Italics are mine

Thomas Schippers in "The Opera House"

Writing my previous post about Leonard Bernstein reminded me of another New York conductor who once reached great fame, but one whose career later plummeted and who met an untimely death of lung cancer at 47: Thomas Schippers.

To be honest, I had never heard of Thomas Schippers until I watched the documentary “The Opera House” during a Met-in-HD broadcast. He led the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center on September 16, 1966 with a performance of Samuel Barber’s “Antony & Cleopatra”, an opera that was panned by the critics in spite of the performers’ best efforts, including those of a stunning Leontyne Price. Schippers was also “handsome as a Hollywood leading man” (from the NYT obit), Leonard-Bernstein-kind of dashing, and like Bernstein he was a homosexual in spite of being married (his wife passed of cancer in 1973), although back then people didn’t talk about those things. They prefer to focus on his enormous talent.

He was considered a major contender to lead the New York Philharmonic after Leonard Bernstein stepped down in 1969 (his conducting A&C on opening day of the new Met in 1966, a great honor, suggests he was being groomed for a top job) but was ultimately passed over for Pierre Boulez and ended up at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, hardly a ringing endorsement of his future. But perhaps he would have staged one of those comeback stories Americans are so fond for, if lung cancer hadn’t felled him. Most of his recordings are out of print (Sibelius, to name just one), but a few remain (Barber's Adagio for Strings, highlights from Verdi's Il Trovatore). 

His New York Times obituary mentions starkly: “Fortune gave him everything and then brutally snatched it away.” Although he is most remembered for conducting the A&C performance that opened the new Met, if he’s remembered at all, the 1977 NYT obit asserts that “One of Mr. Schippers's greatest Metropolitan triumphs came in 1974, when he conducted a new production of “Boris Godunov” in Mussorgsky's original version, a first for the company.” This gave me pause when I read it, because the Met has shown so many more productions of Godunov since then. Schippers’s story reminds me that even the greatest fame is fleeting, and for every Bernstein who remained at the top throughout his career, we also have to count many artists who were once promised to great things but left us too soon or didn’t quite live up to their early days. I don't know if there is any way to rescue from obscurity a conductor who has been dead for over 40 years, but I've done my part by ordering his 1970 recording of Lucia di Lammermoor with Beverly Sills and the London Symphony Orchestra, after he had left the Met but before Cincinnati, before his wife's death, before the lung cancer diagnosis. He only had 7 years left. 

Copland, Bernstein, Shostakovich

I’ve been listening to Aaron Copland a lot since I became an American citizen. When it comes to classical music, what is more American than his Third Symphony or Appalachian Spring? Predictably, I’ve gravitated toward my recordings of Copland’s by American conductor extraordinaire Leonard Bernstein. August 25^th marked the 100^th anniversary of his birth, so Bernstein has predictably been the focus of much musical programming over the past few months, and the subject of several books. Interestingly enough, I valued Copland before I became an American but didn’t care for Bernstein. I'd heard many good conductors live; I didn't feel I missed out on much if I didn't hear Bernstein's recorded take on things. Besides, Bernstein has been dead for 28 years. But I gave him a closer listen for the centenary of his birth, and perhaps also because the man is as fascinating as the music he was able to coax out of his orchestras, I've changed my mind about him. 

Bernstein is famous for many things, from his interpretations of Mahler to his leading the New York Philharmonic to his being a gifted composer in his own right, but also for conducting American composer par excellence Aaron Copland with the New York Philharmonic - an American superstar conducting work by another American superstar with an American orchestra. But Bernstein has also led the NY Phil in landmark performances of work by Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich.

So recently Bernstein became part of a broader reflection I had on musical nationalism: Bernstein conducting Copland with the New York Philharmonic, (Valery) Gergiev conducting Shostakovich with the Mariinsky Orchestra, Bernstein conducting Shostakovich with the New York Philharmonic, (Andris) Nelsons conducting Shostakovich with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Do American orchestras have something novel to offer in the performance of Russian works? What would we think of the Mariinsky Orchestra performing Copland? (It seems hard to imagine, perhaps because Gergiev has been a staunch supporter of Russian works. He knows where his competitive advantage lies. On the other hand, the United States doesn't have a large tradition of first-rate American classical music that would go back multiple centuries. So American orchestras wouldn't have much to play if they had to limit themselves to American music.)

Countries are naturally proud of their best-known composers, and their best-known work shows the essence of that country. Appalachian Spring is imbued with the spirit of the American West at the beginning of the 20^th century and evokes Americans' resilience and can-do attitude. Shostakovich’s symphonies capture the difficulties of life under Stalinism. His Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”) echoes with the pounding rhythms of war and became a symbol of resistance to Nazism, his Thirteenth (“Babi Yar”) pays homage to the great massacre of 1941.

 Do conductors and orchestras of the composer’s same nationality have a particularly insightful perspective to bring to that composer’s work? I like to think so, yet Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre have thrived under Putin, and not every American these days relates to the can-do "I will succeed on my own terms" attitude of their elders. Recent scandals suggest that to some American companies, lying, cheating and exploiting workers might have become the preferred way to wealth. Now that the Soviet Union has imploded and music is available easily on the Internet, should we even continue to consider Bernstein’s recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 as a landmark contribution to music? Or should we accept instead that an American conductor, born and raised in a democracy, will never completely relate to the horror of living in a dictatorship, and so will not be able to fully convey the symphony to his listeners? To be fair, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded Symphony No 5 after they toured the Soviet Bloc, where they performed the piece in front of Shostakovich himself, so the musicians did draw from this deeply moving experience. Their performance remains recognized for its emotion to this day. Perhaps the gratitude of living in a democracy shines through in their playing, as does the 1982 performance at the John F. Kennedy Center of the National Symphony Orchestra led by Mstislav Rostropovich, the most famous cellist of the 20th century with great conducting gifts and a staunch advocate of human rights. 

Bernstein recorded the symphony in 1959. A lot has changed since then, and I prefer purchasing recordings of Shostakovich symphonies by Russian orchestras or at least orchestras from the former Soviet bloc. Among those, no one is better than Valery Gergiev. But can a famous Russian conductor and music director at the helm of the best Russian orchestra who could live anywhere in the world but chooses to keep living in Russia (perhaps to keep conducting Russian musicians), who necessarily has to make compromises with people in power, relate to Shostakovich’s anguish in any sort of meaningful way? Or should we forget who the conductor and orchestra are? In the end, I tend to gravitate toward Rostropovich when I want to listen to Shostakovich's 5th, because of his human rights record. I don't know if it makes for better playing but it does lend the conductor more gravitas. 

 When I become interested in a topic, I don’t do things halfway. True to myself, I’ve purchased quite a few books on Bernstein. He was a complicated man who was widely recognized as a genius and deeply appreciated his beautiful wife but he was also a homosexual who collected one-night stands with far younger men and treated his assistants in such a dismissive way that they never lasted. I’ve read the memoirs by his daughter and the one by his former assistant, both focusing on a troubled man rather than his music (the books don’t make for a very deep read), and I’m now engrossed in his biography by Humphrey Burton, but my favorite books are by Bernstein himself: his essays about music and – more than anything – his letters. What a gifted writer he was. Yet he wanted to be remembered for his music, as he instructed his former assistant on his deathbed. So I should end with a mention of my favorite recording of his, his final concert in August 1990. That second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony gives me chills whenever I listen to it. 

 

Below is a little gallery of the books I have about Bernstein.

 

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Trip to Santa Fe 2018

This summer I decided to return to Santa Fe. I had only been there once before, back in 2011, for the opera and chamber music festivals, and this time around I decided to explore the area around Santa Fe rather than just the touristy, historic part of town, although I did return to the opera festival too, on the outskirts of town. (The chamber music festival hadn't started yet when I was there.)

