Alex Ross's Blog, page 3

Current reading

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Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

George Mackay Brown, Magnus and Greenvoe

Thomas Blubacher, Die viele Leben der Ruth Landshoff-Yorck

Ruth Landshoff, Die Vielen und der Eine

Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography

Alfred Döblin, Bürger und Soldaten

Leonhard Frank, Die Räuberbande

Susan Orlean, Joyride (forthcoming)

Martin Mittelmeier, Freiheit und Finsternis: Wie die "Dialektik der Aufklärung" zum Jahrhundertbuch wurde

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything

Friedemann Beyer, Die Geliebte: Goebbels und die Baarová-Affäre

Kai Sina, Was gut ist und was böse: Thomas Mann als politischer Aktivist

Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (ewig erstaunlich)

Saving baby Cage

Un autre moment Marie Jaëll

For Présence Compositrices, Célia Oneto Bensaid has made an authoritative recording of Jaëll's complete cycle of twenty-four pieces after Dante.

Blues à la Martinů

Denby on Hurwitz

David Denby, whose latest book is Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, recently wrote about the irrepressible Dave Hurwitz for the New Yorker website. I first encountered Dave when I was writing for Fanfare magazine in the early 1990s, covering the likes of Petr Eben, Peter Mieg, Samuel Ducommun, and Torbjörn Iwan Lundquist. Nothing delights me more than when Dave gives attention to offbeat repertory on his YouTube channel. I don't think there's anyone active in classical music who can discuss such a vast swath of repertory in such dizzying detail, and with such infectious enthusiasm.

Hail! California

Composed by none other than Camille Saint-Saëns for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. La Sirène de Paris has been giving amateur performances since 1874. Posted in honor of the Los Angeles grand juries who are refusing to bring indictments against anti-ICE, anti-Trump protesters.

Reviews as journalism

My colleague Richard Brody, in response to the New York Times's abrupt reassignment of four arts critics, has written a vigorous defense of the "traditional review," pointing out that most other forms of commentary on the arts tend toward promotion and puffery, thereby tending away from independent journalism. I took up the same topic some years back, quoting Virgil Thomson's immortal definition of criticism as “the only antidote we have to paid publicity.” What's particularly odd about the Times's demand for "new story forms" is that Zack Woolfe, one of the four demoted critics, did as much as anyone to undertake such experiments, as the culture editor Sia Michel herself acknowledges in a memo. (It's Zack, not Zach.)

Un moment Fernand de La Tombelle

Un moment Franck

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch at 100

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A supremely eloquent witness to the Holocaust; an implacable rebuke to resurgent fascism in America, Germany, and around the world; a born musician, a piercing wit, a great soul, an altogether glorious personage — Lasker-Wallfisch begins her second century tomorrow. I wrote about her for the New Yorker website last year. I won't say anything as banal as "Happy birthday," but some such sentiment is apt.