Author: Douglas McLennan

QUICK FADE

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the leading lights of the mid-20th Century avant-garde, and he influenced many composers. “Yet today it is hard to find Stockhausen even on CD, let alone in performance. He has all but disappeared from view. Some of the reasons for this lie at his own door. Stockhausen now releases CDs on his own label, but makes it frustratingly difficult to buy them.” – The Guardian

COMPETITION ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

The Leeds Piano Competition, set to run next week, is one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world. “But competitions aren’t what they used to be. There was a day when being a prize-winner was a passport to celebrity. But now competitions are so numerous that winning at least something is fairly commonplace. They are also subject to accusations of infighting, poor decisions and corruption.” – The Guardian

BOWDLERIZING BEETHOVEN

Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony begin their Beethoven-as-reconceived-by Mahler series. Some things work, some don’t. “Last night’s concert could not have happened at any other time in history but our own, and because of that, it’s worth hearing. A century ago, critics would have to have been either fer or agin this sort of thing. Now they can hedge with that best of all hedges: Who knows if Mahler’s Beethoven is good or bad, but it’s certainly interesting.” – Washington Post

QUICK FADE

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the leading lights of the mid-20th Century avant-garde, and he influenced many composers. “Yet today it is hard to find Stockhausen even on CD, let alone in performance. He has all but disappeared from view. Some of the reasons for this lie at his own door. Stockhausen now releases CDs on his own label, but makes it frustratingly difficult to buy them.” – The Guardian

REINVENTING DANCE

South Africa’s major dance companies have closed for lack of funding. A disaster? Perhaps. “The other point of view is that the departure — particularly of the ballet ensemble, the management style of which was characterised by a blatant disregard for the political and artistic realities that came into play from the middle of the 1990s — is a positive move, leaving a gap crying out to be filled by the entrepreneurially and/or artistically minded. Over the next few months that gap is to be solidly plugged by a plethora of local and visiting dance companies, varying in degrees of motivation from art to capitalism.” – Daily Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg)

DRAGGING DOWN CANADIAN FILM PRODUCERS

Canadian film production houses are hurting, despite an abundance of work. The reason is an ongoing scandal at production house Cinar, which is “under investigation for taking illegal tax credits, allegedly by using Canadians to cover for American writers who didn’t qualify under Canadian content rules, and misappropriating $86 million (U.S.) in unauthorized investments.” – Inside.com

WHERE HAVE THE LITERARY FILMMAKERS GONE?

“The posh literary film (or PLF) is one of the relatively new petit-bourgeois enjoyments. Since the 1980s, indeed, we’ve had nearly all of EM Forster, a good deal of Henry James, more than half of Jane Austen, a bit of Orwell and Wilde and Graham Greene and, any minute now, no doubt, a Technicolor account of Pope’s Dunciad, starring every British actor who ever failed O-level English – which would make it a cast of thousands.” – The Telegraph (UK)

SO YOU WANT TO BE A SCREENWRITER …

A new paper by the Australian Film Commission says that 1,200 to 1,400 feature scripts have been developed here in the past three years. And the number that reach the screen? About 25 to 30 a year.” – Sydney Morning Herald

  • CANADIAN TV NETWORK SETS UP FILM FUND: “The Western Independent Producers Fund will help filmmakers west of the Manitoba and Ontario border develop their stories.” – CBC

IS THEATRE DYING?

“What we are seeing these days is, more precisely, the theatrical version of the hostile takeover. ‘Englut and devour’ – the name that Mel Brooks once invented for a Hollywood studio – is becoming the motto of the American stage. The triumph of American commercialism is hardly a novelty of the millennium. What is different today is the lack of any indignation about it. It seems almost quixotic these days to criticize the relationship between art and commerce, and a little nostalgic even to try to evoke any interest in the question.” – The New Republic