CD: Sir Charles Mackerras/Orchestra and Chorus of the Welsh National Opera: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado

The American Film Institute's recently updated list of the top 100 American films was a further reminder, as if we all needed one, that popularity is fleeting, genuine artistry survives -- and all bets are off when it comes to list-making and handing out awards (Exhibit A being the also-rans at various Academy Awards ceremonies). If you're any kind of a movie buff, you might want to check out the list at AFI's website and decide which selections you swear by and which you swear about.

Me, I can't resist a keeper, particularly when I'm confronted with the more dispiriting aspects of contemporary life. Give me a classic screwball comedy or a taut Hitchcock thriller. Bring on the film scores by Korngold and Steiner and Barry, the screenplays by the Epstein twins or Billy Wilder. Give me immaculately turned out actors with perfect diction, and save the flip-flops and gross-out humor and overuse of the word "like" for this weekend's roster at the cineplex. I guess that's the conservative side of my personality. So sue me, unless you are Roy Pearson.

All of which brings me once again to the subject of W.S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and the comic works they brought to the Victorian stage and, in one form or another, the rest of the English-speaking world. It's true that G&S are standard fare for the classical singers, with everyone from Bryn Terfel to the King's Singers taking a turn with patter songs and the like, but don't think that pop culture somehow missed out. After all, Mark Russell, Tom Lehrer, and even the old Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour borrowed liberally from G&S, and don't get me started on the Monty Python crowd.

I grew up with the old D'Oyly Carte recordings and was taken to my first G&S production (in Ridgewood, New Jersey, of all places) at age 11 or 12 -- about the same time I saw La Traviata and Madama Butterfly, but that's a topic for another blog and, for all I know, a therapy session.

In short, G&S appeal to my warped sense of humor and musical tastes, and it's still a pleasure to find a performer who gets it.

Over a period of years Telarc issued a series of G&S standards, and generally got them right. There's a fine Pirates of Penzance, a good HMS Pinafore, and a set containing both The Yeomen of the Guard and Trial by Jury, which I sprang for following a Washington Savoyards production of Yeomen -- with former Olsson's staffer Anna Hurwitz in the role of Phoebe.

But a definite must-have for the collector is Telarc's edition of The Mikado. The work itself contains some of the most memorable music Sullivan ever wrote, including some amazing ensemble pieces and show-stoppers both sweet and sour: lovely, lyrical passages for tenor and soprano, the expected patter songs for baritone, even some comic solos for bass.

But if Sullivan wrote charming music for the ingenue, Yum-Yum, and her beau, Nanki-Poo, Gilbert came up with some hilarious lyrics for this silly and rather convoluted love story and put quite a few of those words into the mouth of the lord high executioner, Ko-Ko, a comic scene-stealer if there ever was one. I don't think any listener can fail to empathize with Ko-Ko -- or to nominate additional candidates -- during his list song, in which he catalogues the annoying people he wouldn't mind executing ("people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs"). Prudently, Telarc has omitted some of Gilbert's more extreme lyrics in that regard, leaving just enough dark humor for 21st century audiences.

There is no dialogue on the recording, but lyrics are provided in the CD liner notes. However, the sung performances are so immensely satisfying that you won't miss the spoken portions. The singers possess the vocal agility for Sullivan's music and the crisp diction to carry off Gilbert's lyrics.

A sense of fun doesn't go amiss either, and there the standout is baritone Richard Suart in the role of Ko-Ko. The lovers Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum (Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Marie McLaughlin) play it straight, but their older counterparts Ko-Ko and Katisha (Suart and Felicity Palmer) provide the necessary tang. Both Suart and Donald Adams (the Mikado) were veterans of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and it certainly shows in their respective solos.

A winner all around, and it certainly makes my list.

CD: Lang Lang: Dragon Songs

DVD: The Painted Veil (2006)

I admit it: I've been avoiding Lang Lang, the young Chinese pianist who of late is seemingly ubiquitous in both the concert hall and in new CD releases. When it comes to piano recordings, give me your Argerich, your Schiff, your Andsnes, and perhaps sooner or later I'll get around to the kids.

Well, Lang Lang was waiting for me anyway, albeit in disguise. After putting it off for months, I finally got to see the recent film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, recently released on DVD. Along with stunning cinematography of the Chinese countryside, the film also boasts an evocative and haunting score by Alexandre Desplat.

Just guess who was recruited to play the piano solos.

So whether I had planned on it or not, I was going to hear Lang Lang, and hear Lang Lang I did, in Desplat's compositions and in a familiar piece by Satie included in the film's soundtrack.

The soundtrack performances, though not of actual Chinese compositions, sparked my curiosity about Lang Lang's recent Dragon Songs project, a combination of audio CD and DVD concert video/documentary devoted to works of Chinese classical music.

I found it an exhilarating experience. Lang Lang here plays transcriptions of traditional Chinese pieces and works by modern composers, including a piano concerto adapted from Xian Xinghai's famous Yellow River Cantata.

