Alex Ross's Blog, page 154

Gruppen in Worcester

Matthew Guerrieri reports.

Nørgård 3

Goerke triumphant

Christine Goerke first made her name in the late nineties, in Handel, Gluck, and Mozart. I remember the fresh thrill of her Iphigénie at City Opera in 1997. In the early aughts, she underwent a vocal crisis, as she recounted to Opera News, and has triumphantly reemerged as an exponent of high-dramatic German repertory. Last night, in Die Frau ohne Schatten, she proved herself the most potent dramatic soprano to appear at the Met since — well, let's not jinx her by naming names. But it's now a voice of immense force and wide-ranging expressivity. Absolutely go see her if you have the chance. Here is my 2002 review of the Herbert Wernicke production, which remains a rather superficial affair but certainly uses the Met stage with more flair than most productions of recent years.

Lecture on contemporary classical music

I have nothing to say about the nine-year-old who sings opera or the eight-year-old who composes, and I am saying it.

Another failure at the Met

"The solo writing for the singers is mostly of an instrumental character, essentially un-melodic and unvocal too, with imperfect prosody. The most dramatic choral passage is the scene before the church . . . [where there] is operatic rather than oratorio writing for the massed voices . . . The score is carefully and elaborately contrived. There is something doing most of the time on the stage and in the orchestra — all plausible, and highly intelligent, and — the real life of music-drama lacking."

           — Olin Downes on Peter Grimes, 1949

Nov. 22, 1963

Browsing on YouTube, I found this recording of a Kol Israel broadcast marking the fiftieth birthday of Benjamin Britten, on Nov. 22, 1963. The announcer is marking a performance of Britten's Piano Concerto, by Thea Raphaeli and the "Kol Israel" Philharmonic Orchestra, when there is a sudden, unexplained silence. The announcer then gives a piece of breaking news: John F. Kennedy has been assassinated. The broadcast then resumes. (If you click on the YouTube logo above and then hit "show more," you can read a full description of the event by Sagiv Raphaeli, the pianist's son.) In London, Britten was marking his birthday by attending a concert performance of Gloriana at Royal Festival Hall; the celebratory mood dissipated as word of Kennedy's death spread through the crowd.

Copland in Bayreuth

A fascinating tidbit in Eva Rieger's biography of Friedelind Wagner (just out from Boydell & Brewer, in a translation by Chris Walton): when Michael Tilson Thomas worked as a musical assistant in Bayreuth in 1966 and 1967, Friedelind, the Meister's renegade grand-daughter, took an interest in him, and invited him to give a piano recital at Wahnfried. The program included works of Ives and Copland.

Sokolović

Charles Downey's enthusiastic review of Ana Sokolović's opera Svadba, now playing at Opera Philadelphia, led me to the video above. More evidence of a fascinating sensibility can be found at Sokolović's website.

Niagara Mohawk

Nielsen night

To restate a conviction offered in various fora and media over the years, going back to WHRB's Nielsen Orgy of 1990: Thomas Jensen's 1952 live version of the Nielsen Fourth and Launy Grøndahl's 1956 take on the Second are among the greatest, grittiest recordings ever made. If I ever hear an orchestra play with half the passion of those Danish Radio musicians of the fifties, I'll count myself very lucky.