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October '12 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Sunday, 28 October 2012 10:00
Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Alcatraz—Complete Series 
 (Warners)
This offbeat hybrid of detective and supernatural series, which never had a chance to survive—seeing the first season, it’s probably for the best—follows a group of “detectives” hunting down criminals who disappeared at Alcatraz back in 1963 (its closing was a cover story) and are reappearing in present-day San Francisco, committing crimes decades later. Sound confusing? Join the club.
A general stylishness and a cast headed by Sam Neill help, but the show couldn’t escape its own inconsistencies. The hi-def image shimmers on Blu; extras include deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.
The Ambassador 
 (Image)
Renegade documentary filmmaker Mads Brugger poses as a racist European colonial who wants to make a bundle of money in Africa, and through hidden cameras, provides proof that the black market and corrupt politicians are alive and well.
Brugger, shooting fish in a barrel, is too pleased with his own prankster duplicity to make any truly pertinent points, unfortunately. Brugger’s commentary is entertaining but also lacks insights. The movie looks quite good in hi-def.
Blade Runner—30th Anniversary Edition 
(Warners)
Ridley Scott’s 1982 dark drama about “replicants” and the bounty hunter tracking them down has become, after an initial bumpy ride, one of the seminal sci-fi films. This 30th anniversary Blu-ray set, is essentially a re-do of the film’s 25th anniversary Blu-ray set, has made improvements: the upgrade makes the film’s stunning images even more stunning.
The myriad versions are still present—the original version and international cut, the 1991 directors’ cut, the workprint version, and Scott’s preferred 2007 final cut—and there’s also Scott’s commentary, a crew commentary, and the documentary Dangerous Days.
Exorcism and Female Vampire 
(Kino/Redemption)
These steamy Jess Franco horror flicks are typical of his work: both 1973’s Exorcism and 1975’s Female Vampire provide ample opportunities for Franco’s gorgeous and buxom companion Lina Romay to show off her assets in the name of terrorizing audiences, but the silly stories mitigate any real eroticism.
The Blu-ray images of both films, while far from perfect, are the best representations of these films so far on home video; extras include shorter, blander re-edits of both films, a retrospective documentary and tribute to Romay, who died earlier this year.
Magic City—Complete First Season 
(Anchor Bay)
This new series, set in a Miami hotel in 1959, is another TV nostalgic trip riding the coattails of Mad Men. That it’s on Starz lets it get away with nudity and language still not allowed on other networks.
There’s dramatic intrigue aplenty in these eight episodes as the mob wants its claws in the hotel, along with Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy clan, and clusters of comely women. This stylish soap has the period sets and costumes down pat—but the characters lack depth. The Blu-ray image looks fine; the extras are featurettes.
Magic Mike 
(Warners)
In Steven Soderbergh’s latest on-the-fly character study, that some of the hottest guys in movies (re: my wife), like Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, play strippers overshadows the fact that this is Soderbergh’s third enjoyable movie in a row (after Contagion and Haywire), a sympathetic, non-condescending look at how regular folks make ends meet during economic troubles.
That Olivia Munn shows her bare breasts is a very fair trade-off for my having to endure the female-scream inducing dance moves. The hi-def image is first-rate; extras are extended dance sequences and a making-of featurette.
Neil Young—Journeys 
 (Sony)
Director Jonathan Demme accompanied Neil Young to his old haunts in and around Toronto and filmed him at a solo show in grand old Massey Hall. There are unguarded moments of Neil driving through his old neighborhoods, but most of the film rightly takes place onstage, where Young delivers incendiary versions of tunes both new and old.
