Music

The British musician has long collaborated on videos with her sister. Her new album, “Painless,” stems from exploring her lineage, and what exactly it means to “be from somewhere.”Sometime last year, while on vacation with her two sisters, the British musician Nilüfer Yanya was listening to the mastered recording of her second album, “Painless,” for the first time.“We were getting really excited,” her older sister, Molly Daniel, recalled on a recent video call, especially about “Stabilise,” an antic number built atop a guitar riff as intricate and tightly wound as a labyrinth. “I was like manically dancing around and directing the video,” Daniel said, “Like, then you run here, then you’re on a bike, then you do this, then you’re in a car.”Eventually, Daniel did direct the video, in which Yanya jogs and cruises around London while insisting defiantly, “I’m not waiting for no one to save me.” The collaboration was an extension of the powerful role family has played in Yanya’s music since she first picked up the guitar — a gift for a teenage Daniel that landed in her sister’s hands. “Each time you’re pushing the limits in your head of what you can achieve and what you can do together,” Yanya, 26, said in a separate video call. “My idea of what’s possible and realistic now is so much bigger than when I started out.”Many of the lyrics on “Painless,” Yanya’s excellent new album out Friday, deal with what she described as the connection between your “environment and the way you feel or the way you think about something.” It was created at a time when Yanya was re-examining her lineage and her ties to her homeland, an experience that forms an unspoken undercurrent connecting these songs.Yanya’s parents are both visual artists: her mother is a textile designer and her father a painter whose work has been exhibited in the British Museum. Daniel — a filmmaker, photographer and creative director — has directed every one of her sister’s music videos, beginning with the moody, low-budget clip for “Small Crimes,” from Yanya’s 2016 debut LP. Her younger sister, Elif, is a visual artist and designer.Calling from her manager’s office in London on a February morning, clad in a kelly-green turtleneck sweater and wired earbuds, Yanya recalled weekend family outings in West London and sketching in museums, but added that her upbringing wasn’t completely bohemian. “When people say, ‘Oh, you’ve got artist parents,’ they imagine you painting on the walls and being real hippies,” she said. “But they were quite strict, serious about homework and school.”Once Yanya got ahold of the guitar, she played constantly. When she started performing at local shows and open mic nights, Daniel glimpsed a part of her sister’s inner life that she’d never before seen. “It’s like, oh, there’s this whole side of you that we don’t know,” she said.In conversation, Yanya is soft-spoken and thoughtful but not necessarily shy; Daniel described her as “calmly confident.” (And tirelessly musical: “She hums 24/7.”) Since her first EP, “Small Crimes” from 2016, Yanya’s music has often sounded like someone’s private stream-of-consciousness externalized in the legible grammar of well-crafted melodies. Her singing voice can move deftly from a low, smoky hush to a suddenly impassioned wail.Yanya’s breakout came with her acclaimed 2019 album “Miss Universe,” an eclectic collection of spiky indie-rock, singer-songwriter meditations and even a few jazz-influenced compositions. The album’s sounds were so varied, Yanya said, that she decided to come up with a thematic concept to tie it all together. And so “WWAY Health” was born — a fictitious self-help service that allowed Yanya, in surreal and darkly hilarious interludes spaced throughout the album, to lampoon modern wellness culture. “Congratulations, you have been chosen to experience ‘paradise,’ as a part of our What Will You Experience? Giveaway,” she intones in a robotic voice on one such track. “Don’t forget to leave a review in the comments section.”“It just seems like a waste of an opportunity not to work with my family when I can,” Yanya said, “because everyone seems to make cool things.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesWhen she began writing “Painless,” though, she wanted the album’s through line to be not thematic so much as “a more cohesive, signature sound.” Skittish electronic-influenced beats, textured guitar tones and introspective lyrics are woven together on “Painless” to create an immersive listening experience. The songs are enlivened by subtle flourishes and small moments of upended expectations, like the guitar distortion that blossoms after the final chorus of the record’s centerpiece “Midnight Sun.” “In some kind of way I am lost,” Yanya sings with a stirring mix of melancholy and hope on the affecting final track. “In another life I was not.”“Painless” was created when Yanya was reconsidering her family history. Her father is Turkish, and moved from Istanbul in the 1980s to work in London’s art scene. Her mother is of Irish and Barbadian descent, and the ancestors on Yanya’s maternal grandfather’s side were enslaved. Though she always knew this, Yanya said it has recently caused her to think more deeply about her own sense of place, her relationship to England, and what exactly it means to “be from somewhere.”After George Floyd’s murder, Yanya’s aunt was inspired to research and map out their family’s history more meticulously than ever before, and even to meet with the living ancestors of her family’s enslavers. The experience affected Yanya deeply. “I used to feel like my family’s history wasn’t necessarily tied into the history of this country, and I felt I didn’t have as many ties to where I was,” she said. “But now I’m seeing those ties, and they’re a bit more insidious than I’d imagined.”On Instagram, Yanya has publicized the work of Tteach Plaques, an organization that seeks to “contextualize statues, buildings and institutions enriched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” Last August, Tteach installed a plaque in Bristol Cathedral honoring the life