And on a COMPLETELY different topic... at least one good review today:
In a War-Weary Time, a Score for Nostalgia and Innocence
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: November 13, 2004
There is always ringing in the rafters at Carnegie Hall, but seldom have the resonances surrounding a performance been so specific. The Collegiate Chorale, which Robert Shaw founded in 1941, performed Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" at Carnegie Hall on Thursday evening, rekindling the memory of one of the great achievements of Shaw's later years, a 1994 performance of the work prepared in a weeklong Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop, another Shaw invention.
There as here, Christine Goerke sang the soprano solos, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's provided the instrumental foundation. But the central figure in the Shaw performance, apart from Shaw himself, was the wonderful English baritone Benjamin Luxon, who gave a courageous performance despite a serious loss of hearing that made it hard for him to find his pitches. Mr. Luxon, now deafer still, gave an eloquent preconcert lecture on Thursday, echoing his friend Britten's humanism.
"I wish I could sing it for you," he ended, "but sadly, it's no longer possible."
And all of that doesn't take into account the added resonance of a context of wartime. Britten, writing in 1962 for the consecration of Coventry Cathedral, rebuilt after its devastation in World War II, reverted to the World War I poetry of Wilfred Owen, Mr. Luxon said, "because he was totally bound up with the idea of loss or destruction of innocence," a central theme in many of his works. It is especially painful to come to Owen's wide-eyed and open-hearted poems just now, jaded by the evening news...
"Two drifters off to see the world. There's such a lot of world to see. . ."
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