Category Archives: Music
Music as an Art – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th August 2024Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020) was an English philosopher and polymath. His knowledge of music was deep and wide. He wrote two operas and one libretto. He could analyze a musical composition down to its most granular detail. The book discussed here was one of his last (published in 2018) and has an odd title. Writing…
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Great American Composers – George Gershwin
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th August 2024I’m going to write a series of short articles on some of America’s great composers. I’ll start with the greatest – George Gershwin (1898-1937). Someone said were it not for his death from a brain tumor at age 38 that he’d have become the American Verdi. I think that if anything this assessment is an…
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Invention and the Arts
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th June 2024Art, in all its guises, is of course an invention. Its evolution was governed by the internal manipulation common to any human endeavor. But it was also greatly altered and influenced by inventions not initially intended to relate to art. Consider the discovery of electricity, most famously by Benjamin Franklin but by others as well,…
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The Ride of the Valkyries
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd June 2024With the possible exception of the Bridal March from Lohengrin, the music that opens Act 3 of Die Walküre – The Ride of the Valkyries – is the most familiar written by Richard Wagner. The Ride takes around eight minutes, and begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment…
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Yo-Yo Ma Headlines Lubbock Symphony’s All Dvořák Program
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th June 2024It’s been 12 years since Yo-Yo Ma appeared as a guest artist with the LSO. His return last night was greeted with extravagant enthusiasm by a sold-out audience at the Buddy Holly Hall. The entire program was devoted to the music of Antonin Dvořák. The program’s first half consisted of two Slavonic Dances, the finale…
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LSO Performs Mahler’s Symphony #2
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th April 2024Mahler’s Second Symphony, The Resurrection Symphony, is one of the great works of Western Art. Titanic in its scale and overwhelming in its inspiration the demands it makes on a symphony orchestra are beyond formidable. Its stature is unsurpassed in the orchestral literature. Last night the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra performed the work in the First…
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San Francisco Ballet Goes to the Dogs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd February 2024Some things are more eloquent than words. The brief video below serves no purpose other than mirth, though it shows that the dancers by the Bay have a sense of humor in posting the brief interlude. There’s always considerable risk when animals are assigned a part in a live performance. There is a great story…
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Unfinished Operas
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th December 2023The usual reason an opera by a distinguished composer remains incomplete is death. Sometimes, however, the composer loses interest, or as in one of the examples below suffers from gargantuan writer’s block. A few examples of unfinished operas are presented here. A few are very well known, others barely a footnote. They are presented in…
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Maestro – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th December 2023Bradley Cooper has made a movie based on the life of conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife the actress Felicia Montealegre. Cooper, who also co-wrote and directed the film, has taken the greatest pains to make the two protagonists seem identical to the duo they portray. Cooper has so gotten into the Bernstein character that…
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Justin Peck – Choreographer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st October 2023Opera and Ballet have a lot in common. Both are performing arts typically presented in a theater with an orchestral accompaniment. They both typically tell stories and have sets and costumes. Yet modern opera struggles to survive while new ballets thrive. The disparity is easily explained. Opera, obviously, has both music and words, but the…
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