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2022 Summer Festivals—Bard Summerscape and Tanglewood

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 12 August 2022 21:27; Written by Kevin Filipski

Bard Summerscape

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Through August 14, 2022

Fishercenter.bard.edu

Tanglewood

Lenox, Mass.

Through September 4, 2022

tanglewood.org

Richard Strauss' opera The Silent Woman at Bard Summerscape
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

More than two years into the pandemic, summer music festivals are getting back to normal. There were still masks being worn in the Sosnoff Theater at Bard College, whose annual Bard Summerscape returned to its lovely campus two-plus hours north of New York City, for a Richard Strauss operatic rarity, Der schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), but at Tanglewood, on the equally bucolic campus in the Berkshires, masks were optional for concerts at the outdoor Koussevitzky Music Shed and the indoor Seiji Ozawa Hall.

The Silent Woman contains some of Strauss’ most luscious and elegant music at the service of a knockabout comedy that may have seemed beneath the composer of such opera masterworks as Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Capriccio. The libretto, by the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and based on, of all things a play by the Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson, concerns Sir Morosus, a rich and retired admiral who cannot abide noise of any kind.

Enter his beloved nephew, Henry, who has, to the morose Morosus’ consternation, joined a opera troupe and even married one of the performers, Aminta. Morosus disinherits his nephew in a fit of pique. Morosus’ barber and Henry then concoct a ruse that a disguised, “quiet” Aminta will become the old man’s wife—only to then noisily force a divorce, which will presumably reinstate Henry’s inheritance. The rest of the opera concerns the rough-and-tumble comedy of Aminta, Henry, the Barber and the troupe making life a living hell for Morosus.

German director Christian Räth’s decision to stage The Silent Woman as an opera-within-an-opera isn’t very original, but it’s effective in this context: even if it’s far too long (over four hours) for the amusing if slight material, this elaborate in-joke celebrating performers leans on Mattie Ullrich’s garishly funny costumes, Räth’s own cleverly tongue-in-cheek sets and Rick Fisher’s seductive lighting.

The singers are up to the task of Strauss’ luminous but demanding vocal writing. Harold Wilson (Morosus), Edward Nelson (Barber) and David Portillo (Henry) sound terrific in the main male roles, but the true focus is on Jana McIntyre, who plays the spirited Aminta with a lightness and buoyant vocalism that marks her as a fantastic interpreter of Strauss heroines. Leon Botstein capably leads the American Symphony Orchestra—and James Bagwell does the honors for the Bard Festival Chorale—in yet another of Botstein’s necessary operatic excavations.

* * * *

At Tanglewood, two concerts in one day (July 31) brought a surfeit of great sounds. First, for the afternoon concert in the shed, the Boston Symphony Orchestra was led by its music director, Andris Nelsons, in wonderfully precise readings of two works by women: first, the world premiere of Elizabeth Ogonek’s vigorous and humorous orchestral workout, Starling Variations; and 19th century French composer Louise Ferrenc’s derivative but propulsive Symphony No. 3.

Then, after intermission, we got to witness a master at work: English pianist Paul Lewis, finishing his traversal of all five Beethoven piano concertos in a single weekend with the monumental fifth concerto, the “Emperor.” Lewis was scintillating but in masterly control throughout, and even the most jaded audience member responded enthusiastically to this superlative performance.

That evening, it was the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra’s turn in the intimate Ozawa Hall. This ensemble, put together every summer with students chosen from all across the country and around the world, spends eight weeks rehearsing and playing together, and this concert of lesser-known 20th-century pieces made from an illuminating and impressive night of music.

The conductors comprised two Tanglewood student fellows and two established veterans. The fellows were Nicolo Foron from Italy, who led the opener, Debussy’s Printemps, and Rita Castro Blanco from Portugal, who was on the podium for Lumina by Olly Wilson. Both had fine command of the orchestra in difficult but accessible works. In between, Ades led the ensemble in a finely articulated reading of Agon, one of Stravinsky’s 12-tone works.

The evening ended with a rousing version of Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, led by JoAnn Falletta, the longtime music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, making her belated Tanglewood debut at this concert and making sure with this bracing performance that she will be welcomed back.

August '22 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 11 August 2022 01:11; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

I Love My Dad

(Magnolia Pictures)

Based on writer-director-star James Morosin’s own experiences, this darkly comic character study dissects young Franklin’s frayed relationship with Chuck, his estranged father, and how Chuck, wanting to remain connected, ends up catfishing Franklin by creating a fake Facebook profile for a local waitress named Becca and responding to Franklin’s ever more affectionate texting.

