Elodie Lauten is performing and presenting her piano and chamber music on Tuesday, October 3 – 8 PM at Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street in Manhattan. Elodie will perform selections from her new Piano Soundtracks CD, including Variations on the Orange Cycle, a work that was included in Chamber Music America’s list of 100 best works of the 20th century. Pianist Francois Nezwazky, violinist Tom Frenkel and cellist Kurt Behnke will give the World Premiere of her new trio, The Elusive Virgin Bachelor. The concert is free and open to the public, however, a donation of $15 is suggested. For reservations
Read moreFrom H.H. Stuckenschmidt, “Arnold Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work,” translated by Humphrey Searle (New York: Schirmer Books, 1977): ” … in 1934 [Schoenberg] answered a query from Dr. Walter E. Koons of the National Broadcasting Corporation [sic] in New York, who wanted a definition for a book which he was planning, of what music meant to Schoenberg. His reply was: ‘Music is a simultaneous and a successiveness of tones and tonal-combinations, which are so organized that its impression on the ear is agreeable, and that its impression on the intelligence is comprehensible, and that these impressions have the power
Read moreIn my continuing efforts to find volunteer reviewers who will actually write reviews, this is my latest tack. All of the wonderful CDs you see below are currently in my possession and available to be shipped to your mailbox. The rules are this: You can request up to 3; first e-mail request wins (list a couple of alternatives in case somebody else has beaten you to your first choice). You have one week per CD to write and post a review on the CD page and you must agree to accept one CD of my choice for every one of your choice.
Read moreIan Moss is hungry. (Scroll down the page and look to the right. You’ll see.) Ian Moss is hungry . . . for a Sequenza21 concert!!!! This is good news for you. You know why? A Sequenza21 concert needn’t cost that much money. In fact, as little as $25 would be very much appreciated. But, hey: you pay more, you get more. By the end of this week, the concert committee will have decided on an incentives package for those of you who find it in your heart to donate $100 or more. Whichever shape the package takes, one thing
Read moreShould you find yourself in the vicinity of Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory tonight at 8:30, the Callithumpian Consort is playing Alvin Lucier’s Small Waves for string quartet, piano, trombone, and feedback, an hour long investigation/hallucination of microtones, sonic beatings, and water pouring. (Sounds like your tax dollars at work on a normal day at a CIA detention camp.) Survivors of the water pouring and sonic beatings will then get to hear John Luther Adams’ Strange Birds Passing for 8 flutes and …And Bells Remembered for 5 percussion Alvin Lucier will be present to explain himself.
Read moreThe Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra announced the schedule yesterday for its usual four concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and there’s great news for contemporary music lovers, especially those who have a jones for the didgeridoo. The season opens on February 3 with two works by the Australian composer Peter Schulthorpe–Earth Cry and Mangrove–plus Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Music director Michael Christie, now in his second season, was formerly director of the Queensland Orchestra, which explains the ‘Roo connection. The second concert, on March 10, pits Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round and a new orchestration of Dreams & Prayers of Issac the Blind against Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. My
Read moreDeutsche Oper said it will scrap planned showings of Mozart’s Idomeneo because of warnings by Berlin security officials that a scene in the current production depicting the head of the Prophet Mohammed (along with the heads of Jesus and the Buddha) present an “incalculable security risk.” Actually, they said references to “world religions” but we know which one is the problem. This is the kind of infuriating capitulation that can push otherwise rational people at least temporarily into the nuke ’em back to the Stone Age camp. But, we need to remember that Death of Klinghoffer and the American premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Silver Tassie suffered similar fates
Read moreMalcolm Arnold died over the weekend. He was a deeply troubled man who had a remarkably productive life against the odds. He was, in my view, the most underrated symphonist of the post-war 20th century. New York Times obituary. A far more colorful obituary from Australia. Guardian. BBC Tributes. An excellent interview/profile from last year by Pliable.
Read moreMark Swed, who is (perhaps wisely) ignoring our attempts to stir up trouble over his incoherent Jefferson Friedman review last week, is wild about the Michael Gordon/Richard Foreman opera What to Wear which is now playing a limited run at REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in beautiful downtown L.A.. A couple of snippets: “What to Wear” — with dazzling, hard-hitting music by Michael Gordon and words, staging, design and equally hard-hitting and dazzling zaniness by Richard Foreman — is being called a rock opera. It’s not. If it were, rock opera could, after the premiere of this arresting new
Read moreAlex Ross has a moving tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in this week’s New Yorker. “She was the most remarkable singer I ever heard,” he writes, and it’s hard to argue with that. Speaking of Alex, he’ll be chatting with Mason Bates, Corey Dargel, Nico Muhly, and Joanna Newsom at BargeMusic at 10 pm on October 7 as part of the New Yorker Festival. Alas, the event seems to be sold-out. Alan Rich in L.A. Weekly on why he didn’t hang around for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Hollywood Bowl: The night had turned cold; the gin had run low;
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