Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Quiggin

Senior Member
  • Posts

    1,529
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Quiggin

  1. Yes, but in San Francisco, the serious stuff seems a bit out of balance with film nights. (An odd sort of concert hall music experience since film music is designed to cue the viewer as what they should feel about what's on the screen. In themselves, they're a little like "music-minus-one" albums.) The Los Angeles Philharmonic, ironically, seems to feel less obligated to program film score evenings: https://www.laphil.com/events/performances?Venue=LA+Phil&Season=null https://www.sfsymphony.org/Calendar
  2. I was saddened to learn that Esa Pekka Salonen is leaving San Francisco next year, in part because I haven't regularly attended performances of SFS in the past couple of years. I really liked his Debussy and Stravinsky performances which had such great clarity and detail. Salonen is leaving due to disagreements about allocation of resources. Also maybe (my speculation) because of the way the calendar is padded out with lots of film score programs: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator. He also chose to do programs like the one coming up on June 13: Cello Concerto No. 1 Dmitri Shostakovich Fairytale Poem [First San Francisco Symphony Performances] Sofia Gubaidulina Francesca da Rimini Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/arts/music/esa-pekka-salonen-leaving-san-francisco-symphony.html
  3. Alexey Brodovitch perhaps owes the command "Astonish Me" to Diaghilev, for whom he worked at set painting for a while, but so many photographers owe their film sense to Brodovitch himself. Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Lillian Bassman, Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Leon Levenstein, Louis Fauer, and Hiro all worked with Brodovitch or took intense* classes from him. Harper's Bazaar in its 15 September 1940 issue describes him thus: "Alexey Brodovitch, the Bazaar’s art director, is Russian, and a man of iron shyness, with a gift like the Cheshire cat’s of fading in and out of this office of madly leaping females." From what I've seen of the catalogue, it looks as if Gary Winogrand's insightful 1950s photos of first night Met opera goers are included in the Barnes show, as most likely are Brodovitch's own long-shutter speed photographs of ballet performances of the late thirties, such as Balanchine's Cotillon and Massine's Seventh Symphony. https://www.barnesfoundation.org/brodovitch-astonish-me https://lapetitemelancolie.net/2015/08/05/alexey-brodovitch-ballet-1935-37/ * "exacting and ruthless": Bazaar in 1954
  4. Yes, as I remember it, it was Jackie Kennedy who helped with the Chanel revival, at least in the US. Incidentally, Christian Bérard, who influenced and guided Dior through the initial stages of the New Look, also provided the look for the original versions of Balanchine's La Valse and Mozartiana – traces of which still linger in the choreography. Cocteau interestingly in Harper's: "the fashions created by Mademoiselle Chanel have never been extravagant ... In a way that is uniquely her own she imposes the invisible. In the midst of the social uproar, the nobility of a silence."
  5. Thanks Drew. Interesting reading your thoughts on the Coco Chanel ballet and the ebbs and flows of its narrative. Wonder if a "shadow" Onegin – or shadow Pushkin character – would help bring that ballet closer to the original novel/poem. I'm wondering about the Chanel dream of ripping up Dior's dresses. Looking through the images in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar of the forties and fifties online, it doesn't seem as if Chanel's designs would hold up very well against Christian Dior's brilliant work, especially the sleek designs of his 1947 and 1951 collections. In fact Chanel seems to completely disappear from the scene until 1955 when Jean Cocteau of all people tries to rehabilitate her in a 1955 Bazaar article, and she doesn't seem to be much of a player even after that. Also Dior, always described as a shy and self-effacing man, seems an odd nemesis to have been picked for Chanel. Dior quietly continued to design during the war, while his sister Catherine worked for the Resistance out of their apartment and was later captured and tortured by the Gestapo. The comparison with Dior only seems to point up Chanel's dubious behavior during those years.
  6. It may not have been the intention, but it looked non-binary/male to me. But I should have said more directly that I didn't think the casting worked.
