Latest news with #Schumann
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Isn't the Godsend That Fishermen Had Hoped For
In 2024, even in blue areas like coastal Massachusetts, fishing boats were festooned with Trump flags. Conspiracies about the elite agenda of the environmental movement run rampant in fishing communities, and fishermen don't tend to feel that government is on their side. They hoped Trump would make their lives better by easing regulations. Instead, he's brought chaos and uncertainty to an already challenged industry. It's one of many examples of how thin Trump's commitment is to America's hardest-working people, even in industries that have fervently supported him. Reflecting on life before Trump, Sarah Schumann, a commercial fisherman who works in Rhode Island and Alaska, told me she had been frustrated with 'regulations layered upon regulations. There's been this mounting level of complexity and minutiae, things you have to comply with, paperwork, that have made it quite complex to go fishing, especially in federal waters.' She also grumbled about the process for approving offshore wind farms, which she said seemed to privilege corporations over working people. Her perspective is measured compared to many in the industry. In Gloucester, Massachusetts, historically a major fishing city, the daily paper for years has at times portrayed regulations on fishing—and even concerns about overfishing—as an elite plot, condemning the 'autocratic' methods of environmental groups. Schumann heads the Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign, whose slogan is 'Climate Action Led by People in Boots, Not People in Suits.' During Democratic administrations, she says, many in the industry feel 'the powers that be tend to listen to the professional managerial class and downgrade the lived experiences of the working class'; consultants and staff at nongovernmental organizations tend to have an outsize voice. When Trump was elected, Schumann hoped there would be more of an opportunity for working-class voices to be heard. 'I couldn't have been more wrong,' she said, laughing ruefully. Not even six weeks into Trump's presidency, the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee she had been serving on for the past three years was canceled. 'So I lost my voice,' she said. Many fishermen, including Schumann, were pleased that Trump paused a number of offshore wind projects for review. But that doesn't mean that fishermen have any say. Under Biden, Schumann was regularly participating in public comments, but under Trump there is 'no transparency. A lot less engagement. We're not being asked what we think.' For 'a lowly deckhand' like her to have a voice, she said, 'I would have to hire a consultant'—which is pretty ironic given the administration's crusade against the professional class. Some fisherman also cheered Trump's executive order last month on deregulating the fishing industry, though not everyone did. Many in New England fear that without smart oversight, key fishing stock could be imperiled, just as cod and shrimp were decimated by overfishing in the past. Worse, however, is how this administration's policies—especially budget cuts—are wreaking havoc in the fishing industry. It's an example of how, even for people who have long felt burdened by government interference, Trump is in some ways making things worse for them. Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are moving to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which not only provides weather forecasts and severe storm warnings but also does climate monitoring, fisheries management, and coastal restoration. Thousands have lost their jobs at an agency that only employs around 13,000 people. Trump's proposed budget calls for cutting NOAA by 25 percent. A significant casualty is NOAA Fisheries, which provides the data to regulate and support the industry. The DOGE cuts have led to a lack of clear information, with fishing schedules chaotically redrawn. Scallopers in New England's $360 million industry had to shut down for a few weeks this spring because the short-staffed NOAA couldn't sign off on this season's rules in time. Permits are taking longer. The NOAA's National Weather Service—which provides the weather data on which the whole country relies—has also been ravaged by DOGE. Fishing is already one of the deadliest industries in the world; not having reliable information about coming storms will only make it more so. One of the problems that existed before Trump's reelection, according to Schumann, is that government data on fish populations is often out of date. So, for example, fishermen might be given limits on a species that was in trouble three years ago and has now bounced back. Massive layoffs among the scientists at NOAA Fisheries who collect the data will likely 'magnify that problem,' she said. Meanwhile, the lifting of some catch quotas, a regulation freeze back in January, and reduced data collection are already leading to overfishing, especially of Atlantic bluefin tuna off the coast of North Carolina. Some species that are crucial to the industry and have been declining, like winter flounder, won't be studied this year. Before Trump, many fishermen were in the process of decarbonizing their fleets with the help of federal funding. But Trump and Musk's cuts disrupted those subsidies. Some who began the process of decarbonizing their boats, only to lose the promised money in a DOGE slashing spree, are now on the hook for enormous expenses and can't go through with these plans. In some cases, Schumann says, the funding can be recovered from DOGE, but 'it's too late' for those particular fleets; the season has already started, and fishermen can't take the time to get their boats out of the water and retrofit them. Fishermen like Schumann are still organizing to create workable systems that reduce carbon. Some of that change can be coordinated on a regional level. But this work will be difficult if not impossible without the help of NOAA Fisheries and its scientists. 'These are our scientists,' Schumann says, meaning that they serve the public. 'And they're gone.'
Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
OAE/Andras Schiff — a glorious night of Schumann and Mendelssohn
★★★★★Judging by his platform demeanour, Andras Schiff must be the politest, most civilised pianist on the planet. On he walks, hands clutched as if in prayer, the same hands soon to be seen wafting elegantly over the keyboard; or if he's also directing an orchestra (as he was here), alerting players with crisp finger wriggles, or twists of the wrist so refined that they make the royal waves of the Queen Mother seem positively uncouth. To make matters even more civilised, this Royal Festival Hall concert surrounded Schiff only with people and objects he loves and respects. One was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, partners over many years, so skilled in shared musical conversations. Then there was music played: Schumann and Mendelssohn,
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lang Lang review – captivating, astonishing and disorientating
Think what you will of Lang Lang's brand of pianist-celebrity, but his technical control is absolute. The right-hand melody of Fauré's Pavane was so smooth it might have been glued together. Descant lines tinkled like a tiny music box. His left hand was heavyweight throughout, as if he had decided to turn up the bass. Such oddity was nothing compared to his take on Schumann's Kreisleriana – a set of eight self-consciously eccentric miniatures. Lang Lang launched himself on to the keyboard for the first, driving hard and loud, his hands flying theatrically at the end. For contrast: more of that hushed music-box tone and passages of precious, gossamer delicacy before instantaneous switches back into muscular rollicking dissonance. A more-is-more approach to the sustaining pedal turned some moments into spectacular slush. Just occasionally, there was a magical, quiet sense of storytelling and the penultimate movement was suddenly, playfully dry (pedal briefly abandoned) until yet another gear change into a passage smashed out so quickly it blurred. In the final movement Lang's ever-dominant left hand treated Schumann like Rachmaninov. With barely a break between most movements, it was a disorientating listen, the audience helped along only by Lang's repertoire of physical cues: face lifted upwards, eyes closed; body hunched intensely over the keys; arms whirling away from the piano as if it was scorching. The second half was mainly Chopin Mazurkas. Once again, Lang allowed few gaps between individual numbers. Once again, there were crystalline quiet moments, loudly galumphing moments (accompanied periodically by stamping) and moments that hauled Chopin monumentally into the world of late Romanticism. Yet Lang's rhythmic freedom was astonishing, his sense of producing each number as an improvisation utterly captivating. In his hands, this familiar music became quite alien. By partway through the mazurka-fest, wriggling and coughing were constant. But if defamiliarisation wasn't what some audience members had hoped for, their reward was Chopin's Polonaise in F sharp minor played as a vigorous romp, which precipitated an explosive ovation barely calmed by two encores – 'Chopin' from Schumann's Carnaval and Debussy's Clair de Lune – the latter so exquisitely quiet it seemed to emanate from elsewhere.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Making Sparks Fly at the New York Philharmonic
To judge by its marketing materials, the New York Philharmonic is uncomfortable with its leaderless state, created by the gap between the departure last summer of the music director Jaap van Zweden and the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel, who takes over in 2026. Dudamel's likeness is already splashed all over Lincoln Center, as if the mere promise of him were the orchestra's best hope for selling tickets. But the parade of visiting conductors passing through Geffen Hall has had its own rewards, shaking the ensemble from its routine and injecting a vital note of unpredictability. Week by week, the orchestra sounds different. The energy in the hall fluctuates. And when a firebrand soloist joins a smoldering conductor, sparks fly. This was the case on Wednesday in an electrifying concert that drew tumultuous ovations. The Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa teamed up with the flamboyant violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who shredded the Stravinsky Violin Concerto — and more than a few bow hairs — on a program that opened with the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery's sumptuous 'Chemiluminescence' and ended with a glowing reading of the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms. The previous week had featured another ferociously expressive soloist in another world premiere when the cellist Alisa Weilerstein performed a Thomas Larcher concerto, 'Returning Into Darkness,' on a program bookended by Mendelssohn and Schumann. There, it was Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider who conducted, drawing chiseled playing from the orchestra that brought out the wit in selections from Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the intricate flow of Schumann's Second Symphony. Under Hrusa, the collective sound seethed and