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Selling a 300-Year-Old Cello
On a cold day last winter, an ailing Bernard Greenhouse, wearing an elegant bathrobe and attached to oxygen, was wheeled into the living room of his Cape Cod home, which was festooned with paper cutouts of musical notes. Relatives and students, locals and caregivers had gathered to celebrate the 95th birthday of one of classical music’s most respected cellists, a founding member of the famed Beaux Arts Trio and a beloved teacher. Young cellists performed for him, and then Greenhouse indulged in a martini and a plate of oysters. Thus fortified, he decided he wanted to play for the company. He picked up his cello and, though a bit wobbly, soulfully rendered “Song of the Birds,” a Catalan folk melody transcribed by Pablo Casals, with wh...
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What Does a Conductor Do?
I`m standing on a podium, with an enameled wand cocked between my fingers and sweat dampening the small of my back. Ranks of young musicians eye me skeptically. They know I don’t belong here, but they’re waiting for me to pretend I do. I raise my arm in the oppressive silence and let it drop. Miraculously, Mozart’s overture to Don Giovanni explodes in front of me, ragged but recognizable, violently thrilling. This feels like an anxiety dream, but it’s actually an attempt to answer a quest...
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Wait A Minute - Just How Was That Stradivarius Test Performed?
I read with interest the article in today's Guardian about the blind testing of Stradivarius violins versus modern violins, from which the modern instruments emerged victorious. There are many aspects to this story. First, it is true that modern makers do tend to be underpaid and under-appreciated; there are definitely many wonderful luthiers working today, whose instruments are finely crafted and deeply satisfying to play. A surprising number of famous string-players opt to perform on modern instruments, even when they own fine old Italian ones; their audiences rarely notice. On the other hand, the report of this test leaves too many questions unanswered. Perhaps it is not widely known just how important the set-up of a violin (o...
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Double-Blind Violin Test: Can You Pick The Strad?
In the world of violins, the names Stradivari and Guarneri are sacred. For three centuries, violin-makers and scientists have studied the instruments made by these Italian craftsmen. So far no one has figured out what makes their sound different. But a new study now suggests maybe they aren't so different after all. OK, here's a test. Clip one is a musical phrase from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Clip two is the same phrase. The same musician plays both. But one is on a Stradivarius violin, the other on a violin made in 1980. See if you can tell the difference. It's a tough choice. But a professional violinist could tell the difference, right? |
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Oregon Symphony drops membership in League of American Orchestras
The Oregon Symphony has dropped its membership in the League of American Orchestras, said Elaine Calder, the orchestra's president. At an annual cost of $17,000, the benefits of membership were not worth the expense, she said. It’s another example of an orchestra cutting expenses because of decreasing revenue from ticket sales and donations. In recent years, the Oregon Symphony has trimmed staff, reduced the number of musicians and cut salaries in order to balance its budget. The League is an industry organization that shares information, puts on conferences, informs members about activities and publishes Symphony magazine. About 850 orchestras in North America belong to the League, from the Big Five ...
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Nigel Kennedy: My plan to put Vivaldi to an electro-beat
They say that Nigel Kennedy divides opinion, but he hasn’t lost his ability to pull a crowd. For his late-night performance of solo Bach at the Proms in early August, throngs of customers were still straining at the doors trying to get in well after the scheduled 10pm start time. As the unorthodox fiddler had told me previously, he approached the performance with deadly seriousness. “It’s my main challenge of the year in many ways, doing this Bach concert,” he said, as we sat round the kitchen table in his cottage at the foot of the South Downs. He finds it a great plac...
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Australian Chamber Orchestra Plans Surfing-And-Music Tour
Surfing and dance animate the Australian Chamber Orchestra 2012 program, with a spectacular multi-media exploration of the North-West coast and an innovative reinterpretation of baroque dance by the Sydney Dance Company sending shock waves rippling across one of this innovative chamber orchestra's most exciting seasons to date. "It's not about everything in a season interacts; it's about how they contrast," says ACO director Richard Tognetti on the phone as, always on the go, he sits in a taxi en route to the Adelaide airport. "It's like curating an exhibition in an art gallery - it's about va...
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University Takeover Of Theatre Relieves Strained Missouri Symphony
COLUMBIA — MU and the Missouri Symphony Society reached a deal Thursday afternoon on the short-term future of the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts.
MU will lease and manage the theater, 203 S. Ninth St., for three years with an option to buy it after that time for $3.7 million, according to an MU News Bureau release. MU will lease the theater for $12,000 per month, paid from the university's campus rental account, which is used to purchase space for campus needs, the release stated.
