Classical Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Flute

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the FluteIt’s an instrument based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Listen to the best music ever written for it.Credit…Angie WangJan. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the past, we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, the piano, opera, the cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, the violin, Baroque music, sopranos and Beethoven.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the flute. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your choices in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor and singerThe flute is one of humanity’s oldest ways of producing a beautiful sound, and it is based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Made from bones, wood or reeds, the earliest specimens date from the Paleolithic era. The flute is often associated with things elegiac, poetic, angelic — with purity — but also with the world of magic; in mythology, Orpheus seduces the underworld playing the flute. In this excerpt from Gluck’s Orpheus opera, the flute is extremely sensual, and, with its lyrical soaring, takes us from earthly pleasures to heavenly ones.Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”Emmanuel Pahud (EMI)◆ ◆ ◆James Galway, flutistJohann Joachim Quantz was a German flutist and flute maker who composed hundreds of sonatas and concertos for the instrument. Every time he wrote something, Frederick the Great, his student, would pay him a high sum, equivalent to the price of a cow for every concerto. He died immensely wealthy. This is the third movement of Quantz’s Concerto in G, a piece I learned when I was a child.Quantz’s Concerto in GJames Galway; Jörg Faerber conducting Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn (RCA Victor)◆ ◆ ◆Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull leaderTwenty-odd years ago, I made the acquaintance of a protégé of the renowned flutist James Galway. The youngish upstart was Andrea Griminelli, who invited me to participate in a concert — an adventurous union for a serious classical soloist and a noisy, irreverent rock musician. I wrote, and we recorded, a duet, “Griminelli’s Lament.” We still perform it, and Andrea often does a beautiful piece written by his other pal, Ennio Morricone: “Gabriel’s Oboe,” the theme from the movie “The Mission.” In this tune, Andrea combines his impeccable nuance and technique with a pop sensibility that many classical players lack.Ennio Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe”Andrea Griminelli◆ ◆ ◆Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Times writerDai Fujikura, the composer of this haunting soliloquy for bass flute, likens it to “a plume of cold air which is floating silently between the peaks of a very icy cold landscape, slowly but cutting like a knife.” Listen to Claire Chase cast a spell with sounds that seem to belong to a different geological age, like gusts of wind strafing the mouth of a cave. Some notes splinter in two or dissolve into thin air, while, here and there, you can hear the ghost of a human voice channeled through the instrument.Dai Fujikura’s “Glacier”Claire Chase (New Focus)◆ ◆ ◆Brian Lehrer, WNYC hostHubert Laws is best known as a jazz flutist, but he was classically trained at the Juilliard School and has long included interpretations of classical music in his repertoire. This joyful Bach arrangement, from his 1971 album “The Rite of Spring,” is great for people who like jazz but aren’t much into classical — or if you’re not into either, it could make you fall in love with both! Listen for the beautiful and original cadenza at the beginning, after which you will recognize Bach, sometimes in a jazz vein, sometimes straighter. (And if you have nine more minutes, check out his haunting then soaring take on Ravel’s “Boléro,” which starts with a rare bass flute passage and follows through with a blissful Chick Corea piano solo.)“Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (Second Movement)”Hubert Laws (CTI)◆ ◆ ◆Brandon Patrick George, flutistC.P.E. Bach’s flute concertos date from his tenure at the court of Frederick the Great, who was also a flutist, and they’re brilliant representations of the Sturm und Drang movement of the 18th century, which sought to heighten the emotional impact of art. In the final movement of the Concerto in D minor, the orchestra surges violently, setting the stage for five minutes of unrelenting flute virtuosity, often interrupted by dramatic silences and startling harmonic twists. When I perform it, I love observing the audience’s astonishment; it brews a storm unlike any other flute concerto.C.P.E. Bach’s Concerto in D minorEmmanuel Pahud; Trevor Pinnock conducting Kammerakademie Potsdam (Warner Classics)◆ ◆ ◆Unsuk Chin, composerThe piano, my instrument, was perfected in the 19th century; hence, it can be challenging for contemporary composers to reinvent it. It is different with the flute, which has not always been in wide use as a solo instrument. In his five Études, from 1974, Isang Yun expanded the possibilities of the flute by drawing inspiration from both contemporary Western approaches and traditional Korean music, including ancient instruments like the piri and daegeum.Isang Yun’s Étude No. 5Yubeen Kim◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerIt’s best to take the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez at his word: “The flute of the Faun brought new breath to the art of music; what was overthrown was not so much the art of development as the very concept of form itself.” If Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” did, indeed, represent the start of musical modernity, what a start: sinuous, shapely, sensuous. The flute comes to the fore in music that enchants in its ebb and flow, that makes you fall in love with the orchestra, and the flute, all over again.Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune”Joshua Smith; Pierre Boulez conducting Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Anna Clyne, composerI’m often drawn to the remarkable warmth of the flute’s lower register — for example, the opening of Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” — and I particularly love the bass flute. Marcos Balter’s “Pessoa,” for six of them, shows off this instrument in an unusual and beautiful way: It weaves a sighing quality with vocalizing and pitches that bend, throat fluttering and key clicks that shift in stereo effect, and multiple pitches stacked to create resonant pads of sound.Marcos Balter’s “Pessoa”Claire Chase (New Focus)◆ ◆ ◆Nicole Mitchell, flutist and composerNo matter the style of the music or the cultural context it sings from, it’s the flute’s ability to pierce the heart that moves me most. “The Price of Everything,” from “Suite for Frida Kahlo,” is one of my favorites from the phenomenal James Newton. He is celebrated as a jazz flutist, but, like many creative musicians, also has an active career composing for orchestras and classical ensembles. In this piece, he sings with his huge sound through the upper register with effortlessness and grace. In our times of strife, his brilliant playing and the piece’s title remind us what’s really important: to seek humanity in one another.James Newton’s “The Price of Everything”James Newton Ensemble (Sledgehammer Blues)◆ ◆ ◆James Schlefer, shakuhachi playerFresh out of college with a degree in flute performance and starting graduate school in music history, I first heard the shakuhachi at a house concert and knew I had to pursue that penetrating sound. But when I tried playing one that day, I could not make a noise. I borrowed a shakuhachi, found my first teacher and have devoted the last four decades to its study, performance and teaching. It is a rigorous tradition, remarkably compatible with Western classical music. A formative recording for me was Kohachiro Miyata performing “Honshirabe.” It led me to the understanding that music is not only sound, but also silence.