Classics like “After the Gold Rush” and “Ohio”—where the only explicitly political propaganda is inserted by Demme as he shows photos of the college students killed at Kent State by the National Guard—are front and center. The Blu-ray image is very good; extras include two Demme and Young interviews and a making-of featurette.
Peter Gabriel—Classic Albums: So 
(Eagle Vision)
Peter Gabriel’s So turned a cult artist into a superstar in 1986 with hits “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” (“In Your Eyes” became a smash later in the movie Say Anything). In this fascinating look at So’s creation, Gabriel, co-producer Daniel Lanois, engineer Kevin Killen and musicians Tony Levin, Jerery Marotta and Manu Kache discuss the recording of Gabriel’s seminal record.
I’m still unconvinced “In Your Eyes” should be the last song, because it upsets the familiar balance, but if Gabriel wants it there, who am I to argue? The 60-minute program is reinforced by 35 minutes of additional interviews.
Sunday Bloody Sunday 
(Criterion)
Director John Schlesinger and screenwriter Penelope Gilliat’s account of a bi-sexual triangle was groundbreaking in its onscreen depiction of homosexual lovers back in 1971. But it seems tame today, a snapshot of an era when being gay was swept under the rug. If Schlesinger and Gilliatt do little more than update romantic movies with a twist, the splendid trio of Glenda Jackson, Murray Head and Peter Finch is the main reason to watch.
The Blu-ray gives an accurate representation of talented cinematographer Billy Williams’ intention; extras include interviews with Williams, Head, Schlesinger’s lover Michael Childers and biographer William J. Mann.
DVDs of the Week
DL Hughley—Reset 
(Image)
For this latest standup appearance, D.L. Hughley performs in New Jersey for an hilarious hour of uproarious observations and stinging wit.
Although the ear-opening section of Hughley’s hour-long routine centers on his autistic son—whom the doting father has no compunctions about mocking, albeit lovingly—he also takes on other, less incendiary topics, all to his audience’s fall-out-of-their-chairs amusement.
The Firm—Complete Series 
(e one)
Picking up 10 years after the original John Grisham novel (and Sydney Pollack film) left off, this 22-episode series follows lawyer Mitch McDeere leaving the witness protection program with his wife and daughter and trying to start a new life—and law career.
There are twisty turns galore, and the characterizations are fairly complex for once; the actors, including Josh Lucas and Molly Parker as Mitch and his wife, are up to the task. Extras include interviews and featurettes.
Great Museums 
 (PBS)
This thorough four-disc set comprises 24 programs that show off our best depositories of art, history and culture: along with obvious choices like MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s a good mix of regional museums like the Delta Blues Museum and California Surf Museum and national museums like the National D-Day Museum and American Indian Museum.
The 30-to-60 minute programs provide informative overviews of such uniquely American museums as Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame or New York’s Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
Il Postino 
(Sony Classical)
The immensely charming 1995 film with Philippe Noiret and Massimo Troisi—about an ordinary postman who befriends Chilean poet Pablo Neruda while falling in love with a beautiful waitress—has been transformed into a lovely opera by composer Daniel Catan.
Placido Domingo (Neruda), Charles Castronovo (postman) and Amanda Squitieri (waitress) are wonderfully affecting both vocally and histrionically, which makes the story so personal and profound. In an awful parallel, Troisi died right after the film finished shooting and Catan died just months after his opera premiered in Los Angeles.
The Invisible War  
(Docurama)
This powerful documentary by Kirby Dick—who also made This Film Is Not Yet Rated—shockingly recounts our military’s worst secret: that female soldiers have a better chance of being raped or sexually abused by fellow soldiers than they do of being wounded or killed on the battlefield.
Several courageous women step forward to discuss what happened to them and how their bosses stonewalled their complaints (in at least one instance, because he was involved). It’s a sadly enlightening commentary on a male-centric world. Extras include a commentary, extended interviews and a deleted scene.

