Was Richard Wagner a "monster"? No so far as I can tell. Here's my book review of Simon Callow's opportunistic "Being Wagner" in this weekend's "Wall Street Journal": In 1866, a Munich newspaper reported that Minna Wagner, the recently deceased wife of the composer Richard Wagner, had lived in “direst penury.” She was reduced to accepting poor relief notwithstanding … [Read more...] about Another Cheap Shot at Wagner
Exalting Bruckner at Carnegie Hall
Bruckner’s symphonies are communal rites of spiritual passage. For maximum impact, they require a proper hall and appropriate congregants. In New York City, Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall – formerly Fisher Hall, and Philharmonic Hall before that -- is too dry and plain for Bruckner, and the New York Philharmonic audience that habituates that troubled space is restless and … [Read more...] about Exalting Bruckner at Carnegie Hall
America’s Most Exceptional Orchestra
Setting aside PostClassical Ensemble, the guerilla DC chamber orchestra I co-founded fourteen years ago, the most exceptional American orchestra I know is the South Dakota Symphony. South Dakota’s “Copland and Mexico” festival, which concluded last Sunday afternoon, had many highlights. The performance of Silvestre Revueltas’s Sensemaya was lots better than the versions you … [Read more...] about America’s Most Exceptional Orchestra
The Case of James Levine: Taking Stock
When a pianist plays the piano, when a violinist plays the violin, when a conductor conducts an orchestra, the performer channels music through a network of personal traits. This should be self-evident. It has always seemed to me, for instance, that Artur Rubinstein was an exceptionally wholesome artist. Listen to Rubinstein’s recordings of Chopin waltzes and you will … [Read more...] about The Case of James Levine: Taking Stock
Schubert Uncorked
Every once in a while a master composer creates music so radically new that it seemingly falls wholly outside its time and place. Franz Schubert’s 1828 song cycle Winterreise (“Winter’s Journey”), charting an uncanny descent into madness, is such a work. Schubert’s contemporaries didn’t know what to make of it. Its chilly existential numbness is routinely likened in affect to … [Read more...] about Schubert Uncorked