Classical Month in Washington (June)

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Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

June 1, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 1, 2011 (Wed)
8 pm
Golijov, Ayre
Mobtown Modern
Windup Space (Baltimore, Md.)

June 2, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Axelrod, conductor (music by Bernstein, others)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 2, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 2, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Emanuel Ax, piano
Music Center at Strathmore

June 3, 2011 (Fri)
1:30 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Axelrod, conductor (music by Bernstein, others)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 3, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 3, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Gounod, Roméo et Juliette
Opera Bel Cantanti
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

June 3, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Emanuel Ax, piano
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 3, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore
New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players
Filene Center, Wolf Trap

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
1:30 and 7:30 pm
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Washington Men's Camerata
Music by Gershwin, Kern, Porter
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
7:30 pm
Cantate Chamber Singers
Music by Foss, Barber, Bernstein, Corigliano (with Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano)
St. Columba's Episcopal Church

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Emanuel Ax, piano
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With John Axelrod, conductor (music by Bernstein, others)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore
New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players
Filene Center, Wolf Trap

June 4, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Philharmonic
With Soovin Kim, violin (all-Tchaikovsky program)
Music Center at Strathmore

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
1:30 pm
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
With Emanuel Ax, piano
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Dylan Savage, piano
Whittemore House, Women's National Democratic Club

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
Joel Fan, piano [FREE]
Music by Beethoven, Schönberg, Scriabin
National Gallery of Art

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
18th Street Singers
Music by Frank Martin, others
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

June 5, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Gounod, Roméo et Juliette
Opera Bel Cantanti
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

June 7, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 7, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
Fessenden Ensemble
Music by Rheinberger
St. Columba's Church

June 8, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 8, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Fessenden Ensemble
Music by Rheinberger
National City Christian Church

June 9, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Jennifer Koh, violin (music by Schumann, Augusta Read Thomas)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 9, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 9, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Verdi, Requiem (with Angela Meade, soprano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 9, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
NOI Faculty Chamber Recital [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
7 pm
NOI Student Chamber Recital [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
American Chamber Players
June Chamber Festival
Kreeger Museum

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Gounod, Roméo et Juliette
Opera Bel Cantanti
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Jennifer Koh, violin (music by Schumann, Augusta Read Thomas)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 10, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Verdi, Requiem (with Angela Meade, soprano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 11, 2011 (Sat)
1:30 and 7:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 11, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Jennifer Koh, violin (music by Schumann, Augusta Read Thomas)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 11, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Verdi, Requiem (with Angela Meade, soprano)
Music Center at Strathmore

June 11, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
NOI Chamber Orchestra
Clarice Smith Center

June 12, 2011 (Sun)
1:30 pm
Royal Danish Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

June 12, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Verdi, Requiem (with Angela Meade, soprano)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

June 12, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Gounod, Roméo et Juliette
Opera Bel Cantanti
JCCGW (Rockville, Md.)

June 12, 2011 (Sun)
6:30 pm
Texas Children's Choir [FREE]
With Anne-Marieke Evers, soprano
National Gallery of Art

June 14, 2011 (Tue)
7:30 pm
American Chamber Players
June Chamber Festival
Kreeger Museum

June 15, 2011 (Wed)
7:30 pm
Eggner Trio
Austrian Embassy

June 16, 2011 (Thu)
6:30 pm
Wolf Trap Opera Company
Phillips Collection

June 16, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor) and Stephen Isserlis (cello)
Music by Walton, Shostakovich
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 16, 2011 (Thu)
7 pm
NOI Student Chamber Recital [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

June 16, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Szabolcs Brickner (tenor) and Magdalena Wór (mezzo-soprano)
Embassy of Hungary

June 16, 2011 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Eggner Trio
Heritage Baptist Church (Annapolis, Md.)

