Category: music

Speaking out for the first time on accusations of nepotism, bias and slipping standards, Richard Hickox says “Don’t think that people who criticise are not welcome; they are. But the way they have gone about it – with off-the-record inaccurate allegations – isn’t what I’d call a debate. And then just making more and more allegations, just in the hope that one might stick, it’s not a good way of behaving.” (On casting his wife: “If she wasn’t the best person, it would be the worst possible thing I could do, to offer her a role.”)

Joshua Kosman calls the Stewart Wallace/Amy Tan collaboration “that rare creation – a new opera in which musical characterization, dramatic clarity and theatrical vigor combine to form an arresting and vividly memorable experience.”

“[W]hatever anyone’s reaction to the piece (I had mixed feelings), it is certainly a work of total theater… The music is so bound to the libretto, visuals, choreography and special effects that it is impossible to assess the quality of Mr. Wallace’s score on its own.”

“I am leaving a very well-established situation after many, many years and completely changing my professional pattern,” says the conductor about his move from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. “It’s a scary, bewildering situation to be in, but also rather exciting and inspiring… This is a very interesting juncture in my life because I have no idea really.”

The city boasts five top rate orchestras. “The transformation from the mid-Nineties is little short of miraculous, which makes it all the more annoying that the idea of merging two London bands to form a “super-orchestra” refuses to lie down and die.”

“While it would have been acceptable to audiences in the 1980s to watch a three-hour production of La Bohème with Pavarotti in which the famous tenor would not move at all, those days are now gone. The new crop of performers require a higher level of fitness than before as they dart about the stage.”

For a thrusting and hungry tyro MD, Edward Gardner strikes a strangely wary note. He talks about the need for adventure, but enterprise is tempered with realism. ENO gives fewer performances now than at any time since the company moved to the London Coliseum 40 years ago. A playbill that once boasted more than 200 performances of more than 20 works is now reduced to about 115 of 12-13 main-stage titles.

Surely the best-selling No. 1 song of the past half-century was by Elvis or The Beatles? Well, no – The King isn’t even in the Top 10, and (in a testimony to the nation’s taste) “Hey, Jude” comes in behind “You Light Up My Life” and “Macarena.” Twisting to the top of the chart of charts is Chubby Checker.

Criticizing the BBC Proms is practically a cottage industry in the UK, but Paul Driver says that this year’s installment served as a reminder of how precious the two-month festival really is. “Though most of the concerts I attended had a teeming audience… there was always the sense, created by the concentric layout of the seats and the presence of standees in the arena, of being at a soirée in which people cluster round a piano to hear a marvellous player.”

“Classical music lovers have complained about BBC presenters who they claim are ruining the Proms by ‘spouting drivel’ at inappropriate moments… There have also been complaints about the reliance on special guests who know very little about classical music.” The BBC has also been accused of using televised concerts to promote their more lowbrow TV offerings.