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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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: I am in my last year of an undergraduate program at a conservatory in the U.S. where I have formed a string quartet with fellow students. We have only been playing together for less than a year but we have hopes to stay [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. A few nights ago, I attended a musical evening of sorts—not at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center but at Carolines Comedy Club in New York City. Intrigued by the advertisements I heard on radio station WQXR for its Classical Comedy Contest, I bought two tickets, [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark Lang Lang got the flowers, but a blistering Shostakovich Tenth Symphony dominated the Philadelphia Orchestra’s first Carnegie Hall concert this season under Charles Dutoit (10/25). It’s his fourth and final season as the orchestra’s interim “chief conductor,” between the unfortunate five-year tenure of Christoph Eschenbach and Philly’s music director-designate, the 35-year-old French Canadian [...]
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by James Jorden “I’ve almost come to the conclusion that this Mr. Hitler isn’t a Christian,” muses merry murderess Abby Brewster early in the first act of Arsenic and Old Lace, and to tell the truth I’m beginning to think I’m almost as far behind the curve as she was. Recent new productions at the [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark Leonard Bernstein is one of the few artists whose recordings have continued to sell after his death, and last fall Sony Classical reissued a “limited edition” set of the conductor’s 1950s-70s symphony recordings, most with the New York Philharmonic. But it sold out before I could rehear the CDs, and this write-up [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: My career is evenly divided between an active performing career and commissions for original compositions. My guiding rule over the years has been to never turn down work, regardless of budget and timeframe, unless it was absolutely impossible to fit it in. This [...]
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