June 17, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
American Chamber Players
June Chamber Festival
Kreeger Museum

June 17, 2011 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Szabolcs Brickner (tenor) and Magdalena Wór (mezzo-soprano)
Embassy of Poland

June 17, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor) and Stephen Isserlis (cello)
Music by Walton, Shostakovich
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 17, 2011 (Fri)
8 pm
Wolf-Ferrari, Le donne curiose
Barns at Wolf Trap

June 18, 2011 (Sat)
2 pm
Shanghai Kunju Troupe
Freer Gallery of Art

June 18, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
With Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor) and Stephen Isserlis (cello)
Music by Walton, Shostakovich
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 18, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
NOI Philharmonic
With Matthias Pintscher, conductor
Clarice Smith Center

June 19, 2011 (Sun)
1 and 3 pm
Shanghai Kunju Troupe
Freer Gallery of Art

June 19, 2011 (Sun)
3 pm
Wolf-Ferrari, Le donne curiose
Barns at Wolf Trap

June 20, 2011 (Mon)
7:30 pm
Jonathan Carney (violin), Marcia Kämper (flute), Sarah Fuller (harp)
Charles W. Gilchrist Hall
Johns Hopkins, Montgomery County Campus (Rockville, Md.)

June 21, 2011 (Tue)
8 pm
Songs of Life Festival: A Melancholy Beauty
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 25, 2011 (Sat)
6 pm
Puccini, La Bohème
Castleton Festival

June 25, 2011 (Sat)
7 pm
Wolf-Ferrari, Le donne curiose
Barns at Wolf Trap

June 25, 2011 (Sat)
8 pm
NOI Philharmonic
With Michael Stern, conductor
Clarice Smith Center

June 26, 2011 (Sun)
2 pm
A Soldier's Tale / Master Pedro's Puppet Show
Castleton Festival

June 26, 2011 (Sun)
7 pm
Festival Orchestra
With Denyce Graves (mezzo-soprano) and Lorin Maazel (conductor)
All-Bizet program
Castleton Festival

June 26, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
Orff, Carmina Burana (sing-along)
Cathedral Choral Society
Washington National Cathedral

June 26, 2011 (Sun)
7:30 pm
UMd Summer Sings [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

June 27, 2011 (Mon)
8 pm
Beethoven Found Philharmonic
A Tribute to The Wounded Warriors
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

June 30, 2011 (Thu)
6:30 and 7:30 pm
Steven Silverman, harpsichord
Music by Scarlatti (with Stella sculptures)
Phillips Collection

June 30, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
Castleton Festival Orchestra
Music inspired by Shakespeare
Music Center at Strathmore

June 30, 2011 (Thu)
8 pm
NOI New Lights [FREE]
Clarice Smith Center

Jennifer Johnson Cano

The recital by striking mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, presented by Young Concert Artists on Monday night, formed a pleasing diptych with that of another mezzo, Kate Lindsey, last week. Both singers have come out of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and have sung roles in the Met's productions. Both have an engaging stage presence and a natural sense of drama, and both have the vocal chops to make you sit up and listen, albeit for different reasons. We were impressed with Cano last fall, when she was just Jennifer Johnson, in one of the Musicians from Marlboro concerts at the Freer Gallery of Art -- the only place you could have read about it was here, and it turned out to be featured as one of the Top 10 live concerts of last year.

Cano squeezed the aria Alto Giove, from Porpora's Polifemo (another operatic setting of the story of Acis and Galatea), for every ounce of drama possible. Her expressive face and gestures communicated the intensity of this impassioned plea, as Acis gives thanks to Jupiter for the gift of immortality, and she showed impressive control of an instrument that sounded larger and seemed to have more zoom to it than last fall. Her pianist Christopher Cano, who also happens to be her husband, was often at the edge of being too loud, even with the Steinway's lid closed: although his playing was accomplished and musically sensitive, there is a soft pedal on the instrument, and he should experiment with it. He did bring a varied palette of colors to the piano arrangement of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and the full-throated accompaniment was often needed to support the vocal line (in the big crescendo outbursts in the second and third songs, for example). Ms. Cano's voice here sounded much fuller in its upper range and had greater bloom there: in fact, the relative softness of the chest voice, heard finally at the end of the last song, seemed to indicate a voice tending toward the dramatic side of the mezzo-soprano voice, the exact opposite of what one heard from Kate Lindsey.

