Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Post-classical

Joshua Roman, the twenty-three-old lead cellist of the Seattle Symphony, gives a lively interview to Gavin Borchert: "I would love to see the classical-music industry crumble, just absolutely fall to bits. Because I think then we'd have to start over. We'd have to say, well, what is it? What is classical music? Is it this concert hall, is it these tuxedos? No, it's this music. And then we could start over from the beginning, build it up, find people who like the music. Like rock and roll started, like the punk movement started." (Via Utopian Turtletop.)

I personally find tuxedos to be a ridiculous and distracting choice of male concert fashion. They fail to convey the intended seriousness and instead make players look like uncomfortable groomsmen. Informal all-black attire would be better.

The new pragmatism

I'd received a copy of Jody Redhage's all-contemporary album on the new label New Amsterdam Records, but I somehow hadn't realized that New Amsterdam was the creation of the composer Judd Greenstein, whose fine-spun, strongly flowing music I've mentioned a number of times on this site. The Redhage disc, which includes such standout NYC-area composers as Anna Clyne, Paula Matthusen, and Greenstein himself, is the label's debut release. Future releases will include an album by the brilliant violist Nadia Sirota, who's given numerous performances of Nico Muhly's Keep in Touch (most recently at the Muhly concert on Friday night), and also a compilation by the NOW Ensemble. It's great to see a young community of composers and musicians supporting each other. Nobody's playing the domineering genius (yet). On Friday I was talking to the veteran composer Scott Johnson, who commented that this latest scene has an appealing openness about it, an optimistic spirit. I think of it as pragmatism — music beyond ideology. Scott also pointed out a constant from the seventies to today: the largely invisible generosity of Philip Glass.

Speaking of whom, the MATA festival, which Glass co-founded in 1996, is running this week in Brooklyn. On Saturday at 6:45PM I'll be leading a conversation with some of the featured young composers — Christopher Tignor, Yotam Haber, K-Kalna, and Ned McGowan (if you're having a slow day, his music samples will wake you right up) — and I'll see if these same issues surface. All events will happen at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue.

Going back to Greenstein: he's written a piece for soprano-blogger Anne-Carolyn Bird, which she will sing and Jocelyn Dueck will play on May 17 at the VIM series in Tribeca. The singer muses about a broader mission here and here; she hopes to raise money for a CD and concert tour through small contributions from new-music fans and the Internet community.

Bartók in Brussels

Photo courtesy of Mwanji Ezana.

Proust predicts Messiaen

"Not a footstep was to be heard on any of the paths. Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly."

— Swann's Way (Kilmartin/Enright translation)

Photo taken at the Banff Centre last summer.

Covering the arts

LA Philharmonic violins turn up in Amsterdam; dog is left unattended. So is there a connection to those violins in Jersey? Has anyone seen William Barrington-Coupe? Where are Alberto Vilar and Kathy Battle? Expect Norman Lebrecht to tie it all together in his new book Violins of Doom: The Absolutely Final Death of Classical Music (This Time It's for Real).

Monk-Björk

Tune in at 3PM EST Friday for Sarah Cahill's interview with Meredith Monk and Björk. The broadcast officially kicks off the American Music Center's web station, counterstream radio. (It's also available on demand.)

Return of Agenda

The New York Philharmonic's Hear & Now series — discussion and performance of a contemporary work, usually with the composer present — is one of the current bright spots in the organization. Alas, György Ligeti is no longer with us, but on Wednesday night Steven Stucky will quiz the conductor Alan Gilbert and the violinist Christian Tetzlaff on the subject of the late master's Violin Concerto. Thursday night the Met makes a long-delayed return to The Egyptian Helen, a Richard Strauss rarity that played briefly at the house in 1928. Deborah Voigt is the Face That Launched; the spectacular coloratura soprano Diana Damrau is Aithra; Jill Grove essays the opera obscurantist's favorite role, The Omniscient Mussel. Jonathan Biss, author of a formidable new Schumann recording on EMI, plays the same night at the Met Museum. Friday night at Zankel is the Nico Muhly concert, which finds the fierce young composer intermingling his own pieces with Renaissance choral works by Byrd, Weelkes, and Taverner. This is part of John Adams's In Your Ear festival. I've touted Muhly several times on the blog and in print; let Steve Smith do the honors this time. Handling the electronics will be the Icelandic sound magician Valgeir Sigurðsson, who figured in my Björk profile. (That's him in the picture above, standing on top of the Matthew Barney vehicle on the right hand side.) Valgeir released Muhly's superb record Speaks Volumes on his Bedroom Community label and has his own excellent-sounding album coming soon. He's got a show Sunday night at Tonic. That same night Gabriel Kahane, who's performed with none other than Thomas Quasthoff, brings his wry, haunting songs to Rockwood Music Hall. If I get my act together I will look in on the 70th-birthday David Del Tredici concert on Saturday night. I'd also like to see Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonic de Radio France, the NOW Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and the poetic young pianist Inon Barnatan, except that they are all on Sunday afternoon.

Burying the lede

Perceived storm clouds over Jersey.

What is it with the New York Times and these bloody violins in New Jersey? By my count, the paper has published at least twenty articles in the last three years on the subject of Herbert Axelrod's sale of Stradivarius and Guarneri string instruments to the New Jersey Symphony and that gentleman's subsequent legal difficulties. I don't think that any recent development in the American orchestral sphere has received such aggressive and exhaustive coverage. The saga was interesting up to a point, but I doubt it's still being "closely followed by the classical music world," as Dan Wakin states in his latest piece (and this post is not intended as a slur on his characteristically deft reportage). What struck me were these lines somewhere toward the end: "On the bright side, ticket revenue is expected to rise 10 percent over last year. Subscriptions are up as well." Now that's news. How did a "struggling," "troubled" orchestra manage to do that? Why are so many American orchestras reporting a similar rise in attendance? Dan? Anyone?

(Part of a continuing series on the undeath of classical music. More here, here, and, especially, here.)

Reader Jake Wunsch writes in reply to the above: "Not sure what's driving everyone else to the symphony, but for me and my friends (late-20's, little background in classical music) those cheap "Discovery Concerts" at Carnegie have been near ideal. The lectures are entertaining without being corny or simplistic; it's useful to hear some of the main themes in the first half so they're in our heads for the second; and the modern music they program is in some ways easier to relate to (and, let's face it, cooler to name-check) than the older stuff.... Educate us on what we're hearing, play modern music, and take down ticket prices to where they're comparable to rock shows."

From Tehran to Annandale

John Cage is moving to Bard College.

Boston is rich

For the fiscal year 2005, the Boston Symphony posted a net gain of $36,079,800. It also reported contributions of $33,933,769. In other words, the orchestra would still have made a profit if it had depended on ticket sales, investment income, and other revenue alone. The orchestra's net assets are a jaw-dropping $380,208,088. (Data from Charity Navigator.)

Playlist in memoriam Antonella

— Betty Davis, Betty Davis (Light in the Attic, forthcoming)
— Tristan Murail, Winter Fragments, Argento Chamber Ensemble (Aeon)
— Roslavets, Chamber Symphony and In the Hours of the New Moon, BBC Scottish Symphony cond. Ilan Volkov (Hyperion)
— Schumann, Fantasie, Kreisleriana, Arabeske, Jonathan Biss (EMI)
— Brahms, First and Second Piano Concertos, Nelson Freire and the Gewandhaus cond. Riccardo Chailly (Decca)
— Horatiu Radulescu, Intimate Rituals (Sub Rosa)
— Schoenberg, Early and Unknown String Works, Rangzen Quartet and Christina Fong (OgreOgress)
— Berlioz, Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, London Symphony cond. Colin Davis (Philips, w/ Requiem, finally)

Styles for spring

The New Yorker website has received a long-awaited, très chic redesign.... New men's piano fashions in Shostakovich and Ligeti.... Hindemith and Milhaud gallivant dadaistically in 1927. (Bowler hat tip to Soho the Dog.)

Any day now

A composer of our acquaintance wonders when the 5 Browns, the cutesy multiple-piano family act, are going to play Julius Eastman's Evil Nigger. Or his Gay Guerrilla, for that matter. (The EAR Unit will play Eastman's Crazy Nigger, for four pianos, at REDCAT in LA on April 11.)

Cage in Iran II

Here's a picture from the Night of John Cage in Tehran earlier today. Courtesy of Shervin Afshar.

Cage in Iran

Step aside, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Robert Spano: this year the prize for boldness in programming has to go to Nader Mashayehki, conductor of the Tehran Symphony, who, tomorrow night, will lead Tehran Conservatory students in a performance of Cage's Four⁶, as part of Bukhara magazine's Night of John Cage at the Beethoven Hall of the Iranian Artists' Forum. Mashayehki, a composer as well as a conductor, lived in Vienna for many years, studying at the Musikhochschule with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati and leading the Ensemble Wien 2001. For more on the struggle to maintain an orchestra in Iran, read this AP story from last summer and this story from Der Spiegel. (Via Soho the Dog.)

Update: Shervin Afshar, curator of the Iranian blog Signal to Noise, writes to say that he will be attending the above event, and also sends news of the Limited Access Exhibition at the Parkingallery in Tehran — a mix of sound installations, videos, and live performances. Makan Ashkewari will present a Cagean work mixing his own vocals with radio/TV noises, and Shervin himself will perform a piece entitled The Blue Box. The exhibition runs from March 8 to March 15. If you're looking for something to do in Tehran (?), drop by and check it out.

Danke Denk

It's been a while since I've linked to the remarkable blog of the pianist Jeremy Denk. In his latest post he writes about buying a cup of coffee in San Francisco and walking through the city on a beautiful day. There's more to it than that, of course. Besides being a brilliant musician, Denk is simply one of the most interesting writers I know.

Jones, Rysanek, Voigt in Elektra

"Gwyneth Jones Takes Over Title Role in Elektra"

by Alex Ross

New York Times, April 4, 1994

Singing the title role of Strauss's "Elektra" on Friday night for the first time in her Metropolitan Opera career, Gwyneth Jones snatched dramatic victory from the jaws of vocal defeat. "Allein," her opening monologue, teemed with bad signs: an underpowered lower range; an upper register colorlessly overblown and at times excruciatingly off pitch. Notes were repeatedly attacked from below and then missed altogether. Points of crucial musical tension throughout the opera fell victim to explosions of raw, ugly sound. Prospects looked bleaker than ever for the House of Atreus.

But this soprano's considerable reputation has never rested on purely vocal qualities. Her art cannot be measured listening blind, which is why she has made very few recordings. She viscerally inhabited the role, radiating Elektra's righteous madness; the flashes of anguish and fury on her face were frightening to behold. She quickly took possession of the set and made sense of its awkward topography. From the outset, she had the audience in thrall; after the curtain, shredded Stagebills rained down from the balconies like confetti.

The debate will stretch on to the crack of doom: which comes first, the music or the action? Scenes of Elektra and Chrysothemis together posed the problem concisely: Ms. Jones strove to conquer vocal weakness with theatrical assertion, while Deborah Voigt (in her second-to-last performance this season) balanced a certain dramatic hesitancy with rock-solid musicianship. As a deep believer in the fundamental musical worth of Strauss's score, I found Ms. Voigt's contribution more satisfying in the end. One singer brought the house down, the other brought the music to life.

And then there was Leonie Rysanek, who managed to do both. Having sung the other female leads in this opera with great distinction over the course of her extraordinary career, Ms. Rysanek has now forged a striking characterization of Klytamnestra. It takes some effort: she is not a true mezzo (although her soprano has darkened with age) and she has trouble moving in and out of a very husky lower register. She was also tested on Friday night by James Levine's slow, Wagnerian tempos, which muted some of the swirling scherzo quality of the mother-daughter dialogues. But her performance was of a piece, both musically and dramatically. The "Mehr Lichter!" exit was a tour-de-force of mad hauteur.

The third newcomer to the cast was Jan-Hendrik Rootering as Orest, stolidly noble and assured. Unfortunately, he did not seem to be on the same dramatic wavelength as Ms. Jones. Mr. Levine directed a grand and architecturally imposing performance, despite languid stretches in the first half; the orchestra rose to an extraordinary pitch of eloquence in the Recognition Scene. Whatever its problems, this "Elektra" is worth seeing.

Heckle for harmony!

Priceless footage of a Birtwistle imbroglio outside the Royal Opera House in 1994. This one goes out to the commenters at NewMusicBox and Sequenza21. (Via Clownsilly.)

Missing Disney

Idol commentary

The genius moment on tonight's somewhat dispiriting American Idol came when the erratic Leslie Hunt, having been eliminated in favor of a Jersey girl who can't sing at all and likes to flash her breasts, ad-libbed some new lines in her reprise of "Feeling Good": "Oh why did I decide to scat / America don't care for jazz...." Then again, America did seem to care for Melinda Doolittle's smokily beautiful rendition of "My Funny Valentine." America is, as ever, a mysterious place.

As usual, Jody Rosen has the nonpareil wrapup.