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Film and the Arts
A Stunning Finale With The Philadelphia Orchestra
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 February 2022 15:47
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Monday, February 21st, I had the great pleasure to hear the excellent musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra—under the remarkable direction of the irrepressible Yannick Nézet-Séguin—in the wonderful closing concert of their complete cycle of the magnificent symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.
At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Monday, February 21st, I had the great pleasure to hear the excellent musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra—under the remarkable direction of the irrepressible Yannick Nézet-Séguin—in the wonderful closing concert of their complete cycle of the magnificent symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The program began splendidly with a confident account of the beautiful First Symphony. After a stately and somewhat suspenseful introduction, the main body of the first movement sounded Mozartean even in its weightier moments. Indeed, the spirits of both Beethoven’s idol Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and maybe even more so that of his teacher Franz Joseph Haydn were unmistakable in the ensuing graceful, melodious Andante cantabile.The tumultuous, scherzo-likeMenuettospoke most characteristically in the composer’s own voice, while the closingAllegrowas even more energetic.
After an intermission, the musicians were joined by the superior Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, directed by Joe Miller, for a compelling realization of the world premiere of the powerful, impressively scored Pachamama Meets an Ode by Gabriela Lena Frank, who is currently composer-in-residence with The Philadelphia Orchestra. The program notes usefully commented:
“In this new commission for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Frank was asked to compose a work in dialogue with Beethoven’s First and Ninth symphonies, part of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The commission stipulated that she use the same orchestration as Beethoven while responding to these particular symphonies through her own creative lens. The work was to have received its world premiere in April 2020, but those concerts were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The annotator added: “In Pachamama Meets an Ode, Frank conjectures a meeting between Beethoven and an artist of the Cusco School who is painting his scenes in a Spanish-style church, built on the ruins of an Inca temple. Frank’s own lyrics, partly adapted from an earlier work (Three Myths of My Land, 2009), tell of the Cusco painter hiding ‘spirits from bygone native cultures amidst European figurines, equipping them with protective natural talismans and friendly fauna.’” The composer, who was seated with the audience, rose to acknowledge the audience’s appreciation.
The highlight of the evening, however, was an enthralling rendition of the astonishing, titanic Ninth Symphony. The work opened mysteriously and after a prolonged sequence of inventive divagations, finally achieved a monumental grandeur, as the conductor maintained an admirable rhythmic control. Equally dynamic was the vigorous, imposing Scherzo and the enchanted Adagio that followed had a celestial majesty. After an eccentric, extended introductory “recitative” section, the amazing finale ascended into a glorious dimension with the emergence of the “Ode to Joy” theme and the subsequent entry of the superb soloists and chorus; much musical elaboration preceded the stunning, triumphantly affirmative conclusion. There was rapturous applause for all the performers who included: the outstanding soprano Angel Blue, who appeared with this ensemble at this venue the previous week for an exquisite version of Samuel Barber’s gorgeous Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and the New York premiere of a piece by contemporary composer Valerie Coleman; mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb; tenor Matthew Polenzani whose lovely voice has been an asset to the Metropolitan Opera and who gave a fabulous song recital at Alice Tully Hall several years ago as a part of the Great Performers series; and finally bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green.
Both the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nézet-Séguin will return to Carnegie Hall later this season.
Angel Blue Takes Stage With Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 February 2022 15:11
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Angel Blue with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Photo by Steve Sherman
At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Tuesday, February 8th, I had the great pleasure of hearing the superb musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the excellent direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in a terrific concert independent of their marvelous cycle of the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven being presented at this venue this season.
The program opened with the New York premiere of contemporary composer Matthew Aucoin’s extraordinary, arresting and dramatic Suite from his opera, Eurydice, which first appeared in 2020 and was co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and the Los Angeles Opera. The instrumental excerpts performed here were especially exemplary for their display of a mastery of orchestral color. Felicitously, Aucoin was in the house to experience the audience’s acclaim.
