Sergei Rachmaninoff / Grand Hotel

On this day in classical music: Sergei Rachmaninoff gave the world premiere of his “Oriental Sketch” in New York City in 1931. The little known work for solo piano dates from the same year as the “Variations on a Theme of Corelli.” Rachmaninoff composed only three major works before his death in 1943: the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” (1934), the “Symphony No. 3” (1936) and the “Symphonic Dances” (1940). Listen to the composer play his “Oriental Sketch.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9pmBE976MY

On this day in the musical theatre: “Grand Hotel” opened on Broadway in 1989. Tommy Tune’s innovative staging of “Grand Hotel” won five Tony Awards in 1990, including best featured actor (Michael Jeter), direction, costume design, lighting design and choreography. Vicki Baum’s novel, on which the musical was based, focused on several guests whose lives cross briefly during their stay at Berlin’s famous hotel. Watch Brent Barrett (as Count Felix von Gaigern) and Michael Jeter (Otto Kringelein) perform the rousing “We’ll Take a Glass Together” from the 1990 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDc9ul70kyY

Musical musings: The director and choreographer Tommy Tune may have the most extravagant imagination in the American musical theater right now, and there isn’t a moment, or a square inch of stage space, that escapes its reach in “Grand Hotel.” The musical at the Martin Beck Theater is an uninterrupted two hours of continuous movement, all dedicated to creating the tumultuous atmosphere of the setting: an opulent way station at a distant crossroads of history in Berlin – that of 1928. Think of a three-dimensional collage – or a giant Joseph Cornell box two tall stories high – filled with the smoky light, faded gilt fixtures, dirty secrets, lost mementos and ghostly people of its time and place. Then imagine someone shaking the whole thing up as if waves were tossing around the Titanic. That’s Mr. Tune’s “Grand Hotel.” Is that enough to make a musical? Not really, as it happens, but “Grand Hotel” should satisfy those with a boundless appetite for showmanship untethered to content. Visual craftsmanship doesn’t get much more accomplished than this on Broadway. In a departure from the current fashion in theatrical spectaculars, Mr. Tune creates a world on stage without resorting to rococo naturalism or substituting money for creativity. Tony Walton’s stunning set, in which an orchestra occupies the lofty second tier, is but a deep, dilapidated shell in which dreamy abstract imagery (strings of pearls floating inside transparent structural pillars) stands in for a literal hotel floor plan. Santo Loquasto’s costumes and Jules Fisher’s lighting — equally brilliant evocations of Expressionism — don’t try to wow the audience with Technicolor eruptions but instead hold to a dark crimson-to-sepia palette that suggests the vanished luxury pictured on frayed antique postcards and the fever dreams of a world on the brink of Depression and war. – Frank Rich in The New York Times

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