Elijah soars with the New Bedford Symphony

Mendelssohn’s Elijah was modeled after the great Baroque oratorios of Handel, Haydn and Bach and is a sublime work. It features four soloists, chorus and large orchestra augmented by an organ. Sunday’s performance by the New Bedford Symphony did it justice. The four soloists were uniformly excellent, with a special bow to baritone Philip Lima. As Elijah, he had the greatest share of time and was magnificent. Not only does Mr. Lima possess a glorious voice, but he had a great stage presence. He WAS an Old Testament prophet – at times commanding and others sorrowful. It would not have surprised me had he brought down hail and brimstone. The chorus, which was the Rhode Island College Concert Chorus augmented by members from the Sippican and Greater New Bedford Choral Societies, started off somewhat tentatively but gained in strength as the performance went on. Several members of the RICCC were called out to join the soloists in some sections and displayed excellent voices. The orchestra performed flawlessly, and the organ sections blended in perfectly without dominating. The English lyrics (the piece was first performed in Birmingham in its English edition) made it easier for the audience to follow the biblical tale. A sublime afternoon at the Z.

Fredheads gather in the basement

It has been many decades since we were last in that subterranean shrine to folk music, the Club Passim. In fact, the last artist we saw there was probably Joan Baez when she was one step up from street busker. Nowadays the Club runs concerts just about seven nights a week. Little has changed – it is very small and very crowded, with 4 to a table barely big enough for two. The food is casual hearty – burgers and fries style, with a lengthy drink menu. With a small kitchen, service tends to be slow. We were there to see Fred Eaglesmith, Canadian troubadour of cars and trains and unrequited love. This time Fred added a back-up singer, a big-haired Texas gal who opened and then sang harmony on many songs. He kept his drummer, bass player and guitar player of many years. Fred is one of those artists you either love or hate. His gravelly voice is a bit reminiscent of the early Bob Dylan, and his stage repartee is heavy on insults and irony. He doesn't get this way often, so the evening was a must for fans.

A Number: solid acting, weak story at New Rep

The story line (I hate to call it a plot) of A Number is thus: father loses his wife to suicide, tries to raise infant son alone but fails miserably, at least in part due to alcohol and drug use. Son shipped off somewhere unspecified but to try again, father has him cloned and apparently does a better job the second time. Unknown to him, multiple clones are made ?why? The cloned son discovers this and is very upset. The original son appears, angry and bitter. One of the other clones shows up at the end. The dialog never really hangs together, and too many lose ends are left to make this plausible. The theme is supposedly “nature versus nurture,” but we never really know enough about the second son to know how much he differed from the first. The set is spare and modernistic, and neither adds to or detracts from the play. The acting is excellent. Nael Nacier uses simple changes of costume and accent to pull off being the three different clones. Dale Place over acts at times but is an effective father who has made many wrong choices. The play is mercifully short at just about one hour. As a Black Box, little theatre, presentation, one’s expectations would have been lower, but as a Main Stage piece, this is simply not worth your time.

Russia invades Symphony Hall

Our first BSO concert of the new season featured two contrasting works. The first half was Prokofiev’s Cantata Alexander Nevsky, and the second, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. The great Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein created Alexander Nevsky in large part due to the propaganda need of the Soviet government in the late 1930’s. Stalin feared an invasion by the Nazis and wanted a film that would raise Russian morale. The story of a 13th Century Russian folk hero was designed for that purpose. Despite its genesis, Alexander Nevsky is considered one of the great films of all times. Prokofiev was enlisted to write the movie score, and he turned this score into a free-standing Cantata for chorus and orchestra. Like the Marseillaise, the cantata has stirring music and blood-curdling lyrics best not translated. Each movement of the Cantata depicts a portion of the film, though in a much more flowing coherent musical rendition than can be done with a film score.The full Tanglewood Festival Chorus filled Symphony Hall with rich sound. A short solo section was beautifully sung by Russian mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Serdyuk, making her BSO debut. At the end of the piece, we were ready to serve the defense of the Motherland! After intermission we were treated to a sweet melodic and pastoral contrast. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances was written in America, and sounds much more American than Russian. A beautiful section is played by the woodwinds alone without strings, and the finale includes brass fanfares. Both pieces showed off the splendid acoustics of Symphony Hall and led to standing ovations

