PROVOCATIVE THOUGHTS:
The late Patric Standford may have written these short pieces deliberately to provoke our feedback. If so, his success is reflected in the rich range of readers' comments appearing at the foot of most of the pages.
DISCUSSION: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Improvisation in the classical world and beyond, including contributions from David Arditti, James Lewitzke, James Ross and Steve Vasta.
American businessman, journalist, Mahler scholar and conductor Gilbert Kaplan was born in New York City on 3 March 1941. During his business career, he made a large fortune by creating and editing the successful magazine Institutional Investor, and then selling it.
Following a chance hearing of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, Kaplan became obsessed with the work, buying Mahler's original manuscript (and baton), co-editing a new critical edition of the work, and becoming known as a conductor of just this one work. He conducted it more than a hundred times, appearing with more than fifty orchestras. He occasionally also conducted the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
Critical opinion of his performances was sharply divided: some of the orchestral musicians who worked with him dismissed him as a charlatan who couldn't keep a steady beat, but many critics claimed that the resulting performances were exceptional.
Gilbert Kaplan died on 1 January 2016, aged seventy-four.