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Benched

Collaborative pianists power the machinery of our musical institutions. Every weekly voice lesson, many instrumental lessons, and most music theater, opera and choral rehearsals need a pianist. We’re everywhere: from the very first steps of learning music to its crowning performances. No music department could function for a single day without a small army of […]

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Teodor Currentzis Gets $900 Million Concert Hall in St. Petersburg

Recently, Russian media reported on plans by the state-owned VTB Bank to build a new concert hall and performing arts complex for conductor Teodor Currentzis and his musicAeterna ensembles at the Novo-Admiralteysky shipyard in St. Petersburg.  On June 7, VTB President and Chairman Andrey Kostin and Governor Alexander Beglov signed a statement of intent formalizing […]

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“Let’s keep working.”

For weeks, Kharkiv and the surrounding region has been under regular bombardment, but May 23, the day I arrived in the city, was an especially tragic occasion for our festival, KharkivMusicFest.  My train ride to Kharkiv from Chełm, southeast Poland, took almost 24 hours. The cars were crowded with passengers. In my compartment was a […]

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Divided We Stand

Funding cuts have left Welsh National Opera (WNO) in a financial hole, with its musicians facing the prospect of pay cuts and redundancies. The story of the organization’s plight is long and complicated, but a key moment occurred in November 2022, when WNO’s Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organization funding was cut by 35 […]

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Inhabiting the Curve

Cate Blanchett isn’t the only conductor in Todd Field’s “Tár” (2022). There is her predecessor at the Berlin Philharmonic, Andris, and the Gilbert Kaplan cipher Eliot (Mark Strong). There are also two assistant conductors: the aspirant Francesca Lentini (Noémie Merlant), who hopes to take the assistant position at the Berlin Phil, and the hapless Sebastian […]

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The Price is Wrong

Of all the marginalized composers who’ve yet to receive the acclaim they deserve—and there are many—Florence Price is perhaps the one closest to getting her flowers.  Dedicated work on Price has been happening since the 1970s without fanfare, with scholars like Barbara Garvey Jackson, Rae Linda Brown, and Helen Walker-Hill championing Price’s music. The 2009 […]

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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, […]