Alex Ross's Blog, page 267

Audio guide reminder (EU edition)

Audio-Samples zum Buch The Rest Is Noise: Das 20. Jahrhundert hören finden Sie hier.

Para los ejemplos de audio relacionados con el libro El ruido eterno, vaya aquí.

Clicca qui ad ascoltare ai campioni con riferimento al libro Il resto e rumore.

Tosca at the Met

Fiasco. The New Yorker, Oct. 5, 2009.

Club report

Bob Shingleton of On an Overgrown Path alerts me to the fact that a club called The Rest Is Noise is opening this Thursday on Brixton Road in London. According to the Guardian, it's the latest venture from "the gang behind trendy boozers The Lock Tavern and the Amersham Arms," and it will be purveying an "old-school garage selection," featuring such DJs as DJ Caspa, Joy Orbison, Adventures In The Beetroot Field, Casper C, and Crispin Dior. Surely they need a gay night called The Rest Is...

Kriikku's Kraft

Kari Kriikku is hardly a household name, but he should be. He is a clarinetist of astonishing agility and expressive imagination. He's beginning to develop a higher American profile, thanks to the support of Finnish compatriots such as Esa-Pekka Salonen and Osmo Vänskä: he made a memorable appearance at Mostly Mozart two summers ago, playing the Mozart concerto, and in February he'll unfurl Magnus Lindberg's rapturously lyrical Clarinet Concerto with Alan Gilbert and the New York...

A new season begins

Times Square prepares for Luc Bondy's diet Tosca.

For Hildegard Behrens

Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, EMI 67159.

The great German dramatic soprano died yesterday, in Tokyo, at the age of seventy-two. I first saw her sing in Boston, in 1988, in a searing concert performance of Elektra. Later appearances were fraught with vocal trouble, but she never failed to make a strong impression, throwing herself fervently into her roles. In 1977 she and Karajan made their fearsomely beautiful recording of Salome; I've excerpted the ending above,

U.S. v. Lenny

J. Edgar Hoover corresponds with a Communist-hunting, Philharmonic-listening Wisconsin nun; Pat Buchanan, John McLaughlin, and G. Gordon Liddy analyze Mass; and, live on tape, President Richard M. Nixon calls the composer of West Side Story a "son of a bitch." These and other highlights from the United States Government's files on Leonard Bernstein, now at the New Yorker website.

Hiatus

Activity at this blog will subside over the summer while I work on my next book and various New Yorker projects. Please read music critics and music blogs.

Summer writing

Infinite Playlist: high-end audio online.

Audio companion to the above.

Caramoor in brief.

Let the lamp affix its beam

This is for Merce Cunningham, Michael Steinberg, and Robert Hilferty, all of whom died over the weekend. The first two, grand old men of dance and criticism, will be widely eulogized in coming days. But I would especially like to remember my friend Robert, an elegant writer, passionate listener, and gifted filmmaker, whose beaming face was a constant presence at concerts in New York. I hope his wonderful film about Milton Babbitt, Portrait of a Serial Composer, will soon be released and find dis