Word: pulcinellas
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Last week, to open its fall Manhattan season at City Center, the Jeffrey company restaged the original 1920 Ballets Russes production of Pulcinella...
Clearly a lot of TLC went into the staging of Pulcinella, but to uncertain effect. Rouben Ter-Arutunian has tastefully re-created Picasso's costumes and his imposing backdrop-a blue-gray cubist evocation of a moonlit street in 18th century Naples. The vital young Jeffrey dancers, moreover, prance through the one-act ballet as if caught up in a marathon tarantella. But breathing life into this Pulcinella is rather like trying to revive a dead tree by gluing fallen leaves back onto its limbs...
...play like the BSO" were Vigeland's instructions to his orchestra before the program. And they did not. Where a certain other Boston ensemble played through Stravnisky last week as though they hated every minute of it, the Bach Society was alive with enthusiasm for Pulcinella. The piece represents the beginning of twentieth-century musical neoclassicism. Borrowing from Pergolesi, Stravinsky fools with the theme throughout, always setting off the expected (as implied by classical harmonies) against his own turn of phrase...
...highly regular resolution. More lighthearted is the duet between trombone and double bass just before the final trio. The two glissandi in the trombone theme are terribly funny and the audience appreciated it. In general, the orchestral playing was of consistently high calibre, belying the technical difficulties of Pulcinella...
...program of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wolf. While the HRO has abolished soloists, the Bach Society will use them in every program. A special American Music concert will feature student compositions. But the real "jump off the deep end" (in Vigeland's words) will be a complete Stravinsky Pulcinella in January...