VAN Magazine
@vanmusicmag.bsky.social
Independent online classical music magazine published weekly in English and German. Strong personalities welcome. www.van-magazine.com
Jeffrey Arlo Brown remembers Hans Messner, the valet of Pierre Boulez for over 50 years who died this week van-magazine.com/mag/hans-mes...
Life After Monsieur
On Tuesday, the newspaper Badische Neueste Nachrichten announced the death of Hans Florian Messner at the age of 84. Messner was best known in musical circles for his connection to Pierre Boulez, for ...
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@katewagner.wehwalt.net's AI Bayreuth "Ring" saga continues with a mercifully less hyperactive screen for "Siegfried" and some clarity from director Marcus Lobbes: van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
“Disney, of course, would do it better”
The morning before “Siegfried,” the “curator” of the Bayreuth “Ring,” Marcus Lobbes, gave an interesting question and answer session with Griffin Kaiser, a filmmaker and a member of the Wagner Society...
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Next up: "Die Walküre," where @katewagner.wehwalt.net experiences the AI staging as her own personal "Clockwork Orange"—while leaving with a newfound optimism: van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
A Day of Genuine Dread
Unlike, apparently, the Wagner family and the minds behind the Bayreuth Festival, I actually like and respect the “Ring” cycle as both a work of art and a way of looking at the world. It feels insane ...
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VAN Magazine@vanmusicmag.bsky.social · 2w agoIn Bayreuth's AI "Rheingold," @katewagner.wehwalt.net writes, the production makes the very mistake Wagner warns against: Substituting technology for human intellectual effort out of laziness. van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
In which @katewagner.wehwalt.net does it again
VAN Magazine@vanmusicmag.bsky.social · 2w agoIn Bayreuth's AI "Rheingold," @katewagner.wehwalt.net writes, the production makes the very mistake Wagner warns against: Substituting technology for human intellectual effort out of laziness. van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
Wrote about the slop ring cycle
VAN Magazine@vanmusicmag.bsky.social · 2w agoIn Bayreuth's AI "Rheingold," @katewagner.wehwalt.net writes, the production makes the very mistake Wagner warns against: Substituting technology for human intellectual effort out of laziness. van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
In Bayreuth's AI "Rheingold," @katewagner.wehwalt.net writes, the production makes the very mistake Wagner warns against: Substituting technology for human intellectual effort out of laziness. van-magazine.com/mag/bayreuth...
Enfeebled Expression
AI is everywhere in Bayreuth. When I go to the coffee shop on Sophienstraße, there are AI portraits of Richard Wagner wearing bad emo eyeliner on the walls. On my way to the Festspielhaus, there are A...
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We are literally so 1000% back you guys!!! Did you miss us??? Back with a bang, too. First, @kevinng.bsky.social takes us inside the rise and fall of Le Poisson Rouge, once the figurehead for the alternative classical movement, now "a shadow of its former self." van-magazine.com/mag/le-poiss...
Plenty of Fish
I was 15 the first time I went to Le Poisson Rouge. I was in New York on vacation from Canada, and a concert listing for the Kronos Quartet caught my eye. I had grown up on their recordings of Steve R...
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The New York venue Le Poisson Rouge was the great hope for classical music's counterculture. How did it end up presenting ICE-T concerts? van-magazine.com/mag/le-poiss...
Plenty of Fish
I was 15 the first time I went to Le Poisson Rouge. I was in New York on vacation from Canada, and a concert listing for the Kronos Quartet caught my eye. I had grown up on their recordings of Steve R...
van-magazine.com
Wrote a profile of the brilliant Maddie Ashman for @vanmusicmag.bsky.social—digging deep into the microtonal moment. van-magazine.com/mag/maddie-a...
A Different Angle on the World
In a brown tracksuit top and wired headphones, with ponytails split in her signature style, Maddie Ashman looked stylistically out of joint around the corporate suits rushing to grab lunch around King...
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New in VAN: @maratingeldeev.bsky.social on how Maddie Ashman took microtonality mainstream: van-magazine.com/mag/maddie-a...
A Different Angle on the World
In a brown tracksuit top and wired headphones, with ponytails split in her signature style, Maddie Ashman looked stylistically out of joint around the corporate suits rushing to grab lunch around King...
van-magazine.com
In this week’s edition, A.J. Goldmann reviews two openings at the 2026 Aix-en-Provence Festival: “Die Zauberflöte” and “Die Frau ohne Schatten” van-magazine.com/mag/aix-magi...
Heavy Shadows
This summer’s Aix-en-Provence Festival began with two journeys from darkness toward light. The first, under the stars at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, showed Mozart’s Tamino as a little blond boy growi...
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The people closest to David Foster Wallace didn't think of him as a Wagnerian. Yet Infinite Jest is specked with allusions and resonances to "Tristan und Isolde" van-magazine.com/mag/wagner-i...
Infinite Wagner
Here is a battered sneaker box, tennis-court green. Inside of it are cassette tapes, their cases smudged and cloudy. Outside of it is a room in a second-floor apartment in Somerville, near Boston. To...
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Jeffrey Arlo Brown had a miserable time drinking Krug champagne and listening to Max Richter van-magazine.com/mag/krug-cha...
Tough Life
On June 22, Maison Krug Champagne invited a group of tanned and tattooed influencer types (plus a few journalists) to taste their champagnes at the Reethaus, a sleek “space for radical presence” on th...
