Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

— Adès, Piano Concerto, Totentanz; Adès conducting the Boston Symphony, with Kirill Gerstein, Mark Stone, Christianne Stotijn (DG, out 2/28)

— Liza Lim, Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus; Sophie Schafleitner, Lorelei Dowling, Klangforum Wien cond. Peter Rundel and Stefan Asbury (Kairos)

— Anna Höstman, Harbour and other works; Cheryl Duvall (Redshift)

— Jennifer Walshe, A Late Anthology of Early Music, Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance (Tetbind)

— Alex Hills, OutsideIn and other works; Aisha Orazbayeva, EXAUDI (Carrier)

— Handel, Agrippina; Joyce DiDonato, Elsa Benoit, Luca Pisaroni, Franco Fagioli, Jakub Józef Orliński, Andrea Mastroni, Carlo Vistoli, Biagio Pizzuti, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Maxim Emelyanychev leading Il Pomo d'Oro (Erato)

— Samuel Feinberg, Piano Sonatas; Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion)

— Clairières: Songs by Lili Boulanger and Nadia Boulanger; Nicholas Phan, Myra Huang (Avie)

— Bach, Cello Suites, transcribed for violin; Johnny Gandelsman (MVD)

— Schoenberg, Violin Concerto, Verklärte Nacht: Isabelle Faust, Daniel Harding conducting Swedish Radio Symphony (Harmonia Mundi)

— Sorabji, Sequentia cyclica super "Dies Irae" ex Missa pro defunctis; Jonathan Powell (Piano Classics, 7 CDs)

For Reinbert de Leeuw

The great Dutch conductor, composer, and pianist died today at the age of eighty-one. His contributions to the promotion of new and unsung music were vast: Andriessen, Ustvolskaya, Kurtág, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Claude Vivier, Mauricio Kagel, and on and on. His 1994 performance of Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles at Tanglewood remains a touchstone of my listening life. He also had few peers as an exponent of the music of Erik Satie. He will be remembered long after most of today's celebrity conductors are forgotten: he mattered far more to the music of our time.

My Bloody Alban Berg Valentine

"Here the incomprehensible, immeausurable sorrow that burns my soul can find release."

    — Altenberg Lieder

Previously: An Alban Berg Valentine, Another Alban Berg Valentine, Yet Another Alban Berg Valentine, Return of Alban Berg Valentine, Nothing says forever like an Alban Berg Valentine, Alban Berg Valentine (10th anniversary edition), Alban Berg Valentine (2017 edition), Will you be my Alban Berg Valentine?, Eternity, by Alban Berg Valentine.

Honeck in Pittsburgh

The Close Read. The New Yorker, Feb. 10, 2020.

Previously: Jansons in Pittsburgh, Oct. 9, 2000.

Noteworthy

Georgia.

Will Robin calls for a return to blogging.

Amsterdam playlist

Here, as promised to several people who were in attendance, is a playlist for my event today with the Calder Quartet at the Amsterdam String Quartet Biennale. It was again a deep pleasure to participate in this singular gathering. The theme was music from the American West Coast, with a few digressions.

Stravinsky, Three Pieces for String Quartet

Henry Cowell, The Tides of Manaunaun

Cowell, Quartet Euphometric

Dane Rudhyar, "Stars" from Pentagrams

Harry Partch, "There Are Rides On The Highway At Green River" from US Highball

Lou Harrison, The Perilous Chapel

John Cage, "Quietly flowing along" from String Quartet in Four Parts

Webern, Five Movements for String Quartet

Discussion of La Monte Young

Terry Riley, excerpt from String Quartet (1960)

James Tenney, Saxony

Michael Pisaro, "Fool" from Tombstones

Michelle Lou, HoneyDripper

Andrew Norman, Sabina

Among the oldest trees

The Bristlecones Speak. The New Yorker, Jan. 20, 2020.

When I spent time in Death Valley in 2016, I became mesmerized by the sight of Great Basin bristlecone pines clinging to the slopes of Telescope Peak, the highest mountain in the area. I soon made my way to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, in the White Mountains, northwest of Death Valley. I made several visits there in recent months, talking to scientists about these extraordinary trees, the world's oldest. The piece above is the result. I obviously owe a huge debt of gratitude to Andy Bunn, Matt Salzer, Brian Smithers, Connie Millar, and Tim Forsell, who served as my guides. (A connection to my day job: Andy's parents, Frank and Betsy Bunn, are longtime supporters of Emmanuel Music.) I enjoyed the hospitality of the volunteer crew of GLORIA Great Basin, an organization worthy of support. I also received excellent counsel from Jared Farmer, who is writing an eagerly anticipated book about the bristlecones and the mystique of ancient trees. Above all, I thank The New Yorker for letting me go on such strange jaunts.

