Aurelia Butler

Hear tracks by the Linda Lindas, David Byrne, Summer Walker and others that lean cozy, confrontational and lightly comedic.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Silversun Pickups, ‘Just Like Christmas’The grungy Los Angeles band Silversun Pickups heard potential in “Just Like Christmas,” which was more like a country song when the Minnesota band Low introduced it on its 1999 album, “Christmas.” It’s a song about touring Scandinavia, seeing — and scoffing at — the snowy image of Christmas but feeling its attractions anyway. With sleigh bells and rippling, echoing guitars, Silversun Pickups find a chiming optimism in the song, embracing a joyful illusion even as they realize it’s temporary. JON PARELESSamara Joy, ‘Warm in December’Samara Joy sings with a jazz trio in “Warm in December,” taking on an aspiring standard as she goes swooping, quivering and hopping through her phrasing. The way she leaves room for her backup to improvise echoes the exchange of affection that the song promises. PARELESPhoebe Bridgers, ‘So Much Wine’Phoebe Bridgers’s annual Christmas cover is, by now, a modern tradition; she’s previously released renditions of such holiday laments as Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” and Tom Waits’s “Day After Tomorrow.” This year, she tackles the folk duo the Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine,” a dark but ultimately tender tale of Yuletide overindulgence. While the original version is played for macabre comedy (“I had nothing to say on Christmas Day when you threw all your clothes in the snow”) Bridgers, characteristically, amps up the pathos and issues an impassioned plea to sober up for the holidays. “Listen to me, butterfly,” she sings in a trembling voice, “there’s only so much wine that you can drink in one life.” LINDSAY ZOLADZThe Tribe, ‘This Christmas’This team-up of soft soul music stalwarts takes on Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” with charm and adoration. High points include Freda Payne’s careful, tender entreaty to “shake a hand,” and Michael McDonald absolutely howling, “The fireside is blazing bright/And we’re caroling through the night.” (The song also features Kenny Loggins, Richard Marx and several other singers and musicians.) Proceeds from the track benefit the Donny Hathaway Legacy Project (DHLP), a mental health-focused charity established by Donnita Hathaway, Donny’s youngest daughter. JON CARAMANICASam Smith, ‘Night Before Christmas’’Tis hardly the season for something unholy, so Sam Smith’s “Night Before Christmas,” a new holiday original written with the musician’s longtime collaborator Simon Aldred, is tasteful, traditional and sweetly soulful. “With everything closed now, there’s nowhere to go,” Smith sings over a sparse guitar arrangement, but the atmosphere soon grows merrier with the addition of piano, percussion and a fleet of backup singers. “Baby, this time of year can make you feel old,” Smith sings on the chorus. Coziness, though, is the cure: “But when I’m with you, I don’t feel the cold.” ZOLADZThe Linda Lindas, ‘Groovy Xmas’This is how you do it — a jubilant, surf-ish rock jam about the small details of holiday thrill, including the ones that never, ever change: “Same playlist every year/Mariah brings the cheer/And pumpkin spice lattes are here.” The Linda Lindas continue to extract maximum happiness from every available moment, including watching the cat lap up water from the Christmas tree stand. CARAMANICAStars, ‘Christmas Anyway’Stars, the long-running Montreal indie-rock band, offers a pandemic-era Christmas song in “Christmas Anyway,” singing about a long-delayed reunion — “Two years since we did this” — fraught with unresolved tensions. Amid strumming guitars and a stolid backbeat, they sing about how “we got through it somehow,” and how a holiday can offer at least a temporary reconciliation. PARELESSummer Walker, ‘Santa Baby’“Santa Baby” is one of the classic holiday flirtations, and Summer Walker is one of contemporary R&B’s great emotional reckoners — an optimal match. But Walker’s version of this classic is restrained, and almost a little reluctant. Just a sweet little plea for some seasonal blessing. CARAMANICADavid Byrne, ‘Fat Man’s Comin’’David Byrne applies his quizzical-observer perspective in “The Fat Man’s Comin’,” a brief, brawny and elaborately arranged chamber-pop bolero about “a roly-poly man in the dark, he’s riding.” It’s perfectly poised between objectivity and amusement. PARELESOld Crow Medicine Show, ‘Trim This Tree’“Trim This Tree,” an original from Americana stalwarts Old Crow Medicine Show, is a spirited, occasionally hilarious snapshot of Christmas in modern, overdeveloped Nashville: Sloshed reindeer ride by on a