Alex Ross's Blog, page 120

An Aurélie Lierman moment

The Rwandan-Belgian composer, vocalist, and radio artist is currently on tour in the United States; she appears Saturday night at The Wulf, in Los Angeles, and in the Bay Area later in the month. She is known for, among other things, her soundscapes drawn on journeys in East Africa; the piece above is a portrait of a neighborhood in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

A Dario Palermo moment

The Milanese composer, born in 1970, has an absorbing new CD on the Amirani label: three works for instruments, voices, and electronics, in various configurations. The Difference Engine, composed in 2010-11, is performed by the mezzo Catherine Carter and the Arditti Quartet.

Noted

David Sarnoff, in 1966, foresaw a "global communications system of instant sight and sound that would link people everywhere." He also predicted that this futuristic network would become a capitalist bonanza.

Trinity 70

On the seventieth anniversary of the Trinity atomic test, a link to my 2005 piece about John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic. Here on the blog I supplied a photojournal of my visit to the test site.

Music for #blacklivesmatter

Posted by The Dream Unfinished on Monday, July 13, 2015

In advance of The Dream Unfinished, a special concert marking the first anniversary of the killing of Eric Garner by New York City police, musicians give a preview of Jessie Montgomery's Soul Force in Grand Central Station and other locations.

I first encountered Montgomery in 2006, when she was a member of the Providence Quartet and Community MusicWorks; that remarkable group figured in my 2006 piece "Learning the Score," about music education.

For Alan Curtis

The deep-feeling conductor, harpsichordist, and scholar died in Florence today, at the age of eighty.

Miscellany

A musically lavish edition of the Lincoln Center Festival is now under way. On Wednesday night, Yarn/Wire presents world premières of works by Tristan Murail, Misato Mochizuki, and Raphaël Cendo. Those who are unable to attend can watch a live stream from the LC Fest site. The Cleveland Orchestra presents three programs, including Strauss's complete Daphne; read Zachary Woolfe for a discerning status report on the orchestra. The big event, though, is Heiner Goebbels's production of Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury, on July 23 and 24. Ensemble Musikfabrik, international superstars of modern music, will perform, in every sense... Hannah Edgar, the University of Chicago student who inspired my Strauss piece last summer (and who spoke beautifully at the Andrew Patner Celebration in March), has started up a blog called Dialoges, with her classmate MJ Chen... Good new material has cropped up on Q2. You can hear Meredith Monk's quartet Stringsongs — presented in conjunction with an absorbing Meet the Composer profile of Monk — and also some concerts from this spring's Look and Listen Festival.... In 2012, Boston magazine published a remarkable piece, by Jennie Dorris, about percussion auditions at the Boston Symphony. Somehow I overlooked it at the time; it's cropped again on classical-music social media. It is sharply observed, and the portrait it gives of American orchestral culture is not especially flattering.

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

— Lassus, Missa super Dixit Joseph and motets; Cinquecento (Hyperion)

— Riley, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector, Cadenza on the Night Plain, and other works; Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch)

— Mario Diaz de León, The Soul Is the Arena; Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin, ICE (Denovali)

— Helena Tulve, Arboles lloran por lluvia, Extinction des choses vues, and other works; Arianna Savall, Charles Barbier, Taniel Kirikal, Vox Clamantis, Hortus Musicus, Estonian National Symphony, etc. (ECM)

— Bruckner, Symphony No. 9; Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, from his final concert (DG)

— Clockworking: works of Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Hildur Gudnadóttir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Hafdís Bjarnadóttir, and Thurídur Jónsdóttir; Nordic Affect (Sonus Luminus)

— Time Present and Time Past: works of Alessandro Scarlatti, Górecki, C. P. E. Bach, Geminiani, Reich, and J. S. Bach; Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord, with Concerto Köln (DG)

— Scriabin, Complete Works; various performers (Decca)

For Jon Vickers

The almighty Canadian tenor — the supreme Grimes, the supreme Florestan and Énée, among the greatest of Otellos and Tristans — has died at the age of eighty-eight. He had a voice of stentorian power, but he was never content simply to flatten the ears of his audiences; he was an energetic and detailed actor who made a close study of his characters. If, sometimes, he went over the top, it was never merely for effect; the excess came from a surplus of conviction. How I wish I could have heard him live; I came along a little too late.

Noted

Tom Service, in praise of musical stress: "If reducing stress was the primary driver of musical expression over the centuries, musical culture would not have developed very far or become as meaningful as it is. The levels of emotional intensity and intellectual stimulation produced by everything from Monteverdi to Mozart, Beethoven to Bruckner, Stockhausen to Xenakis, all create a kind of transcendence that comes from going to places of expressive extremity — and sometimes darkness and desperation — that would otherwise be dangerous to confront directly. In other words, it’s music that puts you through a stressful experience.... The music that matters the most to us – well, to me at any rate – makes me stressed, in a deep sense, because it confronts and disturbs our emotional equilibrium. It offers consolation, too, but that’s only one dimension of musical possibility."