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WAGNER: DIE WALKÜRE, (Deutsche Grammophon; 5 LPs). Despite all of its flames, blood, magic swords and flying goddesses, this crystal-and-velvet score is the most human of Wagner's Ring operas. Conductor Herbert von Karajan's slow, deliberate pace illuminates each stroke of genius in the score, but some listeners will find that he has sacrificed passion for clarity and restrained the anguish that Wagner's wild climaxes can evoke. No matter: Jon Vickers' Siegmund is powerful and Régine Crespin's hotoyohos are properly rousing...
...Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony at the 1902 Krefeld Festival in Germany, one reviewer concluded that "the composer should be shot." The first Vienna performance of Mahler's Fourth drove the audience to such fury that fistfights broke out all over the concert hall. Conductor Hans von Bülow refused to perform Mahler's works because they were "much too strange." In the face of such hostility, Mahler remained stoic. "My time will come," he predicted...
Shortly before leaving the Vienna Opera in 1907, Mahler learned that he had a serious heart ailment. He said his farewell to earthly joys and confronted death in the hauntingly bittersweet song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) and the coolly spiritual Ninth Symphony. Weakened by overwork, he caught a streptococcus infection while struggling feverishly with his Tenth Symphony ("The devil is dancing with me!" he scrawled in the margin), and died at 50 in 1911. His life was incomplete but, as he once expressed it, "I am a musician; that says everything...
...doubtful that either the Monro letter or the Farnsworth report will change the attitudes of many students on drugs. Dean von Stade and others have feared that freshmen, who come to Harvard often alone and without friends, are easily coerced into taking drugs when they are approached by new acquaintances. The Monro letter will at least give them more reason to say no, von Stade said...
...Administration, in turn, was badly shaken by the sudden revelation that such things were going on. They knew there was more, but there had been only one other case the whole year. Von Stade was especially distressed...