Alex Ross's Blog, page 74

A Douglas Lilburn moment

A Jennifer Walshe moment

Jennifer Walshe writes: "Like most people of my generation, I studied the work of Peig Sayers (1873-1958) at school, and the opening lines of her 1936 autobiography Peig are burned into my consciousness. Peg 2018 takes those opening lines as a starting point, but departs immediately from the original, imagining the reflections of an entirely different, fictional Peg, an Irishwoman born in the 1950s ... On 25th May Ireland will vote on amending its restrictive abortion laws. I was asked by Room for Rebellion and C.A.N.V.A.S. to create a piece for a compilation in aid of pro-choice charities to be released prior to the referendum. For logistical reasons this compilation won’t be released until later in the year, so I’ve decided to share the piece now, a week away from the referendum. If you’re an Irish citizen or resident, please donate to Together for Yes. If you’re not an Irish citizen or resident, please donate to Abortion Support Network or Alliance for Choice."

A Gillian Whitehead moment

Do you like Paul Verlaine?

Auckland, New Zealand. I am attending the Auckland Writers Festival; I will then go on tour with STROMA, hosting a program inspired by The Rest Is Noise. Happily, we'll make it as far south as Dunedin, wellspring of some of the best pop music of the late twentieth century.

Apropos of nothing

Mahan Esfahani, Jean Rondeau

Pluck. The New Yorker, May 21, 2018.

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of note.

— Cage, Two2; Mark Knoop, Philip Thomas (another timbre)

— Vaughan Williams, Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6; Andrew Manze conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Onyx)

— John Adams, Absolute Jest, Naive and Sentimental Music; Peter Oundjian conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with the Doric Quartet (Chandos)

— Scott Worthington, Orbit (IIKKI)

— Aeternum: Music of the Elizabethan Avant Garde from Add. MS 31390; Le Strange Viols (Olde Focus)

— Maria de Alvear, De Puro Amot & En Amor Duro; Eve Egoyan (Maria de Alvear World Edition)

— Gloria Coates, Piano Quintet, Symphony No. 10; Roderick Chadwick, Kreutzer Quartet, Susan Allen conducting the CalArts Orchestra (Naxos)

— Julius Eastman, Fugue No. 7, Evil Nigger, Buddha, Gay Guerrilla; Kukuruz Quartet (Intakt)

— Laurie Anderson, Landfall; with the Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch)

Miscellany

The crowds that filled the Met for its end-of-season run of Tosca seemed mainly focused on Anna Netrebko's role début as the titular diva. As in the past, I reveled in the power and beauty of Nebtreko's voice but found her less than fully gripping as a stage presence. (Heidi Waleson, in the Wall Street Journal, felt much as I did.) The revelation of the night, instead, was the Scarpia of Michael Volle. I'd admired Volle in Meistersinger and Dutchman, but this outing revealed a degree of dramatic intensity and moment-to-moment electricity that I hadn't heard from him before. I'm listening happily to his Orfeo album of Wagner arias and excerpts.... Similarly, the highlight of the Boston Symphony's concert performance of Act II of Tristan was not Jonas Kaufmann's elegant, diffident Tristan but Georg Zeppenfeld's transfixing King Mark. Only there did text and drama come to life in the voice; I always have difficulty making out what Kaufmann is singing. Buy that man some consonants! .... On May 26 at St. Peter's in Chelsea, NYC, the vocal ensemble Ekmeles performs Stockhausen's Stimmung alongside End Words, a new piece by Christopher Trapani.... Cantata Profana plays a meaty program at National Sawdust on June 2-3: George Aperghis’s Sept crimes de l’amour, Simon Steen-Andersen’s Difficulties Putting it into Practice, Mauricio Kagel’s Unguis Incarnatus Est, and Philippe Leroux’s Voi(Rex)... On May 25, New Music Detroit presents Annie Gosfield's new piece Detroit Industry: The Goddess Stamps Metal While the Blast Furnace Sings. It will be played beneath Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of the Arts... On May 21, Monday Evening Concerts in LA reunites Meredith Monk and Julius Eastman; Eastman once sang in Monk's Dolmen Music ensemble. Two nights later, MEC offers an evening of Éliane Radigue, with Nate Wooley on trumpet and Michael Pisaro handling sound.... The schedule for the 2018 edition of Pisaro's Dog Star Orchestra, a highlight of new-music life in LA, is now up; it runs June 2-16.... The American new-music world has been shaken by the sudden death of Matt Marks, a composer-performer who threw himself into organizing and proselytizing on behalf of colleagues, notably through the New Music Gathering, which he co-founded. The gathering will happen next weekend in Boston, and the sadness is certain to be intense.

Finley's Amfortas

The incandescent Canadian recently outdid himself in a Parsifal with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. The performance is well worth a ten-euro fee for a week's pass at the Digital Concert Hall — and there is much else on offer. Sir Simon will lead his final concert as Berlin's principal conductor on June 20; he bids farewell with Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Mahler still grooves

Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Zach Smith, who was responsible for a rash of Mahlerian graffiti in Washington, DC in the late seventies and early eighties, sent me this picture taken in the fall of 1977, showing his handiwork on the base of the Arizona Avenue Trestle. In a 1995 article for The New Yorker, I related how the graffiti caught my eye as I rode a school bus back and forth to the Potomac School, in McLean, VA. (I misremembered it as "Mahler Lives.") This was not the first time the Austrian master's name had appeared by the side of Canal Road. In a 2009 post, I noted that Stephen Chanock, later of the National Cancer Institute, had originally painted "Mahler Grooves" at this location in 1972. Zach Smith reapplied the legend five years later, and in 1982 painted "Gustav Mahler [heart] Alma" in the same spot. The latter was duly reported in The Washington Post. Mahler graffiti also appeared in Toronto circa 2007. May the trend long continue.

Photo: Zach Smith's Mom.