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      Why the ‘Euphoria’ Teens Listen to Sinead O’Connor, Tupac and Selena

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      The hit HBO show’s maximalist, era-jumping soundtrack is unconcerned with realism, packing in dozens of songs, from the underground to the instantly recognizable.A modern high schooler’s birthday party, chaperoned by an inebriated mother with no household rules except discretion, gets going to the sound of Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” that indelible 1990s relic. “I love this song!” the mom squeals, with an added profanity.At the same time, three teenagers in a beat-up ride are on their way to shoplift some alcohol. “Trademark USA” by Baby Keem, a rising rapper of the moment, blasts from the car speakers.Not long after, a troubled father skims a gay bar jukebox, looking for INXS’s “Kick” but finding Nicki Minaj’s “The Pinkprint” instead. He settles for a nostalgic slow dance to “Drink Before the War” by Sinead O’Connor, a devastating power ballad from 1987. Back at the birthday party, a wasted girl in a bathing suit melts down, belting along simultaneously to the same track, one released long before she was born.For some television shows, this would be an episode’s worth of big music moments. But on “Euphoria,” the maximalist hallucination of high school currently in its second season on HBO, it was but one stretch of carefully curated songs and references that, like the series itself, aimed for emotional resonance over superficial accuracy.Often cramming a couple of dozen tracks into a single hour — from the underground to the instantly recognizable, the 1950s to the 2020s — the show doesn’t do emphatic needle-drops so much as a TikTokian shuffle of aural and visual stimuli, bouncing between genres, eras and moods.In addition to O’Connor and Keem, Sunday’s episode featured a meta-montage of pop culture allusions set to Townes Van Zandt’s “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” plus the premiere of a new song by Lana Del Rey and an onscreen, neo-gospel performance by the singer and producer Labrinth, who also handles the show’s score.Tasteful spareness has never been the objective. “We were not interested in playing by those rules,” said Julio Perez IV, the show’s lead editor, who recalled conceiving of their “own sonic galaxy” with the “Euphoria” creator, writer and director Sam Levinson. “We were interested in plenty of music — too much music for some. The show, in a sense, would be a musical.”A collage of flashbacks, daydreams, nightmares and rhythmic music video-esque sequences, “Euphoria” uses the interplay between its eclectic soundtrack and Labrinth’s recurring score to create a “wild fantasia that blends a raw naturalism with hyper-reality,” Perez said.Jen Malone, the show’s music supervisor, has also overseen the songs of “Atlanta” and “Yellowjackets,” where a strict sense of place and period guide the choices. “Euphoria” has no such boundaries.“If it works, it works,” she said in an interview, describing the show’s creative ethos and noting that Levinson writes to music, frequently including his song choices in the script. “The library of music that he has in his brain is endless,” Malone added.She and her team are then tasked with making Levinson’s vision a reality, making their own suggestions, seeking clearance from the music’s many rights holders and filling in gaps where necessary.In the show’s second season, episode prologues that tell characters’ back stories function as short films of their own, with distinct tones and time frames. One jumps from an Elvis Presley cover to Bo Diddley, Harry Nilsson, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, while another burns through tracks by INXS, Depeche Mode, Roxette, Erasure, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cult, Lenny Kravitz and Dan Hartman, all in the span of 15 minutes.“It’s just insane the amount of music in this show,” Malone said.Complicating her job further is the fact that “Euphoria” revolves around lurid transgression — lust, substance abuse and violence, in particular — and scenes must be described in detail during the music approval process. “We do have to get clever with how we word certain things, but sometimes there’s just no way around it,” Malone said.The sequence ultimately set to an Elvis cover that opened this season featured nudity, drugs, guns and gore — “all the red flags you could possibly think of” — leading to a few denials before the show settled on Billy Swan’s rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel,” following appeals to the music’s publisher and the Presley estate.In securing use of O’Connor’s “Drink Before the War,” the “Euphoria” staff had to confirm that it would not be played over any sexual violence, “because I think she knew the show,” Malone added.Flashbacks in the second season detail character back stories to tracks like Billy Swan’s “Don’t Be Cruel.”HBO MaxHBO MaxBut labels and artists have been pleased to see the surge in interest that a placement on “Euphoria” can trigger, whether for an emerging act like Laura Les, whose track “Haunted” plays in a recent episode, or an established one like Tupac Shakur, whose caustic “Hit ’Em Up,” from 1996, is rapped along to by a teenage drug addict. Featured tracks by Gerry Rafferty and Steely Dan have even started popping up on TikTok.Whether or not the show’s Gen Z characters would actually be listening to this music has sparked some debate and eye-rolling. (“The Euphoria Teens’ Taste in Rap Is Ridiculous,” Pitchfork ruled.) But as with their designer wardrobes, verisimilitude is beside the point.“Realism is secondary,” said Perez, the editor. “There’s a certain amount of romanticism to the approach,” with “the psychological intricacies of inner worlds” taking precedence.A song choice can signal something, as when Selena’s “Como La Flor” plays faintly in a scene featuring a character whose Mexican American heritage is alluded to, but not explored. Or it can just simply sound good.In the playlist era, “Cool kids are into loads of stuff,” said Labrinth, who mirrors the show’s range in his “limitless” original music for the show, which fuses hip-hop, rock, funk and electronic sounds. He compared Levinson to a crate-digging D.J. as likely to reference an ’80s punk band as an obscure Italian composer.For those not already in the know, “Euphoria” can also function as a recommendation engine for a new generation, like the films of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino that it’s constantly nodding to.“Knowing that our audience is very much Gen Z, it’s almost like, ‘Hey guys, listen to some of this,’” Malone said, noting that a party scene where Juvenile and DMX songs are played also included more recent, little-known tracks by artists like Blaq Tuxedo and G.L.A.M.“‘Oh, you like all of this that’s out now? Listen to this!’” she added. “We’re giving them the mixtape that I got when I was in high school.” More

