Category: music

The Pittsburgh Symphony will be forced to make its upcoming European tour without its chief conductor on the podium. Sir Andrew Davis, who also serves as music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, will have arterial bypass surgery in his leg this coming week, and will be out of action for the next several weeks. Leonard Slatkin will replace Davis on the PSO’s tour, which includes stops in Greece, Germany, London, Ireland, and Wales.

Facing the unpalatable possibility of a return to financial instability (even as its artistic fortunes climb,) the Cincinnati Symphony is preparing to launch a major endowment drive, as well as a drive to remodel its concert hall in the city’s notorious Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Music Hall is the largest orchestral concert hall in the U.S. – it seats more than 3,400 – and CSO officials have long contended it is far too large for a city of Cincinnati’s size. By comparison, most other major concert halls seat fewer than 2,500 concertgoers.

“An Irish spinster who travelled faithfully to the Edinburgh International Festival every year from Dublin has left the organisation £3.7 million – the biggest single gift in its history… The money is to be used for promoting the careers of young artists.”

The New York-based Orchestra of St. Luke’s has been forced to cancel its upcoming concerts at festivals in London and Edinburgh as a result of the UK ban on carry-on baggage on all flights. Many of the orchestra’s instruments cannot be stowed in airline cargo holds, and despite efforts to reach an accomodation, it was determined that there simply wasn’t time for the orchestra to make alternate plans. So far, it is believed that the other American orchestras set to perform at the BBC Proms in London and the Edinburgh Festival, most of which transport their instruments in heavy-duty trunks, will be able to keep to their schedules.

A bleak, barren desert in the middle of New Mexico might seem an unlikely place for a full-scale, open-air opera house, and Santa Fe, though most definitely a city, is hardly regarded by most outsiders as a major arts center. So the very existence of Santa Fe Opera “represented a gamble that people from far away would come to regard Santa Fe as they already regarded England’s Glyndebourne, as a pilgrimage destination for opera. And the gamble has clearly paid off. The current 50th anniversary season of five operas, running in repertory until Aug. 26, is virtually sold out, with visitors from around the world.”

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival was considered a relic, a musty and moribund example of what happens when classical music takes its audience for granted. But today, as the festival cruises through its 40th season, audiences are swelling, critics are cheering, and the whole enterprise feels like a winner again. So what changed? Over the last few years, “Mostly Mozart has become a haven for diverse, conflicting, even fringe-y viewpoints on Mozart and his near-contemporaries and descendants.”

It’s far too early, of course, to say what James Levine’s ultimate legacy as music director of the Boston Symphony will be. But already, it is clear that Levine is having a rejuvenating effect on the BSO’s famed Tanglewood Music Center, which brings many of the country’s top young musicians together for several weeks of summer instruction and orchestral training. “For years, the presence of Tanglewood icon Leonard Bernstein made the TMC the place to be, despite the competition. And that phenomenon is happening again because Levine is in the Berkshires.”

When the Louisville Orchestra announced that Jorge Mester would be its next music director, many in the industry wondered what the ensemble’s leaders were thinking of. Mester, 71, served as Louisville’s music director for 12 years in the 1960s and ’70s, and is hardly considered a rising star in the conducting world. Furthermore, Louisville was rumored to have several top young conductors on its shortlist. So what happened? Andrew Adler says that, on reflection, Mester’s second act could turn out to be exactly what the financially strapped and frequently chaotic orchestra needs.

At a time when many American radio stations are dropping classical music, Pittsburgh’s WQED is reaffirming its commitment to the genre, shuffling its schedule to play more music, eliminate talk and other non-classical programming, and increase arts and culture reporting on its popular morning show. “During peak weekday listening hours, the station will play more music by the [Pittsburgh Symphony] and add opera arias, giving the music exposure to a wider audience than would tune in a program devoted entirely to the music.”

Several members of Nashville’s Metro Council have announced that they will ask the governing body to reconsider a $5 million contribution to the city’s new Schermerhorn Performing Arts Center, which opens this fall. “Metro provided the Symphony the property the center sits on, $5 million for construction last year and then… would provide $5 million this year and $5 million the next two years for $20 million total. The Symphony also receives an annual contribution from the Metro Arts Commission for operating purposes, which in recent years has totaled about $400,000.”