Category: music

“Where are the next great maestros? Four major American orchestras –the Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony — either are now or soon will be searching for new music directors. Two of these — Chicago and Pittsburgh — have been looking for more than two years. … Why have two major orchestras failed to find conductors brilliant enough and willing to lead them?”

In Wales, “Spillers Records (est 1894) is under threat. Spillers has been told that it is not going to be able to afford the rent the landlord will demand when two big shopping developments opposite and next to the shop open. When the rent rises owner Nick Todd, who has worked at the shop for 31 years, says the shop will be lost. Its possible disappearance has created shock waves not just among Cardiff musos but also among many who would not know their house music from their jungle.”

Tenor Robert Alagna walks off the stage at La Scala in the middle of a performance. In Alagna’s place, literally within the scene, entered tenor Antonello Palombi, not in costume, between the shouts coming from the loggione section of the theater. The shouts were, “For shame! For shame!”, and, “This is La Scala”! Opera Chic has extensive coverage of the incident.

Los Angeles Opera is launching a project to produce music that the Nazis tried to silence. The “Recovered Voices” project will highlight the music of early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Zemlinsky, Kurt Weill and Viktor Ullmann.

“Anything that can be squeezed down to ones and zeros and moved around at the speed of electrons doesn’t have to be stacked in plastic cases, shoved into bins and splayed over aisles under fluorescent lights anymore. All of it’s going online. And isn’t that better? Doesn’t the digital universe give anyone with a computer and a credit card wider and speedier access to more music than any Tower could ever stock?”

“Spillers Records in the centre of Cardiff is officially acknowledged as the world’s oldest music store by Guinness World Records. Now its future is uncertain – and some of the world’s biggest stars are being asked to back a campaign to keep it open.”

“India, which has never shown much interest in sonata form and suchlike, now has a professional symphony orchestra and this week named a Kazakh violinist as its music director.”

It’s been 14 years since director Franco Zeffirelli worked at the opera house, and the buzz was considerable. “Tickets reserved for sale online for all 11 showings of Aida sold out in a record two hours. One of the season’s most-anticipated cultural events, Aida attracted an audience of leading political, business and cultural figures — among them Italian Premier Romano Prodi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as his guest.”

“Today, thanks to CDs, DVDs, podcasts and downloads, we have access to more classical music, at our fingertips, than the most visionary composer of the 1970s could have imagined. But the notion of the classical-music composer as a major celebrity was pretty much buried with Britten. Thirty years ago, last Monday.”