of Yanya’s great-great-great grandfather John Isaac Daniel, who was born enslaved to a British family that owned sugar plantations in Barbados. The exhibit featured photographs and biographies of his descendants, including Yanya and her siblings.Before this reckoning, Yanya and her family also sought to demystify the process of making art. In 2015, Daniel started Artists in Transit, a program that provides art supplies to communities in need. Before the pandemic, Daniel and Yanya were bringing art projects to migrant families in Greece, and in the past two years they’ve been focused on outreach closer to home, in London. “You can make a career” out of art, she said, “and you can make jobs out of it, so it should always be an option for everybody.”Her family members continue to set this example for her, and even as Yanya gears up to release and tour her second full-length record, she remains curious about art forms other than music. Last year, she took an evening printmaking course taught by her father at a nearby college. “You’re learning how to print onto metal plates, etching into it, and using acid,” she said. “It’s a very technical process, so that was really cool.”What best prepared her for a career in music, she said, was getting to observe her parents in the everyday rhythms of an artist’s life: driving to shows, unpacking materials, hanging paintings. “You can kind of see the labor behind it that you don’t really think about,” she explained. “As I was growing up, seeing how much time they put into their work and practice really solidified in my head that this is work and it doesn’t really stop. It’s not something where you get somewhere and you stop doing it. It’s constantly going on, and constantly changing.”“It just seems like a waste of an opportunity not to work with my family when I can,” she added, “because everyone seems to make cool things.” More

Herbert Blomstedt, 94 and leading the New York Philharmonic this week, discusses the famous opening of the Fifth Symphony.Herbert Blomstedt just keeps on going. The Illinois-born, Swedish conductor is 94, and he maintains a schedule that musicians half his age might blanch at.At the start of February, Blomstedt was in San Francisco, where he was the music director from 1985 to 1995. A week later, Cleveland. Then Boston, conducting Mozart and a new edition of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony that is dedicated to Blomstedt himself. Next week, he repeats that program in Chicago.This week, Blomstedt leads the New York Philharmonic in two symphonies that testify to the strength of the human will: Nielsen’s Fourth and Beethoven’s Fifth.Blomstedt’s service to Scandinavian music has long been lauded, and his recordings of works by Berwald, Nielsen, Sibelius and Stenhammar still repay repeated listening. If his Beethoven has been a little less prominent, that is only because its virtues are not of the flashy or radical kind.Although slightly different in tempos and textures as a result of Blomstedt’s adoption of the new editions of Beethoven’s scores that came out in the 1990s, both symphony cycles he has recorded — with the Staatskapelle Dresden from 1975 to 1980 and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, Germany, from 2014 to 2017 — remain beacons of good taste, with a distinctive spiritual power shining through the music. In both sets, that’s particularly true of the Fifth, which may be less brutally violent than under other conductors but has a merciful empathy to its relative restraint.Asked to choose a page from the Fifth’s score, Blomstedt went for the first, which announces the four-note motif that dominates the symphony’s passage from darkness to light. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.The opening page of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, whose first four notes make up one of the most famous motifs in all of music.Bärenreiter-Verlag, KasselThis is probably the most famous opening in all of music. But is it deceptively difficult to conduct?It’s very difficult. We are all haunted by this saying of Anton Schindler’s, that fate is knocking on the door. Of course, we cannot knock on the door so fast, so it becomes [singing slowly] “baaam-baaam-baaam baaaaaam.” That’s obviously not what Beethoven wanted. On the top of the page it says “Allegro con brio.” If the first bar is like that, it’s not con brio at all; it’s allegro comodo or allegro pesante or something like that.It’s also strange that there are no staccato dots there. Some of my colleagues are very conscientious; they play it [singing smoothly] “duhduhduh duhhh” because there are no dots. So that’s also another subject that can get heated.The new Bärenreiter score now has a metronome mark, in parentheses, because he wrote the marking some years later. The marking is quite shocking for those who were used to listening to Wilhelm Furtwängler or his followers, who are about twice as slow.Then, the second fermata is longer than the first one, tied over to an extra bar. The question is, why is that? So, there are many things to discuss.What are you aiming for yourself, then?The first point about the tempo is that in earlier editions of the symphonies, there were no metronome marks, so that authorized slow tempos. Of course, there were books; you could go to the musicological literature in the library and find out. Now, it is right at the top of the page, even if it is in parentheses. It’s part of the composition. And that makes a difference.When I was young — and it’s almost a hundred years ago now — the attitude toward the scores of Classical composers was much more casual than it is today. It cannot go so far that we are put in a straitjacket; that does not help the music very much. We know that Beethoven was himself very differentiated in tempos. He might start in one tempo, and after a few bars there was another tempo. Schindler reports on this; in that case, he’s quite a reliable source.Before I started conducting, I was a musicologist, so I’m trained to think like this. I’m sure Beethoven wanted the tempo as it stands. I