Other Articles: Cecelia Porter, Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano’s talent has depth (Washington Post, April 13) Young Concert Artists Presents Jennifer Johnson Cano in NY Recital Debut 5/2 (Broadway World, April 4) Zachary Woolfe, Youth Finds Comfort Alongside Experience (New York Times, March 31) Charles T. Downey, Musicians from Marlboro (Ionarts, October 27)

Ravel's Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques have been favorite songs for me since hearing Elly Ameling sing them (a well-worn disc in my collection, released on the Erato label, ECD 75324, and no longer available). They are marvelously concise, evocatively harmonized settings of Greek folk song texts, provided to Ravel by the Greek-born critic M. D. Calvocoressi, and Cano gave them a slightly rough-edged earthiness but kept some of the ethereal qualities of the dreamier songs. The main point of comparison to the Kate Lindsey recital was Cano's performance of another song cycle by Dominick Argento: after the wry, pleasing Miss Manners on Music, Cano chose the much more ponderous From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. The words selected are not Woolf's most poetic or profound, although there are tart and significant observations (and the stunning excerpt from her final entry, before drowning herself), but Argento ruminates over each phrase with a spare, almost humorless approach, nowhere more astringently so than in the sixth song, with its machine-gun treble repeated notes over a dry recitative about the war. Argento the musical mimic comes to the fore again, with a jazzy or Chopinesque background in the piano that morphs into a melancholy tango and back again in the fifth song, with touches of folk mandolin strumming, as well as a neo-Baroque accompaniment that signals the older lifestyle of Woolf's parents. A Roger Quilter song, Music, when soft voices die (op. 25/5, text by Percy Shelley), served as encore.

Venice Comes to Washington

Vivaldi: Concertos and Sinfonias for strings Concerto Veneziano (Tartini, D. 96) Vivaldi, Concertos

With the prospect of a shutdown of the U.S. government narrowly avoided on Friday, the National Gallery of Art remained open for the concert by the Venice Baroque Orchestra on Sunday night. One of the leading historically informed performance ensembles, the group has been coming more to this side of the Atlantic, to Strathmore just last fall and to the Library of Congress in 2007. The echo chamber of the NGA's West Garden Court was not the best acoustic for their rhythmically taut, sharp-edged approach to the Italian Baroque concerto, but their performance of seven such pieces (.PDF file) -- a wag might add "interchangeable" -- was a fitting tribute to the museum's Venetian-themed exhibit on Canaletto and his contemporaries.

The group has already recorded a lot of Vivaldi concertos, but this well will not run dry for a while, even though the opening Sinfonia in A major sounded a bit too much like garden-variety Vivaldi. The other selections that did not feature a soloist were more pleasing, especially Baldassare Galuppi's Concerto a Quattro in G minor, which featured the contrast of a solo group (two violins, viola, and continuo) with the tutti. With a group composed only of strings -- six violins, one each of viola, cello, and violone -- it was otherwise up to the continuo group of harpsichord and the smiling, colorful Ivano Zanenghi on lute to provide diverting color.

For the works with soloist the group brought along its regular collaborator, violinist Giuliano Carmignola, who is guaranteed to add a dynamic, even diabolical flair to these showpieces. Sour tuning issues spoiled the first of these pieces, Giuseppe Tartini's A major violin concerto, D. 96, as Carmignola, perilously flat, slashed and scraped his way through the piece, here as elsewhere attacking the fingerboard with such force that it made some popping, percussive sounds. In the three Vivaldi concertos on the second half, he was erratic at times but his sudden outbursts, punctuated by stamps of his foot, kept one guessing. The E-flat concerto ("La tempesta di mare," RV 253) was the most heart-stoppingly virtuosic, with Carmignola chewing up the scenery and the cello and violone rumbling like thunder in the closing Presto.

