Category: Classical music

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It’s taken Americans a long time to get there, but many now seem more willing to entertain a historical narrative that doesn’t fit into the Eurocentric old world/new world framework. Today, few American history books start with Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492.

Likewise, classical concerts are getting less tied down to the usual Western European suspects. Twin Cities audiences have a great opportunity to enjoy a program born of cultural cross-pollination this week. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is barnstorming multiple metro-area venues with more than half a millennium full of music that eloquently explores the intersection of Spain and Latin America.

Curated by SPCO violinist Maureen Nelson, the concert proved a fascinating fast-paced transatlantic flight at St. Paul’s Ordway Concert Hall Friday night. Hopscotching across eras from the Renaissance to the classical to either end of the modern era, it proved a ceaselessly invigorating 80-minute, intermission-less offering.

While its centerpiece — and the evening’s high point — was an arrangement for string orchestra of contemporary American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout,” the concert was a rewarding musical walkabout, as well, starting with a symphony by a lesser-known composer.

That would be Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, who probably earned his nickname, “The Spanish Mozart,” as much for his precociousness as his style. Alas, the Iberian wunderkind died at age 20. So, if the SPCO’s spirited interpretation of his lone symphony makes you hungry for more of his music, you won’t find that much of it, sad to say. But his symphony was quite a satisfying glimpse into his gifts, buoyed by some lovely woodwind work from flutist Julia Bogorad-Kogan and clarinetist Sang Yoon Kim.

A taste of Latin American flavors finding their way into European music came courtesy of a woodwind quintet version of Maurice Ravel’s “Piece en Forme de Habanera.” But far more involving was Frank’s piece, each of its six movements inspired by a different Andean instrument or ensemble. I’ve heard the original string quartet version before, but this arrangement was more richly textured, both sonically and emotionally, especially during Nelson’s fiery solos on the “Tarqueada” movement and the sorrowful “Chasqui.”

Nelson was both composer and concertmaster for her concert-closing “Renaissance Suite,” which adapted three songs from the late 15th and early 16th centuries from the pens of Pedro Guerrero, Josquin des Prez and Nelson’s own take on a Peruvian dance.

And it served a welcome reminder that other interesting things were happening in 1492, such as des Prez writing some moving heartbroken laments and laying a foundation for the next century of European music.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

What: Works by Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, Maurice Ravel, Gabriela Lena Frank and Maureen Nelson

When and where: 8 p.m. Sat., Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul; 7:30 p.m. Tues., Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, 12650 Johnny Cake Ridge Road, Apple Valley; 7:30 p.m. Thurs., Temple Israel, 2323 Fremont Av. S., Mpls.; 8 p.m. Fri., Wayzata Community Church, 125 Wayzata Blvd. E., Wayzata; 8 p.m. Feb. 4, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, 900 Summit Av., St. Paul

Tickets: Free-$50, available at 651-291-1144 or thespco.org

Classical music will be played at a branch of McDonald’s in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour among youths, according to a report.

The music of composer and pianist Beethoven and others could soon be heard at the fast food chain in Wrexham, north Wales.

Staff there are said to be keen to make the switch from pop songs to discourage groups of youths from gathering and causing trouble.

It comes after they were hit with coins during a clash involving around 20 people, The Sun reported.

The branch will also turn off its free WiFi during the evening, with the classical music playing from 5pm.

Police Inspector Luke Hughes told the paper: “Unless we have some local and unruly Beethoven enthusiasts, it should discourage some issues.”

It is not the first time a McDonald’s restaurant has used classical music as a way to tackle anti-social behaviour.

A branch in Shepherds Bush, west London, brought in the measures and said that it had seen a reduction in incidents.

There were 71 reports of crime in or near the branch on Uxbridge Road in 2017 but this dropped significantly when classical music was played, according to the manager.

Atul Pathak, whose company runs 31 restaurants in the capital, said at the time: “Working together with the police and the local council in Shepherd’s Bush to help them with combating persistent anti-social behaviour, we thought that playing classical music at certain times of the day would help to set a different and calmer tone.

“It is working really well and has been positively received by many customers, so much so that we are giving real consideration as to where else we might introduce it.”

