Of muses, musicians and monsters

Sundown in an old graveyard. Sparrows in the ancient acacias chirping the waning light away. And before the moss-draped chapel, soprano Rachelle Gerodias and pianist Najib Ismail holding their listeners enthralled with German lieder and Filipino art songs.

This Friday evening, this recital at Paco Park is presented by the National Parks Development Committee, the National Broadcasting Network and the German Embassy, with host Thea Perez annotating the program.

Young Artists in Focus features songs by Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Richard Strauss, Santiago, Peña and Abelardo.

How soulfully Rachelle renders each song! The anguish of a maiden abandoned by her lover in Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, the silent rapture of lovers gazing at each others’ eyes in Morgen, the plea of the river nymph in Mutya ng Pasig – these and more the soprano renders with intensity of feeling and beauty of tone.

Rachelle could not have chosen a better encore than Schubert’s apostrophe to music:

Oh blessed art, how often in dark hours

When the savage ring of life tightens around me

Have you kindle warm love in my heart,

Have transported me to a better world!

The joy of music is also much in abundance in the presentation at the CCP Main Theater of An Evening with the Swiss Piano Trio, an offering of the CCP in cooperation with the Embassy of Switzerland. Three young musicians make up the ensemble: Violinist Angela Golubeva, cellist Sebastien Singer and pianist Martin Lucas Staub.

Their repertoire includes three compositions representing three historical styles: Classical, contemporary that looks back to the Middle Ages and nationalistic-romantic.

In their reading of Beethoven’s Piano Trio in C minor, op. 1 No. 3, the Swiss Piano Trio evinces their technical control and a mastery of classical formality that in this particular composer, at moments of intense emotion, bursts unexpectedly into rebellion to tradition. Of particular interest to the young listener not familiar with musical forms is the second movement, Andante cantabile, a set of five variations that the composer weaves into an intricate tonal fabric of increasing complexity, which the trio plays with graceful ease.

Composed especially for the Swiss Piano Trio by Martin Wettstein is Mystical Dances, a musical journey into the inscape of soul as inspired by the medieval mystic, Mechthild von Magdeburg. An eclectic piece in four movements that borrows musical idiom from the past, like the medieval drone here reproduced by the cello, it is a mind-bending exercise into a region of "flowing light," of "dew on the flower."

The concert concludes with Dvorak’s Piano Trio in F minor, op. 65, a work that breathes with the passion of the Slavic spirit and throbs with the rhythms of a gypsy’s heart, all of which the ensemble from the icy north serves with the fiery souls of musicians totally committed to their art.

An outrageously funny show is that presented by the CCP and the British Council Philippines showcasing the enormous multifaceted talent of British actress Linda Marlowe – No Fear! In celebration of Women’s Month, this artist focuses on the power and the state of her sex as she weaves the strands of monologue, mime and music into a unique theatrical tapestry, in her one-woman show. In a span of two hours, she metamorphoses into "a daring divorcee, raunchy rock-chick, undercover operator, manic mother and professional free spirit as she looks back from the viewpoint of the world’s oldest circus artist performing a high-wire act on the eve of her 100th birthday." Running the gauntlet from low comedy to high drama? It’s peanuts for wonder woman Linda Marlowe!

Another outstanding performer is American cellist John Walz, the soloist in the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra concert series VII, Silenced Voices: Of Peace and Protest. The centerpiece of this concert is Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hebraique for Cello and Orchestra, an orchestral panoramic fresco of gargantuan scale that projects in sharp relief the plaintive lamentation of the cello, its soulful strains glowing in triumph or sinking dark with despair.

Maestro Eugene Castillo and the PPO provide Walz granitic support in their account of Bloch’s rhapsody that it almost casts into the shade the opening number of the concert, Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, and the closing piece, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, op. 100, both of which receive respectable treatment from the maestro and the ensemble.

And then, there’s Repertory Philippines and the City of Makati’s spine-tingling, rib-tickling, eye-popping musical comedy, Little Shop of Horrors at the Globe Theater Onstage Greenbelt 1. Says author Howard Ashman of his satire, that it pokes fun at many things: "Science fiction, B-movies, musical comedy itself, and even the Faust legend."

The last business that one should set up in New York’s most depressed area is a flower shop, which is what the Skid Row Flower Shop is. The proprietor, Mushnik (Robbie Guevara), wants to throw the towel and close shop, but his young sales clerk, Seymour (Niccolo Manahan; alternate: Joel Trinidad), has an idea for attracting customers. He wants to display on the shop window a weird-looking plant he had found in a Chinaman’s store during a solar eclipse. The plant does attract customers other than the derelicts of the district, much to the joy of everyone including the nerd’s secret love, fellow clerk, blonde bimbo Audrey (Liesl Batucan; alternate: Ana Abad Santos-Bitong), who is black and blue from being beaten up by her sadistic boyfriend, biker-dentist Orin (Jeremy Domingo; alternate: Ralion Alonso).

Mushnik adopts his clerk and makes him his business partner. Seymour christens his plant Audrey II (manipulated by Arnel Carrion; voice by Raul Montesa) after his crush. The flower business blooms just as the carnivorous Audrey II grows and grows and grows after the dentist, the shop owner and even Audrey vanish mysteriously.

Goodness gracious! The plant look likes a giant tumescent phallus lusting after fresh meat!

Director Baby Barredo and her artistic and technical staff deserve three cheers for this gory show. The cast including the Neo-Greek chorus (Amparo Sietereales, Myrene Hernandez, Marisse Borlaza) deserves to be cheered six times. For his multiple role as Orin, Bernstein, Snip, Luce and everyone else, Domingo deserves to be tossed up in a blanket. As for Liesl, who reveals she can warble a tune as soulfully as she does Somewhere that’s Green, she can begin another career as a recording artist.

And as for that predatory plant, Audrey II – for devouring Liesl alive – the monster ought to be dragged to a Japanese gardener and shrunk into a cute little bonsai, so there!

* * *

For comments, reactions and invitations, send e-mail to jessqcruz@hotmail.com.