Transfigured Concert

Remember Live Music? Dept.: I’ve long been in love with Pamela Frank, both as a violinist (she, not I) and on a fundamentally carnal level. But the two intertwine, in my fevered sensibility, so thoroughly that I have muted this passion for many years. I’m telling you about it now because we’re all too sequestered for it to make a damn bit of difference. Here’s my account of a memorable performance from many seasons ago.

                                                                                                 

Pamela Frank

THE OPENING EVENT of the Union College Concert Series is always a rewarding experience, and those who remained to enjoy Arnold Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night” were treated to a spectacular performance by a string sextet clearly enjoying one another’s musical company.

Those who bolted at intermission missed the concert’s highlight. They also showed an unfortunate ignorance of where the piece falls in Schoenberg’s creative life. They’re tempting the gods to consign them to an afterlife of Richard Clayderman music.

The friends violinist Pamela Frank assembled are top-flight players who, as far as I can tell, don’t perform together regularly, although a light web search yields any number of connections among them (not least the connubial connection of Frank and violinist Alexander Simionescu). But the concert proved that a like-minded ensemble of risk-takers can generate plenty of performance excitement.

Uptown, Downtown Gets Down

Remember Live Performance? Dept.: One of the most compelling shows presented at Albany’s Capital Rep nearly a decade ago was Leslie Uggams’s two-week appearance in her solo show “Uptown, Downtown.” I had the chance to meet her after the performance I saw, and she was just as lively and fascinating – and downright nice – as she seemed to be on stage. Here’s what I wrote.

                                                                                 

WHEN ALL EIGHT PIECES OF THE BAND are wailing as Leslie Uggams gives a powerhouse treatment to “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” you can’t help but be impressed by all that energy. It’s a great sound, reminding us of the majesty of jazz-inflected music and song.

Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

But Uggams’s own instrument is mutli-hued, and there’s just as much energy in the delicacy of the Goffin-King anthem “Up on the Roof” – but this one is delivered as a wistful ballad with only the affecting guitar work of Steve Bargonetti behind it, and it’s one of the show’s most magical moments.

“Uptown, Downtown” came to Capital Rep for a two-week stay, and I wouldn’t let this one get past you. A remarkable singer-actress pays tribute to her long career (she started performing while still in single digits), framed by the contrast between her uptown (Washington Heights) childhood and her eventual (downtown) Broadway career.

The Burger Master

From the Food Vault Dept.: Look, I’m as socially responsible as the next fellow. Trouble is, the next fellow isn’t typically very socially responsible. So while I’m spending a lot more time at home, eating, I like to think, in a socially responsible manner, there come errands. Yesterday, my daughter and I went shopping – or, rather, she went shopping as I waited in the car, the better to limit my risk of contracting infection to passage from a loved one. Near the supermarket is a Five Guys outlet. I installed the phone app and placed an order to us. We enjoyed a guilty pleasure, and I was reminded of a visit that I documented a decade ago.

                                                                                                 

A WIDELY HELD BELIEF maintains that confessing your sins is the first step on the road to forgiveness. I’m not sure that it even counts as a venial offense, but here goes: I enjoy dining at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Here’s something even more surprising: so does my wife, Susan. She professes to despise all things fast-food related, and claims she’d rather starve than ingest fodder from McDonald’s, but she’s astonishingly eager to lap up a Five Guys meal.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

I’m also violating a self-imposed interdiction against writing about chain restaurants, but justify it by suggesting that there are things to be learned from such places, a topic I’ll return to. This is also inspired by the fact that Five Guys topped the recent Readers’ Picks poll, thankfully nosing out the overhyped, overpriced Red Robin. So I’m guessing you’d like a closer look at this place.

Once you start confessing things, subsequent revelations come more easily. Here’s my next one: I don’t think the Five Guys burgers are all they’re cracked up to be, and for one reason only: they insist on cooking the things to well-doneness. I know the argument, and I can’t fault them for it. Thanks to an insufficiently regulated meatpacking industry, ground beef may contain pathogens that lurk in the rare parts, so this cook-the-red-away policy has become ever more common in the chain-restaurant world.

Small Footprints, Great Success

KEEP IN MIND THAT BAYER AG (best-known as the aspirin company) remains in a legal hot-seat over its weed-killer Roundup, a product it inherited when it bought Monsanto. Although Bayer agreed to pay almost $40 million over allegations that it ran misleading ads about the product, it’s still got about 13,000 lawsuits – and nearly 43,000 plaintiffs – seeking damages over the link between glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, and a form of cancer known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Bayer, of course, insists there’s no link.

