This Week in Classical Music: October 19, 2020.Liszt, etc.Good news: Ned Rorem is still with us and on October 23rd he will turn 97.Rorem may be better known for his revealing diaries, The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem, published in 1966, in which he described his own gay life and his relationships with many well-known personalities, in what would these days be considered “outing”, but he is also a fine composer. Rorem is at his best in art songs and is rightly famous for them. Here’s his song The Lordly Hudson on a text by Paul Goodman; it was called “the best song of 1948” and indeed it’s lovely (the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is accompanied by Malcolm Martineau). In addition to hundreds of songs, Rorem’s output includes more than a dozen operas, which are rarely performed these days, several symphonies, and some very good chamber music. To quote from Alex Ross’s 2003 New Yorker essay on Rorem: “The Fourth Quartet, which the Emerson Quartet recently played at Zankel Hall, includes a once-in-a-lifetime movement called “Self Portrait,” in which the cello holds forth in a rambling, halting chant while the three other strings play frigid chords around it.” Here is the very Movement VIII, Self Portrait, from Rorem’s Quartet no. 4. It was recorded by the same Emerson String Quartet but several years earlier than when Ross heard it in 1997.
Franz Liszt was born this week, on October 22nd of 1811, and so was another classical composer, Georges Bizet, on October 25th of 1838.Bizet was 36 when Carmen premiered at the Opéra-Comique on March 3rd of 1875.As the final curtain fell, it was greeted with silence by the shocked and scandalized audience.Music critics panned it.The opera was still being staged when on June 3rd of that year, during the 32nd performance, Bizet died (two days earlier Bizet, who suffered from many ailments, including acute tonsillitis, inexplicably took a swim in the Seine; he fell gravely ill right after and died of a heart attack).His death was probably a reason for the public’s renewed interest in the opera.Almost immediately, Carmen became a sensation and to this day continues to be the most often staged French opera.
Two modernist composers were also born this week, the American Charles Ives, on October 20th of 1874 and the Italian, Luciano Berio, on October 24th of 1925.You can read more about them here and here.And finally, two wonderful Soviet pianist, friends and rivals, Emil Gilels and Yakov Flier: they were born two days and four years apart, Gilels on October 19th of 1916, Flier – on the 21st of the month, in 1912.
Rorem, Liszt 2020
This Week in Classical Music: October 19, 2020. Liszt, etc. Good news: Ned Rorem is still with us and on October 23rd he will turn 97. Rorem may be better known for his revealing
diaries, The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem, published in 1966, in which he described his own gay life and his relationships with many well-known personalities, in what would these days be considered “outing”, but he is also a fine composer. Rorem is at his best in art songs and is rightly famous for them. Here’s his song The Lordly Hudson on a text by Paul Goodman; it was called “the best song of 1948” and indeed it’s lovely (the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is accompanied by Malcolm Martineau). In addition to hundreds of songs, Rorem’s output includes more than a dozen operas, which are rarely performed these days, several symphonies, and some very good chamber music. To quote from Alex Ross’s 2003 New Yorker essay on Rorem: “The Fourth Quartet, which the Emerson Quartet recently played at Zankel Hall, includes a once-in-a-lifetime movement called “Self Portrait,” in which the cello holds forth in a rambling, halting chant while the three other strings play frigid chords around it.” Here is the very Movement VIII, Self Portrait, from Rorem’s Quartet no. 4. It was recorded by the same Emerson String Quartet but several years earlier than when Ross heard it in 1997.
Franz Liszt was born this week, on October 22nd of 1811, and so was another classical composer, Georges Bizet, on October 25th of 1838. Bizet was 36 when Carmen premiered at the Opéra-Comique on March 3rd of 1875. As the final curtain fell, it was greeted with silence by the shocked and scandalized audience. Music critics panned it. The opera was still being staged when on June 3rd of that year, during the 32nd performance, Bizet died (two days earlier Bizet, who suffered from many ailments, including acute tonsillitis, inexplicably took a swim in the Seine; he fell gravely ill right after and died of a heart attack). His death was probably a reason for the public’s renewed interest in the opera. Almost immediately, Carmen became a sensation and to this day continues to be the most often staged French opera.
Two modernist composers were also born this week, the American Charles Ives, on October 20th of 1874 and the Italian, Luciano Berio, on October 24th of 1925. You can read more about them here and here. And finally, two wonderful Soviet pianist, friends and rivals, Emil Gilels and Yakov Flier: they were born two days and four years apart, Gilels on October 19th of 1916, Flier – on the 21st of the month, in 1912.