“Everybody’s so angry right now that nobody can listen or talk to anybody else,” Salman Rushdie said earlier this week in an interview with Jon Stewart. “And what’s more, we also believe that being offended is a sufficient reason for attacking something.… And if you go down that road, then we can’t talk to each […]
Category: Opinion
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Music to Not Listen to Music to
On March 10, 1969, Philip Glass was performing his piano piece “Two Pages” at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam when an audience member rushed onto the stage. “The next thing I knew,” Glass recounts in his memoir, “he was at the keyboard banging on the keys. Without thinking, acting on pure instinct, I belted him […]
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Ysaÿe No More
I don’t know if anybody has realized, but we’re in the middle of Hurricane Eugène. Since 2020, recordings of all or parts of Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas (Op. 27) have been released by violinists including Ju-young Baek-Laurent Albrecht Breuninger-Thomas Bowes-Maxim Brilinsky-Anca Vasile Caraman-Elmira Darvarova-James Ehnes-Julia Fischer-David Grimal-Jeroen De Groot-Hilary Hahn-Kejia He-Kerson Leong-Jack Liebeck-Daniel Matejča-Alessandro Perpich-Solveig Steinthorsdottir-Yayoi […]
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Erotic Vocabularies
In his 1997 biography of Franz Schubert, late Austrian musicologist Ernst Hilmar points a microscope at the minutiae of the composer’s travels. If you have ever found yourself desperate to know the route Schubert took on his first journey from Vienna to visit a noble family in Želiezovce in the spring of 1818, Hilmar has […]
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Immoral Decisions
Update, 10/6/23: WCPE announced via its website that, “After careful deliberation, due consideration, and hearing from our supporters, listeners and the public, The Classical Station has decided to broadcast the entire 2023-2024 season of New York Metropolitan Opera.” Last month, Berlin’s newly-nomadic Komische Oper opened its first season in exile with Hans Werner Henze’s “Das […]
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The Problem with Peter
Rain is hardly a deterrent in Paris. It’s opening night for a new staging of the John Adams warhorse “Nixon in China,” and the imposing stone walls of the Opéra Bastille are framed by a quickly-brewing storm. Under trickling March skies, the house bears an uncanny resemblance to the military stronghold from which it gets […]
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Exotic Educational Experiences
In October 2020, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) acquired the management company Opus 3 Artists. In May 2022, the conservatory bought the boutique Dutch record label Pentatone. And in December 2022, SFCM added the prestigious London agency Askonas Holt to its portfolio, consolidating Opus 3 under Askonas chief executive Donagh Collins. These acquisitions […]
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Insulting and Destructive
Last Saturday, Marco Goecke, the ballet director at the Hannover opera, smeared dogshit in dance critic Wiebke Hüster’s face. A violent incident like this—a highly celebrated choreographer attacking a critic—is unprecedented in dance history. But as shocking as the attack itself is, the reaction to it has been equally dumbfounding. On Sunday, the Staatsoper Hannover […]
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Cartographies of Meaning
At the 64th annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky posed the question: “What is more opposite to music?” and answered, “The silence of ruined cities and killed people.” Dressed in his now-iconic khaki t-shirt, Zelensky evoked in a short video the silence which Ukrainians are facing in their own land, and exhorted musicians […]
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Consumed in the Culture
Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs. Many musicians have had to move to a new city for their careers and work odd hours that separate them from the support of family and friends. There are exacting physical demands, and training for their livelihoods starts at a very young age. Auditioning for a job is highly […]