Sunset Lake - Alton, NH
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Music Review: Alan Gilbert, Emanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic
Its summer and we all want things to be just a little easier, and that includes the NY Phil and its audience. We wish for easy and free parking and there it was right across from Lincoln Center. We ask for a program that is fun and somehow doesn't tax us too much and Mr. Ax, Mr. Gilbert and company are glad to oblige with a program that was more laid back than it looked at first glance.
First up was Mr. Ax and Haydn. The rendition was nothing if not fleet, as if the soloist had to get home for a favorite TV show. We sat on the piano side and couldn't help but be impressed by Mr. Ax's virtuoso playing, but by the time we got into it was over. Just what we expect from an opening piece but we kind of expect more from a first rank pianist.
The other two pieces are more linked in my mind. The First Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 3, in its NY premier, promised a lot with a huge orchestration. One expects a composer to make a great statement with such a huge force behind him but Mr. Rouse choose instead to make a lot of little statements featuring a hodge-podge of different styles from different sections of the orchestra. It was fun in its way and people enjoyed it but it seemed a little too much like the composer showing off all his tricks.
After the intermission we had the privilege of listening to the music of Richard Wagner, sort of. The piece, A Ring Journey, arranged by Mr. Gilbert after suite by another conductor, Erich Leinsdorf. Somehow it may have been one conductor to many. Despite heroic work by Philip Myers and the rest of the brass section the work lost the heroic feel of the actual ring. One problem was the work was a juke box musical of themes from the ring, played out of order. The result was as flat and strangely un-Wagnerian as I recall Mr. Leinsdorf's Wagner conducting was at the MET in my youth . Laid back Wagner for summer, not bad exactly but perhaps a little too easy even for summer.
First up was Mr. Ax and Haydn. The rendition was nothing if not fleet, as if the soloist had to get home for a favorite TV show. We sat on the piano side and couldn't help but be impressed by Mr. Ax's virtuoso playing, but by the time we got into it was over. Just what we expect from an opening piece but we kind of expect more from a first rank pianist.
The other two pieces are more linked in my mind. The First Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 3, in its NY premier, promised a lot with a huge orchestration. One expects a composer to make a great statement with such a huge force behind him but Mr. Rouse choose instead to make a lot of little statements featuring a hodge-podge of different styles from different sections of the orchestra. It was fun in its way and people enjoyed it but it seemed a little too much like the composer showing off all his tricks.
After the intermission we had the privilege of listening to the music of Richard Wagner, sort of. The piece, A Ring Journey, arranged by Mr. Gilbert after suite by another conductor, Erich Leinsdorf. Somehow it may have been one conductor to many. Despite heroic work by Philip Myers and the rest of the brass section the work lost the heroic feel of the actual ring. One problem was the work was a juke box musical of themes from the ring, played out of order. The result was as flat and strangely un-Wagnerian as I recall Mr. Leinsdorf's Wagner conducting was at the MET in my youth . Laid back Wagner for summer, not bad exactly but perhaps a little too easy even for summer.
Theater Review: Master Builder
Spend an evening at the rocky beginning of the sexual revolution. The Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theater presents the fascinating, brilliant and terribly neurotic Master Builder.
’The Master Builder’ by, Henrik Ibsen, translated by Dave Eggers and directed by Andrei Belgrader, is in every way the hottest show in town. In the first act all the characters are apparently clumsy and often act with humor both sly and open. Burlesque seems to be always in the mind of the translator ,director and actors. In the first act.
John Turturro (Halvard Solness) is the last ‘Master Builder’ of the old guild system. With all the important commissions going to Architects He can now build only homes..
He compensates by ways familiar to us to this day. He rapes a fourteen year old girl on the day of his last church commission. The day he lost his faith in god and himself. Wrenn Schmidt (Hilde Wangel) plays the young woman who was raped and visits him to pick-up a promised property. Kelly Hutchinson (Kaja Fosli), who both works for the master builder and his mistress. The perfect frosty Ibsen wife Katherine Borowitz (Aline Solness) knows that sex games are going on can not admit it.
Like many of plays of the higher theater, both classic and modern, this play requires an understanding of the complete work. This includes all of the higher arts. In this case the sex was so strong for some sexually disturbed patrons that they had to walk before or during intermission. Even some ‘critics’ perhaps walked a out as well. Just saying.
I won’t go into detail about the second act but it will tell you why Freud wrote ‘Shakespeare, Ibsen e Dostoevskij: 1913 27’ and Why the good Dr. Freud said it was his favorite Ibsen play. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce and George Bernard Shaw pretty much thought it was the great work of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
Lets all thank BAM, Mr. Eggers, Mr. Belgrader , John Turturro and the rest of the artists for a rare great evening.
Special thanks to every one involved for having the guts for jumping the sexual bubble in this production. I am proud to say I had random fun sexual feelings for Ms. Hutchinson and Ms. Schmidt. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have
’The Master Builder’ by, Henrik Ibsen, translated by Dave Eggers and directed by Andrei Belgrader, is in every way the hottest show in town. In the first act all the characters are apparently clumsy and often act with humor both sly and open. Burlesque seems to be always in the mind of the translator ,director and actors. In the first act.
John Turturro (Halvard Solness) is the last ‘Master Builder’ of the old guild system. With all the important commissions going to Architects He can now build only homes..
He compensates by ways familiar to us to this day. He rapes a fourteen year old girl on the day of his last church commission. The day he lost his faith in god and himself. Wrenn Schmidt (Hilde Wangel) plays the young woman who was raped and visits him to pick-up a promised property. Kelly Hutchinson (Kaja Fosli), who both works for the master builder and his mistress. The perfect frosty Ibsen wife Katherine Borowitz (Aline Solness) knows that sex games are going on can not admit it.
Like many of plays of the higher theater, both classic and modern, this play requires an understanding of the complete work. This includes all of the higher arts. In this case the sex was so strong for some sexually disturbed patrons that they had to walk before or during intermission. Even some ‘critics’ perhaps walked a out as well. Just saying.
I won’t go into detail about the second act but it will tell you why Freud wrote ‘Shakespeare, Ibsen e Dostoevskij: 1913 27’ and Why the good Dr. Freud said it was his favorite Ibsen play. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce and George Bernard Shaw pretty much thought it was the great work of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
Lets all thank BAM, Mr. Eggers, Mr. Belgrader , John Turturro and the rest of the artists for a rare great evening.
Special thanks to every one involved for having the guts for jumping the sexual bubble in this production. I am proud to say I had random fun sexual feelings for Ms. Hutchinson and Ms. Schmidt. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have
Film Reviews: East and Frances Ha
Two films with rather hot actresses Brit Marling (East) and Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha.) One film pretends to be about revolution
but is in the end it is as reactionary as its presenter, Rupert Murdoch. Besides the pretention of the sentimental plots concerning all the stars in the film we get to see dizzy group of ‘freegans’ who do jams killing CEOs especially if they happen to be their parents. Its hard to understand what possible radical effect they want from dumpster diving - don’t all people deserve fresh healthy food. Somehow I think that’s the moral point, not feeding people out of date partly rotten food. Rupert Murdoch and Brit Marling seem to me to believe in pretty much the same philosophy. Remember that when you see the reactionary Brit Marling portrayed on TV as some kind of radical. Fortunately we have a real revolutionary film playing just now. The revolution is delightfully the sexual one and Greta Gerwig is leading it. In the film she plays Frances, a young woman who thinks she has had sex with too many men. She thinks she can keep the number under twenty if she sleeps with former encounters. Needless to say all the men on her list are useless to her. Fortunately her across the hall neighbor, her male counterpart when it comes to sex, serves as a perfect boy friend. Both Frances and the audience learn not to feel guilty for their sexual pleasure. Now that is Revolutionary.
but is in the end it is as reactionary as its presenter, Rupert Murdoch. Besides the pretention of the sentimental plots concerning all the stars in the film we get to see dizzy group of ‘freegans’ who do jams killing CEOs especially if they happen to be their parents. Its hard to understand what possible radical effect they want from dumpster diving - don’t all people deserve fresh healthy food. Somehow I think that’s the moral point, not feeding people out of date partly rotten food. Rupert Murdoch and Brit Marling seem to me to believe in pretty much the same philosophy. Remember that when you see the reactionary Brit Marling portrayed on TV as some kind of radical. Fortunately we have a real revolutionary film playing just now. The revolution is delightfully the sexual one and Greta Gerwig is leading it. In the film she plays Frances, a young woman who thinks she has had sex with too many men. She thinks she can keep the number under twenty if she sleeps with former encounters. Needless to say all the men on her list are useless to her. Fortunately her across the hall neighbor, her male counterpart when it comes to sex, serves as a perfect boy friend. Both Frances and the audience learn not to feel guilty for their sexual pleasure. Now that is Revolutionary.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Thugs protect Whites Only in Prospect Park
An epidemic of de facto racism is spreading in brownstone Brooklyn. This includes the many areas of Brooklyn boarding Prospect Park. The recent event where large mobs of drunk rich inbred idiots got to use large parts of the park exclusively, while the rest of us were turned away by goons from CSS Security. Note the mob who came keep me from taking pictures. Pretty good for a 64 year dialysis patient who was just photographing wildflowers. What an army of cowards, they must think they are the junior Pinkertons.
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