5.8.08
Weekend Highlights May 9-11
THE ROGOVOY REPORT
5.6.08
[PRESS RELEASE] Pinchas Zukerman daughter Natalia to headline at Club Helsinki
Coming to Great Barrington, Mass., nightclub on May 18
5.2.08
Singer/composer Jenny Scheinman at MASS MoCA is weekend's top pick
Preview by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.25.08
[FILM REVIEW] Shine a Light (The Rolling Stones)
review by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.17.08
[FILM REVIEW] The Counterfeiters
review by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.11.08
Klezmatics do Woody Guthrie's Jewish songs
Weekend highlights, April 11-13
3.17.08
GOLEM returns to Club Helsinki for PURIM this Friday night
Press Release from Club Helsinki
3.8.08
CHEESE TO BE SPOKEN OF AND EATEN ON MARCH 30
part of BERKSHIRE LIVING's REST OF THE STORY series
2.25.08
Richard Thompson, America, and Madeline Peyroux added to Mahaiwe lineup this spring
Mahaiwe press release
7.1.07
[DANCE REVIEW] State Ballet of Georgia at Jacob's Pillow
Review from the NEW YORK TIMES
2.24.08
[MUSIC REVIEW] Urban vs. Pastoral Music at the Mahaiwe courtesy of Close Encounters with Music
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.18.08
[THEATER REVIEW] TRUMBO at Barrington Stage
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.18.08
[MUSIC REVIEW] Sarah Aroeste's neo-Ladino at Club Helsinki
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.21.08
[FILM REVIEW] THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.11.08
[COMEDY REVIEW] The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.11.08
[COMEDY REVIEW] The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
|
[MUSIC REVIEW] Urban vs. Pastoral Music at the Mahaiwe courtesy of Close Encounters with Music
2.24.08
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
at the MAHAIWE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
February 23, 2008
Program: "City Lights/Rural Utopia: Urban and Pastoral Music"
Review by SETH ROGOVOY, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., February 24, 2008) -- Perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, the city seemed to have kicked the country's ass last night in a compellingly programmed evening of chamber music pitting urban- versus rural-themed compositions, part of the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC series at the Mahaiwe Theatre.
The balance of the program, featuring the lively Amernet String Quartet, soloists Eugenia Zuckerman (flute) and Michele Levin (piano), and CEWM artistic director Yehuda Hanani, who sat with the Amernet for several numbers, seemed to favor the pastoral, including works by Couperin, Bach, and Carl Maria von Weber.
But the concert climaxed with a surprising roar and ovation from the assembled crowd for a somewhat dissonant, atonal, but gorgeously colored string quartet, "The Urban," by composer Frederick Kaufman. Written in 2005, the piece captured city street life using the language of the contemporary avant-garde in much the same way George Gershwin did in his works of the first half of the twentieth century that used the vibrant, jazz-influenced vocabulary of his time.
The Amernet, who make a specialty of playing Kaufman's "The Urban," his sixth string quartet, invested the piece with driving intensity. Like Gershwin before him, Kaufman is well versed in jazz and plenty of that powered the piece, as well as some rock-like energy, in painting a colorful cacophony of sirens, car alarms, subway screeches, and blaring lights, all organized in musical fashion that built towards its sizzling viola cadenza climax using a Minimalist, Reichian ostinato figure.
The Scherzetto movement from the Berkshires' own Stephen Dankner's Quartet No. 7 that closed the evening functioned as an apt denouement in contrast to Kaufman's fiery lyricism. Dankner's piece built itself on the two-note, descending call of the chickadee, and was in many ways a modern echo of the piece that opened the evening's performance, Francois Couperin's "Pieces en concert."
Zukerman, accompanied by Levin on piano, defied anyone ambivalent about flute music with her lush, energetic vibrato on "Andante Pastoral and Scherzettino for Flute and Piano," Paul Taffanel's sophisticated, artsy, florid version of a shepherd's lament.
With its diverse instrumentation -- a string (Hanani's cello), a percussion (Levin's piano), and a wind instrument (Zukerman's flute) -- Von Weber's four movement "Trio for Piano, Flute and Cello in G Minor, Op. 63" boasted great tonal variety, sounding downright orchestral at moments.
Levin opened the concert's second half with Three Preludes by George Gershwin, instantly recognizable with all his calling cards, echoing his best-known numbers such as "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Summertime." J.S. Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" from Cantata No. 208, given a solo performance by Levin, was an airy nursery rhyme, only making the Kaufman quartet that followed all the more dynamic and exciting.
Seth Rogovoy is BERKSHIRE LIVING's editor-in-chief and award-winning music critic.
|
