This Week in Classical Music: September 28, 2026.  Florent Schmitt and more.  We’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t a very exciting week.  The French composer Florent Schmitt was born on September 28^th of 1870 in the village of Blâmont, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine.  He’s probably better known for shouting Heil Hitler! at the concert featuring the music of the Jewish, and by then exiled, Kurt Weil, than for any of his own compositions.  One still could find some interesting pieces in his output.  Three years ago, we posted a detailed (and we think rather interesting) entry on Schmitt, here, and illustrated it with two pieces: music to the ballet La tragédie de Salomé (here), and his Piano Quintet (here).  This time, we present two of his 1920 Antoine et Cléopâtre suites, written for André Gide's translation of Shakespeare’s play.  The play was staged at the Paris Opera, with the famous dancer Ida Rubinstein as Cleopatra.  Suite no. 1 is here and no. 2 here.

Another Frenchman, Paul Dukas, was also born this week, on October 1^st of 1865, in Paris, into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family.  He’s known for just one work, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, even though he also wrote an opera, a symphony, a piano sonata, and several other pieces.

Two Russian pianists were also born on October 1^st: the great Vladimir Horowitz, in 1903, and Vera Gornostayeva, in 1929.  Horowitz is one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20^th century; Gornostayeva, on the other hand, was mostly known in the Soviet Union, both as a wonderful pianist and a great teacher.  Among her students were Alexander Slobodyanik, Pavel Egorov, Eteri Andjaparidze, Ivo Pogorelich, Sergei Babayan, Vassily Primakov, Lukas Geniušas, Vadym Kholodenko, and many others.  Vassily Primakov is instrumental in bringing her art to Western audiences.

And speaking of musicians born in Russia, David Oistrakh’s birthday is September 30^th.  He was born in Odesa (then Odessa) in 1908.  In the Soviet Union, where rankings were of utmost importance, Oistrakh was considered the greatest violinist.  From age five, he studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky, the founder of the Odessa Violin School (among his pupils were Nathan Milstein, Boris Goldstein, Elizabeth Gilels, Mikhail Fikhtengoltz, Valrey Klimov, winner of the First Tchaikovsky Competition, and many others).  In 1935, Oistrakh won the second All-Union Competition of Musical Performers, then took the second prize in the Henryk Wieniawski International Competition (Ginette Neveu took the first prize), and two years later won the Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels, which made him world-famous.  International music competitions were important to Stalin – for him, they were the way to prove that the Soviet Union was an advanced country, and the young winners, Oistrakh among them, were awarded medals and benefits, such as comfortable apartments, on par with the party officials, something not available to regular citizens.  Oistrakh performed widely in the Soviet Union, and after WWII, became one of the few musicians who were allowed to travel internationally.  One way or another, Oistrakh was a phenomenal violinist who made many exceptional recordings.  Here’s one of them, from 1969: David Oistrakh plays Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of George Szell.

This Week in Classical Music: September 21, 2026.  Bruno Walter at 150, Part 2.  When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30^th of 1933, Bruno Walter was in New York.  With concerts scheduled in Leipzig (he was then principal conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra), he sailed to Germany.  Hitler hated Jewish conductors, Walter in particular, but none of the “official” anti-Jewish laws had yet been passed.  Nonetheless, the latent German antisemitism was spreading all over the country, as if magically released, and flaring up locally.  Leipzig, in the state of Saxony, hadn’t yet been as Nazified as, for example, Prussia; the “coordination laws” that rendered the states powerless hadn’t been passed.  And still, the Chief of Police of the city decided that he wouldn’t permit a Jewish conductor to perform in his city.  The orchestra board tried to resist, timidly, but to no avail: in the end, the concerts were cancelled.  The same thing happened in Berlin, where Walter was about to lead the Berlin Philharmonic.  Walter resigned his posts and left Germany for Austria. 

He stayed in Austria for the next five years, till the Anschluss in March of 1938.  There, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic, staged operas and actively participated in the Salzburg Festival.  In 1936, he became the Artistic Director of the Vienna State Opera, a position held by his beloved teacher and friend, Gustav Mahler (he even occupied the same office).  He also traveled widely, conducting in New York and Amsterdam, where he was made the Permanent Guest Conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.  He was in Amsterdam when Nazi Germany occupied Austria.  In November of 1939, Walter moved to the US. 

