Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

This new Q&A has two guests. With me gabbing too, it is a three-way convo. My guests are Bill Kristol and David French, those sharp and experienced political writers, and two of the people I most value. You are, by now, familiar with “the Politico story”—the report from Politico about Young Republican leaders and what

Kristina Hammer is the president of the Salzburg Festival—which in Salzburg, and Austria, and Europe, and the music world, is a very big deal. She grew up in Germany—the Black Forest—and studied in Mainz and Vienna. As a business executive, she worked in the department-store field for a while. And in cars: Aston Martin

Julian Prégardien is a tenor from Germany—despite his French-looking name. On his father’s side, he is Belgian, Italian, and Dutch. “A true European,” he says, a real mixture. One of his ancestors is Sweelinck, an important composer in pre-Bach days. I talked with Prégardien at the Salzburg Festival, while conducting i

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is an American countertenor—a singer from Brooklyn, N.Y. How do you pronounce that first name? As he explained to me, think of three letters: R-E-A. “Ar-ee-é” (with the stress on the first syllable.) And his last name is not “Cohen” but “Nussbaum Cohen.” Delightful guy. Excellent conversationalist.

Rainer Honeck occupies an interesting, and important, perch: he is a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. I have sat down with him at the Salzburg Festival, in a series of conversations hosted by the Salzburg Festival Society. It was a privilege to talk with Mr. Honeck. He rarely gives interviews. He lets his viol

Fleur Barron is a very interesting singer, and an exceptionally versatile one. This summer, she is making her debut at the Salzburg Festival, where I sat down and talked with her. She is singing Mahler—a composer she has been singing a lot lately. Where is she from? Well, her bio tells us this: “Born in Northern Irelan