Sounds & Fury

22 May 1813

"With the last chords of the Twilight of the Gods, I had a feeling of liberation from captivity. It may be that The Nibelungs' Ring [sic] is a very great work, but there never has been anything more tedious and more dragged-out than this rigmarole. The agglomeration of the most intricate and contrived harmonies, colorlessness of all that is sung on the stage, interminably long dialogues — all this fatigues the nerves to the utmost degree. So, what is the aim of Wagner's reform? In the past, music was supposed to delight people, and now we are tormented and exhausted by it."

—From a letter of Tchaikovsky's from Vienna, to his brother, Modest, 20 August 1876

"I do not believe that a single composition of Wagner will survive him."

—From a letter by noted German music theorist, teacher and composer Moritz Hauptmann, 3 February 1849

Ghost Tracks Of Wagner In New York

Alex Ross, classical music critic of The New Yorker and author of the best-selling book The Rest is Noise, has written a fascinating piece for The New Yorker's Culture Desk that, as "a thought-experiment", "follow[s] ghost tracks of Wagner in New York, a city that he never saw and probably would have hated."

During his tempestuous life, Wagner lived in many cities across the Continent, leaving an indelible imprint on all of them. In Leipzig, Dresden, Paris, Zurich, Lucerne, Vienna, Munich, and Venice, among other places, you can go on Wagner walking tours, seeing the houses where he lived, the halls where he conducted, and the meeting-places where he held forth. In recent weeks, as a kind of thought-experiment, I have been following ghost tracks of Wagner in New York, a city that he never saw and probably would have hated. A case of authorial obsession is to blame for this peculiar undertaking: I am working on a book called Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music, an account of Wagner’s cultural impact. To be candid, the itinerary is often pretty dull, but it picks up interest toward the end, as traces emerge of hidden links between the Rockefellers and the Holy Grail.

Read the full text here.

Bravo!, Alan (And Sesame Street)

Forcing American Audiences To Cease Their Nostalgia Trips

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, in a piece titled "Shock Tactics", New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross writes:

[T]he injection of a mild strain of Regietheater [in opera stagings in American opera houses] ... is a healthy development because it forces American audiences to see opera as something other than a nostalgia trip. [...] [I]t's because we endlessly repeat the same old pieces that we feel the need to reinvent them in ever more drastic fashion.

Yes, well, certainly an interesting view of the matter. Consider, however, that by that same sort of reasoning it might be "a healthy development" if American symphony orchestras did away with repeating year after year performances of, say, those same old Beethoven symphonies the way Beethoven wrote them and instead reinvent them just a bit by injecting some orchestration or other that never occurred to Herr Beethoven such as, say, kazoos in place of bassoons; or, say, slide whistles in place of flutes; or, say, musical saws in place of violas. After all, if that were done, American audiences would surely be forced to see those symphonies as something other than nostalgia trips.

Yes indeed. They most assuredly would.

A Really Neat April Fools' Day Joke

Picture this: A packed-house recital hall and on its stage nothing but a 9 ft. concert grand with lid completely closed as is the piano's keyboard lid, a piano bench set in front of the keyboard. On walks the pianist dressed in full white-tie concert-dress tux, tails and all. He bows to the audience who applaud him warmly. He then turns, folds back the front portion of the piano lid, lifts the music stand into upright position, then raises the full piano lid into concert position. He then opens the piano bench and extracts a volume of sheet music which he places with great care on the upright music stand. He then closes the piano bench, seats himself in front of the keyboard and slowly opens the keyboard lid exposing the full keyboard. He then leans forward, opens the sheet music volume and turns to the first page after which he sits back for the next half-minute or so with hands in lap and plays not so much as a single note. He then again leans forward and turns to the next page in the sheet music volume after which he again sits back for the next half-minute or so with hands in lap and plays not so much as a single note. He repeats this same procedure, say, about six more times for a total time of, say, about 4 1/2 minutes or so. He then once again leans forward, closes the sheet music volume completely, lifts it off the music stand, places it back in the piano bench, stands facing the audience and bows, then turns and walks off the stage into the wings.

Really neat April Fools' Day joke, would it not be?

What's that? It's been done? It's in fact old hat, even famous? And it's not in the least meant as an April Fools' Day joke but is done in dead earnest?

Oh.

Never mind.

