At the Barbican Centre in early May, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), the City of London Choir and London Voices premiered a 49-minute piece titled “Lim Cosmic Rhapsody.” Their recording of the piece, which featured pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, had just been released on Decca Classics, and the performance marked the first outing for score, published […]
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The Struggle Bus
The walls of Berlin’s Schiller Theater have seen their fair share of artistic leaders. The theater opened in 1907 and was rebuilt in 1951, after World War II, under Boleslaw Barlog. He stayed well into the 1970s, fashioning the Schiller Theater into one of West Berlin’s leading venues. In 1975, Hans Lietzau took over from […]
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On Track
On the Sunday before Christmas, a friend invited me to church in Llano, Texas. Music poured from a classic Allen electronic organ, the go-to of small congregations everywhere. Unexpectedly tasty registration, flawless playing—how did this tiny town come by such a good organist? But the bench was empty. Invisible hands finished the intro and the […]
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Human Values
Like the rest of the world, the classical music community also spent most of this week reacting to the news of another Trump presidency. All this week, we’ve been fielding responses from musicians in America, asking for their immediate reaction. Here is a selection of them. Seth Parker Woods, cellist “The work truly begins now. […]
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Is Cleveland Institute of Music Still a Good Environment for Students?
On October 1, less than a week after faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) voted in favor of unionizing with the American Federation of Musicians, CIM board chair Susan Rothmann announced in an all-faculty email that CIM’s faculty senate would be replaced by a temporary governing body, effective next month. CIM’s faculty senate […]
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Conductor Carlos Kalmar Sues the Deeply Divided Cleveland Institute of Music
After a Title IX investigation into his conduct became public last year, conductor Carlos Kalmar is suing the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he served as director of orchestral studies before “enter[ing] into a leave of absence” in September, for between $5 and $260 million in damages. The federal suit was filed in the Northern […]
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Inside the Crisis at the Cleveland Institute of Music
On September 13, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra met at Kulas Hall for its first rehearsal of the academic year. But the orchestra didn’t play. Instead, a group of student musicians, dressed in blue, sat silently without their instruments. Many seats were empty. The dozen or so string players who brought their instruments warmed […]
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“I’m Willing to Commit the Crime of Music”
Icy silence is all that’s left of Afghanistan’s musical terrain. When the Taliban rose to power in 2021, accounts of immolating instruments and violent oppression of musicians foreshadowed censorship of virtually all forms of self-expression—an intimately harrowing circumstance for Afghan musicians. The Taliban rule of 1996–2001 was characterized by similarly strict censorship, including a wide […]
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Relaxing in the Pressure Cooker
On YouTube, there’s a video of a 1973 concert with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bernard Haitink performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with soloist Artur Rubinstein. It’s an extraordinary concert to hear, between the young Haitink, the 86-year-old Rubinstein, and the orchestra’s signature sound (consistently described as “homogeneous and transparent at the same time”). The […]
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Tainted History
In the spring of 2001, Suzanne Farrin auditioned for the Juilliard School’s prestigious composition program. The night after her audition, she says that Christopher Rouse, a faculty member at the time, tried to kiss her. “I sort of twirled out of his arms and ran away,” Farrin said. Farrin wanted to join Rouse’s doctoral studio […]