Alex Ross's Blog, page 258

One for Mahler

Elaine Stritch offers a birthday toast. (Via Gavin Plumley.)

Miscellany: Varèse fireworks, etc.

 

In advance of the Lincoln Center Festival's Varèse
event (July 19 and 20), the International Contemporary Ensemble
presents tonight a preview concert, including the New York premiere of
the eight-hand piano version of Amériques. There will be a
webcast on the increasingly invaluable Q2.... After forty-one years, Robert Christgau appears to have written his last Consumer Guide. Not many music critics can claimed to have changed the art; Christgau is certainly one of them.... A...

Mahler 150

A happy one hundred fiftieth birthday to Gustav Mahler, who was born this day in 1860, in the Bohemian village of Kaliště. The birthplace will host a commemorative open-air concert tonight, Thomas Hampson, Anne Sofie von Otter, Marita Solberg, and Manfred Honeck conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. WFMT has gone all-Mahler for the day; Ö1 is also Mahler-heavy. Gavin Plumley is making a pilgrimage to Mahler's grave in Grinzing. The audio above is the Chorus Mysticus from the...

For Cesare Siepi

The supremely sensual Italian bass, who passed away yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, sings Don Giovanni at Salzburg in 1954, with Dezső Ernster as the Commendatore, Otto Edelmann as Leporello, and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting.

Atonal hilarity

On a slow summer day, here's a Rest Is Noise golden oldie: "Arnie Schoenberg and His Second Viennese School," a spoof radio commercial perpetrated by Robert Conrad, Kenneth Jean, and Matthias Bamert on the Cleveland station WCLV for April Fool's Day, 1977.  A
couple of discographic notes: the superb Lulu death-shriek is delivered
by Evelyn Lear, while the monstrously slow rendition of the 11/4 bar in
Stravinsky's Rite comes courtesy of the dulcet baton of Lorin
Maazel — an in-joke for...

Ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds

Dancing in the dark

In the wake of "Dawn," here's another video from Augustin Hadelich, in which he plays the "Rhapsodie" from Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Sonata for Solo Violin. Best on full screen.

Instant classic

This line by A. O. Scott: "The Last Airbender? Let's hope so...."

CD of the Week: Radvanovsky's Verdi

"D'amor sull'ali rosee," from Verdi's Il trovatore; Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano, with Constantine Orbelian conducting the Philharmonia of Russia; Delos 3404.

Morlot to Seattle

Ludovic Morlot, the incisive thirty-six-year-old French conductor who has made several notable appearances with the New York Philharmonic in the past four years, will be the next music director of the Seattle Symphony, according to an announcement that came over the wires a few minutes ago. A generational turnover at American orchestras continues: two weeks ago, the thirty-five-year-old Yannick Nézet-Séguin was chosen to take the reins of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both appointments seem...