Other Reviews: Joe Banno, Venice Baroque Orchestra at the National Gallery of Art (Washington Post, April 11) Michael Huebner, Venice Baroque Orchestra goes beyond history, to pure music (Birmingham News, April 3)

The G minor concerto, RV 332, had the more serious, luscious sound, especially in the first two movements, while the last, phrased sort of like a fandango, rattled along at a devilish pace. Perhaps finally warmed up, Carmignola ducked and skittered through the final piece (D major, RV 210), backed up only by lute and pianissimo strings in the lovely second movement. Encores included the blistering final movement from the summer concerto of the Four Seasons, making for one hell of a hailstorm, and one another fast movement, as yet unidentified.

Head back to the National Gallery of Art for a lunchtime concert by violinists Christian Tetzlaff and Antje Weithaas (April 28, 12:10 pm).

Brahms, Double or Nothing

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Kennedy Center Chamber Players double down on Brahms
Washington Post, April 12, 2011

Brahms, Complete Trios (piano, horn, and clarinet), Beaux Arts Trio (et al.)

Is the first piano trio of Johannes Brahms good enough to warrant playing it twice in the same concert? The Kennedy Center Chamber Players attempted to show that it was during their Sunday afternoon concert at the Terrace Theater. The group juxtaposed the two surviving versions of the Op. 8 trio, the first published when Brahms was in his early 20s and the second made in the final decade of his life.

This is a rare situation for a composer who had infamously exacting standards for what he allowed the public to hear. The early version contains many melodic references to Brahms’s love for Clara Schumann. At the time, he was helping her deal with her husband’s mental breakdown, and Clara advised against publishing it. When he revised the trio, Brahms soft-pedaled some of those references but created a more concise and better work. [Continue reading]

Kennedy Center Chamber Players
Brahms, Piano Trio No. 1, op. 8 (both versions); Two Songs for mezzo-soprano, viola, and piano, op. 91
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

For more background on this concert, see my preview article.

New Wind Blowing at the NSO

Mahler, Symphony No. 4, D. Upshaw, Cleveland Orchestra, C. von Dohnányi

Christoph Eschenbach's home run streak in his first season with the National Symphony Orchestra continued this weekend, with a program of luscious, evocative pieces at the near edge of tonality. It was hardly the sort of program that should have turned audiences away, even with the name Webern on it, and there were not too many empty seats at the final performance on Saturday evening. The Webern selection was the brief Im Sommerwind, last heard from the NSO two years ago, a glimpse into what might have been if Webern had not responded to Schoenberg's advertisement for students and followed his first inclinations toward Mahler and Strauss instead. (No, as Tim Smith overheard, it has nothing to do with the song A Summer Wind.) From the organ-like deep chords of the opening, to the shimmering chords and bird-wild trills, this is a compact piece with a vast tone poem-like sweep, with Mahler-esque chamber-like arrangements and much other orchestrational whizbangery. All those perfumed fin-de-siècle sighs and exhalations in the piece were inspired by a poem in Bruno Wille's book Revelations of a Juniper Tree (read an excerpt in these program notes -- .PDF file).

Does Osvaldo Golijov have too many commissions on his plate? He already had a reputation for pushing deadlines to the last possible minute, but this year and last he has had to cancel the premieres of some new pieces -- for the Los Angeles Philharmonic (twice) and the St. Lawrence String Quartet -- because he could not complete them on time. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has a "new work" by Golijov (title TBD) on its schedule this year (June 2 to 5) but hopefully the trend will not continue there. [Although the information is not on the BSO Web site yet, the piece in question is Sidereus, which was premiered last fall in Memphis. -- Ed.] The Golijov on the NSO program was She Was Here, commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2008 and dedicated to the memory of Anthony Minghella. Beloved soprano Dawn Upshaw, who premiered the work, was back in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, sounding perhaps less angelic than in previous hearings but more intense and musically sensitive. The melodies, most of them, are Schubert's, because the piece is essentially only an orchestration of four Schubert Lieder. This is not meant to disparage the work, which had some magical effects, but it reinforces my belief that Golijov is in the wrong place in the concert hall and should instead be writing evocative film scores. He has a fine vocabulary of Holstian celesta twinkles, chimes, glassy harmonics, and glints of bowed crotales to work with.

