by Sedgwick Clark Just the other night a colleague was saying how much we owe Leon Botstein for programming rarely (and often never) heard music. Nonetheless, my friend was nowhere to be seen at the conductor’s Sunday afternoon pairing of two 70-minute Romantic behemoths at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra: Busoni’s sole piano [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: I have been told by many of my musician friends that it is very gratifying and helpful to perform in house concerts because they allow for direct communication with a small and appreciative audience and an opportunity to play through repertoire in an [...]
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By James Jorden After putting off for a week trying to make some sense of the horrific mess that is the Met’s new Faust, I’m finally just going to give up. There are some disasters that bear writing about as what you might call teaching opportunities: this season’s Don Giovanni, for example, as a cautionary [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Just a week ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Oberlin Conservatory at the kind invitation of Prof. Kathleen Chastain. Prof. Chastain teaches a course called Professional Development for the Freelance Artist and she has been encouraging her students throughout the semester to send [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark Soon after I moved to New York in the fall of 1968, Charles Munch brought the Orchestre de Paris on tour to Carnegie Hall. He programmed three of his favorites: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Barber’s Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, and the second suite from Daphnis et Chloé. The next afternoon, Jean [...]
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By Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: My name is Zoe Sorrell and I am a second-year flute student at the Oberlin Conservatory. Something that concerns me as I begin to consider my life after school is the balance between professional and personal life. I was wondering what advice you [...]
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By: Edna Landau On the occasion of the Thanksgiving holiday, I would like to offer my thanks to Musical America, all our devoted readers, our sponsors, and those who have sent in their interesting and thought-provoking questions. (I look forward to hearing from more of you!) Happy Thanksgiving to all. “Ask Edna” will return to [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark I’ve had cymbals and triangles on the brain. I was obsessed with them the other day because I had just heard the New York Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink play Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. The climax of the slow movement was punctuated by fortissimo cymbal and triangle (I’ll spare you talk about editions and [...]
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By James Jorden Now that it has become apparent that Robert Lepage’s production of the Ring at the Met is a fiasco (too soon? Nah.)… well, anyway, since arguably the production is a dreary, unworkable, overpriced mess whose primary (perhaps only) virtue is that it actually hasn’t killed anyone yet, and since, let’s face it, [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark One would have cough thought it a TB ward in February. But, no, it was Carnegie Hall’s opening cough night in October. Yo-Yo Ma’s pianississimos in Tchaikovsky’s Andante cough cough cantabile took the breath away from the non-coughers at Carnegie Hall’s opening night (10/5). Too bad the coughers couldn’t hold their breaths [...]
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