The dis-illusionist

The Illusionist faces the end of illusion.

Like a lot of grown-ups, I felt Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville was the best cartoon I'd seen in years (if you haven't seen it, do), and briefly Choment was the "it" boy of high-brow animation. Since then, however, his career has been plagued by controversy - there were charges of plagiarism from a former colleague; Hollywood threw a big project his way (The Tale of Despereaux) but then replaced him; the funding for another movie fell through; and even The Illusionist (above), released seven years after Triplets, has arrived trailing a kerfuffle over its dedication to one of Tati's daughters (it's a long story). Given these travails, perhaps it's surprising that The Illusionist has arrived at all, and I advise you to see it while you can; it's perhaps not in the same edgy, original league as Triplets, but it's nevertheless one of the best movies of the year.

Drawn from a screenplay by Jacques Tati, The Illusionist finds Chomet in a nostalgic mood; he clearly identifies with the silent, subversive wit of the great filmmaker, and not only makes his star, a stage magician facing declining fortunes, a dead ringer for Tati but bequeaths to him the Frenchman's birth name as well ("Tatischeff").  The comedian even makes an appearance on a movie screen halfway through the picture (in a clip from Mon Oncle, I think).  Of course beneath the frisky grotesquerie of Triplets many of the same themes resonated: in Belleville, real joy was only found among loyal old ladies who loved dogs, frog legs and jazz.  It seems that to Chomet, modern pleasures are by way of contrast false and destructive, and driven by egoistic delusion - he ridicules the rock band ("Billy Boy and the Britoons") that pushes poor Tatischeff off-stage as phony poofters, for instance, and their screaming teen-age fans are portrayed as deluded children (Tati, who relentlessly parodied modernism in movies like Playtime, would no doubt have agreed).  Still, the times (the 50's) they were a'changin', and charming as his act may be, the Illusionist finds himself playing to little old ladies at deserted matinees (above), or to the occasional drunk (if hearty) Scotsman - who, in the best Chomet manner, at least knows how to have a good time.

When invited up to a gig at that pickled Scotsman's pub, Tatischeff picks up another admirer - Alice, a simple chambermaid who seems to believe she has passed through the looking glass, and that the magician's tricks are actual magic.  She trails after him as he moves on to another date in Edinburgh (below), and the film develops into a quaint, nearly-silent May-December romance - only without the romance (Tatischeff sleeps on the couch in his forlorn little room, while Alice gets the bed).

The film's vision of Edinburgh - a fantasy that's also an accurate geography.

What action remains in the movie is all indirectly stated: Tatischeff takes up odd jobs to sustain Alice's illusions, and keep his innocently selfish new ward in style - while she (inevitably) finds a different kind of magic in the handsome guy next door (and slowly leaves her protector behind).  I have to admit this poignant arc is never actually as pointed as Tati himself might have made it - because I'm not sure the unspoken courtliness that Chomet admires in his idol is truly his own forte.  The film is instead liveliest in the side gallery of grotesques who fill out Tatischeff's vaudeville programs - the clown who's so sad he's suicidal, the ventriloquist who gets drunk with his dummy - even the testy rabbit that, once out of the hat, always bites the hand that feeds it.  These characters have the eccentric, individual edge the crew from Triplets had, and we come to care for them far more than we do for sweet, blank Alice.  Indeed, the most devastating moment in the movie comes when Tatischeff closes down his act and lets that recalcitrant rabbit go free in the hills above town.  Suddenly he's alone, just like any other bunny; the dream is over.

One dream, however, remains - Chomet's wistful dedication to hand-drawn animation.  The evocative watercolors that make up the backgrounds of The Illusionist (with okay, the occasional digital flourish) supply the haunting atmosphere (below) that the foreground story sometimes lacks.  And I must recommend the film to anyone who loves Edinburgh as I do; Chomet captures Scotland's answer to Florence (where he actually made much of this movie) with a hand so loving, and so accurate, that I almost went and bought a plane ticket as soon as I left the theatre. Those familiar with that wonderful town will recognize many of its locations (even down to the street addresses on the buildings); at last this great location has found its cinematic apotheosis (as London and Paris have so many times before).  Something about Edinburgh's gaunt architectural romance I'm sure spoke to Chomet, just as Tati's courtliness did.  Perhaps the greatest praise one could give him is to acknowledge that he has brought both these profound sensibilities together onscreen.