He settled in Beverly Hills, where a remarkably talented group of German émigrés, many of them Jewish, had found refuge. Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Korngold, Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Theodor Adorno, and Ernst Lubitsch were just some of the writers, composers, philosophers, performers, and filmmakers who formed this creative community; their arrival greatly enriched the cultural life of the entire country. Over the next 20 years, Walter worked with many leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Citing his age, he declined to accept a position as music director, but he continued to perform and record widely. Walter became a U.S. citizen in 1946 and maintained his home in California, while also traveling to Europe as World War II ended. In 1950, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, 17 years after his concert there had been cancelled by the Nazis. 

Bruno Walter died on February 17^th of 1962, in his home in Beverly Hills.  He was 85.  During his long life, he made many wonderful recordings.  Last week, we presented two that he made in the 1930s.  This week, it’s one of Walter’s latest recordings: Brahms Symphony no. 2, with the New York Philharmonic, made in 1960 (here).  A note: Walter was 21 when Brahms died in 1897; there’s a good chance he had heard this symphony being performed during Brahms’s lifetime. 

This Week in Classical Music: September 14, 2026.  Bruno Walter at 150.  One of the most important conductors and musical figures of the 20^th century, Bruno Walter was born in Berlin 150 years ago tomorrow, on September 15^th of 1876.  His birth name was Bruno Schlesinger, a son of a middle-class Jewish family.  When, at the age of 20 and an aspiring conductor, he came to Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), the director of the local opera, where Bruno was to work, asked him to change his name: Breslau was the capital of Silesia, Schlesien in German, and Schlesinger meant “Silesian,” a common name there.  Bruno suggested several names, and the director, Theodor Löwe, picked Walter. We suspect that there was another reason for the name change: Schlesinger sounded too Jewish.

Walter started as a pianist, but after hearing a concert directed by Hans von Bülow (we mentioned him recently as the first husband of Cosima Liszt, who left von Bülow for Wagner), he switched to conducting.  In 1894, the 18-year-old Walter became an assistant to the then 34-year-old chief conductor of the Hamburg opera, Gustav Mahler.  Despite the difference in age and stature, they became close friends.  Walter was devoted both to Mahler as a person and to his music, and Mahler helped further Walter’s career on several occasions.  Walter was at Mahler’s deathbed on May 18^th of 1911, and conducted the posthumous premieres of Das Lied von der Erde and Symphony no. 9.

In 1901, after working with several provincial opera houses, Walter accepted Mahler’s invitation to join him in Vienna as the assistant conductor of the Hofoper.  In this role, Walter led many performances independently.  Soon he developed a significant reputation and was invited to conduct in several European cities.  Walter stayed in Vienna till 1913 (he became an Austrian citizen in 1911), and then moved to Munich, where he was appointed Royal Bavarian Generalmusikdirektor.  Back then, Munich had three opera houses, the State Opera being the main one, and Walter conducted in all three.  He also led the Music Academy, now the Bavarian State Orchestra (the Music Academy in Munich was, like the Vienna Philharmonic, practically the same orchestra as the one that played in the opera house, except that it performed the symphonic repertoire).  During the Great War, while the Bayreuth Festival was closed, Munich became the center for performances of Wagner’s operas.  Walter also conducted several important premieres, such as Pfitzner’s Palestina and Korngold’s operas.

Even before he resigned from his Munich posts in 1922, Walter regularly conducted the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1923, he toured the US to great acclaim.  In Germany and Austria, his career flourished: he became the Music director of the Salzburg Festival, conducted the Berlin State Opera, made recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic, and led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.  It all ended abruptly in 1933, when the Nazis came to power: Walter's conversion to Christianity didn’t matter to them.

The first, tremendously successful part of Walter’s life was over in a catastrophe, personal and national.  The second, different but equally creative, was about to begin.  We’ll write about it next week.  We have a couple of his recordings made in the 1930s: first, an excerpt from Die Walküre, recorded in 1935.  Great singers, Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann; Bruno Walter conducts the Vienna Philharmonic (here).  And here, recorded three years later with the same orchestra and conductor, is the live performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 9, first movement Andante Comodo (the first commercial recording of this symphony).

This Week in Classical Music: September 7, 2026.  From Cabezon to Pärt: Four Centuries of Music.  This is an interesting week: composers with birthday anniversaries that cover much of the historical span of Western classical music and are spread geographically across Europe. 

On our list, Hernando de Cabezón is the oldest; he was born in Madrid on September 7^th of 1541.  Hernando was the son of a more famous Antonio de Cabezón.  Only a few of his pieces are extant; this Dulce memoriae is one of them (and we think it’s very nice).  Rosemary Thomas is at the harpsichord (here).

