A choice selection of essays, reviews and interviews providing
insights into musical performance, composition in the late 20th
century and very early 21st, and the nature of opera. Paul
Griffiths offers his own personal selection of some of his most
substantial and imaginative articles and concert reviews from over
three decades of indefatigable concertgoing around the world. He
reports on premieres and other important performances of works by
such composers as Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, and Steve Reich, as well as Harrison Birtwistle and
other important British figures. Griffiths vividly conveys the
vision, aura, and idiosyncrasies of prominent pianists, singers,
and conductors [such as Herbert von Karajan], and debates changing
styles of performing Monteverdi and Purcell. A particular delight
is his response to the worldof opera, including Debussy's Pelleas
et Melisande [six contrasting productions], Pavarotti and Domingo
in Verdi at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Schoenberg's Moses and
Aaron, and two wildly different Jonathan Miller versions of
Mozart's Don Giovanni. From the author's preface: "We cannot say
what music is. Yet we are verbal creatures, and strive with words
to cast a net around it, knowing most of this immaterial stuff will
evadecapture. The stories that follow cover a wide range of events
over a period of great change. Yet the net's aim was always the
same, to catch the substance of things heard. "Criticism has to
work largely by analogy and metaphor. This is no limitation. It is
largely through such verbal ties that music is linked to other
sorts of experience, not least the natural world and the orchestra
of our feelings." Paul Griffiths's reviews and articleshave
appeared extensively in both Britain [Times, Financial Times, Times
Literary Supplement] and the United States [New Yorker, New York
Times]. He has written numerous books on Bartok, Cage, Messiaen,
Boulez, Maxwell Davies, twentieth-century music, opera, and the
string quartet, and is the author of the recent Penguin Companion
to Classical Music. He is also author of The Sea on Fire: Jean
Barraque.
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