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is closed for the winter and won't reopen until some time in May, when the roads are cleared of snow. If you go, I recommend setting aside a full day: the walk through the Schulman Grove, the main visitor area, takes about three hours, and the drive up to the Patriarch Grove, another site of spectacular old bristlecones, takes about an hour. If you are not of the camping persuasion, there are decent places to stay in Big Pine and Bishop. Matt, Andy, and I recommend the somewhat paralyzing burgers at Aaron Schat's. The Eastern California Museum in Independence is very much worth a visit, as is the former internment camp at Manzanar, the darkest of American national parks. Anyone passing through Tucson should take a look at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, which has exhibits in its lobby, including A. E. Douglass's pioneering tree-ring chronology. Someday I hope to visit the Great Basin National Park in Nevada, where remains of the Prometheus tree can still be seen on Wheeler Peak. I also hope one day to catch a glimpse of Campito, the ghost horse of the White Mountains. If you follow that last link, you'll find many more mountain and desert stories by Tim Forsell.

A reading list: Michael Cohen, A Garden of Bristlecones; Ronald Lanner, The Bristlecone Book; Donald J. McGraw, Edmund Schulman and the "Living Ruins"; Jared Farmer, Trees in Paradise; Darwin Lambert, Great Basin Drama; Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees; George Ernest Webb, Tree Rings and Telescopes: The Scientific Career of A.E. Douglass; Colin Renfew, Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe; David Muench, Timberline Ancients; Rachel Sussman, The Oldest Living Things in the World; Ashee Noren, Ranger Al Noren; scholarly articles by Edmund Schulman, Wes Ferguson, Bryant Bannister, Val LaMarche, Malcolm Hughes, Charlotte Pearson, Matt Salzer, Brian Smithers, Connie Millar, and Barbara Bentz, among others.

Kentridge's Wozzeck

Mind Storms. The New Yorker, Jan. 13, 2020.

Abrahamsen, Czernowin, Neuwirth

Queens of the Night. The New Yorker, Jan. 6, 2020.

Apex 2019

"Aus LICHT" at the Holland Festival.

At the New Yorker website may be found my list of Notable Performances and Recordings of 2019, which also mentions highlights of the decade now ending.

The Rest Is Noise Person of the Year is Lara St. John.

Some notable music books of 2019: Andrew Patner's A Portrait in Four Movements (University of Chicago Press), Arní Heimir Ingólfsson's Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, Mark Stryker's Jazz from Detroit (University of Michigan Press), Nicole Grimes's Brahms's Elegies (Cambridge UP), Susan McClary's The Passions of Peter Sellars (University of Michigan Press), Mark Berry's Arnold Schoenberg (University of Chicago Press), Damon Krukowski's Ways of Hearing (MIT Press), Oliver Soden's Michael Tippett: The Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Outside of music, I read with great enjoyment Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Public Affairs), Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG), Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, Patrick Keefe's Say Nothing, Andrew Marantz's Antisocial, and Amy Waldman's A Door in the Earth, among others.

"Aus LICHT" at the Holland Festival.

At the New Yorker website may be found my list of Notable Performances and Recordings of 2019, which also mentions highlights of the decade now ending.

The Rest Is Noise Person of the Year is Lara St. John.

Some notable music books of 2019: Andrew Patner's A Portrait in Four Movements (University of Chicago Press), Arní Heimir Ingólfsson's Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, Mark Stryker's Jazz from Detroit (University of Michigan Press), Nicole Grimes's Brahms's Elegies (Cambridge UP), Susan McClary's The Passions of Peter Sellars (University of Michigan Press), Mark Berry's Arnold Schoenberg (University of Chicago Press), Damon Krukowski's Ways of Hearing (MIT Press), Oliver Soden's Michael Tippett: The Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Outside of music, I read with great enjoyment Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Public Affairs), Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG), Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, Patrick Keefe's Say Nothing, Andrew Marantz's Antisocial, and Amy Waldman's A Door in the Earth, among others.