Archives for November 2011

The current Times Literary Supplement (UK) includes my review of Fabio Luisi conducting SIegfried and Don Giovanni at the Met, as follows: Notwithstanding its importance as a showplace for rich boxholders -- Mrs. Caroline Astor, who regularly came late and left early, was called a "walking chandelier" -- the early Metropolitan Opera was a conductor's house. During its … [Read more...] about Siegfried at the Met

The most vivid writings about composers' lives, I find, are the ones they produce themselves: letters, articles, books. A case in point is Gustav Mahler -- a copious and gifted correspondent. I have yet to find a Mahler biography that as vividly or poignantly limns the man as Gustav Mahler: Letters of his Wife, as edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Gunther Weiss in … [Read more...] about Presenting Mahler’s Marriage

The central premise of Post-Classical Ensemble's three-day "Ives Project" at the Strathmore Music Center last week was that Charles Ives the composer was not a curmudgeonly modernist, but a wholesome and uplifting product of fin-de-siecle America. The central presentation, "Charles Ives: A Life in Music," applied letters and other writings to an array of Ives songs … [Read more...] about Ives the Man