Category: music

“The Wagner ban is said to be unpopular among Israeli musicians, and two prominent conductors, Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta, have sought on more than one occasion to scrap it. Yet it remains in force nonetheless, and Mr. Stern’s statement suggests that it will continue to be for some time to come.”

“Three-quarters of those surveyed considered themselves to be professional composers, but only 10% made their primary living from that work.”

“The good news is that the concert industry really didn’t have that bad of a year in 2008 even as economic conditions worsened. Overall, revenue was up 7.8 percent to $4.2 billion, though ticket sales dropped 3 percent. The revenue was sustained by record-high ticket prices: an average of nearly $67 a ticket for the 100 top-grossing shows. Overall, ticket prices have more than doubled in the last decade.”

“Although the apprenticeship programs were developed to keep talent from fleeing the country, they have also helped create an increasingly closed circle in the opera world. In effect, entries on a résumé can come to be as important as that elusive, unteachable quantity: artistic excellence. And some critics believe the programs have produced a rather bland crop of performers.”

Classical music critic Donald Rosenberg is suing The Plain Dealer after he was taken off the Cleveland Orchestra beat. “The amended complaint eliminates claims that the newspaper defamed him, breached public policy and broke promises he had relied on. Instead, his only remaining claim is that his reassignment to cover arts and entertainment, as well as dance performances, was an act of age discrimination.”

The Andalusian Orchestra, a 2006 Israel Prize winner, preserves and renews the art music of the Sephardim of Morocco. Well, it did: After months of fruitless negotiations for an increase in their very low pay, the musicians went on strike a few days ago. Then they found out – from the media – that management had disbanded the orchestra in response.

Nearly a third of Mendelssohn’s music has lain in storage for 150 years, unpublished and unheard. Stephen Somary has been leading a project to track down, edit and revive these lost works, and he unveiled 13 of them, all chamber works, in a concert this week. “Most were delightful if not ground shaking,” writes Allan Kozinn.

The title character of Philippe Boesmans’s Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, which had its world premiere at the Paris Opera last week, doesn’t expire of consumption or stabbing or poison or a broken heart. She chokes on a fishbone. What’s more, she doesn’t even sing. (The premiere, by the way, was a popular triumph.)

“With giddiness and glee, musicians tested the acoustics of the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, less than a month before it reopens after a $159 million, 22-month upgrade, a major milestone in Lincoln Center’s $1.2 billion remaking. … The musicians, acoustical experts and Lincoln Center officials in attendance all proclaimed the hall much more present, alive and reverberant than the old Tully, which had been widely faulted for its dry sound.”

“The company, which usually presents three or four concert performances each season at Carnegie Hall, scrapped plans to perform Wagner’s Rienzi on March 19 and Cherubini’s Medea on April 21. It also canceled a concert with Ferruccio Furlanetto on Feb. 27. Its only performance this season was Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Czar’s Bride on Oct. 15.”