Toby Spence de Retour

Charles T. Downey, Vocal Arts D.C. offers milestone local recital of tenor Toby Spence
Washington Post, January 18, 2013

Janáček, Diary of One Who Disappeared, I. Bostridge, R. Philogene, T. Adès (2001)

Vocal Arts D.C. presented two major debuts Wednesday night, the first local recital of Toby Spence and the first appearance of Leos Janacek’s “The Diary of One Who Disappeared” on its concert series. The English tenor’s fine performance at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater brought that mysterious Czech song cycle to life, as well as Robert Schumann’s poignant “Dichterliebe,” in the original high keys.

Sadly, this milestone almost did not come to pass, because Spence, 43, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in late 2011. In February, he underwent a delicate surgery to remove his thyroid and some lymph nodes, an operation that involved many of the muscles and nerves crucial to his voice. It was not certain that he would be able to sing again, but with excellent medical care and vocal rehabilitation, he has taken the stage again, making his debut at the Metropolitan Opera last fall.

Most of what distinguished his voice, a sweet lyric sound and dulcet ring at the top, has returned and will probably continue to improve. Spence seemed poised and at ease, glowing with all of his former charismatic confidence, aside from a few scratches and moments of strain. Continue reading]

Toby Spence, tenor
Carrie-Ann Matheson, piano
With Sarah Mesko, Stacey Mastrian, Rachel Carlson, Lindsey Paradise
Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe
Leoš Janáček, Diary of One Who Disappeared
Vocal Arts Society
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
Heather Brady, After losing his voice to cancer, tenor Toby Spence learns how to sing again (WTOP, January 14)

Rupert Christiansen, Toby Spence interview: 'The sounds that came out were terrifying’ (The Telegraph, January 2)

For Your Consideration: 'Hyde Park on Hudson' and 'Lincoln'

When depicting a U.S. president on film, a director and the actor who portrays him can create a saintly icon or a glimpse of the man behind the history. Two of the year's presidential movies, Steven Spielberg's dour, overstuffed hagiographical Lincoln and Roger Michell's backdoor portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hyde Park on Hudson, demonstrate the two opposing approaches. In the latter, Richard Nelson adapted his own play of the same title, based on the journals of Margaret Suckley, FDR's distant cousin and intimate, whom everyone calls "Daisy." Only recently discovered, Suckley's account of her relationship with the president lifts the veil on FDR's inner life and his sexual relationship with Suckley, among several others. The film focuses especially on the visit of King George VI and his wife to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson in June 1939. The story pulls no punches on the odd family existence of the Roosevelts: the sexual estrangement of Eleanor Roosevelt, played with a hard, slightly asocial edge by Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense, Rushmore); the president's domineering mother (veteran Elizabeth Wilson); the way in which Laura Linney's Daisy gradually finds her place in the pecking order. In this oddly ordered existence King George VI (played by Samuel West in the shadow of Colin Firth's rendition of the same character in The King's Speech) and his wife (Olivia Colman) are completely out of place.

Bill Murray is an extremely odd choice to play FDR, but what he lacks in believability he almost makes up for in whimsy. Daisy, it turns out, took some of the very rare photographs of President Roosevelt in a wheelchair, and the film shows how FDR managed his movements, being carried from place to place by assistants and driving a specially made car that could be controlled entirely by the hands. The acquiescence of the political press corps, which always waited to take pictures until FDR was standing or sitting in place, is unthinkable in today's age, as was the willingness of almost everyone to look the other way, to keep sexual affairs private. Hyde Park is not a great film (it received no nominations), but it is entertaining enough in its own way. The score, composed by Jeremy Sams, is a misty melange of Gershwinesque and Coplandesque, with a main theme that is two melodic nips and tucks away from being the motto of the old Star Trek television show.