Negotiations have been in the works for several months, said Carole Sue DeLaite, co-president of the Missouri Symphony Society.
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Surprise: Sales Of Classical Music CDs Rise
Looking at the classical CD business in 2011, some may wonder whether there still is a classical CD business. The major labels -- Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner Music Group -- are mostly shooting out reissues these days. The demise of the Tower Records chain in fall 2006 hit classical labels hardest of all, for Tower was the primary showcase for their deep catalog product. The early-2000s attempt to juice up sales with the competing hi-def, multi-channel audio formats DVD-A and Super Audio CD (SACD) never caught on with most classical customers, let alone the mass market, alth...
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Coming to Theaters Soon: Mozart's Sister
A few weeks from now, Mozart's Sister will begin its limited release in various cities across the US. This historical fiction portrays the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's older sister, Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart, who once was the family's shining star. When Nannerl becomes an appropriate age to marry, her father, Leopold, forces her to quit performing and composing. However, after meeting the son and daughter of Louis XV, their friendship encourages Nannerl to continue her musical artistry through unconventional means. Though the film is a combination of fact and fiction, it looks to be a rather promising portrayal. And, paired with Mozart's music, those of you living near the selected cities the film will be shown,...
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Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen
By Anthony Tommasini This phenomenon should be seen in historical context. The first several decades of the 20th century are considered a golden era by many piano buffs, a time when artistic imagination and musical richness were valued more tha...
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Collection Of Rare Valuable Violins Goes Missing
A priceless collection of violins stored with the world's biggest violin dealer has vanished after he was arrested for fiddling the books.Dietmar Machold lived in a castle in Austria and owned a Rolls Royce Corniche and a VW Phaeton - travelling the world with his schoolteacher wife buying up rare violins. His company Machold Rare Violins has been in the family five generations since it was founded in 1861 in Germany as a violin manufacturer. But he fled Castle Eichbüchl at Katzelsdorf in Austria to Switzerland after he filed for bankruptcy and prosecutors announced they were investigating him for fraud. He was arrested in Switzerland in March and is awaiting extradition back to Austria ...
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The YouTube Symphony's Techno-Jungle
MUSIC YouTube Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas. Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, March 20.
IN the
words of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra's conductor and artistic adviser
Michael Tilson Thomas, this was no ordinary concert. The "Grand
Finale" at the Sydney Opera House was the culmination of an intensive week
of rehearsa...
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Classical Grammys 2011
Dark Horses And Indie Labels: An Eclectic Mix At
The Classical Grammys
Complete
Clas...
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Romantic Recrimination: Mozart's 'Così Fan Tutte'
In 1989,
Madonna released the hit single "Express Yourself," a song urging
girls to "put your love to the test" by forcing guys to vent their
true feelings, saying, "then you'll know your love is real." Exactly
200 years earlier, W. A. Mozart&nbs...
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Detroit Symphony Cancels Season After Musicians Reject Offer
The
crisis surrounding the Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike hit a new peak
Saturday, increasing the possibility that the financially crippled orchestra
may not play a single note of music this season.
The
m...
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Ben Heppner quits Metropolitan Opera's 'Ring' cycle production
The Metropolitan Opera in New York has lost its
Siegfried for its costly new production of Richard Wagner's "Ring"
cycle. The company said in a release Tuesday that heldentenor Ben Heppner has
withdrawn from the production because the singer "has retired the role
from his repertory."
Heppner's cast...
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So What Now? Chicago Symphony Ponders Another Long Muti Absence
So where does the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra go from here?
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More Woe for Detroit Symphony: Bank Calls In $54M Loan
The
Detroit Symphony Orchestra has a bigger problem than the 18-week-old strike
that has marred the classical music season, alienated donors and disappointed
subscribers.
The
orchestra's lenders, in an ominous turn, repaid the orch...
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The Dude Abides: Gustavo Dudamel Extends LA Phil Contract to 2019
The Dude will be sticking around Los Angeles for...
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CSO director Muti collapses at rehearsal
Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti is hospitalized but in no immediate danger, according to a CSO spokeswoman, after he fainted during a rehearsal with the orchestra early Thursday afternoon at Symphony Center. He suffered a gash near his jaw from collapsing on the podium.
"He is stable and talking," said CSO Association President Deborah Rutter late Thursday by phone from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where the 69-year-old Muti was rushed after suffering a fainting spell while preparing the first subscription program of his winter residency with the CSO. He was eased into a chair while paramedics were being called, said orchestra members.
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James Levine's Four Decades Of Orchestra-Building
AS if to make up for
his reduced presence there, the Metropolitan Opera has favored us with two
giant boxed sets, of 32 CDs and 21 DVDs, in celebration of James Levine’s 40 years with the com...
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The secret torments of Emil Gilels
I have received a short memoir of the great Soviet pianist from the Israeli conductor, Uri Segal. Unlike his great rival, Sviatoslav Richter, little is known of Gilels (1916-85) outside of the official version - that he was a loyal servant of the system. Segal adds a personal dimension: It was in 1982, in Helsingborg, Sweden that I had the great fortune of collaborating with Emil Gilels, conducting Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto Nº1 in Bb minor for him. This encounter which turned to be a memorable one for me in more then one way, was a "miracle" in itself: At that time no Soviet musician was allowed by the Soviet régime to perform with Israeli colleagues, and so the collaboration between Mr. Gilels and m...
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The Naumburg Competition's Winning Formula
The Naumburg Competition: Formula One for Finding Talent San Francisco
Performances’ annual Naumburg Foundation Competition winner concert is a far
bigger deal than you might imagin...
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The force behind Vietnam's classical music tradition: Madame Thai Thi Lien
The 92-year-old pianist worked with Ho Chi Minh
and other musicians to bring classic Western music to the country and keep its
conservatory going through war and beyond. The Vietnam National Academy of
Music also teaches traditional Vietnamese music.
The
classroom at the
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Why carrying a cello could stop you from entering Britain
Even if a musician is not getting paid to play, just carrying a large instrument may make the UK Border Agency say: 'No way'More usually associated with musical esoterica than international espionage, terrorism, or economic skulduggery, the world of musicology – which is to say the musicdepartments of our universities – is under threat. Government cuts? Tuition fees? The progressive dumbing down of today's culture? Well, all that – and the UK Border Agency officials at Heathrow.
Kristin Ostling, cellist with the Carpe Diem Quartet, who reside at the University of Ohio, was questioned for eight hours by officials at Terminal 3 over the weekend, refused entry to the country, forced to sign written statements, an...
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Huddersfield Phil's Conductor Walks Out Over 'Disrespectful' Musician
The principal conductor of
Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra has walked out and is refusing to return
unless one of her 'disrespectful' musicians is removed.
Natalia Luis-Bassa, who has worked with the orchestra for seven
years, declared that her health was beginning to suffer as certain members
increasing...
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How Apple Finally Got the Beatles Catalog for iTunes
By Ethan Smith
After
years of litigation and ill will, it took two men just a couple of hours to
hammer out the ba...
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L.A. Phil to transmit performances to HD-equipped movie theaters
Orchestra officials
hope that charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel will draw audiences for three
concerts but acknowledge there's more of a challenge than in broadcasting
operas, as the Met does.
In a
bold venture that the Los Angeles Philharmonic ho...
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Étienne Méhul's lost masterpiece to be heard for first time in 200 years
A classical
music "missing link" that was lost for 200 years and has hardly been
heard since it was written by its pioneering composer, then in the early stages
of tuberculosis, will tomorrow night be perf...
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Another Musician Forgets His Million-Dollar Violin
A $1.4 million antique violin isn't something
you want to accidentally forget on a train. But that's just what happened
to a panicked German musician on Friday night.
After returning home to Munich from a chamber
music tour in Asia, he got off at his stop without his most prized possession.
D...
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Scottish Opera players looking for cleaning jobs
One of the jewels in the crown of Scottish culture is facing a talent
drain after an internal report found more than 80% of the orchestra of Scottish
Opera are planning to leave.
In
a revealing survey, some of Scotland’s leading musicians detail how they are
looking for part-time jobs as cleaners, waitresses and supe...
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Berlin Philharmonic returns to the Arab world after 42 years
ABU DHABI
— The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra returned to the Arab world for the first
time in 42 years with a concert in Abu Dhabi.
Under the
baton of British conductor Sir Simon Rattle it performed classics by Joseph
Haydn, Joh...
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Cost of DSO too rich for Detroit
Like
other Michigan institutions before it — think bankruptcy-scarred automakers —
the beginning of the end of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as we’ve known it
probably will have a date: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010.
Not
because the ...
