Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Lincoln Center on My Mind

(Thanks to masck (old skool) for the photo)

By Justin Davidson

Thought I: Lincoln Center is Molting

Remember a few years ago, when the talk was that Lincoln Center's gaggle of constituent organizations would never stop bickering over the renovation plans, never raise the money, never take the plunge? The travertine dowager, it was said, would keep sinking elegantly into disrepair. But take a look at it now: Juilliard has shed its skin, in preparation for adding a whole new wing, including a glass-walled dance studio facing onto Broadway. It's more than a little ironic that the dismantling begins with Pietro Belluschi's Juilliard building, which architecture critics of the 1960s praised as the one true incarnation of modernism in a campus rife with aesthetic compromise. Ada Louis Huxtable, the dean of critics at the time, called it “a marriage of form and function in terms of rational simplicity and bare-boned solutions.” Neither Huxtable nor anybody else, however, has been leading protests or writing novella-length Op-Eds defending the building against depraved acts of renovation. Maybe that's because generations of Juilliard students have found the building more  a marriage of ugliness and unfriendliness in terms of labyrinthine confusion.

Thought II:  Long Way to Go

As I squirmed through New York City Opera's  superfluous new production of Rossini's "La Donna del Lago" (loosely translated as "The Lady who Jumped in a Lake"), I kept imagining the company's new director-in-waiting Gerard Mortier sitting rigidly in the audience, his Flemish frown getting longer and deeper by the minute. The company is usually better than this, and the lame-duck director Paul Kellogg should at some point get his due as a resourceful executive with good taste and an ear for talented young singers. Still, it's a long way from lame Rossini to the extravaganzas of vulgarity and bold vision that Mortier is famous for. Will he be able to sweet-talk some extra millions out of City Opera loyalists to support his plans, or will the company only be able to afford a few knockoff shockers?

Thought III: Mini-Moderne

Children are the cruelest critics. They need better music, better playing and better seats than adults do before they'll clap like they mean it, let alone jump to their feet. So I was delighted at the reception that the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert of "modern" music on Saturday got from the pre-tween crowd, including my own discriminating 9-year-old. "I liked that," he volunteered, which in today's praise exchange rate is equivalent to a wild, stomping ovation.  The young conductor James Gaffigan made his debut on that concert; I authorize his publicists to use my son's endorsement for marketing purposes.

And get this: the boy's favorite work was not by Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky or Copland. It was "Katydid Country," a movement from Mason Bates' symphony, "Rusty Air in Carolina." Composed in 2006.  Bates uses field recordings of the noisy bugs - a solo, plus a choir of millions - and turns them into an electronic rhythm section for his high-energy orchestra. (My son also enjoyed Webern's "Five Movements for String Orchestra," which the orchestra played three times.)  When I pointed to a photo of John Adams in the program (the Philharmonic did a lovely job with his "Tromba Lontana") and bragged that I knew him, my son answered coolly: "How come you don't know all the other composers, Dad?" There's your audience of the future.

        Justin Davidson

Lang Lang, Yundi Li

The Wow Factor. The New Yorker, April 2, 2007.

Reendtroducing Justin

I'm ensnared in a Teachoutesque jungle of work — among other things, working on my Esa-Pekka Salonen / LA Philharmonic piece (to appear April 30) and preparing for an April 1 lecture at the 92nd Street Y on Mallarmé, Debussy, Stefan George, and Schoenberg (party!). Stepping in for me next week will be guest-blogger Justin Davidson. Expect shocking revelations, convulsive hilarity, ageless wisdom.... The Rambler amusingly sums up the state of classical music, a topic that has become tiresome. When my desk is overrun with new recordings, when I can't decide which of ten new-music concerts to attend on a given night, to talk about the death of anything is ridiculous. I've sworn off before, though.... New York Times subscribers should be reading The Score, a bloggy symposium involving such major maverick composers as Michael Gordon, Annie Gosfield, Alvin Curran, Glenn Branca, and, not least, Steve Reich.... The consensus is that Alan Gilbert made a powerful impression with his latest appearance at the New York Philharmonic.... In April, the Utah Symphony gives its first performance of Messiaen's From the Canyons to the Stars, as part of an ambitious American Horizons festival. I dream of one day hearing the piece live in Zion Park, with Reinbert de Leeuw conducting.... Noted on MySpace: Ryan Francis's Woman, Bird and Star.... Is it just me or is there a reference to Sibelius's Fifth at 0:34 of Sinatra's "Angel Eyes"? Not to mention the Schoenbergian fourth-plus-tritone at the beginning of "It's a Lonesome Old Town." Nelson Riddle in excelsis.

Pictured: Teachout, not Davidson.

My Rachmaninov

Matthew Guerrieri, who gets some secret crazy music-news feed that the rest of us don't, notes that a twenty-one-year-old, scotch-drinkin', Jay-Z-listenin' Rachmaninov heir named Alexander Temple Wolkonsky Rachmaninoff Wanamaker wants to reassert copyright control of his great-great-grandfather's works by publishing them in new arrangements. According to an Arizona Daily Star story, "Wanamaker said the family already has approached a few composers about doing the rearrangement." This is intriguing. What composers? I nominate the German avant-gardist Hans-Joachim Hespos, whose works have called for, among other instruments, an oil tank with a 5mm-thick casing and a welding torch [for more on this merry tunester, read Geelhoed]; Dean Drummond, curator of Harry Partch's array of microtonal instruments; and Milton Babbitt, who could create a very fresh-sounding Rach 3 with a quick serialization of dynamics.

But all this is moot, I'm afraid. Those who know my world-famous opera Tristan + Isolde will not be surprised to learn that I have also composed a corpus of works that bear a superficial resemblance to Rachmaninov's, although the differences are in fact profound — sufficiently profound that I am claiming retroactive royalties on all Rachmaninov performances to date as well as on all iterations of the Dies irae, together with Alexander Temple Wolkonsky Rachmaninoff Wanamaker's daily allowance since birth. Above is a page from my glorious Symphony No. 2 (click on the image to make it bigger).

For a serious critique of copyright law run amok, read Gann. Rachmaninov will survive, but the idea of all these great new contemporary-classical web-radio stations shutting down is too depressing for words.

Rouse Requiem agenda

Southern Californians, take note of the fact that the long-awaited premiere of Christopher Rouse's Requiem is happening at Disney Hall on Sunday, courtesy of the intrepid Los Angeles Master Chorale. David Salvage has an enticing preview. I have the score, and it looks to be a tremendous, floor-rattling experience. Britten's War Requiem is the obvious model: the traditional Latin texts are interwoven with poetry of Seamus Heaney, Siegfried Sassoon, Michelangelo, Ben Jonson, and Milton. A solo baritone recitation of Heaney's "Mid-term Break" begins the work: "I sat all morning in the college sick bay / Counting bells knelling classes to a close, / At two o' clock our neighbors drove me home." Then the chorus sings a dense, semi-archaic, motet-like setting of the Kyrie. At the end of that section, percussion instruments steal in pppp — snare drum, bass drum, timpani, cymbals, tomtoms, tam-tam — and build to a raucous ffff. A wild setting of the Dies irae begins, explosive percussion combined with a singing, shouting, chanting, glissandoing chorus. Only in the following Tuba mirum does the rest of the orchestra finally enter. I'll look for full reports by Swed, Rich, and Mangan. [Links added 3/26.] This is a work that ought to be done, indeed should have been done, in New York; it is indirectly a memorial to September 11. Rouse is generally an underrated composer, a great musical storyteller.

New York won't lack for events in the next few days. Mitsuko Uchida is playing Mozart with Colin Davis at the New York Philharmonic. The MATA Festival continues at the Brooklyn Lyceum. The awesome Gerald Finley sings at Zankel Hall on Friday. The same night, Wordless Music offers another genre-spanning event,  this one bringing together rock, electronic, and classical artists from Canada: Polmo Polpo, Toca Loca, and Social Music Work Group. And if you missed the sublime Music for 18 Musicians at Carnegie last fall, So Percussion reprise Steve Reich's masterpiece on both Friday and Saturday nights at Miller Theatre.

Dead or Alive: A Rest Is Noise Special Report

In recent weeks I've had interesting adventures in the world of record-sales accounting, a landscape alien and forbidding to an aesthete such as myself. Back in January I noted with some amazement that the "classical" category reported a rise of 22.5% in album sales in 2006. Was this resurgence the result of blockbuster records by the "classical crossover" titans Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, and Il Divo, as one might first assume? I thought there might be more to the story — that increased sales of core classical repertory online and on iTunes could be contributing to the rise. Thinking along the same lines was Chris Anderson, whose brilliant book The Long Tail attacks the fallacy that "the only success is mass success" and posits that money is to be made in selling to niche markets. You can't, of course, get more niche than classical music.

Scelsi shrine

Fans of Giacinto Scelsi may be interested to know that the Montreal artist Charles Stankievech has put together a multimedia installation called Timbral, in honor of Scelsi's music. It will be on display through the end of this week (March 24) at the Parisian Laundry in Montreal. Inspiration came from the famous story of Scelsi playing one note over and over in a psychiatric hospital, not losing his mind but finding the source of his mature style. Last summer, the artist was in residency on the Venetian island of San Servolo, long the home of the local insane asylum. To quote the press release: "Stankievech found a derelict piano once used for music therapy in the asylum, and, for an eleven-hour recording session, reenacted Scelsi’s timbral meditations, pounding away at a single note within the closed remains of the island’s thirteenth-century church."

Photo: Guy L'Heureux

Advisory

The Juilliard Bookstore, which is about to move from its present location to a temporary home on West 66th, is holding a 50% off sale on its stock of scores, CDs, and other merchandise. I picked up Ives's Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich's Fourteenth, Copland's Piano Quartet, and various CDs on the col legno and Kairos labels for a whole lot less than I ordinarily would have. Sale ends and store closes on March 24. Thanks, M. G_.

More characterful seafood in Strauss

The return of The Omniscient Mussel to the Met stage inspired composer-critic Russell Platt, editor of the New Yorker's classical listings, to devise the following supplemental list (in league with Peter Kolkay):

The Curious Bivalve (Die Liebe der Danae)
The Frisky Seahorse (Intermezzo)
The Nefarious Monkfish (Guntram)
The Epileptic Squid (Feuersnot)
The Incontinent Mollusk (Die schweigsame Frau)

I'm reminded of the Jellyfish in Spew's Gazebo of Ecstasy.

No turning back now...

I'm on Amazon. (Via The Standing Room.)

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 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.)