Soul-Satisfying

Few things in music are as soul-satisfying as Renaissance choral polyphony sung supremely well, especially at Eastertime.

(Our thanks to The Rest Is Noise for the link.)

Taking The Ol' Uzi Out Of Storage

BEGIN RANT

The next time I hear a pop singer sing some pop crap rendition of our national anthem at a national event, I'm taking the ol' Uzi out of storage, much-needed new gun control law enforcement notwithstanding, and loading it with just enough ammo to "correct" her (or him).

Oh to hear some measure of nobility and dignity restored to the performance of that time-honored song of praise no matter how achieved.

(This entry provoked by certain of today's Inauguration ceremonies.)

END RANT

Quotable: Floating Utterly Free

Gillian Moore, head of classical music at London's Southbank Centre, commenting on Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2 in a Guardian article promoting the Centre's January opening of its year-long The Rest Is Noise festival the festival based on material drawn from New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross's prize-winning book of the same name:

[Schoenberg's] String Quartet No. 2, written in 1908 in the middle of an extreme marital and psychological crisis, starts with a richly harmonised minor key melody which would not have frightened Brahms. But by the end of the piece, a soprano has — highly unconventionally — joined the quartet and she sings "I feel the air of other planets", to music which is fractured, atomised, ethereal and floating utterly free from the gravitational pull of 600 years of harmonic tradition.

The New York Times Magazine's Shameful Behavior

New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross complains:

For the past five years, the New York Times Magazine has offered an end-of-year feature called "The Music They Made" — an audio collage of musicians who died that year. [...] [W]ith the exception of David Mason, the trumpeter who played on "Penny Lane," no Western classical musician has appeared in these compilations. The omission is particularly maddening this year, since we lost two gigantic figures: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elliott Carter. Almost every other genre has been represented at one time or another....

We might point out to Mr. Ross that Western classical musicians have no place in such a compilation and would, in fact, be made to appear ridiculous by their inclusion. They require a completely separate compilation of their own and it's shameful, especially considering the publication, that no such compilation exists there. However, Mr. Ross's complaint that an annual compilation by the same publication called "The Lives They Lived" is also absent any Western classical musicians is a thoroughly justified one and the New York Times Magazine should feel doubly shamed by the omission.

From Brahms To Bach: An Improvisation

(Our thanks to Slipped Disc for the link.)

Confessions Of An Apparent Reactionary Middle-Brow Bourgeois

[NOTE: This entry has been edited as of 8:10 PM Eastern on 15 Dec to restore a missing parenthetical in the last graf.]

I sat myself down a few days ago to give myself a good talking to. "With each passing day, ACD, you're beginning to appear more and more like a reactionary middle-brow bourgeois where it concerns the domain of classical music," I admonished myself. "More and more you come down on the side polarly opposite the certified smart set in classical music — i.e., the professional practitioners and print-published classical music critics — and, to be perfectly blunt about it, you're beginning to piss me off. Wake up and smell the proverbial coffee! Get a grip! You're fast beginning to appear a champion of the flat-earthers where classical music is concerned!"

I confess I had to agree with my Admonishing Self. But things are even more dire than my Admonishing Self imagined. I daily find myself more and more beginning to feel resentment against and contempt for the certified classical music smart set; to feel they're doing the domain of classical music not only a disservice but real harm in their appreciation and championing of postmodern idiocies such as the idiocies of the avant-garde that include the embracing of Cagean and Stockhausen-esque and Minimalist (uppercase M) aesthetics; idiocies such as the falsifications and absurdities of Eurotrash (i.e., Konzept) Regietheater (Regieoper); idiocies such as the denial of and the declaring null and void the by-their-very-nature-generated boundary line between classical and pop musics; idiocies such as the idea of effectively transforming the classical music concert hall into a quasi-mosh pit on the grounds that it will free the audience to experience and enjoy the music more fully and will, in addition, bring into the concert hall a new and younger audience; etc., etc., etc.

