There is something strange in the ancient woodlands of Jeløya island. Were it not for the little orange sign staked into the ground, you might almost not notice it, so subtle is “The Grey Zone (NeverWhere),” an installation by Jacob Kirkegaard for this year’s edition of the Momentum Biennale in Norway. The loudspeakers are carefully […]
Category: Interview
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One More Voice
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 […]
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Specialities
Phoning in from Frankfurt—he’s there getting a visa ahead of his conducting debut at La Scala—Kazuki Yamada radiates positivity down the Zoom call. An extremely popular conductor in Birmingham, where he is currently City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s music director and artistic advisor, it was recently announced that Yamada would succeed Robin Ticciati as the […]
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Serious Fun
In late February, I watched Lukáš Vondráček perform Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15, with the Prague Symphony Orchestra in that city’s Smetana Hall. He attended the piano like a Victorian surgeon, leaning over the keyboard—a consequence of poor eyesight, I later learned—with a kind of furious concentration, hacking and slashing […]
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Dialogues
Both Catherine Lamb and I arrive for our interview in a west Berlin park slightly distracted, and the universe works to make us more so. First, a bird in a bush behind our bench insists on everyone hearing its loud, virtuosic song; we swiftly relocate to the grass in the middle of the square. Then, […]
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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 […]
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Excavating Eastman
By now, the figure of Julius Eastman needs little introduction—though this was not always the case. Active as a performer and composer in many corners of the eclectic, sometimes contentiously fragmented landscape of late 20th-century American music, Eastman carved a singular path, adjacent to many worlds yet beholden to none. His music can shock as […]
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Breathing Room
The 24-year-old conductor Aurel Dawidiuk is Associate Conductor with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Recently, I spoke with him about the right repertoire at the right time, facing your insecurities in front of an orchestra, and why he didn’t become a soccer goalkeeper. VAN: I read that you’ve wanted to be a conductor since […]
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Learning Culture
Brendan Slocumb’s goal is to be the “Stephen King of musical mysteries.” In the last three years, he has published three mystery novels with Penguin Random House: The Violin Conspiracy (2022), Symphony of Secrets (2023), and The Dark Maestro (forthcoming in May). The protagonists of all three novels are classical musicians, and all three plots […]
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The Traveling Breath
A woman with narrow shoulders and long grey hair steps up to the microphone. In the bluish stage light, she looks pensive and fragile. Which makes the power of her voice all the more surprising as she releases an astonishing variety of sounds into the hall: humming, whirring, sighing; clacking glottal stops, throaty chirps, nasal […]