Transport for London also plays classical music at some Tube stations in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour.

When and where is King Charles’s coronation?

The coronation of the King and the Queen Consort will take place at Westminster Abbey on the morning of Saturday 6th May, and will be conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It launches a bank holiday weekend of celebrations, another centrepiece of which will be the coronation concert.

When and where will the coronation concert take place?

King Charles’s coronation concert will take place at Windsor Castle on Sunday 7th May 2023, the day after the coronation itself.

What will be the likely format of the coronation concert?

The concert, which will be broadcast live on the BBC, will feature some of the world’s biggest entertainers, performers from the world of dance, a laser and drone lightshow as well as spoken word performances from stars of stage and screen, which is appropriate given Charles’s love of Shakespeare.

Will it be open to the public?

A national ballot, held by the BBC, will provide the opportunity for several thousand members of the public to receive a pair of free tickets. Details of how to apply are yet to be released by Buckingham Palace.

Who will the performers be?

Among the performers will be the Coronation Choir, a group comprising amateur singers and members of the UK’s community choirs, including refugee choirs, NHS choirs, LGBTQ+ singing groups and deaf signing choirs. They will join The Virtual Choir, which is made up of singers from across the Commonwealth, for a special performance on the night. Plus, there will be a 74-piece orchestra, led by the Massed Bands of the Household Division and joined by the Countess of Wessex’s String Orchestra. The names of other specific performers are yet to be announced, though it is looking likely that the concert will feature pop icons, who might include Sir Paul McCartney and Queen.

What music will be featured at Charles’s coronation concert?

Although specifics have not been announced, we know that Charles is a fan of classical music. He played the cello as a student with the orchestra of Trinity College Cambridge, later recalling how he practised Beethoven’s 5th symphony in his bedroom, using a Berlin Philharmonic recording as his guide. Since then he has actively supported classical music and the arts, serving as president or patron of a large number of music ensembles. He also enjoys planning classical music for celebrations and helped his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, to choose some of the music for their weddings. So, in addition to pop classics, the Coronation concert programme is likely to include a fair smattering of classical works. But which ones? In a 2019 interview for BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions, Charles said that his musical choices included Haydn’s First Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – so we wouldn’t be surprised to hear excerpts from either of those two pieces.

There may well be a snippet of Handel’s Coronation Anthems, which Charles sang in 1978, while performing with the Bach Choir. And how about Hubert Parry, who formed the subject of a 2011 documentary that Charles presented himself? Can we expect to hear one of his choral corkers? In his documentary, Charles explained that there was much more to Parry than ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘I was glad’. So we might be treated to one of the British composer’s other choral works, such as the Te Deum, which was written for the coronation of George V in 1911, before being neglected for a century. Or Charles might decide to go orchestral, and request something like Parry’s rarely performed 5th Symphony. Then there are all the other pieces that Charles has named as favourites, including Wagner‘s Siegfried Idyll, Chopin‘s Piano Concertos, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and choruses from Bach‘s St Matthew Passion. So who knows. But whatever gets picked, one thing is likely: for classical music lovers around the country hoping that King Charles’s reign will help to bolster the art form, this coronation concert should be an auspicious occasion.

Photo: Getty

Today’s piece of freely-available music comes via Yugen Art, an online repository of sound art that in some respects resembles a netlabel but is more aloof, publishing things online with an absolute minimum of fuss or extraneous (or even pertinent) information. i’ve written about works from the Yugen Art archive on a number of previous occasions (it includes such figures as Kenneth Kirschner, Francisco López and JLIAT), and today i want to explore The World Is Made Of Words by Northern Ireland-born, Japan-based musician Darren McClure.

i think the aspect i find most engrossing is its elusiveness. It doesn’t seem like a piece that should have that as a possibility, as its soundworld consists of just three things: a chordal element that hovers while gently pivoting around its immediate environment, a bass element that never moves above unfathomable depths, and a small-scale manifestation of quicksilver glitch. Yet despite the certainty of these three basic component parts, The World Is Made Of Words is music rooted in ambiguity.