Other Articlews: Anne Midgette, Eschenbach conducts Webern, Mahler and Golijov (Washington Post, April 8) Tim Smith, Exquisite music-making from Eschenbach, Upshaw, National Symphony (Baltimore Sun, April 9) Terry Ponick, Upshaw, Eschenbach, NSO in late-Romantic quest (Washington Times, April 9) Emily Cary, Dawn Upshaw takes stage with National Symphony Orchestra (Washington Examiner, April 6)

The main attraction was a joyous, even raucous performance of Mahler's fourth symphony (see our notes on performances by Bernstein, Zinman, Alsop). Here, as in the earlier pieces, Eschenbach's ideas seemed fully formed from the first downbeat, buoyant and flexible with the pacing, sorting out the many transitions with no stumbles: this being the third performance of the program probably did not hurt the execution, either. You can get an idea of Eschenbach's ideas for the work in his performance with the Orchestre de Paris, available in an online video. The first movement was genially paced, taking the tempo marking "Nicht eilen" at face value, and the second more stately then macabre (again "ohne Hast"), with concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef sounding properly a little raw and steely on the scordatura violin solo. The slow movement was more peaceful than merely slow, with the pianissimo strings, sounding malleable and warm, creating a downy pillow of sound. The fourth movement's homey vision of heaven, where St. Cecilia is the Kapellmeisterin, again highlighted Upshaw's round-toned voice, allowed plenty of space by Eschenbach and the musicians who kept their sound in hushed wonder at the crucial moments. A long and deserved silence at the conclusion was punctuated by a perfectly timed cell phone ringing at the back of the hall.

Kate Lindsey Wants to Make Something of It

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Kate Lindsey at Barns at Wolf Trap
Washington Post, April 11, 2011

If Alma Mahler, Dominick Argento and Miss Manners had attended the same dinner party, the conversation would have been endlessly diverting. At least that was the impression given by an approximation of such an evening, the delectable recital by Kate Lindsey on Friday at the Barns at Wolf Trap.

It was a homecoming for the Richmond-born mezzo-soprano, whose first local triumph was the title role of Wolf Trap Opera Company’s production of “La Cenerentola” in 2005. Her voice remains rich and rarefied, a dark-colored ribbon of sound that is silky but not boringly smooth. In little sets of pleasing songs by Bizet, Liszt and Ives, she was by turns sultry and powerful, with a husky chest voice that never crossed into graininess. Kim Pensinger Witman, the director of Wolf Trap Opera, was a sensitive partner at the piano, providing a carefully crafted accompaniment.

The eclectic program may have kept attendance on the low side, but it revealed an adventurous musical spirit. This was seen, for example, in the song cycle “Jeder Mensch,” commissioned last year by Lindsey from the young Egyptian-born London-born composer Mohammed Fairouz. The work’s appeal was due mostly to its incorporation of songs by Alma Mahler, who put her compositional aspirations aside when she married Gustav Mahler. [Continue reading]

Kate Lindsey (mezzo-soprano) and Kim Pensinger Witman (piano)
Music by Gounod, Liszt, Mohammed Fairouz, Ives, Argento
Barns at Wolf Trap

PREVIOUS REVIEWS:

• Tales of Hoffmann (Santa Fe, 2010)
  
• Don Giovanni (Santa Fe, 2009)
  
