Something I Heard

For over twenty seven years, music critic Bernard Holland reviewed the most celebrated classical artists of the twentieth century for The New York Times. Reporting both sides of the culture war between an honored past and radical change, Holland writes about Philip Glass to Verdi, Messiaen to Bach, Peter Sellars to Zeffirelli, and Linda Ronstadt to The Three Tenors. Throughout, Holland changes the discussion from "will classical music survive?" to "what classical music really is" and, in the process, argues the myth of "high and low art". Along the way, the reader chats with Herbert von Karajan, takes a plane trip with Yo-Yo Ma, joins in with the boos at Bayreuth, and walks the slow walk with Robert Wilson. No one today can match the limpid elegance and intellectual precision of his style, which recalls the heyday of Virgil Thomson. -The New Yorker Holland has a remarkable ability to conjure up the essence of a composer or a piece of music in a few deftly chosen words. He is, I think, an aphorist of unparalleled virtuosity. -San Francisco Chronicle Perhaps the most important of this town's arbiters. -The Independent