Three Books: New Russia, Old Mexico, and Imaginary, Rural Virginia (56 cents)

In my usual way, I recently read three random books (while everyone else was reading the books everyone else is reading).  Just to say what they were:

Alan Gurganus’ “Local Souls”, containing three novelettes taking place in a small town in Virginia.  The 15 year old impregnated by the respected older teacher, who is sent away to have the baby.  Seventeen years pass, she is now married with two young children, when her now 17 year old son (whom she has not seen since the day of his birth) knocks on her door and strikes up a (rather unusual) relationship with her.  A married woman, estranged from her husband, sees her teenage daughter go off to Africa for a summer of community service, and receives the dreaded phone call that she has drowned.  Plans for the funeral go forward, and then something surprising happens.  The respected town doctor grows older, and older, and older, until he isn’t even a shadow of his former self.  How does the town react?  Three interesting and evocative stories – worth reading, but perhaps not worth chasing down.  Published by Liveright Publishing.

Sascha Goluboff’s “New Russia”, set in the Central Synagogue of Moscow in the mid-1990s, after a large section of the Ashkenazic Jewish population of Russia left the city and country (with a significant segment of those remaining being elderly, impoverished or disabled), being replaced by Jews from Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia.  The Muscovite Jews were bred in the Communist USSR, while the newcomers were young, energetic and very business oriented.  Their customs were quite different; these different customs included different ways to conduct religious services, particularly different ways to read from the Torah.  Antagonisms arose at the synagogue, mostly quite petty,  But all reported by Goluboff, who attended weekday services for a year or so – something quite amazing not only because Goluboff is American, but because she is female.  A fascinating window on a unique part of Moscow Jewish life.  Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Edith Couturier’s “The Silver King”, the story of Pedro Romero de Terreros, the Count of Regla, the wealthiest man in 18th century Mexico.  Spanish born, he became the biggest landowner and biggest silver miner in the country.  Couturier (by the way, a friend) did extensive research not only to tell the story of Romero, but to paint a picture of colonial Mexico – a complicated place which is so different from the way the British colonies to the north operated.  Published by the University of New Mexico.

Bach and Britten at Epiphany (4 cents)

As the story goes, Benjamin Britten attended a concert with Dmitri Shostakovich to hear Rostoprovich play.  He had never heard him before, and was more than impressed.  After the concert, Shostakovich introduced the composer to the cellist.  Rostropovich was later to say that (and this was a long time ago), he had not heard of Britten.  But they got on well together, and Rostropovich asked Britten if he would write a piece for him.  The result was the Sonata for cello and piano in C major (actually it was the first of five pieces Britten wrote for the cellist who became his close friend), and I heard it (perhaps for the first time) this afternoon at the Church of the Epiphany, performed by pianist Jeffrey Chappell, and cellist Vasily Popov.

Before they started the piece, Popov gave an interesting (if sometimes hard to hear) introduction, talking about the seminal role Rostropovich played in establishing 20th century cello music.  Many pieces were written with his assistance, many pieces were dedicated to him and written with him in mind, and many pieces were the result of works that Rostropovich himself commissioned.  After the concert, reading a little about this piece, I learned that Britten was a little hesitant about writing for Rostropovich because he was, in fact, not at all familiar with the cello.  Perhaps, this was an advantage, because he seemed to push the instrument well beyond its normal breadth; his biggest concern may have been whether a cellist, even the Maestro, could perform it.  For his part, Rostropovich said that when they first tried out the piece, they waited until they had four or five drinks a piece.  Then, he said, we had a lot of fun.

I did not know what to expect.  It’s a five movement sonata and the first, and I think longest, movement is very fast, very loud, and (can I say it respectfully) very chaotic.  I wondered how much of it I could take (I couldn’t really make sense of it) but certainly admired the technical expertise of the musicians.  But with the second movement, the mood changed (and now I see how Rostropovich and Britten could have had fun) with the cello being plucked, and the piano following right along.

So you don’t go out of the concert hall humming the tune (ha, ha), but you have to admire what you have heard (and enjoyed) — two top notch musicians attacking a clearly difficult piece which stretches the cello to its limits, and challenges the accompanying piano.