pedal tavern, the ornaments are exclusively from Dollar Tree, and, as the frontman Ketch Decor puts it in a Springsteenian croak, “In front of this Airbnb, there’s a Joseph and a Mary and Jesus all lit up like a Walmart.” Even in such environs, though, the group’s rollicking sound manages to rustle up some genuine down-home cheer. ZOLADZImogen Clark, ‘I Got Dumped for Christmas’The Australian songwriter Imogen Clark bashes her way through the self-explanatory “I Got Dumped for Christmas,” with sleigh bells and power-pop guitars. “Your timing was extraordinary,” she jabs, nicely capturing how seasonal expectations can go so badly awry. PARELESNorah Jones, ‘The Christmas Waltz’Norah Jones has nearly doubled the track list for the expanded version of her 2021 album “I Dream of Christmas,” mostly with bluesy, louche studio tracks and live remakes. Her version of the vintage Tin Pan Alley song “The Christmas Waltz” — written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, once recorded by Frank Sinatra — cheerfully trades a waltz for a shuffle, bringing in a quivering harp and an insinuating saxophone, playing with meters but still sounding fond. PARELES More

In the new year, the Vienna Philharmonic will pay tribute to more than a dozen of its members who were ousted, exiled and killed during World War II.VIENNA — When armed forces stormed the State Opera here during a performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” on March 11, 1938, prominent players from the Vienna Philharmonic fled through the back door and would never regain their positions.The solo bassoonist Hugo Burghauser was removed from his post as chairman and replaced with Wilhelm Jerger, a member of the Nazi Party. By the next week, all other orchestra members affected by the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws had been expelled.More than 80 years later, after the Vienna Philharmonic’s 180th anniversary and before its next New Year’s Concert, the orchestra’s current chairman, Daniel Froschauer, has decided to commemorate the players who were victimized during World War II.In 2023, Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones” for the 16 lost members will be laid in the sidewalk in front of their former homes in the Austrian capital. An additional stone will be laid for Alma Rosé, daughter of the veteran concert master Arnold Rosé. The tradition of creating these small plaques to memorialize victims of the Holocaust began in Germany in 1992. The Philharmonic stones include the name of each player, their position with the orchestra, and when and where they died.On March 28, a chamber music concert will take place in front of the onetime building of the Rosés. Also planned is a concert with the orchestra’s academy at the Theresienstadt ghetto in May.In a recent interview, Mr. Froschauer recalled arriving on New York’s Upper West Side as a student in 1982, violin case in hand, and being greeted enthusiastically by local residents of Austrian Jewish descent. Among the people he contacted at his father’s behest was Burghauser, who died three months after they spoke by phone.Hugo Burghauser, a solo bassoonist, in an undated photo. In 1938, he was forced out as chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic. He emigrated to North America.Wiener PhilharmonikerThe brass plaque to be attached to Burghauser’s “stumbling stone.” Details on it include his roles with the orchestra and the date of his death in New York.Wiener PhilharmonikerMr. Froschauer pointed out that while Burghauser was fortunate to find work through the support of the conductor Arturo Toscanini — playing in the Toronto Symphony before joining the NBC Symphony Orchestra and then the ensemble of the Metropolitan Opera — others were left to struggle. Seven members were murdered or died during the war.“There was something inside me that hadn’t yet been worked out,” Mr. Froschauer said of the effort to pay tribute to the lost musicians. “This project should a create a consciousness for what these people had to endure.”Postwar Vienna was slow to face wartime atrocities. According to Fritz Trümpi, author of “The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics During the Third Reich,” the remaining Vienna players seemed more interested in symbolic gestures. With former party members as the majority of the executive committee into the 1960s, the orchestra’s attitude was marked by a kind of indifference, he explains in his book, and attempts to ward off responsibility.