  7. I think the "he" is the part Stanley is dancing in "Racing" and as accommodating as Stanley is, the two of them seem to be in different ballets. Unfortunately, art depends on dialectics and binaries where two different ideas impact each other. it doesn't have to be male and female but it has to be two oppositional forces and those don't seem to have been worked out here. .
  8. I'm just finishing "The Magician" after reading "The Master" – the kind of titling "Maestro" may have been trying to follow. In both books Colm Tóibín handles complex gay/straight, family/out of bounds relationships with great tact – so it's not impossible to do. What the movie does is lock Leonard Bernstein into a certain set of restricted ideas, very comfortable ones, that will be associated with him from now on. And clips of Bradley Cooper's Bernstein will likely supersede the real thing. Sidebar: In "the Magician" – about the Thomas Mann family – there are some very funny scenes that kind of criss-cross "Maestro." One is about Alma Mahler trying to sell the original copy of the Bruckner Third to Adolf Hitler and another alludes to Erika Mann's affair with Bruno Walter, who is insufferably boastful. Plus there's a great impersonation of Virginia Woolf by W H Auden. Am looking forward to the Schoenberg/"Dr Faustus" pages.
  9. Saw his Melancholic several times in San Francisco. The best – beautifully sustained, completely in character of a kind of stripped down non-character.
  10. Mark Swed in the LA Times has some good notes on the movie, the first echoing abatt's reservations about the depiction of Bernstein's conducting style: And on the significance of Thomas Cothran in Bernstein's life: Here's Swed's whole Los Angeles Times piece about the "missing essence" of the Netflix pic: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-12-22/netflix-maestro-movie-leonard-bernstein And his link to a longer account of the Bernstein/Cothran relationship by Peter Napolitano in the Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leonard-bernstein-maestro-tommy-cothran_n_65776e50e4b09724b4352994 Yes, a multi-season series might be the thing, but with all the material available, musical and biographical, it could well be an unlimited one. A whole season could be devoted to the making of Candide, with Lilian Hellman, Richard Wilbur, Barbara Cook, Voltaire, etc !
  11. Henri Cartier-Bresson, who took the series of pictures, famously did not allow his photos to be cropped (except for Alexei Brodovitch, editor of Harper's Bazaar, to whom he allowed the privilege). He believed in catching the whole thing in one throw. H C-B: Lincoln Kirstein: HIs approach was a huge influence on post war Amercian photographers such as Gary Winogrand, William Eggleston and Nan Goldin. No, the picture should not have been cropped. Added: I'll have to amend my comment to say that I'm not sure if the Arthur Mitchell photo was part of the series taken by Cartier-Bresson (there's no vignetting at corners of frame from the particular Leica lens H C-B used), though his ideas of cropping could still apply.
  12. Not all of the archive at NYRB seems to be in public access though you can register for one (or two) free looks. Public libraries, such as San Francisco's, may have online subscriptions through Flipster, but only to 2014. I enjoyed reading Joan Acocella's reviews, though there seemed to me to be some sadness along with the sharpness. Here's a clip from a 1995 article on another critic, Robert Garis: The New York Times obit mentions that a collection of AC's writings on literature, “The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays,” will be published later in the year.
  13. Really enjoyed it the second time, after a quick run through. So many Tchaikovsky overtures and fantasies, like pie fillings without the crust, one after another, often dark and dense – a bit overwhelming. I especially liked the Elegy at the beginning where the corps seem to be describing the dancer's thoughts (Shane Wagman?). Nice that Romeo & Juliet began with the ending first, freeing up the rest of the ballet.
  14. The "Funeral march" is ironic and has some dances in it and odd changes of tempi, so it would seem to give Ratmansky some room to play in. The Adagietto is what people who don't like Mahler like, and I never look forward to it. Klaus Tennstedt said something like it was a bit too sweet perhaps, but it gives the audience a moment to "elax" a bit. But as main fare?
