Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

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.

Muhly's Marnie

Escaping Hitchcock. The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2018.

Bookshelf

New publications of interest.

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)

Anthony Tommasini, The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide (Penguin)

Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (FSG)

Paul Kildea, Chopin's Piano: In Search of the Instrument That Transformed Music (Norton)

Stéphane Mallarmé, The Book, trans. Sylvia Gorelick (Exact Change)

Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Les récits cachés de Richard Wagner: Art poétique, rêve et sexualité du "Vaisseau fantôme" à "Parsifal" (Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal)

E. Douglas Bomberger, Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture (Oxford UP, December)

Sabine Feisst, ed., Schoenberg's Correspondence with American Composers (Oxford UP)

Dana Gooley, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-century Music (Oxford UP)

Eugene J. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House: Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge UP)

Robert Philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music (Yale UP) 

A Dylan moment

Nightafternight playlist

Anima Sacra: Sacred arias of Fago, Heinichen, Terradellas, Sarro, Feo, Zelenka, Hasse, Schiassi, Durante; Jakub Józef Orliński, Il pomo d'oro (Warner)

Kate Soper, IPSA DIXIT; Wet Ink (New World)

Du Yun, Dinosaur Scar and other works; ICE (New Focus)

Tyshawn Sorey, Pillars; Sorey, Stephen Haynes, Ben Gerstein, Todd Neufeld, Joe Morris, Carl Testa, Mark Helias, Zach Rowden (firehouse 12)

Salieri, Les Horaces; Judith van Wanroij, Cyrille Dubois, Julien Dran, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Andrew Foster-Williams, Christophe Rousset directing Les Talens Lyriques (Aparte)

Bach, Six Suites; Kim Kashkashian (ECM)

Bach, Sonata and Partita No. 1, Sonata No. 2; Hilary Hahn (Decca)

Dmitri Tymoczko, Fools & Angels and other works; Newspeak, Illinois Modern Ensemble, Collide Trio (New Focus)

Philip Glass, Symphony No. 11; Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchester Linz (Orange Mountain)

Bob Dylan, More Blood, More Tracks (Columbia)

Debussy

Beauty in the Void. The New Yorker, Oct. 29, 2018.

Meyerbeer's Huguenots

The Meyerbeer Case. The New Yorker, Oct. 22, 2018.

Igor Levit's Life

A recommendation on the New Yorker website.

First nights at the Met and the NY Phil

A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website, Oct. 4, 2018.

At the graves of Debussy and Fauré

Previously: At the grave of [X].

Final Welles

How Orson Welles's "The Other Side of the Wind" Was Rescued from Oblivion, on the New Yorker website, Sept. 26, 2018.

Godowsky plays Clair de lune

Nightafternight playlist

— Cassandra Miller, O Zomer!, Philip the Wanderer, For Mira, Duet for Cello and Orchestra; Apartment House, Philip Thomas, Mira Benjamin, Charles Curtis with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony (another timbre)

— Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson, Temporary Kings (ECM)

— ARC: Glass and Handel arias; Anthony Roth Costanzo, Jonathan Cohen conducting Les Violons du Roy (Decca)

— Georg Friedrich Haas, Trois Hommages; Mabel Kwan (New Focus)

— Paula Matthusen and Olivia Valentine, Between Systems and Grounds (Carrier)

— Prism I: Bach Fugue in E-flat, Beethoven Quartet Opus 127, Shostakovich Quartet No. 15; Danish Quartet (ECM)

— Life: Bach-Busoni, Busoni, Liszt, Schumann, Rzewski, Bill Evans; Igor Levit (Sony, out 10/5)

— Reicha, Études dans le genre fugé; Ivan Ilič (Chandos)

— Birgit Nilsson: The Great Live Recordings (Sony)

Sedona Miscellany

And a new season begins. Next weekend in NYC brings a Feldman festival entitled Softly, curated by Marilyn Nonken. Alongside familiar landmarks like Triadic Memories and Patterns in a Chromatic Field there will be early piano works, to be announced, and three short Feldman-based films by Zahra Partovi and Chris Villars. For further showings of the latter, see Villars's site..... Beginning tonight is another edition of the Resonant Bodies Festival, with Paul Pinto, Helga Davis, Lucy Dhegrae, Jen Shyu, Nathalie Joachim, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Maria Sun, Gelsey Bell, and Pamela Z.... Missy Mazzoli's latest opera, Proving Up, opens the Miller Theatre season on Sept. 26. Zachary Woolfe interviews her for the New York Times.... WasteLAnd has announced its new season, with Katherine Young the featured composer.... The LA Phil has announced details of its Fluxus series, adding yet more allure to its extraordinary centennial season. Yuval Sharon will direct Cage's Europeras 1 and 2, Yoko Ono will be given a portrait concert, Patricia Kopatchinskaja will perform Fluxus pieces at the Getty, and La Monte Young is scheduled to preside over his Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer.... The Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the St. Louis Symphony have announced their 2018-19 concert series, featuring Mazzoli, Shaw, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Mary Kouyoumdjian, among others.... In this week's New Yorker, Rebecca Mead has a wonderful profile of George Benjamin, who speaks revealingly about his long development as a composer and the origins of his recent operatic work.