It all remains a bit creepy, as it’s supposed to be, but Morosin isn’t an accomplished enough filmmaker to make it more insightful. Still, Patton Oswalt gives one of his best performances as Chuck and newcomer Claudia Sulewski is delightful as the unwitting Becca, whom Chuck morphs into Franklin’s dream woman.

Medusa

(Music Box Films)

In Anita Rocha da Silveira’s toughminded satire, Mari and a group of likeminded evangelical young women prowl the streets physically abusing those they deem to be too sinful, even while remain blissfully (or is that willfully?) unaware that they are helping to promote a fascistic regime that is also deeply misogynist.

The problem with the film is that, after setting up this unsettling glimpse of contemporary society rife with hypocrisy—which has its parallels to what is actually happening in her native Brazil and elsewhere—da Silveira concentrates on eye-popping colors and visual style, so much that the repetitiveness becomes grating after two hours. But in lead actress Mari Oliveria the director has a remarkably vital collaborator.

Resurrection

(IFC Films)

Even a powerhouse performance by Rebecca Hall can’t save this risible, ultimately imbecile concoction by director/writer Andrew Semans, who has made an unholy, always grating hybrid of the worst impulses of David Cronenberg and Peter Greenaway (even the score by Jim Williams at times sounds like what Michael Nyman used to turn out for Greenaway).

What might have been a slow-burning psychological horror story about a woman whose past returns in the form of an abusive ex is, instead, ridiculously obvious, signaling its unsubtlety 20 minutes in, when Hall dreams about a finding something cooking in her oven. It’s all downhill from there, with nary a shred of narrative or dramatic coherence, let alone anything incisive, to be found.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Apples

(Cohen Media)

Greek director Christos Nikou’s intimate study of identity loss, set during a worldwide pandemic that leaves its victims with no memories, follows an ordinary man, Aris, whose amnesia puts him in a recovery program. As Aris builds a new life that includes new memories, Nikou gently suggests, through razor-sharp images that take in the full absurdity of modern life, that the way out of a global catastrophe might start from within; it is an understated but humanizing drama.

The tight 4x3 aspect ratio perfectly reflects the protagonist’s claustrophobic world and is nicely rendered on the excellent Blu-ray transfer; extras are two interviews with Nikou, one including executive producer Cate Blanchett.

Battle of the Worlds

(Film Detective)

Describing this cheesy sci-fi flick as a B-movie damns it with faint praise, as Italian director Antonio Margheriti crams much mediocrity into the 80 minutes that make up this loud, empty exercise in “the world’s going to end” melodrama.

Only Claude Rains, as a veteran scientist who’s humanity’s last hope, does what might be charitably called acting, and the Z-grade special effects are laughably amateurish throughout. A bonus featurette about Margheriti, by film historian Tim Lucas, and audio commentary by film historian Justin Humphreys end up making the case that this might be best seen on a tiny B&W screen.

DVD Release of the Week

Fanny—The Right to Rock

(Film Movement)

I thought I knew my classic rock, but Fanny—an all-female hard-rock group that released albums and toured in the early ’70s to critical acclaim but popular indifference—was a band I knew nothing about, so happily, Bobbi Jo Hart’s documentary sets things right by chronicling the women’s long-ago career, comeback and how those in the know (like David Bowie) hyped them.

The Sacramento-based Fanny’s energetic tunes are showcased in vintage clips; there’s also new material the latest incarnation has put together as well as a healthy dose of archival and new interviews that provide an intimate glimpse at a band more rock fans should know about. Plentiful extras include additional interviews and deleted scenes.

A New Generation: An Evening With The National Youth Orchestra of the United States

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 02 August 2022 20:19; Written by Jack Angstreich

NYO-USA, Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall, beginning on the evening of Thursday, July 28th, I was fortunate to attend three splendid concerts presented by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. The enjoyable first program featured NYO Jazz conducted by trumpeter Sean Jones, the Artistic Director and Bandleader, with guest vocals by the impressive Jazzmeia Horn.

Even better was a terrific concert the following night performed by the remarkable musicians of the National Youth Orchestra proper—under the admirable direction of Daniel Harding—which opened with Edward Elgar’s melodious, autumnal Cello Concerto with the eminent Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. The first movement is Romantic and soulful while the Lento introduction to the second is more lyrical if, maybe paradoxically, more inward, ensuing in a sprightly, even dramatic, scherzo. With the Adagio and concluding Allegro the work moves from the meditative to the anguished.

