Alex Ross's Blog, page 176

Extended hiatus

Miscellany: the Minnesota crisis, etc.

On Friday night, Osmo Vänskä led the Minnesota Orchestra in an all-Sibelius program. Although the musicians are officially locked out in their dispute with management, an exception was made for this concert, which celebrated the orchestra's Grammy nomination. Writes Larry Fuchsberg: "[Finlandia] became a political act, destroying any lingering pretense of the conductor's impartiality." The management and board in Minnesota need to think long and hard about what they are doing.... The Rochester Philharmonic is another orchestra that has gone into a tailspin on account of destructive actions by management and board. Here is a dedicated blog.... Since August, the flutist Mimi Stillman has been performing Debussy's Syrinx every day and releasing videos of the results. Above is an Amtrak rendition; you can see more here.... Another edition of the Ecstatic Music Festival is under way. In a not unrelated development, maverick violist Nadia Sirota plays a new work by Judd Greenstein at the Kitchen on Tuesday.... Other Minds 2013 begins on Feb. 28; the programs are happily free of been-there-done-that, and are notable, among other things, for their gender parity.... Matthew Guerrieri joins the exceedingly small company of classical-music authors who have appeared on the Colbert Report.... Bang on a Can presents two neatly programmed concerts in conjunction with MoMA's Inventing Abstraction show: the first, on Feb. 26, pairs Debussy and Steve Reich, and the second, on March 4, brings together Arnold and Morty.

Ragging Wagner

As a prelude to the merriment of WagnerWorldWide, here is Clément Doucet's immortal Bayreuthian medley "Wagneria," as orchestrated by Morten Gunnar Larsen and executed by his Ophelia Orchestra. You can buy a crisp recording of the piece on iTunes; it has given me no end of joy. And here's the original, recorded by Doucet in 1927: 

Wagneria

Doucet, who played in a famous duo with Jean Wiéner, also wrote "Isoldina," which Marc-André Hamelin and Alexandre Tharaud have lately taken up. In the same vein is Donald Lambert's astounding "Pilgrim's Chorus." The tradition of Wagnerian foolery goes back to Offenbach's "Symphonie de l'avenir" of 1860; highlights are Chabrier's Souvenirs de Munich, Fauré and Messager's Souvenirs de Bayreuth, Debussy's "Golliwog's Cakewalk," and, more recently, Peter Schickele's beloved Last Tango in Bayreuth.

Previously: Star-Spangled Wagner.

Wagneria!

As a prelude to the merriment of WagnerWorldWide, here is Clément Doucet's immortal Bayreuthian medley "Wagneria," as orchestrated by Morten Gunnar Larsen and executed by his Ophelia Orchestra. You can buy a crisp recording of the piece on iTunes; it has given me no end of joy. And here's the original, recorded by Doucet in 1927: 

Wagneria

Doucet also wrote "Isoldina," which Marc-André Hamelin and Alexandre Tharaud have lately taken up. In the same vein is Donald Lambert's astounding "Pilgrim's Chorus."

Quartets ahoy (2)

The Momenta Quartet plays Ushio Torikai's Four TEEN.

Quartet ahoy (2)

The Momenta Quartet plays Ushio Torikai's Four TEEN.

Quartets ahoy

The JACK play Aaron Cassidy's Second Quartet.

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, I write about a host of younger string quartets: the JACK, the Momenta, the Danish, the Kleio, the Tesla, the Catalyst, the Calder, and the Zaïde. Space did not allow for an identification of the "unnamed Juilliard foursome" mentioned at the start: this was Siwoo Kim, Francisco Fullana, Danny Kim, and Jay Campbell, delivering a whip-smart rendition of John Zorn's Cat O' Nine Tails. There will be no lack of quartet activity in New York in coming weeks: the most notable event is the Endellion Quartet's traversal of the entire Beethoven cycle at the Met Museum, in February. Keep an eye out also for the Spektral Quartet and the Eclipse Quartet.

