I can’t imagine a better way to shake the late-winter blahs than hearing the great German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff at Stern Auditorium on March 7. Mr. Quasthoff is just about unbeatable in Schubert and Brahms, but wait till you hear him in a program he’s been cultivating since childhood—the Great American Songbook, in which he Read More
Looking back at some of my old music columns, I’ve discovered several overused adjectives. “Rigorous,” “probing” and “immaculate” seem to have been particular favorites. Fine words, but they tend to reinforce a widely held perception that the performance of classical music is an intensely serious business attended largely by people who put high-minded sentiments ahead Read More
On a recent evening, while the rest of the world was glued to the spectacle of bombs raining down on Baghdad, I found myself enthralled by the spectacle of a young man seated at a piano in the elegant paneled library of the Lotos Club. The occasion was a fund-raising gala for the Music Festival Read More
On a recent evening, while the rest of the world was glued to the spectacle of bombs raining down on Baghdad, I found myself enthralled by the spectacle of a young man seated at a piano in the elegant paneled library of the Lotos Club. The occasion was a fund-raising gala for the Music Festival Read More
A cough-free audience is virtually unheard of in New York concert halls, but the other night I found myself, along with hundreds of others, hushed to the bone by the playing of a young American pianist named Max Levinson. I had heard Mr. Levinson, a recent graduate of Harvard College, on his debut CD, a Read More
