Music Magg

German Orchestra, Russian Conductor Do Justice to American Show Music in Berlin New Year’s Concert by MARK GABRISH CONLAN             Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Until 1989, when Herbert von Karajan’s tenure came to an abrupt end in April just three months before his death that July, it would have been unthinkable for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to have a principal conductor who wasn’t German or Austrian. Throughout the 20 th century three conductors — Artur Nikisch (who made a fascinating recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with Berlin Philharmonic musicians in 1914), Wilhelm Furtwängler (who had the dodgy, to say the least, task of leading the orchestra through the Nazi years) and Karajan — had ruled the orchestra and dominated the German musical scene. But times changed quite abruptly after Karajan left the orchestra in April 1989 and the plane...

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Last night CBS-TV telecast the 62 nd annual Grammy Awards from the Staples Center in Los Angeles — billed as “the house Kobe Bryant built” because the arena was originally built at least in part to host the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team when Bryant was one of its stars. By a freak of timing, Bryant had just been killed in a helicopter crash that day along with his daughter and seven other people. So the Grammys largely became, in a weird but appropriate way, a tribute to a celebrity and his tragically premature demise even though the music world the Grammys supposedly honor and the sports world in which Bryant thrived are normally miles apart. If nothing else, this gave the Grammy participants and organizers something legitimate to mourn over and took attention away from the latest scandal surrounding the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS...

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Right now I’m listening to a download of the complete Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concert, of which Charles and I watched a cut-down digest version on KPBS on New Year’s night. The Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concerts were performed sporadically since the orchestra was founded in the 1830’s but the tradition we know today was actually launched by conductor Clemens Krauss and Nazi Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, who had been put in charge of Austria following the Nazi takeover in 1938, at the end of 1939. The first concert was a war-relief benefit and also a pleasant diversion from the war news for the Viennese audience. Krauss decided to focus the concert on the music of the Strauss family: founder Johann Strauss, Sr. (whose “Radetzky March,” written as a parade-ground piece for the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, always closes the concert); his three composing children, Johann, Jr...