Alex Ross's Blog, page 104

For Steven Stucky

The community of American music is in mourning for Steven Stucky, a composer of consummate skill and a colleague of rare generosity. He died yesterday in Ithaca, NY, at the age of sixty-six; Michael Cooper, of the New York Times, reports that the cause was brain cancer. Amid a sizable corpus of works, the environmental tone poem Silent Spring, based on the book by Rachel Carson, deserves particular praise. Its long, desolate fade from an apocalyptic climax shows that Stucky was more than a craftsman; like Copland and Bernstein before him, he could make the orchestra an oratorical medium.

More: Tony Tommasini's obituary.

Messiaen, Abrahamsen

Stars and Snow. The New Yorker, Feb. 22, 2016.

Alban Berg Valentine (10th anniversary edition)

ALWA: You have robbed me of reason.
LULU: Isn't this the couch on which your father bled to death?

                            — Lulu, Act II

Critic at a loss

The delectable byways of research

My reading into the curious life of Olga Plümacher-Hünerwadel, born in Lenzburg and buried in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, probably won't make it into the final manuscript of Wagnerism, but I enjoy having this book on my desk.

The author explains Tennessee to his readers: "Hundert Kilometer weiter östlich von Beersheba Springs liegt Chatanooga. Das war einst Zentrum der Stahlindustrie (Carnegie) und der kühnen Eisenbahnprojekte der amerikanischen Gründerzeit (Vanderbilt). Die berühmte 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo'-Lokomotive ist heute im Museum zu besichtigen. Das Kohle- und Eisenbahnzeitalter, die Epoche der 'Robber Barons,' der rücksichtlosen frühindustriellen Großunternehmer, ist längst vorbei. Die großen Geschäfte werden nicht mehr in Tennessee gemacht. Tennessee hat heute nur noch drei weltberühmte Exportartikel: den Jack Daniels-Whisky aus Lynchburgh, die Western Music aus der 'Grand Old Oprey' in Nashville und Elvis Presley aus Memphis."

Nightafternight playlist

— Hans Abrahamsen, let me tell you; Barbara Hannigan, with Andris Nelsons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony (Winter & Winter)

— Górecki, Symphony No. 4; Andrey Boreyko conducting the London Philharmonic (Nonesuch)

— Liza Lim, Winding Bodies, The Heart's Ear, Jon Øivind Ness, Gimilen; Cikada Ensemble at the Huddersfield Festival (LAWO Classics)

— Pachelbel, Un orage d’avril (Suites from Musikalische Ergötzung, Canon & Gigue, Arias); Hans-Jörg Mammel, Amandine Beyer leading Gli Incogniti (Harmonia Mundi)

— Rihm, Two Other Movements, Abkehr, Schattenstück; Roger Norrington and Christian Arming conducting the SWR Radio Symphony (SWR Music)

— Anders Hillborg, Beast Sampler, O dessa ögon, Cold Heat, Sirens; Ida Falk Winland, Hannah Holgersson,
Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Swedish Radio Choir, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic conducted by Sakari Oramo, David Zinman, Esa-Pekka Salonen (BIS)

— Luzzaschi, Madrigals, Motets, and Instrumental Music; Profeti della Quinta (Pan Classics)

— Linda Catlin Smith, Nocturnes and Chorales, Thought and Desire, The Underfolding; Eve Egoyan (Earwitness Editions)

— Kati Agócs, The Debrecen Passion and other works; Agócs, Lisa Bielawa, Lorelei Ensemble, Gil Rose conducting the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP)

Bookshelf

New and recent publications of interest.

Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty (FSG)

A. O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism (Penguin)

Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, Understanding the Leitmotif: From Wagner to Hollywood Film Music (Cambridge UP)

Walter Moskalew, Anna Moskalewa-Richter, and Dagmar von Reincke, Svetik: A Family Memoir of Sviatoslav Richter (Toccata)

Edward Dusinberre, Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet (Faber & Faber, University of Chicago Press May 2016)

Renée Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leach, eds., Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music (University of Rochester Press)

The ultimate Gražinytė-Tyla pronunciation guide

The City of Birmingham Symphony, which in recent decades has shown exceptional acuity in hiring gifted young conductors (Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, Andris Nelsons), today announced as its next music director the young Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who is presently Gustavo Dudamel's assistant at the LA Phil. I first encountered Gražinytė-Tyla in 2014 at the Hollywood Bowl, where she delivered an electrifying Mahler First. I've seen her on two other occasions, and each time she has exhibited musicality, intelligence, confidence, and, above all, vitality. Perhaps the biggest obstacle she faces as she rises in the profession is her intimidating name. The above video may be of assistance.

Miscellany

The viol consort Sonnambula is set to explore the music of the seventeenth-century Flemish composer Leonora Duarte, who came from a distinguished family of converted Portuguese Jews. Sonnambula is recording her seven Sinfonias, and on Feb. 13 they will give an allied concert at the Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch in NYC.... The gifted young composer Ashley Fure, an agile manipulator of instrumental, electronic, and environmental sounds, will be the subject of a Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre tomorrow night, Feb. 4. David Allen recently profiled her in the New York Times. ICE will present Fure's opera The Force of Things in Darmstadt on Aug. 1, with a preview in NYC preceding. A trailer provides tantalizing glimpses.... When the Minnesota Orchestra had its near-extinction lockout crisis a few years ago, a Sibelius series in progress fell by the wayside. No earthly power can stop Osmo Vänskä from conducting Sibelius; he and the orchestra will return to the field in coming weeks, first revisiting the Kullervo Symphony on Feb. 4-6 — their 2010 performance sent me into a fit of superlatives — and then reviving the "lost program," of the First and Third symphonies, first in Minneapolis Feb. 18-20 and then at Carnegie Hall on March 3.  .... On Friday night in Boston, the Sound Icon series will explore the eerie, crystalline music of Hans Abrahamsen, performing his Winternacht and Schnee. The composer will be on hand for an interview. More soon on the subject of Abrahamsen's vocal-orchestral work let me tell you, a superb recording of which is now available from the Winter & Winter label, with Barbara Hannigan singing and Andris Nelsons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony.... The polymathic New York Times critic Ben Ratliff has a fascinating new book called Every Song Ever, in which he organizes a huge variety of music not by genre but by texture or gesture (slow, fast, dense, repetitive, etc.). On Feb. 8 I will talk to Ben at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, one of the country's finest independent bookstores.

A year without Andrew

Andrew Patner died a year ago today. It was the saddest day of my life. Thousands of friends around the world still miss his glorious mind and generous spirit.