The Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, just a few days until New Year. A period of “Nutcrackers” and overpriced tickets, seeing and being seen. Of course, one can continue to be satisfied with this fossilized mainstream, but the Muscovites have long since developed a taste for new trends, especially when served to them in […]
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Ambient Indifference
I live in London, but generally, I try to avoid using the tube, favoring buses, cycling, or walking where possible. In comparison to the subterranean transport systems of continental Europe, I find it expensive, loud, and surprisingly inefficient. This is perhaps the fault of its age, for London’s underground system is the oldest in the […]
Posted inReview
Deep Listen: Maryanne Amacher
Magic Eye images, or autostereograms, are those illusory images you used to see in books and magazines back in the ‘90s. If looked at in the right way or for the right amount of time, parts of the image would appear on a separate plane and acquire a kind of three-dimensionality produced entirely within the […]
Posted inInterview
Singing Within
I had tea with the tenor Mark Padmore one recent afternoon, backstage at the Berlin Philharmonic as it rained and hailed outside. He wore a black sweater over a light gray dress shirt and a sleek bronze bracelet, and had just finished a rehearsal with the violinist Pekka Kuusisto and members of the Karajan Academy, […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Mike Svoboda Playlist
I listen to a lot of music, but mostly live—either while playing myself, coaching chamber music, or in my head while composing. Putting together this playlist was a chance to remember some musical moments of my youth, the “formative years,” that left a particularly strong impression on me. Con Conrad/Herb Madison, “The Continental” – The […]
Posted inOpinion
Who’s Afraid Of Daniel Hope?
Yes, we’ve seen the video. Over the last few days, the classical music media has become aware of a small but telling scandal. A Berlin-based concert curator, dramaturg, and VAN contributor named Arno Lücker published a shred on his blog. The video, part of a mashup genre in which new audio tracks are added to […]
Posted inInterview
The End Is Pleasure
The pianist Kirill Gerstein is something of an insider’s tip. Despite the glossy magazine covers and ever-changing artist flavors of the month in classical music, the concert reality is closer to a bit of Alfred “Adi” Preissler’s soccer wisdom: “It’s what happens on the pitch that counts.” And it’s there that Gerstein is a regular: […]
Posted inReview
The Mischief I Made
When a friend sent me a YouTube video of Helmut Lachenmann’s newest piece, “Marche fatale” for orchestra, I texted him back asking, “Holy shit, is this a joke?” The eminent German, who writes noisy works of intimidating craft and intelligence, who has probably single-handedly invented more new instrumental sounds than anyone in music history, had […]
Posted inReport
White Noise
Nobody should have to write again that classical music has a race problem. We find ourselves here time and again, overseers of an all-too slow change, making the repeated case for equality. But my recent discovery of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi forum Stormfront’s penchant for classical music got me thinking a little more about how to […]
Posted inInterview
Make It Hurt
On October 26, 2017, the alto Wiebke Lehmkuhl sang a note—a G or an E flat, if I’m not mistaken—that was so quiet and smooth it sounded more like a boy than many boy sopranos do. The piece was Bach’s Mass in B Minor, conducted by Ton Koopman at the Berlin Philharmonic, penultimate movement, the […]