Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Gruppen grouping

Above is a rendering of the stage setup for Philharmonic 360, the upcoming collaboration between the NY Phil and the Park Avenue Armory. The program, to be presented on June 29 and June 30, will consist of Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, the Finale of Act I of Don Giovanni, Stockhausen's Gruppen, and Ives’s The Unanswered Question. Alan Gilbert's co-conductors in the Stockhausen will be Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher; Michael Counts is the director and designer. These will be the second and third performances of Gruppen in New York; the first took place in 1965. Leonard Bernstein had wanted to present the piece in the Philharmonic's 1963-64 season, but the composer withheld approval, as a letter from Carlos Moseley to Alan Rich reveals.

In praise of Piero Coppola

I've been listening to recordings by the Italian conductor and composer — no relation to the filmic Coppolas, evidently — who specialized in French repertory but seemed to render everything with lucidity and vigor. (Pristine's recent release of Schumann, Wagner, and Strauss is a case in point.) Coppola's account of the overture to Reyer's Sigurd, above, makes you think that the opera is worthy of revival — although you'd need a conductor of similar gifts, not to mention another Georges Thill.

Fremstad

"The 'Liebestod' as Fremstad sang it was a paean to annihilation," Samuel Chotzinoff said of her legendary Isolde under Mahler, at the Met in 1908. "By her rapturous otherworldly smile as she gazed at her dead lover, she illuminated the hidden idea of the story — that it was not King Mark who had stood between her and Tristan, but life itself."

Nancarrow 100

It's a little odd that Kyle Gann, the world's leading authority on the furiously original music of Conlon Nancarrow, had to go to London to participate in a commemoration of the Nancarrow centenary. Where are the American celebrations? Justin Davidson was asking this question a little while back; I haven't come across much, although some events are slated for the fall, in conjunction with an online Nancarrow symposium. Above is an excerpt from James Greeson's new documentary, Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano.

Update: Authoritative sources indicate that Other Minds, in San Francisco, is preparing a multi-day Nancarrow tribute for the fall of 2012.

Video of the day

From The Bright Motion, by Mark Dancigers, with Michael Mizrahi at the piano and in front of the camera. An album of the same title is coming soon from New Amsterdam Records. Troy Herion, the director, was previously responsible for the marvelous Baroque Suite film I linked to a while back.

Twentieth-century moment at the Met

This season the Met has seen fit to offer three works composed in the past hundred years: Satyagraha, The Makropulos Case, and Billy Budd. The last two, receiving eight performances in total, are coming in under the wire in these closing weeks of the season. Makropulos opened last night, and it's a gripping show, some rough work on the part of a perhaps exhausted orchestra aside. The Elijah Moshinsky production won't please avant-gardists, but it makes for a sturdy and handsome setting. Karita Mattila is hypnotic as the 337-year-old diva, though she vamps it up too much at times; I cherish memories of the icily potent Anja Silja at BAM in 2001. Go see it if you can — and don't miss Billy Budd, which opens next Friday. In the 2012-13 season, as I noted earlier, the Met will feature precisely two operas written after the death of Puccini.

Nightafternight playlist

New records of interest.

— Das Ewig-Weibliche: Marlis Petersen sings Goethe Lieder; with Jendrik Springer, piano (Harmonia Mundi)
— Nicholas Ludford, Missa Regnum mundi, Richard Pygott, Salve regina; Blue Heron (Blue Heron)
— Wolfgang Rihm, Astralis and other choral works; RIAS Kammerchor (Harmonia Mundi)
— Prokofiev, Sixth Sonata, works of Saint-Saëns and Liszt; Behzod Abduraimov (Decca)
— Britten, War Requiem; Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside, Sabina Cvilak, Gianandrea Noseda conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (LSO Live)
— Terrestre: works of Saariaho, Donatoni, Carter, Boulez, Fujikura; Claire Chase, members of ICE (New Focus)
— Saint-Saëns, Complete Piano Works, Vol. 1; Geoffrey Burleson (Grand Piano)
— Barbara Monk Feldman, The Northern Shore, In the Small Time of a Desert Flower; Sabat/Clarke, Aki Takahashi (Mode)
— Beethoven, Sonata No. 32, Ligeti, Etudes Books I and II; Jeremy Denk (Nonesuch, available May 15)
— John Luther Adams, songbirdsongs, Strange Birds Passing; Calithumpian Consort, NEC Contemporary Music Ensemble (Mode)
— William Bolcom, Gospel Preludes; Gregory Hand, organ (Naxos)
— Nicholas Deyoe, with throbbing eyes; Formalist Quartet, red fish blue fish (populist)

