Category: music

Klaus Heymann: “[Naxos Music Library is] no longer a hope; it’s a big thing now. It’s the fastest growing business we have. This year it’s up 25% on last year. Nothing else is up 25%. … Downloads are stagnating. I don’t think this is a long-term [prospect] … Physical sales are still surprisingly strong in classical music, unlike pop and rock. … All our distribution companies are very profitable, not necessarily from selling our own stuff; but we sell practically every independent classical label.”

“Unlike the famous verses bawled at sporting fixtures and stag nights, and in Irish-themed bars across the world named in her honour, this has no cockles, no mussels, no death of a fever, and no barra wheeled through streets broad and narra. But the singer clearly does know sweet Molly very well indeed.”

“Lorin Maazel earned $3.3 million in his final season as music director of the New York Philharmonic, a figure representing a $500,000 increase over the previous season, according to the orchestra’s newly filed tax return.” That same fiscal year, “the orchestra had a record deficit of $4.6 million. It is projecting a similar shortfall for this past season.”

Edgard Varèse’s Ionisation may have stuck to a traditional format, but it broke almost every other mold one might think of. The piece, composed back in 1931, is “a rigorously organized discourse for 13 percussionists playing on 40 instruments, and nothing else”; it employed “timbre, texture and density, rather than melody and harmony, as organizational tools”; and it “dramatically raised the bar for virtuosity among percussionists,” in terms of both dexterity and command of complex rhythms.

“The Honolulu Symphony Society announced yesterday that it has ‘accepted the resignation’ of the 63 musicians that comprise its orchestra–much to the surprise of the musicians.”

“It had to happen. As the press release has it, “The first classical performance using an iPad in place of traditional paper music” – that’s sheet music, to you and me – happened on Wednesday night.”

“[In] its early years Pitchfork was supposed to be the insurgency, pushing back against mainstream music magazines with committed and sometimes idiosyncratic coverage of independent music. Founded in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber as a small Web site, it’s now the most prominent brand in online music journalism – averaging 30 million page views a month.”

“‘Christian Marclay: Festival’ at the Whitney Museum is aptly titled, since some form of music, much of it live, will be audible at all times during the show’s run. In the late 1970s, Mr. Marclay, an artist-composer-performer, became one of the first musicians to use a turntable as an instrument.” NY Times art critic Roberta Smith and music critic Nate Chinen blog with each other about the show.

Critic Donald Rosenberg’s lawyer said that evidence would show that three Musical Arts Association “officers who had extended conductor Franz Welser-Most’s contract through 2018 … had waged a campaign to get Rosenberg removed from the orchestra beat.” He said Plain Dealer executive editor Susan Goldberg “caved in to that pressure.”

The superstar tenor, who turns 70 next January, appeared as Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra last season to wide (if not universal) praise. On August 2, he’ll sing another iconic Verdi baritone role, Rigoletto, in a concert performance in Beijing. In September, he’ll sing and act the part in a live telecast from Mantua, where the opera is set.