heard so many crazy theories about what he meant with this. Some say that his metronome was going too slow, but I don’t believe that, because you can check the metronome by looking at your watch. Since the new editions have come, I’m convinced that he meant the metronome markings as they stand.Of course, I’m not alone in that. With a couple of exceptions, I think the markings are ideal. You just have to change yourself and not do what you find from tradition. You had heard Furtwängler or Bruno Walter do it, so that must be right. No, it is not right. The right thing is what he wrote.What we think Beethoven actually wanted has changed dramatically over the course of your career, with new research and shifting tastes. How do you reconcile that?That’s normal. I don’t have to apologize for that. My first ideals were what I heard Furtwängler do. I heard him many times, in rehearsal and in concerts. It shaped my musical world; it was magic. But, little by little, I discovered that there are other ways to interpret Beethoven’s music that are at least equally motivated in what he wrote.It’s not easy for a conductor, or any musician who has the task of interpreting this music, to get onto Beethoven’s wavelength, because you have so many memories, so many ideas about the music from what you have heard. You have to free yourself of that if you are looking forward. It requires that you change your mind, but I think that is what we must do. Once you are accustomed to that, you discover new expressions in the music that perhaps were not so evident a hundred years ago.What about the fermata over the last of the four notes in the motif?From a musicological standpoint, the fermata shows that the tempo does not exist anymore. What really says how long a fermata is, in this case, is how long the bow is. When the bow is at the end, you have to stop, unless you want to do two bows, which some people do. I think that misses the point, because to hold the fermata with a single down bow requires great control of muscles. If you do two, you don’t have to have that tension in your arm; it’s too easy.Why do you think Beethoven remains such an obsession for so many of us?One could write a whole book about that, but one thing to me is characteristic. We know that Beethoven was a sufferer, but he never expresses his suffering in his music, like Mahler does. You can hear it in every bar of Mahler — I’m suffering, I’m suffering, I’m suffering — and it’s wonderful, the way he does it.Beethoven was another type of person. He doesn’t put his emotions on display, and that makes it more objective. It can represent the suffering of everyone, not only his, but mine, the suffering of the whole society. The suffering of today, in Ukraine for instance. It could symbolize anything. That helps it to outlive the personal situation of the composer, or the personal situation of the interpreter. It’s something that we go through, as humans. More

Epic Games is acquiring an online music platform that has been embraced by musicians for its eclectic offerings and a payment system that favors artists.The world of independent music got a jolt on Wednesday when Bandcamp, the platform that has been a haven for musicians during the pandemic, announced that it had been acquired by Epic Games, the company behind blockbuster online video games like Fortnite.Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a statement, Epic said that Bandcamp “will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.”While a small player compared to giants like Spotify, Apple or YouTube, Bandcamp has become a favorite outlet among musicians for letting them control how their music is shared and sold and giving artists the bulk of the income they receive from those transactions. According to Bandcamp, artists collect an average of 82 percent of every sale, and the company says that since it went online in 2008, its payments to artists and labels are “closing in on $1 billion.” By comparison, last year Spotify said it had paid out $5 billion to music rights holders in 2020 alone.For listeners, Bandcamp has also become a cherished smorgasbord, filled with obscure but wonderful music they may find nowhere else.But as streaming has become the dominant format for music, artists have begun complaining, loudly, that they are not receiving their fair share of the bounty. According to industry estimates, Spotify pays record labels, music publishers and other rights holders about one-third of a cent for every click of a song; what portion of that money makes its way into a musician’s pocket is determined by their deals with those labels and publishers.On Bandcamp, on the other hand, artists can upload their own work and set the pricing rules for downloads of their own work — pay-what-you-wish pricing is common. During the pandemic, Bandcamp has waived its fees once a month on “Bandcamp Fridays,” bringing the company waves of goodwill. Even more surprising, Bandcamp says it has been profitable since 2012. (Last year, Spotify had $10.7 billion in revenue and lost about $276 million, according to company reports.)Epic Games, which is based in Cary, N.C., and is privately owned, said little about its plans for music, and a company spokeswoman declined to answer further questions about the deal. But Epic’s statement on Wednesday indicated that it was interested in Bandcamp as a direct-to-consumer marketplace. “Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist-friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money,” the company wrote.Fortnite, Epic’s flagship game, has been one of the most innovative outlets for music in video games, allowing artists to appear virtually, often in elaborately produced segments In April 2020, the rapper Travis Scott made what was widely seen as a breakthrough appearance, drawing 28 million players to his virtual performance. For Halloween that year, the Latin pop star J Balvin gave a campy concert dressed as a green-haired Frankenstein’s monster, backed by dancers in costume as ghosts and zombie Cyclopes.Epic has also taken center stage in one of the most high-profile debates in current tech policy. The company sued Apple in 2020, saying that the terms of its App Store — which takes payment commissions of up to 30 percent — were unfair. Epic also fought the public-relations battle around that lawsuit with slick, meme-ready content like “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite,” a parody of Apple’s famous “1984” TV ad that introduced its Mac computer as a joyful disrupter of gray tech monopolies.Last year, in a split decision, a federal judge ordered Apple to give app developers a way for their customers to pay for services that could bypass Apple’s system. Both Apple and Epic Games have appealed that decision.In a statement on Bandcamp’s website, Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp’s chief executive and co-founder, seemed to pre-emptively dispel worries about his platform’s future, and about its value to artists.