Dept. of odd predictions

Gramophone, June 1934: "I don't suppose we shall hear the Strauss-Wilde Salome again, but it is mighty clever, in its erotic way..." (Via Andrew Rose's Pristine Audio newsletter.)

Into the Streets May 1st miscellany

Occupy Guitarmy is seeking a thousand musicians for a May Day march from Bryant Park to Union Square. The setlist includes "¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!"... Tom Service has launched a Contemporary Classical guide at the Guardian website. "Contemporary" is broadly defined as "born in the past hundred years," plus Elliott Carter.... On the first weekend in May, Line Upon Line Percussion in Austin, Texas, will present a Xenakis festival, with performances of Pléïades and Persephassa and a JACK Quartet show. Watch a preview clip.... A cool Ensemble ACJW program at (Le) Poisson Rouge this Sunday: selections from The Art of Fugue intermingled with Michael Gordon's The Low Quartet, Feldman's Durations I, Reich's New York Counterpoint, David Lang's Wed, and Andriessen's Workers Union.... A few other notable NYC-area events in the coming week: a David Daniels / Mark Morris collaboration at Princeton on May 3; a new piece by Tristan Perich with Yarn/Wire at ISSUE Project Room tomorrow night; the big Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival at BAM May 2-4; a Kaija Saariaho program with ICE at Roulette on May 2; Joseph Lin and the Camerata Notturna in a Bachian concert on May 5.... Last Sunday, Norman Scribner, the founding leader of the Choral Arts Society in Washington DC, bid farewell with the German Requiem. The Post ran a profile of the conductor and, of course, an Anne Midgette review. Scribner's son David is a gifted DC-area chef.... The spring 2012 issue of the excellent experimental-music magazine Signal to Noise has an absorbing piece, by William Gibson, on Nonesuch new-music LPs of the 60s and 70s: it includes the essential detail that Richard Taruskin played viola da gamba on the recording of Eric Salzman's The Nude Paper Sermon.... Was Kevin Puts's Silent Night the best American composition of 2011, as a distinguished Pulitzer Prize jury concluded? Judge for yourself by listening at NPR or at the Minnesota Opera website.... I know nothing about the product, but I enjoyed this ad for Klispch headphones, with the St. Louis Symphony's Danny Lee playing the Kodály solo cello sonata.

Where would you put Mr. James Joyce?

Lists are dumb, but they have a certain persuasive power. I remember poring over a list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time that Roger Ebert included in one of his video guides of the nineteen-eighties: it led me to Aguirre, Wrath of God, Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven, and the film that will forever head my personal list — The Third Man. Roger, a writerly hero of mine, dislikes making such lists, but acquiesces in the drill when the proprietors of the Sight and Sound poll come calling. This time, with his customary devotion to the visionary impulse (“Our civilization is starving for great images" is his favorite Werner Herzog saying), Roger has admitted The Tree of Life to his pantheon. No one is asking me, but I'd be tempted to pick, in addition to the above, Andrei Rublev, Vertigo, Chinatown, Touch of Evil, Playtime, The Godfather Part II, La Dolce Vita, and The Passion of Joan of Arc. That's only nine; I want to think about The Tree of Life a little longer.