My brand-new website posts information on my brand-new book: The Propaganda of Freedom: JFK, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and the Cultural Cold War. The pub date is September 26. You can order it now at a 30 per cent discount. Here’s a description: Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that only “free artists” in free … [Read more...] about The Cultural Cold War — at a 30 % Discount
Schubert Lieder on the Trombone (continued)
The 20-minute Mahler/Schubert song cycle Einsamkeit, which I have concocted with the bass trombonist David Taylor, maps a dire trajectory. Each song begins with a disappointed lover. Each discloses an ever more extreme state of “Einsamkeit” – of an existential solitude grown strange and inscrutable. The ineffability of late Schubert was brought home to me by an email … [Read more...] about Schubert Lieder on the Trombone (continued)
“Closer to Mahler and his wife Alma than any other author I have read”
The most recent review of my new novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, is by Clive Paget in Musical America(July 18). Paget writes: "With his unparalleled knowledge of fin-de-siècle classical music in America, Joseph Horowitz has brought us closer to Mahler and his wife Alma than any other author I have read. . . . At times, your heart breaks for … [Read more...] about “Closer to Mahler and his wife Alma than any other author I have read”
How to Ignite a Standing Ovation for a Stravinsky Symphony; or: When is it OK to Project Moving Images During a Concert?
Readers of this blog, and listeners to my NPR shows, will recall that a South Dakota performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony last February unforgettably galvanized a Sioux Falls audience. A major factor was a 40-minute preamble, with live music, exploring the symphony’s relationship to the Siege of Leningrad and the depredations of Joseph Stalin. I came away from that … [Read more...] about How to Ignite a Standing Ovation for a Stravinsky Symphony; or: When is it OK to Project Moving Images During a Concert?
Translating Schubert — “Clairvoyance or Somnambulism”
How reckon with late Schubert? It inhabits a timeless musical precinct unto itself. The pianist Claudio Claudio Arrau (in my book Conversations with Arrau) applied the term “Todesnähe” – a proximity to death. After Schubert (born in 1797) contracted syphilis in 1822 or 1823, his intimacy with death ripened. In 1824 he wrote: “I feel myself to be the most unhappy … [Read more...] about Translating Schubert — “Clairvoyance or Somnambulism”