It’s also music that, though it displays certain hallmarks of ambient, isn’t a conventional steady state, ending up somewhere different (though not necessarily far) from where it begins. For the first half of the piece it’s the chordal element that predominates. It floats in the centre of our perception, one moment seemingly quite clear, the next more vague, never static but subject to tilts and ripples running through its timbre. The glitch element skitters over its surface, occasionally accumulating such that the chord seems to have become dirtied, whereupon it periodically switches abruptly back into clarity. At times the chord moves beyond its initial confines but always returns back; the glitching also develops slightly, from random electrified tendrils into a gentle rhythmic pulse. All the while there’s an implied question about the connection between these two elements, particularly as at times (such as ~3:46) a chordal shift seems to trigger a corresponding change in the glitch’s movement. Yet less than a minute after this the glitch seems to be going its own way, independent of the chordal core.

It’s not until 3½ minutes in that the bass starts to make its presence felt. Initially it’s little more than a distant rumble, though gradually its weight increases such that it causes huge throbbing surges. It too suggests a relationship with the hovering chords, though not only does that come into question after a few minutes, but there’s also the possibility that the glitch and the bass are connected, like a tiny fish cleaving to a huge whale.

The midpoint of The World Is Made Of Words is where everything changes. The glitch, despite its ephemeral nature, briefly seems to be almost pulling apart the established soundworld. It hangs together, but the chord becomes unrecognisable, and before long the bass swamps everything. There’s detectable glitch movement semi-submerged in reverberation, as if the intensity of the waves of bass had the qualities of a liquid. As the music continues we become immersed ever deeper in this abyssal sound trench, a place where all other sounds speak as little more than traces of something tapping, until all that remains are the nebulous modulations of the multitude of bass pitches vibrating and jarring against each other, creating large swells and dark flutterings. Only towards the work’s close does it occasionally suggest the coherence of a drone, but it remains amorphous to the very end, finally receding into blackness.

Released in 2014, The World Is Made Of Words is available as a free download from Yugen Art.

Nearly two thirds of gardeners play music to their plants, according to new research.

Studies have shown that music helps plants to grow, with the vibrations stimulating their growth.

In a survey by music licensing company PPL PRS, which studied 1,000 gardeners, 63 per cent said they played music to their plants.

Like people, plants enjoy listening to music, while different plants prefer different genres.

Classical music is most effective on the growth of roses, while chrysanthemums thrive after just 30 minutes of play.

PPL PRS’s gardening expert Michael Perry (AKA “Mr Plant Geek”) said: “Using sound to stimulate growth is an entirely natural phenomenon.

“To that end – and as strange as it might seem – research suggests that plants enjoy music. With houseplants, a good beat can mimic the natural vibrations they would experience outside.”

According to Perry, jazz and classical music are the best genres for plant growth stimulation, so he advises plant owners to try pivoting to those genres.

“Plants in the great outdoors will benefit from the bees that are drawn to high-frequency sounds in music – these powerful pollinators play a pivotal role in plant reproduction as they pass pollen from one flower to another,” he added.

According to the research, 81 per cent of gardeners play music while they garden, with pop music the most popular genre to listen to.

Accompanying the music with the gardening makes people feel happy, the study finds.

Marianne Rizkallah, music therapist expert at PPL PRS, said: “Music has a profound effect on the brain, providing a boost to our mental wellbeing, our mood and our motivation. It can even help to alleviate symptoms of more serious mental health conditions like stress and anxiety.”

According to Rizkallah, gardening can also have positive effects on our mental health: “Gardening has a similar impact on our wellness to music – it’s good for relaxation, exercise and mental health.  It’s a truly winning combination.

“Plants, like people, have different tastes in music too – with some genres providing better stimulation for growth,” she said.

“After all, we’re not too different as natural beings. Considering the similarly positive effect that being among nature can have, it’s no surprise that so many of us credit listening to music in the garden with feelings of calm and happiness.”

A melancholy notice greeted musicians clicking on the site for Black Dress Code. “Very sadly, we have decided to close our doors,” went the announcement, under a banner offering 70% discounts on the remaining stock of all-black concert clothes. “It is impossible to grow a business with the effects of Brexit both on the UK music industry and on the ability of the UK companies to grow their exports within Europe, our closest trading partners.”

