By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 18, 2012

Never heard of Joaquina Lapinha? Don’t worry. She was an obscure Brazilian soprano who briefly lit up the concert halls of Lisbon in the early 19th century. The closest she came to immortality was when a passing Swede caught her act and wrote, with admirable Scandinavian reserve, that she had a “good voice.”

But Lapinha had a bigger claim to fame: almost single-handedly, she introduced Europeans to the music of little-known Brazilian composers of the time. And in an intriguing — if trouble-prone — concert on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art, the musicologist Ricardo Bernardes, soprano Rosana Orsini and the early-music Americantiga ensemble resurrected much of Lapinha’s actual repertoire, shining a light into a forgotten corner of 19th century musical life and showing just how far Europe dominated the cultural life of its colonies.

There was nothing, in fact, noticeably “Latin” about any of the evening’s music. Two late 18th century works by Antonio Leal Moreira were wrought in “classical” European style — think ersatz Mozart and you have the idea — but were skillfully done with touches of real imagination and fire. Orsini herself proved to be an engaging interpreter. She has a light, agile voice that, though it tended to vanish in the low end and could get brittle in fast passages, suited the works perfectly, and stood out well against the soft-voiced period instruments of the Americantiga players.

But to Orsini’s evident chagrin, things began to fall apart during an aria from Valentino Fioravanti’s cantata “L’Imene trionfante.” Conducting from the harpsichord, Bernardes seemed to lose the plot for a minute, and — as Orsini and bassoon soloist Anna Marsh exchanged alarmed looks — the music nearly derailed before lurching back on track. That may have rattled the ensemble, for the players then got so tangled up in an aria from Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia’s “Triunfo da America” that Bernardes was forced to completely stop the music and reboot.

Orsini — a drop-dead beauty who looks like she just stepped out of a Helmut Newton photograph — appeared ready to strangle the lot of them by that point, but came back strong in a dramatic aria from Bernardo de Souza Queiroz’s opera “Zaira.” It was a heartfelt performance and a fine climax to the concert — even if you did sense she was looking over her shoulder at Bernardes, steeling herself for the next disaster.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • January 8, 2012

When you’re named after one of the biggest constellations in the night sky, the pressure is on to display a little star power — and the young pianist Orion Weiss did exactly that in a high-powered and often ferocious recital Saturday afternoon at the Terrace Theater. Weiss has been racking up an impressive string of triumphs lately (he filled in at the last minute for an ailing Leon Fleischer last summer, turning in a raved-about performance with the Boston Symphony), and Saturday’s recital showed why. Just 30, the pianist has an exceptionally clean technique with virtuosity to spare. And although Saturday’s program — which revolved around a selection of demanding toccatas — sometimes fell a little flat emotionally, it showed Weiss to be a gifted musician well worth keeping an eye on.

The recital (part of the Hayes Piano Series presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society) didn’t open on a particularly strong foot. Weiss’s take on Bach’s Toccata in C Minor, BWV 911 can only be described as ordinary, and he didn’t seem to be particularly involved in the music, tending to just underline Bach’s phrasing rather than find real meaning in it. But the pace quickly picked up. Weiss turned in a vivid account of Liszt’s Toccata, S.197a — a little dervish of a piece that bursts into life, whirls madly for a minute, then vanishes — followed by an intriguing work written for the pianist by composer Michael Brown. Titled “Constellations and Toccata,” it contrasts a “human” perspective on the heavens with a “scientific” one; the first section proved to be a sort of spare, slowly turning nocturne from which a sweeping theme emerged, while the hard-driving toccata took an ecstatic, data-driven look into the fiery heart of stars. Weiss kept everything in perfect alignment, and Brown could not hope for a more convincing account of his work.

The afternoon went on in that vein, as introspective pieces alternated with extroverted ones to varying effect. Weiss didn’t delve very deeply into five pieces from Schumann’s Bunte Blatter, Op. 99, which came off as so much Romantic mirror-gazing, but his no-holds-barred reading of the composer’s Toccata, Op. 7 more than took up the slack. And in the second half of the program, Weiss seemed to finally unleash the full reach of his talent. Brahms’s “Variations on a theme by Schumann, Op. 9” is a sort of love letter to Schumann’s wife, Clara, written when Brahms was still quite young. It’s a fascinating revelation of lovesickness and grief, emotionally subtle beyond the composer’s years, and Weiss gave it a poignant and empathetic reading.

Even more impressive, though, was Bohuslav Martinu’s Fantasie and Toccata, which closed the recital. Written in 1940 as the Czech composer fled Paris ahead of the invading German army, it’s an edgy and relentlessly gripping work, as well as a pianistic tour de force — the sort of music that elbows its way into your brain and takes over for a while. It seemed to bring out the best in Weiss. Not only did he handle its virtuosic demands with ease, he made the work into a riveting and unforgettable human experience — and isn’t that what concert-going is supposed to be about?

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 20, 2011

Andrew Arceci and John McKean — a youngish duo playing viola da gamba and harpsichord, respectively —  have been building a name for themselves lately as thoughtful interpreters of historically informed early music.  They arrived in town with augmented forces on Sunday afternoon, putting on an imaginative program at the Phillips Collection that veered off the beaten Baroque track to explore rarely-heard gems from the likes of Johann Jakob Froberger and La Sieur de Machy.

Adriane PostNot exactly a gem — but intriguing anyway — was Handel’s “Sonata Op. 2 No. 2,” written when the composer was only 14.  Angsty it’s not. Handel seems to have been as stately an adolescent as he was an adult, but the willowy Adriane Post, awash in Botticelli curls, did wonders with the lead violin role, drawing a beguiling sound out of her instrument and trading lines deftly with the less willowy but similarly gifted violinist Benjamin Shute.  John Armato on the theorbo and Daniel Swenberg on Baroque guitar rounded out the ensemble, weaving spare, delicately plucked accompaniments on this work and others by Johann Rosenmuller, Dietrich Buxtehude, Marin Marais and Arcangelo Corelli.

The playing was detailed and beautifully balanced throughout the afternoon, though a sense of caution often seemed to prevail; the players never really summoned the kind of propulsive, edge-of-the-seat electricity that can make Baroque music so exciting.  Arceci and McKean each took a solo turn, though de Machy’s “Suite in G” for solo gamba  came off as constricted and often awkwardly phrased, while McKean turned in a reading of Froberger’s “Suite XXX” for harpsichord that was intelligent, precise and well-behaved to a fault.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 5, 2011

It’s not often that you come across a singer who works his brain cells as energetically (or as skillfully) as his vocal cords, but the young British countertenor Iestyn Davies did exactly that Sunday at the Phillips Collection.

As a fast-rising star in the vocal universe, Davies might have been forgiven for dishing out pyrotechnics and crowd-pleasers; instead, he showed himself to be an unusually thoughtful and perceptive musician, presenting a program of mostly British music titled “History Repeating” that explored the complex ties among composers as diverse as Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten, weaving Bach, Handel and the mildly eccentric Peter Warlock into a fascinating whole.

It was clear from the first notes that Davies has an absolutely superb voice — supple, agile, beautifully controlled and effortless throughout its entire range. Opening with three songs by Purcell (in imaginative arrangements by Britten and Sir Michael Tippett), Davies handled the technical complexities of “Lord What Is Man” and “Sweeter Than Roses” with impressive ease. But it was his directness and authenticity with the emotional complexities of the music that really made the afternoon. It’s no easy trick to bring off Purcell’s “In the Black Dismal Dungeon of Despair” — a work as cheerful as it sounds — in a countertenor voice, but Davies turned in an utterly gripping account, pared to the bone and all the more powerful for it.

That was the tone throughout the afternoon, from Bach’s “Geistliche Lieder” to the songs by Franz Schubert (“Der Tod und das Maedchen”), and from Brahms to Herbert Howells’s luminous “O My Dear Heart” and the achingly beautiful Christmas carol “Bethlehem Down” by Peter Warlock.

A musician’s musician, Davies trimmed each song to its essentials, revealing unsuspected beauties and subtle details. The only (mildly) disappointing aspect of the recital, in fact, was Kevin Murphy’s accompaniment on the piano, which was fine but never quite up to the singer’s sniper-like technical precision and exceptional depth of thought.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • December 4, 2011

Washington audiences had a chance to hear the British pianist Kathryn Stott four years ago when — thanks to the Washington Performing Arts Society — she accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall. Stott returned to the Kennedy Center on Saturday afternoon, but this time for a solo recital in the more intimate Terrace Theater, where, with no distracting superstars cluttering the stage, she proved to be an extraordinarily interesting and incisive interpreter in her own right.

