This weekend’s Wall Street Journal includes my review of Roger Allen’s “Wilhelm Furtwangler: Art and the Politics of the Unpolitical.” As some readers of this blog may remember, my most controversial and notorious book – “Understanding Toscanini” (1987) – deals rather extensively with the American career of Furtwangler. I also use Wagner’s "Lohengrin" Prelude to illustrate … [Read more...] about Furtwangler and the Nazis
The Gershwin Moment — Part Five: Klemperer, Tibbett, Gerstein
As I’ve had occasion to observe in my various George Gershwin blogs, Gershwin and J. S. Bach are the two composers most malleable in performance. There is no Gershwin style. And if there is, there’s full license to ignore it. The most recent “PostClassical” broadcast on WWFM includes two little-known but … [Read more...] about The Gershwin Moment — Part Five: Klemperer, Tibbett, Gerstein
El Paso, Kurt Weill, and Tornillo’s Tent City
Readers of this blog may remember my last filing from El Paso – a “Kurt Weill’s America” festival, part of the NEH-supported “Music Unwound” consortium I direct, that ignited a week of discussion and debate about immigration past and present. My most memorable experience that week was visiting Eastlake High School, in a semi-rural colonia, and telling 3,000 students about … [Read more...] about El Paso, Kurt Weill, and Tornillo’s Tent City
VISCONTI’S FOUR-HOUR “LUDWIG” — A Momentous Wagnerian Film
Today's "Wall Street Journal" includes my mini-review of a remarkable film. It's appended, along with a chunk of my book-in-progress about Wagner the man. The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s current Luchino Visconti retrospective climaxes with more than a week of screenings (June 16 and 22-28) featuring the restored, four-hour version of Ludwig (1973)—a rare … [Read more...] about VISCONTI’S FOUR-HOUR “LUDWIG” — A Momentous Wagnerian Film
Shostakovich and the Cold War
“It is difficult to detect any significant difference between one piece and another. Nor is there any relief from the dominant tone of ‘uplift.’ The musical products of different parts of the Socialist Fatherland all sound as though they had been turned out by Ford or General Motors.” This October 1953 assessment of contemporary Soviet music, by Nicolas Nabokov in the … [Read more...] about Shostakovich and the Cold War