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      Joni Mitchell Plans to Follow Neil Young Off Spotify, Citing ‘Lies’

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      Joni Mitchell said Friday that she would remove her music from Spotify, joining Neil Young in his protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.Mitchell, an esteemed singer-songwriter of songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” and whose landmark album “Blue” just had its 50th anniversary, posted a brief statement on her website Friday saying that she would remove her music from the streaming service. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” she wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”Her statement adds fuel to a small but growing revolt over Spotify, with few major artists speaking out but fans commenting widely on social media. The debate has also brought into relief questions about how much power artists wield to control distribution of their work, and the perennially thorny issue of free speech online.Spotify took Young’s music down on Wednesday, two days after he posted an open letter calling for its removal as a protest against “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Spotify’s most popular podcast, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.He did so after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts had asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31 that had featured Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert. The scientists wrote in a public letter that the program promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines.”Mitchell is the first major artist to follow Young, after a couple of days of speculation and rumors on social media.Young and Mitchell have a deep history together. Both are Canadians who helped lead the singer-songwriter revolution in Southern California in the late 1960s and 1970s.On Spotify, Mitchell is listed as having 3.7 million monthly listeners, with two of her songs — “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” — getting over 100 million streams.While few other major artists have spoken out so far, Young’s stance has resonated widely with fans. Twitter was dotted with the announcements of listeners saying they were canceling their subscriptions, and screenshots from Spotify’s app showed a message from its customer support team saying that it was “getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond.” Spotify has not said how many customers canceled their subscriptions.Tech rivals have also pounced on the controversy, with SiriusXM restarting a Neil Young channel and Apple Music calling itself “the home of Neil Young.”In a statement on his website on Friday, Young reiterated his objections to Rogan’s podcast and took a swipe at Spotify’s sound quality. He also said he supported free speech.“I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship,” it said. “Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.” More

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      Tito Matos, Virtuoso of a Puerto Rican Sound, Dies at 53

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      A lifelong champion of the plena genre, he helped rejuvenate it for a new generation both in Puerto Rico and in New York.Tito Matos, a master percussionist, revered educator and lifelong champion of the Puerto Rican style of music known as plena, died on Jan. 18 in San Juan, P.R. He was 53.His wife, Mariana Reyes Angleró, said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Matos was a virtuoso of the requinto, the smallest and highest-pitched hand-held drum, or pandereta, used in plena. Rooted in African song traditions, plena emerged in the early 20th century on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and came to be known as “el periódico cantado,” or “the sung newspaper.” In street-corner style, it narrated stories, some gossipy, about love and the concerns of everyday working-class and Black Puerto Ricans. In its early years, wealthy elites maligned the genre.Mr. Matos was a member of multiple plena groups but first gained wide recognition with the band Viento de Agua, founded in New York in 1996. It reimagined plena and bomba, another Afro-Puerto Rican style of music and dance, by infusing them with jazz textures, exuberant horn sections and Cuban batá rhythms.For Mr. Matos, the band’s first album, “De Puerto Rico al Mundo” (1998), opened the door to a dynamic career that transformed him into one of the foremost plena practitioners of his generation.Héctor René Matos Otero was born on June 15, 1968, in the Río Piedras district of San Juan, one of three children of Héctor Matos Gámbaro and Hilda I. Otero Maldonado. His father was an accountant and a salsa enthusiast; his mother is a homemaker.Raised in Villa Palmeras, a barrio of the Santurce section that is considered a nexus of bomba and plena, Héctor embraced plena as an 8-year-old when his grandfather gave him his first pandereta, for the Three Kings Day holiday. Héctor had no formal musical training and could not read sheet music, but his love for plena was planted.He moved to New York in 1994 and eventually completed a degree in landscape architecture at City College. He entered a new diasporic community of musicians, joining Los Pleneros de la 21, an intergenerational East Harlem ensemble, and learning from plena masters who had migrated to New York in the 1940s and ’50s.Mr. Matos, third from left, playing the pandereta in 2014. “He got a lot of young people to just pick up a pandereta,” a friend said, “who were not necessarily interested in plena.”Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesIn New York, he met Ricardo Pons and Alberto Toro, two saxophonist-arrangers. “Tito was addicted to plena,” Mr. Pons said in a phone interview. “Un fiebrú,” he added, laughing, “like he had a fever.”Historically, only certain families were custodians of plena, charged with keeping its traditions and rhythms alive. “It was a problem, because they were very restrictive,” Mr. Matos said in an interview in 2010.Instead, Viento de Agua sought innovation. “It was not about conserving plena or bomba,” Mr. Pons said; “it was about doing whatever we wanted with it.”The group’s album “De Puerto Rico al Mundo” was infused with an irreverent, imaginative spirit. Writing in The New York Times, Peter Watrous praised it as “exuberant and raucous.”The group performed in Mexico, Cuba and across the United States, sometimes accompanied by a full jazz band.“Tito was super, super gregarious and charismatic,” Ed Morales, a journalist, author and friend of Mr. Matos, said in a phone interview. Mr. Matos, he added, had a special ability to reach Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora and instill in them a sense of communion — particularly when he performed at a biennial concert at Hostos Community College in the Bronx.“You really got to feel the connection between people in Puerto Rico and people in New York more than almost any other place,” Mr. Morales said.In the early 2000s Mr. Matos returned to Puerto Rico, where he became an educator and cultural advocate. He co-founded Plenazos Callejeros, a monthly initiative that gathered musicians across Puerto Rico for spontaneous plena performances on street corners.“He got a lot of young people to just pick up a pandereta,” Mr. Morales said — “people who were not necessarily interested in plena, because maybe they thought it sounded corny or something, or it wasn’t like salsa or hip-hop or reggaeton.”Today, plena is undergoing a cultural renaissance; in recent years it has played a central role in progressive political gatherings and protests in Puerto Rico, including those in the summer of 2019 that led to the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.Subsequent projects led Mr. Matos to collaborate with stars like Eddie Palmieri, Ricky Martin and the jazz saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón. Mr. Matos later founded the band La Máquina Insular, which focused on returning plena back to its roots.In 2015, he and his wife founded La Junta, a bar and performance space in Santurce, where they hosted live music and plena workshops. Hurricane Maria destroyed the space in 2017, but its spirit was revived in “La Casa de la Plena,” a historical exhibition, curated by the couple, that opened in May 2021 at the Taller Comunidad La Goyco, a community center they established in an abandoned Santurce school building they had renovated.In addition to his mother and his wife, whom he married in 2013, Mr. Matos is survived by their son, Marcelo; two children from previous marriages that ended in divorce, Celiana and Héctor; a brother, Yan Matos Otero; and a sister, Glennis Matos Otero.A procession this month honoring Mr. Matos in San Juan drew hundreds.Taller Comunidad – La GoycoOn Jan. 21, Mr. Matos was honored with an immense procession in Santurce. Friends, family members and dozens of fans walked the streets, drumming on panderetas and singing words of gratitude. “Muchas gracias, te amamos,” they chanted — “Thank you very much. We love you.” More

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      Review: Philip Glass and the Bangles, Mashed at the Symphony

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond brought their gleeful opera-cabaret show “Only an Octave Apart” to the New York Philharmonic.It’s not like the New York Philharmonic hasn’t been queer before. I can’t have been the only boy for whom Jessye Norman’s hair, when she sang Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene with the orchestra on national television in 1995, was a turning point. The ensemble backed Mariah Carey in Central Park, and Elaine Stritch for Sondheim’s 80th. It once paired Lou Harrison and Bruckner.But it’s safe to say it hasn’t presented anything quite like Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Philharmonic debut as a duo on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Performing a rich helping of their recent show “Only an Octave Apart,” they cracked jokes about G spots and traveling for sex, mashed up Purcell’s Dido with Dido’s “White Flag,” layered Philip Glass over the Bangles, and generally camped up the joint.When “Only an Octave Apart” played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn last fall, it was a riff on Beverly Sills and Carol Burnett’s high-low 1976 special of the same name, bringing together Costanzo, an operatic countertenor, and Bond, the gleefully savage cabaret diva. I went in with a little trepidation — a fan of both performers, but not quite sure whether the experiment would go off. Would it be too stiff? Too silly? Too talky? Too self-indulgent?It was sublime.By turns hilarious and tender — those dual Didos are very much not played for laughs — the show was a small miracle of careful craft and improvisatory looseness, of arch personae and moving sincerity. Costanzo was a superb, well, straight man to Bond’s battiness, and their voices — one slender and pure, the other husky and vibrato-heavy — improbably blended. The return to live performance after a year and a half of lockdowns only increased the poignancy and delight of their obvious mutual love and respect. It was a confection that nourished.It still is. Alongside the release of an album version, the show is an apt opener for the festival “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” organized by Costanzo as part of his Philharmonic residency. Focused on marginalized identities and (forgive the self-helpism) being yourself, the festival’s programs include a pair of premieres sung by Costanzo, as well as a rare countertenor take on Berlioz’s song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été.”On Thursday I missed Zack Winokur’s daffy yet elegant full staging of “Only an Octave Apart,” especially Jonathan Anderson’s delirious gowns. But the 90-minute show compressed nicely into a 50-minute concert half, the union between classical and cabaret smoothed by Nico Muhly’s lush yet subtle orchestrations.Costanzo also joined the orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, in the premiere of Joel Thompson and Tracy K. Smith’s “The Places We Leave.”Chris LeeSome moody Nelson Riddle-style string arrangements — like the scoring of a Douglas Sirk melodrama — nodded to what came before intermission: the premiere of Joel Thompson’s “The Places We Leave.” Setting a new text