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Young Latvian Conductor Andris Nelsons To Be the Next Music Director of The Boston Symphony

the horn — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:51:00 GMT

After a long and difficult search , the world-famous Boston symphony orchestra has chosen a new music director , 34 year old Latvian Andris Nelsons, who is currently music director of the City Of Birmingham symphony orchestra in England . Nelsons will fill the shoes of the eminent but ailing American conductor James Levine ,who was forced to resign because of severe back trouble and various injuries caused by accidents .

Although not a household name , Nelsons has conducted many of the world's greatest orchestras with considerable success for several years as well as at the Metropolitan opera and other leading opera companies . From all reports , he has earned the respect and admiration of the demanding musicians of the world's great orchestras , something which is not easy to win , as they do not impress easily . Nelsons was rumored to be one of the most likely candidates to win this prestigious appointment .

He follows in the footsteps of such legendary Boston symphony music directors as Serge Koussevitzky , Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf ,and more recently ,Seiji Ozawa and James levine , and will assume his post beginning with the 2014-15 season . Ndelsons has appeared with such storied orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic , the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra of Amsterdam , the Vienna Philharmonic , the New York Philharmonic etc and has had considerable success at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth Germany .

Despite his youth , Nelsons has a wide repertoire and is committed to programming contemorary music , which is vital for the health of orchestras everywhere in order to ensure that they do not stagnate . Only time will tell how Nelsons and the Boston symphony will fare in the course of classical music in America , but for the time being , things are looking up for this storied orchestra .

The Wagner Production That Went Too Far

the horn — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:36:00 GMT

A recent production of Wagner's opera Tannhauser (Tann - hoy-zer ) at the Dusseldorf opera in Germany has opened up a hornet's nest of controversy in the opera world . Outrageous productions of operas are the norm in German opera houses ,and have been for many years ,as well in other European countries , but this one took the cake for sheer perversity .

The director of the production , one Burkhard C. Kosminski , has set the production in Nazi Germany , despite the fact that it is set in that country in medieval times . Huh ? The minstrel knight Heinrich Tannhauser is the protagonist , and he is a member of the Minnesanger, or the German equivalent of the Troubadors of southern France . He is a member of the medieval German nobility who sings of the medieval ideal of chaste love from afar . He is ostracied by the supposedly chaste and puritanical community of Minnesanger (Minne being an archaic German word for love ) because he has dallied with the goddess Venus, who lures men to her grotto in a cave with her voluptuois nymphs for a life of orgiastic self-indulgence .

So they send him off on a pilgrimage of penitence to Rome in order to beg forgiveness from the Pope . Although the Pope tells him that his dalliance with the goddess of love has doomed him to eternal damnation , he dies in the end ,miraculously redeemed . What the heck does this have to do with Nazi Germany ? Absolutely nothing . Kosminski portrays Jews being executed by the *** for sheer shock effect in this production set in the 1940s .

There was so much outrage in the press and the public that the production was cancelled by the administration of the Dusseldorf opera after only one performance and the following performances are beinbg done in concert form, that is without sets and costumes as is sometimes done when symphony orchestras perform operas in the concert hall rather than the opera house .

Kosminski explained that he had no intention of offending anyone in the audience who might be Jewish , but this did not hold water . He complained of censorship . A production of the same opera back in the late 80s by the Chicago Lyric opera took a similar revisionist approach but without being anywhere near as arbitrary and perverse . At least the production had some similarities to the original story .This time, the opera was set America, and Tannhauser is a televangelist and country wetsern style singer who must repent for having spent time in a legal brothel in Nevada, and flies off to Rome ! , also hoping for a Papal pardon, even though he is not a Cathoilic .

The Met's recent production of Verdi's Rigoletto, which is set among the decadent Italian aristocracy in 16th century Mantua Italy , has been updated to Las Vegas in the 1960s . Here too , the production is set in an environment which is not at all off the mark . In the original, Rigoletto is the hunchback court jester to the libertine duke of Mantua , and is terrified of the Duke seducing his innocent motherless young daughter , whom he keeps isolated for her own protection . But everything goes horribly wrong .

In the Met production , the duke is a handsome and charismatic Vegas singer who is also a serial womanizer , and Rigoletto is a Don Rickles like commedian in his act . This taped production will be shown on PBS this Friday evening, and you can check tis out on the Met's website metopera.org . You can also see it streamed over the internet .

How far can directors and designers go in making travesties of beloved staples of the operatic repertoire ? Just when you think they could not possibly be more outrageous , they never fail to outdo themselves, particularly in Germany . Will this madness never end ? The operatic world is eagerly awaiting th ebicentennial production at the Bayreuth festival this Summer of Wagner's mighty Ring of the Nibelungen, the epic portrayal of Germanic and Scandinavian mythology . There have already been numerous productions of it which take ridiculous liberties with story , and who knows what will ensue at the Wagner shrine this Summer . Chances are it won't be pretty .

If you want to see an excellent traditional realistic production of Tannhauser on DVD , get the one from the Metropolitan opera conducted by James Levine , which should be easy to find at amazon.com .

The Classical Blame Game

the horn — Tue, 07 May 2013 02:39:00 GMT

I hate to harp on Greg Sandow and his constant complaints about how there is supposedly something very wrong about the world of classical music and that unless our orchestras and other classical institution change radically , they are doomed to irrelevance and lack of an audience, particularly one with lots of young people attending . I like the guy and of course he means well . However, he's barking up the wrong tree .

I've come up with a name for this onslaught on orchestras etc ; it's "The classical blame game ". If only classical musicians would play in a freer , more spontaneous way , more people would attend concerts .Supposedly . If only concerts weren't such stuffy affairs, more people would come .If only musicians would stop wearing tuxedos or black ties at concerts, more people would come . If only orchestras played more new music, audiences would increase . If only classical musicians weren't so obsessed with accuracy of performance rather than spontaneous communication with audiences , more people would come . Yadda yadda yadda .

Somehow, it's always the musician's fault , or the fault of orchestra managements if they're having such a rough time increasing their audiences and attracting more younger people to concerts . But has Sandow ever considere the fact that one of the main reasons it's so difficult to increase the audience for classical music are other factors ? For example, the myth that classical music is "stuffy,boring and elitist," which too many people accept blindly ? Or the fact that so many people just aren't aware of how enjoyable classical music could be if they just GAVE IT A CHANCE ?

Or that too many people in America of whatever age just haven't had any exposure to classical music ? The problem is certainly not a lack of excellence in performances ; on the contrary , standards of performance are higher than ever . There are so many outstanding conductors, solo violinists, cellists ,concert pianists etc , and there are more world class orchestras in America than ever before . There is no lack of new music at concerts .

But how can you expect to attract more people with new music alone when they have never even heard the great symphonies ,concertos and other works of Mozart,Beethoven, Schubert,Brahms,Tchaikovsky and other great composers of the past ? If your first exposure to classicla music at a concert is a program of Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt ,Charles Wuorinen or other composers of esoteric and complex modern music, you are going to be completely baffled by it .

New audiences need a context, a frame of reference, before they are ready to hear contemporary music, and that context is the great works of the past . And newcomers ot concerts should not really be concerned with what themusicians wear on stage ; these concerts are not displays of fashion . They should just concentrate on THE MUSIC .

Another problem Sandow has often mentioned is that newsomers often tend to applaud between movements of a symphony or ocncertos, and are often hushed by experienced concertgoers , and this sometimes intimidates them and causes them to decide they don't want to attend any more ocncerts, which is unfortunate . I suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea if applause before th eend of a work became more ocmmon , but many performers seem to get unnerved by mid performance applause and it upsets their concentration . Why not just explain this to newcomers to concerts ?

So let's stop blaming the victims, namely the performers ,for their plight and explore other ways to expand the audience for classicla music in America . It won't be easy , but we need to stop barking up the wrong tree .

The Revered English Conductor Sir Colin Davis Has Died At 85 .

the horn — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 03:08:00 GMT

The world of classical music has just lost one of its greatest conductors . The eminent British maestro Sir Colin Davis, 85 , has passed away after a brief illness not long after leading his final concerts in London . Sir Colin never fit the stereotype of the glamorous ,flamboyant playboy of the podium which so many people have in their minds when they think of world famous conductors . He always put the music first and not his own ego .

In hsi long and distinguished career , he conducted a remarkably wide range of orchestral and operatic repertoire with most of the world's foremost orchestras and opera companies , and held posts as the head of the London symphony orchestra , the Royal Opera in London , the B.B.C. symphony orchestra of London , and the Bavarian Radio symphony of Munich . His association with the London symphony orchestra lasted no fewer than five decades , several as principal conductor in the 1990s up to about 2007 , and his music directorship of London's Royal opera company was remarkably fruitful .

In America , Sir Colin was a regular guest conductor with the Boston symphony, New York Philharmonic and Cleveland orchestras , and led several acclaimed new productions at the Metropolitan opera . In Europe, he regularly conducted such leading orchestras as the Dresden State orchestra , The Royal Concertgebouw orchestra of Amsterdam , and the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics .

