1965

Abstract This chapter presents twenty-six reviews and essays written by Michael Steinberg and published in the Boston Globe between January 3 and December 21, 1965. The first selection, Steinberg’s response to a letter to the editor from the BSO’s board president, details his views of a critic’s responsibility. Other subjects include the implications of cuts made by conductors to musical scores; the much-belated world premiere of Ives’s Symphony No. 4 at Carnegie Hall; the American premieres of Nono’s opera Intolleranza 1960, Stockhausen’s Groups for Three Orchestras, and Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra (one of several articles on Rostropovich); the Boston premiere of Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano; Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto (first a preview article, then a review of BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein’s performance); Wagner’s Lohengrin at Tanglewood and the validity of opera-in-concert; the challenges of mastering the organ; and the relevance of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Also reviewed are performances by Malcolm Frager, Claude Frank, Ernst Haefliger, Rudolf Serkin, Paul Zukofsky and Gilbert Kalish (playing Ives), the Moscow Philharmonic with Kiril Kondrashin and Galina Vishnevskaya, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic playing Mahler symphonies, Messiah under Robert Shaw in Cleveland, the opening of the Boston Pops spring season under Arthur Fiedler, and the Beatles film Help!