Free Republic

I am stricken to hear of the death today of Lorin Maazel at his home, Castleton Farms, Virginia, in the middle of the festival that he and his wife Dietlinde Turban-Maazel founded there, and that now continues without him. He was 84 years old and had been suffering from what Nancy Gustafson, Castleton’s executive director, described as an unexplained illness following a kind of collapse from fatigue after spending much of the spring jetting back and forth between Asia, Europe and North America for various high-profile conducting gigs. The official cause of death was “complications following pneumonia.” He had appeared...

On the eve of the New York Philharmonic's departure on an Asian tour that will include a visit to Pyongyang, its music director, Lorin Maazel, suggested that Americans are not in a position to criticize the North Korean regime, because America's own record on human rights is flawed. "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw bricks, should they?" Mr. Maazel told the Associated Press. "Is our standing as a country — the United States — is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and the way they are treated? Have we set an example that should...