Stott is an unabashed musical Francophile and devoted much of the afternoon to impressionistic works by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré— music full of evanescent colors and shimmering, elusive light. Her playing was, as you might expect, luminous and delicately shaded — her technique is superb, and she’s a master of subtle emotions and telling details — but was never merely atmospheric. Stott stayed refreshingly clear-eyed even in the depths of Debussy’s darkly gorgeous Nocturne in D-flat, and Ravel’s “Sonatine” radiated intelligence, power and playful logic. Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue was less of a pleasure; it’s a rather stern and self-important work which, coming on Debussy’s dreamy heels, felt oddly like a rebuke.

Stott shifted into higher gear in the second half of the program with a riveting account of Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata No. 1, Op. 22, a wildly colorful piece of early Latin modernism. Heitor Villa-Lobos’s “Valsa da Dor” lent a touch of poignancy to the program, but it was “Relent” by British composer Graham Fitkin that stole the show. Commissioned by Stott in 2000, this driving, insistent, almost physical piece charges out of the gate and never looks back: a high-octane performance from one of the most impressive pianists heard here in years

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • October 30, 2011

The Bulgarian-born piano duo of Aglika Genova and Liuben Dimitrov are not only musical partners, they’re romantic ones as well — and it shows. On Saturday night at the Library of Congress, the duo put on a public display of musical affection that was not only extraordinarily virtuosic, but also thoughtful, often deeply engaging and crackling with a current of electricity that seemed to run between the two.

The library had rather clunkily billed the evening as “a concert of showstoppers” — with its overtones of whiz-bang piano fireworks — and in a program heavy on Franz Liszt, there was, inevitably, a certain amount of whizzing and banging. But Genova and Dimitrov opened with a sensitive and often delicate reading of Franz Schubert’s Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 103, integrating their parts seamlessly but maintaining their individual personalities. Genova was the more tender of the two, with a subtler touch; Dimitrov provided, as he did all evening, the gravity and driving power.

A bit of fluff from the Russian Anton Arensky followed. Rimsky-Korsakov once predicted that Arensky “will quickly be forgotten,” and the Suite No. 1, Op. 15 shows why: Think Tchaikovsky with a smiley face and you pretty much have it. The program also included two substantial works by Liszt, and whether you consider Liszt a poet of the sublime or a blustering purveyor of razzle-dazzle, the duo turned in impressive accounts of both the “Concerto Pathetique” and the fiendishly difficult “Reminiscences de Don Juan.”

But to these ears, it was Darius Milhaud’s colorful “Scaramouche” from 1937 that really made the evening, an irresistible mix of Latin flavor, French sophistication and Milhaud’s own obvious love of life. Genova and Dimitrov seemed to loosen up and really expand when they played it, turning in a memorable performance.

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • November 11, 2011   

It’s just after dawn, and our Jeep is skidding down a steep, rocky track in the semi-darkness.  We’re hanging on for dear life, when suddenly we brake to a halt and our guide leans over the side. He points to a paw print in the dust. It’s huge and amazingly detailed; you can almost see the claw marks.

“Tiger,” the guide whispers. “Very fresh.” We peer into the twisting acacia trees around us, the shadows that stretch in every direction. The guide makes a low rumbling noise in his throat. “Tiger mating call,” he says quietly.

“Is that . . . really wise?” a woman sitting next to me asks as he makes the sound again. The guide gives us a level look, then wags his head and breaks into a grin. “Tiger is a very intelligent animal,” he admits. “Hard to make him fool.”

Five of us are packed into the low, open Jeep, and for the past hour we’ve been crisscrossing the dry hills of Ranthambhore National Park in northern India in search of the Royal Bengal tiger. So far, we haven’t had much luck, which isn't too surprising. Tigers have become almost impossible to find in the wild anymore; their numbers have been devastated over the past century, and fewer than 4,000 are left in the world.

But India is one of the last places where wild tigers can still be seen. About half of the planet’s remaining tigers live here, and we’ve come to the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve because it might be the richest -- and most beautiful -- of India’s 39 such reserves. With about 155 square miles of prime tiger country stretching over the hills of the Indian state of Rajasthan, it may, in fact, be the best place to search for tigers in the world.

Timing is everything when loking for wildlife, and we’d been picked up at our hotel at 5:30 that morning by our guide -- a tiger expert (and lawyer, curiously enough) named Mahesh Chaudhary -- and a few minutes later found ourselves in a knot of Jeeps at the ancient stone gate that leads into the reserve.

You can’t get into Ranthambhore without a reservation (fewer than 500 visitors are allowed in every day) and we have to wait for the rangers to check our names and tell us which zone we’ll be allowed into. This is a key question, and Mahesh has been a little anxious about it.  Only about a quarter of the reserve is open to tourists, he tells us, and that area is divided into six zones, some of which are virtually tiger-free. But we get Zone 4, and Mahesh gives us a relieved smile. “A very good zone!” he says. “I think we will see a tiger today.”

