Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

A Kelley Sheehan moment

For Norman Lloyd

Lloyd, center, in Orson Welles's Julius Caesar, 1937.

The great actor, director, producer, and raconteur Norman Lloyd died today, at the age of 106. He spent his last day at his beloved home in Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles, where he had lived since time out of mind. With him, a golden hoard of twentieth-century cultural memory is gone. I've had the honor to speak with many extraordinary people in my journalistic career; my two-hour-long conversation with Norman is, hands down, my favorite among all interviews I've done, and will probably remain so. To hear him so vividly bring to life the personalities of Welles, Schoenberg, Brecht, Eisler, Feuchtwanger, Bernard Herrmann, Chaplin, Hitchcock, and a host of others left me elated for days. Another time, I invited Norman to join me for a concert at the LA Philharmonic. Unfortunately, this never came about, but I remember his response: "A concert! I haven't been to a concert in forever. The last time, I think it was Toscanini."

More: A wonderful recollection by Todd McCarthy, who knew Norman well.

The NY Phil at the Shed

New Stages. The New Yorker, May 10, 2021.

Easter and Kassiani

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Today is Easter, and I am thinking of my late mother, who was a devout Greek Orthodox and the granddaughter of a notable priest, Rev. Basilios Lambrides. I'm listening to Hymns of Kassiani, a new disc by the Byzantine choir Cappella Romana. This ninth-century abbess, whose Troparion is sung on Holy Wednesday, is the earliest female composer whose music is still known.

A Linda Catlin Smith moment

This recent program by Toronto's Thin Edge New Music Collective includes the première of Dark Flower, a major new piano quartet by Smith, alongside pieces by Jonathan Bailey Holland, Sarah Hennies, and Alex Jang.

For Christa Ludwig

The genially towering German mezzo-soprano, who sang with an unexampled fusion of power, beauty, passion, and understanding, has died at the age of ninety-three. At the summit of her vast discography stands the greatest of all recordings of Das Lied von der Erde. It brings Wallace Stevens to mind: "She sang beyond the genius of the sea..."

MaerzMusik in Berlin

The Noise of Time. The New Yorker, April 19, 2021.

An Odeya Nini moment

From her performances of I See You, during Wild Up's Darkness Sounding festival.

For Hans Küng

The great liberal theologian has died at the age of ninety-three. I immediately thought of his remarkable 1982 essay on Parsifal, mention of which I sadly cut from the final draft of Wagnerism. It is a passionate and personal interpretation, one to which Wagner scholars might object. It is worth reading and pondering all the same:

Only if redemption takes place now in the world (as demonstrated by Parsifal) and is not simply redemption of the world, will the theological discussion of redemption lose its ideological character. Only if redemption past, redemption present and redemption future remain unsevered, will it be possible to make good its liberating humane potentiality. Then the talk of renunciation itself, this so often abused and misunderstood category of Christian asceticism, loses its false connotation. Instinctual renunciation is then no longer an individualistically limited, moralizing postulate of private self-castigation. In an age of short supplies of raw materials and squandermania, renunciation assumes the character of dire social urgency: the recantation of the will to power and success in favor of sympathy with man and nature. Sympathy as an appeal and motivation for an alternative political practice. Renunciation is a challenge to humane commitment, in order that man remains man and this world remains habitable for man and animal!

Pope Francis has talked about Wagner in vaguely similar terms.

An Eastman moment

From Wild Up's vibrant new recording of Femenine.