Criticultura em Portugal

 In the past week I sampled some interesting and varied cultural fare in the area during the lead up to the Carnaval season here. Here are some quick impressions.  Theater: The best English language theater company in town is the Lisbon Players. Their most recent effort was Pussycat: in Memory of Darkness , a 70 minute monologue by Ukrainian playwright Neda Nezhdana (seen below), written to show the perspective of residents of eastern Ukraine during the devastating 2014 Russian invasion. This play was performed last year in London, and the Lisbon players imported the solo performer Kristen Milward for these shows. This playwright is seeing her plays performed around the world as companies seek to present the Ukrainian perspective of the ongoing war against Russia. This play was harrowing, and unrelievedly angry. Ms. Milward ably held the stage with a range of intense emotions, with text derived from interviews from real victims of the invasion. Unfortunately I eventually grew ...

Last week I saw the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 ( Vespro della Beata Vergine) , done in an exciting performance at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon. I got to know this piece well when I performed it in the 1990s with the San Francisco Bach Choir. It was a thrilling experience then and now.  Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) needs to be better known and more performed in the general classical world. Among other things, this innovative genius wrote the first opera still in active performance ( L'Orfeo, 1607), is credited with transitioning music from the Renaissance to Baroque periods, and was the most important composer to establish through bass (basso continuo) as the basis of subsequent musical harmony and composition, replacing renaissance polyphony. His music wasn't performed much after his death (at least until its 20th century resurrection), but his influence continued in Italy, culminating a century later with Corelli and Vivaldi, and also in Germany, from Heinrich Schütz all the way...

 Last week I survived a marathon listening experience, hearing six different ensembles play string quartets at the Gulbenkian String Quartet Festival over two afternoons. The quality was high, the hall full (mostly), and the price low (about 6 euros per concert). My brain was a bit scrambled by the end of concert #6, but I really enjoyed the playing overall, and heard some new pieces. I won't summarize each concert  in detail, but will instead try to group my impressions.  Who Played? In order of seniority, I  heard Minguett Quartet (Germany/Austria) founded 1988, 33 recordings Danel Quartet (Manchester), founded 1991, 23 recordings Jerusalem Quartet (Israel), founded 1993, 20 recordings Belcea Quartet (London), founded 1994, 14 recordings Simply Quartet (Vienna), founded 2010, no recordings Van Kuijk Quartet (Paris), founded 2012, 7 recordings Nicely, there was a range of ages and international presence. Most quartets had members from multiple countries, often with...

 The concert by Lisbon's Gulbenkian orchestra last week featured three early twentieth century works of diverse affect, conducted by US guest conductor Robert Treviño. The contrasts made for a really enjoyable concert. The Faure Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) is a compilation from his incidental music to the symbolist Maeterlink play being premiered in London in 1898. The music is pleasant enough, more like a backdrop to an atmospheric video game. It nicely evokes the lovers wandering around in the mist, and most famous for the popsy flute-heavy  Sicilienne .  In this performance the flutist's tone did not quite have the depth and projection of the best performances. A pleasant opener, but better music on this subject is to be found in Debussy's 1902 opera. Completely different was the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand  by Ravel (1930). This is vigorous piece was composed for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig). Wittgen...

The Christmas/New Years holiday is generally a boom period for choruses, one in which many see their largest audiences (and, in the US, income). Repertory varies. Besides the usual carols and regional songs, Handel's Messiah is the go-to piece in the USA, even though 2/3 of it has to do with death and resurrection, not Christmas. In much of Europe, Bach's Christmas Oratorio  is used instead, even though it is essentially six back-to-back cantatas with a tenor narrator, and makes for a very long evening. This season I saw two choral concerts which remarkably featured neither of the above. On my German trip, I took a daytrip from my base in  Hamburg to the old trading town of Lübeck, famed as the birthplace of novelist Thomas Mann, and where he set my favorite of his novels, Buddenbrooks (BTW, read it in the translation by John E. Woods). It's a charming old town with signs of its past wealth as a Hanseatic trading port--especially its four large churches, several damaged sev...