Wish Me Luck—Complete Series 
(Acorn)
This British made-for-TV drama series, originally telecast in 1988-9, tells the gripping true story of English women who were Allied secret agents while France was occupied by the Nazis. These 6 discs include 23 hour-long episodes from all 3 seasons, beginning with the fall of France and leading up to D-Day, as the London home office gives the female spies orders for dangerous missions to keep the Germans occupied.
A superlative cast is led by Jane Asher (who is best known to Beatles fans as Paul McCartney’s pre-Linda fiancée) as the embattled chief of the home office.
CD of the Week
Salonen: Nyx/Violin Concerto 
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Soloist Leila Josefowicz sizzles on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto, a technically formidable work in which she plays almost constantly, easily dispatching its many runs and bringing intensity to a less than impassioned piece.
The disc is rounded out by Nyx, an interesting if disjointed workout for the musicians of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, led persuasively by the composer himself.

Theater Roundup: "Virginia Woolf" on Bway; "Freedom of City," "Modern Terrorism," Heresy" off-Bway

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Saturday, 27 October 2012 20:00
Written by Kevin Filipski

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Written by Edward Albee; directed by Pam Mackinnon

Performances through February 24, 2013

The Freedom of the City

Written by Brian Friel; directed by Ciaran O’Reilly

Performances through November 25, 2012

Modern Terrorism, or: They Who Want to Kill and How We Learn to Love Them

Written by Jon Kern; directed by Peter DeBois

Performances through November 4, 2012

Heresy

Written by A. R. Gurney; directed by Jim Simpson

Performances through November 4, 2012

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in an incendiary new staging by Pam Mackinnon Virginia Michael Brosilowtransplanted from Chicago to Broadway, proves that Edward Albee was once a vital, important playwright—which is hard to believe, considering the substandard Albee plays we’ve been seeing in New York in recent years, from The Goat or Who Is Sylvia and Me Myself and I to this year’s disastrous return of The Lady from Dubuque.

No matter: 1962’s Virginia Woolf, is by far Albee’s best play. It recounts one very long night for two couples in a small university town at the house of longtime history professor George and wife (and the college president’s daughter) Martha, as new and young professor Nick and wife Honey arrive for drinks and talk that turns nasty.

Sure, there are the familiar Albee tropes: the metaphysical grandstanding, unnecessary foul language, parsing of words and phrases, and surrealist touches, but Albee smartly keeping his high-wire dramatics going until an anti-climactic final scene. But since these couples—led by the endlessly squabbling, duking-it-out George and Martha—are multi-dimensional characters we are actually interested in, Virginia Woolf remains an emotionally charged three hours in the theater.

In a play about how words can hurt mercilessly, Mackinnon’s directing re-charges the physical confrontations into something that adds immeasurably to the conflicts between and among the couples. Although Todd Rosenthal’s set is a bit too gorgeously appointed for a mere professor’s house, it certainly provides a superbly-detailed ring for these figurative boxing matches to play out on. And what acting!

The four Chicago-based actors give flawless performances. Madison Dirks makes a perfectly annoying Nick and Carrie Coon—except for her overdone drunken scenes—is a perfectly weak Honey. Amy Morton, whose towering acting in August: Osage County was an indelible theater moment, plays Martha with remarkable nuance, making believable both her barbs at George and her underlying sadness.

Pacing Morton word for word and blow by blow is Tracy Letts: although I’ve admired his plays August: Osage County, Bug and Killer Joe—and he’s been onstage in Chicago for years, it’s my first time seeing him. And he’s a revelation: his George gives as good as he gets, making a much better sparring partner for Martha than an ineffectual Bill Irwin did for an overbearing Kathleen Turner in the dodgy 2005 Broadway revival.

City Carol RoseggBrian Friel’s The Freedom of the City—which reports on the deaths of a trio of Irish locals at the hands of the English—was written in 1973, following the killing of several people on what’s known as “Bloody Sunday,” which Friel alludes to in his most explicitly political play.

Friel is unapologetically didactic, humanizing his martyred trio and letting the British officials act like inhumane monsters, which may be truthful but makes for lopsided drama. Still, Friel’s poetic flair takes flight in several monologues that personalize an otherwise dispassionate tract. Ciaran O’Reilly’s straightforward directing, a solid group of actors, and Charlie Corcoran’s imaginative set richly transform the Irish Rep’s tiny stage into the volatile streets of Derry.

Two plays about our uncertain post-9/11 world are little more than Saturday Night Live skits stretched too thin. Jon Kern’s Modern Terrorism: Or They Who Want to Kills Us and How We Learn to Love Them (an obvious allusion to Stanley Kubrick’s classic satire Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) finds dark humor in three inept Middle East conspirators plotting to blow up the Empire State Building.

Skillful comic acting by Utkarsh Ambudkar, William Jackson Harper and Nitya Vidyasagar as the would-be bad guys and gal is blunted by Steven Boyer’s broad Jack Black impression as a doofus neighbor who stumbles upon them. Peter DuBois’ direction can’t give shape to Kern’s mostly misfiring comedy.

