Morning After Links

Here are a few links to keep you gently occupied while the full weight of the last night’s imbibing is making itself known.

NY Times critic Tony Tommasini echoes what Alex Ross has been saying all year. Classical music is alive and well. Hooray!
Tim Rutherford-Johnson posts a regular musician’s death watch but for the full rundown of who has gone on to pastures green, have a look at the list in the Sun Times compiled by Polly Anderson.
The New York Phil has launched a brilliant multimedia website devoted to Luciano Berio. Load of features, audio, video, bits of scores etc to keep one busy for an hour or so.
The Chicago Symphony is releasing a recording of Shostakovich 5 on their own label Resound in a download only format. No word yet if their going to pull a Radiohead.
The Guardian reports that crossover has become a genre in its own right. Shock. Horror. Here’s an excerpt, “The truth is that classical crossover has become a genre unto itself. It is no longer, as the more defensive record labels would have it, a means to bring classical music to the masses. Nor is it a gateway drug - listeners do not start with a puff of Alfie Boe and end up mainlining Jon Vickers, because they don’t need to. When they’re done with Boe, they simply move on to Andrea Bocelli, Nicky Spence or someone called Cortes.”
For all you audiophiles out there, Rolling Stone has a mammoth piece by Robert Levine on the death of high fidelity. He points mostly at the prevalence of compression necessitated by the MP3 format and the volume wars most pop and rock engineers are currently engaged in.