  15. They were amazing, especially in the asymmetrically crossed-leg figures that you can also see Villella making. Mozartiana!
  16. This is very sad. Patrick was a lively participant on this forum in the early days of long arts discussions that went on for pages of posts and counterposts – along with Carly, Simon G, Bart, etc – all of us keeping Helene very much on the "alert." In general life here and everywhere is much more subdued, people are more cautious and we tend to discuss fine points of performances rather than indulge in loud, overarching theories of the art as before. Bits of Patrick's posts from 2008 & 2010: "When I first started seeing NYCB regularly in the late 70s, the dancers did seem very adult -- but then they were all older than me, or at least my age. Now that they're all young enough to be my children and then some, they look like kids. It's that simple ... But NYCB is not 'like kids' when dancers like Sara Mearns are at work. And I say that even about the her dancing in roles I don't think she fully succeeds at. She is always 'adult', in the sense of either being fully serious or trying to be, as in 'swan lake'. She is just one example of a dancer who is always serious about what she is doing, so that even seeing her do something in which she is not fully convincing is still along the lines of what I used to see Farrell or McBride or Villella doing." "My problem with Sondheim is that, although he's written more successful shows than Bernstein, Jule Styne and Harold Arlen, I don't think he is nearly the great composer that they are, with some exceptions of individual songs here and there. The music often whines and gets smarmy and neurotic, and is not muscular that way the above three are. I think his greater gift is usually that of the lyricist for composers with a greater musical gift ... I was interested that Sondheim 'adored Lee Remick' and was devastated by her death. I also recall finding it totally shocking and unexpected, and I was pretty crazy about her too." "That's probably the main thing we don't agree with, and it might have to do with knowing Colette's work better than I do. I like all that luxuriant decadence, all the sense of a confection and lots of fripperies (aided and abetted by Ms. Kathy Bates). When I think of it, I believe I've taken out 'Cheri' and 'Gigi' several times, and never read past the first couple of pages. I'm not sure why, because I like the whole idea of COLETTE. It's not like anybody else has ever BEEN Colette! Okay, I think I ought to read it, that's what this discussion has convinced me of." "I am simply dumbstruck that I missed this due to various activities last week. Stockhausen was one of the great composers of the 20th century, and while not as 'lovable' perhaps as the recent great performer deaths in classical music--Rostropovich, Sills, Pavarotti--was more important in the musical-adventurer domain. Boulez, who became extremely jealous of him during his ascent into great fame, nevertheless always spoke of him as having been greatly influential on him (although Boulez is a few years older). I've liked some of the piano music, the 'Klavierstucke--I-IV,' and orchestral music a great deal, and remember a rehearsal of 'Jubilee' at the New York Philharmonic in about 1981, which was marvelous."
  17. Here's Alexandra Danilova's charming SPF, done at Jacobs Pillow in 1952. Malissa Hayden's version, which may have been coached by Danilova, seems a bit looser and slightly disaffected in comparison. https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/alexandra-danilova/sugar-plum-fairy-variation-from-the-nutcracker/
  18. As Drew says, the title "Maestro" is where the problem begins. The title is about a conductor, the movie is about a love affair. Regarding Mahler and Maestros, I had forgotten the fact that Mahler had briefly been director of the New York Philharmonic. And after Mahler's death it was Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, quite different in conducting style, who championed his work. This despite years of dismissive, John Martin-like reviews from Olin Downes and Howard Taubman in the Times. Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leonard Bernstein's mentor – there's perhaps an "Anxiety" story there – premiered the Sixth in New York in the late 40s and conducted Mahler after that whenever he could. Leonard Bernstein was then interested in Strauss ("Don Quixote"), Stravinsky and Shostakovitch, which do seem like influences for "Candide." It was only after the series of nine commemorative Mahler concerts in 1959, with Mitropoulos, Bernstein, and Walter taking turns, that Bernstein seemed to get religion. (My own favorite New York Philharmonic Mahler conductor was Klaus Tennstedt who was able to tone down the orchestra's rambunctiousness, especially in transitions to the slow movements.) Regarding Bernstein's sexuality, he does seem to have been genuinely gay, not bisexual and truly devoted to his family (Felicia Montealegre letter: “you are a homosexual and may never change [. . .] I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar"). Maybe he was an actor who was not always convinced of his own acting.
