Sibelius on Europe Day 2021

The concert opens (at ~4:40) with Scènes historiques II (1912) – ‘La Chasse, Ouverture’ performed by the Northern Chords Festival Orchestra/Jonathan Bloxham (Europe Day Concert 2021).

Here’s why the NY Phil was stupid and arrogant to let Alan Gilbert go

This is an extraordinary concert. Works by John Adams, Thomas Adès (Kirill Gerstein, soloist), György Ligeti (in an encore), and Esa-Pekka Salonen, with Alan Gilbert conducting the NDR Elbphilharmonie. A program booklet may be found here.

With Her Back To the World

The first time I saw a painting by Agnes Martin (or at least it was the first time I paid attention) was at the Dia:Beacon in 2007. The quotation on the wall appealed to me then and has ever since:

I want to draw a certain response. . . . Not a specific response but that quality of response from people when they leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature—an experience of simple joy. . . . the simple, direct going into a field of vision as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.

On Creatively Misreading Peter Cole’s The Invention of Influence

. . . thinking we know where we’re going and then
getting somewhere, despite our intention.

—Peter Cole, from Actual Angels

I was tempted into reading poet Peter Cole’s book, The Invention of Influence, by a review in Jacket2.  From the get-go, the signs augured that I’d be in well over my head. Cole is, among other things, “a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetries, modern and medieval” [Jacket 2], about which I know nothing. But I was intrigued by the idea that his work with translation so powerfully informed his poetry—that Cole was, in this sense among others, a Pasternakian sponge:

[Cole] practices writing as a form of translation, as a “being between” fixed places, with the poet as a transponder, not an orator, a conduit, not a usurper.” [Jacket 2]

I don’t have “proper” receptors for understanding this book of poems, but I’m attracted by its ideas and methods and impelled to attempt to “make it mine.” Here are three examples of my admittedly peculiar process.

When Sibelius’s Third Symphony Was New Music

Jean Sibelius, standing at the fireplace at Ainola (1907)

After hearing my third symphony Rimsky-Korsakov shook his head and said: “Why don’t you do it the usual way; you will see that the audience can neither follow nor understand this.” And now I am certain that my symphonies are played more than his.
—Sibelius to Jussi Jalas, 18th June 1940