Dr. Zac Bush

Dr. Zach Bush disagrees. He’s a cancer researcher who tracked what he termed the explosive rise of cancer cases between 1996 and 2007, and discovered that the concentration of such cases was greatest not only where midwestern farmers were using heavy amounts of Roundup on their crops, but also in areas served by Mississippi River drainage tributaries. A map of the river and its drainage areas is a grim duplication of the cancer-cases map.

But this is only one of the several sobering issues presented in the 20-minute documentary “Farmer’s Footprint” (directed by Nicol Ragland) which was produced by Bush and can be freely viewed online. It takes a broad view of the consequences of corporate-style farming and the need for regenerative practices. As a companion piece, “Unbroken Ground,” a 25-minute documentary by Chris Malloy, looks at themes of regeneration in several fascinating contexts. Produced by Patagonia Provisions it can be viewed for free on the company’s website. We took a look at both.

Besides being a film, Farmer’s Footprint is also a coalition of doctors, farmers, and others seeking to reveal the terrible consequences of chemical farming and encourage regenerative agricultural practices. They offer consulting and other educational resources, but they’re also spreading the word with the first of what they plan to be a series of short films.

Go and Look

From the Cinema Vault Dept.: This way-too-brief review hardly suited its subject, a two-and-a-half-hour masterpiece of disturbing storytelling that mixes war story with grim fable. I attended an afternoon preview of the film and emerged as shattered as I’ve ever felt by an artistic experience. I’ve since watched the movie – available on DVD – a couple of times more, but have yet to persuade my wife to watch it with me.

                                                                                            

THE TITLE IS A TAUNT, not an invitation. Released in 1985, this two-and-half hour film was a nine-year project that follows a young man's grim struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied Byelorussia, a Soviet province that borders Poland.

Florya (Alexei Kravchenko) is an adolescent who eagerly leaves his family to join the partisans protecting themselves from the retreating German army, revealed to us at first only as an almost-silent presence overhead in omnipresent Blohmen-Voss aircraft.

The quiet drone of those planes joins the incredibly complex soundtrack of this epic drama of the senses, as we combine with Florya in seeing and hearing the tragedy of the destruction around him.

Director Klimov, president of the Soviet Filmmakers Union, uses tight closeups and an active Steadi-Cam to lock us into the youth's point of view. There is a documentary feel to the film even as it explores the rich scope of the boy's emotions.

Delight Fantastic

From the Vault Dept.: Bob Bowyer found the humor in ballet and offered magnificently endearing shows with his troupe, American Ballet Comedie, during the 1980s. In 1992, he died (at the age of 45) of an AIDS-related illness. Here’s a wistful look back at his 1985 visit to Schenectady.

                                                                                 

ANY CULTURAL PHENOMENON can take itself too seriously and ballet is no exception. Its hallowed traditions invite respect, true, but they also invite someone like Bob Bowyer to take a few potshots. That he does so with a highly skilled ballet company makes a performance by American Ballet Comedie even more enjoyable.

Marianne Claire, Bob Bowyer, and JoAnn Bruggeman

The company paid a return visit to Proctor’s Theatre Friday night, with the pokerfaced Bowyer again demonstrating that ballet can be used to tell hilarious and compelling stories when it isn’t being lampooned.

The group started right out with a big opening titled, and why not, “The Big Opening.” To the strains of “That’s Entertainment,” eight dancers clad in glittering tails performed stunts with hats and canes that made it seem as if there were eight Donald O’Connors onstage.

Great comedians need to master all theatrical basics; great comic dancers must be similarly outstanding. “The Big Opening” works because of right-on-the-button timing and energy that throws a smile to the back of the house.

All You Can Handel

From the Vault Dept.: Capitol Chamber Artists has been presenting music in the Albany, NY, area for over a half-century. They have been responsible for fresh versions of old favorites as well as new and unusual works. Here’s my review and, non-chronologically, my advance on a concert celebrating 1985's Handel tricentennial. These were also among my final pieces for the Albany Knickerbocker News, which paid shit money but took exception to my writing for another area publication.