Davis made a wide variety of recordings , many for the now defunct Philips label with these orchestras and opera companies of works ranging from George Frideric Handel to music by leading 20thcentury composer ssuch as Benjamin Britten ,Sir Michael Tippett and others . He also made recordings for R.C.A. records, Sony Classical , and other labels , many of which have have been widely acclaimed by both critics and listeners everywhere .

Sr Colin was particlarly noted for his championship of the quirky and highly original music of Hector Berlioz , and recorded virtually his entire orchestral ,choral and operatic output , re-recording some of them several times . Sme 40 years ago , he made the first complete recording of "Les Troyens" in London with the Royal opera i , revealing this elusive ,difficult and monumental opera for as towering masterpiece it is , as well as the first recording of the scintillating comic opera "Benvenuto Cellinoi" ,based on the life of the rogue Italian goldsmith and sculptor .

There are also acclained recordings of the Berlioz "Symphonie Fantastique," his most famous work, which Sir Colin recorded no fewer than four times , plus the monumental Requiem , etc .

Mozart was another composer for which sir Colin was renowned , and he made acclained recordings of all seven of Mozart's mature operas for Philips, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute , The Abduction from the Seraglio, Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito , with some of the world's foremost opera singers . Plus Mozart's greatest symphonies concertos and choral works .

Davis was the foremost champion of the great but quirky English composer Sir Michael Tippett , (1905 - 1998 ) , and was a close friend , recording Tippett's operas "The Midsummer marriage", The Knot Garden", and a variety of symphonies ,concertos and other works of this composer .

There are also recordings of operas by Benjamin Britten, such as "Peter Grimes", " A Midsummer Night's Dream , Wagner's Lohengrin ,Beethoven's Fidelio , Weber's "Der Freischutz", Verdi's "Falstaff ", and other operas , as well as the complete symphonies of Beethoven, no fewer than three recordings of th eseven Sibelius symphonies, )another composer for which he was famous ), a variety of Haydn symphonies , and ones by Brahms, Dvorak, Elgar, Bruckner,Mahler , Schubert ,etc .

Although he was never a flashy interpreter , his performances were anything but dull and staid . He always thought deeply about the music , its meaning and significance , and sought to delve as deeply as possible into both the spirit and letter of the wroks .

As a young man, Sir Colin's path toward becoming a conductor was far from easy ; he studied clarinet at the Royal college of music in London , but his ambitions to study conducting there were were stymied by his lack of skill playing the piano , which is an important instrument for conductors to be able to play . But he managed to work his way up the ladder of podium success starting as an assistant conductor with various musicla organizations such as the Sadlers/Wells opera of london, now the English National opera , and his big break came in the late 1950s when he was a last minute substitute for a concert performance to be conducted by legendary German conductor Otto Klemperer ( 1885-1973 ) when the elder conductor was indisposed , and as they say, the rest is history . The musicians of the world's leading orchestras , who are often highly critical of the ocductors who lead them and are not easily impressed , had nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for him .

There is no question that Sir Colin Davis will go down in music history as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century . R.I.P.

Why Aren't There More Women Conductors ?

the horn — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:31:00 GMT

It was only until fairly recently that the profession of orchestral and operatic conducting was an exclusively male one, as well as almost exclusively white . Was it sexism alone , or a lack of women aiming to make a mark in this difficult, demanding and highly competitive field ? It's difficult to say .

It's never been an easy profession to break into , and traditionally , one became a conductor by working as a rehearsal pianist in an opera house as well as assisitng the conductor with rehearsals, preparing the chorus , conducting offstage bands , which are quite common in opera ,etc . Eventually, if one showed one's mettle, one would be assigned some performances to conduct , gradually achieving more prominence , getting invited to conduct at other opera hpouses and eventually moving to concert halls to conduct orchestral works .

So many of the greatest ocnductors have started this way, and there is no better hands on training for this very difficult and complex profession . They include such legendary names as Otto Klemperer, Gustav Mahler, Bruno Walter, Sor Georg Solti, Herbert Von Karajan, Erich Kleiber and his son Carlos , Karl Bohm, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell , Antal Dorati, Fritz Reiner , and many others .

Beginning with the second half of the 20th century , conservatories and university music schools began to offer graduate degrees in conducting , and Leionard Bernstein , Leoard Slatkin, James Levine , Riccardo Muti , and many more recent conductors have begun this way, studying with eminent conductors such as Fritz Reiner , George Szell, Serge Koussevitzky , who taught not at conservatories but the Summer Tanglewood festival in Massachuissetts, among others . Becoming the protegee of a famous conductor was they way to make contacts in the field .

But where were women conductors all this time ? The eminent French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger ( 1887 - 1979) , who taught so many great 20th century composers , was active as a conductor and was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic , but that was not her primary activity . A Dutch woman , Antonia Brico , had something of a career but never achieved the prominence of the greatest male maestros .

In America , the pioneering Sarah Cadwelll (1924-2006) founded the Boston opera , and performed many important 20th century operas by Schoenberg and others , as well as staging them . Beverly Sills was one of many renowned singers who were attracted to her enterpising productions, and in 1976 , she became the first woman to condut at the Metropolitan opera with Verdi's La Traviata . She also conducted orchestral repertoire and appeared with the New York Philharmonic ,Cleveland orchestra and other leading orchestras .

Eve Queler (1936), founded the Opera Orchestra of New York , which was devoted to giving concert performances of numerous rarely performed yet interesting and important operas by Meyerbeer, Massenet , Rossini, Donizetti , and other composers , primarily in Carnegie hall . She also attracted many of the greatest opera singers of the time as well as giving opportunities for promising young vocal talents . She used an orchestra consisting of some of New York's finest free lance musicians , and several of her performances were recorded live . She has recently retired , but the OONY as it is known, continues to the present day . She has a very devoted and enthusiastic audience audience of New York opera fans .

More recently ,Marin Alsop , (1956-) a protegee of Leonard Bernsttein at Tanglewood , has become perhaps the most high profile woman conductor of the present day , and was appointed the first music director of one of America's major orchestras, the Baltimore symphony several years ago , and has recently been appointed music director of the Sao Paolo symphony in Brazil, as well as formerly heading England's Bounemputh symphony, one of England's leading regional orchestras . She has made recordings for the Naxos label in Baltimore, Bournemouth and London of a wide variety of repertoire .

Joann Faletta , a Juilliard conducting pupil of the distinguished Swedish conductor Sixten Ehrling , is currently music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic in upstate New York , and has appeared with leading orchestras all over America, Europe and elsewhere , also making recordings for Naxos records . She has been a champion of long neglected orchestral works by many different composers, and is known for her advocacy of women composers .

Australian Simone Young, is currently nearing the end of her music directorship of the Hamburg State opera , one of Germany's most presitgious, and has also conducted at the Metropolitan opera and elswhere . American Anne Manson has conducted at the New York City opera and was the first woman to conduct the tradition rich and highly conservative Viena Philhamonic , having conducted Mussorgsky's great opera Boris Godunov at the prestigious Salburg festival .

Xian Zhang of China is a protege of Lorin Maazel and served as assistant and later associate ocnductor of the New Yokr Philharmonic when Maazel was music director there several year ago , and has been appointed music director of one of the leading orchestras in Milan . Susanna Malkki of Finland has achieved renown as a specialist in contemporary music in Europe but also conducts traditional repertoire , and and Anu Tali of neighboring Estonia is also making an important career .

These are only several of the increasing numbers of women who have been breaking the glass podium . The website of the Kapralova society , named after a promising young early 20th century Czech composer and ocnductor whose career was cut short by untimely death , lists what appear to be at least 300 or so women conductors active today . Things are definitely looking up for women conductors today, and it's about time !

Why Does Richard Wagner Get Blamed For Everything 200 Years After He Was Born ?

the horn — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:14:00 GMT

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest composers of all time , Richard Wagner , who is also without a doubt the most controversial figure in all of classical music . He died in 1883 , already extremely controversial for most of his life , and the controversy has never died down . Nor is it likely to any time in the future .

What made a mere composer, albeit a towering genius , into a bone of contention all over the world for nearly two centuries ? The answers are very complex . Wagner is a polarizing figure in classical music and opera ; people tend to love or hate his music ; few are indifferent to it . There is something about his music which fascinates and thrills some listeners yet also something which disturbs and repels many others .

It is rich, sensual music filled with sumptuous and multi-hued orchestration . But it can also be grandiose and rugged at times . From the dramatic viewpoint , Wagner was also a keen psychologist , and his principal characters are extremely complex and highly interesting people ,no mere cardboard characters and stock villains, heroes and maidens in distress . Unfortunately, his operas, or "music drams" as he preferred to call his mature stage works , are extremely long , fearsomely complex and extremely challenging to singers, conductors ,orchestras , directors and designers to produce . Some consider them too much of a muchness .

Ah, and yes, there's the inconvenient fact he happened to be the favorite composer of one Adolf Hitler , the over ambitious nobody from Austria who became perhaps the most evil person in world history . But is all this the fault of Wagner, who died six years before Hitler was born , as so many people assume ? I think not .

Yes, both were anti-semites . Wagner was frankly a pretty nasty felow . Monstrously egotistical , self-centered , manipulative, unscrupulous , a dead beat of the worse kind, womanizer and serial adulterer , etc. But when it comes to evil , he was no Hitler , who was determined to commit genocide against the Jews or Europe, and almost accomplished his monstrous goal , as well as slaughtering millions of others and leaving Europe in utter destruction and unspeakable misery at the time of his death .

Yes, Wagner disliked Jews very much , was always making nasty comments about them and wrote an appaling extended essay called "Judaism in Music", which accused Jews of being incapable of creating great art works of any kind, despite their enormous contributions to the arts in history . Yet , as the old cliche goes, some of his best friends were jews .

But did he advocate genociide against the Jews or any other group ? No. Did he advocate creating a totalitarian fascist police state of the kind Hitler and the *** created ? No. Basically , all he wanted to do in life was to reform opera , which he certainly did , create great operatic masterpieces and to promote them as best he could . Would he have approved of the monstrous cruelty,barbarity and brutality of Hitler and the *** ? I doubt it .

The problem is that Hitler read his own insane ideas into Wagner's music and dramas which simply aren't there . Take the stories of his operas ; there are no Jewish characters in them , no discussions of Jews or Judaism either positive or negative, and not a single anti-semitic statement by any of the characters in the librettos ,which he wrote entirely himself ,uliken most other opera composers ,who collabortated usually with professional librettists .

The plots of the operas have nothing to do with Judaism ,except for his last work,Parsifal, only indirectly . The word "Jew" cannot even be found in any of his librettos . His operas deal with love, hate , ambition , lust, greed for power, and the redemptive power of love, in the Greek sense of Agape . There is absolutley nothing in them which glorifies Aryan Germanic triumph over the Jews, although some critics and musicologists have read this into them, albeit in an oblique way .

Yet so many people have condemned Wagner's wroks for supposedly being anti-semitic and having had a baneful influence on Hitler and the *** . However, this makes about as much sense as blaming Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition , the Witch trials and executions and the violence of the Crusades .

It's about time that all those who love classical music and opera jettisoned all the baggage which comes with Wagner's music and learned to accept it on its own terms . But it will not be an easy task to bring this about .

Pianist Van Cliburn (1934-2013 ) An Appreciation .

the horn — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:18:00 GMT

Van Cliburn , who died last week at the age of 78 , was a penomenon of classical music ; the only classical musician who has ever had a New York ticker tape parade in his honor . He was the most famous concert pianist ever produced by America . Not the greatest , which is not to disparage him . No one can ever be the "greatest" of anything in classical music . There have been plenty of great American pianists such as the tragically short lived William Kapell , (1922-1953), who was killed in a plane crash , Leon Fleisher,who is still very much alive and active in his 80s , Peter Serkin ,son of the great pianist Rudold Serkin , John Browning , Ruth Laredo , to name only several .

But no other pianist has ever captured the imagination of the American public . In 1958 , at the height of the Cold War , the lanky young Texan pianist , who had studied at Juilliard , won Moscow's prestigious Tchaikovsky competition and was instantly catapaulted into classical superstardom . Renowned Rissian pianists such as the late Sviatoslav Richter and others were bowled over by his enormous talent and winning personality . The panel of distinguished Russian and teachers pianists and the Russian audiences were were stunned by his playing .

Cliburn seemed to have caused a one man thaw in the tense relations between the Soviet Union and America . He came home to America a national hero ,and his career was instantly launched . He began to record for the prestigious R.C.A. record label for which all his commercial recordings were made , and appeared with renowned conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Eugene Ormandy and others with America's top orchestras . He specialized in the romantic piano repertoire of Chopin, Tchaikovsky,Rachmaninov, and Brahms, and these early recordings have been classics and best sellers for a half century .

His technique was prodigious and his sound was rich and plush ,never hard and metallic . His future seemed assured . His interpretations were warm and spontaneus ; he had the world at his feet . But unfortunately, after a number of euphoric years at the top of the classical music world, something went very wrong. Puzzlingly wrong . Cliburn seemed to have burned out . His playing has declined badly. Not in technique, but something was missing . The spark and bloom of youth was gone .

In 1978 , Cliburn decided to retire from public performing . What happened ? He remained very much involved with classical music and founded the now famous and prestigious Fort Worth piano competition in the Texas city where he lived . He had been born in Shreveport ,Louisiana but settled in Texas with his parents as a child and became a confirmed Texan . He never married and was known to be gay by his friends and associates ,but this did not become common knowledge until relatively late in his life . He had many friends in and out of the field and was out of the limelight but by nomeans reclusive .

The most plausible explanation for his burnout has been ascribed to his small repertoire and his lack of inclination to expand his repertoire regularly, something which many other great pianists have done . This may have led to the relative lack of luster of his later performances . Many other great pianists have performed everything from Bach ,Mozart, Beethoven , Chopin and Rachmaninov to works by living composers as well as exploring the less familiar corners of the piano repertoire .

In this respect he resembled the legendary German/Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber, (1930-2004) who had a similarly small repertoire of orchestral works and operas and rarely appeared in public unless he found the conditions for performing ideal . But Kleiber did not seemto burn out and remained somewhat active much longer .

So Cliburn's illustrious but truncated career appears to have been both a triumph and a tragedy . Who knows what he could have accomplished if he had not been the victim of burnout ?

There are Those Who Have the Stars (Audiobook-style Podcast Redux)

DMI — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:11:00 GMT

The folks over at Every Day Fiction have done up my story "There are Those Who Have the Stars" audiobook style in their weekly podcast. A big thanks to Folly Blaine for digging this one up and giving it an absolutely amazing reading. Truly, a great performance. I'm honored and very proud.

Give it a listen here.

How Long Can The Boston Symphony Orchestra Go Without A Music Director ?

the horn — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 03:24:00 GMT

It's been nearly two years since the great American conductor James Levine was forced to resign from the Boston symphony because of serious back trouble , sciatica, arm tremors and other ailments . He has not conducted at the Metropolitan opera, his longtime post , for nearly as long . He remains technically musical director there and continues to work with singers etc , but Italian maestro Fabio luisi has assumed the post of prinicpal conductor for the time being and has taken over much of Levine's work .

But the Boston symphony continues to languish without a music director , and has had to rely on a steady stream of geust conductors, some of whom could possibly be appointed as Levine's successor . The veteran Dutch maestro Bernard Haitink , 83, ha sbeen a steady presence with the orchestra for many years and is greatly repsected , but is too old for the job . Younger conductors such as the rising Latvian Andris Nelsons have been touted as possible choices , and neslons had had considerable success in Boston so far .

But it is definitely not a good idea for a world-class and storied orchestra like the B.S.O. to go on without someone in control ; music directors in American orchestras have the final say in deciding which candidates get the job at auditions after much deliberation by the audition committee, the musicians in the orchestra who choose the finalists from the preliminary rounds to be advanced to the final audition , and there are many other administrative tasks and decisions to be made by the man (or possibly, the woman,) in charge .

After the brief term of Christoph Eschenbach , now with the Washoington National symphony with the Philadelphia orchestra several years ago , the orchestra was able to obtain the services of th eveteran Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit as a caretaker principal conductor for a time until the recent choice of young French-Canadian Yannick-Nezet-Seguin, who is now in his honeymoon with the "Fabulous Philadelphians" ,as they have come to be known .

After Daniel Barenboim stepped down from the Chicago symphony several years ago, the orchestra appointed a caretaker team of Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez until Riccardo Muti was chosen as the new music director .

Choosing a new music director is never an easy task ; the orchestra's administration and the members of the orchestra must find someone who is felt to be right for the job . But there are so many distinguished ocnductors in so many different posts that it's hard to find someone who is willing to take the job on many occaisions . The orchestra will invite a number of guest conductors to lead concerts , and sometimes a dark horse who makes a highly favorable impression on the musicians and audiences . after making a debut . Sometimes it is a conductor who has been a regular guest .

There are more orchestras an dopera companies thna ever before , and they all have to vie for the services of a limited number of conductors . No conductor can lead every performance throughout the season . This is simply unfeasable . Coordinating the schedules of all these different orchestras etc is rather like a jigsaw puzzle of the most difficult kind .

Sometimes an orchestra may want a particular conductor but he or she may simply be too busy with a post of his own somewhere . There are many rpomising young conductors in the 20s and 30s beginning to make international careers , but appointing them to a prestigious post such as Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or various major European cities could be rsiky, given their inexperience .

Bu tlet's all with the administration and musicians of the Boston symphony good luck in fdinding the right maestro for the job as soon as possible . James Levine is scheduled to return to the Met beginning next season, and let's all wish him a speedy recovery, too .

An Open Letter To Bill Gates Regarding Classical Music In America

the horn — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:23:00 GMT

Dear Mr. Gates : You have achieved great fame for your extraordinary generosity with your enormous wealth toward charitable projects everywhere . I would like to bring your attention to a cause which is very close to my heart and that of many other Americans , namely, the plight of so many of America's outstanding symphony orchestras and opera companies in these difficult economic times for America .

I have heard that you have said that you have no desire to contribute money to opera companies in America . I do not know why this is so, but with all due respect , I feel that you are terribly misguided to think this way , and I presume you also feel this way about our symphony orchestras , and feel that they are not deserving of your help . I beg to try to convince you how wrong you are .

