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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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CD

November 1, 2012 by Terry Teachout

A Sonata Recital by Joseph Szigeti and Béla Bartók. Recorded live at the Library of Congress in 1940, this concert features the most interesting violinist of the twentieth century, accompanied by one of the greatest composers of all time. Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, Debussy’s G Minor Sonata, and Bartók’s own First Rhapsody and Second Sonata are all played with jaw-dropping spontaneity and individuality. The sound is only fair, but who cares? That this performance was recorded for posterity is a blessing (TT).

REVIVING SIDNEY BECHET

November 1, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“The musical score for Woody Allen’s unexpected 2011 hit, ‘Midnight in Paris,’ features songs intended, like the film itself, to evoke the spirit of the City of Lights in the 1920s. The musical performance that opens the movie is a jazz recording called ‘Si tu vois ma mère.’ It dates not from the interwar years but was instead cut in 1952 by a soprano saxophonist whose sound–huge, nasal, and piercing, with a startlingly wide vibrato–is as atypical of jazz as the French-flavored song itself. ‘Si tu vois ma mère’ (‘If you see my mother’) delights everyone who hears it, and the sublime mood in which it drenches ‘Midnight in Paris’ was partly responsible for the movie’s surprising success…”

TT: So you want to see a show?

November 1, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.


BROADWAY:

• Bring It On (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• The Freedom of the City (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 25, reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 6, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

November 1, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Jealousy lasts forever. Bad news for the young.”
Iris Murdoch, The Good Apprentice (courtesy of Levi Stahl)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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