“When the question of financial compensation comes up — pensions, extra pay — the orchestra members dismiss them with at times crude arguments,” Mr. Trümpi said in an interview. “It is all the more bitter in a situation when someone is sick but told, ‘You will receive nothing, you are not here anymore.’”The Philharmonic granted modest financial support mostly because of “image concerns,” he concluded in the book “Orchestrated Expulsion,” written with Bernadette Mayrhofer. Among the beneficiaries was the violinist Berthold Salander, who arrived in New York a ruined man and never resumed his orchestra activities.In Berlin last year, a resident polished “stumbling stones” that commemorated four members of a family who died at Auschwitz. The tradition of installing the stones began in Germany in 1992. Markus Schreiber/Associated PressThe violinist Ludwig Wittels had to leave his position with the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera because he had lung cancer. According to “Orchestrated Expulsion,” requests for financial aid from Vienna led to an exchange in which the orchestra’s chairman and executive director accused him and his wife of “blackmail.” They ultimately granted a sum that was a tiny fraction of the funds allocated for a U.S. tour in 1956. Wittels died in December of that year.In 1952, seven exiled members of the orchestra were presented with silver medals celebrating its centenary at the Austrian Consulate in New York — an event originally planned for 1948. “Overdue,” read the headline in The New York Times on Dec. 21.Efforts to reconcile the orchestra with its ousted members met with resistance on both sides. The violinist Dr. Daniel Falk, who lost several close family members to the Holocaust, replied to an invitation to rejoin the Philharmonic in 1946 that a return would “raise questions” that neither he nor his “adored colleagues” were “in the position to solve.”The Argentine-born Ricardo Odnoposoff became an exception, returning to Vienna as a professor in 1956 and appearing as a soloist with the Philharmonic where he once served as concert master. The violinist Leopold Förderl and his wife, Eva, who was Jewish, also returned to their home city, in 1953.Leopold Föderl returned to Vienna in 1953.Wiener PhilharmonikerRicardo Odnoposoff also returned to Vienna, in 1956, and played again with the Philharmonic.Wiener PhilharmonikerMichael Haas, senior researcher at the Exilarte Center for Banned Music at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, said that postwar Austria in general was reluctant to welcome back former citizens who had the right to reparations because it “would have bankrupted the country.” In turn, he continued, the fact that Austria emerged from the war “relatively unscathed” may have led to resentment among Jewish families.He said that in the past decade, however, the Philharmonic had undertaken a “much more honest and sober appraisal” of its history: “I would probably say that we’ve seen the orchestra begin to confront its own past and deal with some of its issues.”Mr. Trümpi noted that there was still “a need for discussion,” and not only with regard to the history of the Philharmonic. Ms. Mayrhofer, his co-author on “Orchestrated Expulsion,” has estimated that about 100 workers at the State Opera — from stagehands to choristers — were ousted, exiled or murdered after the events of 1938.Ms. Mayrhofer has also found that Jerger, who took over as chairman in 1938, tried to save five members of the Philharmonic from deportation in 1941, but that his efforts were too late: All of them died in the Holocaust. He did manage, however, to facilitate the release of the violinist Josef Geringer from the Dachau concentration camp in December 1938 (he emigrated to New York, passing away in 1979).The Philharmonic recently acquired the correspondence of the former concert master Franz Mairecker, who remained in touch with the cellist Friedrich Buxbaum after he emigrated to London (they were close friends and chamber music partners). And Clemens Hellsberger, chairman of the Philharmonic from 1997 to 2014, is updating his 1992 book “Democracy of the Kings,” a history of the orchestra that reckons with World War II and its aftermath.Mr. Haas said reinstating repertoire by Jewish composers that was performed before the war would represent a further step in repairing cultural damage. He noted that Meyerbeer’s “Robert le diable” (performed in German as “Robert der Teufel”) was one of the most popular works at the Vienna State Opera in the second half of the 19th century. He also mentioned Karl Goldmark’s “Könign von Saba” (Queen of Sheba), which premiered there in 1875 and remained in repertoire until December 1937.The operetta composer Jacques Offenbach, who visited Vienna frequently and inspired Johann Strauss to write “Die Fledermaus,” was also well received before World War II. Operettas in Viennese dialect, such as the works of Edmund Eysler, also thrived.With