For a period of three decades, I have made music with the renegade bass trombonist David Taylor. These sessions began with sight-reading Beethoven cello sonatas in my living room. They accelerated with our mutual discovery that certain Schubert songs – especially Doppelganger -- potently inflamed Taylor’s instrument. A few years ago, I threw caution to winds and turned the … [Read more...] about “Mahlerei” — As Inspired by Zero Mostel
Mahler, New York, and Cultural Memory
“It is always instructive to read European newspapers on American affairs. It gives us the much needed opportunity to see ourselves as others see us – with their eyes shut. . . Do we not all reek with malodorous lucre? Are we not a nation of tradesmen?”? Thus W. J. Henderson, in the New York Sun (March 8, 1908), on the arrival of Gustav Mahler in New … [Read more...] about Mahler, New York, and Cultural Memory
When Charles Ives Wrote a Song as Magnificent as Brahms’s
In the remarkable absence of any suitable acknowledgement of the Charles Ives Sesquicentenary by our nation's slumbering orchestras, it has fallen to the National Endowment for the Humanities to celebrate the 150th birthday of America's greatest creative genius in the realm of classical music. In its latest embodiment, the NEH Music Unwound consortium, which I have directed … [Read more...] about When Charles Ives Wrote a Song as Magnificent as Brahms’s
Stravinsky in Exile — A New View
The current issue of the New School’s quarterly journal “Social Research” is dedicated to the topic “Exile.” I’m pleased to have contributed something on Igor Stravinsky – suggesting that his Symphony in Three Movements, composed in Los Angeles in response (sort of) to World War II, “complexly monograms its composer’s layer upon layer of identity,” disclosing “a condition of … [Read more...] about Stravinsky in Exile — A New View
“A Validation Overwhelming and Unprecedented” — Babayan and Trifonov Perform Rachmaninoff
Today’s on-line “The American Scholar” includes something of mine on a magnificent new recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s "Symphonic Dances" – and why it matters. You can read the whole thing here.. An extract follows: Rachmaninoff left two versions of the Symphonic Dances: one for orchestra, the other for two pianos. He premiered the latter, privately, with Vladimir … [Read more...] about “A Validation Overwhelming and Unprecedented” — Babayan and Trifonov Perform Rachmaninoff