Category: music

“Sources affiliated with the residency proudly note that the project not only pays for itself but also benefits the institution as a whole. Indeed, in a recent strategy document, the orchestra states that it may be planning to “materially increase” the amount of time it spends in Miami.”

“Arguments raged within the Beethoven Society about where the modern premiere of these Beethoven rediscoveries should take place. Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress were considered. Both the consul general of France in Chicago, Jean-Baptiste Main de Boissiere, and his counterpart of the German consulate, Wolfgang Drautz, lobbied strenuously on behalf of Chicago.”

“A new orchestra was forming from scratch. The catch was the location: Doha, Qatar, a place where few of the young professional musicians from Berlin and Vienna and Budapest and Moscow thought they would end up. But some 2,400 musicians from around the world auditioned, 101 were accepted, and lo, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra came into being last summer.”

The organ sometimes emits sounds at inopportune times in concert. “The Filene organ seems to have been doomed from the start. Donated by Catherine Filene Shouse, it was built during a period of change in the aesthetics of organ sound, when the trend was toward thinner, higher, lighter, neo-Baroque organs.”

The BBC made it happen, and it was a huge success. So why won’t anything like it happen again? Shortly after it happened the BBC Trust made a rule banning such a thing…

“In late January, Nevada Opera officials announced that the 41-year-old company was on the verge of collapse and would close if it didn’t raise $100,000 in just four weeks. Now, the message is more upbeat.”

Ivan Hewitt sums up the critical consensus on Tuesday night’s sold-out Minnesota Orchestra concert at the Barbican: “And what a marvellous sound the orchestra makes! […] Vänskä and the Minnesotans built a cumulative tension through every twist and turn, right up to the final explosion of joy at the end.”

John Adams’s opera is having its UK premiere at ENO, and the London critics, like many of their American colleagues, find fault with Peter Sellars’s libretto. Rupert Christiansen puts it most starkly: “[It] makes for a peculiarly inert plot, with all the corny ‘countdown’ tension of a rotten episode of Star Trek… and dramatis personae who remain flat figures, lumbered with unshaped words that they seem to recite rather than embody.” Not all critics agree on how much this problem matters, though, and they mostly like Adams’s score.

Facing a financial squeeze, the Library will cease funding Chicago’s flagship early music ensemble after this season. But the now-autonomous Consort is landing on its feet, with a new performance-and-teaching arrangement that, says director David Douglass, “in many ways… offers us a healthier arena in which to work.”

“The opera’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday night to proceed with Rigoletto March 27-28… The company was pinched by a decline in contributions and box office revenue, and needed to raise $24,000 to produce the opera.”