Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Santa Fe Opera

Alfresco. The New Yorker, Aug. 21, 2023.

I've seen various premières and stagings at Santa Fe Opera over the years: Peter Lieberson's Ashoka's Dream, in 1997; Golijov's Ainadamar, in 2005, in the course of researching my long piece about Adams's Doctor Atomic; Rossini's La Donna del Lago, in 2013, in the course of profiling Joyce DiDonato; and John Corigliano's The Lord of Cries, in 2021. But I'd never really written about the company per se; hence this week's column. The main event is Yuval Sharon's production of Monteverdi's Orfeo, in a gorgeous new orchestration by Nico Muhly.

Ligeti at the Bowl

Ligeti's Lux Aeterna wafts through the Cahuenga Pass at a showing of Kubrick's 2001 with live orchestra and chorus (the LA Phil and the sublime LA Master Chorale, under Caleb Young's direction).

Previously: Kubrick and Ligeti.

A Stuart MacRae moment

Featured on the new Delphian disc Earth, thy cold is keen.

Roadside memorial, Santa Fe

Classical streaming revisited

A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website.

Ligeti meets Barbie

An unexpected and yet somehow inevitable conjunction.

Photo credit: Amanda Ameer.

Notes on Oppenheimer and Doctor Atomic

A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website.

Marx meets Mahler

Groucho Marx and Anna Mahler, that is.

Biber in Sierra Madre

This Sunday, Los Angeles-area listeners will have a rare chance to hear Heinrich Biber's complete Rosary Sonatas. The composer-violinist Andrew McIntosh will perform the cycle at the Villa del Sol d'Oro, in Sierra Madre, with accompaniment from Maxine Eilander, on Baroque harp, and Ian Pritchard, on organ and harpsichord. Andrew writes: "Radically virtuosic and experimental, each sonata features a different tuning on the open strings of the violin, creating unique resonances and timbres that are matched individually to the characters portrayed in each sonata. The tunings with the most tension and the strangest resonances are used in pieces that depict pain and suffering, while those depicting reverence or joy have more open and bell-like tunings." Proceeds from the performance will go toward the purchase of a new Baroque violin for Andrew. He will be playing four different instruments made by the Silverlake-based luthier Michael Fischer; these are modeled on the violins of Jacob Stainer, which Biber likely used.

Erstaunlich

At last a gentler day is dawning

I remain stuck on the new Cyrille Dubois album, which will certainly be one of my favorites of the year. Here, a meltingly lovely aria from Halévy's Les mousquetaires de la reine.

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Liszt, Transcendental Etudes; Yunchan Lim (Steinway)

So Romantique!: arias by Auber, Godard, Dubois, Thomas, Boieldieu, Halévy, Clapisson, Donizetti, Gounod, Luce-Varlet, Bizet, Silver, Delibes, Saint-Saëns; Cyrille Dubois, tenor, with Pierre Dumoussaud conducting the Orchestre National de Lille (Alpha)

Emily Howard, Antisphere, sphere, Compass, Torus; Vimbayi Kaziboni conducting the BBC Phillharmonic, Mark Wigglesworth conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Julian Warburton, percussion, with Gabrielle Teychenné conducting the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Symphony (NMC)

Ysaÿe, Six Sonatas; Hilary Hahn (DG)

Saariaho, Nuits, adieux, Horloge, tais-toi!, Echo!, Tag des Jahrs, Überzeugung, Reconnaissance, Nuits, adieux; Nils Schweckendiek conducting the Helsinki Chamber Choir (BIS)

Takemitsu, Spectral Canticle, To the edge of dream, Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma, Twill by twilight; Jacob Kellermann, Viviane Hagner, Juliana Koch, Christian Karlsen conducting the BBC Philharmonic (BIS)

Abrahamsen, Ten Sinfonias, Left, alone, Two Pieces in Slow Time; Tamara Stefanovich, with Peter Rundel and Mariano Chiacchiarini conducting the WDR Sinfonieorchester (Winter & Winter)

Am Grabe Tab Hunters

I had not realized his mother was German.

Frank's Frida y Diego, the Busoni Concerto

Lives of the Artists. The New Yorker, July 10 and 17, 2023.

Haydn sings

Cyrille Dubois's bewitching new album So Romantique! includes an aria from Charles Luce-Varlet's L'élève de Presbourg, an opera about, yes, the young Haydn: "Come, O pure-breathed melody, / Come, azure-winged enchantress, / My heart yields to your sweet command. / Come, O melody, descend to me."

Riley at 88

Here's video of a remarkable birthday tribute to Terry Riley recently organized by Evan Ziporyn: a live collaboration among eighty-eight people in sixty locations across twenty-three countries and six continents. The collective composition was called Poppy@88, after Riley’s 1967 piece Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band. The roster includes Kala Ramnath, Joan Jeanrenaud, Katrina Krimsky, John Oswald, Maya Beiser, Paul Dresher, Gloria Cheng, Sarah Cahill, Julian Coryell, Robert Rich, Paulo Santos, Tracy Silverman, Victor Gama, and Gyan Riley. The honoree makes an appearance at the end.

Ernst Jünger

Aesthete of Steel. The New Yorker, July 3, 2023.

A Liszt moment

Andrew McIntosh's Fixations

In praise of John Williams

I greatly enjoyed speaking with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Radio Hour, about the monumental film-scoring achievements of John Williams. I interviewed the composer in 2020, and visited him again a few months back. As I recount in my chat with David, Williams showed me the original score of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, possibly his finest Hollywood achievement and certainly one of the most potent film scores ever written.