Posts
“We’re at the end, or toward the end, of an extended collapse of the institutions that made it possible for many of us to make a living through intellectual or creative activity. We’ll have to find another way.”
“In a crisis we are all Socialists,” goes an old adage. But can that instinct be trusted in an increasingly barbaric world?
This is an intelligent, inventively performed, be-boppish tribute to a composer I now know better than ever.
Thomas Adès is a formidable pianist and his output for his native instrument is fundamentally gripping; yMusic’s new album is a spectacularly-played and -recorded disc; Michael Gordon’s Anonymous Man is undeniably hypnotic but gets stuck in a loop that goes on for a mite too long.
“We ask that you limit your stay to two hours, and remember that our restrooms are not open.”
The value and virtue of I Belong to Vienna is that it personalizes and humanizes a global reign of terror into an understandable drama.
The anti-cinema, represented by CGI, obliterates perception; it is not interested in tutoring the eye to see more deeply.
François-Xavier Roth and his period ensemble Les Siècles serve up freshness of playing and conviction of interpretation; Manfred Honeck is a conductor who can draw compelling, electrifying accounts of the standard canon as if on cue; the verdict’s mixed on the music of Lithuanian-born composer Mikalojus Čiurlionis.
“Politics is driven by language, and America’s peculiar history has given oligarchs the language to undercut democracy.”
Television Commentary: Unreeling the Newsreels in “The Plot Against America”
Was this alternate history lesson too much of a downer for viewers weighed down by the burdens of their own unexpected rendezvous with history?
Read More about Television Commentary: Unreeling the Newsreels in “The Plot Against America”