Maybe. But we know that, realistically, the chances are slim.  Most visitors, in fact, never get to see a single tiger.  There are only about 35 in the whole reserve, and they tend to stay in a core area where humans are not allowed. Only a dozen or so live in the tourist zones, and they’re notoriously solitary creatures, spending most of their time hidden in the forest, sleeping. On the plus side, we’ve come in April; it’s the hot season, and many of the trees have lost their leaves, making tiger spotting easier. We might get lucky. But we know that at best, we’ll probably only get a distant glimpse.

The rangers wave us through the gate, and we set off up a twisting road into the park. Tigers aside, Ranthambhore is a spectacularly beautiful place, full of plunging gorges and jaw-dropping views surrounding the ruins of a 10th-century fort. We veer down a dirt track into the forest, and animals start to appear: a delicate sambar deer with upward-curving horns, black-faced lemur monkeys in the branches of a dhok tree, a herd of Chinkara gazelles on the ridge of a distant hill.

It's Edenic -- but it wasn't always so.  Ranthambhore was a battleground for more than six centuries, the scene of one bloody invasion after another.  In the 17th century, the area passed to the Maharajas of Jaipur, who turned it into a tiger-hunting reserve, and in 1955 the government made it a wildlife sanctuary.  Since then, an astonishing array of animals has come to flourish, and as we lurch over the trails we come across the tracks of a sloth bear, see a pair of mongooses dart across the road, and watch a brilliantly colored kingfisher dive into a pond full of crocodiles. Egrets pose at the edge of a far-off marsh, and a peacock, startled by our jeep, lurches into the air with an indignant squawk.

But . . . no tigers.

You can hardly blame tigers for avoiding us, given that we’ve hunted them pretty close to extinction. Of the 40,000 Royal Bengals that roamed India a century ago, only about 1,760 remain — and they’re in deep, serious peril. The Sariska Tiger Reserve (less than 100 miles from Ranthambhore) lost all of its 26 tigers in 2006, most to poachers supplying markets in China and Tibet, where a pelt can reportedly fetch as much as $12,500 and the organs are sold for medicines and aphrodisiacs. The profit from a single animal can be as high as $50,000, and the risks are low.  With that kind of price on their heads, it’s a wonder any tigers are left at all.

We’ve spent about two hours exploring the reserve, and Mahesh has guided us into a clearing to take a break when suddenly a high-pitched cry pierces the forest. He jumps up and stares into the trees. It’s the alarm call of a deer — a telltale sign that a tiger is around. Tigers prefer to hunt deer, Mahesh tells us, though they’ll eat monkeys and slow, easy prey such as frogs and peacocks.

“And Jeeps full of tourists?” someone asks. Dozens of people are killed by tigers every year, we’ve heard, and India has had its share of dangerous man-eaters, such as the notorious Champawat Tigress, who killed 436 people around the turn of the 20th century.

But Mahesh assures us that we’re in no danger, even though our open vehicle feels a bit like a serving tray, with us as the canapes. The tigers here have grown up with people around, he says, and if we got out of the Jeep they would probably just run away — though he urges us not to test the theory.

“We probably look like candy bars to them,” says someone in the back seat. “Crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy in the middle.” Mahesh admits that this is, in fact, sort of true. Humans can be appetizing to older tigers who have lost some of their teeth, since we lack shells, fur or fang-proof packaging of any kind. Plus, we’re slow. And not always particularly smart. Mahesh tells us that in fact someone was just killed in Ranthambhore: a local villager who went into the forest with his donkey to collect firewood. The tiger went for the donkey; the villager responded by throwing stones. The tiger took offense, and that was the end of the villager.

The deer cries again, and we follow the sound through the trees, emerging into a dry streambed where several other Jeeps and two lumbering, 20-seat vehicles called “canters” have pulled up, full of animal paparazzi like us. The sun is higher now and the heat is scorching, but we barely notice. Everyone has their lenses and high-powered binoculars aimed into a patch of tall grass 50 yards off the road, where one of the rangers has seen a bird fly off with a piece of meat in its mouth, a good sign that there’s been a kill.

“Machali is in there; this is her territory,” Mahesh tells us in a hushed voice. “She would have made the kill last night and returned today to eat it.” Her name is officially T-16 (all the Ranthambhore tigers have these bureaucratic labels), but the rangers have given her a nickname taken from a distinctive pattern on her right cheek. “Machali,” it turns out, means “fish.”

We creep up the dirt track, and suddenly Mahesh holds up his hand and points: Machali has appeared, gliding through the grass parallel to us about 30 yards away. She’s just a flash of stripes at first, her face a tan disk in the pale grass, and we hold our breath, expecting her to vanish into the trees. But suddenly she pauses and seems to sniff the air.

And then she starts walking toward us.

It’s hard to describe the feeling — the raw, elemental terror — of a tiger approaching you in the wild.  A woman behind me has literally climbed on top of the person next to her, which gives you the general idea. Machali clears the long grass, and we can see her now in all her fearful symmetry. She’s magnificent — nine feet long and more than 300 pounds — and frighteningly powerful, gliding over the rock-strewn ground. Her eyes never leave us. Pausing by an acacia tree 30 feet away, she flicks her tail and gives us a long, cool look.

The only sound is the click of cameras and the faint whimpering of the woman behind me. Machali starts moving toward us again, and in a moment is so near that with a jump she’d be in the Jeep. Even Mahesh is looking alarmed. We can see into the tiger’s pale green eyes now, trace the labyrinth of marks that run, like  hieroglyphics, across her face. It’s mesmerizing. No one can move — we’re caught in some kind of primal encounter, some primitive, brain-stem memory of being hunted in the forest before we were even human. Ten thousand years of civilization suddenly evaporate. We've become prey, pure and simple.  And now, just 10 feet away, Machali stops and turns those otherworldly eyes on us — a cruel and distant god about to decide our fate.

And then. . . .

She yawns.

She yawns, and strolls almost casually between the Jeeps. The god isn’t interested in us at all, apparently; she just wants to cross the road, and we happen to be in the way. Her power, her terrible majesty seem to deflate as she ambles tamely among the vehicles. I look down and fumble with my camera for a second, strangely ashamed. We’ve diminished her with our presence.

When I look back up, the tiger has vanished into the trees on the far side of the track. But a little later she reappears a hundred yards away, climbing across a rocky escarpment. Radiant in the  morning sunlight, she makes her way down the rocks to a streambed below, and we lose her in the thick reeds where she’s gone to drink. But we catch one final glimpse as she turns and starts walking again, up the streambed and off into the distant hills. With every step away from us, she becomes more beautiful, more unfathomable, more strange and mysterious -- more the tiger of our imaginations.

We stare after her, blinded by the immense light reflecting off the hills, until she’s gone.

•••••

(This article also appeared in The Seattle Times, The Columbus Dispatch, and USA Today.)

GETTNG THERE

Continental offers connecting flights from BWI Marshall to New Delhi starting at $1,328 round trip. From New Delhi, a train to Sawai Madhopur (the closest town to Ranthambhore National Park) takes about 51 / 2 hours.

WHERE TO STAY

The Oberoi Vanyavilas
Ranthambhore Road
011-91-7462-22-3999
www.oberoihotels.com

The superb Oberoi Vanyavilas is the best hotel in the area -- in fact, it was voted “best hotel in the world” by Travel + Leisure magazine in 2010, and it's easy to see why.  With its luxurious tents, four-poster beds and bougainvillea-shaded gardens, it’s an unforgettable experience, and a perfect retreat after a dusty day in the tiger reserve.  The standard rate is about $900 a night, but check for specials.

Taj Sawai Madhopur Lodge
Ranthambhore National Park Road
Sawai Madhopur
011-91-7462-22-0541
www.vivantabytaj.com

Part of the Vivanta by Taj group. Comfortable rooms run from $150 to $500 per night.

WHAT TO DO

Ranthambhore National Park
011-91-9212-77-7223
www.ranthamborenationalpark.com

Tigers are elusive, so I suggest scheduling at least two trips into the park to increase your chances. The safaris last about three hours and are held in early morning and late afternoon.

Advance reservations are necessary; demand is high year-round, and the number of visitors is tightly restricted. Book a private six-person Jeep (with driver and guide) at least 60 days in advance. If you can’t get a private Jeep, seats in the open 20-seat “canters” are sometimes available on shorter notice. Your hotel can arrange this: The Oberoi Vanyavilas, for instance, charges about $54 for the Jeep tour and about $27 for the canter.

Tiger sightings are most frequent in the hot months of April, May and June, but from December through March (when the greenery is thicker), the weather is cooler and more pleasant. The park is closed July through September.