“Honshirabe”Kohachiro Miyata (Nonesuch)◆ ◆ ◆Claire Chase, flutistThese exhilarating four minutes hooked me to this little tube of metal when I was 13, and they keep me hooked to this day. By turns aching, luring, wailing like a siren and bursting into lyricism, this is music that grabs the listener and refuses to let go. There is no solo flute piece like it. “Density 21.5” unfurled genre-dissolving possibilities for the instrument and its repertoire, inspiring performances by titans of avant-garde jazz and classical music alike; Harvey Sollberger’s 1975 rendition still shakes me with its honesty, brutality and grace.Varèse’s “Density 21.5”Harvey Sollberger◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorYou could put together a list of flute highlights drawing solely on Claire Chase’s “Density 2036,” her astonishing project to commission new solo programs each of the 23 years leading up to the centennial of Varèse’s “Density 21.5.” These premieres have already offered an encyclopedic vision of the instrument — sometimes even within a single piece, like Marcos Balter’s “Pan.” This is myth told through music, but it’s also a tour of the flute family (panpipes included, of course) and the possibilities of full-body performance, leading to the final “Soliloquy”: an ending at once chattering, claustrophobic and darkly sensuous.Marcos Balter’s “Pan”Claire Chase (Corbett vs. Dempsey)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorOne of the most luscious flute solos in the repertory actually depicts the creation of the first flute. Near the end of the ballet “Daphnis et Chloé,” Daphnis is pretending to be the god Pan, who formed reeds into pipes — panpipes! — to musically mourn the loss of a nymph he was pursuing. But in Ravel’s sultry score, the song that emerges is at least as seductive as it is melancholy. And even playful: This Pan can’t help but dance.Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé”Emmanuel Pahud; Pierre Boulez conducting Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆John Corigliano, composerAfter the voice and the drum, is the flute our most ancient instrument? Blowing across a hollow tube creates a timbre that reaches deep within our souls. Our modern flute can do it all: rapid repeated notes, huge leaps, dynamics that range from a whisper to a scream. But even at its mildest, it’s that sound that makes the flute irresistible. The great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu wrote his exquisite “Air” for solo flute in 1995. You hear every color of the instrument: intimate as a lullaby in its low register, ethereal as the wind on high.Toru Takemitsu’s “Air”Robert Aitken (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerAnthony Braxton’s “Composition 23C” offers a memorable amalgam of musical languages. If at first the mutual appearance of trumpet and bass suggests a jazz combo, their melodic partnership with Mr. Braxton’s flute reveals clever misdirection. By traversing steady repetitions and gradually unfurling motifs in lock step, the group, with the added benefit of some improvised percussion, is playing a gloss on Minimalism. This was an aesthetic Mr. Braxton had early access to as a sometime member of the Philip Glass Ensemble. But the jaunty concision of his take on the style is its own singular, joyous experience.Anthony Braxton’s “Composition 23C”Anthony Braxton; Kenny Wheeler, trumpet; Dave Holland, bass; Jerome Cooper, percussion (Arista)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticIn 1943, as World War II raged, Prokofiev took a break from his brash film score for “Ivan the Terrible” and wrote his Sonata for Flute and Piano in D. On the surface this piece may seem genial. But right in the first movement, after the flowing, lyrical main theme, the music goes through episodes of dark, wandering harmonies and unsettling turns. Soon after its premiere, the violinist David Oistrakh pressed Prokofiev to repurpose the piece for his instrument. But I much prefer how the bright, piercing tones of the flute in the original version stand out from — and even take on — the piano.Prokofiev’s Flute SonataEmmanuel Pahud; Stephen Kovacevich, piano (Warner Classics)◆ ◆ ◆Kathinka Pasveer, flutistI met Karlheinz Stockhausen at the conservatory in The Hague in November 1982, when he was giving concerts and master classes. During that month I performed several of his works. One week after he left, I got a phone call asking if I would like to come to Kürten, Germany. Stockhausen wanted to write flute music for me, and “Kathinkas Gesang,” the second act of the opera “Saturday From Light,” was born. After that, he dedicated many works for flute to me. One is “Thinki” (his nickname for me), a birthday present in 1997.Stockhausen’s “Thinki”Kathinka Pasveer (Stockhausen Foundation for Music)◆ ◆ ◆[embedded content]AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Tyshawn Sorey: The Busiest Composer of the Bleakest Year

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookTyshawn Sorey: The Busiest Composer of the Bleakest YearAn artist straddling jazz and classical styles had perhaps the most exciting fall in new music.Tyshawn Sorey, a composer and multi-instrumentalist, conducting his song sequence “Cycles of My Being” in a filmed presentation by Opera Philadelphia.Credit…Dominic M. MercierJan. 1, 2021“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes”: Tyshawn Sorey wrote the string quartet that bears that title in 2018. But the sentiment is so tailor-made for the past year that when the JACK Quartet announced it would stream a performance of the work in December, I briefly forgot and assumed it was a premiere, created for these tumultuous yet static times.I should have known better. Mr. Sorey already had enough on his plate without cooking up a new quartet. The final two months of 2020 alone brought the premieres of a pair of concerto-ish works, one for violin and one for cello, as well as a fresh iteration of “Autoschediasms,” his series of conducted ensemble improvisations, with Alarm Will Sound.Mr. Sorey leading a rehearsal for Alarm Will Sound’s virtual performance of “Autoschediasms,” one of his series of conducted ensemble improvisations.Credit…via Alarm Will SoundThat wasn’t all that happened for him since November. Mills College, where Mr. Sorey is composer in residence, streamed his solo piano set. Opera Philadelphia filmed a stark black-and-white version of his song sequence “Cycles of My Being,” about Black masculinity and racial hatred. JACK did “Everything Changes” for the Library of Congress, alongside the violin solo “For Conrad Tao.” Da Camera, of Houston, put online a 2016 performance of “Perle Noire,” a tribute to Josephine Baker that Mr. Sorey arranged with the soprano Julia Bullock. His most recent album, “Unfiltered,” was released early in March, days before lockdown.He was the composer of the year.That’s both coincidental — some of this burst of work was planned long ago — and not. Mr. Sorey has been on everyone’s radar at least since winning a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2017, but the shock to the performing arts since late winter brought him suddenly to the fore as an artist at the nexus of the music industry’s artistic and social concerns.Undefinable, he is appealing to almost everyone. He works at the blurry and productive boundary of improvised (“jazz”) and notated (“classical”) music, a composer who is also a performer. He is valuable to ensembles and institutions because of his versatility — he can do somber solos as well as large-scale vocal works. And he is Black, at a time when those ensembles and institutions are desperate to belatedly address the racial representation in their programming.From left: Mr. Sorey, the soprano Julia Bullock and the flutist Alice Teyssier in Da Camera’s presentation of “Perle Noire,” inspired by Josephine Baker’s life and work.Credit…Ben DoyleHe’s in such demand, and has had so much success, that the trolls have come for him, dragging him on Facebook for the over-the-topness of the biography on his website. (Admittedly, it is a bit adjective-heavy: “celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery,” etc.)The style for which he has been best known since his 2007 album “That/Not,” his debut release as a bandleader, owes much to the composer Morton Feldman (1926-87): spare, spacious, glacially paced, often quiet yet often ominous, focusing the listener purely on the music’s unfolding. Mr. Sorey has called this vision that of an “imaginary landscape where pretty much nothing exists.”There is a direct line connecting “Permutations for Solo Piano,” a 43-minute study in serene resonance on that 2007 album, and the first of the two improvised solos in his recent Mills recital, filmed on an upright piano at his home. Even the far briefer second solo, more frenetic and bright, seems at the end to want to settle back into gloomy shadows.