• L'Etoile (2007, Wolf Trap)
  
• Barber of Seville (St. Louis, 2006)
  
• La Cenerentola (Wolf Trap, 2005)

OTHER ARTICLES:

• More on Fairouz's 2011 song cycle Jeder Mensch
  
• Bill Lohmann, Have voice, will travel Kate Lindsey at Wolf Trap (Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 3)
  
• Judith Martin, The portrait of a lady: Judith Martin on sitting for Victor Edelstein (Washington Post, April 7)
  
• Tom Moore, Mohammed Fairouz: An Interview (Opera Today, September 12, 2010)
  
• Gary Hoffman, Kate Lindsey: An Interview (Opera Today, September 13, 2010)

Sidney Lumet, 86

We welcome this appreciation of director Sidney Lumet from our Hollywood correspondent.

Sidney Lumet passed away Saturday morning, and the news caught me completely off guard. He seemed like he could just go on forever. I certainly wished he would. Not simply because, at 86, he was still making movies, but because of the craft, passion, and audacity he retained even up to his great, underrated Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. That film, starring Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, not only was as dark and taut as any of his previous movies but also had the invigorating immediacy of shooting digitally. His energy was so unabated that he sat alongside Hawke and Hoffman to do an audio commentary for the disc, which like his others, was just filled with insight, humor, and immense respect for his performers and crew.

Perhaps there is a bias on my part, being an actor, for adoring Sidney and his films as much as I do. He managed to get the best from the best. In an age where the upcoming talent is trying to figure out new ways to fling a camera off a car, underwater, or ride along with bullets, Lumet knew the real effect was the human condition. Something he had a keen ability to break apart and find the crux of the moral animal within us.

There are plenty of accounts of his great achievements to be found, ranging from 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network to Running on Empty and Night Falls on Manhattan. Even trying to list these great accomplishments feels like a stroll down Academy Lane. But, personally, I didn’t just enjoy these great films, I loved how they came into being. Lumet wasn’t afraid of discussing process as he started each one anew with a fascination on how the puzzle would be taken apart and put back together again. He held rehearsals not simply for the efficiency of having done prep, but rather to find a unified vision that connected all the pieces.

S. Lumet, Making Movies

In his book Making Movies, Lumet walks the reader through every aspect of production, from the analysis of the script, the philosophy of camera placement, working with actors all the way down to style (“The most misused word since love,” he quips in that chapter.) All this earthy, human preparation was not just to have the ship sail smoothly but quite the opposite: so that he’d be ready to take advantage of that great happening, the accident. In his commentary for Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet discusses the intense scene where Pacino, playing Sonny, has to say his goodbye to his transvestite lover, Leon (Chris Sarandon). Knowing, in advance, that such a delicate moment would take care and heavy lifting by the actors, Lumet had two cameras hidden from the view of Pacino. They shot and shot to the point where he felt Pacino had peaked…and then he shot some more. He cued the second camera to jump on the heels of the take. He laughs as he describes the murderous look that Pacino gave him as he felt he left it all on the floor. You can feel that emotional exhaustion in the movie, and to this day I still smile over the story.

Many actors today dislike rehearsals for films as they feel it can flatten their spontaneity. I can agree with that as most are simply repetitions and the performers learn the others' reactions and it becomes stale. Yet, Lumet never believed there was a finished version of the scene. He would fight and work to get through to something deeper. Again, his process of examination bound each element into the theme and was always looking for something deeper. In 1964, Lumet did a live broadcast of the teleplay Fail Safe, with Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau, about the threat of a nuclear attack. When he restaged it in 2000, starring George Clooney and Richard Dreyfuss (among many others), they rehearsed in the same way. They rented an airport hangar and taped down markings for where the sets would be: each performer was wired for sound, and everyone watched each scene build upon another. Having understudied for Noah Wyle on this project, I got to see first-hand how each piece fed into another, and the effect of feeling a part of a whole can create a greater perspective.

