HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DMITRI!

It's been a pretty awful day overall, but the last few hours have been repaired, rejuvenated in the rejoicing in the celebration of one the composers whose work has influenced, changed, and bettered my existence into something far more than merely that.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich lived a good bit longer than Mozart, but it was by no means a long life. Living to only 68 (as I approach those years myself, it seems frightfully young) and enduring Soviet era horrors, defamation, hardship, censorship and having his creativity stifled, what emerged as his catalog is nothing but triumph - even when we see it and hear it at its most intimate and harrowing moments, of which there is no shortage of.

Upon Stalin's death one can hear something of a shift in his style, as Clemency Burton-Hill wrote: 

. . . you can almost feel in his music, the gigantic breath of relief as he could start to publish not just the 'desk drawer' works he’d kept under wraps for years, including the Fourth Symphony, but also works in which he could openly give musical expression to the brutalities he and his contemporaries had endured under Stalin’s purges.

Shostakovich himself wrote:

Without party guidance I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.

Even so, what he was able to do with that camouflage revealed genius on a level we rarely see. The brain of this man . . . the heart of this man . . . the courage of this man was remarkable. Even more so when one learns he suffered from an almost crippling shyness, was a bundle of nerves, cautious to a fault and it's no bloody wonder considering all he endured. Watching family and his closest friends rounded up, sent off to the gulag or executed. Shostakovich himself barely escaped this fate and only because the officer assigned to interrogate him was arrested and Dmitri somehow slipped through.

Shostakovich had all kinds of ticks - obsessed with neatness and order, cleanliness,his daughter wrote of his synchronizing every clock, writing letters to himself to test the reliability of the postal service, and such.

Given his brief time on the planet, Shostakovich was able to crank out an astonishing amount of music . . . BIG music. 15 symphonies, six concerti, ballets, operas, a musical, endless chamber and solo music, film scores, theatre music, song cycles - his output is dizzying, and brilliant. He was known to sit at his table and write out a complete score without stopping, which seems . . . well, frankly impossible. For normal humans, it is. But, if you're a genius and gifted with a photographic memory . . . if you've worked every detail out in your head, maybe not. Shostakovich described his compositional method as "think long,, write fast."

I always found it fascinating that Shostakovich was such a football fan, and was shocked when I first learned his ballet, The Golden Age was . . . a ballet about football. That tidbit of information was, to this then young musician, about as cool as cool gets.

As a young pianist and already obsessive collector, I grew up with an oddball collection of favorite composers at my side whose music has been part of the soundtrack of my life - at the top of that list are two names: Bach. And Shostakovich.

Tonight I've enjoyed, laughed, cried, and gotten the shivers from a few personal favorites : Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg and Dmitri's boy Maxim, in the First Violin Concerto; a slew of Preludes and Fugues, Symphony No. 4 (Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony) 10 and 11 (Mstislav Rostropovich and the National Symphony).

The night has just ended with a live (recorded earlier today) Birthday Concert from Moscow with the Tatarstan Symphony Orchestra led by Alexander Sladkovsky performing the Second Cello Concerto with Cellist, Alexander Knyazev (and who played an encore from the 3rd Bach Cello Suite, which seemed fitting), and Symphony No. 8. The Tartarstan is not one of the world's great orchestras, but nobody seems to have told them, and so they play as if they are. There were a few moments that could have been better, but overall the playing was inspired, solid, and offered a beautifully hushed ending more famous ensembles might want to look at and listen to.

I couldn't help but smile REALLY BIG when after an extended ovation, Maestro Sladkovsky turned his back to the house, raised his baton, and launched his musicians into the most appropriate of encores: Waltz No. 2 from the The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1, Perfect.

[Poscript:  This is the original photo collage I used for this birthday tribute.  To my utter horror . . . the upper right hand photo is something I did not catch. It IS Dmitri's head, but superimposed onto the body of Harry Potter (a series of films I've never watched, but whose hero apparently looked very similar to Shostakovich). Here is the photo collage I was going to replace it with - but now just adding because - how cool is it that pop culture is trying to steal Dmitri Shostakovich for its own purposes?]

LA CHIMERA - ITALIAN CINEMA'S LATEST GEM

I have now twice viewed the latest film from Alice Rohrwacher - the Italian director with the most German of names, and am in absolute awe. Throughout the first viewing I sensed something magical at work in the movie and in myself. While I frequently laugh and/or cry, or yell at the screen watching movies, it takes a special film for me to notice that I'm smiling so much my face almost hurts.  La Chimera is that movie.  

I remember admiring and even loving Rohrwacher's earlier work - The Wonders (2014) and Happy As Lazzaro (2018), but this, for me, is her best work so far. 

