#morninglistening: Bach on Sandpaper with Feldman Looking On

#morninglistening to #Bach on @naiverecords w/Alessandrini#classical #classicalmusic #ba… http://t.co/TDEO25FVIB pic.twitter.com/10uURHBR1E

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) October 13, 2015

Read more »

Classical Music Agenda (April 2016)

By comparison to the previous three months, April feels a little light on major concert events. Here are our Top 10 picks for the month, which are all performances you will want to hear and see.

HISTORY:
In the lifetime of the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium, which has seen so many excellent performances, none looms larger than the premiere of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring with Martha Graham's ground-breaking choreography. The Martha Graham Dance Company returns for the 90th anniversary of the Library's concert series, with three free performances including Appalachian Spring and some new works (April 1 and 2).

Opera Lafayette takes a look at operas performed during the French Revolution, with scenes from Martini's Sapho (a modern premiere), Cherubini's Médée, and Sacchini's Œdipe à Colone (April 29), presented at Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University.

Washington National Opera presents its first-ever complete Ring Cycle starting at the end of the month, with the first performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold (April 30). The hot ticket should be for the third of the three cycles, featuring Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde.

VISITORS:
Icelandic composer Anna Þorvaldsdóttir has been at the top of many critics' favorite lists in the last couple years. She will appear on the Leading International Composers Series at the Phillips Collection (April 14).


The Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, performs mostly British music in the ongoing British choir festival at Washington National Cathedral (April 3).

The Venice Baroque Orchestra, last heard in Washington in 2011, will perform two concerts at Dumbarton Oaks (April 10 and 11). Andrea Marcon will lead a program of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, George Frideric Handel, and Pietro Locatelli.

Ionarts readers are used to our European correspondent's reports on the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble, under the baton of Mariss Jansons, will play at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (April 12), presented by Washington Performing Arts. The program combines Mahler's fifth symphony and Korngold's violin concerto, the latter with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist.

More Mahler is on the menu later that week when the San Francisco Symphony performs Das Lied von der Erde with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and tenor Simon O'Neill (April 16), also presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Michael Tilson Thomas also conducts Schubert's eighth symphony.

Beethoven, Cello Sonatas, Yo-Yo Ma, E. Ax (Sony, 1990)

CHAMBER MUSIC:
Who does not remember the set of Beethoven's cello sonatas with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax? These two artists, now more seasoned, are reunited to perform four of the sonatas, again presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (April 13). It should be a night to remember.

You know that when the Takács Quartet comes to town, Ionarts is there. The next opportunity is on the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series (April 20), in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, and they will play music by Dvořák, Webern, and Beethoven.

If I were not going to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, I would want to hear the Esterházy Trio, presented by the Embassy Series at the Hungarian Embassy (April 12). This is a trio playing viola, cello, and baryton, the oddball string instrument favored by Prince Esterhazy, and they will play music by Haydn, Tomasini, and Abel.

The rest of the calendar will scroll through the Ionarts sidebar.

#morninglistening: Zhu Xiao Mei Bach Perfect

#morninglistening glorious #Bach ♥Zhu Xiao-Mei♥ @outheremusic #Piano #classicalmusic #Earl… http://t.co/egRZD4M6jD pic.twitter.com/OqGUNZJIQS

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) February 4, 2015

Read more »

Latest on Forbes: NSO, Eschenbach & Lang Lang hit Vienna

Backstage w/@NSOtweets in Vienna. Trunk for music if royalty or octogenarians come?#over… https://t.co/vphYO3EqVM pic.twitter.com/aX0JNDALWR

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) February 10, 2016

Washington's National Symphony And Lang Lang In Vienna

...BA-Dam!! Christopher Rouse rips the score of his 1986 8- or 9-minute symphonic overture open with a loud, butts-from-seats-jolting chord before plinking and plonging away, harp-supported, and moving on with great gaiety in the woodwind section. The tuba engages in sounds that would make juveniles giggle; the neglected strings are allowed a word in, edgewise, here and there. Eventually the music works up an appetite and goes through more notes than the Cookie Monster through Oreos. Me want demisemiquaver!...

The full article on Forbes.com.

#morninglistening: McNulty Mozart Beauty

#morninglistening to #Mozart w/a favorite musician, #Bezuidenhout on @harmoniamundi#clas… http://t.co/FNrSwGslBX pic.twitter.com/V8v7NUfA5Y

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) October 12, 2015

Read more »

La Piau Goes to Washington

Après un rêve, S. Piau, S. Manoff (Naïve, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, French soprano Sandrine Piau makes stunning D.C. debut
Washington Post, February 9

Sandrine Piau made her long overdue Washington debut on Sunday afternoon, and the Phillips Collection, celebrating its 75th anniversary season, got the glory. The French soprano’s excellent program of 19th-century songs, superbly accompanied by pianist Susan Manoff, was the latest sign of the ascendancy of the Phillips concert series, which has become one of the strongest in the city.

Manoff and Piau recorded many of these songs on their 2011 CD, “Après un rêve.” The qualities that set Piau’s voice apart on disc were, if anything, more pronounced live... [Continue reading]

Sandrine Piau (soprano) and Susan Manoff (piano)
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Briefly Noted: Sandrine Piau (Ionarts, November 1, 2011)

Mel Brooks on ‘Blazing Saddles’

The movies of Mel Brooks have long been a guilty pleasure of mine, none more than Blazing Saddles. One must be careful, however, when quoting or even referring to the film, because politically correct sensitivities have eroded some people’s sense of humor. In Blazing Saddles, Brooks has his characters say the things that are better left unsaid, making fun of racists, homophobes, sexists, and other small-minded people by blasting open the dam that holds back vile talk and sentiments. No trigger warnings here: you are going to hear what people really think.

