Guest Critic Reviews

Review by Vicky A. Clark-

Two of the three exhibitions at the Strohl Art Center celebrate variety. Choosing broad categories as her organizing principle gave Judy Barie, the Susan and John Turbin Director of VACI Galleries, the freedom to mix and match small sculptures in one and works on paper in the other, highlighting different approaches and materials. This diversity is especially evident in “Small Sculptures: Big Impact.”

There is something for everyone in this show from colorful glass vessels to formal arrangements of geometric shapes; from ritualistic ceramic pots to narratives captured in small capsules. The success of the show is aided by an installation that allows for an initial impression of the group, but then allows each object to stand on its own. While weighed heavily toward clay and glass, the objects are quite different in intent, technique and form, making for a fun show.

Bringing an “Alice in Wonderland” magic to ceramic and porcelain pieces is Korean-born Ahrong Kim. In “Let it Rain,” she stacks three faces, a human with a brightly flowered hat, a dog — don’t miss its backside — and a sad figure in a boat wiping away tears. A large, puffy rain cloud hovers over it. What does this odd juxtaposition mean? Has something happened to the dog or the human? Who knows? The piece is like a dream without a clear narrative, allowing for an imaginative interpretation. Kim works from her own emotions, “the voices we hear from inside,” to create a visual diary. Similar cartoony characters with bright accents populate her other pieces. She adds decorative objects and patterns, but this patchwork effect actually derives from a traditional Korean fabric technique, jogakbo, where scraps are reclaimed and reused to create new cloth. Kim melds both aesthetic and narrative disparities into fun, innovative pieces reminiscent of fairy tales and literature with pop-cartoon characters in cross-cultural improvisation.

While Kim imagines personal, emotional states, John Sharvin, who lives and works in Pittsburgh, imagines different worlds in his small-scale dioramas in glass capsules. He is fascinated by memories, real and imagined; and his pieces, like Kim’s, require close looking. “Crystal Dream Capsule” contains two competing landscapes separated by a wooden disk. Like an hourglass, it is tempting to turn the sculpture upside down, and interestingly in 2011, Sharvin made a series of hourglass pieces filled with sand. While the upper part contains miniature trees, the lower part resembles a cave with crystal formations that could be stalagmites or stalactites, depending on your orientation. Spelunking figures — two tiny HO railroad figures — animate the scene, adding a dose of storytelling. Despite calling this a dreamscape, Sharvin based his piece on an actual crystal cave he read about in National Geographic, so he is combining fact and fiction in a fun narrative.

The artist has a great sense of humor in “Scenic Overlook,” which features a glass upper torso that supports a tiny deck where a man, another HO figure, sits on a tiny bench. He reflects on nature, perhaps contemplating how small he is in this “natural” world, by enjoying the view of trees that sprout from the head and shoulders of the torso.

Sharvin’s ability to fabricate small glass objects to combine with the HO figures adds even more interest. His capsules become miniature natural history dioramas, containing a hint of social history or scientific presentation. By mixing the real and the imagined, he makes us think about the relationship between fact and fiction while we marvel at his inventiveness.

Sharif Bey brings a whole other level of meaning to his work in the show. His two “Ceremonial Vessels” speak to ideas of power and history, especially by referencing the contested history of the colonization of Africa. His vessels begin life as typical vase-like forms that are then pierced with shards, creating a rough surface that hints at danger. The smooth, stylized bird atop the pieces is elegant in contrast, and the two parts suggest the sky over earth. Bey brings his interest in African ritual vessels to his work, referencing both personal identity and a cultural collective in objects of power and ritual. These kinds of objects, usually seen out of their original context in museum and private collections, have a contested history. Prized by colonizers and traders, they were stripped from their original use to become consumer goods, materialistic possessions, paralleling the power imbalance of colonization. Artists like Bey are influenced by that history as they reclaim the forms as part of black culture. In other works, he was influenced by the popular Central African nail fetish figures, joining artists such as Renée Stout, Vanessa German and Pascale Marthine Tayou in making artifacts for a new generation. His work could easily have placed in another Chautauqua exhibition, “Reconstructing Identities.”

Bey grew up in an African American family in Pittsburgh, and earned a doctorate with a dissertation titled, “Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff: The Social Responsibility and Expanded Pedagogy of the Black Artist.” He brings his understanding of race and global politics to not only his art but also to his teaching at Syracuse University, and he uses his knowledge to add an ideological rigor to the work in this show.

An interesting aspect of this exhibition is the title itself. Some of the work would usually be seen in a craft context while other pieces question the boundaries of traditional craft forms. Some works look and feel like sculpture on a small scale. This leaves open the definitions of sculpture and craft. These categories have been questioned and stretched for the last half century, and the gap between art and craft in general is slowly narrowing. By including such a variety of work in this show and using the word “sculpture,” Barie seems to advocate for an expansion of the definition. Many curators would have used the more generalized category of “objects,” so her choice is interesting. These terms, like almost every aspect of contemporary art, are undergoing a critical reevaluation, something that adds another level of interest to this show. 

Vicky A. Clark is an independent curator, critic and teacher based in Pittsburgh. Throughout her 30 years in the Pittsburgh art scene, she has served as a curator for the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and curated “The Popular Salon for the People: Associate Artists at the Carnegie Museum of Art” exhibition.

Review by Christopher H. Gibbs:

Chautauqua Institution is uniquely positioned to connect various aspects of its programming over the course of a day, week or summer. The theme of the morning lectures this past week has been “A Planet in Balance,” presented in partnership with National Geographic Society, and on Tuesday evening, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra took the opportunity to make some connections between nature and music. Because the concert was part of the “Into the Music/After the Music” series, Music Director Rossen Milanov spoke briefly before the first two compositions to explain some of the intersections.

The concert opened with the marvelous “Cantus Arcticus” by the eminent Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. For much of the 20th century, audience’s principal association of music and Finland was most likely the towering figure of Jean Sibelius. But in recent decades, the phenomenally active musical life of this small nation has vastly expanded as conductors, singers and instrumentalists crowd the world stage and composers like Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen attract ever greater acclaim. Rautavaara, who died in 2016 at age 87, was the elder statesman of the group.

Sibelius himself was the one who selected the young Rautavaara to come to America in the 1950s to study at Tanglewood and Juilliard. Like Sibelius, Rautavaara was deeply connected to the landscape and soundscape of Finland. In 1972, he composed “Cantus Arcticus: A Concerto for Birds and Orchestra,” which went on to become his most-frequently performed and popular piece.

From the Middle Ages to the present day, composers’ attraction to birds seems natural — because it is. While most worldly depictions in music are not immediately obvious (how often, really, do we recognize a particular story in a programmatic work unless we are tipped off by a title or program note?), nature’s own melodists pose few such problems. Whether in a Renaissance madrigal, a Haydn string quartet, a Beethoven or Mahler symphony, or a Wagner opera, bird songs and calls stand out. Some composers — the great French composer Olivier Messiaen, most notably — present these sounds with almost scientific accuracy. Recordings in the modern age expanded the possibilities. In his “Pines of Rome,” Ottorino Respighi introduced a quite extraordinary innovation for the mid-1920s: a phonograph recording of a nightingale.

“Cantus Arcticus” makes use of taped birds, chance techniques and a harmonic language of extraordinary beauty. In three slow movements lasting some 20 minutes, the recorded birds heard on tape are imitated by the instruments of the orchestra. The evocative piece needs to be heard live to appreciate fully the interaction between recorded sound and live orchestra. The Amphitheater is the perfect place to encounter such a piece, connected as it is so organically to nature (granted, we more often hear barking dogs than chirping birds as ambient sound in the Amp, but the open-air setting nonetheless places everyone within a natural space). The CSO is playing extremely well this summer, and under Milanov presented the majestic work most effectively.

The fantastic Nordic landscape then shifted to a Bohemian one: the fourth symphonic poem of Bedřich Smetana’s six-part orchestral masterpiece “Má vlast” (My Country). Although Smetana is generally recognized as the first great Czech Romantic composer (he was born nearly two decades before Antonín Dvořák), much of his aesthetic was actually German — Franz Liszt served as his mentor and model. “Má vlast” displays his native Czech roots as well as his Germanic musical inclinations. Liszt was a pioneer in the single-movement symphonic poem, but I don’t think any of the 13 he composed quite match the six of “Má vlast” in their seamless exploration of different moods.

Vltava (Die Moldau in German) — the cycle’s second part that depicts the river running through the heart of the Czech lands — is much better known than its companion pieces that altogether touch on various aspects of the country’s vistas, history and mythology. What the CSO performed — “From Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows” — is the one most related to nature, to what Smetana called “the rich and beautiful land of Bohemia.” Milanov led a well-balanced and joyous performance, especially in the polka section near the end.

An obvious way to conclude the program would have been with Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, but Milanov chose a less familiar piece by the composer — the Triple Concerto — and delivered a spirited performance with three terrific young soloists known as the JCT Trio. Although the concerto has no overt connection with nature, Beethoven was one of those composers (Mahler was another) for whom nature was crucial to his existence and creative process. He once remarked in a letter: “No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear,” and he despaired when Napoleon’s troops occupying Vienna meant he could not leave the city: “I still cannot enjoy life in the country, which is so indispensable for me.”

Beethoven communing with birds and flowers may seem at odds with the eccentric genius shaking his fist at fate, but the two images are complementary sides of his personality. The Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major, Op. 56 — to give its official title — shows the composer in a kinder, gentler mood as he looks back in time as well as geographically sideways in its Polish finale. The Triple is a relatively unusual 19th-century concerto in having multiple soloists, something that was common in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is the least performed of his seven mature concertos and is sometimes used as an excuse to bring together star soloists who don’t necessarily have a particularly unified vision of the piece. But the young JCT Trio, consisting of violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Jay Campbell and pianist Conrad Tao, not only delivered an engaged and vibrant performance, but also a fully integrated one despite this being the first time they had performed the work together (as they stated in the post-concert discussion). Expertly partnering with the CSO, they were by turns bold, elegant and in the dazzling coda to the final movement, really thrilling.

During the introduction before the concert, Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, and Owen Lee, the CSO’s principal bass, took the opportunity to acknowledge the retirement of bassist Patricia Dougherty, who had played with the orchestra for over 40 years.   

Christopher H. Gibbs is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, executive editor of The Musical Quarterly and program annotator for The Philadelphia Orchestra. His books include The Life of Schubert, which has been translated into six languages, and the College Edition of The Oxford History of Western Music, co-authored with Richard Taruskin.

Review by Steve Sucato:

Chautauqua mainstay Charlotte Ballet returned to the Amphitheater Wednesday night for the first of its two productions this summer. With its “International Series,” the company offered up a taste of the classics, both ballet and modern, along with two contemporary dance spectacles.

Opening the program was Peter Schaufuss’ reconstruction of the balcony scene pas de deux from Sir Frederick Ashton’s Romeo & Juliet. The rarely seen pas de deux, first staged on the Royal Danish Ballet in 1955 to music by Sergei Prokofiev, was danced by Charlotte Ballet’s Chelsea Dumas and Josh Hall. 

Ashton’s uniquely beautiful choreography for the scene was a mixture of reserved delicacy and elegance. Rather than focusing the pas de deux on Romeo and Juliet’s impassioned desire for one another, as in other interpretations — including Ashton’s successor at England’s Royal Ballet, Sir Kenneth MacMillan — the scene appeared to hone in on the couple’s unbridled joy. When the two first meet onstage, they get lost in each other’s eyes and we get lost in their heartfelt discovery of one another. 

Hall’s Romeo was dashing to Dumas’ angelic Juliet. Ashton’s illustrative movement for the pas de deux included unusual rolls of the head and shoulders by the dancers, Hall lifting Dumas in arabesque to hop in small steps arcing around the stage, and Dumas contently relaxing into Hall’s embrace, her head resting on his shoulders. The euphoric and dreamy dance concluded with a trio of kisses by the pair as Romeo departed the stage leaving Juliet with one arm raised, smiling and pledging her eternal love for him heavenward.

