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This weekend's "Wall Street Journal" includes my review of Conrad L. Osborne's new mega-book "Opera as Opera" -- the most important English-language treatment of opera in performance ever written: During the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, when classical music was a lot more ­robust than nowadays, High Fidelity was the American magazine of choice for lay connoisseurs and not a few … [Read more...] about On Rescuing a “Dead Art Form” — A Landmark Book on Opera in Performance

The Bernstein Centenary celebration at the Brevard Music Festival last month was multi-faceted. I was invited to explore the Bernstein story for a week with Brevard’s exceptional high school orchestra (the festival also hosts college and professional ensembles). The result was  the multi-media “Bernstein the Educator” program that I described in my previous blog. I was also … [Read more...] about Bernstein at Brevard — Take Two: The Artist and Politics

Museums curate the past. They help us to shape and populate our impressions of history. Orchestras do not curate the past. A typical symphonic program (alas) begins with the selection of a soloist. The resulting programs are eclectic: a potpourri. During his historic music directorship of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein was the rare conductor for whom … [Read more...] about Bernstein the Educator

I am returning to the topic of Furtwangler because my previous blog produced a minor miracle – a thread of responses that yielded heightened understanding of a complex topic. I wrote to William Osborne and Stephen Stockwell: “Thanks so much for this engrossing feedback. Maybe we could summarize that the truth about Furtwangler falls within these two polarities: “1.He … [Read more...] about Furtwangler and the Nazis — Take Two

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal includes my review of Roger Allen’s “Wilhelm Furtwangler: Art and the Politics of the Unpolitical.” As some readers of this blog may remember, my most controversial and notorious book – “Understanding Toscanini” (1987) – deals rather extensively with the American career of Furtwangler. I also use Wagner’s "Lohengrin" Prelude to illustrate … [Read more...] about Furtwangler and the Nazis