for Seth Brodsky PART I: STRANGE THINGS I. getting it just right Every act of reading is a difficult transaction between the competence of the reader (the reader’s world knowledge) and the kind of competence that a given text postulates in order to be read in an economic way.—Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation All artists play […]
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Posted inInterview
The Unconscious Process
On a recent warm autumn evening in Porto, the Russian-Armenian pianist Eva Gevorgyan performed before a crowd so spasmodic with coughing fits it may yet prove to be a locus of the next pandemic. The barking did nothing to quell Gevorgyan’s performance of Chopin, Brahms, and Schumann. Dressed in a Celedon-green sequined dress, a silken […]
Posted inHistory
A Piece for Peace
In 1965, the United Nations asked Benjamin Britten to compose a choral work to celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary. The piece, it hoped, would be “the natural and inevitable sequel to the War Requiem.” The Secretary-General, U Thant, explained that the new work would be premiered at the UN Day concert on October 24, 1965, […]
Posted inOpinion
Playing Along
American classical music institutions have been quiet lately. Quieter than they were about the murder of George Floyd. Much quieter than they were about the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Individual musicians have often been more outspoken. But in recent years institutions have taken political positions often enough that their current silence is surprising. When […]
Posted inEssay
The Disappearing Monument
It is easy to believe in the permanence of sound. Now every recording can be streamed and repeated on demand without degradation; files replicate flawlessly; loops repeat without wear; digital archives expand infinitely. Music appears inexhaustible as technology promises security against erosion—like nothing goes away. William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops,” receiving a deluxe reissue in […]
Posted inReport
A House of Mud and Hope
The rain poured through the mud-brick walls of her father’s house in Duk County, Nyarweng Community of South Sudan, soaking the earthen floor where Nyibol Thon held her newborn daughter. As water dripped from the thatched roof onto her makeshift bed, she began to sing. “From that pain, I composed a song and named her […]
Posted inEssay
Thin Fire
Not long ago, I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. One line stayed with me: “Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these—‘Chloe liked Olivia. . .’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes […]
Posted inInterview
Crossing the Line
On September 11, the Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov gave an emotional speech following a concert with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall in London, decrying the carnage inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli government under Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces. “I know that many of us feel […]
Posted inOpinion
A Stale Start
Since last week, the conclusion has come to seem inescapable: By sticking with its new chief conductor François-Xavier Roth despite allegations of sexual harassment surfacing against him last year, the SWR Symphonieorchester—the renowned Stuttgart-based radio orchestra with a particularly strong contemporary-music reputation—has lost its way. Cancelling his contract following the allegations might well have led […]
Posted inInterview
The Question Mark in the System
I’ve known Georg Friedrich Haas for many years, first as a teacher and later as a friend and mentor, and his music has been a constant source of inspiration. Ahead of the North American premiere of his monumental “11,000 Strings” for 50 microtonally attuned pianos and chamber orchestra performed by Klangforum Wien at the Park […]