The music itself is wholly accessible to the Western listener, composed in the romantic, nationalist, and impressionist traditions. There are joyous and energetic dances, on the one hand, and evocations of nature and rural tranquility on the other. If you enjoy folk music or the dreamy, meditative works of French composers such as Debussy, here is a disc you ought to explore.

The piano concerto is a virile work. Listen for the patriotic rallying cry contained within it, and bear in mind that the original cantata dates to the Second Sino-Japanese War. It's a powerful piece of music.

The accompanying DVD reflects both Lang Lang's heritage and career, and includes concert footage -- quite a tribute to a youthful career. You can, of course, enjoy the music twice: once on the CD and in concert on the DVD.

And what of The Painted Veil?

The film is less a visit into the heart of Chinese culture than it is a character study in which the nation of China plays a pivotal role. An estranged couple, Walter and Kitty Fane, journey to a remote town in China, where Walter, a bacteriologist, intends to help combat a cholera epidemic. It's difficult to say which tensions facing the couple are more unbearable: the community's deadly combination of political unrest with the outbreak of disease, or the dire state of the Fanes' marriage. Walter, you see, has forcibly extracted Kitty from an adulterous affair back in the city and almost spitefully placed her in an isolated and dangerous place.

The leads -- Maryland's own Edward Norton and Australian actress Naomi Watts, both playing English colonials -- are wonderful, particularly Watts, who captures her character's obvious flaws and untapped virtues without apology or artifice. The Broadway actor Liev Schreiber (What a voice!) rounds out the triangle as Kitty's charming and amoral lover.

Toby Jones, playing a cynical British commissioner who befriends the Fanes, somehow manages to steal scenes from Norton and Watts. I don't know how he does it either.

Aside from a few pivotal roles -- for example, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as a shrewd military officer -- our Asian cast is very nearly reduced to ciphers and stereotypes: desperately poor peasants, adorable orphans, flinty housekeepers and the like. It doesn't help matters much that we are forced to watch as the white colonials are borne aloft in sedan chairs.

But the discomfort is well earned this time out, for this is a story of clashes within a culture, of struggles inside the human soul and within a marriage. I am particularly haunted by a soliloquy delivered by Diana Rigg (playing a mother superior who befriends Kitty) comparing her relationship with God to a long-term marriage -- a surprisingly unsettling and ambiguous moment, and about as far from the stereotypes as can be imagined.

DVD: Ball of Fire (1941)

Classic movie fans are having a banner year for the hundredth birthday parties of many of their film favorites, even if the honorees are no longer with us to celebrate. Just the past few weeks have marked the hundredth birthdays of actors Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, John Wayne, and Rosalind Russell. And on July 16th we light 100 candles for the great Barbara Stanwyck.

I'm curious to know what percentage of filmgoers today are even familiar with the work of Stanwyck, especially since she defies easy classification and it appears that her image has gone unexploited by Madison Avenue. Her performances were acclaimed, though she never won a competitive Academy Award, and her roles were mind-boggling in their range -- everything from the ambitious and amoral title character in the pre-Production Code shocker Baby Face to the matriarchs of her late TV work. Just glance at her film and television credits and you'll find Westerns, melodramas, and suspense, including Double Indemnity, in which she played yet another manipulative seductress and more than guaranteed her place in film history.

But due to a stroke of luck and the film schedule at the university student union, I discovered early on that not only could Stanwyck do comedies but that she made some memorable ones. The film that night was Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve, from 1941, in which con woman Stanwyck works her wiles on a clueless and wealthy mark played by Henry Fonda. Notice a pattern here?

Some years later I discovered yet another Stanwyck comedy, also from 1941, Ball of Fire. The great Howard Hawks directed from a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and the film turns up regularly on Turner Classic Movies. Still, I suspect Ball of Fire enjoys nowhere near the following of other top comedies from the era, such as Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace.

I mean to rectify that, now that the movie's out in a new DVD edition and can be enjoyed at any time -- in "glorious black and white," as they say.

First, a little plot: To write an article on slang for a new encyclopedia, English professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) goes out to conduct a little real-world research and meets up with smart-mouthed nightclub entertainer Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). The next thing he knows, the leggy Sugarpuss is following him back to the house he shares with a team of seven other dusty academicians. The guys are duly thrilled with this interesting new arrival, but the housekeeper, Miss Bragg (Kathleen Howard), has another take on things. "That is the kind of woman," she declares, "that makes whole civilizations topple."

Not surprisingly, Sugarpuss does indeed turn the household upside down, basking in the professors' goofy adoration and rendering the initially resistant Potts a bit hot and bothered himself. But real trouble is not far behind, for Sugarpuss has a few dirty little secrets, including a vicious gangster boyfriend (Dana Andrews) and a pressing need to avoid the local district attorney. But the surefire scheme to gain a temporary hideout takes an unexpected turn as Sugarpuss warms to her nerdy protectors and especially the shy but besotted Potts.

Where do I begin in describing the pleasures of this movie? First there's Stanwyck herself, as sly, assured Sugarpuss, nicely paired with an appropriately starchy Cooper.