The wonderful and appealing soprano Angel Blue then took the stage—she wore a beautiful gown with a blue satin skirt and a black bodice—for an exquisite, luminous performance of Samuel Barber’s magnificent Knoxville: Summer of 1915, his setting of a prose poem by the renowned author, James Agee. Following appreciative applause, she then powerfully sang another New York premiere, “This Is Not a Small Voice,” by the contemporary African-American composer Valerie Coleman, whose memorable Umoja, Anthem for Unity and Seven O’Clock Shout have both been performed recently by this ensemble in this hall. I found this new work compelling, with most of my ambivalence about the seeming programmatic “wokeness” of the poem by Sonia Sanchez that it sets overcome and it too was notable, like the composer’s other pieces mentioned here, for its impressive orchestration. Coleman was also present to receive a warm ovation.
The second half of the program provided a splendid opportunity to hear some forgotten repertory—the Symphony No. 1–by a neglected African-American composer, Florence Price, whose lovely Violin Concerto was recently performed by the Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall. The opening Allegro was melodious—even sumptuous—and gripping and drew applause. The ensuing Largo was stately, lyrical and quietly affirmative while the following movement, the Juba Dance, was joyous, celebratory and enchanting and also was applauded. The exciting finale was also dancelike but more propulsive, closing a rewarding evening.
The Philadelphia Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall on the evening of February 21st to finish their Beethoven cycle with the First Symphony and the monumental Ninth Symphony.
February '22 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 17 February 2022 01:49
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
The Beatles and India
(Britbox)
1968 was pivotal for the Beatles, coming off the previous year’s artistic high of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and crashing lows of manager Brian Epstein’s death and the Magical Mystery Tour TV debacle. Their journey to India to follow the Maharishi and his teachings introduced much of the West to Eastern spiritual enlightenment and consolidated the reach of Indian and world music and artists, as this straightforward, informative documentary chronicles.
Many of those musicians discuss their admiration of the Beatles, which allows directors Ajoy Bose and Pete Compton an original way of exploring the Fab Four’s continued musical relevance and widespread cultural influence over the past half-century. (See review, below.)
(Briarcliff Entertainment)
Even by the low standards of Liam Neeson revenge vehicles, Mark Williams’ cheapo action thriller shows how a secret FBI agent (Neeson, of course), whose boss is a bad guy, soon fights for his life against the bureau itself. It’s all less plausible and more risible than usual and, although supposedly taking place in D.C., the movie screams “shot far away from D.C.” (it was filmed in Australia, of all places).
Neeson’s sleepwalking routine has grown awfully tiresome, but if it worked for Clint Eastwood for more than a half-century, I’m not surprised that Neeson will see how long he can get away with it. Maybe not much longer.
Fabian—Going to the Dogs
(Kino Lorber)
In Dominik Graf’s expansive, engrossing saga—set in Weimar Germany between the two world wars and based on Erich Kästner’s classic of German literature—a young man falls in love with a struggling actress whose career takes off while he flounders in a decadent society preceding the horrors of Nazism. In a brisk three hours, Graf plausibly recreates a society on the edge of disaster and develops fully rounded, quotidian characters.
There are sensationally good performances by alumni of the last great three-hour German epic, 2018’s Never Look Away: Tom Schilling and Saskia Rosendahl are brilliantly three-dimensional and sympathetic. Graf shrewdly uses the nearly square full framing of 1.33:1 to nod to films of the era in which his own film is set as well as recording the malign hardships awaiting many in this claustrophobic environment.
(Juno Films)
In Bille August’s intelligent biopic, famed Danish writer Karen Blixen, back in Denmark after living in Africa—from which her memorable memoir, Out of Africa, was written—finds a willing victim in writer Thorkild Bjørnvig, who becomes her protégé without realizing that the manipulative Blixen will try and control every aspect of his life, despite the fact that he’s married and has a young son.
August’s simple but compelling biography doesn’t make moral judgments about a genius dominating a neophyte, which makes it all the more unsettling. August smartly centers this intimate drama on two excellent performances: Birthe Neumann as Blixen and Simon Bennebjerg as Thorkild.
