BOSTON — Lady Gaga was joined by Oprah Winfrey, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her mom at Harvard University on Wednesday for the launch of the singer's Born This Way Foundation.

In one part of the lengthy forum, Gaga told the crowd assembled at Harvard's Graduate School of Education that parental involvement in their children’s lives is essential.

“It’s okay to say ‘you can’t use that website’ or ‘you shouldn’t be on that program’ or ‘this kind of language is inappropriate’ or ‘stay away from' — educating your kids about social media today is as important as anything,” she said.

The singer sported a monochrome look: basic black with a wild headpiece and shoes.

The members of the Twitterverse who watched in person and online had largely positive reactions to the event, with many praising Gaga's message as "powerful" and "inspiring." (Also, they liked her mom.)

The Born This Way Foundation addresses self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development issues through research, education and advocacy. 

The classical music season has seen some dynamic performances over the last few months, but they took place alongside some unexpected developments.

Jeremy Eichler and Brian McCreath talk about a few of the low and high points.

Part 1: Opera Boston, Bemjamin Zander and the New England Conservatory, and Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

For more about Opera Boston, visit the Boston Globe, with reporting and analysis by Geoff Edgers and history by Matthew Guerrieri (registration required).

Classical New England has video from Calderwood Hall, and for more about concerts scheduled there, visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Musuem.

Part 2: Continued cancellations at the BSO, and looking forward to a few events coming up

For Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts on-demand, visit BSO Radio, and for tickets to upcoming concerts, including the week wtih guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, visit the BSO.

For information about performances of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, visit the Handel and Haydn Society. For more about Tan Dun's Water Passion After St. Matthew, visit the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Full conversation, with additional commentary on the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Opera Boston, Calderwood Hall, and more

(image of Boston skyline:  Boston Skyline At Night By Archon Fung (Arfung at en.wikipedia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Thomas Quasthoff (image by Kass Kara, courtesy of the artist)

An extravagantly talented bass-baritone takes an unfortunate early retirement at age 52.

Devastating news came yesterday: One of the world's great geniuses of song, bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, announced that he was retiring from concert life at age 52 due to persistent health concerns. He had announced last September that he was cancelling his singing engagements through the end of 2011; now that decision has been made permanent. With an incredibly empathic feel for text and a tone my colleague Tom Huizenga rightly called "burgundy-colored," Quasthoff's presence onstage will be very sorely missed.

In the official announcement of his retirement released by his management, Quasthoff said, "After almost 40 years, I have decided to retire from concert life. My health no longer allows me to live up to the high standard that I have always set for my art and myself. I owe a lot to this wonderful profession and leave without a trace of bitterness."

I first met Quasthoff in the mid-1990s, during the period he was signed to RCA Victor Red Seal. I worked at one of his label's sister divisions, and later had occasion to interview him a couple of times. He was always a gracious, warm and sweet artist with a ready laugh.

His presence and demeanor were a consistent and utter refutation of all the factors that could have made him bitter and resigned to a lesser life: his profound physical disabilities, difficult childhood (with the first three years of his life spent in a hospital) and later struggles that included being denied admission to a conservatory in his native Germany because he was unable to play the piano, which was considered an unbreakable degree requirement.

When his mother was pregnant with him, she took thalidomide, a prescription drug that caused serious birth defects. As Quasthoff wrote of his body in his 2008 memoir, The Voice: "Here is a 4-foot, 3-inch concert singer without knee joints, arms or upper thighs, with only four fingers on the right hand and three on the left. He has a receding hairline, a blond pig head and a few too many pounds around his hips."

Quasthoff plans to continue teaching at Berlin's Hanns Eisler Academy of Music and at master classes around the world, and he will continue as artistic director of the "Das Lied" international song competition he founded in 2009. He also will continue to host his "Thomas Quasthoff's Night Talks" series at the Konzerthaus Berlin, in which he leads conversations with celebrities from politics and the arts. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The dynamic pianist escaped the Nazis to build a brilliant career.

The Bulgarian-born pianist Alexis Weissenberg, whose musical talent as a youngster probably saved his life and his mother's, died Sunday at age 82.

Weissenberg's career swayed high and low. At its peak, he made recordings with Leonard Bernstein and Herbert Von Karajan and was hailed as a distinctive virtuoso. At its rock-bottom, Weissenberg, weary from too much fame too fast, took a 10 year break, reemerging with a Paris recital in 1966 and successful performances of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Karajan.

Weissenberg was born in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, in 1929, and began piano lessons at age three. As a ten-year-old, he gave his first recital.

It was in 1941 during the war, as he recalls on his web site, that he and his mother packed a small bag, a few sandwiches and an accordion and fled for the border with fake ID papers:

My mother was interrogated during two infinite hours, after which we were placed in an improvised concentration camp with a probable design to a final destination, Poland and extermination. It is unnecessary here to describe the three months we spent there, it was no different from other camps, except that there were no tortures and no murder. Only three elements remained constant: silence, singing, and crying. The German officer who was given the responsibility of our bunker happened to like music enormously.

Luck is a nasty miscalculation which sometimes produces tiny miracles. Our unexpected piece of luck was a musical instrument, the dear old accordion. The German officer adored Schubert. He let me play in the late afternoon, and would come and listen from time to time. I remember him seated in a corner, near nobody, stone faced, expressionless, suddenly getting up and leaving with the same abruptness as when he walked in.

It was the same officer who decided one chaotic day to come and fetch us hurriedly, bring us to the station, push our belongings through the door, literally throw the accordion through the window of the compartment, and say to my mother, in German "Viel Glück" ["Good Luck"] and vanish. Half an hour later the train crossed the border. Nobody asked for a passport.

Weissenberg reportedly had long suffered from Parkinson's disease. He died in Lugano, Switzerland where his family had moved.

If you have any favorite Weissenberg memories, please tell us about them in the comments section.

You can also read a more detailed obituary here from our colleague Brian Wise at WQXR. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

His most ambitious work was a 75-minute oratorio called “Trinity Mass,’’ addressing the anxieties of the nuclear age, its name taken from the test site of the first atomic bomb. For the piece’s Cambridge premiere in 1986, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra was joined by four local choruses. The libretto collected antiwar texts taken from Native American prayers, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and the speeches of Albert Einstein, among other sources.

Typically for Dr. Yannatos, the score’s musical language was extremely eclectic, drawing inspiration from Gregorian chant, Japanese scales, gospel harmonies, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

From the Harvard Crimson:

Yannatos was aware that his students, experienced and well-versed in musical talent, had come from a variety of backgrounds, said Norman L. Letvin ’71, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who played in Yannatos’ orchestra all four years while he was an undergraduate.

“He had the ability of finding the right mix of how to push students and really understanding that it’s hard to switch gears as a student,” Letvin said.

Victor M. Lee ’05, a former HRO violinist, remembers the encouragement that Yannatos would provide in pushing the orchestra forward to try new types of music.

Yannatos hosted listening parties at his home after every performance, where students from the orchestra would be invited to listen to the soundtrack of their latest performance. At the listening party for Yannatos’ final performance, a group of orchestra members showed up in turtlenecks as a tribute to their outgoing mentor, Tsen said.

For full obituaries, visit the Boston Globe and Harvard Crimson.

Hear performances:

  Mozart - Overture to The Magic Flute

  Yannatos - Symphony No. 3:  Prisms

Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, James Yannatos, conductor
Recorded at Sanders Theater, Harvard University, on Oct. 31, 1998

BOSTON — The Boston Pops' 126th season is now underway, with a special focus on the American Songbook.

That's a phrase we've all heard — but what does it actually mean? The American Songbook encompasses a broad range of music, which some people say extends as far back as the 1800's and can go into somewhat contemporary times.

Singer and anthropologist Michael Feinstein says much of the American Songbook explores love and romance in clever, witty words and playful tunes.