                                                                                      

CAPITOL CHAMBER ARTISTS, a small group which has doggedly managed to present several seasons of chamber music to this area, is finally attracting the size of audience it deserves, judging from the turnout at a concert in celebration of the birthday of Handel.

George Frideric Handel

The auditorium at the Albany Institute of History and Art on Sunday boasted a larger crowd than has attended many of the group’s previous concerts, and the audience was treated to a very energetic performance of some of Handel’s best-loved music, the high point of which was soprano Mary Anne Ross’s presentation of selections from “Messiah.”

The program opened with the “Largo” from the opera “Xerxes,” originally an aria and now a mainstay of young violinists and wedding processionals. Performed by an ensemble of strings, flute, bassoon and harpsichord, it was given the stateliness it deserves, and was an effective prelude to the music which followed.

The orchestra was augmented for the “Messiah” selections with the addition of oboe, although the recitative sections were sung to continuo. Ms. Ross had the unique distinction of being absolutely intelligible all the time, without resorting to the florid overpronunciation which dogs many a singer.

Downtown Place to Be

From the Food Vault Dept.: Remember restaurants? How odd it would have been for me were I still actively reviewing them! Here’s a throwback – quite far back, to 1996 – look at a downtown Saratoga Springs institution that we watched decline thereafter, until it received a $28 million renovation four years ago. I haven’t been there since it re-opened.

                                                                                     

MY EXPECTATION OF VICTORIAN-AGE ANYTHING includes ornate architecture, potted palms, and, however improbably, Rudy Vallee crooning by the bandstand. A weird mix of styles, but it can work--as demonstrated by Saratoga’s Adelphi Hotel.

The old Adelphi in a postcard view.

It’s almost the last of the grand old places, and it maintains an elegant air of the bygone days, from the plush parlor you see upon entering to the old-style desk where reception awaits. During the warm weather, it’s my favorite place to go for a tasty fruit daiquiri, enjoyed in the garden that’s reached a couple of rooms beyond the entrance.

Last week, my wife and I visited for dinner, something we haven’t done at the Adelphi before. I’m glad we discovered it. I’m only sorry we’ll have to share it with August’s crowd.

You have a choice of dining venue. The bar has several tables; beyond that is a smaller room. A larger room follows, and then there’s the garden. We made it to the almost-outside room, hedging against a cool breeze that was blowing in.

O, Isolation!

TRUTH TO TELL, there’s not much different going on here. Rural life has a built-in social-distancing factor, although that’s the thing that causes neighbors to crave any manner of get-together. Take the farm-supply store a half-mile down the road from me. It’s a long-established retail outlet that stocks every possible tractor-repair part, along with tools and boots and feed and hardware, and it draws customers from many miles around. But there have been days when you could raise a beard while waiting in line for the next cashier. My theory is that this is the first human contact some of the customers have had in many days, and they’re making the most of it. (You don’t count spouses or farmhands, of course; familiarity is conversation’s worst enemy.)

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Now the store, essential business though it has been deemed, is usually fairly empty and the line, if there is one, moves quickly. We’re getting ready for spring planting and need seeds and mulch, although this is something practiced here in a comparatively compact way. Around us, the farm tractors are disking wide furrows for the feed corn that dominates the late-summer landscape; here, a lone roto-tiller pushes through our unkind clay.

It’s not so rural here as to be without supermarkets and big-box stores, which perch about twenty minutes away in the struggling city of Amsterdam. But the supermarkets here (as have yours, I’m sure) are now limiting their hours and the hardware giants are limiting the number of customers allowed within, asking their overflow customers to wait in a well-spaced line, said spacing demarcated by PVC pipe sculptures reminiscent of a Christo installation.

How to be a Doctor

Guest Blogger Dept.: The rising need for medical personnel is bein matched by a rising self-sufficiency among the quarantined masses. According to Stephen Leacock, we can combine these pursuits, as reflected in his 1910 essay, reproduced below. At the time this was written, Leacock was a professor at Montreal’s McGill University. He began submitting articles to the Toronto humor magazine Grip in 1894 and soon his humorous pieces were appearing in magazines throughout Canada and the United States. In 1910, he privately published a selection of these as Literary Lapses, which was picked up by a British publisher, who issued editions in London and New York. Leacock soon became the most famous writer of his time.

