Michael Linton

What is this century’s greatest piece of music? Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ? Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron ? Britten’s Peter Grimes ? Bernstein’s West Side Story ? Carter’s Piano Sonata? I don’t know the answer to the question. “Great” is hard . . . . Continue Reading »

Some revolutions are noisy affairs from the start. The riot with which the Parisians greeted the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring comes immediately to mind (although it was Nijinsky’s wildly modern choreography more than Stravinsky’s music that provoked the brouhaha). But . . . . Continue Reading »

“Outrage!” “Shocking insensitivity!” “Boycott!” Art, in recent years, has raised any number of protests, but this time it isn’t Jesse Helms and his cronies complaining about taxpayer-funded obscenity. Now it’s the radical left, howling over Angie and Debbie Winans’ anti-gay gospel . . . . Continue Reading »

For musicians, Christmas means Messiah. This is not a comment upon musicians’ religiosity, but rather upon their finances. Messiah, Handel’s Messiah, is to America’s choral societies and orchestras what La Bohème is to its opera houses and Nutcracker to its ballets: the guaranteed full house . . . . Continue Reading »

Centurions ride through the audience on white Arabian horses, Pilate feeds his pet tiger while interrogating Jesus, and the Resurrection is accompanied by a light show and fireworks; let it never be said that Robert Schuller is intimidated by Disneyland just down the street. The “Glory of . . . . Continue Reading »

Celebrating twenty-five years at the world’s greatest opera house, the New York Metropolitan Opera closed its season last year with a well deserved gala honoring conductor James Levine. During his tenure, Levine has raised the Met orchestra to a position where it is universally acclaimed as the . . . . Continue Reading »