Latest news with #Schoenberg
Los Angeles Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
To capture the outlandish subject of Schoenberg in Hollywood, it takes an opera
There is a small and intriguingly personal sub-genre of operas about composers. Something is always up when one composer deals with another composer's life and music. Subjects have included Carlo Gesualdo, the 16th century madrigalist who murdered his wife and her lover. César Franck and others got a kick out of Alessandro Stradella, the Baroque opera composer who attempted to embezzle the Roman Catholic Church. Rimsky-Korsakov turned to Mozart and Salieri. In the fall, Los Angeles Opera will premiere Sarah Kirkland Snider's 'Hildegard,' about the Medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen. In the meantime, UCLA presented the West Coast premiere Sunday of Tod Machover's 'Schoenberg in Hollywood' at the Nimoy Theater, with performances through Thursday. Machover, who directs the Opera of the Future group at MIT's Media Lab, says he was drawn to the idea after he learned about the remarkable 1935 meeting of Schoenberg and MGM producer Irving Thalberg about scoring 'The Good Earth.' The uncompromising German inventor of the 12-tone system had just fled Nazi Germany, and the meeting became a battle of high art and entertainment. Schoenberg and the movies ultimately went in their independent directions, but the composer did become deeply integrated in L.A. culture, living across the street in Brentwood from Shirley Temple, teaching at USC and UCLA, playing tennis with George Gershwin (whom he adored), feuding with neighbor Thomas Mann (who opposed Schoenberg's innovations) and hanging out with the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin. Machover's opera begins and ends with Thalberg as a framing devise. The 90-minute opera is basically a phantasmagoria of how Schoenberg got here. The superb libretto by Simon Robson (based on a scenario by Braham Murray) is a clever series of short flashbacks of Schoenberg's life, with film accompaniment. Some are realistic, some fanciful. The three characters are Schoenberg, Boy and Girl. Boy and Girl represent all the characters in Schoenberg's life with many a virtuosic costume change. We witness Schoenberg, who was born 150 years ago, starting out as a cellist and self-taught progressive composer in his native Vienna and Berlin. He flees the Nazis and, via Paris, Boston and New York, finally settles in Los Angeles in 1934, where he remains for the rest of his life. Moving scenes reveal his personal life and its connections with his music, but as he reaches the New World wacky ones begin to creep in. He becomes Groucho and SuperJew. The films, which are cued as though musical elements, run the gamut of cinematic styles and periods. They include historic documentary scenes, modern enactments, cartoons and graphics. Machover's score for 15 instruments is its own complex delirium. An impossible composer to pin down, Machover has written a traditional grand opera such as 'Resurrection,' based on Tolstoy's novel, and 'Brain Opera,' which is just that, using electrodes on your noggin. A trained cellist, he's comfortable with acoustic instruments but also can't wait to get his hands on whatever crazy invention the Media Lab's irrepressible tech visionaries come up with next. Musically and dramatically, 'Schoenberg in Hollywood' has Schoenbergian denseness along with new-world electronics. Machover is particularly effective in evoking both the trauma and the exhilaration in Schoenberg's spiritual progress as he reinvents himself after horrors of World War I, in which he fought, and again when confronted with new horrors of World War II. The commanding performance by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music ensemble, conducted by Neal Stulberg, makes the high/low dichotomy irrelevant, leading us to a profound middle ground. Choreographer Karole Armitage, who bases the Nimoy production on the original one she created for Boston Lyric, operates, however, on extremes. Schoenberg comes across as either self-knowing prophet or goofball. Whimsy and wit become silly. Marx Brothers, Wild West and SuperJew stagings are saved only by the music. Omar Ebrahim's imposing and magnificently sung Schoenberg is well-suited for visionary gravitas, less so for slapstick. Anna Davidson and Jon Lee Keenan, as Girl and Boy, turn on a dime. They move with dancers' ease, allowing Armitage to create a sense of flow in the episodic opera. They can do silly, but also a lot more. Davidson was particularly gripping as Schoenberg's first wife, Mathilde. In some ways, Armitage seemed to be compensating for the small, bare Nimoy stage. Schoenberg no doubt attended movies in what is now the Nimoy, which was a movie theater until its recent renovation as a performing space for UCLA. It is an intimate space, which meant that Armitage had to do without decor, and which may have led her to overemphasize theatrics. Amplification added a complication. The sound stage was too loud for vocal subtleties and too flat for careful instrumental and electronic music balance. Still, Schoenberg would not be Schoenberg without obstacles to have triumphantly overcome. He changed music in Vienna and Berlin. He thrived in L.A. as composer, teacher and inspiration, fitting in as he needed to. He remained true to his (12-tone) school but also, when it pleased him, went rogue. Schoenberg even wrote a terrific MGM-style Hollywood Bowl fanfare that for no good reason never gets played. Could 'Schoenberg in Hollywood' be a wake-up call? Shockingly, Schoenberg remains starless on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Los Angeles Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Is there a Los Angeles musical style?