“Bandcamp will keep operating as a stand-alone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team,” Diamond wrote, telling artists that “you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site.” The deal with Epic Games, he said, would help Bandcamp expand internationally and “push development forward across Bandcamp.”As news of the deal spread, some independent artists sounded a note of cautious optimism. Tom Gray of the British band Gomez, who has been a leading critic of Spotify and of the streaming economy in general, tweeted a request for Epic Games: “Please think seriously and long,” he wrote, “about whatever you do with the one place independent artists can always rely on for direct income from recorded music.” More

Michael Tilson Thomas, who helped found the New World Symphony in 1987, said his condition was prompting him to step down as its artistic director.The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas announced on Wednesday that he would step down as artistic director of the New World Symphony, a prestigious training orchestra for young artists in Miami that he helped found, as he battles an aggressive form of brain cancer.Saying he was “taking stock of my life,” Thomas, 77, the former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said he was reducing his administrative duties to focus on his health.“I now see that it is time for me to consider what level of work and responsibilities I can sustain in the future,” he said in a statement.In the statement, Thomas provided for the first time details about his condition, which he announced last summer, when he canceled a series of engagements. He said he had glioblastoma, one of the most lethal forms of brain cancer; had undergone surgery last year to remove a tumor; and had also received chemotherapy and radiation treatments.“Currently the cancer is in check,” he said. “But the future is uncertain as glioblastoma is a stealthy adversary. Its recurrence is, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception.”The New World Symphony, where Thomas will remain artistic director laureate, praised the “genius of his vision and the strength of his leadership” in a statement, in which the chairman of its board, Will Osborne, said, “We are honored to have his continued presence and involvement.”Thomas said he planned to continue conducting in the United States and Europe. In the coming months he is scheduled to lead more than two dozen concerts, including with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. On May 6 and 7 he is scheduled to be in Miami to lead the New World Symphony in the Fifth Symphony of Mahler, one of his specialties.Since his surgery, Thomas has led 20 concerts, appearing with the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic. Audiences have greeted him with hearty ovations, and he has seemed relatively energetic.“I will continue to compose, to write and to mull over your thoughts and mine,” Thomas said in his statement. “I’m planning more time to wonder, wander, cook and spend time with loved ones — two-legged and four-. Life is precious.” More

The pop star’s second album, “Future Nostalgia,” is ambitious and impressive. Onstage, the production didn’t match the LP’s ecstasy.Many of the best Dua Lipa songs start with an easily absorbable concept — “Physical,” “Levitating,” “Cool” — and emanate outward from there. Her music is fleet, stomping and appealingly icy: industrial-grade club-pop that’s mindful of history while flaunting the latest in polish and panache.The songs are very tightly wound, though. Lipa is a lightly regal singer who often sounds removed from the hiss and purr of her production, as if she’s performing to the track and not with it. Great dance-floor-oriented music often connotes abandon, but Lipa exudes control. She’s a pop superstar, but not quite a full pop personality.Maybe that’s why on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, she, like the other 20,000 or so people in attendance, came to sing along to Dua Lipa songs.That is, naturally, what many have been doing for the past few years, especially the two since the release of Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia,” one of the first excellent albums of the Covid era. It was, for a little while, the soundtrack of our collective hallucination about the possibilities that had been wrested away by social isolation, a set of clinically ecstatic, pointedly unbendable anthems designed for megaclubs that wouldn’t reopen for months or more.Given the sheer popularity of Lipa’s music, the show was modest.The New York TimesIn many ways, Lipa, 26, is a pop superstar for diminished times. From Madonna to Katy Perry to Lady Gaga to Rihanna to Billie Eilish, the most successful figures in the last few decades of pop music built worlds. They are philosophers of the body and aesthetics as much as sound.Lipa’s music doesn’t ask questions, though, or suggest alternate interpretations. It is — especially on songs like the buoyant “New Rules” and “Electricity” (made with Mark Ronson and Diplo, working under the Chicago house music-evoking name Silk City) — perhaps overly studious, though in the best way. At times, Lipa