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The Only Jealousy of Emer by W. B. Yeats, directed by Ray Yeates—Origin 1st Irish Theatre Festival 1018 at Torn Page/Apartment 929 by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/the-only-jealousy-of-emer-by-w-b-yeats-directed-by-ray-yeates-origin-1st-irish-theatre-festival-1018-at-torn-page-apartment-929/

The Only Jealousy of Emer by W. B. Yeats, directed by Ray Yeates—Origin 1st Irish Theatre Festival 1018 at Torn Page/Apartment 929

Whether one reads W. B. Yeats’ The Only Jealousy of Emer as a closet drama or sees it in a convincing (indeed outstanding) production like the one mounted by Torn Page Apartment 929 this winter, one gets a strong feeling that the action and speech are unfolding on two levels: the mythic and the experiential, i.e. biographical, in relation to Yeats. As stated in the program note, “Yeats is a poet as much of fact as of feeling. Every work of his has a source—whether from folklore, legend, mythology, the occult, or history: each a source that for him had a definite objective reality. The demands of this world and of that other world of Yeatsian spiritual reality often conflict. His verse play The Only Jealousy of Emer, particularly in its early drafts, offers a vivid portrayal of such a struggle.”

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Stephen Hough, Piano, at Carnegie Hall, January 30, 2018: Debussy, Schumann, and Beethoven by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/stephen-hough-piano-carnegie-hall-january-30-2018-debussy-schumann-beethoven/

Stephen Hough, Piano, at Carnegie Hall, January 30, 2018: Debussy, Schumann, and Beethoven

Stephen Hough remains one of the most engaging personalities in the world of virtuoso pianists. He makes his wide range of interests—literary, visual, and religious—known to the world at large with grace and modesty, out of a genuine desire to contribute things that others with find enjoyable or helpful. He is even able to compose pieces, mostly of a light nature, which he sometimes interjects into his concert programs. Early in his career he built a reputation with his impressive technique, as he built a list of outstanding recordings of forgotten concerti and solo pieces which were too difficult for others to learn for the rare occasions on which they would be called for in concert. In recent years he has turned more to established classics in his concert programs, approaching them with a consistent style founded on attractive tone and a vision of the coherence of the works he plays.

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Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2018/02/berlioz-les-troyens-a-concert-performance-and-a-symposium/

Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium

Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordings are still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career.

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Inbal Segev talls to Michael Miller about Christopher Rouse's Cello Cencerto, Coming Up February 10 and 11th at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/inbal-segev-talls-michael-miller-christopher-rouses-cello-cencerto-coming-february-10-11th-troy-savings-bank-music-hall-baltimore-symphony-orchestras-new-music-festi/

Inbal Segev talls to Michael Miller about Christopher Rouse's Cello Cencerto, Coming Up February 10 and 11th at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival

Last month I had the pleasure of chatting with Inbal Segev, a young cellist from Israel, who has been making a mark in contemporary music and the classics. She was discovered by Isaac Stern as a high school student in Israel, and he arranged for her to come the United States to study at Yale and Juilliard. On this occasion we talked about her upcoming performance of Christopher Rouse’s cello concerto with the Albany Symphony under David Allan Miller and a very interesting—and successful—contemporary music festival sponsored by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Marin Alsop. It held its inaugural season just last summer.

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by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2018/01/27483/

My own fall season of piano recitals began on a high point with Gilbert Kalish’s appearance at The Concerts at Camphill Ghent. (This is the only concert I shall discuss that did not take place within the confines of Manhattan, although one might in a stretch consider Ghent as local in some indirect way, since it is a mere fifteen minutes drive outside Hudson, and Hudson is surely a colony of New York City, tossing together traits of Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and the Upper West Side. Click here for a more general account of the concert series.) Here Mr. Kalish played the sort of carefully pondered, intelligent program he has been known for since the 1960s.

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Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/der-rosenkavalier-at-the-royal-opera-house/

Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House

his latest ROH Rosenkavalier has so far had middling reviews, many focusing their criticism largely on the production, which originated in 1984 under the late John Schlesinger and here directed by Andrew Sinclair, which they believe to be showing its age. It has been revived many times, and therefore probably dulled by overfamiliarity for some, but to this first-time viewer it seemed understandable that the company would wish to extract the maximum mileage from it—perhaps a lull before an exciting new production comes storming in to mark the opera’s 100th anniversary in 13 months’ time?

