Category: music

Louisville Orchestra executive director Scott Provancher has resigned from the beleaguered organization. He “said that felt really good after the initial sessions but he became disappointed that the players decided to conduct a full vote on one of their initial offers before he felt that the offer was fully vetted.”

Edward Gardner is the “high-risk” choice to be music director of the troubled English National Opera. “The selection process, though swift, was admirably consultativen and transparent. The American Andrew Litton, much liked by the orchestra, was vetoed by the singing staff who felt he gave them insufficient support. Yakov Kreizberg, the Russian-born American, was top of the search list but he could not find room in a busy international schedule for the seven months a year that ENO required. Mark Wigglesworth, a British conductor who had commendably refused to work with Doran, was forced to make a choice between troubled ENO and the comfortable Monnaie in Brussels, where his appointment is expected shortly.”

Louisville Orchestra management has made a new proposal to its musicians. The orchestra would be “a two-tiered structure with 55 full-time and 19 part-time players. Last month management had offered a plan with 53 full-time and 21 part-time players. Management also offered to pay a $5,000 bonus to each of 16 players who are now full-time but who would become part-timers.”

Edward Gardner is the English National Opera’s new music director. “The conductor Oleg Caetani was to have started as music director this month, but resigned at Christmas even before he began. The company has, since November, also lost an artistic director and a chairman. Gardner is music director of Glyndebourne Opera’s touring arm, and a former assistant at the Hallé Orchestra to Mark Elder, who himself was 32 when he became music director of ENO in the 1980s.”

An unknown version of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem has been hidden in the archives of a former Brazilian cathedral. A new recording of the Requiem on the specialist K617 French label has been released, “in a version written 30 years after Mozart’s death by an Austrian-born composer, Johann Sigismund Neukomm. It has lain forgotten in a Rio de Janeiro vault for nearly 200 years.”

“The Louisville Orchestra has rejected a proposal by its musicians to cut six weeks from the upcoming season, a move musicians say will save $400,000 in that contract year. But management believes that the cost savings would be closer to $200,000 because of the loss of potential revenue during those weeks and that the musicians’ one-year proposal isn’t sufficient to address the orchestra’s longer-term needs.”

Are recording companies conspiring to inflate the price of music downloads? The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation. “The department of justice inquiry centres on the activities of the four largest record labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music. Subpoenas are believed to have been issued to all parties, with federal officials understood to be focusing on whether the companies have been colluding to keep the price of downloads artificially high.”

A Philadelphia production of “Margaret Garner” seems to get worse with every performance. “Is it possible for an opera to deliver experiences so radically different without any significant revision of the score, change in cast, or alteration of production? That happens with Broadway musicals. But opera is supposed to be sturdier – and transcend things like the struggling orchestra heard on Feb. 24. Or can an opera be so eager to succeed with a mainstream audience that it lacks the anchor needed to overcome a performance that, for any number of reasons, loses its way?”

Odd to say, given its enormous size, but the bass is a largely invisible instrument in the modern orchestra. “I think the size of it gives people the mistaken impression that you have to be a brute to play it. But it’s a misconception, especially these days, with the advancements of the technical abilities of players and a more thorough understanding of body usage.”

Elliot tCarter is either “(a) America’s great living composer or (b) an ogre who has alienated audiences with music of unfathomable density and dissonance.” So which is it?