Old pro A.R. Gurney alternates between affectionate comedies of manners and screeds against former President Bush’s wartime bungling and overreaching: his Heresy is an example of the latter. In the near-future in what’s now called New America, a prefect named Pontius Pilate is visited by old friends Joseph and Mary, upset that their son Chris (without the final “T”) has been thrown in jail for no apparent reason.

Strained Biblical parallels aside, Gurney and director Jim Simpson keep things percolating amusingly until this paper-thin satire is resolved in 75 painless minutes. An accomplished cast led by Reg E. Cathey, Annette O’Toole and Karen Ziemba polishes off Gurney’s one-liners with comic zest, putting off the playwright’s worries about a future police state to a later date.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, New York, NY

http://virginiawoolfbroadway.com

The Freedom of the City

Irish Repertory Theatre, 136 West 22nd Street, New York, NY

http://irishrep.org

Modern Terrorism, or: They Who Want to Kill and How We Learn to Love Them

Second Stage Theatre, 307 West 43rd Street, New York, NY

http://2st.com

Heresy

Flea Theatre, 41 White Street, New York, NY

http://theflea.org

Concert Review: Shawn Colvin at City Winery, NY

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 26 October 2012 10:00
Written by Kevin Filipski

For the past few years, Grammy winning singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin has made the Shawn CDintimate Soho club City Winery her base when playing New York City during her annual fall “residency.” (She also comes to Chicago’s own City Winery for concerts on November 7 and 8.)

It was no different on October 25, the first of a four-night residency through October 28. For 100 minutes, Colvin held her audience in thrall with just her voice, acoustic guitar and pocketful of superb songs: for the second half of the concert, she was joined by Mary Chapin Carpenter, whose low harmonies beautifully accentuated Colvin’s own voice. The pair had just flown back from an eight-show run in England, Ireland and Scotland—but jetlag was nowhere in evidence.


Colvin, whose latest Nonesuch album, All Fall Down, came out in June—following a six-year hiatus after the release of These Four Walls—writes deceptively simple songs that incisively dissect relationships with straightforward but cutting lyrics. On display was a trio of melancholy tunes from the new record, “Knowing What I Know Now,” “Seven Time’s the Charm” and “Change Is on the Way.” Colvin, whose engagingly chatty banter between songs is an essential component of her live shows, wryly noted that she got one of her few upbeat songs, “Fill Me Up,” out of the way early in order to fool her fans into thinking she’s a “happy” performer.


But her fans are as savvy as she, and she knows it: in addition to her songwriting talent, Colvin also is a terrific cover artist—it’s not for nothing that an early album of hers, Cover Girl, comprised tunes of artists like the Police, Talking Heads and Greg Brown, whose “One Cool Remove” was a highlight of the evening. For this concert, Colvin balanced eight originals with nine covers, beginning with her signature re-working of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”


Colvin and Carpenter were at their vocal best during the four-song covers-only encore, beginning with a stark, emotional version of the Beatles’ “I’ll Be Back” and ending with, according to Colvin, “the sweetest song we know”: Willie Nelson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes.”


Shawn Colvin
October 25-28, 2012
City Winery, New York, NY
November 7-8, 2012
City Winery, Chicago, IL

October '12 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Sunday, 21 October 2012 05:00
Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Au Pair Girls 
(Kino)
A lot of the late 60s-early 70s T&A movies are guilty pleasures, but this doesn’t even reach that exulted level. From its ear-splittingly awful title tune, this hackneyed flick follows the unarousing London exploits of a quartet of young women just arrived from the continent.

Even by the era’s low standards, Girls never rises to the occasion, despite ample nudity during many compromising positions. The Blu-ray image, obviously from a bad source, also disappoints.

The Barrens 
(Anchor Bay)
Set in New Jersey woods, this would-be creepy thriller channels superior movies like The Hills Have Eyes (setting) and The Shining(father goes insane) without approaching either in quality.

While his cast is adequate—although it’s off-putting to see Mia Kirshner in a drab stepmom role—writer-director Darren Lynn Bousman never figures out how to make the horror real rather than risible. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras are a director/cinematographer commentary and a deleted scene.

Broadway—
The American Musical  
(PBS)
Michael Kantor’s six-part historical overview of America’s great contribution to theater spans its beginnings in 1893 to 2004, when this film was originally shown on PBS.

