile bow. It leaves more questions than answers, and audience members are left to quarrel about whether Trip made a correct choice. In a further effort to connect with the onlookers, the production was mounted in a tiny enclosure. Director Matt Pfeiffer and designer Matt Saunders transformed Theatre Exile’s black box Studio X into a copy of a real garage in Upper Darby, with a broken-down 1994 Nissan Sentra sitting in the middle of the space while the audience sits on one side of the shop. ♦Respond to this Article Theater • Posted on 05/11 • More by this author |
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Introduction to Broad Street Review, plus biographies and contact points for our editors and contributors.
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‘Orphans’ on Broadway: The Boston Marathon link
BY: Carol Rocamora
05.11.2013
I saw Orphans when it opened in the 1980s, and remember being repelled by its violence and ferocity. Not now. This hilarious, harrowing absurdist drama sheds chilling insight into the two brothers charged in the Boston Marathon bombing. Orphans. By Lyle Kessler; Daniel Sullivan directs. At Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th St., New York. www.orphansonbroadway.com |
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Two abandoned brothers, then and now, or: What if you and your older brother dwelt alone in a derelict row house in North Philadelphia, with no hope for the future? What if you lived hand-to-mouth? What if you were too afraid to go outside? What if you’d die without your older brother to take care of you— even though a) he’s not a particularly nice fellow and b) you’re not sure quite how he’s bringing home the bacon? Then suppose that, out of the blue, a stranger appears: a man who promises to change your miserable life forever. Wouldn’t you be inclined to let him? That’s the question confronting Philip in Orphans, Lyle Kessler’s explosive absurdist drama now being revived on Broadway, with an all-star cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster, and Tom Sturridge (who is giving the runaway performance of this Broadway season). Unkempt, unschooled, untouched Mind you, Treat (Foster) and Philip (Sturridge) aren’t exactly Peter Pan’s lost boys. They’re 20-something, and have lived like Romulus and Remus for years, abandoned by their parents too long ago to remember them. Indeed, you think they’d be raised like wolves– at least in the younger Philip’s case. The feral Philip soars around the house— from couch to chair to tabletop— like some wild flying squirrel, his feet never touching the ground. He subsists on rock music, tuna fish and “The Price Is Right.” Unkempt, uneducated and untouched by human hands, he derives his only comfort from embracing the coat his mother left hanging in the closet before she died. (Is Philip agoraphobic or autistic? In this absurdist world full of dark metaphor, his extreme behavior is never explained). Kidnapped con man The violent Treat, on the other hand, knows his way around. He’s his brother’s keeper, disappearing daily to steal whatever they need to survive, but forbidding Philip to leave the house. Philip, meanwhile, spends his day waiting for Treat to come home, watching the world through dirt-caked windows with the grimy curtains drawn. Then one dark night Philip wakes up, shocked to find that Treat has brought home something new and terrifying. He’s kidnapped a businessman (with criminal connections) and tied him up in their North Camac Street living room. His plan? To call the numbers in the man’s address book and demand ransom. While Treat ducks out for a moment, the captive Harold suddenly springs to life. He entices the gullible Philip to untie him, and within ten minutes has begun to tame this wild creature. “Let me give you some encouragement,” Harold croons in the grateful Philip’s ear, promising that he is here to help him. Bait and switch Treat returns, dismayed to find that the tables have been turned. Only ten minutes later, Treat, too, is conned by this con man. The sweet-talking Harold, played with low-key charisma by Alec Baldwin, tells Treat he wants to hire him as his bodyguard. “But I kidnapped you!” protests the bewildered Treat, to no avail. Harold lures both brothers into obeisance with stories of his own orphaned childhood. By the end of Act I, Harold has pulled a bait and switch, brokered a deal, and gained control. When the lights go up on Act II, the audience erupts in shocked laughter. The brothers’ hovel has been transformed with fresh paint and shining new furniture. Philip walks proudly around the apartment (feet on the floor) in a flashy new pair of yellow shoes, while Treat flaunts a jaunty new suit and tie. Harold is in the kitchen preparing bouillabaisse, which he teaches Philip to pronounce as well as eat. It’s a wild turn-around, with more to come before this dangerous play concludes. Quest for a father figure I saw Orphans when it opened in the 1980s, and remember being frightened and repelled by its violence and ferocity. Not now. This hilarious, harrowing drama has been given a perversely moving interpretation this time around. Thanks to Dan Sullivan’s deft direction, my empathies lie with the brothers in finding a father figure to give them “encouragement,” no matter how flawed that father figure turns out to be. Indeed, Harold’s efforts to civilize these orphans are deeply touching.
