On August 16, the Salzburg Festival ended its focus on the French composer Gérard Grisey with a complete performance of his cycle “Les espaces acoustiques” by the Austrian ORF Symphony Orchestra and Maxime Pascal conducting. It was an hour and a half during which the music’s timbral and structural richness occupied the brain’s entire perceptive […]
Category: Playlist
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A Giacinto Scelsi Playlist
The only proper word for the music of the self-taught Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi is “sublime.” Not in the common sense of the word, which comes to something like “very good”—but in the sense that Moses Mendelssohn understood it, that is, something that is frightening and overwhelming and pleasing and painful and immense and transcendent […]
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A Daniel Grossmann Klezmer Playlist
Daniel Grossmann is the conductor and music director of the Jakobsplatz Orchestra in Munich, which focuses on Jewish music. In this playlist, he tells us the brief story of his relationship with the frequently underestimated—particularly in his home country—genre of klezmer. I hate klezmer. Or do I? Right now, it seems to me, Germany is […]
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A French Election Playlist
The tension among French people in Berlin on May 7, when the final runoff between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron took place, was palpable. Musicians in particular were worried: Would visas and work permits soon be real bureaucratic problems they had to deal with? We asked artists to tell us what music they were […]
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A Sung Jin Hong Playlist
Sung Jin Hong is the artistic director and conductor of the New York ensemble One World Symphony. In this playlist, he explores identity and idealism in music. Here is his introduction to the selection. “What is it about Mignon that has captivated composers for over two centuries? More than 70 different composers have given voice […]
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Phyllis Chen’s Unusual Instruments Playlist
A few years ago, the pianist and toy piano virtuoso Phyllis Chen performed a piece of mine that included an invented instrument. We didn’t have time to meet before the concert. When she began to play, she twirled the instrument—which had once broken and flown into an audience—enthusiastically above her head. I like to think […]
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A Brexit Day Playlist
Andrew Manze, Music Director, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5; Ralph Vaughan Williams (Conductor), London Philharmonic Orchestra A pacifist and humanist, Vaughan Williams completed his Fifth Symphony during the darkest days of the World War II. It was premiered in London in 1943 and is an unambiguous expression of hope and […]
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A #HearAllComposers Playlist
On March 21, musicians and music lovers who desired more diverse orchestral programming took to Twitter with the hashtag #HearAllComposers, to encourage symphony orchestras to program music by non-male and non-white composers. The hashtag came largely from the efforts of Emma O’Halloran, Annika Socolofsky, Amanda Feery, and Finola Merivale, all young composers frustrated with the […]
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An Arthur Kampela Playlist
At this year’s MaerzMusik festival in Berlin, Arthur Kampela will present his research on Walter Smetak, an obscure Brazilian composer and inventor of instruments. Smetak is one artist featured in this playlist of radical, searching music by Kampela, himself a Brazilian composer and guitarist currently living in New York. These are intense sounds—our recommendation is […]
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A Pamela Z Playlist
The composer, performer, and media artist Pamela Z works with a wide variety of techniques, including “voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video,” and has produced art both for the concert hall and the museum. From San Francisco, she sent us this playlist. Each track here contains a multiplicity of influences; taken together, the […]