Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

A (long) Klaus Lang moment

Ensemble Nikel in Battery Park, at TIME:SPANS 2019.

Robert Simpson at 100

The superb British symphonist, an independent-minded disciple of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Nielsen, was born a century ago today. Notwithstanding the early Jascha Horenstein / London Symphony recording featured above, the composer's recorded legacy resides almost exclusively with the Hyperion label, which offers cycles of his symphonies (eleven) and string quartets (fifteen), alongside various other orchestral and chamber works. The usual thinking would describe Simpson as a "conservative," which is a dubious designation in musical terms — there is nothing conventional about his intricately plotted, densely textured work — and entirely inappropriate in a political sense. Simpson was a socialist, a conscientious objector, an anti-nuclear activist, and a vociferous anti-Thatcherite; out of disgust with his country's rightward drift he moved to Ireland in 1986, and died there in 1997. Needless to say, little is being done to mark the anniversary, but tonight one can go to the Bromsgrove Concerts website to see the Tippett Quartet perform Simpson's Quartet No. 1. (I discovered this event thanks to the Robert Simpson Society.) Also, Lyrita has released the première performances of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, with the London Symphony under Andrew Davis and the London Philharmonic under Charles Groves. And BBC Radio 3 will devote a week of broadcasts to the composer at the end of May. I wrote a bit about Simpson in a 2015 piece; my first published review, back in 1988, was of Simpson's Sixth and Seventh.

The Switched on Pop podcast

Chord Talk. The New Yorker, March 8, 2021.

Will Robin's Industry

I've known Will Robin since his sophomore year in college, when I signed a copy of The Rest Is Noise for him in Chicago. That summer he asked if he could do any work for me as an assistant; he ended up helping me hugely with Listen to This, my second book, and with Wagnerism in its early stages. In the ensuing decade, as I continued to grind away at the same book, Will went to graduate school, became an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, married, fathered an adorable baby boy, and completed his own first book. He's become a valued colleague and a close friend; I now feel I learn more from him than he does from me. All this by way of saying that I feel personal joy at the arrival of Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace, which Oxford University Press publishes today. At its heart, Industry is the story of the emergence and evolution of the Bang on Can ensemble, but it goes much wider, examining struggles within new music to find a footing as Reaganism dismantled arts funding. There were gains and losses in the course of that "marketplace turn," as Will calls it, and despite his close contact with the Bang on a Can leaders he doesn't shy away from delineating compromises with the gig economy and other aspects of neoliberal culture. What I find most admirable in the book is the balance it strikes between historical narration and critical analysis: such balance is hard to achieve. Will has a book launch "at" the 92nd Street Y tonight: he'll converse with Allan Kozinn, who covered the rise of Bang for the New York Times. On Wednesday, he chats with Anne Midgette. Heartiest congratulations!

Wild Up's Darkness Sounding festival

Before dawn in Griffith Park.

Wind Songs. The New Yorker, February 22, 2021.

Du Bois's Ode to Joy

From W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America, 1935.

For Peter G. Davis

Peter G. Davis, the longtime classical critic of New York magazine, one of the best and wisest practitioners of this odd profession, has died at the age of eighty-four. Peter was most widely known as an opera authority — his 1997 book The American Opera Singer is an essential work — but he covered every form of music-making with expertise and panache. He studied composition seriously in his youth, and that training showed whenever he approached new music. At Columbia he wrote a thesis on Strauss's Daphne and Die Liebe der Danae. He also studied in Germany and Austria, and had many encounters with the extraordinary musicians of the mid-century. If you asked him about favorite performances of, say, Salome, he'd describe outings by Welitsch, Borkh, and Varnay as if he'd heard them the day before. (A few years ago, for Opera News, he wrote up a mouth-watering memoir of his operagoing adventures in the summer of 1956.) Peter had a marvelous wry sense of humor that gave a playful edge to his often very tart comments about the foibles of musical life. As a colleague, he was unassuming, sweet, and generous. When I was a neophyte critic, I received schooling through innumerable intermission chats, and felt a mixture of pride and insecurity when my installation at The New Yorker led me to be seated behind Peter at many events. I recall fondly certain moments at the Met when, about twenty minutes into a performance that was veering toward disaster, he'd incline his head ever so slightly in my direction, with an unmistakable signal of "Oh God, here we go." I feel much the same as when Andrew Porter died: an immense storehouse of experience and perception is suddenly gone. My heartfelt condolences to Scott Parris.

Update: Peter's New York Times obituary.

Saint Alban Berg Valentine's Day Massacre

"Life and dream of life — suddenly it's all over."

                — Altenberg Lieder

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?, Eternity, by Alban Berg Valentine, My Bloody Alban Berg Valentine.

A Marcel Dupré moment

Lew Williams 1 · Marcel Dupré, Final Improvisation 5 - 30 - 71

The great organist-composer's final improvisation, on May 30, 1971, at St. Sulpice, in Paris. He died later that day, at his home in Meudon. He was eighty-five. 

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent recordings of interest.

— Salieri, Armida; Lenneke Ruiten, Florie Valiquette, Teresa Iervolino, Ashley Riches, Christophe Rousset conducting Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de chambre de Namur (Aparte)

— Josquin, The Golden Renaissance: Missa Pange lingua and other works; Stile Antico (Decca)

— Rebecca Saunders, SOLO: Shadow, Dust, Solitude, Flesh, Hauch, to an utterance; Klangforum Wien (Kairos)

— George Lewis, The Recombinant Trilogy; Claire Chase, Levy Lorenzo, Seth Parker Woods, Dana Jessen, Eli Stine (New Focus)

— Beethoven, Symphony No. 9; Manfred Honeck conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony, with Christina Landshamer, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Werner Güra, Shenyang, and the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh (Reference)

— Catherine Lamb, Muto Infinitas; Rebecca Lane, Jon Heilbron (another timbre)

— Gesualdo, Tenebrae Responsoria; Graindelavoix (Glossa)

— Stanchinsky, Sonata in E-flat minor and other works; Peter Jablonski (Ondine)

— And the sun darkened: Compère's Officium de Cruce and other Passiontide works; New York Polyphony (BIS)

— Coleridge-Taylor, Piano Quintet, Fantasiestücke, Clarinet Quintet; Catalyst Quartet, with Stewart Goodyear and Anthony McGill (Azica)