Category: music

Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan, not yet 33 years old, has been named the next music director of the Opéra National de Paris, effective with the 2009-10 season.

As it prepares to kick off its new season, the New Jersey Symphony “faces fiscal challenges many administrators would think a nightmare.” But the orchestra’s 40-year-old CEO is enthusiastic about the work that needs to be done to stabilize his organization, which includes dealing with the fallout from the NJSO’s overpayment for a collection of rare Italian instruments in 2003.

“The Cleveland Orchestra’s controversial audition process, which excluded the use of first-round screens intended to protect candidates from bias, is a thing of the past.” Members of the orchestra have agreed to make their auditions more like those of other American orchestras, placing screens in front of auditioning candidates. No change will be made to a provision under which final hiring authority is given solely to the music director.

“There’s no denying that cross-fertilisation and new audiences are vital to keep the genre on its toes. But it seems difficult to disagree that it’s a good idea to learn your craft before taking on an entirely new artistic discipline on the largest stages in the Western world.”

“We wanted to send a message that you don’t do this, that you have been warned. At least two jurors, one of them a funeral home owner, wanted to award the Recording Industry Association of America the maximum $150,000 for each of the 24 copyright violations, while one juror held out hours for the $750 minimum for each violation of the Copyright Act.”

Hermann Abert’s classic biography of Mozart “set down practically everything of interest about Mozart’s life that was known in 1919… Nevertheless, so much research has been expended on Mozart since 1919, so much more is known, and so many dates and facts have been corrected and revised that the book could not simply be translated. It had to be brought up to date.”

“It browbeats its audience with ham-fisted messages, hampered by a libretto that seems to have been stitched together on deadline, and then, above all, there’s Glass’s unremitting music: two hours of minor chord progressions, throbbing and tunneling into our brains like a migraine, as unforgiving as war.”

Many of Cuba’s Golden Age stars are elderly or have died. “From the late 19th century and well into the middle of the 20th, Cuban popular genres, most of them dance music, swept the world: habanera, danzón, son, conga, rumba, mambo, cha-cha. And there’s salsa, which is mostly old Cuban genres reworked for modern tastes. Only American music has had a broader and deeper reach globally.”

“Slatkin’s predecessor in Detroit, Neeme Järvi, who stepped down in 2005, left the orchestra in battle-ready condition. After 15 years of Järvi’s electric spontaneity, the DSO plays with the virtuoso flexibility of an Olympic gymnast. But Järvi’s laissez-faire approach could also lead to imprecision, and his interpretive compass could go astray when intuition let him down. Even with limited rehearsal, Slatkin brought a meticulousness, shape and structure to Beethoven’s Seventh that suggests the ability to help the DSO ascend to a higher plane of expression.”

“The last 10 months in Chicago have been grim for the classical music compact disc collector. The death knell began its long toll last November when the two area Tower Records turned out their lights for the last time. The hopes of aficionados soon rested with the Michigan Avenue Virgin Megastore, but with only a moment’s notice, it closed for business in July. Now, as online file-sharing makes the compact disc primitive, local classical CD buyers are wondering if the brick-and-mortar classical meccas are just a thing of the past.”