Not just a city, but a sensibility - Edinburgh in The Illusionist.

Bell epoque

Joshua Bell plays Bach in the Washington subway - to at least one appreciative fan.

Above is a clip of perhaps the most famous violin performance of the past decade: the morning Joshua Bell stood in the Washington D.C. subway (the L'Enfant Plaza stop) and played his Stradivarius for spare change.  As you can see, he was largely ignored (although over three quarters of an hour, he did pick up around $50 in tips; not bad, if you ask me).

Needless to say, context is everything in the arts; Bell received quite a different welcome at his Celebrity Series appearance here last weekend.  Indeed, the crowd that filled Symphony Hall listened in something like rapture as Bell - who looks much as he has for the past, what, two decades - performed a suite of late-nineteenth century duo sonatas (with Sam Haywood, himself a remarkable talent, on piano) that showcased what he does best: the smooth, singing line that is as much his trademark as that famously sun-ripened tenor was Pavarotti's.

The ongoing critical debate over Bell amounts to the question: is there more to him than that glorious bel canto sound?  His fans argue, "Isn't that enough?," and I'm inclined to agree; at any rate, even if Bell's no musical intellectual, he's nevertheless intelligent (not quite the same thing as being intellectual), and he holds his programs to a high standard; he simply chooses serious music that plays to his strengths.  And there's no better place to find such music than in the (mostly) late romantic period - the Bell epoque, if you will. The program last Friday, for instance, was the Brahms Sonata No. 2 in A Major, the Schubert Fantasy in C Major, and the more-obscure Grieg Sonata No. 2 in G Major - all for violin and piano.  This is serious (and certainly self-conscious) stuff, but like much of the late-romantic repertoire, it's loosely structured, and heavier on melody than development; the Brahms in particular is a long collection of songs (and I mean that quite literally - a good part of the piece is drawn from the composer's lieder).

Bell in action.

Bell seemed to take that chamber-music aspect of the Brahms sonata to heart - his playing here was daringly soft, although appropriately warm and meditative.  The opening of the Schubert was likewise intimate (to plushly melancholic accompaniment from Haywood) but as the pulse of the piece quickened, Bell gave it a dancing, almost improvised air.  The Grieg - which I'd never heard before - was the pleasant surprise of the evening - moody, at times tinged with tragedy, and crammed with memorable phrases and melodies (again, drawn from song, this time Norwegian folk song).  Bell seemed at his most committed here, and made a convincing case for the piece as more than just nationalist fantasia (which is how it's usually viewed).

For his encores, the violinist dipped into Sibelius (the poignant "Romance") as well as Henryk Wieniawski (the rousing, if familiar, "Polonaise Brillante"), but made the deepest impression by reaching all the way back to Chopin for the violin transcription of the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor. This is the kind of piece - long, limpid lines of melody set against subdued harmony - that Bell brings off as few can. You left the concert feeling that perhaps you'd learned nothing new about the pieces he had played - but at the same time, yes, Bell's playing was more than enough all by itself.

Beau Derek

Jacobi on the heath at Dover in King Lear.

In between operas last week, I managed to catch the simulcast of Derek Jacobi's King Lear from London's Donmar Warehouse to our own Coolidge Corner. I have tickets to see the production again, at BAM in May, but I thought I would take this opportunity to compare the simulcast experience to the "live" one.

Alas, many of the issues that have been discussed in the Met Opera simulcasts are evident in the National Theatre simulcasts, too. The "show" began abruptly, and was somewhat mistimed so that we missed the first two or three lines of the play. And despite the intimacy of the Donmar (it's only 250 seats), the actors were miked, and also slightly amplified, which gave some exchanges a boosted, ringing quality, and made it hard to tell who had vocal chops and who didn't (Jacobi does). There were also a few electronic blips, and the simulcast seemed to skip a beat when the satellite wobbled or something. The camerawork, however, was restrained and mostly apt - it generally followed what you would expect a spectator's eye to track, along with a few appropriate flourishes (the slow pull-back from the Fool as he disappears from the play was particularly effective, as were the storm sequences - brilliant lightning effects, and a flexible soundscape, allowed Jacobi to whisper his most famous lines from what seemed to be a kind of psychological bubble).

