I sanction every­thing but the music in this video (thanks to @ukeleleuser for the tip).

If you’re a longtime Sibelius user, like me, your favorite person in the world is probably Daniel Spread­bury. This morning he posted a new blog at Stein­berg, where he and the former Sibelius team are working on an entirely new notation program. Pretty thrilling stuff.

But did you catch this epic dig at his former employer, Avid, basi­cally implying that they have aban­doned Sibelius entirely (despite their insis­tence to the contrary)?

…the number of compa­nies actively working on profes­sional music notation software is very small, and perhaps now numbers only two (one being Stein­berg, the other MakeMusic).

Ouch.

The Polon­aise-Fantaisie is to be classed among the works which belong to the latest period of Chopin’s compo­si­tions which are all more or marked by a feverish and restless anxiety. No bold and bril­liant pictures are to be found in it; the tramp of a cavalry accus­tomed to victory is no longer heard; no more resound the heroic chants muffled no visions of defeat—the bold tones suited to the audacity of those who were always victo­ri­ous. A deep melancholy—ever broken by startled move­ments, by sudden alarms, by disturbed rest, by stifled sighs—reigns through­out. We are surrounded by such scenes and feelings as might arise among those had been surprised and encom­passed on all sides by an ambus­cade, the vast sweep of whose horizon reveals not a single ground for hope, and whose despair had giddied the brain, like a draught of that wine of Cyprus which gives a more instinc­tive rapidity all our gestures, a keener point to all our words, a more subtle flame to all our emotions, and excites the mind to a pitch of irri­tabil­ity approach­ing insanity.

—Franz Liszt, Life of Chopin.

This morning I happened on the wonder­ful “BikeNYC” portraits by Dmitri Gudkov, of New York cyclists and their bikes. This collec­tion is the strongest case I’ve seen in support of expanded bike infra­struc­ture around the city; the subjects of Gudkov’s portraits repre­sent the true range of cyclists I see in the bike lanes, espe­cially here in Bed Stuy. Many are emphat­i­cally normal-looking; there are some oddities, too, though not in the ways you might expect. The impres­sion you get is that cycling is a routine, prac­ti­cal activity, not just the domain of fixed-gear scorchers and insane people with toe-coozies. The photos them­selves are nicely done, too.

Luis The Super is one of my favorites. My god, this guy needs his own protected bike path. He’s blind in one eye and rides around with a giant bucket hanging from his handlebars.

Thomas Adès’s Mazurkas are, I believe, the finest Mazurkas yet to be written in the 21^st century. I’ll be playing all three of them on my Lincoln Center show on Sunday, February 24^th; in the meantime, I made a little home-record­ing demo of the second one. I’ve got another month or so to practice, so listen up and tell me how I could be doing better:

Thomas Adès: Second Mazurka

Timo Andres, piano

He dressed in more or less Ivy League fashion casually, infor­mally, and yet with an occa­sional touch of flam­boy­ance. As soon as he could afford to do so, he indulged his interest in good clothes freely and took inor­di­nate pride in his tailor. He often dragged along his friends to fittings which came to be known as “Lenny’s dress rehearsals.”

—From Leonard Bern­stein: A Biog­ra­phy for Young People (1960) by David Ewen.

Popped over to Ft. Greene last night to hear Dave Kaplan play the Gold­bergs. Dave’s playing, like his custom­ary bow tie and corduroy suit, is instruc­tive in the best way, without being overly didactic—his inter­pre­ta­tions have a clarity which allow you to notice things you hadn’t before. 

I’ve noticed that my inter­pre­ta­tions (espe­cially of “standard rep”) tend to swing between poles of natu­ral­ness and didacticism—constant reacting and re-reacting to oneself, rather than a process of winnow­ing down to a consis­tent ideal. Probably not the best way to be a “concert pianist”, but it keeps things inter­est­ing, and anyway, as Victor Borge might say, “That’s just the way I’m built”.

After­wards we all went to Die Schwarze Kölner, one of my favorite bars (Schnei­der Aventi­nus on tap!), then home, to assemble Linzer cookies. Truly the best of Germanic culture, right here in Brooklyn.

Did every­body catch that article a couple of weeks ago in the New Yorker about the virtuoso pick­pocket, Apollo Robbins?

