A few evenings ago, after the end of a program at Alice Tully Hall celebrating the legendary keyboard virtuoso and composer Ferruccio Busoni, the pianist Garrick Ohlsson announced that he was going to do a famous encore by another virtuoso and composer who had played it so much that he had come to loathe it: Read More
In Bruno Monsaingeon’s indispensable collection of memories and
musings by the greatest of postwar pianists, Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations (Princeton
University Press), the always unfettered Richter gives this reaction to the
playing of an older Russian giant of the keyboard, as heard on the video Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic :
“Phenomenal and off-putting Read More
Perhaps it’s the effects of an end to the most destructive century since the Black Plague, but the prevailing approach to opera at the world’s most prestigious music festival this summer has been punitive. When you find yourself at a Don Giovanni whose noxious atmosphere makes the underground parking garage where you left your car Read More