Well, it seems there's no help for me. That all the above makes me appear a reactionary middle-brow bourgeois where the domain of classical music is concerned is undeniable and I must accept that as there's nothing for it until such time — if ever such time arrives, as improbable as that may be — as I can honestly appreciate and champion what the current certified classical music smart set now appreciates and champions. Until that time what I must earnestly strive to do is find an honorable and honest way to not feel resentment against and contempt for the current certified classical music smart set. After all, I've no reason to suspect that smart set of being dishonorable or dishonest in their enthusiasms (other than, perhaps, a subconscious falling victim to a persistent if subterranean fear of appearing in a 22nd-century edition of Slonimsky) and they have as much right to hold them as I have to reject them (the enthusiasms, that is). A new year will presently be upon us, the traditional time for the making of resolutions. Let that be my very first.

Trash Into Music: The Landfill Harmonic

Reversing the typical Modern and Postmodern progression in classical music, this group is astonishing, encouraging, and thoroughly heartwarming. Meet The Landfill Harmonic.

As we've said: astonishing, encouraging, and thoroughly heartwarming.

Ave Atque Vale, Charles

The world of classical music suffered a great loss this past Sunday, 9 December 2012. Charles Rosen — concert pianist, musicologist, teacher, critic, brilliant polymath, and author of several hugely enlightening books in the domain of classical music, one of which, The Classical Style, has become a bona fide classic — died of cancer in Manhattan at age 85. We considered (and consider) Mr. Rosen a latter day Sir Donald Francis Tovey and his absence will be deeply felt both by the classical music world generally and by us personally as we owe him much. For more details on Mr. Rosen's life and work than we can provide, the New York Times obituary can be read here, and the Guardian obituary, here.

Atque in perpetuum, Charles, ave atque vale.

Whither Classical Music?

John Simon, the often reviled but brilliant literary, theater, music, and film critic whose acerbic, barb-tongued, (too-)often just plain nasty commentary has appeared in such wide-ranging publications as The Hudson Review, The New Leader, The New Criterion, National Review, New York Magazine, Opera News, The Weekly Standard, and Bloomberg News and who now writes his own blog Uncensored John Simon has up on that blog a new article titled "Whither Art?" the "art" of the title referring to the fine arts generally but painting in particular.

As we read the article it struck us that were one to substitute classical music along with mutatis mutandis adjustments everywhere painting is referred to, pretty much everything Mr. Simon has to say would read just as on-point. (In fact Mr. Simon himself suggests just that in one brief sentence in one brief paragraph: "The problem for most arts is that so very much has already been done in them, propelling more recent practitioners into horrible distortions, obscure byways, or downright dead ends. This is true also in music, otherwise we would have been spared Stockhausen, Cage, Glass and their likes." See also our August 2004 S&F entry titled "Whither Genuine Art?".)

Writes Mr. Simon:

As I have often said and sometimes written, the history of art extends from Anonymous to Untitled, from when only the work mattered to where only the name in the signature does.

What reminds me of this is a reproduction in The New York Times (10/16/12) of an untitled painting by Franz Kline, which, at the forthcoming auction, “is expected to bring $20 million to $30 million” and make me sick to my stomach. I recall a time, long ago, when Kline yelled at me at a party, “You are full of shit!”, and I replied, “Maybe, but at least I don’t smear it on canvas and peddle it as art.”

Art today is the result of a tacit conspiracy among artists, art historians, art critics, art dealers, nabobs who don’t know what to do with their money, and all the people who don’t know anything about art. And why shouldn’t it fetch that much when the article about the Kline painting notes that one by Clyfford Still, resonantly entitled “1949-A-No. 1” went for $61.7 million? Even Clyfford with a Y should raise a cautionary eyebrow.

Read the full text here.

James Levine To Resume Conducting

This press release from the Metropolitan Opera today:

James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s Music Director, will return to conducting on May 19, 2013 with the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He will then lead three operas in the Met’s 2013-14 season, including a new production of Verdi’s Falstaff and revivals of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Berg’s Wozzeck. He will also conduct all three Carnegie Hall concerts that season.

Oh that it not prove a false (or over-optimistic) alert!

Read the full text here.

Carl Orff’s Meretricious Claptrap

Following a few brief, general introductory remarks, venerable classical music critic Martin Bernheimer began his Financial Times review of this past Wednesday's opening concert of the Carnegie Hall 2012-2013 season featuring the splendid Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its music director Riccardo Muti thusly:

Riccardo Muti, whose aesthetic preferences are sometimes surprising, chose to inaugurate [the orchestra's] vaunted Manhattan visit with the meretricious claptrap of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. So much for intellectual and/or emotional challenge.

