Category: music

“Portland has always supplied America’s indie market. Last week, for instance, the local entertainment mag Willamette Week listed more than 100 bands playing in a total of 60 venues on an average Thursday night. This in a town with a population the size of Edinburgh.” But why Portland?

“The New York Philharmonic is poised to announce the successor as music director to Lorin Maazel, who leaves at the end of the 2008-9 season (the same time, intriguingly, that Mr. Salonen will be free). After Mr. Masur and Mr. Maazel — two formidable but very Old World maestros whose combined tenures at the Philharmonic will have totaled 18 years — it would surely seem time for a generational jolt.”

“Ivan Fischer will become the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season, the NSO announced yesterday. It is an interim appointment, slated to last two years while the search continues for a full-time music director to replace Leonard Slatkin, who will step down at the end of the 2007-2008 season. Fischer will not serve as music director.”

Something peculiar is happening on the U.S. pop charts: A passel of British female solo artists is making an impact. “Historically speaking, to be both British and female was a double hindrance in trying to achieve chart success in America, or anywhere else for that matter. … But British women are making up for lost time, spearheading a genuine revival of enthusiasm for this country’s musical exports.”

Philip Glass has long since passed from the realm of controversial minimalist into compositional elder statesman, but that doesn’t mean that his music is any less polarizing than it ever was. Rupert Christiansen’s response to being forced to sit through a Glass opera this week: “There are times in the opera house when the tedium reaches such a peak that I am hit by a vertiginous urge to leap out of my seat, strip off my clothes and run on to the stage screaming like a banshee.”

The Sydney Symphony and its supporters are positively giddy over the hiring of Vladimir Ashkenazy as the orchestra’s new chief conductor, but the Russian maestro’s star power will come at a cost: Ashkenazy will spend only eight weeks a year with his new orchestra. Still, at a time when the SSO is trying to raise its international profile and stabilize its finances, a big name on the marquee can go a long way.

The North German city of Hamburg has unveiled plans for a massive new concert hall designed by the architects Herzog & DeMeuron. The design, which is already being compared to that ghostly schooner, The Flying Dutchman, has clearly been created with global iconic status in mind. “The project is part of ongoing efforts to redevelop the city’s old docklands – known as Hafencity, or Harbor City – as a center of homes, offices and cultural events.”

The visage of composer Sir Edward Elgar is shortly to be removed from Britain’s £20 note, which has set off yet another round of the seemingly endless debate over whether Elgar was or was not the UK’s greatest composer. “Now that modernism has receded, we can see the originality of these co-called ‘conservative’ composers more clearly. Strauss, Sibelius and Elgar now seem in their own way just as symptomatic of the troubling modern era as Stravinsky or Schoenberg.”

“In 1936, two of the Soviet Union’s greatest artists decided to work on a new theatrical production of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” for its author’s coming jubilee. Sergei Prokofiev wrote 24 musical pieces while the visionary stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold mapped out scenes and started rehearsals. The following year, Stalin’s terror fixed its gaze on Meyerhold and he abandoned the project. Three years later, he was dead, shot by a firing squad. Now, thanks to the recent discovery of Meyerhold’s original notes and Prokofiev’s handwritten score and comments, their collaboration is finally having its world premiere.”

For decades, the Boston Symphony’s summer home at Tanglewood has depended on the labor of a small army of volunteer staffers, who toil on the grounds in exchange for free passes to the concerts. But now, with the BSO battling deficits, the organization is demanding that all “volunteers” donate at least $75 to the orchestra, and is also yanking the privilege of “companion passes” volunteers could use to get guests in for free.