Upshaw and Kalish at Bard, Brahms in Boston, Handel in Williamstown...and Art History
An Embarras de Richesse in Music and Art
By: Michael Miller - Apr 23, 2007
Friday evening at the Fisher Center at Bard College, two of the greatest and most influential American musicians, the soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish will present a recital for the benefit of Bard's Conservatory of Music. This recently founded double-degree program fills a serious educational gap by providing students with conservatory training together with a liberal arts degree, combining the benefits of one of the finest and most innovative liberal arts colleges with the world-class faculty of the conservatory, which includes Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, and Arnold Steinhardt; violist Michael Tree; pianists Melvin Chen, Jeremy Denk, Peter Serkin, and piano master classes with Richard Goode, to name only a few. Dawn Upshaw herself is director of the Vocal Arts Program. I strongly suggest you go to the Bard Conservatory site to read more about this important and fascinating initiative.
Upshaw and Kalish will perform a selection of personal favorites, including Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Child of Song"; Ruth Crawford Seeger's "White Moon," from Five Songs; Charles Ives's "Two little flowers (and dedicated to them)"; Gabriel Fauré's "L'aube blanche," from La chanson d'Eve; Claude Debussy's "La Flûte de Pan" and "La chevelure," from Chansons de Bilitis; Maurice Ravel's "Le cygne"; Olivier Messiaen's "Le collier" and "Prière exaucée," from Poèmes pour Mi; Robert Schumann's "Er ist's!", and "Mignon" (Kennst du das Land?); Hugo Wolf's "Die Bekehrte," from Goethe-Lieder; Alban Berg's "Die Nachtigall," from Sieben Frühe Lieder; Kurt Weill's "Je ne t'aime pas"; William Bolcom's "Song of Black Max," "Waitin'," and "Amor," from Cabaret Songs. Mr. Kalish will perform Charles Ives's Piano Sonata, No. 2, "Concord, Mass., The Alcotts," and a work by Johannes Brahms.
In Boston at Symphony Hall Bernard Haitink, Emanuel Ax, and the Boston Symphony will perform a program which will include Brahms' First Piano Concerto and his Third Symphony.
On Saturday Dylana Jenson, the violinist whose playing in the Goldmark Violin Concerto made such an impression on me at a fine concert by the Albany Symphony Orchestra under her husband, David Lockington. This time, she will be playing the Brahms Concerto with the Orchestra of Indian Hill under Music Director Bruce Hangen. The program will generously include Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9. This will be in Littleton, Massachusetts, at the junction of Routes 2 and 495. (follow the link or call (978) 486-0540 for tickets.) I believe it's important to pay attention to first-rate musicians who are not such household names as Emanuel Ax, and the lively program of Indian Hill Music seems very much worth exploring.
In Williamstown on Saturday evening Williamstown Early Music will offer a Handel Gala in Chapin Hall at Williams College. The program features dramatic scenes and sumptuous solo arias excerpted from both opera and oratorio, including Giulio Cesare, Acis and Galatea, Rinaldo, and Saul. Allison Mondel, soprano, Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano, Matthew Anderson, tenor, and Keith Kibler, bass-baritone will sing, and Richard Giarusso will conduct the Williamstown Early Music Chamber Orchestra. All of programs offered so far by this new organization have been superb, making them one of the strongest assets of the Northern Berkshires.
The Clark Art Institute will be hosting an important art historical conference on Friday and Saturday: "What Is Research in the Visual Arts?: Obsession, Archive, Encounter." Organized by Michael Ann Holly, Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark, the conference will explore a number of extremely broad issues related to the study of art history. As the description states: "This year's Conference explores fundamental questions, both philosophical and practical, for those working with visual art. What is research, why and how do we do it, and what place does it have in art making and the understanding of art today? Our speakers will consider the pleasures, passions, and dangers of research and its attendant obsessions and encounters with incoherence, chaos, and wonder. Art history and visual studies, as well as curatorial activities and fine art practices, engage in many strategies for doing research and working with archives. How does the process of inquiry engender meaning? In what complex ways is research bound up with writing, teaching, curating, and making? Why are we obsessed with the idea of research?" A number of prominent art historians will present their thought on these emergent questions, including Marquard Smith, Marc Gotlieb, Serge Guilbaut, W. T. J. Mitchell (who will speak about the Abu Ghraib photographs, which have intensely fascinated scholars in several disciplines), and Dr. Holly herself. The titles of the various contributions are rich in words like "obsession," "anxiety," and "monstrous," promising that we will leave the conference with more questions than when we came, always a healthy experience. Members of the public are welcome for an entry fee of twenty-five dollars, reduced to fifteen for students and members of the Clark, and are invited to register in advance. Presumably the papers will be published along with the others of the Clark's distinguished conferences of past years.
VERY IMPORTANT!!! This is the last week of the Clark's splendid exhibition, Claude Lorrain, the Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum, which includes paintings and etchings as well as drawings. (See my review of Feb. 16.) The distinguished conservator Phoebe Dent Weil will speak on "Claude Lorrain and Seventeenth-Century Italian Studio Practice" on Sunday, April 29, at 2:00 PM.
If any reader has mastered the art of being in two places at once, please get in touch!