Other Reviews: New York Times | Washington Post | Los Angeles Times The New Yorker | Hollywood Reporter | Village Voice | TIME Roger Ebert | NPR | Wall Street Journal | Movie Review Intelligence

Lincoln also attempts to show a behind-the-scenes view of its president, but director Steven Spielberg has in some ways revealed the statue in place of the man, rather than the man behind the statue. Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the greatest acting mimics of the age (My Left Foot, A Room with a View), is almost too perfect as Lincoln, the beard, the wrinkled face, the stovepipe hat -- a sort of living stone monument. He is likely the surest bet in your Oscar pool this year (Best Actor), along with Anne Hathaway as Best Supporting Actress for Les Misérables. The New York Film Critics Circle picked Sally Field in the latter category, for her braying, over-the-top harpy portrayal of Lincoln's wife -- not sure I would agree with that either. Lincoln is the sort of film -- with historical sweep, but life-affirming, dotted with star performances, and lavish production values -- likely to do very well at the Academy Awards (it received twelve nominations).

Better than it probably deserves, in fact. Tommy Lee Jones chews the scenery as the abolitionist representative Thaddeus Stevens, fun mostly because of the invective placed in his mouth and the relish with which he pronounces it. There is a whole cast of recognizable actors in supporting roles, bringing to life the drama of President Lincoln's white-knuckle attempt to get the 13th Amendment to the Constitution past the U.S. House of Representatives: David Strathairn (L.A. Confidential) as the scheming Secretary of State William Seward; Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50) as the president's hot-headed son Robert; James Spader (Crash) as W. N. Bilbo, a fast-talking, dirty-handed tough who crosses palms with silver to get the necessary votes; Hal Holbrook as Preston Blair, founder of the Republican Party; and many more. Spielberg's direction and Janusz Kaminski's cinematography seem restrained, giving the film the air at times of a documentary -- most of the story is drawn from Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography Team of Rivals -- rather than a feature.

Quicksilver's Washington Debut

Charles T. Downey, Quicksilver offers night of discoveries at Dumbarton Oaks
Washington Post, January 15, 2013

Stile Moderno: New Music from the 17th Century, Quicksilver (2011) [Sample tracks]

When Dieterich Buxtehude is by far the best-known composer on a concert program, you know you are in for a night of discoveries. The others surveyed by the historically informed performance ensemble Quicksilver at its Washington concert debut, on Sunday at Dumbarton Oaks, also worked at some point in Germany or Austria in the 17th century. Their names — Matthias Weckmann, Antonio Bertali, Johann Schmelzer, Johann Kaspar Kerll, Nicolaus a Kempis — are mostly found in the footnotes of music history textbooks.

These pieces for instruments, mainly sonatas, were meant to divert the ear, with several moods and tempos in succession over a concise single movement. This musical approach was called the “stylus phantasticus,” because miniature, intricate worlds can be contained in the 10-minute spans. [Continue reading]

Music of 17th-century Germany
Quicksilver
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

Ionarts-at-Large: Mariss Jansons' Birthday Turangalîla

Edit: You can listen to this performance via the Bavarian Radio's free on demand stream here.

At 8:02PM, Friday January 11^th, I wondered how Mariss Jansons in seemingly out-of-character Messiaen—specifically the Turangalîla Symphony—would sound like. Would Messiaen’s central part of his Tristan & Isolde triptych, this “love song” and “hymn to joy” (Messiaen), really be up Jansons’ alley?

Read more »

'Alexander Nevsky'

Charles T. Downey, With ‘Alexander Nevsky,’ BSO channels medieval bombast
Washington Post, January 14, 2013

Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky, E. Gorohovskaya, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Y. Temirkanov

When foreigners watch patriotic American films, they must find them obnoxious. This was one of my reactions to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 epic “Alexander Nevsky,” a glorification of the medieval prince who routed the Teutonic knights in the 13th century, meant rather transparently to flatter Joseph Stalin. The film was screened at Strathmore on Saturday night, with Sergei Prokofiev’s bombastic and chilling score performed live by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

These musical screenings have been one of the great successes of Alsop’s tenure in Baltimore, able to pack the hall and providing a thrill for both eyes and ears. The musical contributions were all fine, with a robust orchestral sound, particularly in the heraldic brass, moody tenor saxophone and clanging bells of the heroic town of Novgorod. [Continue reading]

Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Baltimore Choral Arts Society
Irina Tchistjakova, mezzo-soprano
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, BSO presents 'Alexander Nevsky' with live soundtrack (Baltimore Sun, January 12)

In Brief: Foggy Town Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)