The main reason I decided to go was to follow in the footsteps of painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), for whom I have tremendous admiration. She first discovered New Mexico in 1929 before settling there permanently in 1949 after her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s death in 1946, and spending the last 37 years of her life alternating between Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch depending on the season. O’Keeffe was a pioneer in many respects and didn’t fit an easy mold. She stood out even before she became famous: for instance as a young woman she taught in Texas at a time where people dismissed everything that didn’t happen in New York as unimportant and she wasn't afraid of raising eyebrows with her dark, austere clothing and her (much less austere) behavior with eligible men. She developed her own unique signature style (if you're still reading this post you're probably aware that she is particularly well known for her flowers) and yet also she didn't paint flowers forever and reinvented herself at multiple junctures in her life. She enjoyed alone time far into nature – and nature there wasn’t, say, the Hamptons outside New York, but the arid and unwelcoming Abiquiu area. She didn't follow fads or trends. She made her life work on her own terms.

Visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe museum again counted as a highlight of the trip. I had been very disappointed in the museum, nestled in the historic part of Santa Fe, when I had visited in 2011 because it showed very few paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, but the museum curators have now developed a brilliant retrospective of O’Keeffe’s work (the new exhibit has only been open for a year or two), which gives an outstanding overview of O’Keeffe’s development as an artist. Perhaps O’Keeffe’s life resonates more with me now that I’ve moved to Texas. I also enjoyed her retrospective at the de Young museum in San Francisco back in 2014, but any exhibition of part of her works pales in comparison to what is on display in Santa Fe. The museum also has prepared a great timeline of O'Keeffe's life, which you can enjoy here.

Then, Ghost Ranch. The tour itself was quite good (it showed the landscapes that have inspired O’Keeffe’s paintings, and the tour guide had reproductions of the corresponding paintings as well so we could see first-hand the simplifications or slight changes that O’Keeffe made to focus on what was important in an image), but the drive to Abiquiu was even better. The picture above is one I took during the drive to Abiquiu. I recommend stopping by the Abiquiu Inn for lunch. I wonder how it must have felt to live so far away from most people, back in the 1950s and the 1960s.

The drive through Taos’s High Country also offered some stunning views of New Mexico and glimpses into areas of stark beauty but also stark poverty. I am not much of a church person but the church of Chimayo, famed for its holy dirt, was worth the stop. The Taos Pueblo also remains a highlight of that day. I also saw the Rio Grande Gorges, with very little water due to the drought. For lunch I recommend stopping at Bella’s Mexican Grill in Abiquiu. Both the salad (I think it was the elote salad with shrimp) and the tableside guacamole were exceptionally good.

I returned to the Santa Fe Opera as well. In a 2010 stunning production by the late Lee Blakeley, Madame Butterfly, which opened the festival when it was first launched in 1957 and when it re-opened after a devastating fire, had all the hallmarks of productions I love, with exquisite lighting, outstanding voices, spare sets and rather monochromatic props (in this case inspired of Japanese art), but in addition to the magnificent singing by Kelly Kaduce as Cio-Cio San (the tenor singing Pinkerton didn’t quite have her vocal range and the audience let it be known at the end that it wasn’t pleased), I loved most sitting in the first row of the mezzanine and observing the headlights of the cars go by in the far distance of the mountain range. The theater’s opening in the back on the range offered a spellbinding spectacle.

I also saw Doctor Atomic. I had never seen it (I usually don’t care much for operas sing in English) but the opportunity to see it next to the Los Alamos National Laboratory was hard to pass up. It was very good. I did like Madame Butterfly better. I also went on a backstage tour of Santa Fe Opera, which perhaps could have provided a few more insights and, disappointingly, didn’t allow the group to go anywhere near the performance hall or the stage because a rehearsal was in progress.  

