Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

For Peter Schjeldahl

If it is possible for a critic to be a genius, then Peter was one. Just a few issues ago in The New Yorker he published one of his finest pieces, on Mondrian. It ended with a grandly dizzying sentence that contained the phrase "adamantine conundrum." This, I told him, was worthy of Wallace Stevens. Thank you, Peter, for everything.

For Geoff Nuttall

Geoff playing a chacona, 2010.

One of the brightest, most generous lights in the American chamber-music world is gone: Geoff Nuttall, the first violinist of the St. Lawrence Quartet, died today at the age of fifty-six, of pancreatic cancer. It's devastating news to the hundreds of musicians who've worked with Geoff over the years, whether as students or as colleagues. And it's devastating news to audiences across North America — from the Banff Centre, where the quartet first broke through, to Palo Alto, where it is based, and on to Charleston, where Geoff led the chamber-music series at the Spoleto Festival. One of my favorite experiences as a critic-reporter came in 2001, when I followed the St. Lawrence on the road, to El Paso, Texas, and Joplin, Missouri. I'd covered the quartet's New York début, in 1992, and wanted to check in on their progress. Geoff was at the heart of the group and the chief source of its spontaneous, viscerally musical spirit. Behind his regular-guy affect was an exuberant, unpredictable, wide-ranging mind. Barry Shiffman, the former second violinist of the St. Lawrence, tells me that Geoff remained active to the end, biking to and from his chemotherapy appointments and leaving Barry huffing in the course of strenuous hikes. He will be profoundly and permanently missed.

Late-period Wagner sonnet

Once Wagner was the idol of a girl
steeped early in his “endless melody,”
as storms were slyly starting to unfurl
in Meistersinger-land, her Germany.
When storm troops marched, that world was terror-tossed;
symbol of dread, the fierce Wagnerian sound
of Berchtesgaden signaled holocaust,
a battle cry piercing her underground.

In a new land, she would emerge matured,
at peace one day to know the old elation
hearing the Ring, soaring past pain endured,
singing redemption and conciliation.
At last, she gave her long-withheld applause
to music – pure, unmarred by human flaws.

  — Anne Marx, "With Wagner: Through Storm to Calm" (1980)

See also: Bad Wagner Poetry (although I would not place Marx's poem in that category)

Otello at Opera Philadelphia, Medea at the Met

In Extremis. The New Yorker, Oct. 17, 2022.

Schoeck's Elegie

A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website.

At the grave of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger

Previously: Toch, Lubitsch, Korngold, Salieri, Bruckner, Liszt, Georg Trakl, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis, Thomas Mann, Bach, Nietzsche, Monteverdi, Koussevitzky, Michael Furey, Luranah Aldridge, Ligeti, Frescobaldi, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Baudelaire and Beckett, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Stravinsky and Nono, Zemlinsky, Schnittke, Fibich, X. Scharwenka, Elliott Carter, Enescu, Rachmaninov, Mahler and many others, Russ.

Thought of the day

"They gaily speak about differences between America and Italy. 'Take Caruso and Bing Crosby,' she says. 'You don't need such a big voice, if you are rich.'"

            — Bertolt Brecht, "The Goddess of Victory"

A Mattie Barbier moment

From Barbier's new album threads, which was recorded at The Tank. Video filmed at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Adams's Antony and Cleopatra

Immortal Longings. The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2022.

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Andrew McIntosh, Little Jimmy, I have a lot to learn, Learning; Yarn/Wire (Kairos)

Mahler, Symphony No. 5; Semyon Bychkov conducting the Czech Philharmonic (Pentatone, out Oct. 14)

Mozart, Piano Sonatas; Robert Levin (ECM)

Odeya Nini, ODE (out Oct. 7)

Tristan: works of Liszt, Henze, Wagner, and Mahler; Igor Levit, Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (Sony)

Weinberg, Symphonies Nos. 3 and 7, Flute Concerto No. 1; Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducting the City Of Birmingham Symphony and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, with Kirill Gerstein and Marie-Christine Zupancic (DG)

she / her / hers: works by Milica Paranosic, Jessica Meyer, Gabriela Lena Frank, Adah Kaplan, Valerie Coleman, Laurie Anderson, Melissa Dunphy, Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté, Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, Jessie Montgomery, Ana Sokolović, Laura de Rover; Lara St. John (Ancalagon)

Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable; John Osborn, Nicolas Courjal, Amina Edris, Erin Morley, Nico Darmanin, Marc Minkowski conducting the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and the Chœur de l'Opera National de Bordeaux (Bru Zane)

Schulhoff, Shapeshifter: Piano Concerto and other works; players from the Colburn School, including James Conlon leading the RVC Ensemble (Delos)