Joseph Karl Stieler: Beethoven mit der Missa solemnis Ölgemälde, 1819. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Atlanta residents have the all-too-rare opportunity to catch a pair of live performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Op. 123) with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on  January 20 and 22 (Thursday and Saturday). Donald Runnicles is conducting with with the principle soloists Christine Brewer (Soprano), Karen Cargill (Mezzo-Soprano), Thomas Cooley (Tenor) and Eric Owens (Bass-Baritone). If you have not seen this work live, it can be an overwhelming experience.

Beethoven considered this work to be his greatest, and I’m inclined to agree. The choral writing is astounding, especially the two lengthy, virtuosic fugues that cap the Gloria and the Credo. While the Mass as a whole is monumental in scope, it also has passages of sublime lyricism (the entire Benedictus) and ethereal beauty (the Credo’s Et Incarnatus Est). The latter passage, which is in the Lydian mode, also illustrates how Beethoven closely studied Renaissance and Baroque music while composing this radically innovative work.

Because the Mass is so long and complex, it benefits greatly from multiple listenings. To my mind, the three most successful recent recordings are by John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe and James Levine. Gardiner’s period instrument recording with the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir is often regarded as the best in the catalog. I like the transparency of texture that Gardiner brings with his relatively smaller orchestral and choral forces. The soloists are uniformly excellent, and I think his brisk tempi are very much on the mark. Herreweghe takes a similar approach with the Ghent Collegium Vocale and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, but benefits from the deep spiritual conviction that the conductor and his ensemble bring to the work. While in general I favor the faster tempi that Gardiner and Herreweghe take, I do think there’s a limit to how far this approach can go; David Zinman’s recording with the Zurich Tonalle Orchestra features dazzling performances, but at times it is simply too rushed for the music to have the spiritual impact that Beethoven intended.

James Levine’s live recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, Leipziger Rundfunkchor and Swedish Radio Chorus is my personal favorite of the numerous recordings with a conventionally-sized (large) orchestra and chorus. The soloists (Cheryl Studer, Jessye Norman, Placido Domingo and Kurt Moll) are decidedly operatic, but I think they blend well and one could argue that such an operatic style is legitimate here. The chorus is also extremely impressive, even thrilling in places. One aspect I like about this recording in particular is that despite the large forces, it maintains an effective balance between the orchestra, chorus, soloists and organ–something which is apparently difficult to pull off. You can hear a number of details which often get buried elsewhere. Levine’s tempi are broader than Gardiner’s and Herreweghe’s but not unduly so, and he brings considerable vitality to the aforementioned fugues.

Whichever recordings you choose, this is one work that needs to be heard live for its full impact.

"Mistress X - Downtown Las Vegas, 2009" Laurenn McCubbin, 2009

Laurenn McCubbin, a professional graphic artist and MFA student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is developing an ambitious performance and gallery show entitled Speaking to Las Vegas in the Language of Las Vegas. The gallery show is scheduled to open in February 2010. Click here for more details.

Laurenn describes the project as follows: “This is going to be an art installation that combines sculptural elements, performance, audio, video, photo documentation, and illustrated portraits of Las Vegas sex workers. The purpose of this show is to investigate the connections between the Las Vegas economy & the legal & illegal sex work that happens there.” Among other things, Laurenn’s project will entail creating her own “hooker cards”–those full color escort service cards that men pass out on the Strip–directing interested parties to a phone number and website which Laurenn is creating beforehand. Thanks to Gary Tognetti for bringing this show to my attention. It’s a shame I’ll be back in Atlanta at that time, because I would have loved to see it.

I have a question for all you Vegas natives: when did “hooker cards” first make their appearance on the Strip? In the Seventies I remember seeing the newspaper dispensers with free black-and-white tabloids advertising escort services, but I don’t recall the cards. Those must have started in the Eighties or Nineties.

Delphine Seyrig as Jeanne Dielman. Courtesy Paradise Films.

A new 35mm print of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)–an avant-garde cult hit about a housewife keeping a very tight schedule–is showing this Friday, October 23, 7:00 p.m. at Emory University, in White Hall 205. The running time is 200 minutes. Admission is free. For more details see Andy Ditzler’s Film Love.

I have to confess that I’ve never seen Jeanne Dielman, though it is finally available on DVD from the Criterion Collection. I’ve been waiting instead to see a good 35mm print, since what I’ve read so far indicates that this is one film which demands the finely rendered visual texture and sense of space that only a theatrical presentation can provide.

If you haven’t seen any of Chantal Akerman’s films, her Seventies work is fascinating as an extreme example of the long-take aesthetic. Individual shots often run for several minutes without a cut, unfolding in real time while very little seems to happen story-wise. It’s a calculated challenge to the viewer, but the cumulative effect can be surprisingly moving, especially in News From Home (1977) and Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978).
Criterion is putting out an Eclipse set of Akerman’s other Seventies films in January 2010.

In general, there seem to be quite a few interesting films coming out of Turkey in recent years. Probably the best known figure internationally is Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who has won numerous festival awards for his art-house films Distant (2002), Climates (2006) and Three Monkeys (2008). He’s a major practitioner of the long shot/long take aesthetic associated with directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Chantal Akerman. His treatment of emotional isolation (or “alienation,” if you will) is often compared to Michelangelo Antonioni, though in Distant, the one film of his that I’ve seen, there’s also a great deal of humor in the film’s observation of everyday life. (To be fair, Antonioni also had a sense of humor.) Another new Turkish director, Özer Kiziltan, explores the conflict between religious faith and modernity in Takva (2006), which received U.S. distribution on DVD last year. A third figure worth looking at is the Turkish-born Italian director Ferzan Özpetek, known for films such Steam: the Turkish Bath and Facing Windows; I like his sympathetic, open-minded treatment of the complications of human sexuality.