Gunmen entered the Munch Museum in Oslo and ripped Munch’s “The Scream” from the wall, stealing it. “Two masked thieves pulled the work and another painting, Madonna, off the wall as stunned visitors watched. One robber threatened staff with a gun before the pair escaped in a waiting car, a museum officer told the BBC.”
Blog
On The Trail Of The Stolen Scream
Leads are coming in about the two Munch paintings stolen in Oslo this weekend. “On Sunday afternoon police found a painting frame near Carl Berners plass in central Oslo. Police believed the find could be linked to the Munch heist. One of the employees at the Munch Museum café told Aftenposten’s Internet edition that she saw two men walking with the two paintings held between them.”
A Scream Twice Stolen
“The Scream is one of the world’s most recognisable paintings. Copies of the anguished expressionist work can be found in any major poster shop and it is even the name and symbol of a popular pub chain in the UK.” It was stolen before – in 1994, and held for ransom, but was recovered before the money was paid.
Dreaming Of A Classic Cathedral In 3-D
Work began on Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona in 1883. “Though work resumed in 1952, it has gone very slowly. More than 50 years later, the church is still only 40 percent finished. (It now holds 4,000 people; when it reaches its final circumference, 295 by 196 feet, it will accommodate 14,000.)” It will take at least 30 years more to complete. But for those unwilling to wait to see what it will look like, a new 3-D projection has been completed.
Rewriting The Book On Kids Plays
At the recent Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region at the Arvada Center in Denver, Steven Fendrich took issue with the kinds of plays considered for young people. “At the showcase, which included four new works for young audiences, Fendrich championed age 6 as the baseline for material to be considered publishable. He admonished several authors for using sophisticated language and references to historic figures children ‘could not possibly be expected to understand’.”
How Does New Music Relate To “Classical” Music?
“One wonders how much discussions of new music have to do with the classical music world today: a collection of fundamentally conservative institutions in which predominantly old music is presented and received in reverential, churchly silence and new music, for better or worse, is too often something to sit through. Many critics deplore this situation and are deeply invested in encouraging contemporary performances from classical institutions. In essence, we’re demanding of classical music that it be a living art. But focusing as we do on the larger institutions, we’re not necessarily keeping abreast of the latest trends in composition ourselves.”
Spreading Understanding
What’s next in classical music? Kyle MacMillan suspects the “next big thing is going to come in how classical music – in some cases, all music – is perceived and understood. Already causing a huge transformation is our unprecedented ability to log on to Amazon.com and buy recordings of music from virtually anywhere in the world and any period of the past 1,000 years. This widespread availability of recordings and the accompanying reach of the Internet are helping spread classical music well beyond its usual Western confines.”
A Detente Orchestra That Can’t Play At Home
Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a youth ensemble comprised of equal numbers of jews and arabs. “This orchestra cannot perform in Jerusalem, for fear of disruption, or worse, from one set of extremists or another. This orchestra has never performed in any of the countries from which its members are drawn. Last year there was a single, heavily guarded, performance in Rabat in Morocco – the only one to date in an Arab city. Security for these youngsters, as they make their way to and from their homes, is such a problem that on occasion the Spanish government has even provided diplomatic passports. And – most chillingly of all – the concert programme contains no names.”
Remembering Elmer Bernstein
The death of film music composer Elmer Bernstein marks the end of an era. “Over the years, Bernstein worked with many of the greatest directors and, with a fair number of them, he collaborated several times, including three films with Martin Scorsese. But he became increasingly disillusioned with the ignorance and crude commercialism of Hollywood’s approach to music.”
Will Rowling Write Peter Pan Sequel?
Trustees of the estate of JM Barrie have asked three of the UK’s top children’s book authors to take a try at writing a sequel to “Peter Pan” as the story’s 100th anniversary approaches. The trustees aim to commission a new story which will “share the same enchanting characters as the original, the same longevity, and be just as valid in a hundred years as the original is today”.