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Category Archives: New York

CARNEGIE HALL | Vienna Philharmonic

Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 8 PM Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Zubin Mehta Hugo Wolf | Italian Serenade Joseph Marx | Lieder: “Hat Dich die Liebe berührt,” “Selige Nacht,” “Zigeuner,” “Barcarole.” Soloist: Angela Maria Blasi, Soprano. Franz Schubert | Symphony No. 9, “Great” Encores: Johann Strauss Jr. | “Tritsch-Tratsch” Polka, Op. 214 & “Unter Donner […]

METROPOLITAN OPERA | Carmen

Carmen was the first opera I knew and loved, before its tunes became too familiar and the eager young self dismissed it as unsophisticated. Last night, in the Zeffirelli production first staged at the Met in 1996, I began to rediscover its musical as well as dramatic intelligence. My memory of Don Jose, formed upon […]

Untimely meditations

We know something about Wittgenstein’s architectural designs, and about Schoenberg’s paintings. Perhaps there’s a book to be written on philosophers who composed music: Rousseau, Nietzsche, Adorno. More on Nietzsche: in this month’s Atlantic Monthly, Terry Castle’s brief omnibus review of “astonishing memoirs by (and about) deeply repellent people” recommends Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth […]

Hot fusion

A couple of months ago, This American Life on NPR featured the extraordinary profile of Chaim, a young Hasidic Jew who redubbed himself “Curly Oxide” and became something of a Williamsburg punk-rock star before marrying and returning to the life of Hasidim. Along similar lines, sans reversion, an emerging Hasidic reggae star of dubious talent […]