Imani Winds

My alma mater presented a woodwind quintet called Imani Winds.  A woodwind quintet is a traditional ensemble with exactly the makeup of players you see illustrated.  And yes, a French horn is not a woodwind.  There is composed repertoire for this ensemble, but mostly they played arrangements.  The members left to right are:  Mark Dover, Brandon Patrick George, Monica Ellis, Jeff Scott and Toyin Spellman-Diaz. 

This concert had a theme:  The Beauty of Strife.  Artworks that came to us through war and political conflict.

Nkosi si di Leli by Enoch Mankayi Sontonga, arranged by Valerie Coleman is the South African National Anthem.  There is no note for this interesting piece because we all are familiar with the strife in South Africa.

Le Tombeau de Couperin [the tomb of Couperin] by Maurice Ravel is arranged by Mason Jones from the orchestral version of this piece.  Ravel is responding to the deaths of his friends in WWI by attempting to create a French suite such as Couperin might have written.  We heard 4 of the movements.

Quartet No 8 by Shostakovich is arranged from a string quartet by Mark Popkin.  We heard 5 movements.  It was explained from the stage that this work has a unifying theme.  Just as Bach wrote a piece using his name as a theme [BbACB], Shostakovich made a theme of his initials DSch [DEbCB] which appears through the work.  This work was composed from his reaction to the bombing of Dresden in WWII.

"Gift of Life" from Wanderings by Derek Bermel is concerned with conflict and cultural merging in Jerusalem.  It has a certain Klezmer quality.

Traditional Spirituals arranged by Valerie Coleman is "Steal Away" and "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit" arranged for woodwind quintet.  We all know that these come from the period of American slavery, but what I didn't know was that they sometimes contained instructions on how to find the underground railroad leading to freedom.

Wapango by Paquito D'Rivera is originally for woodwind quintet and is a Mexican dance by a composer from Cuba.

I have listed this all out because of what a wonderful program it was.  Classical recitals are seldom this lively and fascinating.  We ended with an unknown encore with singing, including a little audience participation singing.  I loved it all.  I tried to find out what Imani means but failed.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Conductor: Kirill Petrenko
Production: Harry Kupfer

Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov, a Merchant: Anatoli Kotscherga
Zinoviy Borisovich Izmailov, his son: Sergey Skorokhodov
Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, wife of Zinoviy Borisovich: Anja Kampe 
Sergei, a workman employed at the Izmailovs: Misha Didyk
Aksinya, a workwoman employed at the Izmailovs: Heike Grötzinger
Sonyetka, a convict: Anna Lapkovskaja

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Dmitri Shostakovich streamed today from the Bayerische Staatsoper.  I have seen this opera twice before, both times at the San Francisco Opera.  This is different somehow.  Kampe is marvelous, but the most applause goes to Petrenko.

The Nose

Today we were blessed with The Nose by Dmitri Snoztakovich live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD, sung in Russian.  You have no idea how long I've been waiting to tell that joke--stolen from Emily Pulley.

Conductor: Pavel Smelkov
Production: William Kentridge
Stage Directors: William Kentridge, Luc De Wit
Projections: Catherine Meyburgh, William Kentridge
Set Designers: William Kentridge, Sabine Theunissen
Costume Designer:  Greta Goiris
Lighting Designer: Urs Schönebaum
Live in HD Host:  Patricia Racette

Cast

Kovalyov: Paulo Szot
Police Inspector: Andrey Popov
The Nose: Alexander Lewis

The only person to be interviewed for this simulcast was William Kentridge who explained that his own nose was the model for the character The Nose.  He turned to show us a profile.

This performance is an art work on three levels.

I.  The short story by Nikolai Gogol.  The opera plot follows this story, written between 1835 and 1836, very closely.

II.  The opera by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) written in 1929, an early work.  My reaction to this was that I was viewing an opera comique complete with spoken dialog.

III.  The production by William Kentridge, which is fully an art work in its own right.

Before I get too far into this, I feel that 2:15 is too long for an opera with no intermission.  A short period to relax, complete with an interview with Paulo Szot, would have made me enjoy this a lot more.

Every time there was piano music in the score there was a film of Shostakovich playing the piano.  The other person whose photograph frequently appeared was Joseph Stalin whose reign had just started two years before.  At this time Shostakovich had not yet fallen from political favor. 

While his owner lounges around in his bedroom staring at himself in the mirror and feeling sorry for himself, the nose has a full and exciting life.  He participates in swim meets and track and field contests.  He loves to ride a horse, and rises to a higher place in the political hierarchy than his owner.  We see all this in the projections on the set.

There is a lot of crashing and banging in this score full of complex and varied orchestral colorings.  There are many soloists, supers, chorus and actors on the set.  I must say I really only enjoyed the parts where Paulo was on the stage.  He is a wonderful performer with great variety and presence.

I was asked on exiting the theater if I would go again to see Nixon in China, and I reported that I had already seen it 3 times in 3 different productions.  I love it, and they hate it.  Maybe once will be enough for The Nose.

This review is supposed to include an extended discussion of the deeper meaning of The Nose.  All I seem to be able to think of is that if a barber actually cut off your nose, your face would have a hole in it and not a flat piece of skin.  And occasionally I would remember the photograph of the man who is growing a new nose on his forehead.  Nothing was done to make Paulo seem not to have a nose.  Perhaps it is all a dream.