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Classical Music Sampler: March 2012

March 3, 2012
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This month I am simply listing concerts I expect will be great. My pick of the month is the Boston debut of a new Flute, Viola, and Harp trio, starring instrumental superstars Marina Piccinini, Kim Kashkashian, and Sivan Magen.

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Theater Review: “Monsters!” — A Pleasant Musical about Midlife Crisis

March 2, 2012
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The musical wheels out well-trodden jokes about growing old while supplying all the usual greeting card life lessons (live each moment as if it were your last!).

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Theater Review: Theatrical Time Machines — Wild Swans and Time of My Life

March 2, 2012
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Both productions play around with chronology in order to show the dark side of history, to unmask convenient illusions of social or personal well-being by juxtaposing the myopia of the past with the payback of the future.

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Fuse Theater Interview: Ken Cheeseman on “Bakersfield Mist”

March 1, 2012
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We’re in this virtual reality age now, asking new questions about what art is. What has true meaning and what doesn’t?

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Concert Review: Alexander Baille and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra/Benjamin Zander at Sanders Theater

March 1, 2012
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The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra handled Lutosławski’s aleatoric textures with confidence, though the all-important brass interruptions felt more hesitant than decisive, making the work’s narrative quality rather episodic as opposed to smoothly flowing.

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Theater Interview: Viva August Strindberg — The Great Swedish Modernist

February 29, 2012
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August Strindberg’s work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It’s a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams — have openly acknowledged their debts to Strindberg.

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Fiction Review: “So There!” — Nicole Louise Reid’s Poetic Chick Lit

February 28, 2012
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“So There!” comes off as a poetic species of chick lit, its female characters desperate to break deadly dull routines, longing for more (not even sure what), but generally expecting the doorway to redemption —- a passage figuratively filled with light in their imaginations -— to be a man.

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Book Review: Annotating Jane — An Illuminating New Edition of Austen’s Persuasion

February 28, 2012
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This invaluable addition to the Austen literature offers two for the price of one: a beautifully designed and printed edition of the novel many consider her best and a parallel critical commentary that deepens our understanding and opens up a rich, textured view of her world and time.

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Book Review: “Behind the Beautiful Forevers”

February 26, 2012
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The people of Annawadi live in conditions so bleak that “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” evoked, for one Indian reviewer, Primo Levi’s depiction of life in concentration camps.

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Concert Review: Beethoven’s Missa solemnis at Symphony Hall

February 26, 2012
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John Oliver, director of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, deserves the thanks of all involved for his willingness to take on this unenviable assignment, as well as credit for ensuring that the performance didn’t fall off the tracks.

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