Tag: composers
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
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