Michael Steinberg, who died of cancer last Sunday morning in Minneapolis, was one of the great voices raised in defense of high culture, and Boston was lucky that he was based here for so many years.From 1964 to 1976, he was the Boston Globe's powerfully outspoken and phenomenally well-informed music critic. After a particularly scathing review of a 1969 Boston Symphony Orchestra concert led by the generally worshiped Carlo Maria Giulini — Steinberg wrote that if Danny Kaye and Victor Borge had conducted "with such crazed dislocation of tempo and with such prodigality in expression of tragic suffering and deep knee-bends, the audience would have been in stitches" — the BSO threatened to bar him from Symphony Hall. But the Globe stood by him, and he continued to hold musical performances and programming in Boston to the highest technical, interpretive, and musicological standards — until the BSO co-opted him. He then served as its director of publications and program annotator from 1976 to 1979.
The BSO continued to use his program notes even after he moved on to the San Francisco Symphony (where he was also artistic advisor), Minneapolis (Jorja Fleezanis, that orchestra's concertmaster, was his second wife), and New York Philharmonic orchestras. He maintained his BSO connection as its most popular pre-concert lecturer. His program notes are collected in three Oxford Press volumes (The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks), which are bibles of profoundly insightful and eloquent historical and musical information.
He was a significant mentor to the next generation of Boston critics. (Thank you, Michael! Former Globe and Phoenix critic Richard Buell told me, "He was the most important person in my life outside of my own family.") One could regret that he never completed a long-planned book on Elliott Carter or a collection of E.T.A. Hoffmann translations. But what a generously full and valuable life he has completed now.
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One of my most profound musical experiences took place when I was still a graduate student.
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- Mixed blessings
The Boston Symphony Orchestra began the new year with one of its most disappointing concerts since music director James Levine took over.
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Last week's Boston Symphony concert was a snaggle of contradictions. British guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth was substituting for the exciting but erratic Russian maestro Yuri Termirkanov, who'd cancelled all his American appearances.
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Ten-best lists usually come at the end of the season, but this year the Phoenix has asked its critics to provide a calendar of 10 events that, at least on paper, might wind up on an end-of-season Top 10. Boston, in case you didn't know it, is a great city for classical music, so it's not easy to keep the list short. But here goes.
- A song to sing, O!
Seiji Ozawa returns to the BSO, Boston Early Music Festival's 17th-century chamber operas, the Bostonians' Yeomen of the Guard
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Opera is the big word for 2009.
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- Schnozzola!
By the time you read this, you've either seen or missed one of Boston's most exciting opera productions, Opera Boston's brilliant version of Shostakovich's The Nose .
- Phenomenal!
Living for a century is still a milestone; for a great and still-productive artist to do so is virtually unheard of.
- Pilgrimage
Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony is a stunner. And Boston Symphony Orchestra guest conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic's music director designate led a stunning performance.
- Less
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