the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, local traditions were altered to fit antisemitic propaganda. For example, the National Socialists modified baptismal documents to conceal the fact that Strauss had a Jewish great-grandfather, while Mr. Trümpi’s research has revealed that more than 40 percent of the Vienna Philharmonic’s programming from 1940 to 1945 consisted of works by the Strauss dynasty.The New Year’s Concert on Jan. 1, 2022, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The concert’s origins stem from World War II.Wiener PhilharmonikerOn Dec. 31, 1939, a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic performing Strauss works served to support the War Winter Relief Program. After World War II, the tradition continued as a vehicle of hope and joy on the first day of every year.This year’s New Year’s Concert includes works by Carl Michael Ziehrer and Franz von Suppé — and Josef Hellmesberger Jr., who in addition to playing and teaching violin served as the Philharmonic chairman and composed ballets.Among Hellmesberger’s students was Fritz Kreisler, a prodigy who began his conservatory studies at age 7 and emigrated to New York in 1938. He had performed as a soloist with both the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, premiering Elgar’s Violin Concerto in 1910 (an exhibit is currently on view at the Exilarte Center for Banned Music).Mr. Haas said that “it is only slowly beginning to seep in” to what extent Austrian Jewish musicians contributed to Viennese cultural life. Although there were also prominent doctors, scientists and writers, he explained, “music was greater than any other discipline.”For Mr. Froschauer, laying down the “stumbling stones” for the lost members of his orchestra is a moving opportunity to create awareness about the challenges these individuals faced while the rest of the ensemble was able to carry on with a degree of normalcy.“One should simply never forget,” he said. “This is a very late apology and a sign of gratitude for their accomplishments.” More

Starting with “The Threepenny Opera,” the Volksoper in Vienna is reconsidering a series of works and inviting audiences to join the discussion.“The Threepenny Opera” could be considered an antiopera as much as its menacing lead character, Macheath, is an antihero. This satirical and existential piece spoofed opera and, in doing so, broke the rules and pushed the art form of musical theater forward.And this is precisely the lure for the Volksoper in Vienna. The house stages musicals and operas, often with a new spin. Right now, it is exploring “The Threepenny Opera,” with a new production running through January.The 1928 work, based on the 18th-century work “The Beggar’s Opera” by John Gay, was written by the German composer Kurt Weill and the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht as a harsh satire of capitalism just before the rise of Nazism. The show’s antihero, Macheath, is a criminal among a rogue’s gallery of friends and business acquaintances relishing in the corruption and greed of 19th-century England, but with a wink to pre-fascist Germany.Cue the Volksoper’s new Manifesto concept, which seeks to reconsider two pieces each year and give them life to new generations of theatergoers. While some might consider “The Threepenny Opera” to be off-putting, the Volksoper found it to be the perfect springboard.“When we started reading the text, we realized that everyone thought that they knew the text really well, but that nobody really did,” said the production’s director, Maurice Lenhard. “It felt like an experiment. But ‘The Threepenny Opera’ allows for that more than, say, a Mozart opera.”That experiment revealed that the sinister elements of the musical, from characters to the production design, were open to interpretation. The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music in New York, which oversees all of Weill’s productions, allowed for cross-gender casting, which was a way to dive deeper into the piece and find something more abstract, Mr. Lenhard said, rather than the usual gritty realism. More colorful costumes and sets (versus the street-urchin depiction of most productions) helped transform this production.The Volksoper is using more colorful costumes and sets for “The Threepenny Opera,” versus the street-urchin depiction of most productions of the show. Barbara Pálffy/Volksoper Wien“The Threepenny Opera” premiered in 1928 in Berlin and was performed thousands of times across Europe in several languages before Weill and Brecht fled Germany in 1933 as the Nazis seized power. Its initial New York production that same year closed after 12 performances. A revival in the 1950s cemented its place in theater history. But its many commercial