Author: Max Mayo

National Symphony Orchestra: Marek Janowski conducts Brahms’ First Symphony / Jackiw plays Bruch

Max Mayo4 Comments

Playlist:

Conductor Marek Janowski

Carl Maria von Weber – Overture to Euryanthe

Max Bruch – Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, with Stefan Jackiw

Johannes Brahms – Symphony No. 1 in C minor 

The main reason for attending this performance was to hear Brahms’ First Symphony, my favorite symphony, live for the first time.  To be clear, I know about 10 symphonies. . . Nevertheless, I entered with an exaggerated confidence to persuade any onlookers that I not only belonged there, but that I could elucidate any number of classical music opinions if asked.  The mask worked like a charm and no one bothered me the entire evening.

The first piece, a von Weber opera overture was a nice appetizer, but as I stated before, I know close to nothing about classical music.  Moving on.

The next piece, Bruch’s First Violin Concerto was a true delight.  This was the first violin concerto I’d ever seen.  So when violin soloist Stefan Jackiw entered to much fanfare and then stood in the center of the stage I couldn’t believe it.  STOOD!  Is this normal?  He was standing and swaying, his bow slicing near vertically throughout.  This is why you see these pieces live.  The drama of Jackiw’s full body fiddling brought me to tears.  Normally this might have been embarrassing but was in this case accidentally fortunate, adding depth to my refined music snob character.

Finally, the Brahms did not disappoint.  The piece is known for its bombast, from its in media res opening of blaring discordant sounds, to its ambiguous main melody.  The latter, found loudest in the first and fourth movements, is a marching chorus of strings punctuated by trumpets that at times feels either dark and militant or triumphant and hopeful.  The symphony depicts the battle between these dichotomies.  German guest composer Marek Janowski brought this struggle to life and revealed to me a deeper humanism in the piece.  Brahms stitched the most dramatic moments with lulls of wind instruments, in particular the flute, all of which I had taken for granted.  Janowski (a German music expert according to the pamphlet I received) seemed to pay extra attention to making these moments stand out.  I’d never considered how important those pivot points were, but they are the soul of the work.

Bob le flambeur

Max Mayo1 Comment

Bob, the titular gambler, and the police chief of the post-war Parisian red light district of Montmartre, have a history. Allegedly, Bob had once pushed the chief out of the way of a bullet, ultimately saving his life during a heist bust Bob would then go to jail for. Intermittently, these two characters make vague references to their shared past. Both men are of the World War II generation and are aging into a reconstructed society. Though the moral ambiguity of Bob and the sympathy of the police chief are never unraveled, their mysterious relationship gives this early Melville film surprising depth.

Bob’s unaddressed addiction is a stand in for several vices in the underworld and fatefully lures young Paolo and Annie into his circle. If the cause is WWII related, whether from a collaborative or resistive past, it is fitting that he is in part brought down by the negligence of these youths. These kids admire Bob’s slick confidence but they can’t comprehend the implications of Bob’s behavior. By the end Bob gets Paolo killed, leaves Annie alone in the underworld and is off to jail. No one wins every gamble. Moreover, one senses that things are starting to change a little too fast for people like Bob; the generational variables are getting too hard to manage. It will only be a matter of time before some kids wiser than Paolo and Annie decide to take matters into their own hands.

This is all 1956, pre-French New Wave and before Melville settled into the restrained mode of cool that defines his later masterworks. The cinematography by Henri Decae is fully formed and would sow the seeds of the French New Wave over the next 5 years.

Annihilation

Max Mayo1 Comment

I wanted to like this movie going in. This is a $40 million hard science-fiction film!  And like the best science fiction filmmaking, Annihilation is atmospheric, visually driven and intellectually dense. This is very much down my alley. I wish Hollywood would greenlight a dozen of these each year.

Having read the novel by Jeff Vandermeer, I was intrigued throughout by a lot of choices director Alex Garland made when adapting the story. He abandoned all narrative devices that are language based – hypnotism, found journals, organic writing on the walls – and instead attempted to reroute as much information through the visuals. Nevertheless, the script is full of unnecessary exposition, but I was willing to look past this due to the fantastic cast. Portman and Isaac are the standouts, but the whole team of women have their moments. Getting Black Panther and this film back-to-back is proof of how rejuvenating minority led casts can be. Unfortunately, these positives were not enough to push this movie over the top for me.

In theory, the end offers much to discuss. But in the aftermath of Annihilation, what I find most interesting about director Alex Garland and his first two directing projects (this and 2015’s Ex Machina) is how much the central organism at the heart of these two films have in common. Ava and The Shimmer are mimics/replicants of human nature; Ava being a coded AI, trying to win her freedom as an intelligent life form; The Shimmer as an alien life form, ambiguously attempting to recode/replicate Earth’s biology. Both organisms are more or less successful and yet, there is no question for the viewer that they are not the same as humans. Compare this to Garland. He’s a director who is boldly trying to make the next science fiction classic. It’s coded into the DNA of his films with their plethora of synthesized references and images. From film history alone, he’s compositing Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Cronenberg, Carpenter and Scott. He studiously replicated it all and yet, just like Ava and The Shimmer, there is something completely inauthentic about the entire enterprise.