Vasily Petrenko talks to Edward Seckerson about his latest Shostakovich recording
The latest instalment in Vasily Petrenko’s highly acclaimed cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies offers a telling flashback to the composer’s youth. Symphony No.1 -his sensational symphonic debut- is, according to Petrenko, a whistle-stop tour through revolutionary Petrograd with Shostakovich donning the masks of comedy and tragedy in practical pursuit of his already highly developed sense of irony. As Petrenko explains to Edward Seckerson, the really big influence here is Stravinsky’s Petrushka, (as witness the devilishly flashy solo piano part) and there is something of the feel of a silent movie in the flickering imagery. Symphony No.3 “The First of May” offers a rather more prescribed view of the Revolution with its brassy choral paean redolent of those striking propaganda posters.
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Fresh AirWhy Libya Matters To The Middle East's Future
Story: The future of Libya has become a key part in the rapidly changing transformation of the Arab world. On today's Fresh Air, political scientist Marc Lynch explains why the United States and its allies decided to intervene — and what's at stake for each side.
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Entitled Opinions
Italian Cinema - Sarah Carey
Sarah Carey specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century Italian literature, visual culture and cinema. She received her B.A. from Stanford University in 2002, her M.A. from UCLA in 2007, and her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2010. Her current book project analyzes how photography has met with artistic and literary aspirations in order to collectively explore Italy's own “autobiography.” Such a study, which would be one of the first full-length works in English to explore the relationship between photography, literature and cinema in Italy in the past two centuries aspires to show how the integration of photography into literary and filmic texts is idiosyncratic – a direct result of Italian visual traditions and the nation’s need to find a way to narrate its own story. Ms. Carey has published in Quaderni d’Italianistica and CARTE ITALIANE; her most recent article, “Futurism’s Photography – From fotodinamismo to fotomontaggio,” examines the complicated and at times hostile relationship between Italian Futurism and the photographic medium. She also has two forthcoming articles: a work co-authored with Thomas Harrison on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni in Italian Culture and an essay on photography in Vittorio Imbriani’s 1867 novel Merope IV that will be included in the book Enlightening Encounters Between Photography and Italian Literature (2010). Ms. Carey currently teaches Italian cinema and literature for the Department of French and Italian at Stanford. Her present course, “Rebels, Outcasts & Iconoclasts – Italian Cinema 1943-1975,” focuses on figures of social deviance in films from the most important Italian auteurs.
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