"Rose, BMOP wax ecstatic in glorious, unsettling 'Alice'"
Boston Globe, February 27, 2016
There are times, and they are not infrequent, when I worry that I've lost my knack for doing the things I used to do regularly at The New York Times, There, I was a writer exclusively, and the frequency of my work built up a certain ease over time - which is not to say that the work was intrinsically easy, but rather that my process became so. Now, almost two years later and charged primarily with editing at the Boston Globe, the naturalness with which I formed my assessments and put them to paper/pixels does not come so quickly. I don't think I've forgotten how to ride my bicycle, but it does take a bit of ground to shake off the wobbles now.
All of which said, I'm very happy with the way this particular review turned out. It reads like the voice I found for my last few years at the Times - which is to say, it reads like my voice - and it covers the sensation of what being at the concert was like. No, it doesn't go into a great deal of explicit musicological detail, a task I leave to others who have more than a few hours' time and 400 words in which to dissect things. And no, I didn't report how Gil Rose conducted with such physical energy that at one point his eyeglasses flew off into the viola section. That was a fun morsel, for sure, but one that ultimately didn't amount to much when compared to the larger epiphany I had on hearing Child Alice complete - the overwhelming sadness that I felt, which I had to describe and analyze succinctly.
It feels good to ride again. I wish it could happen more often.
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