The digital hiccups were mostly minor irritations, however, in the transmission of a production that, if not quite great, was still quite good, and certainly better than the Christopher Plummer or Ian McKellen versions that have recently passed through New York.  Director Michael Grandage has said he considers Lear to be "a political play," and this was evident in his concise cutting of the text; in this version (unlike in so many others!) you always understood just what the balance of power was between the ruthless junior royals.  Beyond that, Grandage doesn't seem to have had any big new ideas about the play, but he has a lean, driving style that served it well, and a directorial habit (a good one in popular versions of the classics) of making each transition a clean statement (at the moment that Lear's mind broke, for instance, Jacobi let out an impressively deranged scream).

At first, however, Jacobi seemed to make a rather lightweight Lear; this was no knotty oak, much less a human Everest, and in the early scenes his anger sometimes sounded more like pique.  But as this particular actor has made a dramatic specialty out of the sympathetic investigation of human weakness, he had a special angle on Lear's crack-up, and his well-known way with delicacy and tenderness made his reconciliation with Cordelia quite moving, and the terrible finale truly heart-breaking.

The supporting quartet of the storm scenes - Gloucester (Paul Jesson), Kent (Michael Hadley) and especially Edgar (Gwilym Lee) and the Fool (Ron Cook) were all at Jacobi's level, and these sequences were therefore tremendous.  Indeed, Jesson and Lee made more of the Gloucester sub-plot than I think I've ever seen actors manage to do; for the first time in my experience, it rivaled the main plot for emotional impact.

Alas, Lear's daughters and their associates weren't in quite the same class.  Gina McKee had her moments as a languidly evil Goneril, but Justine Mitchell made a hash of Regan (she seemed to want to play her as sweet rather than weak), and Pippa Bennett-Warner made a pretty but standard-issue Cordelia.  Meanwhile as Edmund, Alec Newman lacked the sexy swagger than can make the role a show-stopper, and Gideon Turner just seemed lost as Cornwall.

These gaps slowed, but couldn't stop, the drive of the second half of the play, however, and the terrible last scene was just as shattering as it should be; it struck me that this swift, clean version could eventually become known - should it be issued on DVD or shown on public TV - as the current 'standard' version.  There's an encore simulcast tonight at the Coolidge; Shakespeare devotees who can't get out tonight may still want to consider a trip to Brooklyn in May or June.  This Lear isn't perfect, but it's worth it.

The cruel truths of Martin McDonagh

Tadhg Murphy ponders his fate as Cripple Billy.

Martin McDonagh, I think, will always be known as the very good playwright who was never quite a great playwright. And the reason is clear: his vision is compromised by his personality. McDonagh's great theme is sadism. But he also seems to be a sadist.  And that tends, you know, to compromise his perspective on his material.

Which is too bad, because he's certainly clever and funny as hell (if hell is made of ice rather than fire). And certainly The Cripple of Inishmaan - now at ArtsEmerson's Paramount through Sunday - shows off both McDonagh's misanthropic wit and his ability to build metaphor through the barest of means. What's more, Cripple even glints here and there with daubs of conventional sentiment; not everyone in it is a terrorist, for instance, or gleefully torments the helpless.

Of course some of them do; but then this is practically the sine qua non of the McDonagh manner, which is most notable for the importation of the kind of scenes we'd expect to find in the bondage cellars of Quentin Tarantino's skeezy L.A. onto the windswept shores of Ireland. Not that McDonagh is himself Irish; he's English - but born of Irish parents; thus, perhaps, the icy, child-like dissection of Gaelic mores that serves as the backbone of almost all his plays (unsurprisingly, he has never set a single script in his hometown - London - or among his own social set; all his work is a projected teen fantasy of resentment).