                                                                                                

CERTAINLY THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE is a wonderful thing. One can’t help feeling proud of it. I must admit that I do. Whenever I get talking to anyone—that is, to anyone who knows even less about it than I do—about the marvellous development of electricity, for instance, I feel as if I had been personally responsible for it. As for the linotype and the aeroplane and the vacuum house-cleaner, well, I am not sure that I didn’t invent them myself. I believe that all generous-hearted men feel just the same way about it.

Stephen Leacock

However, that is not the point I am intending to discuss. What I want to speak about is the progress of medicine. There, if you like, is something wonderful. Any lover of humanity (or of either sex of it) who looks back on the achievements of medical science must feel his heart glow and his right ventricle expand with the pericardiac stimulus of a permissible pride.

Just think of it. A hundred years ago there were no bacilli, no ptomaine poisoning, no diphtheria, and no appendicitis. Rabies was but little known, and only imperfectly developed. All of these we owe to medical science. Even such things as psoriasis and parotitis and trypanosomiasis, which are now household names, were known only to the few, and were quite beyond the reach of the great mass of the people.

Some Little Bug Is Going to FInd You

My cabaret partner, Malcolm Kogut, and I spent yesterday recording the song embedded below. It's from a 1915 operetta by Franz Lehar, "Alone at Last," although it's not a Lehar number. It was common then to have interpolations to showcase a particular star's specialties. Unlike the other videos I could discover of this song, we went through all five verses, which you'll probably regret when you get to about verse three. Dr. Munyon, by the way, was a famous homeopath back at the beginning of the last century.

A Litany in Time of Plague

Guest Blogger Dept.: Thomas Nashe (or Nash; he signed it both ways) was a poet, playwright, and pamphleteer – and a devout Catholic, who lived from 1567 to 1601 or so. He wrote the lines below as a meditation on the Black Plague – which may well have brought on his own death. He is thought by some to have collaborated with Shakespeare on “All’s Well That Ends Well.” He also is purported to have written one of the most pornographic poems of his era, “The Choice of Valentine.” You may get more enjoyment out of that one than this one.

                                                                                   

Thomas Nashe, or so it's reckoned

ADIEU, FAREWELL, Earth's bliss;
This world uncertain is;
Fond are life’s lustful joys;
Death proves them all but toys;
None from his darts can fly;
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health;
Physic himself must fade.
All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by;
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Grocery Story

YOU’VE PROBABLY CONTEMPLATED doing more shopping at your local food co-op for many reasons, among them that you’ll probably find healthier fare and you’ll be supporting the local economy. Once you finish reading John Steinman’s Grocery Story, you’ll wish never again to set foot in a supermarket.

Even as the book explains in anger-inducing detail how the supermarket chains got where they are today, it gives you enough info to help you realize how thoroughly such stores manipulate pricing structures, shelf placement, and, ultimately, you, the captive shopper.

Steinman is a food journalist who produced “Deconstructing Dinner,” a six-episode TV series, in 2013, and a syndicated one-hour radio show produced from 2006 to 2010, originating in Steinman’s home town of Nelson, British Columbia, where the author also served as a director for several years of the Kootenay Co-op, Canada’s largest.

But the Grocery Story begins in the U.S. with the A&P, a supermarket that began in the 1850s, swelled into an impressive national chain as it reached its height in the 1930s, and sputtered to its bankrupt finish in 2015. Its history is instructive. Early in the 20th century, A&P wielded enough buying muscle that it could institute aggressive pricing practices to undercut competing stores. As Steinman reminds us, this led to A&P losing a court case because of such predatory pricing – which then paved the way for the grocery chain to developing its own manufacturing facilities. Or contracting with other companies to provide house-brand goods, often aping a well-known brand in order to capitalize on a hard-earned image while undercutting its pricing.

Blowin’ up a Storm

MOSAIC RECORDS HAS BEEN VERY GENEROUS with its Woody Herman reissues, and for an excellent reason: Herman’s jazz bands (and there were many) were among the most exciting and innovative in the business. Why they’re not mentioned in the same breaths as the bands of Ellington, Goodman, Shaw, and the like, is puzzling. Herman had no shortage of hits during the big bands’ heyday. Perhaps his constantly mutating image worked against him.

