If the performance of Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock” by the “Encores! Off-Center” series, which just ended its all-too-brief five-performance run July 13 at New York City Center, is not recorded for posterity, it will be a major loss. To call it revelatory is an understatement. This searing, hilarious and deeply affecting production resurrected…
Out of curiosity, especially after reading the restless intelligence and enticing spin he recently gave his work on this blog, I went on August 14 to hear young Israeli pianist David Greilsammer make his debut at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival with a late-night, hour-long performance of wide-ranging repertoire. What I experienced was interesting and…
The late Richard Tucker, who went from being a celebrated cantor to the even more celebrated lead tenor of the Metropolitan Opera, would have turned 99 years old this month. In his honor, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has proclaimed August 28 “Richard Tucker Day” in New York City. WQXR 105.9 FM, New York’s…
Ulrike Hessler, the first woman to be appointed intendant of the historic, four-century old Saxon State Opera in Dresden, popularly known as the Semper Opera, died July 30 in Munich, after a 19-month battle with cancer. She was 57. I first met Hessler eight years ago, when she was the director of the press office…
It may have taken 76 years, and they missed the composer’s bicentenary by three years, but Düsseldorf is finally about to replace the bronze statue of Felix Mendelssohn that the Nazis tore down in 1936 and later used for scrap metal. The recreated statue is to be re-installed September 27, at the entrance to the…
When I found out that an ambitious new music festival in New York, the Chelsea Music Festival, was honoring the 150th birthday of Claude Debussy, I was intrigued to learn that the celebration would feature a performance at the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Debussy — his high-strung, artistic,…
It’s always surprising how often Jews cross borders. But this coincidence was just too good not to be documented. In January I was raving to my friend Beate Sirota Gordon about a performance of the famously gigantic, wild and strange Ferruccio Busoni Piano Concerto I’d just heard for the first time, performed by Leon Botstein…
Is there a more sunny and less ego-driven violinist than Israeli-born Gil Shaham? He makes even the most virtuosic music seem so effortless and natural, it’s easy to forget how rare and difficult an achievement that is. This year he has devoted himself to reviving a handful of under-played 20th-century violin concertos. In mid-March, abetted…
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