“Turangalîla is the work of my life,” Olivier Messiaen wrote in a letter to a young Leonard Bernstein, who was preparing to conduct the world premiere near the end of 1949. Messiaen thanked him in advance for agreeing to take on this formidable challenge, “since I know (having seen you in The Rite of Spring) that you will do it in a way that is marvelous and brilliant.”
Here’s my program essay for Juilliard Opera’s production of Dido and Aeneas at the Willson Theater, directed by Mary Birnbaum and led by Avi Stein, with choreography by Claudia Schreier. Closes tomorrow.
“Even this little boarding-school opera is full of [Purcell’s] spirit, his
freshness, his dramatic expression, and his unapproached art of setting
English speech to music.” This was the verdict that Cornetto di Basso (aka
George Bernard Shaw, using his pen name as a music critic) reached when
covering an otherwise less-than-thrilling performance of Dido and Aeneas
in 1889. Though two centuries old by then, the score had only first been
published in 1841; the opera would not be performed outside England until
1895, when the bicentennial of Henry Purcell’s death stimulated curiosity
about his work.
Here’s my story for the Julliard Journal on the phenomenal Barbara Hannigan:
Even as an internationally acclaimed soprano, Barbara Hannigan is unable to resist challenging herself to ever more-formidable accomplishments. In 2011 she made a bold leap to the podium, debuting as a conductor at the Châtelet in Paris with Stravinsky’s Renard.
The opening concert is on 25 January at Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater, when Sachs will lead the New Juilliard Ensemble. All six Focus events are free of charge.
I unexpectedly realized the role of radio in October 2017, while writing a program note about Argentinean-German composer Mauricio Kagel for a New Juilliard Ensemble concert. Because Kagel settled in Cologne, I began thinking about the extraordinary post-World War II new music scene that flourished there, where he and many other compositional giants, German and foreign, had settled.
Being reasonably acquainted with that Rhineland city and its institutions, I immediately recalled the German letters WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, West German Broadcasting), the radio-TV public broadcast based there. An enormous operation, WDR generally considered the most important broadcaster in German, with five radio transmissions, television, internet broadcasts, and a group of external studios in various cities around Germany’s industrial heartland. Having had a professional relationship with WDR 3, I realized that it has had a vital role as one of the most prominent of European radio stations with its decades-old commissioning program.
Dots began to connect. I had performed or recorded at the BBC, Radio France, Swiss stations in Zurich and Basel, Austrian radio in Salzburg, but what had never struck me was that they all were busily commissioning composers, not just creating background music for radio dramas, but also music intended for live performance in concerts, and not just those composers who produced ‘comfortable’ music. Suddenly I had a topic for Focus 2019: “On the Air! A Salute to 75 Years of International Radio Commissions.”
Sunday evening’s Byron Schenkman & Friends program looks delicious: focusing on two early cantatas by Handel (including Vedendo Amor from his sojourn in Rome), it also includes some of his instrumental music plus pieces by Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Caldara, and Anna Bon.
For some background, here’s my piece in this month’s Juilliard Journal on Handel in Rome (on p. 16).
Complete program:
George Frideric Handel:
Sonata in G Major, op. 1, no. 5, for flute and continuo
Domenico Scarlatti:
Four keyboard sonatas, K. 238, K. 239, K. 99, K. 100
George Frideric Handel:
Cantata “Vedendo Amor” for voice and continuo
Antonio Caldara:
Cantata “Soffri, mio caro Alcino” for voice and continuo
Anna Bon:
Sonata in F Major, op. 1, no. 2, for flute and continuo
George Frideric Handel:
Cantata “Mi palpita il cor” for voice, flute, and continuo
Performers:
Reginald Mobley
COUNTERTENOR
Joshua Romatowski
FLUTE
Nathan Whittaker
CELLO
Byron Schenkman
HARPSICHORD
Concert starts 7pm on Sunday 18 November at Benaroya’s Nordstrom Recital Hall.
Tickets here.
Nearly a year after bringing to a close his eight-year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert reflects on another farewell—he’s stepping down as director of conducting and orchestral studies at Juilliard this spring. As announced in March, David Robertson will succeed him in the fall.