As for the Tarantino part - well, McDonagh has all but admitted he was pretty aimless until he saw his first Tarantino films in the mid-90's. Sensing a kindred spirit in the lantern-jawed torture-porn auteur, and grasping that movies like Pulp Fiction had opened up a cultural space in which the spoiled jadedness of Gen-X could slide into "ironic" cruelty, McDonagh promptly sat down and penned virtually his entire ouevre in a matter of months.  And his haughty sense of craft - at least when it comes to dialogue and shorter scenes, if not larger structures - soon made him a star in a field hungry for any author with old-time dramatic flair, however coldly rendered. (It didn't hurt that McDonagh's plays were a frank imitation of the coolest trend in movies, either.)

The Cripple of Inishmaan has some pride of place in this achievement - it's not as vicious as The Beauty Queen of Lenane, not as pretentious as The Pillowman, and not as brutally empty as The Lieutenant of Inishmore. It may represent the playwright's peak, in fact, and is chiefly interesting for the way it see-saws between two emotional and moral abodes - the author's usual charnel house/abbatoir, and some place more humane, at times even cozy.  Its central character, Cripple Billy (Tadhg Murphy, above left), whose parents died under mysterious circumstances when he was a babe, has been brought up by two eccentric "aunts" (Ingrid Craigie and Dearbhla Molloy) who run a run-down grocery on Ireland's coast that seems to sell only eggs and peas.  Poor Billy is afflicted in many ways - not only must he bear up under twisted limbs, crossed eyes, and a speech impediment, but he's also in love with the beautiful, cruel Slippy Helen (Claire Dunne), and so bored he sometimes finds himself staring at cows (then again, one of his aunties talks to rocks).

When a Hollywood crew arrives on a nearby island to film Man of Aran, Billy sees a possible way out of his torment - and even bends the truth a bit to get a shot at a screen test.   Which feeds into McDonagh's second major concern - the way in which the moral standing of the world shifts with the stories we tell (and believe) about it.  His characters speak to one another with the hard-hearted innocence of children, and yet still the actual "truth" about the world remains strikingly unstable.  We hear several versions, for instance, of how Billy's parents perished - and depending on which one we put our faith in, they seem either heroes or horrors.  Likewise McDonagh teases us with the possibility that much, or perhaps all, of Billy's escape to L.A. is a fiction; has he found fame and fortune playing inspiring cripples in Hollywood, or is he instead dying somewhere of tuberculosis (as the "wheeze" of his early scenes suggests)?  Meanwhile trundling about town - in an obviously symbolic role - is JohnnyPateenMike (the hilarious Dermot Crowley), a pompous little gossip who styles himself "a newsman."  Well, perhaps, but which pieces of his news can we believe - and how does the meaning of life change depending on what we choose?  Seen one way, Cripple Billy's life is a recipe for despair (it hints that God himself is as casually cruel as Slippy Helen); narrated differently, however, it's positively uplifting (he was saved from death by those who love him).

These are quite serious themes, and McDonagh eloquently suggests them - all while demonstrating that every version of the world has been subtly (or even secretly) colored by the people who have crafted it.  All this makes The Cripple of Inishmaan a remarkable play.  If only McDonagh had stopped there!  But I have to report that this usually fastidious writer has crippled Cripple with scenes of pure filler, in which mean-spirited practical jokes and musings on motiveless wickedness eat up nearly half an hour of stage time.  And the finale is likewise drawn out to no apparent end - McDonagh simply swings at will between alternate readings of poor Billy's fate long after we've gotten the point; we can almost hear the playwright musing, "Now am I going to be nice this time - or nasty?  Nice?  Or nasty?  Nice or nasty?  Nice-or-nasty?" By the finish, I felt like packing off for home and leaving McDonagh to his own narrative dilemma, his themes at the mercy of his own predilections.

