Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Hey man, slow down

Jessica Duchen has repeated the now legendary Joshua Bell experiment with the violinist Tasmin Little in London, watching crowd reaction as the star musician busks on her Stradivarius: "....it becomes clear that it's the young people, children and teenagers, who are the most interested, responsive, willing to stop and likely to give their money — even though they, no doubt, have the least resources. As for the well-heeled, grey-haired clientele that we are always told make up the majority of audiences for classical concerts, they are the most likely to turn away, lips pursed in snobbish disapproval...." On a related theme, read about Lisa Bielawa's Chance Encounter project, a site-specific work to be performed in public spaces in downtown Manhattan next September, and follow her musings at her blog.

Not for all

Looking for the perfect Mother's Day gift for that mom who loves Schoenberg? The Schoenberg Center in Vienna can cover your needs. The Schoenberg Shop is offering Schoenberg T-shirts (mit Aphorismen), pencils, mousepads, and postcards. Also check out Schoenberg on YouTube. And, of course, Schoenberg Webradio and Schoenberg Jukebox are still going strong.

Philharmonic cryptogram (expanded)

A story by Dan Wakin in the New York Times reveals that the New York Philharmonic has devised a new post of "principal conductor" to go alongside that of music director, and that it also plans to appoint a composer-in-residence, found a new-music group, and present mini-festivals. These are all intelligent moves, signalling, as I suggested in my piece this week, that the Philharmonic is making serious strides toward artistic renovation (with the LA Phil perhaps providing inspiration). It’s potentially a good structure for an orchestra — not to have one star director plus a stream of guests, but two regular conductors working side by side. Ideally, they would have contrasting personalities and tastes, suited to different audiences (Brahms-loving subscribers, youthful new-music-listening types). Trouble is, no names are being put forward to fill in the blanks. The second-banana role would seem tailor-made for a younger conductor such as Alan Gilbert or Ludovic Morlot, but neither is mentioned. Zarin Mehta, the Philharmonic president, is said to have "ruled out" Riccardo Muti and Daniel Barenboim for the lead post and further stated that "no conductors had been approached" about either job. A strange cliffhanger. [If you're confused by the details, Matthew Guerrieri has a helpful chart.] Notice, though, a bright statistic at the end: "Over the last four seasons, the orchestra has recorded a steady increase in ticket sales, raising the percentage of tickets sold to a projected 86 this year, from 73."

In my LA Phil article, I mention how it no longer makes sense to generalize about the hidebound attitude of the American orchestra. With such partnerships as David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony, Robert Spano in Atlanta, Marin Alsop in Baltimore, James Levine in Boston, and Osmo Vänskä in Minneapolis, many orchestras are striking out in fresh directions these days, programming more new music and devising new kinds of programs. I might also have mentioned the Detroit Symphony, which is set to present a festival called 8 Days in June, bringing Beethoven and Stravinsky together with Wynton Marsalis and Chuck D. The Brooklyn Philharmonic, which had a brief golden age under Spano in the nineties, is again presenting lively programs under Michael Christie, who also seems to be doing good things at the Phoenix Symphony. The Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW series, currently under the joint direction of Mark-Anthony Turnage and Osvaldo Golijov, is reportedly attracting big crowds (including, as you can see in the photo, young dudes drinkin' beer, like this one). Atlanta, too, has had encouraging results with its new-music programming. When I asked for specifics, the orchestra reported that under Spano attendance has risen 7% to 76%, and that when big works by such locally admired composers as Jennifer Higdon, Golijov, and Michael Gandolfi have appeared on the programs the attendance has been higher than the average: respectively, 86%, 95%, and 92%. (In Minnesota, attendance has gone from 58% in 2002-3 to 72% in 2005-6.) When new music becomes a selling point — and we're not quite there yet — we will be living in a new world, or, rather, a world like Mozart's.

This modernizing trend originated on the West Coast in the nineteen nineties, when Esa-Pekka Salonen arrived in Los Angeles and Michael Tilson Thomas came to San Francisco. There was a particular day in June when you could feel the atmosphere changing — I'll never forget it.

Random notes agenda

After writing about New York new music a couple of weeks ago, I've heard tell of several more ensembles and series based in the city, links to which have been added to my new music page.... The Newspeak ensemble plays tonight at Princeton, in a program including Judd Greenstein's What They Don't Like (For Chuck D), Samson Young's Efflorescentric Aftermath (Game Boy Music II), and David T. Little's sweet, light, crude. You can listen live at the Princeton music department website at 8PM.... Princeton seems a happening place these days, what with grad composers such as Little, Greenstein, Christopher Tignor, Miriama Young, Andrew McKenna Lee, and Gregory Spears, broad-minded elders such as Steven Mackey and Paul Lansky, electronic projects such as the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, and groundbreaking theoretical explorations by Dmitri Tymoczko (listen here as Tymoczko demonstrates how charming music can be concocted by imposing efficient voice-leading rules on a random collection of notes).... Tonic may be gone, but lively-sounding things are transpiring at The Tank, a space I've yet to visit. Amp Music is presenting a new-music series called Inflections. And this Saturday, Wet Ink plays with, er, Glissando bin Laden. Note also Tranzducer at Lemurplex in Brooklyn. And Roulette is back in action; this Thursday they host the Amsterdam-based, frequently recorded Barton Workshop.... The ICE Ensemble begins its epic nine-program assault on New York with a solo flute show tomorrow night at Galapagos, part of the Darmstadt series.... Kalamazoo's Opus 21 plays Saturday at Symphony Space, presenting premieres by Richard Adams, Anna Clyne, Mark Dancigers, Dennis DeSantis, and Bill Ryan. On Friday, John Adams conducts the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie. Adams spricht: "The model of the composer as lonely outsider, the Schoenberg or the Adrian Leverkühn that Thomas Mann so vividly sketched, is not the ideal for me...." Lastly, Laurie Anderson plays at the Paris Bar at the National Arts Club on Saturday.

EPS/LA

"The Anti-Maestro," my big article on Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker. Like most longer pieces in the magazine, it is not available online. (Here is where I ritualistically mention that a subscription to this very fine publication is not a bad deal.) Toward the end there's a section describing how the orchestra went about picking as its next music director the extraordinary young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel (pictured above, with Salonen in his scandalous cerulean jacket). Later in the week I'll have a follow-up piece on Salonen's recordings on the New Yorker website; here's a discography, corrections and additions to which would be welcome. Here's also a link to my 1994 NY Times piece on Salonen. The LA Phil is headed New York's way; next Sunday at Lincoln Center the orchestra will perform Salonen's Helix alongside the Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand (with Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and music from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and on May 2 they'll do two performances of the epic Tristan Project — unfortunately coinciding with the debut performances of Mark Morris's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met and Björk's first shows in New York — together with a Fleming Abend. Tomorrow night, Miller Theatre augments the Nordic atmosphere by hosting Present Music from Milwaukee in a program of the complexly layered, wildly entertaining music of Kimmo Hakola. Disney Hall, meanwhile, will be loaned out on Wednesday night to some kind of televised singing competition.

Honored guest

I'd like to thank to Justin Davidson for keeping the blog burning while I was on Esa-Pekka-related semi-hiatus. We're still waiting for that full-time Davidson blog.

Playlist
— Strauss, Four Last Songs and scenes from Salome and Capriccio, Nine Stemme and Antonio Pappano conducting the Covent Garden Orchestra (EMI)
— Terry Riley, Reed Streams (Elision Fields) [w/ amazing live 1970 L'Infonie performance of In C]
— Handel, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Natalie Dessay et al, Emmanuelle Haïm leading Le Concert d'Astrée (Virgin)
— Handel, Floridante, Marijana Mijanovic, Joyce DiDonato et al, Alan Curtis conducting Il Complesso Barocco (Archiv)
— Björk, Volta (Atlantic) [genius!]
— Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 5, Robert Spano conducting the Atlanta Symphony (Telarc)
— Me and My Toy Piano, Rodney Lister live at Boston University (unreleased)

Weillenya

By Justin Davidson

The Broadway show Lovemusik, which opens at the Biltmore Theater next week, chronicles the agonized, fitful, tender, ugly and ultimately indispensable relationship that bound Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. In the show — which features many Weill songs, including a few that only full-time Weillologists are likely to know — the composer explains to the singer that there is really no distinction between music and love, between the sonic and the erotic. For the stage,  Alfred Uhry condensed a letter that Weill wrote to his not-yet-wife in 1926:

When I feel this longing for you, I think most of all of the sound of your voice, which I love like a very force of nature, like an element. For me all of you is contained within this sound; everything else is only a part of you; and when I envelop myself in your voice, then you are with me in every way. I know every nuance, every vibration of your voice, and I can hear exactly what you would say if you were with me right now - and how you would say it. But suddenly this sound is again entirely alien and new to me, and the it is the greatest joy to realize how affectionately this voice caresses me.

— from Speak Low (When You Speak of Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya; edited and translated by Lys Simmonette and Kim Kowalke

The Lovemusik website has a short clip of Weill singing "Speak Low" in his Freudian croon. I won't comment on the show itself until my theater critic colleagues have reviewed it — except to say that Donna Murphy closes it with a wrenching rendition of "September Song."

Thank You for Forcing Me to Sing Opera

By Justin Davidson

We all know that music education has essentially vanished from public schools, but Michael Schwartz, the director of the music program at Great Neck South High School on Long Island, apparently didn't get the memo. Year 38 of the school's live annual opera performance features "The Magic Flute," with sets, costumes, orchestra — the whole shebang. Sung in German, no less! The recitative's been abbreviated, the spoken dialogue abridged and translated into English, and a couple of arias transposed to accommodate a teenage tenor's range, which changes daily. Other than that, it's all there.

Yes, of course, Great Neck is one of the country's wealthiest suburbs. Not every school can field an orchestra  (an oversize one, for Mozart), fit the singers out with wireless body mikes, or attract teachers as tireless as Schwartz or vocal director Pamela Levy. Not every school can cast a Pamina who has been taking singing lessons since she was in first grade. But what other schools could do is help kids connect with music through having them perform it. Eleventh grader Jordan Rochelson, Great Neck South's Papageno, is a natural stage animal, but he told me that he started out with zero interest in opera. He said: "Now I’m so happy that a love of classical music has been instilled in me . . . um, forced on me, I guess.”

More on this story here, including an impressive clip from last year's "Carmen," as sung by Nikki Blonsky (who went on to win a starring role in the forthcoming movie version of Hairspray).

Over to you, Mitt Romney

The French music site Altamusica has posed several questions to the French presidential candidates, including this one: "One often hears that classical music is elitist. What do you think?" Nicolas Sarkozy, of the conservative UMP party, responds (my rough translation): "The music called 'classical' is by definition the most popular because it is that which has transcended time, fashion, and society to reach us. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, seen as elitist in the time of their contemporaries, but how can one pretend that it isn't popular? The number of people who have heard this music over several centuries is simply incalculable! Even the music that certain cultural functionaries call 'musiques actuelles', even the most contemporary rock groups, draw their harmonies from the tonal system invented by Bach and Rameau." That's a pretty good answer, though, as far as right-of-center (i.e. left-of-Hillary) European-politician music criticism goes, it doesn't quite beat Merkel on Wagner. (Via Clive Davis.) — Alex

Live From New York, It's Garbage Time!

By Justin Davidson

While I was hanging out in the hallway outside the Soundcheck studio at WNYC, waiting for my moment at the mike, John Schaefer was on the air, talking by phone with the freshly minted Pulitzerian sax man Ornette Coleman. The honor apparently carries an odd assortment of privileges and responsibilities. In the first category: during the live  broadcast, Coleman put John (and all of New York City) on hold for a couple of minutes - and John did not just move on to the next caller. In the second: the reason Coleman walked away was that his building super was at the door. Something to do with taking out the garbage, it seems. Some things are more urgent than others.

But then this is the guy who managed to win a Pulitzer without first bothering to get nominated for one. John, who was on the jury, tells the story. As jurors huddled for a weekend in March to go through the hundred-plus scores and recordings, someone noticed that despite the official desire for submissions in jazz, film music and other genres, Coleman's latest CD, "Sound Grammar," wasn't in the pile. Another juror, ex-Timesman John Rockwell, sent someone out to scare up a copy.

This was also the year when the paper that employs both of the non-winning finalists in the criticism category, music critic Mark Swed and art critic Christopher Knight, neglected to nominate either. (They did the honors themselves.)