Directing is more than choosing expressive shots and coaxing emotionally satisfying performances from actors.
The pat and occasionally preposterous story is really just a pretext, a serviceable scaffolding for a handful of expert, satisfying performances.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also feels less personal, though Mr. Vaughn gets satisfying performances and copious tears, along with sex appeal, from his leading men.
"The pat and occasionally preposterous story is really just a pretext, a serviceable scaffolding for a handful of expert, satisfying performances," A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times.
This, not the opening bars of Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A (K. 201), was the real start of the concert, which turned out to be one of the most appealing, satisfying performances I have heard this season.
"The pat and occasionally preposterous story is really just a pretext, a serviceable scaffolding for a handful of expert, satisfying performances," Mr. Scott wrote in The Times in September.
With excellent rhythm sections, a preference for tough, athletic group improvisation and a hyper-alert playing style, the saxophonist Branford Marsalis can pull off some of the more satisfying performances among current jazz musicians.
WHAT the Telarc discs ultimately provide, in lieu of fully satisfying performances, is an interesting provocation, though not necessarily any of those signaled in the conductor's detailed explanations, spoken, "sung" and played.
Mark Lamos's Julie Taymor-istaginging was visually poetic; Heather Buck, Peter Strummer, Ethan Herschenfeld, and Joel Sorensen all gave satisfying performances, although they sometimes struggled to stay aboard the merry-go-round of Wuorinen's pitch rotations.
The most interesting characters also receive the most satisfying performances - Nathan Berg is contained and slightly mysterious as Alidoro and Simone Alberghini's Dandini is detached yet controlling, but then with this particular prince he doesn't have much competition.
Vance told BBC Guernsey : "It was probably one of the most satisfying performances from the team so far".
