Today's on-line "The American Interest" carries a greatly expanded version of my blog of Feb. 25 (scroll down for Shostakovich and Ives): Books continue to be written about what it was like to live in Germany under Hitler. I wonder if any of the authors have auditioned Wilhelm Furtwängler’s wartime broadcasts with the Berlin Philharmonic. They should – and also ponder … [Read more...] about Furtwangler and Shostakovich: Bearing Witness in Wartime
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Furtwangler in Wartime
Books continue to be written about what it was like to live in Germany under Hitler. I wonder if any of the authors have auditioned Wilhelm Furtwangler’s wartime broadcasts with the Berlin Philharmonic. They should. About a year ago, the Berlin Philharmonic issued a $250 box containing 22 CDs and a 180-page booklet. The contents comprise the complete surviving … [Read more...] about Furtwangler in Wartime
The Best of the “Black Symphonies”
For this weekend's "Wall Street Journal" I have written an impassioned encomium for William Dawson's thrilling "Negro Folk Symphony" of 1934 -- still (alas) buried treasure: In 1926 the African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote a seminal Harlem Renaissance essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The mountain “standing in the way of any true Negro art in … [Read more...] about The Best of the “Black Symphonies”
Allan Bloom, Identity Politics, and “Closed Minds”
Looking for another book not long ago, I stumbled upon Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. In 1987, it was a national sensation, a trigger-point for debate over the legacy of the sixties and its “counter-culture.” Subtitled “How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students,” Bloom’s salvo attacked from the right. It … [Read more...] about Allan Bloom, Identity Politics, and “Closed Minds”
JFK’s Cold War Cultural Dogma — and Where It Came From
During the cultural Cold War, President John F. Kennedy delivered eloquent speeches claiming that only “free societies” fostered great creative art. But no one scanning centuries of Western literature and music could possibly believe that. Among countless counter-examples was the Soviet Union at that very moment. Its film-makers included Tarkovsky, its poets Akhmatova, its … [Read more...] about JFK’s Cold War Cultural Dogma — and Where It Came From