Month: August 2007

Shakespeare in the Park, presented by the Public Theater, on Saturday, August 25.

Like everyone who has studied Shakespeare and who loves his work, I have strong feelings about how his plays should be interpreted. If, for example, a production diverges sharply from my vision of Othello (deeply internalized self-loathing rotting behind a facade of strength), I’m skeptical about its quality from the outset. My opinions about A Midsummer Night’s Dream are no less passionate (though perhaps less vehement), so I was slightly disappointed when I learned that the Public Theater’s new production wasn’t using the same actors for Athenian and fairy royalty, often key in the sort of Freudian, forest-as-the-unconscious interpretation I favor.

But Midsummer has so many elements—the lovers, the mechanicals, the fairies, the city, the woods—that even if one element isn’t to your taste, another surely will be. And the Public Theater production won me over. Funny but not frothy, sometimes creepy but never cruel, it was too charming and sweet not to enjoy.

The Mark Morris Dance Group at the Mostly Mozart Festival on Wednesday, August 15.

I’ve never gotten used to the practice at dance recitals of applauding in the middle of a work—to acknowledge a string of pirouettes, for example, or a soloist’s exit from the stage. As a classically trained musician (I know it’s an insufferable phrase, but it’s applicable here), I was taught never to applaud until the very end of the piece and, even then, preferably not until the conductor has dropped his hands or the soloist released her instrument. In the music world, clapping between movements of a work is pitiably ignorant at best, and clapping mid-movement is unheard of.

Dance etiquette is different—I understand that—so I do my best to tolerate the outbursts of applause over the music of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and Stravinsky, however much they make me wince. I nearly cracked at Mozart Dances, though. I wanted to scream: I don’t care that you enjoyed that particular solo sequence, people. Emanuel Ax is playing a piano concerto! Shut the hell up!

Perhaps that seems extreme, but in some ways the clash of etiquette reflects Mark Morris’ charming but sometimes problematic union of movement and Mozart. Maybe Mozart just doesn’t truly lend himself to dance.

The Swedish Radio Choir at the Mostly Mozart Festival on Wednesday, August 8.

Russian choral music has a wonderfully distinct sound. Anchored by unusually rich, low bass voices, the music feels grounded and earthy yet, at its best, mystical as well, as if the music were spanning the spectrum of sound, all-encompassing, all-embracing. It’s glorious.

The Swedish Radio Choir never quite attained that glory when they performed selections from Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Wednesday night. Maybe the not-particularly-live hall dulled the basso profondo sound and muffled the overtones. Maybe a man must have grown up in the Russian Orthodox Church to truly exemplify its musical traditions. Maybe the choir members simply haven’t lived and breathed the work, let it soak into their pores, into their consciousness and unconsciousness, the way you must to bring that music to life inside you. Whatever the reason, the Liturgy never took flight. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t transport me. I felt marooned in my seat.