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Lost Vivaldi flute concerto found in Edinburgh archive
Lost Vivaldi flute concerto found in Edinburgh archive
A lost flute concerto by the composer Vivaldi has been discovered in Scotland.A lost flute concerto by the composer Vivaldi has been discovered at the National Archives of Scotland. Il Gran Mogol, which belonged to a quartet of lost concertos, has been authenticated as the work of the 18th Century Italian composer. Southampton University research fellow Andrew Woolley found the piece among the Marquesses of Lothian's family papers at the archives in Edinburgh. It will receive its modern day premiere at Perth Concert Hall in January. The piece was part of a quartet of lost Vivaldi concertos |
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WHAT’S WRONG WITH CLASSICAL MUSIC?
by Colin Eatock
Every day I pass through
Toronto’s Bathurst Street Subway Station, on the way to work. And sometimes, on
days when I’m not running late, I pause to listen to the classical...
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Wagner's great-granddaughter retracts invite to Israeli orchestra
Holocaust survivors outraged at plan for Israeli orchestra to open German festival celebrating Hitler's favorite composer Outrage in Israel over leaked reports that one of the country's leading orchestras has been invited to open next year's Wagner festival in Bayreuth, southern Germany, has prompted the composer's great-granddaughter and festival head to withdraw the invitation. A spokesman for the Bayreuth Festival confirmed that Katharina Wagner had cancelled a trip to Israel next week during which she was scheduled to officially invite the Israel Chamber Orchestra to perform at next summer's event. Leaked reports about the planned visit provoked outrage among Holocaust survivor groups, who...
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Detroit Symphony Orchestra musician to go on Strike October 4th
The Detroit Symphony
Orchestra musicians announced Saturday they would go on strike Oct. 4, a move
that threatens the start of the season and throws the financially beleaguered
institution into more turmoil.
The strike would be the
first at the DSO since 1987 and c...
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Gustavo Dudamel and Vienna Philharmonic go to a small town in Kentucky. But why?
On Monday, Gustavo Dudamel
will conduct the Vienna
Philharmonic in Danville, Ky., a town of 18,000 right in the middle
of thoroughbred country. Earlier in the day, the Venezuelan maestro be given
the title of Kentucky ...
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Cecilia Bartoli Named Director of Salzburg's Whitsun Festival
What do singers do when they can't sing any more?
Plácido Domingo sought an answer by starting new careers as a conductor and
administrator, leading two of America's major opera companies (it was announced yesterday that he has
extended his contract with the Los Angeles Opera through the 2012-13 season).
The fly in the ointment proved to be that, unlike most singers, he has been
abl...
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An Old Soviet Composer Sees Redemption?
The
Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin has long been damned faintly by two facts -
that he is the husband of the Bolshoi prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and that
he was for a long time the president of the Russian Composers' Union in the USSR.
These two things were plenty enough to remove discussion of him from the
musical arena to the seething forum of politics where every Soviet composer's
actions were given intense non-mus...
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Detroit Symphony Heads Into Last-Chance Negotiations
DSO, players to conduct
last-ditch talks on Friday
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
management and players have scheduled an eleventh-hour negotiating session
Friday morning in an effort to settle a rancorous contract dispute before a
potential work stoppage.<...
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Calif. Symphony's Firing of Conductor Was Stealth Action
California Symphony founder and
music director Barry Jekowsky was officially fired by a small contingent of the
organization's board Tuesday night, but the real ax fell in a voice mail two
nights earlier, he said Thursday.
Jekowsky, 56, was at home
...
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Hooked On That New Conductor High
Of new beginnings
New beginnings. The fall season is full of them. In
the classical music world, none is better than the infusion of energy that
comes with a new director -- music director, general director, you name it. In
Washington, the National Symphony Orchestra (taking a leaf from the
Metropolitan Opera’...
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Riccardo Muti has grand plans for Chicago Symphony Orchestra
In
case you've missed it, Riccardo Muti is coming to Chicago.
Much of the classical music world faces various crises and several major
symphony orchestras are turning to new generations of conductors or beating the
drums for American accents on the podium as a means of attracting and retaining
audiences. But the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, rarely an institution to be
moved by the trends of others, is putting its institutional and fi...
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Gustavo Dudamel: 'I'm not the messiah'
From Los Angeles to Lucerne, Sweden to La Scala, conductor
Gustavo Dudamel tells Alan Rusbridger how he's still passionate about his
mission to bring joy to the world
Gustavo
Dudamel's time is precious and severely rationed. Everyone wants a piece of
him. His minders preside over him with a stopwatch. Thirty minutes with the
ma...
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Why Does The Flagship of the PhilOrch's New Download Series Sound So Bad?
Why Does The
Flagship of the PhilOrch's New Download Series Sound So Bad?
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At a Chicago Orchestra, Diversity Is on the Program
The Chicago Sinfonietta is an orchestra that was founded in 1987 to give classical musicians who are members of minority groups greater professional opportunities. In a field with a minuscule number of black performers, it prides itself on the racial composition of its players, staff members and board, with roughly half representing minorities. ...
