Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

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.

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.