Whatever you may think of his slightly offbeat style or flamboyant stage manner, there can be no denying that pianist Lang Lang is bringing people back to classical music in droves with a devastating combination of “charm, charisma, stamina and an almost evangelical sense of mission… As far as Lang Lang is concerned, changing the world means you don’t just play concerts, you also appear on The Tonight Show and Sesame Street.” His open embrace of all the publicity that has come his way in recent years has led to an unusually bitter critical backlash, but none of the sniping seems to have dimished the pianist’s confidence or ability in the slightest.
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So You Wanna Be An Opera Singer…
What does it take to become a player in the hypercompetitive world of opera? “Even a stellar voice is no guarantee of success. It helps, but so do looks and luck and that intangible, uniquely human quality called charisma. A knack for strategic schmoozing can’t hurt either. And great hair. Very important, that.” Sherrill Milnes, who knows a thing or two about all of those qualities, may be the best thing ever to happen to young singers hoping to become the next big operatic thing. From his perch at Northwestern University, Milnes has earned a reputation as not only one of America’s great vocal teachers, but as a man who can prepare students for what they will face in the professional opera world.
Levine in Boston: The First 100 Days
It is foolish, of course, to try to judge a music director’s tenure with an orchestra after only six months, but the immediate effects of a new arrival on both ensemble and audience can have a significant impact on the evolution of the relationship between maestro and musicians. In Boston, where James Levine is now firmly ensconced as music director, observers have begun to notice a distinct shift in how the orchestra is perceived. More young people have been showing up at concerts, and a number of musical heavyweights who couldn’t be bothered with the waning years of the Ozawa era are back in the fold as well. “Clearly, Levine’s programs are sparking all this interest. They are long; they are challenging. He is striving to create concerts that are at once provocative to the musically trained, yet not off-putting to the more casual concertgoer.”
Paglia: Poetry’s Sorry State
Camille Paglia remembers the 1960s, when poetry mattered. “But over the following decades, poetry and poetry study were steadily marginalised by pretentious “theory” – which claims to analyse language but atrociously abuses it. Poststructuralism and crusading identity politics led to the gradual sinking in reputation of the premiere literature departments, so that by the turn of the millennium they were no longer seen, even by the undergraduates themselves, to be where the excitement was on campus. One result of this triumph of ideology over art is that, on the basis of their publications, few literature professors know how to “read” any more – and thus can scarcely be trusted to teach that skill to their students.”
Pols, Players Rally To Save Tasmanian Orchestra
Australia’s musicians’ union is joining forces with politicians and members of the public to lobby the country’s arts ministry to reject the proposal laid out in a new study which recommends downsizing the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra to a chamber ensemble. Union representatives accuse Australia’s conservative ruling party of trying to “wreck” the orchestra more than once, and calls any plan which would redistribute funds from one ensemble to another unacceptable.
It’s An Author! It’s A Marketing Whiz! Wait! It’s Both!
“With profits in the publishing world pretty flat in recent years, big publicity budgets are largely limited to the heavyweights in the writing world, the proven novelists (such as Stephen King) or famous memoirist (such as Bill Clinton). Everyone else gets about $5,000 to $10,000 to promote their title, if they’re lucky. Many get nothing at all… The days when it was enough for an author to launch a Web site and give away some tote bags are over. An unknown writer today has to be an imaginative entrepreneur, with strong marketing skills — not just a wordsmith.”
Author Chosen For Peter Pan Sequel
Geraldine McCaughrean has been chosen to write a sequel to Peter Pan. “The working title of the new story is Captain Pan, an indication of what happened to Peter Pan as he advanced in years. The children’s hospital has said that the book must feature the original characters, including Peter, Wendy, Tinkerbell and Captain Hook.”
Piecing Together A City’s Art Index
Members of a San Francisco synagogue has discovered a “treasure trove” of 19th-century art hidden in plain sight on its walls and ceiling. The discovery that two prominent local artists working in concert were responsible for the temple’s beautiful, Renaissance-inspired interior has touched off a renewed round of interest in San Francisco’s often cloudy art history. “The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed public records and personal papers, erasing much of the city’s artistic history from current memory.”
Why Can’t Eschenbach Just Be Eschenbach?
Philadelphia Orchestra music director Christoph Eschenbach, who has a passion for 20th-century music and is legendary for his fiery performances of Shostakovich, could not be much more different from the man he replaced, Wolfgang Sawallisch, a low-key European conductor of the old school, whose tastes ran more to German romantics. “So you have to wonder why [Eschenbach] has spent so much time in his first year and a half as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra plowing through repertoire that was the specialty of his immediate predecessor. Comparisons are inevitable, and Eschenbach is not coming out on top.”
Shirley Fleming, 75
Legendary classical music critic Shirley Fleming, who wrote for the New York Post and the New York Times, has died at her home in Georgia, aged 75. In addition to her newspaper work, Fleming spent 25 years as editor of Musical America magazine.