Monthly Archives: August 2008
John Adams’s new memoir
Earlier this month, the New Yorker previewed an excerpt from Hallelujah Junction, the forthcoming memoir by the American composer John Adams. The book, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is scheduled for release Sept. 30. As it happens, … Continue reading
Filed under Literature, Music
When comfort and chamber music meet
A brief entry today to second the words of Amanda Ameer, whose Life’s a Pitch blog can be found on ArtsJournal.com, which I now realize I have neglected to add to my blogroll until now. In this piece, Ameer cheers … Continue reading
Filed under Music
Vaughan Williams: England’s greatest composer
On this day 50 years ago the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams died, ending a creative career that had lasted more than 60 years, and is to my mind the single greatest body of work by any English composer. I … Continue reading
Filed under Music
Hahn’s Schoenberg an important event
There aren’t many recordings of the Violin Concerto of Arnold Schoenberg — Zvi Zeitlin and Pierre Amoyal have done it — so the disc of the concerto released this spring by the American violinist Hilary Hahn with Esa-Pekka Salonen and … Continue reading
Filed under Music
The books we haven’t read
Here’s something from Britain’s Telegraph that was great fun to read (and watch, too): A survey asking some well-known literary types what canonical work of literature they hadn’t read, and were ashamed to admit it. The video for this thing … Continue reading
Filed under Literature
An orchestra’s just a Beethoven tribute band
I’m not sure how long the phenomenon of elaborate tribute-band concerts has been going on, but right now in this area you can hear live renditions of seminal 1960s and 1970s albums such as Led Zeppelin IV, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely … Continue reading
Filed under Music
Kapell’s Australian concerts
Listening this week to the new discs of the short-lived American pianist William Kapell, taken from broadcasts over the air in 1953 as he toured Australia. He was killed that October when his plane coming back from Down Under slammed … Continue reading
Filed under Music
When the weather makes you work
A friend writes this week that certain kinds of weather seem more conducive to creativity than others, and with Tropical Storm Fay having moved through here with plenty of wind and rain in the past days, there was plenty of … Continue reading
Filed under Literature
Book review: ‘The Soloist’
In writing The Soloist, the Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has achieved the kind of useful act he writes about wanting and not finding in three decades of newspaper work: After 30 years of fulminating about this or that, … Continue reading
Filed under Literature, Music
Respecting Puccini
The New York Times‘ Arts and Leisure section had an interesting piece on Puccini yesterday, bringing all of us up to date on a current scandal involving this composer, whose 150th birthday is being observed this year. Apparently, he might … Continue reading