From classical ballet to classic modern dance, a brief portion of “Cunningham Centennial Solos” came next. Performed by Anson Zwingelberg, the solo excerpted from Merce Cunningham’s BIPED (1999) and Objects (1970) was part of 2019’s international commemoration of what would have been the late choreographer’s 100th birthday. Zwingelberg, performing to experimental electronic music by John King, bounded about the stage, arms curved like parentheses at his sides, hopping and turning from one delineated dance step into another. Zwingelberg gave a respectable performance of the iconic choreographer’s signature minimalist, technically demanding choreography.

Next, the work of choreographer and former Ballett Frankfurt dancer Helen Pickett was presented for a second successive summer as part of Charlotte Ballet’s repertoire. Pickett’s “IN Cognito,” which the company world premiered in Charlotte last April, was inspired in spirit by North Carolina writer Tom Robbins’ 2003 novel Villa Incognito. 

The contemporary ballet, set to music by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Mikael Karlsson and Joshua Rubin, was said to explore the duality of wanting to be seen and not wanting to. With a nod to North Carolina’s furniture industry, Pickett littered the stage with furniture pieces including lamps, chairs, a sofa and a potted tree that dancer Elizabeth Truell, at times throughout the ballet, hid behind. 

Nine dancers performed Pickett’s idiosyncratic movement that appeared a cross between 1960s staccato jazz dance and the mechanized motions of a music box dancer. Injected into that was everything from lush contemporary ballet partnering to snippets of the social dance “The Floss,” in which a person with clenched fists repeatedly swings their arms from the back of their body to the front on each side.

All given a turn in the spotlight over the course of the ballet, Pickett juxtaposed dancers highlighted in spotlight with those in shadow performing alongside or behind them in moments of unison choreography; the effect was entrancing. When not moving the furniture about the stage, the dancers performed around and on it, as in a daring twisting and turning trio that saw Sarah Hayes Hawkins lifted and flipped about by Ben Ingel and Juwan Alston as a trio of women to their side danced with heads bowed and throw pillows pressed to their ears.

A quirky work of competing moods in both demeanor and musicality, the dancers could be found at times lounging on furniture as they watched others perform, coyly lurking in the shadows on various parts of the stage, or precision marching about in packs.

The movement-dense and engaging work came to a halt in a false ending as the dancers all laid on their backs in silence on the stage floor before continuing for a bit more as it had before that break.

The final piece on the program, “Petite Cérémonie” (Little Ceremony), came courtesy of French choreographer Medhi Walerski. Premiered by Canada’s Ballet BC in 2011 (where Hope Muir was a former rehearsal director), Walerski’s contemporary work for 15 dancers, 15 white boxes on a white dance floor, was a bit of a mashup of the choreographic stylings of a plethora of European choreographers over the past several decades, including Ohad Naharin, Pina Bausch, Mats Ek and Jiří Kylián.

Walerski said in a YouTube video about “Petite Cérémonie” that he wanted to create a work where the dancers and dancing were more human, with a less of an emphasis on perfection. Taken as a whole, he realized that desire with a gem of a work that was unlike any seen at Chautauqua before.

Danced to music by Mozart, Bellini, Vivaldi and others, the piece began in a slow burn to the distant sound of an opera singer’s aria as dancer James Kopecky quietly walked to center stage to stand with legs together and began a step sequence alternating one foot tapping the top of the other that was repeated continuously, while the rest of the cast emerged from various areas of the Amphitheater to walk through the audience and join him onstage in a horizontal line doing the same stepping sequence.

Walerski’s choreography for the work then moved through more of these unison group movement sequences that varied in tone and intensity. Costumed in black cocktail dresses for the women and black suits for the men (white shirts untucked and sans ties), the dancers moved through precisely timed, gesture-laden choreography that had them snapping their fingers, clapping, vocalizing grunts, groans and laughter in surprising spurts throughout the work.

Feeling more at times like being witness to a surreal dream of a dance work than to an actual one, “Petite Cérémonie” turned bizarre into beauty as it built energy toward an inevitable big bang ending. 

Father into the work, Ingel, in a humorous vignette, juggled three balls while speaking into a microphone explaining how a man’s compartmentalized brain differs from a woman’s, and adding one of those compartments is empty and that men are happy to dwell there doing nothing. A couple’s group dance followed, led by soloist Sarah Lapointe who performed with a smooth slinkiness. After that came a succession of delicious Kylián-esque pas de deuxs beginning with adroit dancers Maurice Mouzon Jr. and Alessandra Ball James and a women’s group dance in shadow light, with Kopecky to the side of them standing atop a white box mouthing a speech no one would hear. The work came to its climactic end with the dancers again each pushing around a white box, this time to the “Winter” section of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, stopping to perform dance phrases seated on them and then in one final flurry, lift and stack them into a pyramid where several dancers scrambled up it to create a tableau of posed dancers reminiscent of a fashion magazine photo spread.

For Chautauqua audiences who have known and loved Charlotte Ballet’s stellar performances over the past several decades, Muir’s bold new contemporary repertory for the company has given them even more to love.

Based in Painesville, Ohio, Steve Sucato is a contributing writer, critic and reporter. His work has appeared in such publications as The Plain Dealer, The Buffalo News, Pittsburgh City Paper and Dance Magazine, among others.

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  The Chautauqua Symhony Orchestra, led by Conductor Rossen Milanov, delivers a strong performance accompanied by famed pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk on Tuesday night, July 2, 2019 in the Amphitheater. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
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  Conductor Rossen Milanov directs the Chautauqua Symhony Orchestra to stand for applause after finishing the first song of the concert during the performance Tuesday night, July 2, 2019 in the Amphitheater. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
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  The Chautauqua Symhony Orchestra, led by Conductor Rossen Milanov, delivers a strong performance accompanied by famed pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk on Tuesday night, July 2, 2019 in the Amphitheater. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
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  The Chautauqua Symhony Orchestra, led by Conductor Rossen Milanov, delivers a strong performance accompanied by famed pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk on Tuesday night, July 2, 2019 in the Amphitheater. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Review by Christopher Gibbs-

Three long threads were woven into the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra concert Tuesday evening. The first is called “Into the Music/After the Music,” intermission-less programs after which the audience is invited to ask questions of Music Director Rossen Milanov. The second: several concerts this summer featuring Russian music, in this instance Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Finally, there is the ongoing collaboration of the CSO with the remarkable pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk, who is appearing for his 14th consecutive summer at Chautauqua.

The briefer programming format has several advantages. Audiences evidently enjoy that some concerts are given without an intermission, while welcoming the chance to linger afterward for a discussion that helps to build bridges between listeners and performers. More practically, most CSO concerts are prepared with just one rehearsal. This used to be the standard procedure for every CSO concert until a few decades ago, when the total number of season performances was slightly reduced and the number of rehearsals somewhat increased.

But most concerts are still presented with limited rehearsal time, which demands the conductor’s efficient preparation and the orchestra’s adept professionalism. The fine results speak for themselves, but it all requires strategic planning. A program like the one on Tuesday, with just two works totaling some 45 minutes of music, benefits from having a bit more time to rehearse, especially when it includes an often tricky and relatively rarely performed piece like the Rachmaninoff concerto.

Milanov’s care was immediately evident with the opening work, the far more commonly heard Prelude and Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, which he led in an uncommonly subtle performance. This is a piece that changed music history (two weeks from now we will get to hear another game changer when the Music School Festival Orchestra joins the CSO for Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”).

The opera’s plot revolves around the doomed love of the title characters, as Isolde is betrothed to Tristan’s much older uncle, King Marke. One of Wagner’s brilliant achievements in this opera was finding a musical analogue to the lover’s unfulfilled erotic passion. The first chord in the Prelude — the “Tristan Chord,” perhaps the most discussed and famous in all of Western music — is unresolved according to the traditional rules of tonal harmony (the Rolling Stones would say it gets “no satisfaction”). Wagner immediately repeats it, again without resolving the dissonance. And then does so again and again — for nearly five hours. The effect is astonishing. The chord is finally resolved only at the very end, when Tristan and Isolde are both dead.

What we heard Tuesday gave us the beginning and end of the opera, skipping the many hours in between. Milanov chose a relatively fast tempo for the opening, one that I think serves the music well, unlike some conductors who drag things out, supposedly for greater profundity. The pacing over the course of work was totally convincing and built to effective, blossoming climaxes that wonderfully captured the sweep of this intoxicating score.

Midway through, there is a quick splice that transports us to the end of the opera. This is when Isolde, standing over the body of her dead lover, sings her “Transfiguration,” which because of a piano transcription by Wagner’s father-in-law, Franz Liszt, became more popularly known as the “Liebestod” or “Love Death.” In the opera,   the music of this some 7-minute-long section largely repeats that of the great second-act love duet before the lovers are discovered, but orchestras often perform the excerpt purely instrumentally. 

Gavrylyuk’s special bond with Chautauqua has led to his return each summer for performances with the CSO, recitals and chamber music, master classes and a more recent position as artist-in-residence and artistic adviser to the School of Music’s Piano Program. There is clearly a commitment on both sides that continues even as his international recognition and career justifiably skyrocket.

This summer displayed another type of loyalty and flexibility. Daniil Trifonov, a terrific pianist who performed with the CSO some years ago, was supposed to play Scriabin’s Piano Concerto on the season’s opening concert, but had to cancel. Gavrylyuk graciously stepped in to perform Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” In turn, he switched his originally scheduled performance for Tuesday of Brahms’ First Concerto to Rachmaninoff’s First.

I will gladly hear Gavrylyuk play anything, but he is a Rachmaninoff specialist, so it is a particular pleasure that Chautauquans in short succession got to hear him perform two of the composer’s five works for piano and orchestra. While he has recorded all of Sergei Prokofiev’s piano concertos, and some of Rachmaninoff’s solo keyboard music, Gavrylyuk has not yet recorded the concertos (his widely praised performance of the Third Concerto at the BBC Proms concerts in 2017 can be viewed on YouTube, and is simply extraordinary).

Chances to hear Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 are relatively rare, especially in comparison with the composer’s much more familiar second and third concertos and Paganini Rhapsody (his fourth concerto is the unjustly ignored ugly duckling). Although he composed a fair amount of juvenilia, Rachmaninoff decided that the First Piano Concerto should be presented as the official Opus 1. The 17-year-old began composing the work in the summer of 1890, and premiered its first movement in 1892. A few years later he published the concerto in a two-piano version, but cooled on the piece, which he stopped playing until he could get around to revising it.

By his mid-30s, Rachmaninoff was an internationally famous composer, particularly after the success of the second and third concertos (1901 and 1909). It was not until 1917, just before he left Russia in the wake of the Revolution to live permanently in the West, that he returned to his youthful effort. The revisions involved a thinning out of the orchestration, making some structural modifications, writing a new cadenza for the opening movement, and considerable recasting of the finale. He gave the first performance of the new version in 1919, at Carnegie Hall.

Despite the revisions, the First Concerto still sounds like the Rachmaninoff whose music audiences so embraced, chronologically situated, as it is, both before and after its phenomenally famous siblings and dazzling Second Symphony. Since the original version of the concerto survives we know that the revision remains close to what the teenage Rachmaninoff initially composed.

Gavrylyuk brought to his performance his usual thrilling technical wizardry, but also the large-scale drama that makes his Rachmaninoff so special. Milanov and the CSO were perfect partners in this drama and adeptly handled the tricky metrical challenges of the final movement. Audiences can look forward to this fabulous pianist’s recital in the Amphitheater next week.

Christopher H. Gibbs is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, executive editor of The Musical Quarterly and program annotator for The Philadelphia Orchestra. His books include The Life of Schubert, which has been translated into six languages, and the College Edition of The Oxford History of Western Music, co-authored with Richard Taruskin.

Review By Johanna Keller:

A pair of beloved Romantic symphonic masterworks — by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms — were performed back-to-back without intermission to close out the first week of Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s 90th season. The news of the night was that about half the concerts this year will be intermission-free, due to popular demand from the audience, a change announced by Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, in her opening remarks from the stage.

On a more serious note, Moore also paid tribute to Peter Haas, principal bass player of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, who performed with the CSO for 24 years and passed away last autumn after a year-long battle with cancer. It was a profound loss for the close-knit community of Chautauqua, and in an interview after the performance, Haas was fondly remembered by bass player Kaitlyn Kamminga, who called him “a consummate professional and great colleague.”

The evening’s performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, dubbed the “Unfinished,” was appropriately dedicated to Haas’ memory.

So, it was in this somber mood that Music Director Rossen Milanov took the stage and stood for a long moment before conducting a singularly poignant interpretation of the two movements that Schubert wrote in 1822.

In the Allegro moderato opening, Milanov kept his gestures small, maintaining a restrained dynamic throughout. He pushed the lyricism of phrasing, demanding sweeping arcs of sound, so that the cellos and violins seemed to sing, while the sforzandi provided a muted punctuation. One of the most shattering moments in this work comes when Schubert abruptly halts the gorgeous second theme, follows it with a full measure rest and then brings in an unrelated chord, in C minor. The crispness of the CSO’s playing made this interruption freshly shocking. In the Andante con moto, each of Schubert’s unusual transitions and daring key changes — often a kind of pivot on a solo instrument — seemed transparent, even fragile. The pizzicati (plucked passages) in the low strings were on tiptoe.

I have heard the “Unfinished” played countless times with dozens of approaches — it can sound muscular, bouncy, tragic, dramatic, stately, yearning. But I have never heard it sound so tender. Such a subtle approach requires the kind of musical imagination that Milanov possesses, as well as a true fusion and trust between conductor and players that has obviously developed during his five years on the CSO podium.

The mystery of why Schubert never completed his Eighth Symphony has been the subject of much scholarly debate, and the consensus seems to be that after writing his first six symphonies that hewed to fairly conventional classical structures, Schubert suffered a kind of artistic crisis — and it certainly couldn’t have helped that he also contracted syphilis. It is theorized that he was blocked by comparing himself to Beethoven, then a towering musical figure at the height of his renown. Schubert had sketched out a Seventh Symphony and then set to work on the eighth, composing two movements and leaving a third movement in an incomplete sketch.

By the time of his death in 1828, at the age of 31, Schubert left dozens of projects incomplete or abandoned, yet he was among the most prolific of major composers. He had written more than 600 songs, nine or 10 symphonies (or sketches, depending on how you count them), 15 string quartets, two piano trios, two quintets, 21 piano sonatas, 10 operas and other incidental music for the stage, seven full masses and a whole lot more. The two completed movements of the “Unfinished” symphony show Schubert experimenting with bizarre key modulations and harmonies, in a direction Beethoven never pursued. We are left to wonder how much more Schubert would have written, and how his music would have evolved, had he not died so young.

By contrast, after a short pause (not an intermission), Milanov hopped onto the podium and dove headlong into Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 by Brahms. Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere, called this robust 1883 piece “Brahms’s Eroica,” referring to the nickname for Beethoven’s “heroic” Third Symphony. Both works open with a spirited Allegro con brio, and Milanov flung out his arms and stirred the orchestra into a full-out rendition that had the strings swirling while the brass and woodwind sections interwove those Brahmsian motives.

A particularly telling moment occurred in the third movement, Poco allegretto. The cellos introduce this throbbing minor key theme that is then handed around the orchestra and repeated again and again. This is a movement that can unfortunately become lugubrious and sentimental. But Milanov took it at a brisk pace and pushed the articulation in a fascinating way. Usually the two phrases of the main theme are played (bear with me here) Dah-dee-Daaaaah, Dah-dee-Dah. But Milanov demanded a legato that crescendoed into the second phrase with an extra surge at the top, so that it turned into Dah-dee-daaahHH-DAH-dee-dah. The difference in phrasing may seem minor, but it is just such a detail as this that turns a good performance into a great one, and demonstrates Milanov’s intelligence and refined taste.

Composers have often gotten their jollies by incorporating cryptograms — sequences of notes whose letters spell out words or names. Most notably, Bach spelled out his name (in German music, B-flat was named B and B-natural was H), and Robert Schumann inserted a form of his name into his music as well. Brahms had a friend and collaborator, Joseph Joachim, whose musical motto was “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely). A lifelong bachelor, Brahms converted Joachim’s motto into his own theme on F-A-F, to signify “Frei aber froh (Free but happy), and sprinkled it throughout the symphony.

Alas, it must be said that three times during the evening, dogs being walked by their clearly unmusical owners, added unwelcome interruptions, and always at the quietest and most sublime moments; why can’t Chautauqua institute a dog-free No Barking Zone on orchestra nights?

Speaking of acoustical matters, while I usually prefer to sit two-thirds of the way back to enjoy the surprisingly well-blended sound in the Amphitheater, I took this opportunity to take a seat in the choral section behind and above the orchestra, an experiment I recommend to any serious listener. Of course, the sound there is dry, like being in a recording studio, so that you hear the sections of the orchestra separately, including sonic details like the slight rasp of the bows. You also miss the visceral blare of the brass section (they are sitting 15 feet below with their bell ends pointed away from you). On the other hand, you get to closely observe the interactions of the players and see the conductor from the perspective of the orchestra members; it is revelatory to watch Milanov use his gaze and facial expressions to elicit the sound he wants from his players.

Finally, it should be noted that a new element has been added to the orchestral season — program books. Handsomely edited, the 51-page booklet contains repertoire, guest artist bios and David Levy’s fine musicological notes for the opening few weeks of the season. Best of all is the list of orchestra members with a photo of each and a note about their other institutional affiliations. Highlighting each musician is a great idea that all orchestras should adopt. It’s just another reminder of the atmosphere of Chautauqua, where each individual voice contributes to the whole.

Johanna Keller received the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for her essays on music in The New York Times. She writes for Opera and The Hopkins Review and teaches journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

Review by Eric Grode:

Chautauqua Theater Company’s first play of the season begins with a musical number, some two dozen voices strong. It ends stirringly. But no one in the audience claps.

Then the leading man steps forth, microphone in hand, and begins a lengthy monologue. Its very first line sets the stage while also uprooting us: “Brothers and sisters, let us pray.” And it is around this time that we realize the house lights are still on.

What the hell kind of play is this?

It is The Christians, Lucas Hnath’s nuanced dissection of the limits of tolerance within a contemporary megachurch. And its blend of earnest theology and Shavian verbal gymnastics makes the 2014 play a natural fit for Chautauqua Institution, as Hnath himself pointed out during an Amphitheater event last year.

That opening monologue is, of course, a sermon, one in which the charismatic Pastor Paul (a convincingly earnest Jamison Jones) touches upon the courtship of his wife and the church’s material success before pivoting to a harrowing act of violence in a suffering (but unnamed) country far away. A young man there died in the act of rescuing his sister from a bomb, and a missionary from the pastor’s (also unnamed) denomination regrets that this heroic young nonbeliever faces eternal damnation.

The ramifications of this idea lead Paul to detonate his own bomb, one that rattles the newly bought-and-paid-for church (conveyed effectively by Adam Rigg’s antiseptic scenic design) to its bones. “We are no longer a congregation that believes in Hell,” he announces from the pulpit. “We are no longer that kind of church.”

Well, then.

How does an entire congregation change a linchpin of its core theology on a dime? Does it? Should it? Hnath, a daring young playwright with two playfully revisionist works reaching Broadway in the last three seasons, and himself a former member of an Evangelical church, takes the respectful measure of these questions by approaching them from several different angles.

The skepticism toward Paul’s abrupt shift is apparent from the beginning, at first in Associate Pastor Joshua (the stealthily powerful Ricardy Fabre). And as the two pastors wrangle over scriptural interpretations in front of the congregation, The Christians feels at first like “12 Angry Churchmen,” with one progressive dissenter patiently converting the room one naysayer at a time.

But as we’ve learned in plays from Saint Joan to Galileo to The Crucible to A Man for All Seasons, speaking out against religious dogma can be a risky business. And as the pushback continues from the church’s bottom-line-conscious board of elders (led by the stentorian Malcolm Ingram), its congregants and even Paul’s wife (the terrific Stori Ayers), Hnath manages to convey the congregation’s estrangement from Paul without ever condescending to those more hidebound voices.

Some of his less thought-through twists get the better of director Taibi Magar and her cast: Why does Paul spar so commandingly with Joshua early on and then turn into a stammering, and vaguely sleazy, mess when a deceptively meek congregant takes issue with virtually the same concept just two scenes later? But Magar shows a keen ear for subtle shifts in power — you learn a lot about the various characters’ misgivings even when they are silent — and finds an almost ideal synthesis of emotion and rigor during even the most Scripture-heavy passages.

Incidentally, Fabre and Madeline Seidman (palpably touching as that concerned congregant) are the only two members of the vaunted CTC conservatory to take the stage, and their material adds up to roughly a half hour of stage time. Granted, the Motet Choir lends solid support throughout The Christians. But with just two mainstage productions this season, using guest artists for 60% of the speaking roles feels like an odd underutilization of CTC’s considerable resources. Here is a gentle prayer that One Man, Two Guvnors, its next show, will use more of these talented performers and create a sufficiently ungodly mess.

Eric Grode is the director of the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at Syracuse University and a regular freelance theater contributor to The New York Times.

• 
  Dancers Antonina Skobina and Denys Drozdyuk perform a ballet routine named “Irresistible”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Irresistible”, features music by Michael Jackson and choreography by Denys Drozdyuk. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
• 
  Dancers Antonina Skobina and Denys Drozdyuk perform a ballet routine named “Irresistible”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Irresistible”, features music by Michael Jackson and choreography by Denys Drozdyuk. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
• 
  Dancer Denys Drozdyuk performs a ballet routine named “Tres Hombres”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Tres Hombres”, features music by Astor Piazzolla and choreography by Drozdyuk, Lex Ishimoto, and Daniel Ulbricht. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Review by Steve Sucato:

One of several dancer-founded dance showcases touring the United States each year, New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht’s Stars of American Ballet made its triumphant debut Wednesday in the Amphitheater, in a mixed-repertoire program that brought the audience to its feet multiple times and left them wanting much more at program’s end.

A former student of the School of Dance in the late-1990s, Ulbricht, a St. Petersburg, Florida, native, formed Stars of American Ballet a decade ago after his mother was diagnosed with cancer and was unable to travel to see him dance. The idea was to bring top-flight dance to her and others who might not otherwise get the opportunity to experience it.

Ulbricht and company — which for Wednesday’s program might have been more aptly named, “Stars of New York City Ballet,” given seven of the 10 dancers were either soloists or principal dancers with the company — all lived up to their star billing in a stylistic variety of works.

The program opened with George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” the often performed, 30-minute ballet classic, that Balanchine originally created for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1928, and one of the iconic choreographer’s earliest works. Set to Igor Stravinsky’s composition, “Apollon Musagète,” the ballet depicted Apollo (Adrian Danchig-Waring), the young god of music being visited by his three half-sister muses who instruct him in their individual talents via a series of solo dances.

The first of them, Calliope, muse of poetry, carried with her a tablet. Danced by Sara Adams, who is also a School of Dance alum, Balanchine’s illustrative choreography for Calliope saw Adams mimicking writing poetry, and then, with her mouth agape, used her hands to trail a line outward from her mouth to indicate the recitation of said poetry.

Polyhymnia, muse of mime, whose symbol was a mask, came next. The unfortunate victim of a technical glitch, Carlisle, Pennsylvania-native Abi Stafford danced Polyhymnia, and was left standing onstage for an uncomfortably long time, waiting for the music for her solo to start. When it finally did, she too performed gestural movement illustrative of her talent, most noticeably holding one finger to her lips in a shushing gesture as she danced.

The last of the half-sisters, the lyre-carrying Terpsichore, muse of song and dance, was portrayed by Unity Phelan dancing the role for the very first time. She powered through her vibrant solo, full of waving arms and high kicks, that showcased her wonderful facility and skillfulness as a dancer.

Each of the women were marvelous in their solos and in group dances that saw them twisting in and out of pretzel-like formations, on their heels in duck walks or moving one after the other across the stage on pointe in bourrée en couru (a series of tiny steps) that had them looking like mechanical dolls. But the ballet ultimately belonged to Danchig-Waring, who appeared every bit a Greek god in his commanding stage presence and in his technically brilliant dancing. His quick, sharp movements, jumps, leaps and turns were near flawless.

After an intermission, the program majorly switched gears with “Irresistible,” a ballroom dance duet performed to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” Denys Drozdyuk, a former winner of the TV program “So You Think You Can Dance Canada,” choreographed the number and performed it with fellow ballroom champion and Ukraine native Antonina Skobina. The pair delighted the audience with fast-moving, daring and adroitly danced contemporary ballroom movement, infused with Jackson signature dance moves. The killer duet surely would have landed the pair on the coveted “Hot Tamale Train,” a term coined by Mary Murphy, ballroom expert and judge on America’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Next, Ulbricht made his first appearance onstage in the 15-minute solo, “(A) Suite of Dances,” choreographed by Jerome Robbins in 1994 to music by Johann Sebastian Bach that was played live by cellist Ann Kim. The playful and charming ballet was originally created for dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose footprints remained all over it. Looking like a blend of improvisation from Baryshnikov mixed with bits of Robbins’ ballet and Broadway stylings, including cartwheels and somersaults, the solo created banter between dancer and musician that Ulbricht and Kim, who is a member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, executed deliciously.

For his part Ulbricht brought a carefree ease and humor to the sometimes difficult and taxing choreography, while Kim brought poetry to Bach’s music in her playing. Perhaps the only letdown in the ballet choreographically was a rather bland, slow section — an obvious breather for the dancer, but also a momentum killer — which saw an introspective Ulbricht amble about the stage in thought. 

In the first of two dancer-choreographed ballets to round out the program, Danish dancer Ask la Cour’s pas de deux, “Change of Heart,” took the stage like a runaway freight train in its drive and unyielding pace. Performed to music by Edvard Grieg, la Cour and dancer Teresa Reichlen ripped through contemporary ballet choreography, that while lovely enough, provided little emotional connection between the dancers. The relationship piece could have benefitted from some purposeful pace changes to better explore the characters’ tumultuous bond.

Capping the program was perhaps its biggest “wow” piece, “Tres Hombres,” choreographed by Ulbricht, Drozdyuk and Lex Ishimoto. Danced to music by Astor Piazzolla, the trio of Ulbricht, Drozdyuk and former Boston Ballet first soloist Joseph Gatti, released the bravura dance hounds in a barrage of high flying jumps, blurringly fast turns, spins and leg beats. Steeped in machismo attitude and flamenco flair, “Tres Hombres” left many in the audience gleefully wondering what just hit them.

In the end, Stars of American Ballet was the perfect example of what happens when you give the keys to the luxury sports car to world-class dancers and let them drive the programming. They put the pedal to the metal, do donuts in the parking lot and take us all on a thrill ride we will never forget.

Based in Painesville, Ohio, Steve Sucato is a contributing writer, critic and reporter. His work has appeared in such publications as The Plain Dealer, The Buffalo News, Pittsburgh City Paper and Dance Magazine, among others.

Review by Johanna Keller:

The 90th season of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra opened with heavenly performances of three works that, in various ways, revolved around the theme of Hell.

Conductor Rossen Milanov, beginning his fifth season as music director, chose Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, Symphonic Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32, as his challenging opener, which immediately plunges the listener into darkness and the swirling, stormy sufferings of the underworld. Programming it as an opener was a bold move, since the slashing strings and eddying woodwinds allow no time for orchestra players to warm up — welcome to Hades.

Doomed lovers abound in literature and myth: think of Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet. Once just as well-known, the story of Francesca’s illicit love affair with her brother-in-law Paolo inspired numerous operas, including one by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The tale comes from Dante Alighieri’s epic “The Divine Comedy,” and there are no more beloved passages than those of the fifth canto of The Inferno, when the author Dante reaches the second ring of Hell. There, raging winds eternally buffet those who committed the sin of lust. In the midst of this storm, Francesca tenderly recounts how she and Paolo fell in love. Rendered in Dante’s delicately rhymed three-line stanzas (terza rima), Francesca’s story so moves Dante that when she finishes speaking, he writes that he faints from emotion.

Tchaikovsky’s 1876 fantasy on the Francesca theme alternates lyrical moments (props to the soaring phrasing by Chautauqua’s principal clarinetist Eli Eban) with thunderous tutti passages that depict the netherworld’s storms as well as the storms of sexual passion. Milanov drew on his enormous range of communicative gestures to pull out of the orchestra sweeping, singing phrases that built to a final climactic accelerando, and was answered by cheers from the audience. It was an auspicious beginning.

In the world of classical music, one of the most bizarre characters has to be violinist and composer, Nicolò Paganini (1782-1840), who played so brilliantly, he was rumored to have sold his soul to Satan. Paganini’s abilities on the violin — he also played the viola and guitar — were the stuff of legend, and he invented new ways of playing the instrument in his 24 Caprices that bedevil violinists to the present day. A tall, spectrally thin man, Paganini brought some audience members to shrieks with the physicality of his performances — think of Mick Jagger crossed with a young Elvis. In recent years, much has been written about the theory — which was referenced by Chautauqua’s resident musicologist David Levy in his excellent pre-concert lecture in the Hall of Christ — that Paganini had Marfan syndrome, and was double-jointed, accounting perhaps for some of his unusual dexterity.

Pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk took the stage for the fiendish, knuckle-breaking challenge of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43. Like Paganini, Rachmaninoff was a virtuoso performer, one of the great pianists of his century, so the keyboard technical challenges are abundant.

Gavrylyuk, who also serves as the Heintzelman Family Artistic Advisor and artist-in-residence for the Chautauqua School of Music Piano Program, delivered an electrifying interpretation with propulsive energy, cascades of notes transformed into sheer veils and gigantic Rachmaninoff chords that demand not only power but astute voicing. Better known outside of the United States, Gavrylyuk is on track for a stellar international career. Milanov kept the orchestra with him every step of the way, with plaintive solo violin work by acting concertmaster Vahn Armstrong.

Theme and variations are playful forms that show off the inventiveness of the composer. Early on, Rachmaninoff gives us a wink with hints of the Dies Irae — the often-quoted Gregorian chant that summons up images of death — to allude to Paganini’s demonic reputation.

Most famously in this work, at the apogee comes a most exquisite tune (I hear it in my mind’s ear as I write these words), a tune you would recognize. Tchaikovsky invented it, or discovered it, when he inverted Paganini’s theme and recognized it as a stunner. He treats it with a full-out sobbing rendition in the orchestra and then lets the piano caress it alone, just once, before the next variation begins. A lesser composer than Tchaikovsky would have brought the hit tune back at the end, but instead, it gains all the more poignancy for its brief but spectacular, singular appearance. Milanov drove his orchestra through the final variations that pound out the Dies Irae to the shattering conclusion, with the tiny tail of a piano flourish at the very end that always brings a laugh from the audience. Wit indeed. The loudest cheering of the night came for Gavrylyuk, a favorite at Chautauqua.

At intermission, some of the audience filtered away, unfortunately missing one of the rare opportunities to hear Dmitri Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony from 1939. On the surface, this extremely unusual work has nothing whatsoever to do with Hell. There are no infernos, no hellish storms, no Dies Irae, and no souls sold to the devil — or are there?

Throughout his early life, Shostakovich (1906-1975) suffered from the vicissitudes of the dictator Stalin, living in an atmosphere of terror that most of us (I hope) have never experienced and can scarcely imagine. Unfortunately for Russian artists, Stalin took a great interest in them and their work. A word misspoken or misunderstood, a work of art deemed “too formal” or “not socialist realism,” could land one on the wrong side of history — or in the gulag. Or shot. The midnight knock at the door: Such things happened under Stalin, when it is estimated that more than a million Russians died in the gulags over 20 years; others died uncounted.

In 1934, Shostakovich had written an opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, that got him denounced by the Communist Party after an anonymous article appeared, perhaps written by Stalin himself. Shostakovich managed to redeem himself by composing, as his Fifth Symphony, a triumphant celebration of Soviet might. For his next symphony, he announced he would use poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s paean, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” and would convey “spring, joy, youth.” On the surface, this plan sounded like a surefire way to further ingratiate himself to Stalin. But when it comes to Shostakovich — his music or his life story — the surface is always a betrayal.

Mayakovsky had been one of the most famous poets in Russia and tapped the young Shostakovich years before to provide some stage music. But the poet had his own political problems. He was a futurist: Stalin disapproved. The poet died by suicide in 1930, and afterward, and still to this day, there are arguments that it was actually an assassination.

So, for whatever reason, the symphony Shostakovich wrote was not as announced. There is no Mayakovsky poem, no chorus. Instead, it begins with a Largo that takes up more than half the work. Somber and based on minor third and diminished seventh motifs, its thickly orchestrated passages give way to moments when one instrument — piccolo, flute or English horn — are virtually isolated. It is impossible to hear this effect without thinking of the way Stalinist terror could isolate and silence individual voices. The composer finishes with two shorter movements: an Allegro and then a Presto that, for all their energy and verve, are underpinned with the bitter irony that mark this great composer’s work. There are various kinds of hell — and perhaps this symphony describes one of them.

Milanov and the orchestra members turned in an unforgettable performance — the strings bearing down on the lacerating passages, outstanding solo turns from the woodwinds and brass and percussion providing what sometimes sounded like an alarm. Milanov whipped up a galloping finale that propelled the audience to its feet and, after a sustained ovation, out into the safe and peaceful darkness of the charming streets of Chautauqua.

Johanna Keller received the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for her essays on music in The New York Times. She writes for Opera and The Hopkins Review and teaches journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

For its debut at the Amphitheater Saturday night, the Nashville Ballet teamed up with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for an evening of ballet set to orchestral works from Mozart, Aaron Copland, Hershy Kay and relative newcomer to classical composition, multiplatinum selling singer-songwriter Ben Folds.

Co-commissioned by Nashville Ballet, the Nashville Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, Folds’ 25-minute Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in three movements was performed crisply and with feeling by pianist Joel Ayau and the CSO under the baton of Grant Cooper. The music was a vibrant partner to Nashville Ballet Artistic Director Paul Vasterling’s expansive and stylized neo-classical choreography for the aptly titled ballet, “The Ben Folds Project: Concerto.”

Premiered in 2014 and reprised at the Kennedy Center in 2017, “Concerto” was the largest of the four works on the program with 21 dancers. It began with Ayau and his grand piano on stage and the CSO in the Amphitheater’s pit as eight male/female couples costumed all in black swept over the stage. With the feel of classic Broadway or Hollywood production number, the delectable wave of dancing appeared inspired by Fold’s zestful music.

Coming to the forefront in the first portion of the ballet was first-year company dancer Owen Thorne, who played leading man to a string of female partners in short pas de deux. With each pas de deux, Vasterling beautifully framed the soloist couple with various groupings of corps dancers in their shadow. The effect was as grand as Ayau’s piano. In one sequence, the corps dancers, inching their way across the stage behind the lead couple, formed a chain of overlapping arms that shifted along the chain as they moved.

