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New York Philharmonic Performs Bartók at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:22; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, April 26th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a marvelous concert featuring the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of the extraordinary Iván Fischer, the founder and leader of the amazing Budapest Festival Orchestra and one of the greatest living conductors.

The event started appealingly with an effective rendition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular Overture from his magnificent opera, The Magic Flute. In useful notes for the program, James M. Keller—who is the “former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator; San Francisco Symphony program annotator; and author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide,” published by Oxford University Press—comments about Mozart and the piece as follows:

He finished almost all of Die Zauberflöte during the spring and early summer of 1791, but several numbers (including the Overture) remained to be written when, in July, he was invited to compose an opera, to Metastasio's already much-used libretto La clemenza di Tito, for the festivities surrounding the coronation in Prague of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia.

A solemn Adagio introduction precedes an ebullient, “fugal Allegro, the theme of which seems to have been borrowed (consciously or not) from a piano sonata by Muzio Clementi,” according to Keller; this is interrupted by another serious passage before a mostly exhilarating, concluding section.

The splendid soloist, Lisa Batiashvili—who looked lovely in a beautiful, bright yellow gown—then joined the musicians for a terrific performance of Mozart’s superb Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219, the “Turkish,” from 1775. The initial, Allegro aperto movement begins charmingly, after which the solo violin enters lyrically. For all its gracefulness, the movement at moments attains an intensity that anticipates that of Ludwig van Beethoven; it closes somewhat abruptly, but affirmatively. (The notes explain that “Mozart did not provide cadenzas for this concerto” and that in this movement, the soloist “played a cadenza written by Tsotne Zedginidze, a 15-year-old composer/pianist from Georgia who is a participant in the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation.”)

The ensuing Adagio is more playful than usual for a slow movement by Mozart, but it too features aria-like passages for the soloist and plumbs greater emotional depths as it unfolds; it closes elegantly. The enchanting Rondeau finale, marked Tempo di Menuetto—is appropriately dance-like, with numerous dynamic episodes, and is often sparkling but also has more profound currents; it ends gently, if suddenly. (In this movement, the soloist played a cadenza that she composed.)

The second half of the evening was at least equally as strong and as memorable: a sterling account of Béla Bartók’s outstanding ballet score, The Wooden Prince: A Dancing-Play in One Act, to a Libretto by Béla Balázs, Op. 13. Keller records that:

Among the considerable output of Béla Bartók we find only three works for the stage: the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911, revised through 1918), the ballet The Wooden Prince (1914–16, orchestrated in 1917), and the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin (1918–19, orchestrated in 1924).

He adds:

The Budapest Opera had approached Bartók in March 1913 about writing a ballet that they might consider producing, but it wasn't until the following year that the composer, who was in the backcountry collecting folk songs just then, began work on The Wooden Prince, which he started in April 1914 and then set aside for another two years. In April 1916 his Two Portraits for Orchestra (Op. 15, from 1907–08) received a belated premiere, and the excellent performance on that occasion catapulted him back into working mode. Within a few months The Wooden Prince was substantially completed, and by January 1917 it was fully orchestrated — very fully indeed, we might say, given the size of the orchestra employed.

He goes on to describe the scenario:

In Bartók's work a Prince, wandering in a forest, spies a Princess, who has just been confined to her castle by the Fairy of Nature. Unable to reach her, the Prince carves a puppet from his wooden staff and thrusts it high into the air, trying to attract the Princess's attention. He adorns it with his robe, then his crown, but only when he cuts off his curly hair and affixes it to the puppet does the Princess show interest. She leaves her castle but lavishes all her attention on the “wooden prince” rather than the real one, who stands by in abject frustration. The Fairy, who is monitoring all of this, causes the puppet to dance about, to the Princess's delight. Eventually, the Fairy takes pity on the lovelorn Prince and reverses the influences. Suddenly the Prince himself appeals to the Princess more, but Nature sees to it that she must also sacrifice something to achieve love, just as the Prince sacrificed his curly locks. She gives up her crown, and the Fairy elevates the couple into the realm of love. The dreamlike substance found in symbolism invites interpretation, and Balázs suggested one possibility:

