Dutilleux 100
The retiring French master would have been one hundred today. Esa-Pekka Salonen has some commemorative thoughts in a Philharmonie de Paris video. The Dutilleux 2016 website has a listing of events.
View ArticleJaap van Zweden to the NY Phil
A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website. A further thought: when the remarkable Carlos Moseley was in charge, in the sixties and seventies, the Philharmonic pursued a consistent vision. Bernstein...
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Venice at Carnegie
Carnegie Hall has announced a handsomely varied 2016-17 season. There are various noteworthy events — a new Steve Reich piece, Pulse; a Barenboim marathon of Bruckner symphonies and Mozart concertos;...
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A year without Andrew
Andrew Patner died a year ago today. It was the saddest day of my life. Thousands of friends around the world still miss his glorious mind and generous spirit.
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Miscellany
The viol consort Sonnambula is set to explore the music of the seventeenth-century Flemish composer Leonora Duarte, who came from a distinguished family of converted Portuguese Jews. Sonnambula is...
View ArticleThe ultimate Gražinytė-Tyla pronunciation guide
The City of Birmingham Symphony, which in recent decades has shown exceptional acuity in hiring gifted young conductors (Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, Andris Nelsons), today announced as its next music...
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Bookshelf
New and recent publications of interest. Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty (FSG) A. O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism (Penguin) Matthew...
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Nightafternight playlist
— Hans Abrahamsen, let me tell you; Barbara Hannigan, with Andris Nelsons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony (Winter & Winter) — Górecki, Symphony No. 4; Andrey Boreyko conducting the London...
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The delectable byways of research
My reading into the curious life of Olga Plümacher-Hünerwadel, born in Lenzburg and buried in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, probably won't make it into the final manuscript of Wagnerism, but I enjoy...
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Alban Berg Valentine (10th anniversary edition)
ALWA: You have robbed me of reason.LULU: Isn't this the couch on which your father bled to death? — Lulu, Act II
View ArticleFor Steven Stucky
The community of American music is in mourning for Steven Stucky, a composer of consummate skill and a colleague of rare generosity. He died yesterday in Ithaca, NY, at the age of sixty-six; Michael...
View ArticleShame-inducing headline of the year
"Met to Stage Its First Opera by a Woman Since 1903."
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Canyons in the canyon
When I was working on a column about the St. Louis Symphony's magnificent performance of Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles, I saw mention of a story about Roger Kaza, the orchestra's principal horn....
View ArticleKurtág at 90
In France, the literary world once elected the "prince des poètes" — the unofficial master of the game. The title "prince des compositeurs," shorn of gender, might go to György Kurtág, who celebrates...
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Miscellany
Photo: Parícutin, 1943, by C.S. Ross, USGS There will be a major Kaija Saariaho première at the Netherlands Opera on March 15, with Peter Sellars directing: Only the sound remains, a pair of pieces...
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Brochure of the month
I've often complained about a classical-music marketing syndrome that might be called John Adams Conducts Respighi: the tendency to advertise concerts in a way that actively conceals new or unfamiliar...
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