Alex Ross's Blog, page 42

For Mr. Baron

Martin J. Baron, the imperturbable admiral of fact-checking at The New Yorker, died today at the age of eighty-five. Mr. Baron, as he was invariably addressed, had a thirty-five-year tenure at the magazine, during which time he must have conversed, in his decorous and unhurried way ("In the next passage, Mr. Pollini, we would like to say . . ."), with most of the significant figures of the late twentieth century. I remember once looking through one of the two immense Rolodexes on his desk and finding cards for Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. If I had written, say, that Rimsky-Korsakov was a superb orchestrator, he would call up Richard Taruskin and ask whether it would be fair to say that Rimsky-Korsakov was a superb orchestrator. (This is an exaggeration, but only a mild one.) He worked on most of my articles from the mid-1990s until his retirement, in 2010, and I owe infinitely much to his knowledge, his meticulousness, his gentleness, and his sympathy. In 1997, as the New York Times reported, he nearly missed his own sixtieth-birthday party because he was immersed in my essay on Schubert. I wrote in the acknowledgments to The Rest Is Noise: “Martin Baron is the greatest fact-checker that ever was and ever will be. (Leave on author.)" The last phrase is a long-standing New Yorker locution, indicating an item that cannot be checked by normal channels and is left to the writer's discretion. The son of a longtime St. Louis Symphony violinist, Martin had a profound love for classical music, and for Schubert above all. I offer the above in his memory.

Wagnerismi

The Italian translation of Wagnerism, by Lorenzo Parmiggiani and Andrea Silvestri, is now available from Bompiani. It joins the Spanish version, by Luis Gago (Seix Barral), and the German version, by Gloria Buschor and Günter Kotzor (Rowohlt). I am well aware of how taxing this book must have been to translate, and I am deeply grateful to all of the above.

Hungarian steam locomotives

Courtesy of the Avant-Garde Project.

The German opera system

Marx in Chemnitz.

Aida in Chemnitz. The New Yorker, June 20, 2022.

A Milton Babbitt moment

Slowly Expanding Milton Babbitt Album by Erik Carlson

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Schoeck, Elegie; Christian Gerhaher, Heinz Holliger conducting the Basel Chamber Orchestra (Sony)

Alvin Singleton, Four String Quartets; Momenta Quartet (New World)

Johanna Beyer, Music for Woodwinds; Arizona Wind Quintet, Daniel Linder (New World)

Mouton, Missa Faulte d'argent, Motets; Stephen Rice leading the Brabant Ensemble (Hyperion, out July 1)

Muhly, Stranger, Lorne Ys My Likinge, Impossible Things; Nicholas Phan, The Knights (Avie)

John Williams, Violin Concerto No. 2, selected film themes; Anne-Sophie Mutter, Williams conducting the Boston Symphony (DG)

Georgia Rodgers, September; Apartment House, Zubin Kanga (another timbre)

Bach, St. Matthew Passion; Julian Prégardien, Stéphane Degout, Sabine Devieilhe, Hana Blažiková, Lucile Richardot, Tim Mead, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Christian Immler, Raphaël Pichon leading Pygmalion (Harmonia Mundi)

Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin; Gerald Finley, Julius Drake (Hyperion)

Gabriel Kahane, Magnificent Bird (Nonesuch)

Wagner-Welt Bamberg

After Dortmund, I spent more than a week in Bamberg, hovering around the Bamberg Symphony while they presented two Wagnerish concerts: a multimedia presentation titled Die Welt mit Wagner, produced by Clemens and Nick Prokop; and Der Ring ohne Worte, a version of Lorin Maazel's symphonic condensation of the Ring with supplemental Wagnerian texts recited by the great German actor Jens Harzer. In advance of the latter, which incorporated writings of Nietzsche, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Willa Cather, Charlotte Teller, Alexander Blok, Elfriede Jelinek, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Walther Rathenau, and Wagner himself, I presented my first and quite possibly my last lecture in German. I am deeply grateful to the Bamberg Symphony for having invited me to participate in these endeavors. I was able to make several side trips to see opera in neighboring cities; a report will be forthcoming in The New Yorker.

Anthony Davis's X, Brett Dean's Hamlet

Outsiders. The New Yorker, June 6, 2022.

Wagner-Cosmos Dortmund

A Pascal Bentoiu moment

Dozens of attempts have been made at setting Hamlet to music; few have been deemed successful. One that deserves a second look is a 1974 adaptation by the Romanian composer Pascal Bentoiu. I found myself mesmerized by his approach, though I umderstood not a word. The second act can also be found on YouTube, courtesy of Thorsten Gubatz.