Category: music

While visiting Brodsworth Hall in Yorkshire, a retired recording engineer noticed a disc that turned out to be an excerpt from Bohème recorded by Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in 1908. It was part of a trove that includes violinist Mischa Elman playing Souvenir de Moscou in 1906 and Sousa conducting Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in 1905.

“The International Mozarteum Foundation says it has discovered two new works composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Salzburg-based foundation says in a brief statement that the previously unknown works are piano pieces.”

“Next time an airline loses or breaks your luggage, try shaming them with a song and a video. That’s what a little-known Canadian country and western singer did after he claimed that his Taylor acoustic guitar had been damaged by baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last year. United Breaks Guitars has become a YouTube sensation and provided Dave Carroll with the biggest hit of his career.”

“Now that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has defused Mike Antonovich’s potentially embarrassing attempt to change the focus of Los Angeles Opera’s Ring Festival from Wagner…, I hope it is safe to point out that the company’s troubles may not be completely over. Unfortunately, its next installment in the cycle, ‘Siegfried,’ opens on Sept. 26, in the midst of the Jewish High Holidays” — and it’s the “most problematic of the cycle” in terms of stereotyping.

So far, 22 artists have pulled out of the Milwaukee company’s 50th anniversary season in protest against the abrupt dismissals of artistic director Bill Theisen, company manager Diana Alioto, music director Jamie Johns and other staff members last month. Longtime supporters are beginning to sever their ties with Skylight as well.

“Conductor Emil de Cou has prepared real-time program notes to Beethoven’s Sixth [Symphony] that will be beamed to Twitterati sitting on the lawn of Wolf Trap July 30.”

“The orchestra is fighting for its budget, only now beginning to solicit corporate sponsorship in a country where the state once controlled all (and still does, if chaotically). [INSO director Karim] Wasfi is lobbying to build an opera house in a country where electricity, clean water and garbage removal remain scarce services.”

“The board voted down a motion written by Supervisor Mike Antonovich asking the opera company to shift the focus of the festival away from Wagner, the renowned 19th century composer who is widely admired for his operas and detested for his virulently anti-Semitic personal views. Instead, the board voted to approve a substitute motion from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky in support of L.A. Opera and the Ring Festival.”

The manager of the band Radiohead has founded a business called Polyphonic, which
“will look to invest a few hundred thousand dollars in new and rising artists … [B]ands that receive investments from the firm will operate like start-up companies, recording their own music and choosing outside contractors to handle their publicity, merchandise and touring.”

Composer John Adams’s latest recording was all set for release when somebody realized that there was a typo in conductor David Robertson’s name on the cover. So new covers have to be put on every copy of the CD, and the Nonesuch label is putting back the shipment date to July 28.