Visually arresting Rohrwacher has given La Chimera it's own universe - one that moves effortlessly between stark (but never dull) reality, fantasy, magical realism, and even absurdist comedy more accepted in literature and opera than cinema. As an avid opera lover - and particularly a lover of the works of Monteverdi, La Chimera jumped out at me in a way that I've not yet read in any review.  It happens within the first few moments of the opening scene, when the first music we hear is the fanfare from Monteverdi's Orfeo - the earliest known still regularly performed opera today, and it instantly served as a clue, this was going to have some ties to the Orpheus legend. Indeed, in its way, it is a sort of retelling of it, or at least heavily influenced by it.  

La Chimera also reminded me of Wim Wender's American film Paris, Texas in several ways, which, unlike my Orfeo discovery, I've now read in several other reviews. There are similarities, yes, but they seem more coincidental than influenced, and plenty of other directors pre-and-post Wenders have this in common.

The story elements in a nutshell: A British archeologist, Arthur, recently released from prison for tomb raiding, returns to Italy, and is on a train in search of his missing girlfriend, Beniamina. There is some trouble and the first bit of magical realism prepares us for what's to come - or may come.  Arthur arrives at the home of Flora, Beniamina's mother, (an absolutely magical performance from Isabella Rossellini), and her brood of loud, selfish daughters, who made me instantly think of harpies. We are also introduced to Italia, Flora's sadsack, talentless maid and voice student. Italia is an incredibly written character and Carol Duarte - who reminded me of a young Hildegard Behrens - infuses it with a lifeforce that is gently electrifying - which sounds like an odd combination, but there it is.

Rohrwacher has a brilliant eye for visual texture and its layers are imprinted throughout the entirety of La Chimera. Whether within the confines of a narrow train, the rundown ramshackle slum Arturo lives in surrounded by ragpickers and junkies, Flora's crumbling mansion, the sea and landscape, an abandoned train station turned into a home, or the chill and darkness of the caves that feel like hell, the visual richness of every scene adds immeasurably to this director's magnificent storytelling. 

At the center of all of this is the performance of Josh O'Connor as Arthur. With a minimum of dialogue, O'Connor's Arthur conveys the anger, angst, the bitterness of one having taken the fall for his wild associates, his aching longing for Euridice - I mean Beniamina - the headstrong confidence and determination - even in despair that he will find her and bring her back, like Orfeo.  For almost the entirety of La Chimera Arthur is clad in a plain white suit becoming, like his character, more soiled, dirty, and frayed, as he wends his way through the story. This costume decision feels more operatic than cinematic, and further ties together these two arts. 

I can't write more without destroying the incredible elements that make up this wondrous story of love, loss and redemption, but want to comment further on the use of music in La Chimera.  Along with the Monteverdi excerpts, there is a parade through the village with an "oom-pah" Italian band playing Noi siamo zingarelle from Flora's party in Verdi's La Traviata - as it accompanies a flatbed truck filled with drag queens and revelers. There are also several points where the villagers break into song, dance, and one particularly brilliant, magical moment, where soprano Edita Gruberova's beautiful recording of Mozart's Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!  morphs from being part of the soundtrack into an actual element of the movie - more on that I will not say.  

La Chimera is easily one of the most beautiful films I've seen this year - or in many years.  Audience reactions have been mixed because - well, it IS a strange movie when compared with so-called "standard" Hollywood fare. Critics on the other hand, have been going over the top in extolling the virtues of this glorious celebration of cinema.  Sadly, box office in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico totalled only $950k, so . . . clearly American audiences aren't interested. Fortunately La Chimera is streaming on a number of services, and Hulu offers it gratis on its subscription service. 

Rohrwacher has made an absolute dream of a movie - and even though the year isn't out yet, it goes towards the top of what will be my favorites of 2024.

Wozzeck: The Perfect Opera Movie

Okay, let's talk about Wozzeck and video (Berg's opera, not the play or its other adaptations). In the category of as good as it gets, allow me to put in a plug for a unique Wozzeck, which just may be the finest treatment of an opera committed to film:  Rolf Liebermann’s 1970 Wozzeck made for German television.  

Yes, ideally Wozzeck (and pretty much every other opera) is best experienced in the house, where its 3-dimensional brutality packs a visceral punch, Liebermann has populated his film with true singing actors (or vice versa) who live, breathe and become these characters down to their very marrow.  For this director, there is no separation of the music from its drama, nor any from its characters,not of the scenery or indeed, of any element of it whatsoever. Liebermann presents us with something truly extraordinary . . . as close to a complete embracing of the gesamtkunstwerk ideology as exists in film.  

Musically it’s in equally find hands in an almost outsized reading of Berg's score by the Hamburg Opera foces, led by Bruno Maderna. While clearly not film score music, Maderna matches Liebermann's vision through sound in a perfect wedding of both.  