Selling dresses, tops, trousers and skirts designed for performing, BDC supplied orchestral players, choirs, conservatoire students and institutions like the Amsterdam Opera for six years.

The collapse of a single, niche business in Ealing may not carry huge significance, but when I spoke to its founder, Daniella Gluck, it struck me that the story of its demise is a double whammy for both the classical music industry and the businesses that depend on it. The creative industries, including music, were together worth £116bn annually before Covid, similar to finance or construction.

Classical music is international and very European, full of freelancers with uncertain incomes dependent on travel to make a living. And the first misfortune for the business, which Gluck set up after struggling to find suitable concert outfits for her violinist daughter, was that it was set up in 2016, just as the UK voted to leave the EU, in effect turning its back on that cross-border lifestyle in which musicians thrived.

During the transition period, travel wasn’t affected at first, but other problems arose. An Australian company wanted to buy 500 dresses for a choir. “It was the day of the Brexit vote,” Gluck told me. “My business partner said to them, ‘if they vote for Brexit, the pound will slide and you will get these dresses very cheaply!’”

Rather than an incentive, the sight of the UK voting for economic instability had the opposite effect. They cancelled for fear of future uncertainty. For a while, business with Europe nevertheless grew. “Europe is my biggest market – they’re serious about classical music.”

But when the UK left the EU in 2021, the extra paperwork, border checks and
additional costs for exports started to hit. Europe-based trade show Classical
Next became impossible for Gluck because of the expense of taking samples over. Europeans stopped looking on her website overnight.

This also affected the UK clientele as Brexit made travel for work harder. Even seemingly unrelated haulage rule changes affected instrument transport, further hampering orchestra tours and depriving UK musicians of vital performance opportunities and earning the higher fees offered in Europe. Many gave up altogether.

Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Independent Society of Musicians, said the former Brexit negotiator David Frost had “(destroyed) the livelihoods of countless musicians to deliver Brexit.”

It’s not just about travel. The falling pound, as Gluck has seen, took casualties, as did falling wages and disposable income – you don’t buy tickets when struggling for basic needs. Even Glyndebourne opera owner Gus Christie wrote in 2017 that, with Brexit, “we believe that the costs of maintaining our very high standards are going to rise over the next few years, and that our income may not be able to keep up”.

Amid wider belt tightening, the Arts Council last year sharply cut funding to
venerable, big employing institutions such as the English National Opera to support regional arts. After this either-or decision, the ENO’s future is uncertain. The Welsh National Opera shortened its tour and Glyndebourne cancelled theirs – affecting venues, as well as emerging musicians. “They were really good freelance gigs of the sort many of us depended on for the summer,” a professional orchestral musician told me.

This could be career-ending for musicians trying to get established.

Gluck went to a conference of the Association of British Orchestras (ABO).
“Everybody had lost contracts,” she exclaimed. “My sales were a thermometer for what was lost in Europe.”

The brand survived Covid, but its small, family-run suppliers in Leicester lost out on PPE contracts.

“They really got it, whereas most people didn’t understand what I was
doing, why musicians need to be able to move and how to make these clothes move with them,” Gluck said. “They’ve gone bust. It was the last straw.”

She threw in the towel. Her shipping company said many other clients had
done the same. Yet, despite endless reports and inquiries – last month, Annett told the Lords European Affairs Committee: “Brexit has been an
unmitigated disaster for musicians” – nobody seems to clock quite how bad
things are. “Everyone thought musicians were crying wolf,” Gluck told me.

Since then she has made a presentation to the Labour Party about the state of the industry she depended on. “I was asked how long it could survive before it crashes,” she said. “I just quoted Annett: ‘It’s not collapsing, it’s already collapsed.’”

Director Todd Field has gone through great pains, including on a podcast for The Times, to explain his great effort to get the world of classical music right in “Tár.”

A wealth of knowing chatter, gossip and the goings-on in the orchestra is meant to add to the film’s realism. Cunning clues abound, as in a conductor in the film, Andris Davis, being named after the real-life Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons and the revered late British conductor Colin Davis.