• From Lausanne, a rare performance of Leonardo Vinci's opera Artaserse, with Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, and Concerto Köln. [France Musique]


• Fabio Luisi conducts a performance of Janáček's Jenůfa at the Zurich Opera, recorded last month, with Kristine Opolais and Christopher Ventris. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Listen to Georges Prêtre conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven's seventh symphony, plus Stravinsky's Firebird suite and Ravel's Bolero. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The Quatuor Diotima plays a concert at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord with music by Schoenberg and Beethoven, plus the revised version of Pierre Boulez's Livre pour Quatuor, parties 4 et 6. [France Musique]


• A recital by pianist Cédric Tiberghien, recorded in 2011 at the Schubertiade Hohenems festival. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Watch Valery Gergiev conduct the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, in an all-Shostakovich program, with pianist Denis Matsuev as soloist. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Kent Nagano conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in an Ives program, including songs orchestrated by Georg Friedrich Haas, sung by Chen Reiss and Thomas Hampson, plus the second symphony of John Adams. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts the Orchestre National de France at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with music by Kodaly and Rachmaninoff, plus Schumann's second piano concerto with Martin Helmchen as soloist. [France Musique]


• Philippe Herreweghe conducts the Collegium Vocale Gent in a concert of sacred music by Buxtehude and Bach, recorded last September in the St. Jakobskirche in Köthen. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• The young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov performs at the Kennedy Center next weekend. Get a preview of him playing at the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris. [Medici.tv]


• Riccardo Chailly conducts the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chorus in Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang" symphony, in a concert at the Vatican last spring. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Thanks to reader Johan Larsson in Stockholm, who advises us that you can watch some videos of performances by the Goteborg Symphony. [GSO Play]


• The Orchestre Français des Jeunes celebrates its 30th anniversary with a concert conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, with music by Haydn and Ravel, plus Philip Glass's 10th symphony. [France Musique]


• Gautier Capuçon joins the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for music by Saint-Saëns and Ravel, plus Éric Tanguy's Éclipse (1999) and Albert Roussel's third symphony. [France Musique]


• Pianist Laurent Wagschal and members of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France perform an octet by Ferdinand Ries and the op. 20 septet by Beethoven. [France Musique]

For Your Consideration: 'Smashed', 'Les Misérables', 'Celeste and Jesse Forever'

Smashed
Director-screenwriter James Ponsoldt returns to the theme of alcoholism in his second feature, after Off the Black from 2006. It follows the struggles of a young wife to get sober and how it distances her from her husband, who suffers from the same addiction. This view of the devastation of alcoholism is neither sentimental nor exaggerated for dramatic effect, seeming to have the touch of personal knowledge of addiction's impact, winning this watchable but not noteworthy film the Special Jury Prize at Sundance. Neither of the leads, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), really seems up to the dramatic weight that falls on their characters. The central crises of the film therefore ring false (in fairness, part of the blame falls on the weak screenplay), leaving most of the great performances to actors in bit parts: Megan Mullally (Will and Grace, Parks and Recreation) as the sanctimonious principal at the wife's school, Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) as the fellow teacher who gets the wife into AA, and Mary Kay Place (The Big Chill) as the wife's alcoholic mother.

Les Misérables
Whoever heard the first pitch to spend a fortune on making an elephantine Broadway musical from a sprawling Victor Hugo novel must have laughed. At 1,500 pages the book is impossible to adapt, even if you leave out all of Hugo's historical, political and artistic analysis. In the musical, a blockbuster created in the 1980s, composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and librettists Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (originally in French, with the English version by Herbert Kretzmer) gutted the story, leaving cardboard cutouts in the place of characters and a couple big ensemble numbers for the grand historical sweep of Hugo's view of history. Such a crazy thing could only have happened in France, where Victor Hugo is still widely read, but no one could have predicted that it would be such a hit in English.