For accommodations, I couldn’t have imagined a better place to stay than the Eldorado Hotel, with its back entrance just feet from the Georgia O’Keeffe museum. The breakfast restaurant prepared an outstanding egg-white omelet, although staff tended to be slow in the cooking and the service. Thankfully I was never in a rush. I loved that my room had a fireplace and a balcony. I got lucky without knowing it because I booked the trip with a check-out date that happened to be the day that the governors’ association was coming to the hotel for its big meeting, so guests couldn’t stay beyond that for security reasons, which meant a number of people staying in Santa Fe past that day had picked other hotels for their entire trip, leaving people like me with really pretty rooms in spite of my booking the trip a bit last minute. (I also appreciated the direct flights from Dallas.) For dinner I adored TerraCotta Wine Bistro. A glass of cabernet sauvignon and the best tomato, cucumber and watermelon salad I've ever eaten with the most delicious freshly baked bread: total bliss. Second choice was La Casa Sena, especially for its wasabi crab salad.

True to myself, I prepared for the trip by buying a lot of books about O’Keeffe and dusting off a volume I had about Santa Fe Opera as well as some books about O’Keeffe I had bought a while back. I also added a few O’Keeffe monographs to my collection during the trip. (See below for the book covers.) I came back with Native American artwork and artifacts, books about O’Keeffe, many remarkable memories and – after bringing my sketchbook and pencils to New Mexico with me for a few quick sketches – a commitment to start drawing and painting again on a more regular basis. This was a good trip.

 

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Superb "Trials of Sam Houston" at the Kalita Humphreys Theatre in Dallas

Last week I was fortunate to see the amazing play "The Trials of Sam Houston" by Aaron Loeb in its world premiere at the Kalita Humphreys Theatre in Dallas. The play was still in previews when I saw it, and since it's considered bad taste to review plays before they've officially premiered (because the actors are still finding their marks), I waited to blog about it. But now I can say with absolute certainty, as someone who lived and breathed theatre in the New York City area for about a decade, this play is phenomenal. It's everything Robert Schenkkan's "The Great Society" should have been but wasn't. It has great story-telling, great directing, great everything.

Director Kevin Moriarty displayed PURE GENIUS in his cross-racial and cross-gender casting. The story centers around Sam Houston, the American soldier and politician who secured the independence of Texas from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto, and his refusal in 1861 to recognize the legality of Texas's vote to secede from the United States and join the Confederacy. The narrative is dramatized through the relationship between Houston and his slave, Jeff Hamilton. (When Houston freed his slaves in 1862, Hamilton remained with the family.) The play offers flashbacks to various times in Houston's life as he struggles with the decision to accept or refuse the legality of Texas's vote. While Houston made the honorable decision of rejecting the legality of the vote, the story is deeply about African-Americans' rights and the production was wonderfully modern in giving African-Americans the leading roles they deserve in this story, specifically, in having African-American actor Charlie Robinson portray both Old Jeff Hamilton and Old Sam Houston, as well as African-American actress Liz Mikel portray both African-American Lina Graves and the definitely not African-American (and definitely not female) John Quincy Adams. Caucasian actor Steven Michael Walters played Young Sam Houston, when Houston struggled with alcohol. (He is also famous for beating another member of Congress with a cane, an incident also shown in the play, along with the consequences.) All actors in the production were excellent, but especially the three mentioned above as well as Kate Wetherhead in the role of the journalist Patricia Caras who has come to interview an aging Jeff Hamilton. 

This is a must-see play that deserves to make it to Off-Broadway (in the same casting) and hopefully to Broadway. But the residents of Dallas will have seen it first. Buy tickets here.

Robert Schenkkan's "The Great Society" is a Dud

I eagerly waited several years for Robert Schenkkan's follow-up to its Tony-Award-winning Broadway sensation "All the Way", but after I saw the result at the (Regional-Tony-Award-winning Dallas Theater Center) I wished Schenkkan had taken a few extra years to fix his play. Maybe that's why we had to wait so long. Maybe he was already trying to fix it, and perhaps the best course of action would have been to throw everything out and start from scratch.

Read the rest on my Dallas blog!

