Miscellany: Dead or alive pt. 176, etc.

Naxos chief Klaus Heymann, in interviews with Tim Smith and Anne Midgette, sounds bullish on the future of classical recording, although the picture remains chaotic.... Heather Mac Donald, in a long piece for City Journal, also strikes a mainly optimistic note. But if the public "could not be more unequivocal" in rejecting modern music, why have we recently seen sell-out shows of Xenakis, Ligeti, and Varèse? ... In August, Annie Gosfield and Roger Kleier guest-curate a month of concerts at the Stone in NYC, with more than twenty premieres on tap. Gosfield will present, among other things, her new string quartet inspired by radio transmissions of the French resistance in WWII; it is also heard at Caramoor on August 5. Sarah Cahill plays the Stone on August 3.... Cleveland Orchestra musicians pack bar for chamber concert.... David Weininger interviews Lera Auerbach.... Nico Muhly is properly annoyed that an anonymous director said of his forthcoming opera, "I can't fundraise for underage sex." Operas about incest and rape, no problem.... Let's hope Robert Lepage's Ring at the Met is as successful as his Rossignol, which originated at the Canadian Opera last year and just caused a sensation at Aix-en-Provence. A video from Aix is up at Arte TV.