by the poet Tracy K. Smith, Thompson also reveled in sumptuous, worried strings, and gave Costanzo mellow, narrative vocal lines that surge into piercing climaxes. There was even a patch of exhausting Handelian coloratura, a wink at the text’s account of a lover who “left me breathless,” and at a Costanzo specialty. (He appears in “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera in March.)The concert opened with Joan Tower’s stout “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” No. 1, and also included Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical.” What was this chestnut doing here? Particularly as conducted by Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director — who was otherwise a sensitive leader — with his all-too-characteristic clenched, unwitty approach to the standard repertory.But an aspect of the choice resonated. Like “Only an Octave Apart,” Prokofiev’s First was created in a time of crisis, the violence of the February Revolution in Russia, but has little hint of that darkness in a work of sparkling energy and grace.Is making joyful music in grim times escapist, even reactionary? Sometimes the opposite: The “Classical” looked, as does “Only an Octave Apart,” to the past with a fresh spirit, a kind of progressive nostalgia. And like Costanzo and Bond in their show, Prokofiev used the work not to rest on his laurels but to spur himself to develop; the symphony was the first big piece he wrote without leaning on his beloved piano as a composition tool. It made his future possible.As unlikely yet satisfying a pairing as Costanzo and Bond, then, these two works — bridging an intermission and a century — are a reminder that what emerges and survives from our distressing era may not be what we expect. All we can do is give artists the space to create, and keep our ears open.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Reawakening the Antichrist (and Other Lost Opera Gems)

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      It can be challenging to revive forgotten works like “Antikrist.” But the absence of entrenched traditions can be liberating.BERLIN — The Whore of Babylon, in a grotesque fat suit, belts out a hymn to hedonism midway through the Deutsche Oper’s new production of “Antikrist” here.Ersan Mondtag’s riotously colorful, boldly stylized staging of what this work’s Danish composer, Rued Langgaard, called a “church opera” is a near-breathless swirl. Nodding to various early-20th-century art movements, including Symbolism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus, it is only the third full staging of the work, which was written and revised between 1921 and 1930, but which remained unperformed at the time of Langgaard’s death, in 1952.Inspired by the Book of Revelation, “Antikrist” premieres Jan. 30 and runs through Feb. 11. It is the latest in a series of operatic rediscoveries at the Deutsche Oper, which, in recent decades, has made a point of highlighting works from outside the canon. In recent seasons, it has lavished attention on Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète” as part of a series devoted to that once-renowned 19th-century composer, as well as two early-20th-century titles, Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane” and Zemlinsky’s “Der Zwerg.”A scene from “Der Zwerg,” another rarely performed work that was revived at the Deutsche Oper.Monika RittershausAlong with the Deutsche Oper’s commitment to commissioning new operas, these rediscoveries are a way of refreshing and enlarging opera’s notoriously narrow repertoire. An essentially unknown work like “Antikrist” presents a host of logistical challenges, from training singers to attracting audiences, but it can provide its director with rare creative license. The absence of entrenched performing traditions can be artistically liberating.“It’s totally crazy,” Mondtag, who also designed the sets and helped design the costumes, said of the piece. “It’s something between Schoenberg and Wagner, and like a sacred opera without linear narration. So you have the freedom to do whatever you want.”Mondtag, one of Germany’s leading young avant-garde directors, was putting the finishing touches on “Antikrist” when the pandemic locked the country down for the first time, in March 2020. Since then, he’s staged two other rarely performed 20th-century works, Schreker’s “Der Schmied von Gent” and Weill’s “Silbersee,” both for Vlaamse Opera in Belgium. A relative newcomer to opera, Mondtag said it was hardly surprising that he’s been getting assignments like these, rather than war horses like “Tosca.”Mondtag onstage at the Deutsche Oper. He says he didn’t set out to become a specialist in unknown operas: “It just happened that way.”Gordon Welters for The New York Times“It’s considered more experimental to do unknown things,” Mondtag said. In his short time working in opera, he added, he has acquired something of a reputation as an “expert of unstageable or unknown operas. I didn’t choose that; it just happened that way.”When the Deutsche Oper returned to live performance in the summer of 2020, it concentrated on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring.” All four titles premiered at the house during the pandemic, but after the “Ring” played its last performances earlier this month, the company turned its attention to the delayed “Antikrist” premiere.“It’s such impressive music that I think it’s necessary to do it,” said Dietmar Schwarz, the Deutsche Oper’s general director. He added that while he would love it if Mondtag’s production inspired new interest in “Antikrist,” he was mostly focused on finding a curious and open audience in Berlin.“We’re not necessarily doing it for the survival of this old opera,” he said.Isolated productions of rediscoveries rarely catch fire. One exception was David Pountney’s acclaimed staging of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s punishing 1965 work “Die Soldaten,” which was first seen in 2006 at the Ruhrtriennale festival in Germany and traveled to the Park Avenue Armory in New York two years later. A spate of productions followed in Berlin; Munich; Salzburg, Austria; and elsewhere.A scene from a 2008 performance of “Die Soldaten” at the Park Avenue Armory. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera had been revived at the Ruhrtrienniale festival in Germany two years before.