Hernando de Cabezón never traveled to Italy, which is somewhat surprising: Italy was the place where European music was happening, and Spaniards often went to Rome to study.  Our next composer, Girolamo Frescobaldi, was not only born in Italy – he was born in Ferrara, which was then the most important musical center outside of Rome.  His birthday is in September of 1583, but the exact date is disputed; it’s either the 9^th or the 13^th.  From the late 15^th to the end of the 16^th centuries, the d’Este court of Ferrara attracted the most important composers of Europe, from Josquin des Prez to Claudio Monteverdi.  Luca Marenzio, Claudio Merulo, John Dowland from England, Giaches de Wert, Carlo Gesualdo – all visited Ferrara during that period.  Luzzasco Luzzaschi was the resident court composer, organist, manager of the famous Concerto delle Donne, and Frescobaldi’s teacher.  The young Frescobaldi became known as a virtuoso harpsichord player while still living in Ferrara (later he moved to Rome, as the popes took over the city and the court moved to Modena).  The harpsichord and organ were Frescobaldi’s favorite instruments.  Here’s Frescobaldi’s Toccata duodecima, from the Primo Libro collection.

The great English composer Henry Purcell was born on September 10^th of 1659, in London.  If Cabezón could be firmly placed in the Renaissance and Frescobaldi somewhere between the Renaissance and Baroque, Purcell’s music is very much of the Baroque era.  Purcell lived only 36 years but, being very prolific, left us a large body of work: an opera, a large amount of music for the theater (called semi-operas), some instrumental music, anthems and songs.  Here’s Purcell’s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.

We’re skipping three composers (we think of them as minor stars): William Boyce, another Englishman, baptized on September 11^th of 1711 (he went deaf later in his life but, like Beethoven, continued composing); a Danish composer, Friedrich Kuhlau, born on the same day in 1786 (Kuhlau is remembered for his pieces for the flute and piano sonatinas, still a staple at music schools); and Clara Schumann, born on September 13^th of 1819.  Clara was Robert’s wife, Brahms’s friend, a virtuoso pianist, a major cultural figure, and a composer.   

That brings us into the 19^th century and two very different composers, Dvořák and Schoenberg.  Antonin Dvořák (born on September 8^th of 1841) was a Romantic nationalist, as were several East European composers of the time.  He was Brahms’s student and, in much of his music, a follower.  Several of his symphonies and the cello concerto remain very popular.  Arnold Schoenberg (born on September 13^th of 1874) couldn’t be more different.  The creator of the atonal and later twelve-tone systems, he was one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century.  Some years ago we had a series of posts about him, here, here, here, and here.

And this leaves us with the last and only living composer in our 400-year-long journey, Arvo Pärt, who was born on September 11^th of 1935.  A minimalist, in a way, he’s closer to Cabezón than any other composer on our list.  But to look back – what a wonderful, tremendously creative ark!

This Week in Classical Music: August 31, 2026.  Leaving Bayreuth behind.  For the previous three weeks, we’ve been engaged with the history of Bayreuth, and there’s still much more to be discovered.  The lives of some of the musicians involved with the Festival – singers and conductors – are worth separate entries.  Others mostly disappeared from our memory but are very much worth getting back to.  We’ll do it in due time, but right now we have to catch up with other notable events.

Itzhak Perlman’s birthday is today; he was born in 1945.  Some months ago, we heard that Perlman was very ill, and are happy to report that he seems to have recovered since then: a month ago he performed in Cleveland, conducting and playing violin a little to the adoring public.  Without a doubt, Perlman is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, violinists of his generation.  We’re not very big on Perlman’s forays into pop or klezmer, but at his best (mostly earlier in his career) he’s incomparable.  In the 1970s, Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy made recordings of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s sonatas, and they’re an absolute pleasure to listen to (these recordings also received a Grammy Award, when classical music Grammys were still worth something).  They also recorded two Prokofiev’s sonatas and Brahms’s First Violin Sonata (here).  Of Beethoven’s sonatas, no. 5 (“Spring”) and no. 9 (“Kreutzer”) are most popular, but here is no 8, and we think the Perlman-Ashkenazy interpretation is pretty close to perfect.  The recording was made in August of 1975, half a century and a year ago.

There are several other birthdays this week.  A big one: Anton Bruckner, who was born in Ansfelden, outside of Linz, on September 4^th of 1824.  One of the greatest symphonists of the 19^th century, he was an unusual man: self-taught as a composer, he was insecure in his talent, dependent on opinions of others, always revising his own work.  He looked provincial in fashionable Vienna.  A lifelong bachelor, he made numerous unsuccessful marriage proposals to very young girls.  He was prone to depression.  He was also deeply religious: he spent many years living in St. Florian monastery (Bruckner was buried there, under the great organ of the basilica). 

