Gilbert Kaplan is a former economist who conducts one symphony. Ane he does it very well. His second career “has to be one of the strangest acts of wish fulfillment in musical history, not quite on a par in historical importance with Gustav Mahler’s becoming conductor of the Vienna State Opera in 1897, but possessing its own odd grandeur. Mr. Kaplan is doing what he regards as the definitive “Resurrection” Symphony with the orchestra that Mahler conducted when the work was first performed 108 years ago. But the Vienna Philharmonic is one of about 50 orchestras that Mr. Kaplan, who is not a professional musician, has conducted in the Mahler Second Symphony.”
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Poetic Justice – American Poets Speak Out Against War
American poets are becoming an unexpectedly vocal opponent of a war with Iraq. “On Wednesday, in the kind of coordinated grass-roots action unseen since the Vietnam era, poets and writers will stage more than 50 readings in bookstores, libraries, churches and meeting houses across the country, inspired by poet and Copper Canyon Press publisher Sam Hamill, who in an e-mail late last month asked 50 friends and colleagues to dedicate the day to ‘Poetry Against the War.’ How did one e-mail launch a nationwide protest movement that will stage events through the month and beyond?
The New Women Literary Publishers
A new generation of women running British literary publishing imprints is making a big success of them. “So what differentiates these women from the men who came before them? Perhaps the fact that they represent ‘joined-up’ publishing. The new hierarchies comprise editors who understand business, or business people who appreciate books. Unlike their predecessors, they can safely be introduced to an author without saying anything embarrassing.”
4000-Year-Old Body Giving Up Clues To Stonehenge
A man buried near Stonehenge 4000 years ago is giving a number of clues about the monument. “The first scientific results, from a burial already regarded as astonishing, are bewildering archaeologists but give clues which could solve the continuing mystery, despite innumerable theories and experiments, of how Stonehenge’s four-tonne bluestones were transported 240 miles from Preseli in the Welsh mountains.”
Picasso And Matisse Come To Queens…
This week’s opening of the Museum of Modern Arts’ blockbuster Picasso/Matisse show has people wondering how MoMA’s temporary home in Queens will show itself. The blocks around the museum have been cleaned up, and the museum is anticipating large crowds. “Seeing fine art changes the way you look at the world. I hope that seeing the show here changes the way hundreds of thousands of people look at Queens.”
Havel: From Playwright To President And Back
Vaclav Havel’s presidency of the Czech Republic has ended. “Awkward and shy, Havel is a curiously natural director. Forty-odd years ago, he started out as a stagehand and a playwright. He was an acolyte of Beckett and Ionesco—the theatre of the absurd. The sense of the absurd extends to his own life. There is surely no modern biography that is more improbable yet dramatically coherent. Havel’s is the rare life, Milan Kundera has written, that resembles a work of art and gives ‘the impression of a perfect compositional unity’.”
Big Decline In UK Recordings Sales
Sales of recordings are way down in the UK. “Figures out this week will show sales of CDs and other recorded music were down almost 4% last year, says the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It is understood the figures will reveal the biggest downturn in a single year since the birth of the CD market in the early 1980s.”
Amazon Dumps Ads – It’s Prices, Not Ads That Inspire Customers
Amazon has decided to dump its TV and print advertising. “Last year, the company spent just under than $50 million on its TV campaign, mainly in big cities right before Christmas. But it ran ads most of last year in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., to see whether advertising increased sales in those areas.” The results? The ads helped push business, but only a bit. Reducing prices was much more effective in driving sales…
Recording Industry Contracting Warn Industry Analysts
Stock analysts are warning that the recording business is a fading one. “We believe the structural issue of piracy and weak pricing power will continue, and predict that the industry will continue to contract through 2006.”
Minority Report – Competition Tries To Encourage Young Musicians
Blacks and Latinos make up just 3 percent of the musicians in American orchestras. And though some attempts have been made to try to help diversify, the number of minority classical musicians is still small. So in Detroit, “for six years, the Sphinx Competition for young minority string players has been on the front lines of rewriting the odds. Prizes include more than $100,000 in cash and scholarships to top summer music camps. Winners also receive recital opportunities and solo appearances with major orchestras…”