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYet even if rediscoveries are confined to a single production, German opera administrators have increasingly made them a priority. This contrasts with the United States: These days, it is more common for the Metropolitan Opera or the Lyric Opera of Chicago to present an attention-generating world premiere than to dust off a forgotten work. (Leon Botstein’s full-production revivals at Bard College in New York are a notable exception.)“There is a treasure trove of stuff out there,” said Barrie Kosky, who leads the Komische Oper in Berlin. Since arriving at that company in 2012, he has scored some of his greatest hits with productions of long overlooked works, including operettas by German-speaking Jewish composers like Paul Abraham and Oscar Straus.“Let’s face it, we can’t survive on just a diet of the 20 most famous titles,” Kosky said.“Of course, it’s always a risk because sometimes you bring back a piece and it doesn’t work,” he said. Or, he added: “You say: ‘Look, we’re bringing this back. It’s not a perfect piece, but this score is still worth hearing.’ I think that’s also very legitimate and valid; I don’t think everything has to be a masterpiece.”Kosky pointed to his own eclectic programming at the Komische Oper — where, before the pandemic, the house was selling 90 percent of its seats — as evidence that theaters can be filled with works by composers other than Mozart and Puccini.“All of that’s been blown out of the water when I see that we can sell out ‘The Bassarids’ completely,” he said, referring to Hans Werner Henze’s 1965 opera, which Kosky staged in 2019. “Or we can have incredible advance sales for an operetta where people don’t even know the title or the music.”Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, center, in “The Bassarids,” a sold-out production at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2019.Monika RittershausWhen Matthias Schulz, the general director of the Staatsoper in Berlin, programmed a Baroque festival in his first season leading the company, he didn’t go for the usual suspects.“I wanted to do everything except Handel,” he said.The centerpiece of the festival’s first edition, in 2018, was Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie.” Since then, two rarities have followed: Scarlatti’s “Il Primo Omicidio” and, this past fall, Campra’s “Idoménée,” far more obscure than Mozart’s later “Idomeneo.”Hidden in the corners of opera history, Schulz said, “there are real masterworks and we have a responsibility to find them. We need to convince the audience that what we do is interesting, and to challenge them.”A scene from a 2021 production of Campra’s “Idomenée” at the Staatsoper in Berlin.Bernd UhligThat process looks different in Berlin, with a rich opera landscape thanks to three full-time companies, than it does in smaller cities. Laura Berman, the artistic director of the Staatsoper in Hanover, in northern Germany, said that drawing an audience with obscure titles can be a challenge. But, she added, the right work and the right production can also put a smaller house on the map.In her first season in Hanover, Berman scored a hit with Halévy’s religious potboiler “La Juive” — which, like Meyerbeer’s grand operas, faded from the repertory by the early 20th century. Lydia Steier’s production conjured a historical survey of antisemitism, starting in post-World War II America and working back to 15th-century Konstanz, Germany, the setting specified by the libretto. The 2019 staging was acclaimed, and helped the company earn the title of Opera House of the Year from Oper Magazine.Berman said she wasn’t surprised that a production about the need for tolerance had resonated in Hanover, a religiously and ethnically mixed city she that called “extremely diverse.”“People have always talked in the theater about ‘hooks’: how to get the audience hooked into going to see something,” she added. “I truly feel today that the topic is major, especially for younger audiences, more than the title.”A scene from the Staatsoper in Hanover’s 2019 production of Halévy’s “La Juive.”Sandra ThenShe added that works like “La Juive” were excellent for convincing people “that an opera house is a forum for social and political discussion — which, in the end, it always has been, for at least several hundred years.”The Staatsoper’s next big premiere in Hanover will be Marschner’s “Der Vampyr” in late March — directed by Mondtag. “His visual world is really special,” Berman said. “But for me, the main factor is being able to think through works and being able to bust them open.”That is less “terrifying,” she added, “if you do a work where there are no preconceived notions.” More

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      Don Wilson, Who Gave the Ventures Their Distinctive Rhythm, Dies at 88

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      He was a founder, with Bob Bogle, of what has been called the best-selling and most influential instrumental band in rock ’n’ roll history.Don Wilson, co-founder of the instrumental rock group the Ventures, whose twanging, hard-driving sound, propelled by his dynamic rhythm guitar, led to hits like “Walk — Don’t Run” and helped shape the surf music of the early 1960s as well as influencing generations of guitarists, died on Saturday in Tacoma, Wash. He was 88.His daughter Staci Layne Wilson confirmed the death, at a hospital.Mr. Wilson and Bob Bogle formed the group that became the Ventures in the late 1950s and had been having modest success performing in the Seattle area when, with Nokie Edwards on bass and Skip Moore playing drums, they recorded “Walk — Don’t Run” in March 1960. It was their version of a song by the jazz guitarist Johnny Smith that had previously been recorded by Chet Atkins.The group had already released one 45 r.p.m. record, having formed their own label, Blue Horizon, with the help of Mr. Wilson’s mother, to do it. But that first record didn’t generate interest, and neither did “Walk — Don’t Run,” until they played it for Pat O’Day, who had the afternoon show on the Seattle radio station KJR. He smelled a hit.The station always played an instrumental leading into its newscast at the top of the hour, but without introducing it, Mr. O’Day said in an interview for “Sonic Boom! The History of Northwest Rock, From ‘Louie, Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’” a 2009 book by Peter Blecha. “So we put it on every hour as that filler there,” he said, “and of course you know what happened after that.”What happened was, callers flooded the station wanting to know what that catchy record was. One of the callers was from Dolton Records, which had earlier turned away the fledgling Ventures. Dolton signed them, and soon the record reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It stayed on that chart for months and became one of the most recognizable songs of the era.Mr. Wilson spoke when the Ventures were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. With him were, from left, John Durrill, Fiona Taylor (the band’s manager), Bob Spalding, Nokie Edwards and Leon Taylor.Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage The group went on to have a number of other successful singles, most notably its version of the theme from the television series “Hawaii Five-0,” which made the Top 10 in 1969. The lineup shuffled a bit — Mr. Bogle, who died in 2009, switched to bass; Mr. Edwards, who died in 2018, was the better player and became lead guitarist; and Mel Taylor, who died in 1996, settled in as drummer. Mr. Wilson pounded out his rhythm accompaniments for 55 years, turning over the job to Ian Spalding, son of another current member, Bob Spalding, during a show in Tokyo in 2015.In 2019 the Grammy Museum mounted an exhibition in honor of the group, calling the Ventures “the most influential, best-selling instrumental band in rock and roll history.” The group, the exhibition said, has recorded more than 250 albums, including a series of instructional records aimed at novice guitar players.Leon Taylor, Mel’s son, is the Ventures’ current drummer and had a close-up view of Mr. Wilson’s impact.“Don has been a part of my life since I was a little kid,” he said by email. “Don was a unique talent that influenced thousands of guitar players all over the world.”Mr. Blecha, too, cited the group’s influence on would-be guitar players, as well as its chutzpah in putting out its first records on its own label when no one else would, something rare for the time.The Ventures in 1999, from left: Gerry McGee, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Bogle and Mr. Wilson.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns via Getty Images“But beyond all that,” he said by email of Mr. Wilson in particular, “you just gotta admire a musician who carved out such a lucrative and impactful career playing mainly rhythm guitar. Guys who have accomplished that comprise a rather short list.”Donald Lee Wilson was born on Feb. 10, 1933, in Tacoma to Woodrow and Josie Wilson. His father was a car salesman, and his mother became a record producer and was key to the band’s early success.“When I was younger I wanted to learn how to play the trombone,” Don Wilson said in an interview for “The Ventures: Stars on Guitars,” a 2019 documentary film directed by his daughter Staci. “I thought the trombone had such a mellow sound. It was Tommy Dorsey that I really liked.”He played trombone in an Army band, where a bandmate taught him chords on the guitar, adding to the few he had already been shown by his mother. After mustering out, he was working at his father’s used-car lot in Seattle when Mr. Bogle came in, looking to buy a car. They started talking and hit it off.Mr. Bogle got Mr. Wilson a job working with him as a bricklayer. They soon realized that, with all the rain in the Pacific Northwest, they had a lot of down time, since many of their jobs were outside. And both of them had rudimentary guitar skills.“We bought two guitars in a pawnshop in Tacoma, Washington, and we probably paid 10 or 15 dollars apiece for them,” Mr. Wilson said in the film.The group was just the two of them at first, Mr. Bogle playing lead and Mr. Wilson rhythm. That, of necessity, led them to develop a unique sound, underpinned by Mr. Wilson’s driving approach.“In the early days Don had to play very rhythmic and strong because they didn’t have a drummer,” Bob Spalding, who first played with the group in 1981 and joined for good after Mr. Bogle’s death, said by email. “Later, when they became a quartet with a drummer, his style never changed, and that unique rhythm guitar drive became a prominent characteristic of the band’s music.”In addition to their success in the United States (where their other hits included “Walk — Don’t Run, ’64,” a remake of their own hit that also made Billboard’s Top 10), the Ventures became wildly popular in Japan — so much so, Mr. Wilson said, that numerous bands there took to imitating them. That led to an uncomfortable surprise when the band made its second trip there, its first as headliners, in 1965.“We had an opening group,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984, “and they played all of our songs before we went on.”At his death, Mr. Wilson lived in Covington, Wash. In addition to his daughter Staci, his survivors include three other children, Jill Fairbanks, Tim Wilson and Cyd Wilson; and two grandchildren.In 2008 John Fogerty inducted the Ventures into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In his induction remarks, he marveled that the group had recorded more than 250 albums.“Good Lord, think about that,” Mr. Fogerty said. “Nowadays, some of us would be happy to sell 250 albums.” More

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      5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

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      Recordings of Brahms, Haydn, Grieg, Nikolai Kapustin and George Walker are among recent highlights.‘Blueprint’: Piano Music by Nikolai Kapustin for Jazz TrioFrank Dupree, piano; Jakob Krupp, bass; Obi Jenne, drums (Capriccio)When I reported last year on the pianist Frank Dupree’s first album of works by Nikolai Kapustin, Dupree previewed things to come. For his follow-up engagement with Kapustin, a swing-influenced Russian composer, Dupree said he would release a series of solo piano works played by a traditional jazz trio.Now that the results are out, the wisdom of the idea is evident. Dupree could have recorded an enjoyable solo set, as his feel for Kapustin is as fluid as ever. But we currently have no lack of one-player recitals of this music — including from Marc-André Hamelin, Steven Osborne and Kapustin himself.The improvised element on “Blueprint” is subtle. Dupree plays the piano solos as they were notated, and the bassist Jakob Krupp follows his left hand. The album’s distinguishing element of improvisation is left to the percussionist Obi Jenne. And it’s his interventions that truly elevate this set. In a piece like the Op. 41 Variations, Kapustin