The wooden puppet, which my prince makes in order to make his presence known to the princess, is an act of creation, embodying everything that an artist has to give, until it is perfectly and brilliantly lustrous, but leaving the artist himself empty and bereft. I was thinking here of the deep tragedy that artists frequently experience when an act of creation becomes a rival of the creator, and of the painful glory when a woman prefers the poem to the poet, the picture to the painter.

Balázs, who authored the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle, alsowrote a collection of fairytales praised by Thomas Mann as a “beautiful book,” as well as poetry, drama, an autobiographical novel, screenplays, film criticism and theory, and a work on the aesthetics of death.

As for the music, which resists summary, it is mysterious, evocative, haunting and sometimes ludic.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

April '25 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2025 23:53; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Release of the Week

The Trouble with Jessica

(Music Box Films)

When Jessica, the depressed friend of two middle-class couples, decides after dinner to hang herself in the garden, the foursome goes through hell—unexpected police visits, unexpected potential house buyer visits, a fan of Jessica’s book visits—as they try and move the body so an impending house sale won’t be affected.

Matt Winn’s scattershot black comedy (Winn also wrote the script with James Handel) has a great setup and quotable dialogue but soon goes overboard with ridiculous coincidences and unlikely reveals that make this start to drag even though it's only 89 minutes. The sledgehammer use of music doesn’t help either; at least the formidable cast—Olivia Williams, Shirley Henderson, Rufus Sewell, Alan Tudyk, and Indira Varma as Jessica—keeps things percolating even when it becomes risible instead of funny.

Streaming Release of the Week

Artie Shaw—Time Is All You’ve Got

(Film Movement Classics)

Brigitte Berman’s recently restored documentary of jazz clarinetist, composer and band leader Artie Shaw was cowinner of the 1986 Oscar for best documentary feature (along with Lee Grant’s Down and Out in America) is an engaging look at a complicated musical artist that benefits from a sit-down interview with Shaw, who’s a chatty and forthcoming subject.

Berman also uses lots of well-chosen vintage clips and interviews with fellow musicians and some of the women in his life (Shaw was married eight times) to present a sympathetic but never fawning portrait.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

The Outlaw Josey Wales

(Warner Bros)

In this 1976 western, Clint Eastwood plays the title character, who looks to avenge the slaughter of his wife and son on his Missouri farm by Union troops in the waning days of the Civil War—his joining the Confederates and facing down bounty hunters form the crux of the drama, which, at 137 minutes, is overlong if never dull.

Although Eastwood directs as laconically as ever, he conjures up a vivid atmosphere of lawlessness that outweighs the cliched moments. The UHD transfer is transfixing; extras include Richard Schickel’s commentary as well as new and vintage featurettes about Eastwood the filmmaker and western icon.

Pale Rider

(Warner Bros)

In this 1985 western, Clint Eastwood plays the title character (who’s nicknamed “Preacher”), arriving in a gold-rush town and finding himself in the middle of a clash between a lawless mining syndicate and several prospectors in a stripped-down but familiar western (Shane, anyone?) that makes director Eastwood its understated star, along with the charming presence of then teen performer Sydney Penny as one of the locals he protects.

There’s an excellent UHD transfer; extras include the usual new and vintage featurettes, along with the full-length 2010 documentary The Eastwood Factor.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Alchemy of the Piano

(Naxos)

Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi talks with inspirational keyboard practitioners from superstars Alfred Brendel and Maria João Pires to reclusive American Stephen Kovacevich and French priest Jean-Rodolphe Kars, who vividly dissects and plays the sacred music of Messiaen.

