Today’s online edition of “The American Scholar” carries my essay on Lawrence Tibbett and how he "prophesied today's Metropolitan Opera crisis." You can read it here. An extract follows: In a recent New York Times “guest essay,” Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s embattled general manager, expresses the naïve hope that “new operas by living composers” can make … [Read more...] about Lawrence Tibbett and the Fate of American Opera Today
“Rachmaninoff In His Own Words” – A Man of Firm Identity and Principle
A dear friend of mine died recently of a sudden heart attack. I discovered that the only music I found consoling was the slow movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto – the 1929 recording with the composer at the piano, accompanied by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I am of course aware that many people find this piece maudlin. But Rachmaninoff the … [Read more...] about “Rachmaninoff In His Own Words” – A Man of Firm Identity and Principle
“Dear Daddy” — What Kind of Man Was Charles Ives?
What kind of man was Charles Ives? Based on the testimony of those who knew and met him, I would say: a great man. And the greatest such testimonial was left by his daughter, Edie, in a letter she wrote to her father in 1942 on the occasion of his sixty-eighth birthday. I discovered Edie’s letter thanks to Tom Owens’s Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives (2007). Edie's … [Read more...] about “Dear Daddy” — What Kind of Man Was Charles Ives?
“Very Likely the Most Important Film Ever Made about American Music”
During the pandemic, unable to produce concerts, I found myself making six documentary films linked to my book Dvorak's Prophecy. The most necessary of these was and is “Charles Ives’s America.” The Dvorak’s Prophecy films were picked up by Naxos as DVDs – which almost no one purchases any more. For the current Ives Sesquicentenary, however, Naxos has … [Read more...] about “Very Likely the Most Important Film Ever Made about American Music”
A Revelatory Visual Rendering of an American Musical Masterpiece
Of the masterpieces of American classical music, among the least appreciated and least performed is Three Places in New England by Charles Ives. There is an obvious reason: the piece fails in live performance unless it’s contextualized. In particular, the first movement – “The 'St. Gaudens' in Boston Common” – makes little impression unless an audience gleans its … [Read more...] about A Revelatory Visual Rendering of an American Musical Masterpiece