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Champion Pianist Bruce Liu Performs at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 24 May 2023 13:41; Written by Jack Angstreich

Bruce Liu at the piano. Photo by Jennifer Taylor.

At Carnegie Hall on the evening of Friday, May 19th, I had the pleasure of attending the memorable New York recital debut of pianist Bruce Liu, the winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition.

The program began charmingly and promisingly with an admirable account of Frédéric Chopin’s sparkling Rondo à la mazur in F Major, Op. 5, one of the composer’s earliest works—written when he was just sixteen—but one not without Romantic depths. Robert Schumann praised it, saying that “whoever does not yet know Chopin would be well advised to begin with this piece.”

A more histrionic strand of Chopin was then presented with an accomplished rendition of one of his ballades—it was the No. 2 in F Major, Op. 38—a genre that the composer invented. The first half of the program concluded impressively with the at times dazzling Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni, written when Chopin was only seventeen. (The composer was one of Chopin’s favorites, along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Vincenzo Bellini.) Schumann’s review of the piece included the line: “Hats off, gentlemen—a genius.”

The second part of the recital was even more remarkable beginning with a beautiful realization of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35—indeed the famous Funeral March movement was one of the highlights of the evening. Schumann’s description of the work is worth quoting: “That he should have called it a ‘sonata’ suggests a joke, if not sheer bravado. He seems to have taken four of his most unruly children and put them together, possibly thinking to smuggle them, as a sonata, into company where they might not be considered individually presentable.”

Also notable was an exquisite version of the Trois nouvelles etudes, Op. Posthumous. The program proper ended with an astonishing performance of Franz Liszt’s Réminiscences de Don Juan. In 1841, the composer told Marie d’Agoult that he was “working like a madman at some tremendous fantasies. Norma, La sonnambula, Freischütz, Maometto, Moïse, and Don Juan will be ready in five or six days. It is a new vein I have found and want to exploit. The effect these latest productions make is vastly superior to my previous things.” The audience’s response to Liu’s playing was incredibly enthusiastic, eliciting an amazing seven encores!: Jean-Philippe Rameau’s marvelous "Les tendres plaintes" from Suite in D Major from Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin; Chopin’s Écossaise in D-flat Major from Three Écossaises, Op. posth. 72, No. 3; Erik Satie’s superb Gnossienne No. 1; Liszt’s excellent "La campanella" in G-sharp Major fromGrandes Études de Paganini;Isaac Albéniz’s "El Puerto" fromIberia,Book I; Chopin’s Etude in G-flat Major, Op. 10, No. 5, "Black Keys"; and Nikolai Kapustin’s jazzy Variations for Piano, Op. 41.

May '23 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 23 May 2023 19:18; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Master Gardener

(Magnolia Pictures)

In the latest by writer-director Paul Schrader (Hardcore, American Gigolo, First Reformed), Narvel Roth, a former neo-Nazi—who, with a new identity, works as head horticulturist at Gracewood Gardens, owned by Norma Haverhill, a wealthy old widow who also takes sexual favors from him—finally confronts his racist past when Norma’s orphaned great-niece Maya arrives.

As crudely blunt as the “white pride” tattoos all over Narvel’s body and Narvel’s own voiceovers, Schrader’s film makes obvious contrasts between and less than illuminating observations about his hero’s previous and current lives, yet still remains a thoughtful redemption parable. There’s also compelling acting by Joel Edgerton (Narvel), Sigourney Weaver (Norma) and Quintessa Swindell (Maya). For Film at Lincoln Center showtimes, visit filmlinc.org.

Giving Birth to a Butterfly

(Cinedigm)

America’s working-class families, struggling to keep their heads above water, are the focus of debut director Theodore Schaefer’s bumpily surreal but often raw drama centering on Diana, the mother in a dysfunctional family who’s a victim of identity theft.

Although Schaefer’s script ultimately lacks much depth in the sketchy characterizations, a game cast fills in the holes, especially the always dependable Annie Parisse, who plays the victimized Diana with her usual intelligence.