Still, the near-definitive Druid Theatre production obscures these flaws almost as far as possible.  The Druid's artistic director, Garry Hynes, discovered McDonagh back in the 90's - The Beauty Queen of Lenane premiered there - and by now his manner is in her (and her cast's) very bones.  Thus the acting in this touring version is pretty much impeccable - with the possible exception of the lovely Clare Dunne, who never finds a plausible center to the sadistic Slippy Helen (whose abusive nature I think must stem from her own sexual abuse).  Everyone else is wonderful, though - with perhaps special laurels going to star Tadhg Murphy, those dotty aunties, Ingrid Craigie and Dearbhla Molloy, and Dermot Crowley's memorable JohnnyPateenMike.  The cast is also graced with a local star - Nancy E. Carroll - who more than holds her own as Johnny's bitter 90-year-old mother, whom he's trying to off with drink, and who returns the favor by cackling happily whenever she ponders him in his coffin.  In McDonagh's most inspired gambit, these two vultures briefly muse about "that man with the funny mustache" who has just become Chancellor of Germany.  Which only reminds us that the moral questions disturbing a tiny hamlet on the west coast of Ireland are the same ones that disturb the world.

Life and death in the Third Reich

Kaiser Überall in his bunker in The Emperor of Atlantis.

Okay, folks - this one is important.

If you care about twentieth-century opera (or opera in general); if you care about Jewish history and the Holocaust; if you care about World War II; hell, if you care about the old "human spirit," then you must see Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, which is currently holding court in a mostly brilliant production from Boston Lyric Opera, only through this weekend at the Calderwood Pavilion.

The big news here is simply the opera itself, which feels like an incredible discovery.  Even though most opera buffs have at least heard of it, few have seen or heard it (myself included) - due to its short length, fragmentary nature, and curiously whimsical tone, it has rarely been seen in the United States, or indeed anywhere.

Yet it's certainly one of the major cultural documents of the Holocaust, and perhaps one of the major operas of the twentieth century.  I know, I know - you think I'm hyperventilating.  Just go see it and then tell me I'm hyperventilating.  (I don't think you will.) [Update - unfortunately, the production has completely sold out.]

First, though, a warning - you may want to come late.  As if the first New England production of this rarity wasn't challenge enough, BLO has also commissioned a companion piece to fill out a full evening of performance (Emperor reigns for only about an hour). The idea - a very worthy one - was to add to the marketability of the opera by creating a handy companion piece for it.

But alas, the evening's prologue, Harvard composer Richard Beaudoin's "The After-Image," though pleasant enough in an earnest way, is a bit attenuated and tedious. The piece is a meditation on the meaning of a photograph, and as it's based on texts from Rilke and Rückert, it hints (or half-hints) at all sorts of intriguing intellectual issues regarding history and the transmission of meaning. But somehow this "tableau for two voices" never quite coheres; if you can imagine Susan Sontag warbling along to the Quartet for the End of Time,  you've got roughly the idea. And things weren't helped much by silly performance art flourishes from director David Schweizer that obscured, rather than illuminated, the overall arc of the evening.

Still, I suppose there's no use crying over spilt Rilke, and once the far-more-robust opera proper gets going, everything is suddenly imbued with the strange fire of a wild poem written in one's last hour, in which one attempts desperately to convey everything one knows about life and love before the final curtain falls.  That sense of poetic urgency is so palpable because the composers of The Emperor of Atlantis were, indeed, facing annihilation: Ullmann and his libettrist, Petr Kien, composed it from behind the barbed wire of the Terezín concentration camp, which was the "showplace" of the Nazi work camps (designed to fool the Red Cross into believing the camps were habitable). At one time four concert groups operated within the walls of Terezín, and Ullmann composed some twenty works during his time there; he never saw Emperor of Atlantis performed, however. Sensing its piercing allegory, the authorities shut it down during rehearsals, and Ullmann and Kien were soon transported to Auschwitz, where they were quickly murdered.

The dance of death in Emperor of Atlantis.

This was the official reaction to the brilliant allegory at the heart of Kien's witty book, in which the mad Kaiser Überall (that's him up top, mustache, epaulets and all) has declared a war to end all wars - indeed, its only real purpose is to kill every single person on the planet.   The carnage becomes so great, however, that Death himself is affronted, feeling he is being treated like a kind of mechanical lackey - and soon he's on strike, leaving the Emperor practically apoplectic as more and more people are unable to expire on schedule.  Executions grind to a halt - they're pointless - and on the battlefield, soldiers lay down their useless weapons and begin to sing to each other of love.  Clearly this can't go on; but Death only relents, and agrees to pick up his scythe, on one condition - that the Kaiser be the first to fall to it.

You appreciate immediately, I imagine, the genius of the libretto.  And Ullmann's music is barely a step behind; perhaps it's a pastiche, but what a pastiche - in Atlantis, snatches of Weimar cabaret bump into “Deutschland, Deutschland, Über Alles,” bits of Bach, and even a melancholy reworking of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" (that most Germanic of hymns), as the Grim Reaper returns to his work.  The ironic mood reaches its highest, sweetest peak in the lovely aria granted to the Kaiser at his death - it's really the most beautiful music in the entire opera.  And at moments like this The Emperor of Atlantis seems to sail beyond the normal bounds of irony and into some sublime new sphere - this is irony that can break your heart; the humanity of Ullmann and Kien's conception - their almost whimsical portrayal of their own killers - stands as one of the noblest artistic gestures of all time.

All this found its fullest form (and force) in a galvanic central performance by Kevin Burdette as Death (combined in this version with the associated role of "The Loudspeaker"). Burdette is blessed with both a commanding bass and hilarious comic chops, and in this dazzlingly manic tour de force, he seemed at times to all but personify the opera. Almost as good were baritone Andrew Wilkowske (another inspired clown with a great voice) as the Emperor and tenor John Mac Master (above, with Burdette) as a harlequin who's nearly as bitter about how things are going as the big guy himself.

Director David Schweizer seemed to recover his sense of humor after the languors of "The After-Image," and generally delivered a defiantly witty take on the opera's action, although at times the staging was a bit generically Regietheater-esque.  At other moments, however - as in the funereal finale - Schweizer delivered delicately haunting moods and imagery. Designer Caleb Wertenbaker's set (left) was a grand post-industrial wasteland littered with technological junk, while the talented Nancy Leary's imaginative costumes evoked something of the desperation of life in Terezín (both Death and the Harlequin sported accessories made of barbed wire).   This, actually, was one of the few moments in which the production referenced the Holocaust concretely - something I felt it could have done more often; how even more piercing this gallant piece of modernism might have seemed! Then again, perhaps some distance on the work is what's required; otherwise this particular testament to humanity could be almost overwhelming.

Il ritorno d'Ulisse in puppetry

Ulysses takes down the suitors who would have Penelope's hand in The Return of Ulysses.

As I took my seat at the Cyclorama last weekend to take in Bread and Puppet's version of Claudio Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses (original title: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria) I knew I was about to witness a car crash. For Peter Schumann, the shaggy guru of Bread and Puppet, is all about "cheap art." But Claudio Monteverdi, the guy who practically invented opera, was all about (shall we say) expensive art. Think of Schumann, and you imagine brass bands in the great outdoors. Think of Monteverdi, and you hear chamber music - or even sacred music. Schumann - broad. Monteverdi - subtle. Schumann - protest. Monteverdi - acceptance. You can't get further apart than these two auteurs.

But if I expected a car crash, what I got was a train wreck. Schumann did exactly the opposite of what he should have done, IMHO - he didn't really listen to Monteverdi at all, or even pay attention to the themes of his source. For the story of The Odyssey should have proven fascinating new terrain for the crunchy Bread and Puppeteers. It is, after all, a tale of the re-integration of the military man back into domestic society - even back into the marriage bed (fighting all the way, btw).

But how does a grizzled war protester even begin to treat the humanization of his longtime nemesis? Well, I guess he doesn't. Instead, Schumann tried to yoke Ulysses to our current egregious misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. The calmly rendered scenes of slaughter of the local populace by American soldiers (with audio drawn from Wikileak-ed tapes of the conflict) were indeed chilling in their deadpan jargon and banality. But their connection to the tale of Ulysses was, at best, oblique. And the imposition of a brass band onto Monteverdi's delicate score - well, of this let no more be said; aside from a few appropriately raucous blares, instrumentally the piece was a defiant disaster. The soloists were a bit better, but were clearly stretched beyond their limits (and the dreadful acoustics of the Cyclorama did nobody any favors). Surprisingly, however, the choruses came off rather well - largely thanks to the direction of the unbelievably versatile Greg Corbino (who also sang and played trumpet and accordion). The choruses weren't polished, mind you, but had a rough lyricism that gave a hint of what a Bread and Puppet/Claudio Monteverdi mash-up might have been like if Schumann had made a more honest attempt at one.

