My Record of the Year? I have a few
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Year:
… Let’s start with the ones that got away.
I’m in love with the Goldberg Variations by Vikingur — he seems to have dropped that long Icelandic surname — and have listened to them at least half a dozen times. I didn’t review the release when new because it was swamped with critical hyperbole and I had little to add. I love this disc (DG).
The Doric string quartet’s new Beethoven cycle is brilliantly programmed. The first double-album contains quartets from different periods of the composer’s life, neatly counterposed. This is a walk with Beethoven through his creative life. Can’t wait for the next instalment (Chandos).
Yuja Wang’s capture of four Rachmaninov concertos and the Paganini Variations in a single concert made headlines for its athleticism….
Read on here.
And here.
In The Critic here.
En francais ici.
Hint: The final choice is none of the above.
You don’t say. The CSO is not listed in NL record of the year survey. The CSO did not win a Grammy nomination for best orchestral performance this year, either (the LA Phil, Philadelphia, San Fran Symphony all got Grammy nominations for best orchestral performance; the Met too, for opera recording).
It’s unbecoming.
These are desperate times and, in all candor, the CSO should have been on the NL list and should have been nominated for the Grammy. They had earned it by fighting against all odds. What do you do when you are desperate? Desperate times call for desperate remedies, right? If you are speeding down the Cambodian Old Smugger’s Trail on a mountain bike and your breaks fail, your steer towards the mountain, and pray. But — – if you are the CSO, and have permanently lost a large portion of your pre-Covid audience and have not won a classical music award since the time of the Pharaohs, what do you do THEN?
The answer is simple: you’ve got to go bold. You throw the kitchen sink at it. You fake it. You pretend Muti never trumpeted his disdain for contemporary music (refer to “cow-ricotta” quote below) and convince the Stallion to drop any last shred of intellectual integrity. You conjure up “CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS” (https://cso.org/experience/audio/10691/contemporary-american-composers), a toxic concoction of Glass, Montgomery, and why not – Max Raimi (who achieved a personal notoriety, if not as immortal composer yet, certainly thanks to his regular if ill-conceived SD contributions as social media arm of the CSO PR dept; and, more recently, it appears, as “Biden proxy”). You slap a picture of Muti on it, with the Stallion caught for posterity in the watershed moment of discovering a new appreciation for wokeism (” …not so bad if it brings a Grammy, I can live with that”).
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS was a valiant CSO effort, and I am so sorry that they did not get nominated or listed here. But all is not lost, next year’s Grammys will be even more suited for fake-woke recordings. Or just record another album of Italian opera overtures, they could do the trick if only you stop following Muti and finally speed up your tempo. So hang in there, you’ll have another shot in America.
For the moment, folks, console them for their loss, help them out and buy this thing. The proceeds will go to fund one extra Muti concert in 2025. His fees, contracted by Jeff Alexander, are expensive and not very wokeish (approx. $50K per concert).
So please grab your credit card, and pay Muti up.
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“It is scientifically proven that when the cows listen to the music of Mozart, they make very good milk. When they listen to contemporary music or avant-garde music, they make acid milk. Or maybe ricotta.” – Riccardo Muti
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/september-2022/riccardo-muti/
Lose “woke” in your vocabulary. It describes nothing in concept, but only reveals your political inclinations.
Your hate-filled crusade against Riccardo Muti has become really tiresome.
The Nielsen is unique indeed and convincing with its natural and seems obvious. Musician know their Nielsen since cradle and Luisi is inspired. Fresh like beginning of a romance. Beginning of a romance between a conductor and his orchestra, it counts. Enjoy it as it lasts…
The new DG recording of Yuja delivering Rach 1-4 + Paganini is not either of the stunt all-in-one marathon shows mounted in Philly and at NYC’s Carnegie. Rather, it draws from a weeklong Racha-ganza in Los Angeles with LAPhil and Duda, and a critic should be too tall to blur the straight facts.
By remarkable coincidence, these are my three worst records of the year.
Olaffsoon Goldbergs are a schizophrenic dumpster fire of “ideas” that never gel and are not cohesive.
Comment of the Year!