The Unmaking of a College
(Zeitgeist)
Progressive Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts—which boasts alumni like documentary master Ken Burns—nearly shuttered a few years ago when a new president quickly changed its mandate to simply “stop hemorrhaging money,” without notifying the students, staff, faculty or even well-heeled alumni who could have assisted.
Director Amy Goldstein insightfully documents the very fraught months among the student body—many of whom engage in a president’s office sit-in for several weeks—staff and administration, succinctly showing grassroots activism at its most basic.
(Screen Media)
Whether one can sit through this silly romcom about an actress, reeling from discovering her actor husband has a new and pregnant girlfriend, who visits her cousin on a beautiful Caribbean island and promptly falls for a charismatic (and conveniently single) chef depends on your tolerance for unalloyed cutesiness amid gorgeous locales.
At least director Philippe Martinez cast in the lead role Malin Akerman, who’s an underutilized but charming actress; Connie Nielsen also scores as the flirty cousin. Too bad the men—Akerman’s real-life hubby Jackie Donnelly as Akerman’s cheating hubby and Philip Winchester as her chef love interest—aren’t up to the task of making us care enough about her choice.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Dido and Aeneas
L’Enigma di Lea
(Naxos)
British composer Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, composed in 1689—six years before Purcell died at age 36—is only an hour long, but its very compactness elevates its dramatic power, as in Deborah Warner’s 2008 Paris staging. Purcell’s music is wonderfully rendered by Les Arts Florissants under conductor William Christie, while soprano Malena Ernman (mother of Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg) gives a rendition of Dido’s Lament, which climaxes the opera, that’s among the most haunting I’ve heard.
Spanish composer Benet Casablancas’ 2018 opera L’enigma di Lea—seen in its 2019 Barcelona production—gives ample proof of its own unsettling musical power. Allison Cook gives a fearless performance as Lea, a difficult role histrionically and musically. Both operas look and sound terrific in hi-def; Lea has interviews with Casablancas, librettist Rafael Argullol, conductor Josep Pons and director Carme Portaceli.
The Beatles and India
(Silva Screen Records)
The film The Beatles and India (see review, above) inspired several Indian artists to tackle Beatles songs, to varied but welcome effect. Kiss Nuka’s inspired cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a stunning opener, and other standouts are Dhruv Ghanekar’s emotional “Julia,” Anoushka Shankar’s delicate sitar playing on “The Inner Light” and Karsh Kale and Monica Dogra’s lovely rendition of “Dear Prudence.”
With the exception of George Harrison’s sitar-laden “The Inner Light” and “Love You To,” most of these arrangements use Eastern and world-music instruments and sounds as ornamentation to underscore the Beatles’ brilliance. Surprisingly (or maybe not), most of the 19 songs are Lennon’s: a baker’s dozen of his are covered, while there are only 4 by McCartney and 2 by Harrison. A second disc comprises Benji Merrison’s film score.
February '22 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 February 2022 03:16
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
Air Doll
(Dekanalog)
This 2009 drama from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda doesn’t have the resonance or emotional pull of many of his other films—Like Father Like Son, Shoplifters and After Life, for starters—but its story of a middle-aged loner’s sex doll who has her own separate life and relationships while he leaves the house is too diffuse to be anything more than an only occasionally effective portrait of loneliness, especially coming right after his sublime drama about grieving, 2008’s Still Working.
Bae Doona gives a sublimely understated performance in the title role, but the sympathy she engenders can’t completely overcome the surprising one-note shallowness of Kore-eda’s work here.
(Cohen Media)
In this bracing documentary set at the A-Sham Arabic Food Festival in Haifa, Israel, director Beth Elise Hawk introduces us to Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, a microbiologist who won the Israeli reality series Master Chef, and who presciently founded the food festival in order to foster the beginning of social change among Israelis and Arabs.
The director and the Master Chef winner both show us the scrumptious-looking meals made by chefs from traditional recipes and ingredients, helping to foster the (maybe outlandish) notion that—just perhaps—satisfied stomachs could be the key to the common ground that has yet to be found in the Middle East.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Fidelio
(Opus Arte)
Beethoven’s only opera, a magnificent but messy masterpiece, concerns liberty, equality and love in its story of a woman, Leonore, who disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, to free her husband, Florestan, a political prisoner.
