Rolling Classical 2019

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020! I'd really thought she'd miss it, as they gave it to Hans Abrahamsen in 2019 and made Hannigan and 'Let Me Tell You' the centerpiece of the galla concert, but nope. So incredibly deserving!

Excellent news! Every bit of praise lavished upon her is utterly deserved.

Guys are there two of these threads or is my hangover psychosis worse than I thought?

Also yes great win

I've been clamouring for the gods mods to delete the duplicate but they've yet to respond to my bootless pleas.

what's the other one? might as well use it while i got it.

found it, got it.

Barbara Hannigan awarded the Sonning Award for 2020!

― Frederik B

this is cool but unfortunately thanks to ilx i will always believe in the back of my mind that the Sonning Award is given for outstanding performance in a twitter beef

lol

On Saturday I heard Jonathan Biss and the Seattle Symphony play Caroline Shaw's new piano concerto Watermarks, which was sort of playfully and delightfully in stylistic tension between the romantic and the contemporary. Highlights include a theme for the soloist in the second movement that almost but not quite resolves into the sound of a pop melody and a recurring gag in the third movement. Part of Biss' project to commission new concerti in response to those of Beethoven.

Sounds interesting. I've been disappointed by a lot of Shaw other than Partita but I'd definitely be interested to hear it.

man, i wish i were free for this tonight and recommend it strongly to New Yorkers who are:
http://roulette.org/event/the-voices-of-erin-gee/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVIUt-YtaM

Holy shit:

https://youtu.be/gzodB0Sp6ZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzodB0Sp6ZI

Aargh! I've seen that shared easily over 10 times in the past week. It annoys me tbh. The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion. (Maybe some postwar serialist music was but Schoenberg and Berg certainly weren't.) Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I completely agree with you (there's nothing even remotely unemotional about Schoenberg's 2nd quartet or Berg's Lyric Suite, to say the least), but my expectations when it comes to pop culture discourse about this stuff are so low as to be nonexistent.

That said, if his dad really was a composer of 12 tone music and it's not just a fictive spin on country tropes, he should definitely know better.

Yeah I enjoyed the song and video but my mind was screaming foul at all the inaccuracies and generalizations

Cage's 4'33" isn't really what I think of as an atonal composition, either, although you could possibly make a case.

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I really liked that atonal solo in the middle of it. Its just nerdy internet stuff but I'd like to think passers by might be horrified/mystified and curious enough to check it out.

The solo really clinches it. Wouldn't be a worthwhile meme otherwise.

No point to this kind of thing if it's not well-informed imo. Otherwise, it comes closer to being a put-down (of something that probably doesn't need to be taken down).

(Solo is the best part.)

To be fair, this is how most people perceive it. I've taken friends/relatives to several such concerts, made them listen to recordings and 'cold, forbidding complexity' remains their takeaway to this day. I frankly gave up a long time ago.

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

Yeah, that's sort of why I dislike this.

I don't imagine that modern literature fans would eagerly share a comedy song about pining for the emotionless, incomprehensible writing of modern authors like Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, and cummings (but maybe they would).

I probably would tbh. But I've abandoned all hope of ever turning more than a pinch of people on to 'modernist' art. And when it does happen, it's usually an accident.

It would have to be a comedy short story

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

There's a whole book about this phenomenon - the subtitle is something like Why Do People Like Rothko But Not Schoenberg? I've always meant to read it.

Here it is; it's called Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen

That sounds interesting. I'd need to be convinced of the premise first, though.

I'll have to check it out, thanks. Too bad there's no matching phenomenon for poetry (haikus notwithstanding).

xp

The book is an OK read. Idk if it really arrives at a satisfying answer to that question and it turns into a kind of historical overview. Hard to deny that more people know Picasso and Dali than Schoenberg and Cage, at the least. I used to have my late 20th c avant-garde classes debate the question. Alex Ross and Philip Ball have also written about it (taking v different positions).xp

Just looking at the blurb, I'm not sure that this indicates much about popular enthusiasm for modern paintings; it's more about the extravagant amounts of money being moved around: "Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums at auction, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news."

