by Paul E. Robinson

George Szell: A Life in Music
by Michael Charry
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011
412 pages
One of the conducting icons of my youth was George Szell. I had the good fortune to live within a few hundred miles of his home base in [...]

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by Paul E. Robinson

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has always been an enterprising organization, and especially so with impresario Ernest Fleishmann in charge. Today, under the leadership of current president Deborah Borda and Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, it is breaking new ground in all kinds of ways; for example, Dudamel is bringing the concept of El Sistema [...]

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by Paul E. Robinson

The First Emperor
Placido Domingo/Elizabeth Futral/Paul Groves/Michelle DeYoung/Wu Hsing Kuo/Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Chorus and Ballet
Composer/Conductor: Tan Dun
Director: Zhang Yimou
EMI DVD 215129-9
After spending several weeks in China earlier this year, it took me some time to absorb what I had seen and heard and to properly evaluate the enormity of the changes taking [...]

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