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Do Dictators Have Anything to Fear from Musicians?
Last December, I wrote a speculative piece for First Things Online, regarding the upcoming visit of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to the People's Republic of North Korea. I was responding to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by the critic Terry Teachout, who thought that such a visit would constitute a serenade for Kim Jong-Il, and a betrayal to that tyrant's victims....
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Ears to Hear
Sometimes my worlds collide. I attended a concert this past weekend...a suburban orchestra conducted by a friend of mine. We hadn’t gotten together in a while and it was decided that we’d meet up after the concert for some drinks to catch up. I hadn’t realized that it was a pops concert (not my thing generally)....
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Auf Wiedersehen, Karl!
Recently, I was home sick catching up on my reading. Flipping through an accumulation of The Economist magazines, I began in the back with the obituaries...a singular and fascinating specialty of this publication. What greeted me was the obituary of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died December 5 at the age of 79.
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The First Pitch
I can recall the first time that I heard ‘classical’ music. My mother had just retrieved the long disabled record player back from the repair shop and put on an LP to test it out. For a kid of seven or eight, the novelty of the thing must have brought me into the room to see how this contraption worked. On the A side of the record was a recording of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Oscar Levant as the soloist.
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Current Issue
Issue 72
Memoir by Lauren Winner, Poetry by James Harpur, Art by Guy Chase and Adrian Wiszniewski
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