Category: music

With paychecks totaling $3.5 million, “James Levine is not just among the most acclaimed music directors of his time. His combined salaries from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and New York’s Metropolitan Opera make him the highest-paid conductor in the country, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service filings.” This does not, however, mean he wins the world title for highest paid conductor.

“The Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is slated to open Sept. 15, but builders are racing to finish at least a month earlier — the leeway the hall needs to have a fighting chance of sounding right in its debut. Its resident orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, needs the time to become acclimated to the 2,000-seat venue in Costa Mesa, which is considerably more intimate and acoustically sensitive than its previous home of nearly 20 years.”

“Music itself is not a product. A thing of beauty, a universal language, an outpouring essential to life and expression, yes – but not a product. Yet, unfortunately, classical music seems to be slipping down the image-conscious slope that degrades so many other art forms. More and more it attempts to package itself as a consumer item, with all the fatuous and artfully deceptive gloss to match; it sacrifices ideas of integrity and transmitting the benefits of artistic endeavour for the ideologies of market competitiveness and maximised returns.”

The Rolling Stones made the most money of any band touring in the first half of 2006. “The veteran group made $147.3m (£79.7m) from 45 concerts on their A Bigger Bang tour in the US and elsewhere. Irish band U2 made $73m (£39.4m) over the same period, while veteran rockers Bon Jovi made more than $65m (£35m).”

The legal club scene in the UK is limited so illegal raves are returning. “First signs of the rebirth of the outdoor rave came last year, but partygoers now appear to be more emboldened to challenge laws brought in 12 years ago by the Conservative government to crush a scene that epitomised the dance and drug culture of the early 90s.”

London’s South Bank has offered work to a pair of talented English composers that will keep them away from composing, writes Norman Lebrecht. “In the prime of life and apparent good health, the pair ought to be at the height of their fertility yet such is the English aptitude for seducing artists away from art – and the concomitant avidness of English artists to accept state honours and financial honoraria – that no-one, not even their loyal publisher, would aver that Oliver Knussen or George Benjamin has come within a nautical mile of fulfilling a truly remarkable potential.”

Classical music, like any art form that demands effort and intellectual engagement from its fans, can be an intimidating experience for the uninitiated. But today, there are any number of ways for classical neophytes to take the plunge, and thanks to the internet, you can listen to almost any piece without ever leaving your desk. One new guide to exploring the classical world even combines the printed word with an astonishingly large online database of music, enough to keep any fan of the genre listening for years.

Simon Rattle’s new Ring Cycle at the Aix-en-Provence Festival hasn’t been much of a hit with the critics. “Rattle’s Wagner as yet lacks that veteran conductor’s inexorable sense of drama. The momentum started and stopped and frequently dragged… The overall effect was soporific. Perhaps Rattle was as bored as the rest of us by what he saw on stage.”

A recording of a famous confrontation between Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein over a performance of a Brahms piamo concerto in 1962 is about to finally be released. It’s the kind of performance that never would happen today, writes Norman Lebrecht…

South Florida is about to get a big new performing arts center. What will that do for the nearby Broward performing arts center? “To be sure, there are hardcore music fans who will journey far afield to hear the finest visiting artists and local groups available. But for the majority of the region’s classical audiences — comprised of a heavily senior-skewing demographic — convenience and proximity take precedence over considerations of artistic merit.”