Category: music

“I have just discovered that the last three Mozart symphonies are an instrumental oratorio,” Nikolaus Harnoncourt told interviewer Tom Service, who explains: “[A]ll that he had time to tell me was that it’s because the 39th Symphony is the only one with an introduction, and the 41st, the Jupiter, the only one with a proper finale; and that there are thematic connections across all three symphonies – and not just the four-note tag that dominates the finale of the Jupiter.”

“A strike may cripple the New York City Opera later this year if its new general manager and artistic director, George Steel, seeks extensive concessions, said the union representing opera singers, stage directors and other production staffers. … ‘Under Steel’s proposal, working at City Opera wouldn’t even be a full-time job,’ Alan Gordon, the executive director of the Guild, said in an interview.”

Jessica Duchen: “Some competitions have helped to launch fine careers, with relative impartiality … But under that tip it seems that there lies an iceberg of nepotism, sexual coercion, financial greed and downright megalomania that has gone unchecked for decades.”

“Prominent Belgian Jews have harshly criticized the Flanders Opera in Antwerp for staging what they regard as an anti-Israeli, political event disguised as a premiere.” The production of Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, directed by two Israelis, puts the Philistines in Western garb while dressing Samson and the Israelites as Arabs.

“Tony Sertich, executive director of the Rochester Symphony Orchestra & Chorale, was dismissed Monday” – an uncommon occurrence in a field where top administrators who lose the confidence of their boards of directors are usually permitted to resign.

The all-sibling foursome is losing its first violinist, Timothy Ying, who announced at a concert last weekend that this was his last performance with the group. He says, “It’s all about providing the kind of family life that I want for my kids. I’ve been on the road about half of the time for the past 15 years.” He has three children under the age of 5.

“There was a time in the late 1960s when the avant-garde composer Robert Ashley thought that the world was ready for televised opera.” In 1984, with the broadcast of his Perfect Lives, “Ashley was possibly even poised to give birth to a new popular genre — and then he didn’t. … It’s 25 years since [Perfect Lives‘] first TV success, yet Ashley is farther than ever from realising his dream of opera for television. But, even at 79, he’s patient.”

“Beethoven and Bach could become the latest victims of the New York Times Co.’s financial crisis. Rumors are raging that top suits have discussed putting classical radio station WQXR (96.3 FM) on the block to shore up the company’s dwindling cash stash, which, The Post reported last week, is down to $34 million after debts are weighed in.”

“The musicians of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra agreed Friday to end a nearly seven-month strike, just before playing the fifth and final Masterworks performance of the 2008-09 season.” (That is, they were taking a break from the strike when they decided to end it.)

“The five 2009 honorees are composer John Adams; stage director Frank Corsaro; mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne; stage director and former general manager of the San Francisco Opera Lotfi Mansouri; and conductor Julius Rudel.”