The second half of the event was enthralling, devoted to a compelling reading of Gustav Mahler’s magnificent Fifth Symphony. The beginning of the first movement is thrilling and suspenseful, the prelude to a beautiful funeral march that builds to great intensities before ending softly. The second movement is more turbulent but also with quieter passages, closing too on a hushed note. The increasingly eccentric Scherzo that follows begins with a cheerful and ebullient Ländler with a lovely, slower, waltz-like section. The celebrated Adagietto is unearthly in its majesty and the exhilarating finale has a more pastoral character but concludes exuberantly. The artists received an enthusiastic ovation which was answered by a fabulous encore: a dazzling performance of an abridged version of "Adventures on Earth" from John Williams’s wonderful score for Steven Spielberg’s film, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.

DSC6362 med The marvelous third concert—performed on the evening of Monday, August 1st—featured the absurdly precocious musicians of NYO2—which consists of instrumentalists ages 14-17—with Fellows of the New World Symphony and America’s Orchestral Academy, under the flamboyant direction of Mei-Ann Chen. The program began auspiciously with an accomplished account of the rewarding Soul Force by contemporary composer Jessie Montgomery which was notable for its effective orchestration. The excellent jazz soloist Aaron Diehl then took the stage for a brilliant performance of George Gershwin’s delightful Piano Concerto in F. The opening Allegro is sparkling, although very variegated in style and mood, while the second movement is bluesy and more subdued. The exciting finale is propulsive and virtuosic.

The second half of the evening—an assured rendition of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s enchanting Symphonic Dances—was equally memorable. The first movement is compelling with tuneful passages and the second is a captivating—if oddly eerie—waltz, with the last impassioned if quirky. Ardent applause elicited two outstanding encores: An-Lun Huang's extraordinary “Saibei Dance” from Saibei Suite No. 2, Op. 21 and Leonard Bernstein’s irrepressible Candide Overture.

Concert Review—Heart’s Ann Wilson at Sony Hall, NYC

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 01 August 2022 12:35; Written by Kevin Filipski

Ann Wilson

July 26, 2022

Sony Hall, New York City

August 2, 2022

AON Grand Ballroom, Chicago

AnnWilson.com

Ann Wilson in concert at Sony Hall, NYC (photo: Criss Cain)

On her current tour—which stopped at New York City’s Sony Hall July 26 and comes to Chicago August 2—Ann Wilson deftly balances the well-chosen covers that dominate her three solo albums, including her fine new Fierce Bliss CD, with classic cuts from Heart, the band with which she and sister Nancy have made their mark since the mid-’70s. (Now on hiatus, as both sisters have released solo albums in the past year, Heart is supposed to return to touring in 2023.)

Opening with the vigorous one-two punch of Heart’s “Even It Up” and “Straight On,” Wilson and her (all-male) band spent the rest of the 90-minute concert alternating between excellent covers—like their powerful versions of Jeff Buckley’s “Forget Her,” the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” and Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs”—with classic Heart hits like “Magic Man,” “Crazy on You” and “Barracuda.” But it was in the deeper cuts of the evening where Wilson’s still-formidable voice rang out most strongly. (Although she’s now 72, Wilson’s voice remains an imposing instrument.)

On two originals from Fierce Bliss, the pounding rocker “Greed” and the stately “Black Wing,” Wilson sang impressively and with little strain. (It’s instructive to watch her while singing: unlike many rock vocalists, she makes it look effortless, even when hitting the high notes that she can still often reach.) And the lone Heart deep cut, the brooding, mystical “Mistral Wind,” allowed her to alternate between lung-shredding power and exquisite delicacy.

Queen’s “Love of My Life” also brought out Wilson’s ethereal side, as she made her own a song that most vocalists might cede to Freddie Mercury. But Wilson has never shied away from covering songs that others might hesitate to tackle, like her majestic “Stairway to Heaven” at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012.

And it was Zeppelin—one of Heart’s most obvious influences, as anyone who hears “Achilles’ Last Stand” whenever “Barracuda’s” drum track kicks in—that dominated the encores, as Wilson ran through her superb, singular takes on the mandolin-driven “Going to California” and the pummeling “Black Dog.” One might even go so far as to say that Wilson’s versions surpassed Robert Plant himself on these songs. But that’s an argument for another day.

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