Mixing Art and Music (cont’d): Mixing Food and Music
Now that the always enterprising Anne Midgette has posted my blog objecting to live Bach cello suites imposed on visitors to the Corcoran Gallery, I’ve realized that I failed to indicate that this was...
View ArticleIn Praise of Moral Fire
My new book Moral Fire is praised in today’s Boston Globe by Jeremy Eichler for its “elegant and warmly sympathetic” portrait of Henry Higginson, who invented, owned, and operated the Boston Symphony....
View ArticleJon Stewart and Moral Fire
As I have occasion to remark in my new book Moral Fire, moral passion is a phenomenon little glimpsed in public life nowadays, unless you happen to be a devotee of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart....
View ArticleRecapturing Moral Vision (cont’d)
As readers of this blog know, I was recently amazed to find myself talking on the radio for 20 minutes about my new book “Moral Fire” in what turned out to be a completely unhurried exchange with ample...
View ArticleKurt Weill and Darwinian Adaptation
My topic has ever been cultural transplantation – the fate of classical music when exported from Europe to America. Of the composers America has imported, Kurt Weill is a special case. In Berlin,...
View ArticleMoral Fire and Mitt Romney
As readers of this blog know, I am the author of a recently published book titled “Moral Fire: Musical Portraits from America’s Fin-de-Siecle.” My topic is culture as an agent of moral empowerment....
View ArticleInterpreting Shostakovich
PostClassical Ensemble’s month-long “Interpreting Shostakovich” festival, in DC, began with a screening of Grigori Kozintsev’s 1970 film version of King Lear, with music by Shostakovich and Boris...
View ArticleSchubert Uncorked
Readers of this blog in the New York vicinity will (I hope) be interested to know that I’m producing a take-no-prisoners concert event – “Schubert Uncorked” – this Friday night at The Stone, John...
View ArticleThe Met’s New Parsifal
The current Times Literary Supplement UK), not available online, includes my review of the Met’s exceptional new Parsifal, as follows: # In the program book for the new Parsifal at the Metropolitan...
View ArticleDvorak and Hiawatha
Two wicked questions to ask conductors of Dvorak’s New World Symphony are: “Why does the coda begin with a dirge?” and “Why is there a diminuendo on the final chord?” The musical content of the finale...
View ArticleThe Greatest Film Score You’ve Never Heard
Silvestre Revueltas’s Redes is one of the greatest of all film scores. That it remains virtually unknown is a function of Revueltas’s own neglect and the neglect of the 1935 film itself, an iconic...
View ArticleIves the Sophisticate
Leonard Bernstein did Charles Ives an incomparable service when in the 1950s he premiered and recorded Ives’s Second Symphony. But Bernstein did Ives a disservice when in a program note for that work –...
View ArticleA Status Report on City Opera
The current issue of the Times Literary Supplement (UK) includes my review of the City Opera season just past, as follows: # Now is a tough time for American orchestras and opera companies. Many are...
View ArticleHumanizing Stravinsky
To my ears, the most sublime music Igor Stravinsky ever composed is “The Land of Eternal Dwelling” — the Epilogue to The Fairy’s Kiss. # The 1928 ballet itself, possibly Stravinsky’s most emotionally...
View ArticleThe Great American Symphony
Tom Huizenga, who presides over Classical Music for National Public Radio, recently initiated a discussion thread on “The Great American Symphony” – and invited me to contribute something about early...
View Article“Bring My Boat!”— Who Wrote the Ending of Porgy and Bess?
“Bring my goat!” Porgy exclaims in the final scene of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Bess has left for New York City and he’s determined to find her. When his request is met with astonishment — New...
View ArticleHow Did “Porgy and Bess” Originate?
“Where did the big set pieces of Porgy and Bess originate? With Rouben Mamoulian, it seems,” writes Steven Suskin in his copious Playbill.com review of my new book “On My Way” – The Untold Story of...
View Article“I’m a Didactic Writer”
Last Fall, I was interviewed for a full hour by Chris Johnson of Houston Public Radio and invited to comment not only on my book Moral Fire, but more broadly on the state of culture in today’s America....
View ArticleLeonard Bernstein’s Letters
Reviewing the new book The Leonard Bernstein Letters in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I write: # In June 2011, the estate of Leonard Bernstein donated to the Library of Congress 1,800 letters...
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My “Porgy and Bess” Playlist
A few months ago Jim Svejda of LA’s KUSC, whose The Record Shelf has for years invaluably showcased necessary recordings from before the LP era, invited me to talk about my new book “On My Way”: The...
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