moves briskly between different syncopated styles; Jenne’s mutable beat-juggling highlights each change. Perhaps not every item here needed the jazz combo treatment. But when the arrangements work — as on selections from the Eight Concert Études — this trio adds to the material a new jolt. SETH COLTER WALLSBrahms: Late Piano WorksPaul Lewis, piano (Harmonia Mundi)To listen to the pianist Paul Lewis’s new album of late Brahms, you would think these pieces had been written just after the last sonatas of Schubert, which Lewis has recorded with wrenching restraint. Splicing the gap between 1828 and the early 1890s, Lewis’s is a vision of Brahms as fully Classicist; these final four sets of solos are rendered with judicious tempos and a clean, calm touch — intelligent, sensitive readings.The pearly moderation that makes Lewis’s Schubert so movingly humble sometimes keeps his Brahms shy of grandeur and especially mystery. These are tender, affecting interpretations more than pensive, let alone unsettling, ones; Lewis sometimes stints the softest dynamics, giving a slight sense of straightforwardness when you want intimations (at least) of the epic. The Intermezzo in E flat (Op. 117, No. 1) doesn’t seem to lose itself in the middle section — as it does in Radu Lupu’s benchmark 1987 recording — so the return to the theme is less than overwhelming.But a cleareyed Intermezzo in A (Op. 118, No. 2) is deeply satisfying; the Intermezzo in E Minor (Op. 119, No. 2) leavens lucidity with dreaminess. And Lewis’s sparkle in the middle of the Romanze in F (Op. 118, No. 5) gives the shift back to sober feeling at the end quietly immense power. ZACHARY WOOLFEGrieg: SongsLise Davidsen, soprano; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano (Decca)The recording industry has finally found a way to capture Lise Davidsen. A luminous soprano of remarkable range, equally capable of floodlight power and the piercing smallness of a laser pointer, she wasn’t well represented on her first two albums for Decca, which were documents of sensitive and intelligent interpretation more than versatility or resounding might.Now, after programs of Wagner, Strauss, Beethoven and Verdi, comes a much more intimate album of Grieg songs performed with the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes — a pairing of two excellent Norwegian musicians in works by their country’s most treasured composer. The scale of this program is better suited than Davidsen’s earlier albums at conveying the dexterity of her voice, and her gift for endearing levity; there are playful turns of phrase here that you just don’t get in “Tannhäuser.”Throughout the album — which begins with the eight-song cycle “The Mountain Maid” and continues with excerpts from other collections — Andsnes is an evocative tone painter, with dreamy glissandos in “Singing,” galloping festivity in “Midsummer Eve” and flowing momentum in “A Boat on the Waves Is Rocking.” And Davidsen is a nimble raconteur, lovingly warm in the opening cycle’s “Meeting,” then shattering in its Schubertian finale, “At the Gjaetle Brook,” and later bringing both folk lightness and Wagnerian heft to the six songs of Op. 48. To the credit of Grieg and these artists, you’ll never be so moved by a song called “Snail, Snail!” JOSHUA BARONEHaydn: SymphoniesAcademy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor (Eloquence)It’s easy now to be a little sniffy about Neville Marriner’s achievements with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a partnership renowned as the most recorded in history. With the success of the period-instrument movement, their hundreds of recordings on modern instruments have gained the reputation of being a bit staid — practical and reliable, to be sure, but nevertheless dusty relics of an era best forgotten.But this thoroughly enjoyable 15-disc set — which for the first time brings together 33 Haydn symphonies set down between 1970 and 1990 — is ample reminder that there were perfectly good artistic reasons Marriner and his chamber-orchestra forces were such a roaring commercial success.Conceiving their work initially as a crisp, stylish rejoinder to an older, stouter approach to the Baroque and Classical repertoire, they played this music with insatiable collective commitment — the slow movements singing gracefully, the outer movements sparkling in their drive and invention. If there is a little more zest in their accounts of Haydn’s earlier symphonies than his later ones, they are all brilliantly well judged, and full of life. DAVID ALLENGeorge Walker: Piano SonatasSteven Beck, piano (Bridge)In 2018, when the composer and pianist George Walker died at 96, there were plenty of accomplishments to memorialize, including his Pulitzer Prize — the first awarded to a Black composer. But there was also a dispiriting acknowledgment of a missed opportunity, given that so few elite classical institutions had seriously engaged with Walker’s work while he was alive.The inattention extended to recordings; there remains a notable dearth of sets devoted exclusively to Walker. Very partial redress comes in the form of this new album, in which Steven Beck takes on all five of Walker’s piano sonatas, written between 1953 and 2003.The first sonata, revised in 1991, offers some of the galloping energy seemingly required when suggesting Americana, but it also includes a rambunctious harmonic edge that bristles with maverick spirit. By the time of the Third Sonata, written in 1975 and revised in 1996, atonality had taken center stage. But Walker’s signature feel for contrast — including alternations between motifs that ring out and peremptory chordal bursts — is still evident. With playing that’s slashing and sensitive by turns, Beck’s recital accentuates the through lines in a protean artistic life. SETH COLTER WALLS More

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      Sweden’s Songwriters Look to K-Pop