Handel and Haydn at 200

Handel and Haydn opened their Bicentennial year with the classics: Haydn and Mozart. Leading off was Haydn’s Symphony #99 – a pleasant piece in which he first used the clarinet as part of the orchestra. Haydn spent the bulk of his career as Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, one of the most powerful men in Austria, and I must believe that his style was developed as he wrote what would have been “easy listening” music for the rich and powerful. It is hard to dislike Haydn, but at the same time, it is hard to be passionate about his orchestral works, all of which sound vaguely similar. That said, H+H did a technically perfect rendering of the piece, and it was a relaxing opening. A short choral piece followed – Samuel Webbe’s “When winds breath soft” written for 5 voices and sung beautifully by a subset of the H+H chorus. The first half ended with a reprise of last year: a short section from Haydn’s Creation. The second half was devoted to Mozart’s stirring Requiem. Listening to this piece, unfinished at his death, it is hard not to feel the pain of the composer who died so young, and who wrote this as his own epitaph. The four soloists sang primarily as a quartet, and had fine voices, with a special shout-out to bass-baritone Dashon Burton for his mellifluous deep voice. The bulk of the singing was done by the full H+H chorus, and their technical mastery carried the day. This was a most stirring piece, sung stirringly. For readers on the South Coast: H+H will be giving a concert in Westport on November 22 as part of the Concerts on the Point. Don’t miss it.

NBSO opens its Centenary Season

100 and counting! The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra kicked off its centennial season with a pre-concert party and free birthday cake in the street before the concert. Indoors was an even better feast. The lead-off was Berlioz’s Le Corsair overture, a Pops favorite with rousing melody and a crashing brass finale. Then came the Sibelius Violin Concerto, the only such work composed by the Finnish national hero. Unlike many violin concertos, the Sibelius clearly separates violin from orchestra, with each operating sequentially for most of the piece rather than together. This requires a strong soloist, and Martin Chalifour fulfilled the role admirably. As is typical for the NBSO, Mr. Chalifour is not a “rock star” soloist, but a first tier player with numerous appearances with major orchestras. He received a well-deserved standing ovation. After intermission we heard perhaps the best known and recognized symphony not called Beethoven’s Fifth: Antonin Dvorak’s 9th Symphony “From the New World.” This was perfectly played and reflected the maturation of the NBSO to a truly first class orchestra. A fine kick-off to the season. Join the NBSO for the rest.

Broken Glass at the New Rep

The year is 1938, and in Brooklyn, Sylvia Gellburg, has become paralyzed from the waist down for no reason, to her husband’s dismay. He has consulted the dashing, handsome Dr. Harry Hyman to treat Sylvia. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Kristallnacht has occurred: that night in 1938 when Nazis went on a rampage, shattering the windows of Jewish shopkeepers and burning synagogues. Sylvia is obsessed by a news photo of two elderly Jews forced to clean the sidewalk with toothbrushes while a mob taunts them. Dr. Hyman has become convinced that Sylvia’s paralysis is psychosomatic, brought on by some unknown stress, and spends a good part of the play trying to tease out the root cause. In the mean time, Phillip Gellburg, a Jew who wants desperately to assimilate, gets into trouble with his Wasp boss at the Brooklyn bank where Phillip is the only Jew. During the course of the play we learn more and more about the Gellburg’s failed marriage, and the denouement is fairly predictable. The cast is strong, with particular kudos to Anne Gottlieb as Sylvia. Jeremiah Kissel’s Phillip is well-played, but his lines were often swallowed. Benjamin Evett, who has played many roles at the New Rep, is a very credible dashing ladies’ man. The other parts: Eve Passeltiner as Harry’s wife Margaret, Christine Hamel as Sylvia’s younger sister, and Michael Kaye as the rich Wasp boss, are less demanding but well-done. The action shifts seamlessly from Dr. Hyman’s office to the Gellburg bedroom to the bank with a revolving stage. Coming from Arthur Miller, you expect unhappiness, and Phillip Gellburg carries unmistakable overtones of Willy Loman, insecure in himself. Do not go to the New Rep to be “entertained” but do go to experience powerful acting.