Still, despite everything, the evening had its moments; some of the choreography was striking, and Schumann's gigantic puppets often did their familiar magic. (This time around, Schumann not only cribbed from Egon Schiele but also from Picasso, who seemed to have provided inspiration for Minerva, Ulysses's ship, and other masks and props.)

As usual, I left Bread and Puppet wishing I'd liked the show more, and musing in puzzlement over the troupe's cult. It is of course only smug to smile at B&P's passion, which I don't think has had much of any political effect since the 60's. Their protests may be a lost cause, but then almost all the best causes are lost causes, aren't they. Schumann's essential problem, it seems to me, is that the very political situation that fuels his outrage - America's dismaying ability to wage foreign war while maintaining domestic peace - also renders him politically impotent. Only when the draft was on - that is, when our warmongering touched the heartland itself - did Bread and Puppet have political traction. Which is a situation the worldly Monteverdi, I think, would have understood perfectly.

From Berlin with love

The Philharmonia Quartett Berlin (at left) really needs no introduction, given the orchestra referenced by its name - these are four players on holiday from what is probably the best (and certainly the most prestigious) symphony on the planet.  Be that as it may, however, they're still orchestra players - who are often known more for sublime craft than for electricity or passion.

Which isn't to say the Philharmonia only colored within the lines at their Celebrity Series concert last weekend (their Boston debut) - they just rarely let rip.  But at the same time, they undemonstratively demonstrated something far more than craftsmanship (even far more than the finest craftsmanship).  Their readings of the Shostakovich Quartet No. 13, Beethoven's "Razumovsky" and Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" revealed superb insight and an unfailing musical intelligence.  I'm glad I heard them. But at least until the Schubert,  a sense of over-arching musical meaning often eluded these expert players, perhaps because they seemed to prefer attention to detail to construction of a grand statement.  Having shed their conductor (these days the erstwhile Simon Rattle), you sometimes got the feeling they still needed one.

The Shostakovich quartet - a late one - proved most problematic.  In it the Russian master faces death squarely, like Beckett, and without illusion or even hope; still,  despite its bracing honesty, the piece clearly is keening at times - other moments come off as paroxysms of sheer terror - and the composer's characteristic wicked scratch still has a little life left in it.  Even more to the point, the quartet closes with a seeming scream, and then a few clock-like ticks: the last seconds of life are dripping out.  Yet the Philharmonia's studious approach seemed to bring out every facet of the work without conveying either its grief or its sense of bitter acceptance; thus it was absorbing as a musical demonstration without being gripping as drama.

Better was the Beethoven "Razumovsky" - even though again the Philharmonia's devotion to detail seemed to undo the kind of impression the piece can make in other hands.  But to be fair, this time the problem lies right in the music: the "Razumovsky" seems to steadily pose brilliant, even grand, ideas, only to diminish them, even fritter them away - and the Philharmonics (that's what I'll call them from now on) refused to fudge on that; they followed Beethoven's instructions to the letter.

The best, fortunately, was yet to come: the famous Andante con moto of "Death and the Maiden" was just about everything it should be: sublimely lyrical, yet delicately poised and effortlessly balanced.  This music, of course, lies near the beginning of the long sweep of nineteenth century music that is the Berlin's specialty, so it was no surprise the quartet should have such a nuanced understanding of it.  But I was almost shocked by what came next (as an encore): a really stunning reading of the slow movement from Debussy's single string quartet; in a way, it struck me as the best playing of the night.  But then Debussy is all about texture, about atmosphere, rather than statement; and this offered the Philharmonics' wonderful craft a special opportunity to shine.