Issues in the Arts

PERSPECTIVE – Even for the much-traveled Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, its recent European trek with music director Rafael Payare stands out for a critical consensus that conductor and orchestra are always on the same page.

PERSPECTIVE – Opera as an art form has been under attack from bureaucrats and cost-cutters on all ends of the British political spectrum as elitist. But this visitor found Britain retains an admirable range of classical vocal experiences.

PERSPECTIVE – The new film about Maria Callas (simply titled Maria), starring Angelina Jolie, is reasonably authentic and well made. What's more, Callas fans can be grateful that Jolie’s Oscar-baiting work means the movie will be seen.

PERSPECTIVE – Frederica von Stade, 79, made her first recording in 1975 with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. She says her latest, new works with Musica Viva NY led by Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, will close that long chapter.

PERSPECTIVE – "I fell into a rabbit hole learning about 20th-century composers who found themselves marginalized due to the events of the Second World War,” said tenor Ian Koziara of his new recording devoted to songs once silenced.

PERSPECTIVE – Awards are great, says one recipient of the annual prize for best opera from the Music Critics Association of North America, but more performances are the goal. A follow-up revealed some winners surging, others stalled.

PERSPECTIVE – The tenor drank bleach, and one of the great singing careers of that era ended in an instant. With the biopic Maria Callas, which focuses on the years after her voice loss, the fragile lives of singers have taken center stage.

PERSPECTIVE – To stake its claim as one of the world’s top string quartets, the Escher played all six of Bartók’s quartets in a single three-hour March concert in New York. Its second such marathon will take place Aug. 11 in Santa Fe.

PERSPECTIVE – Marking the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitzky's birth and the 100th of his appointment to lead the Boston Symphony, where he reigned for 25 years, the orchestra will honor his legacy in festival programs July 26-28.

PERSPECTIVE – Even as the presence of new operas has expanded, and works from the distant past endure, what has gotten squeezed out are classic American operas from before the 1987 premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China.

PERSPECTIVE – During my annual coverage of the Munich High End audio show, I managed to catch two great performances: the Beethoven Ninth by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein and Tannhäuser at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper.

APPRECIATION – This was a shocker. Not because 80 is an unseemly age at which to make an exit, but because Andrew Davis, the British conductor who died April 20, had cut such a convivially youthful figure onstage for so many decades. 

PERSPECTIVE – Composer Matthew Aucoin's new Music for New Bodies, directed for the stage by Peter Sellars, is a “synesthetic song cycle” that reflects the interconnectedness of individuals and collective humanity with the wider natural world.

PERSPECTIVE – The baritone's new album Show Me the Way, with pianist Jonathan King, is shared by a variety of guest artists, but the last word goes to Will's mother, gospel singer Terry Liverman, accompanied by her versatile son at the piano.

PERSPECTIVE – Whatever conclusions arise in the ever-evolving reputation of Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra era, a new 88-CD box covering the years 1958-1963 is likely to prove everybody to be absolutely right and dead wrong.

PERSPECTIVE – The victory by pianist Van Cliburn (pictured with Nikita Khrushchev) at the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition helped to calm the Cold War. Even In today's fractious world, cultural exchanges offered in good faith are worthwhile.

APPRECIATION – In a career spanning half a century, the Japanese conductor, who died Feb. 6 at age 88, first took Toronto by storm, then turned a blazing light on the Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Vienna State Opera.

EVANSTON, Ill. – When the New York City Opera premiered Anthony Davis’ first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, in 1986, his career seemed poised for launch. It didn't happen. But a Met staging in 2023 has brought vindication.

PERSPECTIVE –To record that matchless body of string quartets, said the first violinist of the Dover Quartet, stamps a group "trying to carry the torch" of great ensembles. The Dover completed its well-received cycle on the Çedille label in 2022.

PERSPECTIVE – Leonard Slatkin, music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1979-96 and relocated to the city since 2018, will lead concerts of works displaying non-classical influences by American composers and others.