Two pianoless quartets + two restless leaders = some of the best music of the last few years.
Review
Classical CD Review: György Ligeti’s “Études” — Well Played and Clearly Lived In
Throughout these Études, Driver’s playing marries tonal warmth with textural precision.
Television Review: “Exterminate All the Brutes” — A Familiar, and Partial, History Lesson
As an introduction to the progress of colonization and the horrors that white people have inflicted on BIPOC, Exterminate All the Brutes achieves its admirable mission.
April Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Arts Reconsideration: The 1971 Project — Celebrating a Great Year in Music (April Entry)
Arts Fuse writers continue their countdown of great music celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the list includes Marvin Gaye, Link Wray, David Bowie, Jean Knight, and The Rolling Stones.
Book Review: Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” — Closing the Circle, Perfectly
This is a great work, more linear than Tom Stoppard’s earlier dramas, yet filled with such intelligence and compassion that it will be read and seen for years and years and, perhaps, over time be regarded as his richest, most haunting play.
Poetry Review: “Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth” — Yusef Komunyakaa, A Poet Who Expresses the World
It is always a pleasure to read the poems of a writer who has an ear for language and an eye for form, a voice of their own, and an interest in a world beyond the reach of their own person.
Book Review: “Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home”
Endpapers is an invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of publisher Kurt Wolff’s life scattered throughout
Book Review: “Last Chance Texaco” — Rickie Lee Jones Remembers
Of all the biographies of female musicians I’ve read in the past year, Last Chance Texaco is the most transparent about the vagaries of fame.
Opera CD Review: Two Splendid World-Premiere Recordings Rediscover an Exotic Master of Song — Reynaldo Hahn
Attention is being paid today to talented composers who have been sidelined or disdained because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Reynaldo Hahn qualifies on several counts.