Alex Ross's Blog, page 68

Kurtag's Fin de Partie

Trash and Vaudeville. The New Yorker, Dec. 24 and 31, 2018.

An Elliott Sharp moment

From Dispersion, a new Mode CD.

TV dialogue of the year

Marion Stein (Monica Dolan) in A Very English Scandal: "Jeremy, I'm not a fool. I practically grew up with Benjamin Britten. I've seen something of the world. I fled from Hitler, for God's sake. My own son married a hippie in a yurt. And I've toured with orchestras—I couldn't begin to tell you the things I've seen. So there's no need to protect me."

Yo-Yo Ma at National Cathedral

Bow Ideal. The New Yorker, Dec. 17, 2018.

Yo-Yo at National Cathedral

Bow Ideal. The New Yorker, Dec. 17, 2018.

Apex 2018

At the New Yorker website may be found my list of Notable Performances and Recordings of 2018.

The Rest Is Noise Person of the Year is Chad Smith, the Chief Operating Officer of the L.A. Philharmonic.

Some notable music books of 2018: Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (FSG); Heidi Waleson, Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt); Anthony Tommasini, The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide (Penguin); Gundula Kreuzer, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera (UC Press); Jamie Bernstein, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein (Harper Collins); Naomi André, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press); Honey Meconi, Hildegard of Bingen (University of Illinois Press). Belatedly, I caught up with two important Wagner books: Ulrich Drüner's Richard Wagner: Die Inszenierung eines Lebens (Blessing, 2016) and Jean-Jacques Nattiez's Wagner antisémite (Bourgois, 2015). Both are deserving of translation.

Outside of music, I read with great enjoyment Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet (New Directions), Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All (Knopf), Brian Phillips's Impossible Owls (FSG), Leland de la Durantaye's Hannah Versus the Tree (McSweeney's), Susan Orlean's The Library Book (Atlantic), Jill Lepore's These Truths (Norton), and Caroline Weber’s Proust's Duchess (Knopf), among others. My favorite films of the year were Roma, The Death of Stalin, and, of course, The Other Side of the Wind.

EPS -> SF

On the New Yorker website, an interview with Esa-Pekka Salonen, on the occasion of his appointment as the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

At the grave of Ligeti

At the grave of Salieri

The LA Phil at 100

Chris Kallmyer performs George Brecht's "Drip Music."

Orchestra of the Future. The New Yorker, Nov. 26, 2018.