No, I didn't like Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Chekhov's "Three Sisters", and here's why

The Undermain Theatre production of Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters closes this weekend, and as much as I was glad to see Chekhov produced in Dallas with the added publicity of having his play "adapted by [a] MacArthur "genius" grant winner" (which led to a 5th week of representations), I'm not sad to see the production go. Now, I have to say, as someone who has spent a substantial amount of her life in New York and Paris theaters, the acting was not bad, and while I found the design and costumes a bit on the underwhelming side, I suspect that seeing it at the Comedie-Francaise (France's state theater) in Paris a few years back spoiled every minor production of Three Sisters for me forever, but I will be the first to agree that a minor production of Three Sisters is better than no production of Three Sisters. And of course, given the three sisters' hope of returning to Moscow, there is some added relevance to the play for the artists in Dallas who dream of moving away to New York or Los Angeles. But that is not what I want to focus on for today's post. 

Let me start by saying that Sarah Ruhl is widely recognized in the theater world, and was offered by Cincinnati Rep the opportunity to translate Chekhov - it was not her idea. This out of the way, it is also a fact that she doesn't speak Russian and had to get her sister-in-law to make a literal translation of the play so that she could rewrite that translation in a way that supposedly achieved her goal of "getting to the root of the original Russian", as she writes in the author's notes to the book. This is all very convoluted, preposterous, gimmicky, insulting to professional translators (I'm not one of them, in case you're wondering) and nothing more than a transparent ploy by Cincinnati Rep to drum up interest in a Russian play in Ohio when they staged the production back in October 2009. Elsewhere, one would hope that producing one of the world masterpieces of the theater repertoire would be enough to sell tickets, but perhaps Ohioan theater-minded audiences require a little more convincing. So be it.

In itself, while this little ploy to get Americans to care about a Russian play is a bit grating (it reminds me of Americans' tendency to remake European movies to generate more income at the box office), it would be quite harmless if Ruhl's "translation" was actually good. But she simply put 21st-century colloquial English into the mouths of 19th-century Russians, giving the text an odd feel of continued anachronism and vague mediocrity throughout. In Russian (which I read), Chekhov renders the three sisters' anguish with stunning lyricism and musicality. Ruhl's translation is nothing more than lowbrow and plodding. If you care about a good translation of Three Sisters, I highly recommend the Penguin Classics edition of Three Sisters (in Plays), translated by the late Peter Carson. Carson's work is of the highest caliber. Every line of his is like a gem that I admire both intellectually on the page and viscerally when I read the words aloud. Ruhl's translation, on the other hand, is best forgotten.

Jiri Belohlavek, 71, Czech Philharmonic Conductor

 A few days ago I learned that Jiri Belohlavek had died. I actually heard the news one month to the day since I had seen him conduct the Czech Philharmonic at Prague's Rudolfinum, in a masterful performance of Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 featuring Nikolaj Znaider and Mahler's Symphony No 5. I hadn't known he was sick, although it was clear when I saw him in Prague that he was recovering from a serious illness: he had lost so much weight and the trademark chock-full of hair I had grown accustomed to seeing, from picking up my favorite CD set [the Complete Dvorak Symphonies and Concertos, with cover pictured to the left], had disappeared.

Since his contract with the Czech Philharmonic had been renewed earlier this year, I hoped that his illness was behind me and that I would be able to attend another concert by him were I to return to Prague, which I hope to, some day. In fact I chose the dates of this trip to attend a performance by Belohlavek. That was one of my requirements: I would not go all the way to Prague for my first trip ever without attending a performance by the maestro with the Czech Philharmonic. And I'm just so glad I made it happen. The concert was almost sold-out when I bought the ticket, the same evening I booked the plane tickets and the hotel. I will always cherish the memories of that concert.

Belohlavek has done so much to raise the profile of Czech music and the Czech Philharmonic. Thanks to him I discovered much great Czech music I didn't know before, such as Martinu's Piano Concertos. His Dvorak moved me like no other conductor's can, and it is only fitting that I am listening to the CD1 of his Dvorak's Symphonies (Symphony 1 and Cello Concerto featuring Alisa Weilerstein) as I type this. I don't remember being so stunned and sad by the passing of someone I didn't know personally since the death of David Halberstam, ten years ago. But we can all be grateful for what he did to advance classical music.  

