Conductor Kent Nagano is suddenly the man of the moment. “Nagano, 52, was in the news last month when the Montreal Symphony Orchestra put an end to weeks of rumors and officially announced that he would become the orchestra’s music director starting with the 2006-07 season. In February, the Bavarian State Opera named him to succeed Zubin Mehta as general music director, also beginning in 2006-07. He is currently music director of the Los Angeles Opera, Berlin’s Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and the Berkeley (Calif.) Symphony Orchestra, a post he has held for more than 25 years.”
Month: April 2004
Modern Music In Modern Art
“For whatever reason – and speculation could fill many a book – modern visual art is far more widely accepted than modern classical music. Exhibitions of Picasso and Matisse draw huge crowds, and even hotels mount abstract art on their walls. But mainstream modern music by the likes of Stravinsky, Poulenc and Janácek, some of it nearly a century old, remains a hard sell. Genuinely atonal music, from Arnold Schoenberg to Elliott Carter – the equivalent, you might say, of abstract expressionism in painting – isn’t popular even among highly trained professional musicians. Surrounded by modern painting and sculpture, though, modern music can make more sense.”
Liechtenstein Museum Reopens For First Time Since WWII
The Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna recently reopened. “The collection is one of the largest and most valuable private collections in the world, and belongs to the royal family of Liechtenstein, the tiny country wedged between Austria and Switzerland. The museum closed on the eve of World War II in 1938 and since then the artwork has remained hidden behind castle walls in Liechtenstein. Until its closure the museum was regarded as a must-see among Vienna’s cultural wealth.”
Denver’s Library Saloon Tradition
According to the Hennen’s American Public Library Rating index, between 1999 and 2001, the Denver Public Library was America’s No. 1 library. But budget cuts last year have closed the library one day a week and forced other cutbacks. Does this mean the city will have to return to its past, when its first libraries were located in saloons?
Koolhaas Steps Out Front
Rem Koolhaas’ new Seattle Library could confirm his reputation as the most influential architect in the world. “While Frank Gehry remains the most famous architect in the world, for more than a decade Koolhaas, who is 59, has been the most influential. A few architects have a sharper theoretical edge than Koolhaas, and a few create more exciting spaces. But nobody—not even Gehry—produces buildings that are simultaneously so intellectually ambitious and so shamelessly populist.”
Audience Turns Up To Support Liverpool’s Schwarz
Gerard Schwarz returned to conduct the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic after members of his orchestra voted last week not to renew his contract. “The members voted against the 57-year-old music director’s contract being renewed when it comes up for renewal in 2006. But Mr Schwarz appears to have the support of the paying public as record crowds turned up to see him conducting the Liverpool Young Musician of the Year contest.”
Many Iraq Artifacts Recovered, Many Archaeological Sites Plundered
A year after the Iraq National Museum was looted, many of its artifacts have been recovered. But “in terms of archaeological losses, the looting of the museum may well be dwarfed by the continual destruction of archaeological sites all over Iraq by looters. This looting has touched upon well-known sites such as Nippur, home of an archaeological expedition of the Oriental Institute, Umma, Lagash, and Isin, but many more unexcavated sites are destroyed by the unsystematic onslaught of pick axes used by the looters throughout the country. The loss in archaeological data is impossible to quantify but clearly has reached disastrous dimensions. Although coalition forces have taken measures to protect some of the key sites in Iraq, archaeologists contend those measures have been inadequate.”
Chick Lit’s Mixed Blessing
There are now several publishing devoted to the genre. “Score one for the ladies, right? Not exactly. It seems that many observers are up in arms about what they perceive to be antifeminist pabulum. ‘Many of these titles really are trash: trash that imitates other, better books that could have ushered in a new wave of smart, postfeminist writing, and trash that threatens to flood the market in women’s reading’.”
The French Police Picasso Files
French police are releasing their files on Pablo Picasso. “Documents show that Picasso was spied on initially as a suspected anarchist, and later over his communist sympathies – before he became a prominent member of France’s Communist Party.”
A New Idea For The Barnes?
A large piece of property next to the Barnes Collection is about to be sold. Could the property represent a solution to the Barnes’ financial woes? “Were it to acquire a slice of Episcopal’s campus for a short access road, the Barnes could open an entrance on busy City Avenue, solving at a stroke the intractable traffic and parking disputes that have dogged the institution for years. Add a parking lot, and thousands more paying customers could see the foundation’s unrivaled collection of Renoirs, Matisses and Cezannes in the original halls designed by founder Albert C. Barnes for his collection. With a few other simple changes, the operating deficits that have plagued the Barnes for years would be gone.”