Blog

The Overachieving Octogenarian

Japan’s Yomiuri Nippon Orchestra has named the Polish-born composer/conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski as its new principal conductor, beginning in spring 2007. What makes the appointment unusual is that Skrowaczewski, a former music director of the Minnesota Orchestra and of Manchester’s Halle Orchestra, will be 84 years old when his tenure in Japan begins.

Finessing A Turnaround

Two and a half years ago, news stories about the Minnesota Orchestra told a distressing tale of internal power struggles, musician dissatisfaction, board dysfunction, and seemingly endless red ink. Today, the deficits are in rapid decline, the organization seems to be healing, the orchestra is garnering rave reviews, and much of the credit for the turnaround is being given to Ronald Lund, who just stepped aside as the orchestra’s board chair. Lund’s success in a post which is frequently a magnet for criticism from all sides may be due in part to his emphasis on improving communication within the organization before trying to heal its external problems.

The Producers’ Producer

Mel Brooks is one of the enduring comedic icons of his generation, and with the wild success of the stage version of The Producers, his politically incorrect zaniness has been embraced by a new generation of fans. Still, “there are some who think that Brooks’s humour is too one-dimensional, too vulgar, to be as enduring as, say, that of Woody Allen.” But contradictions are what Brooks has always been about, and he doesn’t seem terribly troubled by the concept of his legacy.

Chasing Beethoven’s Head

When scientists announced recently that Ludwig van Beethoven died as a definitive result of lead poisoning, a number of gaps in the composer’s biography – his gradual descent into deafness, his erratic behavior and violent temper – began to be filled in. But someone had to do the legwork for the lead poisoning theory to be proven, and that someone was author Russell Martin, whose quest for the skull fragments that would yield the truth could be alternately described as obsessive, gruesome, and fascinating.

Screaming From Birth

A new biography of Edvard Munch suggests that the painter’s tortured childhood went a long way towards shaping the ghoulish style he would bring to his art. “Art enabled Munch to sidestep the claims of family, religion, sexuality and prevailing local attitudes to aesthetics… without simply repudiating his experiences. So it’s no wonder so many of Munch’s paintings are filled with smoke and smokers, tantalising and infecting at once. Often the world itself turns to heavy, poisonous smoke under his brush. Sick, dying and dead children melt into nothingness; predatory women with tangled red hair present themselves to the gaze; family trees become gibbets on which all the generations to come will swing.”

Literacy Of American College Grads Falls

“The average American college graduate’s literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday. When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation’s college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.”

Atlantic Magazine Says Goodbye To Boston

The Atlantic publishes its final issue in Boston, where it has been for 148 years. It now moves to New York. “David Bradley, who owns the Washington-based National Journal Group of publications and bought The Atlantic from Mort Zuckerman in 1999, has built readership up to about 1.5 million, and doubled newsstand sales to close to 60,000. The latest audited circulation is about 405,000, but according to an e-mail from Bradley, the magazine is still losing about $3 million a year.”