sounds like she’s doing devoted analysis of the club-pop of the early 1990s, not a nostalgist so much as a historical re-enactor.But Lipa’s ambition isn’t academic-scaled, it’s domination-focused. And that requires something more than pinpoint recreations. This performance, part of her Future Nostalgia Tour, had the thrill of listening to Lipa songs on the radio — a wonderful way to lose yourself when you have to keep your eyes on the road.Given the sheer popularity of Lipa’s music, the show was modest, a concept-less, box-checking production that severely underplayed Lipa’s stadium-size goals. A meager arrangement of balloons dropped from the rafters during “One Kiss.” Lipa and her dancers oozed through a pro forma umbrella routine during “New Rules.” Later, a handful of orbs and stars limply dangled from the ceiling. During “We’re Good,” Lipa sat on the stage singing, while nearby, an inflatable lobster hovered … menacingly? Not quite that. More woozily. (The accompanying animation on the big screen at the back of the stage recalled Perry’s cheekiness, which is not generally part of Lipa’s arsenal.)Throughout the night, Lipa was flanked by dancers and roller skaters.The New York TimesThe New York TimesThroughout the night, Lipa was flanked by up to 10 dancers and two roller skaters. She is a labored dancer, choosing choreography that emphasizes small, tart movements while telegraphing big sentiment: a power stomp out to the end of the runway on “New Rules,” an extreme dose of hair whipping on “Future Nostalgia.” But rarely did the theater of the presentation match the drama of the songs themselves.As for the songs, the arrangements were faithful and emphatic — they filled the space that the happenings onstage did not. Lipa never sang more forcefully than the arsenal of backup singers and prerecorded vocals that were bolstering her. On her albums, she sings with an occasional growl, but whenever those moments arose here, she appeared to pull back from the rigor. (Lipa’s dancers were given an elaborate video introduction at the beginning of the show. At the end of the night, she introduced her band members by name, but — pointedly? — not her backup singers.)It was not unpleasant — “Break My Heart” was cheerful, “Don’t Start Now” was punchy, “Cool” was ethereal. But these were closed loops, reinforcement of feelings already experienced more than jumping-off points for growth. All in all, inhibition outweighed risk — a perfect recreation of a time when we were all inside, wondering if we’d ever be set free.“Future Nostalgia” was, for a little while, the soundtrack of our collective hallucination about the possibilities that had been wrested away by social isolation.The New York Times More

The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the diva Anna Netrebko have lost engagements because of their ties to Putin, as geopolitics and music collide once again.A conductor, perceived to be aligned with the opposition in wartime, pushed from his podium in disgrace.Another, two decades later, offered a prestigious position, only to withdraw under pressure after protests of his ties to a despised foreign regime.The first, Karl Muck, a German-Swiss maestro, led the Boston Symphony Orchestra until he was arrested and interned, in what is now widely viewed as a shameful example of anti-German hysteria at the start of World War I.The profound musical legacy of the second — Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazi Party but was essentially its court conductor, dooming his appointment to the New York Philharmonic — still struggles to emerge from his association with Hitler.How will we think of Valery Gergiev a century from now?One of the world’s leading conductors, he has in just the last week lost a series of engagements and positions, including as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, for not disavowing the war in Ukraine being waged by his longtime friend and ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.The swift unraveling of his international career — and the decision of Anna Netrebko, a Russian diva who is one of the biggest stars in opera, to withdraw from performances amid renewed attention to her own ties to Mr. Putin — raises a host of difficult questions.What is the point at which cultural exchange — always a blur between being a humanizing balm and a tool of propaganda, a co-opting of music’s supposed neutrality — becomes unbearable? What is sufficient distance from authoritarian leadership?And what is sufficient disavowal, particularly in a context when speaking up could threaten the safety of artists or their families?Mr. Gergiev, with his quasi-governmental role as general and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, is closer to Furtwängler than to Muck. He has endorsed Mr. Putin in the past and promoted his policies with concerts in Russia and abroad. But when he has spoken — he has remained silent through this latest firestorm — he has tended to sound like Furtwängler, who longed to focus only on scores and said, “My job is music.”The legacy of the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler has been tainted by his association with Hitler.Teldec“Am not politician, but exponent of German music, which belongs to all humanity regardless of politics,” Furtwängler wrote in 1936, in clipped telegram style, withdrawing under pressure from the New York Philharmonic post.Classical music likes to think of itself this way: floating serenely above politics, in a realm of beauty and unity. Its repertory — so much of it composed in the distant past — seems insulated from present-day conflicts. What can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony do except good?But politics and music — a field in which Russian performers have long been stars — have swiftly collided since the invasion of Ukraine. The Mariinsky Orchestra’s tours have been canceled. On Sunday, the Metropolitan Opera announced that it would no longer engage with performers or other organizations that have voiced support for Mr. Putin. Presenters in the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands have announced the cancellations of performances by some artists who support Mr. Putin.Ms. Netrebko had engagements at the Bavarian State Opera canceled, and then announced that she planned to “step back from performing for the time being,” withdrawing from her upcoming dates at the Zurich Opera.The Russian diva Anna Netrebko and Mr. Gergiev appeared together with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2018.Lisi Niesner/ReutersThe artistic director in Zurich, Andreas Homoki, noted some of the complexities, welcoming a statement that Ms. Netrebko made opposing the war but suggesting that her failure to condemn Mr. Putin put her at odds with the opera house’s position. But Mr. Homoki took pains to note that his company did not “consider it appropriate to judge the decisions and actions of citizens of repressive regimes based on the perspective of those living in a Western European democracy.”In her first public statement on the war, in an Instagram post Saturday morning, Ms. Netrebko — who has long been criticized for her ties to Mr. Putin, and was photographed in 2014 holding a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine — initially seemed to be issuing the kind of statement that had been lacking from Mr. Gergiev.“First of all: I am opposed to this war.” So far, so good.“I am Russian and I love my country,” Ms. Netrebko went on, “but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering right now breaks my heart. I want this war to end and for people to be able to live in peace.”Though she conspicuously didn’t mention Mr. Putin, Ms. Netrebko’s words were simple and tender, a needle — love of her country and empathy for another — seemingly threaded.But unfortunately for those of us who have cherished her as a performer, there was more. In the next slide, she added that “forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right.”“I am not a political person,” she wrote, echoing the Furtwängler perspective. “I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist and my purpose is to unite people across political divides.”She then added to her Instagram story, alongside heart and praying-hands emojis, a text that used an expletive in reference to her Western critics, and said they were “as evil as blind aggressors.”So much for threading the needle. And a series of posts over the following days, which were later deleted, only muddied the waters further.What could have smoothed over criticism instead inflamed it. The politically outspoken pianist Igor Levit, who was born in Russia, did not mention Ms. Netrebko by name in his own Instagram post on Sunday morning, but wrote, “Being a musician does not free you from being a citizen, from taking responsibility, from being a grown-up.”“PS,” he added: “And never, never bring up music and your being a musician as an excuse. Do not insult art.”Ms. Netrebko performs at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe Met, where Ms. Netrebko is scheduled to star in Puccini’s “Turandot” this spring, seemed to have her in mind — along with a producing partnership with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow — when it made its announcement on Sunday.“While we believe strongly in the warm friendship and cultural exchange that has long existed between the artists and artistic institutions of Russia and the United States,” the company’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said in a video statement, “we can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him.”It’s true: Ms. Netrebko is not a politician, expert or otherwise. In this she is unlike Mr. Gergiev, who has repeatedly and explicitly worked as a government propagandist, leading battlefield concerts in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, in 2008, and in Palmyra after that Syrian site was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016. In Ossetia, he even led Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, completed during the German siege of that city in World War II and as charged a musical memorial as there is to Russian suffering.Mr. Gergiev conducting in Palmyra, after the ancient city was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016.Olga Balashova/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via Associated PressBut Ms. Netrebko is certainly a political actor — the kind of “political person” she denies being. Again and again in the past, she has voiced her political opinions, publicly if vaguely. (She said that she had been caught off-guard when she was handed the separatist flag in that 2014 photograph with a separatist leader, which was taken after she gave him a donation for a theater in a region controlled by separatists; that donation, she claimed at the time, was “not about politics.”)Ms. Netrebko can hold whichever flag she wants, of course. But she should not be surprised that there are consequences. In January 2015, after her Met performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” under Mr. Gergiev’s baton, a protester climbed onto the stage during her curtain call and unfurled a banner that called them “active contributors to Putin’s war against Ukraine.”The Met, which opened a performance this week with the Ukrainian national anthem, has left vague the way it intends to police its new test. But I hope the company will look at the existing record rather than requiring new, public words from artists who may have legitimate reasons of safety to remain silent about Mr. Putin and his actions. Eliciting — coercing, some might say — affirmative statements hardly seems the right way to oppose authoritarianism.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4A city is captured. More

