Alex Ross's Blog, page 150

Make Music Winter 2013

The winter-solstice festival returns on Saturday. Highlights of the schedule are a reprise of Chris Herbert's Winterize (a chilly pleasure last year); a bicycle-bell piece by Merche Blasco; a new version of James Holt's Bach-on-the-G concept; a percussion procession led by TIGUE (the core of the amazing Wall Street Vexations); and, of course, a boombox opus by Phil Kline.

Staier

Opera north

The Canadian Opera Company recently announced that it had commissioned a new opera, entitled Hadrian, from the singer-songwriter-turned-opera-composer Rufus Wainwright. Reactions in the Canadian new-music community have not been entirely positive, as Robert Everett-Green indicates in a Globe and Mail article. In the past fifty years, the COC has managed to mount only five Canadian works on its main stage — a record that outdoes the Met's in spottiness. Was Wainwright the most deserving candidate for such a rare commission? Everett-Green contemplates that question, and he also examines the very different case of Opera Philadelphia, which, under the direction of a Canadian impresario, David Devan, has thrown itself into contemporary opera — including Ana Sokolović's Svadba, first seen at Toronto's Queen of Puddings Music Theatre. “We decided that, if we want to remain viable, we need to move from being Turner Classic Movies to being HBO,” Devan told Everett-Green. A metaphor for others to ponder.

Pop triumphalism, update

Not surprisingly, many self-described leftists have rejected John Halle's thesis that the vast majority of pop music serves as a tool (wittingly or not) of élite capitalist forces and that classical music has a role to play in resisting them. He is accused of defending "old white people's tastes nobody gives a shit about." Take that, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. On the Minnesota matter, Halle is sadly right in observing that many on the nominal left have accepted "the right's rhetoric, viewing classical musicians as a 'coddled' workforce receiving an unjustified exemption from market discipline." The collectivist model of the orchestra, the chamber group, or the chorus is unfashionable; instead, our heroes are mega-rich superstars who peddle populist fantasies while residing on a plane far removed from ordinary life.

Othello's Daughter

I've placed my Ira and Luranah Aldridge piece online. This is a personal favorite among articles I've written; deepest thanks to The New Yorker for letting me do it. The third volume of Bernth Lindfors's Ira Aldridge biography is now out. Red Velvet, Lolita Chakrabarti's play about Aldridge, arrives at St. Ann's Warehouse in March, with Adrian Lester in the lead.

Lenny, Benjy

Tim Page and John Rockwell on the Bernstein letters; James Wood on the Britten biographies.

Chord of the day

The chord that opens Rudolf Kelterborn's Fourth Symphony. Horst Stein conducts the Bamberg Symphony, from a Musikszene Schweiz recording.

Guilty pleasure

Wolf Harden is the soloist, with Heribert Beissel conducting the Slovak Radio Symphony; from a Marco Polo recording. In my library are Walter Gieseking's 1943 account and a cpo release with Volker Banfield at the keyboard and Werner Andreas Albert leading the Munich Philharmonic. The latter disc includes a fascinating liner note by Hans-Christian Schmidt, with liberal quotations from Wolfgang Rihm's essay "Zur Aktualität Pfitzners," which states, among other things, that Pfitzner resides in a "secure position of uncontested complete contestability." One can scarcely argue with that.

Arts in Chicago

The Chicago Reader asks whether Yo-Yo Ma and Renée Fleming are being taken for a ride by Rahm Emanuel.

Dawn miscellany

Researchers cast yet more doubt on the so-called Mozart Effect, the notion that Mozart makes you smarter: "There is very little evidence supporting the idea that music classes enhance children’s cognitive development.” Good riddance — I'm convinced that such soulless, utilitarian arguments on behalf of music education damage the cause in the long run.... In The Nation, Marina Harss has a finely detailed portrait of the marvelous Mark Morris.... Ethan Iverson celebrates the hundredth birthday of Morton Gould, another anniversary composer overlooked in the Wagner-Verdi-Britten stampede. There are all kinds of odd and interesting things in his varied output. Back in 1992, I interviewed the kindly Mr. Gould about, among other things, his piece The Jogger and the Dinosaur, a "theatrical concerto for rapper and orchestra".... Bob Shingleton assesses Jonathan Reekie's stewardship of the Aldeburgh Festival.... There's an international petition to stop the "fusion" of the SWR orchestras in Germany.... Will Robin forwards this remarkable account of the "sex magic" scandal that brought down Eugene Goossens.... Anne Midgette and meditate on Deborah Rutter's move to the Kennedy Center. Charles also has a lovely remembrance of the late Marion Lignana Rosenberg, whom I first encountered, from an awed distance, as the operatic arbiter of WHRB. David Elliott, WHRB's éminence grise, recorded a tribute here; other memorials can be found at New York Classical Review.