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Who knows best in Puccini?

November 27, 2009 By

Contrary to a slew of press reviews that called it 'trashy' and 'pointless', I found Rupert Goold's production of Turandot at English National Opera apt and often exhilarating. Goold, 37, is the latest in a parade of youngish theatre and film directors who have been hired to bring an alternative perspective and a different, younger audience into London's second opera company. The best thing he does in Turandot is shift its frame from introspect to retrospect. Before the curtain … [Read more...]

11/27/09 8:49 AM | filed under: main |

A squirm at the opera

November 26, 2009 By

Duke Bluebeard's Castle was never one for the squeamish, but English National Opera's production tips Bela Bartok's masterpiece into an abyss of atrocity. Originally staged during the First World War, it retells the fable of a Transylvanian count who keeps his wives in a dungeon as a Freudian parable of female sexual curiosity and impotent male vengeance. With only two singers on stage, the orchestra gets many of the best lines and an hour can pass very quickly in a live concert … [Read more...]

11/26/09 11:15 AM | filed under: main |

A death in Haydn Year

November 24, 2009 By

H C Robbins Landon - who did for Haydn what Alexander Wheelock Thayer, a fellow-American, once did for Beethoven - has died at his home in France, aged 83. A jovial fellow who liked to frolic naked in his pool with research assistants and guests (or so he told the press), Robbie got on the Haydn trail in Austria as an occupying US soldier and spent the rest of his life digging out manuscripts from disused monasteries and seeing them through to performance at the Musikverireinsaal and … [Read more...]

11/24/09 11:13 AM | filed under: main |

A Serious Man? You gotta be joking…

November 24, 2009 By

Grounded in Detroit on a Spirit aircraft with a cockpit problem, I got chatting to my very close row-mates, an academic humanist lawyer and an Orthodox rabbi. Both had the same topic uppermost in mind. They had just seen the Coen Brothers' movie A Serious Man and were deeply troubled both by its content and by its critical reception. The film is about a man's midlife crisis in a mainstream Jewish community in the Midwest, set in 1967 when society was on the cusp of change and … [Read more...]

11/24/09 8:48 AM | filed under: Uncategorized |

Last Composer Standing – the retro edition

November 19, 2009 By

As debate continues in several languages over who will still be heard 50 years from now, several readers have asked how accurate our forecasting can be. Well, let's go back to 1959 and ask which living composers, in the view of listeners at that time, would be likely to endure. Shostakovich, for sure - he was the flagship musician of the Soviet Union, and everyone thought the USSR was forever. Stravinsky had just produced Threni. Britten was receiving more opera stagings than … [Read more...]

11/19/09 9:31 AM | filed under: main |

Unsung premiere

November 18, 2009 By

Simon Mawer's reflective novel The Glass Room, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and one of my reads of the year, digresses midway into a sub-story about a shortlived composer. Vitezlava Kapralova, born in 1915 in Janacek's town, Brno, was a star pupil of the conductor Vaclav Talich and, in Paris, of the composer Bohuslav Martinu, whose lover she became (Martinu, though married, had two or three long-term liaisons, but that's another story). In 1937, Kapralova conducted the … [Read more...]

11/18/09 10:08 AM | filed under: main |

Last composer standing – the results

November 17, 2009 By

Of 3,200 people who read or engaged with the debate here, on twitter and on facebook, as well as an uncounted readership on radio and newspaper sites, just over 100 eligible ballots were received. Some ticked one composer for posterity, others voted for the full ten options. The results of the poll are not in any way scientific or universal. There is a bias towards US and UK composers - understandable since the debate is conducted in English - as … [Read more...]

11/17/09 9:12 AM | filed under: main |

Last Composer Standing – the top three

November 15, 2009 By

In light of technical and security difficulties - think Afghan election - polls for the most durable composer will remain open until 1800 EST (2300 GMT) Monday Nov 16. The response has been far heavier than expected and the spin-off discussions will run and run. Early returns show Pärt leading by a tiny margin from Reich and Adams, with Glass and Golijov strongly in pursuit. There is a heavy weighting towards US composers of a minimalist/anti-modernist tendency. It's not too late to change the … [Read more...]

11/15/09 12:18 PM | filed under: main |

Late contenders in the Last Composer Standing vote

November 14, 2009 By

We're getting a late surge, here and on Twitter, for Meredith Monk surviving the test of time. Now there's an interesting possibility. John Luther Adams, anyone? Could there be two Adamses in the final list? Tim Page likes Dusapin. I somehow forgot Henze: surely something from his vast output will be played. 7th symphony? Silvestrov (whom I like immensely), Beat Furrer (whom I don't). Get those votes in now. The numbers are seriously mounting.    … [Read more...]

11/14/09 5:51 PM | filed under: Uncategorized |

Last composer standing

November 13, 2009 By

A fleeting thought while listening to Gavin Bryars has led to a sweeping discussion as to which 10 living composers will still be played in 50 years' time. We've whittled it down to five certs: Birtwistle, Boulez, Rautavaara, Reich and Sondheim. But the other five places are still open and being hotly contested on twitter and Facebook. The probables include Adams, Bryars,Glass, Kurtag, Lachenmann, Pärt, Riley, Sallinen,Sciarrino and John Williams, with a late rush of votes for James MacMillan … [Read more...]

11/13/09 12:03 PM | filed under: main |
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