In adapting the musical to a film version, released last month, director Tom Hooper made the unusual decision not to have the actors lip-synch with a prerecorded stereo track of the score: except for some of the ensemble and chorus scenes, the singing of the actors was captured in real time in front of the camera. Unfortunately, you have to go pretty deep down into the cast -- to Aaron Tveit's Enjolras -- to find anyone with a voice good enough to make this technique worthwhile. The leads -- Hugh Jackman's Jean Valjean, Anne Hathaway's Fantine, Amanda Seyfried's Cosette, Eddie Redmayne's Marius, and especially Russell Crowe's Javert -- are pretty faces whose singing is not nearly as flattering in vocal closeup. With tempos dragged out and some additional numbers (new text by James Fenton, screenplay by William Nicholson), the film reaches a deadly weight that no amount of spiffy cinematography and visual effects can lighten. Even the comic mugging of Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter's buffoonish innkeepers ultimately falls flat. I have to agree with both Anthony Lane and David Denby on this one.

Celeste and Jesse Forever
This slender film, by young director Lee Toland Krieger, seems like it got its start as an idea for an Andy Samberg sketch on Saturday Night Live -- involving a couple's recurring hand job joke (don't ask) -- that could never play on network TV. Developed instead into a feature film, it has a tedious screenplay of annoying characters written by the actors who play two of them, Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation) and Will McCormack. Andy Samberg (haplessly) plays Jones's clueless husband as the two of them try to decide if they really do want to get divorced or not. The tedium would not have been as extensive if it had remained an SNL sketch.

For Your Consideration: 'Amour'

The one thing that is most certain in life, that we will die, is also the thing for which most of us will not or cannot prepare. In his most recent film, Amour, Michael Haneke explores this most personal stage of life, as a devoted husband and wife, both retired music teachers, confront the inevitable end. Since The Piano Teacher in 2001, Haneke has had startling critical success as a filmmaker, winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his last two films, The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012), making him one of only seven directors who have won that award twice. (Caché was favored to win the award in 2005 but did not.) His films are the sort likely to make audiences squirm in their seats, but while Amour has some of those typical Haneke moments of terror and disgust it is new territory in many ways, a portrait of the eponymous emotion in all its complexity.

Schubert, Moments musicaux, D. 780 / Piano Sonata, D. 664, A. Tharaud (2009)

Classical music features importantly in Haneke's stories -- although most of the film is starkly silent -- and the couple shown here, Anne and Georges (the names of many couples in Haneke's films), play the piano, listen to recordings of themselves, read a book about Nikolaus Harnoncourt. After the introduction of the film, the story opens at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, for a long, uninterrupted shot of the audience filing into their places, the lights darkening, and the gentle notes of Schubert emanating from a piano. We cut to the reception afterward, where the elderly couple meet and congratulate the performer, one Alexandre Tharaud, who turns out to have been Anne's student when he was young and does just fine as an actor here. He comes to their apartment for a visit, plays another Schubert piece for them there, and later sends them his new CD. After a particularly disturbing scene, the camera turns away from the story, focusing on a series of beautiful landscape paintings. The message seems clear, that one of the functions of art is to show beauty when life has none, because the worst parts of a person dying -- "None of that deserves to be seen," as one character puts it.

Other Reviews: Anthony Lane | New York Times | NPR | Los Angeles Times New York Magazine | Village Voice | Wall Street Journal Washington Post | Hollywood Reporter | Movie Review Intelligence

Perhaps that is why Haneke, somewhat uncharacteristically, does not cut as mercilessly into the disturbing details of the story as he normally would. Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima mon amour), now in her 80s, gives a luminous performance as Anne, while Jean-Louis Trintignant is more incisive as the crusty, somewhat short-tempered husband, a role that recalls his embittered judge in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Trois couleurs: Rouge. Isabelle Huppert, a Haneke favorite, plays the couple's daughter, who pops in from time to time from her life as a traveling musician, along with her British husband, played by William Shimell (Copie conforme). Unfortunately, like many children, she is little help to her parents and even gets in their way in some respects. All of the performances are strong, especially those of Trintignant and Riva (while she has been honored with some awards buzz, he has not), who bring an entire world of a life lived together to vivid light (with excellent cinematography by Darius Khondji) almost entirely in the space of their well-appointd Parisian flat. It is Haneke's best film so far, because he has not gone to such lengths to repel his audience. That is not to say that watching it is not an uncomfortable experience, because it is, but it may indeed be the best film of the year.

This film opens today at Landmark's E Street Cinema and Bethesda Row.