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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At 44, the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann may be the most popular tenor of his generation in the international opera world, and one of the most versatile. Among his recordings this year are albums dedicated to both Verdi and Wagner, celebrating the bicentennials of their birth.
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New York City is home to more paintings by Johannes Vermeer — eight — than any other city. And until mid-January, it's playing host to one more: the world-renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says, since the painting's 1994 restoration, "It's even more breathtaking than I remembered." -
Live at Carnegie Hall captures a riveting experience with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a beloved conductor, James Levine, who has been plagued with a variety of medical troubles. -
In few operas does all the mayhem express what underlies George Benjamin's Written on Skin. The work conveys a profound awareness of human cruelty and its inextricable connection to passion and art. -
Recently reissued Brahms and Mozart recordings by the Stuyvesant Quartet convey natural refinement, balance and a kind of inward grace. Fresh Air critic Lloyd Schwartz says they take their place among the most luminous chamber-music performances on record. -
Director Kenneth Branagh has given us fresh Shakespeare and witty modern comedies of manners, and some years ago he turned to opera, with an adaptation of Mozart's classic set in World War I. It's finally available in the U.S., and critic Lloyd Schwartz says the results are disappointingly mixed. -
Claes Oldenburg is one of the best-known American pop artists. Critic Lloyd Schwartz found himself not alone in enjoying the current Oldenburg exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, which continues through Aug. 5. -
In the 1950s, as movie directors were trying to offer TV watchers something they couldn't get on a small screen, Cinerama films threw three simultaneous images onto a curved screen to create peripheral vision. Two classic Cinerama films — This Is Cinerama and Windjammer — are now out on DVD. -
The 1971 John Schlesinger film, recently released on Blu-ray, tells the story of a love triangle and makes moving use of a trio from the opera Cosi fan tutte as the film's musical theme. -
Critic Lloyd Schwartz welcomes the opera star's new album, Mission, which breathes new life into the work of Italian composer Agostino Steffani. Bartoli, he says, has an astonishing capacity for vocal fireworks and warm, delicate lyricism. -
On its 50th anniversary, Robert Aldrich's classic horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has just been released on Blu-ray. Though it's far from a musical, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says its musical elements are crucial to the film. -
Carter lived one of the most fulfilled lives any artist could wish for. What's sad about his death Monday at 103 isn't just that a whole era in music has come to an end, but that Carter was still composing, and on the highest level.
