{"id":7035,"date":"2012-08-29T11:31:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T15:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=7035"},"modified":"2012-09-22T18:13:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T22:13:50","slug":"vivat-boulez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=7035","title":{"rendered":"Vivat Boulez"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not often that one can gratefully quote British musical mudslinger (or &#8220;gadfly,&#8221; depending upon your point of view) Norman Lebrecht. But his report on Sunday (8\/26, Arts Journal) that Pierre Boulez had begun rehearsals in Lucerne months after \u201can eye operation that went wrong\u201d was the best news\u00a0I&#8217;ve heard all\u00a0year. Boulez had cancelled concerts in Chicago and Cleveland last season due to failing eyesight, and fear among friends and followers was that he would never conduct again because of his invariable use of a score. (He\u00a0told me in an interview\u00a0that he never fails to learn new insights from the score during performance.) Lebrecht publishes a photo of the French maestro congratulating Franz Welser-M\u00f6st after a Cleveland Orchestra concert in Lucerne on Sunday, commenting that \u201che looked tanned, relaxed, happy, and far younger than his 87 years.\u201d Vivat!<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Reader Responds<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I often wonder, especially when faced by a deadline, who reads this stuff? Snail mail resoundingly replied on Tuesday (8\/28) with a new CD from ECM\u2019s Tina Pelikan, who had read my favorable review last week of Louis Langr\u00e9e\u2019s Mostly Mozart performances of Lutos\u0142awski\u2019s <em>Musique fun\u00e8bre <\/em>and Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Third Piano Concerto. She kindly sent me Dennis Russell Davies\u2019s Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra recordings of the Lutos\u0142awski work and Bart\u00f3k\u2019s <em>Romanian Folk Dances<\/em>, <em>Divertimento<\/em>, and Seven Songs, featuring the Hungarian Radio Children\u2019s Choir in the songs (ECM 2169). Davies\u2019s softer textures contrast markedly with Langr\u00e9e\u2019s slashing attacks; in fact, with the Frenchman\u2019s interpretation so vividly in mind, I barely recognized Luti\u2019s Funeral Music. There being no such thing as a \u201cdefinitive\u201d performance, I\u2019m happy to have heard both.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:34px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=7035\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Sedgwick Clark It\u2019s not often that one can gratefully quote British musical mudslinger (or &#8220;gadfly,&#8221; depending upon your point of view) Norman Lebrecht. But his report on Sunday (8\/26, Arts Journal) that Pierre Boulez had begun rehearsals in Lucerne months after \u201can eye operation that went wrong\u201d was the best news\u00a0I&#8217;ve heard all\u00a0year. Boulez [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7035"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7468,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035\/revisions\/7468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}