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Music fails to chime with Islamic values, says Iran's supreme leader
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is "not compatible" with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practised or taught in the country.In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, Khamenei said: "Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."Khamenei's comments came in response to a request for a ruling by a 21-year-old follower of his, who was thinking of starting music lessons, but wanted to know if they were acceptable according to Islam, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
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Salzburg Festival Journal: Paging Peter Gelb
SALZBURG, Austria — Jürgen Flimm, the noted German director of opera and theater and the outgoing artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, has a message for Peter Gelb: he’s available. Mr. Flimm suggested that I pass the message on the other day when he sat for an informal in...
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Tenor gives seven-minute concert
Those with front row seats for Ricardo Villazón's concert paid 178 kroner per minute.
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2010 USA International Ballet Competition
One of
the world’s most prestigious dance events, the USA IBC, is a two‑week
“olympic-style” competition where tomorrow’s ballet stars vie for gold, silver
and bronze medals; cash awards; and scholarships. Designated as the official
USA Competition by a Joint Resolution of Congress, the USA IBC is held every
four years, in the tradition of sister competitions in Varna, Bulgaria, and
Moscow, Russia.
The
first International Ballet Competition premiered in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1964
and eventually grew into a cycle of ballet comp...
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The Jazz Evangelism of Woody Allen
The Carlyle Hotel on Monday nights is, like all great Manhattan institutions, a carefully romantic transaction. For sale is a moment in Old New York, a composite of faded glamour too delicate to survive and too perfect to have ever really existed. Beneath the soft, earthy brushstrokes of an original Marcel Vertes mural, amid the soigné murmur of rustling silk and clinking stemware, 90 eager patrons of all ages gather in the Café Carlyle supper club to soak up pristine, antique luxury.
They've paid $100 or so apiece mostly to see the musician seated in the perfect center of the room, at the carpeted meridian of this alternate universe—and "see" is truly the impetus here, as the music he offers is secondary to the draw ...
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Sans $800M Infusion, Sydney Opera House May Close
SYDNEY'S global icon, the Opera House, is in such severe financial straits it cou...
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Renee Fleming-Even Sopranos Get the Blues
By Anthony Tommasini FOR months now, the acclaimed soprano Renee Fleming, her recording company and her public relations agency have been working hard to make one thing clear: “Dark Hope,” h...
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"Was Ivo Pogorelich really that bad during his Philadelphia Orchestra performance Wednesday in Suntory Hall? In a word, yes."
TOKYO - Was Ivo Pogorelich really that bad during his Philadelphia Orchestraperformance Wednesday in Suntory Hall? In a word, yes.The 51-year-old Croatian pianist was once a fascinating personality, cutting a modern-day Byronic figure onstage, with wild hair and leatherlike pants - while playing some of the most daun...
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How to sell classical music to the masses
It’s almost akin to a papal pronouncement. On Monday the world’s most influential classical music critic...
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Vladimir Horowitz: the tiger who burnt bright
The German word Klaviertiger — which hardly needs translation — might have been invented to describe the musical and technical prowess of the young Ukrainian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who shot to international stardom when he provoked a sensation as a last-minute replacement in a virtuoso tour de force, Tchaikovsky’s B flat minor Piano Concerto. That was on January 20, 1...
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Hearing A String Quartet In Utter Darkness
In the beginning, Georg said, let there be no light. And there was dark. Silky, womb-like India-ink blackness. No emergency lighting in theaters, nada, nothing. And...
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Music Under The Volcano - How Ash Is Disrupting Classical Music
By Daniel J. Wakin Ticket holders worldwide, beware. That violinist onstage this weekend may be addled by a 14-hour drive. That pianist may not be the one you expected to see. The concert hall doors may even be locked be...
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Jennifer Higdon Awarded 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music
Jennifer Higdon has been awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, which received its premiere performance by Hilary Hahn and the Indianapolis Symphony conducted by Mario Venzago on February 6, 2009, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The citation describes the work as "a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." Also nomi...
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Pianist battled his way back from crippling disease
When you hear Meng-Chieh Liu igniting the piano keyboard with his formidable sound and style, you would never guess he once battled a debilitating disease that left his body frail and paralyzed, and nearly cost him his life.
Liu, a prominent concert artist and member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, will make his Chicago recital debut Thursday as part of Roosevelt Univ...
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Using an Electronic Device to Break in a New Violin
No one knows how the violins of Antonio Stradivari sounded when they first left his workbench in Cremona, Italy, hundreds of years ago. But those fabled instruments probably did not reach th...