The composer and critic Virgil Thomson once defined American music as music written by Americans. There is no arguing with that. Less obvious, however, is figuring out what, if anything, describes L.A. music. Los Angeles is the home of film music. The two most influential classical composers of the first half of the 20th century, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, lived here. (In Stravinsky's case, the Russian composer spent more of his life in L.A. than in any other city.) The composer with the most radical influence on the second half of the 20th century, John Cage, was born and grew up here. Ferreting out L.A.'s bearing on jazz and the many, many aspects of popular music, as well as world music, is a lifetime's effort. Yet these seeming incongruities of musical life are what fascinate the most. Schoenberg and Stravinsky, for instance, flirted, if futilely, with writing Hollywood film scores. The money was a lure. The possibility of reaching the masses, irresistible. Picture Schoenberg, in 1935, in the office of Hollywood's prevailing film producer, Irving Thalberg, offering untenable requirements to score MGM's feature film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's 'The Good Earth.' Picture the composer, considered by many the instigator of the most daunting music of all time, asking for $50,000 (more than $1.1 million today adjusted for inflation) and full control of the movie's sound, including having the actors recite their lines to his rhythms and suggested pitches. Picture, again, eight decades later and 3,000 miles away, the head of the Opera of the Future project in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's ultra-futuristic Media Lab, mulling over an idea for an opera based on that remarkable Thalberg incident as a way to examine the profound implications of art and entertainment had Schoenberg been given the green light. A new production of Tod Machover's 'Schoenberg in Hollywood,' which had its premiere in Boston seven years ago, finally reaches L.A. on Sunday afternoon for the first of four performances by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music at the Nimoy. Those very names — Schoenberg, who taught at UCLA from 1936 to 1944, Alpert and Leonard Nimoy — couldn't better illustrate the marvelous fantasy of L.A. musical juxtapositions. Also Sunday at First Lutheran Church of Venice, the Hear Now Music Festival concludes its 2025 season of three concerts. This festival is L.A.'s most dedicated resource for surveying local music. Over the last 14 years, it has featured more than 200 composers, from the most famous to the most obscure, from academia and from Hollywood, be they John Williams, an electronic wizard at CalArts or a kid fiddling away with a guitar in the garage. The idea of artistic place and physical place are at the heart of Hear Now. If L.A. music is anything, it is a music that challenges the notions of borders. The festival came about because its co-founder, composer Hugh Levick — who divides his time between France, Spain and Venice Beach — said the music that his L.A. colleagues were writing was easier to hear being performed abroad than in venues here. Composers in L.A. are far-flung. Looking at universities alone, UCLA, USC, CalArts, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Pomona College and the Cal State campuses in Northridge, Long Beach and Fullerton are all centers of musical activity that have had widespread influence. The seeds of Minimalism, the most prominent style of late 20th century music as propagated most famously by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, can be traced to Los Angeles City College in the 1950s. That's where La Monte Young — while studying with, and finding encouragement from, pianist Leonard Stein (who had been Schoenberg's assistant) — began to consider what would happen if he radically slowed everything down. I sat down with Levick recently to discover what he had learned from the festival. Having coffee at a Santa Monica cafe, we were near a cottage where Cage had lived in the early 1930s, when he found his first music job. It was as an assistant to pioneering animator Oskar Fischinger, who came into artistic conflict with Walt Disney over 'Fantasia.' Cage didn't last long, falling asleep on the job and dropping a lighted cigarette on flammable celluloid. Levick has probably encountered a greater variety of composers in this part of the world than anyone else. The way Hear Now works is that any composer can submit scores, so I asked the obvious questions. Could he detect any commonality, as one might in, say, Paris or Berlin? Is there West Coast and East Coast music as there once seemed to be? Does L.A. have its own sound or maybe laid-back sensibility? 'Not really,' Levick said. 