Finally uploaded my Amazon.com review of Boulez’ Structures for two pianos from May 2016, my first and small dip into reviewing the music of Boulez. I had wanted to transfer it here since I had posted my review of Fitkin’s CD on Argo, Slow-Huoah-Frame, because therein I made a passing reference to Structures.
Boulez’ music is going to be a major Himalaya to climb, and I’m going to do it only when I can really devote time and concentration to it. I guess I could have met Boulez if I had really wanted to. But then, you always think you’ve got plenty of time and that people are eternal, until one day you realize they weren’t, and that day it’s too late, of course. I wonder if that’s true with me, too…
New review of Ming Tsao‘s CD on Mode, “Pathology of Syntax”. Very interesting and original, exploring the threshold between “sound” (or even “noise”) and “music”. Biut I take exception with the fact that Ming Tsao is described, in the biographies that I’ve found, which all presumably derive from himself, as “Chinese-American”, which first led me to think that he was born in China and then established in the United States. No, he’s 100% American, born in Berkeley California. Yes, I know, I know, it’s a very bizarre American thing to need to qualify one’s American-ness by adding an adjective to specify the color of one’s skin: “African-American”, “Mexican-American”, “Chinese-American”. And what do you say for the WASPs? “Caucasian-American” or “European-American”? An what’s an “Indian-American”, a descendent from the natives, or someone whose family came from India? Have they invented “Pakistanese-American” yet (skin color is darker than Indians from India, so there should be a name for it, no?) ?
So how about just “American”, with no distinction of skin hue or origin?
I should upload my recent review of Tarnopolski’s music on Megadisc. That would be one more T and one more Megadisc. And I need to create the composers entries for Kremer’s Nonesuch CD “De Profundis”, which I’ve imported here some time ago. There’s another T among them: Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer. I was looking for info about him and trying to determine his nationality. Long and very “personal” autobiography on his website, but it doesn’t really answer the question. What’s a guy born in a country that was called Yugoslavia and doesn’t exist any more, in the part of the country now known as Serbia but in a small enclave peopled by Hungarian populations, and who left the country with the outbreak of the civil war to establish in France and never went back to his city of birth? His own website doesn’t say that he’s acquired French citizenship, so which passport does he have? Serb?