For all its much-hyped and massively expensive high-tech stage machinery, the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold seems surprisingly underpowered, as if so much money and mental power went into the behemoth contraption…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
There are few things worth giving up a perfect fall afternoon in Upstate New York for, but Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman with live music is one of them. A dinner break and a return for…
Being present at a musical performance of unexpected greatness is even more memorable than having high expectations met. When I heard Rostropovich with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa in 1985 playing the Dvorak Cello…
An increasing number of drawing-room revolutionaries have begun to discuss their strategies to overthrow that despot, the musical score. Rather than treat the notes on the page with slavish admiration, these musicians — Uri Caine’s…
The drive from Ithaca, New York, at the southern end of Lake Cayuga to the old-and-new money town of Skaneateles at the northern end of Skaneateles Lakes takes a little less than an hour, but…
Before I Am Love, directed by Luca Gaudagnino and released into American movie theaters this summer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams had never written a soundtrack. In a way he still hasn’t, since…
There is nothing more sincere than a guitar. A few simple chords, plucked or picked one note after the other at a gently swaying tempo summon reflexive feelings of trust, comfort, love, and hope. This…
Bach never went in the ocean for a refreshing dip. He never even set eyes on the Atlantic. He could have made it to the North Sea at Lübeck during his sojourn there to learn…
Bach’s sons remained in the homeland — until the last, Johann Christian. Born in 1735, he was called, though even from beyond the grave, father Bach might have regretted that second name after his youngest…