Before the Britten, each of the performers played a solo number.  Chappell played one of Bach’s toccatas, again with great technical expertise.  I must say, however, that I had to transform the piece, as I was listening, from piano to harpsichord (what’s my trick?) to really enjoy.  Again, looking on line at some descriptions of Bach’s toccatas, I read that, because they are so exuberant (Bach wrote them when he was quite young), they are much better suited to the harpsichord, and rarely performed on the piano (and that you really need to be a good pianist to perform them well).  I think Chappell did a fine job – but his speed was matched by the decibel level – I am sure that this is the way to perform this piece, but because the piano can be so much louder than the harpsichord, the older instrument does seem by far more preferable.

Popov’s solo was also by Bach, a prelude (D major) from Bach’s Suite for unaccompanied cello.  Very nicely done.

Gone Girl at the Avalon – Meh Minus (44 cents)

The new film “Gone Girl” has received a lot of press and pretty good reviews (8.6 on IMDB, for example), and I went to see it yesterday anticipating that I would agree with the (apparent) majority.  Not so.

It’s a very well acted and directed film, and makes a better than normal use of flashbacks, but the plot line is not only weak and silly, it is disgusting.

All I knew is that a young wife suddenly disappeared and that her husband was pegged as the murderer but was innocent.  What I didn’t know is that the wife would turn out to be a sadistic, criminal lunatic, the husband only marginally better, the setting unbelievable, and that there would be a bevy of holes and inconsistencies in the story line.

So, it’s a horror movie (akin to, say, Fatal Attraction or The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) in the guise of a thriller and……who needs it?

Amy Herzog’s “Belleville” – Quick Thoughts (25 cents)

I think that Washington Post critic Peter Marks got it right:  Amy Herzog’s “Belleville”, now at Washington’s Studio Theatre, leaves you “a bit creeped out but less than sufficiently gripped”.  Zack and Abby are newly married Americans living in Paris, where Zack has a job helping to eradicate pediatric AIDS.  But each is more neurotic than the other, their marriage was clearly a colossal mistake, and things obviously have to change.  They do, and for the worst, and what starts out as a fairly typical “can’t we just get along and start from scratch” romantic comedy into a sophomoric horror story, where everything leads to something more unsettled.  Surely, Herzog (and Studio) can do better.

What’s the back story?  It appears that Abby has suffered from serious psychological problems from the day she and Zack first met, and his goal has been to do everything possible to make his wife as secure and as happy as possible (this turns out to be a hopeless task, of course) but his codependency turns out to be largely a manifestation of his own (possibly even more serious) neurosis, which comes out of the proverbial closet leading to unimaginable tragedy.  But the play lacks verisimilitude (after starting as a believable story of just another troubled couple) as Zack’s actions are based on years of major deception, a scale of deception that just cannot be believed.

I saw one other Herzog play, also at Studio, “4000 Miles”, a year or so ago.  A young man stops to stay with his grandmother (an unrepentant Marxist, as I recall) on his bike tour across the country.  He and his grandmother come from different worlds – their lack of previous contact, and the nature of their unexpected contact now, left me cold.

Both these plays have received some strong reviews – but I guess that they are just not for me.

The Michael Obst Musical Score for the Silent “Nosferatu”

“Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens” is a 1922 German silent film, directed by F.P. Murnau.  It is basically a retelling of the Dracula story, not authorized by the heirs of Bram Stoker, author of “Dracula”.  After the film was released (the story line basically the same, with some changed details and all changed names), the Stoker heirs sued and the court ruled for the heirs and ordered all copies of the film destroyed.  Most were, but one remained (I am not sure why or how this happened) and we are today able to see what is now a classic early horror film.

The film is not particularly enjoyable to watch in 2014, except for its historical interest.  The version I saw Monday night at the Goethe Institute in Washington had English subtitles and a musical score written about ten years ago by German composer Michael Obst.  Obst was at the showing, and spoke a bit about the art of creating a musical score for a silent film to the crowd (OK, not really a crowd; there were only about 20 in the theater).

I don’t know how (or if) the Obst score was reviewed when it was first heard, but I think that the composer completely nailed it.  It was a perfect accompaniment for the film.  And his explanation of how he went about writing the music was interesting.  If I remember closely enough, he said that there were three things he needed to accomplish:  first, he needed to portray the general atmosphere of the film; second, he needed to react to particular moments of drama – a fight, a flight, etc; and third, he had to go beyond what the actors were saying (or mouthing) and reflect what their characters would have been thinking.  In other words, he said, and I paraphrase, “the dramaturgy of the music must match the dramaturgy of the film”.

I had never thought of musical scores in this way.  Obst opened my eyes.