In Hollywood the buzz word is always “story.” But Lumet knew that there was more to a film than its story. There was the ability to tell it and the reason why. He took on Shaw, Tennessee Williams, Paddy Chayevsky, down to David Mamet with humility and courage. He used that vantage point to communicate his experience with greats such as Brando, Newman, Hepburn -- to let you know, they too were daunted by these great themes and the joy afterward of having gone beyond his and their expectations. There are just too many anecdotes for one column. He left behind great stories on great projects on and off the set. While I am saddened today to know I won’t get to anticipate another treasure from Mr. Lumet, I know I don’t have to go long without the pleasure of his company that he left behind.

A great man. A great legacy. You will be missed.

In Brief: No Shutdown Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• The curtain of the new Oslo Opera House looks like a bunch of crumpled tin foil. It is the work of Los Angeles-based artist Pae White, and it was made by "scanning crumpled aluminum foil and translating that data into instructions for a computer-controlled loom that wove the material out of cotton, wool, and polyester. [Boing Boing]


• With hat tip to Alex Baker -- the real reason why Glenn Beck is out at Fox? An ill-advised dalliance with amateur theater criticism, of course. Leave the reviewing to the professionals, please! [Culture Monster]


• Tim Smith reports that the Castleton Festival is coming back to the Washington area this summer, when the Castleton Festival Orchestra plays a concert of music inspired by Shakespeare on June 30 at Strathmore. Sure, it's the usual suspects -- Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Mendelssohn -- but it will also feature readings by Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. [Baltimore Sun]


• Twitter lit up this week with a fun hashtag competition, featuring ingenious mash-ups of movie titles with names of conductors. Here are the ones I came up with but was too lazy to tweet. Some suggestions for HIP conductors: The Last Temptation of Christie | The Great Alessandrini | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Harnoncourt | Conversations with My Gardiner | Ed Hogwood | A Man for Savall Seasons | The Two Jacobs | From Herreweghe to Eternity | Les bronzés font du Minkowski. Some local ones: Meet Me in St. Reilly Lewis | Saving Private Ryan Brown | Antony Walker and Cleopatra | Restrepovich. [#conductormovies]


• With hat tip to Tyler Cowen, Frédéric Lefebvre was at the Paris book fair last week to flog his book Le mieux est l'ami du bien. When asked by a reporter about his favorite book, he tripped up and -- probably by accident -- misnamed Voltaire's Zadig as "Zadig et Voltaire," the name of a chain of French fashion stores. This has spawned a wave of Twitter derision (and a hashtag -- #bibliolefebvre), with literary types creating mash-ups of book titles and fashion names, like The Girl with the La Perla to The World According to Gap, Thus Spake Zara, Waiting for Gaultier and Victor Hugo Boss's Les Misérables. [The Guardian]


• The Opéra-Comique in Paris opened a new production of Weber's rarely heard opera Der Freischütz this week. Marie-Aude Roux says that the musical component -- the Orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique and Monteverdi Choir conducted by John Eliot Gardiner -- was excellent; the staging by Dan Jemmett not so much. [Le Monde]


• Online concerts from France-Musique this month include a recital of piano trios by Haydn and Schumann by Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, and Alexander Melnikov at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (April 1); pianoforte player Andreas Staier in a Schumann program with violinist Christoph Prégardien and tenor Christoph Prégardien (April 3); the Ensemble Intercontemporain performing music of Julian Anderson, Elliott Carter (On Conversation with Paradise), and Kaija Saariaho (Graal Théâtre) (April 4); Brahms piano trios (including the original version of op. 8, discussed yesterday) with the Capuçon brothers and Nicolas Angelich (April 5); a rebroadcast of the gala concert that opened the new opera house of the Bastille in 1989 (April 8); and a rebroadcast of a performance of Rossini's Moïse, under Wolfgang Sawallish in Munich (April 8). Click on the headphone icon to get to the streaming audio. [Les concerts à l'antenne]