There have been many fanciful feature films set in the milieu of the classical music world with many actors, including Rex Harrison and Yul Brynner, as charismatic star conductors. They, though, are charismatic movie actors just doing their thing. On the other hand, Cate Blanchett, in her role as Lydia Tár, attempts to show what it really takes to conduct an orchestra, let alone reveal what it might require and feel like for a women to become the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, the most desirable job in the profession. Blanchett doesn’t, like all the others, just wave her hands around. She conducts.

And now “Tár,” after raking up rave reviews and generating conversation along with a smattering of controversy, is collecting copious awards and nominations, including six for the Academy Awards. Who in the classical music racket wouldn’t want an Oscar contender drumming up attention for classical music? Maybe more of us than you might think.

A few musicians and critics have begun to speak out about “Tár.” Marin Alsop, a glass-ceiling-breaking conductor who studied with Leonard Bernstein, who created an institution to promote young women conductors and who is raising a child with her wife, was the partial inspiration for Tár; Alsop has taken umbrage with the film. A handful of music critics have pointed out some of what “Tár” gets wrong. Nevertheless, a feature film must be allowed the necessary licenses of fiction. The hard work and devotion of orchestra life is a lot less glamorous and a lot more boring in real life. Sort of like making a movie.

Even taking all that into account, though, the truth remains that underlying its veneer of authenticity, “Tár” happens to be a mean-spirited horror film with a classical music industry chip on its shoulder the size of the Hollywood Bowl. It resembles fake news more than fiction.

We’ve been there before. Remember “Shine”? The biopic about an Australian pianist with a schizoaffective disorder made a momentary sensation of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. Nominated for best picture in 1996, “Shine” delivered an Oscar to Geoffrey Rush for best actor and led to making pianist David Helfgott’s unfortunate recording of “Rach 3” a bestseller. But Rachmaninoff has survived.

So, too, will Mahler survive. A few excerpts of his Fifth Symphony, in performances said to be actually conducted by Blanchett (she studied conducting to prepare for the role) are distorted on the soundtrack beyond reason. The real conducting is obviously by the music editors. Every instrument sounds individually miked, and the balances done in the editing room meant to underscore a sense of massive egotism. The volume is extreme. The soundstage is massive. No concert hall sounds like that. The result is the orchestra standing in for a grotesque exhibition of power, as though it were a calculating film score, maybe meant as a reflection of Tár’s own controlling and out-of-control character.

The idea of creating a horror film around orchestra life does have a certain ghoulish charm. Ominous soundtracks can make or break a picture, and no more so than in horror. Think the often brilliant atonal scores of 1950s horror films or Martin Scorsese’s marvelously devious use of avant-garde classics in “Shutter Island.”

Field gets that in his application of barely perceptible, moody original music by Hildur Guðnadóttir. It subliminally primes you for the shock of hearing an orchestra blasting Mahler. The problem is we don’t know it’s a horror film until the end. I didn’t realize that the distorted Mahler we hear is what is supposedly going on in Tár’s head as the world around her falls apart. The soundtrack is meant, according to its mixer, to intensify Tár’s psychological revulsion, or misphonia, to noises — hardly a believable trait for one of the world’s most celebrated conductors.

“Tár” isn’t meant to be about classical music. Field has said that since it’s the study of a sexual predator, he made her a conductor, who he sees as an almighty musical god asserting her will over 100 exceptional musicians. Setting the story in the culture of the symphony orchestra is, to the general film-going public, exotic and hence intriguing.

Yet the classical world we’re presented with in “Tár” is full of tired, outdated clichés. The players of the Berlin Philharmonic choose their own music director, and it would not be one who talks to them like they were first-year conservatory students. Should those of us in L.A. not be offended by a Hollywood film cluelessly referring to the “Big Five” America orchestras while leaving out the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the biggest by all relevant measurements? The film opens with New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik interviewing Tár at a New Yorker talk, and when he brings up the so-called Big Five you wonder whether he reads his own magazine.

