Welcome to The Podium, the only place where a working orchestra conductor will tell you what he really thinks. In this Substack, I will write about music, the arts, and politics. For its first several months, in addition to weekly listening recommendations, The Podium will focus on the degradation of classical music by political activism.
Like most of the culture, the classical music world is divided into a small group of activist “woke” believers and a larger group of reasonable people terrified of being publicly denounced.
In the last few years, the former group has forced the latter, as well as the concertgoing public, to accept that undistinguished composers no one had heard of until last year are better than Beethoven; that the canon of great art we all venerate owes its existence to a “white racial frame,” and that the blind audition process for orchestras perpetuates “systemic racism,” among numerous other absurdities.
The Podium will call public attention to the methodical denaturing of the great, humanizing musical tradition we have built over the centuries. Its hope is to be able to do something, albeit something small, to reverse it.
Publication schedule will be “when it’s done,” but approximately every three or four weeks. I will also release a weekly newsletter sharing a work of music or recording that deserves to be more widely known. Since I will maintain an active conducting career while writing these posts, I hope you will consider subscribing or donating to help me continue writing over the months to come.
The Podium is authored by Don Baton, who can be reached by email at donbaton2@outlook.com.
