Ashley Walters performing Bača's Nähte at a WasteLAnd event, Nov. 16, 2018. Walters will play the same piece live at Outhaus in LA on Aug. 1, as part of a three-day Underwolf Records festival (July 31 – Aug. 2). Many more videos from WasteLAnd's recent concerts are now online, including works of Liza Lim, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett, Katherine Young, Nicholas Deyoe, and Andrew McIntosh. I especially recommend Klaus Lang's missa beati pauperes spiritu, which I was lucky to witness live; I am somewhere behind Michael Pisaro.
Links
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.
Gay life
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, I've assembled some of my writing on gay topics, going back to the first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 1993. The photo is from my marriage to Jonathan at Toronto City Hall, 2005.
Love on the March. Nov. 4, 2012.
Gay Berlin, Jan. 26, 2015.
Oscar Wilde, Aug. 9, 2011.
Willa Cather, Oct. 2, 2017.
Corigliano's First Symphony, May 30, 2019.
Gay opera, July 27, 2017.
Julius Eastman, Jan. 15, 2017.
Women, gays, and classical music. Oct. 3, 2013.
Beyond the gay-marriage victory, March 25, 2013.
Gay-rights victories, Nov. 7, 2012.
Thomas Mann, March 11, 1996.
In memoriam River Phoenix, Washington Post, Nov. 7, 1993.
On Wayne Koestenbaum's The Queen's Throat, April 12, 1993.
Nightafternight playlist
George Benjamin, Lessons in Love and Violence; Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Gyula Orendt, Peter Hoare, Samuel Boden, Benjamin conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (Nimbus)
Sibelius, Kullervo; Helena Juntunen, Benjamin Appl, Thomas Dausgaard conducting the Lund Male Chorus and BBC Scottish Symphony (Hyperion)
Pierluigi Billone, FACE; PHACE (Kairos)
Antón García Abril, Six Partitas; Hilary Hahn (Decca)
Kaija Saariaho, True Fire, Trans, Ciel d'hiver; Gerald Finley, Xavier de Maistre, Hannu Lintu conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Ondine)
Carl Hockh, Violin Sonatas; Mikołaj Zgółka, Jarosław Thiel, Aleksandra Rupocińska (NFM)
Antony Panteras, Collected Works Vol. II (2005–2018); various performers (Immediata)