I do not know if you enjoy classical music and listen to it with any frequency or have any knowledge of it or interest in it . But please be aware that the livelihoods of so many talented, dedicated and hard-working classical musicians in America are threatened by the difficult economy and the woefully inadequate financial support they receive from both our government , philanthropies and corporations are threatened by this , and many members of orchestras and opera companies have already lost their jobs because of this, not to mention those who work on administration , as well as bitterly disappointed audiences all over America .

These are people with families to support . Classical music is not a frivolous entertainment for wealthy people, but something which should be available to anyone who wishes to attend concerts and opera , and there are so many of these in America . Contrary to popular belief , it is in no way "elitist " . It is something which brings joy , excitement and mental stimulation to countless peopel all over the world .

Our symphony orchestrras and opera companies provide gainful employemt to so many people in all 50 states . And they are world-class institutions ,many of which are famous throughout the world, such as the Metropolitan opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago symphony, the Boston symphony, the Philadelphia orchestra, Boston symphony , to name only a handful .

Collectively, they rank with the greatest of America's national treasures . This nation cannot afford to lose them, because no nation should allow its national treasures to be lost or destroyed . Please, consider providing financial help for those which are struggling to maintain their existence, or which have been forced to gp under .

The arts are NOT a frivolous thing . They are a vital part of the life of any nation . And remember - if America's symphony orchestras and opera companies can flourish , not to mention its dance and drama companies , they help the U.S. economy to flourish, too . The arts are GOOD for America . Please do not forget this .

Thank you . Sincerely yours, Robert Berger , an advocate for the preservation and advancement of classical music in America .

The Met's New Rigoletto - Is It Ok To Tamper With An Opera ?

the horn — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:38:00 GMT

The Metropolitan opera has premiered its eagerly awaited new production of Verdi's grim but beloved masterpiece Rigoletto , and the reviews are mixed, as usual . The controversy lies in the production , which has been much ballyhooed since it was first announced last year . The opera is set in 16th century Mantua,Italy in case you're not familiar with it (and you definitely should get to know it if not) , and is the sordid and tragic tale of a handsome but licentious Duke and his bitter and cynical court Jester Rigoletto , who is deathly afraid that the Duke will seduce his innocent young daughter , whom he keeps under close watch . He hates the Duke, and hires a 16th century hitman to assasinate him , but the whole thing goes horribly wrong , and the poor girl is not only seduced ,but the hitman betrays him ... well, I won't give the story away .

As is so common today , the director and designer of the new production have updated the action to around 1960 in - Las Vegas ! The Duke is now a popular Vegas singer, and Rigoletto is a comedian who is part of his act . In the original setting , the court at Mantua is just as corrupt, licentious and decadent as Las Vegas , and there's plenty of intrigue and lust . The court at Mantua becomes a gaudy Las Vegas casino .

Anthony Tommasini , chief music critic of the New York Times , had some reservations about the staging , but liked it on the whole . James Jorden of the New York Post , thought it was lame and unconvincing . I'll reserve judgment until I see it on a PBS telecast . But the production does not appear to be nearly as outrageous as many European stagings of operas since about the 1980s , which have been downright bizarre, even grossly perverse , with all kinds of gratuitous sexnudity , gratuitous violence and absurdly arbitrary gimmicks .

The acclaimed German coloratura soprano Diana Damrau, who sings Rigoletto's beautiful but naive daughter Gilda in the Met production ,recently starred n a Munich production of the opera where the characters were dressed as gorillas and chimpnzees ! Last year's Bayreuth production of Wagner's Lohengrin, which takes place in medieval Belgium , has the chorus dressed in costumes which deliberately make them look like rats ! What on earth does this have to do with the knights and soldiers of medieval Belgium ? The production of Parsifal, Wagner's last opera, which takes place in the north of medieval Spain in the realm of the knights who guard the Holy Grail , features a prop on stage which is the decaying body of a rabbit ! Much larger than a real rabbit, of course . But why ?

The famous American theater and opera director Peter Sellars has staged Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", which takes place in an 18th century Spanish palace of a nobleman , in New York's Trump tower , and the nobleman is a blllionaire tycoon ! Sellar's production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" , which is set in 18th century Seville , is set in Spanish Harlem among pimps and drug dealers ! Sheesh !

Opera directors and designers have been vying with each other to create the most outlandish and perverse opera productions possiible . It's De Rigeur in Europe , and it seems that any production team which did a traditional production set in the actual time and place of the opera would get booed off the stage today there, especially in Germany .

What is the point of all of this nonsense ? It's known as "Regietheater" in German , or "director's theater " . It also goes by the name of "Eurotrash opera ". In recent years, there have also been similar updated productions of some of the Shakespeare plays ; not too long ago, I saw a London production of Hamlet on PBS which transferred the action of the opera to what looked like the near future . It didn't bother me too much , and the drama came through unscathed .

Fortunately, the Met has resisted the most outrageous staging and visual gimmicks , and although critics might justifiably have some reservations about the productions , they have not been ridiculous for the most part . The recent new production of Donoizetti's charming bucolic comic opera "L'Elisir D'Amore (the elixir of love ) , which was telecast on PBS just two weeks ago,is entirely traditional , and put the opera in the original early 19th century setting . Even the sets looked chamringly old-fashioned , rather like something from the 1920s or 30s .

But several years ago, the New York City opera, now unfortunately struggling to mainstain its existence , set the opera in 1960s America , and the characters were right out of "Laverne and Shirley " on television . The set evoked 60s pop culture America .

Ultimately, what matters is whether the production works or not , or is just a ridiculous collection of arbitrary gimmicks . You have to take each production today on an indivisual basis . Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't . You can get many of these productions on DVD . Decide for yourself .

So You Think Classical Music Hasn't Changed Much In Ages ?

the horn — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 04:33:00 GMT

Commentators on classical music are always telling us that classical music has to "change" , and change drastically , in order to "survive" and to be "relevant ". As I've pointed out here on a number of occaisions, composer/critic/ blogger and consultant Greg Sandow has been one of the most vocal advocates of this meme . And he's far from alone in saying this . But is classical music really so stodgy , hidebound and resistant to change , and are performances really the kind of dreary and boring affairs these Chicken Littles would have us believe ?

We are told, for example, that unless musicians in orchestras dress more casually instead of wearing tuxedos or black tie , and concerts become less "stuffy" and intimidating , the audience for classical music will inevitably shrink , and younger people will not be persuaded to attend and make classical music apart of their life .

The repertoire has to change, too . We need more new music at concerts . Orchestras can't just go on playing the same old warhorses by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and a few other famous composers . Pop and Rock music are things that audiences can relate to . Why can't classical music catch up and get with the times ?

The problem is that you can't judge classical music by the standards of popular music ,Rock are what have you . Pop and Rock are what countless people are accustomed to . They're meant to be easy to listen to . They don't require homework to get to know . They also haven't been in existence anywhere near as long as Classical music . To complain that classical concentrates too much on musci of the past ignores the fact that the masterowrks of Bach, Mpozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so many other composers have been popular for a very long time and have stood the test of time, and that there is a vast reservoir of works from the past which are not at all familiar to the general public but which are very much worth hearing .

And is there realy a lack of new classical music today ? Not at all . There are many composers today who have been widely performed in our time and who are still writing new works all the time . John Adams, John Corigliano , William Bolcom, Tan Dun, Richard Danielpour, Jennifer Higdon, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle Wolfgang Rihm, Henri Dutilleaux, Unsuk Chin may not be household names , but they are promient and highly respected ocmposers , and might achieve a lasting place in the classical music repertoire in the future .

How is classical music different from what it was 50 or 60 years ago ? In many ways . The musi cof the great composers of long ago was popular then and is still popular, but the repertoire is still vastly different . Many,many composers have come to prominence since that time, and are now performed regularly . There are more women composers than ever before , and when an orchestra plays a work by one, it isn't even news any more .

Many composers form the past who had been long neglected have been brought back into the repertoire , such as Alexander von Zemlinsky, Franz Schmidt, Carl Nielsen , Karol Szymanowski , Havergal Brian , to name only a handful . German music no longer has anything near a monopoly on the repertoire , and you can hear composers from such previously unlikely places as Japan, South Korea, China, Latin America and even tiny Estonia on the Baltic sea .

Conducting used be a profession monopolized by white males, mostly European .But more and more women have begun to make international careers in both concerts and opera , and conductors from Asia and latin America are everywhere . There ar emore orchestras and opera ocmpanies than ever before , and they have been sprouting up in such unlikely places as Qatar , Malaysia , Singapore and elsewhere .

Classical music is enjoying a boom in China, where Mao Zedong had silenced it and stymied the art form in his zeal for total control of China . Asian classical musicians are now an integral part of classical scene . They are ubiquitous .

In America, the number of opera companies has multiplied exponentiallly from the past , when New York, San Francisco and Chicago were the only game in town . The HD broadcast of live performances from the Metropolitan opera into movie theaters around America and Europe has revolutionized the way people experience opera . The internet has enabled people to see and hear concerts an dopera performances from not only the present day, but the past .

For all its problems, classical music has never been more vibrantly alive . Remember these facts the next time somebody you meet and converse with sneers at it . And let him know about it ,please !

