During a marvelous performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) by the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia on Sunday, I flipped through the program and was startled to find that the principal bassist’s name is Miles Davis.
Last week I had the rare pleasure of a front-row seat for a performance of Helmut Lachenmann‘s Gran Torso and Grido string quartets, works created more than three decades apart. Lachenmann was in the audience, amazingly enough, though I didn’t get to hear his discussion with fellow composer Gene Coleman earlier in the day.
There’s a brief but interesting mention of Lachenmann in Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise: “Lachenmann is a sensitive composer who places his cries and whispers with extraordinary care and keeps the listener in a tensely riveted state,” which certainly describes my experience as I peered directly at the impenetrable score being read by violinist Christopher Otto of the Jack string quartet.
Alex also writes that Lachenmann’s “fractured aesthetic” (shockingly enough) “is allied to political convictions of a far-leftist, insurrectionary character.” So in one opera we have Lachenmann quoting Gudrun Ensslin of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (a.k.a. Red Army Faction). Support for the RAF was once very chic, but it was always disreputable, for reasons laid out effectively here. (And here.)
PS – Forgot to mention that right after Lachenmann, I went to Johnny Brenda’s to hear the electronic noise trio Wolf Eyes. In my PW preview I wrote that Wolf Eyes “makes Ministry sound like Doris Day.” Well, Lachenmann makes Wolf Eyes sound like Simon & Garfunkel, or something. Maybe if I’d removed my earplugs…
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