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 […]
Tag: Orchestra
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Matinee Idyll
Vladimir Horowitz stretches out on his sofa. Basking in the glow of a recent Carnegie Hall triumph, the virtuoso grants a rare interview. He has something important to say, a deeply held wish he’s rarely discussed. The conversation is nearly over before he brings it up. “The only thing which I change,” begins the maestro, […]
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The Value of Normality
I The drive from Tbilisi airport to the Tsinandali Estate should take about two hours, but it’s a much swifter journey in the very early morning. We zoom serenely along the quiet highways, slowing only to swerve stray dogs who have wandered onto the road. Each swerve is a sudden lurch that jolts me out […]
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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 […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Weary Deserts and Distant Sounds
If I had to name a favorite Strauss opera, “Daphne” would make a Cinderella-run to the center of my bracket. It doesn’t have the revolutionary spirit of “Salome,” nor the orgiastic horns of “Der Rosenkavalier.” It’s weird, but not in the way that “Die Frau ohne Schatten” is weird, and in terms of Strauss’s affinity […]
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“You’re Afraid to Ask Your Friends How They Are”
On November 26, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (YsOU) performed a concert titled “A Night for Ukraine” at the Konzerthaus in Berlin. Supported by the Goethe Institut and the YsOU’s German counterpart, the Federal Youth Orchestra of Germany, the event had patriotic trappings, with blue and yellow light projected on the back of the […]
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Winter Journeys
In the third episode of “Dekalog,” Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ten-part series of interconnected short films (each based on one of the Ten Commandments), cab driver Janusz’s Christmas Eve is interrupted by Ewa, his former extramarital lover. Janusz abandons his family dinner to assist Ewa with what he believes is tracking down her missing husband. What Ewa […]
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Leagues of Nations
Among the cameos in Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, Kira Thurman’s jam-packed history of Black performers in German-speaking Europe, is Claudio Brindis de Salas Garrido. Thurman describes the virtuoso violinist as “a mirror reflecting German conversations about Black masculine musicality in the Kaiserreich,” or the German Empire. […]
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In the Wake
Classical music isn’t known for being in-the-moment: Seasons are planned years in advance, and there are people who still refer to “The Rite of Spring” (1913) as “contemporary” music. Even in this deferred environment, however, lockdown albums and works composed in the mindset of social distancing are nothing new. With so much downtime and so […]
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Sense and Sensuality
Simon Zaoui, Pierre Fouchenneret, Raphaël Merlin, Marie Chilemme, and Quatuor Strada: “Gabriel Fauré: Horizons II” (Aparté) Marie-Eve Munger, Les Boréades de Montréal, Philippe Bourque: “Maestrino Mozart” (ATMA Classique) Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kirill Gerstein, Marie-Christine Zupancic: “Mieczysław Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7, Flute Concerto No. 1” (Deutsche Grammophon) […]