Category: music

“For all that Mr. Barenboim has changed the orchestra’s character, it is not always apparent to one who has not heard a lot of the Chicago Symphony in recent years what, precisely, the new character is. While the sound retains weight and solidity, it tends more to invite listeners in rather than overwhelm them. Perhaps it is a matter not so much of a new personality as of a new versatility.”

Fort Lauderdale music groups say they’re feeling a scheduling squeeze from the Broward County Performing Arts Center because of touring Broadway shows. “Officials have privately complained for years that the Broward Center’s emphasis on reserving large blocks for touring Broadway shows has made scheduling their performances increasingly difficult.” With the imminent opening of the Miami Performing Arts Center, the groups may be looking at other options.

A majority of most orchestral audiences probably don’t even realize that the tuxedo-clad musicians in front of them are affiliated with organized labor, but American orchestras have been union shops since the turn of the 20th century. Well, most of them. The Boston Symphony, one of America’s top bands, furiously resisted all organizing efforts for nearly half a century before finally embracing the union in 1942. Since then, Boston’s musicians have become some of the most influential in the country.

Charleston, South Carolina may not be one of the first cities you think of when listing the world’s classical music centers. But “during late May and early June, the cultural life of smallish Charleston is virtually synonymous with Spoleto Festival USA,” a major music festival that takes over the entire city and has long since been embraced by the entire populace.

This weekend, Daniel Barenboim conducts his final concerts as music director of the Chicago Symphony. “Barenboim has had his differences with CSO players, and some of them are doubtless happy to see him go. But Thursday night’s Mahler offered a glimpse of conductor and virtuoso orchestra clearly willing to go for broke.”

“Although it’s true that tweaking a piano is not illegal, hardly like ingesting a banned substance, one effect resembles that of steroids. According to ‘Game of Shadows,’ the recent bestseller that blew the whistle on Bonds, one of the properties of steroids is that they can reduce the effects of fatigue, permitting ballplayers to ignore pain and concentrate on hitting or throwing. A looser action on a keyboard does something similar: You can play runs and scales faster and for a longer period of time with less muscle fatigue. In that sense, you could say that Horowitz’s instrument was like a piano on steroids.”

In Miami there are mixed feelings about a deal that will make the Cleveland Orchestra the resident orchestra of the region’s major new performing arts center. Cleveland is one of the world’s great orchestras. And yet, some worry that having the orchestra in residence will mean the area won’t be able to build its own orchestra. “It’s a shame that the hall was built for the local musicians and they’re not getting a chance to use it. Obviously, the musicians who were in the Florida Philharmonic would like to be playing in the hall that was built for them.”

Whatb are the prospects for classical recordings on the internet? A recent panel at the American Symphony Orchestra League conference in Los Angeles discussed the opportunities and challenges…

“Right now, if I were asked whether I’d rather hear Temirkanov or Alsop in Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Shostakovich — in virtually any of the masterpieces in the standard repertory — I’d go for Temirkanov in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. But if I were asked who was more likely, over time, to bring in new audiences and board members, to win over Baltimoreans who may never have attended a classical concert, to help revitalize both the orchestra and the city in which it is rooted, Alsop might get the nod.”

The Mesa [Arizona] Symphony has canceled four upcoming concerts, including its popular July Fourth concert. “Officials from the symphony, which comprises 65 part-time employees who perform about a dozen concerts a year, blamed the failure of a Mesa property tax initiative in May for the loss of funding. The $50,000 grant represents about a quarter of the symphony’s annual budget.”