Copper
Too much tchaikovsky
More Mostly Quiet Music
Have we today forgotten how to speak softly and with grace, or is the real danger that we aren’t screaming loudly enough? —Sean Shibe That’s how the BBC’s Kate Molleson leads...
Hearing Bach
Among the most-played and -recorded of J. S. Bach’s instrumental works are his six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin and six Suites for solo cello. They have acquired a reputation for being quite...
Why Do You Think They Call it Classical?
Larry: Greetings, music lovers. Today we have a question or two for The Goddess of Conventional Wisdom—who has agreed to talk with us at length, in spite of her busy schedule. Our...
Snobs and Slobs
Here’s a (lightly edited) exchange that took place right after I sent in my “Steve Jobs: the Opera” copy to our Esteemed Editor: Leebs: Wasn’t Nixon in China weird enough? LS: Musically Nixon in China was...
Steve Jobs, the Opera. Really.
Mason Bates wrote the music, Mark Campbell the libretto. They took their work seriously. The Santa Fe Opera offered the world premiere last summer, and Pentatone (PTC 5186 690) was there to record...
In the Matter of M. Weinberg
He escaped, and not just once. The outward circumstances of his life read like a spy thriller. Born in Warsaw to Russian Jewish parents active in the Yiddish theatre, Mieczysław...
Bert van der Wolf
[Bert van der Wolf is a distinguished Netherlands-based engineer/producer with over thirty years’ experience in developing and advancing high-resolution, multichannel classical recording. Recently he agreed to share his thoughts with...
Winds From the North
Oh Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838), where have you been all my life? I was a clarinet major for three semesters. I avidly collected recordings: Reginald Kell, Harold Wright, Richard Stoltzman,...
The Ondine All-Stars
For the classical record industry, it’s gotten hard to tell whether these are the best of times or the worst of times. The CD revolution of the mid-1980s brought a...
Part Deux
[Or: Another Mess O’ Messiaen—-Ed.] This column usually follows a fairly predictable path: first a few words about some music, then a brief clip illustrating the point. Today, let’s switch that...
Our Annual Summer Edition
Sweet summer! Calendar-wise, it’s not quite here, but musically it’s already available, via new recordings of two seasonal favorites. Also on tap: a masterpiece for all seasons, freshened through the...
Letter from London
New York, May 22. I’ve had some of my favorite musical experiences here, beginning the first time I came forty years ago and popped down to the Village Vanguard on a...
Why Messiaen (Still) Matters
This is not a Messiaen Year. It would be the 110th anniversary of his birth, but I haven’t heard of any celebrations coming up. Apparently we pretty much maxed out...
There's a Record Store in Newnan
Newnan, Georgia, is the little town I live in, just south and slightly west of Atlanta. It’s not so little—the census counted 38,000 of us in 2016—but it’s not so...
So Far, So Good
That’s a punch line! It belongs to the joke about a guy who falls off a ten-story building. As he passes the sixth floor, someone calls out to him from...
Violin+Orchestra, Part 2
So many concertos, so little time. When I decided to devote two whole TMT columns to (ahem!) Violin Concertos After Beethoven, my aim seemed simple: I would sort through a...
Daughters, Part 2
Talk about in medias res. In “Daughters, Part 1” we stopped virtually mid-sentence after introducing Milica Djordjević (b. 1984), Serbian composer now based in Berlin. The waves she’s making in Europe are only...
Violin + Orchestra, Part 1
Our story begins with Beethoven. (What else is new?) His Violin Concerto (1806) especially, because it’s the poster child for Modern Concertos in so many ways. First, he wrote it...
Daughters, Part 1
Choose your parents carefully. That’s probably the best advice anyone can offer a young person who wants to become a composer. It helps a lot if your mom or...
Awards Season!
Once every year, a year passes! Pundits, critics, observers far and wide seize the opportunity to assess yada yada yada. “Best Of 2017” lists pop up, also Grammy Nominations, BBC Music Magazine...
Searching For Big
I’ve been listening to, or watching, a lot of new opera lately. Saw Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel at the local multiplex, via Met HD; listened to the live Pentatone recording of Jake Heggie’s It’s...
Special Effects
It’s holiday season as I write this, and I can’t help feeling grateful for the bread I’ll break and the people with whom I’ll break it. This year I also...
Voices
Whenever people talk seriously about recorded music, sooner or later the matter of scale comes up. Some musics and musical experiences get big. Others win by staying small. So, public versus intimate. Meta...
Oboe Quartets
What does an oboe sound like? If you fancy yourself a connoisseur of yin/yang balancing acts, oboes might well provide your soundtrack. On the one hand: honey. Golden, slow-pouring strands...