“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes,” a hovering, lightly dissonant 27-minute gauze, is in this vein, as is the new work for violin and orchestra, “For Marcos Balter,” premiered on Nov. 7 by Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Sorey insists in a program note that this is a “non-certo,” without a traditional concerto’s overt virtuosity, contrasting tempos or vivid interplay between soloist and ensemble.Xian Zhang conducting the violinist Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in Mr. Sorey’s “For Marcos Balter.”Credit…Sarah Smarch“For Marcos Balter” is even-keeled, steadily slow, a commune of players rather than a metaphorical give-and-take between an individual and society. Ms. Koh’s deliberate long tones, like cautious exhalations, are met with spectral effects on the marimba. Quiet piano chords amplify quiet string chords. At the end, a timpani roll is muted to sound almost gonglike, with Ms. Koh’s violin a coppery tremble above it.It is pristine and elegant, but I prefer Mr. Sorey’s new cello-and-orchestra piece, “For Roscoe Mitchell,” premiered on Nov. 19 by Seth Parker Woods and the Seattle Symphony. There is more tension here between discreet, uneasy minimalism and an impulse toward lushness, fullness — more tension between the soloist receding and speaking his mind.The piece is less pristine than “For Marcos Balter,” and more restless. The ensemble backdrop is crystalline, misty sighs, while the solo cello line expands into melancholy arias without words; sometimes the tone is passionate, dark-hued nocturne, sometimes ethereal lullaby. “For Roscoe Mitchell” feels like a composer challenging himself while expressing himself confidently — testing the balance of introversion and extroversion, privacy and exposure.The cellist Seth Parker Woods and the Seattle Symphony perform the premiere of “For Roscoe Mitchell.”Credit…James Holt/Seattle SymphonyBut it’s not right to make it seem like an outlier in this respect; Mr. Sorey’s music has never been solely Feldmanian stillness. In Alarm Will Sound’s inspiringly well executed virtual performance of “Autoschediasms,” Mr. Sorey conducted 17 players in five states over video chat, calm at his desk as he wrote symbols on cards and held them up to the camera, an obscure silent language that resulted in a low buzz of noise, varying in texture, and then, excitingly, a spacey, oozy section marked by keening bassoon tones.And he isn’t afraid of pushing into a kind of Neo-Romantic vibe. “Cycles of My Being,” featuring the tenor Lawrence Brownlee and texts by the poet Terrance Hayes, nods to the ardently declarative mid-20th-century American art songs of Samuel Barber and Lee Hoiby, just as “Perle Noire” features, near the end, a sweetly mournful instrumental hymn out of Copland.“Cycles,” which felt turgid when I heard it in a voice-and-piano version three years ago, bloomed in Opera Philadelphia’s presentation of the original instrumentation, which adds a couple of energizing strings and a wailing clarinet. And after a year of protests, what seemed in 2018 like stiffness — in both texts and music — now seems more implacable strength. (Opera Philadelphia presents yet another Sorey premiere, “Save the Boys,” with the countertenor John Holiday, on Feb. 12.)The cellist Khari Joyner playing in “Cycles of My Being.”Credit…Dominic M. MercierThe violinist Randall Goosby.Credit…Dominic M. Mercier“Perle Noire” still strikes me as the best of Sorey. Turning Josephine Baker’s lively numbers into unresolved meditations, here is both suave, jazzy swing and glacial expanse, an exploration of race and identity that is ultimately undecided — a mood of endless disappointment and endless wishing. (“My father, how long,” Ms. Bullock intones again and again near the end.)In works this strong, the extravagant praise for which some have ribbed Mr. Sorey on social media — that biography, for one, or the JACK Quartet lauding “the knife’s-edge precision of Sorey’s chess-master mind” — feels justified. And, anyway, isn’t it a relief to talk about a 40-year-old composer with the immoderate enthusiasm we generally reserve for the pillars of the classical canon?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in January

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story10 Classical Concerts to Stream in JanuaryA Verdi opera from the Met and composers on the border of classical and pop are among the highlights.Luciano Pavarotti and Aprile Millo in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” which will be streamed by the Metropolitan Opera.Credit…Met Opera ArchivesDec. 31, 2020, 8:00 a.m. ETAs the live performing arts still reel from the coronavirus pandemic, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in January. (Times listed are Eastern.)‘Lonely House’Available now until Jan. 22; operavision.eu and on YouTube.This winter, Katharine Merhling was scheduled to reprise her Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” at the Komische Oper in Berlin. The pandemic got in the way, but the company’s devoted audience need not spend the season without this singer’s gifts. This performance (first streamed live late in December) offers a fresh look at Kurt Weill, focusing on that composer’s years in Paris and New York. Devotees know many of these songs. But Ms. Mehrling’s energy — aided by Barrie Kosky, the Komische Oper’s artistic director, on piano — gives a saucy charge to a medley from the rarely staged “Lady in the Dark.” SETH COLTER WALLS‘Un Ballo in Maschera’Jan. 2 at 7:30 p.m.; metopera.org; available until Jan. 3 at 6:30 p.m.In case you missed it in August, this 1991 Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi’s dark tale of love, betrayal, friendship and regicide returns to the company’s series of nightly streams from its archives. “Ballo” is part of a week centered on Luciano Pavarotti, Met star supreme, but is also a showcase for the passionate artistry of the soprano Aprile Millo, whose career burned bright in the 1980s and ’90s, a throwback to divas of yore. James Levine conducts a cast that also includes Leo Nucci, Florence Quivar and Harolyn Blackwell. ZACHARY WOOLFEThe soprano Julia Bullock’s recital will be streamed by Cal Perfomances.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJulia BullockJan. 14 at 10 p.m.; calperformances.org; available until April 14.Kurt Weill isn’t just coming from the Komische Oper. One of our most luminous singers has four Weill numbers of her own to offer in a recital for Cal Performances that swings, in characteristic Bullock style, from the classical canon to contemporary work by way of golden age musical theater. Pieces by William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds are at the core of a program that also includes songs by Wolf and Schumann (selections from “Dichterliebe”), a set from “The Sound of Music,” and material from John Adams’s recent opera “Girls of the Golden West,” composed with Ms. Bullock in mind. Laura Poe is the pianist. ZACHARY WOOLFEEve EgoyanJan. 