Singing Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem

March 7, 2010 performance of Johannes Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem by the Brookline Chorus at All Saints Parish church in Brookline, MA

A belated entry (I've been busy the last month, didn't have time to blog).

It was an afternoon concert on a sunny Sunday. The sun lit up the huge stained glass windows of All Saints. Friends were in the audience. I can't imagine a better place or time for this Requiem.

I loved singing this more than anything else I've sung since joining the Chorus, except perhaps for Carmina Burana. It's challenging and long. You have to pace yourself in order to have enough energy left for the last movement. It's a terrific journey.

To me the most heart-stopping moments come early, in the second movement, when we sing:

Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret
und die Blume abgefallen.

For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man,
as the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower thereof falleth away. I Peter 1:24

We sing the words at first as a funeral march, a dirge, an acquiescent, resigned lament about the temporary nature of all life.

But then, a few minutes later, we blast out the very same words in an almost violent complaint against God and the universe. There's an orchestral buildup to this fortissimo over many bars. The music builds in tension and volume. You can see it, of course, in our director, Lisa Graham; with her increasingly tense gestures and her face, she makes you, the orchestra, and the audience understand that these are also very angry words.

The Huntington's "Becky Shaw" just manages to be a play, and not a sitcom

The Huntington Theater Company's production of "Becky Shaw," a play by Gina Gionfriddo, directed by Peter DuBois. We saw it Saturday night, March 20, 2010.

15 minutes into the play: what is this, television? A sitcom?

25 minutes: the moving sets -- whole sets sliding ostentatiously onto and off the stage, does it mean something? Am I not getting it?

The names of these people...Suzanna Slater, Max Garrett, Susan Slater, Andrew Porter, Becky Shaw. Not only is it television, but it's daytime soap opera. From the 60s. Maybe the town they're in is called Middleville or something like that.

Well, a high toned soap opera, actually, with some witty lines, a few laughs. Parts sound like a Woody Allen parody. The premise -- a group of academics or academically trained characters generating drama out of their neuroses, loves and self-loves. Yes, it's been done. This is a 2009 version.

Why are they swearing all the time?

30 minutes: The actor Seth Fisher, who plays Max Garrett -- he's very good. He takes over the stage whenever he's present. As soon as his cynical self is present, the energy level rises, and the story make sense (sort of).

60 minutes: wait, you mean this woman, who has lived with her adopted step-brother most of her life, who has a tormented relationship with him, finally has sex with him when they're in their thirties? Wouldn't they have worked all this out by now? Seems implausible.

80 minutes: the swearing, maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe they don't really mean it. The words don't carry the same weight for these 30 somethings as for us 50ish types. Really?

90 minutes: the cover photo of the program book is actually a good snapshot of the play. Becky Shaw, an adult woman, sits in a floral dress, showing a good bit of cleavage, yet her white-socked foot is turned in, in the manner of a little girl. Her blind date with Max gives her an opportunity to not so much seduce as to trap someone with her neediness.

110 minutes: This isn't a bad play. It's barely a play. A bit static. But it has a few laughs. The ragged nature of the relationships, the chaos, the emotional damage -- it all does seems real.

At one point, Susan says that love in marriage is a matter of "putting up" with your spouse. A lover is there to support you, despite your rottenness.( I'm not saying this is the playwright's belief -- it's what the characters express.) And whether you agree or not, Gionfriddo does capture this cynical view of what might be termed love on the stage. Love and marriage as devotion, as self-sacrifice, that's not here. For better or worse.

Honore Balzac's "Pere Goriot" -- it's all the same

Pere Goriot, by Honore Balzac (first published in 1835; I listened to it on CDs from Recorded Books).

It's a good story, how Eugène de Rastignac, a poor student from the country, his family's great hope, decides to take a short cut to fame and wealth by ingratiating himself into Parisian society. It's risky. He meets up with the most cynical people you could imagine, and acknowledges that he himself becomes one. It's old Goriot, Jean-Joachim Goriot, an old vermicelli dealer, who calls him back to reality with the example of his selfless (and cloyingly bottomless) love for his daughters.

I wondered if there was anything new in this book, compared to Lost Illusions and Cousin Bette, the two other Balzac novels I've read. The cast of characters are similar (maybe even the same in some cases). The experiences and motives of the characters -- all based on greed -- are similar. It's a decent pot boiler. But I'm not sure there's a good reason to read it if you've already read the the other two. Or even Lost Illusions alone.