On reading this we simultaneously smiled and winced (a neat trick, that), for while we could not help but agree with Mr. Bernheimer's bitingly laconic assessment of the work, we nevertheless harbor "an ongoing, undiminished, and fairly mindless fascination with it," as we've previously remarked here on S&F. As we went on to say:

Its unrelenting ostinati; its primitive, propulsive rhythmic drive; its unsubtle tonic-dominant harmony sans any trace of chromatic coloring — in short, its very "dumbness" — is what seems to attract. It's a sort of invigorating mind-rester: primally engaging, and no thought required. And it's weird. Very weird. The text, I mean, its weirdness sharpened by being written and of course sung mostly in Latin.

But as Mr. Bernheimer neatly put it concerning other music on the CSO's program for the following night's concert, "one didn’t have to love the music on this occasion to admire the music-making," so it is with a particularly brilliant reading of Carmina recorded and released on vinyl LP in 1958 by Capitol Records featuring (of all groups!) the Houston Choral, Houston Youth Symphony Boys' Choir, and Houston Symphony Orchestra with the great and inimitable Leopold Stokowski on the podium which recording was subsequently remastered and transferred to CD by EMI. (It's paired on this recording with a reading of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite about which reading the less said the better.) As we wrote about this recorded performance of Carmina:

Lord knows I'm no Stoki fan generally which in my day was enough to get one run out of Philadelphia on a rail were one reckless enough to admit to it in public. But of all the recorded readings of this work of my experience Stoki is the only one to get everything right sans any minuses. He draws from the at that time less than world-class Houston forces performances that the best of the era would have been proud to have produced, and draws from the soloists — Virginia Babikian, Clyde Hager, and Guy Gardner — performances to match. A truly sterling reading. [Our full and more detailed commentary on Carmina and this recorded performance can be read here.]

This EMI remastering is a tough-to-impossible CD to find new, but one well worth the search.

A Brief Wagner Corrective

Although it hardly meets the burden of its title, Alex Ross's newly posted article for The New Yorker's Culture Desk section, "The Case For Wagner In Israel", is a brief but incisive commentary that ought to be read by all whose understanding of Wagner is mired in the pop image of this complex artist as a composer of music characterized by "grandiosity, bombast, anything that makes a loud noise and goes on for a very long time," as Mr. Ross put it, and that he was Hitler’s favorite composer.

The artist who fired the imaginations of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Mann, Cather, Kandinsky, Isadora Duncan, and Eisenstein, among hundreds of others, cannot be summed up in a few adjectives.

[...]

Wagner must take some of the blame for the reductionist image that prevails in the public mind. It was his spiteful anti-Semitism that has caused so many people to draw a straight line from the “Ring of the Nibelung” to Hitler.

Read the full text here.

An Ugly Tale Just For The Record

Last week we posted an entry titled "The Wrong Man" that linked to an item posted on Norman Lebrecht's Page Six-wannabe blog Slipped Disc titled "Exclusive: New York Times demotes a critic" reporting that The New York Times had "reassigned" its longtime classical music critic Allan Kozinn to "the newly-created, sidewalk-pounding post of general cultural reporter," as Mr. Lebrecht put it. The report was quite detailed vis-à-vis the backstory of this action and so our entry linking to that report began with the sentence:

If the accuracy of this report by Norman Lebrecht can be trusted (a not always safe assumption), The New York Times reassigned the wrong man.

It was our way of letting our readers know that we had no corroboration of any of Mr. Lebrecht's report and were aware that taking at face value all the details included in Mr. Lebrecht's reporting of such news stories is generally not, um, shall we say, an entirely prudent thing to do.

In his blog item, Mr. Lebrecht had some quite nasty things to say about the Times's Classical Music Editor James R. Oestreich and in the ensuing comments section of that item (which at present numbers some 141 comments) one commenter suggested that Mr. Lebrecht's nastiness toward Mr. Oestreich might have something to do with Mr. Oestreich's New York Times book review of Mr. Lebrecht's latest book, Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World, in which review Mr. Oestreich gave the book a bit of a drubbing.

