“Wherever I found decency and humanity in the world, it reminded me of America.” That this observation – recorded by Kurt Weill in 1947 –...

With classical music under siege, many are rethinking audiences and venues. Here in Manhattan, Geffen Hall – previously Fisher Hall, and...

When commercial radio was new, the airwaves were saturated with classical music – not just recordings and live concerts, but highly...

What did the legendary Russian experimental theater director Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883-1922) have in common with Porgy and Bess,...

If you asked me who composed the best American violin concerto, and who composed the best American piano concerto, I would answer with...

In 1972, across the Lincoln Center Plaza, New York City Ballet undertook a Stravinsky festival of its own. Balanchine’s company gave...

As readers of this blog know, Redes is an obsession of mine. However little acknowledged, it’s one of the peak examples, in all cinema,...

Are orchestras better than ever?  Riccardo Muti thinks so. Recently, dedicating a bust of Fritz Reiner at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, he...

PostClassical Ensemble – the DC chamber orchestra I co-founded a dozen years ago – produced a concert at the Washington National...

No other music so instantly evokes a sense of place as that of Dmitri Shostakovich. When Daniil Trifonov launched Shostakovich’s E minor...

This weekend’s “Wall Street Journal” includes my review of Alfred Brendel’s new essay collection, “Music, Sense, and Nonsense,” as...

A colleague in Music History at a major American university reports that it has become difficult to teach sonata form because sonata...

In today’ s Wall Street Journal I review the new Library of America Virgil Thomson compendium. Here’s what I had to say: The heyday of...

“Would the New York Philharmonic sing Palestrina?” – the question posed by my previous blog – arose from a recent performance of...

When Doug McClennan persuaded me to start blogging in 2006, I was a newcomer to electronic media and also a skeptic. I read books. It...

— I — I recently spent the three consecutive weekends speaking at conferences pertinent to the fate of America’s orchestras. The first,...

With our newly released Redes DVD, PostClassical Ensemble completes its Naxos quartet of classic 1930s films with freshly recorded...

I have a good friend who’s a magnificent pianist, maybe sixty years old. Some years ago, my friend remarked: “You know, when we were...

For every screening with live orchestra of Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (music by Prokofiev), there should be at least a dozen...

In Berlin 1929 Kurt Weil wrote a “Note Concerning Jazz” which today reads as both a prediction and a warning. Weill wrote in part: “Today...