So the New York Philharmonic will get an American conductor after all. And he’s young enough to make Kurt Masur look like his … brother.
Such, at least, seems to be the conclusion of the excruciatingly long public search that has ended with Lorin Maazel, 70 years old and a veteran of Cleveland and Read More
When the New York Philharmonic decided in early 1998 that it would not renew musical director Kurt Masur’s tenure past 2002, it somewhat recklessly entered a nationwide scramble that already had the cities of Cleveland and Philadelphia–and soon Boston–vying to find replacements for their own departing maestros. With the orchestra playing better than it had Read More
Why have I-and so many of my musical friends-stopped going regularly to symphony concerts, preferring opera, chamber music, or recitals to what used to be the most commanding of classical attractions? One explanation was offered a number of years ago by Leonard Bernstein, who remarked that the symphony had ceased to dominate orchestral writing because Read More
The news that the New York Philharmonic has informed Kurt Masur his services as music director will no longer be required after 2002 might seem, at first, ho-hum. Mr. Masur is 70, after all, and although he shows no signs of diminishing energy-conductors are supposed to live forever, you know-he will, when he does step Read More
Among the higher modes of artistic endeavor, performances of classical music are perhaps most vulnerable to complaints of elitism from the barbarians who are no longer at the gate but are presiding over the banquet table. It is charged that we who enjoy such nongladiatorial sports do so for no other purpose than to be Read More
