Articles
6207 results
Page 486
Unindicted war criminal to play at Mann Center
How low can the Orchestra go? Will you welcome, please, Condoleeza Rice!
No one seriously pretends that Condoleeza Rice is qualified to play the piano in public, much less with an orchestra that has played with Rubinstein and Horowitz. Her notoriety alone, as the Bush administration's prime enabler, has attracted the Mann's programmers.
Articles
4 minute read
"Vincere' and the pitfalls of passion
Going belly-up for Mussolini
How could a society nurtured by Dante, Michelangelo, Verdi and Puccini fall in love with a tacky bully like Benito Mussolini? Marco Bellochio's remarkable Vincere goes a long way toward supplying the answer.
Articles
4 minute read
Listening to music: Aesthetics or psychology?
Right brain, left brain: How do you listen to music?
What constitutes beauty in music? How do the conscious and unconscious interact when we make aesthetic judgments? Is a Beethoven quartet in some way a more worthy experience than Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians?
"Braving the New World' by Rebecca Davis
Orwell and Huxley meet their match
Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World shaped the course of modern thought. But Rebecca Davis's choreography has gone those cerebral works one better, enabling us to see and feel how totalitarian regimes work in practice.
Articles
4 minute read
"American Idiot' on Broadway
Adolescence after 9/11 (but before Bernie Madoff)
Is American Idiot just another punk rock jukebox musical fouling the Great White Way? Or is it an earnest and even passionate attempt to recapture a moment a few years ago when the concept of “coming of age” changed irretrievably?
American Idiot. Musical based on the album by Green Day; Michael Mayer directed. St. James Theatre, 244 West 46th St., New York. (800) 432-7250 or americanidiotonbroadway.com.
Articles
4 minute read
"Romeo and Juliet' at Annenberg
Romeo at the grass roots
The co-producers of this touring Romeo and Juliet have targeted communities across America and, in particular, young audiences. But something got lost in the transition.
Articles
3 minute read
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New light on Beethoven's Fifth
The pedestrian truth about Beethoven's Fifth
Where do musicians find their inspiration? A letter from Beethoven to his musicologist second cousin Moishe Gunzburg, recently discovered in a closet in my West Philadelphia apartment, sheds new and startling light on the origins of the great composer's most famous symphony.
Articles
3 minute read
New music and so-called music 'lovers'
So you call yourself a music lover?
Is it really true that most music lovers dislike "new music"? As a critic for the past 25 years, I can attest that new music is becoming more accessible, and its audiences are expanding. This is an encouraging development. It means that music lovers are opening their minds to the creative voices of our time.
Articles
3 minute read
McPherson's "Shining City' by Theatre Exile (3rd review)
Shining city, damaged souls
Conor McPherson's Shining City might more fittingly be titled Island of Lost Souls. Excellent performances, particularly by Scott Greer, can't quite lift the play out of its existential funk, nor can a surprise ending that left the audience gasping.
Articles
4 minute read
Otto Dix at Neue Galerie in New York
To hell and halfway back: The artist as survivor
Otto Dix (1891-1969), a pivotal figure in the revival of 20th-Century German art, receives the first American show dedicated solely to a major sampling of his work at New York's Neue Galerie. It isn't a full-blown retrospective, but it does focus undistracted attention on a man who created some of his century's most iconic— and disturbing— images.
Articles
7 minute read