Post-WWII traditions
The streaming music phenomenon has, for me, quickly grown stale. A musician playing alone in a room through my screen is a wan and tiresome experience, no sense of touch of course but also no sense of live tension. The mediation of the computer and internet renders everything artificial. A few ensemble performances have been …
Tonight, April 29. 7:30—Timo Andres will live stream a recital he was schedule to give at Carnegie Hall, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel. I was planning on reviewing this, so was feeling the loss, and now some gain. Tune in at his YouTube channel above or via this link. Here’s the program, it’s the good stuff: …
I do not begrudge the big guys, they do a lot of good work. But right now, they are too big—they won’t fail, but they are paralyzed. I know, I know, this is late capitalist America, where material success is rewarded and quality is effervescent…
The scratch for the stir-crazy itch is to be elsewhere, and there’s nothing that takes you farther from where you are than sounds from someplace different than your own.
Penderecki had an extensive career and in the end wrote far more music with the tonal and structural means of classicism and romanticism than he did works along the line of the Threnody.
One of the quirks of the COVID-19 Culture Closure (CV19CC?) is that there are now more chances to experience a lot of music that normally would come only intermittently. Shit ain’t normal.
