Blog

State Of The Art: Music Criticism

A hundred classical music critics gathered in October to talk about their chosen profession. “Conductor James Conlon sounded a recurring theme when he said U.S. classical music institutions were in crisis and needed the help of critics “not just to admonish and correct our bad tempi or poor choice of repertoire . . . but to raise the consciousness of the entire nation” about the value of the arts.”

Tenors, Tenors, Everywhere…

The planet is awash in tenors. They’re popping up everywhere. But have we hit tenor aturation? “Among serious opera people, suspicion is warranted. Legitimately trained tenors often come and go in a few seasons. And ours is a time when questionably trained pop tenors sweep the country with massive marketing campaigns and then disappear before they can develop artistically.”

Sherlock’s First Case

The British Library is putting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first literary effort on display. “The contents have never been made public or published since Conan Doyle wrote the book while he was working as a doctor in Southsea, probably in the early to mid-1880s, soon after he finished his training at Edinburgh, the city of his birth.”

New Russians And The Russians

This week in London, the largest sales of Russian paintings were up for bid. And who’s buying? Russians. “So-called ‘New Russians’ have accumulated vast fortunes, helped by rising prices for oil and other raw materials, and have spent some of that wealth on buying works by artists they were taught in school to revere.”