ALEXANDER NEVSKY
Readers’ Opinions
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center
New Yorkers looking for a film to see tonight should head to Avery Fisher Hall. Yes, the home of the New York Philharmonic has been temporarily turned into a movie house to present screenings of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 epic, “Alexander Nevsky.”
This landmark of Russian cinema was a joint project between the director and Prokofiev, whose moody and gripping score for orchestra and chorus is being performed live by the Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists, conducted by the young Chinese dynamo Xian Zhang. At Thursday night’s performance, the coordination between the music and the film, projected onto a large screen above the orchestra, seemed flawless.
Weirdly, Stalin played a pivotal role in the creation of this film. At the time, Nazi Germany was a looming threat to the Soviets. To fortify popular sentiment against the Germans, Soviet officials asked Eisenstein to make a film commemorating the victory of the Russian prince Alexander Nevsky over the marauding Knights of the Teutonic Order from Germany in 1242.
The original optical sound track used a studio-sized orchestra and apparently sounds terrible. Though this 110-minute film has many scenes with spoken dialogue, in long stretches Prokofiev’s music accompanies silent scenes of landscapes, street life in medieval Russian cities and the climactic cast-of-thousands battle sequence.
While hearing the lush orchestra and chorus intrude, in a sense, on the film was sometimes jarring, over all it was a thrill to experience the music, best known as a concert suite, in its original context, especially in the brilliant, colorful and moody performance that Ms. Zhang conducted. Avoiding typical battle-movie bombast, Prokofiev taps into the bleakness of the story with muted and pensive music. There is a searing episode when the Teutonic Knights, who have occupied the city of Pskov, brutalize the townspeople, even tossing shrieking, naked children into bonfires. Prokofiev’s music here is mournful and dark, with pleading strings and hymnal harmonies.
The film itself is stunning. The ruggedly handsome actor Nikolai Cherkassov, who plays Alexander, exudes calm authority. The battle scene when the German knights in armor and on horseback are defeated by the ragtag Russian foot soldiers is like an intricate choreography of thrusting spears and intertwined bodies.
Also striking is Prokofiev’s bumptious music for two Russian soldiers, one grim and stalwart, the other big and goofy, who compete for the love of the maiden Olga but wind up bonding in battle. The mezzo-soprano Meredith Arwady gave a poignant performance of the despondent song of the maiden, left behind to wonder how her endearing suitors are surviving war. And Ms. Zhang, the Philharmonic’s associate conductor, seems a bigger talent with every appearance. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
“Alexander Nevsky” will be presented again tonight at Avery Fisher Hall, (212) 721-6500.
VERONIKA POVILIONIENE
Thalia Theater
Songs once heard while women harvested grain needed no amplification to fill a small theater on Thursday. At the Thalia the World Music Institute presented the New York debut of Veronika Povilioniene, a traditionalist singer who is one of Lithuania’s most celebrated musicians and folk music researchers.
Ms. Povilioniene has collected and preserved music that not only is endangered by modernization — tractors don’t sing — but has also bound together a national identity. Lithuania, along with its adjoining Baltic states Latvia and Estonia, broke from the Soviet Union as the 1990’s began in what is called the Singing Revolution. Its citizens affirmed a local heritage and defied Russian domination by gathering nonviolently to sing, sometimes in the face of Soviet troops.
With her hair wrapped in a traditional white wimple, Ms. Povilioniene looked like a kindly mother superior and sang in a voice that embodied travail, endurance and compassion. She was joined by Blezdinga, a group she assembled in 1991, which looked like an extended family: a husband and wife with their young son and daughter, plus two male singers who also played flutes, percussion and accordion.
Their concert gathered songs that were originally part of ordinary life, in a survey from a culture that has songs for every time of day, season and occasion. Songs of love, labor, weddings and war looked back to Lithuania’s agrarian past and its turbulent history. Between songs, a translator described a disappearing rural existence in which women farmed from dawn to sunset alongside men, singing work songs that were also about romance.
