Night After Night

Masters of the universe.

"Seeking Profits Beyond CD Sales"
The New York Times, May 29, 2008


Confirming rumors that have circulated since arts manager Jeffrey Vanderveen announced his departure from IMG Artists in March, Universal Classics and Jazz announced on Wednesday the formation of a new division, Universal Music Classical Artist Management and Productions, headed by Vanderveen. Some of the biggest stars in the operatic firmament, including Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca (both Vanderveen clients at IMG), have joined the new roster. But there is a catch: IMG, alleging a variety of serious improprieties, has filed suit against Universal and its principals in the New York State Supreme Court.

This is certainly a story that will bear watching. One thing definitely worth noting is that while early rumors suggested that the new division would be concerned primarily with producing pop-concert extravaganzas, the project held up as an example of what Universal is interesting in achieving is the new Deutsche Grammophon recording of La Bohème available now in Europe and due June 10 in the U.S. The project, recorded by DG during concerts arranged by Vanderveen at IMG, doubles as the soundtrack for a cinematic film of the opera that will be screened in Europe this summer (and presumably here at a later date). More such complete opera recordings are already in the planning stages.

Defenders of the faith.

Seems I'm not the only one who made the transition from youthful heavy-metal enthusiast to grown-up classical-music aficionado: After attending a show by Finnish cello-thrash quartet Apocalyptica, Ontario critic John Keillor exposed his dark roots in "The Ear Wants What It Wants," an essay that appeared in Monday's edition of the National Post. Keillor goes on to explain why everything you've ever listened to with passion has colored and perhaps even enriched your subsequent and present listening experiences.

Keillor's story doesn't exactly parallel my own. I was soaking up classical music -- and in training to play it -- at more or less the same time I was exposed to metal, punk and prog. (See this recent post for the lurid details). And sadly, it appears that Keillor no longer indulges his passion for the adrenaline high of a good metal show. But I definitely throw horns to him for an idiomatic reference to Cannibal Corpse in what is still in fact a classical critic's piece in a major newspaper. (Hat tip to FJO.)

Playlist:

Slayer - Hells Awaits (Metal Blade)

Leyla Gencer - Arias and Scenes, Vol. 2 (Opera d'Oro)

Nile - Black Seeds of Vengeance (Relapse)

Christopher Theofanidis - Visions and Miracles; Paul Moravec - Morph; Lisa Bielawa - The Trojan Women; Michael Gatonska - Transformation of the Hummingbird - String Orchestra of New York City (Albany)

Obituary - World Demise (Roadrunner)

Morton Feldman - The Viola in My Life I-IV - Marek Konstantynowicz; Cikada Ensemble, Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Christian Eggen (ECM)

Marillion - Brave (Sanctuary)

Fish - 13th Star (Chocolate Frog)

John Zorn - Spy vs. Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman (Elektra/Musician)

Thomas Adès - Violin Concerto - Anthony Marwood, Chamber Orchestra of Europe (EMI Classics download)

"Deadheads for Obama" (Phil Lesh and Friends with Mickey Hart and Bob Weir) - The Warfield, San Francisco, CA, February 4, 2008 (Archive.org download)

Johannes Brahms - Symphony No. 1 - Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra/Jaap van Zweeden (Brilliant Classics)

Hector Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique - Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel (Deutsche Grammophon download)

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 1 - London Symphony Orchestra/Valery Gergiev (LSO Live)

Elodie Lauten - The Death of Don Juan (Unseen Worlds)

Giacomo Puccini - La bohème - Anna Netrebko, Nicole Cabell, Rolando Villazón, Stèphane Degout, Boaz Daniel, Vitalij Kowaljow, Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Bertrand de Billy (Deutsche Grammophon, due June 10; audio samples at ArkivMusic)

Bach and awe.

Bachiana Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
and
The Xanthos Ensemble at Roulette
The New York Times, May 26, 2008

Speed racer.

The Moscow Virtuosi at Avery Fisher Hall
The New York Times, May 19, 2008

More, more Mortier.

