A little-known — and very Jewish — opera by Kurt Weill is scheduled to debut in a fresh translation prompted by new insight into why the work remained obscure. Weill, a composer known for his collaborations with the playwright Bertolt Brecht, wrote the comic opera “The Tsar Wants His Photograph Taken” with librettist Georg Kaiser…
My best memories of summer are of the arts: Catching a B.B. King concert in a Denver August downpour; waiting in the humid heat for a free ticket to “My Fair Lady” at the Muny in St. Louis; spreading a jacket on the beach at Coney Island and watching the riveting and under-recognized “Crown Heights”…
The German Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), not to be confused with the Swiss Jewish composer Ernest Bloch, is still remembered for such landmark books as “The Spirit of Utopia,” “The Principle of Hope,” and “The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays.” As a philosopher, Bloch was influenced by Karl Marx and G….
Sometimes music achievement is directly associated with a degree of chutzpah. Generations have been moved by the stirring 1881 setting for cello and orchestra of “Kol Nidre” by Max Bruch, especially as performed with granitic Old Testament authority by Pablo Casals on Emi Classics. Only an audacious composer would dare to rival Bruch’s achievement, as…
The Babylonian Talmud counsels that at times of bitterest cold, it is best to say, “Such is the way of the world,” and then “observe eight days of festivity.” One such ideal post-winter solstice festivity for Manhattanites is a January 11 Carnegie Hall recital by America’s sweetheart of song, soprano Renée Fleming, in a program…
The Cincinnati-born Jewish jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who will be giving a much-anticipated solo concert on March 31 at New York’s Weill Recital Hall, has been scaling barriers for decades. One of the few openly gay musicians in the surprisingly closeted and macho world of jazz, Hersch has also been HIV-positive since 1986, conquering many…
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