Piemontesi also takes a tour of the Swiss home of Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff with colleagues Yulianna Avdeeva and Zlata Chochieva. This lovely exploration of artistry and genius has the right balance of talk and performance to spread the gospel of the keyboard. The lone extra is an hour-long Rachmaninoff concert by Piemontesi, Avdeeva and Chochieva.

Russ Meyer’s Up!

(Severin Films)

This 1976 entry in an increasingly bizarre oeuvre begins with an orgy featuring Adolf Hitler (hiding out in a Bavarian castle in California under an assumed name) and gets progressively stranger—but Russ Meyer doesn’t care: he loves showing off buxom, attractive women onscreen, whether they are sexually ravished or violently violated, sometimes in the same scene.

Here he has real finds: leading ladies Raven De La Croix and Janet Wood are alluring and appealing personalities (they’re not really actresses) and the immortal Kitten Natividad—who was married to Meyer for a few years—plays the nude Greek chorus. The film has a good hi-def restoration; extras include a commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell and De La Croix interview.

CD Releases of the Week

Édouard Lalo—Le roi d'Ys

(Palazzetto Bru Zane)

Outside of France, Edouard Lalo (1823-92) is best known for his Symphonie espagnole, but this fantastical opera—which contains a lot of attractive music and a marvelous lead role for a mezzo-soprano—deserves a surer foothold in the repertoire based on this superb recording by the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and Hungarian National Choir under conductor György Vashegyi.

This fairy-tale evocation of a Breton city torn by war and filial jealousy begins with an appropriately drama overture and culminates with a thrilling evocation of a flood, and this disc’s soloists—led by the excellent American mezzo Kate Aldrich as Margared, whose decisions propel the story toward tragedy—make vocal magic.

The Complete Songs of Ravel

(Signum Classics)

The music of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is more varied than his greatest hit, the metronome-like Bolero, would suggest. His finely crafted songs, for example, are eclectic in the best sense. Pianist Malcolm Martineau, who has traversed the complete vocal works of Duparc, Fauré and Poulenc on disc, is the sensitive accompanist on nearly all of these graceful mélodies.

An array of singers—Lorna Anderson, Julie Boulianne, John Chest, Sarah Dufresne Dafydd Jones, Simon Keenlyside, Paula Murrihy, Nicky Spence and William Thomas—and instrumental combos (quartet, flutes, cello) greatly contribute to Martineau’s wonderfully alive exploration of such great song cycles as Shéhérazade, 3 Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé and Chansons madécasses.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Perform Soviet Era Classic & More

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 28 April 2025 14:12; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, April 23rd, I had the pleasure of attending an excellent concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the first of two on consecutive days—featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the distinguished direction of Andris Nelsons.

The event began splendidly with a marvelous realization—featuring the superb soloist Mitsuko Uchida—of Ludwig van Beethoven’s extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58, completed in 1806. The initial, Allegro moderato movement begins with the hushed playing of the solo piano; with the entrance of the orchestra, the music increases in intensity. Throughout much of this movement, the music has an almost celestial quality and it closes grandly. The ethos of the ensuing Andante co moto is somewhat starker and it ends inwardly and very quietly. Contrastingly, the Rondo finale, marked Vivace, is ebullient but with some song-like moments, and it concludes triumphantly.

The second half of the evening was comparably memorable, an admirable account of Dmitri Shostakovich’s ambitious, seldom performed, Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Op. 141, from 1971—it stood favorably, measured against the recent rendition in late February of the same work played by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Shostakovich commented on the piece as follows:

I was composing in the hospital, then I left the hospital and continued writing at my summer house—I just could not tear myself away from it. It’s one of those works that just completely carried me away, and maybe even one of my few compositions that seemed completely clear to me from the first note to the last.

The accomplished scholar of Soviet music—especially that of Sergei Prokofiev—Harlow Robinson, in a useful note on the program states:

To his close friend Isaac Glikman, the composer joked ironically that the 15th Symphony was “turning out to be lacking in ideals” (“bezideinaya”), a label often applied by Communist Party officials to work they found politically deficient.

