"Fortunately, in music you can say everything, no one understands you. How fortunate that [in Bach's Mass in B Minor] those words are there, to mislead people! Without that, to be logical, one should not allow it to be performed."
— to Romain Rolland, 1900
Now playing (idea stolen from Steve):
Gustave Charpentier's Louise (Sills, Gedda, Dunn, Van Dam, Paris Opera, Rudel conducting, EMI)
Arnold Bax, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies (BBC Philharmonic, Vernon Handley conducting, Chandos)
Georg Friedrich Haas, In Vain (Kairos)
Nico Muhly, Speaks Volumes (not yet available)
Notes: Louise cries out for a major revival. I can't revive my adolescent enthusiasm for Bax, and these performances have less zest than Bryden Thomson's. Haas is turning into a really fascinating composer, lushly microtonal, spaced-out, post-German. Muhly has hit on the brilliant scheme of putting out a new-music record through an indie-rock rather than classical label; more details forthcoming.
