Timothy Judd 
Seiji Ozawa, the internationally renowned Japanese conductor, passed away in Tokyo last week (February 6, 2024) as a result of heart failure. He was 88. Ozawa’s 29-year tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra began in 1973. Prior to the appointment, he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-1969) and the San Francisco Symphony (1970-1977). In 1984, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Matsumoto, Japan. In …
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was premiered one hundred years ago today, on the snowy afternoon of February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall on Manhattan’s West 43rd Street. The 25-year-old composer was at the piano, joined by the dance band of Paul Whiteman, the noted bandleader who commissioned the work. It was presented near the end of a marathon concert, organized and promoted by Whiteman, entitled, An Experiment in Modern Music. Purportedly in …
Jean Françaix (1912-1997) began composing at the age of six. When he was ten, his first published work caught the attention of the legendary composition teacher, Nadia Boulanger. In a comment to the boy’s parents, Maurice Ravel said, “Among the child’s gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility …
Imagine the kind of music Johannes Brahms might have written had he lived into the twentieth century. Chances are good that it might have sounded something like Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata, Op. 6. The Sonata’s harmonic language is firmly rooted in the twentieth century, even as it renounces the prevailing twelve tone atonality in favor of C minor. At the same time, its melodic construction, deep, rich piano voicing, and Romantic pathos …
Among the most expansive and complex organ works of J.S. Bach is the towering Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548. The 19th century Bach biographer, Philipp Spitta, went so far as to call it “a two-movement symphony” for organ. According to the polymath musicologist, Albert Schweitzer, these two complimentary movements are “so mighty in design, and have so much harshness blended with their power, that the hearer can only grasp them …
Chita Rivera, the dynamic American singer, actress, and dancer, passed away last Tuesday, January 30th. She was 91. In 1957, Rivera was catapulted to stardom when she created the role of Anita in the original Broadway production of West Side Story. Among the musical’s iconic moments was Rivera’s dazzling performance in the first act ensemble dance number, America. Later, she recalled the excitement of “watching Leonard Bernstein setting down notes that would later be …
In a song or an opera, which is more important—the words or the music? Richard Strauss’ whimsical final opera, Capriccio, Op. 85, sets out to answer this age-old question. Subtitled “A Conversation Piece for Music,” it is a work of magical escapism, composed by the 78-year-old Strauss amid the horrors of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. (The premiere took place in Munich on October 28, 1942). The “opera within an …