George Hunka

Notes and comment

Category: Music

  • All in the family

    Better than a Grammy, and not just because it’s French: L’Origine du Monde, an album of the music of Hugues Dufourt performed by my lovely wife Marilyn Nonken, has been awarded the 2025 “Coup de cœur” from the Académie Charles Cros Contemporary Music Committee (les Coups de coeur 2025 musique contemporaine de l’Académie Charles-Cros). As this press release from Métier has it:

    Founded in the aftermath of World War II in 1947, the Charles Cros Academy defends musical diversity, ensures the preservation of sound memory, supports the creation, career development of artists, the entrepreneurial spirit and courage of graphic and phonographic publishers. …

    “Métier is excited to celebrate this award with pianist Marilyn Nonken. L’Origine du Monde marked her third album exploring the spectral music movement, of which she is a leading interpreter. An award from this distinguished French Academy is all the more appropriate for this album of music by Hugues Dufourt, a foundational figure of the French spectral school. Métier and First Inversion thank the Académie for this recognition.” — David Weuste, First Inversion Executive Director

    L’Origine du Monde has also received excellent reviews from the likes of Gramophone magazine, which called it “an exceptionally assured and spellbinding demonstration of Dufourt’s uncompromising creative ambitions.” You can purchase a CD or stream the entire album at Presto Music. It’s available on Apple Classical too.

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  • Opernabend: Don Giovanni, Vienna, 1955

    A rehearsal session for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Conductor Karl Böhm is on the right; next to him Erich Kunz; behind him George London; Sena Jurinac; and at far left Anton Dermota. Vienna, 1955.

    An “alpha-plus” according to the eminent Sir Denis Forman, Mozart’s 1787 Don Giovanni, in a landmark 1955 Wiener Staatsoper recording conducted by Karl Böhm, will be broadcast by radio klassik Stephansdom tomorrow, Saturday, January 31, at 2:00 pm Eastern time. The fine cast includes George London as the lecherous Giovanni, Erich Kunz as his hapless servant Leporello, Sena Jurinac as Donna Elvira, and Ludwig Weber as Giovanni’s nemesis, The Commendatore.

    Eva Reinold hosts this broadcast, a fitting end to Mozart’s Birthday Week. You can stream it here.

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  • “An elegy to … music’s departing landscape”

    Circle Thursday, March 26, in your calendar now, and plan to Uber it to Steinway Hall in New York at 1133 Sixth Avenue for Morton Feldman at 100: “Triadic Memories,” Marilyn Nonken‘s performance of Feldman’s epic 90-minute piano solo, which she originally recorded for Mode Records in 2005. According to the web page for the event:

    Feldman’s Triadic Memories is a 90-minute elegy to what the composer saw as music’s departing landscape, where the sound exists in our hearing — leaving us rather than coming towards us. Part ritual, part meditation, Triadic Memories offers the opportunity to explore issues of perception, memory, and imagination.  “Any pianist wanting to play Feldman needs the most exquisite touch, and also great stamina,” writes the London Times,  “and Marilyn Nonken clearly has both in abundance.”

    A reception and pre-concert talk will precede the performance. RSVP and prepare to perceive.

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  • Happy 100th

    A toot on the birthday horn today for Morton Feldman, born on this day in 1926. A major figure in post-war American concert music, he produced works of remarkable delicacy and duration that remain unique in the canon.

    On this occasion I recommend that you cue up two recordings that my lovely wife Marilyn Nonken has released through Mode Records. Feldman described his 1981 Triadic Memories as “the biggest butterfly in captivity” and it remains one of his most important solo works; Marilyn recorded it in 2003. And only a few years ago she and cellist Stephen Marotto collaborated on Feldman’s Complete Music for Cello & Piano. Links to hi-res recordings above courtesy Presto Music.

    Marilyn will be performing Triadic Memories live at Steinway Hall in March. More about that soon; in the meantime, sit back with the lights down low and treat yourself to a few hours of elegant contemplation.

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  • Metaphysical stocking stuffers

    If you’re still looking for a few gifts for the pessimistic metaphysician on your Christmas list and have around $750.00 lying around, here are a few presents you might consider shoving under the tree.

    The Georg Solti Ring cycle recorded for Decca in the 1950s and 1960s and produced by the great John Culshaw was a landmark in stereo technology, still considered one of the best recordings ever made. (I have the original releases and can vouch for that.) It’s never been out of print, but a few years ago Decca remastered the original recordings and issued them on both SACD — whatever that is — and vinyl. Except for Das Rheingold, the new remasters are still in print (and I hope Decca is smart enough to repress Das Rheingold too). You can find them all here for the price of a mid-level audiophile system, appropriately enough. Surely there’s a middle ground between this and streaming it over Apple Music, but what the hell. It’s Christmas. Decca has a pretty compelling argument a little down this page.

    Yesterday I wrote about Arthur Schopenhauer, with whom most of us my age became familiar through the classic E.F.J. Payne translation from Dover Publications. More recently, though, Cambridge University Press issued new translations of all of Schopenhauer’s work under the editorship of Christopher Janaway. Sandra Shapshay of Indiana University reviewed the first volume of Cambridge’s The World as Will and Representation shortly after its 2010 publication. It will be hard to give up Payne’s remarkable rendering, but after reading through Professor Shapshay’s evaluation, I admit she must be right: the Cambridge is the keeper. You can get the lot in paperback for $300.00 or so, and unlike the new Solti Ring releases, they all seem to remain in print.

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