The English-speaking world’s most prestigious classical recording prize goes to DG’s release of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphonies No. 2 and No. 21, with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducting the City of Birmingham SO and Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer playing the violin solos. Notable among the other awards is the rehabilitation of the Philadelphia Orchestra: 12 years after being pointedly left off the magazine’s list of the world’s 20 greatest symphonic ensembles, the band has been named Orchestra of the Year. (As David Patrick Stearns puts it in the accompanying essay, “Like all heavenly bodies, the Philadelphia Orchestra moves in and out of eclipse.”) – Gramophone
Author: Matthew Westphal
British Gov’t Considers Selling Off Channel 4
Said minister John Whittingdale, “Unlike the BBC, Channel 4 survives as an advertising-funded model. … We do need to think about Channel 4 and whether there is still a need for a second publicly owned public service broadcaster, or what function it should fulfill.” Founded in 1982 as a home for risky and experimental programming commissioned from independent producers, the station is currently best known for The Great British Bake-Off. – The Guardian
James Beard, The Great Emancipator Of American Cuisine
“[He] was perfectly cast. Large, broad, and jovial-seeming, a Santa of the buffet table, … the happy stout man showed that you could eat well without being frightened of eating incorrectly. … The role that Beard invented and played was vital in creating a new idea of what American cooking was.” – The New Yorker
Tokyo’s Transparent Public Toilets Were Designed By A Pritzker Prize Winner
“Yes, these colorful, see-through stalls turn opaque when occupied. When not, you can literally see right through them. … The architect behind these one-of-a-kind Tokyo toilets is Shigeru Ban, winner of none other than the Pritzker Prize, the world’s most prestigious architectural prize. And when you take a deeper look into the work of the architects behind these transparent restrooms, the source of such creativity becomes more than obvious.” – Metropolis (Tokyo)
The 100 Most Influential Sequences In The History Of Animation
“We chose the deliberately flexible element of a ‘sequence’ because it felt the most focused: It is often in one inspired moment, more so than a single frame or entire work, that we are able to see the form progress. … This list is not intended to be comprehensive. One hundred is a crushingly compact number of slots with which to encapsulate the totality of a medium. That isn’t to say we didn’t try.” – Vulture
Death Of Young Bollywood Actor Has Completely Obsessed India
“News outlets have focused on every twist in a tale” — the apparent suicide of 34-year-old Sushant Singh Rajput, and the blame and abuse that have been hurled at his girlfriend — “that … has puzzled and infuriated social critics. With hard proof lacking, they say, the investigation and coverage appear to be fueled by institutional misogyny, a taboo against discussion of mental health issues and an increasingly partisan news media.” – The New York Times
Yes, Reading Is Important, But It’s Not A Moral Good In Itself
Katherine Gaudet on trying to make children into lifelong readers: “I teach humanities courses to undergraduates; I facilitate reading groups at public libraries; I have seen over and over how engagement with literature leads to understanding, empathy, and exploration. What I don’t believe in anymore is the moral undertone of reading promotion: that people who read for pleasure are more good and more deserving than those who don’t.” – Literary Hub
How Online Theatre And Its Audience Are Changing Each Other
“Our great crisis, the coronavirus, forces us to watch plays alone, in the crannies of our homes, instead of drawing us into proximity with strangers. Our current government, unlike that led by Franklin Roosevelt, doesn’t see a connection between economic privation, social estrangement, and the kind of nourishment that can come only through an encounter with art — and has no sense of responsibility to encourage the flourishing of art and public life. And so, in a very real way, each of us is on her own. The work of playwriting, acting, and theatrical production today might be to reintroduce us to one another, one at a time.” – The New Yorker
Playing In The First Post-COVID Rehearsal Of A Socially-Distanced Orchestra
“As live music begins to make a cautious comeback, Matthew Bain, a freelance violinist with the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia amongst other ensembles, shares his experience of returning to orchestral playing.” – The Strad
Using Limestone Remnants Of Ancient Greek Sculptures To Make New Reproductions: Okay Or Not Okay?
2,600 years ago, the world’s largest Doric temple to Zeus stood in southwestern Sicily, and its façades incorporated 38 towering statues of Atlas, seeming to hold up the roof the way the Titan held up the sky. All but one of those statues have long since fallen to pieces, but the monument’s director wants to use pieces of the ruins to reproduce eight of the ancient Atlas figures and incorporate them into a contemporary sculpture. Archaeologists are appalled. – The New York Times