Are we still meant to be listening to music? This is something I’ve been struggling with over the last two-and-a-half months, even when I am, by virtue of my profession, actually meant to be listening to music. Either the political ramifications of a work start to become too foregrounded (try listening to Maria Callas in […]
Category: Stuff I’ve Been Hearing
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Just Like Holy Mary
“Vespro” & “Vespro della Beata Vergine” It’s rare that a new recording of a repertoire staple becomes a catalyst for a real-life version of the math lady meme, but Raphaël Pichon is exactly the sort of conductor you’d willingly follow down a rabbit hole. Given the relative recency of the Monteverdi revival, it’s also surprising […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
In These Times
“Beethoven” It’s always fun when an album nearly slips past your radar until it becomes the catalyst for controversy. This isn’t a slight to Alice Sara Ott, whose early recordings of Chopin’s complete waltzes and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata are among my favorite interpretations. More likely, her Beethoven compendium—including a live performance of the First Piano […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Where Past and Future Are Gathered
“The Beginning and the End” Earlier this summer, I was in Athens with Joyce DiDonato and the orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro as part of their EDEN tour—an ambitious multi-year program that will see the musicians perform on six continents and offer a host of workshops for local children’s choirs. While DiDonato and I shared a […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Mediums and Messages
As the landscape of Twitter continues to become more gnarled and Mad Maxian, are those who remain becoming more revanchistly retrograde? At this point, between the algorithm and the audacity, you’d think no tweet could still be so remarkable as to invoke a pile-on. Especially now that the app is limiting the amount of tweets […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Symmetries of Desire
There are tenors who fuck, and then there are tenors who fuck. Sure, hearing Jonas Kaufmann pump out “Winterstürme” is good for some heady thrills, and I wouldn’t not tuck Jussi Björling’s “Ch’ella mi creda” in my hope chest. But let’s talk for a moment about the ténor de grâce. At first blush, they may […]
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Children of History
The late (do I even have to say “great”?) Tina Turner’s first songwriting credit remains an anomaly in her canon: a riff on “City Called Heaven,” with some of the original text interspersed with Turner’s own lyrics. It’s a delicate arrangement, just Turner’s voice in its fathomless low range and Ike Turner’s slightly hollow-sounding blues […]
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What You Sow
What’s the carbon footprint for a beheading? And why is this seemingly the one question I am unable to answer via Google? I mean, yes, I could just review the new studio recording of Puccini’s “Turandot,” including the role debuts of Jonas Kaufmann as the Calaf and Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role, as well […]
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Children of Humanity
“When you reach a certain age, you become aware, as a composer, that you will not be able to compose it all, that there is a limit,” writes Bent Sørensen. In 2014, at the relatively spry age of 56, Sørensen decided that the one work he wanted to compose beyond anything else was a St. […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Weary Deserts and Distant Sounds
If I had to name a favorite Strauss opera, “Daphne” would make a Cinderella-run to the center of my bracket. It doesn’t have the revolutionary spirit of “Salome,” nor the orgiastic horns of “Der Rosenkavalier.” It’s weird, but not in the way that “Die Frau ohne Schatten” is weird, and in terms of Strauss’s affinity […]