"Most songs are songs of romance and love and the songs from the Golden Age, the '20s, '30s and 40s, were a panoply of extraordinary brilliant, clever expressions of romance. These songwriters were always trying to find different ways of expressing that oft-expressed emotion. And the wit and the humor still tickles people," Feinstein said.

And that's what conductor Keith Lockhart says he's really looking for — music that still tickles, that still resonates. Classics. 

"To, me the definition of classic is something that reaches somebody for whom it was not originally intended. Shakespeare’s plays for example are an incontrovertible example of that. But also the songs of Gershwin, the songs of Porter," Lockhart said. "Things that people now, who were not alive when either of those people died still sing, still understand, still love." 

The Boston Pops are especially well-equipped to explore this canon. The Pops is older than the songbook itself, and for decades it has literally given voice to the genre with performers like Rosemary Clooney.

Click the player above to hear WGBH's Bob Seay's full interview with Greater Boston's Jared Bowen on the Boston Pops' 126th season.

Friday, May 6, 2011 at 8pm

ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
THE NEW BRANDENBURGS
[program notes]

AARON JAY KERNIS
Concerto with Echoes (inspired by Brandenburg No. 6)
MELINDA WAGNER
Little Moonhead (inspired by Brandenburg No. 4)
SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
Sea Orpheus (inspired by Brandenburg No. 5)
CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS
Muse (inspired by Brandenburg No. 3)
STEPHEN HARTKE
A Brandenburg Autumn (inspired by Brandenburg No. 1)
PAUL MORAVEC
Brandenburg Gate (inspired by Brandenburg No. 2)

The air is soft as summer. 76 degrees. I feel like I've finally begun to breathe again. (Winter, I've decided, is a prolonged period of shallow breaths.)

Many of us have never been here, and Madrid has seduced and surprised us. The city itself has three million inhabitants, with another three million in its suburbs. Something I can't explain creates an atmosphere of contentment - even in the lively and ever-present crowds (and even with political turmoil, economic distress and a good dose of corruption woven into the whole tapestry).

Our guide throughout the trip is Mervin Samuel, a happy transplant to Spain from Great Britain some forty years ago. He now has the country in his veins. Along with him, for the Madrid portion of our stay, is our casually brilliant guide Mauricio, who tells stories about Kings, Queens, El Greco and Goya as if he knew them all personally.

Is it really possible for the world to look like this?



That's ancient Toledo, home of the great painter El Greco for the latter part of his life. Toledo is on a mountaintop, surrounded on three sides by a bend in the Tagus River, with its spectacular Gothic cathedral that could send you away hyperventilating if you don't keep your eyes from taking in too many of its gilded spectacles, like this piece from the Cathedral.



After breathing in the sunny air and deep blue skies of Toledo, we headed to the Auditorio Nacional de Musica, a fairly recent concert hall with seats surrounding the stage and a beautiful, clear acoustic.



We finished the evening with sore palms from all the clapping.

In 1966, the jury of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, headed by Emil Gilels, unanimously awarded Grigory Sokolov the Gold Medal. Now 61, he is a pianist held in the deepest regard by other pianists around the globe, and he is passionately followed by millions of pianophiles who know that he doesn't travel to England or the United States. It's a rare thrill to hear him live. We were a lucky bunch tonight.



Sokolov spends little time bowing, and even less time waiting to begin. He started tonight with Bach's Italian Concerto, a piece that I've found frequently unrewarding because it's such a challenge for pianists to find the purity of energy and sound that it needs. Tonight I heard more than I knew was there!

The outer movements are bursting with rhythmic vivacity. The voices are gleefully woven together with a bright, propulsive cheer that requires exquisite control and understanding. Sokolov has a unique way of giving his weight to the piano for a round and burnished sound, while teasing the hammers into hyper-speeds with the quickness and height of his hand gestures. These two ingredients make his playing intensely communicative, so that the piano can speak, sing, whisper and roar in a way I've never quite heard before.

