Alex Ross's Blog, page 15

For Busoni

The shadow emperor of twentieth-century music died a century ago today. I wrote about him in 1999, 2001, and 2012.

For Irene Schweizer

The great Swiss improvising pianist Irene Schweizer has died at the age of eighty-three. Above, some glimpses of her in action, including collaborations with the painter Rosina Kuhn. I'd previously noted one of her duets with George Lewis.

For Bill Viola

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Photo: Kira Perov.

His Tristan with Peter Sellars and Esa-Pekka Salonen was one of the great ecstatic shocks of my operagoing life.

Neutra in Iowa

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The Dunn Library at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa.

Nightafternight playlist

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New and recent releases of interest.

Schubert, Quartets Nos. 8 and 15; Takács Quartet (Hyperion)

Bruckner, Symphony No. 7, Bates, Resurrexit; Manfred Honeck conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony (Reference, out July 19)

Milica Djordjevic, Mali svitac, žestoko ozaren i prestravljen nesnošljivom lepotom, Quicksilver, Čvor, Mit o ptici; Duncan Ward, Peter Rundel, and Johannes Kalitzke conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony (BR Klassik)

Lisa Ilean, arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, Tiding II (silentium), A through-grown earth, Land’s End; Aura Go, Emma McGrath, Tilman Robinson, musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music, GBSR Duo, David Zucchi, Michael Acker, Experimentalstudio des SWR, Juliet Fraser, Explore Ensemble, David Robertson conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (NMC)

Scriabin Sonatas and Preludes, Scarlatti Sonatas, Asal Transitions; Julius Asal (DG)

Travelogue: piano music of Philippa Schuyler; Sarah Masterson (Centaur)

Queen of Hearts: music of Brumel, Josquin, Clemens non papa, Gombert, and others; Owain Park leading the Gesualdo Six (Hyperion)

Grieg, Holberg Suite, Ballade, Lyric Pieces; Andrey Gugnin (Hyperion)

How democracies end

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                          — Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Cathedral at midnight

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National Cathedral, c. 1987.

Jeremy Eichler leaves the Boston Globe

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Jeremy entering the Komponierhäuschen in Attersee, 2005.

My friend and colleague Jeremy Eichler, who has been the Boston Globe's chief classical critic since 2006, has left his position in order to take up a post at Tufts University, as a professor in music history and public humanities. He promises to continue writing in a music-critical vein and also to pursue new book projects, in the wake of the international success of Time's Echo. He has written a characteristically eloquent, thoughtful, and searching farewell essay for the Globe, which gives a sense of all he has accomplished during his tenure. Jeremy also makes a potent argument for the value of journalistic criticism, even as he steps back from it. He writes: "Robust cultural coverage is essential for any city’s arts ecosystem — which also, of course, plays a key part in the local economy. (As the Globe’s art critic Murray Whyte has pointed out, '21 million people go to the theater, visit a museum, or buy a ticket for a concert in the Greater Boston area over the typical year — four times as many as those attending every single home game of Boston’s four major sports teams.') Yet beyond these larger civic benefits, for individual readers, I have always believed good criticism can offer still more ... I have always considered it my responsibility as a critic first and foremost to enact, with some sense of invitation, a way of thinking about, responding to, or, most simply, living with the presence of art." This resonates very much with my own thinking about a steadily dwindling, seemingly doomed, but not yet fully extinct profession. The good news is that the Globe seems inclined to maintain a full-time classical-critic post — something that appears not to have happened with the recent retirement of Joshua Kosman at the San Francisco Chronicle. So perhaps we can — to apply once again a favorite phrase of Morton Feldman's — keep it going for a little while more.

Satisfied customer

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I picked up new publications by two cherished colleagues at Skylight Books: Ann Powers on Joni Mitchell, Emily Nussbaum on reality TV. Emily will be appearing at Skylight on July 1.

Boston Symphony, meet Chaya Czernowin

I was interested to read Josh Barone's profile of Chad Smith, the Boston Symphony's recently appointed administrative chief. Given Smith's remarkable track record at the LA Phil, there is every reason to believe that he'll have a revivifying impact on an institution that once outstripped all American orchestras in its promotion of new music. It struck me that if the BSO wants to engage more seriously with contemporary reality it does not have far to look. Since 2009, Chaya Czernowin, incontestably one of the most significant composers active today, and also one of the profession's most influential teachers, has been based at Harvard. I suspected that the BSO has barely touched her music, but I was still a bit shocked to discover, on consulting the orchestra's performance history, that it has never played a note. The only item in the archive is a 2019 performance of the string octet Anea Crystal at Tanglewood, featuring Tanglewood Music Center fellows. There are, of course, gifted composers all over Boston, but Czernowin is an internationally towering figure. That the BSO has ignored her is a kind of scandal.