Friday Miscellanea

The New York Times has a long piece on one of my favorite musicians: Esa-Pekka Salonen: A Conductor at the Top, and at a Crossroads

“We in this classical music industry sometimes wonder what we’re doing in this bubble,” he said. “But this tells us that it actually matters that there’s a symphony orchestra in a town. We are the good guys, in the cultural side of things. We are constructive forces of society, and it’s nice to be reminded of that.”

So, what now? Within five minutes of the announcement that he was leaving San Francisco, Salonen had the first of many job offers. At the moment, he’s not interested in taking on another orchestra, but there are many other ways to remain active. He is working on a horn concerto for Stefan Dohr of the Berlin Philharmonic, and he is considering writing his first opera.

Chase said that Salonen’s ideas for the field are “more porous and ultimately more powerful than institutions”; there’s a possibility that his work as a freelancer could evolve into something more project-based, with orchestral partners worldwide. When he was at the Soho House in Stockholm, he told Benkö, the interviewer, that it was kind of odd to see his old classmates start to retire.

* * *

Here is economist Tyler Cowen's list of his favorite classical performances. Not many surprises. Lots of Bach and Beethoven but just Don Giovanni from Mozart.

* * *

The Guardian alerts us to a new phase of minimalism: Subdued, sleepy and despised by snobs: how minimalist piano eclipsed classical music

Beving and Melnyk are two figures in a huge musical phenomenon unfolding on the fringes of classical music. It can be heard on film and TV soundtracks, adverts and call-centre hold music, and behind that trickledown lies an enormous number of albums, singles and playlists by pianist-composers now attracting more listeners than most big names of classical piano performance. Did you think Yuja Wang, the 37-year-old Chinese phenomenon, was one of the most famous pianists in the world? Think again.

Beving, Melnyk and similar artists work in a solo piano soundworld sometimes known as “ambient” or “neoclassical” or “postminimalist” – although categories aren’t really its thing. As one fan put it to me with a hint of impatience: “It’s all just stuff, you know?” And this particular stuff is about soulful simplicity. A stripped-back aesthetic. Quiet melancholy. It is a world of arpeggios and gentle undulations, of atmosphere rather than athleticism.

* * *

Five of the best books about classical music

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain

Set in the 17th-century Danish court, this is the story of Peter Claire, a young lutenist who arrives from England to join the royal orchestra. Atmospheric, tender and gripping, Tremain explores the extraordinary power of music through her language. Melodies have a “strange and haunting sweetness”, and notes are “carried, as breath is carried through the body”.

* * *

In The New Yorker, Alex Ross on The Cellist of Auschwitz

As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, Lasker-Wallfisch is one of the most forceful and eloquent witnesses still living. More than that, she embodies a lost way of being—the intellectual spark of German Jewish culture before Hitler. With her shock of white hair, ruddy face, and exacting eyes, she looks twenty years younger than she is. She is mordantly funny. She speaks in epigrams and aphorisms. She has no patience with sentimentality or stupidity. An unrepentant smoker, she intersperses her remarks with well-timed drags on a cigarette. Her voice has descended at least an octave since 1945. The word “indomitable” might have been invented for her. She is perhaps the most awe-inspiring person I have ever met.

I have to agree: one of the most awe-inspiring people I have ever known was also a survivor of Auschwitz.

* * *

I've always been fond of the music of Hector Berlioz--I wrote a big paper on how he engaged the listening subject. Here is the NYT: The World Is Still Catching Up to the Music of Hector Berlioz

He felt wronged by the public and his fellow composers, who even when they admired him didn’t know what to do with his music, or his personality. Wagner wrote that Berlioz didn’t trust anyone’s opinion, and seemed to enjoy isolation, dooming him to “remain forever incomplete and perhaps really shine only as a transient, marvelous exception.”

Berlioz had faith that his time would come, though. By his estimate, things would pick up for him if he could just live to 140. He made it to 65.

But he wasn’t wrong. After his death, in 1869, some of his works, like the “Symphonie Fantastique,” became firmly entrenched in the canon, and he is the subject of this year’s Bard Music Festival, which begins on Aug. 9. Still, two weeks’ worth of concerts and panel discussions, as well as a companion collection of essays, can only begin to capture the breadth of Berlioz’s artistry.

* * *

As a tribute to this still-neglected composer, let's have three pieces by Berlioz for our envois today. First, the Symphonie fantastique:

Next, Harold en Italie, a symphony/viola concerto based on a poem by Byron:

Finally, Roméo et Juliette, a dramatic symphony based on the Shakespeare play: