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Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Mahler at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 21 April 2025 13:21; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee.

At the outstanding Stern Auditorium, on the night of Tuesday, April 15th, I had the tremendous pleasure of attending a superb performance of Gustav Mahler’s glorious Symphony No. 6 in A Minor—in its final, 1906 revision—played by the extraordinary Philadelphia Orchestra under the stellar direction of the inestimable Yannick Nézet-Séguin. (The concert, which continues a strong season of orchestral music at the venue, was presented by Carnegie Hall.)

In a valuable note on the program, Christopher H. Gibbs records that:

Mahler performed his Sixth just three times. The printed program for the last performance in Vienna carried the title “Tragic.” (It was not so named in the manuscript, at the premiere, or in the published editions released during his lifetime.)

The eminent conductor Bruno Walter, a close associate of the composer, had this to say about the work:

It reeks of the bitter cup of human life. In contrast with the Fifth, the Sixth says “No,” above all in its last movement, where something resembling the inexorable strife of “all against all” is translated into music. “Existence is a burden; death is desirable and life hateful” might be its motto.

And, in a letter to the critic Richard Specht, Mahler wrote: “My Sixth will pose puzzles which can only be broached by a generation which has imbibed and digested my first five.”

The turbulent initial movement—marked Allegro energico, ma non troppo—begins urgently, propulsively, forcefully and suspensefully with a recurring, dramatic, funeral march; a more subdued passage ushers in a surge of contrasting, Romantic lyricism that too returns as the movement unfolds. The movement, which is not without engaging eccentricities and which builds to a stunning apotheosis, contains more tentative, reflective and interior interludes—the first with pastoral elements (bells) that reappear in the third and fourth movements. Gibbs comments on these, quoting the composer:

He indicates that they “must be treated very discreetly—in realistic imitation of the higher and lower bells of a grazing herd, sounding from afar, sometimes combined, sometimes singly,” and then tellingly adds: “It must be expressly stated that this technical remark allows no programmatic interpretation.”

The ensuing Scherzo is a thrilling, almost menacing, march-like Ländler; its marvelous Trio is more playful, even ingenuous. The movement has many surprising, even extravagant, developments; it closes quietly, if quirkily.

The annotator reports that “Arnold Schoenberg praised the ‘curious structure’ of the beautiful melody that opens the Andante moderato.” It opens hauntingly with an exquisite flow of unusual, thematic inspirations—a gentle joyousness shines throughout it and it is arguably the loveliest of the symphony’s four movements. The music intensifies but the movement concludes very softly and serenely.

Walter’s view of the unwieldy, inordinately anfractuous, Allegro moderato Finale was as:

...the mounting tensions and climaxes [that] resemble, in their grim power, the mountainous waves of a sea that will overwhelm and destroy the ship ... The work ends in hopelessness and the dark night of the soul. Non placet is his verdict on this world; the “other world” is not glimpsed for a moment.

The movement starts portentously, if somewhat inchoately, with diverse musical ideas that evolve in unexpected ways, sometimes tumultuously, sometimes evoking a bucolic reverie. (The famous hammer blows in the movement were specified by the composer to be ”short, mighty, but dull in resonance, with a non-metallic character, like the stroke of an ax.") The symphony’s brilliant ending is simultaneously and paradoxically hushed and emphatic.

The artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.

April '25 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 17 April 2025 16:57; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

One to One—John & Yoko

(Magnolia Pictures)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1972 One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden culminated months of left-wing activism after they moved to NYC, as per Kevin Macdonald’s both enlightening and frustrating documentary (showing in IMAX), which alternates restored video and audio from Lennon’s final full live concert performance with archival footage from that era. Macdonald uses vintage clips to provide political and cultural context for the couple’s wide-ranging activism, although the many references to notable names and events overstuff this 100-minute film.

As for the music, Macdonald takes John and Yoko’s powerful performances and adds (you guessed it) archival video to comment on—at times forcefully and at others in a strained manner—what was going on. John’s propulsive “Instant Karma” features scenes of destruction in Vietnam and the U.S., while his raucous heroin-habit tune “Cold Turkey” includes glimpses of the 1972 Republican Convention. Even the finale, “Give Peace a Chance,” showcasing a joyful Stevie Wonder scat-singing over the familiar chorus, is only excerpted—maybe upcoming streaming and Blu-ray releases will include all the full performances as important additions to Beatles history.