Mr. Lebrecht responded to the commenter's suggestion by saying he (Norman Lebrecht) was unaware of the review and then altered his response to say, "Never saw it… won’t bother now." Another commenter responded with the link to the review whereupon Mr. Lebrecht deleted both the comment providing the link and the original comment suggesting that Mr. Lebrecht's nastiness toward Mr. Oestreich might be due the latter's uncomplimentary review of Mr. Lebrecht's book. All of this within the space of some ten minutes or so. We were able to see it all only because we'd subscribed to eMail notification of all comments for that item which eMail is sent automatically by the software the instant a comment is made public. (Ironically, Mr. Lebrecht neglected to delete his own laconic response to the original comment which response is, at this writing, still extant and just sitting there all by its lonesome, disconnected from everything and making no sense whatsoever.)

We must confess we found this whole business on Mr. Lebrecht's part quite dismaying. His deleting of the two comments was dishonest enough, but his declaration that he was ignorant of or never saw The New York Times's review of his new book strains credibility well past the breaking point. We'd long been aware of Mr. Lebrecht's, um, playing loose with facts but had never suspected him of outright dishonesty.

And just why are we troubling to relate this sordid business here? Because it's prelude to what followed in that same comments thread which involved our good self and which we want to make a matter of record here on S&F just in case the involved comments should one day, um, mysteriously no longer display in that comments thread.

One of the commenters in that comments thread was one William Osborne; a True Believer of the PC sort and a man with an agenda. We'd run into Mr. Osborne some four years earlier in another comments thread on another website and had exchanged some few comments with him having to do with the Vienna Philharmonic's practice of denying membership in the orchestra to females and non-White males. Mr. Osborne was on a crusade to bring a halt to this "bigoted and racist" practice, as he called it, and we took the position — one which we still hold today — that the Vienna Philharmonic, a private organization, is entitled to deny membership to anyone it pleases for whatever reason, stupid and self-defeating though that reason may be. This of course fairly incensed Mr. Osborne who promptly labeled us a bigot and racist for our view of the matter.

In the present comments thread on Mr. Lebrecht's blog, we read the following comment from Mr. Osborne in response to a comment by another commenter wherein the commenter had written, among other negative things about Mr. Oestreich, "Mr Oestreich has annoyed so many people with his bile-rich reviews":

Very good observations, and they also apply well to the review of Norman’s book that was mentioned. One senses his [James R. Oestreich's] personal resentments in the commentary. We might also remember that Oestreich is an apologist for the Vienna Philharmonic. He has written articles defending the orchestra and rationalizing its sexism and racism. It is one thing to appreciate the orchestra’s music-making, but another to dismiss its bigotry and treat it as a non-topic. I think many are looking forward to the sea change that will come when he leaves the Times.

Our jaw dropped on reading this. What could Mr. Oestreich being "an apologist for the Vienna Philharmonic" possibly have to do with the business to hand? Not a damn thing that we could see, and so we responded:

Still riding that same old, stillborn hobbyhorse regarding the Vienna Philharmonic, I see.

Time to dismount and move on.

To which Mr. Osborne replied:

In earlier discussions in other forums, Mr. Douglas has gone on record saying that the Vienna Philharmonic/Vienna State Opera Orchestra is entitled to exclude both women and racial minorities.

To which we replied:

And up to your same old tricks again, I see. You know very well that the last time you tried to sneak the Vienna State Opera Orchestra into the Vienna Philharmonic question you were roundly and soundly called out for the underhanded attempt as you're perfectly aware they're two entirely separate organizations — one public, one private — regardless that the same personnel occupy both.

That comment never saw the light of day because it was deleted instantly by Mr. Lebrecht before it was made public. Although we were unaware of it at the time, we shortly thereafter learned that not only does Mr. Lebrecht hold the same view as Mr. Osborne regarding the Vienna Philharmonic in this matter but had even promoted and linked to Mr. Osborne's crusade against the orchestra.

When we discovered our comment had been deleted, we shot off another comment addressed directly to Mr. Lebrecht and for his eyes only (he moderates all comments posted to his blog so we knew he would see it and know it was not for publication) which read:

Mr. Lebrecht:

I see you declined to publish my response to William Osborne's subtle lie about me (I'm nowhere on record or off as saying "the Vienna State Opera Orchestra is entitled to exclude both women and racial minorities" as he invidiously suggested). It's not the first time he's done that, usually following it by declaring me a racist and bigot, his favorite response to those who disagree with his position on the Vienna Philharmonic. I realize this thread is no place to have this business out, but having let stand Mr. Osborne's subtle lie, you owe me at least a response to it.

