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New York Philharmonic Presents "Elektra" at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 26 March 2026 16:48; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the afternoon of Sunday, February 1st, I had the privilege to attend a superb concert featuring the New York Philharmonic, under the exceptional direction of the eminent Manfred Honeck.

The extraordinary first half of the event consisted of a magnificent account of Ludwig van Beethoven’s masterly Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, from 1806, here brilliantly played by the remarkable virtuoso María Dueñas—she wore a fabulous, pale blue gown—whose debut with this ensemble was with these performances. The initial, Allegro ma non troppo movement begins modestly but not without an undertone of suspense that rapidly intensifies; the music becomes more forceful but also lyrical before the soloist is heard. In its complex development, the movement builds to a kind of climax more than once before the violinist’s own cadenza and then concludes emphatically. The ensuing Larghettois song-like too—indeed even more so—as well as meditative in character—a hushed quality pervades the movement. The Rondo finale, marked Allegro, is much more playful and dance-like, charming yet dynamic with a celebratory ethos and some pastoral elements, although there are quieter passages; it closes abruptly but triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a delightful encore from Dueñas, Applemania by Aleksey Igudesman.

The second half of the program was maybe even more memorable: the first presentation by this ensemble—here gloriously rendered—of the enthralling Elektra Symphonic Rhapsody completed in 2014, which was refashioned by Honeck—and orchestrated by Tomáš Ille—from the score for the eponymous and celebrated 1908 opera by Richard Strauss. In March 1906, the composer wrote as follows to his incomparable librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, about beginning work on the subject:

I am as keen as ever on Elektra and have already cut it down a good deal for my own private use. The only question I have not finally decided in my mind … is whether, immediately after Salome, I shall have the strength to handle a subject so similar to it in many respects with an entirely fresh mind, or whether I wouldn't do better to wait a few years before approaching Elektra, until I myself have moved much farther away from the Salome style.

The librettist replied thus:

The blend of colors in the two subjects strikes me as quite different in all essentials; in Salome,much is, so to speak, purple and violet, the atmosphere is torrid; in Elektra, on the other hand, it is mixture of night and light, or black and bright. What is more, the rapid rising sequence of events relating to Orest and his deed which leads up to victory and purification — a sequence which I can imagine much more powerful in music than in the written word — is not matched by anything of a corresponding, or even faintly similar kind in Salome.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

March '26 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 26 March 2026 03:14; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Project Hail Mary

(Amazon MGM)

Based on the novel by Andy Weir—whose first bestseller, The Martian, was turned into a pretty good 2015 Ridley Scott movie with Matt Damon as a lonely man trying to survive in a brand new world—this saga about Ryland Grace, a brilliant science teacher finding himself the lone astronaut on a spaceship heading for a distant star and trying to survive in a brand new world (of course) shows that lightning does not always strike twice. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (and writer Drew Goddard) take Weir’s goofy premise way too seriously, and their 156-minute behemoth sags throughout—most damagingly in the middle hour, when too many flashbacks show how Grace got here and his cutesily budding friendship with an alien he names Rocky.

It’s certainly watchable, thanks mainly to Ryan Gosling’s effortless star power and awesome-looking effects, but it drips with sappiness along with the most strangely literal use of a Beatles song ever on the soundtrack.

Two Prosecutors

(Janus Films)

Adapting an obscure novella by Soviet author Georgy Demidov that’s set during the Stalinist purges, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa vividly dramatizes the visit of young prosecutor Kornyev to a Soviet prison where he talks with a jailed elderly Bolshevik, Stepniak—after witnessing evidence of torture, the idealistic Kornyev goes to Moscow as a whistleblower, but he’s pleading to the wrong man: Andrey Vyshinsky, the mastermind of the great purge.

Loznitsa has made the slowburn to end all slowburns, demonstrating how the banality of bureaucracy hides the evil lethality underneath; but if the denouement is too patly predictable, the journey to arrive there is quietly, spellbindingly unnerving.

Streaming Releases of the Week

Blue

(Breaking Glass Pictures)

When her shady boyfriend owes a lot of money to even shadier characters, bright college student Luce decides that the only way she can help him financially (after her strict father tells her no) is to become a cam girl for the night, so with help from Vittoria—already making a healthy amount of cash with her online exploits—Luce transforms herself into a sexy character named Blue, which triggers a lot of unintended consequences.

Eleonora Puglia writes and directs in a lively manner, which helps this sordid, sometimes plodding morality tale go down easier than it should. Alexia Cozzi, a winning actress I’ve not seen before, makes the clueless Luce sympathetic. Italian porn legend Rocco Siffredi, of all people, decently plays Luce’s dad.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

(Kino Lorber)

This intensely personal film, which won the best documentary Oscar this month, introduces Pavel Talankin, a mild-mannered teacher at a Russian school who is affronted when Putin invades Ukraine and an edict comes down that students must be indoctrinated into being patriotic. Co-directed by Talankin and David Borenstein, Mr. Nobody is the ultimate David vs. Goliath story, as Talankin records the absurdities of forced political allegiance with bemusement, anger and humor, although it must be said that making the invasion of Ukraine the red line to finally oppose Putin’s encroaching totalitarianism feels less than authentic.