Dry vs. Juicy
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Well, it’s hard to write about a lot of things. Sometimes we have to invent new language, but mostly we make old language...
Pledge(s) of Allegiance
I’ve been reviewing classical records for, like, ever. In the process I think I’ve begun to figure out what matters and what shouldn’t. Naturally, I’ve made a list. Two lists,...
Fireworks and Fizz Water
Hey there, classical fans. Let’s talk shallow pleasures! Excuse me? Didn’t we do “fun” last month? Look, it’s midsummer. Temperatures in the 90s. No shade anywhere. We had a Glorious...
Guitar Madness
Ah, but none dare call it madness. We’re speaking of the classical guitar, to which milder epithets appropriately apply. How about “modified rapture,” as in The Mikado? That comes up right before Nanki-Poo reveals...
Getting to Know György
György Kurtág (b. 1926) is old. Really old. If his music sounds young—somehow new—that may simply be due to his having labored in the shadows of Messiaen, Ligeti, Cage, et al. all these...
Classical Concept Albums
They’re baack. Concept albums, that is, those packages that attempt—with varying degrees of success—to offer works that complement, complete, and inform one another. For pop and rock, the advent of the...
Exiles
Last time our subject was Americans, and a varied lot they were. Who knew a person could write “American” music in so many different ways? Actually you knew, and so...
American Symphonies
Writer Philipp Meyer said something worth repeating a couple of weeks ago: Literature—or any art—should move you before you understand why. It should feel as if you’re in the presence of something...
Schoenberg After Pierrot
I haven’t said much so far about Arnold Schoenberg’s craft, i.e., how he pulled the notes out of his hat. You’ll get some of that this time. It matters to musicians, who...
Bridges and Boundaries
Can we put Arnold S. on hold for a bit? I need to growl and shake my old chew toy, style. For the style-obsessed, composers seem to come in two flavors: Style Aggregators...
Five Uneasy Pieces
It is not pretty, any of it. But its maker, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), found its making necessary. By reinventing the language of Western music, he hoped to extend the heritage...
Style, With Sprinkles
Dear Friends, Congratulations! Copper’s readers, writers, faithful Editor, and visionary Publisher have all played a part in getting us to Year Two of this worthy enterprise. For me, the best way...
Style, Part 1
Okay, we’ve done some work with Rhythm and Melody. Time to tackle Style, right? Maybe not. Style is way more complicated. When we talk about style in classical music, we’re referring to a music’s particular...
Melody
Onward and upward with our New Year’s survey of musical elements. Last time, we got a start on rhythm, because any art form that moves through time must consider rhythm...
Rhythm
Boulez called it duration. By that he meant the whole spectrum of ways that music moves through time. (Jazz and rock musicians often refer to a sense of proper rhythm, or even...
Rest of the Best, 2016
As I write this, the Old Year is drawing to a close, so media outlets near and far are posting Best of 2016 lists in many categories. Even classical music...
Berlioz for Christmas
And Liszt for the New Year! Here we go. Hector Berlioz (1803–69) was no novice by the time he created L’enfance du Christ. Well past the sensational premiere of the Symphonie fantastique and his...
Starter Kit
This column began as a Gift Guide kind of thing. You know: “here’s what to buy your classically oriented audiophile friend.” That got me thinking about my Aunt Frances. Beginning...
Bad Manners
We were just sitting there, listening to music. My friend Bernard the Cellist had come to town and I couldn’t help showing off my system. Someone suggested we hear some...
Three New Choral Passions
Steinberg: Passion Week There once were two young Russian composers, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Maximilian Steinberg ((1883–1946). They both studied in St. Petersburg with Rimsky-Korsakov, although Steinberg was the one...
Liszt, Show Business, and Art
Franz Liszt (1811–86) practically invented the showbiz end of classical music. He was the first touring pianist to give solo concerts in large halls. He was the first to play...
More Flutes
A few weeks ago we stuck one toe in the deep waters of music for transverse flute, an instrument played by lots of Western musicians. The website flutemonkey.com lists 50 great...
Organizers and Decorators
Isaiah Berlin gave us foxes and hedgehogs. Classical Greece offered Apollo and Dionysius. Not to be outdone, Ned Rorem came up with his own slam-dunk binary oppositions, French/German. (Example: cats are...
The Fine Print
They used to be called liner notes. Nowadays, since there’s not always a “liner,” we call them CD booklets, or text inserts, or . . . liner notes. Downloads offer them...
Box Sets: Threat or Menace?
I hate it when my most cherished assumptions take a beating. I’ve never been a fan of boxes, so imagine my shock and horror this month when Gramophone featured a gushing tribute...
Flutes
It’s not that complicated. Lauren Bacall said it best, in To Have and Have Not: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together . . ....