The ballet and the score’s second movement shifted gears visually and sonically as dancer Kayla Rowser, costumed in a white leotard, took over the spotlight from Thorne and became the center of attraction for two male dancers in teal, who lifted her in the air, twisting and turning her about. Also framed nicely by various configurations of corps dancers, Rowser was the picture of grace and beauty, exerting a quiet command in her dancing. Her performance left you wanting much more, and it was a pity this was the only ballet we were to see her in.

The ballet’s final section took another musical tact, and the dancing followed it brilliantly. Folds, who said of his creation, “The notion of a piano concerto written by a rock musician in this century is so completely out of step that I had to do it,” did a not-so-surprisingly bang-up job with the distinctive concerto, and the ballet proved a highly entertaining opener.

Next, came a 10-minute excerpt from George Balanchine’s slice of Americana, “Western Symphony” (1954). Evoking a theatrical view of the old West, complete with cowboys and saloon dance hall girls, the ballet had the flavor of dance associated with that era infused into a classical framework. The excerpt, taken from the ballet’s opening “Allegro” section, featured upper level student dancers from Chautauqua School of Dance in the ballet’s corps roles.

The Americana theme continued in Vasterling’s “Appalachian Spring” (2017) that followed. Set to the suite version of Aaron Copland’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition made famous by choreographer Martha Graham in her 1944 ballet of the same name, Vasterling created a heartfelt and beautifully crafted work that was distinctive, yet paid homage to Graham’s original.

Employing a mix of neo-classical ballet infused with movements associated with the Graham work, the 25-minute ballet was danced fabulously by nine of Nashville’s dancers, led by 10-year company member Katie Vasilopoulos. It began with her dancing a hopeful solo full of spins and leaps to the quiet opening section of the score that conjured up the feel of a new day dawning around her. While Vasilopoulos was dancing, five men and three women costumed in mid-19th century American prairie-inspired costumes and carrying Shaker-style chairs began to move like a wagon train, circling around her.

In Vasterling’s program notes on the ballet, he describes his inspiration for the ballet coming from a friend who observed “the irony that a work of art that is considered so quintessential Americana was created by a woman (Martha Graham), a gay Jewish man (Aaron Copland) and a Japanese designer (Isamu Noguchi)” — three people that may have been considered (and may in some way still be) considered “the other” in American society.

Vasterling used that notion of “the other” that was reflected in the personality traits of the characters in the ballet, with Vasilopoulos as a sort of motherly figure to them and representing the larger ideals of freedom, hopefulness and acceptance associated with America. Her performance in the role was emotional and captivating throughout.

Each in the cast was featured in small, meaty solos and duets revealing individuals that were exuberant in their hopes, sometimes awkward in their differences and, in the case of two men, longing in their desires for one another.

In the end, the ballet proved a worthy reinterpretation of Copland’s music, delivering a message of unbounded optimism for the future that remains uniquely American.

For the program’s final work, Americana gave way to European farce in the form of Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián’s modern masterwork “Sechs Tänze” (Six Dances). Premiered in 1986 (coincidently the same year Nashville Ballet was founded) and set to Mozart’s Six German Dances, K. 571, the ballet was representative of the Rococo period of Mozart in its costumes and mannerisms, albeit taken outlandishly over-the-top.

Powdered wigs for the four shirtless men, towering teased hair for the four women and white face clown makeup for all added to the spectacle of this zany and risqué work that played out at times like an old episode of “The Benny Hill Show.” Slapstick humor, priceless facial expressions and several brilliantly unusual methods for the dancers to move about the stage, such as bouncing along in a prone position, sent the audience into laughter.

Of particular note was the performance of dancer Mollie Sansone, whose plucky and sometimes spitfire personality in the work saw her deliciously being pursued by two men, only to have them abandon her to don gown-like rolling black dress forms (the same forms that would famously reappear in Kylián’s 1991 masterpiece “Petit Mort”) and her shooting them an “I’m not having that” face.

“Sechs Tänze” ’s comedic thrill ride came to its climax with the dancers shaking out clouds of wig powder, and while a shower of soap bubbles rained down on them from above as they feigned humility, the audience rose to give them a well-deserved standing ovation.

Fabulously, Nashville Ballet and the CSO’s program was everything it was cracked up to be and more.

Based in Painesville, Ohio, Steve Sucato is a contributing writer, critic and reporter. His work has appeared in such publications as The Plain Dealer, The Buffalo News, Pittsburgh City Paper and Dance Magazine, among others.

John Chacona | Guest Reviewer

Weird night last night.

I should have known that something was amiss at Chautauqua when I found a parking space at the bottom of the lot close to the exit. Paradoxically, the failure of a transformer earlier in the day and the resultant loss of electrical power increased the noise level on the grounds as gasoline-powered generators chugged away.

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra chugged away, too, in a truncated concert in a semi-darkened Amphitheater last night, but the lack of power wasn’t a consequence of the transformer as much as it was of the heat.

Musicians are mortal like the rest of us, and nobody likes to work outside when temperatures are in the mid-90s. Moreover, in hot weather, instruments are hard to keep in tune. Humidity is an enemy, too. So the climatic deck was stacked against the CSO yesterday.

After President Tom Becker made an announcement about the power outage (in a polo shirt and shorts!), Marty Merkley told the slightly thin crowd (many had left to seek food as well as air conditioning) that the program would be shortened so that symphony patrons might find their way home before dark.

The initial movement of the Prokofiev G minor Violin Concerto and the first three movements of the Dvořák Symphony No. 8 were sacrificed, a decision that was both vexatious and merciful.

Under the circumstances, it seems unfair to offer a review in the normal sense of the term. Does a restaurant critic judge a restaurant solely on the amuse bouche and the dessert?

So I’ll report on what I heard, namely that the CSO players, under conductor Christopher Seaman’s direction, delivered a tidy and sonorous account of the “Meistersinger” overture, with the strings sounding surprisingly rich and well-tuned.

The Prokofiev began with the slow movement, and though it’s not unusual to play individual movements of works in certain settings, starting a work in the middle is rather like reading a book beginning with chapter four. One can get a sense of the author’s style, but not the message. I think the orchestra was a little unnerved, too, as some of the ensemble work was a bit tentative.

Was violinist Joan Kwuon’s small tone a function of the heat, the change in program or was it anomalous? It’s impossible to know, but my heart went out to her in what had to be a thankless assignment, and certainly not the one for which she prepared. The closing pages of the brilliant finale arrived with more relief than triumph.

It was a pity that the Dvořák G major Symphony had to take the hit, because this is supremely outdoor music, and summer music, too. Full of juicy Bohemian folk melodies and the composer’s amiability of utterance, it would have been nice to hear all of it.

Conductor Seaman gave the downbeat before both his feet hit the podium surface, and it was off to the races. The finale was played very fast, with principal flutist Richard Sherman puffing hard to keep up. Not that it didn’t work — sort of. Standing alone, the movement was an undiscovered Slavonic Dance, an encore piece to the half-hour or so concert that preceded it. Like I said, it was a strange night.

By the time you read this — not by candlelight, as Becker warned of the tragic potential of candles and open windows — power should have been restored, but the heat is a more intractable problem than is electricity, and the CSO has a hugely ambitious program on Saturday, with two sets of soloists and a chorus. It may be the highlight of the season. Let’s hope that it may be heard under ideal conditions.

John Chacona is a freelance writer for the Erie Times-News.

Anthony Bannon | Guest Reviewer

Blue: Wavelength 440-490 nm; frequency 680-610 THz; ranging from navy blue to cyan as one of the primary colors. And there are other truths, other ways of seeing and being blue.

Another truth is that Judy Barie, director of galleries for Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution and curator at Strohl Art Center, caught a notion and decided to riff on. She calls her exhibition of paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and glass works, “Out of the Blue,” and it continues through Aug. 23.

And this is, in part, her rhapsody; call it blue on blue.

“We eat blue cheese, wear blue jeans, sing the blues, dress our baby boys in blue, work blue collar jobs, talk a blue streak, accept blue ribbons, laugh till we are blue in the face, and we forever strive to capture the perfect blue sky,” she writes in an introductory panel.

Now, we all know that there are too many more blue-streak familiar quotations and bluesy puns and amusing symbolic meanings for blue. It wouldn’t be funny at all if we all were to share our blue books. Fortunately, Ms. Barie only asked eight artists to create blue work for the show. But if you like the color — and the statistics say that chances are it is your favorite color — you’ll have a blue heavenly time on Wythe Avenue.

On the other hand, if you prefer pink, blame it on the Korean artist Moon Beom. He was the inspiration for the show, and it is easy to see why. Barie saw his recent show in Kim Foster Gallery in New York City and was inspired by Beom’s otherworldly use of the color, an excess nothing short of alternative realities.

The viewer won’t miss the point. Barie has installed Beom’s large 5-by-4 painting, “Possible Worlds 846,” on the direct line of sight from the Strohl Main Gallery entrance, and it extravagantly announces itself from a sumptuous grounding in the elegant pigment of ultramarine blue. Beom slivers out of the blue a silver-lined creation, like the idea of waters splashing out of the dark void, roiling, misting for the first time into this place of the canvas, a new world, a new possibility.

That is a birthing call if ever there was one, and Barie was paying attention and doctored the idea along. There are other paintings by Beom, who would be the star of the show, which are like blueprints of a speculative imagination. And he is not alone.

Clayton Merrell, who has taught and shown with the faculty of the Chautauqua School of Art, also will be known. And he is included here in blue with his exciting, generative abstractions — fundamental ideas fit out in Talmudic proportions: ruptures of nature for a big bang Creation event blasting out of the sky, or the waves of the Flood streaming across the frame, or the charged particles of a divine presence, like a necklace of wonder in the sky, a rapture manifest above a farmer’s field.

Merrell and Beom play the major chords. Melinda Hackett, in smaller scale, conceives a biomorphic splendor based in blue, or so highlighted, and delights with visions usually reserved for cellular pleasures, here magnified into a painterly reality. In concert, Amanda Knowles’s screen prints envision blue-lined swirls of energy, design overlays, multiple forces wheeling out a make-believe, with smaller cousin images, papers stitched into a mixed media of artful propositions: What if we pie-chart a space like this? How might we put it all together, after all, even in blue?

And then along comes Ron Porter, driving big trucks into blue skies, our only psycho-realist happily reflecting clouds from the trucks’ shinning surfaces, and then — amazement — a truck taking off: a truck lifting off into the sky, having had enough with this actuality business: announcing the freedom of going airborne, just one stop short of abstraction, blue as a truly uplifting experience.

Carrie Gustafson and Adam Kenney then propose the range of blues in thin-necked glassware and blown glass that is etched and silvered, while Melinda Bernard creates an echo in ceramics for experiences off the wall. And there you have it: worthy of a blue-blood.

An opening reception was held Tuesday evening. Guess what? With a blues band.

Anthony Bannon is the Ron and Donna Fielding Director of George Eastman House, the International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY.

John Chacona | Guest Reviewer

The buzz around the young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya is that he’s in the running to succeed the departed Stefan Sanderling as the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s music director.

On paper, he’s a compelling candidate: young, full of energy and with a growing list of high-profile gigs (a protégé of Esa-Pekka Salonen, he was at Tanglewood last weekend). Harth-Bedoya looks great in a cowboy hat (check out his website), has a million-dollar smile and a crisp podium manner that projects confidence and energy. Like his mentor, he gets an admirably clear, focused sound from the orchestra — a necessity in the French music that made up two-thirds of his concert on Thursday evening, Bastille Day.

