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...

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...

Looking back, I find that I have attended concerts conducted by the New York Philharmonic’s last six Music Directors. (Gulp, I must be a geezer.)Even though I only saw a small percentage of the total conducting output of each of these men (hope there’ll be a woman at...

When I first encountered Le nozze di Figaro when I was a kid, I couldn’t make much sense of it. Characters jumped out windows, hid in closets, pretended that their feet were injured, and then to end the proceedings, they put on disguises and mistook one another’s...

Most people today seem to care less and less about whether other people are straight, gay, transgender, or transsexual. Perhaps the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage is one factor behind the trend. Another could be the growing public affection for certain gay...

In a future post, I’ll write about some of the free open-enrollment courses that you’ll find on Coursera.com and other online learning platforms. I’m writing about something different today –lectures about classical music that you can watch online any time you...