16 at 5 p.m.; rcmusic.com; available until Jan. 23.This Canadian pianist, who specializes in contemporary music, will perform the premiere of her Seven Studies for Augmented Piano. This is a series of works she created for a Yamaha Disklavier — an acoustic piano with a computer interface, coupled with software that allows her “to augment and extend the sonic range of the piano,” as she writes in a program note. The program, part of the 21C Music Festival presented by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, includes a short video exploring Ms. Egoyan’s creative process. ANTHONY TOMMASINIWild UpJan. 17 at 9:58 a.m.; patreon.com/wildup; available indefinitely.Artists from the Wild Up collective, including its conductor and artistic director, Christopher Rountree, are familiar to Los Angeles audiences. But for the group’s coming monthlong project, “Darkness Sounding,” listeners around the world are invited. Some concerts will be available as livestreams, then archived, through Wild Up’s Patreon page. At five dollars for the month, you can access shows like this one on Jan. 17, “simple lines/quiet music/silent songs,” featuring the pianist Richard Valitutto. A daylong “house concert,” it’s organized around largely soft, contemplative works by the likes of Ann Southam and Alvin Curran. SETH COLTER WALLS‘Soldier Songs’Jan. 22 at 8 p.m.; operaphila.org; available until May 31.David T. Little’s “Soldier Songs,” for baritone and small ensemble, was born of the American invasion of Iraq. But, based on interviews with veterans of five wars, it speaks to conflict more generally and abstractly. And like the most satisfying politically minded art, it’s rife with complication — not just in the score’s uninhibited blending of genres, but also in the treatment of its subject, defying stereotypes and hagiographies. “Soldier Songs” puts you off as it draws you in, and it will haunt audiences anew in a virtual production presented by Opera Philadelphia, directed by and starring the baritone Johnathan McCullough. JOSHUA BARONEThe baritone Christian Gerhaher, standing, and the pianist Gerold Huber performing in September at Wigmore Hall, which will stream their recital on Jan. 27.Credit…Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChristian Gerhaher and Gerold HuberJan. 27 at 2:30 p.m.; wigmore-hall.org.uk; available until Feb. 26.As concerts have moved online during the pandemic, many have also gotten shorter. Thus “Schwanengesang,” the shattering collection of Schubert’s final songs, can more easily stand alone on a program — as it does in this Wigmore Hall stream from the baritone Christian Gerhaher and the pianist Gerold Huber, one of the great musical partnerships of our time. The duo also appear earlier in Wigmore’s richly scheduled January, presenting works by Schumann and Debussy (Jan. 25). Other hall highlights include the soprano Lise Davidsen, singing Grieg, Sibelius and more (Jan. 17), and the pianist Igor Levit, playing Hindemith, Schoenberg and Busoni (Jan. 29). JOSHUA BARONEBaltimore Symphony OrchestraJan. 27 at 8 p.m.; offstage.bsomusic.org; available until June 30.This ensemble has been offering a series of documentary-style, hourlong discussion and performance programs called BSO Sessions. “Twelve” looks at composers who have bridged contemporary classical music and pop. There will be performances of a suite by Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, from his score for the film “There Will Be Blood”; Bryce Dessner’s “Lachrimae”; and Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte.” Steve Hackman, a composer and arranger skilled at this crossover, discusses the music and the stylistic overlaps with musicians from the orchestra. Nicholas Hersh conducts. ANTHONY TOMMASINIThe pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason will appear with the Hallé Orchestra.Credit…Matt Crossick/PA Images, via Getty ImagesHallé OrchestraJan. 28 at 6 a.m.; halle.co.uk; available until April 28.This orchestra, which has been streaming performances filmed at its Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, England, has an intriguing program coming up featuring the pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, the eldest of the seven young, gifted members of a British musical family that has been gaining international attention. She plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on the program, conducted by Mark Elder, which opens with Richard Strauss’s Serenade for winds (written when its composer was 17) and ends with Sibelius’s Third Symphony. ANTHONY TOMMASINIPeter Evans EnsembleJan. 28 at 8 p.m.; roulette.org; available indefinitely.The trumpeter Peter Evans is a reliable source of thrilling virtuosity. That’s true when he’s working with the Wet Ink Ensemble or International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as when he’s leading his own groups. This quartet, with the electronics and percussion specialist Levy Lorenzo, the violinist and vocalist Mazz Swift and the pianist Ron Stabinsky, recently celebrated the release of a blazing album, “Horizons.” But this livestream won’t be a victory lap; it promises a fresh slate of compositions by Mr. Evans. SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      5 Things to Do This New Year’s Weekend

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This New Year’s WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDanceMaking the Old NewKenneth Shirley of Indigenous Enterprise in a scene from a short film that is streaming on the Joyce Theater’s website until Sunday.Credit…Danny UpshawSince September, the Joyce Theater has been offering a free virtual fall season that is as good as some of its best in-person ones. The secret has been surprise and an avoidance of the usual suspects. If that is a little less true of the latest batch of videos — available through Sunday at joyce.org/joycestream — the variety still provides plenty of spice.The connecting theme might be “tradition reimagined.” Indigenous Enterprise captures the beauty of Native American dances in urban settings. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo revives parts of the 19th-century ballet “Paquita” with an all-male cast. Streb Extreme Action does daredevil stunts with huge machines; it’s like a carnival side show performed by cool astronauts.Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. And Rennie Harris Puremovement shows once again how hip-hop can convey both can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it flash and hard-to-watch grief.BRIAN SEIBERTKidsBon Voyage to BoredomA scene from “Journey Around My Bedroom,” an interactive production that will livestream on Zoom through Jan. 10.Credit…New Ohio TheaterA room can be a refuge, but without an easy exit, it can also feel like a jail. For the Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, it was both: While under house arrest in 1790, he wrote “Voyage Around My Room,” a tribute to the creativity his imprisonment unleashed.Now de Maistre’s work has inspired New Ohio Theater for Young Minds’ first virtual presentation, “Journey Around My Bedroom.” Written by Dianne Nora and directed by Jaclyn Biskup, with songs by Hyeyoung Kim, this whimsical 35-minute play emulates Victorian toy theater, in which puppeteers manipulated cutouts on a tiny stage. (Myra G Reavis did the inventive design, assisted by Ana Maria Aburto.) Traveling in a failing dirigible, de Maistre visits Xavi, a contemporary girl who discovers that her own room offers hidden adventure.The production, which livestreams on Zoom Fridays to Sundays through Jan. 10, includes audience participation and a post-show discussion. Children can also follow the journey, though less interactively, in an on-demand video Jan. 11-Feb. 