  19. It looks intriguing and seductive from the clips, but I'm also put off by the marker of artistic success being a work's verisimilitude, impersonation here being so upfront and so much the focus that you're always saying, "that's so just like Lenny." Zachary Woolfe has a piece in today's Times about what's been left out of the movie, Bernstein's actually life as a gay man (I remember Lillian Hellman fussily chastising him on Dick Cavett one night for this) and his and Felicia's involvement in social issues. But also left out, more importantly, are LB struggles to be accepted as a composer, rather than a conductor or writer of musicals, judgments that dogged him all his life. Important biographical points get deleted or rounded off and Bernstein ends up in the public imagination as a kind of celebrity caricature, full of ticks and actors' tricks.
  20. Thanks for the descriptions. Sound like all Coppelias have something to recommend them. Yes, Swanilda does save the day and Franz is a bit of a dolt. (In ETA Hoffmann's original stories, which share characters and themes with the Nutcracker, the Franz/Nathanael character has something of a psychotic break, at least as I remember the wayward plots – and which are all well worth rereading.) I'm almost embarrassed sometimes how much I love the uncomplicated music – even hearing a few bars brings up memories of the ballet.
  21. Medici.tv just put up a nice 2 1/2 minute clip of Ratmansky's Coppelia. Roslyn Sulcas in today's NY Times says Ratmansky "infuses the ballet with new life," but the Danilova-Balanchine version always seemed pretty lively, at least the SF Ballet production did. Comparisons anyone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluXtSgu3a8
  22. First naming became an issue for me in "Ninth Street Women," about the New York School painters Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler. I'd not be able to keep up with which Joe it was: Joe LeSeur or Joe Hazan? Only with Edwin Denby did I feel I was on solid ground. For me there is a bit too much intimacy in a biographer calling their subject by their first name. The biographer and subject are not really equals and first naming implies that. The distance between them should be established in some graceful, or amusing, way (Shakespeare's first biographer called him "this William"). With Homans, I sort of accepted the first names basis, as if everyone were in a big rehearsal room. What I objected to were the quick Homeric thumbnail sketches of each person she introduced, their ethnic background, their often absent father or mismatched parents, etc. It was too digressive and not that interesting. With composers and writers I like last names if they're no longer alive and first and last if they are – at least in the first reference. The sound of the name might figure in – you say Hemingway, last name, but also F Scott Fitzgerald, first and last, Suzanne Farrell than Farrell. Igor Stravinsky might be the composer whereas Stravinsky seems to me, less respectfully, the brand. You could be formal for a while, then break it as if coming in for a close up. The LeClercq / Tanny performer / woman (long shot / close up?) variation seems like a really good solution.
  23. I agree. I saw Orpheus twenty or so years ago (with Wendy Whelan) and was a bit perplexed in that it didn't stylistically match up with Apollo and Agon with which it was often programmed, once as a "Greek Trilogy." But there was something so minimalist and unusual about the moving curtain, and the pas de deux is full of Balanchine invention. It is time-locked in art deco modernism, but Noguchi and Balanchine make it into a superior variety. Just remembered the play about its making, "Nikolai and the Others" – https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/theater/nikolai-and-the-others-relates-the-making-of-orpheus.html
  24. Great rehearsal photos in Gia Kourlas's piece. Loved this:
  25. Of all Balanchine's ballets, Apollo seems to me to have the most potential for dead spots and empty transitions. Villella's had none, it was all structure. Everything he did had meaning, was taking him somewhere that was important. Yes, quite thrilling.
×
×
  • Create New...