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Conductor Survives Marathon, Placates Romanian Diva: Interview
Interview by Zinta Lundborg April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Marco Armiliato&nbs...
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Dispatch from New York: There's smoke -- if not fire -- at the Met's 'Hamlet'
This weekend, Los Angeles opera-goers experienced for the first time the most famous flames in opera— Brünnhilde’s self-immolation at the end of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” On Monday night, New York...
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El Sistema: There's More Talent Where Dudamel Came From
LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND — The conductor Claudio Abbado has called it “the most important project in the music world in our time.” But only recently, as the meteoric rise of the conductor Gustavo Dudamel aroused curiosity about the unique environment within which his talents blossomed, has it attracted the widespread attention of music lovers. Mr. Dudamel is a product of El Sistema, the far-flung instructional system in Venezuela that brings music to the lives of the country’s youth. With over 350,000 instrumentalists and choristers scattered among 215 regional centers known as “núcleos,” El Sistema is a progr...
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At The Met, Leonard Slatkin Doesn't Know The Score
Who would have guessed that a routine revival of “La Traviata” at theMetropolitan Opera could cause such a ruckus? The problem was that the conductor Leonard Slatkin...
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Slatkin Withdraws From Met’s ‘Traviata’
“I do not know whose fault it was,” Verdi wrote after the first performances of “La Traviata” were panned in 1853. “It is best not to talk about it.” Fingers were pointed, however, after the troubled opening-night performance on Monday of “La Traviata” at the
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When the Kids Come Out to Play
By Matthew Gurewitsch
Last December in Vienna, Christoph Koncz, a cherubic ex-concert master with the training orchestra at theVerbi...
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Bridge Over the Visa Moat for Musicians Trying to Enter the U.S.
By Ben Sisario
Of the 2,000 bands at the annual South by Southwest Music and Media Conference this week in Austin, Tex., more than 500 are from outside the United States. And to help make their way through the byzantine process of obtaining an American visa, about 200 of them have sent their paperwork, their prayers and $600 to one tiny office on the ...
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Same Phantom, Different Spirit
By Ban Brantley The New York Times
LONDON — To think that all this time that poor old half-faced composer hasn’t been dead at all, just stewing in his lust for greater glory. Being the title character of “The Phantom of the Opera,” the most successful musical of all time, wasn’t enough for him. Oh, no. Like so many aging stars, he was determined to return — with different material and a rejuvenated body — to the scene of his first triumph. So now he’s back in the West End with a big, gaudy new show. And he might as well have a “kick me” sign pasted to his backside.
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Learn An Opera In Two Days? No Problem
By Robert Smith The audience at the Metropolitan Opera is expecting a little on...
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Reconsidering Classical Music's No Applause Rule
By Alex Ross Last autumn, Barack Obama hosted an evening of classical music at the White House. Beforehand, he said, "Now, if any of you in the audience are newcomers to classical music, and aren't sure when to applaud, don't be nervous. Apparently, President Kennedy had the same problem. He and Jackie held several classical music events here, and more than once he started applauding when he wasn't supposed to. So the social secretary worked out a system where she'd signal him through a crack in the door. Now, fortunately, I have Michelle to tell me when to applaud. The rest of you are on your own. "Obama was having fun at the expense of the No Applause Rule, which holds that one must refrain from clapping until all move...
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How Do You Win That Orchestra Spot? Get In The Minivan
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Conservatory Students May Be Turning To Beta Blockers
BY IAN LARSONEditor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series investigating how some University of Minnesota students use drugs to excel in their studies. The second part will focus on students who take psychostimulants as a study aid.Joshua Rohde smiled backstage as he wiped loose rosin off his cello.“I’m excited for this. I don’t know if I’m like the average musician who’s wetting their pants right here.”The University of Minnesota School of Music senior tuned his A string while he waited to go on stage for his senior recital — the culmination of a lifetime of study and practice.After seeing his flushed face in the mirror, Rohde admitted he was a little anxious.Rohde prayed, then bent over and untied his shoes. H...
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It's Making Music, Not Listening, That Hones The Brain
If you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, you need to be a participant, not just a listener.
Five months after we are conceived, music begins to capture our attention and wire our brains for a lifetime of aural experience. At the other end of li...
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Music Helps People To Heal -- But How?
Yes, yes, it hath charms to soothe a savage breast (or beast, if you prefer to repeat a common mistake). But researchers are finding that music may be an effective balm for many other afflictions: the isolation of conditions such as autism and Alzheimer's disease, the disability that results from stroke, the physical stress of entering the world too early.
