Word: cantatas
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Andy Lee's "Bach and the Beatles" is a world premiere, of sorts -- its pieces have been performed, but never before staged. "Staging" Bach cantatas and Beatle hits is not as easy as it sounds. It means keeping two dozen bodies onstage through the plotless wanderings of the Peasant Cantata looking as if they belong there, and it means dramatizing John Lennon's wonderful language without distorting it beyond recognition. And -- considering that he snuck this ambitious premiere into a House dining room -- director Ken McBain has managed something of a coup...
Bach comes first and sets the stage; the singers keep the same costumes for the Beatle cantatas, which only heightens the feeling that parts of the program's halves are completely interchangeable. The Peasant Cantata's chorus -- which actually does not sing at all -- is well handled as a pantomiming backdrop to the two singers. The drinking scenes are especially colorful...
Baritone Tom Weber, who looks more like a burgher-meister than a peasant, sings freely and clearly although without much range of emotion. Spring Fairbank sings the soprano in both cantatas smoothly and precisely. She is especially fine in the Coffee Cantata, which has a real plot, and a ridiculous one at that; Miss Fairbank milks almost as many laughs from her coffee aria as Richard Fermin does later from the Beatles. James Jones as Schlendrian has a wonderful voice, but his over-acting was almost painful by the time the cantata ended...
...highly regarded Michael Field Cooking School. He is the consulting editor for LIFE'S forthcoming 16-volume series, Foods of the World. An uncompromising traditionalist, Field maintains that "cooks are not creative; they're simply brilliant technicians." Comparing the pianist's task of illuminating a Bach cantata with the task of a cook, he says: "You don't illuminate a souffle-it either rises or it doesn...
MOZART: EXSULTATE, JUBILATE (Seraphim). Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in a performance that has become a collector's item in the years since it was first released in 1954. Her hallelujahs are triumphant in the Mozart motet and then shower forth brilliantly again in the Bach cantata, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen...