Alex Ross's Blog, page 152

Parterre at 20

Parterre Box, the formidable online hub for opera critique and chatter, celebrates today its twentieth anniversary. The publication began life as a zine — youngsters may have to look up the word — and found a robust second life on the Internet. I treasure my stack of vintage Parterres, with their juicy backstage stories, salacious illustrations, and learned jeremiads by the likes of Dawn Fatale, Dr. Repertoire, Enzo Bordello, and, of course, James "La Cieca" Jorden, Parterre's founder, who is now a respected and incisive print critic, if that still means anything. Auguroni!

Agenda (updated)

An explosive revelation in Paul Morley's fine piece on the Huddersfield Festival: Cage, Boulez, and Messiaen once dined together at the Huddersfield Pizza Hut.... The Serbian-born composer Djuro Zivkovic has won the 2014 Grawemeyer Award, for his work On the Guarding of the Heart.... The fascinating and difficult-to-classify Icelandic composer Anna Þhorvaldsdóttir is featured Thursday in Miller Theatre's Composer Portrait series.... Kyle Gann, the godfather of new-music blogging (among many other distinctions), makes waves at the ISCM in Vienna.... No one understands Parsifal, with the possible exception of the Boulezian.... Sundry pundits have analyzed the demise of New York City Opera; it's another thing to witness the event through the eyes of a singer, namely Nick Phan.... Notable operatic rarities playing in New York next week: Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All (which received an unforgettable City Opera production in 2000) at the Manhattan School of Music (Dec. 11-15) and Strauss's Feuersnot in a concert performance by the American Symphony (Dec. 15).... Somebody loves Martinů: at a recent Sotheby's auction, the manuscript of the Czech master's Fourth Symphony sold for 177000 Euros, far above evaluation.... I'm deeply saddened to hear of the death of Marion Lignana Rosenberg, one of the most passionate and perceptive of opera critics. Her last piece for WQXR ended with a salute to Joyce DiDonato and these words: "Here’s to countless voices singing out in freedom, dignity, and joy in 2014 and beyond."

Agenda

An explosive revelation in Paul Morley's fine piece on the Huddersfield Festival: Cage, Boulez, and Messiaen once dined together at the Huddersfield Pizza Hut.... The Serbian composer Djuro Zivkovic has won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award, for his work On the Guarding of the Heart.... Kyle Gann, the godfather of new-music blogging (among many other distinctions), makes waves at the ISCM in Vienna.... Sundry pundits have analyzed the demise of New York City Opera; it's another thing to witness the event through the eyes of a singer, namely Nick Phan.... Notable operatic rarities playing in New York next week: Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All (which received an unforgettable City Opera production in 2000) at the Manhattan School of Music (Dec. 11-15) and Strauss's Feuersnot in a concert performance by the American Symphony (Dec. 15).... Somebody loves Martinů: at a recent Sotheby's auction, the manuscript of the Czech master's Fourth Symphony sold for 177000 Euros, far above evaluation.... I'm deeply saddened to hear of the death of Marion Lignana Rosenberg, one of the most passionate and perceptive of opera critics. Her last piece for WQXR ended with a salute to Joyce DiDonato and these words: "Here’s to countless voices singing out in freedom, dignity, and joy in 2014 and beyond."

The song of 1 WTC

The Britten anniversary

Photo: Matt Haimovitz plays the Third Suite at Trinity.

Coronation. The New Yorker, Dec. 9, 2013.

Here is the full schedule for Trinity Wall Street series, the great event of the Britten season here in New York; the final performance is on Jan. 5. The Decoda Quartet plays the Third Quartet and Berg's Lyric Suite on Thursday, and Chris Herbert sings Who Are These Children? on Dec. 12.

Lupophon

Liza Lim's Tongue of the Invisible introduced me to the lupophon, a modern variant of the heckelphone. In this video, the composer discusses the lupophon's capabilities with Peter Veale, the oboist of Ensemble musikFabrik, who plays transfixingly on the Wergo CD saluted below.

CDs of the year (first three)

I'm assembling my list of notable CDs of 2013, and have much listening and re-listening before me. Here, though, are three discs (or boxes) that are certain to make the final cut:

— Liza Lim, Tongue of the Invisible; Omar Ebrahim, Uri Caine, Ensemble musikFabrik (Wergo)

— George Benjamin, Written on Skin; Barbara Hannigan, Bejun Mehta, Christopher Purves, Benjmain conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Nimbus)

— Britten: The Complete Works (Decca)

I've updated my list of recommended CDs.

Alice Herz-Sommer at 110

The Woman Who Remembers Mahler.

Britten 100

Benjamin Britten is one hundred, and, as Ian Bostridge argues in the Guardian, "his greatness is only now coming into proper focus." If there are still doubters, let them listen to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Phaedra — written in a few weeks in the summer of 1975, the music so secure in Britten's mind that he made no sketches and wrote in full score. The best epitaph for him remains Michael Tippett's: "I want to say, here and now, that Britten has been for me the most purely musical person I have ever met and I have ever known." It seems absurd to shout greetings to a very private and reserved man who is no longer with us, but, as one who became obsessed by Britten's music in college and has never wavered in my love for it, I will do so all the same: Happy birthday, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh!

Britten intime

Via NPR Music. For a different kind of Britten tribute, follow the Overgrown Path.

Previously: Britten 100 in New York.