The hope of music's curative powers has spawned a community in the United States of some 5,000 registered music therapists, who have done post-college study in psychology and music to gain certification. Active primarily in hospitals, nursing homes, spe...
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Moscow State Radio Symphony Does Bus-And-Truck Tour Of US
Russian Orchestra Tour: From the Bus to the Stageby Daniel Wakin When the great orchestras of Europe glide through the United States on tour, they stay at elegant hotels like Le Parker Meridien...
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Phila. Orchestra musicians make pay concessions
by Peter Dobrin
Faced with nearly 40-percent-empty houses and the threat of bankruptcy, musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have agreed to a freeze on minimum salaries for next season, early negotiations for a new contract, and a hiring freeze with certain qualifications.Musicians also agreed to give up an expected increase in contributions to their underfunded pension fund while a musician-board-staff task force works to "identify viable pension plan options for musicians and staff." The concessions could save $4.5 million, according to their employer, the Philadelphia Orchestra Associ...
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New director at CSO: Beginning of Muti era
The Riccardo Muti era at the Chicago Symphony Orchestraofficially began Thursday at Symphony Center, as the CSO's 10th music director announced plans fo...
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Losing the hearts of its listeners
With no music director, pricey tickets and parking, and a ballooning deficit, the Philadelphia Orchestra and its audience are asking: Where do we go from here?
by Peter Dobrin
Even before the public learned that the sword of bankruptcy hung over the Philadelphia Orchestra, an obviously pained fan called me to offer his thinking on why attendance was suffering.
When the orchestra was still in the Academy of Music, you could go backstage after a concert and talk to the players. It made him feel connected, he explained. Now, in Verizon Hall, the orchestra does not le...
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Domingo Insists (Again) That He's Not Too Busy To Run His Opera Companies
The superstar rejects recent suggestions that his busy life is affecting L.A. Opera and his other commitments.
When
people ask Plácido Domingo how he maintains his relentless pace -- jetting
around the world, performing in countless roles, conducting, singing at special
events, raising funds and running opera companies on both coasts -- he's fond
of recit...
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Musicians Drive Emmanuelle Haim From Paris Opera Podium
Firing Emmanuelle Haim by Charles T. Downey
French baroqueux conductor Emmanuelle Haïm was scheduled to appear in the pit of the Opéra de Paris last month for a run of Mozart's Idomeneo at the Palais Garnier (staging by Luc Bondy). We have admired her recordings with the historically informed performance (HIP) ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée, like the recent one of Handel's La Resurrezione, but the orchestral musicians -- not the normal crew of HIP specialists used to working with her -- staged a coup that can only remind one of the headstrong, rebellious musicians in Fellini's Prova d'orchestra. Two days before opening night, Haïm was removed from the production and replaced by Philippe Hui, due to conc...
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S.A. Symphony selects a new music director
By
David Hendricks
The
story of the San Antonio Symphony's new music director begins with a
clandestine, three-day work session in a hotel room overlooking New York's
Carnegie Hall.
A
conductor had flown...
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Classical Music - No Genre's The New Genre
Dogma No
More: Anything Goes
By
Anthony Tommasini
IN its
modest, underground way a concert that the young musicians of the Ensemble ACJW
gave on a brisk night in December at Le Poisson Rouge, the Greenwich Village club
for all kinds of contempor...
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Philadelphia Orchestra’s Ticket Sales Add to Woes
By Daniel J. Wakin The
Philadelphia Orchestra suffered unexpectedly weak ticket sales in the fall, an
orchestra member said, yet another blow in a spiraling financial crisis that
has been coupled with a leadership vacuum at one of the world’s elite orchestras.
“The situation is very se...
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Unearthing Prokofiev: Rare Works Get NYC Debut
Sergei Prokofiev is, perhaps, one of the best-known composers of the 20th century, if only for Peter and the Wolf
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Vulgar trash? Popstar to Operastar's Rolando Villazon replies to his fiercest critic
'POPSTAR to OPERSTAR' is only a television show, RupertBy Rolando Villazon No sooner had the first episode of Popstar to Operastar aired then the sacred gates of the opera world opened, revealing a resounding chorus of disapproving voices. Among them, one stood out: Rupert Christiansen not only expressed his disgust and insulted all participants; he even wished doom on the entire project.
I wonder what all the noise is about. Why are the critics so angry? What do they fear? They claim they are merely defending the reality of opera, of which the programme is "in no way representative". Would they be as angry watching people play Monopoly because that's not how economics really work? Popstar to Op...
