Category: music

“The players accepted a freeze for the 2010-11 season and a 16.6 percent reduction for the two seasons after that. By the 2012-2013 season, base pay for BSO members will be $67,600 – essentially the same as it was in 2001.”

“One of the bonuses in having Marin Alsop as music director is that she brought a strong connection to the Naxos label with her, and the company was happy to add the BSO to its product line.” Alsop and the BSO are already in the midst of recording a Dvořák symphony cycle; next season they begin a similar project with Prokofiev’s symphonies.

Last week The New York Times reported that the fundraising concert by the pianist and conductor Christoph Eschenbach at Carnegie Hall could net at most about $8,000. As it happened, the total box office take was around $160,000, and expenses were more than $180,000. Yet Lang Lang announced from the stage that the event had raised $100,000 “so far.” Where did that money come from?

“The same person who is able to sit in silence in a darkened concert hall while a symphony orchestra plays or clap along when a bunch of people start dancing to ‘Shout’ in a train station may be at a loss when presented with classical music in the absence of any markers indicating what he or she is supposed to make of it.”

“As about a dozen onlookers assembled, tenor Jesus Hernandez hefted a ripe avocado in his palm and stared wistfully at soprano Jennifer Waters as she bent over the oranges. Suddenly, Hernandez … burst forth into the familiar strains of ‘Libiamo,’ the celebrated homage to drinking and love in Giuseppi Verdi’s ‘La Traviata.'”

“Modern opera, baroque productions and ballet are due for a major revival under the Vienna Opera’s new director, Dominique Meyer. … [He] replaces Romanian-born Ioan Holender who ruled over productions for 18 years but had lately come under increasing fire from critics for his lack of innovation.”

“After the city of Munich had already spilled the beans, confirmation came today that Maazel will be the new chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, starting 2012/13. From the press release it is not clear how long Maestro Maazel will grace Munich with his presence.”

Just when the rest of us thought the whole Bach-builds-baby-brains business had been debunked, Scottish Opera has announced a “groundbreaking” project called “Baby O” – a specially-composed set of music, noises and other stimuli aimed at children aged six to 18 months.

“Although everyone, from Emperor Franz-Josef down, acknowledged his success in galvanizing a stagnant art, Mahler was treated as an outsider and subjected to a barrage of anti- Semitic abuse — the most vicious of its kind until the Hitler era.” Now, “[w]ithout admitting it was wrong about Mahler,” the city “is working hard to adjust its attitudes.”

The star tenor, sidelined for a year due to health and vocal problems including a cyst on his vocal folds, made a one-time, quickly scheduled appearance in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Vienna State Opera on Monday night. He got 60 seconds of applause just for entering and enjoyed a 25-minute ovation after the final curtain. How did he sound?