Missouri Classical Music News

Polish-born Artur Rodzinski was the music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947. He was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself on a farm in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted.

Rodzinski said that God told him to hire young Leonard Bernstein, of Lawrence, Massachusetts and Harvard, to be the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Wisely acting on this advice in the summer of 1943, Rodzinski was responsible in more than one way for what radio audiences heard on Sunday, Nov. 14 1943, when they tuned in to their regular Philharmonic radio broadcast. "Good afternoon, United States Rubber Company again invites you to Carnegie Hall, to hear a concert of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra [sic], of which Artur Rodskinski is musical director. Bruno Walter, who was to have conducted this afternoon, is ill, and his place will be taken by the young American born assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony, Leonard Bernstein."

As Austria and the world gear up for a jubilee year of concerts and celebrations marking [Mozart's] birth, his hometown of Salzburg is on the verge of becoming Schmaltzburg.

. . .

Shelves are stacked high with bottles of Mozart beer and wine, Mozart baby bottles, Mozart milkshakes, Mozart knickers, Mozart umbrellas and Mozart jigsaw puzzles. There's Mozart torte ("a symphony of tastes," its creator promises) and even Mozartwurst, a sausage of beef, pork and pistachios courtesy of a Salzburg butcher who claims the recipe came to him in a dream.

Complaints of excessive kitsch aside, it's a fitting frenzy of tribute for a musical genius who gave the universe "Don Giovanni," "The Marriage of Figaro," "The Magic Flute," his haunting "Requiem" and hundreds of other works.

"Mozart is back - big time," said Ilse Blank, who works for a Vienna tuxedo rental shop that's scrambling to dress clients who want to look like Amadeus at balls and parties.

Poking fun at the unprecedented hype, the organizers of Mozart 2006 events in Vienna have come up with a playful logo: a famed 18th-century portrait of the composer doctored to show his eyes rolling back in his head.

While looking at some proofs, it occurred to me that their structure resembled musical scores, so as an experiment I decided to see what they sounded like. Essentially, the musical notes correspond to the depth of the proof tree as the proof is constructed by the proof verifier. A fast higher note is produced for each step in the construction of a formula. A sustained lower note is produced when the formula is matched to a previous theorem or earlier proof step, to result in a new proof step . . .

Is it "music"? I guess that's for you to decide. It is richly structured, with underlying themes that on the one hand seem to repeat but on the other hand are interestingly unpredictable, teasing your mind as the piece progresses.

* Academic Approach
The PSO from the eyes of students and educators
* Behind the Scenes
Musicians, staff, conductors and board members describe concerts from the inside out.
* Composer's Corner
Commentry from living composers
* PSO Patrons
Long-time concert-goers share what keeps them coming back
* Testing the Waters
First season concert-goers

Barrie Kosky's Wagner is not Wagner's Wagner. The audience at Saturday's new production of "Lohengrin" thought so too.

At the end of a five-hour performance, there was prolonged applause and "bravas" for the soloists, choir, orchestra and conductor. But Kosky, the director, was roundly booed, along with stage and lighting designer Klaus Gruenberg and Alfred Mayerhofer, responsible for costumes.

Most of their work was neither jarring nor controversial. It was worse _ irrelevant, leaving the audience little choice but to concentrate on the mastery of the conductor Semyon Bychkov and the soloists Johan Botha, Soile Isokoski, Falk Struckmann, Janina Baechle, Kwangchul Youn and Adrian Eroed. They _ and an alternately feisty, majestic or tremulous orchestra _ wove a magical musical tapestry.