productions, with such famous Macheaths as Raul Julia, Sting and Alan Cumming, have not always been successful critically or financially. It’s probably most famous for “Mack the Knife,” the sinister ballad about Macheath that became a perky, up-tempo jazz standard thanks to Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Bobby Darin.How the musical has been interpreted over the decades is part of the lure for the Volksoper team. Mr. Lenhard said the idea of cross-gender casting seemed ideal for “The Threepenny Opera” because of how Brecht revolutionized theater by challenging the audience with his “verfremdungseffekt.” This is often translated in English as the distancing, or alienation, effect, which sought to break the theatrical “fourth wall” and lure the audience into the production more as a critical observer, not just as the emotional passive observer.“Brecht was happy when the youngest character in one of his plays was played by an old person,” Mr. Lenhard said. “Then the audience had to really pay attention and to listen.”In another example of the Volksoper’s cross-gender casting, Sona MacDonald, center, is playing Macheath.Barbara Pálffy/Volksoper WienIn “Die Dreigroschenoper” at the Volksoper (this production is sung in the original German and runs through Jan. 23), Macheath is played by a woman, Sona MacDonald, and Jenny, the prostitute who was once Macheath’s lover and is in many ways the heart and soul — and hope — of the musical, is played by a man, Oliver Liebl.Despite these bold changes, no words have been altered, said Lotte de Beer, the artistic director of the Volksoper.“Not a word has been rewritten,” Ms. de Beer said. “Manifesto is not an invitation to rewrite anything.”But part of the Manifesto concept is bringing the audience into the discussion. For the debut of the series, the Volksoper held three evenings of talks with the public, with numbers from different musicals and operas performed. About 80 people attended each session, as well as an open rehearsal of “The Threepenny Opera” with an audience discussion afterward.It all seems suited to the vision of Weill and particularly Brecht, who was constantly pushing the boundaries of theater and how it can change culture.“Doing Brecht, you’re forced to reflect on the whole idea of how he imagined theater to be played,” Ms. de Beer said. “Brecht wanted to actively pull people out of their comfort zones.“This production is stirring up some reaction here in Vienna,” she added. “And I think that’s good.” More

The “Safety Curtain” series at the Vienna State Opera has put artwork from all over the world in front of audiences since 1998.The Vienna State Opera is not exactly a go-to place for cutting-edge contemporary art: Inaugurated a century and a half ago, it is housed in an ornate edifice with gilded and velvet interiors.Yet every year since 1998, a contemporary artist has been commissioned to deliver a design for the safety curtain that about 600,000 operagoers gaze at before performances and during intervals all season long — for eight or nine months. More than two dozen artists have designed 176-square-meter (nearly 1,900-square-foot) images for the opera house and produced safety curtains that are nothing like what operagoers see elsewhere.Kara Walker, who was the inaugural artist in 1998, delivered a curtain featuring her signature silhouettes of African American figures. Jeff Koons adorned one with toy monkeys and cartoon characters.And Cerith Wyn Evans treated the public to a brief text (in German) that invited operagoers to “imagine a situation that, in all likelihood, you’ve never been in.”The text began: “Permit yourself to drift from what you are reading at this very moment into another situation, another way of acting within the historical and psychic geographies in which the event of your own reading is here and now taking place.”The Vienna State Opera in January.Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesThis season, the Chinese-born multimedia artist Cao Fei is showing a female avatar — a dystopian, pale-white head so imposing that signs have been put up all over the opera house to alert spectators to its presence.The “Safety Curtain” series was started by Museum in Progress, a nonprofit established in 1990 by an Austrian couple: the curator Kathrin Messner and the artist and curator Josef Ortner. Their mission was to showcase contemporary art in unexpected places to audiences that might otherwise not engage with it. In more than three decades, Museum in Progress has displayed contemporary art in the pages of newspapers and magazines, on television, on billboards and building facades, and in concert and performance halls.