Music Criticism

In this context, Kaija Saariaho’s very last musical work, a concerto for trumpet and orchestra under the title of HUSH (2022-23), stands apart as something knowingly conceived as finale – both in personal and professional terms – winding up (as far as such action is humanely conceivable) a cycle of solo concerti, an œuvre, a life.

The music industry is deceiving you. They aren’t doing it on purpose, though. Statistics are just deceptive. And I’m not talking about any fancy statistical techniques. I’m talking about simple things, like means and medians. I’ll illustrate how with Spotify’s album charts.

The simplest way a music streaming service calculates the top album on their... See more

Like a town built around a mine, an entire ecology has sprung up around the seemingly inexhaustible resources of Kononenko’s fortune and Ishkhanov’s energy as an organizer. That ecology is Shorworld: a labyrinthine network that intersects with the mainstream classical music industry while duplicating many of its structures. And though the... See more

The qualities of the Met’s new pieces—literalness, signposting, pat plotlines, an impatience with the slightest ambiguity—are key tenets of second-screen television. They are also irreconcilable with good opera, in which text and music subvert one another and pieces permit manifold interpretations. In Don Giovanni, for example, Mozart quite

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Unlike a more classic European operatic takedown of capitalist America—like Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s brutal “Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny”— these productions seem committed to imitation rather than meaning. They never elevate their scattered details to the level of myth. The productions are a collection of curios, a dress-up that... See more

What makes a Shor work identifiable? According to some musicians, it is the mismatch between the rudimentary craftsmanship of the compositions and the skill with which those same compositions have been performed.

Andrew Trovato, an American composer who uses elements of tonality in his works, said that “the high level of playing masks the... See more

In seiner vollen Ausfaltung aber fährt er in überwältigender Wirkung, doch eben überhaupt nicht effektmacherisch in unser Ohr: so, als würden alle Töne der Welt, die bekanntlich im Nichtsklang stecken, auf einmal hörbar. Tausend Farben grellen uns da weiß an. Dieser schneidende Krach ist zugleich vollkommene Stille.