Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Yes, the same man who wrote Sibelius, le plus mauvais compositeur du monde. Leibowitz was actually quite an interesting conductor, and his Beethoven cycle with the Royal Philharmonic, once notorious for its quick tempos, now sounds modern and bracing. This recording of Valse Triste, however, seems almost deliberately inept, as if Leibowitz were trying to substantiate the thesis of his pamphlet.

I shot the video above during a performance of John Luther Adams's Inuksuit as the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. My account of the event appeared on the New Yorker website.

A voyage into the harmonic uncanny.

Anyone who loves film should read this book. No matter how much you know, Murch knows more.

Earlier this year, Emi Ferguson and Jacob Rhodebeck gave the premiere performances of Michael Hersch's two-hour-long, twenty-nine-movement cycle scars plummet to the corners, for flute and piano. A complete video is now on Hersch's channel on YouTube. At Ojai in 2022, I heard Ferguson and Conor Hanick play two movements from the cycle, and was enthralled. I'm still absorbing and making sense of the complete work, but it's obviously a staggering achievement. The video is interspersed with ads, but perhaps some of you have paid the premium that removes that annoyance. 

At The New Yorker, John Hersey's monumental 1946 article and Jane Mayer's account of its impact. Also, in June, E. Tammy Kim wrote about the bombs' forgotten Korean victims.

May P-22 greet you, from a safe distance.

Romantique. The New Yorker, Aug. 11, 2025.

Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

George Mackay Brown, Magnus and Greenvoe

Thomas Blubacher, Die viele Leben der Ruth Landshoff-Yorck

Ruth Landshoff, Die Vielen und der Eine

Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography

Alfred Döblin, Bürger und Soldaten

Leonhard Frank, Die Räuberbande

Susan Orlean, Joyride (forthcoming)

Martin Mittelmeier, Freiheit und Finsternis: Wie die "Dialektik der Aufklärung" zum Jahrhundertbuch wurde

Friedemann Beyer, Die Geliebte: Goebbels und die Baarová-Affäre

Kai Sina, Was gut ist und was böse: Thomas Mann als politischer Aktivist

Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (ewig erstaunlich)