Monotonous Forest

Bernstein angst finally gets New York premiere

New York City Opera stages Leonard Bernstein's A Quiet Place.  MusicWeb International, November 26, 2010

[Above: Chorus members in A Quiet Place, photographed by Carol Rosegg]

Giving thanks for Sondheim

Tonight at 9:00 p.m., Thirteen (WNET) will broadcast Sondheim! The Birthday Concert, taped from the New York Philharmonic performances last spring, and for anyone who admires the composer/lyricist, celebrations don't get much more electric.  (I reviewed it here.)  Led by Paul Gemignani, the orchestra sounded terrific, and host David Hyde Pierce was hilarious introducing a galaxy of theater legends—all directed with great taste (and a little emotion) by Lonny Price.  The show will be repeated on Friday at 1:30 a.m. and Sunday at 9:00 p.m.

[Photo by Richard Termine]

An oasis of serenity

Philippe Herreweghe at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival.  MusicWeb International, November 19, 2010

Satie rarity catches Levine's ear

James Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble at Zankel Hall.  MusicWeb International, November 16, 2010

Sorrowful song

Today composer Henryk Górecki died in a hospital in Katowice, Poland, after suffering a lung infection.  Possibly no living composer had the success he enjoyed, when in 1992 a recording of his 1976 Symphony No. 3 ("Symphony of Sorrowful Songs") unexpectedly rocketed him to international fame.  The recording, with Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman, became a bestseller, and not only topped the classical charts, but in the U.K., the pop charts as well.

In three slow movements, the piece is contemplative and shimmeringly tonal, and perhaps a quiet, unintentional rebuke to the complex modernism that had taken the lion's share of compositional attention until then.  Of the texts Górecki chose, the second movement became the most famous: a poem scratched on a Gestapo cell wall by a Polish teenager, with a simply worded request to her mother "not to cry."

Keith Potter has a fine obituary in The Guardian.

[Henryk Górecki photographed by Vladek Juszkiewicz in 1997 at the University of Southern California,  via USC's Polish Music Reference Center]

Putting the pedal to the metal

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic tackle Magnus Lindberg's Kraft.  MusicWeb International, November 2, 2010

Sam returns, sine waves in hand

Last February I wrote about Gelie, the iPhone app designed by Sam Tarakajian that turns the phone into a unique way of creating music.  Now Sam is at it again, with an intriguing program for iPad called SineAttack, which he demonstrated recently when we met for lunch.  Touch the color screen, and a fingertip leaves a small black dot with a tone.  Two fingers generate overlapping sine waves, creating the aural equivalent of a scratchy buzzsaw.  Place an entire hand over the screen and rub, and all hell breaks loose.  It's sort of the aural equivalent of an Etch A Sketch, except here the picture and sound evaporate almost immediately.  I'm not sure where this will lead, but testing out the raw research and development was way too much fun.