The rather brilliant and awesomely cultured Elisabeth Vincentelli, my TONY colleague and the voice behind the excellent Determined Dilettante, has just put up a long post on the WNET/Channel 13 SundayArts blog that I reckon a bunch of you will want to read.

The title is "How to sell art to the masses," and the subject is Gérard Mortier -- specifically, his views on building an audience through challenging people, and what he really thinks of some of the more populist ventures his soon-to-be new neighbor on the Lincoln Center plaza has engaged in. The quotes come from a recent hourlong interview on French public radio, which Elisabeth translated herself. One sample:

Interestingly, Mortier credits his Jesuit education in Ghent with his intellectual training, reading Sartre, Camus, Ibsen, Nietsche in 1961. “I loved the dialectic spirit of that education. Everybody had to be intellectually involved. It was always about dialogue and debate. Debate is what makes the world move forward.”

All this, and David Lynch, too. Go, see.

Playlist:

Silvestre Revueltas - Sensemayá; Inocente Carreno - Margaritena; Antonio Estevéz - Mediodia in el Llano; Arturo Márquez - Danzon No. 2; Aldemaro Romero - Suite para cuerdas; Alberto Ginastera - Estancia: Danzas del Ballet; Evencio Castellanos - Santa Cruz de Pacairigua (Suite Sinfoníca); Leonard Bernstein - Mambo - Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel (Deutsche Grammophon download; CD out now in Europe, due for U.S. release July 22)

Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness (Earache)

Opeth - Still Life and The Roundhouse Tapes (Peaceville); Blackwater Park, Deliverance and Damnation (Koch); Ghost Reveries (Roadrunner)

Bolt Thrower - War Master (Earache)

Terrorizer - World Downfall (Earache)

Marduk - Panzer Division Marduk (Regain)

Autopsy - Severed Survival (Peaceville)

Entombed - Left Hand Path (Earache)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The String Quintets - Griller String Quartet with William Primrose (Vanguard)

Charles Wuorinen - Tashi; Fortune - Group for Contemporary Music; Percussion Quartet - New Jersey Percussion Ensemble (Naxos)

Colin Matthews - Fourth Sonata; Suns Dance; Broken Symmetry - London Sinfonietta/Oliver Knussen (Deutsche Grammophon)

Poul Ruders - Four Compositions; Hans Abrahamsen - Winternacht; Walden - London Sinfonietta/Oliver Knussen (Paula)

Terry Riley - Salome Dances for Peace - Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch)

Michael Tippett - The Mask of Time - Faye Robinson, Sarah Walker, Robert Tear, John Cheek, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Andrew Davis (EMI Classics)

Confessor - Condemned (Earache)

Exhorder - Slaughter in the Vatican and The Law (Roadrunner)

Pestilence - Spheres (Roadrunner/Metal Mind)

Leyla Gencer - Arias & Scenes, Volume 1 (Opera d'Oro)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Battaglia di Legnano - Leyla Gencer, João Gibin, Ugo Savarese, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Giuseppe Verdi di Trieste/Francesco Molinari-Pradelli (Gala)

Gasparo Spontini - La Vestale - Leyla Gencer, Robleto Merolla, Renato Bruson, Agostino Ferrin, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Massimo di Palermo/Fernando Previtali (Gala)

Luigi Cherubini - Medea - Leyla Gencer, Daniella Mazzucato, Aldo Bottion, Ruggero Raimondi, Coro e Orchestra del Teatro la Fenice (Gala)

Carlisle Floyd - Susannah - Phyllis Curtin, Norman Treigle, Richard Cassilly, New Orleans Opera Orchestra and Chorus/Knud Andersson (VAI Audio)

John Adams - Nixon in China - Carolann Page, Trudy Ellen Craney, John Duykers, Sanford Sylvan, James Maddalena, Thomas Hammons, Orchestra of St. Luke's/Edo de Waart (Nonesuch)

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphonies Nos. 1-9 - Sheila Armstrong, Margaret Price, Norma Burrowes, New Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir/Adrian Boult (EMI Classics)

Salon treatment.

