Friday Miscellanea

 Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again. --Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, p. 101.

I think they overestimated the timespan: even two or three generations might be enough...

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Is this a string-player's dream car?

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There is no need for me to describe my listening for the year as this blog has a pretty good account of it. So let's take a look at economist Tyler Cowen's listening:

2023 has been one of my very best years for classic music listening.  I’ve discovered an unusually high number of excellent recordings, and made a lot of progress in understanding many composers better.  Most of all, that would be Bach, Scriabin, Byrd, Handel, Robert Ashley, and Caroline Shaw, but by no means exhausting the list.  For whatever reasons, I’ve just had an immense amount of emotional energy to put into these discoveries.

I thought I would write up a list of my favorite new recordings, but there are too many of them.  Here are just a few:

Handel, The Eight Great Suites and Overtures, Francesco Corti.  My whole life I’ve preferred these for piano, say by Richter.  Corti is converting me to the harpsichord versions.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, Bach, sonatas and partitas for solo violin, volumes one and two.  These are some of my favorite works to buy multiple versions of.  I started off preferring the Milstein recordings, which still are wonderful.  Last year went through a Biondi phase, now am enamored of these.  I never tire of these pieces.

Monteverdi, Vespro Della Beata Vergine, conducted by Raphaël Pichon, covered here by the NYT.  Monteverdi’s greatest work, and this recording has been receiving special praise from many quarters.

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, the complete score (for the first time recorded), John Wilson and Sinfonia of London.

Here is the Alex Ross New Yorker classical music recording list: “I can’t remember a year of so many pleasure-inducing, addiction-triggering albums.”

You also might consult these 2023 recommendations from Gramophone, the ones I have heard are excellent, the others are high expected value.

It is a marvel that such a revenue-poor, streaming-intensive musical world is generating so many new and amazing recordings for virtually all kinds of classical music.  This is not what I was expecting five to ten years ago.

Another marvel is how many world-beating recordings are coming from young performers who do not have mega-strong preestablished reputations.  A lot of them I have never heard of before.

Most of all, I am pleased to see that beauty is proving so robust.

The links to other lists by Alex Ross and Gramophone are just a bonus.

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From Slipped Disc: SAD NEWS: GUITARIST HEIKE HAS DIED

The family has announced the death last night of the German classical guitarist Heike Matthiesen. Heike was 59 and had been battling cancer for five years. She is survived by her mother and sister.

Many of us knew her as one of the sweetest, most benign and positive communicators on social media.

After years of study with Pepe Romero, Heike put a friendly new face on the fretful work of guitar playing, often in contemporary music. She will be sorely missed.

What I find sad is that there are so many excellent guitarists these days that I had never previously heard the name Heike Matthiesen! Like myself, she had studied with Pepe Romero.

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These days, when all musical adulation seems to be directed towards Taylor Swift, at least in the mainstream media, it is rather refreshing to recall one of the charismatic musical acts of a previous generation: On the Sly: A memoir of the Family Stone

The group’s legend-clinching moment came when it stole the show with “I Want to Take You Higher” at Woodstock 1969, despite being pushed back to 3:30 am in a rainstorm—“I hadn’t thought of it as a competition,” writes Stone, “until the results started to come in.” Then and there, the Family Stone, alongside Jimi Hendrix, briefly threatened to reclaim rock counterculture as Black culture, and to catch the world in a love embrace with all the imaginative impunity taken for granted by their Californian white hippie peers.

The clips of the Woodstock performance on YouTube are pretty poor quality, this will give a better idea:

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 Beyond the Big 5: Making a Case for New, Neglected, and Offbeat Concertos

“In any given orchestra season, you can look, and there are one or maybe two cello concertos,” says cellist Alisa Weilerstein when asked about her longstanding advocacy of the Barber Cello Concerto, which she recently brought to the Cleveland Orchestra. “Violin and piano always get priority in terms of concerto performances. One of [the cello options] is usually going to be a very well-known concerto: Dvořák, Elgar, maybe the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1, but that’s already considered slightly more adventurous, even though that’s as classic as it gets.

“Then, if you’re going to program a mid-20th century concerto, you might do Shostakovich 1 or 2, and maybe the Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante, although that’s also rarely played. And then there’s Barber. It falls in there, and it just doesn’t get programmed that often, unless both the conductor and soloist really want it to. The Barber is a piece I advocate for very strongly. I don’t always get it when I ask for it, but I’ve been getting it more often lately, which is nice.”

Of course the situation is far worse if you are a guitarist! There is really only one concerto that orchestras want to program, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. I was delighted to be asked to play the Villa-Lobos concerto with the CBC Vancouver orchestra, years ago, even though I only had three months to prepare amid a lot of chamber-music commitments.

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I suppose this was inevitable: a collection of creepy and awkward Christmas music album covers.

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This piece from the New York Times alerts us to some interesting European opera productions available on Amazon Prime: 5 Operas You Can Stream at Home.

Tobias Kratzer is a director who is willing to jerk a canonical text around to fit a contemporary concept. In his take on Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” for the Royal Opera in London in 2020, he upends both acts: The first takes place in a Jacobin milieu, amid the French Revolution; the second, however, departs from historical specificity, showing its chorus in modern dress. This approach fits an opera that has always proved a challenge for straightforward storytelling. Crucially, Kratzer’s direction of singing actors tends to be marvelous; here, the star soprano Lise Davidsen is truly gripping as Leonore.

Unfortunately, I discovered that a lot of these may not be available on Amazon Prime in Mexico. 

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Let's have Frank Peter Zimmermann playing the Bach Chaconne:

Guitarist Heike Matthiesen with some Granados:

Finally, the Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra by Prokofiev: