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      At 200, Bruckner Is More Popular Than Ever. Why?

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      Seven conductors share what it’s like to lead Anton Bruckner’s monumental symphonies, and why they resonate today.Bruckner, Bruckner, everywhere.There was a time, as recently as three or four decades ago, when this composer was a relative rarity, especially outside Central Europe. His reputation preceded him. He was a religious man alien to the modern world, the author of monumental symphonies that many listeners found monumentally dull.He was a provincial, uncouth, hardly a sophisticate like Brahms or Mahler. There was the forbidding editorial history of his nine (or is that 11? 18?) symphonies, and the lingering unease at his adoption by Nazi propagandists. If Bruckner was never exactly absent from the repertoire, he was long its resident eccentric.Even if some listeners still struggle with this music, though, there has always been a band of Bruckner devotees among scholars, critics and musicians. “There is no doubt that if people once grow fond of Bruckner, they grow very fond of him,” the editor of Gramophone magazine said nearly a century ago. And lately, more and more people seem to have grown very fond of him indeed.Performances of Bruckner’s symphonies seem more common than ever, and not just because this year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. Recordings come out constantly, with offerings that include fresh takes on period instruments and entire cycles from our most esteemed ensembles. It used to be that Bruckner had to be programmed with Mozart to draw a crowd; now he carries enough weight to bring Messiaen or Ligeti along with him. Attitudes have changed; clichés have quietened. Observers once talked of the “Bruckner Problem.” Now, we live in the Bruckner Moment.Conductors have played a major part in this transformation. Many of those working today are not just fond of Bruckner, but truly love his scores. For some, a performance of one comes close to a transcendent experience. Gone are the days when Bruckner was the preserve of the grizzled, graying maestro: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, for example, recorded the Seventh when he was just 31. Studying the music earlier in their careers, conductors have more opportunities to perform it; as technical standards have risen, even unheralded orchestras can give persuasive accounts of works that once posed challenges.So, what is Bruckner’s music like to conduct? Why do his symphonies, the expression of a deep Catholic faith, resonate so loudly in an increasingly secular age? How have these long, complicated works grown so remarkably in stature while our attention spans have become so brief? In interviews, seven conductors offered their thoughts; here are edited excerpts from those conversations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise

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      The band, Varihnaz, has gained fans by offering an alternative to China’s hyper-polished, fast-paced modern life, with songs about pesticides and poultry raising.Before setting out on his band’s first national tour, before recording another album and before appearing on a major television network, Ba Nong had one task: finishing the summer harvest.Standing in a field edged by rolling hills, two days before the first tour date in late September, Ba Nong, the frontman of the Chinese band Varihnaz, looked over the yellowed remnants of the rice stalks he had spent the past few months tending.“The land gets to rest, and I get to go play,” he said.Planning around the harvest may be an unconventional way to manage an ascendant music career, but Varihnaz is an unconventional band.For its members — two farmers and a former bricklayer from rural Guangxi in southwestern China — the land and their music are inseparable. Rather than the usual staples of love and longing, their lyrics dwell on pesticides and poultry rearing.Varihnaz means “fields filled with fragrant rice flowers,” in the language of Guangxi’s Zhuang ethnic minority. To fans, the group offers a refreshing break from China’s hyper-commercialized popular entertainers, with music about a simpler, slower way of life, an alternative to the intense competition of modern Chinese life.Ba Nong hopes his music helps people consider shrugging off mainstream expectations themselves. “The more tolerant and developed a society is, the more diverse its lifestyles should be, too,” said the musician, who is 44.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Music Industry Is Hoping Halloween Can Be the New Christmas

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      Eyeing the big business of holiday music, a few of pop’s major players are trying to expand the market for Halloween hits.When Ashnikko was growing up in North Carolina, their family told them that Halloween was satanic. But for each of the last six years, the alt-pop rapper and singer (who uses she/they pronouns) has observed what remains a fairly unusual tradition: releasing a single tied to a day better known for costumes and candy.This year’s track is the final entry in a seasonal series of gleefully lewd songs now packaged as an EP, “Halloweenie I-VI,” and available on “oxblood red” vinyl. Although perhaps not especially appropriate for a trick-or-treat night with the kids, the set reflects its creator’s idea of the holiday as a space for freedom through the grotesque.“I feel very passionately about Halloween music,” Ashnikko said, noting the day’s roots in the Celtic harvest festival Samhain as well as its prominence in L.G.B.T.Q. history. “It’s camp. It’s carnal. It’s macabre. It’s, like, silly. It’s the only holiday where all of those get to exist at once.”It’s also an $11.6 billion business, one that pop’s major players are increasingly tapping into. Ashnikko’s six “Halloweenie” songs have racked up a combined 100.3 million on-demand streams in the United States as of Oct. 17, according to the tracking service Luminate.The Weeknd, who hosted a haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood two years ago, has returned with “Nightmare Trilogy,” a maze with a soundtrack from the singer. It opened eight days earlier than in 2019.“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Jazz Musicians Like Louis Armstrong Paid Homage to Trains With Music

