Bernstein's Rock Star Podium

plus: 2023 Year In Review

Jan 05, 2024

Maestro (2023) Hollywood Movie - Release Date, Review, Cast, & Story

LAST YEAR’S Tár centered its monster-artist story around a formidable female conductor (Cate Blanchett) drunk on power; seemingly in response, this year’s Maestro answers with a corrective, addressing problems unique to its historical subject, composer-conductor (and Lydia Tár’s “real-life” mentor) Leonard Bernstein. Musicians regard Bernstein’s career with exasperation. On the one hand, he taught a new generation of listeners how to hear the classical canon, danced between platforms high and low, and left a recorded legacy with the New York Philharmonic that, while uneven, still delivers a midcentury glow (chiefly with the symphonies of Joseph Haydn and Gustav Mahler).

But Bernstein lived an exhibitionist’s life and would have been canceled in our own time for flagrant sexual predation that often included his Tanglewood students. By his death at age 72 in 1990, he had given himself over to such hard-living debauchery and misjudged his own talent so profoundly that he wound up struggling to salvage his reputation with European orchestras. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth there with an awesome hubris—even for him…

continued at LARB

PJ Harvey announces new album with single, 'A Child's Question, August'

2023 LISTS: POP/ROCK

Remember, we all started out in awe of Rihanna’s Super Bowl gig (February 12), which threw disdainful shade on that racist, homophonic, misogynist event as only a pregnant Barbados deity might. The other diva concert films screened inside her context, and Swift sits on a volatile NFL volcano. Tick-BOOMs be TICKING.

PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, V

Vagabon, Sorry I Haven’t Called

Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World

Morgan Wade, Psychopath

Marnie Stern, The Comeback Kid

boygenius, the record

Teddy Thompson, My Love of Country; and with Jenni Muldaur, Sing the Great Country Duets

Blondshell, Blondshell

Jenny Lewis, Joy’All

Kelsea Ballerini, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (For Good)

SZA, SOS

Margaret Glaspy, Echo the Diamond

Iris Dement, Workin’ on a World

Janelle Monae, The Age of Pleasure

The Pretenders, Relentless

Corinne Bailey Rae, Black Rainbows

Kara Jackson, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?

Rickie Lee Jones, Pieces of Treasure

Public Image Ltd, End of World

Aoife O'Donovan, Nebraska

Vince Gill, Paul Franklin, Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & the Cherokee Cowboys (see also Albert Lee and Vince Gill with Aussie Friends, LIVE at the Prince of Wales Hotel, 1988)

Gorillaz, Cracker Island

Willie Nelson, Bluegrass, also Songs of Harlan Howard

The Feelies, Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground tribute set)

POP/ROCK REISSUES/SINGLES/ETC

The Who, Who’s Next/Lifehouse super deluxe

Replacements, Tim: Let It Bleed Edition

Kirsty MacColl, Real, and Live at the Jazz Café, London, 12 October 1999

Prince, Diamonds and Pearls

Bruce Springsteen, The Live Series: Songs on Keys

The Spinners, Ain't No Price on Happiness: The Thom Bell Studio Recordings 1972-1979

Dionne Warwick, The Complete Scepter Singles 1962-1973

Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975)

Sonic Youth, Live in Brooklyn 2011

Little Richard, Complete Atlantic/Reprise Singles

The Kinks, Journey Part 2

Jerry Garcia, Garcia (Remixed)

Sonic Youth, Brooklyn, NY

Various, Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos

STRAY TRACKS

Nikki Lane, “When My Morning Comes Around”

Billie Eilish, “What Was I Made For?”

Jimmy Ruffin and David Ruffin, “Lo and Behold,” from I Am My Brother’s Keeper (1970)

Brad Mehldau, “I Am the Walrus,” from Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles

Juliana Hatfield can do cover albums of anybody and everybody, even that Grease vixen, and we’ll listen. But we’re swerving hard around ELO.

Two releases nobody knew what to do with: André 3000 (New Blue Sun), and Lil’ Yachty (Let’s Start Here), softcore moves from hardcore Atlanta icons, almost as if they had gone through a global pandemic with the rest of us. The only solution: cue up an old movie to help these prog-rock moves find their inner absurdity, the way we once did in olden times with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Here, the pairing screams itself into new voids: start watching The Wiz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson and cue up Yachty. Ya burned.