What's The Right Tempo ? Nobody Seems To Agree .

the horn — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:20:00 GMT

Recently, someone on a classical music forum I'm on put an old recording of one of the orchestral suites of J.S. Bach by the great German conductor Wilhlem Furtwangler (1886-1954) on a post citing it as a example of impossibly slow tempos and a hopelessly old-fashoned and long discredited way of performing baroque music . The recording was posted from youtube, and you can hear it yourself there .

Yes, the opening movement is very,very slow, flying in the face of everything which is currently believe dot be "correct performance practice " . This is no-no ; you're not supposed to do this . Such au courant "Hiistorically Informed " conductors as John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood , Frans Bruggen, Roger Norrington and others would would have apoplectic fits hearing this old curiosity ; we have come to expect fleet, bouncy , even rushed performances from them of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and other Baroque composers .

But Wilhelm Furtwangler lived long before the whole "authenticity " movement in classical music became an integral part of the scene ; he was a product of his time , having been born only three years after the death of Wagner and having known , collaborated and even studied with so many legendary 19th century musicians .

But he was also one of the greatest conductors of all time and a towering musical intellect . For me at least, he may have been "wrong" by the standards of the present day , but he made the tempo WORK on his own terms . He imbued the Bach suite with a grandeur and nobility which you don't find in the supposedly "authentic" performances of the present day using instruments of Bach's time or copies thereof , and dutifully making music by the book .

Cllassical music fans , critics and musicologists are always disputing the "right" tempo for the works of this or that composer in general or individual works . Ultimately, the only person who can say what THE right tempo is is the composer , since he wrote the music himself . But unfortunately , Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and so many other great composers ave been dead for a very,very long itme .

We will never know with certanty what they would have thougt about the tempi of performances today, live or recorded . There are various tmepo indications, mostly in Italian , such as adagio, slow, alllegro , fairly lively , presto, very fast ,andante, a rather moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow , and others , and in the early 19th centry, the metronome wa sinvented in Europe, allowing composers to specify and exact tempo based on the number of beats per minute , to give the performer an exact guideline to the basic tempo .

But tempo is not set in stone . Composers themselves have been known to change their minds and performing the same work with different tempi on different occaisions . You can even hear this on recordings made by composers as either conductors or playing the piano . Therefore, SOME performances by other musicians may use the wrong tempo at times, but no performance can ever be considered to use the ONLY right tempi .

If a musician plays a work or movement of one marked "presto" (very fast ) at an adagio (slow) tempo , this is just being perverse . Or a slow, solemn work at a breakneck tempo . But otherwise, things are far from being black and white .

Two classical music fans may have different recordings of the same Beethoven symphony by different ocnductors and orchestras at different tempi . Both may be convinced that their recording has the "right" tempi, and the other's has tempi which are "wrong ". Who is right ? The composer, if he could hear them, might not like the tempi of either . But we will never know .

The late,great Elliott Carter , who departed the earth only a couple of months ago , had a coterie of distinguished musicians whose performances of his music he approved of, and some of their recording were actualy made under his supervision .So we know that these musicians did not use tempi which he disapproved of , or he would have made his displeasure known to them . But that does not mean that future performances of his music could not be different yet valid . But again, we'll never know . Arguments over performaces of his music will continue in the future . But that's the nature of the beast .

The Latest Push

DMI — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 15:33:00 GMT

I just scanned through my last real post to this blog and can't belief that so much time has past. The girls were six weeks old and I was trying to keep the book going by writing during my planning period. It was a good idea, worth a try at least. At least I was trying to intend to do something. Of course, that didn't work. I heard of a writer once who had his first book under contract, he only needed to make some changes for it to be published, and one baby derailed him completely - and he was almost there! I have two babies, a full-time job and I'm a graduate student. Anyone could safely assume, and be totally right, that next to nothing has happened in my book for the past six months. Yep, Rosie and Jules are six months old in just a few days, growing so fast you can sit there and just about watch, starting to eat solid foods and working real hard on crawling. It's a blast around here. But I have to write. It nags at me if I don't.

So I have a new plan and I've even waited a few weeks to write about it here so that I know it's working a little bit and worth reporting. Writing during my planning period is a no go. There's too many ways to get distracted by all the work around me that needs doing and kids coming in to see me and appointments and classes that need covering and who knows what else. Even on days where I could block it all out, by the time I really got going, the bell would ring. I realized that larger blocks of time were needed, even if they were fewer, but they had to be on a regular basis, an even schedule because writing has to be part of the routine. A book won't get written in the scraps of time in a busy schedule. So my plan is this: every Sunday morning I will get up at the time when I would normally go to work, head out to a coffee shop and write for a good three hours before I go home and help with the babies and we head off to church. So far, I've done this twice. Additionally, on Saturdays where I don't have classes (like today) or days off (like Monday) I will do the same. Thus, my sleep schedule remains the same (wholly inadequate) and I carve out of my hectic schedule at least three solid, continuous hours of writing a week and sometimes much more.

So far, it's working. I'm doing a reboot on draft 3. I was only what, six? eight? chapter in and I really was having difficulty starting in the middle, where I left off. So far I've gone through chapters 1 and 2, which were pretty easy, and now I'm looking at 3 and maybe 4 at the same time, because the major events of each chapter might be switching places. It looks to be some work but I'm hoping that I can finish both of them up by Late Jan, early Feb. I've always tried to be ambitious with my goal setting, to push myself, but the fact is, trying to write a book with all this other stuff going on is ambitious enough. I'd like to be about halfway through the novel by the time school ends. I will be taking a graduate class this summer, but if I can carry this morning writing through June and July, everyday, I should be able to finally have draft 3 complete by the time next school year starts and the girls are one year old. That only puts me a year behind schedule. Whatever that means.

Until next time, I'm Eric and I'm an unpublished novelist.

For Classical Music, 2012 Was The Best Of Times And The Worst Of Times

the horn — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:39:00 GMT

No one could say that 2012 was an uneventful year for classical music , or any year in recent times . So much happened, both good and bad , hence the paraphrase of the famous opening line of Dicken's "Tale of Two Cities ". The existential crisis of the world's orchestras and opera companies continued , and more than a few have either gone under or are at imminent risk of folding .

The New York City opera is still looking for a permanent home after being forced out of its long time home in Lincoln Center because of financial difficulties , the David H. Koch theater , formerly the New York State theater . The Mnnesota orchestra in Minneapolis is still locked out because of labor disputes, the Hague Philharmonic in the Netherlands has lost much government funding and must downsize th enumber of musicians it uses , the South West german radio orchestra is hanging by a thread . the storied opera companies of Italy, birthplace of opera are having a rough time because of economic woes , the Syracuse and Utica symphonies of upstate New York have gone under, as well as the San Antonio opera in Texas and the Napa Valley Philharmonic in California , and many other groups have been hit hard by tough economic times .

Despite all this, the vast majority of the world's orchestras and opera companies are still alive and kicking . Some towering figures in classical music passed away , such as composers Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist/scholar Charles Rosen , plus the great operatic sopranos Lisa Della Casa and Russia's Galina Vishnevskaya , widow of the late,great cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich .

Biut there are still so many great musicians who are still very much with us , composers and performers , and many brilliant young talents have begun to make ian international reputation as composers, conductors, instrumentalists and singers .

Venuzuela's acclaimed "El Sistema ", which has enabled so many gifted young classical musicians to make important careers is flourishing and others countries, including America, are beginning to emulate it . The East/West Divan orchestra, founding by the renowned Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim brings together gifted young Israeli and Palestitian classical musicians to play as members of an orchestra, and to tour internationally and make recordings .

The classical CD industry no longer functions as it did until recently , recording complete studio recordings of operas and issuing regular new recordings by the world's leading orchestras, and sales could certainly be better . But there is unprecedented diversity of classical repertoire available ; everything from medieval and Renaissance music to works by a wide variety of contemporary composers . So much interesting classical music which had never been previously recrded is now easily available . Classical CD collectors who are curious to hear unusual repertoire have never had it so good .

More and more classical music is now available on DVD ; four centuries worth of oepratic repertoire from opera houses all over the world , orchestral concerts and so much more . Youtube.com offers a wealth of classical music which you can see and hear at the click of a mouse .

The glass is definitely half full ,not half empty . There will be continued difficulties in 2013 , but also so much for which we must be gratefiul .

When Is It Time For An Orchestral Musician To Retire ?

the horn — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 04:27:00 GMT

Stories have been circulating in the classical music world about the sad decline of one of the world's greatest virtuosos of the horn - the veteran principal horn of the world-famous Chicago symphony, Dale Clevenger, 72 . Clevenger has been prinicpal horn in Chicago since the mid 1960s, and has achieved great renown not only as an orchestral musician but a soloist al over the world . He has made acclaimed recordings of the horn concertos of Mozart, Richard Strauss, and the one for four horns by Robert Schumann and other works .

But any musician, now matter how accomplished , can only last so long . Advancing age inevitably brings physical decline , especially in brass players , whose lips cannot last forever . Being an orchestral musician is a very physically stressful and demanding job, and the horn is a notoriously difficult instrument to play and gto master . A study ranking different professions on their stress levels has shown that being prinicpal horn in a world-class orchestra is one of the most streesful jobs in existence !