In the video above (I know, it’s flash, terribly sorry) he demon­strates some of his methods on Adam Green, who wrote the article. What’s espe­cially amazing to me is that even after he’s revealed his “secrets”, the routines appear, if anything, more impres­sive and just as impos­si­ble, because of the amount of tech­nique involved. We should all be so lucky.

Just a quick note to say: I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox I have posted two new record­ings up on here:

A complete & much improved version of It takes a long time to become a good composer, from my show at LPR last May;

and the première of Comfort Food, from Milwau­kee last weekend.

Last night I went to the Basilica of St. Josaphat (could they not have picked a more digni­fied-sounding Saint?) to hear the Milwau­kee Symphony. Two of my school chums play in the group—Margot, a violin­ist, and Aaron, a bassoon­ist. It’s a great-sounding orches­tra, though it was hard to hear very much detail in the Basilica, which acoustic makes our old stomping ground of Woolsey Hall look bone-dry by compar­i­son. The strings started off with an unfa­mil­iar Pärt piece, Tris­a­gion, glori­ously well-suited to such a space; same for the next piece, a stolid if unin­spir­ing hunk of ponder­ous Russian Ortho­doxy by one Metro­pol­i­tan Hilarion Alfeyev (or as he is better known, 1 Chain).

The second half of the show was utterly confound­ing: Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye suite, and then TOD UND VERKLÄRUNG. What was even going on here? The program allegedly had some sort of theme—“transformation”, perhaps?—but I’ll be damned if I could’ve figured that one out on my own. I am actually having a hard time thinking of two pieces more ill-suited to being a) bedfel­lows on the same program-half or b) played inside a giant, echoey Basilica. It’s the kind of thought­less juxta­po­si­tion which, instead of illu­mi­nat­ing the simi­lar­i­ties or contrasts of both pieces, serves only to make each one sound ridiculous—cartoonish, even, and Strauss’s tone-poems border on cari­ca­ture already. If the mood isn’t right, the only thing you can think about is: indeed, yes, we are hearing a piece written by a 25-year-old egoma­niac entitled DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION. My god, if I ever try anything like that, please somebody send me to Siberia. 

St. Josaphat’s Basilica is an enter­tain­ing space: vast & ornate with some of the most convinc­ing trompe‑l’oeil marble I’ve seen. The pews were encour­ag­ingly packed, with children and young couples well-repre­sented. Nice to see you, Milwaukee! 

My hotel contains (possibly a convinc­ing replica of) an old-fash­ioned diner counter, where break­fast is served; the wait­resses are atten­tive and one’s coffee remains mirac­u­lously full. I’ve reached the point in life where I would much rather do without the standard-issue compli­men­tary hotel breakfast—in fact I can think of little more stomach-turning than the little poly­styrene muffins in their glass mausoleum. It is thrilling to be able to pay actual money for smoked salmon & scram­bled eggs & hash browns. 

Speaking of which: this after­noon is the première of my new choral piece, Comfort Food, on Present Music’s annual Thanks­giv­ing concert. Again we find ourselves in a cathe­dral, though it is one of a slightly more manage­able size. Rehearsal yester­day was quite encour­ag­ing, and I’m as un-nervous as it is possible to be for these occa­sions. Again, some detail is unavoid­ably lost to the acoustic, but it’s not a piece where I miss it much, even though I put in all those details myself. The text may be beyond compre­hen­sion, but when is a text sung by a chorus ever comprehensible? 

Present Music is doing some­thing kind of great thing on the concert, which they are calling an “Ives Mashup”— cutting up his song The Things Our Fathers Loved into small chunks and splicing into it a panoply of folk songs, popular tunes, marches, etc. and in true Ivesian manner, having roving battal­ions of instru­men­tal­ists and singers and children’s choirs play and sing in multi­lay­ered antiphonal parades. I wouldn’t have thought this would be a good idea, mostly because it’s hard to imagine split­ting apart one of my favorite songs, but The Things Our Fathers Loved is by nature frag­men­tary, and this further inter­po­la­tion doesn’t bother me at all—in fact, it comes across as a triumphant homage. I’m not quite sure what to expect from the rest of the program, which will feature Native American Drumming as well as me playing The Alcotts. What is clear is that somebody thought about this concert.