Look through older interviews with violinist Julia Fischer, and you’ll find a disturbing mix of chauvinism and sleaze: “A desirable German export with doe eyes and blond, angelic hair”; “young, sexy, and classical”; “ready for the runway.” One television anchor says she has the “looks, talent, and intelligence of a superwoman,” only to ask her […]
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Posted inOpinion
Classical Complacency
The time is in the street you know, Us living as we do upside down. And the new word to have is “revolution.” People don’t even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel Because God’s hole card has been thoroughly piqued And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey —Gil […]
Posted inReview
We Got Drunk and Listened to Jonas Kaufmann’s Christmas Album
Considering the bleak happenings that have defined 2020, we can all be thankful for one grand unifying event that restored a little bit of our faith in humanity: Jonas Kaufmann released a Christmas album. Not just any Christmas album: a two-hour, 42-track deluxe set of everything from traditional Alpine tunes (“Es wird scho glei dumpa”) […]
Posted inReport
Collective Breath
Singing, as a teacher of mine once disarmingly put it, is simply “an exhaling of sorts.” For most people, the mechanisms of breathing are hardly noticed unless they stop working as intended. That caveat has become more present in the last year, with the nature of COVID-19 leaving us paying more, and more nervous, attention […]
Posted inSponsored
Collection: Engaging with Beethoven
The International Telekom Beethoven Competition offers a platform and the best possible support to talented young pianists. Applications for this year’s prize in December 2021 are open until May 14. Another goal of the competition is to encourage musicians and audiences to engage intensively with the work of the composer. VAN has some places to […]
Posted inHistory
The Pianist who Killed Stalin
In his 2017 film “The Death of Stalin,” Armando Iannucci links the titular event to a letter penned by pianist Maria Yudina: “Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, you have betrayed our nation and destroyed its people. I pray for your end and ask the Lord to forgive you. Tyrant.” In Iannucci’s history-as-farce, the dictator reads this note […]
Posted inReport
Big Breaks
Early this summer, Polish pianist Elżbieta Bilicka got some exciting news. Bilicka is 28 and lives in Logan, Utah, where she is on the piano faculty at Utah State University. At the time, the novel coronavirus was spreading rapidly throughout the United States and Europe, wreaking financial havoc on the performing arts. In the midst […]
Posted inReport
Long Time Passing
An old Pete Seeger song that ran through my head in the autumn of 2016 ends with the lines: “And by union what we will can be accomplished still. / Drops of water turn a mill; singly none.” In 2020, I’m listening to folk singer Lee Knight sing that same song (“Step by Step”) on […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Screaming Song is Good to Know…
One of the most memorable panels from Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak’s 1960 book Open House for Butterflies features the line: “A screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream.” I’ve thought about that line a lot in the 4,932 days since 2020 began, and I am ready to sing like […]
Posted inInterview
Struggling with Time
In September, conductor and Alarm Will Sound artistic director Alan Pierson managed a bureaucratic feat of Olympian proportions: traveling, with COVID-19 restrictions in effect, from the United States to Germany. His essential business: conducting the rehearsals, premiere, and later performances of Hans Thomalla’s new opera “Dark Spring” at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. In early October, Pierson […]