Category: music

“In particular, critic and composer Virgil Thomson dismissed Barber as a composer for ‘high middlebrow taste.’ And Barber’s music does sound conservative next to the atonal, modernist style in vogue in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. If the scathing reviews bothered Barber, he tried not to show it.”

But general manager and artistic director George Steel “said that this season City Opera expects to balance its budget for the first time in years. ‘The company is light-years ahead of where we were last year at this time,’ he said. ‘There are still significant challenges, but we are working very hard to address them.'”

Alex Ross: “Programme booklets sometimes contain a list of rules, rendered in the style of God on Mount Sinai,” telling people when it is and isn’t acceptable to applaud. “The underlying message of the protocol is, in essence: ‘Curb your enthusiasm. Don’t get too excited.’ Should we be surprised that people aren’t as excited about classical music as they used to be?”

“The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s [third] International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition has been won by [a] 31-year-old Latvian, Ainars Rubikis. … Since its launch only six years ago it has become one of Europe’s most important conducting competitions” … notably because the first winner was Gustavo Dudamel.

Mark Swed: “Anyone who took a close look at Nixon in China discovered that it was not ‘CNN opera,’ despite the historical accuracy of the libretto: It was a boldly anti-CNN opera. Its concern was everything that they didn’t tell you on television. … [It] was not about what Nixon meant for China but what China meant for Nixon.”

Romel Joseph, a 50-year-old Haitian-American who had already triumphed over blindness, had his left hand crushed by a falling wall and his right impaled by nails (not to mention a leg crushed and pinned by another wall) in the January earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince. Doctors, nurses and musicians are coming to Joseph’s aid as he recovers in a Miami hospital.

“It’s no longer possible to ‘sell out’ — at least, not within a certain time-cherished understanding of the term. Rockers, rappers and up-and-coming pop titans of all stripes are licensing music and image as an integral part of brand-building, which largely has usurped selling music and concert tickets as many musicians’ professional end goal.”

“Officials from the Italian culture ministry will on Monday begin investigating an episode that has flabbergasted music-lovers and opened a heated debate in Italy on the power of its public employees and the trade unions that back them. According to the organisers, the concert had only four minutes to run; the attendants’ representatives said that it was more like 40.”

“Across three decades, research has converged to suggest that exposure to music with violent themes increases the likelihood of aggressive behaviour, along with aggressive and hostile thoughts and negative emotions such as anger, unfriendliness and fear.”