A side note about the New York Times and Washington Post obituaries, available here and here, respectively. I have included screenshots below. The NYT went with an older picture of Belohlavek (from 2008), which would be familiar to the music amateurs around the world who own his records. In it he is strong and vigorous. It resembles the one on the cover of my Dvorak Symphonies set. The one in the WaPo obituary is more recent, and matches the Belohlavek I saw when I went to Prague. There isn't much resemblance between the two, is it? And I was thinking, I doubt he wants us to remember him with the WaPo picture. But I will always remember him from the covers of his CDs anyway.

Finally, I have to wonder if he already knew he was about to die when he gave that concert of Mozart and Mahler at the Rudolfinum. He looked frail, but his conducting was not frail. I remember the enormous standing ovation we gave him at the end - Europeans, contrary to Americans, are much more parsimonious in their acclaim, but everyone was on their feet - and how touched he was when he faced us, even bringing his hand to his heart. My opinion (without proof) is that he knew, but music carried him forward as long as it could. "Music is my life," the WaPo reports him to have said. I hope he knew how much we love him and are grateful to him for making music our lives too.

Review of Play "Icebergs"

(Photo credit: Geffen Playhouse) I recently saw "Icebergs" at the Geffen Playhouse, and not only will this play transfer to Broadway if I know anything about the theater business, but it will win a Tony if the judges have any sense. It is light-years better than Pulitzer-Prize winner Clybourne Park, far better than The Humans (winner of the 2016 Tony for Best New Play, among other things), and on par with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013. The audience connects with the characters in a far more effective way than in the plays mentioned above - we root for the aspirations of the L.A. couple in their mid-thirties, the husband a filmmaker and the wife a struggling actress, who attempt to pursue their dreams of career success while struggling to have a baby and also (for the wife) struggling with the consequences of having a baby in today's world, with the threat of global warming, but we also root for the African-American scientist friend, married with one child and another on the way, who stays with them while he's in town for a conference and who ultimately gives the most moving speech about being black in America today that I've heard in a long time. The other supporting roles (the wife's friend and the husband's agent) also feel real rather than cardboard characters. We're truly treated to a slice of life for people we care a lot about from the start, and it is refreshing that the play is rooted in L.A. I loved everything about it.

I had two minor comments about specific dialogue points that made me cringe: (1) after the powerful speech by the African-American actor, the "well said" of the other cast members seemed superfluous, and (2) when the wife's friend decides to give her cat to the husband's agent - don't ask - it felt cheesy for the agent to ditch the date he had lined up and say "let's go and meet the love of my life" when he talks about meeting the cat. And that's it. The rest of the play is flawless. Everyone who has hung on to the pursuit of his/her dreams long after it was looked upon with benevolence by relatives will relate to the play - not just aspiring actors in NYC or LA. The play manages to tackle big issues, such as bringing a child in a world threatened by global warming and the continuing dangers faced by African-American today. Of course it was helped by the brilliant delivery of the fantastic cast, in particular Nate Corddry as the husband filmmaker and Keith Powell as his friend the African-American scientist. The play got a lot of laughs the day I attended - it is not really a comedy but its insights into human nature and the life of the struggling actor are spot-on.

This was a great play, the deserving recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. It'd be a big loss for the East Coast if it doesn't make it to New York City and the Great White Way.

