May '25 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 08 May 2025 03:22

Written by Kevin Filipski

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Surfer 

Streaming Release of the Week

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

CD Releases of the Week

Wagner— Der fliegende Holländer 

(Decca)

Richard Wagner’s first mature opera, Der fliegende Holländer is also one of his most musically and dramatically accessible works, and the straightforward story of how love can be redemptive works beautifully with some of Wagner’s loveliest music.

 

 

Although there is some bumpiness in the musical passages, Edward Gardner ably leads the orchestra and chorus of the Norwegian National Opera, and the central roles of the Dutchman and Senta are wonderfully sung, respectively, by Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley and the great Norwegian soprano, Lise Davidsen. 

Soprano Nina Stemme Performs at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 17:38

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Stephanie Berger

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Friday, May 2nd, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a terrific recital—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the magnificent, Swedish soprano Nina Stemme—her astonishing performance in the title role of Richard Strauss’s glorious Ariadne auf Naxos at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010 is possibly the greatest theatrical experience that I have ever had—expertly accompanied by pianist Roland Pöntinen.

The event started strongly with a marvelous rendition of Edward Elgar’s wonderful Sea Pictures, Op. 37, which consists of five parts beginning with “Sea Slumber Song,” which is set to a beautiful poem by Roden Noel. The striking lyric for the next song, “In Haven,” was written by the composer’s wife, Caroline Alice Elgar. The third song, “Sabbath Morning at Sea,” has the one text in the set written by a canonical poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The following song, “Where Corals Lie,” is also based on an excellent poem by a distinguished author, Richard Garnett. The final song, “The Swimmer,” is of less literary interest but is nonetheless an equally compelling achievement in the genre.

Stemme then brilliantly performed four extraordinary songs by Kurt Weill, the first two set to texts by Bertolt Brecht, beginning with “Surabaya Johnny”—which was famously interpreted by Marlene Dietrich—from the musical Happy End—which was adapted from the same Damon Runyon story as Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls—and succeeded by “Nannas Lied.” The second two were French songs, starting with “Je ne t’aime pas,” which preceded “Youkali”—which, according to the program note by Janet E. Bedell, had its source as “an instrumental interlude for Jacques Deval’s French play Marie Galante” and was rediscovered by Teresa Stratas for her 1981 album, The Unknown Kurt Weill.

The second half of the evening, devoted to music by Richard Wagner, was as memorable if not more so, opening with the exquisite Wesendonck Lieder: “Stehe still!”, “Der Engel,” “Im Treibhaus,” “Schmerzen,” and most indelibly of all, the magisterial “Träume,” which for me inevitably recalls Luchino Visconti’s immortal film, Ludwig. The concert concluded with the stunning Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, in the arrangement by Franz Liszt. Enthusiastic applause for this incomparable artist elicited two fabulous encores: first, the superb "Var det en dröm?," Op. 37, No. 4, by Jean Sibelius, a setting of a text in Swedish by the 19th-century Finnish poet and dramatist, Josef Julius Wecksell; and, finally, Weill’s enchanting “My Ship”—with lyrics by Ira Gershwin—from the celebrated musical Lady in the Dark, written by Moss Hart.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:48

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Richard Termine

At the terrific Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, April 24th, I was fortunate in attending another fine concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the second of two on consecutive days—featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the admirable direction of Andris Nelsons, playing music of Dmitri Shostakovich. 

The event started strikingly with a superior rendition of the powerful Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107, with the renowned, enormously popular soloist, Yo-Yo Ma. The opening of the initial, Allegretto movement is somewhat playful but with serious undercurrents; the music quickly turns suspenseful and more fraught, even sinister, with propulsive rhythms—it ends suddenly and forcefully. The ensuing Moderato is graceful, if solemn, and the music increases in intensity, culminating in what the program annotator Harlow Robinson describes as a “ghostly duet” between the cello and the celesta; the movement concludes very quietly. The third movement, an extended cadenza for the soloist, is also somber, and slow at first, but it becomes quite agitated, seamlessly transitioning to the lively finale, marked Allegro con moto—this has ludic elements but a sense of gravity pervades it and it too closes abruptly, if emphatically. Abundant applause elicited a delightful encore from Ma along with some of the ensemble’s cellists: the traditional Yiddish song, "Moyshele,” arranged by Blaise Déjardin.

It was the second half of the evening that was truly memorable, however: a sterling realization of the intriguing, seldom performed Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103, “The Year 1905,” completed in 1957. The annotator comments:

“I have great affection for this period in our national history, so vividly expressed in revolutionary workers’ songs of the time,” wrote Shostakovich. In the Symphony No. 11, he incorporated the tunes of seven different revolutionary folk songs, tunes from his own Ten Poems (1951), and a quote from Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov’s 1951 operetta Bright Lights. This use of imported material was a notable departure from Shostakovich’s usual practice.

He adds:

The first movement (“Palace Square”) portrays the merciless inhumanity of autocracy. Its powerful opening casts a hypnotic spell, evocative of autocracy, the cold, and the austere expanse of stone around the Winter Palace. This episode returns throughout the symphony as a kind of refrain. Then the movement introduces two prison songs (“Listen” and “The Convict”). The second movement (“The Ninth of January”) depicts the Cossacks’ assault, using two marching songs (“O Tsar, Our Father” and “Bare Your Heads!”). Meditative and requiem-like, the third movement (“In Memoriam”) unfolds variations of a well-known tribute to fallen heroes (“You’ve Fallen Victim”) over a slow ostinato foundation. Four different fast marching tunes (“Rage, O Tyrants”; “The Varsovienne”; “Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”; and Sviridov’s tune) combine in the raucous, percussive finale (“The Tocsin”). Several of the songs appear in multiple movements. Adding to the overall sense of unity, the four movements are played attacca, without pause.

The opening movement begins softly and soberly and sustains an almost meditative mood throughout—although it becomes more urgent as it progresses—while in the following one, the music becomes turbulent and builds to a climax. The third movement is elegiac and lugubrious and the finale is exciting, dramatic and energetic, with a driving momentum, if with more subdued passages—it concludes triumphantly. 

The artists merited and received a standing ovation.