Crammed full of amazing excerpts from classic musicals and interviews with the likes of Stephen Sondheim and Carol Channing, this monumental undertaking is narrated by Julie Andrews—a British singing superstar at home on the American stage throughout her career. The Blu-ray image is decent; voluminous extras include three hours of additional interviews and a featurette, Wicked: The Road to Broadway.

A Cat in Paris
Chico and Rita 
(New Video)
These foreign animated features prove there is life left in the non-computerized cartoons we’re used to. Paris is a charming adventure about a feline who takes off for the rooftops of the world’s most beautiful city each night, while Chicois a romantic glimpse at the Cuban and American music scenes before and after Castro, and by extension savvily political.

Both films’ hand-drawn animation look eye-poppingly good on Blu-ray; Paris extras include a short film, and Chico extras include a making-of featurette, directors’ commentary and soundtrack CD.

Chernobyl Diaries 
(Warners)
When dumb American tourists visit Pripyat, the town near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, they get more than the thrills they bargained for: after the van breaks down, they are attacked by mutants and are picked off one by one.

This might have made a diverting little thriller if it wasn’t yet another “found-footage” feature, a gimmick that seems never ending. The ending is particularly yawn-inducing; an alternate ending, included among the extras along with a deleted scene and featurette about Chernobyl itself, is more clever. The graininess of the “shot cheaply” look lends itself well to Blu-ray.

Fear and Desire 
(Kino)
Stanley Kubrick’s 1953 debut, though far from auspicious, contains the seeds of his later, superior war films Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. An otherwise naïve effort, it’s unsurprising Kubrick never wanted it from being shown. That now, years after his death, it reappears is due to the Kubrick estate’s ignoring his wishes, an about face from immediately after his death.

All the better for fans, I suppose. The B&W movie is undistinguished in every way except visually, and the Blu-ray transfer is strong enough to make fans happy they’ve finally seen Kubrick’s worst film. The lone extra is 1953’s The Seafarers, Kubrick’s 28-minute short about merchant seamen, most interesting as Kubrick’s first foray into color.

Khovanshchina 
(Opus Arte)
Although Modest Mussorgsky’s epic opera details 17thcentury Russian history—a rebellion against Peter the Great’s western reforms—Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2007 Munich production instead updates it with modern dress that makes the drama nonsensically absurd.

It’s too bad, for the singers (led by John Daszak and Valery Alexejev) and Bayerische Staatsoper Orchestra, led by conductor Kent Nagano, stirringly perform what the composer himself described as a “national music drama.” The static visuals do look clear in hi-def, and the music sounds fantastic.

Little Shop of Horrors
Whatever Happened to Mary Jane 
(Warners)
Based on the campy Broadway musical, Frank Oz’s 1990 Little Shop tries to be scary and funny simultaneously, but the creaky, low-brow material trips it up: only Steve Martin escapes with his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a nasty dentist (which owes something to his Maxwell in the botched Sgt Pepper movie).

Robert Aldrich’s 1962 camp fest, Mary Jane, smartly trains its cameras on Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and lets them go at it. Both movies have top-notch hi-def transfers; extras include Oz’s commentary on Shop, and a commentary and Davis and Crawford featurettes on Baby.

Mad Men—Complete Season 5 
(Lionsgate)
In the fifth season of the perennial Best Drama Emmy winner, the divide between protagonist Don Draper and the ‘60s becomes more pronounced, visualized by his pulling the needle on the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”: Draper doesn’t get it….get it?

Despite its production sheen and committed acting by a large and interesting cast, Mad Men isn’t as brilliantly groundbreaking as defenders claim: its originality is more a case of nostalgia for a bygone era, which it captures well. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras include interviews, featurettes and commentaries.

Produced by George Martin 
(Eagle Vision)
Best known as the Beatles’ producer, George Martin’s storied career before and after his amazing Fab Four studio work is chronicled by his son Giles, who asks him about his time at EMI and afterwards, with Martin engagingly and modestly discussing his work with comedy legends like Peter Sellers and the Goons, and what he did when he wasn’t in the studio with John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Paul and Ringo also sit down with Martin, and the mutual respect among the men is obvious even while they joke around together. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras include 52 minutes of additional interviews.

