Issues in the Arts

PERSPECTIVE – Hungarian conductor Henrik Nánási will lead the premiere in Fort Worth of a Shakespeare sonnet set by his wife, Veronika Ágnes Fáncsik. It's for two characters: a bass singer as lover and, as the beloved, a clarinet.

PERSPECTIVE – "A life in music is a life of imagination," says pianist Ruth Slenczynska. "Nothing in the world was created without imagination." Her new CD My Life in Music just released, she reflects on an extraordinary career.

PERSPECTIVE – "I loved Cherubino and loved every time I was able to perform in Marriage of Figaro," said Frederica von Stade, 76. "It was always fun." She made her Met debut in what would become her signature role 50 years ago this month.

PERSPECTIVE – Are obscure operas and operettas unjustly forgotten gems or cultural roadkill found on the wayside? Both kinds of discoveries surface constantly, and making those distinctions can mean sharpening one's listening skills.

PERSPECTIVE – Elim Chan, a 36-year-old Hong Kong native and in-demand conductor across Europe and the U.S., epitomizes the future for women on the podium: "I don’t want my gender to take away from what I can bring to the music."

PERSPECTIVE – Richard Freed, who achieved distinction writing and broadcasting on music for six decades, including stints with The New York Times and Washington Post, died at his home in Rockville, Md., on New Year's Day.

PERSPECTIVE – Kent Nagano led the early-music ensemble Concerto Köln in a version based on lengthy research by a special committee that sought the sound Wagner might have hoped for when composing the piece in the 1850s.

PERSPECTIVE – As a writer in the early 1980s, I had heard that Steve had no time for the likes of us. My first encounter with him, at a party, seemed to bear that out. Evidently, he knew my byline, and I lost him at hello. Then we became friends.

PERSPECTIVE – The African Diaspora Music Project, created by opera singer and scholar Louise Toppin, has amassed a database of works by Black composers with the goal of moving concert programmers away from old formulas.

PERSPECTIVE – Bernard Haitink, who died Oct. 21 at age 92, was responsible for some of the most memorable performances I have attended. Objective and insightful, he was that rare maestro with an affinity for both Mahler and Bruckner.

PERSPECTIVE – The Sphinx Organization, which has helped to develop a plethora of skilled young classical musicians of color, will present a gala concert Oct. 15 at Carnegie Hall. Artistic director Afa Dworkin reflects on Sphinx's impact.

PERSPECTIVE – In Macduff’s aria mourning his murdered children, at Lyric Opera of Chicago's new Macbeth, tenor Joshua Guerrero offered his heart and soul. Then, amid the cheering, one loud boo. Really? After all we've been through?

PERSPECTIVE – The stylistic cross-pollination that runs through Bernstein's Mass, derided as "cheap and vulgar" five decades ago, has become familiar language. The work will see several performances during this anniversary year.

PERSPECTIVE – The Leuven Chansonnier, a tiny 600-page volume of 50 secular songs that turned up in a 2014 auction in Belgium, has sharpened our sense of what early music means, how it should be performed, and what it says to us.

PERSPECTIVE – Eugene Ormandy's record 44-year tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra (1936-1980) stretched over sleepy seasons marred by his faulty conducting technique. Some musicians say he wouldn't have a major career today.

NEW YORK – The concert titled Pity These Ashes: Tulsa 1921-2021 featured works by Adolphus Hailstork, Jessie Montgomery, Trevor Weston, and Alice Coltrane, whose Prema, transcribed from piano to harp, drew on the jazz tradition.

PERSPECTIVE – Jonnet Solomon, a tax accountant and director of the Steel City Arts Initiative, has worked for decades to save the long-vacant home where Mary Cardwell Dawson established the National Negro Opera Company in 1941.

BOOK REVIEW – At its best when evoking Mozart's day-to-day life in an age of crude carriages, lousy air, and barbarous doctors, Jan Swafford's study asserts that "composers do not get much more successful than Mozart in his own time."

PERSPECTIVE – Michael Fabiano and fellow tenor John Viscardi run a non-profit program of their own creation called ArtSmart, which pays gifted young freelance singers to mentor pre-teen and teen students and give them voice lessons.

BOOK REVIEW – Three recent books about the composer-pianist offer rich insights into his life as man and musician. All three offer much to ponder, and time and again had this reader reaching for a score or a recording to follow up.