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Alex Ross

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59
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2020-09-22
most recent
2020-09-22
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1
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  1. “Every moment. I don't care if the C sharp is perfectly sustained in the soprano if I'm sort of losing the meaning of the words. Because he was always a dramatist as well as a composer. And the words mattered a great deal to him. And this general sensibility that we have now of voices always in danger of getting swamped by the orchestra, I don't think would have pleased him at all.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Think it would be very pleased by the technical standard. It's just very hard to say. I mean, when you go back to the 19th century, I mean, the singing style was so different. If you listen to those recordings right from the turn of the century, the very early cylinder recordings, it's a very different kind of vocal delivery. It's less finished, less burnished in terms of the tone quality. It has a kind of more, I think what we consider to be a focus kind of sounds sort of slightly rougher in terms of timbre, almost more conversational in terms of the delivery, the voices weren't as big also. So I think he'd be surprised and he might not be altogether pleased by this kind of finish ringing power of the sound. He might well say, oh, that sounds great, but I can't hear the words. You know, I want to hear, I want to hear more of the words at every”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Just such a highly professionalized field in terms of how players are chosen and this lengthy, lengthy process of the audition process and before the audition process, the conservatory training process. And people take the sheer question of technique very, very seriously and take pride in it as they should because the technical level of orchestra players today is higher than it's ever been. And if you just go back to classic recordings, you might hear more expression. You might hear more sense of musical understanding is not going to be as good as it is today, just in sheer technical terms. That's a trade-off that deserves to be questioned. Because when you go back to those old recordings, sometimes you just don't care if there are a few more.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I do agree with that. I mean, that's absolutely a general issue in musical interpretation these days. You just don't have these geographical distinctions among orchestras in different countries that you used to, where it's sort of just a French wind section sounded quite different from a German one. And it's been called the Americanization of orchestral sound because the great American orchestras of the 20th century tended to smooth out those regional differences even as they incorporated players from so many different traditions. They tended to smooth out those differences. And then I think that attitude has spread backward back to Europe in terms of European orchestras just don't have that as much of that distinction.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Immersion. And I think just because this opera is just so much more complicated in terms of putting all these ingredients together and making an effective fusion in terms of having the right singers, the right conductor, the right stage director, it's a pianist on his or her own can just make a great Beethoven recording without needing all of these sort of cogs and wheels and sort of working pieces to depend on. So just Wagner, it's always tricky. And people are always saying that all the great Wagner singers are the past. People said that in the 50s and 60s, they said, oh, you should have heard so-and-so. And so this bemoaning of the lost golden age is a very familiar syndrome in the conversation about opera.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, again, I wouldn't say that the meaningfulness has been drained out of Wagner singing. I mean, you have some tremendous singers right now. I mean, Lisa Davidson, the young Swedish soprano, I think has incredible potential to become possibly a singer almost at the level of Nielsen in terms of sheer technique. We've had this great run of performances from Renee Pop and there are younger singers in that category who I think could easily carry that on, Gutrun Grossbook and some others. And the tenors may be a little less so. I'm not as much a fan of Jodas Kaufman as some others are in terms of his Wagner thinking it seems a little contained to me. But yes, I wouldn't put it quite as starkly as that, but definitely I don't feel this sort of overall sense of dramatic.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Of the training of opera voices today, there might be a little too much emphasis on sheer technique and less on expression and the use of language and the communication of drama through the voice.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And others remained in Nazi Germany and collaborated or didn't collaborate to whatever extent. And then after the war, they all came back together. And Bayreuth resumed with what seemed to be a really a new philosophy and a new approach under the Wagner grandson. And so suddenly there was this explosion. It was this pent-up kind of energy. But it isn't just about the singing quality. There is an expressive power to those voices. And it's sort of a question, I think this comes up throughout opera, not just in Wagner. A high technical quality of voices today, but it's not so easy to find this total expressive conviction, whether in Wagner or Verdi or Mozart. And so I think in terms of”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “An interesting question. There are a great many wonderful Wagner voices today. And there's always a little bit of a dearth in one category or another. We never seem to be at the moment where there are sort of a surf in of outstanding voices for every role. But there's no lack of wonderful Wagner singers. But it is true that there was this extraordinary outpouring of recordings in the 50s and the 60s. And I think it had something to do with all of these singers. It was just an extraordinary generation of singers to begin with, Hans Hotter and Astrid Varnai and then Birgit Nielsen a little later, Wolfgang Windgassen. But I think because of the Second World War created this kind of cesure and a bunch of singers went into exile.”

    2020-09-22 · Conversations with Tyler · Alex Ross on Music, Culture, and Criticism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source