Alex Ross's Blog, page 197

Inside Schoenberg's wallet

The awe-inspiring website of the Schoenberg Center in Vienna continues to digitize its holdings and place images online; every time I visit, I find new treasures. Various of the master's identity cards and school reports can be viewed, and one can also page through his address books; one page lists Heinrich Schenker, Richard Strauss, Franz Schmidt, and Franz Schreker, among others. There are also cards for Orson Welles and Harpo Marx. The photograph file has been considerably expanded: I don't recall having seen this lovely picture of Schoenberg with Poulenc, for example, or a bathing shot of Schoenberg with a husky Winfried Zillig. Two photo-booth snaps are strangely reminiscent of Robert De Niro; another has him wearing a delightfully rascally smile. (The Photomaton, the world's first fully automatic photo booth, arrived in Berlin in 1929, the Schoenberg Center newsletter advises.) A couple of the pictures suggest a man attempting to figure out his new camera.

The one and only...

A quartet of Koussevitzky concerts from 1923. Yes, Stravinsky's Octet and Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto had their premieres on the same program; after intermission came the Eroica.

The one and only

A quartet of Koussevitzky concerts from 1923. Yes, Stravinsky's Octet and Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto had their premieres on the same program; after intermission came the Eroica.

MTT's smoothie

In a Rest Is Noise exclusive, I can reveal to an anxiously waiting world the contents of the smoothie that Michael Tilson Thomas prepared onstage at Carnegie Hall the other night, during a rendition of Song Books and other works by John Cage. To wit: cucumber, celery, carrots, apple, and banana. Leaving nothing to chance, Maestro Tilson Thomas brought his own Cuisinart from San Francisco for the occasion. The above photo — a still life or nature morte taken by Oliver Theil, the director of public relations at the San Francisco Symphony — hauntingly captures the ingredients before their glorious disintegration.

The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met

SF Mavericks, night 2

The San Francisco Symphony's program of Ruggles, Feldman, and Ives-Brant was, as expected, a knockout. MTT gave a little talk before the Feldman, positioning the music in the context of the Abstract Expressionists and not so subtly begging the audience to remain quiet for the duration of the piece. This they did; Morty was saved the incessant coughing and shuffling that, in the past, has greeted his appearances in large New York halls. (On one unhappy night at the Philharmonic in 1996, Feldman's Structures preceded the final scene from Salome, and dynamic levels onstage and off seemed about the same.) What a joy it was to hear Ruggles's Sun-Treader! This masterly score has been heard all too seldom in New York since its local premiere, in 1967, with the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. (The program erroneously listed a 1970 MTT/Boston Symphony performance as the first New York outing.) When the Phillharmonic thundered through Sun-Treader at the American Eccentrics festival in 1994, I felt certain that it would become a repertory item, but it did not. Incidentally, Other Minds will, at long last, reissue the classic two-LP set of the complete Ruggles that MTT put together for CBS in 1980. The release is scheduled for next month. Tonight's program has Harry Partch, Mason Bates, David Del Tredici, and Lou Harrison.

James Brown questions tonality

Previously: James Brown sings Kurt Weill.

Wagner-free miscellany

Allan Kozinn reviews the delirious Sō Percussion / Matmos American Mavericks event I mentioned below. I would happily have seen it five more times. The hotly anticipated Sun-Treader / Feldman / Concord program is tonight.... I wish the Mavericks lineup had found space for the music of Johanna Beyer, who truly lives up to the ever-debatable name. This 2011 New World release has some of her percussion pieces .... The lineup for the 2012 Look and Listen Festival has been announced — more Sō on the way.... A fund-raiser is under way for a recording of John Luther Adams's percussion masterpiece Inuksuit.... The London Symphony's Gareth Davies, whose Twitter account modestly describes him as "one of the flautists of his generation," has an amusing account what went down the night Valery Gergiev conducted the Star Wars theme in Shanghai.... Claire Chase, unquestionably one of the flautists of her generation, has a gorgeous new record on the New Focus label, with works by Saariaho, Donatoni, Carter, Boulez, and Fujikura. I've also been listening heavily to New Focus's Drew Baker record, with Marilyn Nonken — the piano as granite outcrop.... Jeremy Denk, a pianist for all generations, is now a Nonesuch artist, with a Beethoven-Ligeti record arriving in May.... The gifted Iranian-born harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani plays at the Frick on Sunday.... Voting for Spring for Music's Ultimate Xtreme Arts Blogger Death Match — did I get the name right? — has begun.... When, in 1896, the arts connoisseur Harry Kessler visited Bayreuth, he found that — oops, my mistake.

There are also points of dissimilarity

"There are several points of resemblance between the activities of Mrs. MacDowell at Peterboro and those of Wagner's widow at Bayreuth." — New York Times, Aug. 7, 1910

Brooklyn Phil, So Percussion

A photo of the setup for Brooklyn Village, last weekend's virtuosically produced Brooklyn Philharmonic program at Roulette. Steve Smith has a report in the New York Times. I plan to write about the orchestra at the end of the season. Last night, I attended a John Cage tribute by So Percussion and Matmos — one of the more entertaining and fulfilling evenings I've had in recent years, not least because Dan Deacon's conceptual piece Take a Deep Breath required me, along with the rest of the audience, to make a hooting, hollering, singing, stamping, and ringtone-playing Carnegie debut. (The score explicitly called for the participation of "press," so critics were unable to recuse themselves.) For the record, I played a Music for 18 Musicians ringtone and sang "Shallow Brown." Fortunately, my singing was inaudible amid the general din. American Mavericks week at Carnegie is off to a riotous start. There's much auxiliary material on WQXR's Q2 channel, including guest-host appearances by Michael Tilson Thomas, Phil Kline, Mary Rowell, and Fred Sherry.