Alex Ross's Blog, page 78

Nightafternight playlist

)

New releases of interest, in the manner of Steve Smith.

— Debussy, The Complete Works (Warner Classics)

— George Walker, Symphony No. 5, "Visions"; Ian Hobson conducting the Sinfonia Varsovia (Albany)

— Cage, Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Wolff, Resistance; Philip Thomas, Apartment House (HCR)

— Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread (Nonesuch)

— Paganini, Twenty-four Caprices; Augustin Hadelich (Warner Classics)

— Schubert, Winterreise; Mark Padmore, Kristian Bezuidenhout (Harmonia Mundi)

— Steve Reich, Pulse / Quartet; International Contemporary Ensemble, Colin Currie Group (Nonesuch)

— Elizabeth Maconchy, Héloïse and Abelard; Hannah Francis, Tom McDonnell, Philip Langridge, James Gaddarn
conducting the Croydon Philharmonic Choir and English Symphony Orchestra (Lyrita, re-release)

— Zemlinsky, Eine florentinische Tragödie; Wolfgang Koch, Heidi Brunner, Bertrand de Billy conducting the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony (Capriccio)

A Helena Tulve moment

Und von liehte vinster, for bassoon and string quartet (2012), takes its title from the Middle High German of Meister Eckhart: "On earth, this entrance [to divine nature] is nothing but pure detachment, and when the detachment reaches its climax, it becomes ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, and dark with enlightenment."

Wagnerian

A fiftieth-birthday present to myself: an overlong, often unreadable, but nevertheless continuous first draft of my third book, Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music. Minnie and Bea are warily supportive.

Previously: Benchmark, Birthday poem.

Gregory Spears's Fellow Travelers

No Ordinary Time. The New Yorker, Jan. 15, 2018.

John Williams, Star Wars, and Wagner (again)

A Field Guide to Star Wars Leitmotifs, on the New Yorker website, Jan. 3, 2018.

Street Symphony

The People That Walked in Darkness. The New Yorker, Jan. 1, 2018.

Philip K. Dick's fan letter to Christa Ludwig

From The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, vol. 5.

Trump on Wagner

Admirers of the perpetually beleaguered art of Richard Wagner will be relieved to know that Donald Trump evidently has a low opinion of the composer. The passage above, dated Sept. 25, 1987, appears in Tina Brown's addictively absorbing Vanity Fair Diaries. A curious footnote: although the Ring was in the air at the Met that month, with the new Otto Schenk production of Rheingold waiting in the wings, the season opened with Plácido Domingo in the title role of Otello. The future Horror-Clown seems to have had no idea what he was seeing.

Hilde Zadek at 100

Warmest birthday wishes to the German-born soprano Hilde Zadek, who turned one hundred yesterday. She was honored at the Vienna State Opera, where she once sang alongside Schwarzkopf and della Casa in the company's famed postwar ensemble; Christa Ludwig, a younger colleague from those years, led the tributes. (Via David Shengold.)

Andy Warhol on Wagner