Perhaps it’s the partisan nature of his current fanbase. Many jazz commentators are fond of picking this or that period of the Herman realm and disparaging the rest, but Herman’s lapses, such as they may be, occurred on an individual basis. He recorded any number of second-rate songs (who in the business didn’t?), and there were some questionable choices of session personnel when Woody had to pay the bills. But all of his bands, or herds, or whatever you wish to call them, gave off sparks – the result of Herman’s ability, again and again, to pick great performers and arrangers.

The new Mosaic release, “The Compete Woody Herman Decca, Mars, and MGM Sessions (1943-1954),” fills in the gaps created by two earlier (spectacular) Mosaic boxes. “The Complete Capitol Recordings of Woody Herman” is a six-CD collection that ranges from the end of 1948 to ’50, and from 1954 to ’56, which whetted the fans’ appetite for the release that followed: “The Complete Columbia Recordings of Woody Herman and His Orchestra & Woodchoppers (1945-1947).”

The Maddening Mystery of the Missing Manor

From the Editorial Trauma Dept.: Here’s a piece that could have been a favorite of mine, written in 1986, as I successfully traced a historic building that traveled from the Albany area to Williams College and back to Albany again, losing a great deal of its architectural luster along the way. But the piece I wrote was so badly butchered by an incompetent editor that I still shudder at the recollection, and I’m dismayed by the terrible changes that remain under my byline. This dates from before I was archiving my work carefully, so it’s all I’ve got.

                                                                                       

THE MORNING WAS MISTY AND COLD as only spring in Albany can be. I stared down at State Street from my grimy office window wondering how the greenery could look so gray and decided that this might finally be the year I would have to clean the soot from the panes.

Van Rensselaer Manor,
as painted by Thomas Cole in 1841

The intercom buzzed. “There is a man here to see you,” came my secretary’s voice. “A Mr. Stimson.”

I gave her my devil-may-care rumble, although I know she is never impressed. “Send him in.”

Robbe Stimson was a tall, lanky fellow with sandy hair, tinted eyeglasses and a big, broad smile, a country gentleman in jeans and corduroy jacket. His Tennessee Walking Horse was probably parked outside.

“A detective’s office right out of Raymond Chandler,” he said, examining my dingy room with amusement.

“Mysteries are a sort of hobby of mine,” I replied, trying to sound like I’d breakfasted on whisky.

Getting a Rise

ALONGSIDE ITS INCREDIBLE RESOURCE of helpful information, the internet also has brought us the scourge of YouTube how-to- videos. This is not to say that I haven’t found many of them useful; I have. But the useful ones tend to be simple, self-produced video essays with a comprehensible presenter who didn’t begin by intoning, “Hey, guys,” and who saw merit in the use of a tripod.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Now we’re bombarded with overproduced videos featuring overexplanatory hosts, overdoing it at attempts at humor while overusing all available technical devices. And in no realm is this worse than in the matter of the cooking video.

I’m learning to make sourdough bread. I like to experiment in the kitchen, and this is an item that gives me plenty of room to do so. Previous attempts at breadmaking have been woeful – enough so that I will cop to using a bread machine, which I wrote about here – and sourdough has always seemed the most elusive of missions.

I was intimidated, right off the bat, by the concept of making a starter. It seemed as if it would take forever even as I threw out, day after day, half of whatever it was I had brewing. So I didn’t give it much thought until my daughter, a Manhattan resident, announced that she had started a starter, would be bringing it to my house on a recent trip, and expected oven access.

And I have to say that the loaves she turned out were pretty impressive. She wasn’t happy with the “crumb,” which is the inside texture. The flavor was there, but the loaves seemed dense. She left me a little starter and a lot to think about.

1999: The Year Ahead

Crystal Ball Dept.: O, those prognotications of the year ahead! They fade so easily that by the time summer arrives we’ve usually forgotten whatever it was we expected. Unless you commit those predictions to print, as I did at the end of 1998. Of course, this was also a convenient way to weasel out of having to trek through snow to review a restaurant.

                                                                                          

THE BUSINESS OF REVIEWING RESTAURANTS got its own book-length treatment in Dining Out, by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, in which leading critics, chefs, and other restaurant people held forth. How many visits are appropriate? How much does the food figure into the final assessment? And what the hell is with those stars?

Look for this book – it came out last year from publisher John Wiley – for a thought-provoking examination of a subject that’s obviously dear to my heart. But don’t look for my comments within. We review drudges in the not-so-major markets didn’t make the cut.

