Category: music

A heart arrhythmia caused pianist Hélène Grimaud to cut short a recital in Los Angeles this week. Grimaud had seen a doctor earlier in the day, and withdrew from the stage after becoming dizzy and faltering at the keyboard. Grimaud “wanted to go back on stage, but couldn’t regain enough strength to complete her program.”

Prodigies are nothing new in the music world, but you don’t generally find them on the podium in front of professional orchestras. But this month, a 14-year-old wunderkind from the UK will stand before the orchestra at Moscow’s New Opera Theatre, and conduct the premiere of his own ballet based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

An Italian cellist accompanied by what must have been the world’s most devoted audience climbed 4,500 vertical feet to the summit of Japan’s Mount Fuji last weekend (with his cello,) and then played a recital of solo Bach on the mountaintop.

“A mobile phone salesman won the television show Britain’s Got Talent last night. Paul Potts, 36, an amateur opera singer from Port Talbot, Glamorgan, won the £100,000 prize and the opportunity to sing at the Royal Variety Performance after a public vote. More than two million people cast their votes.”

“Thanks to generous speed limits, I was able to catch a Thursday matinée by the Indianapolis Symphony; a performance that night by the Nashville Symphony; and, the following day, a concert by the Alabama Symphony, in Birmingham. I learned what touring musicians have been saying for years: that lesser-known orchestras can deliver sure-footed, commanding performances, and that the notion of a stratospheric orchestral élite is something of an illusion.”

“Let’s hear it for artists with tin ears who’ve proudly lowered the bar of musical performance. We’ll start our survey with a new Scottish group, whose name says it all: The Really Terrible Orchestra. Many who’ve heard them have embraced these amateur classical musicians as a lovely alternative to pros who play, um, really well.”

Alex DePue played an open mic night Nov. 11 at Lestat’s, a tiny San Diego club that seats just 50. But his performance of “Owner of a Lonely Heat” was filmed and somebody put it up on YouTube. Now he’s famous. “It got 80,000 hits in the first week. Now, it’s up to over 781,000 hits on YouTube alone. If you include the other Web sites that have posted it, like break.com and iFilm.com, and add them up, we’ve had 1.5 million viewings.”

“Performing all nine Beethoven symphonies in 90 minutes by taking one movement from each may not get the Philadelphians respect from the aficionados, but these concerts were not designed for them. These shorter, 7 p.m. primers on three populist composers are clearly aimed at listeners looking for a friendly entry point into an art form that too often sends the message that everyone in the audience – except you – first walked into the concert hall about three decades ago.”

The once-venerable competition usedt be on top. Now, not so much. “Around 200 young pianists, violinists, cellists and singers from 34 countries will perform over the next two weeks before juries of top musicians in Moscow’s grand but run-down Conservatory, hoping to become the virtuosos of the future. Organizers hope that more entrants, increased sponsorship, open voting and more prestigious juries will return some of the luster the four-yearly competition enjoyed prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.”

Mark Kanny says that the focus of musical performances has changed decisively over the past several decades, with the bulk of the audience’s attention now firmly focused on the performers, rather than the composer. “Performer-oriented music appreciation goes beyond what we see at concerts. The best selling CDs are often compilations featuring superstars… Yet for listeners, I think it is ultimately more rewarding to pay attention to composers than performers.”