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The composer Hans Werner Henze was born 100 years ago today in Gütersloh. Pictured here with Ingeborg Bachmann in Naples, 1956 (photo via Hans-Werner-Henze-Stiftung)
End of an era at The New Yorker, where Alex's writing has been the defining music criticism of this century so far
Jacob Greenberg specializes in new music, but even for him Wu Lang's works are "beyond the beyond." In this week's VAN, he explores the blend of utter surprise and miraculous logic in her compositions: van-magazine.com/mag/wang-lu/
The Temperature of Time
I first met the composer Wang Lu on a warm weekend in south Brooklyn in the spring of 2008. The International Contemporary Ensemble, where I’m a pianist and original member, was about to premiere her ...
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Darius #Milhaud died 22 June 1974. Great excuse to reshare my epic @vanmusicmag.bsky.social assessment of 345 of his works. Some great music, some turkeys, the word 'prolix' used more than in the rest of my published work put together: van-magazine.com/mag/every-pi...
(Almost) Every Piece by Darius Milhaud, Ranked
“The complete Milhaud? Won’t you be holed up in a bunker for six months?” said a friend when I mentioned this project. If people know one thing about Darius Milhaud, it is that he was one of the most ...
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Bradley Wester's strange two-year relationship with the great director Robert Wilson brought him to the heights of the art world. It also profoundly alienated him from his peers: van-magazine.com/mag/my-affai...
My Affair with Robert Wilson
Performance Art Valhalla The first opera I ever saw was the entire “Ring,” which lasts some 15 hours over four days. This was the 1980 Centennial Ring, or Jahrhundertring, marking 100 years since the ...
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Berlin's Philharmonie, the home of the Berlin Phil, will close for renovations in 2032. A feasibility studies obtained by VAN estimates the renovations will take at least 8 years with costs totaling €1.15 billion. It also recommends an interim venue van-magazine.com/mag/philharm...
Exclusive: Study Estimates Cost of Berlin Philharmonie Closure: €1.15 Billion
In 2032, the Philharmonie, the home of the Berlin Philharmonic, will close for major renovations—the year of the orchestra’s 150th anniversary. The project raises thorny questions: Where will the Berl...
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Augustin Hadelich on attention to detail, how bios lie, and why he once thought his career would be limited to the U.S.: van-magazine.com/mag/augustin...
Savor the Calm
We all have the pieces we listen to less than we sit through. Where we think, “Wake me up when it’s over.” Every so often, though, a performer will play those works in a way that makes us bolt upright...
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Popelka joins a lineage including Hermann Levi, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Kirill Petrenko...
Bruckner, Mahler... Branca. As the composer finally gets his Lincoln Center debut on Friday, George Grella makes the case for Branca as a great classical symphonist: van-magazine.com/mag/glenn-br...
On the Bridge to Forever
You may find yourself at Lincoln Center. You may find yourself sitting in the Wu Tsai Theater inside David Geffen Hall, where the New York Philharmonic plays. You may find yourself seeing 100 musician...
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In VAN this week, Quincy Mackay on Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst's "Starmirror," and some answers in the constantly questioning world of AI and music van-magazine.com/mag/herndon-...
New: Daniel Harding becomes the new music director of the LA Phil. Below, Harding in VAN in 2022 about his reluctance to take a music director job in America....
INBOX: Elim Chan named next Music Director of San Francisco Symphony, effective immediately, and beginning tenure in September 2027. For more context behind the turmoil at the institution, read Hannah Edgar's report from 2025 van-magazine.com/mag/san-fran...
City of Beasts
Hannah Edgar reports on an institution facing an enormous deficit, an exiting music director, fractious labor relations, and changing modes of philanthropy.
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This was a really fun one to write – on Amacher's lost, never quite completed sci-fi media opera, started 50 years ago, set in the far future of 2021, when all music is generated by AI. Was great to chat again with Alvin Curran and George Lewis for this, both excellent interlocutors.
VAN Magazine@vanmusicmag.bsky.social · 3mo agoThursday, VAN day! Two new articles for you today: first, Robert Barry (@monsterbobby.bsky.social) goes in search of Maryanne Amacher's "Intelligent Life" van-magazine.com/mag/maryanne...
Thursday, VAN day! Two new articles for you today: first, Robert Barry (@monsterbobby.bsky.social) goes in search of Maryanne Amacher's "Intelligent Life" van-magazine.com/mag/maryanne...
Perceptual Astronomy
Maryanne Amacher's grand opera "Intelligent Life" has lots to say about artificial intelligence and the future of music.
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This week in VAN, Leah Mandel on how the world of human music was shaped by insects van-magazine.com/mag/insect-m...
In this week’s issue, Jordan Silversmith dedicates a dual profile to the Iranian musicians Aïda Nosrat and Ashkan Behzadi, finding in both their oeuvres a central place for the remembering body: van-magazine.com/mag/ida-nosr...
"Yet hovering outside this merry gathering of gays, Florentine bourgeoisie, and film and fashion worlds is the cloud that has attached itself to 'Klinghoffer': the same cloud that attaches itself to anything and anyone that addresses the question of Palestine." van-magazine.com/mag/guadagni...
Posing The Question of Palestine at Crisco Disco
A librettist-turned-priest, a dramatic soprano, and the creative director of Christian Dior walk into a bar called Crisco Disco. It’s a late April evening in Florence, and the room smells of high-end ...
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