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      Jazz lovers worldwide know well the passion that Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong had for trains, especially for the elegant Pullman cars that toted them to gigs across the country. Within the velvet-appointed sleeping carriages, African American porters shined the musicians’ shoes, nursed their hangovers, clipped their hair and served them mint juleps and Welsh rarebit — the same service afforded wealthy white passengers.In return, the maestros composed their now famous songs of homage to trains. There’s Duke’s throbbing “Happy Go Lucky Local,” the Count’s bow to the “Super Chief” and Satchmo’s romantic rendering of “Mail Train Blues.” But few fans appreciated the real reason these jazz legends worshiped not just the railroad generally, but George Pullman’s sleeper car: It saved them from the threat of terrifying violence.In that Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Just getting out of an automobile or bus to look for a meal and a bed could prove perilous in unfamiliar cities below the Mason-Dixon line. Wrong choices sometimes led to berating, beating or worse, with racial violence reaching new peaks in the early 1900s. Even the music makers’ fame couldn’t fully protect them. Only on the Pullman cars, where they were served by fellow African Americans, could they truly relax while on the road.“To avoid problems, we used to charter two Pullman sleeping cars and a 70-foot baggage car,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 memoir, “Music Is My Mistress.” “Everywhere we went in the South, we lived in them.”Duke Ellington’s band members on a train in 1941. In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Otto F. Hess Collection / New York Public LibraryThe Count Basie Orchestra did, too. Traveling in stylish Pullmans “was my piece of cake,” Basie recalled in his 1985 autobiography, “Good Morning Blues.” “Lots of times, instead of me getting into my bed, I used to sit and look out the window most of the night as we rambled from one place to another. That was music to me.” More

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      DJ Clark Kent, Who Introduced Jay-Z to the Notorious B.I.G., Dies at 58

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      He was a producer and club D.J. who helped rappers find their voices and fortunes, and who later became known as a raconteur of hip-hop history.Antonio Franklin, known as DJ Clark Kent, a widely respected hip-hop insider for four decades who had influential relationships with many leading rappers, died on Thursday at his home in Greenbrook, a township in northern New Jersey. He was 58. The cause was colon cancer, his wife, Kesha (Vernon) Franklin, said.Mr. Franklin’s career followed the trajectory of hip-hop itself. He entered the scene just as it was taking shape, in New York in the 1980s, and he reached prime time when rap itself did, in the mid-90s. After being a club D.J. for years, he moved on to work as a producer and took jobs with Atlantic Records and Motown.In 1995, he produced a rap classic — and his first hit song — with “Player’s Anthem” by Junior M.A.F.I.A., a group formed by the Notorious B.I.G., who also appeared on the track. The song became a breakout single for the group and introduced Lil’ Kim to the international hip-hop audience.The next year, he produced three songs on Jay-Z’s debut album, “Reasonable Doubt.” His most noteworthy contributions were to the song “Brooklyn’s Finest.” Mr. Franklin provided the vocals for the hook, and he suggested to Jay-Z and his manager, Damon Dash, that they include Notorious B.I.G. on the track. The two somewhat hesitantly agreed — without realizing that Mr. Franklin had already asked Notorious B.I.G. to wait downstairs. The collaboration took place instantly.That kind of behind-the-scenes orchestration was ordinary for Mr. Franklin. In 1998, he saw a young man who went by Shyne freestyling in a barbershop, then introduced him to Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, who signed him to a record deal on the spot.“I practically knew every rapper before they made their records,” Mr. Franklin told the pop culture publication Complex. “They wanted to be familiar with the D.J.s and what was happening in hip-hop. I was happening in hip-hop.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Claire Daly, Master of the Baritone Saxophone, Dies at 66

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      She was celebrated for both her playing and her love of the jazz community. “My life in music,” she said recently, “is the smartest thing I’ve done.”Claire Daly, who was regarded by both her fellow musicians and critics as a standard-bearer on the baritone saxophone, died on Tuesday on a friend’s farm in Longmont, Colo. She was 66.The cause was squamous cell cancer of the neck and head, said the saxophonist Dave Sewelson, a longtime friend.Thanks to her flexibility on an ungainly instrument and her expressive precision as a soloist, Ms. Daly was a frequent winner of critics’ polls from the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat magazine.Thanking the journalists’ group when she received its 2024 award for best baritone saxophonist, she wrote in May on Facebook: “Kudos to all the baritone players — we get to play bari! We are the lucky ones. My life in music is the smartest thing I’ve done.”She spent many of the early years of her career playing both jazz and rock in all-female ensembles. Her sturdy playing formed the foundation of the original Diva Jazz Orchestra, which from its founding in 1992 established itself as one of the most potent big bands in jazz, gender notwithstanding.She left Diva after seven years, tending thereafter toward small ensembles. She collaborated frequently with the pianist Joel Forrester in the quartet People Like Us, with the experimental pop vocalist Nora York, and with Mr. Sewelson in the bottom-heavy trio Two Sisters Inc. (its other member was the bassist Dave Hofstra).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Met Opera Doesn’t Catch Fire

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      The energy in Verdi’s classic must come from the singing, but the cast of this revival fails to convey the work’s passion.Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” begins with a group of soldiers keeping a weary patrol. “Drive off the sleep that hangs heavy on our eyelids,” they sing, begging their commander to entertain them with a story.His spine-tingling tale riles them up. But the sleepiness never quite lifts from the revival of “Il Trovatore” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoon. While this was only the first of 12 performances of David McVicar’s cement-gray staging — a long run — already on Saturday there was the worn-out feeling of a show ready to rest.The conductor Daniele Callegari kept things flowing in the orchestra pit. But particularly in the operas of the Italian bel canto tradition from which “Il Trovatore” (1853) emerged, the energy — in this piece, it’s closer to crazed passion — must come from the singing.The tenor Michael Fabiano is usually the kind of artist who provides that energy, even if his voice can seem tensely pressed out rather than smoothly natural. As Manrico on Saturday, though, he tended listless, sounding strained from his first offstage song. He occasionally made some attractively plangent sounds, but couldn’t conjure this character’s moody restlessness.As Azucena, the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sang with neither the raw power nor the varied, surprising colors needed to make this long-suffering woman’s plight feel truly central to the story. Igor Golovatenko, a baritone who has made a strong impression at the Met in Russian works and, last season, in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” was gruffer than usual on Saturday as Count di Luna.Fabiano and Willis-Sorensen. As Leonora, she kindled some of the passion the production was otherwise lacking. Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera“Il balen,” his monologue about his consuming love for the noblewoman Leonora, should unfold in long, aching lines but here was tired and blunt. Even putting a leading man, the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, in the supporting role of Ferrando didn’t end up seeming like luxury casting; this part wants richer depths than Green’s voice provided on Saturday.The show did give reassuring signs about the continued health of the Met’s chorus under its new director, Tilman Michael. That group of soldiers early on sounded hearty and believably frightened, and the women of Leonora’s convent sang with evocative mistiness.Best among the soloists was the soprano Rachel Willis-Sorensen as Leonora. She wasn’t entirely comfortable when agility was required, and she didn’t have the vocal heft and commitment to give the “Miserere” in the final act its full stature. But along with some light-filled high notes, there’s a gentle creaminess to her tone that made the aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” feel earnest and true.Thanks to Willis-Sorensen, some embers of passion glowed near the opera’s end. But it was too little, too late, for a performance that never caught fire.Il TrovatoreContinues through Dec. 6 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years

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      Deep in the vault of the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan on a late-spring day, the curator Robinson McClellan was sorting through a collection of cultural memorabilia. There were postcards signed by Picasso, a vintage photograph of a French actress and letters from Brahms and Tchaikovsky.When McClellan came across Item No. 147, he froze:The Morgan Library & MuseumIt was a pockmarked musical scrap the size of an index card…… with tiny notation and a conspicuous name.The piece was marked “Valse,” or waltz.And a name was written in cursive across the top: Chopin.“I thought, ‘What’s going on here? What could this be?’” McClellan said. “I didn’t recognize the music.”McClellan, who is also a composer, snapped a photo of the manuscript and played it at home on a digital piano. Could it really be Chopin? He had his doubts: The work was unusually volcanic, opening with quiet, dissonant notes that erupt into crashing chords. He sent a photograph to Jeffrey Kallberg, a leading Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.“My jaw dropped,” Kallberg said. “I knew I had never seen this before.”After testing the manuscript’s paper and ink, analyzing its handwriting and musical style, and consulting outside experts, the Morgan has come to a momentous conclusion: The work is likely an unknown waltz by Frédéric Chopin, the great fantasist of the Romantic era, the first such discovery in more than half a century.Hear the full Chopin waltz, performed by Lang Lang at Steinway Hall in Manhattan.Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times More