DVDs of the Week
Bill Moyers—Great Thinkers 
(Athena)
Brave New World 
(Acorn)
Yet another set of Bill Moyers’ excellent interviews has the PBS host speaking with famous intellectuals including Noam Chomsky, Jonas Salk and movie producer David Puttnam.

Brave New World is an intelligent British series featuring Stephen Hawking, who introduces episodes of fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may well change our very lives, like cars that drive themselves and wheelchairs motored by the occupant’s brain power.

The Lovers’ Guide—
Original Collection and Essential Collection 
(True Mind)
These quintessential sex-ed DVD releases feature explicit but clinical footage of couples as narrators explain how men and women can enjoy better sexual experiences.

The two five-disc sets, the Original Collection and the Essential Collection, summarize basic and advanced lessons for those who want to improve their sex lives. There’s also a one-disc primer, Sexual Positions, for those whose budget doesn’t allow picking up either (or both!) of the collections.

Nazi Collaborators 
(Shanachie)
Dramatizing the horrific stories of those inhuman collaborators who willingly helped the Nazi regime murder their fellow citizens, comrades, friends and even families, this four-disc set deals with dozens of such people, from the Polish Jew Chaim Rumkowski to traitors from Belgium, Croatia, Greece, Holland, even Germany.

Each one-hour program lucidly tells one story, interviewing surviving witnesses and showing compelling footage that underline unbelievable but true tragedies.

Olmsted and America's Urban Parks
(PBS)
This hour-long PBS documentary—narrated by Kerry Washington and with Kevin Kline as Olmstead—about American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted informatively provides biographical bits and glimpses of grandest creations, starting with Manhattan’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

I know there are dozens of his glorious spaces spread across the country, but not even mentioning—let alone giving any face time to—his incredible achievement designing Buffalo’s linked park system is a crime.

30 Beats
(Lionsgate)
Writer-director Alexis Lloyd’s tired look at ten New Yorkers’ roundelays during a steaming hot day is an unnecessary update of Arthur Schnitzler’s classic drama La Ronde.

There’s a sense of arbitariness to the structure, which a better director would more interestingly tease out; with few exceptions—Condola Rashad in the first and last episodes most particularly—there’s little insight nor, for those so inclined, any titillation.

2016—Obama’s America 
(Lionsgate)
This mostly fact-free documentary hopes to scare us about President Obama’s Otherness. What’s surprising is that Dinesh D’Souza is an outsider himself, so his pointing out Obama’s foreignness bumps up against out-of-context insinuations that are easily refuted, like a Winston Churchill bust taken out of the White House not because Obama hates imperialism, but because it was returned after a loan.

The casual linking of Obama to anti-Americanism—because a friend of his father has such ideas, so must Obama by implication—is most troublesome. D’Souza flies around the world, but 2016 is no travelogue: this slapdash doc is so ideologically rigid and pandering that only those who already hate Obama will fall for it.

CDs of the Week
Alison Balsom: 
Sound the Trumpet 
(EMI Classics)
Trumpeter Alison Balsom returns with a beguiling disc of works by Handel and Purcell. Although the baroque music world is one I return to far less often than others, Balsom’s assured technique on historically correct valveless trumpets carried me through excerpts from works like Handel’s Water Music and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

Superior cameos by singers Iestyn Davies and Lucy Crowe don’t overshadow Balsom, who has the last word with a technically astonishing performance of Handel’s Oboe Concerto, modified for her triumphant trumpeting.

Bedrich Smetana: 
The Bartered Bride 
(Harmonia Mundi)
Smetana’s perennial folk-opera favorite—and the breakthrough Czech opera that anticipated Dvorak and, later, Janacek—gets a glistening performance by a group of mainly Czech artists, beginning with Jiri Belohlavek (who conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra with brio) and extending to such wonderful singers like Dana Buresova, Tomas Juhas and Jozef Benci.

From the famous overture’s irresistible opening, Smetana’s masterly melodic music sweeps the listener away for over two enjoyable hours.

More Articles...

  1. Theater Roundup: 'Grace,' "Cyrano' on Broadway; 'Him,' 'Harper Regan' off Broadway
  2. October '12 Digital Week II
  3. 2012 NYFF Masterworks Sidebar Showcases Rare Russian Silent & Classic American Indies

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