All the supposedly insider talk about legendary conductors and the rest sounds uncomfortably like how some of us used to carry on as nerdy pretentious freshmen. “Tár” trots out Antonia Brico as an extraordinary, pioneering conductor. Brico grappled with gender discrimination in her day, and despite conducting such top orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic in the 1930s, as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1930, her much-publicized return to the Bowl 45 years later did not go well.

Blanchett doesn’t help either, not when there are musicians of the extraordinary caliber of Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla and Susanna Mälkki. But the main thing is the music. When Rex Harrison flails about on the podium in the delicious Preston Sturges classic “Unfaithfully Yours,” from 1948, you hear wonderful results from a prerecorded studio orchestra expertly led. Even Yul Brynner in the goofy 1960 film “Once More, With Feeling!” is curiously believable because of the expert studio orchestra soundtrack. The music makes the conductor.

These comedies made plenty of fun of the classical music world at the time, parodying its exaggerated glamour but with a layer of warmth. Brynner’s manager — a character based on the impresario Sol Hurok (who, Isaac Stern quipped, speaks five languages and all of them badly) — is the butt of jokes but lovable all the same.

“Tár” is cold as ice. At a rehearsal, Tár smugly likens trying to conduct the players to standing on the podium with “a four-thirty-three trying to sell a car without an engine.” A possible translation is that she is stuck with meaningless silence, a callback to John Cage’s silent piece, “4’33”,” and even then the players are so hapless they can produce no juice. I’ve heard Simon Rattle rehearse the Berlin Philharmonic when he was its music director. That’s not how it works. He urged. They delivered big time.

When the film bases a character on a real person, it becomes downright vituperative. A major donor to Tár’s conducting program is a reptilian wannabe conductor named Eliot Kaplan, who looks like Gilbert Kaplan did in the early 1960s. Gil Kaplan was a Wall Street financier whose passion for Mahler’s Second Symphony got the best of him. After making a bundle, he dropped out of business and hired top conductors with whom he obsessively studied the symphony until he could half conduct it.

That he did with orchestras all around the world, always without a fee and usually as fundraiser for the players. I never reviewed him, because he was an amateur. But I knew him and liked him. Whenever Gil came to town, he wanted to meet and talk and talk and talk about Mahler. He couldn’t get enough. He created a foundation and supported Mahler projects. He surely did annoy some conductors. But he was a kind man who died seven years ago and who cared deeply about music and people.

Much attention has been given to the discovery of Sophie Kauer, who plays a young cellist, Olga, to whom Tár is socially attracted. We hear her play a little of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and she is impressive. But Kauer is expected to channel Jacqueline du Pré, who was a legend of another generation. While “Tár” goes to considerable ends to be contemporary — Tár tools around Berlin in a Porsche Taycan, dresses with a sense of fashion and lives in a swell apartment — it does so in everything but the music.

What “Tár” gets right comes out feeling wrong, and what it gets wrong is just plain wrong. Without an exalted level of music, it simply doesn’t work. This is what $35 million, the budget for the film, buys to create the Berlin of “Tár.” It so happens, however, that the price tag for the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the magically enthralling space Frank Gehry designed for Daniel Barenboim’s inclusive West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, cost only a fractionally more 35 million Euros.

At one point in the film, Tár is awakened by her radio alarm. It is tuned to the classical station. She listens for a moment and recognizes that it is a performance by Michael Tilson Thomas, whose conducting she likens to “screaming like a porn star.”

That’s the last straw. Tilson Thomas’ recent L.A. Phil performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall was one of the all-time great and least self-serving Mahler performances. It was music-making as matter of life and death from a beloved conductor, who announced that he had a life-threatening brain tumor well over a year before the film was released. Even if Tár’s tasteless remark may have been meant to show us more about her than MTT (and there is no way to know what was intended in a film that delights in enigma), it exemplifies the film’s petty tone.

The music advisor for “Tár,” John Mauceri, served as an assistant to Bernstein and is the founding conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, which he led from 1990 to 2006. Field has said reading Mauceri’s “For the Love of Music: A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening” proved an inspiration. Field has also spoken repeatedly about his own love of music, and none more so than for Mahler’s Fifth. But somewhere along the line in the making of “Tár,” love was left behind on the cutting room floor.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.