Alex Ross

Synopsis

Michael Berkeley's guest is Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, whose first, recently published book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century was well-received on both sides of the Atlantic. A cultural history of music since 1900, the book was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

Ross's musical selections include a Brahms intermezzo that he grew up with as well as his favoured recording of Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. His choices from the 20th century include the closing scene of Strauss's Salome, the Lacrimosa from Ligeti's Requiem as heard in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Percy Grainger's Shallow Brown, an excerpt from John Adams's opera Nixon in China and Simple Twist of Fate by Bob Dylan.

M Berkeley The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP)
Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet
BBQ BBQ 003 T10

Brahms Intermezzo in E flat, Op 117 No 1
Radu Lupu (piano)
Brahms DECCA 417 599-2 T3

Purcell Thy hand Belinda…When I am laid in earth (from Dido and Aeneas)
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Dido), Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra/Nicholas McGegan
Purcell HARMONIA MUNDI HMU 907110 T27

Strauss Ach, ich habe deinen Mund geküsst (from Salome)
Hildegard Behrens (Salome), Karl-Walter Böhm (Herod), Vienna PO/Herbert von Karajan
Salome EMI 567080-2 CD2 T11

Percy Grainger Shallow Brown
Lynette Alcantara (alto), Monteverdi Choir, English Country Gardiner Orchestra/John Eliot Gardiner
Percy Grainger PHILIPS 475 213-2 T5

Ligeti Lacrimosa (from the Requiem)
Caroline Stein (soprano), Margriet van Reisen (mezzo soprano), London Voices, Berlin PO/Jonathan Nott
TELDEC 8573 88263-2 T14

John Adams I am old and I cannot sleep (from Nixon in China)
Sanford Sylvan (Chou En-Lai), Orchestra of St Luk’s/Edo de Waart
Nixon in China NONESUCH 979 177-2 CD3 T13

Bob Dylan Simple Twist of Fate (from Blood on the Tracks)
Greatest Hits COLUMBIA 498361-2 T11

Broadcast

1. Sun 14 Sep 2008
   12:00
   BBC Radio 3