Museum of the Revolution

(Lightdox)

In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, a mother, her young daughter and an older woman live in the decrepit, unfinished Museum of the Revolution, which was to be a centerpiece of Communist Yugoslav history—but only the grand building’s basement was ever constructed.

Director Srđan Keča closely follows his three subjects as they scrape together barely enough through panhandling or washing car windows to eke out a meager existence in the damp, unsafe abandoned museum. Keča’s unobtrusive camera contrasts their difficult existence with a Serbia that’s abandoned socialism for capitalism.

Sanctuary

(Neon)

The power plays between Hal, the wealthy heir apparent to his father’s hotel chain, and Rebecca, the dominatrix he’s had a relationship with are the sole focus of director Zachary Wigon and writer Micah Bloomberg’s two-character study that’s less psychologically complex than a clever sleight-of-hand like Sleuth.

What makes this one-note movie work are the performances: Christopher Abbott is excellent as Hal, while Margaret Qualley—who again shows herself a fearless performer—makes Rebecca more complex and fascinatingly detailed than she’s been written.

Stay Awake

(MarVista)

Carried along by a trio of formidable lead performances, Jamie Sisley’s intimate look at a pair of teenage brothers’ love-hate relationship with their drug-addicted mother works best when Wyatt Oleff (son 1), Fin Argus (son 2) and Chrissy Metz (mom) display the roller-coaster, contradictory emotions in a tug-of-war between a woman who can’t (or won’t) get help and the sons who are ready to move on—to college and acting school.

Although well-meaning, Sisley’s drama falters in traversing the sons’ coming of age with mom’s downward spiral to the point that the emotional upheaval is dramatically short-circuited.

The Thief Collector

(FilmRise)

Jerry and Rita Alter, a somewhat eccentric American couple, brazenly stole a priceless de Kooning painting right out of its frame in an Arizona museum in 1985 and hung it behind a door in their New Mexico bedroom; after their deaths in 2017, antique-store owners who bought the work in an estate sale realized its notoriety—and value.

That’s the starting point for Allison Otto’s noteworthy documentary, which allows family members, the antique-store owners, FBI agents and art experts to weigh in on exactly what the Alters did and why (and it more than simply one heist). Otto cleverly constructs the strange but true tale as a puzzle with new reveals popping up intermittently, but at least it’s only 90 succinct minutes instead of being spread out to 5 or 6 hours as a Netflix series.

4K Release of the Week

Creed III

(Warner Bros)

Adonis Creed comes out of retirement to fight the current champion, Dame, an old friend who finagled his way to the title with Creed’s unwitting help, in the latest entertaining sequel in the successful if derivative Rocky/Creed franchise.

Michael B. Jordan has settled into a reassuring presence as Creed and Tessa Thompson makes the most of her screen time as his wife, while Jonathan Majors is a too brutish Dame. Jordan directs flashily, particularly in the fight scenes, but shrewdly helms tender scenes between the Creeds and their hearing-impaired daughter: that the actors learned ASL to communicate with young deaf actress Mila Davis-Kent is especially heartening. The UHD transfer looks great; extras are featurettes and deleted scenes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Everything Went Fine

(Cohen Media)

French director François Ozon eschews nearly every trace of sentimentality other filmmakers would leave in as he chronicles the heartwrenching attempts of two middle-aged daughters to honor their elderly father’s directive that, following a debilitating stroke, he wants to end his life on his own terms.

Ozon pulls no punches as Emmanuèle (played with exemplary tact but emotional honesty by Sophie Marceau) and Pascale (a heartfelt Géraldine Pailhas) reconcile their contradictory feelings about their father André (André Dussolier, whose intensely physical and fiercely visceral performance is astonishing) while caring for him and planning his assisted suicide. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.

Moving On

(Lionsgate)

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have gotten much mileage out of their comically inspired pairing in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie: first, they reteamed for the execrable 80 for Brady, and now, this intermittently funny black comedy-revenge pic about two women attending their longtime friend’s funeral to confront her unruly, prickly widower.

