In April, tenor Ian Bostridge released his latest book, a brief meditation on the intricacies of vocal interpretation in music by Monteverdi, Ravel, and Britten titled Song and Self: A Singer’s Reflections on on Music and Performance. In May, he gave a recital at the Boulez Saal in Berlin, with pianist Julius Drake, of works […]
Category: Interview
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In Constant Motion
The performance began with a scream. Or was it a bang, followed by the cry of the wind? In the next half-hour, recorder player Dora Donata Sammer whistled, bleated, cried, crowed, whirred, rattled, purred, hummed, sang, and chirped her way through repertoire from the Baroque to the contemporary, from the Renaissance soprano recorder to the […]
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A Collection of Disappearing Sounds
Four years ago, I put on a pair of chunky red headphones and was immediately plunged into an entirely new soundworld. Suddenly, everything was buzzing, clicking and pulsing—yet there was no cable running from my headset, no bluetooth link to a nearby media player. I was in the center of Amsterdam for the city’s biennial […]
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“Stop Touring, Take Mushrooms”
Pekka Kuusisto and I have turned up to the interview looking vaguely similar. Two pairs of glasses, lots of short, dark-blond hair, and two not dissimilar jumpers meet on the screen: mine, a sludge-green skiing fleece borrowed from my dad; his, a bottle-green Icelandic-knit sweater made by his mother-in-law during lockdown. Kuusisto is an intense […]
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The Process of Enrichment
On April 22, Kent Nagano will bring his Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra to Carnegie Hall for a performance of Beethoven, Brahms, and a new work by composer Sean Shepherd, “On a Clear Day” (featuring cellist Jan Vogler and an international youth choir and set to poetry by writer Ulla Hahn). I spoke with Nagano recently […]
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Playful Entities
Composer, improviser, and trombonist Alex Paxton has had a busy few months. Between winning both this year’s Ernst von Siemens Composer’s Prize and Paul Hindemith Prize, preparing for the release of his upcoming album “Happy Music for Orchestra” on Delphian Records, and commissions for Riot Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, and Ensemble Modern, it felt like […]
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Beauty in the Limits
Violinist Adam Woodward was one of two winners of the March 2023 edition of the Berlin Prize for Young Artists. His program, meticulously curated and performed with palpable intensity, included music by Liza Lim, John Cage, and Bahar Royaee, and summoned the austere, indifferent beauty of landscapes and stars. Woodward, who is the youngest of […]
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Are Music Engagement and Mental Illness Related?
According to a study released in March by researchers at Frankfurt’s Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, people engaged in making music are at a higher risk for mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Results of the study suggest there is an overlap between inherited genetic variants associated with a tendency to make music, […]
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“I’m Grateful to Destiny”
Violinist Gidon Kremer was unusually quick to develop an aesthetic of his own and has long been ahead of his time. This independence is most obvious in his love for contemporary music, which he developed as a conservatory student in Moscow and which brought him into contact with composers such as Pärt, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and […]
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The End of a Voyage
In his long career, Riccardo Muti, 81, has led top orchestras and run major opera houses; for a brief moment about a decade ago, there were rumors he would become Italy’s ceremonial head of state. Muti’s fierce stare is imposing and inspirational—he’s an Italian conductor out of central casting, but with better hair than Arturo […]