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      When the Swedish songwriter Ellen Berg first heard a K-pop track, in 2013, her reaction was typical of many Western listeners: “What the hell is this?” she recalled thinking.Berg, 31, was studying at Musikmakarna — a songwriting academy about 330 miles north of Stockholm — and her class had been asked to write a Korean hit.To get the aspiring songwriters in the mood, the students listened to “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation, a wildly popular K-pop girl group. “It’s one of the craziest K-pop songs ever,” Berg said recently by phone. The track includes raps, bursts of high-speed dance music and even a verse in the style of a rock ballad. “It’s really five different songs in one,” Berg said.The class was given a week to write something like it. “It didn’t go very well,” Berg said, with a laugh.BTS performing during the American Music Awards in November in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For MrcEight years later, Berg has certainly improved her K-pop songwriting abilities: She is now one of dozens of Swedish musicians who make a living exclusively from writing tracks for the genre. She has contributed to a hit for the pop juggernaut BTS, as well as to wildly successful tracks by groups like Red Velvet and Itzy.While Swedes have long been go-to figures for American pop stars — with songwriters like Max Martin and Shellback producing or co-writing tracks for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and others — Swedish musicians are now becoming a force in K-pop, too.Berg is signed to EKKO, a Korea-based music publisher with studios in Stockholm, where Berg works alongside Moa Carlebecker, a sought-after K-pop songwriter better known by her stage name, Cazzi Opeia. The two musicians (who collaborate under the name Sunshine) also regularly write with another duo — Ludvig Evers and Jonatan Gusmark, who call themselves Moonshine — based in a studio next door. Seven other Swedish songwriters who work on K-pop tracks have studios in the same building.Berg, Carlebecker, Evers and Gusmark first worked together in 2017 on “Peek-a-Boo,” a Red Velvet track that Berg likened to an old “Scooby-Doo” episode or a trip to a haunted house. “Peek-a-Boo” has since been streamed more than 217 million times on YouTube.EKKO is not the only company pumping out K-pop in Stockholm. Cosmos, a publisher, has seven songwriters working full time on K-pop tracks, Peo Nylen, its creative director, said in an email. The Kennel, another songwriting company, employs 14 K-pop writers, said Iggy Strange-Dahl, one of its founders.K-pop may seem like a recent phenomenon to Western music fans who caught on with the rise of BTS, but Korean record labels have been seeking out European songwriters since the late 1990s in a bid for global success, said Michael Fuhr, a German academic who wrote a book about K-pop. “They had Max Martin productions in mind,” he said, adding that the first successful European K-pop writers were actually Finnish and Norwegian, not Swedish.Today, songwriters of many nationalities are trying to make K-pop hits, Fuhr said, attracted, in part, by the fact that Koreans still buy CDs, so there is a lot of money to be made. SM Entertainment, a Korean entertainment conglomerate, says on its website that it works with 864 songwriters worldwide, including 451 across Europe and 210 in North America.Fuhr said that many K-pop hits were written at songwriting “camps” organized by record labels or publishers who invite musicians from across the world. Over multiple days, songwriters work in teams to create new songs. (American pop songs are also commonly written this way.)Gusmark, left, and Evers working in the studio. They perform together as Moonshine.Felix Odell for The New York TimesCarlebecker said in a video interview that she became hooked on K-pop when she first heard it, in 2016. As a child, she loved the Spice Girls, she said — “I had all the posters, I had all the CDs” — so K-pop instantly felt familiar, with its multitude of girl and boy groups in which each member has a uniquely defined personality.She immediately grasped that K-pop tracks must have multiple sections so each group member has a chance to shine, she said, whether they want to rap, sing softly or belt out a chorus. Having so many sections provides a lot more opportunities to be creative than on a typical Western pop song, she added.“There are no rules in K-pop — you can have three hooks, one after each other, if you feel like it,” Carlebecker said. “You can be crazy and colorful, and that’s what appealed the most.”Carlebecker, who is covered neck-to-toe in tattoos — a look that would be unlikely on an actual K-pop star — said she knew only two words of Korean: “annyeonghaseyo” (hello) and “gamsahabnida” (thank you).But that didn’t get in the way of her songwriting, she said: Carlebecker writes in English, and then Korean songwriters add new lyrics to her melodies, often keeping in a few random English words to help the track stand out.In interviews, Berg and Carlebecker offered multiple theories to explain why Swedes produce such good K-pop tracks, including the country’s strong songwriting tradition and comprehensive music education system. Sweden is cold, Berg noted, which meant that there was often “nothing better to do” than stay in and work on music.For some Koreans, the reason is actually quite simple: Swedes write melodies that are so catchy, fans want to sing them at packed stadium shows and at their local karaoke bars.“Swedes seem to have an emotional understanding of us Koreans,” Michelle Cho, a Korean songwriter who also scouts foreign songwriters for Korean record labels, said in a telephone interview. “They write melodies that seem to really hit our emotions.”Whatever the reason, as K-pop booms, competition among songwriters around the world is becoming fierce. Evers, of Moonshine, said that a few years ago, some songwriters in Sweden used to look down on his work as “a bit lame,” as though he’d failed to land gigs with American or European musicians and now had to ply his trade in Asia. Now, Evers said, those same people were coming up to him in bars saying, “We should write K-pop sometime!”Thanks to his success, he added, he was starting to get a tiny insight into the life of a K-pop idol. K-pop fans regularly contacted Moonshine on social media to praise the duo for its work, Evers said, and a popular K-pop YouTube channel has interviewed him.Swedish K-pop writers are getting noticed in Sweden, too. In November, Carlebecker was named “international success of the year” at Sweden’s annual songwriting awards, beating Max Martin (and Moonshine). Articles about the songwriters have appeared in the country’s major newspapers, and Berg and Carlebecker have been interviewed for TV news.Still, Evers said, not everyone has grasped just how significant K-pop is becoming for Sweden’s music industry.“My grandma still doesn’t understand what I do for a living,” Evers said. “She doesn’t think it’s real.” More