Category: music

The Seattle Symphony is being blasted by its subscribers after instituting huge price increases for some seats in its concert hall. “Although there were only modest price increases, from this season to next, for most of the seats in Benaroya Hall — generally 10 percent and less — the third tier (fourth level) was hit, in some cases, with increases of more than 300 percent.”

“After a seven-year hiatus, the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra are primed to begin commercial recording again.” Beginning this weekend, the PSO will record all four Brahms symphonies live in concert, to be released on the Pentatone label.

With the innovative Peter Gelb at the helm of the Metropolitan Opera, and the controversial Gerard Mortier preparing to take over City Opera, New York opera fans are in for a lot of changes, and a lot of envelope-pushing. “Because the singers at the Met are booked much further in advance than those at the City Opera, Messrs. Gelb and Mortier will each present the first season he has fully designed in 2009-2010.”

“Twenty-one years after disappearing in a robbery, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s circa 1727 Stradivarius violin is back in town, newly reconditioned and ready for a new solo debut.” The instrument, purchased by the DSO in 1978 for its concertmaster to use, was stolen in a burglary in Europe in 1985. No one saw it again until last year, when a retired DSO violinist spotted it in an auction catalog.

After watching “Eugene Onegin” at a Minnesota multiplex, Garrison Keillor joins the chorus of bravos greeting the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcasts: “I’m not an opera critic so I can’t compare this ‘Onegin’ to the 1948 Bolshoi production or comment on Miss Fleming’s use of sprezzatura in the Letter Aria, but I can say how joyful it is to see great artists take big chances on the big screen and rip loose from the moorings of cool and sing with red-blooded passion.”

“The New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra is cancelling all of its upcoming performances this season and may not play next year, either, if new revenues don’t emerge, its trustees say… The orchestra, an institution since 1974, has faced difficulties before. Financial woes forced cancellations in 2004, when some of the musicians’ jobs appeared to be in jeopardy.”

Conductor James Levine is sharply trimming his schedule with the Metropolitan Opera for the 2007-08 season, but insists that the cutback will be a one-time anomaly. “Other than 2005-6, when he tore a rotator cuff and missed the latter part of the season, next season will be Levine’s lightest Met workload since 1975-76.”

The Baltimore Symphony is rolling out an unprecedented ticket discount to promote Marin Alsop’s upcoming first season as music director. “Thanks to a $1 million underwriting grant from the PNC Foundation, current and new subscribers will be offered $25 seats for all classical and pops performances — any seat in the house, including the usually pricey boxes.”

A local orchestra in Minnesota found a unique way to show its support for members of the state’s National Guard serving in Iraq this week, performing a tribute concert which was relayed live on a two-way video transmission to Baghdad, as troops and family members watched on two continents.

In what may be a new trend in corporate cross-promotional synergy, large companies like Best Buy and Ameriquest are offering customers who subscribe to special promotional e-mails first crack at tickets to some of the hottest arena rock concerts of the season. “Typically, bands give their fan-club members a chance to buy tickets a few days before the general public.” But rewarding those who buy a new DVD player with early access to unrelated concert tickets has some fans steaming.