Alex Ross's Blog, page 139
June 16, 2014
NYPhil Biennial
Blockbuster. The New Yorker, June 23, 2014.
June 9, 2014
June 6, 2014
Midsummer miscellany
The NYPhil Biennial is winding down, but the schedule will remain lively through much of June. Opera Cabal stages Georg Friedrich Haas's ATTHIS at the Kitchen, June 12-13; the same weekend, Chelsea Opera presents Copland's The Tender Land. Alexandre Lunsqui is the featured composer at the Chelsea Music Festival. The Early Music Festival NYC, a new initiative under the direction of Jolle Greenleaf and Donald Meineke, has a rich week of concerts June 13-19, culminating in a reprise of the Green Mountain Project's legendary Vespers 1610. Caramoor is offering this summer a Garden of Sonic Delights, with works by Laurie Anderson, Betsey Biggs, Annea Lockwood, Trimpin, Bruce Odland, and various others. The Philharmonic will include premières by Anthony Cheung and Sean Shepherd in the series starting on June 11 and 18. And, of course, there's Make Music NY on June 21.... On the other coast, WasteLAnd, in Los Angeles, offers Scott Worthington's Even the Light Itself Falls on June 13, and the What's Next Ensemble stages its annual Los Angeles Composers Project concert on June 21.... This year's MATA Festival is now streaming on WQXR.... Glen Wilson's masterly series of Naxos harpsichord recordings continues with a disc devoted to the undersung Elizabethan master Ferdinando Richardson and other treasures of the period, including the astounding, anonymous "Upon la mi re." ... In a futile protest against anniversary glut, I am not listening to Richard Strauss.
Unglaublich
From Anastasia Tsioulcas's NPR Classical Facebook page: "If you've been following the ongoing conversation about how women are treated in classical music today...an interesting and relevant incident took place between yesterday & today. A source told me yesterday that during a session of the League of American Orchestras conference that is taking place right now in Seattle, a representative of the Berliner Philharmoniker was talking to a roomful of classical music professionals, and said that the reason that 78% of users for their (excellent) Digital Concert Hall is male is because...the computer setup is 'too complicated' for women." And more: "I received this via Twitter today from the orchestra: 'This was indeed a misleading statement – of course women can connect the devices just as well as men.'"
More: An official statement from the Berlin Philharmonic: "We very much regret this misleading statement and want to apologize for this mistake. As we know from the many emails we receive, difficulties in the use of such a complex technical offer as the Digital Concert Hall affect male and female users alike. We will address these difficulties very soon and work hard on an easier access."
June 4, 2014
Debating Fischer
Robert Levine responds to Iván Fischer's comments about the American orchestra system.
May 31, 2014
May 30, 2014
The joy of discord
Tony Tommasini, in the Times, surveys the art of dissonance, giving excellent piano illustrations in accompanying videos.
For Francesco d'Avalos
The composer, conductor, and author Francesco d'Avalos, Prince d’Avalos and Marquis of Vasto and Pescara, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the uncle of Maria d'Avalos, the unlucky first wife of Carlo Gesualdo, died on May 26th at the age of eighty-four, at his palazzo in Naples. I visited him in 2011, and described the encounter at the end of my article on Gesualdo. Norman Lebrecht has a word or two about d'Avalos's work as a conductor.
May 29, 2014
Make Music NY
The full schedule for June 21 is announced. Some highlights: Henry Brant's Mass in Gregorian Chant for Multiple Flutes, John Cage's 49 Waltzes (hopefully incorporating all 147 NYC addresses), three smartphone-interactive pieces, the traditional Cornelia Street In C, Salvatore Sciarrino’s La Bocca, i piedi, il suono with a hundred saxophones, and what promises to be a mightily loud rendition of Berlioz's Symphonie funèbre et triomphale.
May 28, 2014
Joyce DiDonato at Juilliard
A powerful commencement speech: "We are all deserving of a life that overflows with immense possibility, improbable beauty and relentless truth."
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