'There are people whom you could vaguely put together stylistically. They may have obvious influences, but mostly they have gone their own way. What is a little different about the West Coast and the East Coast is there is a certain fluidity and flexibility here and certain rigidity on the East Coast.' When asked what has surprised him over the years, Levick pointed to the fact that although John Williams, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Thomas Adès and Andrew Norman may attract audiences, curiosity also drives crowds. Of this year's festival, which features works by 28 composers, I've previously encountered only four. Even Levick was surprised by the great many submissions from composers he didn't know. Yet that turns out to be a draw. At this year's festival, the first two programs were sold out. I attended the first at 2220 Arts + Archives in March devoted to often arcane electro-acoustic music, and it attracted a diverse and enthusiastic audience taking pleasure in not knowing what to expect. No two works were remotely the same. If Levick shies away from generalization, he too is a composer not easily pinned down. He started out as a fiction writer who, while living in Paris, chanced upon avant-garde jazz and took up the saxophone. That led him naturally to classical avant-garde. The concert Sunday will feature his latest work, 'The Song of Prophet X,' for speaker/singer and piano quartet, a similar configuration that Schoenberg used in his antiwar 'Ode to Napoleon,' We cannot escape Schoenberg. This season has seen widespread celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Last year, on April 30, Hear Now ended its festival with a large-scale concert given at the UCLA music department's Schoenberg Hall and featuring the UCLA Philharmonia conducted by Neal Stulberg, the same forces tackling Machover's 'Schoenberg in Hollywood.' The campus was on edge from news of a violent attack on a Palestinian protest that day just across from Schoenberg Hall. Hear Now, nevertheless, went on as scheduled. The concert was not a political statement, the music had nothing to do with protest movements. Even so, the symbolism of the occasion was impossible to ignore. Schoenberg, who had fled Nazi Germany, wrote scores of protest music such as 'Ode to Napoleon' and 'Survivor From Warsaw.' He also dallied with Hollywood. Schoenberg might ultimately be seen as the great juxtaposition. Leonard Stein and John Cage were in Schoenberg's UCLA classes. Film composers David Raksin ('Laura') and Leonard Rosenman ('East of Eden') studied with Schoenberg. Both Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman brought up Schoenberg when I interviewed them, and it was their world of progressive jazz that led Hugh Levick to Hear Now. Could we then define L.A. music as simply be music of, and open to, juxtapositions?
The Guardian
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Klangforum Wien review – Vienna focus brings lucid and colour-filled Pierrot Lunaire
Founded by the composer and conductor Beat Furrer in 1985, Klangforum Wien is now regarded as one of Europe's finest new-music ensembles. But, for its first visit to the Wigmore Hall in London, the Vienna-based chamber orchestra brought two programmes that focused on what was new a century ago, when, on either side of the first world war, the Austrian capital was the epicentre of modernism in music. In the second of Klangforum's concerts, though, only the work that ended the concert, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire truly belonged to that revolutionary movement. The first half had been made up of pieces by composers who were very much watchers from the sidelines of modernism, who borrowed some of its tendencies without fully embracing them. Franz Schreker's strange little 'dance allegory' Der Wind, for a quintet of clarinet, horn, piano and strings, from 1909, parades some strikingly original colours alongside moments of pure romantic kitsch, while Hanns Eisler's Divertimento for wind quintet, composed in 1923 while he was still studying with Schoenberg, was one of the first works to adopt his teacher's newly formulated 12-note technique, yet could almost be a lighter-weight, wittier version of Schoenberg's own wind quintet. There was also Busoni's Berceuse Elégiaque, in an arrangement for chamber orchestra that Erwin Stein made for Schoenberg's Society for Private Music Performances, and which involved all 12 Klangforum players in reproducing the lusciously honeyed textures. Vimbayi Kaziboni conducted the Busoni, and also took charge of Pierrot Lunaire, in which the soloist was the mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj, whose wonderfully lucid delivery of the text favoured the gesang end of the Sprechgesang spectrum. The odd touch of winsomeness aside, her performance was wonderfully assured but not at all theatrical. The most vivid imagery came from the ensemble, especially the cellist Andreas Lindenbaum, who added real sepulchral gloom to the eighth movement, Nacht, and led off the grotesquerie in the 16th, Gemeinheit! (Atrocity). But all five instrumentalists ensured that every fleck of colour in Schoenberg's feverish score registered, so that for once music and words seemed perfectly fused, just as they should be in what is one of the great precursors of late 20th-century music theatre.