11. Tickets to gain access to these performances are pay-what-you-wish and available at newohiotheatre.org.LAUREL GRAEBERArtTime to Ponder Time ItselfClodion’s “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock” will be the topic of discussion on Friday during the Frick Collection’s “Cocktails With a Curator.”Credit…Claude Michel and JeanBaptiste Lepaute; via Frick Collection; Michael BodycombWhen the Frick Collection introduced its virtual series, “Cocktails With a Curator,” its deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, described the program as a way to show how the museum’s pieces are “relevant to issues we’re facing today.” That’s especially true for the artwork featured in the next episode: “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock,” by the 18th-century sculptor Clodion with the clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. Looking back on 2020, the passage of time has never felt so complicated.There’s also nothing simple about “The Dance of Time.” The three terra-cotta nymphs holding up a globe-encased clock are either witnessing the passage of time or represent it themselves. To find out more, make a metropolitan (or the mocktail alternative, a ginger ale hot toddy; both recipes are on the Frick’s website), and tune in to the museum’s YouTube channel on Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time to hear Salomon discuss the timelessness of this unique timepiece.MELISSA SMITHPop & RockSummerStage Is Just a Screen AwaySoccer Mommy and her band performed for SummerStage Anywhere in November. The show is available to watch on YouTube.Credit…via City Parks FoundationWhile its recently renovated stage in Central Park sat idle this past season, SummerStage — the nonprofit organization that typically floods the five boroughs with live outdoor music — sprouted roots in virtual space. Its season of free online programming, SummerStage Anywhere, is now complete, but is archived on their YouTube channel for latecomers to enjoy.Offerings are wide-ranging, crossing disciplines, genres and generations. Soccer Mommy, an indie-rock darling, performed her first and, so far, only full-band show in support of her latest album, “Color Theory.” ASAP Ferg joined Fab 5 Freddy, one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, for a conversation about creativity in the face of racial injustice. Gloria Gaynor and her band revisited hits from her disco heyday (including, of course, “I Will Survive,” a song that has special resonance these days). For those of us yearning for a time when we can once again spread our blankets and take in the sounds at Rumsey Playfield, this series provides a nice stopgap.OLIVIA HORNClassical MusicCatch Up With ‘Density 2036’Claire Chase recently released four full-length CDs for her ongoing “Density 2036” project.Credit…Karen ChesterPreviously, listeners curious about “Density 2036” — the ambitious, 23-year commissioning project that the flutist Claire Chase started in 2013 — have needed to stake out her concerts. (While Chase recorded her interpretations of a couple of the earliest works at the beginning of the project, studio renditions seemed to have taken a back seat to live dates in recent years.)Now four new full-length CDs, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, allow a global audience to catch up with the first half-decade of Chase’s initiative. (They’re also available digitally on Bandcamp.) Highlights abound in each set, thanks to a range of composers that includes Marcos Balter, George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros. And one particularly striking stretch on “Part IV” features a version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Bertha’s Lair” (with the composer heard on percussion alongside Chase). That fancifully vigorous piece is directly followed by a distinct yet similarly percussive work: “Five Empty Chambers” by Vijay Iyer.SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Fou Ts’ong, Famed Chinese Pianist, Dies of Covid-19 at 86

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFou Ts’ong, Pianist Whose Family Letters Inspired a Generation, Dies at 86Driven from China during Mao’s rule, Mr. Fou kept up a correspondence with his father that became a beloved book in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.Fou Ts’ong in 1960. He was one of the first pianists from China to win international renown.Credit…Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDec. 31, 2020, 4:59 a.m. ETFou Ts’ong, a Chinese pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, and whose letters from his father, a noted translator and writer, influenced a generation of Chinese readers, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.The cause was the coronavirus, said Patsy Toh, a pianist, who had been married to Mr. Fou since 1975.In 1955, Mr. Fou became one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, also winning a special prize for his performance of Chopin’s mazurkas.Almost overnight, he became a national hero at home. To China’s nascent Communist-led government, Mr. Fou’s recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, a prominent translator of French literature, for advice on child-rearing.But the authorities’ good will did not last long.Two years later, Mao Zedong initiated the Anti-Rightist Campaign, during which hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals, including Mr. Fu, were persecuted. Many were tortured and banished to labor camps. Mr. Fou, then studying at the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland, was made to return to China to undergo “rectification” for several months.Not long after going back to Warsaw, Mr. Fou found himself in a quandary. Having witnessed the increasingly tumultuous political climate back home, he knew that if he returned to China upon graduation — as the government expected him to do — he would be expected to denounce his father, an unimaginable situation.So in December 1958, Mr. Fou fled then-Communist Poland for London, where he claimed political asylum.“About my leaving, I always felt full of regret and anguish,” he later recalled in an interview. So many intellectuals in China had suffered, he said, but he had escaped. “I felt uneasy, as if I owed something to all my friends,” he added.After his defection to London, Mr. Fou maintained a written correspondence with his father in Shanghai — a special privilege that was said to have been personally approved by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier.Then, in 1966, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos that upended Chinese society. Militant Red Guards accused Mr. Fu, a prolific translator of writers like Balzac and Voltaire, of having “capitalistic” artistic taste, among other crimes. They humiliated and tortured the scholar and his wife for days until the couple, like many other Chinese, were driven to suicide. Mr. Fou, still in London, did not learn of his parents’ deaths until several months later.In 1981, after China’s post-Mao government posthumously restored the reputations of Mr. Fou’s parents, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and stern paternal love, the book, “Fu Lei’s Family Letters,” became an instant best seller in China.For many, the long disquisitions on music, art and life offered a welcome contrast to the Cultural Revolution years, which saw sons turn against fathers, students against teachers and neighbors against neighbors — all in the name of politics.“If you imagine the environment we grew up with, it was very rigid,” said Xibai Xu, a political analyst who first read the letters in middle school in Beijing. He added, “So when you read ‘Fu Lei’s Family Letters,’ you realized how a decent human life could be — a life that is very delicate and artistic, with real human emotions and not just ideology.”Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu’s words resonated long after his death with the person for whom they were originally intended.