After all, I’m like many others who file a review each week in that I get reimbursed for one visit only. Would it be fairer to the restaurant to show up three or more times? Probably. If things go really wrong during my visit, I have to figure out what caused the problems and guess whether it’s unique or ongoing. And if my experience is transcendent, I might raise your expectations to an unrealistic height.

Last week we looked at 1998's best. Let’s start the year with a glance ahead, along with some explanation of what goes into a Metroland restaurant review.

Ragging Annie

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: I reproduced in these e-pages an opinion piece I wrote in 1984 after the premiere of a Raggedy-Ann musical inspired an Albany-area mom to get her panties in a bunch, as she complained that “there were portrayals of gruesome characters, a mother deserting her child, death and even suicide.” In popular entertainment? Can you imagine? Although I wasn’t won over by the musical itself, I saw nothing in it to warrant this woman’s whining. You can read my editorial here; below is my review; below that, a preview piece that ran the week before.

                                                                                    

DERIVING A FULLY-STAGED musical fairy tale out of the classic stories of “Raggedy Ann” seemed like such a good idea that the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts has done it twice, the most recent attempt a revamping of last year’s unsuccessful staging.

With a new book by a different playwright – in this case, the renowned William Gibson – and a revised score and lyrics by Joe Raposo, a wholly new show has emerged, with a completely different thrust: Gibson has wisely put the idea of making this a no-holds-barred fairy tale to the forefront, and the result is a vivid dream-cum-nightmare in which dolls come to life, a bed floats and flies and a young girl undergoes a series of confrontations with problems that are literally killing her during her waking hours.

As a starting point, Gibson borrowed the real-life fact that Raggedy Ann’s creator, Johnny Gruelle, invented the stories for his sickly daughter, Marcella. It is Marcella who becomes the focus of the show; a trio of doctors cannot diagnose her malaise, and her dipsomaniacal father tries to soothe her with a rag doll, to which he affixes a heart.

Powerless Cooking

From the Food Vault Dept.: We’re still in early March, so don’t be fooled by the melting snow. It’s only clearing a space for what’s bound to surprise us before the month is out. Here’s a piece I wrote during the waning months of Metroland to discuss the business of stocking up for a snowstorm – or even, if you want to fresh reason to panic – a pandemic.

                                                                                

I HIT THE SUPERMARKET ON MONDAY. I wasn’t sure that I needed anything more to get me through the predicted apocalypse, but I felt reluctant to miss a chance to surge through the crowded aisles among my panicky neighbors.

Grim were their miens as they whipped their heads from side to side, studying the cheerful abundance as if they’d never seen such foodstocks before. And then a tremble, and then a pounce! – and a canister of raisins gets snagged as surely as a cat grabs hold of a vole.

Soon enough I took my place at the end of a long, winding line to the checkout register, my view so obscured by these towers of comestibles before me that I was unable to mark my progress. No sense of we’re-in-this-together lifted our spirits, and, as we now know, no actual disaster arrived to maroon us.

Émigré Debut

From the Concert Vault Dept.: My stint as a classical-music reviewer began after I submitted samples to all the area newspapers, correctly conjecturing that there was little competition in this field – and it was back in a time when the periodicals thought it part of their missions to cover the classical-concert scene. Here’s the second piece I wrote for the Schenectady Gazette. I’m delighted to report that Victoria Mullova is still going strong, and still championing the music of Prokofiev.

                                                                                       

VICTORIA MULLOVA ATTRACTED MUCH PUBLICITY last summer when she left her luggage and Soviet-owned violin in her hotel room and defected from Finland to the American Embassy in Sweden.

Victoria Mullova, shortly after
her arrival in the U.S.

Upon her arrival in the U.S., she announced her affection for this country and its attractions, particularly baseball.

Any suspicion that the young violinist’s art may have suffered from so many distractions was swept aside last night, as Mullova made a triumphant East Coast debut in Troy Music Hall.

Later in the evening, following a standing ovation, Mullova was presented with a violin from the collection of Troy resident Henry Ainsworth (he is making a gift of two instruments, one of which was given to her during the concert). Assemblyman Neil Kelleher made the presentation with a speech worthy of an Academy Awards ceremony.

The program was well-chosen not only to demonstrate her considerable talent but also to attract and please an audience. Opening with Bach’s Partita No. 1 for violin solo (one of the least-played of his six unaccompanied sonatas), she displayed a rich, warm tone and fine sensibility to baroque interpretation.