Rian Johnson, Patti Smith, Alex Ross and others offer favorite highlights of a composer best known for his sprawling length.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas, Bach, the organ, mezzo-sopranos and music for dance.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the music of Richard Wagner, with very short tastes of his very long operas. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Rian Johnson, filmmakerThe problem with isolating a piece from any of Wagner’s operas is insidiously twofold: You’re going to miss (for my money) the real source of its power, and you’re not going to realize you’re missing it because the music is so damn good. Take the prelude from “Das Rheingold.” Put on good headphones, close your eyes, and it’ll transport you, I guarantee.But it wasn’t meant to live in a vacuum. Wagner is a storyteller, and when the piece sits in its proper place in the pre-curtain dark, birthing you from a pinprick of light into the blinding sun of elemental harmony whose theft will launch an epic, tragic saga of gods and betrayal and love — well, that’s the real stuff.“Das Rheingold”Vienna Philharmonic; Georg Solti, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Katharina Wagner, Bayreuth Wagner Festival artistic directorI grew up with the music of my great-grandfather, but until today the “Liebestod” is my favorite passage of “Tristan und Isolde.” Isolde expresses her deepest feelings and sings the most beatific passage with great euphoria. Birgit Nilsson, in the recording under Karl Böhm from the 1966 Bayreuth Festival, testifies to the dramatic power and passion of her performance, the size and fullness of her voice, the beauty and purity of her intonation, and her brilliant stage acting. She is rightly considered one of the most important singing personalities of her era.“Tristan und Isolde”(Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Michael Cooper, Times editorThis is the five minutes (well, the scene) that made me fall in love with Wagner. When I first heard it in a college music survey course I was already an opera fan, but I knew little about Wagner other than his antisemitism, his reputation for tedium and bombast, and, of course, Bugs Bunny and “Apocalypse Now.”This was not what I was expecting: The sheer beauty of the orchestra and the unexpected tenderness of a father’s loving, lullaby-like farewell to his daughter was a revelation. I became obsessed that year, investing in a whole “Ring” cycle (not cheap in the pre-streaming era); buying Ernest Newman’s book “The Wagner Operas” to guide me; and scoring a seat in the second-to-last row of the top tier at the Metropolitan Opera. This was the gateway drug to what became a not-too-unhealthy addiction.“Die Walküre”Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Vienna Philharmonic; Georg Solti, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Simon Callow, actor, director and ‘Being Wagner’ authorThe death of Siegfried, the hero in the “Ring” who was to have saved the world, draws out of Wagner an astounding panoply of orchestral sounds of infinite majesty and splendor. It also represents the climax of the system of leitmotifs — melodic and rhythmic fragments associated with particular aspects of characters and their emotional history. Wagner weaves them into the texture with cumulative power so that it is as if Siegfried’s entire past passes before our ears — his energy, his idealism, his passion, so that one feels that an entire life is being commemorated. At the same time, we mourn what might have been. The sense that we shall not look on his like again is deeply affecting.“Götterdämmerung”English National Opera Orchestra; Reginald Goodall, conductor (Chandos)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerYou might think of Richard Wagner as the composer of gods and myths, of the end of the world and a love that destroys — and you would be right. But if his sheer ambition makes him someone to be repulsed by and swept away with, in not quite equal measure, he was capable, too, of tenderness of the most affecting kind. His “Siegfried Idyll,” initially a private birthday gift to his second wife, Cosima, was first performed by a small ensemble at their home on Christmas morning in 1870; in the later, expanded orchestration we hear more often now, its ending is a touching depiction of blissful contentment — the warmest, most humane music he ever wrote.“Siegfried Idyll”Berlin Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Alex Ross, New Yorker critic and ‘Wagnerism’ authorWagner’s “Ring” is, simply put, a study in the futility of power, with the god Wotan as its chief exhibit. The crux of his fall comes at the beginning of his epic monologue in Act II of “Die Walküre,” after his wife, Fricka, has demolished his delusions. He cries, “O heilige Schmach!”: “O righteous shame! O shameful sorrow! … Infinite rage! Eternal grief!” Wagner’s orchestra delivers the sound of power grinding itself to pieces, with monstrous dissonances piling up over a drone of C. In Joseph Keilberth’s great 1955 “Ring” from Bayreuth, Hans Hotter is a howling pillar, magnificent in collapse.“Die Walküre”Hans Hotter, bass-baritone; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra; Joseph Keilberth, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Patti Smith, performerI have chosen Waltraud Meier’s exquisite performance of the “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde.” I was privileged to attend the premiere of the opera in December 2007 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Conducted by Daniel Barenboim and directed by Patrice Chéreau, it was the most beautiful and moving production of Wagner’s great romance I have experienced.Waltraud Meier is a fine actress as well as being one of our great singers. In this piece, she projects the full range of Isolde’s devotion, desire, madness and loss. She brought to her performance humility and expertise, comprehending fully the meaning of transcendent love.Backstage, I saw her in the shadows. She was yet spattered with Tristan’s blood and still contained in her countenance something of Isolde.