“My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,’” Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. “Even now, I believe in this order — that it should be this way and that I am this way.”Mr. Fou performing in New York City in 2006.Credit…Nan Melville for The New York TimesFou Ts’ong was born on March 10, 1934, in Shanghai. His father, in addition to being a translator, was an art critic and a curator. His mother, Zhu Meifu, was a secretary to her husband.Under the strict supervision of their father, Mr. Fou and his brother, Fu Min, were educated in the classical Chinese tradition, and they grew up surrounded by both Western and Chinese cultural influences. As a child, Mr. Fou studied art, philosophy and music, frequently making use of his father’s phonograph and extensive record collection.A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. He later studied under a number of teachers, including Mario Paci, the Italian conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic.But the chaos of wartime China prevented the young pianist from receiving a systematic musical education. In 1948, Mr. Fou, then in his teens, moved with his family to the southwestern province of Yunnan, where he went through what he described as a rebellious period. It was only after returning to Shanghai several years later that he began to dedicate himself in earnest to the piano.In 1952, Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected the young pianist to compete and tour in Eastern Europe, Mr. Fou’s first trip abroad.Soon, Mr. Fou moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of competition.After the deaths of his parents in 1966, Mr. Fou stayed abroad, rising to become a renowned concert pianist on the international circuit. Though he was best known for his interpretations of Chopin, he also received acclaim for his performances of works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy. In a review of a 1987 recital in New York, the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times of Mr. Fou’s “sensitive ear for color” and “elusive gift of melody.”“We should hear Mr. Fou more often,” Mr. Holland wrote. “He is an artist who uses his considerable pianistic gifts in pursuit of musical goals and not for show.”In 1979, after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Fou was granted permission to return to China for the first time in more than two decades, reuniting with his brother to hold a memorial service for their parents.On subsequent visits, Mr. Fou gave performances and lectures; he became known to many Chinese as the “Piano Poet” for his lyrical musical interpretations. Later versions of “Fu Lei’s Family Letters” were updated to include some of Mr. Fou’s letters to his father.Mr. Fou’s death came at a time of resurgent nationalism in China. On Chinese social media, some ultranationalist commentators called him a traitor to the country for having defected decades ago, echoing similar accusations that Mr. Fou faced in the 1950s not long after settling in London.“What would I tell them? There was nothing to say,” Mr. Fou once said of such critics in an interview. “It’s not that I was longing for the West.”“I was choosing freedom,” he added. “It was not an easy situation. There was no other choice.”Many other Chinese honored his memory, including well-known pianists like Li Yundi as well as Lang Lang, who called Mr. Fou “a clear stream in the world of classical music and a beacon of light in our spirit.”Mr. Fou in Chengdu, China, in 2007. The pianist Lang Lang called him “a clear stream in the world of classical music.”Credit…VCG/VCG, via Getty Images“Fou Ts’ong’s legacy was to show people and musicians the importance of integrity, character and music beyond technique,” said Jindong Cai, a conductor and the director of the U.S.-China Music Institute at Bard College Conservatory of Music.Mr. Fou’s first marriage, to Zamira Menuhin, daughter of the prominent violinist Yehudi Menuhin, ended in divorce, as did a brief marriage to Hijong Hyun. In addition to Ms. Toh, Mr. Fou is survived by a son from his first marriage, Lin Xiao; a son from his marriage to Ms. Toh, Lin Yun; and his brother, Mr. Fu.Mr. Fou remained passionately devoted to music in his later years, playing piano for hours every day even as his fingers grew frail. It was a love that he invoked often in interviews, alongside nuggets of wisdom from his father.“When I was very young, I wrote to my father from Poland that I was sad and lonely,” he once recalled. “He wrote back: ‘You could never be lonely. Don’t you think you are living with the greatest souls of the history of mankind all the time?’”“Now that’s how I feel, always,” Mr. Fou said.Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      With No Tickets to Sell, Arts Groups Appeal to Donors to Survive

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith No Tickets to Sell, Arts Groups Appeal to Donors to SurviveVirtual cocktail parties have replaced black-tie galas as cultural institutions struggle to pay their operating costs.Many nonprofit cultural institutions, whose ticket revenues have fallen sharply during the pandemic, are struggling to collect donations as well. A donation box at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesDec. 28, 2020One of the headliners of the New York Philharmonic’s fall gala last month was Leonard Bernstein, leading his old orchestra in the overture to “Candide.”Yes, Bernstein died three decades ago. But since the gala, like so much else, was forced to go remote, the Philharmonic had some fun with the format, filming its current players performing to historical footage of Bernstein wielding his baton. The virtual gala had some advantages: it cost less to produce, with no catering, linen rentals and flower arrangements for a black-tie audience, and it reached some 90,000 people, while the concert hall holds around 2,700.But when it came to the bottom line, the picture was less rosy. The virtual event raised less than a third of what the gala concert took in last year: $1.1 million, down from $3.6 million, a vivid illustration of the steep challenge of raising money for the arts during a global pandemic.With little or no earned income coming in amid canceled performances and proscribed public gatherings, nonprofit cultural institutions across the nation are scrambling to attract a source of revenue that is often even more important to their bottom lines: philanthropy. Now, as they anxiously await the results of their year-end appeals for donations, they are facing competition from pressing causes including hunger, health care and social justice.“I am pedaling quickly to try to make sure that we can try to figure out how to make it through,” said Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center in Washington, which ended its fiscal year on Sept. 30 with a $500,000 deficit compared to last year’s balanced budget. “We are heavily dependent on contributed revenues to survive.”The going has, indeed, been rough. Box office revenues for many institutions have fallen off a cliff: ticket sales for performing arts groups in the United States were down 96.3 percent in November compared to that month last year, according to a report released last month by the analytics group TRG Arts. And donations do not appear to be making up the difference.Despite an outpouring of contributions when the virus first struck, individual giving to arts organizations fell by 14 percent in North America during the first nine months of the year, the group found in another report. The average size of gifts from the most active, loyal patrons fell by 38 percent, the survey found.With live performances and large events canceled, arts groups have had to move their fundraisers online. Clockwise from upper left: Zadie Smith at the BAM Virtual Gala, Meryl Streep during Equality Now’s Virtual Make Equality Reality Gala, Cate Blanchett at the BAM gala and Aubrey Plaza at the Equality Now event. Credit…Getty Images for BAM (Smith and Blanchett); Getty Images for Equality Now (Streep and Plaza)A survey of performing arts administrators by the publication Inside Philanthropy found 45 percent reporting “reduced funder interest and resources as a result of the current shifting of funds for Covid and racial justice.”The outbreak has forced institutions to find creative ways to interact with donors: virtual cocktail parties, music quizzes, meet-the-musician online events.