Programming

Programming is a practice that falls somewhere in the cracks between high art, alchemy and sausage making. There are two kinds of decisions orchestras make that greatly overshadow all other concerns. 1-       What are we going to play 2-       Who’s going to play it...

The ultimate test of musical genius

So… how does one identify true musical genius in the 21st Century? Is it a composer with a new harmonic vocabulary? A conductor with photographic memory? A violinist with perfect pitch? A pianist with ten brains for ten fingers? I, for one, look to poetry. Magnetic...

Don’t expect it to get any better

I was rehearsing the first Shostakovich Piano Concerto yesterday, and it occurred to me that we tend to think of composers careers in a rather naïve way. Almost invariably, we tend to hear about composers “developing” or even “improving” throughout their careers, but...