No other music so instantly evokes a sense of place as that of Dmitri Shostakovich. When Daniil Trifonov launched Shostakovich’s E minor Prelude at Carnegie Hall last week, the bleakness and exigency of Stalin’s Russia at once chilled the huge space. The Shostakovich affect can seem exotic or native, according to circumstance. I would say it today complements that part of the … [Read more...] about Trifonov Plays Shostakovich
Uncategorized
Brendel and Schubert
This weekend's "Wall Street Journal" includes my review of Alfred Brendel's new essay collection, "Music, Sense, and Nonsense," as follows: It is axiomatic, to some, that music speaks for itself. But there are musicians who both perform and speak for music. In this country, Leonard Bernstein was surely the most influential exemplar. Bernstein’s landmark campaign for the … [Read more...] about Brendel and Schubert
The Future of Orchestras Part IV: Attention-Span
A colleague in Music History at a major American university reports that it has become difficult to teach sonata form because sonata forms transpire over 15 minutes and more. This topic – shrinking attention-span -- is obviously not irrelevant to the future of orchestras. My most memorable TV interview took place half a dozen years ago in a Southern city of moderate size. I … [Read more...] about The Future of Orchestras Part IV: Attention-Span
Virgil Thomson: Guerilla Tactics and Slapdash Judgments
In today' s Wall Street Journal I review the new Library of America Virgil Thomson compendium. Here's what I had to say: The heyday of American classical music occurred around the turn of the 20th century, when most everyone involved assumed that American composers would create a native canon and that American orchestras in 2016 would play mainly American music. This … [Read more...] about Virgil Thomson: Guerilla Tactics and Slapdash Judgments
The Future of Orchestras, Part III: Bruckner, Palestrina, and the Rolling Stones
“Would the New York Philharmonic sing Palestrina?” – the question posed by my previous blog – arose from a recent performance of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony in which the musicians did precisely that. The conductor was James Ross, whose University of Maryland Orchestra breaks … [Read more...] about The Future of Orchestras, Part III: Bruckner, Palestrina, and the Rolling Stones