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December 07, 2009

Alex Ross on Dudamel...

New Yorker | Read Full Story >

The classical-music world has a fraught relationship with fame. On the one hand, people are always pining for the days when Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, and Leontyne Price dominated the airwaves and appeared on the covers of magazines. On the other hand, whenever a contemporary classical musician brushes up against celebrity—this usually entails a segment on “60 Minutes,” a Rolex ad, a photograph in People, and possibly the final slot on the “Tonight Show”—skeptics start to worry that the supposed avalanche of hype will wipe out any trace of artistic integrity. Such anxiety is not entirely misplaced: Luciano Pavarotti went from being the finest lyric tenor of the modern era to serving as the punch line for fat jokes.



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