STILL TRYING

Admirable acts whose new music didn’t thrill: Rhiannon Giddens, Jon Batiste, Old Crow Medicine Show, DJ Shadow

CLASSICAL

Inon Barnatan, Rachmaninoff Reflections

Sergei Babayan, Rachmaninoff: Préludes; Études-Tableaux; Moments musicaux

Cuarteto Casals, Bach Art of Fugue

Ébène Quartet, Mozart Quintets

Quatuor Van Kuijk, Mendelssohn Quartets Vol. 2

Lars Vogt, Mozart 9 & 24, Orchestre de chambre de Paris

Angela Hewitt, Mozart Sonatas K310-K311, K330-K333

Keith Jarrett, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Lars Vogt, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Mozart Concerti 9 & 24

Ewa Poblocka, Bach Preludes and Fugues, Book 2 (follows Book 1, 2018)

Andris Nelsons, BSO, Shostakovich 2, 3, 12 & 13

Christian Tetzlaff / Tanja Tetzlaff / Paavo Järvi / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Brahms Double, Dvorak

Igor Levit, Mendelssohn Songs Without Words

Rafał Blechacz, Chopin Sonatas, Barcarolle

Kopatchinskaja, Fazil Say, Janacek, Brahms, Bartok

Hilary Hahn, Eugène Ysaÿe, Six Sontatas for Solo Violin Opus 27

María Dueñas, Beethoven and Beyond

STILL TRYING

András Schiff, Bach on Clavichord

CRITICISM

Even in 2023, public discussion about the romantic entanglements of Ms. Swift, 34, presumes that the right man will “finally” mean the end of her persistent husbandlessness and childlessness. Whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s extracurricular activities involving a certain football star (romance for the ages? strategic brand partnership? performance art for entertainment’s sake?), the public’s obsession with the relationship has been attention-grabbing, if not lucrative, for all parties, while reinforcing a story that America has long loved to tell about Ms. Swift, and by extension, itself…

from “Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do,” by Anna Marks in The New York Times

As Succession’s Logan Roy proclaimed, "money wins." Greg Tate (RIP) wrote that story on hip hop's 30th birthday. In December of 2004, Tate assured that "twenty years from now we'll be able to tell our grandchildren and great-grandchildren how we witnessed cultural genocide: the systematic destruction of a people's folkways." Back then Tate laughed at the people who gathered for a birthday party when, in his view, they were really presiding over a funeral. Hip hop had died, the moment it fully married into global hyper-capitalism.

from 50 Years Later, Is There Anything Left Of Hip Hop? by Jason England in The Defector

I played a solo on something, and the producer came on the talkback and goes, “Man, that was impressive. Can I ask you to try it one more time? This time, just play me half of what you know.” Neither is wrong. And neither is right. It’s all a matter of what somebody is drawn to — some people love to hear shredders, they just love all that stuff. I never did. My way’s not right, it’s just my way…

from Vince Gill on the Best and Toughest Music of His Career, by Natalie Weiner in Vulture

Turner’s eyes were described as “flashing,” yet she often performed behind sunglasses. From within whirls of fringe and sequin, Turner looked to be dancing on hot coals. She sang ferociously, as if for her freedom…

from Tina Turner, by Danyel Smith in The New York Times

GOOD NEIGHBORS: In his Mahler 9 issue of Classical Guy, John Buxton sorts through a series of fine releases that starts with Karajan. I’m always impressed when I sample Herr K, but he counts as canceled in my pantheon. Herbert Blomdsted goes unmentioned here, but picked up on in the comments. Another recent issue chases down the teeming spigot of Bach Goldberg Variations (give me Schiff live on ECM, Simone Dinnerstein, and Maria Yudina).

And Ray Padgett has just started a detailed 50th anniversary trek through Dylan’s 1974 tour with the Band on Flagging Down the Double E. (See “One Gig Is Worth 10 Rehearsals,” in LARB.) That’s a bootleg series entry more deserving than most. Why do you think I called it “Hero Blues”?