Tag: classical music
Conductors Had One Job. Now They Have Three or Four
“I love my three orchestras,” the twenty-eight-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä said the other day on WQXR, during a broadcast from Carnegie Hall. Mäkelä was leading an all-Stravinsky concert with the Orchestre de Paris, of which he has been the music director since 2021. The other orchestras in question are the Oslo Philharmonic, which he has led since 2020, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he holds the title of Artistic Partner. In 2027, Mäkelä will become the chief conductor
Notable Classical Recordings of 2023
If I were making my usual yearly list of memorable live performances, I would include Michael Tilson Thomas’s buoyant concerts at the L.A. Philharmonic, in January; the première of Salvatore Sciarrino’s enigmatically radiant opera “Venere e Adone,” in Hamburg, in May; Andrew McIntosh’s heady traversal of Heinrich Biber’s Rosary Sonatas, in Pasadena, in July; and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s feisty farewell at Geffen Hall, in August, with Louis Langrée all but giving the finger to the oblivious leaders of
“Maestro” Honors the Chaotic Charisma of Leonard Bernstein
In 1955, Leonard Bernstein explored the art of conducting on an episode of the CBS show “Omnibus.” After leading a studio orchestra through the opening bars of Brahms’s First Symphony, Bernstein walks away from the podium and turns to the camera, leaving the orchestra to continue playing behind him. “Well, you see, they don’t need me,” he says, with an ironic smile. “They do perfectly well by themselves.” According to Bernstein’s script, which can be viewed at the Library of
The Case for Challenging Music
On December 1, 1900, at an intimate concert hall in Vienna, a respected local baritone gave the premiere of some early songs for voice and piano by Arnold Schoenberg. Today this music, though written in an elusive harmonic language, comes across as exuding hyper-Wagnerian richness and Brahmsian expressive depth. But the audience in Vienna broke into shouts, laughter, and jeers. From that day on, as Schoenberg ruefully recalled two decades later, “the scandal has never ceased.”
The author Harvey
Deciphering the Wagner Group’s Love for Wagner
“Wagner calls off threat to march on Russia capital” was the disorienting lead story in the June 25, 2023, edition of the Times. The eternally problematic composer Richard Wagner, the godfather of all cancelled artists, was once again at the top of the news, seventy-eight years after the Daily Mail reported on Nazi radio memorials for Hitler
Apple Again Fails to Save Classical Music
The case against the music-streaming industry is as damning as ever. The leading services pay pittances to artists—usually, less than one cent per play. In a textbook demonstration of monopoly economics, megastars magnify their wealth while everyone else struggles to break even. Streaming technology is environmentally destructive, resulting in the release of up to 1.57 million metric tons of carbon per day. On the apps, music is atomized into bits, stripped of biography, history, and iconography. Even from a predatory
A New Formula for Happiness
We often follow a misguided formula for happiness—pushing us toward material wealth and other worldly successes. But when our expectations set us down the wrong path, it may be time to reorient ourselves around something new: universal happiness principles we can practice at any age.
In our finale episode of this season, a conversation with psychiatrist Robert Waldinger provides a scientific insight into key elements for happy living, whatever your age.
This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is
Listening to Russian Music in Putin’s Shadow
On the morning of August 21, 1968, Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Wenceslas Square, in Prague, completing an overnight Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Alexander Dubček, the liberal-minded leader of the Czech government, was detained and flown to Moscow. That evening, in London, the U.S.S.R. State Symphony, under the direction of Yevgeny Svetlanov, gave a concert at Royal Albert Hall, as part of the BBC Proms. Shouts of protest were heard at the outset of each work on the program. Mstislav
Music of the West, Music of All Mankind
On Bach, Beethoven, and other musical friends of mankind
Editor’s Note: Below is an expanded version of a piece published in the current issue of National Review.
In 1977, the United States launched two space probes: Voyager I and Voyager II. They carried a “golden record,” containing sounds and images of Earth. That way, if we bumped into some creatures out there, they might know something
Davóne Tines Is Changing What It Means to Be a Classical Singer
Before the altar of the church stood a large screen displaying the words “recital no. 1: mass,” in black letters on a white background. The singer entered from the back, walking slowly, delivering an a-cappella setting of the Kyrie from the traditional Mass, by the contemporary composer Caroline Shaw: “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.” The light was low, almost séance-like. The singer wore a black suit jacket over a black tank top, with a pearl rosary around