The three reasons he arrives at in his conclusion are i) The Original (the cachet and financial value of original paintings - as you note) ii) The Distress ('difficult' music asks more of the listener than 'difficult' visual art asks of the viewer since the former is a time-based medium and you need to e.g. sit through Hymnen for two hours to even hear the piece, while you can look at a Rothko in a minute - as pomenitul notes) iii) The Corporation (wealthy corporations are more likely to sponsor modern art exhibitions than modern music concerts or recordings - although I don't think he did a great job of interrogating the reasons why this might be true).

lol at alison brown up there

The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion.

there is a scene in the marlon brando version of island of dr moreau which also makes this incorrect point (Moreau plays serialism on piano, animal men get restive, Moreau plays Gershwin on piano, animal men get all happy)

Atonal music (incl. 12-tone) is too broad and has too many different possible approaches to really make a thesis like Stubbs's thesis stick for me. Rothko/Stockhausen is a false dichotomy imo-- Rothko's musical equivalent is Ligeti's Requiem et al., which is very easy for any listener of any level of experience or age to appreciate.

I'm trying to think of any analogs I've privately drawn between visual artist and composer and, like:

Glass = Motherwell
Boulez = ??
Cage = Pollock
Stockhausen = god I don't know.. Paul McCarthy?

Or Rothko = Feldman, duh

Heh, the fact that you thought both of Ligeti and Feldman as sonic translations of Rothko is quite interesting. Analogies between the Muses are fraught with approximations, which doesn't mean that they're useless or merely fanciful or random.

For Boulez, it's tempting to say Paul Klee, because Pierre himself said so, but it wouldn't have automatically sprung to mind otherwise.

Fwiw, Stubbs does not limit himself to atonal notated music specifically but discusses "avant-garde music" defined more broadly. Iirc, he actually spends a lot of time on free improv as well as on Hendrix, Eno, postpunk stuff like PiL, and avant electronica like Aphex Twin and Scanner, along with modern composers, which makes the thesis pretty dubious.

Ooh OK that does sound interesting

And also, duh, of course Boulez = Klee, or even more so: Kandinsky

But I mean, isn't it true that more people buy prints of Rothko for their dorm room, or would go to a Rothko exhibit, than would buy an album of Ligeti compositions or attend a Ligeti concert? (Not sure if people enjoying films that use Ligeti in the soundtrack quite counts.) Even a noticeable segment of the paying BSO audience were unappreciative of the Violin Concerto last year. xp

I would agree with that. Ligeti's popular aura is inseparable from Kubrick's visuals, whereas Rothko copycats litter the walls of countless hotels – their success is partly predicated on how easy they are to ignore.

I always come back to Pascal Quignard's quip in The Hatred of Music: 'Ears have no (eye)lids.'

He wrote that in the context of auditory torture (Auschwitz, Guantanamo, etc.), which I suppose leads to a broader point about music's greater potential for immediate, overwhelming and uncontrollable affect.

Sund4r I think 2001's enduring popularity is enormously due to the enormous power and wide-spread appeal of Ligeti's Lontano and Requiem, and the dorm-room ubiquity of both that movie (at least, in my generation) and Rothko's prints make the two of them comparable under this examination

The reason why the BSO didn't like Ligeti's Violin Concerto is because, as I've stated before: it's a bad, bad, bad, bad piece

(I actually like the Violin Concerto fine but it lacks the thesis-forward approach of my favourite-favourites of Ligeti's work-- Clocks And Clouds, Atmospheres, Lontano, Requiem, piano pieces, Continuum, organ drone-y works. Le Grand Macabre remains the only non-micropolytonal work of Ligeti's that I've heard and really adore)

*micropolyphonal, ugh I always get the word wrong

Ligeti's is the Derrida of violin concertos. Gawriloff/Boulez's take sounds off (or it doesn't get its off-soundingness right) but Zimmermann/de Leeuw's is pitch-(im)perfect. Do you also dislike the viola sonata?

I was just listening to a live Isabelle Faust take of the ligeti. I’m really into Isabelle Faust rn.

FGTI what about the horn trio? It is thesisy yet not micropolyphonic

Lutoslawski = Kandinsky
Crumb = Joseph Cornell

Understandably so! I'm going to do it pfunkboy/Michael B-style, which means there are bound to be some grave omissions, for which I'll profusely apologize in each thread.

I have to say, I mostly know about choral works...