Instead of a studio soundstage, Liebermann takes his cast and places them in and around an abandoned, ancient German castle or fortress (take your pick). It's yet another stroke of genius in creating a world both familiar and alien, and it works magnificently. 

Marie is performed by one of the most graceful interpreters of Strauss and Mozart of all time; Sena Jurinac.  Jurinac's Marie is sung with uncommon lusciousness and beauty of voice, which brought to mind the beautiful sounds of Eileen Farrell in the legendary Columbia recording with Mack Harrell, and Mitropoulos.  Jurinac takes the palm, however, both in musicianship (spot on) and in her sense of drama.  She looks lovely, and there is an incredible naturalness to her acting that one is actually able to feel her fear, and sense both her weary desperation and strained hope as she sings to her child. Jurinac lends a real you and me against the world  quality that, for my money has been matched only by Hildegard Behrens' take on the role .

With a perfect everyman hangdog quality about him, Toni Blankenheim quite simply is Wozzeck.  Through his interactions and reactions to the horrifying world around him and those in it, Blankenheim reveals a man whose pitiable sense of aloneness and repression feels like an open apology to the universe for his very existence.  He is a perfect Wozzeck and his is a performance both harrowing and heartbreaking. 

Liebermann  ingeniously uses Berg’s magnificent interludes as intended . . . stitching the entirety of the tale together, yet also bringing to its severe linear structure, something rather intangible but entirely profound (in the best sense). We become aware of art and beauty in an otherwise artless world. How they fit here with Maderna's pacing of the interludes provide us with moments to reflect on all we’ve just heard and seen, as its propulsive quality rushes, hurtling us forward to the inexorable, tragic conclusion.

I can’t think of a better made operatic film, nor one that offers the abundance of rewards as does this Wozzeck.  For those of us who enjoy filmed opera, it truly doesn’t come much better than this. And for those of you who don’t love it, well you just might be surprised by this one.

Okay, let's talk about Wozzeck and video (Berg's opera, not the play or its other adaptations). In the category of as good as it gets, allow me to put in a plug for a unique Wozzeck, which just may be the finest treatment of an opera committed to film:  Rolf Liebermann’s 1970 Wozzeck made for German television.  

Yes, ideally Wozzeck (and pretty much every other opera) is best experienced in the house, where its 3-dimensional brutality packs a visceral punch, Liebermann has populated his film with true singing actors (or vice versa) who live, breathe and become these characters down to their very marrow.  For this director, there is no separation of the music from its drama, nor any from its characters,not of the scenery or indeed, of any element of it whatsoever. Liebermann presents us with something truly extraordinary . . . as close to a complete embracing of the gesamtkunstwerk ideology as exists in film.  

Musically it’s in equally find hands in an almost outsized reading of Berg's score by the Hamburg Opera foces, led by Bruno Maderna. While clearly not "film score music" Maderna matches Liebermann's vision through sound. Incredibly so. 

Instead of a studio soundstage, Liebermann takes his cast and places them in and around an abandoned, ancient German castle or fortress (take your pick). It's yet another stroke of genius in creating a world both familiar and alien, and it works magnificently. 

Marie is performed by one of the most graceful interpreters of Strauss and
Mozart of all time; Sena Jurinac.  Jurinac's Marie is sung with uncommon
lusciousness and beauty of voice, which brought to mind the beautiful sounds of Eileen Farrell in the legendary Columbia recording with Mack Harrell, and
Mitropoulos.  Jurinac takes the palm, however, both in musicianship (spot on) and sense of drama.  She looks lovely and there is an incredible naturalness to her acting that one actually feels her fear, senses both her weary desperation and hope as she sings to her child. There is a real, you and me against the world  quality that for my money has only been matched only by Behrens's take on the role .

With a perfect everyman hangdog quality about him, Toni Blankenheim quite
simply is Wozzeck.  Through his interactions and reactions to the horrifying world around him and those in it, Blankenheim reveals a man whose pitiable sense of aloneness and repression feels like an open apology to the universe for his very existence.  He is a perfect Wozzeck and his is a performance both harrowing and heartbreaking. 

Liebermann  ingeniously uses Berg’s magnificent interludes as intended –
stitching the entirety of the tale together, but also bringing to the severe linear structure something rather intangible. We become aware of art and beauty in an otherwise artless world. The pacing of the interludes provide moments to reflect on all we’ve just heard and seen, as well as a propulsive quality hurtling us forward to the story's inexorable, tragic conclusion.

I can’t think of a better made operatic film, nor one that offers the abundance
of rewards as does this Wozzeck.  For those of us who enjoy filmed opera,
it truly doesn’t come much better than this. And to those of you who don’t love it, well you just might be surprised.