It's not a job for the faint-hearted ! You never know if you will make it through a performance without making "clams" , or splitting and cracking notes, because of the difficulty of the horn, especially in the highest notes . Playing the long , complex symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler and many other works is a grueling experience , and in order for the first horn to save his lip endurance, many orchestras, particularly in America and England, have an assistant principal horn who takes over periodically during difficult works to keep the prinicipal from exhaustion ,fatigue and stress . This is the principal's lifeline .

For decades , Dale Clevenger has been greatly admired by critics, audiences and fellow horn players , orchestral musicians and eminent conductors for his gorgeous sound , amazing technical virtuosity and panache , and he has appeared as a soloist in the demanding horn concertos of Mozart, Richard Strauss and other composers with his hometown Chicagoans and many other leading orchestras , as well as being a leading teacher of his instrument .

But unfortunately, there are reports from leading music critics who have admired his playing for years , uncluding Chicago's John Von Rhein, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times, and others , of concerts in which he has flubbed too many notes , standing out like the proverbial sore thumb .

U.S. orchestras do not have a mandatory retirement age ,unlike those in Germany, where it is generally 65 , and music directors cannot demand the retirement of veteran musicians who are past their prime because of strict union regulations . Other renowned horn players have chosen to retire before Clevenger's age of 72 in order to avoid embarassing their orchestras and audiences and even because they found the stress of the job to great after many years , including Clevenger's predecessor in Chicago , the great Philip Farkas .

Will Clevenger finally decide it is time to call it quits after such a long and distinguished career ? Only time will tell .

Renowned Pianist, Scholar And Author Charles Rosen Has Died

the horn — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:08:00 GMT

Charles Rosen was no ordinary concert pianist . The protean pianist, scholar, author, teacher and thinker died on December 9th at the age of 85 . He was a true polymath ; an intelectual's intellectual , brilliant in diverse fields and remarkably versatile in the field of music , a man of vast and formidable erudition .

Born in New York in 1927 , he was a child prodigy who studied from childhood with the legenday virtuoso Moritz Rosenthal , an heir to the great tradition of 19th century piano playing , but who ioronically did not study music formally at a leading conservatory . Instead , he studied French literature on both the undergraduate and graduate level at Columbia , obtaining a doctorate in this discipline ,in which he was an authority .

He went on to achieve international acclaim as a pianist in repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers , making prize-winning recordings , as well as teaching at Stony Brook university , the University of Chicago and elsewhere . In addition , he wrote a number of greatly admired books on diverse musical topics, the most famous being "The Classical Style", a penetrating discussion of the music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven which has long been considered a classic of writing on music , as well as numerous articles and reviews for the New York Times , the New York Review Of Books and other leading publications .

Rosen's playing was not flashily virtuosic , but his technique was certainly up to the challenges of whatever music he played . Some considered him to be too cerebral a performer , but you could never accuse him of dulllness . His recordings of the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann , the late Elliott Carter and other composers are still very much available .

His expertise ranged from the music of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms to the music of Schoenberg and other great 20th century composers , and he was a committed advocate of the formidably intricate piano works of the late,great Elliott Carter , who preceded him in death by only a two months and who was a close friend .

I was priveleged to take a graduate course in the criticism of music anbd other topics back in the 1980s at Stony Brook university on Long Island , and it was a memorable experience to hear his stimulating commentary on composers, critics , and criticism as well as being regaled by his recountngs of his experiences working with so many great musicians .

His books , such as The Classical Style and "Sonata Forms" , which discusses musicla structure , are not easy to digest and comprehend but are well worth the effort in reading . The world of classicla music has lost one of its foremost musicians ,scholars and thinkers .

Rediscovering WQXR - America's Foremost Classical Music Station

the horn — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 03:32:00 GMT

Until a few years ago, WQXR was proudly announced as "The radio station of the New York Times . " It had been America's flagship classical music station for decades and had long been owned by te Times . But financial difficulties forced it to get rid of the venerable classicla radio station , and in order to survive, it had to become affiliated with New York's WNYC , which carries many NPR programs and also to become non-comercial and funded by pledge drives etc .

The station ,located in Manhattan , had to move to a different frequency , meaning that listeners had to put up with inferior reception , including yours truly . I had been listening for about 40 years since I was a teenager . So I pretty much gave up on listening to my regret because of poor reception . But recently, I got a BOSE radio , which many consider the best there is , and by golly , I can get pretty good reception despite move . You can also hear WQXR over the internet , but I just don't have the patience to stay glued to the ocmputer for that long .

WQXR has always offered a lot more than classical DJs announcing what particular recording is being played , the name of the composer , title of the work and performers . Over the years it has hosted the Saturday afternoon live broadcasts of Metropolitan opera performances , taped broadcasts of the New York Philhamronic , Boston symphony and other great orchestras , taped broadcasts of performances from the Chicago Lyric opera and other U.S. opera companies , special live performances broadcast from various performance venues in New York , special weekly programs on opera and other kinds of classical music hosted by eminent musicologists, critics and other experts , and much,much more .

The station plays a very wide variety of classiclal works by ocmposers of every era , nationality and compositional style , and its announcers are the best in the business ; people who really know classical music and are experts in pronunciation of difficult ,tongue-twistng names by composers such as Khatchaturian , Myaskovslky , Ippolitov-Ivanov , etc as well as performing musicians .

Many classical stations, afraid of alienating conservative listeners , stick pretty much to the same old classical warhorses by Vivaldi, Bach,Handel, Mozart, Beethoven Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov etc . Not WQXR . It does play these thrice familiar works , but also music by far less well known but high quality composers ,too . You can hear music by composers such as Josef Suk, Karl Goldmark, Carl Nielsen , George Whitefield Chadwick , Alberto Ginastera and others which other classical stations would never drema of playing . Even works by contemporary composers . Like Forrest Gump's famous box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get .

For more information , check out wqxr.org .

Happy 70th Birthday To The Great Pianist And Conductor Daniel Barenboim

the horn — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:53:00 GMT

Today is the 70th birthday of one of the world's foremost classical musicians - Daniel Barenboim , a native of Buenos Aires , Argentina ,son of Russian jews , but a citizen of the world . A child prodigy on the piano who grew up to achieve world renown not only as a pianist but a condiuctor of music by composers ranging from Bach to contemporary , at home in both the concert hall and the opera house and an ambassador for world peace .

Daniel Barenboim began to achieve international renown as a pianist more than 50 years ago after having studied with many eminent teachers ,including the legendary French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (1887 - 1979 ) , and working with eminent conductors such as otto Klemperer and others . He grew up in Israel , but but made virtually the entire world his home with his constant travelling as a pianist and conductor . He has been more active conducting than playing the piano for much of his life , but continues to make appearances both as a recitalist and performing concertos with the world's leading orchestras . He has also made an enormous number of recordings of music from Bach to the late, great Elliott Carter and other contemporary composers , and many of his live performances are now available on DVD . Barenboim has recorded prolifically for such great record labels as Deutsche Grammophon , EMI, Telarc ,Decca and Sony Classical .

Daniel Barenboim has held a number of prestigious conducting posts, including ten years as music director of the renowned Chicago symphony, succeding the late , great Hungarian maestro Sir Georg Solti , the orchestre De Paris , as well as regular appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic , the London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic and other great orchestras . He has been cief conductor of the Berlin State opera for many years , as well as conducting concerts with its resident orchestra, the Berlin State orchestra , and has recently become the first non Italian to serve as music director of the legendary La Scala opera house in Milan .

A few years ago , he made his eagerly awaited debut at the Metropolitan opera conducting Wagner's Tristan &Isolde . One of his most significant recent projects has been the creation of the East West Divan orchestra, which is made up of talented young Israeli and Arab musicians in the hope of promoting peace between Israelis and Arabs .

Barenboim is one of today's foremost Wagner conductors , and has appeared at the Bayreuth Festival numerous times . His performances there of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung and Die Meistersinger are available on CD and DVD, and he has recorded the other Wagner stage works with the Berlin State opera and the Berlin Philharmonic with some of today's leading Wagner singers . He is also renowned as an interpreter of the mighty symphonies of Wagner's fervent admirer Anton Bruckner , and has made complete sets of his symphonies with the Chicago symphony and the Berlin Philharmonic .

There are also recordings of all nine Bewethoven symphonies, and the complete symphonies of Brahms, Schubert and Schumann , as well as composers as diverse as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Elgar , Debussy , Berlioz , Carter , Luciano Berio , Liszt , Bach , Richard Strauss , Mahler, and many others .

Barenboim has regularly collaborated with such great violinists as Itzhak Perlman , Pichas Zukerman , pinait Lang Lang and other renowned musicians, as well as such great opera and lieder singers as the late, great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Placido Domingo , and others .

Let's all wish a happy birthday to this enormously gifted , industrious and versatile musician, and wish him many more years of great achievements .

The Great American Composer Elliott Carter Has Died At 103 .

the horn — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 04:12:00 GMT

Elliott Carter , generally acknowledged to be the greatest American composer of the present day, has died at the extraordinary age of 103 in his native New York . Even more remarkably , he remained active as a composer until just before his passing . His death comes just a week after that of Hans Werner Henze , which I covered last week here . Carter was not as well known to the general public as Aaron Copland , Samuel Barber and a few other American composers , but he enjoyed the esteem of many of the world's leading music critics , scholars , conductors and instrumentalists , as well as many other distinguished composers for decades and won virtually every award a composer could receive , including a Pulitzer prize .

Carter was born in December 1908 , when Theodore Roosevelt was President , and died just one day before Barack Obama was re-elected . He was the son of a wealthy New York merchant and was by no means a child prodigy . But the great composer Charles ives, who was an insurance executive by profession and sold insurance to his father, befriended the teenage Carter and encouraged his musical insterests . The youth became studied music diligently but enrolled in Harvard as an English major ,later studying music there on the graduate level . He also went to Paris to study composition with the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger , who taught many young Americans who went on to major careers as composers, such as Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson .

Carter began writing music of a populist style similar to Aaron Copland , but did not find his own voice until the early 1950s , when he wrote his acclaimed first string quartet , which launched his career as a composer of uncompromisingly complex , thorny and challenging music . He never used the Schonebergian 12-tone technique which was adapted by so many other composers of the day , but developed a freely atonal technique of his own .

Over the years , Carter wrote four more string quartets, assorted orchestral works, concertos for violin, cello, piano, and other instruments, choral works, songs , piano works , and even one opera, written at the age of 90 ! Many concertgoers were perplexed and even outraged by the baffling complexity of his works and their utter lack of conventional melodiousness , but many prominent critics recognized the brilliance of compositional technique and inventiveness of the music , and many prominent conductors , pianists , and other musicians championed his works and even befriended him .

Despite the extreme difficulty they posed to orchestras , pianists and chamber ensembles , Carter's works were regularly performed all over America and Europe . Orchestras and conductors required extra rehearsal time to prepare his orchestral works for performance , so he was not performed as often at concerts as other contemporary composers , but they did get performed with some regularity , and there have been numerous recordings . Eminent conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Sir Georg Solti,Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, James levine, and others progrmmed his orchestral works despite the reluctance of many conservative concertgoers to hear challenging music , and leading pianists such as Charles Rosen and Ursula Oppens played his piano concerto and solo piano works regularly and recorded them . The Juilliard string quartet and other leading quartets played his string quartets often and recorded them .

Carter also taught composition at Juilliard and Queens college in New York , and wrote articles on his music and other contemporary composers and traveled regularly to Europe to participate in festivals of contemporary music and teach .

When you hear Carter's music for the first time , you will probably be confused ,disoriented and baffled until you get accustomed to it . If you are looking for juicy , lush ,melodious music you will be disappointed . But to do this is to miss the point altogether . Carter's music seems rhythmically chaotic at first and there are so many different rhythms going on simultaneously . But everything is rigorously organized despite the apparent chaos .

Carter's music is diametrically opposed to the minimalist , highly repetitious style of his younger ocntemporary Philip Glass , which seems to bother many listeners with its relentless repetition . The older composer's works seem to be totally lacking in repetition ; the music is in a constant state of flux , and there is no sense of going from one theme to another , and returning to this or that theme as you find in the familiar works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky etc . To use a cliche, you have to go with the flow, and follow the music as it goes on its mercurial course .

The variations for orchestra is probably the best introduction to Carter's music ; it's quite complex but relatively approachable . Other orchestral works by Carter include the Concerto for orchestra, Symphony of Three orchestras, which features three different instrumental groups within the orchesta contending with each other , the piano concerto , and the various concertos for cello, violin, clarinet and French horn .

A good place to check for recordings of Carter and countless other composers is arkivmusic.com , where you cna look up any recording by either composer or performer and easily order it . If you are willing to challenge your ear and brain , the music of Carter is the perfect place to start .

Preeminent German Composer Hans Werner Henze Has Died At 86

the horn — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:49:00 GMT

One of the world's foremost composers, Hans Werner Henze (Hen-tse ) has died in Dresden at the age of 86 . Henze may possibly be the last in a long line of great German and Austrian composers beginning with Bach ,Handel, Haydn, Mozart ,Beethoven , Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner ,Mahler ,Richard Strauss , Hindemith and his eccentric contemporary Karlheinz Stockhausen, who passed away in 2007 .

Henze was born in the northwestern region of Westphalia in 1926 , studied with the composer Wolfgang Fortner , who is little known outside of Germany today , and began to make a reputation as one of Germany's most promsing young composers . He developed a highly eclectic style of composition , sometimes using 12-tone serialism and at other times adapting a neo-classical style influenced by Stravinsky while maintaining a distinctive voice of his own .

Henze was a confirmed left-winger and an unabashed Marxist ,maintaining his ties with various communist parties in Europe, including that of italy where he settled after the second world war , as well as spending time in Cuba where he taught and composed works with a decided Marxist bias . He was also active as a teacher at leading European avant-garde music centers and in America , which he visited regularly , and was active as a conductor , not only of his own music .

Henze composed prolifically in virtually all musical idioms ; operas, symphonies, concertos,ballet and film scores , choral works , chamber music etc , including no fewer than 15 operas and 10 symphonies . Among his best known operas are Der Junge Lord (the young lord ) a bizarre black comedy about an eccentric English nobleman who visits a small German town , passing an ape off as his nephew with weird results , the Bassarids, based on Greek mythology , Elegy For Young Lovers , Konig Hirsch ( king of the stags ) , and the political opera We Come To The River . They have been performed regularly by virtually all of the leading European opera companies , though not quite as often in America, and the Metropolitan opera has yet to perform any of them. Perhaps this will change sometime in the future .

His works are hardly easy listening , but they are by no means as esoteric and abstruse as those of Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter , Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt , for example , and his orchestral works feature sumptuous and highly colorful orchestration . Many eminent conductors , such as Christoph von Dohnanyi, former music director of the Clevenad orchestra , Sir Simon Rattle ,Kurt Masur , Sir Georg Solti and others, have performed his orchestral works all over the world , and most of his output has been recorded , including the composer conducting . Many of these recordings are on the Deutsche Grammophon label .

Only time will tell how posterity sees Henze's music , but the world of classical music has lost one of its most important figures .

Symphony Orchestras - The Football Teams Of Classical Music

the horn — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:22:00 GMT

There's an old joke about a music critic who opened his unfavorable review of a concert with the line - The X Philhamonic orchestra played Beethoven last night -Beethoven lost . But serioulsy , this post will compare the similarities and differences between symphony orchestras and football teams . There are definite similarities, but considerable differences,too .

Think of the orchestra members as the team , and the music director, who is the orchestra's chief conductor , as the head coach .The assistant conductor is the assistant coach . The orchestra has a variety of people working in its management , and th eorchestra has its management and owner or owners, but orchestras don't have owners per se . They have a boards of directors , and a general manager who is in charge of running the orchestra , and people working in various capacities, such as publicity , public relations , commiunity outrach , artistic management , finance etc . They have borads of directors , often consisting of wealthy people involved with philanthropy etc .

Each member of the orchestra has a particular position and function . Just a sa football team has its quartback, halfback, linebackers ,etc , there are the different sections of the orchestra ; strings ,consisting of first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses , the harp , the woodwinds, consisting of the flutes, piccolo, oboes, English horn, Clarinets, bass clarinet , bassoons and contraassooon , the brass, with the horns, the trumpets, the trombones , tuba . Finally, there are the percussion, consisting of the tympani , and the rest of the section which plays a wide variety of instruments, including cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, etc .

Each section hads its prinicpal player , plus in American orchestras , the associate prncipal, assistant principals etc . The concertmaster, or principal first violin, could be compared to the quarteback . He or she is the leader of the first violins and plays the violin solos in any given work with them , and is in charge of deciding the bowings for the section, and there are the principal second violin , associate and assistant principals of both violin sections, and then the rank-and-file players . Ditto prinicpal viola, cello, and bass sections etc .

In a typical American orchestra, there are the principal flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon players, plus the second flute, clarinet, oboe etc, th eassociate proincipal who divides work with the principal and plays third flute, obe, clarinet etc, plus the piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet and contrabassoon players . There are also occaisional parts for instruments such as the smalle flat clarinet etc.

The horn section in a typical major US orchestra consists of the prinicpal horn , the associate principal horn who divides the work on a program with the prinicpal and also plays fifth horn when six to eight horns are callled for, the assistant principal horn who takes over certain parts of works to enable the principal horn to avoid lip fatigue , and the second, third and fourth horns . When extra h0orns are needed n works calling for very large orchestras , extra players who are not regular members of the section are used .

There is the principal trumpet , plus the second, third and fourth trumpets . The fourth trumpet sometimes functions as an associate principal . Then there are principal, associate principal, second and third trombone. The third trombone plays the bass trombone, which is equipped with extra tubing for low notes . Ther eis only 0one tuba player, because very few works call for more than one tuba . The few which do require an extra player who is not a regular orchestra member . Certain works require horns 5-8 to play the so-caled Wagner tubas, and instrument which looks somewhat like a barit0one horn or euphonium but which is a different instrument . And sometimes a trombone player is used to play baritone horn in the occaisional work which calls for it .

The tympanist is the head of the percussion section , and the other members play a wide variety of percussion instruments , including as I mentioned, cymbals, snare and bass drum, castanets , triangle etc . Occaisionally , a pianist is needed , as a limited number of works use them as an orchestral, not a solo instrument . Each orchestra also has an organist for those works which require this majestic instrument .

There is also a personnel manager , whose job is to co-ordinate the orchestras rehearsals, scheduling ,etc , and to make sure that each musician knows when he or she is needed for a rehearsal or concert . Not every musician is needed for every work an orchestra plays , so each must know when he or she is needed . And when extra or substitute musicians are needed , the personnel manager is responsible for engaging them , as well as running audiitions . This is a very important job .

Of course, no football team could function without a coach , and an assistant coach or coaches , and the orchestra needs a conductor , whose job is to lead the orchestra , prepare works during rehearsals etc . But the music director , or chief conductor cannot possibly lead every concert of th eseason ,lasting from September until possibly as late as June , plus a Summer residency at a festival etc .

So there are guest conductors to lead various concerts througout the season , plus an assistant conductor who assists the conductor during rehearsals , and may have to take over a concert at the last minute if the scheduled conductor is ill or unable to appear for any reason . nSme orchestras have a regular guest who is called the principal giuest conductor , and an associate conductor who leads some cncerts .

Like the coach , the conductor, whoever he or she may be for any given concert, is repsonsible for preparing everything and seeing to it that the orchestra has mastered the music and knows just what to do . The individula musicians are respinsible for their individual parts , but the conductor has to study the full score , which shows all the different musical lines simultaneously , and has to co-ordinate the whole concert, which is no easy task . The conductor must be able to correct mistakes during rehearsal , make sure that everyone is playing in tune, and that all the sections of the orchestra are clearly balanced and that everything can be heard clearly . This is just the tip of the iceberg of the conductor's numerous tasks .

Whether it's a football team or an orchestra , it's all teamwork !

My Recent Encounter With The Symphonies Of Haydn- All 104 of Them !

the horn — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 01:44:00 GMT

The other week I was able to borrow a huge set of CDs from a nearby library on interloan - nothing less than the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809 ) . Yep. All 104 of the symphonies by the great 18th century composer known as the "father of the symphony" , even though he was not the first one actually to compose them . 37 , count 'em, 37 CDs ! The performances are on the Sony Classical label , with the noted American conductor Dennis Russell Davies and the excellent Stuttgart chamber orchestra , and are excellent .

I had already heard most of them on individual recordings by many eminent conductors , including parts of the first integral set by the late Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati , and Bernstein,Karajan, Colin Davis, Karl Boehm , and others , but this was my first chance to hear the whole vast symphonic output of Haydn in one fell swoop . These works , most of which are rarely if ever heard live , were written over a period of nearly 40 years , from the 1760s to the late 1790s and are highly varied , ranging from the brief and simple early ones to the grander and somewhat lengthier later ones . None is as long as the Beethoven symphonies except for Bethoven's first and eighth , his shortest . Haydn's range form about fifteen minutes to a little over thrity .

Quite a few have nicknames , none of which was given to them by the composer . Over the years , various listeners and even critics were reminded of certain extramusical things by the music , and nicknames somehow stuck to them . Probably the best known of these is the so-called "Surprise symphony", no 94 , which features sudden outbursts of loudness amid quietness in the slow movement . No 68 is known as "La Poule" (hen in French ) because a certain passage reminded someone of the pecking of a hen ! No 100 is called "The Military" because it makes use of extra percussion in the second movement and the finale . No 101 is called "The clock " because the slow movement reminded someone of the ticking of a clock . And so forth . A trio of early ones are known as "Morning, Midday and Evening ". No 31 is called the "horn signal" because it features prominent virtuosic parts for four French horns and is virtually a concerto . All the others use only two French horns ; four did not become the norm until the 19th and 20th centuries when composers began to write for larger orchestras .

Many of the symphonies were written when Haydn was serving as Kapellmeister, or music director for music -loving members of the nobility who had their own small private orchestras and would have him compose a variety of works for their enjoyment and to entertain noble visiitors . Haydn spent many years in an isolated Hungarian manor owned by the count Nikolaus Eszterhazy , a great music lover . Haydn also composed a number of operas for the count , who maintained his own small opera company in a private theater . Haydn was responsible for writing the music and hiring the musicians , and directing the orchestra at private concerts . He was literally a paid servant, and had to wear a servant's uniform , but it was a secure and well-paying job . Having the great Haydn as his kapellmeister was a feather in the count's hat . Over the years , Haydn's music achieved great popularity throughout Europe , and when the count died and the estate was inherited by a relative who was not much of a music lover , Haydn moved to Vienna , iwell off on his own and famous . He continued to compose and traveled around Europe , including extended stays in London ,where he was ocmmissioned ot write his late symphonies, which became known as the "London symphonies " . He was also awarded with an honorary doctorate from Oxford University , and the symphony he wrote for the occaision , no 92 , is known as the "Oxford symphony ".

Haydn died in 1809 at the advanced age of 77 , unusual for the day , universally revered as a great master . He outlived his great younger friend Mozart , whom he greatly admired , by 18 years . The symphonies are so inventive , melodious and life-affrming that I fail to see how anyone could possibly dislike them in the least . It's feel good music .

It's been a great experience hearing the whole shebang !

Despite All The Problems , The Classical Music Season Has Begun And Is Going Strong !

the horn — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:25:00 GMT

Yes, too many American orchestras and opera companies are experiencing serious financial difficultes and even some of those in Europe . And to make matters worse , the Atlanta symphony , the Minnesota orchestra in Minneapolis and the Indianapolis symphony are struggling with labor disputes which have kept their seasons from opening as usual . Maestro James Levine is still beset with health problems and will be absent from the Metropolitan opera's roster of conductors for the first time in forty years . The Boston symphony is still searching for the right conductor to take his place as music director .

But the season as a whole has been going strong for a month now, and the young and highly gifted French Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet- Seguin has taken the rens of the August Philadelphia orchestra and hopes are running high for him to revitalize this great orchestra . Riccardo Muti , beginning his third season as music director of the great Chicago symphony , has just completed a critically acclaimed set of concerts in Carnegie hall .

The world's opera houses are set to present an amazingly wide variety of operas ranging over four centuries - a diversity of repertoire unprecendented in the history of opera . Great conductors such as Muti, Pierre Boulez , Daniel Barenboim , Bernard Haitink , Mariss jansons , Claudio Abbado , Valery Gergiev , Leonard Slatkin , Neeme Jarvi , Kent Nagano , Simon Rattle , Christian Thielemann , Riccardo Chailly , Michael Tilson Thomas , and others are very much in action , and young lions of the podium such as Gustavo Dudamel , Nezet-Seguin, Andris Nelsons and others are establishing themselves as conductors of stature .

There is an abundance of highly talented talented young conductors , instrumentalists and opera singers is emerging all over the classical music world , and new works by a wide variety of contemporary composers is being performed . As far as this observer of the classical music scene is concerned , the glass is more than half full , and not half empty by any means . Classical music is very much alive and kicking , and will endure . You can't keep a great art form down !

Catching Up With The Latest issues Of Opera News Magazine

the horn — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:02:00 GMT

Lazy me ! I've been neglecting posts about Opera News magazine for a while . But here's a profile of the August and September issues . In the August issue , Washinton Post critic Philip Kennicott discusses his ideas of how opera may change in the next decade in terms of production technology , reaching new audiences , new forms of broadcasting etc . Jennifer Melick , managing editor of Symphony magazine , discusses the impressive new National Opera Center in New York , which offers splendid facilities for auditions and opera rehearsals etc .

Opera News editor-in-chief F. Paul Driscoll has an article entitled "Opera's Next Wave " - a profile of sme of the most talented up-and-coming younger singers , conductors , composers and arts managers in the field of opera in America today . These are likely to be the superstars of opera in the near future .

The September issue has the annual preiview of the repertoire in opera houses for 2012-13 alll over the globe, not only Europe and America , but Australia , South America and elsewhere . This includes dates of performance for the Met, La Scala, the Royal opera in London, the great houses of Berlin,Vienna, Munich , Paris , Dresden , Hamburg , you name it . The preview shows amazing worldwide diversity of operatic repertoire ; old operas, new ones, familiar and unfamiliar ones of dazzling variety .

A particularly interesting article on the members of the orchestra of the San Francisco opera shows what it's like to work in the pit of a major opera house ; the chalenges, frustrations and joys of this extremely demandng yet rewarding job . Noted American opera conductor David Lawton, professor of music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook , has an article on the Los Angeles opera's revival of the rarely heard early opera I Die Foscari (the two Foscaris ) .

Reviews of opera performances around the world from London ,Berlin , Milan, Geneva, Salzburg , New York, Washington D.C. , San Francisco , and Brussels by the magazine's travelling reviewers can be read , as well as reviews of new CD recordings of operas by Handel , Dvorak, Franz Schreker , Puccini , and DVDs of operas by Richard Strauss , Janacek , Monteverdi , Verdi, Tchaikovsky , etc .

Editor F. Paul Driscoll has an extensive obiturary of the late great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , who passed away this May . You can also check out the agaznes website operanews.com .