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An Interview with Yehudi Wyner by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/an-interview-with-yehudi-wyner/

An Interview with Yehudi Wyner

Yehudi Wyner, whose career as a composer and a performing musician goes back some sixty years, finds himself entirely focused on the present at the moment, and very positively so. For one thing Bridge Records, who have issued the most substantial body of his work on CD, have released his collected sacred music, and Mr. Wyner is very pleased to have it all together in one place. Secondly, he is anticipating the premiere of a new work, a secular cantata called Give Thanks for All Things.

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2017: A Film Festival Restrospective from the Northeast, above all, the Berkshire and the Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/2017-film-festival-restrospective-northeast-berkshire-nitrate-picture-show-george-eastman-museum-rochester/

2017: A Film Festival Restrospective from the Northeast, above all, the Berkshire and the Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester

Film festivals have become an integral part of film-going life. They are no longer the preserve of industry professionals, now attended by a variety of cinephiles and even casual viewers, who may have read a title or a preview that struck their fancy. Not a few worthy films will never make it into general distribution. We take that for granted, and a festival award may be the best many filmmakers can hope for. A screening at a festival before a roomful of living humans in itself seems more tangible than a showing on cable or one of the streaming networks.

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The Home  Place by Brian Friel, New York Premiere, at the Irish Repertory Theatre, closing December 17. by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/12/home-place-brian-friel-new-york-premiere-irish-repertory-theatre-closing-december-17/

The Home  Place by Brian Friel, New York Premiere, at the Irish Repertory Theatre, closing December 17.

You have five more days to see—or to see again—the New York premiere of Brian Friel’s late masterpiece, The Home Place, in its extended run. Between the rich language of the play—subtly heightened, but idiomatic to contemporary ears and sounding entirely convincing in the mouths of Irish and Anglo-Irish English-speakers of 1878—James Noone’s evocative set, the unfailing precision and feeling of the actors, and Charlotte Moore’s crisp direction, it provided the most absorbing and moving evening in the theater of the year.

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Achim Freyer's Rocky Horror Ring takes over Los Angeles! by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/achim-freyers-rocky-horror-ring-takes-over-los-angeles/

Achim Freyer's Rocky Horror Ring takes over Los Angeles!

Dressing up in a monkey suit is a time-honored profession in Hollywood. Many is the young actor or layabout who has earned a few dollars by dressing up as a gorilla — or Batman or Chewbacca — and going out into the streets with pamphlets to spread the good news about some new deli or used car lot or strip show. For a while, gorilla suits were popular in the studios as well. (That’s a whole genre that’s almost entirely forgotten today.) I reflected on this, as, on the eve of Das Rheingold, I drove along Sunset Boulevard, observing the crowds of tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, along with a group of people dressed up as comic book heroes who were available to pose with the visitors. I wondered if any of them thought about the impoverishment of the imagination that these comic book figures have brought to the movies. Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, and Bette Davis all created characters in their own way, even if they remained recognizable as themselves in their parts. We know what to expect from Batman and Darth Vader simply by their costume, their design, or merely the outline of their shadow on a fictitious pavement. Characterization and acting are superfluous, even though some of these characters have human vehicles, who are dutifully provided with origins, relationships, and dilemmas, by screenwriters who know that they can only sink so low.

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Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen from Glyndebourne: Semi-Opera Made Whole, at Last by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/henry-purcells-fairy-queen-from-glyndebourne-semi-opera-made-whole-at-last/

Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen from Glyndebourne: Semi-Opera Made Whole, at Last

The life and career of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), the colossal figure who dominates the history of English music, occurred at the chronological mid-point of the Baroque, a period whose leading and most distinguishing genre is opera. And yet, opera never took root as a native product in English cultural soil. For that it had to wait until Purcell’s distant successor, Benjamin Britten, appeared on the scene two hundred and fifty years later. Twenty years after Purcell’s death, Handel arrived with his succession of exotic opera singers: Italian divas and castrati who swooped in like birds of paradise warbling their outlandish roulades and then vanished. The taste for such entertainment lasted at the most 25 years. Meanwhile, Purcell wrote only one true opera, a tiny gem that was held to be the only crown jewel for centuries, the miniature Dido and Aeneas of 1689. (John Blow’s fine companion piece, Venus and Adonis of 1701, still has not established itself in the canon.) And it was written for a girls’ school run by a dancing master, or at least its first documented performance occurred in this context.

