The New York Philharmonic is thinking of visiting North Korea next year and that has caused a great deal of tut-tutting from the nuke ’em, don’t serenade ’em crowd. The conservative position was captured rather nicely by Terry Teachout in a piece called Serenading a Tyrant in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday: “Why … is the New York Philharmonic giving serious consideration to playing in Pyongyang, the capital of what may be the world’s most viciously repressive dictatorship?” he wrote. “Attendance at the Philharmonic’s concerts will be carefully controlled. And of course any concert in Pyongyang can’t possibly reach the North Korean people, because only
Read moreHey, I think you and your readers at sequenza21 will like this piece we just published, by Richard Taruskin: It’s a provocative argument that the dire situation in which classical music finds itself is being made even more dire by the sentimentality and unreality of some of the music’s most ardent defenders. Here’s a link. Best, Barron YoungSmith The New Republic
Read moreSeveral good reasons to be glad you weren’t a child prodigy. Oops, forgot. Some of you probably were. Morton Subotnick. Discuss.
Read more[youtube]6J14flyMOQo[/youtube] Human behavior’s funny. The more we try to change the more we don’t seem able to. Are we cursed to repeat the same mistakes in our private lives — with lovers, friends — as well as in our public ones? Are we genetically condemned to disjunction, discord, and war, like Sisyphus trying to keep that enormous rock from crushing him each day? Philip Glass’ SF Opera commission, APPOMATTOX, which world premiered 5 October, and which I caught 16 October, seems to accept these things as givens. Its ostensible subject is Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant at Appomattox
Read moreNorman Lebrecht is an entertaining writer who has never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Come to think of it, he may have been the world’s first blogger–he adopted the sloppy research habit before blogs were even invented. For years, he’s been planting verbal IEDs along the classical music highway, wiping out entire convoys of evildoers and occasionally fragging some innocent bystanders in the process. So, it is with some smugness that one is able to report this morning, or the New York Times is able to report, that Stormin’ Norman has had a bit of a comeuppance. The Brtisih publisher of his
Read moreDid you ever wonder why doctors think it’s a good idea for a bunch of sick people to wait together for their exams in a small, overheated, unventilated room? Or why drugstores invariably put the cough medications in the aisle where people are waiting to pick up their prescriptions? No? Well, I do. Think of these things, I mean. But, I digress and I’m late checking in today. Here’s a new rule for those of you with frontpage posting ability. If you don’t see something from me by noon Eastern, feel free to jump in there and mix and stir. If you don’t have frontpage posting rights, let me
Read moreThe Metropolis Ensemble is getting set to record the complete collection of chamber orchestra concerti of Avner Dorman with producer David Frost but you don’t have to wait to hear it; the best little orchestra in New York will be performing the same repertoire live and in color next Thursday night, October 11, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts (172 Norfolk St, between Houston and Delancey), commencing at 8 pm. On tap are the American premieres of Dorman’s Concerto in A and Concerto Grosso, the New York premiere of Piccolo Concerto, and an encore performance of Mandolin Concerto. Soloists Mindy Kaufman of the New York
Read morePhilip Glass is not the only composer who turned 70 this year. Among other newly-minted septuagenarians is David Del Tredici, a “maverick” composer in the great American tradition, and while his attainment of elder statesman status has attracted much less fuss than Glass and Steve Reich, there have been some small, quiet celebrations, one of which was reviewed in the NYT this morning by Alan Kozinn. I have not heard a lot of Del Tredici’s music but what I have heard I have liked. I would be happier if it was presented with less explanation, not simply because his “subjects” sometimes make me a little squeamish (not homophobic,
Read moreTurning 70 is a big deal for most people, and especially so for Philip Glass, whose birthday is being celebrated worldwide big time. He’s just been feted in New York by Music At The Anthology (MATA), and Groningen, Holland, is putting on a Glass Festival. The composer and The Philip Glass Ensemble performed his massive compendium of minimalist moves, Music in 12 Parts (1971-74), this summer in the Hague and the San Francisco Bay Area pays its homage with the world premiere of his SF Opera commission, Appomattox, this coming Friday, October 5. Glass is such a big name, and pervasive influence–I caught a chord progression in a dance
Read moreAdam Kirsch, writing in today’s New York Sun: The critic of the serious arts — poetry, painting, music — is addressing readers who are not just indifferent to new work, but feel justified in their indifference. The critic’s first job, then, even before he evaluates individual works, is to make the reader feel uneasy about his ignorance—to convince him that the art in question is vital and serious, deserving of complex attention. A reader who has always heard that classical music is dead must first be convinced that it is alive. No critic at work today does this better
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