Harold buys Philip a map of Philadelphia and “gives him encouragement” to leave the house, walk to the end of the block, and ride the subway to Broad and Olney– for the very first time. “You’ll never be lost again,” he promises Philip.
The unlucky Treat and Philip bear striking similarity to other orphaned brothers in recent drama: Lee and Austin in Sam Shepard’s True West, and Booth and Lincoln in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog. Both pairs were abandoned by their parents, too; both pairs are prone to excessive violence; and both pairs come to an ignominious end. But there’s another, darker reason why I am haunted by this current incarnation of Kessler’s disturbing play. I can’t help seeing parallels between Kessler’s brothers and Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers accused of last month’s horrific bombings at the Boston Marathon. Based on what we know at this point, the suspects were also abandoned (physically, if not spiritually) by their parents, after being fatally misled by at least one of them (allegedly, their mother). What further “encouragement” were the Tsarnaev brothers given by other nameless, nefarious sources? Do we face a frightening new generation of misguided youth, abandoned by their parents, uprooted, homeless, anarchic, uncivilized and ultimately violent? What darkness have we uncovered? No wonder this timely revival of Orphans is giving me nightmares. ♦ Respond to this Article Theater • Posted on 05/11 • More by this author |
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Mumia again: Stephen Vittoria’s ‘Long Distance Revolutionary’
BY: Robert Zaller
05.11.2013
Is Mumia Abu-Jamal a cop-killer rightly locked up for life, or a political prisoner whose conviction embodied a racist era in Philadelphia the city will never get past until he is set free? This new documentary argues strongly for the latter viewpoint but passes too quickly over the central question: Was Mumia guilty or innocent?
Long Distance Revolutionary. A film directed by Stephen Vittoria. At the Ritz at the Bourse, 400 Ranstead St. . (215) 440-1181For show times, click here.
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The elephant in the room ROBERT ZALLERThe byline in my Wikipedia entry used to read, “A strong supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.” The last time I looked, it had been edited slightly, but the message was still there. Unseen hands at work. It’s probably not how I would have summed up my life had I written my own biography. But, yes, I believe that Mumia, who is undoubtedly Philadelphia’s most famous living citizen (there’s a street named after him in a suburb of Paris), was wrongfully convicted in the 1981 street killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner, and that he does not belong in prison. I also believe that he is a man of remarkable courage and resilience. His spirit wasn’t broken by 30 years on death row in a 23-hour-a-day lockdown, and by all the other affronts to human dignity that attended his daily routine, a regimen designed to produce a person who goes willingly, if more slowly, to his death. In the Nazi camps, they called such a person a Musselmann; on death row, they call him a “volunteer.” But they’ve had no luck with Mumia. He has continued to speak and write from his cell, and to maintain a powerful presence in the world despite every effort to deny him access to it. You don’t have to agree with everything Mumia says to admire how his voice has pierced the thickest walls injustice can devise. Unabashed paean Stephen Vittoria’s new documentary, Long Distance Revolutionary, is an unabashed paean to Mumia’s life and spirit. You can bet it will play better in Paris than in Philadelphia. Stephen Rea’s Inquirer review and Karen Heller’s column on the film’s opening pretty much set the local tone: Not him again. For the local establishment, Mumia keeps turning up like the bad penny in the city’s conscience. Like MOVE, with which Mumia aligned himself after the 1978 Powelton Village shootout, he won’t go away, and he keeps the volume up loud— morally speaking, because his resonant baritone is never raised in anger. Anger is something Mumia can’t afford. The film follows the standard documentary format: vintage footage and stills, including the Powelton MOVE shootout and the Osage Avenue MOVE bombing, with commentary by talking heads. Chief among them is the ubiquitous Princeton professor Cornel West, who provides the film’s title by describing Mumia as a “long distance revolutionary,” inferentially placing him beside such figures as Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela. Which raises the question: Should Mumia be regarded as a political prisoner? A non-political encounter Director Vittoria obviously adopts this stance, but the film never really addresses a critical stumbling block. You can say that Mumia is in prison because he was a threat to the system, because Frank Rizzo targeted him, and so forth. But the legal ground of his incarceration is that he killed Daniel Faulkner during a street scuffle at 4 a.m. on the night of December 9, 1981, that he was found guilty by a jury of his peers the following July, and that that conviction has never been successfully challenged (although his death sentence was ultimately vacated). In other words, in the eyes of the law he is a cop-killer. True, Malcolm X espoused revolutionary violence early in his career, and Nelson Mandela practiced it in the struggle with Apartheid South Africa. But there was nothing political about Mumia’s encounter with Faulkner, except in the most exiguous sense. He came upon his brother, Billy Cook, being rousted. A tussle ensued. Mumia was shot. Faulkner was shot and killed.