Coastal

(Trafalgar Releasing)

Actress Daryl Hannah followed husband Neil Young around on his 2023 solo tour of the West Coast, and the resulting B&W documentary is the last word in self-indulgence: watching Neil chat up his bus driver gets old quickly—although driver Jerry Don Borden is interesting enough to deserve more screen time—and the dullness of being on the road is conveyed all too well.

Luckily, Hannah smartly shoots most of the concert footage up-close—the intimacy suits Young’s performance, which consists of him, his acoustic guitar, harmonica and an old grand piano. But don’t expect hits: aside from “Mister Soul” and “Comes a Time,” casual fans won’t know songs like the recent “Love Earth,” which gets a half-hearted call-and-response from the audience.

Julie Keeps Quiet

(Film Movement Plus)

Director-cowriter Leonardo Van Dijl’s engrossing exploration of an elite teenager at a Belgian tennis academy and how she deals with—or not—the dysfunctional, woefully unbalanced power dynamics with her coach is grounded by the astoundingly subtle performance by Tessa Van den Broeck as Julie.

Van Dijl and Van Den Broeck (who’s a tennis player, not an actress) team up for a superbly detailed study of the painful sounds of silence—and how the “thwack” of a racket hitting a ball has metaphorical reverberations that can be heard far from the court.

Sacramento

(Vertical)

Coming so soon on the heels of A Real Pain, with Jesse Eisenberg and Oscar winner Keiran Culkin as estranged cousins on a road trip to explore their Polish ancestry is this diffuse and blurry buddy flick about estranged childhood friends who forego their own adult responsibilities by taking a car ride from Los Angeles to central California.

The problem is that neither character is individualized enough for us to care about their journey, their friendship or the people they meet along the way. Michael Cera has played this kind of jittery character many times already, while writer-director-costar Michael Angarano’s manipulative liar is not as witty or charming as he thinks; and their leading ladies—Kristin Stewart, Maya Erskine (Angarano’s real-life wife), AJ Mendez and Iman Karram—are given short shrift, when any of them could be the center of a less one-dimensional character study.

Streaming Releases of the Week

Count Me In

(Level 33)

This 2020 documentary celebrating the art of drumming hears from an impressive cross-section of rock and pop drummers like the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Deep Purple’s Ian Paice and Queen’s Roger Taylor to Steven Perkins (Jane’s Addiction), Cindy Blackman (Santana) and Samantha Maloney (Hole). Director Mark Lo’s fleet, short film is informative and surprising in equal measure, with appropriate stops for the great drummer forerunners like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich to the earliest rock masters (Ringo, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Ginger Baker) to the ultimate hard-rock drummer, John Bonham.

Clips of them performing are always welcome, while the thoughts of some interviewees, particularly Copeland, Perkins and Maloney, come across strongly. Of course, things are missed—no mention of Phil Collins’ gated drum sound that dominated the ‘80s or any prog drummers, notably Rush’s Neil Peart—but then it would have been much longer. And RIP to Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins and Blondie’s Clem Burke, both included here.

Her Way

(Film Movement Plus)

In what may be the quintessential French movie, Laure Calamy plays a prostitute desperate to get her ne’er-do-well teenage son into a famous cooking school—so she debases herself by working for a tough pimp at a sleazy German nightclub while dealing with her son’s laziness and later ungratefulness.

Director-writer Cécile Ducrocq doesn’t so much wallow in the sexual underground as record it passively, while Calamy—always a magnetic presence—is reduced to striking poses that alternate between sexy and tired. But there’s a nagging question: however well-intentioned, should we care about a mother who needs to raise 50,000 Euros so her son can go to a posh school he’ll probably flunk out of anyway?

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Antiviral

(Severin Films)

Writer-director Brandon Cronenberg is a chip off the old block with his 2012 debut film, as unpleasant and sour as advertised: it follows a sales rep for a clinic that harvests celebrities’ infections to inject into their most maniacal fans.

Although his film is cleverly constructed, Cronenberg has an eye based on other clinical directors like his dad to Kubrick, and there’s no one onscreen worth getting involved with. The visuals look impressively steely in UHD; extras—on a separate Blu-ray disc that also includes the film—comprise Cronenberg and director of photography Karim Hussain’s commentary; Cronenberg’s short, Broken Tulips; interviews; featurettes; and deleted scenes with optional commentary.

