Culture

The 2019 Classical Grammys

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The 61st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony took place in Los Angeles yesterday. Here are excerpts from the winning albums in the classical categories: Best Orchestral Performance “Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11”-  Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra) This recording is the latest installment in a Shostakovich cycle featuring Nelsons and the Boston Symphony. Earlier recordings in the set won in the same category in the 2016 and 2017 Grammys. Additionally, this …

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A Conversation on “The Next Track”

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Recently, I was honored to talk about classical music with Doug Adams and Kirk McElhearn on their podcast, The Next Track.  The Next Track, “a podcast about how people listen to music today,” offers fascinating discussions on topics ranging from the effect of background music, to the works of John Cage, to progressive rock. Updated each Friday, this is a go-to resource for information on trends in the recording industry. Past guests include music critic and …

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The Music of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”

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Music was at the heart of the long-running PBS children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I was reminded of this last week as I watched the timely new documentary film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The film opens with a youthful Fred Rogers, seated at the piano, relating far-flung harmonic modulations to difficult adjustments in children’s lives. Rogers, a talented pianist, wrote all of the show’s songs. Dialogue between characters in the “Neighborhood of Make-believe” …

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Broadway’s Jerry Goldberg Remembers Barbara Cook

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Yesterday, my friend Jerry Goldberg shared with me his memories of Barbara Cook, the legendary singer who passed way earlier this week. Jerry spent decades in the Broadway theater as a pianist and conductor, working on such notable shows as A Chorus Line and rubbing shoulders with some of Broadway’s greatest performers. He worked with Cook on two occasions. The first was in preparation for Cook’s appearance in the leading role of Fanny Brice in Jule Styne’s Funny …

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Remembering Barbara Cook

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Barbara Cook, the Tony Award-winning lyric soprano who came to prominence during Broadway’s Golden Age and later re-emerged as a star of cabaret and concert hall, passed away yesterday. She was 89. Cook was known for her wide vocal range and her magical ability to color musical phrases and shape lyrics. In her later years, her voice darkened and she performed to great acclaim into her eighties. In 1956, she played the …

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Remembering Conductor Jeffrey Tate

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The English conductor Sir Jeffrey Tate passed away on Friday. He was 74. In the early 1970s, Tate worked as a repetiteur and coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden under Sir Georg Solti. His international conducting debut came in 1979 at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He went on to lead the English Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He overcame the tremendous …

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“Der Rosenkavalier,” Renée Fleming, and the Passing of Time

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Time is a strange thing. While one is living one’s life away, it is absolutely nothing. Then, suddenly, one is aware of nothing else. It is all around us – inside us, even! It shifts in our faces, swirls in the mirror, flows in my temples. It courses between you and me – silent, as in an hourglass. Oh, often I hear it flowing, irrevocably. Often I get up in the middle of …

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