simmered. Larcher's one-movement concerto grows out of a single gesture, a swooping glissando across multiple octaves on the solo cello. On a string instrument, glissando results from the player's finger sliding up or down the fingerboard, drawing an elastic line through all available pitches. Because it blurs the distinction between individual notes, it evokes extra-musical sounds: sirens, moans, the lowing of a wounded animal. In 'Returning Into Darkness,' the swooping lines that recur in the solo cello part, interspersed with bouts of frenetic activity, convey a state of emotional emergency and a certain neurotic rootlessness, unmoored but also unwilling to commit. A similar fluidity governs the ensemble sound, which swells and tapers like a swarm of insects that can build to menacing proportions. Moment by moment, Larcher's command of color and Weilerstein's forceful performance were compelling, though over the course of 25 minutes, the constant slaloms induced little more than emotional whiplash. High glissandos also made an appearance in Montgomery's 'Chemiluminescence' for string orchestra, where they function like sonic will-o'-the-wisps glinting through the oceanic churn. This nine-minute piece wears its neo-Romantic heart on its sleeve from the first strains, reminiscent of Strauss's 'Metamorphosen,' that proceed in tender, halting motion. Ardent melodies in the violas, then cellos, are nearly submerged in the luscious ensemble. A choppy section whips up rhythmic excitement before leading into an ambiguous ending with gleaming violins undercut by a restive repeated figure in the lower strings. From Kopatchinskaja's first double-stopped notes on Wednesday, it was clear that glossy tone and full-bodied violin-ness would be a low priority in her reading of Stravinsky's neo-Classical Violin Concerto. And a good thing, too: The rough, scratchy sounds she drew from her instrument with punishing bow strokes suited the abrasive brilliance of the first movement, in which Stravinsky sets the soloist and individual wind players in gleeful competition against one another. In the inner two movements, Kopatchinskaja allowed brief glimpses of a more songful side, including a memorably tender duet with a solo bassoon. But her approach to the score is that of a character actor unconcerned with favorable optics. When the drama demands it, Kopatchinskaja is more than happy to dig for ugly sounds including squeals, rattles and the kind of fuzzy whistles called wolf tones that can result from competing sound oscillations inside a string instrument and which players usually work hard to avoid. The entire last movement, played with toneless fury at dizzying speed, might have been called 'Dances With Wolves.' Dressed in a gown that paid homage to the folklore-inspired costumes worn in Ballets Russes' 'The Rite of Spring,' Kopatchinskaja crouched, bobbed and weaved in what sometimes looked like a sacrificial dance of her own. At the final, explosive note the audience sprang to its feet. Kopatchinskaja's first encore lasted all of 90 seconds: a Dadaistic miniature, 'Crin' by Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, in which she vocalized a virtuosic stream of nonsense while performing acrobatics up and down the fingerboard. She followed it with a cadenza that she wrote, distilling themes from Stravinsky's concerto along with ghostly echoes of Bach; it ended in a vertiginous pas de deux with the orchestra's concertmaster, Frank Huang. In duet, their wildly different sounds — his impeccably polished, hers raspy and urgent — came together in an unexpectedly moving demonstration of how much diversity can fit into classical music and how much of it seems to be thriving at this institution, even, and perhaps especially, in this season's no-man's-land between leaders.
New York Times
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Martha Argerich, the Elusive, Enigmatic ‘Goddess' of the Piano
The pianist Martha Argerich had just delivered an electrifying performance on a snowy night in northern Switzerland. Fans were lining up backstage for autographs, and friends were bringing roses and chrysanthemums to her dressing room. But Argerich, who at 83 is still one of the world's most astonishing pianists, with enough finger strength to shatter chestnuts or make a Steinway quiver, was nowhere to be seen. She had slipped out a door to smoke a Gauloises cigarette. 'I want to hide,' she said outside the Stadtcasino concert hall in Basel, Switzerland, shrinking beneath her billowy gray hair. 'For a moment, I don't want to be a pianist. Now, I am someone else.' As she smoked, Argerich, one of classical music's most elusive and enigmatic artists, obsessed about how she had played the opening flourish of Schumann's piano concerto that evening with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. (Her verdict: 'not so good.') And she became transfixed by the memory of performing the concerto for the first time, as an 11-year-old in Buenos Aires, her hometown. There, at the Teatro Colón in 1952, a conductor whose name was seared into her memory — Washington Castro — had offered a warning. Never forget, he said: Strange things happen to pianists who play the Schumann concerto. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
