taruskin to speak tonight May 15, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, add a comment
Image courtesy Stanford University.
This via David Stabler.
Leading music scholar and sometime iconoclast Richard Taruskin will speak tonight at 6:30 at the Benson Hotel.
He’s written, edited, or co-written some of the seminal books on Western music, including The Oxford History of Western Music, Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance, and Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions. Should you be so inclined, you can buy the here.
Seattle loses long-time music critic - is Portland next? May 12, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, portland, seattle, add a commentMelinda Bargreen, classical music critic in Seattle for the past 30 years, has accepted a buy-out from the Seattle Times as part of a restructuring of the paper’s staff. You can read her last column here.
Now read this blog entry by our lone full-time classical music critic here in Portland, David Stabler of the Oregonian. I’d be tempted to say that it sounds like we might lose our classical music critic sooner rather than later, too. The question to be asked might be, is the paper cutting staff or has Stabler just burned out on covering a growing music scene? Every critic has his/her own supporters and detractors, and that’s certainly the case with Stabler, but he has, until lately, done an excellent job of writing articles that keep the arts front and center in the consciousness of the city, and which have provoked a lot of lively discussion.
I hope that it’s just a moment of end-of-season ennui on his part, because Portland’s arts organizations are struggling enough as it is without having to worry about losing coverage in the state’s largest daily newspaper.
more brilliance from A-ross May 2, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, chamber music, composition, add a comment
Alex Ross, music writer for the New Yorker, who was Pulitzer shortlisted for his music history page-turner The Rest Is Noise, and blogger at the site of the same name, just wrote a review of the series presented at Carnegie Hall by the Brentano Quartet, which concerned the late works of a variety of composers.
How many classical music critics (or any other journalists for that matter) do you know who can regularly turn out such prose as this in the course of their beat?
Whatever it is that allows artists to maintain their powers of invention as they grow older, composers possess it more richly than most. Musical figures from Monteverdi to Messiaen have had careers that can be plotted as steadily rising curves. In old age, certain composers reach a state of terminal grace, in which even throwaway ideas give off a glow of inevitability, like wisps of cloud illumined at dusk
That’s seriously good stuff. Read the rest here.
brilliant criticism April 30, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, add a commentThroughout history, the great works of literature (whether well-received or not) have sparked equally great works of literary criticism. Alex Ross’ brilliant history of music in the twentieth century has sparked criticism of the highest order - most lately by the great British tenor Ian Bostridge, writing in the Times Literary Supplement (think the English equivalent of The New York Times Review of Books).
Thanks to E. for the tip.
Here’s a taste:
Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise tells the story of what happened to Western classical music in the twentieth century. We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire - largely composed for the rich and powerful - to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before have so many people listened to, or liked, so-called classical music. Yet this extraordinary triumph has culminated in a malaise, a feeling, widespread in the musical profession and elsewhere, that classical music is in crisis and that things have never been so bad. Classical music feels abandoned, left behind as history has moved on, sulking in its tent as the real cultural action happens somewhere else.
tired and sore April 27, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, the orchestra world, add a commentThat’s how I feel this morning. If you’ve played Mahler’s Ninth twice the previous day, plus ridden the 9 miles to work and 9 miles back home before and after the rehearsal - it leads to a healthy sense of fatigue!
The performance last night was memorable - this orchestra has truly come of age. We’re finally realizing our untapped potential, and playing concerts of some of the most demanding music at a seriously high level. It feels good.
Now, let’s do it two more times, o.k.?
If you haven’t yet had a chance to read my thumbnail sketches of the four movements that comprise the Ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler, here’s a helpful set of links so you can do so. I also hope that you make the trip down to Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall tonight or tomorrow night - it’s a concert that you’ll be glad you attended.
mahler 9 - IV. Adagio. April 24, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, audio, music, the orchestra world, 1 comment so farWe’re at the final movement of this great symphony, and what a movement it is! If you mention Mahler 9 to almost anyone, they’ll invariably start to talk about the first time they ever heard the slow movement, and how it affected them at a critical time in their life.
In the orchestral parts, the string parts span only two pages, yet the movement can last upward of 25 minutes. It’s a very slow piece of music, but not an uneventful one. (more…)
mahler 9 - I. Andante comodo April 22, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, audio, music, the orchestra world, 2commentsStuttering, arrhythmic, heartbeat rhythms in the horn and cellos, hesitant fragments of a melody in the distant french horn, then the rocking of the harp, and the first ineffably sad song of melancholic longing in the strings accompanied by restlessly rustling sextuplets in the violas. It’s the opening of Mahler’s massive, elegiac Ninth Symphony, and I cannot think of another piece which begins in such a place of desolation as this one. (more…)
mahler 9 - III. Rondo. Burleske. April 21, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, audio, music, the orchestra world, 1 comment so farWhat would a Mahler symphony be without a sprawling, hectic, and by turns achingly beautiful scherzo? Well, quite a bit shorter, for one. Mahler is often in the habit of taking a huge movement in cut time and making a huge journey out of it, and the Ninth Symphony is no exception. (more…)
A few old-school Mahler’s 9th recordings April 19, 2008
Posted by trumpetboy in : appreciation/criticism, audio, composition, conducting, guest post, music, recordings, add a commentI’m pleased to welcome as my first guest blogger Jeffrey Work, principal trumpet of the Oregon Symphony. He, among other things, is an enthusiastic collector of old recordings, and as such, I thought that he might like to delve into his massive collection and give us some nuggets that relate to the upcoming work on the next classical series: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Enjoy! — CN
As the Oregon Symphony’s musicians prepare for our upcoming performances of the Mahler 9th, most of us will head to our record and CD libraries. It’s a common first step before we go to the more important second step: heading to the practice room. My routine is no different. (more…)
kalmar, prokofiev earthshaking April 19, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : News, appreciation/criticism, music, the orchestra world, add a commentThis past Friday, the St. Louis area was awakened by the shaking of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake. That evening the St. Louis Symphony was led by OSO music director Carlos Kalmar in a performance that included the Fifth Symphony of Sergei Prokofiev. According to this review and other accounts, this may have been an aftershock of its own.
Friday in St. Louis began with the tremors and aftershocks of an earthquake, and ended with an incandescent performance that shook the stage of Powell Symphony Hall.
The first half of Friday night’s concert by guest conductor Carlos Kalmar and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra was fine. The second half was remarkable: What a difference the right repertoire in the right hands can make to a concert.
That second half consisted of an incandescent performance of Serge Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, op. 100. Written during the waning days of World War II, the Symphony No. 5 is a symphonic masterpiece. This score has it all, from moments of big, sweeping grandeur to light humor, from passages of savage jeering to outright lyricism.
Kalmar and the orchestra invested it with a sense of excitement beyond that inherent in the score. Kalmar was fun to watch, with a leonine head of hair that moved dramatically as he danced around the podium, and angular body language perfectly matched to Prokofiev’s rhythmic world.
Read the complete review here.
