Alex Ross's Blog, page 13

Peter Gelb vs. the operas of Elliott Carter

The New York Post's Page Six section, a space that infrequently turns its attention to classical music, reports on a bizarre attack that Peter Gelb recently unleashed on Zachary Woolfe, the classical critic of the New York Times. At a donor event on the Upper East Side, Gelb apparently said: “There’s a great deal of resentment on the part of some critics — not all critics, some critics — about the idea that music should be approachable by a large audience and should be available to more people and some critics might [prefer to] keep it sacred, in some ways, for themselves." He went on to claim that "some critics" were promoting “the operas of Elliot [sic] Carter or pieces that I don’t believe would have popular success." This is nonsense, on several levels. First, Elliott Carter wrote only one opera, the forty-seven-minute-long What Next?, and no one I know is campaigning for it to be performed at the Met. The remark exhibits Gelb's basic indifference to contemporary music. Second, Woolfe is hardly an inflexible advocate of modernist complexity; Gelb seems to have confused him with the late Charles Wuorinen. Third, the Met is lavishly covered in the pages of the Times, and it's rather ungrateful for the company's leader to attack it on that score. Fourth, when only a handful of papers in America still have classical critics on staff, "some critics" is a strange locution. Finally, after nearly two decades at the Met, Gelb ought to have developed thicker skin when it comes to bad press. (Recall his 2012 attempt to shut down adverse coverage of Met productions in Opera News.) Instead of becoming fixated on imaginary media conspiracies, Gelb should be concentrating on more substantial challenges.

Nightafternight playlist

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New releases of interest, à la manière de Steve Smith.

Brahms, Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, Pieces Op. 116-119; Igor Levit, with Christian Thielemann conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (Sony)

Weill, Symphonies No. 1 and 2, The Seven Deadly Sins; Joana Mallwitz conducting the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, with Katharine Mehrling, Michael Porter, Simon Bode, Michael Nagl, Oliver Zwarg (DG)

Ives, Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-4, Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2; Stefan Jackiw, Jeremy Denk (Nonesuch)

Corelli, Violin Sonatas Op. 5; Rachel Barton Pine, Brandon Acker, John Mark Rozendaal, David Schrader (Cedille)

Mozart, Requiem and other sacred pieces; Chadi Lazreq, Ying Fang, Beth Taylor, Laurence Kilsby, Alex Rosen, Raphaël Pichon conducting Pygmalion (Harmonia Mundi)

Beethoven, Sonatas Op. 106 and Op. 2 No. 3; Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion)

Lanzilotti, forever forward in search of the beautiful and other works; Gahlord Dewald, Roomful of Teeth, Brian Horton, Lanzilotti, Johanna Novom, Jesse Blumberg, Argus Quartet, JoAnn Lamolino, Tommy Yee, Morfbeats (Bandcamp)

Mazzoli's The Listeners, Tesori's Grounded

Downward Spirals. The New Yorker, Oct. 14, 2024.

Meeting Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, who turns 100 today, was one of our most musical Presidents. He took an interest in the Suzuki method of string education and enrolled his daughter, Amy, in classes. On November 20, 1977, according to the Carter Presidential Diary, he went to St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, in Northwest Washington, to attend a violin recital by students of the local teacher Ronda Cole. At the time, Amy was enrolled at Hardy Middle School, across the street. I lived with my family nearby — I was nine at the time — and news quickly spread that the President was coming. He greeted people outside, and I shook his hand. A little later, before the recital began, I wandered inside the church and found myself in a meeting room. As I recall, three men were standing there: two in suits, presumably Secret Service, and, off to one side, the President, presumably waiting to make a last-minute entrance. If I hadn't been a little boy, I doubt I'd have been allowed in, but the two men paid me little heed. Along one wall was a table on which were laid foodstuffs for a post-concert reception. I gazed somewhat awestruck at the President; I also gazed at the table. Carter looked at me, looked at the spread, and said, "Would you like a brownie?" I nodded, and was presented with a brownie. There was no mistaking the quiet kindness that emanated from the man. The recital itself was a bit excruciating, but that's beside the point. Happy birthday, Mr. President!

Mendelssohn on Mull

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Quartet Island. The New Yorker, Oct. 7, 2024.

For Fredric Jameson

The great philosopher and critic Fredric Jameson died today, at the age of ninety. His writings, almost impossibly voluminous and still growing year by year, accomplish a magnificent balancing act between intellectual rigor on the one hand and aesthetic perception on the other; a strong political commitment undergirds the whole, yet his devotion to dialectical thought prevents him from ever approaching dogma. You read him not only for the grand formulations but also for the passing insights; he was, in realms of art, a skeptical enthusiast, and thus a brilliant critic. I took a seminar with him in 1987-88, on post-Marxist cultural theory; it was a turning point in my intellectual development, perhaps the turning point, and I am still rewriting the paper on Mann, Adorno, and Doktor Faustus that I produced under his aegis. A few years ago, I exchanged notes with him about Wagner, for whom he had an acute appreciation. He once wrote that the ending of the Ring "is paradigmatic of all great art in the way in which it foregrounds not this or that solution (bound in any case to be ideological), but rather the contradiction itself." The above is from Kasper Holten's Copenhagen Ring, which he especially admired. Ruhe, ruhe ...

An Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti moment

The titular album, an exceedingly beautiful one, appears on October 4.

Sag Hallo zu meinem kleinen Freund

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Benno Herz, the program director at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles, drew my attention to a curious error that has routinely surfaced in stories about the so-called Scarface Mansion — the sprawling Montecito mansion, formally known as El Fureidis, that Bertram Goodhue designed in 1906 for the real-estate tycoon James Waldron Gillespie, and that Brian De Palma later used as a location for Scarface. Such publications as Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post have claimed that this nine-acre estate once belonged to Thomas Mann. One account alleges that Mann "entertained Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill there." This is all absurd. Mann did well by his royalties, but he could never have afforded a property on the scale of El Fureidis. He owned only one house in America — the one at 1550 San Remo Drive, designed by J.R. Davidson at his behest. He had earlier occupied houses in Princeton, Brentwood, and Pacific Palisades. He never lived in Santa Barbara, though he did visit Lotte Lehmann there. I do not believe he ever met Churchill, much less entertained him. I have no idea how all this started, but, as Benno points out, it could lead to some entertaining deepfakes.

Beim Schlafengehen

Schoenberg at 150

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Some twenty concerts are happening on the great man's birthday, according to the Schoenberg 150 website. Included are no fewer than four performances of Gurre-Lieder — in Montreal, Vienna, Milan, and Hamburg. (I'm now watching on an Elbphilharmonie stream of the last.) Especially notable is a pair of Schoenberg events at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine. The only American celebration listed at Schoenberg 150 is one at the Westside Conservatory in Los Angeles. Schoenberg's son Larry will be speaking, and Viennese pastries will be served. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!