The art of the concert pianist is different from that of other classical soloists. The voice is immediately expressive of the singer’s personality; the violin, which fiddlers sometime think of as a “third arm,” has ready-made powers of seduction; but pianists contend with an enormous, alien machine. The eminent American pianist Richard Goode, who’s currently Read More
For years, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center seemed an idea whose time had gone. The event was launched in 1966 as a scheme to keep the new performing-arts center in business during the summer (it was originally called “Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival”). Under the increasingly lackluster leadership of its music director, Gerard Read More
Wednesday 14th
War of awards: If you were too busy watching the Yankees pat each other’s pinstriped rumps (somehow even more compelling in defeat) to watch the oft-
canceled Emmy Awards , but you did click over for a second and caught a blur of
“business-attired” host Ellen DeGeneres pretending to mistake Steve Martin for Read More
The omniscient, all-controlling father figure-or, his professional namesake, the maestro-has played an inordinately large role in the last hundred years of classical music. It’s worth remembering, however, that before the second half of the 19th century, when the first professional conductors like Hans von Bulow and Arthur Nikisch emerged to handle the bloated forces required Read More