Cecil Taylor 1995

New music at the NY Phil

A hefty quantity of new and modern music appears in the 2013-14 season announcement by the New York Philharmonic. Particularly notable is the introduction of a new festival rubric, the NY Phil Biennial, which promises to present, over a ten-day stretch, "a veritable playground of new and recent music from all over the world." It recalls the Philharmonic's Horizons series of the eighties. Christopher Rouse, the orchestra's composer-in-residence, is featured several times, not least with the New York premiere of his huge Requiem; there will be a showing of 2001 with live orchestral accompaniment; and Mark-Anthony Turnage, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Magnus Lindberg, Osvaldo Golijov, Thomas Adès, Krzysztof Penderecki, Julian Anderson, Anthony Cheung, Sean Shepherd, and, on the night of his hundred birthday, Benjamin Britten are given the spotlight. On the downside, many of these choices are unsurprising, and, as Lisa Hirsch notes, no women have yet been included.

Another Noise playlist

A number of people — namely, one person — asked me to post a playlist from my recent lecture at Southbank. It may be found below. These aren't necessarily my recommended recordings for each and every work, though I used many old favorites. Afterward, I was gently upbraided by Raymond Coffer for presenting outdated information about the suicide of Richard Gerstl. Dr. Coffer has recently published online his doctoral thesis on the fatal triangle of Gerstl, Schoenberg, and Mathilde Schoenberg. A summary of his findings may be found here; anyone who writes about the Second Quartet should take note of them. Dr. Coffer has cast doubt on the story that Gerstl burned some of his work before committing suicide, and he also notes that the act took place not at night but in the late afternoon.

— Leonard Rosenman, Rebel Without a Cause; John Adams conducting the London Sinfonietta (Nonesuch)

— Ligeti, Requiem; Jonathan Nott conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and London Voices (Teldec)

— Duke Ellington, Ko-Ko, from The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA)

— Frank Sinatra, "It's a Lonesome Old Town," from Only the Lonely (Capitol)

— Björk, "An Echo a Stain," from Vespertine (One Little Indian)

— Wagner, Tristan Prelude; Carlos Kleiber conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle (DG)

— Valley Tonga people, "Ngoma," from Dance Songs with Drums from the Valley Tonga People of Zambia (Smithsonian Folkways)

— Thelonious Monk, "Ruby My Dear," from The Blue Note Years (Blue Note)

— Debussy, "Voiles" and "La fille aux cheveux de lin"; Steven Osborne (Hyperion)

— Strauss, Salome; Hildegard Behrens, Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (EMI)

— Berlioz, "Pandemonium" from The Damnation of Faust; Kent Nagano conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra de Lyon (Erato)

— Strauss, Notturno; Petja Petrova, Friedrich Haider conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice (Nightingale)

— Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue; Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony, with Benny Goodman and Earl Wild (Iron Needle)

— Schoenberg, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11; Mitsuko Uchida (Philips)

— Schoenberg, String Quartet No. 2; Dawn Upshaw, Arditti Quartet (Disques Montaigne)

— Schoenberg, Six Pieces for Orchestra; James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

— Berg, Wozzeck; Behrens, Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (DG)

— Webern, Six Pieces for Orchestra; James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

— Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring; Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the LA Philharmonic (DG)

— Stravinsky, Petrushka; Pierre Boulez conducting the New York Philharmonic (Sony)

— Stravinsky, The Firebird; Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra (Philips)

— Stravinsky, Histoire du Soldat and Pulcinella; Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Symphony (Sony)

— Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments; Nagano conducting the London Symphony (Virgin Classics)

— Poulenc, Les Biches; Charles Dutoit conducting the Orchestre National de France (Decca)

— Janáček, Amarus; Charles Mackerras conducting the Czech Philharmonic and Chorus (Supraphon)

— "Sír a kis galambom," recorded by Bartók, 1907

— Bartók, Three Hungarian Folksongs from the Csík District; Piotr Anderszewski (Virgin Classics)

— Bartók, Second Quartet; Takács Quartet (Decca)

— Grainger, Shallow Brown; John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and the English Country Gardiner Orchestra (Philips)

— William Grant Still, Levee Land; Celeste Headlee, Patricia Hoy conducting the Northern Arizona University Wind Symphony

— Ruth Crawford Seeger, String Quartet 1931; Schönberg Ensemble (DG)

— Sibelius, Fifth Symphony; Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony (BIS)

— Clément Doucet, "Wagneria"; Ophelia Orchestra