The middle movement of the Italian Concerto features a soft, insistent throbbing in the left hand that Sokolov urged from the piano like a distant and vulnerable heartbeat. Above the pulse sails one of Bach's unending, golden lines - always close to heartbreak, but ever intact. Sokolov never got too close to the breaking point. Maybe he could have ventured a little nearer the edge, but the effect was gorgeous. I felt as if I'd witnessed a silver thread making its way through the stillness of a sad episode in a larger life.

The last movement was a riot of pearly, thrusting scales. And within them, instantaneous changes of dynamic and surprises of balance, all within the frame of a sturdy and joyous beat.

Sokolov's quick hand gestures are magically partnered with a subtle and expert use of the soft and sostenuto pedals. The dance the hammers do give the music a warm and crystalline energy that worked beautifully in the French Suite in B minor, BWV 831. It also worked beautifully in Schumann. The Humoresque, written when Schumann was 29, is full to overflowing with the swings of mood and temperament that make him so intriguing. Sokolov let the melancholy unfurl in Schumann's touching tunes and then dug into the treacherous dotted leaps with a kind of perfect abandon. On top of it all, if it matters, he didn't miss a note.

After the Four Pieces, Op. 32, also by Schumann, the audience began a round of insistent cheering that brought Sokolov back six times. He played Scarlatti, Couperin, Brahms, and two Chopin preludes. If the lights hadn't been brought up after the sixth encore, they'd have demanded six more, I'm sure!

I'll have more soon - Segovia, the Prada Museum, the birth of Modern Art, and Zarzuela! In the meantime, here are a few more photos of Madrid and Toledo. The first is a scenic view of Toledo. The second is one of the many gorgeous fountains in that city. And the third is the magnificent Mayor's Mansion of Madrid.

BOSTON — The Boston Symphony Orchestra is facing a season of change. The departure of its world-renowned music director James Levine has left a formidable institution without a permanent music director. As it considers its next act, the orchestra finds itself considering both Levine’s legacy and its own goals for the future.
 
Levine announced last week that he’ll resign his post, effective in September. Hailed as the best conductor since Leonard Bernstein, Levine brought critical success and a reinvigorated reputation to the BSO. But the latter years of his tenure were dogged by back problems and related health complications.
   
Some observers sense an oncoming crisis for the institution, as it tries to stabilize after Levine’s chronic health issues resulted in only inconsistent appearances by the conductor – and falling ticket sales that some think were related to Levine’s absence.
 
Other critics view now as an exciting time for the BSO, an opportunity build on Levine’s success with the BSO while adjusting old paradigms and reach new audiences.
 
WGBH’s Callie Crossley sat down with Lloyd Schwartz, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix; Yehudi Wyner, a composer and pianist who won a Pulitzer Prize for composition in 2006; and our arts and culture contributor Alicia Anstead, to discuss Levine, the state of the BSO and what might come next. Here are some highlights of their discussion.
 

 
On Levine’s Musical Gifts
 
Wyner: Levine came from the deepest sources of classical music. He’s a marvelous pianist, and an overall musician of extraordinary gifts. Certainly not second to Leonard Bernstein in terms of his ability to interpret music, and to absorb it. The amount of absorption, the amount that a man like this has really digested, and retains, is universal. It’s like a compendium of classical music canon.
 
On Levine’s Program
 
Wyner: Almost all the great music directors have sooner or later come to a commissioning program of adventurous new pieces… the problem that came up with Jimmy, as far as audience was concerned, (was) that he immediately jumped to something that had not easily prepared and organically prepared by the Boston Symphony in the previous years. That is, a certain kind of very radical, sometimes theoretical music that Jimmy is very partial to. And sometimes that may be very great.
 
Moreover, he balanced programs. There was lots of music that was not new.
 
Schwartz: For me, the absolute high point of Levine’s tenure here was the year he did joining Beethoven and Schoenberg on the same programs. So that on one hand, you knew that some of the music was going to appeal to a larger audience and some people were going to resent having to sit through something they thought they didn’t want to hear. And yet, those concerts were so illuminating, because you could hear Schoenberg taking off from where Beethoven left off.
 
