The Canadian Opera Company is thrilled with their new home at Toronto’s just-opening Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, but the company is also trying to temper expectations of the acoustic before audiences get their first listen later this week. “After decades of pushing out enough sound to fill the unresponsive Hummingbird Centre, he said, the musicians of the COC’s resident orchestra are going to need time to discover how much is enough in the new building, which hosts its first public concert tonight… When it comes to the acoustics of music theatres, it seems, nothing is easy.”
Category: music
Comparing Toronto’s Opera House To the World
How does Toronto’s new opera house stack up against the world’s great opera houses? Architect Jack Diamond’s new Toronto theatre has “an almost dour grey-brick exterior, which belies the warmth of the hall’s interior, an effect created by ambient lights, a cozy horseshoe-shaped auditorium — small for an opera hall — and rich wood paneling. To make the opera-going experience less elitist than European halls built by and for aristocrats, Diamond has opened the main lobbies to the passing eye, with nothing but glass between show-goers and outsiders gaping from the street.”
Baltimore SymphonyBreaks 8-Year Recording Drought
The Baltimore Symphony has gone eight years without recording a commercial CD. “Other than a limited-edition disc issued by the orchestra itself, there is no documentation of the BSO’s extraordinary collaboration with music director Yuri Temirkanov. But Marin Alsop, who succeeds Temirkanov next year, will record with the ensemble this week. If all goes well, recordings will be a regular feature of her BSO tenure.”
Artist management Company Closes After A Decade
Janice L. Mayer is closing her classical music artists management agency after a decade. “Friends and associates said fatigue, a need for change, tough times in the business and a dispute with one of her singers might all have contributed to the decision.”
Teachout: Stravinsky Bio Is A Modern Classic
Terry Teachout has strong words for Stephen Wash’s new biography of Igor Stravinsky. “The Second Exile, like its predecessor, is an inspiring piece of work, at once comprehensive and beguilingly well written. After two careful readings, I feel safe in ranking it—alongside David Cairns’s Berlioz, Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven: The Music and the Life, and Anthony Tommasini’s Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle—as one of the finest biographies of a classical composer to be published in the modern age of musical scholarship.”
UK Sound Artists Lead the Way
Britain’s experimental musicians are now what the YBAs were for visual art in the 90s. “While pop seems to have run out of new ideas, preferring to find witty ways to reinvent the sounds of decades past, these artists are pushing the boundaries of what music can do, and melding it with technology, art, architecture, film and even comedy. ‘Sound art’ is finding a home in galleries and venues that have identified an appetite among the listening public for music that gives the brain, as well as the ears, something to work on.”
Assessing Baltimore’s Temirkanov Years
“Yuri Temirkanov’s time with the Baltimore Symphony was relatively brief, just 6 1/2 years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes on the glow of legend as time passes. He inherited what had long been a solid orchestra of the not-quite-top tier and proceeded to elicit, in concert after concert, nuances, tendernesses and reserves of feeling from the players that were often extraordinarily affecting. The best analogy I can come up with is that moment in “The Wizard of Oz” when the scene changes from black and white to full color and we are in a different world.”
Oh My Ojai
“Ojai used to be the music world’s best-kept secret. Now it is in danger of becoming too successful for its own good. Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez and Peter Maxwell Davies are among the composers who have succumbed to its simple charms. Michael Tilson Thomas and Kent Nagano are two of the performers it recognised before they reached the limelight. Ojai is synonymous with musical adventure and yet the festival takes place in a small town 90 minutes’ drive north of Los Angeles, the last place you would expect to find an iconic festival experience.”
Daniel Barenboim On The State Of Music In America
“The fact remains that a great majority of the intellectuals in this world are totally oblivious to the existence of music. Some of them enjoy the sounds they hear at concerts or when they listen to records at home. But it’s not part of their intellectual worldview. This is a worldwide sickness. And I have to say the problem is more acute in America.”
Baltimore Symphony Works To Smooth The Road
The Baltimore Symphony has had a bumpy ride in the past year, hiring a new music director and seeing its management leaders depart. “The orchestra has been further roiled by continuing budget deficits and sparse attendance at many concerts – problems that have led similar orchestras to fold in recent years. Now, though, with a former corporate executive shepherding the orchestra and a beefed-up role for musicians in major decisions, the BSO says it’s in the midst of a crescendo.”