Eating Ice Cream with the Devil

In "Pizzazz on the Podium," from the March-April 2011 issue, Richard Dyer writes that New York Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert ’89 "has shaken things up at an orchestra that had grown a bit stodgy" under previous conductors.

One example: a set of three lighthearted YouTube videos promoting Ligeti's avant-garde opera Le Grand Macabre, which turned out to be the unexpected hit of Gilbert's first season with the Philharmonic. View the videos:

Watch an interview in which Gilbert discusses Le Grand Macabre:

See video of Gilbert conducting Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in Tokyo:

You might also like

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Unionizing Harvard Academic Workers

Pay, child care, workplace protections at issue 

Should AI Be Scaled Down?

The case for maximizing AI models’ efficiency—not size

Most popular

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard

The president emeritus on elite universities’ academic accomplishments—and a rising tide of antagonism

The Broken Social Contract

Danielle Allen on America’s broken social contract

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy