Category: music

Maazel “would succeed Christian Thielemann, who was unable to negotiate a contract to his liking and is leaving at the end of the 2011 season to take over the Dresden Staatskapelle. The orchestra has not officially announced the appointment, but Munich’s mayor, Christian Ude, and his press spokespeople appear to have spilled the beans.”

“Ambitious plans are being drawn up to build a second concert hall for Liverpool’s Philharmonic as part of a £40m revamp. Officials have revealed proposals to build a second hall,” – smaller and more flexible than the Art Deco 1,800-seat Philharmonic Hall – “create more back stage space for musicians and new drinking and eating areas for concert goers.”

After all, Melville’s book is probably the most famous classic American novel that most of us haven’t actually read. Yet, says the composer, people “have a sense of what it’s about. They know that there’s an obsessed captain, a ship, a white whale. And that gives a creative team tremendous freedom to play with it.”

“The cost of an average individual ticket will rise by 11 percent, while subscriber tickets will go up an average of 6 percent. The Met said it had not made ‘across the board’ increases in four years,” and general manager Peter Gelb “said that while administrative cost cuts remained in effect, ‘We are not skimping on our presentations’ for the coming season.”

“Here is what’s particularly frustrating about this rueful moment in the history of a great ensemble: It’s obvious that as the Philadelphia Orchestra sits on one side of the footlights wondering why its audience has abandoned it, former listeners sit at home wondering why the orchestra they love has abandoned them.”

“Virtually every conductor I’ve worked with – the worship has been of themselves,” says one orchestral musician. Among top maestros, it’s unusual to find an individual as openly, and even enthusiastically, devout as the Pittsburgh Symphony’s music director. “Yet [Honeck] wears his piety lightly. There is little sanctimony about him, and …[s]tories abound about his humility and charity.”

The media group has issued a statement saying, “We believe that Abbey Road should remain in EMI’s ownership.” The company is trying to raise investment capital to revive the facility and supports the agency English Heritage’s plan to add Abbey Road to its list of registered historic places.

“Nothing has changed since I started my contracts, both with Washington and then with Los Angeles. I have worked very hard for the company. Really, I’m very proud that both companies, they have really grown. And the only problem that we have right now is the fact that we are generally, globally, in a crisis.”

“Chopin’s music has sometimes been branded effeminate, or ‘salon music’: not quite serious, not quite healthy, not quite German, since it departs from the structural conventions of the great Viennese classical school. … Indeed, some of Chopin’s ardent defenders have implicitly bought into the idea that the music is weak and needs defending, trying to emphasize its seriousness (and manliness) by playing the works in sets.”