The music is as glorious as anything Beethoven ever composed, but the dramaturgy is a little clunky; luckily, this 2020 Royal Opera House (ROH) production from London, adroitly staged by Tobias Kratzer, has in place the superb ROH orchestra and chorus, led by veteran conductor Antonio Pappano. In the leads, there are the magisterial voices of Lise Davidsen (Leonore) and David Butt Philip (Florestan). There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio; extras are short interviews with cast and crew.
(Warner Archive)
This nearly perfect display of singing and dancing is the apogee of Busby Berkeley’s onscreen and onstage style: with his story of a producer creating a Broadway musical amid the Great Depression, Berkeley creates a series of exhilarating production numbers like the risqué “Pettin’ in the Park.”
Then there’s “The Shadow Waltz,” a showstopper featuring several chorus girls in hooped skirts dancing with violins, and their movements are choreographed, shot and edited with skill and precision. Warner Archive’s typically superior hi-def transfer presents the film in all its B&W glory. Extras are a retrospective featurette and several vintage shorts and cartoons.
King Richard
(Warner Bros)
In a frightfully overlong biopic that comes perilously close to hagiography—at least it’s not titled Saint Richard—Will Smith plays Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena and who’s shown as the architect of their championship-caliber careers, in a bizarre, unfocused performance that drops this would-be inspirational drama down a few notches.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and writer Zach Baylin try in every way to make Richard the hero of his daughters’ tennis achievements, with surprisingly little nod to their own talent and perseverance. Far better are the portrayals of Aunjanue Ellis (the girls’ mother Oracene), Saniyya Sidney (Venus) and Demi Singleton (Serena). There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras comprise on-set featurettes and deleted scenes.
(Shout/Scream Factory)
Madness, death, suicide were themes in several Hammer Studios movies, and this 1963 entry, cleverly directed by Freddie Francis (and moodily photographed in B&W by Arthur Grant), takes advantage of its spooky plotline to create some arresting images and eerie moments.
The 80-minute flick reaches maximum lunacy at its climax, while finely calibrated performances by Oliver Reed, Janette Scott, Sheila Burrell and Alexander Davion finesse its clumsier aspects. The film looks great in hi-def; extras include an audio commentary, a making-of featurette and new interviews with Hammer film experts.
Stargirl—Complete 2nd Season
(Warner Bros)
What’s the JSA (Justice Society of America)? Stargirl, also known by her civilian name, Courtney Whitmore, is part of the teen JSA and has difficulty balancing her superhero work with being a normal high school kid. In fact, she has to go to summer school to make up the classes she failed. But when adversaries Eclipso and the Shade appear, the JSA kids band together to stop them.
With the right amount of humor and drama, the series balances silly and heartfelt, and a cast led by young Brec Bassinger as Stargirl and Patrick Wilson and Amy Smart as her stepfather and mother make this an appealing entry in the superhero canon. All 13 episodes look terrific on Blu; extras are two featurettes and the ubiquitous gag reel.
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—Light in a Time of Darkness
(Beau Fleuve)
After months of not performing together when the COVID lockdown began in March 2020, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) began returning to its architecturally and acoustically marvelous home, Kleinhans Music Hall, to start recording in fall 2020. The six works on this program might seem random, but as music director and conductor JoAnn Falletta explains in her note, they were works that “were high points … in terms of their emotional depth and spirituality.”
And what high points there are! Ralph Vaughan Williams’ incandescent Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis kicks things off, a piece I never grow tired of no matter how often I hear it. The trio of short works—Pietà by Ulysses Kay (a world premiere recording), The Winter’s Passed by Wayne Barlow and Lyric for Strings—Lament by George Walker—are unsurpassed in their musical beauty. Bach’s familiar Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 and Haydn’s facile Symphony No. 44 (with its haunting Adagio movement) round things out. Falletta and the BPO perform with their usual elegance and ebullience, making this CD musical uplift of the highest order.
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