Lloyd Schwartz
Lloyd Schwartz is the classical music critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
In addition to his role on Fresh Air, Schwartz is the Senior Editor of Classical Music for the web-journal New York Arts and Contributing Arts Critic for WBUR's the ARTery. He is the author of four volumes of poems: These People; Goodnight, Gracie; Cairo Traffic; and Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017). A selection of his Fresh Air reviews appears in the volume Music In—and On—the Air. He is the co-editor of the Library of the America's Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters and the editor of the centennial edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Prose, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2011.
In 1994, Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
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He's been at the forefront of contemporary music and conducting for more than half a century. Marking his 85th birthday this spring, a number of new Boulez CDs and DVDs have been released. Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews three of the latest.
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Bach's cantatas contain some of his greatest music, but their individual sections are seldom performed out of context, least of all by celebrities. Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says Hilary Hahn's new CD, Bach: Violin & Voice, provides a welcome exception to this rule.
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The Bauhaus was one of the most important and exciting social and artistic movements of post-World-War-I Germany. Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the movement lasted 14 years until the Nazis finally forced it to shut down. An astonishing exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art gives a thorough view of the precise but imaginative products of Bauhaus.
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For the golden anniversary of the original cast album of Gypsy, Sony is reissuing the classic recording, which features Ethel Merman. Music critic Lloyd Schwartz sees how well it holds up.
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Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the first full recording of Allegro, the 1947 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.
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Fresh Air's classical music critic reviews an 80-disc set of recordings by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. The collection, issued 25 years after Gould's death replicates the look of the original LPs.
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In 1971, critics hailed soprano Patricia Brooks' recital debut as groundbreaking. A new CD release provides a rare document of a performer who demonstrated a rare mix of talents.
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Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the new DVD of The Threepenny Opera. G.W. Pabst's 1931 film version of the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical, with Weill's wife Lotte Lenya as Jenny, is newly out from the Criterion Collection.
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Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera star with the charming smile and the clean, silvery coloratura, died Monday at the age of 78. Fresh Air's classical music critic pays tribute.
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A new Criterion four-DVD box set — Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist features several of Robeson's films and an abundance of documentary material.