The State of The Art

At a time when it’s tougher than ever for a promising young concert pianist to establish a major performing career, Jonathan Biss has vastly exceeded expectations. At 23, he has already debuted with the New York Philharmonic, won an Avery Fisher career grant, and is recording his first CD for EMI. He joins us to perform some positively sparkling Schumann. We also hear from Douglas McLennan, a Seattle-based journalist and editor of Artsjournal.com, and ask him about classical music’s place on Americans’ cultural literacy menu. "Where once classical music was a core art," he argued in a recent Newsweek article, "it is now no longer essential, one of those things educated people believe they ought to know something about in order to be considered educated."
Additional Resources:

More about pianist Jonathan Biss

Read Douglas McLellan’s Newsweek article on cultural literacy