Issues in the Arts

PERSPECTIVE – What distinguishes Rana’s playing is an exceptional technical mastery coupled with singular freedom of expression. One can hardly connect her poise at the piano with the power and intensity that emerge from the instrument.

SALT LAKE CITY – At the 80th national conference of the League of American Orchestras, which drew representatives of 630 ensembles, the league conferred its annual Gold Baton Award and highest honor on the veteran conductor.

BREAKING NEWS – The San Francisco-based violinist and critic is the first winner of the award named for, and supported by, William Littler, a longtime writer for the Toronto Star and member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

BREAKING NEWS – David T. Little's monodrama, "a poetic and sensitive work that conveys the chaos of adult desire and the traumas of gay childhood," is the winner of the 2025 Award conferred by the Music Critics Association of North America.

PERSPECTIVE – On Gail Wein's podcast Classical Gas, Chickasaw American composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, whose works are performed around the world, describes native influences in his music for orchestra and stage.

PERSPECTIVE – Is there anything to be discovered from historical-instrument performances of Wagner's Ring Cycle or Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, or from music so ancient that any performance is a speculative act of co-composition? Yes, plenty.

CHICAGO – Amid highlights of a vibrant autumn season was the convergence of more than 1,700 historians, theorists, composers, and recording artists, even as Lyric Opera and Chicago Opera Theater staged two versions of the Fidelio story.

BOOK REVIEW – In his book We Are Music, the polymath John Sharpley grapples with the meaning of music, and the multicultural embrace of his process poses an invitation to examine who we are through this timeless, pervasive medium.

CHICAGO – The energy of Lahav Shani's program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra reflected how younger conductors are forging a new sound world. Shani, a 35-year-old Israeli, is a friend of CSO music director-designate Klaus Mäkelä, 28.

PERSPECTIVE – The still-controversial composer, born 150 years ago, believed that "music should not come easily," says Donald Berman, president of the Charles Ives Society, the debut guest on Wein's Classical Gas series on our website.

PERSPECTIVE – Pianist Jeremy Denk will pay tribute to the composer's boisterous, dense, and unapologetically American music, performing Ives' Sonata No. 2 (Concord) on a program Dec. 12 in New York celebrating the 150th year of his birth.

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.