Alex Ross's Blog, page 113

Bayreuth 1891

Another fascinating image from the Goethe-Universität digital archive. Click to enlarge.

Last train to Bayreuth

Feb. 18, 1883: Wagner's body is moved from the Bayreuth train station to the gravesite at Wahnfried. From the digital collections of the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt.

For Carl Schorske

The great historian has died, at the age of one hundred. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, published in 1980, is one of those rare books that change the direction of people's lives. So it was for me: I read it when I was seventeen, and it fired my imagination, showing me how early twentieth-century music related to surrounding cultural and political forces. My book The Rest Is Noise was written very much in Schorske's shadow; my current project, Wagnerism, even more so. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna will long remain a model for interdisciplinary writing, although no one will soon match Schorske's inquisitive erudition.

Arvo Pärt at 80

The Estonian master celebrates today his eightieth birthday. Q2 is hosting a twenty-four-hour Pärt marathon, which will include a live webcast of a New Juilliard Ensemble concert at the Met Museum. Joel Sachs, the director of the New Juilliard, and his longtime collaborator Cheryl Seltzer first presented Pärt's music back in 1981, on a Continuum Ensemble program devoted to the Soviet avant-garde. This was three years before the ECM label's release of Tabula Rasa, which inaugurated the international Pärt phenomenon. Manfred Eicher, ECM's head, has compiled a satisfying two-disc survey of Pärt works, entitled Musica Selecta.

Monk at the White House

At the White House today, President Obama bestowed a National Medal of Arts on Meredith Monk. Something about the picture above gives me great delight. Monk is an internationally celebrated artist, but she has never come close to achieving the sort of mass-market stardom that now seems required for, say, the Kennedy Center Honors. The National Medal committee, which this year also honored George Shirley and the University Musical Society, is less driven by pop-culture triumphalism, even if a bestselling author and a movie star were on hand to collect prizes and dominate the media coverage.

Wedekind sings

Erika Wedekind, the playwright's sister, a noted coloratura of her day, sings "Ernani, Ernani involami."

In the garden of Dr. Wedekind

From the Daily Alta California of Aug. 15, 1853. Friedrich Wilhelm Wedekind fled Germany after the revolutions of 1848 and found his way to San Francisco. Having made a small fortune speculating in real estate during the Gold Rush era, he set up a successful gynecological practice and lived in comfort on Simmons Street, now called Sixth Street. "The ground of Dr. Wedekind is a very beautiful and even romantic place," the Alta California reports. Alas, this can no longer be said of Sixth Street near Harrison, although a certain nocturnal romance attaches to The EndUp.

Dr. Wedekind ended up marrying one of his patients, the singer Emilie Kammerer, who had been appearing regularly with the Bianchi troupe, pioneers of Italian opera in San Francisco. Above is a review of an 1859 performance of Lucrezia Borgia. Their second son, Benjamin Franklin Wedekind, author of Spring Awakening and the Lulu plays, was conceived in San Francisco but born in Hanover. Arguably, a fleck of Gold Rush San Francisco remained embedded in him.

Images from the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Wilhelmine oddity of the day

Hans Thoma, Ritt auf dem Vogel (1885)

Herein must lie a tale

Wagner's sketch for the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin is for sale, at a price of $3.6 million. The manuscript disappeared long ago; according to the listing offered by the seller, it was presented by Siegfried Wagner to a "friend." It would be interesting to know who received this rather lavish gift.

Brief Nelsons comment

Reviewing Andris Nelsons's first concerts as the music director of the Boston Symphony last fall, I wrote: "What Boston requires most from this hugely gifted, still maturing conductor is his full attention." With the announcement today that Nelsons will become the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 2017, it's clear that Boston won't be getting it. I concur with the Twitter reaction of my New Yorker colleague Leo Carey: "Stars too powerful. Music needs wider pool of performers considered bankable. Orchestras need committed directors."