Category: music

A controversial production of Idomeneo in Berlin went off with little incident Monday. A powerful male voice called out “stop it!” and “boo!” as the heads of Islam’s founder, along with those of Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas, came tumbling out of a sack hefted by Idomeneo. But several voices from the other side of the hall yelled, “continue, continue,” their cheers clashing with the voice of the critic, and the cast and orchestra received prolonged applause.”

Police will be on high alert for Monday’s performance a controversial production of Mozart’s Idomeneo in Berlin. “It’s a case of art meeting religious sensibility — and a decision that the show must go on, despite concerns that the production, featuring the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, could prompt violence.”

It’s been almost ten years since the Vienna Philharmonic admitted its first woman musician. And now? “There has been no change in the m/f ratios in the Vienna Philharmonic in the last ten years. They still have only one woman member. And she is still a harpist, Charlotte Balzereit. And the orchestra’s opera formation has fared little better. Only six women have been hired, but two were fired after their trial year.”

“Today, it’s hard to know when buzz is more than just noise. In an age of accelerated connection, the buzz around every art form has intensified, but nowhere as much as in music. The growing ease of music-making and distribution resulted in 60,000 releases (that’s in the U.S. alone) last year. Downloadable music multiplies that number like bunnies in spring. And pop’s historical embrace of novelty and amateurism means that few heavy gates stop the flow.”

When Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä took the reins of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003, he said quite publicly that he wanted his new ensemble to become the top orchestra in the U.S. inside of five years. Measuring such a thing is nearly impossible, of course, but James Oestreich says that even if Minnesota isn’t the best yet, it may well be the most important American orchestra working today.

In the wake of last week’s announcement that Washington, D.C.’s last classical radio station will shortly convert to sports talk, one of the district’s public radio stations is saying that it will strongly consider adding classical music back to its program schedule. WETA dropped classical in favor of an all-news/talk format in March 2005, but the change hasn’t been popular with the public.

Ahmet Ertegun, the immigrant founder of influential Atlantic Records who died this past week, was a fascinating study in both business acumen and a pure, all-consuming love of the music of others. He was “an outsider, from Turkey no less, who loved African-American music so much that he became a major force in pop history. Points of friction in American culture — class, ethnicity, race, religion — mostly provided him with sparks.”

Lost in the hullabaloo that followed Roberto Alagna’s huffy departure from the La Scala stage last week has been the role of the stand-in who finished Alagna’s aborted performance that night. Antonello Palombi, the 45-year-old Italian tenor who dashed onto the stage in his street clothes just in time to save the show, was happy for the exposure, but not necessarily for the circumstances under which it arrived.

Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic banded together with Fidelity Investments this week to donate $80,000 worth of band and orchestra instruments to four L.A.-area public schools. “The professional musicians came up with the idea when they first began volunteering at local public schools several years ago.”

While it may not be as well-known as crippling conditions like Parkinson’s, focal dystonia is wrecking the careers of a growing number of professional musicians. The terrifying disease, which causes musicians to forget the muscle movements necessary to play their instruments, “ended the careers of pianist Gary Graffman, Tokyo String Quartet violinist Peter Oundjian and Chicago Symphony Orchestra oboist Alex Klein.” There are treatments, but no guaranteed fixes, and the condition frequently worsens when victims, ashamed of their deteriorating skills and unaware of the cause, fail to report the problem to a doctor.