Clarity is the prize in the music of Maurice Ravel, perhaps the most French of composers. But it’s only won by not falling headlong into the voluptuousness of his dazzling orchestration. The “Rapsodie Espagnole” further seduces with local color (authentic, too: Ravel’s mother was Basque). It’s easy to overdo this, and one might expect the Peruvian-born Harth-Bedoya to assert his authority in music with a Spanish accent. To his credit, he did not, leading a performance of understatement and orderliness (also authentic; the composer’s father was a Swiss engineer) — perhaps a bit too meticulous, though the closing Feria, marked assez anime, danced.

The Camille Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 is a young man’s piece, written when the composer was a comparative boy of 37 (he would live just short of half a century longer), and in the young German-born New Yorker Alban Gerhardt, it found a persuasive advocate. Gerhardt, who has a wide-eyed and expressive face, played the music with the proper measure of respect and fire, digging into the chewy opening theme with ardor. He could be graceful, too. Gerhardt made the little mock minuet of a slow movement, lovingly shaped by Harth-Bedoya, into a lyric arioso.

And he took some chances, interpolating octaves into one of the flashier moments in the closing Allegro. Why not? The Saint-Saëns is not exactly a monument of probity. Showing off is the point, and Gerhardt managed to do so without sounding vulgar or flippant. He made a strong case for the work and seemed to enjoy himself doing so.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 “Scheherazade” is by now so familiar as to be inconsequential, but listen closer and you hear strange snippets of Russian folk tunes and advanced, sometimes startling, turns of harmony. Stravinsky learned more from Rimsky-Korsakov than he would admit.  Harth-Bedoya’s admirable clarity of orchestral texture brought all of this out. Like Ravel’s “Rapsodie,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s four-movement symphonic suite can seduce with color, but the trick is for the conductor to be an Impressionist, not a Fauvist. This Harth-Bedoya largely did, though even he succumbed to the IMAX sensory density of Rimsky-Korsakov’s climaxes, which made an appropriately grand noise. And in the opening movement, he did something I’ve never heard: make the piece sound almost German. His tightly argued and impressively controlled approach transformed Rimsky-Korsakov into a Slavic Richard Wagner.

Harth-Bedoya’s tempo was quite plastic, and he gave his players wide interpretive latitude in the numerous instrumentals that adorn “Scheherazade’s” glittering, Fabergé-egg surface. This is a good way to win the hearts of your musicians — and perhaps ultimately, a job. The audience seemed to like it, too.

It would be nice for whoever is named the new CSO music director to have section players as distinguished as Emmanuelle Boisvert. For 23 years, Boisvert had been concertmaster with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra before she fled the turmoil there less than two months ago to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Her presence at the back of the first violins was as notable an example of luxury casting as the venerable shed ever may have seen.

John Chacona is a freelance writer for the Erie Times-News.

David Shengold | Guest Reviewer

The good news is that Chautauqua Theater Company is staging Anton Chekhov’s 1901 “Three Sisters,” one of the greatest plays ever written, through July 17. Further, good reports can be made of the chosen translation: by the late Slavic academic-turned-actor Paul Schmidt, it renders Chekhov’s then-contemporary idiom (the play is set in a stultifying provincial city in 1900) into plausible, listenable and unstilted American English, with only a few questionable decisions. (For one, the play opens on the imeniny of Irína, the youngest of the titular sister: her “name day,” the feast of the saint for whom she was named. Schmidt chooses to make it her birthday.) Several of the individual performances prove outstanding, and the entire cast certainly manifests a lot of energy and willingness to venture out on interpretive limbs.

However, guest director Brian Mertes’ often showy, self-impressed staging is longer on attitude than on narrative coherence: Many around me in the audience Friday afternoon voiced puzzlement as to the basic storyline, let alone the nuances of meaning inherent in Chekhov’s multi-level text. Certain scenes achieve emotional resonance, and Mertes and his designers furnish some striking images along the way — also, alas, some displays of posturing, clutter and already cliché artifacts of Wooster Group-type productions.

Nearly everything is overdone, sometimes deep into the ground. There is way too much music (some of the folkish stuff was lovely and worked well with the text, but the blasts of heavy metal seemed both portentious and pretentious) and way too many interpolated “numbers” — such as a truly unfortunate and unmotivated moonwalking/mime display lasting minutes by Irína’s suitor Baron Túzenbach, blighting an otherwise engaging and distinctive performance by Charlie Thurston, though the young actor is in the enviable position of being too attractive for the role he’s playing.

It is also disheartening to hear such frequent resorting to “funny voices” — like the worst kind of opera singer acting, with characters affecting SNL-quality French, German and (most bizarrely) “Russian” accents and (worse) reaching on occasion for pat television intonations instead of speaking their lines.

Jim Findlay’s set is quite ingenious in terms of varying the playing space and allowing different perspectives and trajectories; Mertes takes commendable advantage of that. Still, as the performance unfolds, one ticks off a catalogue of iconic and hardly novel post-modern effects, including mirrored sunglasses, mime-like play with bowler hats, glass back walls (the better through which to see two softcore “shower scenes” — perhaps an attempt at rendering a Russian banya, or bath house, though that potential locus of sin interested Dostoevsky much and Chekhov not at all).

In terms of Detritus Chic, we see mattresses used as a crash pit, a summary pile of dirt for the final act’s outdoor setting and plastic dolls desultorily used as infant stand-ins.

Technologically, the production included a live mic into which some of the play’s key speeches were over-earnestly intoned — as if Mertes had found Chekhov’s language at these junctures too unhip to countenance without an ironic aural frame.

At one point during the fire scene in Act Three, we see the frequently put-upon servant Ferapónt (Dave Quay, equally put-upon by the direction but ingratiating) using his Mac laptop. (Are audiences expected to think, “Kewl!” Really?
In 2011?)

An equivalent gratuitous signifier of Hip is the onstage video monitor, distracting and rather poorly used withal. Olivera Gajic’s thoughtfully detailed costumes, however, contribute positively to the production’s visual side.

The notably long (3.5 hour) performance ends with a big, elaborate, unison motion choreographic extravaganza (Jesse Perez is its credited maker, and the steps are fun). One admires that the cast can get through it, especially on matinée days, but the fist-pumping, Michael Flatley-esque tone seems peculiarly out of synch with Chekhov’s despairing finale — however jokily some of it is rendered here — and the dance seems (in its inordinate length) to imagine audiences wildly applauding what they have seen. That was not the case Friday, and — not for the first time — one felt rather embarrassed for some very hard-working actors.

The orphaned Prozorov sisters yearn for their native Moscow as for the lost possibilities of their youth. It is by definition unrecapturable — what Gertrude Stein meant in saying late in life of her native Oakland that “there is no there there.” Irína, 20, traces the sharpest arc from hope to abject despair and also acts (often unwillingly) as a romantic catalyst for the young officers posted in the city.

In my experience, this tricky role usually draws the show’s weakest performance, so it’s a particular pleasure to see lovely Charlotte Graham embody it so truthfully and intelligently. She and Thurston (under Mertes’ direction) have forged an impressive onstage rapport — one can’t say “chemistry,” because Irína admits she admires but doesn’t love the poor (rich) Baron.

In this enactment, the relationship seemed to hold potential, making its thwarting by the jealous, strange Solyóny (a dignified, focused Tyee Tilghman) all the more tragic.

Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch plays Ólga, the eldest sister, and though she does some subtle and convincing work here, both the beginning and ending of her performance (and thus of the play) seem unduly “actressy” — the exhausted Ólga gets an exhibitionistic dance in Act Four that came from and went nowhere.

Másha, the gifted and unhappily married middle sister, emerged rather emotionally opaque in Laura Gragtmans’ reading — which also too often verged on verbal incomprehensibility.

Joel de la Fuente, seeming young for the part, did a capable and well-spoken job as Vershínin, the equally unhappily married colonel with whom she briefly finds happiness. “Three Sisters” usually revolves around Másha; Mertes got better work from, and devoted more interpretive and plastic stage time to, her hapless, pedantic husband Kulygin — a highly stylized and in-your-face but quite brilliant performance by Ted Schneider, conveying both Kulygin’s human suffering and the deep awfulness of living with such a person.

The other Prozorov sibling, Andréy, is excluded from the title; his doomed marriage with a local shrew (Natásha) and his manic gambling are the inexorable engines that drive the sisters out of their paternal home. He can seem a kind of silly also-ran to his sisters, but Mertes’ direction pushes Lucas Dixon into high-decibel, flamboyant, sad goofiness, with Andréy emitting many laughs — Ólga also chuckled incessantly — and tears. Most of the time, this gamble worked.

The most completely realized portrayal onstage is Andrea Syglowski’s Natásha. Stalking the stage like a meaner, pettier Lady Macbeth, she misses not a trick in portraying this monster of sentimentality and voracious selfishness. (One knows the proto-conservationist Chekhov hated anyone who cut down old trees.)

Keith Randolph Smith has a fabulous presence and voice — a Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” just waiting to happen — and aces Dr. Chebutykin’s comic parts. He doesn’t capture sufficiently the old fraud’s effectively murderous nihilism — but again, the direction toward the dénouement tends toward pushing for laughs.

Lynn Cohen’s most interesting scene as the old nanny Anfísa is her last one, in which she seems to have crossed over into contended dotage. Biko Eisen-Martin and Peter Kendall draw Chekhov’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roles, Fedótik and Ródhe, quite well; Mertes explores more than usual their interrelationship with Túzenbach and Irína; and Eisen-Martin and Kendall also handle a lot of the musical duties.

Mertes and his staff seem to have done some substantial dramaturgical work, as several linguistic and sociological details emerged spot-on. However, someone might have ascertained the correct pronunciations of Dobrolyubov (duh-brah-LYOO-buhff), Saratov (sah-RAH-tuff) and the English word “Caucasus.”

First-time “Three Sisters” viewers might find themselves at sea — though probably not bored. Those who know the play well might (like myself) find themselves weighing the production’s genuine insights and strengths against its tendency to posture
and overdo.

A Philadelphia-based arts critic, David Shengold has written for Opera News, Opera (UK), Theatre Journal and Time Out New York among many venues. He has contributed program essays to the Metropolitan, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Covent Garden and Washington National Opera programs and lectured for NYCO, Glimmerglass Festival and Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre. He trained and acted at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA and has taught on opera, Russian literature and cultural history at Oberlin, Mount Holyoke and Williams Colleges.

Jane Vranish | Guest Reviewer

It’s always a welcome event to have the North Carolina Dance Theatre and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra collaborate, but the first such program of the season appeared to have a third party involved — the audience.

There was no doubt that these ballets had a built-in audience appeal — dare I say accessible? — with the likes of John Philip Sousa and Johann Strauss. However, the notion of accessible can sometimes mean the kiss of death, implying that a performance was pleasant but lacked a certain substance.

That was not the case here. It was a program designed to play on the considerable personalities of the NCDT dancers, one of the company’s main strengths, and to extend a comfortable familiarity with the music, played with a robust sweep by conductor Grant Cooper and the orchestra.

It worked — the audience was almost immediately hooked and helped to escalate the sense of excitement throughout the evening, much like Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” does so succinctly in itself.

This was obviously one of Mark Diamond’s most popular ballets, judging by the audience’s applause at the Amphitheater Tuesday night. But he used the music, ripe with that iconic repeated rhythm, merely as a jumping-off point. Instead, his “Bolero” seemed to focus on its overall exotic, undulating nature, sometimes with humorous touches, rather than the usual erotic interpretation.

While the bolero is a Spanish dance, there were only a few hints of that in the choreography. It began as if in a sleepy Mexican town, the men lounging about with sombreros on their heads. Anna Gerberich entered to the soft opening strains, clad in a white midriff top and harem skirt, wafting among the men like a hot summer breeze.

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The other women joined in, playing with the sombreros, then undulating their torsos occasionally with a Middle Eastern flavor as if to encourage the men to join them. As the music escalated, Diamond inserted more technical elements for the dancers, giving the dance a classical balletic overlay in the various solos and lifts. Although the choreography itself appeared to change emphasis, the dancers’ commitment did not, bolstering the undeniable appeal of this “Bolero.”