That was a brilliant idea, and maybe some of the BSO regulars resented that, but on the other hand, there was a whole new audience of both younger people who were really curious about this juxatopistion, and there were also people from the university music departments who had stopped going to the BSO because they were so bored with the program, and suddenly, filling the seats because there was an actual programming idea that they were interested in.
 
The State of the Orchestra
 
Anstead: With all respect to the difficulties that the BSO administration is in right now, in filling in these gaps, and that the orchestra members themselves are facing in morale, and also what Levine himself is experiencing medically – that’s all very difficult. What’s exciting, is that the BSO is actually in such a great position, to embrace a whole new world.
 
They have a robust online presence, with music that’s recorded there… The BSO is well-positioned, it’s one of the strongest orchestras in the country, if not one with the biggest budget. 
 
Schwartz:Crisis is not quite the right word because partly – or maybe even mostly – Levine, when he came here, really transformed the orchestra. I’ve lived in Boston since 1962. I’ve been going to the BSO since 1962, I don’t think it has ever been in this good shape since I’ve been there.
 
Wyner: (The BSO management) are first class in their field, and they haven’t been sitting on – well, whatever you sit on – not thinking about the future.
 
What’s Required of His Replacement
 
Wyner: We tend to think of a conductor from the outside-in, but how do the members of the orchestra – or even someone like the BSO’s librarian – think of the conductor? Also, how does a conductor relate to the press? How does his image project in raising funds? How does he look on the cover of a brochure? The factors are innumerable. It’s not just how they wave their arm and the knowledge of the music.
 
Anstead: Artistic excellence is the most fundamental quality a new conductor will have to have.  The face of music in Boston could of course be a woman. What would happen if someone like an Alondra De La Perra or a Dudamel took root and made cultural connections with younger people?

Schwartz:I believe that the future of classical music lies with women. It used to be thought that young women didn’t have the right kind of DNA to play Beethoven or Bach. But women are the largest constituencies in our music schools and they are becoming the majority of players. How long are they going to stand for the hegemony of the male leader?
 
We hope that whoever becomes the music director has broad taste, and that includes centempory music, 20^th century music, and even early 21^st century music
 
Anstead: They’re also going to have to understand that the audience is no longer a sit-still audience – that they are digitally driven, that they are immigrants, and that the digital world is her to stay
 
Role of BSO in the City and Going Forward
 
Wyner: A symphony orchestra in a city, a major symphony orchestra, stands as a kind of icon and a beacon of civilization. It is a measure by which the quality of intellectual and emotional life is regarded and judged…For that reason, even though it’s attractive to only a fairly small minority of people…nevertheless, it’s that kind of a moniker, that kind of an identification, ‘Yeah, Boston really is a classy city.
 
Anstead: It’s not quite like the Red Sox and it’s not quite like the Celtics, and yet, in terms of our global pride out in the world, not just locally but out in the world, the BSO has just as much reach. This is a world-class orchestra. It’s in the top 20 orchestras of the world. And that gives it a unique place, not just in local pride but national pride. And that makes it an organization that exchanges cultural information, cultural knowledge, reaches across all sorts of borders, which music does, of course. And I would put it on a par not only with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts but with the Boston Public Library System, in creating an important place for our city. Not only here, but beyond our town lines.
 
Schwartz: BSO performances are not only live performances at Symphony Hall. There are recordings, including some recent Grammy-winning recordings, that certainly are accessible and available to people who certainly aren’t anywhere near Boston and probably never will be…The outreach is huge. And in fact one of the triggers for this recent crisis is that the Boston Symphony Orchestra does go on tour outside of Boston, and there were scheduled performances, which are taking place but without the maestro, at Carnegie Hall, at the Kennedy Center, and at several other places in the northeast corridor. And the orchestra has certainly been to Europe.