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Where are all the women conductors?
A female conductor is still seen as such a novelty in the UK, yet one of our most internationally acclaimed maestros is a woman
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Opera Takes Over The Cinema
By
Heidi Waleson
On
a Tuesday afternoon in mid-December, Symphony Space on Manhattan's Upper West
Side was filled to near capacity with opera fans attending a live
high-definition transmission of Verdi's "Il Tro...
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Who’s That Man? A Mystery Clarinetist Takes a Bow at Philharmonic
When a pinch hitter comes out of the dugout, an
announcer intones his name over the public-address system. When an understudy
fills in for a Broadway actor, inserts in the program say who it is. A waiter
even tells you what’s on special.
Don’t ask the New Your Ph...
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Soprano Daniela Dessi quits opera after Zeffirelli calls her fat
Graham Keeley and Richard Owen In the world of opera, it is rarely frowned upon if
sopranos or tenors sport a few extra pounds. But before the curtain could go up
in Rome on a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata
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Best of the decade: Classical music
Best
of the decade: Classical music
By
Anne Midgette
Sunday,
December 27, 2009
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A Quiet End for Boys Choir of Harlem
Bi Sharon Otterman
For more than three decades, they sang Mozart in Latin, Bach in German, and Cole Porter and Stevie Wonder in English, from Alice Tully Hall in New York to Royal Albert Hall in London.
For the audiences that marveled at the Boys Choir of Harlem, it was an additional wonder that the young performers with world-class voices had emerged from some of the most difficult neighborhoods of New York. December was always a busy month, as the choir toured the country’s premier concert halls and appeared on television Christmas specials.
But this year, the boys are nowhere to be found. Last week, Terrance Wright, a 39-year-old choir alumnus, picked up a microphone ...
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Honolulu Symphony Musicians Stick Together In Bankruptcy
Musicians remain loyal to orchestra in hard times
By Rob Shikina
Honolulu Sympho...
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Handel at Work: A Virtual Look at the Original ‘Messiah’ Score
Ever wonder what kind of penmanship George Frederick Handel had? Was he the type
to cross things out with a single, swift stroke, or did he cover up hi...
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Uh, New York? What About Met's Tosca Upset You So?
Not
many opera productions lately have met with the kind of outrage that greeted
director Luc Bondy's new "Tosca," which opened the Metropolitan
Opera's season in September. Patrons and critics alike were scathing in their
denunciations of Bondy's unpardonable deviations from Puccini's instructions,
and suddenly the company's general director, Peter Gelb, had a full-blown
brushfire on his hands.
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Yo-Yo Ma coming to CSO for three-year residency
Yo-Yo
Ma coming to CSO for three-year residency
by Andrew Patner
NEW YORK — Chicago
Symphony Orchestra music director designate Riccardo Muti took a giant step
toward realizing his goals of connecting the CSO with wider audiences and young
...
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ALEC BALDWIN and New York Philharmonic
Serious
Music? He Loves It. No, Seriously.
By Daniel J Wakin
Published: December 11, 2009...
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Critic's notebook: Save the 'Ring'
Critic's notebook: Save the 'Ring'
Details of Los Angeles
Opera’s financial mess are still sketchy, so it is ...
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The Stradivarius` secret.
Scientists dymystify the Stradivarius 'secret'The Australian IT has long been suspected that the beauty of a Stradivarius violin was skin-deep, with its gleaming lacquer responsible for the instrument's supreme, bright sound.But after years picking apart scraps of varnish taken from Stradivarius instruments, scientists have ruled out any secret ingredient as the key to the fiddles' superb timbre. They reveal that Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) applied two simple products in his workshop in northern Italy: oil and pine resin ."There is no indication that allows us to say that the lacquer has an influence on the sound," says Jean-Ph...
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iPhones are musical instruments in new course and ensemble
iPhones
are being used as musical instruments in a new course at the University of
Michigan.
The
students -- who design, build and play instruments on their smartphone...
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Ten Questions For A Critic: The State Of Classical Music
Ten Questions For A Critic: The State Of Classical Music
by TOM HUIZENGA
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Simon Rattle wins over the Berlin Phil and its fans
Simon
Rattle wins over the Berlin Phil and its fans
After
becoming the orchestra's principal conductor in 2002, the Englishman has
endured a rocky interlude b...
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Tchaikovsky`s Operatic Caunterpart to Nutckracer
Tsarina in my eyes Tchaikovsky's sole comic opera, based
on a Gogol fairytale, is a little-known rarity. Francesca Zambello, directing
it for the second time, can't understand why
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