The most profound music ever conceived by Richard Strauss may be Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings. Composed in 1945 when Strauss was 81 years old, it memorializes the cultural inheritance symbolized by the opera houses of Munich, Dresden, and Vienna, all bombed to rubble during what Strauss called “the most terrible period in human history . . . the … [Read more...] about Why Colorado Mahlerfest Matters
“Ripeness Is All” — Is the South Dakota Symphony’s Mahler Really Better than Klaus Makela and the Oslo Phil?
Many readers have responded to a series of recent blogs in which I’ve pondered the bewildering appointment of Klaus Makela, age 28, to become music director of the Chicago Symphony beginning in 2027. Some have expressed incredulity that I prefer Delta David Gier’s South Dakota Symphony reading of Mahler’s Third to Makela’s with his superb Oslo Philharmonic. As it … [Read more...] about “Ripeness Is All” — Is the South Dakota Symphony’s Mahler Really Better than Klaus Makela and the Oslo Phil?
A New Biography Ponders the Controversial Director of “Porgy and Bess”
My Wall Street Journal review of Kurt Jensen’s new Rouben Mamoulian biography takes stock of a unique near-genius, perhaps the least known and appreciated American theater and film director of consequence. I came to Mamoulian (1897-1987) while writing my book on immigrants in the performing arts: Artists in Exile. The juxtaposed magnitude of his successes and failures … [Read more...] about A New Biography Ponders the Controversial Director of “Porgy and Bess”
Mahler in Sioux Falls (with yet another glance at Klaus Makela)
I have just returned from a trip to Sioux Falls, where I heard Delta David Gier lead the South Dakota Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. As readers of this blog know, I regard the SDSO as an American cultural institution that must be studied and emulated. When I arrived at my balcony seat I was addressed by a couple of young men sitting just in front of me. They had heard … [Read more...] about Mahler in Sioux Falls (with yet another glance at Klaus Makela)
Are the Arts Inimical to our Democratic Ethos?
The starting point of my new book The Propaganda of Freedom is the core tenet of the cultural Cold War as prosecuted by the CIA and the Kennedy White House: that only “free artists” in “free societies” can produce great art. And yet this is a risible claim, self-evidently counter-empirical; I’ve dubbed it the “propaganda of freedom.” An … [Read more...] about Are the Arts Inimical to our Democratic Ethos?