The pair wrings mordant humor out of writer-director Paul Weitz’s serviceable but clichéd premise and Malcolm McDowell enlivens the stock part of the bad hubby, while the relative brevity (80 minutes) doesn’t let the movie jump the shark before it predictably—but satisfyingly—ends. The film looks fine on Blu.

Violent Streets

(Film Movement Classics)

Japanese director Hideo Gosha’s 1974 crime drama is a much different animal than his mid-‘60s samurai pictures Film Movement recently released, Samurai Wolf 1 & 2—here, there’s less ambiguity as a former crime boss enjoying retirement as a nightclub manager is drawn back into the yakuza when rival factions face off.

Gosha enjoys the bloodletting as well as the female nudity (the women are mostly appendages, except one who’s as lethal—if not more so—than the men), and his furiously fast pace keeps it percolating. The new hi-def transfer looks excellent on Blu-ray; lone extra is a visual essay about Gosha.

Yellowstone—Season 5, Part 1

(Paramount)

The new season of this hit series starts out strongly—and although Kevin Costner’s star power as patriarch John Dutton has always been the draw for most viewers, it’s the high-powered portrayal by Kelly Reilly—who invests the stock character of his daughter Beth with an always enjoyable “WTF” attitude—that makes the show more than just another soap opera.

Wes Bentley and Luke Grimes as Dutton’s son Jamie and Kayce are good, as is Kelsey Asbille as Kayce’s wife Monica, but creator Taylor Sheridan really should run with Beth’s story arcs even if it means closing others down. The eight episodes looks immaculate on Blu; many extras include a “behind the story” for every episode, along with interviews and featurettes.

CD Release of the Week

Natalie Merchant—Keep Your Courage

(Nonesuch)

For her first album of completely new material since her 2014 eponymous release, Natalie Merchant returns with a musically dense, lyrically knotty but impassioned album of 10 songs written during the pandemic. What distinguishes these at times downbeat but always emotional tunes is Merchant’s talent for the stirring story-song, whether it’s the opening salvo, “Big Girl” (one of two lovely duets with singer Abena Koomson-Davis), the bittersweet “Sister Tilly”—featuring a beautiful and moving orchestral arrangement by Gabriel Kahane—or the closing “The Feast of Saint Valentine,” a final benediction that’s richly scored by Megan Gould.

In fact, eight of the songs are so enriched by the orchestrations and arrangements that Merchant is smartly incorporating them while on tour this summer. Upcoming concerts at Alice Tully Hall in NYC (June 2 and 3) and NJPAC in Newark (June 25) will feature Merchant with a symphony orchestra, which will replicate—and, perhaps, even surpass—the album’s expansive sound.

Taiwan Philharmonic Performs at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 23 May 2023 14:43; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Tey Tat Keng

At David Geffen Hall on the evening of Friday, April 21st, I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful concert—which was presented by the New York Philharmonic—featuring the admirable musicians of the Taiwan Philharmonic, The National Symphony Orchestra, under the estimable direction of Jun Märkl.

The program began promisingly with a thrilling rendition of contemporary Taiwanese composer Ke-Chia Chen’s compelling—indeed exciting and dramatic—and impressively orchestrated Ebbs and Flows, heard here in its New York premiere. Chen said the following about the work:

While composing Ebbs and Flows for the Taiwan Philharmonic’s 2023 United States tour, led by Maestro Jun Märkl, I kept asking myself one question: what theme speaks to people around the world and to the people of Taiwan? Growing up in Taiwan, an island nation surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, and now living in the United States, with the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean bordering its coasts, the beauty and wonder of the ocean came to the fore.

The massive ocean provides, inspires, and sustains. Seeing waves crash against the white sands of a beach or a rocky shore is a spectacular sight to behold. It makes one think of its enormous strength as it cycles endlessly. When humans come into the scene and harness this massive force through marine transport, exploration, and fisheries, to name a few, its wonder comes even more into focus.

