Collaborators: Three Conductors Who Performed for Hitler

by Barry Lenson | Feb 7, 2014 | Uncategorized

Let’s consider three very important conductors of the war years – Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan and Wilhelm Furtwängler.  They all conducted before Hitler and his ghoulish leadership team, that’s not in doubt.  Yet if we consider their very different...

Renée Fleming, Opera’s Ambassador to the World of Sport

by Barry Lenson | Feb 3, 2014 | Uncategorized

Renée Fleming, Opera Ambassador to the World of SportRenée Flemingdid a top-notch job of singing our national anthem at the Super Bowl last night, don’t you think? She is a heck of a singer.In case you missed it, here it is . . . Today, the day after, tweets are...

Harmonic Rhythm and the Hypnotic Allure of Gluck’s Aulide Overture

by Barry Lenson | Jan 27, 2014 | Uncategorized

Harmonic rhythm is the rate at which the underlying harmonic chords change in a piece of music. If you’re listening to a piece and the chords change at the rate of once a measure (from the tonic [I] to the dominant [V], or whatever), that piece has a faster harmonic...

Why Alan Gilbert is the Greatest New York Philharmonic Music Director of the Last 50 Years: Part Two

by Barry Lenson | Jan 24, 2014 | Uncategorized

On December 10th, I wrote that Alan Gilbert is the finest Music Director that the New York Philharmonic has had during the last five decades.That statement – that he is the finest – logically demands that I comment about the Music Directors who preceded him. So here I...

Let’s Kick the Stuffiness out of Classical Music

by Barry Lenson | Jan 15, 2014 | Uncategorized

I was listening to a classical radio station last week and found one of them again – a pretentious, affected, stuffy announcer who made classical music sound alienating and unattractive. It made me think that if I were a young person just discovering classical music...