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From Captain America to The White Lotus: a complete guide to this week's entertainment
Captain America: Brave New WorldOut now In the latest instalment of Marvel mayhem, Anthony Mackie stars as Sam Wilson-slash-Captain America, with Chris Evans having bowed out. And replacing William Hurt following the veteran actor's death is Harrison Ford, hulking out as antagonist Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, president of the USA and occasional Red Hulk. Oh brave new world indeed. Bridget Jones: Mad About the BoyOut now We've seen singleton Bridget, pregnant Bridget, now here comes widowed solo-parenting Bridget for the presumably final instalment in the Ms Jones chronicles, at least until Helen Fielding writes another bestseller. While raising her six- and 10-year-old children by the late Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), Bridget (Renée Zellweger) finds herself embroiled in another love triangle. Memoir of a SnailOut now After Grace's mother dies during pregnancy, she is raised alongside her twin brother by an alcoholic father. But hold up: this isn't some gritty social-realist drama. No, this is a gritty social-realist stop-motion animation, with voicework from Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee. BFI Future film festival 20 February to 6 March, Nationwide Now in its 18th year, this celebration of young film-making talent is back at the BFI showcasing the work of the new generation, aged 16-25. The festival takes place at BFI Southbank, online and in UK cinemas. Catherine Bray Klangforum Wien Wigmore Hall, London, 16 & 17 February One of Europe's leading new-music ensembles makes a rare visit to London, with conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni and mezzo soprano Barbara Kozelj, for concerts devoted to music composed in Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century. The first features Schoenberg, Mahler and Zemlinsky, while in the second Schoenberg's revolutionary Pierrot Lunaire is prefaced with music by Schreker, Eisler and Busoni. Andrew Clements Pitbull3Arena, Dublin, Wednesday; The O2, London, 21 FebruaryThe self-proclaimed Mr Worldwide touches down in the UK and Ireland for just two shows as part of his Party After Dark tour. Expect a litany of 2010s bangers such as Give Me Everything and Timber. Support comes from Lil Jon. Michael Cragg Strictly Smokin' Big Band ft Emma RawiczGlasshouse International Centre for Music, Gateshead, 21 February The young UK saxophonist-composer started getting noticed when she was still a student, and her 2022 debut album Incantation clinched her growing reputation for seamlessly merging classic-sax soulfulness and post-Coltrane edge. She fronts north-east bandleader Michael Lamb's genre-bending orchestra for this one-off show. John Fordham Carly Pearce19 to 28 February; tour starts London While her four albums haven't troubled charts in the UK, as with a lot of American country stars the Grammy-winning Pearce has built up a loyal following. This tour of mid-sized venues is in support of last year's Hummingbird, which features the excellent revenge anthem, Truck on Fire. MC FlowersSaatchi Gallery, London, to 5 May The first modern artists were fascinated by flowers, from the bouquet being delivered to Manet's Olympia to Van Gogh's intense arrangements. This exhibition follows that floral cult into today's art with a huge and colourful gathering of artists, from Caroline Larsen to Damien Hirst. Emii AlraiCompton Verney, Warwickshire, to 15 June Volcanoes have inspired and exhilirated artists for centuries: in the 18th century, painters flocked to see Vesuvius, the volcano that had buried ancient Pompeii, erupt once again. Emii Alrai responds to Compton Verney's collection of their paintings with rugged, lava-like sculptures. Her installations bring the sublime up to date. Vanessa da SilvaMostyn, Llandudno, to 31 May Brazilian modern art is increasingly renowned, with the Royal Academy currently celebrating its early history. Vanessa da Silva brings the abstract and spatial energy of Brazil's Concrete and Neo-Concrete schools up to date. Her colourful sculptures evoke traditional folk dances, and the power of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian rituals. Citra SasmitaBarbican: The Curve, London, to 21 April Women fly like birds, or open their heads, out of which living trees sprout. The folklore and mythology of Indonesia gets a feminist rebirth in the paintings of self-taught artist Citra Sasmita, who works with the Kamasan technique, invented in the 1400s. She reverses its traditional dominance by male artisans. Jonathan Jones Lynn FacesNew Diorama theatre, London, 18 February to 1 March What do you do when you're escaping a coercive relationship at 40? Form a punk band, of course. First performed at the Edinburgh fringe, playwright Laura Horton's gig-theatre show is a musical tale of emotional resilience, rebuilt confidence, and Alan Partridge's PA. Kate Wyver Figures in ExtinctionAviva Studios, Manchester, 19 to 22 February The world premiere of the complete Figures in Extinction trilogy by choreographer Crystal Pite and Complicité director Simon McBurney – only the first section has been previously seen in the UK. It's a