The press is piling on in the day and a half since the Metropolitan Opera announced that James Levine is withdrawing from the fall portion of the company’s 2011-12 season. A few are worth a read, including Zachary Wolffe at the NY Observer, who writes:
Continue reading Classical Press Piles on Levine Story (… plus a bonus zing at DG)
His recent post on the best Bruckner recordings on CD comes pretty close to mine (though I’m not as sanguine about the Welser-Möst/Cleveland Orchestra Bruckner DVDs I’ve seen). Besides, how can I not like a guy whose first LP was Jascha Horenstein’s mighty Bruckner Ninth on Vox?
I’ll add two alternate first choices to Alex’s short list: the Eighth with Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig on Querstand, and the Ninth with Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic on Melodiya.
How can I not steer you to a blog post at Classical Iconoclast that touches on Christmas greetings from the late Karlheinz Stockhausen and takes a controversial swipe at Alex Ross’s much-praised The Rest Is Noise?