Category: music

Composer Max Steiner (King Kong, Gone With the Wind) “was once complimented as the man who invented modern movie music. ‘Nonsense,’ he replied. ‘The idea originated with Richard Wagner. … If Wagner had lived in this century, he would have been the No. 1 film composer.’ That last point is debatable. (Try to imagine Wagner working for Harvey Weinstein.)”

“A new study from – where else? – France suggests listening to love songs may increase women’s receptivity to amorous advances.” (Thank heaven for social science.)

“On corners, in parks, the pianos will be an eyeful as well as an earful, with attention-getting cases and living-color keys — green or blue, or all black instead of the usual allotment of 52 white and 36 black. So before the whole city finds out who needs to brush up on the ‘Minuet in G,’ volunteers have been putting brushes to the pianos.”

A BBC correspondent “meets the musicians of the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra rehearsing in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The orchestra has been making music year-in-year-out through a quarter of a century of national turmoil, … using Western musical instruments to create Congolese classical music.”

“Nézet-Séguin’s conducting expertise is only one key component to a potentially successful tenure. He needs to connect with the musicians on a level that inspires them well beyond their basic professionalism. He has started on the right foot, partly because the musicians feel included in the selection process….”

“In summer … [a] large portion of [the music director’s] work is with the Tanglewood fellows, the young, talented players who have scored summer posts to study and perform works as an orchestra. While Levine is welcome to visit this summer, it is not clear whether he will be able to work at all with the fellows, [BSO managing director Mark] Volpe said.”

“It’s particularly gratifying to see in classical music, where for decades the trend has been very much in the opposite direction: families who 150 years ago would have learned new music by playing it at the piano now buy recordings or attend concerts where they listen in stony silence.”

With its “leading man too ill to perform” and “his understudy and leading lady laid low by the same bug” yet game to “battle through,” the ENO went ahead with its performance — even when the ailing understudy was replaced after intermission with a chorus member. “At what point does ‘the show must go on’ tip over into ‘must the show go on’?”

“The process started at the hall’s loading dock on 66th Street, with smaller pieces at first. Occasionally a recognizable feature — the organist’s bench, for example — would float by. … A little later, the second truck started yielding up organ pipes on 65th Street, where the stage entrance provided a more direct route and easier turns into the hall.”

“It is a tragic lament, sung by Dido, Queen of Carthage, who flings herself on a funeral pyre after being abandoned by the Trojan Prince Aeneas. ‘Remember me,’ sings the heartbroken queen, to the lover who has left her. ‘But ah, forget my fate.’ She then commits suicide in despair.”