Brooks is still going strong at almost 90, as he showed when he appeared at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Saturday night, in a Q&A session after a screening of Blazing Saddles. Truth be told, there were relatively few questions in this part of the event, mostly just Brooks sharing memories of how the film came to be made, in a rather delightful, slightly manic monologue.

Even people who know Blazing Saddles well may be surprised to learn that Brooks had wanted Richard Pryor to play the role of Sheriff Bart. The insurance company balked, because of Pryor’s problems with addiction, but the film is still partly Pryor’s work, through the writing he contributed to the screenplay. “All of the uses of the N-word,” Brooks said at one point, “were approved by Richard.” This sounds like retroactive butt-covering on Brooks’s part, but Richard Pryor, who died in 2005, could not be reached for comment. More surprising is that Brooks approached John Wayne for the film, possibly to take the role of the Waco Kid, which Gene Wilder eventually played. Brooks said that Wayne read the script and liked it, but declined because he had “too many white Christian fans.”

For such an outrageous film, was there anything that Brooks thought was too much? He claimed he had cut only part of one scene, the scene where Madeline Kahn’s Lili von Shtupp beds Sheriff Bart. In the darkness, she says, “Is it twue what they say about you people, how you are built?” After a pause, she exclaims, “It is twue! It is twue!” Brooks said that he cut the next part of the scene, where Kahn was making noises that sounded like she was performing fellatio. Bart then said, “I hate to disappoint you, Ma'am, but you’re sucking on my arm.” A friend quipped that if Brooks were making the film now, the blowjob scene would stay and all the racist and homophobic jokes would be cut. Different times.

Brooks said it was hard to get clean takes throughout the shoot because people lost it so much on set. When the actor David Huddleston said the line, “We don’t want the Irish" (in the scene embedded above), they had to do twenty takes because everyone was laughing so much. Eventually he bought everyone on the crew white handkerchiefs and told them to stifle their laughs so they would stop burning through so much footage. Incredibly, Harvey Korman never lost it during the shoot of Blazing Saddles, according to Brooks. The only time he after spoiled a take by breaking character was in History of the World, Part I, when he told Brooks’s king, “Your Majesty, you look like the piss boy.” Brooks said that he improvised the king’s now-famous response (“And you look like a bucket of shit!”), and Korman lost it.

Puppet-Driven 'Equus' at Constellation Theater

Ross Destiche (Alan Strang) and Ryan Tumulty (Horse), in Equus, Constellation Theater (photo by DJ Corey Photography)
We welcome this theater review from Ionarts contributor Philip Dickerson.

“The Naked Play,” “The Horses Play,” “The Harry Potter is in love with a horse Play”: These are just some of the descriptive nicknames given to Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Constellation Theater has revived this dark tale, bringing new life to a play that is plagued with stigmas and practical hurdles. In her program note, director Amber McGinnis Jackson speaks of the play as having “big ideas.” Despite the beautiful exploration McGinnis Jackson takes us on, the biggest obstacles presented by the play may not lie in the theme or ideas, but in requiring six horses moving about on stage and two brave actors being nude on stage for several minutes.

This play also has an infamous history tied to its 2009 West End/Broadway revival when Daniel Radcliffe, best known for playing the title role in the Harry Potter franchise, took on the role of Alan Strang, which required the young celebrity to bare all in front of thousands, night after night. Radcliffe’s stardom made the production more about seeing Harry Potter naked, and the story fell by the wayside. Now we find Constellation Theater doing what they do best, bringing local artists together to tackle productions that others may avoid. Thanks to careful crafting by McGinnis Jackson and the bravery of actors Ross Destiche and Emily Kester, the required nudity is handled with grace and the story remains the focal point.

Other Reviews: Jane Horwitz, Constellation Theater revives ‘Equus’ to great effect (Washington Post, January 19) Mark Lieberman, Horse Whisperer: Constellation Theater Interrogates the Mind with Equus (DCist, January 21) Rebecca Ritzel, Actors head out of the theater and into the stable to prepare for ‘Equus’ (Washington Post, January 12)

At the onset, we are guided through this emotional quagmire by Martin Dysart (played exceptionally by Michael Kramer), an emotionally stale psychiatrist working day to day, until an extraordinary case is placed at his feet. A young boy named Alan Strang (Destiche) has blinded six horses for an unknown reason. Other psychiatrists have failed to get through his hardened shell, and Dysart is seemingly the boy’s last chance. Intrigued by the extremity of the case Dysart begins treating Alan. The production takes a while to find its pacing during the back and forth of the counseling sessions between Dysart and Alan and the flashbacks involving Alan’s parents (Laureen E. Smith and Michael Tolaydo), the stable master (Colin Smith), Alan’s love interest Jill Mason (Kester), and of course the Horses (Tori Bertocci, Gwen Gastorf, Ashley Ivey, Ryan Alan Jones, Ryan Tumulty and Emily Whitworth). When Alan begins to trust Dysart and play his mental “games and tricks,” the horse-like gallop sets in and the tension builds.

Beyond the intimacy displayed between Kramer, Destiche, and Kester, the horses make this production more real. The puppet head-pieces give visual satisfaction, but under the movement direction of Mark Jasser, the puppeteers provide authentic movement, mannerisms, and breath. Such authenticity is reminiscent of the West End/Broadway hit War Horse, which in many ways revolutionized puppetry. While Constellation’s horse puppets are much simpler in design, the actors bringing them to life create their reality with just as much precision.

Equus runs roughly two and a half hours with a ten-minute intermission. It closes on February 14.