Category: music

“When I am in front of an orchestra, the players know I have quite a lot of experience behind me. Therefore there is a kind of – respect is too hard a word – agreement that I know my business. I try to persuade them as to the merits of a given score without forcing them to swallow something they don’t want to swallow.”

The Leipzig Gewandhaus is “searching for a new director of its concert office and artistic planning. And it’s making this known over Twitter. This is actually a nice sign of institutional transparency — even, arguably, a sounder understanding of the Twitter audience than many groups seem to harbor.”

“The scheduling drama … suggests that City Opera remains in trouble,” continuing “to bleed money while downsizing its seasons. … Would anyone be surprised if, in the not-too-distant future, City Opera simply closed up shop entirely for the fall season and turned over even more valuable performance time to the ballet?”

“Mr. Gerstein, 30, is the sixth member of an elite and eclectic group of pianists that includes Ingrid Fliter, Piotr Anderszewski and Leif Ove Andsnes.” The prize, intended to honor and draw attention to an extremely promising young talent, is “given every four years to an unsuspecting pianist.”

Anne Midgette: “The conventions surrounding such announcements have become slightly risible. In classical music, things are booked so far in advance that the performances being announced now have been set in stone for some time. … The mainstream press, however, is not supposed to know anything about this.”

The internationally known Mathieu Dufour had taken a one-year leave to play principal flute with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with the apparent intent of staying there. The 37-year-old Dufour told his once-and-future colleagues in Chicago of L.A., “They have no tradition there.”

“The score is really a blueprint for our creative talents and, consequently, our interpretive options abound,” Byron Janis writes. “We interpret not only the music but the verbal directions the composer has given us. No score will tell you how to play allegro (quickly)–there are a lot of different ‘quicklies’ to go around.”

“Ticket revenue totals $5.19 million at the mid-point of the 2009-2010 season, up 20 percent from $4.34 million during the same period last year, the symphony orchestra said Monday.Total tickets sold are up 14 percent to 145,790, up from 128,362.”

“It’s a golden age of deep repertoire exploration and high-velocity coloratura – singers who put out more notes per second than nearly anybody in recorded memory. … Making matters more fun: Fans don’t have to invent artistic rivalries. The singers are doing that themselves.”

“The red states are those who love the classical tradition with a deep passion. They understand the need for contemporary music and revitalization, and subject themselves to it with a dutiful sense of obedience…. The blue states love classical music no less. But they worry that it’s dying out because it is so entrenched in the past.”