Alex Ross's Blog, page 133

Miscellany in memory of Vaughn Keith

Beginning tomorrow, the Library of Congress will celebrate the centennial of Irving Fine with a panoply of concerts and discussions. For background, read Will Robin and (shortly) Ethan Iverson.... On Dec. 13, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony introduce a new experimental space called SoundBox: there will be music of Josquin, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Ravel, Varèse, and Monteverdi.... On Dec. 2, Ensemble Pamplemousse gives the world première of George Lewis's A Recital for Terry Adkins, a multimedia creation that draws on the work of Adkins and Romare Bearden.... Master-Pieces, a new opera by Petr Kotik, will have its American première at the Paula Cooper Gallery on Dec. 17.... Via The Wagnerian, a fascinating discussion of that bedeviling Castorf Ring at Bayreuth.... The period from Dec. 3 to Dec. 10 will be particularly dizzying in NYC: events include Meredith Monk's On Behalf of Nature at BAM (see Zachary Woolfe's fine Monk profile); Steven Stucky and Jeremy Denk's The Classical Style at Carnegie; Philip Glass's Etudes at BAM; Xavier Montsalvatge's El gato con botas at Gotham Chamber Opera; Keeril Makan at Miller Theatre; an Anna Clyne première with Orpheus; the Torino Opera's concert performance of William Tell at Carnegie; Annie Gosfield with the JACK Quartet at Roulette; William Christie conducting Handel's La Resurrezione at Juilliard; Matmos performing Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives at ISSUE Project Room; Gabriel Kahane's The Ambassador at BAM; and a fabulously grim American Symphony program of Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony, Ligeti's Requiem, and Schnittke's Nagasaki.

Freilicher at 90

"Yellow," 2009. Courtesy of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

The great American painter Jane Freilicher turns ninety today. Happy birthday, Jane! There will be a celebration at the Poetry Project on December 12th, with readings and tributes by John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Adam Fitzgerald, Maxine Groffsky, Tom Healy, Alex Katz, Vincent Katz, Amy Klein, Jenni Quilter, Karen Roffman, Charles Simic, Emily Skillings, Richard Thomas, and Anne Waldman.

Recommendations

For whatever it's worth, I've added several new selections to my page of recommended CDs. The first twenty or so are in the running for my best-of-the-year list. My colleagues at the New York Times have supplied gift-buying suggestions; I'd endorse a number of these, especially Tony Tommasini's choice of the Virgil Thomson Library of America edition. Some other recent music books of note: Mark Berry's After Wagner, Nicholas Mathew's Political Beethoven, Susan Tomes's Sleeping in Temples, Mark Evan Bonds's Absolute Music, Chris Walton's Lies and Epiphanies, and Mina Yang's Planet Beethoven. I have yet to see James Klosty's John Cage Was, but reliable sources report that it's delightful.

Season's Greetings

Andris Nelsons in Boston

Brushfires. The New Yorker, Dec. 1, 2014.

Nightafternight playlist for St. Cecilia's Day

Ted Hearne, The Law of Mosaics, Andrew Norman, The Companion Guide to Rome; A Far Cry (Crier Records)

Lully, Amadis; Cyril Auvity, Judith van Wanroij, Christophe Rousset leading Les Talens Lyriques (Aparté)

Fantasticus: seventeenth-century works of Weckmann, Bertali, Buxtehude, Krell, Schmeltzer, Vierdanck, Oswald; Quicksilver (Acis)

Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, Aerial; various ensembles, including CAPUT, Iceland Symphony, Nordic Affect (DG)

Mahler, Symphony No. 9; Jascha Horenstein conducting the Vienna Symphony (Pristine)

Brigitta Muntendorf, it may all be an illusion; Ensemble Modern, Ensemble musikFabrik, Ensemble Garage, Calefax Reed Quintet, IEMA-Ensemble (col legno)

Anthony Cheung, Roundabouts; Ensemble Modern, Ueli Wiget, Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Ensemble Modern Medien)

Note about Meredith Monk

Downtown Shaman. The New Yorker, Nov. 24, 2014.

Picketing Verdi

Virgil Thomson on the 1952 protests against Don Carlo at the Met:

Just for pleasure, and also to impress a visitor from Europe, your announcer dropped in last Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera for a performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo ... It was something of a surprise to learn that the performance was being picketed. Investigation revealed the following facts. The Archdiocesan Union of the Holy Name Society of New York, the American Society for the Preservation of Sacred, Patriotic, and Operatic Music, and the Children’s Drama Guild have all made protests to the Metropolitan management. The latter group had already asked the Manhattan Supreme Court, back in 1950, for a declaratory judgment enjoining the Metropolitan Opera Association from disseminating subversive anti-religious propaganda. This suit is still awaiting action....

The signs carried by the picketers, who are about thirty in number, bore the following legends:

“The opera Don Carlo is a mockery of religion.”

“The opera Don Carlo is anti-state and anti-religious.”

“Stop Sovietizing operas.”

“Moscow termites invade the ‘Met.’”

“Don’t support ‘Met’ Opera as long as they hire subversives.”

“Who gets the money that the ‘Met’ loses?”

“Planned deficit financing is anti-American.”

I quote from the excellent new Library of America edition of Thomson's writings, edited by Tim Page. Thomson further notes that the protesters had earlier been confused about their dates, showing up on a night when Die Fledermaus was playing.

Needless to say, all of this anticipates the Klinghoffer demonstrations that unfolded this fall — not least the scene on opening night, when some protesters upbraided operagoers for attending an anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist work, not realizing that the opera on offer was The Marriage of Figaro.

Miscellany

Strange days at : according to Robin Pogrebin's Times report, the complex "is essentially paying the [Fisher] family $15 million for permission to drop the name" of Avery Fisher from the main concert hall, so that another donor can offer his, her, or its name to the forthcoming renovation.... On Saturday in Cambridge MA, Blue Heron presents a multimedia event celebrating Thomas Forrest Kelly's new book Capturing Music, a lucid and absorbing account of the emergence of musical notation.... On Friday at Spectrum in NYC, Cantata Profana plays a program of Mozart, Adès, and Ustvolskaya, with "wine and Oreos" to follow.... The LA Phil celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Disney Hall organ—Hurricane Mama, as Terry Riley has dubbed it—with the première of Stephen Hartke's Fourth Symphony, for organ and orchestra, on Nov. 20, and a special Pipedreams event on Nov. 23.... The next NY Phil CONTACT! event, on Monday, will be hosted by John Adams, and will include works of Daníel Bjarnason, Ingram Marshall, Missy Mizzoli, and Timo Andres (his Schumann-inspired string quartet Early to Rise)....  The formidable Norwegian singer-composer Maja S. K. Ratkje is in residence at The Stone Nov. 25-30.

Judith Ring

The Irish composer has a new album on Ergodos. Above is a piece called GONE, with footage and sound recorded at an abandoned factory in Rüdersdorf, outside Berlin.