I think I have a crush on Alex Ross from the New Yorker. I always enjoyed his pieces in the magazine, but never really thought much about him beyond "pleasant subway reading." But then today, I was reading last week's piece on Leonard Bernstein, and just really loved his lush, descriptive language and style:
"To attend the Bernstein festival night after night was to watch this man’s sometimes desperate struggle to find the proper vessel for his talent. In a better world, these conflicts—between classical and popular traditions, between composing and conducting, between high-art institutions and radical politics, between gay and straight sexualities—would have mattered little. The spirit of the man, which had something primordial, almost animalistic, about it, overwhelmed all categories."
and
"The moment exemplifies Bernstein’s ability to render almost any abstract sequence of notes or chords as a physical act, a sweatily human gesture."
So bravo, Alex Ross. Way to pull ahead of Sasha Frere-Jones.
No comments:
Post a Comment