I conceived Ebbs and Flows with this mind, casting the orchestra as a massive body of water, like the ocean. I utilized different sound sources from the orchestra to depict the ocean’s wonders and treasures. Furthermore, like a symphonic documentary, it tells stories of people’s lives — fishermen, sailors, and seamen — stories that have been passed down among families and cultures from generation to generation.

The ocean ebbs and flows throughout the Earth and throughout human history, at times peaceful and calm and other times an uncontrollable raging force. This composition, in its development, reflects the ebbs and flows of both the ocean and our humanity. The water nurtures the world; the music feeds a wandering soul! The piece is co-commissioned by the Taiwan Philharmonic, Washington Performing Arts, and Muzik3 Foundation, Inc.

She entered the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

The remarkable soloist, Paul Huang, then joined the musicians for an accomplished performance of Max Bruch’s enjoyable Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra. The Prelude to the first movement is passionate and Romantic while its main body—marked Adagio cantabile—is even more lyrical. In the lively Allegro that follows, the folk element is even more pronounced, while the Andante sostenuto is more directly expressive, even sentimental, and the Finale is rousing, but with more inward passages. The violinist rewarded the audience’s enthusiastic applause with a dazzlingly virtuosic encore: John Corigliano’s The Red Violin Caprices.

The second half of the program was even better, opening with an excellent account of Felix Mendelssohn’s magnificent The Hebrides Overture. Equally successful, was a laudable reading of Claude Debussy’s astonishing La Mer. In the first movement, titled “From Dawn till Noon on the Sea,” one can especially discern the influence of East Asian music; it closes majestically. The ensuing “The Play of the Waves” is more suspenseful and propulsive, and the closing movement, “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” is the most dynamic and turbulent of the three. The artists garnered a standing ovation which elicited another delightful encore: The Angel from Formosa by the modern Taiwanese composer, Tyzen Hsiao. One hopes that these fine musicians will return to the New York stages before long.

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra Presents a Musical Epic

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 19 May 2023 13:41; Written by Jack Angstreich

Susanna Mälkki directs the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee.

At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Tuesday, May 9th, I was provided the exceptional privilege of attending a superb concert featuring music by Finnish composers and performed by the splendid musicians of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, under the sterling direction of Susanna Mälkki, one of the most impressive contemporary conductors.

The program began auspiciously with a luminous reading of Jean Sibelius’s too infrequently heard tone poem, the beautiful Lemminkäinen’s Return from theLemminkäinen Suite,after tales from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. The celebrated flautist, Claire Chase, who is known for her commitment to avant-garde currents in new music, then joined the ensemble as soloist for an admirable account of Kaija Saariaho’s striking Aile du Songe, a mysterious work notable for its meticulous orchestral writing. According to the program note by Jaani Länsiö, the piece is “a joint commission from the Flanders Festival Ghent, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra for flutist Camilla Hoitenga” and “based on the collection Oiseaux by French Nobel Prize–winning poet Saint-John Perse.”

The second half of the event was even more memorable, mainly for a brilliant realization of Sibelius’s incomparable Symphony No. 2, the premiere of which he conducted with this orchestra in 1902 and which it has played more than any other work. The somewhat charming opening of the initial Allegretto conceals grander ambitions that rapidly emerge as the movement acquires a more portentous and emotional cast. The ensuing slow movement—marked Tempo andante, ma rubato—is also suspenseful and becomes even more Romantic in inspiration, while the Vivacissimo third movement, although dramatic and turbulent, nonetheless functions as a scherzo. Thefinaleis ultimately the most joyous of the movements, although it contains more subdued and enigmatic passages, building to a stunning, affirmative conclusion. Enthusiastic applause elicited two fabulous encores written by the same composer: the Valse triste--one of his most exquisite creations—and the exhilarating Finlandia.

Reviews

Champion Pianist Bruce Liu Performs at Carnegie Hall

May '23 Digital Week III

Taiwan Philharmonic Performs at Lincoln Center

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra Presents a Musical Epic

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