Music in Review

MUSICIANS FROM MARLBORO


Readers’ Opinions

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

Maurizio Pollini played Karlheinz Stockhausen and Beethoven Friday.

When the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont first sent its performers on tour under the Musicians From Marlboro banner in 1965, one of the participants was the violinist Arnold Steinhardt. A year earlier, Mr. Steinhardt had co-founded the Guarneri String Quartet, now one of chamber music’s most enduring ensembles. The quartet regularly plays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but when Mr. Steinhardt appeared there on Friday night, it was as mentor to a current crop of young Marlboro musicians.

Mr. Steinhardt played second violin in a memorable account of ’s String Quartet No. 8. Playing first violin, the position that carries much of the narrative impetus in this moody, occasionally tormented piece of musical autobiography, was Lily Francis, whose graceful solo lines conveyed a poignant fragility. The violist Yu Jin and the cellist Wendy Law, both accomplished, powerful players, seemed to relish the work’s more obsessive passages.

By comparison, Dvorak’s Piano Quartet in E flat was a sunny frolic. Mr. Steinhardt, Ms. Jin and Ms. Law were joined by the pianist Anna Polonsky, a chamber musician of exceptional refinement. Compared with the Shostakovich, this was slightly rough-hewn. Still, telling details emerged: Ms. Law’s surpassingly sweet solos in the second movement, Ms. Polonsky’s rollicking dulcimer evocations in the third, Ms. Jim’s ardent lines in the finale, Mr. Steinhardt’s dignified contributions throughout.

’s Piano Trio in G (K. 496), which opened the concert, provided further evidence of Ms. Polonsky’s appealing touch and compelling interpretive skills. STEVE SMITH

AMERICAN STRING QUARTET Weill Recital Hall

Looking back was the theme of Friday’s Walter W. Naumburg Foundation concert at Weill Recital Hall — part of a series celebrating past winners of its prestigious prize. And the American String Quartet, which won in 1974, did just that.

First, it looked back to Alban Berg’s Op. 3 quartet, mellow and organic, playing with a dark throatiness from the opening crunchy second violin line, like a footstep in dead leaves: each phrase subtle, reined in, refracted through all the instruments to yield ever new patterns, like colored beads in a kaleidoscope.

Then it looked to the recent past with an emotional “Triptych” written about 9/11 by Robert Sirota, president of the . It is a challenge, today, to convey chaos in a tonal language: the first movement, illustrating the fall of the towers, struggled to go beyond agitation, rising and falling from long-held notes, dying away, that sought to hold together the dispersing clouds of music. The second movement was a sorrowful meditation, while the third sought to make peace with a kind of lullaby that evanesced in fillips of ascending notes.

For the Schubert C major quintet the group looked back to its original cellist, David Geber, who after a wild and slightly muddy first movement coalesced with the others into a single, remarkable organ of sound. Peter Winograd’s first violin sent out questioning phrases while the other players steadily built in intensity; when the phrases returned they had clearly been answered, but the intensity continued to build for the remainder of an edge-of-the-seat performance. ANNE MIDGETTE

MAURIZIO POLLINI

Some people live faster than others. Schubert’s life, it can be argued, was not tragically short but was lived at high velocity. Then there is Maurizio Pollini, who plays piano music at such speed that we can only stand by the roadside and try to catch glimpses of it whizzing past. Elegant, thoughtful and vastly cultured, Mr. Pollini seems to exist in a time continuum all his own. I am sure he hears his own playing with perfect clarity. I wish I could keep up with him.

Listeners at Carnegie Hall on Friday had rare opportunities to catch their breath. One was at the start, in the Stockhausen Klavier stücke Nos. VII and VIII. The first is really about silence, with isolated strokes on the piano acting as boundary markers subdividing the empty spaces. The second speaks a rhapsodic Romantic language but with violent contrasts of bass and treble and in a language removed from the past.

Those wanting to make an early evening of it were probably grateful for the Schumann “Kreisleriana” that came after. When asked by the music, Mr. Pollini can ruminate and linger with great beauty. Elsewhere, he takes the “very” and “extremely” of movements marked “extremely agitated,” “very excited,” “very lively” and “very quick” (I translate from the German) at their word. 1 /n /n

Pretty Woman (1990) - DVD Review

While trying to find his Beverly Hills hotel, a tycoon corporate raider, Edward Lewis, played by Richard Gere, accidently meets Vivian Ward, a Hollywood prostitute. Vivian Ward, played by Julia Roberts, is hired by Edward Lewis as a date for a whole week.

Julia Roberts portrays Vivian Ward brilliantly as a prostitute suddenly taken into the world of the ultra rich where anything you could desire is just a call away. Normally, she has been able to get just enough clients to survive with her drug-using roommate. Since Vivian does not even have a high school diploma, she chose prostitution as the only higher paying alternative to working in fast food restaurants.

Now, Vivian is staying in a hotel suite that has a bathroom about as big as her whole apartment and an unlimited number of people to wait on her. As a date for Edward Lewis, she is swept up in the snobbish, Hollywood culture on Rodeo Drive. After being asked to leave an exclusive boutique, Vivian is desperate to learn how to dress and eat at a high class restaurant. She finds a sympathetic hotel manager at the Beverly Hills Hotel who has his own boutique manager work with Vivian personally from hair to shoes, giving her a stunning and elegant appearance.

Both Edward Lewis and Vivian Ward come from extreme ends of society and could not be more different. However, they do share one thing in common; they both use their clients in a cold, unemotional manner. But later on, what begins as a business contract quickly evolves into to much, much more.

Richard Gere is very convincing as Edward Lewis, showing a cool, calculating manner, totally involved in winning his business deals. He spends almost all day and night on the phone, planning his next move and meeting with his lawyer, never taking a day off. But that changes when Vivian enters the picture.

Over the week, the poor prostitute escorts the rich industrialist to a client dinner, a polo game, and is flown on his private jet to San Francisco to hear an opera for the first time. As can be expected, there are a few twists and turns when things do not go smoothly at each of these events, causing both Vivian and Edward to reconsider who they are and what they should be doing in their lives.

This movie is a delightful romance that will have you guessing what will happen next with this bizarre mix of these two fascinating people.

Pretty Woman is rated R. Parents need to know that this film contains adult themes, strong sexual references, and sexual imagery.