Category: music

“Some patrons offer swift best wishes when asked about the newly named musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In a half beat, they beg off further talk. Others consider questions about Muti, who three years ago was forced out as musical director of La Scala, in a kind of reflective crouch.”

Apparently, the scores — unearthed at the Jasna Gora monastery — have been identified as 18th century manuscript copies and “their character allows us to suppose Mozart was their author,”

Columnist Joel Stein is on a quest to become the world’s most insufferable old man, so it’s only natural that he would seek to learn how to become a proper classical music snob. To achieve his goal, he seeks out a bass player in the LA Phil, and gets a few tips on how to morph into the sort of jerk who glares at people applauding between movements.

Violinist Andre Rieu has made millions from his televised concerts featuring him smiling and swaying and sawing through Strauss waltzes with panache. But is he actually a good musician? “He rarely plays anything that is technically beyond the reach of a talented 10-year-old, so it’s hard to say exactly how good a violinist he is… But you don’t have to be in the music business for long to realise that talent and success don’t always go together.”

The theremin might be the world’s oddest musical instrument, generating spooky sounds from an electromagnetic field into which the performer inserts him/herself. “Whatever you do in that field with your body affects the sound, so in order to be precise you must try to move just, say, your hand, nothing else. Even the swelling of your chest as you breathe can make the notes glide up and down.”

Percussionists can be a feisty bunch, as you might be if the question you were most frequently asked was, “You get paid for standing around and occasionally hitting things with sticks?” But the oft-misunderstood musicians are being highlighted in Minneapolis this month as part of a 3-week Percussion Festival…

Yoko Ono is battling in court to prevent a filmmaker whose documentary challenges the theory of evolution from using John Lennon’s song, Imagine, in the soundtrack. “The filmmakers acknowledge they did not ask Ono for permission to use 15 to 20 seconds of the song. But they argue they are protected by the ‘fair use’ doctrine.”

“Around 2000, a group of Iraqi school friends weaned on bootleg Metallica and Slayer tapes formed their own metal band with an imposing name, Acrassicauda (derived from the name of a species of black scorpion), and an appropriately do-or-die attitude.” Now, a feature documentary is giving the post-war incarnation of the band newfound fame.

Berlin Philharmonic officials say that maintenance work on the roof of the Philharmonie concert hall likely caused the fire that threatened the building earlier this week. But the damage was largely contained, and the orchestra plans to be back in its home by June 2.

Improvisation was once a regular part of classical music. But in the 20th Century improvising disappeared from the concert stage. Now “a new generation of composers and performers is rediscovering it as a central part of the creative process — and, quite possibly, as a remedy for the shrinking of classical-music audiences.”