Jay Harvey Upstage

During an intermission in the preliminary round of the last International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, I got into a fascinating chat with a new fan of the contest. He had convinced himself that the range of repertoire choices facing participants was too liberal. So he put across to me a rather startling viewpoint: the young violinists should be required to play exactly the same pieces. My mind reeled, as I thought of the bludgeoning that the ears and sensibilities of jury and audiences alike would be subject to.  From the Bach unaccompanied repertoire, for example, all 40 participants might be judged on how they played the monumental Chaconne from the D minor Partita. No more electing a multi-movement Partita sampling, like the Allemanda and Double, Corrente and Double from the B minor suite. I think the friendly conversation was pitched upon an analogy to sports competitions. That kind of comparison is always tempting to make when it comes to musical contests. Like mos...

 Participants heard in the Sept. 2 afternoon session, International Violin Competition of Indianapolis: Alina Kobialka Gychee Kim Arianna Dotto Joshua Brown Boson Mo Fabiola Kim Missing the morning prelims at the Indiana History Center this week seems to mandate not judging my favorite participants so far. But focusing on some standout performances of Sunday afternoon would be a good start, especially since convalescence from recent surgery doesn't have me yet at 100 percent mentally or physically. Joshua Brown: A fresh 24th  Caprice. Three composers loom large in the prelims repertoire list: Bach, Mozart and Paganini. A fourth group contains a variety of major and minor masters in their capacity as suppliers of encore pieces, sometimes the result of a particularly fetching arrangement by a star violin master. Even well-schooled young violinists, adaptable though they may be, seem to shine particularly in one of the categories. This is where their personalit...

In the vaunted American trinity of "God, motherhood, and apple pie," sometimes it seems as if fruit pies and the Lord Almighty have better prospects than that third partner, which is honored with elaborate lip service but substantially unsupported. Molly Smith Metzler' s "Cry It Out," which opened Friday night in a Phoenix Theatre production, plants its feet squarely in defense of modern motherhood by shedding light on the host of challenges it faces. Products and practices, philosophies and excruciating binary choices, the cost-benefit calculus of love and need — all come into head-spinning play. The Basile Theater's black-box setting puts the audience in the side yard between the homes of new mothers Jessie and Lena, whom we first see nervously checking their baby monitors to ascertain where it's safe to meet and talk. The neat, modest exteriors of their houses, summed up in opposite corners of Daniel Uhde's set, belie the stress of measuring ...

Learning mutual respect: Aufidius (left) and Coriolanus hone their rivalry in war. Not known for either frequent productions or lots of famous quotations, "Coriolanus" has one line that's oddly lodged in our cultural memory. It's also characteristic of the prickly warrior hero in its plainness and absoluteness. "There is a world elsewhere," says Shakespeare's ancient Roman general publicly in abandoning his hometown. It turns out the world he looks toward extends no farther than the nearby tribal state of the Volscians, with whom Rome is at war. The prideful turncoat cannot foresee how badly such a move will end. He sets the political tone of the tragedy: Foresight is rare among people who can't look beyond their pride and immediate desires. In times of social turmoil, living in the moment has scant survival value. This is reinforced right up through the repeated final line — a touch by which Robert Neal, director of the Indianapolis Shakespe...