Few prominent classical musicians—and few prominent Germans—have spoken out about Israel’s brutal war in Palestine quite as consistently, as passionately, and with as much attention to detail as the violinist (and son of Daniel) Michael Barenboim. When I met him last month in a quiet corner of a beer garden near the Barenboim-Said Akademie in […]
Author Archives: Jeffrey Arlo Brown
… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York Times, and elsewhere.
Posted inBarTálk
A Proper Continuum
On Sunday, a new “Don Giovanni,” the final staging of Kirill Serebrennikov’s Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, premiered at the Komische Oper in Berlin. It imagined the title character as being taken through the bardo throughout the opera, following the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and substituted movements from Mozart’s Requiem for the work’s usual finale. After […]
Posted inInterview
Inner Necessity
In March, pianist András Schiff announced that he would withdraw from all his concerts in the United States for the 2025–2026 season, citing “recent and unprecedented political changes.” He has a good eye for the danger of such developments: His native Hungary, where he hasn’t set foot for over a decade, is an oft-cited roadmap […]
Posted inReport
These Are The Top Republican Donors Also Donating To Classical Music
In May 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, many American classical music institutions joined what appeared to be a society-wide reckoning on racism. The Minnesota Orchestra commissioned a work in Floyd’s memory, by composer Carlos Simon and librettist Marc Bamuthi, called “brea(d)th.” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra shared sobering […]
Posted inBarTálk
The Constant Organism
On Sunday, a new opera by Beat Furrer, “Das grosse Feuer” (“The Great Fire”), premiered at the Zurich Opera House. Directed by Tatjana Gürbaca and based on a novel by the Argentine author Sara Gallardo, the work, also conducted by Furrer, tells the story of an Indigenous shaman named Eisejuaz, whose community and individual being […]
Posted inBreaking
A Freedom to Dream
Few classical music organizations in the United States are as vulnerable to the new “patriotic” diktats of President Donald Trump’s arts policy as White Snake Projects. Founded in 2018 by Cerise Lim Jacobs, a retired lawyer turned librettist, the Boston-based indie opera company’s mission is explicitly activist, with a longstanding emphasis on racial and cultural […]
Posted inInterview
The Yin and Yang
On February 7 and 9, the Handel+Haydn Society in Boston will perform works by the former under their artistic director, conductor, cellist and keyboardist Jonathan Cohen, in a program featuring the soloist Joélle Harvey and titled “Love, Handel.” (“Love, Handle”?) Recently, I met Cohen—whose interpretations of the Baroque and Classical repertoire are unusual for their […]
Posted inInterview
The Constant Dance
On February 20, Marin Alsop makes her debut conducting the Berlin Philharmonic at the orchestra’s Biennale, leading a premiere by Outi Tarkiainen alongside pieces by Brett Dean, Aaron Copland and Heitor Villa-Lobos on themes of nature and climate change. Last spring, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, but this next gig has the […]
Posted inInterview
Puzzles and Courage
Masato Suzuki plays the harpsichord and leads the Bach Collegium Japan with a clean, pearly touch, creating performances with the delicacy of freshly trimmed and polished fingernails. The son of the ensemble’s founder, Masaaki Suzuki, Masato will lead the group’s latest European tour, beginning January 21. We spoke on video call about composing in the […]
Posted inInterview
So Everything
Earlier this week, Nina Guo, a soprano, composer and improviser originally from Pasadena, California, performed a piece of hers called “The Rides Are Going Up Again” at the Berlin experimental music venue KM28. The delicate work combined gentle, rhythmic spoken poetry with gauzy recorded vocalizations—a sound, I thought and Guo later confirmed, inspired by Morton […]