Piano Great: SMU's Joaquin Achucarro

SMU really is fortunate to have had the great Joaquin Achucarro on its piano faculty for the past 25 years. (Everyone who knows me knows how appealing it was for me to join a university with very strong performing arts programs.) I thought of Achucarro, who just turned 84, in early November when I attended a performance of the Schumann piano concerto by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with Ingrid Fliter as guest artist and Pinchas Steinberg guest-conducting. The piece had last been performed by the DSO in September 2012 with, yes, Achucarro himself playing the piano under the baton of Jaap van Zweden. In the performance I attended, Fliter kept jumping up and down on her bench like a puppet jerked in all directions, her flowing hair falling into her face. I had seen Fliter at the 92nd Y back in 2011 in a program of Beethoven sonatas and I don't remember her as being so over-the-top. In Dallas she was so ridiculously overdramatic (people laughed in the audience) that I found myself yearning for an artist who doesn't try to steal the show away from the composer and lets his playing speak for itself - a consummate professional like Achucarro. Anyway, I felt sorry I missed Achucarro playing this great concerto by only four years. 

By coincidence, the students in his master class presented an event connecting music - piano recital - and literature - poetry reading - at SMU Meadows the other day, with music by Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Ravel, and texts by Petrarch, Goethe, Shakespeare, Verlaine and Bertrand. I wish more of Achucarro music was available on Amazon.com but I still recommend the few recordings on sale (Schumann: Fantasy and Kreisleriana, Schubert and Schumann: Masters of Art, Brahms Piano Concerto No 2, Musica Espaola Por Un Poeta Del Piano) - as a side note, I find it fascinating that Achucarro didn't go the route of his contemporary Alicia de Larrocha in making a primary reputation for himself as advocate for Spanish composers such as Albeniz and Granados, although he did play them to some extent and you can find his Granados recording on YouTube. He was just as well-known for his playing of Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Brahms. Performances available on YouTube include the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor and the Mozart Piano Concerto K.467, although I hope you will consider buying the music so that he can receive royalties.

Below is a video posted on the YouTube channel of SMU Meadows, to honor Achucarro's 25 years of teaching at SMU, with a few musical excerpts by himself and his students and plenty of good words from people who know him, including SMU President Gerald Turner himself. The concert given in his honor is described here. Dallas is fortunate to count Achucarro among its residents.

Movie review: "Theater of War"

I watched this DVD over the weekend and if you care about Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children, the business of war, or simply want to have a behind-the-scenes look at a first-rate production, Theater of War is the documentary for you.

(Admittedly, not everyone cares about Bertolt Brecht. Their loss. He was one of the great genius playwrights of the twentieth century who witnessed the defining tragedies of our times, in particular Nazism - he fled Germany in 1933 with his wife and their children, first to Denmark, then Sweden, then Finland and finally the United States - the Second World War - most of which he spent in exile in Los Angeles - the beginning of the hunt against Communists, which prompted his return to Europe after the war, and then of course the oppression of Eastern Germany, although he served as a poster child to the party in power, since he had returned from the mecca of capitalism).

The first-rate production in question is the 2006 staging of Mother Courage at the Public Theatre in New York City. It doesn't hurt that Meryl Streep plays the title role, although there were fewer snapshots of her process in creating the role than I expected. At least we were treated to scenes from rehearsals, which was better than nothing. But for me the true value of this documentary is in the insights it provides about Brecht, the testimony of his daughter Barbara, the stills of the original Mother Courage production in Berlin which marked the beginning of the Berliner Ensemble and where Brecht's wife, the great Helene Weigel, starred as the mother. 

As much as I admire Streep as an actress, her casting as the mother is not a perfect match (this is better explained in the New York Magazine's review of the production; put another way, it is hard for Streep at this point in her career to make a theater audience forget she is Streep, while it is easier to do in movies). For another review of the 2006 production, here is the New York Times's take on it. I thought the excerpts on DVD were far better than the reviewer implied of the whole production, but maybe it was too early for its time. Ten years later with certain wars dragging on and others having broken out, the theme of the 30-year-war resonates far more with the viewers.

I was stunned when I saw the stills by how good of a fit for the role Helene Weigel seemed to be. She directed the Berliner Ensemble after Brecht passed away in 1956 and survived him by 15 years. Magnum Photos has some great photos of hers at the height of her fame and power in East Germany. Buy the DVD for Streep and watch it for Weigel.