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Ruth Sommers' Festival Chamber Music, a Concert Series at Weill Hall (Carnegie Hall) — an Introduction by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/11/ruth-sommers-festival-chamber-music-concert-series-weill-hall-carnegie-hall-introduction/

Ruth Sommers' Festival Chamber Music, a Concert Series at Weill Hall (Carnegie Hall) — an Introduction

Just about a year ago I had the pleasure of discovering a New York chamber music series I hadn’t heard about, Festival Chamber Music, when I came to hear Mohammed Fairouz’s No Orpheus (2009) for Mezzo Soprano and Cello, settings of poems by our Senior Editor of Art and Music, Lloyd Schwartz, who had made the trip down from Boston to read his texts before they were sung. He has heard several performances of this work since its premiere, and he was well pleased with the work of Christine Antenbring, mezzo-soprano and cellist Ruth Sommers, noting the strong differences in the performances of the work he had heard. One might be tempted to consider the use of a solo cello to do the job of a piano a gimmick, but in fact it convinced me from the very beginning—thanks to a great extent to Ruth Sommers’ eloquent, colorful, many-sided, but disciplined playing.

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The Wagner Cult on Record: Tristan und Isolde, by Huntley Dent by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/the-wagner-cult-on-record-tristan-und-isolde-by-huntley-dent/

The Wagner Cult on Record: Tristan und Isolde, by Huntley Dent

    Mild und leise. Plenty of otherwise gentle people lose their grip on civility when Wagner’s name is mentioned. I was standing in line at the post office explaining to a friend why I thought Wagner was greater than Bach. I felt that we were in a safely uncivilized location, but no. T...

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by The Editor

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/27262/

SUPPORT WILDFIRE RELIEF EFFORTS IN SONOMA AND NAPA!! Five Senses Tastings and Vinfluence present “American Mosaic” this Thursday, October 19th at 6:30 pm at 555Ten. Hear beautiful music by guitarist Dan Nadel and vocalist Shira Averbuch, taste wines from Vinfluence’s extensive portfolio, enjoy cheeses from Murray’s Cheese and chocolates from Honey Mama’s.

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A Weekend with Pierre Boulez...and Debussy, Duckworth, Beethoven, and Pavaali Jumppanen, Pianist by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/weekend-pierre-boulez-debussy-duckworth-beethoven-pavaali-jumppanen-pianist/

A Weekend with Pierre Boulez...and Debussy, Duckworth, Beethoven, and Pavaali Jumppanen, Pianist

When I approach a review, I usually try to objectify it in some way, especially if it’s about familiar music, not only in recognition of the the fact that I’m writing for a public readership, but also in recognition of the discrete nature of a work of art as an entity created by an individual working under a specific set of historical circumstances, even if it dates from two months ago. Boulez’s Répons is very much rooted in such a situation in 1981, with its connection to the history of electronic music—then still fairly young—and the foundation of IRCAM, an event which gave electronic music formal institutional support in Europe. However, my personal response to hearing it at the Park Avenue Armory was especially strong, and in this review I will stay with that.

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A Handful of Last Season's Orchestral Concerts in New York—All Worth Remembering by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/handful-last-seasons-orchestral-concerts-new-york-worth-remembering/

A Handful of Last Season's Orchestral Concerts in New York—All Worth Remembering

Even the most independent of us can’t hear everything one might like to. In New York, choices must be made, usually based on what one thinks is most important, and often enough what is important has nothing to do with music. Family obligations kept me away from Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, although he was in his prime repertory for his final US appearances with the orchestra, and sheer surfeit diluted my enthusiasm for Gergiev. He is not the only friend of Vladimir Putin’s to be accused of spending too much time on the golf course, and it shows in his wayward performances. What I did manage to hear brought discovery in conductors of exceptional ability I hadn’t heard before and some new music, as well as measures of excitement, admiration, and boredom.

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Paavali Jumppanen, Pianist, Talks to Michael Miller before his Recital at the Frick Collection, Sunday, October 8, at 5 pm. by Michael Miller

read the full article at http://newyorkarts.net/2017/10/paavali-jumppanen-pianist-talks-michael-miller-recital-frick-collection-sunday-october-8-5-pm/

Paavali Jumppanen, Pianist, Talks to Michael Miller before his Recital at the Frick Collection, Sunday, October 8, at 5 pm.

I’m very pleased to present this interview with Paavali Jumppanen, who will be playing a recital at the Frick Collection this coming Sunday, October 7, 2017, at 5 pm. He will play works by three composers he has studied in particular depth over many years: Beethoven, Debussy, and the William Duckworth (1943-2012).