Alex Ross's Blog, page 89

A Bolcom moment

Bookshelf

New and recent publications of interest.

Bill Alves and Brett Campbell, Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick (Indiana UP) [available March 2017]

Marian Wilson Kimber, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press)

Pauline Fairclough, Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet Musical Identity under Lenin and Stalin (Yale UP)

Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 (University of California Press)

Seth Brodsky, From 1989, or European Music and the Modernist Unconscious (University of California Press)

Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson, eds., Transformations of Musical Modernism (Cambridge UP)

Kenneth Marcus, Schoenberg and Hollywood Modernism (Cambridge UP)

Karol Berger, Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche (University of California Press)

Theodore Ziolkowski, Music into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated (Camden House)

Huib Schippers and Catherine Grant, eds., Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective (Oxford UP)

Alban Berg Valentine, 2017 edition

 

DRUM MAJOR: Shall I pull your tongue out of your throat and wrap it round your neck?

                — Wozzeck, Act II

Previously: An Alban Berg Valentine, Another Alban Berg Valentine, Yet Another Alban Berg Valentine, Return of Alban Berg Valentine, Nothing says forever like an Alban Berg valentine, Alban Berg Valentine (10th anniversary edition).

The Great Besmirchment

Making Art in a Time of Rage, on the New Yorker website.

Threnody to the Victims of Bowling Green

Threnody to the Victims of Bowling Green

In memory of the fallen heroes of Kellyanne Conway's febrile imagination, I have composed a Threnody to the Victims of Bowling Green, for five independent orchestral groups. Here is the first section, Exordium Lamentationis. Scores and parts are available for rental from various publishers, although my name may not necessarily appear on them.

New Haas

Written for the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Amjad Ali Khan, Jan. 20, 2017

American shame

One mark of the dishonor that has fallen on this country in the wake of Donald Trump's morally repugnant, profoundly un-American actions as President is that the brilliant Syrian-born clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh does not know whether he will be able to return to his Brooklyn home. I wrote about him in 2013, when he appeared in conjunction with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Trouble out at the mine

"Are we really here? Is all this happening? Don't be surprised. What we're seeing now is frankly everything we should have expected. If there's one thing we can say in Donald Trump's favor, there was no bait and switch. They told us they would do all of this and more. Not everyone believed them. But everyone had fair warning. And here we are." — Josh Marshall

Nightafternight paylist

New and recent releases of interest.

— Sibelius, In the Stream of Life and other songs with orchestra; Gerald Finley, Edward Gardner conducting the Bergen Philharmonic (Chandos)

— Weinberg, Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1-4, Piano Quintet (arr. Pushkarev and Kremer); Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica (ECM)

— Divine Theatre: works of Giaches de Wert; Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi)

— David Smooke, Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and other works; Michael Parker Harley, Karl Larson, loadbang, Lunar Ensemble, Peabody Wind Ensemble (New Focus)

— Steven Stucky, American Muse, Rhapsodies, Concerto for Orchesta; Gil Rose conducting the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with Sanford Sylvan (BMOP)

— Clara Iannotta, A Failed Entertainment and other works; Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Recherche, Talea Ensemble, Orchestre des Élèves du Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, Quatuor Diotima, Ensemble Garage, Trio Catch (Edition RZ)

— Ginastera, Piano Concerto No. 2, Panambí; Juanjo Mena conducting the BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Chamber Choir, with Ziayin Wang, piano (Chandos)

— Wadada Leo Smith, America's National Parks (Cuneiform)