“It’s a long way to make up for the gap, and I think we should all be realistic about the fact that this is nowhere near a substitute,” said Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center, who helped develop #GivingTuesday in 2012, a day to encourage philanthropy on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. But he added that “when the traditional fund-raising vehicles return, a lot of us will have also learned some new digital tricks.”Among those tricks: New York City Center has invited audiences to “Make Someone Happy” this holiday season by sending as a gift (for $35) digital access to its Evening With Audra McDonald, available on demand through Jan. 3. And earlier this month, Ars Nova, an artists incubator in New York, raised more than $400,000 during its 24-hour livestream telethon, which featured more than 200 artists.Museums are struggling to raise funds in the absence of events, and because they were forced to close during the first few months of the pandemic. “We count on the front door for about 30 percent of the budget, so to lose that in one fell swoop is perilous,” said Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which is projecting a $13 million deficit and had to cancel a potentially high-traffic Joan Mitchell touring retrospective because the timing no longer worked.Rather than pivot to a virtual gala, the Guggenheim decided to scrap that event altogether — instead inviting donations to a “Gala Fund” — in part because of Zoom fatigue and because online programming had not been a strong point.“We were a little far behind on virtual previously, so we had to catch up and we’re still figuring that out,” Mr. Armstrong said. “We certainly put out a lot of content in the seven months. We’ve learned, I think better, how to make the online museum more comparable to the physical space.”New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet typically hold a benefit each year after a Saturday matinee of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” followed by a backstage tour and party on the promenade of the David H. Koch Theater. This year they went online.The principal dancer Tiler Peck gave a backstage tour, told the story of the ballet and performed an excerpt. People who purchased benefit tickets received treats delivered to their homes, and were able to interact with dancers on Zoom. Dancers, in costume, were streamed live from their theater dressing rooms, where they did makeup demonstrations, talked about their characters and answered questions. And attendees received a free link to watch the company performing the full ballet on marquee.tv through Jan. 3.But many arts institutions must navigate a sensitive fund-raising climate — making the case for culture as a worthy cause, while remaining mindful of the international health crisis, rising hunger and a national reckoning around racial and social justice.“We were careful not to be overreaching, allowing partner organizations to do what they had to do, like United Way or other community service organizations that were literally dealing with life and death situations,” Mark A. Davidoff, the chairman of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, said. “How much is enough, and how much might be too much?”This month’s annual summit of the Arts Funders Forum, which aims to increase private funding for arts and culture in the United States, emphasized how arts institutions need to demonstrate to donors what they are doing to drive social change.“Of the causes that Americans of all generations do support,” said Melissa Cowley Wolf, director of the forum, during her opening remarks, “arts and culture do not make the top seven.”With no performances of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” this season, New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet had to move their family benefit fundraiser online.Credit…Rachel Papo for The New York TimesMany nonprofit institutions are hoping to apply for aid available in the stimulus bill that President Trump signed Sunday night.Amid the crisis, some foundations are stepping in to try to help keep institutions afloat, and large organizations are seeking emergency support from their boards.Virtual fund-raising has benefited a bit from the fact that people are stuck at home, making them eager for engagement as well as less heavily scheduled.“People have the bandwidth for those kinds of conversations,” Ms. Rutter, of the Kennedy Center, said. “In the past, it would be like, ‘Let’s get together for lunch,’ and it would take six months to get it on the calendar. Now it’s like, ‘I’m free tomorrow.’”Still, fund-raising challenges remain formidable. What is typically a subtle dance — we’ll give you this perk, if you give us your dollars — has now become a more brazen cry for help.This month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art placed donation boxes in the lobby of its Fifth Avenue entrance: “Please give to The Met to help us connect others to the power of art.” The Detroit Symphony launched what it is calling a Resilience Fund “to ensure that our world-class orchestra keeps the music playing for our community during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.”The New York Philharmonic has established the “It Takes an Orchestra Challenge,” trying to raise $1.5 million by Dec. 31. David M. Ratzan, a New Yorker who typically takes his son to several concerts a year, contributed $100. “If people don’t pitch in,” he said, “these places won’t exist.”The orchestra was forced to cancel its entire current season, and this month its musicians agreed to substantial salary cuts as its administration was reorganized to allow Deborah Borda, its president and chief executive, to focus on two priorities: renovating David Geffen Hall, its Lincoln Center home, and fund-raising.“It’s an incredibly serious situation,” Ms. Borda said. “Our last concert was March 10 and we can’t play this entire year and then the next question is, looking forward, what will happen in the fall of 2021? What is going to happen with the vaccine? How comfortable will people feel about coming back?”Given this uncertainty, cultural executives still find themselves far outside the bounds of the traditional arts management playbook.“I’m not talking about whether Yo-Yo is available,” said Mark Volpe, the chief executive of the Boston Symphony, referring to the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and noting that the symphony would typically have started selling tickets for its summer Tanglewood season in November. “I’m talking about what the future is going to be.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      I Think Beethoven Encoded His Deafness in His Music