Starting with 1800-1810 is fine by me! Op. 32 is one of my favorite things Beethoven ever did. I was just thinking that once you get to the 1820s you get some Beethoven vs Schubert suspense whereas for the 00s and 10s you've got Beethoven and... everyone else (well Rossini tbf)

You're right, of course. Beethoven will undoubtedly dwarf everyone else in the 00s but papa Haydn was still around (The Seasons, the final two Masses) and some minor masterpieces were penned around that time, such as Boieldieu's Harp Concerto. I'll try my best to make it a little less obvious…

I greatly anticipate this educational experience; I look forward to campaigning heavily for Quartet for the end of time 15 polls in

I suspect there's be a good excuse to listen to the late quartets again. And then I'll definitely vote for Symphonie Fantastique :)

Best 'first symphony' in classical music history tbh

In case you missed it:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1800s (the decade, that is. Also, this is Totally-Not-a-Middle-Period-Beethoven-Poll)

OK wow I just paid attention to Poulenc for the first time today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87wGyfUQiQ

the 1810s thread has me digging into augustin hadelich. he's far too "shreddy" for my tastes. the recording of ligeti's violin concerto from this year is not bad- ligeti being a fairly astringent composer anyway - but this new cadenza by thomas ades, what the fuck, it is so bad and not in keeping with the rest of the piece. well i guess one can just stop listening after the fourth movement...

special mention of note has to go out to the really hideous cover art as well

Shreddy, really? I don't get that sense from Hadelich's Paganini at all. If anything, he gives the Caprices their due as proper music, which may or may not be a good thing.

Agree about the Adès cadenza, however. I could do without Adès's music altogether tbh, it's thoroughly mediocre.

love this Henriëtte Bosmans string quartet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCAUrauoDLc

Oh, thanks. I hadn't heard of her before but that is a nice discovery.

getting unreasonably obsessed with kurt atterberg's piano concerto

I listened to a set of his symphonies a few years ago and found them unmemorably conservative compared to, say, Stenhammar's 2nd, but I'd be curious to hear his Piano Concerto.

it doesn't really do anything novel, just a nice bit of post-romanticism

CBC's favourite Canadian classical albums of 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/music/our-20-favourite-canadian-classical-albums-of-2019-1.5335275?fbclid=IwAR01WQkjnQNtjLetJWsIk4KdMdpEMzChySg1jo8FFg9MWoOiJa0zovIJqjU

I wasn't going to post about Cicchillitti-Cowan since they are friends/colleagues but, yes, the album is really good. The Stafylakis piece actually integrates some metal influences into classical guitar music. Emily Shaw's Vespers and Cowan's Arctic Sonata also v good classical guitar albums from Ottawa/Montreal from this year.

Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

That Lisiecki and Abdrazakov are Canadian is news to me.

Lisiecki is from Calgary. Abdrakazakov seems to be Russian - they're probably counting that one bc of Orchestre Métropolitain?

Oh right, I misread (see ILX discussion about reading comprehension in Quebec).

Haha

RIP Mariss Jansons.

I don’t have a ton of his work in my collection but his LSO Live Mahler 6th is among the very best of that symphony.

His Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff box sets contain some of his very finest recordings – they've helped me gain a newfound appreciation for these two composers, whose music I otherwise find problematic (not in the modern, woke sense, mind you). He was also an excellent accompanist (see the Grieg/Schumann Piano Concertos with Leif Ove Andsnes) and some of his less well-known projects, such as Johan Svendsen's Symphonies 1 & 2 with the Oslo Philharmonic, are as persuasive as it gets. I was never wholly won over by his much-touted way with Shostakovich, however.

Alex Ross's preliminary EOY list:

https://www.therestisnoise.com/2019/11/preliminary-end-of-year-list.html

We don't really see eye to eye (hear ear to ear?) but the Danish Quartet's Prism II and the Riot Ensemble's Speak, Be Silent both deserve to place. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm burnt out on Feldman, found Zosha di Castro's monograph to be full of hotshot smugness and have yet to hear George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence (I'm generally a big fan, even though I'm less interested in his operas).

I’ll definitely plan to hear that Honeck/Pittsburgh Bruckner 9th - I cant think of a better US conductor-orchestra combo on record this decade

NAC in Ottawa commissioning a Philip Glass work in honour of Peter Jennings: https://abcnews.go.com/US/philip-glass-write-orchestral-work-honor-news-anchor/story?id=67679791

shuddering with pleasure at the idea of Philip Glass composing 30 second stingers for news broadcasts

went to the guggenheim last night for Tigue and Roomful of Teeth and Caroline Shaw presented a new piece that was as lovely as anything I've heard all year.

This is how workers at Opéra de Paris go on strike (sound on, please). pic.twitter.com/SN682BM6ze

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 18, 2019

PROMO: The latest cd from my choir is out now: https://open.spotify.com/album/4k1FnvR7AIzP2IQCfrFEoz?si=gqG6dtAaTi-2UpcRWuY6Bw Danish choir music, amateur choir, but the Vagn Holmboe is pretty great, at least.

'Grats! I always have time for more Holmboe.

New thread for a new year: Rolling Classical 2020