Michael James Miller, writer and arts critic, died aged 73 on November 14th, 2021, after a long illness with cancer. He was at home in North Adams, MA, his partner Joanna Gabler and youngest son, Lucas, beside him. His last word was “Peace.” The post Obituary: Michael Miller, Writer, Editor of New York Arts and Hudson-Housatonic Arts, Dies at 73 appeared first on New York Arts. The post Obituary: Michael Miller, Writer, Editor of New York Arts and Hudson-Housatonic Arts, Dies at 73 appeared first on New York Arts ..read more

Here is one of the strangest living bits of ceremonial history you will ever encounter, along with some fine, nearly forgotten music ever since. The year 1937 witnessed Paris’s International Exposition, the last continental world’s fair to take place before the Second World War, and something of a nervous set piece for political tensions of the day. The post A Crop of Recordings XXXVII: Schmitt/Honegger, Furtwangler, Sibelius, Ondine appeared first on New York Arts. The post A Crop of Recordings XXXVII: Schmitt/Honegger, Furtwangler, Sibelius, Ondine appeared first on New York Arts ..read more

The sad news was released a few days ago:  Francesca Zambello, the most innovative opera directors in the world, and who gave the Glimmerglass Festival its greatest years, was ending her tenue after the 2022 season. The post Glimmerglass 2022: Francesca Zambello’s Final Season Ends Twelve-Year Tenure appeared first on New York Arts. The post Glimmerglass 2022: Francesca Zambello’s Final Season Ends Twelve-Year Tenure appeared first on New York Arts ..read more

Welcome to the world of unselfconscious Mozart as it once was. When this LP first arrived in record bins in 1977, there was nothing stylistically unusual about romantically phrased performances of the composer’s music, delivered by large orchestras with substantial masses of strings. Herbert von Karajan, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm, George Szell, all recorded “big” Mozart. Towards the end of the decade Josef Krips would turn out some nicely crisp late symphonies with the Concertgebouw for Phillips, a bit reduced in scale, but we were still a long way from the aggressive small dog Mozart which bit ..read more

Raymond Tuttle of Fanfare raised some seldom addressed questions recently about the subjectivity of music criticism. Those questions lead to even greater mysteries, I find. It isn’t often asked, for instance, why music exists at all, but that’s surely where one has to begin, if it is to matter what we say about it.  The post Commentary: What We Do appeared first on New York Arts. The post Commentary: What We Do appeared first on New York Arts ..read more

I’m always intrigued when European orchestras take up the cause of American music, a simple enough notion to understand semantically but difficult at the stylistic level for continentals to adopt idiomatically. Our music’s frequent combination of seemingly naive musical prayerfulness with ungoverned explosive energy has typically left European musicians a bit puzzled, and the Teutonic world at times more than a little stiff and earnest. So I wondered about this release. Could the Swiss sashay down Broadway with that long-legged swagger and impudence implicit in so much of American life? Could ..read more

It’s rare that a recording for strings alone wows listeners as a sonic blockbuster, but I celebrate this one from its first plucked, throbbing, filigree-laced chords. John Wilson has effectively reconstituted the Sinfonia of London, known to many in fond memory for Sir John Barbirolli’s unsurpassed 1962 LP of Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Wilson has set himself up for recording purposes in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn with stunning results. I don’t think I have ever heard an acoustic more flattering to strings. He also exercises tact in not trying to reproduce the magic of Barbirolli’s progr ..read more

How should music scholars write for non-specialists? That is the wide-ranging question that Dave Hesmondhalgh raised in an essay for Naxos Musicology International in November 2019. (NMI is available to anyone who subscribes to Naxos Music Library or whose library does. Click the “Musicology” button on the left edge of the homepage.) Hesmondhalgh lays out numerous beneficial possibilities. But he passes quickly over the single most frequent form of scholarly outreach: books and articles (for newspapers, CD booklets, blogs, online magazines) that address topics likely to be of interest to many ..read more

The streaming experience, June 27 at 5 PM, depicted Mr. Hamelin behind a view of gray skies on a rainy seacoast day replete with undulating seagulls underscoring Schubert’s somber and dark study with the neatly folded ensemble of insouciance, ribbons of color, and fleeting flights of weightlessness. The post Retrospective Fragments from a Virtual 2020 – Hamelin Schubert Recital and the Parker Quartet appeared first on New York Arts. The post Retrospective Fragments from a Virtual 2020 – Hamelin Schubert Recital and the Parker Quartet appeared first on New York Arts ..read more

For over a decade I’ve covered the Glimmerglass Festival and have celebrated its ascension to an internationally lauded event under the direction of the boundlessly energetic and resourceful Franscesca Zambello.  The cancelation of the 2020 season was another of many tragic cancelations of sister opera houses world-wide. The post Glimmerglass 2021 – Thinking Outside of the Box appeared first on New York Arts ..read more