Alex Ross's Blog, page 174

A tale of fandom

We all know that Wagner worshipped Arthur Schopenhauer; most people also know that Schopenhauer did not return the favor, jotting all manner of sardonic remarks in the margins of the Ring libretto that Wagner sent to him. (Next to the stage direction at the end of the scandalous first act of Die Walküre — "The curtain falls quickly" — Schopenhauer wrote, "And it's high time.") The philosopher once saw The Flying Dutchman and found it "overdone," according to David Cartwright's biography. He adored Mozart and Rossini above all; his attitude toward the latter bordered on the same bashful idolatry that he received from Wagner, who once said that Schopenhauer was the only man who ever intimidated him. Cartwright tells a poignant tale: in 1856, Rossini came to Frankfurt, Schopenhauer's home town, and was seen dining at the Englischer Hof, the philosopher's favorite spot. Alerted in advance, Schopenhauer arranged with the management to be seated near the composer. But he did not rise to say hello; instead, too shy or too proud, he lingered in Rossini's vicinity for the duration of the meal.

For Roger Ebert

Miscellany: Happy Dog, Tectonics, etc.

The Cleveland Orchestra, with or without the ailing Franz Welser-Möst, has various notable programs coming up: a California series at the Cleveland Museum of Art, including a Dane Rudhyar world premiere; and a series of community concerts in the Gordon Square area, including a return to the Happy Dog bar. Josh Smith's Happy Dog project is about to yield a CD.... A bow of the head for Robert Ward, composer of The Crucible, who died yesterday at the age of ninety-five.... The Mieczysław Weinberg revival continues apace: the Pacifica Quartet has included his meandering, mesmerizing Sixth Quartet on the of their superb Shostakovich survey; ACME plays his rugged Piano Quintet at the Morgan on April 18; Naxos has a recording of his Eighth Symphony, "Polish Flowers"; and David Pountney's potent production of The Passenger is coming to the Houston Grand Opera and Lincoln Center Festival next year.... Gregory Spears's operatic adaptation of Willa Cather's story "Paul's Case" will have its premiere at Urban Arias in Arlington VA on April 20.... Some remarkable programming for the Iceland Symphony's Tectonics Festival, April 18-20: Christian Wolff, Vinko Globokar, Henry Brant, Pauline Oliveros, and a host of Icelanders.... Closer to home, MATA (April 17-20) presents Jobina Tinnemans, Tel Aviv's Meitar Ensemble, Talea, and various others.

Dyed sugar-water deems classical music boring

On the other hand, there's Beethoven Dada.

Photograph by Adam Crane.

Beethoven Dada

An attempt at re-creating Stefan Wolpe's Dada action of 1920. More at the New Yorker site.

Chamber opera

Shock Tactics. The New Yorker, April 8, 2013.

In the same issue is a new article by Jeremy Denk.

Venture forth, O soul

An attempt to mark non-Orthodox Easter and the Skandalkonzert anniversary together. Penderecki's Utrenja might also be an apt choice, particularly with all the talk of The Shining in the media these days:

Tenebrae 2

Tenebrae

Lip-syncing George Benjamin

The above video seems already to have made the rounds in the UK, but I hadn't come across it until a friend forwarded it. Mono Pop describes itself as "an online verbatim series sharing the unheard voices of the ordinary, the not-so-ordinary, and everyone in between"; essentially, it's an exercise in off-kilter, conceptual lip-syncing. In this episode, an actor who participated in the première of George Benjamin's Written on Skin, in Aix-en-Provence, mimics some audio recorded during rehearsals. The result is daft, adorable, and, despite some possibly exaggerated gestures, revealing of a major artist at work. Here is a conductor who gets what he wants in the least dictatorial way imaginable. At the end, we hear Benjamin focusing on a crucial detail of the score—the rustle of maracas that is heard at the very end of the opera, carrying an implication that I tried to tease out in my New Yorker review. I have been assured that Benjamin himself found the video amusing. Written on Skin will receive its American première at Tanglewood in August, with the composer conducting.

A tougher lip-sync assignment: Paul Hindemith.