Long Distance Revolutionary deals with this event in highly elliptical fashion. It notes that Faulkner was killed. It describes Mumia’s savage beating as he was taken into custody. It cites the notorious alleged remark of his trial judge, Albert F. Sabo, that he was going to help the prosecution “fry the nigger.”
But the film does not suggest an alternative theory of the killing, even though one of its interviewees, Dave Lindorff, has made an exhaustive study of the case. Given the film’s presentation of Mumia as a hero in the struggle for social justice and a prisoner of conscience, it’s understandable why it chose to sidestep the delicate question of whether Mumia fired the fatal shot. From Vittoria’s perspective, the system set Mumia up, and meant to get him one way or another. Daniel Faulkner simply provided the opportunity. For those reflexively disposed to adopt this point of view, nothing more need be said. But I think Mumia’s guilt or innocence does matter, particularly for those who find much to admire in him, as I do. And I think the film errs in failing to confront the issue. This failure certainly makes it easier for Mumia’s critics to dismiss it, and to reduce Mumia simply to the stereotype of a cop-killer. Framed but guilty? It’s said in some circles that Mumia was “framed but guilty,” meaning that he didn’t receive a fair trial but was factually culpable. I trust that is not a sufficient standard for the law. Mumia’s court process was a mockery of justice in every conceivable respect: the wrong venue; a stacked jury; a hanging judge who made no secret of the outcome he desired; coerced and perjured testimony; witness and evidence suppression; an absence of the most elementary forensic testing. The only thing the trial proved was that Mumia was present at the crime scene, the one element of the case not in doubt: He was lying there in a pool of his own blood. The courts have refused to reverse Mumia’s conviction for more than 30 years, despite the fact that the singular standard of “justice” applied to him has come to be known in legal circles as the Mumia Exception. To take on all the ramifications of Mumia’s trial would have required another film, but in glossing over it, Long Distance Revolutionary undermines its credibility for those not already of its persuasion. This is unfortunate, because it highlights the pervasive lawlessness of Philadelphia’s police in the 1970s and 1980s, and the systemic injustice of its courts. Rendell the lawgiver My favorite moment occurs when a young Ed Rendell, then a rising district attorney, observes that the police would have been justified on the basis of Officer James Ramp’s death in the Powelton Village shootout in storming the MOVE compound and killing every one of its 12 occupants. That’s the fellow who represented the law in these parts back then, and went on to sign death warrants as governor. Mumia Abu-Jamal has another perspective on the law. Writing from death row on the Rodney King beating case and the deadly riots it touched off in Los Angeles, Mumia argued that the four white policemen tried in King’s beating should not have been subject to civil prosecution after having been acquitted of the same charges in criminal court, however dubiously. That, he pointed out, was double jeopardy, which violated a core legal principle. That a black man on death row for killing a white policeman should rise to the defense of four cops accused of beating a black man is not the sort of thing one sees every day. None of us should rest until Mumia gets justice too. ♦Respond to this Article Books & Movies • Posted on 05/11 • More by this author |
A selective guide to arts commentaries in print and websites elsewhere.
Introduction to Broad Street Review, plus biographies and contact points for our editors and contributors.
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Banality as an art form
BY: AJ Sabatini
05.11.2013
Do you have what it takes to be truly banal? Let me count the ways. |
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The most interesting man on the block AJ SABATINIHe bakes blue velvet cake.
“I don’t think often,’ he says, “but when I do, I think in platitudes.”
“Stay banal, my friends.”
Respond to this Article Cross-Cultural • Posted on 05/11 • More by this author |