Alex Ross's Blog, page 109

Hopscotch in depth

Jonah Levy on the ETO Doors tower (click to enlarge).

Opera on Location. The New Yorker, Nov. 16, 2015.

On the Philharmonic matter

A Cultural Comment at the New Yorker website.

Hereinspaziert!

Berg's Lulu has returned to the Met, in a generally strong, haunting production by William Kentridge. There is early praise from Anthony Tommasini and Anne Midgette; my review will appear a week from Monday.

Access road to Hades

One of the Hopscotch vehicles in motion. The production has been extended through Nov. 22.

Another Zemlinsky moment

Zemlinsky's 1937 setting of Langston Hughes's "Misery," in a transcription for voice and two guitars. Alex Grabarchuk sings; Walter Marsh and Alan Berman play guitar.

A Zemlinsky moment

The Escher Quartet, seen here playing the second movement of Zemlinsky's Third Quartet, will perform the composer's four quartets under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center tomorrow night; the event will be streamed live. Of the four, the Second is particularly notable, breathing much the same rarefied air as Schoenberg's Second Quartet. The Chamber Music Society is undertaking this season a laudable series of quartet cycles, looking beyond the usual suspects: also featured are Nielsen, Ginastera, and Leon Kirchner. Only with a Bartók cycle by the Jerusalem Quartet does the series venture into standard fare.

Previously: Late glimmers of a golden age, At the grave of Zemlinsky.

Schiff's Schubert

The Trill of Doom. The New Yorker, Nov. 2, 2015.

Noted

Carrie Brownstein: “I feel like it’s got to the point where I’m processing information about Syrian refugees or the latest cat video exactly the same way, because I’m mediating it through the same screen. Everything begins to share the same value. Everything’s a stage.”

Hopscotch arrives

Hopscotch, the "mobile opera" created by the Industry and directed by Yuval Sharon, opens in Los Angeles on Oct. 31. I've had some early glimpses of the production, and I strongly urge anyone who lives in or near LA not to miss it. The principal composers are Andrew Norman, Andrew McIntosh, Ellen Reid, Veronika Krausas, David Rosenboom, and Marc Lowenstein, who also serves as music director.

Bookshelf

New, recent, and forthcoming titles of interest.

Michael Church, ed., The Other Classical Musics: Fifteen Great Traditions (Oxford)

J. Martin Daughtry, Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq (Oxford)

Fabias Huss, The Music of Frank Bridge (Boydell)

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