The symphony is more purely “abstract” and enigmatic music than Shostakovich had recently written in the symphonic form, and is more rhapsodic in structure. The first movement, Allegretto, combines the manic energy of the William Tell motif with a humorous, sarcastic character recalling some of the composer’s early works; the composer called it, perhaps ironically, “just a toy shop.” In the somber, mournful second movement, the orchestral forces are often reduced to chamber size and to solo voices. A funeral march builds to a massive climax with large percussion forces before receding into a heavenly calm. Squealing and laughing woodwinds dominate the grotesque, darkly humorous scherzo, creating a sort of frantic dance atmosphere.

The first movement opens somewhat playfully—it amusingly quotes Gioachino Rossini’s famous Overture to his opera, William Tell—and remains so—it is eccentric but almost rushed at times. The succeeding Adagio is solemn, even lugubrious, while the Allegretto third movement is also quirky, even uncanny, but jocular too—it closes abruptly and unexpectedly. The annotator describes the finale thus:

The fourth movement opens with three references to Richard Wagner, beginning with the “fate” motif from the Ring cycle. The solo timpani line that follows suggests the rhythm of “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from the last Ring opera, Götterdämmerung.And the three notes (A-F-E) played by the first violins at the end of the introductory Adagio echo the opening notes of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. In the Allegretto, a pleasantly lyrical theme meanders through thinly scored string, woodwind, and brass passages. Then the mood darkens with the entry of the sinister marching passacaglia in the low strings. Eventually the lyrical theme joins in, and then again the Wagnerian motif. The relentless passacaglia theme builds to what Krzystof Meyer has described as a “soul-searing climax,” and then the music begins to fade and fragment into a weirdly ethereal coda, reminiscent of the Fourth Symphony, with knocking instruments tapping out what sounds like the ticking of a clock pronouncing the end of time, or asking a question.

Th artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.

April '25 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 23 April 2025 19:16; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII

(Sony/IMAX)

This 1972 concert film of Pink Floyd performing at the ancient Roman amphitheater in Pompeii—with no audience present—has been restored and remixed, giving fans a superior visual and aural experience. Adrian Maben’s documentary is a true artefact of its time, with an hour’s worth of Pompeii footage supplemented by interviews with Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright as well as glimpses of them at Abbey Road recording Dark Side of the Moon.

There’s a surfeit of crude, cliched visuals (split screens, front projection, superimposition, slow-motion) that haven’t aged well—but the film anticipates the MTV video era and remains an eye- (and ear-) opening document of Pink Floyd right before the group became rock royalty.

Eric LaRue

(Magnolia)

The devastating fallout of a school shooting is the subject of this earnest, often static but unsettling drama by actor Michael Shannon, making his feature directing debut; based on a play and script by Brett Neveu, Shannon’s film centers on Janice, mother of Eric, who fatally shot three of his classmates.

Her interactions with her husband, pastor, victims’ mothers and her son—both in prison and as a young child in her memories—make up this occasionally piercing but also plodding character study. Unsurprisingly, Shannon’s cast is superb, led by Judy Greer (Janice)—also impressive are Alexander Sarsgaard (husband), Paul Sparks (pastor), Tracy Letts (preacher) and Annie Parisse and Kate Arrington (victims’ moms).

1-800-On-Her-Own

(8 Above)

The perfect documentary subject—endlessly personable and confessional—is alternative music pioneer Ani DiFranco, the Buffalo-born musician turned entrepreneur (she has her own record label, Righteous Babe) who’s released dozens of albums in the past three decades.

In Dana Flor’s intimate fly-on-the-wall portrait, DiFranco—now in her early 50s—must navigate how to remain relevant in a business very different from when she began and how to keep her artistic integrity while raising her two daughters. The film’s title refers to the toll-free phone number for her Buffalo office in the early days; it also describes the fierce independence that’s marked DiFranco’s career.