Then there's the wacky script, steeped in the slang of the time. You're on your own here, folks, but consider a glossary if you were born after rationing, Sputnik, or the Great Society.

And yes, that is really Gene Krupa, with orchestra, in the nightclub scene. Martha Tilton provided the vocals for Stanwyck.

But my favorite aspect of the film is the casting of so many scene-stealing Hollywood character actors, particularly Cooper's academic posse, made up of Richard Haydn, Oskar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, Tully Marshall, Aubrey Mather, S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, and Henry Travers. Sakall, the much-loved Hungarian Jewish actor, is a particular favorite of mine and practically feels like a member of the family, given that my immigrant grandmother was a fan. But pride of place among the scene-stealers is definitely held by Richard Haydn (The Sound of Music, Young Frankenstein), here playing a timid botanist who attempts to educate Cooper in the ways of women. You won't soon forget that voice.

I won't even attempt to describe the suspenseful and hilarious finale, which pits the professors against the mob. The Sopranos it ain't, though everyone does wind up in New Jersey, and you should never underestimate the cunning and resourcefulness of nerds or your garbageman.

The DVD's special features include a choice of languages (English and Spanish, in stereo or mono) and of course subtitles. The latter might be helpful when you're trying to follow the characters' rapid-fire 1940s slang, particularly when Allen Jenkins, as that friendly neighborhood garbageman, opens his mouth.

By the way, early on and in the closing scenes of Ball of Fire, keep an eye out for a thin, bespectacled man and you'll catch a glimpse of a cast member who is, as of this writing, still with us: Charles Lane. This character actor, who not only worked with Howard Hawks but Frank Capra and other greats, has literally hundreds of film and TV credits. He turned 102 years old in January of this year.

CDs:

• Kronos Quartet: Gorecki: String Quartet No. 3... songs are sung

Dawn Upshaw with David Zinman/London Sinfonietta: Gorecki, Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

A decade and a half ago, music store clerks were besieged with requests for a new CD of a symphony by a Polish composer. Its texts, sung by a soprano soloist, included a 15th century poem depicting the lament of Mary, the mother of Jesus; a folk song expressing the grief of a soldier's mother; and an actual prayer written on a cell wall by a young woman detained by the Gestapo. The unifying themes are of love, sorrow, and resilient faith, each expressed in a woman's voice.

The composer was, of course, Henryk Gorecki, and the work was Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." The work's transcendent beauty, as well as soprano Dawn Upshaw's moving performance, won listeners around the world, even those outside the usual audience for classical music.

Yet to know and love the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" is not to comprehend Gorecki in full, though to immerse yourself in that symphony puts you in the midst of his values and philosophy. As a composer, however, he has his share of surprises.

Wandering around online in Gorecki Land led to some interesting discoveries. I did not realize, for instance, that his compositions were featured in film (Ripley's Game) and televison (Wit). And the patented Hagman smirk crossed my face when I saw he was among the composers included on The Most Relaxing Classical Album in the World... Ever! First of all, that title amounts to quite a claim, and secondly, since when does your man Henryk get tossed into a collection with Gabriel Faure and Claude Debussy?

As it happens, however, it is more than fair to label some of Gorecki's compositions as meditative, serene, tender. He has written choral works of austere beauty, charming pieces for string orchestra, and haunting, lovely passages for the soprano voice.

But prepare yourself for the varying compositional styles, for Gorecki has refused to stay put. Is he a nationalist, a minimalist, a member of the avant garde, or an inveterate borrower and blender of folk and medieval music? If the only work you happen to know is Symphony Number 3, consider his "Miserere" or "Three Pieces in the Olden Style." Submit yourself to assault by String Quartet Number 1, and then recall that the ethereal "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" came from the same composer as the dark and dissonant Symphony No. 2 ("Copernican").

Darkness and dissonance, as well as grief, come once again to the fore in Gorecki's most recent composition for the Kronos Quartet, String Quartet No. 3 ("...songs are sung"), which takes its title from a Khlebnikov poem about death. The music is demanding, at times possessing a gentle melancholy, then propelling itself into the dissonance of the rather unsettling Allegro, and circling back again to a dark, deliberate pace.

If Gorecki's works are informed by suffering and grief, they also chronicle courage and vision. There's an unmistakably political component alongside the music's aforementioned spirituality. Gorecki, after all, touches on some of the pivotal events of the 20th century: World War II, the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, Pope John Paul's return to his native land in the closing years of the Cold War.

But if Gorecki is resolutely Polish and Roman Catholic, his music transcends cultural and spiritual barriers.

I can't end this blog entry without an update on Dawn Upshaw, the versatile American soprano who provided the vocals on the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." I have long been dazzled by the sheer breadth of her repertoire -- everything from songs by Blitzstein and Weill to soubrette roles in Mozart -- as well as enchanted by her voice.

I was therefore saddened to learn that Ms. Upshaw had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. However, it is a relief to report that following treatment, Ms. Upshaw is back in the concert hall and has taken up other musical projects. May she thrive and continue to share her gifts with the rest of us.