haunting, searing (and perhaps hopeful) meditation on humanity's impact on nature. Lyndsey Winship ChampionLive theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, to 8 March Live theatre specialises in stories rooted in the north-east, here taking us back to 1977, when Muhammad Ali came to town. This new play by Ishy Din, associate playwright at the Royal Court, explores the impact of the venerable boxer's visit on one family in South Shields. KW Atsuko OkatsukaGlasgow, Thursday; Manchester, 21 February; London, 22 February Many comics riff on their upbringing; few have a backstory as disturbing as this Taiwan-born standup, who grew up in Japan with a schizophrenic mother before being 'kidnapped' by her grandmother and taken to the US. But don't expect an earnest account of childhood trauma; instead Okatsuka's work brims with quirky wit and childlike vim. Rachel Aroesti Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The White LotusNow & Sky Atlantic, 17 February It's check-in time! Mike White's darkly amusing (and often extremely sinister) luxury resort-set anthology series ups sticks to Thailand for a third trip of a lifetime. The hotel guest list includes a troubled businessman (Jason Issacs) and his brood, plus a peppy young woman (Aimee Lou Wood) and her cynical partner (Walton Goggins). A Thousand Blows Disney+, 21 February Since finding success with Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight has become an astonishingly prolific screenwriter; A Thousand Blows – his sixth TV series since 2023 – sees him return to England's historic criminal underbelly with a tale anchored in the illegal boxing scene of 1880s London. Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty star. Zero Day Netflix, 20 February Robert De Niro plays a former president tasked with investigating a deadly cyber-attack in this starry new series, which also features Jesse Plemons, Dan Stevens and Lizzy Caplan. The vibe may be schlocky, but the creators – Narcos showrunner Eric Newman, ex-NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Michael Schmidt – know their stuff. EastEnders: 40 Years on the SquareiPlayer & BBC One, 17 February, 8pm Only 40 years?! From Pat and Peggy to Barry and Beppe, the London-set soap's hold on the nation's imagination has been strong and steady since the moment it debuted in February 1985. Now the show is taking stock with this Ross Kemp-helmed anniversary documentary revisiting iconic moments and trailblazing storylines. RA AvowedOut 18 February; Xbox, PCFirst-person, colourful, well-written fantasy for appreciators of Oblivion and Skyrim who don't want to ossify waiting for the next Elder Scrolls. Come for the interesting magic-infused combat against fungus-infected beasts, stay for creative social commentary. Keza MacDonald Afterlove EPOut now; PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PCThe creators of cult hit Coffee Talk return with another sensitive gem, this time following budding musician Rama as he grapples with grief amid the trials and joys of everyday life in modern Jakarta. Expect a slice-of-life adventure with plenty of heart. Keith Stuart Mallrat – Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right Out now Australian-born, LA-based pop practitioner Mallrat, AKA Grace Shaw, returns with the follow-up to her 2022 debut, Butterfly Blue. Continuing that album's blend of dreamy ambience and airy cloud rap, it also mixes in thrilling, big pop moments sich as Ray of Light. Alessia Cara – Love & HyperboleOut now After emerging in 2015 with sleeper hit Here, Canadian Cara has won a earn a Grammy and collaborated with the likes of Zedd and Troye Sivan. On this fourth album she teams up with producer Mike Elizondo for 14 tracks that showcase her emotionally frayed vocals. Horsegirl – Phonetics On and On Out now For their second album, alt-rock trio Horsegirl – AKA Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein and Gigi Reece – relocated to New York from their native Chicago, recording in a freezing cold studio with producer Cate Le Bon. The result is an intimate, hyper-focused collection of off-kilter songs anchored by the excellent Switch Over. Bartees Strange – Horror Out now The English-American singer-songwriter leans into that surname on his third album. Raised in Oklahoma on a diet of scary stories to teach him about life, and horror films to make him strong, here he alchemises that fear into power via songs like the genre-hopping Too Much. MC System CrashPodcast With tech oligarchs exerting increasing influence on global governments, this series from writers Paris Marx and Brian Merchant offers crucial insights into the latest developments, from celebrity crypto scams to battles over free speech. Adavya: An Ecology of LoveOnline The digital learning platform offers intriguing courses that touch on topics such as death, gender and environmentalism with often unusual perspectives. Mark Valentine's weekend with their course on biology and romantic connection. Intrigue: Word of GodRadio 4, 19 February, 9.30am Ben Lewis hosts this seven-part series about billionaire Steve Green, whose obsession with acquiring biblical artefacts produced an antiquities scandal. Episode two sees papyrologist Roberta Mazza investigate a suspicious artefact at the Vatican. Ammar Kalia
