In many major American cities, the tawdry sections of town that once housed pornographic cinemas, bookstores, and strip joints have given way to shiny new office buildings and Starbucks coffee houses. Does this sign of urban renewal also signify moral renewal? Has America finally grown bored with a surfeit of pornography? Unfortunately not. Pornography has … Read more
Robert Reilly recently spoke with Finland’s most popular composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928), several days after the week-long celebrations in Helsinki for Rautavaara’s 70th birthday on October 9. Rautavaara studied at Helsinki University and the Sibelius Academy. In 1955, a Koussevitzky Foundation award allowed Jean Sibelius to choose Rautavaara for a scholarship to study in … Read more
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was widely touted as a “Soviet” artist because he was the first significant Russian composer to have been completely educated under the new communist regime. In some sense, Shostakovich may have agreed with this description. Nevertheless, he was in a state of constant tension with the Soviet Union, which alternately celebrated and … Read more
Poor Mendelssohn was rich. Had he only suffered more, he might have been a profound composer. As it was, cosseted by the luxuries of the haute-bourgeois world of the wealthy Mendelssohn banking family, he was relegated to the politeness and pieties of the Victorian world. He was even afflicted with the name Felix, which means … Read more
The 20th century is unique in its promulgation of noise. I do not mean industrial racket, the sounds of traffic, or the incessant hum of frost-free refrigerators. I mean the presentation of random noise as art. Never before has an artist asked an audience to come to a pre-arranged place at an appointed time to … Read more
Wailing cries of impending financial doom resound within the classical music business. Yet never before has such a cornucopia of recorded music been available, while each month more releases of music pour forth that, until few years ago, one had no hope of hearing. The labels suffering the most are those still endlessly replicating the … Read more
The stiad English sense of manners and propriety has always been counterpoised by a compensating craziness. The English do not tolerate eccentricity; they take pride in it. Once during a visit to a London club, I was quite accidentally thrown together for an evening with a marquis from one of Fair Albion’s most famous families. … Read more
Italian music is so synonymous with opera that most music lovers would be hard put to think of any Italian orchestral or chamber music from the last two centuries. The only exception may be the music of Ottorino Respighi, especially his highly colorful tone poems, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. A group of … Read more
A year ago this column was dedicated to a survey of the great Stabat Maters composed over a period of 400 years. For my own Lenten edification, I most often return to two 20th century Stabat Maters, very different in character but equally affecting—those by Francis Poulenc and Arvo Part. Here I offer a number … Read more
The reputation of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) has waxed and waned over the course of this century. In the early part, he was thought by many to be the second most powerful symphonist next to Beethoven, and was certainly the most often performed contemporary composer of that time. In his famous book of 1934, … Read more
While walking through the woods with Beethoven one day in 1817, English composer Cipriani Potter popped the big question: Who did Beethoven, apart from himself, consider the greatest living composer? At first Beethoven seemed startled by the question, then answered, “Cherubini.” This was not the first time Beethoven had expressed himself about Cherubini’s stature. A … Read more
The following are short reviews of new CDs featuring the music of composers covered in this column in the recent past. This is not meant as a best of the year list, but as a way for readers to follow up on composers whose music they have particularly enjoyed and wish to explore further. I … Read more
What can one say of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom everything seems to have already been said? How about, “Beethoven lives!”? This fall, I saw that announcement inscribed on baseball hats and T-shirts to promote the National Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven concert series. Later the same day, I received further evidence of his existence at Sunday … Read more
This year is the bicentennial of Franz Schubert’s birth in 1797. In terms of his achievement there is only one other composer to whom he can be compared: Mozart. Perhaps not as precocious as Mozart, Schubert was nonetheless already an accomplished composer as a teenager. In his brief thirty-one years, he created a life’s work … Read more
In his recently published diary, Polish poet and novelist Czeslaw Milosz bemoaned “the hideous music of the second half of the nineteenth century,” and wondered why composers ever abandoned “that heavenly sculpting in sound as in Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and not only in them; lesser composers, too, partook of that beautiful style.” I have often … Read more
David Diamond (b. 1915) is the last of several generations of great American symphonists who flourished mid-century. This list—beginning with Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, Aaron Copeland, and Walter Piston—continues with William Schuman and Diamond himself. Of them all, Diamond has created the most substantial body of symphonies, which now number eleven, in addition to ballets, … Read more
It took a half-century after the death of Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928) for his music to emerge before a worldwide audience. Much of the credit for its current esteem goes to the advocacy of Sir Charles Mackerras, the British conductor who studied in Czechoslovakia and returned bearing treasures. His superb London opera and orchestral … Read more
An exclusive interview with Robert R. Reilly In June 1995, the eyes of the world turned toward China when a naturalized American was arrested, detained, then tried and convicted for crimes against the Communist state. As the world prepared for the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, suddenly, one man was able to put a face … Read more
Henryk Gorecki in Poland, Arvo Part in Estonia, Peteris Vasks in Latvia, Rodion Shchedrin in Russia (at least in his extraordinary work, The Sealed Angel) and Giya Kancheli in Ukraine—all are composers musically meeting the spiritual needs of their countries for mourning over, and recovering from, having been on the ideological rack of the twentieth … Read more
The Principality of Liechtenstein is hardly larger than the postage stamps it issues. It is a two-ski-run country tucked into the eastern Alps between Switzerland and the Tyrol. I once had the pleasure of visiting Liechtenstein in an official capacity in the midst of the Cold War. I was there to explain U.S. foreign policy … Read more