I finally decided it was time to redesign my home page. I still have a few changes to make, the least of which will be cooking up some teaser copy and getting my biography off the home page.
Arthur Winograd, 1920-2010
The NY Times obituary is here. Winograd conducted the Hartford Symphony while I was in college, and guest conducted the Hartt School Orchestra on one occasion during my undergraduate years, getting impressive results with his authoritative, patient approach.
MET names Fabio Luisi their Principal Guest Conductor
Covering classical radio as if the Internet simply weren’t there…
I do most of my classical music radio listening via the Internet: BBC Radio 3, WCPE, BR-Klassik, WWFM and WFMT are all regular destinations. So imagine my surprise…
Continue reading Covering classical radio as if the Internet simply weren’t there…
Sign of the Times
Sony has ceased production of 1.44Mb floppy discs. You do remember floppy discs, don’t you?…
Alan Rich, 1924-2010
Rich was a terrific writer and an enthusiastic booster of LA’s dynamic classical music scene. Here’s the obituary from the OC Register. (Hat tip: Christopher O’Reilly)
UPDATE: Here’s Allan Kozinn obit, just posted to the NY Times Web site.
NPR looks at the Philadelphia Orchestra
… and its continuing financial woes. It’s worth pointing out that the final section of the article puts perhaps too much of a link between the orchestra and their venerable former venue. The lion’s share of the orchestra’s recordings made during Eugene Ormandy’s tenure as music director were made not at the acoustically uneven Academy of Music but at other venues, notably Philadelphia Town Hall, which yielded a far different sound than the orchestra created on their “home turf.” Additionally, the orchestra’s “Ormandy” sound had changed drastically before the move from the Academy to Kimmel Center under Ormandy’s successors Riccardo Muti and Wolfgang Sawallisch.
All Hail the Glorious Teabag Comrades!
I direct your attention to this one sentence:
The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that its chief financial backers owe their family fortune to the granddaddy of all their hatred: Stalin’s godless empire of the USSR.
You know you have to read the rest. Click here for Yasha Levine’s terrific article on the Tea Party’s Bolshevik bankroll.
Crossposted to APJ
Musicians as citizens: Ilona Oltusky on Evgeny Kissin
Somehow I managed to miss Ilona Oltusky’s fascinating take on Evgeny Kissin’s outspoken opposition to what he sees as increasing anti-Semitism “in some of the prominent British media in general and the BBC in particular in the last few years.” Ouch. The post makes for provocative reading — as does Kissin’s scathing open letter to the Beeb.
On Robert Schumann | To Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann‘s piano music never made much of an impression on me when I was in high school or college; it wasn’t until I began to delve into the music of Johannes Brahms as a student and listener that I began to work my way back to the music of his mentor and take a careful listen.