Review

Book Review: “The Hired Man” — A Powerful Novel about the Aftermath of War

November 27, 2013
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Aminatta Forna has given us a novel that belies its modest premise, a book about how the human mind protects itself by not knowing, yet sometimes, due to unexpected circumstances, comes to terms with what it thought it could not.

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Concert Review: Wayne Shorter’s 80th Birthday Celebration — A Memorable Bash

November 26, 2013
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One doesn’t come away from a Wayne Shorter Quartet performance merely raving about individual accomplishments: the set on Sunday night never felt like just a compelling sequence of solos.

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Poetry Review: The Unexpected Compassion of German Poet Gottfried Benn

November 25, 2013
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A collection of poems and essays by the admired German poet Gottfried Benn, who, because of his brief association with Nazism, has been absent from our mainstream, non-specialized, English-language view of modern German poetry.

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Theater Review: “The Cocktail Hour” — A Pick-Me-Up for Waning WASPS

November 25, 2013
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With the 1% rapidly vacuuming up the resources of the upper and middle classes, A.R. Gurney’s comic vision of the tipsy idle rich, shorn of cares and criminality, floats completely free of reality.

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Fuse Concert Review: Pianist Fred Hersch and Guitarist Julian Lage — A Sublime Duo

November 23, 2013
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The set was thrilling, full of the most intelligent byplay, and consistently songful. Chamber music doesn’t get any better than this.

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Fuse Film Review: The “Hunger Games” Sequel — Better Than The First Time Around

November 22, 2013
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Jennifer Lawrence has blossomed into a charismatic screen presence in her gala return as Katniss, the beloved bow-and-arrow heroine of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

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Classical Music CD Reviews: Lang Lang plays Prokofiev and Bartók (Sony Classical), Philadelphia Orchestra plays Stravinsky (Deutsche Grammophon)

November 21, 2013
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So we’ve got a mixed bag. If you get this Lang Lang disc, it should be for the Bartók, but not the Prokofiev: as things stand, the competition there simply blows Lang out of the water.

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Classical Music CD Reviews: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Early Classical Opera

November 20, 2013
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Two discs released by Harmonia Mundi benefit from the dramatic flair of conductor René Jacobs.

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Rock Album Review: Beady Eye — “BE” Good?

November 19, 2013
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At its best, “BE” is an adventurous album, which automatically makes it an improvement over Beady Eye’s 2011 debut.

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Dance Review: The Stephen Petronio Company — Creating Fascinating Structures of Dance

November 17, 2013
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I was mesmerized by the coherence of the shifting patterns, their ideas so clearly presented, even though the work by no means provided more than a suggestion of a story.

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