“Tristan und Isolde”Waltraud Meier, soprano; Teatro alla Scala Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerDo Wagner’s operas feature almost endless melodies? Certainly. But he knew how to write conflict, too — sometimes even in short bursts. Take this climactic scene from Act II of “Lohengrin.” The plot is complex, but even if you don’t know what’s being said, you can feel the heat of the moment: the sorceress Ortrud, near the entrance to a church, barring the arrival of Elsa, there as a bride-to-be. The townspeople in the chorus gasp as these Real Housewives of Antwerp go at it regarding the comparative status of their mates; you may feel yourself in rapt league with those assembled voyeurs as you listen to the mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig and the soprano Elisabeth Grümmer.“Lohengrin”Vienna Philharmonic; Rudolf Kempe, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Celia Applegate, historianCompassion is at the core of “Parsifal,” Wagner’s last and, for many, greatest opera. The music of the prelude connects all living things in its embrace. It’s not heavenly music. It’s music of this world, expressing suffering, struggle, the inevitability of death and the peace of understanding and acceptance. Its slow tempo and gorgeous sounds draw you almost into a trance. But somehow, too, you feel the presence of all things on this earth — and our responsibility to care about it and for it.“Parsifal”Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Morris Robinson, bass“Das Rheingold” is just going along, with ebbs and flows, when suddenly, without warning, this incredibly loud, obtrusive, majestic musical theme “debos” its way into the score. Everyone — within the story and in the audience — realizes that something massive and potentially destructive is about to make an appearance.I’m thinking Incredible Hulk vibes, except Wagner has created a pair of Hulks, the brother giants Fasolt and Fafner. Having played Fasolt several times, I can assure you that the theme music brings the moment into focus, and also gets the singers pumped to go out and mentally invest in their characterization. I make it my goal to ensure that my vocal quality immediately following this fabulous introduction matches the intensity and volume of Wagner’s fabulous orchestration, which consists of extremely heavy brass and pulsating, pounding timpani.“Das Rheingold”Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; James Levine, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorOne word associated with Wagner is “cinematic,” in part because of his innovations at the Bayreuth Festival Theater — where the stage, surrounded in darkness, is given the focus of a silver screen, and where the hidden orchestra’s sound fills the auditorium like a Dolby system. But I also see film in his patient moments of diegetic music, such as when Tannhäuser returns from the orgiastic Venusberg, freshly earthbound. The orchestra fades, first to a clarinet solo, then seamlessly to an English horn, standing in for the pipe of a shepherd, who sings an a cappella ode until pilgrims pass through with a hymn. Wagner weaves the pipe and chorus, beautifully but with a sense of naturalism: The orchestra doesn’t even come back until Tannhäuser, overwhelmed by what he sees, exclaims, “Praise to You, almighty God!”“Tannhäuser”Ying Fang, soprano; Johan Botha, tenor; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus; James Levine, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporter“Der Fliegende Holländer” is the opera that launched Wagner’s career. He was 29 when it premiered in Dresden, and it is generally regarded as his greatest early achievement, with hints throughout of the dramatic intensity and musical flow that would come to characterize his later works. The rousing “Sailor’s Chorus” from the third act shows his early mastery of grand orchestral and choral sound.“Der Fliegende Holländer”Vienna State Opera Chorus; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Stephen Fry, actor in ‘Wagner and Me’Who’d present a single block from a pyramid to give a picture of all Egypt? The epic scale of Wagner is surely his signature quality. But here goes: The last five minutes of “Tristan und Isolde” offer one of the most astonishing moments in all art. Echoing the great pounding of the sea by which she stands, Isolde sings herself to death by way of a shattering musical climax. The orgasmic passage is known as the “Liebestod”: love-death. Its ravishing, horrifying rise and fall still astounds. Finally, it levels out across the sands in an exquisite release.“Tristan und Isolde”Kirsten Flagstad, soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra; Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorFive minutes to make you love Wagner, and hate him. At the end of his sprawling comedy “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg,” a speech from the kindly shoemaker protagonist, Hans Sachs, takes a dark swerve as Sachs warns of foreign invaders who seek to contaminate “holy German art,” his praise of which is taken up by a fervid crowd — a communal celebration turned nationalistic rally. This stirring choral melody was perhaps the first bit of Wagner I loved. But it is one of the moments in his work that for me now mingles thrill and nausea. Here it is conducted in Vienna in 1944 by Karl Böhm, whose complicity with the Nazis was profound.“Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”Vienna State Opera Chorus; Vienna Philharmonic; Karl Böhm, conductor◆ ◆ ◆ More

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe Brooklyn band Big Thief has become one of the indie-rock breakout success stories of recent years. With its evolving indie-folk sound, the band has inspired both passionate fandom and committed detractors — it is an intimately-scaled band that inspires big feelings. Its fifth album, “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You,” is out now.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the sonic evolution(s) of Big Thief, the space the band occupies in contemporary indie-rock circles (and in the historical arc of indie’s embrace of American heritage music), and how to think critically but generously about music that doesn’t necessarily speak to you as a listener.Guests:Jon Dolan, reviews editor at Rolling StoneSam Sodomsky, associate editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More