“The solemn rituals that attend classical music have long made the genre an irresistible target for mockery,” writes Alex Ross in the December 21 issue of the New Yorker. “From time to time, though, a knowing insider produces a satire of classical pretensions that approaches the sublime. Peter Schickele’s anarcho-Baroque incarnation of P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742), who is habitually described as the last of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-odd children … made his public début in 1965, at Town Hall; fifty years on, Schickele … returns to the scene of the original crime…. Schickele brings to bear consummate skill as a composer and an instantly recognizable musical voice. Much of the pleasure of the P.D.Q. pieces—‘Iphigenia in Brooklyn,’ ‘The Stoned Guest,’ and ‘Wachet Arf!’ are typical titles—comes from their combination of the risible and the hummable…. The comic fame of P.D.Q. has inevitably overshadowed Schickele’s serious output. His Bassoon Concerto appears on ‘Full Moon in the City,’ a new recording from the Oberlin Music label—one that also contains bassoon-and-ensemble works by Augusta Read Thomas, Libby Larsen, and Russell Platt, a colleague here at The New Yorker. Witty, elegant, concise, and affecting, the concerto shows Schickele as a latter-day Haydn.”
Posted December 14, 2015