The President’s Wife

(Cohen Media)

In director-cowriter Léa Domenach’s feature debut, Catherine Deneuve is a delight as Bernadette Chirac, France’s First Lady from 1995-2007; her deadpan delivery borders on bemusement as Bernadette navigates the tricky journey from being a loyal president’s wife to becoming a cultural icon in her own right.

Although Deneuve unsurprisingly wears Karl Lagerfeld’s clothes perfectly—and director Domenach shows cleverness in her tongue-in-cheek use of a church choir—but even superstar Deneuve’s glamour can’t make this light satire more than an amusingly slight concoction.

The Shrouds

(Sideshow/Janus)

David Cronenberg’s latest is an inert meditation on grief (his wife Carolyn Zeifman died in 2017) that plays like a lumpen parody of a Cronenberg film, with howlers in the dialogue, embarrassingly stiff acting by Vincent Cassel as the director’s stand-in, and a bunch of plot and thematic threads that pile up but go nowehere.

Even a bizarrely entertaining turn by Guy Pearce and appearances by the appealing Diane Kruger (in two roles) and the always welcome Sandrine Holt (in a lazily-written part) can’t drum up much interest. Despite Cronenberg’s attempt at dealing with the finality of death in his singular way, his film has the slick look of a feature-length Tesla commercial (Cassel drives a white Tesla throughout), which is the lasting memory of this farrago.

The Ugly Stepsister

(IFC Films)

If unblinking body horror is your thing, then this twisted take on Cinderella could fill the bill—writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt follows a desperate young woman who has always been second fiddle to her beautiful stepsister and how she takes the ultimate desperate measures to ensure that (of course) the prince’s glass slipper fits her foot—even though her mother already “fixed” her nose, teeth and eyelashes to no avail.

Done with a minimum of humor and maximum of nastiness, it’s skillfully, even stylishly, made and enacted with commitment by its cast—too bad the final shot fails at being simultaneously dark and darkly humorous.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

In Custody/The Proprietor

(Cohen Film Collection)

Ismail Merchant (who died in 2005 at age 68) was the producer of his professional and personal partner James Ivory’s films, including the award-winning A Room With a View and Howards End. But Merchant also directed his own features, including this pair of very different character studies.

While In Custody is rather stuffy and clunky as it explores the clash between a skeptical interviewer and a famous Urdu poet in India, The Proprietor showcases a wonderful Jeanne Moreau as a French Holocaust survivor who leaves Manhattan to return to her Parisian childhood home—along with its attendant ghosts. Both films have good hi-def transfers; extras include interviews with Ivory and Merchant; a commentary on The Proprietor; and Merchant’s 1974 short film, Mahatma and the Mad Boy.

CD Releases of the Week

Tamara Stefanovich—Organized Delirium

Pierre Boulez—Live pour Quatuor

(Pentatone)

Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)—theorist, conductor, activist—was a formidable composer who never held to a rigid orthodoxy as he became one of the most uncompromising modernist composers of the 20th century. These two discs provide a window into his chamber music—his astonishingly complex Piano Sonata No. 2 and the equally challenging Livre pour quatuor (Book for Quartet).

Boulez was notorious for not “finishing” his pieces—he would tinker over the course of years, even decades. That wasn’t the case with the sonata, which Tamara Stefanovich (who collaborated with Boulez) plays with passion and conviction on her new CD—along with tackling other important 20th century sonatas by Hans Eisler, Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Livre pour quatuor is another story; the bulk was written in 1948-49, but Boulez rewrote sections and never completed the fourth movement. The Diotima Quartet—whose members worked with Boulez on his final revisions before he died—plays this cerebral hour-long work with clarity and muscle, even premiering the reconstructed fourth movement on this recording.

Reviews

New York Philharmonic Performs Bartók at Lincoln Center

April '25 Digital Week IV

Boston Symphony Orchestra Perform Soviet Era Classic & More

April '25 Digital Week III

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