Category: music

“In a revealing survey, some of Scotland’s leading musicians detail how they are looking for part-time jobs as cleaners, waitresses and supermarket workers to supplement their income, as the national opera’s orchestra is set to become a part-time operation next year.”

An unnamed (due to embarrassment?) German violinist left his $1.4 million 1748 violin on the train when he got home to Munich from an Asian tour. Railway staff promptly found and returned the instrument, whose owner needed medical attention for a panic attack.

“Heading the group of five distinguished artists is violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who this season celebrates her 35th anniversary as a performer, starting as Herbert von Karajan’s violin soloist of choice in his late recordings of the concerto repertoire.”

“[The] orchestra next year will transmit live performances of three of its concerts to more than 450 high-definition-equipped movie theaters throughout the United States and Canada.” However, “the orchestra faces an inherently greater challenge than an opera company in making its productions visually – as well as aurally – compelling.”

“The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will perform Méhul’s Fourth Symphony – and herald it as a long-lost prototype for the 19th-century romantic cyclic symphony, but written 20 years before Berlioz took up the form in his Symphonie Fantastique.“

Like all of the players’ concerts so far, Sunday’s performance was jammed. A church official said the sanctuary holds some 700 to 750 people, and there were only a smattering of empty seats.

Musicologists in Oxford have made exact replicas of instruments featured in the The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. And, apparently, they sound ‘horrible’

“He’s added 29 new productions to the Met’s repertory in the past 4 years and almost all of them have been wildly successful, with total attendance rising 12 per cent. And for accessibility, his ace in the hole was his scheme to put the Met onto the movie screens of the world in HD.”

This week “the financially beleaguered company will go into performance hiatus while a task force tries to figure out where Opera Cleveland should head. s it curtains, in other words, for the company that began life in 1976 as Cleveland Opera? Or will the organization be able to survive by adopting a mission that veers dramatically from its grand-opera sensibility?”

“Musicians and management of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra met face to face for the first time in six weeks Friday in an effort to resolve the 34-day-old players’ strike. But talks broke off after nine hours with the two sides no closer to a deal.”