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Sarah Hennies, Zeitgebers, Clock Dies, Motor Tapes; Ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Dedalus (New World, available digitally May 3) Bára Gísladóttir, VAPE, Hringla, COR; Bára, Eva Ollikainen conducting the Iceland Symphony (Dacapo, out May 17) Fauré, Complete Piano Music; Lucas Debargue (Sony) Ockeghem, Complete Songs, vol. 2; Blue Heron (Blue Heron) Louise Bertin, Fausto; Karine Deshayes, Karina Gauvin, Ante Jerkunica, Nico Darmanin, Christophe Rousset conducting Les Talens Lyriques and the Flemish Radio Choir (Bru Zane) Music in Time of War: music of Debussy and Komitas; Kirill Gerstei ..read more

My friend and colleague Joshua Kosman, who has been the widely esteemed chief music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle for thirty years, is stepping down. In a farewell column, Joshua looks past the near-extinction of classical-music criticism as a profession — an ever-dwindling handful of people in America still have full-time staff jobs in the field — and conveys a characteristically wise and warm message to his audience: "The important thing is to have the conversation, to take music seriously in all its divine glory and human fallibility . . . We listen, we react and then we go in searc ..read more

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In commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, Ruzan Mantashyan and Kirill Gerstein perform Komitas's "Antuni." Gerstein is launching a formidable new project entitled Music in Time of War, combining late works of Debussy with Armenian songs and dances of Komitas Vardapet. Accompanying the recording, which also features Mantashyan, Katia Skanavi, and Thomas Adès, is a 170-page book that addresses the historical frame: the First World War and the contemporaneous murder of more than a million Armenians.  ..read more

The point has been made before, but Mark Swed shows that it is worth repeating: "Both [LA Opera events] raised the question of what makes opera elite, as opposed to, say, a Lakers game. Wealth or privilege, say the lexographers at Oxford, a university where wealth and privilege have sway. As I write, tickets purchased on the L.A. Opera website for the Wednesday performance of La Traviata range from $89 to $329. The next night, the Lakers take on the Denver Nuggets at Crypto.com Arena. Cash in your crypto (if you still can) for nuggets of gold: Tickets on the Lakers website begin at $249, risin ..read more

Alma Rosé died in Auschwitz, and so her remains are not here, but her memory is present. Her uncle is a short walk away. Previously: Grieg, Feuchtwanger, Toch, Lubitsch, Korngold, Salieri, Bruckner, Liszt, Georg Trakl, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis, Thomas Mann, Bach, Nietzsche, Monteverdi, Koussevitzky, Michael Furey, Luranah Aldridge, Ligeti, Frescobaldi, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Baudelaire and Beckett, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Stravinsky and Nono, Zemlinsky, Schnittke, Fibich, X. Scharwenka, Elliott Carter, Enescu, Rachmaninov, Mahler and many others, Russ ..read more

The Berlin Philharmonic has been giving due honor to Arnold Schoenberg on the 150th anniversary of his birth, not only playing a fair number of his works but also remaking the lower lobby into a Schoenberg exhibition. It would have been wonderful to see something similar at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in a city where the composer lived longer than he did in Berlin. I always wonder, though, why German-speaking countries fail to honor Schoenberg's decision to change the spelling of his name when he reconverted to Judaism in Paris in 1933. The dropping of the umlaut was not merely a matter of ..read more

But soft, what noise? The isle is full of noises. I hear a noise of hymns. A noise like of a hidden brook. An Heavenly noise. A mighty noise. His voice was like a noise of many waters. Make a joyful noise. Make some noise. Bring the noise. The art of noise. Addicted to noise. Cum on feel the noize. Noises off, noise within. Infernal noise! Oh, the noise, oh the noise! Inexplicable dumb shows and noise. Signal to noise, white noise, pink noise, thermal noise, background noise, random noise, statistical noise. The noise of time ... What Is Noise? The New Yorker, April 22, 2024 ..read more

The Kirche am Steinhof, Vienna ..read more