Diamond also contributed one of the two opening pas de deux, choosing to rework a duet from “La Fille Mal Gardée,” a production already made famous by Sir Frederick Ashton. It is wickedly difficult to do ballet comedy, but Ashton’s classic does it with style, where one of the highlights is a cleverly brilliant grand pas that incorporates satin ribbons into the choreography. (Imagine a ballerina poised en pointe in attitude, holding the ribbons like a human maypole while the other dancers rotate around her.)

Diamond’s version was cast in the classical idiom, more like the peasant setting of “Coppélia,” although the musical selections and tempi seemed a little lackadaisical even for that. While it was performed with a fresh-faced flair by Sarah Hayes Watson and Daniel Rodriguez, there was straightforward partnering built on the arabesque and, as expected, a series of whipping fouettes for her and clear-cut beats for him.

If the choreography in “La Fille” was direct, George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux” was not, showcasing a chain of twizzling off-center balances right out of the starting gate. This virtuoso piece has all the razzle dazzle of a parade condensed into a duet. As such, it needs larger-than-life dancers, which it had in Gerberich and Pete Walker.

They came on with a flourish and never let up. Gerberich (a true “Liberty Belle” here) displayed a razor-sharp passe that seemed to ricochet into place then deliberately unfold into a high extension. In her solo, she balanced while piquantly tilting her head in different directions and later did a blinding series of turns that changed feet and suddenly transformed into fouettes.

Walker emerged as a star in his own right, strutting his stuff in high, floating jumps and dashing off turns with considerable aplomb, the kind that galvanizes an audience.

It remained for artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux to keep the momentum going in his premiere, the aptly titled “July’s Delight,” although Cooper apparently nicknamed his arrangeament “Strautauqua.”

Balanchine delved into some Strauss for his full-length “Vienna Waltzes” in 1977. Although the two works share the music from “Voices of Spring,” Bonnefoux took his ballet in another direction.

“July’s Delight” was a collection of works from “The Waltz King,” ranging from the popular “Radetzky March” and “Blue Danube” to the lesser-known “Eljen a Magyar” and “Jokey Polka.” It contained a slight subtext where Walker gave Gerberich an engagement ring, which she elatedly showed off to her friends while embarking on some celebratory chasing maneuvers. Later in the finale, she appeared in a white gown, perhaps a wedding dress.

While that might be stretching things a bit, the ballet still had an overall youthful exuberance about it, beginning as the dancers precisely marked time in the opening march. Then it moved into a waltz where the lush Melissa Anduiza swirled among a trio of possible suitors.

Although a few details still needed to be worked out — there were some long pauses to accommodate the men’s costume changes — the varying moods kept things interesting, particularly with a lively character dance, something that is rarely inserted into contemporary choreography nowadays, and an almost giddy polka for Hayes Watson, her feet flickering as she bounced between Greg DeArmond and Jordan Leeper.

With all this delicious variety, Bonnefoux still understood the basic nature of each selection — the character steps were spot-on, and the polka selections had a sprightly accent. But it all came down to the basics — a strong connection of the steps to the music, allowing the dance to emanate from the score.

Perhaps that was best seen in “Blue Danube,” a winsome finale where the billowing patterns created the atmosphere of a lovely moonlit night. Bonnefoux was able to fill the stage with his dancers, who fully understood the glide, the weight and the elegance of the waltz.

And when the lights went down, they were still dancing … delightfully.

Jane Vranish is a former dance critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and continues there as a contibuting writer. Her stories can be read on the dance blog “Cross Currents” at pittsburghcrosscurrents.com.

Anthony Chase | Guest Reviewer

Those who love Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” understand that as time passes, the world we know fades into the past. In time, we ourselves will be gone, and no one will remember our faces or even our voices. The good news is that through the indelible impact we have on others, eventually, our lives will take on meaning, and the world will be a better place.

At least, that is the famous prophecy made by Ólga, the oldest of the three sisters, in the final moments of Chekhov’s play.

This is also the hope of the theatrical experience — that we will enter the world of a play, and leave, somehow altered forever. On certain magical occasions, before the performance evaporates into time, the conflicts, sufferings and victories played out by actors transcend mere diversion to become the kind of joy that affirms life itself.

These are the theatrical experiences that we never forget.

Those who have seen “Three Sisters” performed brilliantly know just how unforgettable it can be. When we recall the words of this great play, we often hear the voices of the actors who have spoken them. Ólga is simply wrong when she predicts that future generations will not remember how many sisters there were. For those who love Chekhov, there were (and always will be) three.

Ólga, Másha and Irína, the “Three Sisters,” find themselves stagnating in a provincial Russian town at the turn of the 20th century. Cultured and well-educated, they yearn to return to their girlhood home in Moscow, where the ability to speak three languages might, on occasion, actually prove useful.

They find some amusement in the company of the military officers stationed in town, and as the play progresses, they latch onto glimmers of hope, but none is fulfilled. Their brother, Andréy, marries the odious and vulgar Natásha, who overtakes and tyrannizes the house, even as his gambling addiction pulls the family into debt. Másha is unhappy in her marriage and has become cynical. Irína settles on a man she does not love.

As desperation mounts, the three sisters are alarmed to realize that boredom has become the primary theme of their lives. That is not, of course, to suggest that they, themselves, are boring — anything but. “Three Sisters” is sustained by three and a half hours of brilliantly engaging conversation, monologue and insight into the human condition.

For their current production of “Three Sisters,” Chautauqua Theater Company artistic directors Vivienne Benesch and Ethan McSweeny saw an opportunity to offer their audience something fresh, different and memorable. They brought in director Brian Mertes, current head of the MFA directing program at Brown University, who has made a name for himself as a director of Chekhov through epic environmental productions that he and his wife, director Melissa Kievman, have staged at their home on Lake Lucille in Rockland County. They engage a company of 30 visiting artists and enlist the support of their entire neighborhood to house and feed them. Then, after a week’s rehearsal, 400 people come to see a Chekhov play, fully staged using locations around the lake. Reportedly, these communal productions (“Ivanov,” “Platonov,” “The Cherry Orchard,” “Three Sisters,” “The Seagull,” “Uncle Vanya”) have been life-altering theatrical events for those involved.

Benesch and McSweeny envisioned the potential for similar flights of magic for their own version of Chekhov by a lake.

Inserting a director who develops his ideas collaboratively and intuitively during the rehearsal process was a risk in a summer festival, where time is limited and professional polish is expected. But the Chautauqua Theater Company has assembled a remarkable resident company to experiment with Mertes, comprised of young actors from some of the most highly regarded theater programs in the nation. And so, Benesch, who plays Ólga, is joined by Laura Gragtmans, a Canadian actress studying at the Yale School of Drama, as Másha, and Maryland native Charlotte Graham, a recent graduate of the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program, as the youngest sister, Irína.

Added to the resident company, Chautauqua brings in seasoned actors like Lynn Cohen, who plays Anfísa, the old servant; Joel de la Fuente, familiar from “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” who plays Másha’s love interest, Vershínin; Keith Randolph Smith, one of the great interpreters of August Wilson’s work, who here plays the drunken doctor, Chebutykin; and Ted Schneider, who can count among his credits four of the Mertes-Kievman stagings of Chekhov, here playing Másha’s tedious but well-meaning husband, Kulygin.

Director Mertes establishes his expressionistic mark in the very first moments of the play. Cacophonous electronic music anachronistically underscores our entry into the world of Chekhov. When a clock striking 12 interrupts Ólga’s immortal opening speech, in which she announces it has been a year since father died, the chiming stops at 10. Benesch prompts the musicians who are creating the clock chimes to provide two more. When Irína trills her yearning to return to Moscow, this central desire of the play is underscored with an electronic blare, her relative youth and innocence amplified by placing her on a chair-swing in a short white dress. When characters are overcome with emotion, they hurl themselves offstage into a bank of mattresses.

Clearly this is an “Epic” production in the Brechtian sense, reminiscent of a Berliner Ensemble production of a classic, wherein Hedda Gabler might find her furniture has attached itself to her gown, obliging her to drag it around the stage, a visual metaphor for her confining home life.

Mertes and the Chautauqua Theater Company remain almost entirely faithful to Chekhov’s text, here rendered in the comfortably American prose of the famed translation by the late Paul Schmidt. But they do play within the text, energetically and capably exploring intentions, laughing at sad moments, searching through each character’s unstated desires.

At times, the process of experimentation has fragmented the play. Playful moments of discovery seem to stand in isolation from each other, like a loose collection of mismatched pearls. The action lacks a coherent through line, and choices often seem illogical. At various moments, for instance, the action dissolves into mysteriously motivated dances and seemingly unmotivated gestures. Two visually arresting but perplexing shower scenes can be included in this category. I found myself thinking, “What ARE they doing?”

At other times, critical lines of the plot are lost among the distractions. Vershínin’s passionate efforts to balance love and duty are diluted, for instance, and Chebutykin’s important confession that he loved the late mother of the three sisters is glossed over, as if they were inconsequential, submerged beneath the veritable circus that surrounds them.

The relationship most fettered by the frenetic goings-on is the fatal rivalry between Baron Túzenbach and Captain Solyóny. Charlie Thurston as the baron and Tyee Tilghman as the captain give the characters their all, but within this production, the volatile coupling is dissipated.

There are moments, however, that work exquisitely. I was quite moved by the staging of Vershínin’s declaration of love for Másha. As he begins his impassioned advance on the married woman, she thrusts a table onto its side, obliging him to woo her through the obstacle of a makeshift wall. Her physical evasions of a married man serve to heighten the intensity and frustration of their passion for each other. One might expect that the logical payoff would come in the scene of their final parting; it doesn’t.

The famed farewell between Másha and Vershínin is a collision of mismatched emotions and confused motivations. In its Chekhovian simplicity, the scene provides a perfect expression of the play’s theme of unfulfilled desires. As played on the Bratton Theater stage, however, it is a clash of desires between Másha, Vershínin and Ólga. Mertes alters the scripted actions of the scene in order to reinterpret the spoken words.

Why does Ólga passionately throw herself at Vershínin when he comes to say good-bye? (The script suggests a sympathetic and maternal gesture.) Why does Vershínin aggressively throw himself at Másha despite his dutiful resolve to leave her? (The script specifies that she throws herself at him.) Why does Vershínin order Ólga to take Másha away from him in anger and disgust? (The script suggests that he wants Ólga to comfort her younger sister.)

Laughter abounds. True, Chekhov himself maintained that he was writing comedy, and there is great humor to be mined from the text. Másha’s dreary worldview, alone, affords notable chuckles. The text does not, however, sustain the sort of collegiate yuck fest we see here. At times, the effect is like watching scene parodies, rather than a faithful rendering of the play, and this production will, without question, not appeal to everyone.

And yet …

This nearly wanton manhandling of Chekhov does afford powerful flashes of brilliance and even thrilling revelation. Purists will undoubtedly object, and I, personally, continue to savor memories of many another “Three Sisters” — from the 1989 Stratford production in which Másha’s nihilistic toast was comically rendered as “A short life, but a merry one. God help us!” by luscious Lucy Peacock; to the 1999 Irish Classical Theatre production that opened Buffalo’s Andrews Theatre. I watch and re-watch the video of the Actors Studio production that played on Broadway in 1964 with Geraldine Page as Ólga, Kim Stanley as Másha, Sandy Dennis as Irína and Shelley Winters as Natásha. (I stare at photographs of Katharine Cornell as Másha with jealous yearning.)

Nonetheless, there is something exciting about this sprawling and misshapen “Three Sisters,” populated by astounding talent, including a crew of young actors who are, without a doubt, among the finest up-and-comers in the American theater today.

