Welcome MET PLAYER!

For those who, like me, love opera, another stunning, inspired move from Peter Gelb's brilliant, multimedia-driven team at the Metropolitan Opera.

Starting today, the company is offering MET PLAYER, a catalog of -- as of now -- 13 on-demand HD performance videos, 37 historic video performances and 120 Met radio broadcasts (audio), all available for web streaming, with many more to come. It is a subscription service and clearly worth every penny.

What I would have given for such broadaccess to the MET's archives as a young listener! It took years to finally break open and make available the vaults of the MET's historic radio and other media archives. Now, with technology, we not only have Gelb's great effort in negotiations with unions, etc. to enable us to behold this priceless legacy, but the chance to hear and see it at our fingertips.

I'm almost literally overwhelmed. GO GELB!!!

Pierre Boulez at 80 - Mahler Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"

In 2005, the grand French composer/conductor (once Music Director of the New York Philharmonic), Pierre Boulez, turned 80. The Staatskapelle Berlin, one of the world's oldest orchestral ensembles, honored the maestro's birthday by presenting him conducting the orchestra in a Mahler series.

On DVD from EuroArts/Arte is a video of a spectacular performance from the Boulez/Staatskapelle Berlin celebration series of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection". It is one of the most touching essays of this work I've ever experienced. The maestro, completely focused and almost stone-cold on the podium -- in Richard Strauss, Fritz Reiner fashion -- unleashes waves of gorgeous sound from the orchestra and chorus. Everything is delivered with musical nuance but also with a complete, unbridled passion which belies Boulez's conducting stance. It means that he drilled a lifetime of experience with Mahler's music, and his power and exhuberance, into the players and singers before the performance, and then let them "do the work" in the hall.

If you get your hands on the DVD, you'll experience a real treat.

Photo Credit: Copyright © 2005 Clive Barda (for Deutsche Grammophon).

An excerpt from the great final movement can be heard and seen here (on YouTube):

The Reichsorchester: The Berlin Philharmonic

One of the topics I find most fascinating is the role of art during the Nazi era. In this light, I've very much wanted to see the new documentary entitled "The Reichsorchester: The Berlin Philharmonic" by Enrique Sanchez Lansch (Arthaus Musik DVD). I decided today to treat myself to the DVD.

Lansch's documentary, from a book by author Misha Aster called "The Reich's Orchestra", chronicles the Berlin Philharmonic during WWII. In addition to remarkable historical footage of great conductors leading the BPO during the period (e.g. Wilhelm Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, Hans Knappertsbusch and others), there are compelling interviews with living members of the orchestra who played throughout the war and the children of other members. The interviewees, with a complex perspective, "true" or not, describe their connection to the time as artists, musicians, citizens, observers... The view of these players and their descendents of the Nazis and their willingness (or requirement for survival) to perform in an orchestra that celebrated both great art but also the "mission" of the Nazis during this atrocious period in history should be seen, IMHO, by all. Every viewer of Lansch's documentary will come away with different conclusions, but you will have heard first-hand accounts of the period and experience something never really seen, collectively, before.

The 2007 documentary was released on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Berlin Philharmonic (1882). This is a bold and interesting statement--to point-blank face the issue of the Nazi period as a representation of the anniversary of the orchestra's origination.

An excerpt of the documentary can be found here:

Kundun

One of my top 10 favorite films of all time is Martin Scorsese's Kundun. It is Scorsese's brilliant telling of the story of the early life, and escape to freedom from Chinese oppression, of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.

For me, among the most important elements of the film is the inimitable, Oscar®-nominated score by the other of, IMHO, the greatest late 20th Century classical and cinematic music composers, Philip Glass. I feel the score to Kundun is Glass's finest film work--this even considering his majestic music for The Hours, Mishima and the "Qatsi" Trilogy.

I cry every time I hear the music from the final part of the film--represented in the YouTube clip below.

First Personal Blog Entry

Welcome to the first entry of my personal Blog. For a long time, I've wanted a forum for my own words... to write about subjects such as opera and classical music, cinema (esp. Asian cinema), other music, arts, culture, theater, pop-culture, food, travel, trends, politics, life in general and more. I look forward to providing many entries in the months and years ahead!

Note that this first entry comes while I am recuperating from an illness that caused my first-ever (in my life) hospital stay. 6 days of IV antibiotics to fight an infection. Yuck! I'm home now, still too weak to do anything particularly constructive but my mind is going a million miles a minute so I'm climbing the walls.

Again, more to come... :-)