MUNICH — I recently had the pleasure of visiting this German city for a weekend of music, museums, and multiple…

WASHINGTON — Last week in this space I wrote about culture and how essential it is to the politics of…

What do we possess today as “art”? A faked music, filled with artificial noisiness of massed instruments; a failed painting,…

Valery Gergiev is famous for two things. First, according to music critics who supposedly know about such things, he’s a…

This October saw the Covid-delayed staging of one of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions, the 18th Chopin Competition, originally…

Far be it from me to object to the Allegretto — the one in Beethoven’s Seventh, of course, the one…

Increasing charges of systemic racism have been levied against the classical music tradition since the death of George Floyd, and…

Election Day! A great day, and often a brutal one. What can we do about it? Libby commented on my…

According to Vox, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is now a symbol of white supremacy and classism. As Beethoven’s Fifth itself would…

French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal was on to something when he said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s…