A Lost Song by Aaron Copland
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Memories, Music, People on May 18th, 2008 Comments Off
Archive for the 'Music' Category
My life-changing 1944 introduction to Aaron Copland
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Memory Lane, Music, People on May 17th, 2008 Comments Off
A note on Copland’s setting of "I Bought me a Cat"
Posted in Life and culture, Memories, Memory Lane, Music, People on Dec 30th, 2007 3 Comments »
[This afternoon at the Komische Oper zu Berlin, the American baritone Kevin Deas sang this captivating little song Aaron Copland adapted as one of his "Old American Songs", and when I got home I emailed him this addendum:] Dear Mr. Deas, as Berlin correspondent for www.MusicalAmerica.com I attended – and enjoyed – your concert this [...]
A substantial addendum on Stockhausen (at 70)
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Dec 9th, 2007 2 Comments »
[From my hard disk I've excavated some Stockhauseniana I put together in 1998, which has definitely not lost its relevance to this inordinately intricate personality:] Although Karlheinz Stockhausen at 70 has probably become globally the most famous living German composer (his only rival: Hans Werner Henze), comparatively few people actually know his music. During the [...]
An incongruously larky footnote on Stockhausen
Posted in Memory Lane, Music, People on Dec 8th, 2007 Comments Off
This afternoon I actually started a bloggery, skimming the cream off the many times over the past half-century when Karlheinz Stockhausen’s path and mine crossed, but eventually I gave up on it for what I’d originally thought of as a casual stroll down Memory Lane unexpectedly touched off such an avalanche of recollections, from locations [...]
How Aaron Copland came by that odd surname
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Dec 1st, 2007 Comments Off
Howard Pollack’s 690-page biography Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man documents in some detail (the index cites me seven times) one of my life’s most enriching friendships with that almost saintly man, which began soon after I emerged from the University of Texas at 19 as a brand-new Bachelor Musicae and [...]
Tallulah Bankhead on Norman Mailer (1948)
Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Nov 10th, 2007 Comments Off
Young Mailer’s first novel The Naked and the Dead turned him into an overnight celebrity but it appeared early enough for its publisher to have serious problems with a pungent monosyllable that peppered the manuscript. Mailer had written naturalistically about the robust young Americans in uniform he’d known during World War II, and for him [...]
P.S. to "Why did Claudio Abbado REALLY cancel?"
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People on Nov 7th, 2007 Comments Off
From an unimpeachable, totally reliable source I have this latest shaming tidbit of barbarous stateside yahoo nitwittery towards distinguished visiting foreign artists in the fatuous name of “security”, a sacrosanct word which for the incumbent criminal administration apparently excuses no matter what indignities. The Berlin Philharmonic, billed by Carnegie Hall for four concerts with its [...]
Why did Claudio Abbado REALLY cancel?
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics on Nov 3rd, 2007 1 Comment »
As a reputable musical journalist of several decades’ high-level experience, I almost invariably avoid even mentioning sources I feel I must, for whatever reason, leave anonymous, but I feel strongly that this present instance justifies such an exception. On October 8th, a New York Times article under James R. Oestreich’s byline led off with this: [...]
Editorially rejected review of a Hans Pfitzner concert
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics on Oct 15th, 2007 Comments Off
BERLIN. – “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,” wrote Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany’s greatest poets and most famous Jews, “Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht” – “If I think about Germany during the night, it robs me of my sleep.” A partially sleepless night preceded the writing of this review, for [...]
