A couple of weeks ago I wrote a bit about the songwriting class I’d been teaching at Duke. I’m going to continue in the mode of self-debriefing, I guess you could call it, with some thoughts about how classical music fits into the general undergraduate curriculum. I’ve never had much sympathy with the point of […]
Also tagged Alex Ross, Duke University, teaching musicA couple of days ago I picked up a recording of Fidelio in the library. It’s conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a “historically informed performance” (HIP) specialist, meaning that his ideal is to calibrate the performance of a piece based on what is known about musical practices and instruments at the time it was written. When […]
Also tagged flame wars, historically informed performance, music criticism, opera, Sequenza21Never mind the overblown dust-up about Joshua Bell in the Metro station. The big classical music news of the moment is The Classic FM Hall of Fame 2007, this year’s list of the top 300 classical works. Thanks to the astonishing reach of Topix.net’s Classical Music news feed, I’ve just become aware of a UPI […]
Also tagged Bach, Classic FM, Joshua Bell, rating and ranking, Vaughn WilliamsOne of the more impressive classical music-focussed blogs that I follow is On An Overgrown Path. A recent entry about Byzantine mosaics and frescoes in the Chora Church in Istanbul has, in addition to some gorgeous pictures, a link to a video of oud player Rahim AlHaj on YouTube. At the end he says the […]
Also tagged Bach, Beethoven, Glenn Gould, jazz, Louis Armstrong, Rahim AlHaj, world musicThis morning Alex Ross posted a short summary of the Hattogate scandal with links to some key sites that get to the heart of the matter. The one I found interesting enough to follow up is to Pristine Classical’s Hatto Hoax page. Andrew Rose, the engineer who runs the site, specializes in audio restoration—and it […]
Also tagged Beethoven, historically informed performance, recordingsThis morning on NPR I heard Scott Simon and Marin Alsop talking about Mahler’s Fifth (you can listen too). Simon began by noting that Mahler was disappointed with the reception it got, and is supposed to have said that he wished he could have waited 50 years and then conducted the premier, when the piece […]
Also tagged Mahler, NPRTonight, in the same hall Zorn played last night, it was the Ciompi Quartet with Branford Marsalis. I was looking forward to hearing my friend marc faris’s new composition Mountain Music which, as it turned out, is a beautifully restrained piece, distinctive, personal, and surprising. And yet, through no fault of the music or musicians, I was discontent. I was hoping for something grittier, and I end up thinking about other times I’ve heard Branford play or speak.
Also tagged Branford Marsalis, Ciompi Quartet, crossover music, jazz