CD Release of the Week

Shostakovich—Suite on Verses of Michelangelo/October

(Alpha Classics)

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) originally wrote his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo—a dramatic setting of 11 poems of the great Italian artist translated into Russian—for baritone and piano, but his gripping orchestrated version, one of the composer’s final works, is far more celebrated; Shostakovich himself reportedly told his son he considered it his 16th (and final) symphony.

On this recording, Matthias Goerne’s stentorian baritone also nails the intimate passages Shostakovich has written into the score, as does the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, which delivers powerfully under conductor Mikko Franck, who also leads his instrumental forces in an equally compelling reading of the symphonic poem October.

New York Philharmonic Present "CHEMILUMINESCENCE" & More

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 14 April 2025 13:48; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Wednesday, April 9th, I had the great pleasure to attend a marvelous concert—it continued a successful season for the ensemble—featuring the New York Philharmonic, brilliantly led by Jakub Hrůša who, according to the program notes, “is chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, music director designate of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden (music director from 2025), and principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.”

The event started auspiciously with a world premiere: a sterling account of Jessie Montgomery’s striking and memorable CHEMILUMINESCENCE, which was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic—as part of its Project 19–along with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and The Sphinx Organization. (The two earlier, orchestral works by the composer that I’ve heard—Hymn for Everyone and Soul Force—were both impressive.) Montgomery, who was present to receive the audience’s acclaim, provided the following remarks on the piece:

“Chemiluminescence” is the scientific term to describe any chemical reaction that produces light from a non-light source, such as a firefly rubbing its wings to produce a glow, or bioluminescence along an ocean's edge, or the light produced from a cracked glow stick. The light produced can present varied qualities as infrared, visible, or ultraviolet.

As a composer, interpreting light sources and their resulting reflections and hues is an endless field of potential sound exploration. I used my impressions on this idea to create harmonies, colors, and blends I feel are unique to the string orchestra, with its ability to bend and shift timbres in an instant.

The piece is in three distinct sections, each of which interprets light, agitation, reaction, and frenetic interplay in its orchestration. This piece represents my continued interest in finding corollary between music and the natural world.

At moments, the work is reminiscent of the film scores of Bernard Herrmann and it concludes gently and unexpectedly.

An extraordinary soloist—Patricia Kopatchinskaja, in her debut with this ensemble—then entered the stage for a dazzling rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s superb Violin Concerto in D, from 1931–it is the basis for a classic ballet by George Balanchine. The composer recalled in his Autobiography that, when offered the commission:

I hesitated because I am not a violinist, and I was afraid that my slight knowledge of that instrument would not be sufficient to enable me to solve the many problems which would necessarily arise in the course of a major work especially composed for it.

The violinist for whom the work was written, Samuel Dushkin, interestingly reported on his collaboration with the composer:

Whenever he accepted one of my suggestions, even a simple change such as extending the range of the violin by stretching the phrase to the octave below and the octave above, Stravinsky would insist on altering the very foundations correspondingly. He behaved like an architect who if asked to change a room on the third floor had to go down to the foundations to keep the proportions of his whole structure.

The piece is from Stravinsky’s Neoclassical phase and is often evocative of the Baroque style. The initial movement, Toccata, is sprightly—indeed playful—and rhythmic, with many eccentricities; it finishes emphatically. The ensuing Aria I is oddly somber with moments of surprising lyricism—slow at first, it soon acquires a dynamic pace before resuming the tempo at its outset, before ending suddenly and softly. The succeeding Aria II, although it begins with a recurring, urgent statement, has a melancholy cast and is on the whole more subdued; it too closes quietly. The finale, Capriccio, is virtuosic, vivacious, sparkling, propulsive and quirky and maybe the wittiest of the movements—it concludes forcefully. An enthusiastic response by the concertgoers elicited two enjoyable encores from the soloist: first, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong’s Crin for solo violin, during which she curiously voiced nonsense syllables; and second, her own arrangement of material from the Stravinsky Concerto, calling it Cadenza for Stravinsky Violin Concerto—for this, she was also accompanied on the violin by the concertmaster, Frank Huang.

The second half of the evening was at least equally fine: an exceptionally satisfying realization of the awesome Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, of Johannes Brahms, completed in 1877. Annotator James M. Keller informatively records:

“My symphony is long and not particularly lovable,” wrote Brahms to his fellow composer Carl Reinecke when this piece was unveiled.

He adds that, “He drafted the first movement of this symphony in 1862 and shared it with his friend Clara Schumann. She copied out the opening and sent it along to their friend Joseph Joachim (the violinist).” She appended this comment:

That is rather strong, for sure, but I have grown used to it. The movement is full of wonderful beauties, and the themes are treated with a mastery that is becoming more and more characteristic of him. It is all interwoven in such an interesting way, and yet it moves forward with such momentum that it might have been poured forth in its entirety in the first flush of inspiration.

That movement begins gravely and portentously with an Un poco sostenuto introduction, rapidly and strongly recalling the music of Ludwig van Beethoven before the onset of its dramatic, even turbulent, Allegro main body—in this latter, some passages have an almost pastoral quality and it finishes quietly, and drew applause, as did the next movement, marked Andante sostenuto. This is often solemn but with many pretty, felicitous measures; it builds in emotional power, closing celestially. The enchanting third movement—its tempo is Un poco allegretto e grazioso—has a certain buoyancy; its conclusion is not without abruptness. The finale, is more serious and suspenseful, even ominous, in its Adagio opening; a nobler vista soon emerges, ushering in the movement’s mostly stirring, sometimes triumphant, even exuberant, main body, marked Allegro non troppo ma con brio—it attains a triumphant, exultant climax.

The artists were deservedly rewarded with a standing ovation.

Off-Broadway Play Review—Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” with Billy Crudup

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 14 April 2025 02:17; Written by Kevin Filipski

Ghosts

Written by Henrik Ibsen, a new version by Mark O’Rowe

Directed by Jack O’Brien

Performances through April 26, 2025

Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY

lct.org

Lily Rabe and Billy Crudup in Ghosts (photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts might have scandalized audiences after its 1882 premiere—tackling as it did sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate children, euthanasia, incest and religious hypocrisy—but it’s far milder stuff for today’s audiences, so directors and adapters must work harder to make it relevant.

Nearly 20 years ago, Ingmar Bergman brought his celebrated Swedish troupe to BAM in Brooklyn for an incendiary staging that included bits of Strindberg and even Bergman’s own material to shore up Ibsen’s script, along with a memorable turn by the great Pernilla August as the widow Helena Alving. About a decade ago, Richard Eyre's compelling adaptation that was a hit in London also took BAM by storm with Lesley Manville as an indelible Helena.

Unfortunately, in his mostly adroit staging at Lincoln Center Theater, director Jack O’Brien has saddled himself with a subpar Helena: Lily Rabe gives her usual mannered, ineffectual performance, barking out the lines wrongheadedly and coming across more Helena’s beloved son Oswald’s older sister than his overprotective mother who’s hiding a horrible family secret that will eventually come out.

O’Brien does better with the rest of his cast, even though Ella Beatty is a bit stiff as Helene’s housemaid Regina, in love with Oswald—who wants to marry her and take her back to Paris, where he lives as a tortured artist. Although Oswald is played by Levon Hawke, making his New York stage debut, the actor’s lack of polish works well for Helena’s sickly son, wracked by the syphilis he inherited from his dead father; Hawke is especially convincing in the play’s shattering final moments, when he—now blinded by the disease—begs his mother to put him out of his misery.

Regina’s estranged father Engstrand—helping to build the orphanage Helen has planned in her husband’s memory—is played with his customary intensity by Hamish Linklater, while Pastor Manders—Helena’s long-ago paramour who embodies the hypocrisy of the church—is a role tailor-made for Billy Crudup, who’s expert at playing complicated characters who alternate being cheered for and sneered at.

Mark O’Rowe provides a lucid adaptation of Ibsen’s masterpiece; if he and O’Brien falter in a needless framing device of the performers walking onstage and picking up scripts that—after Beatty and Linklater act out the play’s opening lines in differing ways as if they’re rehearsing—they don’t look at and which are immediately jettisoned, Ibsen’s morality tale moves swiftly until it arrives at its inevitably tragic conclusion.

John Lee Beatty’s aptly minimalist set, Japhy Weideman’s incisive lighting, Jess Goldstein’s spot-on costumes and Scott Lehrer and Mark Bennett’s evocative sound contribute handsomely to this story of a family haunted by unseen but always present specters, culminating with a metaphorical but very real destructive conflagration that might be a sign from the almighty about the family’s immorality, something Manders—who convinced Helena to forego insurance for the orphanage because God would take care of things—ruefully opines. It may be singleminded, but Ghosts remains potent theater.

Reviews

Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Mahler at Carnegie Hall

April '25 Digital Week II

New York Philharmonic Present "CHEMILUMINESCENCE" & More

Off-Broadway Play Review—Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” with Billy Crudup

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