Friday Links
Loads of wonderful things to link to this morning. Sometimes it’s a shame that there aren’t more hours in the day, or at least less items that are irreparably labelled “need to be done now.”
- First thing’s first. Jeremy Denk has a piece up at the NewMusicBox on what he what he likes in a modern composition. No spoilers here, you’ll have to go read it yourself.
- Daniel Webster revisits the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 visit to China over at Playbill. A propos considering all the proing and conning going on over the NYPhil’s North Korean sojourn this month.
- Norman Lebrecht on Herbert van Karajan. To say he is not a fan would be an understatement akin to claiming that this is a hairline fracture. Here’s a teaser: “It’s hard to believe, but the old monster is back. Walk down any Paris boulevard and he looms off billboards in that eyes-shut pose of simulated spirituality that baffled and infuriated so many of his musicians. In your local record store – if you’ve still got one – he’s pushing living maestros out of the racks with major-label box-sets and new releases of his unpublished takes.”
- And finally from Der Spiegel, a report of a new dictionary entitled The Dictionary of Coming To Terms With The Past has been published. The book has to do with words that were used by the Nazis and are no longer acceptable in politically correct German.