“The core idea of Museum in Progress is really simple: It’s about developing new presentation formats for contemporary art,” said Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl, managing director of the organization.He said it was necessary to present the public with “really high-class art,” adding that although Austrian museums and cultural institutions do put on exhibitions regularly, they are aimed at attracting crowds. “We feel it’s really important not to popularize, not to choose artists whom everybody would like,” he said.The contemporary safety curtains are not just ornamental: They are placed over a curtain with a dark past. That curtain was designed by Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger, a Vienna-educated artist who went on to become hugely successful in wartime. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933; produced murals for Vienna City Hall showing young Nazi supporters in brown shirts waving swastika flags; and was awarded the title of professor by Hitler himself.The artist Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger in 1955.Votava/Brandstaetter via Getty ImagesEisenmenger’s career continued after World War II. When the Vienna State Opera — which had been heavily damaged by bombings — reopened in 1955 after a major redevelopment, Eisenmenger was selected to design its safety curtain. And that curtain, with a depiction of Orpheus and Eurydice, was never questioned until the mid-’90s, when the opera house’s director at the time suggested that it should be taken down because of Eisenmenger’s Nazi past — and met with strong opposition in public opinion and the media. In 1997, Museum in Progress stepped in to propose the “Safety Curtain” project.Despite its troubled history, the original safety curtain, which can still be seen outside of the opera season, seems to remain popular with some Austrians. Every time the Vienna State Opera gets a new director, he receives “lots and lots of letters trying to convince him” to stop the contemporary-art project, Mr. Mühlemann Hartl said. In 2010, a far-right politician even raised the question in Parliament, he added.The contemporary “Safety Curtain” project has nonetheless managed to continue for 24 years, as it is well liked overall, and every year’s design gets abundant news coverage in Austria.Artists are chosen by a jury of curators, currently composed of Daniel Birnbaum, artistic director of Acute Art (a London-based digital art platform); Bice Curiger, artistic director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France; and Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.The process of choosing the winning artist is “incredibly fast,” Ms. Curiger said in an interview. Judges draw up a long list and rank each artist based on whether they can “come up with a good idea” that will work for an opera house and speaks to 21st-century audiences.“We want to be contemporary,” she said. “We don’t want to just have nice decorative things.”Ms. Curiger noted that the jury felt “a responsibility,” because the Vienna State Opera’s staff and audience “have to live with a work, which is really big, for a whole year.”Hans Ulrich Obrist, a member of the jury that chooses the artist for each new safety curtain, speaking in front of Carrie Mae Weems’ design for the 2020-21 edition, which featured an image of Mary J. Blige.Andreas Scheiblecker/Museum in ProgressFor the 2020-21 season, the chosen talent was the American artist Carrie Mae Weems. She presented a large photographic image of the singer Mary J. Blige — a version of which had appeared in W Magazine — that showed her wearing a crown and sitting at a table covered with flowers, fruit, glassware and an elaborate tablecloth that were reminiscent of an old-master painting.“Mary is a very careful woman, concerned about how Black women are experienced and understood, and what they look like,” Ms. Weems said of the image in a video interview in 2020 with Mr. Obrist. “So it was perfect.”The project costs 80,000 euros (about $85,000) a year to fund, according to Mr. Mühlemann Hartl, a modest amount by the standards of Western cultural fund-raising. Yet he said Museum in Progress still had difficulty raising the money every year, because in Austria, individual and corporate cultural philanthropy were not very developed.In a recent interview, Mr. Obrist described the project as “an interesting oxymoron,” because in a house where most of the music played is not from the 21st or even from the 20th century, the artists are “bringing something extremely contemporary in relationship to a work from the past.”He said he would love to see the initiative spread to other opera houses around the world, as was the intention of the couple who conceived it.“It’s almost like a model that they created,” he said. More