After all, it is possible that Ólga really is displacing all her losses and unfulfilled desires onto Vershínin as he departs. Perhaps Vershínin is having a moment of panic when he realizes the sacrifices he is making as he goes and reacts with a new sense of angry urgency when he recognizes his own weakness. That incongruous chair-swing does provide a metaphor for Irína’s unsettling journey, as it successively highlights her innocence, her entrapment and finally, her aloneness.

Moreover, within individual performances, we find great delights.

Andréy, the brother in this sister play, is perfectly cast and played with marvelous clarity and convincing cluelessness by Lucas Dixon, a Texan now entering his third year in the Yale program.

Andrea Syglowski, a Pennsylvania native and Juilliard School student, is horribly delectable as Natásha, rendering her increasingly vicious and self-absorbed outbursts with terrifying yet hilarious punch.

Lynn Cohen, whose expressive face will be familiar to audiences from her work in television and film, is affecting and solidly anchored (and anchoring) as the aged servant, Anfísa.

Joel de la Fuente cuts a sculpted and well-tailored figure as philosophical Vershínin, looking crisp and orderly even in a supposed state of dishevelment. He brings meticulousness and intelligibility to his character’s celebrated monologues. This, coupled with his unusual good looks, helps us understand why he catches Másha’s eye — he is decidedly not from this tedious provincial town.

As Chebutykin, Keith Randolph Smith lends expressive prowess and much-needed vocal variety to the production, even when hidden beneath an animal head.

Finally, as responsible and dignified Ólga, Benesch is entrusted with much of the heavy lifting. With a graceful stage presence and without visible hesitation or doubt, she throws herself into the performance with full-throttle zeal. These efforts are matched by Gragtmans and Graham, who are similarly required to turn on an emotional dime in order to keep this roller coaster of a show careening about the stage. And into the wings. And in the case of Graham, up into the air.

These efforts are supported by Jim Findlay’s versatile scenery, Olivera Gajic’s eclectic and expressive costumes, Peter Ksander’s lighting and Daniel Baker’s startling and hard-working sound design.

While this production of “Three Sisters” feels decidedly unfinished, there are unmistakable sparks of brilliance and the sort of insight that is only possible through rigorous experimentation. Most importantly, the production provides the Chautauqua audience with an intriguing glimpse into the process of a fascinating director. We may yearn to see the scattered gems sorted, matched and restrung with greater unity, but to insist upon that would be to deprive ourselves of a foray into the experimental that is, in its own way, powerful and unforgettable.

Anthony Chase teaches dramaturgy and criticism, including script analysis, at Buffalo State College. For nearly 20 years, Chase has been featured on WBFO’s “Theater Talk” segment during NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and has served as the theater editor for Buffalo’s Artvoice newspaper. He is the creator and producer of Buffalo’s annual professional theater awards, “The Arties.” Chase was a feature writer for Theater Week magazine in New York for 10 years, and has also been published in Stages, In Theatre, American Theater and Hispanic magazines.

Chautauqua Opera scores with a full-blooded Verdian ‘Luisa Miller’

David Shengold | Guest Reviewer

Following last season’s grand Norma, the Chautauqua Opera Company achieved even finer results Saturday evening with a fine but under-appreciated Giuseppe Verdi work that represents a midpoint between the bel canto style of Norma and the full-out “music drama” Verdi and Wagner were to develop later in the 19th century: 1849’s Luisa Miller. While, it’s never been a crowd-pleaser like Rigoletto or La traviata, it’s a passionate story — full of melodrama, but also full of feeling — and the music is wonderful, culminating in a third act that ranks among the great single acts in Verdi’s huge output. It certainly pleased the crowd at the Ampitheater; kudos to Jay Lesenger (the artistic and general director of the company as well as this straightforward, flowing production) for having the vision to program something not a “top-10” title for the benefit of Chautauqua’s audience.

The score was in fine, idiomatic hands with conductor Joseph Colaneri; some of the rushing string passages in the overture could have used another rehearsal, but beyond that, the players sounded terrific, and Colaneri presented the piece’s complex architecture — it has several nonpareil numbers, like Act Two’s a cappella quartet for soprano, mezzo and two basses, playing off innovations found in earlier scores by Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante — with understanding and sweep.

Plus, Lesenger and Colaneri had assembled a cast that could deal more than soundly with Verdi’s testing writing (I have heard less well-cast Luisa performances at the Met).

Ron Kadri furnished handsome, swiftly changeable set units, well-lit by Michael Baumgarten (having an initial spotlight on the eventually fatal drinking cup was a fine touch from Lesenger). The period costumes (B.G. FitzGerald) and wigs (Georgianna Eberhard) looked handsome.

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The opera, premiered in Naples, is an adaptation of Friedrich von Schiller’s 1784 play “Kabale und Liebe” (“Intrigue and Love”), which still holds the stage in German-speaking countries. The opera marked the third of four Verdian Schiller treatments, the others being Giovanna d’Arco (1845), I masnadieri (1847) and Don Carlos (1867).

Each of these Schiller-based operas contains an essentially murderous relationship between a father and a child. In Luisa Miller, it’s between the illicitly established Count Walter and his freer-thinking son Rodolfo, who so dislikes his father’s world that he has pretended to be a commoner to woo the title heroine, with disastrous consequences.

(Such disguised-down noble suitors crowded the Romantic stage: think of Rigoletto and Giselle). Along with I masnadieri and 1850’s Stiffelio — heard here in 2004 — Luisa Miller stands out as one of Verdi’s only three works set in Germany.

Librettist Salvatore Cammarano, best know for such Gaetano Donizetti collaborations as Lucia di Lammermoor and Roberto Devereux, had already worked with Verdi on two rather problematic operas (Alzira and La battaglia di Legnano); later, he began Il trovatore before dying at only 51.

His adaptation of Schiller in Luisa marks his strongest work for Verdi: he intensified the class difference between the central lovers, making the merely upper-class Walters into counts and changing Luisa’s father from a middle-class musician to a bluff retired soldier.

Barbara Quintiliani, last year’s imposing but uneven Norma, here gave the best performance I have heard from her. She offers a big, aptly italianate sound that dominated the ensembles but could also float delicate pianissimi.

Luisa is not an “iconic” prima donna role like Aida or Tosca: created by Marietta Gazzaniga, who also created Lina in Stiffelio, the part demands everything: fleet coloratura, tonal amplitude, long soaring lines, dramatic accents. Only the heroines of Verdi’s nearly contemporary operas Les vêpres siciliennes, Il trovatore and La traviata make similar challenges — though the last-named rarely receives suitable vocalism.

In fact the Met recently “looks cast” a striking, telegenic blonde who could barely handle the music and broadcast the sorry results worldwide. Quintiliani and her very promising tenor, Gregory Carroll, are not physically likely to find a place in such HD-driven projects; but unlike many who do, they offer voices suitable for Verdi’s testing scope and orchestration.

Quintiliani handled the tricky entrance coloratura quite well and she can certainly soar; the voice has not only power and shine but weight at the bottom. There remained about 3 percent of the role that gave her accustomed problems with intonation (she tends to flat ascending intervals when singing out), but her Luisa was an impressive feat — plus a sympathetic presence.

Lesenger incisively played up the father/daughter dynamic here. So often an emotional fulcrum for Verdi, who lost his daughters when they were very young, the father/daughter duet is key in many of his works; Luisa Miller offers, with Simon Boccanegra, the supreme example; Quintiliani and baritone Todd Thomas did it full justice here. Tellingly, in the opera’s final trio, “Ah, vieni meco” — Verdi cannily saved the very best tune for last — Lesenger visually paired Luisa not with her (also) dying lover Rodolfo, but with her father.

Miller is a wonderful part, created by the Milanese baritone Achille de Bassini, for whom Verdi wrote four roles over an 18-year period. Todd Thomas — once upon a time a Chautauqua Young Artist — returned for his sixth role as a mature artist. He gave a full-voiced and stylish “Verdi baritone” performance — that special category denotes a certain scope, ease in the upper register (Thomas sailed up to an interpolated high A flat to cap his rousing cabaletta) and broad phrasing.

His was the most completely realized vocalization of the night, and he acted the part with apt dignity and filial feeling. Thomas has a fine regional career going; I’ve been hearing him excel for a decade in places like Syracuse, Wilmington and Austin and still can’t figure out why he’s only done small parts at the Met — which has sent onstage several far less qualified Millers — and doesn’t get snapped up by some major German house.

Gregory Carroll’s Rodolfo made it clear why he is in such demand for Richard Strauss’s high-lying Bacchus: he offers an impressively solid tenor with nice finish and ring, traveling easily up top. The soft section of the ravishing “Quando le sere al placido” — perhaps Verdi’s loveliest tenor aria — needed firmer legato treatment, and Carroll might bone up on Carlo Bergonzi’s recorded legacy to bring more light and shade to a Verdian line; but he should make a fine career. The two basses — Wayne Tigges (the vicious Count Walter)  and Michael Ventura (his baddie assistant Wurm, who covets Luisa himself) — looked and acted very well and sang very solidly in their rare bass/bass duet. Both offered quality vocalism; I might have cast them in one another’s parts, since Ventura’s sound is darker and Tigges spits out words more incisively. Young Artist Daryl Freedman showed a striking dark timbre and attractive presence as the Duchess Federica, Luisa’s rival; but it’s a very tough assignment technically, in my experience best left to very experienced Verdi mezzos (Christa Ludwig, Mignon Dunn, Bianca Berini) and Freedman is still developing her resources. Another Young Artist, mezzo Victoria Vargas, made Luisa’s friend Laura’s brief contributions telling.

It’s tempting to repeat verbatim a sentence I write last year after Norma: “The choral work under Carol Rausch was excellent throughout, full-voiced fresh of tone and accurate in entries.” But more should be said, because in Norma, the chorus functions mainly as scene-setting filler, or in a call-and-response manner; Verdi and Cammarano assign them much more dramatic responsibility. In fact, they begin the show, assembling quietly one morning to fête and bestow gifts on a friend (Luisa), who is awaiting her fiancée’s arrival; here and elsewhere, this opera shows faint structural parallels with Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula (1831).

The chorus acts as an observer to the most public and musically the grandest scene in Verdi’s opera: at first we hear two groups of men hunting offstage — a stereo effect that worked wonderfully in the Amphitheater. Later, it emerges that it is Luisa who is being hunted; Count Walter arrives to humiliate her and threaten her outraged father. The full chorus takes part as observers in the huge concertato that builds, a magnificent passage well shaped here by Colaneri that looks ahead to similar tense public confrontations in Don Carlos, Aida, the revised Simon Boccanegra and Otello.

A point reiterated in Schiller’s Enlightenment-inspired oeuvre is that rich and powerful people do what they want to their less powerful neighbors — a state that, sadly, can be observed in any community or society. Count Walter and Wurm live on in the boardrooms and secret police offices of today — but in familial terms, Walter’s nastiness has few parallels in opera.

Bright English surtitles projected on twin screens aided comprehension, though one or two moments (like “The favored youth presented himself to you falsely” and the Britishism “grey”) unaccountably evoked old-style Cinecittà translations done — as Gore Vidal has alleged — by somebody’s Finnish au pair. But the only real complaint to be made about this presentation of Luisa Miller was that it was a one-off event; it’s a shame more Chautauqua audiences could not have reaped the benefits of Verdi’s music and all the fine work involved.

A Philadelphia-based arts critic, David Shengold has written for Opera News, Opera (UK), Theatre Journal and Time Out New York, among many venues. He has contributed program essays to the Metropolitan, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Covent Garden and Washington National Opera programs and lectured for NYCO,  Glimmerglass Festival and Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre. He trained and acted at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Mass. and has taught on opera, literature and cultural history at Oberlin, Mount Holyoke and Williams Colleges.