Monotonous Forest

Scavenger hunt

Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre requires four percussionists.  Here is what they play:

Xylophone, vibraphones, mechanical car horns, music boxes, electric door bells, tambourine, military drum, tom-toms, bass drums, triangle, suspended cymbals, rins (Japanese temple bells), tam-tams, maracas, guiros, ratchets, whips, wood blocks, claves, castanets, temple blocks, slide whistle, police whistle, cuckoo whistle, lion's roar, sheets of rustling paper, sandpaper blocks, orchestra bells, marimbaphone, snare drum, bongos, conga, tenor drum, crotales, cymbals, tubular bells, large wooden hammers, wooden slats, signal whistle, sirens, flexatones, duck quacks, large alarm clock, large metronome, tissue paper or newspaper, parade drum, gong, wood (log) drum, siren whistle, steamship whistle, wind machine, pistol, paper bag, tray of crockery, and kitchen pot.

[From the New York Philharmonic program notes for Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre" (1974-77, rev. 1996) by James M. Keller]

A "macabre" birthday

György Ligeti would have been 87 today, and no doubt delighted at the overwhelming response to the New York Philharmonic production of his sole opera, Le Grand Macabre, which opened last night.  Reports have been coming in all day, and I'm most gratified to hear that the loudest ovations were for conductor Alan Gilbert. 

Alex Ross posted a superb photograph, and Anthony Tommasini ends his review calling it "an instant Philharmonic milestone."

"Keys" moves to LPR

On Tuesday, Keys to the Future, the fifth annual festival of contemporary solo piano music, begins at (Le) Poisson Rouge.  Over the three nights, ten pianists will play 29 works by György Ligeti, Nicolai Kapustin, Annie Gosfield, Rodion Shchedrin, Magnus Lindberg and Chick Corea, among others, plus a world premiere by pianist Joseph Rubenstein, the festival's artistic director.

[Photo: "You don't even play piano" (2008, collage) by Guilherme Lepca, via Flickr]

Fun at that midtown hotel

Last night the four-year-old Talea Ensemble drew an eager crowd to the endearingly odd Roger Smith Hotel for the first annual Talea Ball, with dinner, drinks and a short concert.  The program began with the New York premiere of Topografia Index 3A (2008) by Alexandre Lunsqui, in an ear-tickling reading by Tara Helen O'Connor (flute), Rane Moore (clarinet) and Alex Lipowski (percussion and one of the group's co-founders). 

After dinner the crowd moved to the 16th floor penthouse, supposedly a favorite haunt of Buckminster Fuller when he worked at the hotel in the 1930s.  There Lipowski made a dazzling show of Georges Aperghis's Le Corps à Corps (1978), written for the zarb, a Persian drum resembling a large goblet.  The composer asks the percussionist to chatter away, blurting out syllables in French, and to periodically whip his head around as if startled by an unexpected noise.

The evening ended with composer Matthias Pintscher conducting a taut performance of Beat Furrer's Spur (1998) for piano and string quartet, a fascinating piece that showers listeners with a pointillistic spray of rhythmic droplets.  The musicians, all superb, were Alexander Woods and Joshua Modney (violins), Elizabeth Weisser (viola), Chris Gross (cello), and Steve Beck (piano).  Ms. Weisser, who also serves as the ensemble's Director of Development, coordinated the stimulating, intelligently planned evening, which couldn't have been more enjoyable.

Au revoir, Yvonne

Yvonne Loriod, the great French pianist and widow of Olivier Messiaen, died yesterday at age 86.  Roger Nichols wrote the obituary for The Guardian, and Tom Service has an appreciation on his blog.

[Photo: Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod with pianist Fred Došek in 1965, via the Music Biennale Zagreb]

Drawing while listening

Check out these fascinating sketches by Audrey Hawkins and Julia Sverchuk, who caught some of the performers at last weekend's Look & Listen Festival.

For young composers, an exuberant crowd

Two Nights at the MATA Festival.  MusicWeb International, May 11, 2010

#Operaplot results are in

Apparently tenor Jonas Kaufmann has a keen ear for humor, in addition to substantial singing chops.  As the judge for this year's #Operaplot contest (organized by The Omniscient Mussel), he found some invitingly diverse approaches to the challenge of describing the plot of an opera on Twitter, in 140 characters or less.

It's hard to pick a fave from this page of winners, but I did burst out laughing at Micaela Baranello's thoughts on The Coronation of Poppea, and James Harrington's assessment of Andrea Chénier.

Listen. Look. Repeat.

Starting Friday the Look & Listen Festival gets underway at the Chelsea Art Museum, and this year the three nights are particularly impressive.  Eighth blackbird will appear in Missy Mazzoli's Still Life with Avalanche, and the world premiere of Five Memos by Carlos Sánchez-Gutierrez.  Pianist Jade Simmons will play Corigliano's Etude Fantasy, and the JACK Quartet offers Caleb Burhans's Contritus, with the world premiere of Frayed by Hannah Lash.  WNYC's John Schaefer will be on hand to talk with the composers during the evening.

On Sunday afternoon, also at the Museum, WQXR's Terrance McKnight hosts percussionist Eduardo Leandro in works by Daniel Almada and Flo Menezes, and Face the Music presents Marcelo Zarvos and Dan Visconti.  Tanya Bannister is the piano wizard in pieces by Messiaen, Del Tredici and Suzanne Farrin.  And for this concert only, mothers get in free (not that the $10 regular admission is a budget-breaker).

For the middle concert on Saturday night, the festival moves to Gary Snyder/Project Space, where So Percussion will dig into Feldman, Cage, and a piece by the group's own Jason Treuting.  An a cappella group, Meridionalis, will present an array of Latin American music, and Phyllis Chen will deploy her talents on toy piano in works by Fabian Svennsson, Andrian Pertout, and Karlheinz Essl.

[Photo: Le débat (1998, acrylic on canvas) by Jean Miotte at the Chelsea Art Museum]