Violinist.com (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
By Laurie Niles: Vadim Gluzman believes the violin has a living soul & ndash; and from the pile of performance reviews on my desk as well as from my own ears, I believe he knows something about how to give it breath. This week he offers us a new recording, of the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto, Ernest Bloch's & quot;Baal Shem, & quot; and Leonard Bernstein's & quot;Serenade, & quot;...
Musical Assumptions (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Last night Michael and I were driving through the East-Central Illinois fog, listening to the syndicated radio program "Radio Deluxe," hosted by John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey. The program presents the aural illusion of being broadcast from a penthouse on Lexington Avenue in New York (though the program is produced on the west coast), and claims to feature what people like to refer...
A Boat Against the Current (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
November 14, 1954—Eleven years to the day he electrified classical music audiences by appearing for the first time at Carnegie Hall, Leonard Bernstein made a debut of a different kind: as a master music teacher for the television age, on the CBS arts-and-entertainment show Omnibus. The appearance, in which he led viewers through Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony , describing the composer’s...
The Classical Beat (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Web-only review: BSO goes pretty with cozy standards by Charles T. Downey If anything, the program offered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Friday night at Meyerhoff Hall was too pretty, too easy on the ears. Continuing an unofficial traversal of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, music director Marin Alsop gave up on last season's unsuccessful pairing of Mahler's music with that of Leonard Bernstein....
Of Music and Men (Free subscription) | 10/25/2009
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that majority of the world's affairs are taken care by a clique of some kind. Even heads of state surround themselves with loyalists and cronies. Just think of the people in George W 's inner circle, most of who eventually became disgraced for a reason. Decisions by boards have been decided in advance by a small group of insiders; voting is but a rubber stamp. If...
Edward Seckerson (Free subscription) | 09/30/2009
Josef Woodard's review of the World Premiere of Stephen Schwartz' first foray into "Opera" - "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" - in the Los Angeles raises once more the spectre of divisive attitudes to music theatre - the them and us, Opera and the rest attitude. I haven't yet seen Schwartz' take on the 1964 Bryan Forbes film but when Woodard writes.... "This piece, in which arias...
Orlando Sentinel (Free subscription) | 09/18/2009
When Arnold Breman was a boy in Brooklyn, his parents used to drag him off the streets to go hear Leonard Bernstein conduct his famous Young People s Concerts at the old Metropolitan Opera House. A love of the arts ran in the family: His parents paid for season tickets to the opera although they had to sit in the nosebleed section, and my religion, he says, was not going to temple on Friday night but...
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 09/17/2009
... Alan Gilbert's challenge . I sincerely hope that Alan Gilbert will prove to be a great conductor. But I have no doubt that it is far more important to the future of classical music in America for him to be a great communicator, one who finds new ways to do what Leonard Bernstein did so superlatively well in the days of the middlebrow. And I suspect that his will be the harder task: to make the...
AfriClassical (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
[Irene Britton Smith (1907-1999)] On July 23, 2009 AfriClassical posted: “Irene Britton Smith, African American Composer Who Taught Reading in Chicago Schools for 40 Years .” The post noted: “ Today AfriClassical.com proudly launches a new web page on Irene Britton Smith , who was born in Chicago Dec. 22, 1907 and died in the city Feb. 15, 1999.” Much of the narrative of Smith's...
Clef Notes (Free subscription) | 08/28/2009
The BSO's just-out recording of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" reconfirmed my impressions of the performance the orchestra gave with music director Marin Alsop last fall. My earth-shattering review ran in the paper earlier this week (if you missed it, a single...
Clef Notes (Free subscription) | 08/25/2009
Can't let this day go by without a salute to Leonard Bernstein, born Aug. 25, 1918. The conductor/composer set off wonderful sparks like no one before him, or since. He could achieve magic on the podium, generating performances that took...
On An Overgrown Path (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
Second from right on the CD sleeve above is Helmut Schmidt , who was the Social Democratic chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. He was the fourth pianist on a 1985 Deutsche Grammophon recording of J.S. Bach's Concerto in A minor BWV 1065. Christoph Eschenbach (a personal friend of Helmut Schmidt), Justus Franz and Gerhard Oppitz were the other pianists. It was not the German politician's first...
PostClassic (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
I live 50 miles from Tanglewood, but I've never been there until today. Not my kind of crowd - too much Mozart and Carter, not nearly enough Glenn Branca and Eliane Radigue. But I've also never heard Leonard Bernstein's...
Violinist.com (Free subscription) | 07/08/2009
By Sydney Menees: Every year since 2004, I have eagerly awaited ten days. Those ten days comprise of an intensive music camp in Ottawa, KS called Sound Encounters. This year accomplished the seemingly impossible by exceeding my expectations. This year was my second year of being a collegiate student at SE instead of an undergraduate. The only difference between the two is housing – collegiates...
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