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyI Think Beethoven Encoded His Deafness in His MusicGabriela Lena Frank, a composer born with high-moderate/near-profound hearing loss, describes her creative experience.“Is it an exaggeration to say that composers after Beethoven, the vast majority of them hearing, were forever changed by a deaf aesthetic?”Credit…Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDec. 27, 2020Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer and pianist and the founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, which aims to foster diverse compositional voices and artist-citizens, was born with a neurosensory high-moderate/near-profound hearing loss. In an interview with Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, she described her creative practice and her exploration of the music of Beethoven, who gradually lost his hearing and by his 40s was almost totally deaf. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.From the time I was a little girl, I have been fascinated with how deafness affected Beethoven. If you look at his piano sonatas, in that first one in F Minor, the hands are very close together and the physical choreographies of the left and right hands are not that dissimilar. As he gets older, the activity of the hands become more dissimilar in his piano work, and farther apart.The progression over the course of the sonatas — a musical document of his hearing loss in transition — is not perfectly linear by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s undeniable. By the time of the “Waldstein” Sonata, not only are the hands far apart, but they are doing very different things: that left hand pounding in thick chords against the right hand’s spare little descending line, for instance.Well, I recall from my therapy classes for hearing-impaired children that I was taught to recognize thick from thin. My therapist had me close my eyes and indicate from which direction a rumbly drum was coming, as opposed to a high-pitched whistle. I couldn’t really hear them, but I could certainly feel them and their contrasting energies.I think it’s fascinating, too, that as Beethoven’s hands stretched for lower and higher notes, he demanded pianos with added notes, elongating the pitch range of the keyboard; he asked for physically heavier instruments that resonated with more vibration. More pitch distance and difference, and more vibration and resonance, create a recipe for happiness for a hearing-impaired person, trust me. A more dissonant and thick language, with clashing frequencies, also causes more vibration, so the language does get more physically visceral that way, too.That said, if I don’t wear my hearing aids for a couple of days, my composing ideas start to become more introverted. This can produce music that is more intellectual, more contrapuntal, more internal, more profound, more spiritual, more trippy. And I think these are also hallmarks of Beethoven’s later music, and not just for piano.Yet more from my own experience: When I’m really under a deadline, and need to get new ideas quickly, I don’t usually listen to music, as some composers do. In fact, I do the opposite: I take off my hearing aids and stay in silence for a few days. In the absence of sound, my imagination goes to different places. It’s a bit like being in a dream when unusual and often impossible events come together, the perfect place from which to compose. And when I put in my hearing aids again, I can feel all these wonderful ideas and connections fly away, just as a dream disappears when awakening.The composer Gabriela Lena Frank in Boonville, Calif. “When I’m really under a deadline, and need to get new ideas quickly, I don’t usually listen to music,” she said. “I take off my hearing aids and stay in silence for a few days. In the absence of sound, my imagination goes to different places. It’s a bit like being in a dream.”Credit…Carlos Chavarria for The New York TimesI wonder: Is it an exaggeration to say that composers after Beethoven, the vast majority of them hearing, were forever changed by a deaf aesthetic? And that the modern-day piano wouldn’t be with us if a deaf person hadn’t demanded its existence? This is beyond my expertise, but I’ve also wondered about sign language. Are there certain spatial gestures in the language that appear in the choreographic execution of certain kinds of music? And if so, does this imply yet more levels in which a deaf sensibility infuses the music-making of a hearing world?I often wonder how Beethoven would react to modern-day hearing aids considering his great frustration with the ear trumpets of his day. Personally, I miss the old analogs of my girlhood, for their simplicity. Nowadays it’s an effort not to roll my eyes as a technician fits me with the ubiquitous digital aids that, in addition to all manner of dazzling bionic-lady bells and whistles, default to the type of correction desired by late-deafened people — namely, high frequencies and spatial reorientation to help with speech recognition. That’s completely understandable as losing the ability to communicate with loved ones is an awful and dispiriting experience.Yet those of us born with hearing loss are often champion lip-readers (as I am) or use sign language. And whether or not we are musical, we join musicians with hearing loss (at any stage) in desiring hearing aids that prioritize beauty of sound, unchanged pitch, unchanged timber and naturalness — restoring proper weight to middle and low frequencies, and spatialization. We don’t want hearing aids that ply our sound world with obvious artifice, like a supposedly “acoustic” album that’s been overworked by a manic sound engineer.In this vein, I don’t think Beethoven would like how so many modern-day digital hearing aids massage all kinds of processes into what the wearer hears. It helps to have an imaginative and sensitive technician, preferably one with experience with performers and composers. A good fitting is an art so the music can just breathe.At the piano, I usually start practicing without my hearing aids, entering a world of profound silence familiar from my earliest years, when I wasn’t yet fitted. At first, I’m still hearing the music in my head, but after a while, I’m more aware of the choreography, how it feels like a dance in my hands. Focusing on a physical experience that feels good and healthy can counteract bad habits which appear when you are only listening to the sound.For instance, if one plays a large chord of, say, eight notes, the tendency will be to bring out the lowest note and the highest note — the bass and the melody — to give them more audibility and importance. Because of the structure of the hands, this means the weakest pinkie fingers are bringing out the most important notes. To help the poor fingers out, the hands may be tempted to angle out, left hand pointing to the bass, right hand to the melody.This is a very unnatural position for your hands to be in, and in fact it mimics the wrist-breaking karate locks taught in dojos, inviting injury. Imagine a series of these chords up and down the keyboard, in such an unnatural position. But because you are chasing a full-bodied sound from this eight-note chord, and not paying attention to its physicality, you start to do dangerous things. With the ability to take the sound out of the equation, I focus on the feel. I solidify a good technique first, and know it. Knowing it, I can hang onto it once I do put my hearing aids back in, and then work on the sound.So, ironically, even though we are talking about a sonic art form, sound can be a distraction. Sound can take your attention away from the many other factors that go into making music. Music, after all, is about so much more than volume. For my own loss, I’m just missing volume. I’m not missing everything else one needs to make or enjoy music. And I even have perfect pitch, so in some ways, I hear better than hearing people.And I think that had to have happened to Beethoven. He learned to create music without sound, however reluctantly. While he increasingly withdrew from society and disliked talking about his disability, he left us a living document of his hearing loss in transition likely starting with music written in his mid to late 20s, when his hearing began to fade. In other words, I think he encoded his deafness in music. And as I say, the progression in his music is not a perfectly linear one, just as his progression through deafness was likely not perfectly linear, but the journey is there. Unmistakably.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More