One of the twentieth century's greatest, most impassioned tenors has passed away at the age of eighty-six, Opera Chic reports. Hearing him sing "E lucevan le stelle" on the Callas/EMI Tosca was my first great spine-tingling operatic experience. Listen to a sensational live rendition of the aria at La Cieca.
Alfred the Great. The New Yorker, March 10, 2008.
The other day Esa-Pekka Salonen announced his final season with the LA Philharmonic. The most innovative conductor of the contemporary era is going out in the high and bold style to which LA audiences have become accustomed. Of particular interest is a series of concerts in January 2009 in which Salonen will conduct new works of Arvo Pärt and Louis Andriessen and the long-awaited Peter Sellars staging of Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone. His last series begins on April 7, with a Green Umbrella concert of younger composers: Fang Man, Erin Gee, Enrico Chapela, and Brooklyn's Anna Clyne. He then leads a yet-to-be-titled work of his own devising and moves on to the grand finale: Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms, as directed by Sellars. That's not even the end of the season: John Adams curates some concerts in May, including a premiere by the very gifted composer-pianist Timothy Andres. (It's great to see the mighty LA Phil championing younger, relatively unknown composing talent.) And, lest anyone worry that the orchestra's modernistic tendencies will lapse when Salonen leaves, Ligeti's Atmosphères and Kurtág's Stele appear on Gustavo Dudamel's programs in fall 2008.
Explaining why he focussed on Stravinsky in his farewell season, Salonen said: “Stravinsky was very fortunate. He lived a very long life and he was productive to the very end. And somehow, I cannot think of many other artists of any discipline with the same sort of imagination and fantasy as Stravinsky. And that’s what it comes down to, really: the point of the idea, the imagination. The technique, everybody can learn ultimately, to make something that looks or sounds like a work of art. But the quality of the idea itself is the very central issue here, and Stravinsky never had bad ideas." Miller Theatre in NYC will underscore that point when it puts on a five-concert Stravinsky Festival in April, centered on a presentation of the Psalms, the Mass, and Requiem Canticles at the Park Avenue Armory.
"Chuse a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy."
— Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Timothy Goeglein, director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, resigned yesterday after he was found to be committing plagiarism in the pages of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Those who relish encounters between contemporary music and politics — encounters inevitably as weird as they are rare — will want to know that living composers play a peripheral role in the story. One of Goeglein's columns, lyrically titled "Life Can Be Beautiful If the Music Is," sang the praises of Gian Carlo Menotti. It turns out that the author borrowed liberally from a Robert Reilly article in Crisis magazine. The really striking passage in Goeglein's piece — seemingly of his own invention — is this: "In the world of contemporary classical music, no names rate higher than John Corigliano, John Adams and Richard Danielpour. They are names that classical music lovers know and respect. But how about creative individuals who strive for excellence in all the arts and whose achievements often go unreported and unfunded because they are seen as less avant garde? How do they comprise this renaissance in music, for instance, that gets beyond an endless succession of bar rests and back to inspired notation?" A good question! I am sure that listeners everywhere have had their fill of Danielpour's astringently experimental, evening-length silent pieces.
Look under Event.
— Josquin, Missa Sine nomine and Missa Ad fugam; Tallis Scholars (Gimell)
— Heavenly Harmonies (music of Tallis and Byrd); Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi)
— Rochberg, Symphony No. 1; Christopher Lyndon-Gee conducting the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony (Naxos) [See Sequenza21 review by Steve Hicken]
— Dowland, Lute Songs, Britten, Nocturnal; Mark Padmore, Elizabeth Kenny, Craig Ogden (Hyperion)
— Verdi, Aida; with Roberto Alagna, Violeta Urmana, and, well, Roberto Bolle (Decca DVD)
— Schumann, Symphonies 1-4, Mahler edition; Riccardo Chailly conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (Decca)
— Leifs, Edda I; Hermann Bäumer conducting the Iceland Symphony and Schola Cantorum (BIS)
Very sad news: Dutton's, in Brentwood, California, will close its doors on April 30.
"N.Y. SENDS GERSHWIN TO SECRETIVE COMMUNISTS," said CNN's main page earlier today. It feels like 1956 again. There are, needless to say, divergent opinions about the New York Philharmonic's forty-eight-hour tour of North Korea, now underway. Norman Lebrecht has issued a flat-out denunciation, as has Terry Teachout. Matthew Guerrieri is skeptical, but at a softer dynamic. Greg Sandow believes the trip can do good. Jens Laurson and George Pieler think it might have done good if the program had been different. Condoleezza Rice weighs in: "I don't think we should get carried away with what listening to Dvořák is going to do in North Korea." Dan Wakin is providing reports on the Times arts blog; Steve Smith is also along for the ride. Kate Julian of the New Yorker talks to Lorin Maazel. Anne Midgette looks at North Korea's classical scene. Pete Matthews live-blogs the broadcast. I'll comment later on.
Go here for sound samples to accompany The Rest Is Noise (currently being read by Tom Stoppard, Sting, and, according to Neil's Pet Text for Jan. 15, the Pet Shop Boys).
