Schubert and Mendelssohn on the verge of nervous breakdowns (like the rest of us)  Hundreds of performances of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (“Death and the Maiden”) have come my way over the decades, but none seized me from the very first notes like the new recording by the vision string quartet, titled Memento, recently issued on Erato. – David Patrick Stearns
Future Jazz past: Hal Willner, circa 1992  The death of this funny, smart, idiosyncratic, unique music producer at age 64 saddens me. We were East Village neighbors in the go-go ’90s, flush with ideas to try in the future. Here’s my entry about him from Future Jazz. – Howard Mandel
Mahler’s 8th: The antithesis of social distance in a new PhilOrch recording  This Mahler 8th arrives some four years after the live performances, and it signals not only a high-water mark in Nézet-Séguin’s relationship with the orchestra but a certain evolution in the performance practice of the piece itself. – David Patrick Stearns
Small Consolation: Museums’ Hit-&-Miss Attempts to Engage Audiences Via “Virtual Exhibitions”  Too much of museums’ existing online content, now being repurposed, reminds me of “park and bark” — the great opera stars of yesteryear, standing stock-still at center stage and belting out their arias. By contrast, I found much to admire in purpose-built content that some museums managed to put together on the fly. – Lee Rosenbaum
Safety, Solvency, Service  These past few weeks, a whole world of arts organizations have been searching for, revisiting, or assembling-on-the-fly their emergency readiness plans as the pandemic turns that world upside down. Many are finding that “pandemic” wasn’t among the expected disasters in their plans, so they’re diving into action as best they can. – Andrew Taylor
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