But, with similar political situations occurring elsewhere, that may be the point. And Pavel’s bravery cannot be dismissed: he left Russia in 2024 with his film footage on seven hard drives, and now lives somewhere in Europe.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The Key

(Cult Epics)

In Italian erotic master Tinto Brass’ 1983 comedy, superstar Stefania Sandrelli plays Teresa, whose impotent older husband nearly pushes her into an affair with their son-in-law Laszlo. This is typically effervescent Brass filmmaking (with the usual softcore sex scenes and clinical crotch shots) that has a bona fide movie legend at its center, often in the altogether.

As always, Brass is closely attuned to female sexuality and has a willing participant in Sandrelli, who has never been more sexually charged. The UHD transfer looks immaculate; extras are an audio commentary and (on the accompanying Blu-ray disc) interview with actor Franco Branciaroli, who reminisces about his intimate scenes with Sandrelli; a vintage Brass interview; featurettes on the Venetian locales and Ennio Morricone’s score; and an isolated Morricone audio track.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Wagner—Der Ring des Nibelungen

(C Major)

Richard Wagner’s classic operatic tetralogy about gods, dwarves, nymphs and humans predates Tolkien’s Middle Earth by decades—the first opera, Das Rheingold, premiered in 1869 and the last, Götterdämmerung, first appeared in 1876—but it remains thrilling and even relevant, as directors and opera houses find new ways to stage this mammoth masterpiece. In Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2022 Berlin State Opera production, the disharmonious setting is an antiseptically modern office building that removes the grandeur from Wagner’s meticulously worked-out conflicts among gods and humans.

But there’s first-rate music making—by the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin conducted by Christian Thielemann—and splendid performances by a cast led by Michael Volle’s supreme Wotan; Rolando Villazón’s mischievous Loge; and Anja Kampe’s powerhouse Brünnhilde. Hi-def image and sound are first-rate; disappointingly, there are no extras.

CD Release of the Week

Youth—Krása Quartet

(Animal Music)

Early works by a trio of composers whose artistry and actual lives were forever changed by the Nazi regime in Germany make up this excellent new disc by the enterprising Krása Quartet, which unsurprisingly begins with a couple of works by its namesake, the Czech composer Hans Krása (1899-1944), who was murdered at Auschwitz. His String Quartet No. 2 (1921) is a delight, while the scarcely more somber Theme and Variations for String Quartet (1936) was premiered in the Terezin concentration camp during WWII.

Karel Ančerl (1908-73) was a notable conductor, but he penned a pair of short fugues while a student. The last work is by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), who died of tuberculosis after being deported and imprisoned. His Divertimento for String Quartet (1914) is quite an achievement, even if it’s somewhat more conventional than his more musically progressive later works. The members of the Krása Quartet perform impressively throughout.

New York Philharmonic Perform Tchaikovsky & Shostakovich at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 13:27; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, January 8th, I had the privilege to attend a superb concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the sterling direction of Gianandrea Noseda.

The event started splendidly with an exhilarating account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s dazzling Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23—which reached its ultimate revision in 1889 and was dedicated to the German pianist and conductor, Hans von Bülow—here brilliantly performed by the eminent soloist, Behzod Abduraimov. The first movement begins with a celebrated fanfare and then a statement of passionate Romanticism; a moody, solo passage for the piano is followed by a recapitulation of the opening theme. The next section starts with a lilting, balletic theme and the music becomes more playful; the development is complex and elaborate with numerous, highly virtuosic passages and the movement concludes forcefully. The ensuing slow movement is lyrical and—like the concerto as a whole—melodious; it soon acquires a waltz-like quality and an accelerated tempo—it closes softly. The Allegro con fuoco finale is propulsive and dance-like in rhythm, ultimately culminating in an expression of intense emotionalism, ending triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a marvelous, dazzling encore from Abduraimov: Franz Liszt’s famous Étude No. 3, “La Campanella,” from the collection Grandes études de Paganini.

The second half of the evening was maybe at least equally impressive: a magisterial realization of Dmitri Shostakovich’s extraordinary, seldom performed, very ambitious Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43, which was finished in 1936. The initial, Allegro poco moderato movement opens urgently with a suspenseful march but it also has ludic elements that sometimes come to the fore as well as more subdued passages; towards its finish, a quieter march unfolds and it ends abruptly. The sequence of the next (and last) two movements is restrained at the outset but becomes more powerful—again there are seemingly jocular moments even as an ethos of great seriousness pervades although the music is also often quite lively. Later, the music becomes exuberant and affirmative followed by an extended, more gentle episode, closing pianissimo.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

March '26 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 19 March 2026 22:02; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Slanted

(Bleecker Street)

Chinese-American high-schooler Joan yearns to be as popular as white girl Olivia, so in desperation Joan goes to a clinic to get something called ethnic modification surgery, transforming herself into Jo, the girl of her own dreams, in writer-director Amy Wang’s unsubtle but effective black comedy that takes more from Mean Girls than last year’s overrated body-horror cautionary tale The Substance.

Wang’s script is as blunt as a sledgehammer, but her unsettling film has the courage of its convictions and is led by resonant performances from Shirley Chen (Joan) and McKenna Grace (Jo).

The Bride!

(Warner Bros)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s writing-directing follow-up to The Lost Daughter pulps Mary Shelley’s classic novel into a steampunk mashup of Bonnie and Clyde and The Bride of Frankenstein that’s so on the nose and incoherent that it’s starts out risible and ends up enervating.

Pointlessly using Shelley herself as a framing device to comment on and propel the story (such as it is) forward, Gyllenhaal lazily hangs several disparate but desperate set pieces onto the flimsy plot—Frankenstein’s creature (a hammy Christian Bale) and his undead female companion (an even hammier Jessie Buckley, who also overacts as Shelley) run from the law—including shoehorning in an unnecessary Young Frankenstein homage/rip-off (set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” duh). There’s a joylessness to the entire enterprise that’s surprising—even Gyllenhaal’s husband, Peter Sarsgaard, seems bored whenever he’s onscreen.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week

Heel

(Magnolia)

A middle-aged couple, Chris and Kathryn, kidnap Tommy, a 19-year-old hooligan, to try and rehabilitate him, keeping him literally chained up in their basement with a collar around his neck—so the title of the film (and its original title, Good Boy) already hints we’re not dealing with a subtle character study.

The first English-language film by Polish director Jan Komasa (who made the intriguingly offbeat Corpus Christi) has visual panache but is saddled with Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid’s soggy script, in which everyone—Chris, Kathryn, Tommy, the couple’s young son Jonathan and their foreign housemaid Rina—acts so contradictorily that it’s less reality than arbitrariness. The cast, led by Stephen Graham (Chris), Andrea Riseborough (Kathryn) and Anson Boon (Tommy), does its best with what’s basically a shaggy-dog story.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

The Housemaid

(Lionsgate)

This often absurd but entertaining drama, based on Freida McFadden’s lively page-turner of a novel, tries a sleight of hand by pitting an unhinged mother, Nina, against her new, desperate housemaid, Millie—as Nina’s angelic husband, Andrew and young daughter Cece look on. Director Paul Feig could never be accused of subtlety, so when it’s obvious early on who the villain is, the rest of this overlong flick becomes a slog, especially when everything is spelled out with clunky flashbacks.

Still, the twisty revelations and consequences that are meted out are fun to watch, as are Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney’s paired performances as Nina and Millie. The Blu-ray looks good; extras include two commentaries featuring Feig, deleted scenes, short featurettes and a 40-minute look at how the adaptation went from McFadden’s book to screen.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

(Cult Epics)

In Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s glorious 1983 adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1967 sci-fi novel, teenage superstar-to-be Tomoyo Harada is a delight as Kazuko, a teenage student who faints one day in her high school’s lab and soon finds herself moving back and forth in time, reliving days in her past as well as finding herself in future moments.

Obayashi’s visual dazzlement beautifully conveys Kazuko’s bewilderment as well as trenchantly observing how a tentative romance could break the time-travel cycle. There’s an excellent UHD transfer and an audio commentary on the 4K disc; the accompanying Blu-ray disc includes the commentary, two visual essays, two vintage Obayashi interviews and a featurette about Harada.

CD Releases of the Week

Overtures From the British Isles, Volume 3

(Chandos)

This latest in a series collecting overtures by English composers consists of 11 works from the period 1938-49, overlapping the Second World War. The only piece I knew before hearing it was Benjamin Britten’s sprightly overture to his 1941 operetta Paul Bunyan, but there are also works by familiar names Alan Rawsthorne (1944’s Street Corner), Frank Bridge (1940’s Rebus) and Havergal Brian, whose lively Comedy Overture No. 2 from The Tinker’s Wedding (1948) is far less overwrought than his nearly three dozen symphonies.

These pieces and more—especially the enticing Yorick by Geoffrey Bush, who wrote it in 1949 as a musical memorial to famed comedian Tommy Handley—are vigorously played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Rumon Gamba.

Piatti Quartet & Guests—Phantasy

(Rubicon)

Another disc of British works is made more intimate by their chamber form, highlighted by the masterly Ralph Vaughan Williams quintet that gives this disc its title. Similarly titled works by the underrated Herbert Howells (the “Fantasy” quintet) and Malcolm Arnold (his Phantasy for string quartet, subtitled “Vita Abundas”) anchor a collection that also features Ina Boyle’s mournful Lament for Bion, strikingly sung by tenor James Gilchrist, and her impassioned Still Falls the Rain, sung beautifully by mezzo Sharon Carty.

Short works by August Holmes and Michael Tippett round out a disc that’s elegantly played by the Piatti Quartet, violist Zahra Benyounes, cellist Jessie Ann Richardson, flutist Tom Hancox and clarinetist Chris Richards.

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