In the current New Yorker, Alex Ross reminds us that it was seventy years ago this week--April 9, 1939, to be precise--that the most significant concert in American history took place.   Newsreel footage of the event is available here.  Surveying the state of race and ethnic relations in the classical music today, Ross writes:

The most talked-about conductor of the moment is Gustavo Dudamel; the superstar pianist is Lang Lang; the most famous of all classical musicians is Yo-Yo Ma. (When people talk about the “whiteness” of this world, they tend to count Asians as white.) No longer a European patrimony, classical music is a polyglot business with a global audience.

In fact, this is not entirely new:  I read somewhere that already by the 1930s, the single largest market on earth for prerecorded classical music was Japan.  Of course, Japanese didn't count as "white" then, at least not in the U.S., where they were banned from immigrating.  (South Africa was a different story, as I discuss in the epilogue to The Dawn That Never Comes).   

   Yesterday afternoon, Satoko and I braved a hailstorm to trek downtown for an all Bach program at Symphony Center.  Pinchas Zukerman led the Chicago Symphony.  The first half was a bit disappointing.  We sat stage right, behind the cellos and violas and with Zukerman's violin aimed point blank at our ears.  That lent a rather harsh tone to the proceedings.  It didn't help when Zukerman seemed to stress speed over musicality in Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major. 

   Matters improved dramatically after the intermission.  Zukerman shifted to stage right, facing the other side of the auditorium, so we obtained a much mellower take on his playing.  The rarely played Concerto for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord in A minor is a piece that burns with intelligence and subtle tension, and Zukerman played brilliantly, as did Mathieu Dufour (flute) and Stephen Alltop (harpsichord).  The slow middle movement, played by only the three soloists, was especially moving. 

   The program ended with a lovely rendition of the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, with Zukerman gracefully sharing centerstage with Robert Chen, the CSO's concertmaster (and one of our personal favorites).  After a rather lackluster ovation before the intermission, the audience gave the players a well-earned standing ovation at the end.