It's unfortunate that the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the world's leading orchestras, has been suffering from muddled leadership on the part of its board of directors. When Deborah Borda left the LA Phil's top administrative post in 2017, the board had the opportunity to promote Chad Smith, the orchestra's longtime chief of programming. Instead, it brought in Simon Woods, who had had success in previous jobs but who lacked Smith's vision and imagination, not to mention his deep knowledge of the organization. Woods's early departure, announced Monday, gives the board a second chance to make the right choice.
Links
Nightafternight playlist
New and recent recordings of interest.
Feldman, For Bunita Marcus; Aki Takahashi (Mode)
Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas; Igor Levit (Sony)
Clara Schumann, Piano Concerto, Piano Sonata in G Minor, and other works; Isata Kanneh-Mason with Holly Mathieson conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Decca)
Mark Andre, hij 1 and 2; Mariano Chiacchiarini conducting the WDR Symphony, Marcus Creed conducting the SWR Vocal Ensemble (Wergo)
Weinberg, String Quartets Nos. 11–13; Silesian Quartet (Accord)
Ronald Stevenson, Piano Works vol. 2; Kenneth Hamilton (Prima Facie)
Luke Bedford, Through His Teeth; Opera Factory Freiburg (bastille musique)
Christopher Cerrone, The Pieces That Fall to Earth; Lindsay Kesselman, Theo Bleckmann, Christopher Rountree conducting wild Up (New Amsterdam)
Catherine Lamb, Point / Wave; Cristián Alvear (another timbre)
John Luther Adams, Become Desert; Ludovic Morlot conducting the Seattle Symphony (Cantaloupe)
in manus tuas: works of Andrew Norman, Caroline Shaw, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir; Lanzilotti, Karl Larson, Sarah Mullins (New Focus)
Bookshelf
New and recent publications of interest.
Melissa Burrage, The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America (Boydell and Brewer)
Cate Haste, Passionate Spirit: The Life of Alma Mahler (Basic Books)
Shayne Carter, Dead People I Have Known (Victoria UP)
Mark Stryker, Jazz from Detroit (University of Michigan Press)
Walter Everett and Tim Riley, What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time (Oxford UP)
Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG, out 8/27)
Katherine M. Kuenzli, Henry van de Velde: Designing Modernism (Yale UP)
The Karl Muck affair
For the New Yorker website, I've written a Cultural Comment on two recent books that describe the absurd and frightening Karl Muck hysteria of 1917-18. Above is a cartoon from the period. One rumor pegged Muck as Wagner's illegitimate son, prompting a poem from Lincoln Kirstein: "Karl Muck conducts the symphony; a steel svelte villain, he— / Ma says he's Wagner's bastard son ('Daddy, what's bostordy?')" Other eminent German- and Austrian-born musicians suffered consequences during the First World War, including Ernst Kunwald, who was interned; Frederick Stock, who temporarily stepped down from the Chicago Symphony; and Fritz Kreisler, who stopped performing for the duration of the war.
Miscellany
"No musical administrator is more widely respected or well liked than Ara Guzelimian," I wrote on this blog in 2007, shortly after Ara left Carnegie Hall to become Dean of Juilliard. Ara recently announced that he will step down from Juilliard next year, and the song remains the same. During his tenure, Juilliard has diversified and deepened its mission while retaining an exalted status among American conservatories. I look forward to seeing what institution will profit next from Ara's wisdom and warmth.... The keen critic and Bruckner authority Richard Lehnert has left Stereophile after thirty-four years of service as the magazine's copyeditor. He's written a delightful memoir of his adventures in editing.... The Louth Contemporary Music Society, whose leader Eamonn Quinn won the Belmont Prize last year, has an entrancing new CD out, KLANG, on which the Goeyvaerts String Trio plays Wolfgang von Schweinitz's Sounds on Schön Berg La Monte Young.... On August 10, Indexical will take over much of the Californian city of Santa Cruz, as Carmina Escobar leads a daylong event entitled Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light. Indexical is seeking musicians, dancers, artists, surfers, and bicyclists.... The NYC activist orchestra The Dream Unfinished ends its season on July 11 with a program devoted to climate change and its effect on communities of color.... Composer and YouTube analyst Samuel Andreyev has a fine segment on Ruth Crawford Seeger's awesome Quartet.