In response to which Mr. Lebrecht, instead of asking us to resubmit the comment he deleted, extracted from our above protest the single sentence, "I’m nowhere on record or off as saying 'the Vienna State Opera Orchestra is entitled to exclude both women and racial minorities' as Mr Osborne invidiously suggested. ACD," and without explanation or editor's note published that as OUR response to Mr. Osborne.

Mr. Osborne, being ignorant of these machinations and innocently taking what Mr. Lebrecht had published under our name at face value, replied:

Notice that Mr. Douglas only mentions the Vienna State Opera Orchestra as not entitled to exclude women and racial minorities. He conspicuously does not mention the Vienna Philharmonic. His claim has been that since the Vienna Philharmonic is a “private” organization, it can exclude whoever it wants.

It is important to remember that the State Opera Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic are the same orchestra and use the same personnel. The members of the opera orchestra just run the Vienna Philharmonic on the side as a nominally “private” organization. If the Philharmonic excludes people based on race and gender, so does the State Opera Orchestra.

So Mr. Douglas, if you have changed your stance and no longer feel the Vienna Philharmonic is entitled to exclude people based on race and gender, please let us know.

To which we responded:

Mr. Lebrecht will not permit me to respond to any of your posts on this matter. He deleted my original response to your prior post, and when I protested, he extracted a single sentence from my protest and published it above as my response to you. It’s pointless for me to attempt to continue to post here as even if this post gets through, which is extremely doubtful, Mr. Lebrecht will delete or edit any replies I make to your subtly false and invidious charges. I may be blocked from replying here, but you may be certain I’ll be posting the entire dishonest history of this exchange and more on the dishonesty of Mr. Lebrecht on Sounds & Fury (my blog) which is read by most if not all who read this blog.

(We here freely confess we were being somewhat disingenuous in our above by saying that it's "extremely doubtful" our above comment would "get through." We knew for certain it would because of the threat of its last sentence. Mr. Lebrecht may be dishonest, but he's not stupid.)

Mr. Lebrecht replied to our above with the laconic and dishonest comment:

This site operates a non-abuse policy. ACD’s replies were deleted or redacted on those grounds.

It would appear Mr. Lebrecht considers a true recounting of inconvenient fact to be abusive and so felt compelled to delete our response to Mr. Osborne.

And so endeth the ugly tale.

As previously noted, all the above just for the record.

Georg Solti: "Musical Colossus"

Next month marks the centennial of the birth of one of the world's all-time great conductors: Georg Solti. To mark the occasion the Brit daily The Guardian ran a fine (if a bit overstated in places) 5000-word tribute by writer Ed Vulliamy titled "Georg Solti: The Making Of A Musical Colossus" (can you imagine our National Newspaper Of Record — or any major American daily, for that matter — devoting that many column-inches to such a subject in their regular pages?).

Next month marks the centenary of the birth of the conductor, musician, visionary, jester, husband and father who bore witness to, and embodies, his time, the core of the 20th century, and whose genius — a word too liberally used nowadays — not only towered over the music-making of his lifetime but radically changed it in ways that are only now becoming clear.

[...]

[H]e made music of magic and quality, entwining power and clarity, that no other interpreter of his time — not even Karajan, Jansons, Ancerl, Böhm or Bernstein, in what is rightly considered music's golden age — could match. In the studio, Solti revolutionised the science and art of recorded music so as to democratise it at the highest — still unsurpassed — level of atmosphere and sound quality. And in concert, Solti is the only name one can speak in the same breath as those that dominated the generation that preceded him — astride both the second world war and the iron curtain — Evgeny Mravinsky in Leningrad and Wilhelm Furtwängler in Berlin. Solti was the true heir to their legacy on record, and their way of electrifying live performance through blending restless and rigorous perfectionism with explosive spontaneity.

Read the full text here.

The Power Of Genuine Music

Amidst all the events and seemingly ubiquitous articles in the classical music media, both print and digital, celebrating the centennial of the birth of the much celebrated charlatan composer John Cage whose noise posing as music is, for reasons elusive, still being performed it's sobering to witness the power genuine classical music has, when that music is encountered in an environment that's a quotidian part of their lives, to enchant even those normally deaf to it.

(Our thanks to JDCMB for the link.)