Paul Groves in the Movado Hour at the Baryshnikov Arts Center
The New York Times, May 15, 2008

Art of the recital.

Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson at Zankel Hall
The New York Times, May 12, 2008

Variations.

Steve Reich: 'Daniel Variations'; Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings

Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon; London Sinfonietta, conducted by Alan Pierson.

Nonesuch 406780-2; CD.

The New York Times, May 11, 2008

(ArkivMusic; Barnes & Noble)

Meme me.

I've been tagged by my dear friend and colleague Molly Sheridan (of NewMusicBox, Mind the Gap and other worthy endeavors) for the latest blog meme making the rounds. Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

And so:

Erickson is not as well-known as he deserves; during the time when he was recreating the whole concept of college-level music education, ransacking the environment for new sounds for his own musical use, and turning them into music with instruments and gadgets of his own invention, he didn't bother much with playing the establishment game. Now, when he has more time on his hands, he has neither the strength nor the stomach to send out press releases or give TV interviews. Someone needs to rebuild his revolutionary instruments -- which were damaged when the university's music department moved into new quarters -- so as to revive the whole repertory of cool fantasy that they were designed to play.

From So I've Heard: Notes of a Migratory Music Critic by Alan Rich (Amadeus Press, 2006). The excerpt comes from "Erickson: Local Sounds," an LA Weekly column from March 1996.

The "Erickson" in question is Robert Erickson, a composer about whose music I know embarrassingly little. The university Rich mentions is the University of California at San Diego, where Erickson taught. He also exerted a tremendous influence as the music director of KPFA-FM, a free-form radio station operated by the Pacifica Foundation. When Rich wrote this in 1996, Erickson had been bedridden for most of a decade due to lupus; he died just a little more than a year after the column appeared. Compelled by Rich, I've just ordered a copy of Thinking Sound Music, a biography by Charles Shere.

Tough to find bloggers who haven't already been tapped for this exercise, but I'll tag Bruce Hodges, Pete Matthews, Hank Shteamer, Elisabeth Vincentelli and David T. Little.

Playlist:

Judas Priest - Unleashed in the East (Columbia)

Steve Reich - Daniel Variations - Los Angeles Master Chorale/Grant Gershon; Variations for Vibes, Pianos & Strings - London Sinfonietta/Alan Pierson (Nonesuch)

Németh - Film (Mosz)

Robert Erickson - Recent Impressions; Two Songs; High Flyer; Summer Music - Continuum (Naxos)

Messiaenic.

My friend Hank Shteamer -- TONY colleague, math-metal drummer and Dark Forces Swing blogger -- has posted a detailed, insightful and highly entertaining account of the concert that Tashi presented at Town Hall yesterday. The performance was the quartet's first New York appearance in some 30 years.

Hank, as you might know, is a musical polymath but by no means a classical-music specialist. He is, however, exactly the kind of open-minded, open-eared listener that Tashi was originally after back in its heyday, and that Alex Ross set out to court with The Rest Is Noise, which was why I urged him to produce this fine TONY feature on Alex and his book last fall.

Among my favorite bits from Hank's post:

Basically that was a disclaimer because I don't want to be That Guy, i.e., the classical nonenthusiast who goes around raving about Messiaen. But alas, I am Him whether I like it or not.

And:

Had this been a rock show, it would've been something akin to All Tomorrow's Parties' Don't Look Back series, i.e., Slint playing Spiderland live or somesuch. In the program notes we're told that Tashi was--in their early '70s heyday--"on the level of Jimi Hendrix in the classical music counterculture." ... Quartet was their signature work then, and if Ross's list is any indication, their recording of it is still the One to Get.

I'm very sorry that I couldn't make it to this concert. Of course, I'm sorrier still that I didn't make it to the Midori concert scheduled for exactly the same time, which I was actually assigned to review -- my excuse being that I was stuck in a derailed subway car.