We’ve written about Bruckner almost every year; two years ago we celebrated his 200^th anniversary.  In our library, we have practically all of Bruckner’s symphonies, except for the so-called “Symphony 00” (Symphony in F minor), his not very successful youthful undertaking.  But of some symphonies we have only movements, not the complete piece; that’s the case with Symphony no. 6.  We had the first (here) and the third (here) movements, in different interpretations; now we’ve added the second (here) and the fourth, Finale (here).  These movements are from the recording made by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Herbert von Karajan in September of 1979.  The symphony was composed between 1879 and 1881, and as one of Bruckner’s quirks, he dedicated it to his landlord in Vienna, of all people.  Like almost all of Bruckner’s symphonies, it was harshly criticized upon its premiere, especially by his nemesis, the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick.

Also this week: Johann Pachelbel (September 1^st of 1653), Engelbert Humperdinck, on the same day in 1854, Darius Milhaud (September 4^th of 1892), and John Cage, born September 5^th of 1912.

This Week in Classical Music: August 23, 2026.  Bayreuth after Wagner, Part II.  What is it with English girls that they fall in love with Hitler?  Unity Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters, was one, and famous in her time; another, of course, was Winifred Wagner.  Unity Mitford traveled to Germany in 1933 at the age of 18, became obsessed with Hitler, moved to Berlin a year later, and eventually became very close to him, so much so that Eva Braun became jealous of her.  There are connections between Unity and Winifred: Unity’s grandfather was Richard Wagner’s friend and wrote introductions to Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s books.  And Unity accompanied Hitler on several of his visits to Bayreuth, when Winifred was running the festival; it’s quite likely that two of them met.  They would have had much to talk about: both adored Hitler, and both were virulent antisemites.

We interrupted our last week’s narrative at 1939; by then, Winifred Wagner had been running the Festspielhaus for nine years.  That was the last pre-war season: it ended in August, and the war started a month later.  That year, Victor de Sabata conducted Tristan und Isolde, Heinz Tietjen the Ring, and Franz von Hoesslin Parsifal (Hoesslin, a popular conductor, married Erna Liebenthal, a Jewish viola player, and by then lived mostly in exile; we’ll tell his life story later this year). 

Only three seasons followed under Winifred’s stewardship during the war, 1940 through 1942.  Even though she was managing the festival, the Nazi government was in charge.  During those years, all stagings were by Tietjen.  Hoesslin conducted the Ring in 1940; by 1941 the season was shortened, Tietjen conducted the Ring (Max Lorenz was starring).  In 1942 it was Karl Elmendorff’s turn to conduct; that was the last “regular” season till 1951.  There were sporadic concert and opera stagings till 1944; the last one was Meistersinger in 1944.

Americans captured Bayreuth on April 16, 1945; the war was over three weeks later.  That April, Villa Wahnfried was hit by a bomb, but not Festspielhaus.  During the denazification process that followed, Winifred Wagner was banned from running the festival, and management was passed to her sons, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner.  Many of the artists associated with the Festspiel also went through denazification, and the process wasn’t always fair.  For example, Heinz Tietjen, Hermann Goering’s friend and ardent supporter of all Nazi programs who fired all Jewish musicians from the Berlin State Opera, was let go with just a mild reprimand.  The same happened to Herbert von Karajan, a tremendously talented young conductor, who joined the Nazi Party twice!  Wilhelm Furtwängler, on the other hand, went through a difficult denazification process, was ultimately acquitted, but was shunned internationally (Furtwängler never joined the party, clashed with Goebbels many times, and helped scores of Jewish musicians to flee).

Wieland and Wolfgang were the first Wagners free of antisemitism and the ideas of Pan-German art; they were also talented art directors.  The festival didn’t reopen till 1951, when Parsifal was staged, directed by Wieland Wagner and conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch (Karajan replaced him for one evening).  Wieland died in 1966, and Wolfgang continued on his own.  In 2008 he resigned and his daughters, Eva and Katharina, took over (Katharina alone since 2015).  Many wonderful (and some bizarre) stagings were produced in this post-WWII, “New Bayreuth” era; prominent conductors were invited, Karl Böhm, Pierre Boulez, Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim and James Levine among them.  The greatest Wagner singers performed in the Festspielhaus.  These days, controversies are confined to merits of productions, not ideologies.  There’s a dearth of heldentenors, but one hopes that new ones will arrive (Lise Davidsen, on the other hand, is a great Wagnerian soprano, and she already sang in Bayreuth).  This year’s staging of the Ring, with its “AI-curated” background projections, was loudly booed by the audience and panned by critics.  And yet, even if somewhat diminished, the Bayreuth Festspiel keeps going on as one of the most important German cultural institutions, probably not just in Germany but worldwide.