Admissions: Warning: spoilers and harsh critique

The supposedly 'feel-good' film Admissions (directed by Paul Weitz, with Tina Fey as Princeton admissions director Portia Nathan) seemed to me a gratuitous set of cruelties perpetrated on any woman unfortunate enough to be in camera's range. (Read on with spoilers...)

Space and the Vespers of 1610

 This post is motivated by the spectacular Vespers performance by the Green Mountain Project, Jolie Greenleaf, artistic director, and Scott Metcalfe, music director. I heard them in Cambridge, Mass., but they also sang in New York City. Here is the New York Times review by CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM.

Monteverdi apparently wrote his Vespers to get out of Mantua—some say, to get a job in Rome, some think in Venice.

He wanted some breathing room, literally: Mantua was unhealthy, surrounded by stagnant water, and becoming too provincial for Monteverdi. Working for the Duke, his primary musical space would have been the beautifully decorated but small assembly rooms in the duke's palaces.

So one might well imagine that space was on his mind as he thought about his musical portfolio.

What spaces might he have thought about? In Rome, surely, the Sistine Chapel. As the Papal chapel, that would not have been the right space for the Vespers, but Monteverdi included a more appropriate piece in his dossier publication, the Mass for six unaccompanied voices, in the conservative musical tradition favored by the Pope. Not as exciting as the Vespers  — or as flamboyant as Michelangelo's ceiling!— but safe and elegant.


And also in Rome, surely St. Peter's would have come to mind — vast, grand, not so much solemn as stirring. It would have been a great place for Monteverdi's newly theatrical music to resonate in.




But no job surfaced for Monteverdi in Rome. He did end up, though, in one of the greatest spaces of Italy for music: Saint Mark's in Venice. And for that acoustically and historically resonant space, the Vespers were a perfect job-application piece. The space, like the music, was versatile and complicated: capable of big gestures and intimacies alike.


Here is a clip of part of the Vespers, starting at the tenor solo, "Nigra Sum," performed in Saint Mark's (Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner). You can hear the wonderful reverb that supports the tenor and the theorbo. Added bonus: you can see some of the gorgeous mosaics. And notice one of the many ways Monteverdi has written space into the music: the tenor sings "Surge" -- "get up!"—on a repeated rising scale. Vertical space is right there in our ears!


More about this wonderful piece in another post!

Messiah as theater

I almost didn't go to Apollo's Fire's Messiah this Christmas. I get tired of the endless repetitions of the Christmas section, which so debilitates the power of this complicated and not altogether holiday-friendly oratorio. But Cleveland Classical asked me to review it, so we went.

We loved it. The performance had integrity and drama. Every part seemed rethought for the moment. And beautifully performed. Photo of Apollo's Fire by Roger Mastroianni.

As usual, here's my review. If you like it, I hope you'll subscribe to ClevelandClassical.com.

One of the stars was the soprano Meredith Hall, a wonderful convincing and utterly musical singer. Here's a clip from her website of her singing "Rejoice greatly" from the Messiah.

Another star was the wonderful baroque trumpeter Josh Cohen. Here's him playing "The trumpet shall sound" with another group:

Oberlin Musical Union

It's no wonder that Amadeus featured the Mozart C Minor Mass. Like so much of Mozart, this piece transcends its occasion (a commissioned mass in Salzburg, the town Mozart was so glad to have left).

Here's the throbbing, opening Kyrie (John Eliot Gardner):


And that spectacular solo he wrote for his wife Costanze-- the Christe eleison! Here's Salieri "listening" to it: http://youtu.be/vNaXQQbcgw0

Oberlin's Musical Union performed the mass last night.













My review is here: http://www.clevelandclassical.com/121112omunjrev.  Don't forget to sign up with Cleveland Classical while you're there!

The high point was Ellie Dehn's gorgeous singing of Et incarnatus est. (She's an Oberlin graduate!). On her website, here is her rendition of this "concerted" piece for flute, oboe, bassoon and soprano...