The Merry Wives of Windsor at The Juilliard School (photo by Richard Termine)
By a strange coincidence, the swan songs of two 19th-century composers, Giuseppe Verdi and Otto Nicolai, are dazzling comic operas that are based on the same play: Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was first registered in 1602. ..
It may be hard to imagine that there was a time when pre-Baroque figures were generally treated as an obscure footnote to the alleged master narrative of Western music history. But when it comes to the lifework of individual composers, a similarly myopic attitude is still sometimes found…
Here’s a piece I wrote for this month’s Juilliard Journal about Agrippina:
In one of Agrippina‘s pivotal scenes, the Emperor Claudius—at first presumed dead at sea by the scheming title character, only to be inconveniently rescued—crows in triumph over “conquered Britain” as a “new subject” for the Roman throne. That wouldn’t exactly be music to Brexit supporters—but, then, international migrants like George Frideric Handel (né Georg Friedrich Händel) would have had a harder time in a Europe of zealously policed borders.
Juilliard’s Focus! Festival for 2017 is devoted to the music of Latin America. Complete schedule and programming here.
Longtime Juilliard professor, conductor, and scholar Joel Sachs, who organized the entire festival, writes:
In the fall of 1992, I was offered the directorship of MoMA’s Summergarden, then a two-month long festival of new music. Since the museum was preparing a major show of Latin American art, I was asked if my first Summergarden in 1993 might explore Latin American music. I assented, not realizing the challenge of finding the best music of a high swath of the world whose composers were hardly known. I quickly learned that the resources were huge.
As my knowledge of the music of Latin America has increased in the ensuing years, so has the number of composers. A Latin American Focus! festival seemed badly needed, even if six concerts could only scratch the surface. I wanted to emphasize composers still living in their home countries, but could not exclude the Latin America diaspora – composers who went abroad for education, opportunity, and in many cases, to escape the persecution and violence of the 20th century military regimes.
For months I have consulted extensively with composers in Latin America and elsewhere, assembling lists especially of young composer. The quantity of composers is truly staggering, and I have had to create limitations, favoring the living and those who remain in their home countries, while including some émigrés. Three of the pioneers are heard on the opening and closing programs.
Above all, I want to illustrate the stylistic diversity that makes to term ‘Latin American composer’ difficult to define other than geographically. The breadth of styles is truly amazing. The audience should not expect only ‘Latin-sounding’ folklore-based compositions. Since the primary aim of Juilliard’s Focus! festival is to give Juilliard students opportunities to extend their experience and skills, I have excluded purely electronic music, or music requiring indigenous instruments.
Emily Nussbaum's new book, I Like To Watch, is a collection of essays that span her career and the age of prestige TV. She wants to "explode and expand" the types of shows we take seriously, she says.
Critic Bob Mondello reviews the history of movie blockbusters and tracks how Disney's ownership of mega-blockbusting franchises is reshaping the multiplex.
In the semi-autobiographical show, Ramy, Youssef plays a practicing Muslim who's torn between his faith and his desire to fit in. "Everyone has a code," he says of the compromises his character makes.
Mary Beth Keane's novel opens in 1973 New York and follows two rookie cops and their families over four decades. Her closely-observed domestic tale transforms into something deep and universal.
The collection of 32 mostly previously published essays by New Yorker TV Critic Emily Nussbaum includes a new consideration of the question "What should we do with the art of terrible men?"
Claire Lombardo's sweeping family drama — fueled by power plays between spouses and between sisters — is a wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels.
Inspired by the challenges to the current presidential administration, law professor Kim Wehle has written a guide to the founding document — and its susceptibility to interpretation.
"We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy" Ravelry said. "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."
"I felt like everything that had mattered to me was gone," Amber Scorah says of her decision to leave the Jehovah's Witness community she grew up in. Her new memoir is Leaving the Witness.
The six-part BBC series airing on HBO follows one British family over the course of 15 years of upheaval, beginning in 2019. The unsettling show imagines the dismal future that liberals fear.
