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 […]
Tag: Music & Politics
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 inHistory
An Encounter with Distance
Pau Casals wrote letters as he played the cello: with conviction and exacting care. An epistolophile to the core, he wove a web of correspondences through what Eric Hobsbawm called the “short 20th century,” an era of war and upheaval that shattered the 19th century’s bourgeois order. His letters, exchanged with a fluid cast of […]
Posted inEssay
Between the Sky and the Earth
A house not in the sky and not on earth(Čardak ni na nebu ni na zemlji) A country not in the east and not in the west It is important when writing, they say, to state three facts at the very beginning. It establishes trust and allows connection. I will start with three lies. My […]
Posted inOpinion
Trump: The Opera
The performing arts field tends to move slowly; Donald Trump does not. Last Friday, he announced that he would be taking over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; by Monday, he had dismissed a number of board members and installed a new interim executive director, Richard Grenell; and on Wednesday, he […]
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 inBreaking
Silence, Ringing Loudly
When members of the Belgrade Philharmonic stepped onto a road crossing in a brief, silent protest last Friday, they were approached by an angry motorist. After being asked to muster a few minutes of restraint and loudly refusing, the driver floored the gas pedal. The outcome? Four members of the orchestra were run down, resulting […]
Posted inInterview
Wonderful Chaos
On December 8, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was swiftly toppled from power after 13 years of oppressive rule. Syrian communities around the world celebrated the sudden shift in power as Assad was granted asylum in Russia. What does this mean for Syria—and for Syrian musicians? I caught up with Aeham Ahmad, a pianist and a […]
Posted inEssay
Bronze Age Pervert’s Guide to Music
One day in 1999, a decade after the “new” musicology was really new, and at the tail end of the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s, I was an 18-year-old freshman and wannabe musicologist attending a job talk for a new hire in the musicology department at my undergraduate institution. A female candidate presented her […]