Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

New piano concertos by Adès and Adams

The Concerto Challenge. The New Yorker, March 25, 2019.

Versuch über Wagner

This is my first and final meme.

Now playing: Riot Ensemble

A very strongly recommended collection of Czernowin, Thorvaldsdottir, Ivičević, Lim, and Saunders, on Huddersfield Contemporary Records.

An ordinary evening in Los Angeles

Ryoji Ikeda's 100 Cymbals and Alison Knowles's Proposition #2: Make a Salad were performed last night at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The salad was quite delicious.

Eternity, by Alban Berg Valentine

DR. SCHÖN: It must be your husband's blood.
LULU: No traces remain.

                            — Lulu, Act II

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?

Sonnambula, Orliński

Deep Cuts. The New Yorker, Feb. 18 and 15, 2019.

Song of the year

Gabriel Kahane's Book of Travelers

A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website.

For Sanford Sylvan

"How much of what we did was good?" Just about everything. Aside from the extraordinary performances of John Adams's music, which matched Sylvan's voice in uncanny fashion, I cherish the memory of an intensely searching Winterreise at Corpus Christ Church in NYC, in 2001. Condolences to all those who were close to him; he is reputed to have been an exceptionally kind and generous man.

More: Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times, Boston Musical Intelligencer, Lisa Hirsch, Matthew Guerrieri, Juilliard Journal.

Prototype Festival 2019

De Profundis. The New Yorker, Jan. 28, 2019.

Kurtag's Fin de Partie

Trash and Vaudeville. The New Yorker, Dec. 24 and 31, 2018.

An Elliott Sharp moment

From Dispersion, a new Mode CD.

TV dialogue of the year

Marion Stein (Monica Dolan) in A Very English Scandal: "Jeremy, I'm not a fool. I practically grew up with Benjamin Britten. I've seen something of the world. I fled from Hitler, for God's sake. My own son married a hippie in a yurt. And I've toured with orchestras—I couldn't begin to tell you the things I've seen. So there's no need to protect me."

Yo-Yo Ma at National Cathedral

Bow Ideal. The New Yorker, Dec. 17, 2018.

Apex 2018

Chris Kallmyer performing George Brecht.

At the New Yorker website may be found my list of Notable Performances and Recordings of 2018.

The Rest Is Noise Person of the Year is Chad Smith, the Chief Operating Officer of the L.A. Philharmonic.

Some notable music books of 2018: Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (FSG); Stephen Walsh, Debussy: A Painter in Sound (Knopf); Heidi Waleson, Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt); Vivien Schweitzer, A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera (Basic Books); Anthony Tommasini, The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide (Penguin); Gundula Kreuzer, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera (UC Press); Jamie Bernstein, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein (Harper Collins); Frank Lehman, Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford UP); Naomi André, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press); Honey Meconi, Hildegard of Bingen (University of Illinois Press). Belatedly, I caught up with two important Wagner books: Ulrich Drüner's Richard Wagner: Die Inszenierung eines Lebens (Blessing, 2016) and Jean-Jacques Nattiez's Wagner antisémite (Bourgois, 2015). Both are deserving of translation.

Outside of music, I read with great enjoyment Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet (New Directions), Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All (Knopf), Brian Phillips's Impossible Owls (FSG), Leland de la Durantaye's Hannah Versus the Tree (McSweeney's), Susan Orlean's The Library Book (Atlantic), Jill Lepore's These Truths (Norton), and Caroline Weber’s Proust's Duchess (Knopf), among others. My favorite films of the year were Roma, The Death of Stalin, and, of course, The Other Side of the Wind.

EPS -> SF

On the New Yorker website, an interview with Esa-Pekka Salonen, on the occasion of his appointment as the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

At the grave of Ligeti

At the grave of Salieri

The LA Phil at 100

Chris Kallmyer performs George Brecht's "Drip Music."

Orchestra of the Future. The New Yorker, Nov. 26, 2018.

Dylan's Blood on the Tracks

A Cultural Comment for the New Yorker website, Nov. 13, 2018.