Deceptively Simple

This is probably an unfair entry for the Worst CD Ever Made Award, since Ezra Pound was a poet and not a composer, and because the performances are as spirited and as dedicated as one could ask. But what are they spiriting and dedicating themselves to? Pound’s throwback medievalism from two operas Le Testament and [...]

The two-night, two-concert summary of Edgard Varèse’s music at the Lincoln Center Festival was that rarest form of musical outings: an honest-to-goodness event. About thirty, maybe more, people were waiting for returned tickets at Monday night’s Alice Tully Hall concert featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble with Steven Schick, and the New York Philharmonic’s concert the [...]

Word came this afternoon that this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival has sold out. Or at least, Sunday has sold out*. And the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is in the middle period of a Beethoven Festival. And the Grant Park Music Festival will soon be upon us, starting next week. Lollapalooza arrives in August, and there’s an [...]

Alan Rich was a music critic, and the last American critic to have heard Artur Schnabel, and who attended the premiere of Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1945, when he was a student at Harvard. The passing of that musical knowledge marks something in our nation’s musical life. There [...]

“What are you hoping to hear?” “…Anything from 69 Love Songs would be great, I guess.” “That’s tied up with an old relationship for me.” “Yeah. I think we all have a little bit of that.” First set 1. Kiss Me like You Mean It – 69 Love Songs, vol. 2 2. You Must Be [...]