Category: music

It’s been five years since the Chicago Symphony lost its regular series of radio broadcasts, and a replacement series is nowhere on the horizon. Wynne Delacoma says that the continued lack of any radio presence is directly attributable to stubbornness on the part of the CSO’s musicians and management, who have been loathe to challenge old compensation systems, even as other orchestras embrace new ideas. “Audiences in Chicago and around the world need to hear what the symphony is doing now, not simply what it did 10 or 20 or 30 years ago… It is a crime that [the CSO] is falling so far behind in the world of electronic media.”

The Chicago Symphony’s music director search is now two years old, and no progress has been visible in the quest to find a proper successor for Daniel Barenboim, who leaves the position in June. But no one in the organization seems to be in any sort of hurry, and if there seems to be a dearth of well-qualified candidates, the CSO isn’t bothered by it. Some are even suggesting that a music director isn’t terribly important to the fortunes of a truly great orchestra. “The CSO’s 2006-07 season, with trips to Carnegie Hall under Boulez and a residency in Florida next February, hardly signals an orchestra on hold.”

Conventional wisdom says that the opera crowd is too mired in tradition to embrace new work, but several Canadian companies are enlisting big-name stars and media partners in an effort to ramp up public interest in a new wave of premieres. One of the city’s artistic directors says that opera “has become a populist voice and an opportunity for creative artists to show society to itself.”

Cleveland’s two opera companies are on the verge of combining operations while maintaining their separate missions. “Like many American opera companies, Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland have struggled in recent seasons with deficits and declining attendance. The two organizations view a merger, no matter how challenging, as a means of controlling finances and presenting a reasonable number of performances of varied repertoire.”

There may be no more conservative institution in American classical music than New York’s Metropolitan Opera. For decades, the Met has catered to an audience that loves old chestnuts, respects tradition above all else, and generally abhors the experimental. So when the company’s incoming general manager starts talking about wholesale change and using terms like “radical reinvention,” a lot of people get very nervous. But Peter Gelb is apparently quite serious in his desire to remake the Met for the 21st century.

“For the first time in 12 years, the Grammys did not win its night in the ratings. From 8 to 9 p.m. nearly 29 million people decided they’d rather watch the lousy performances and histrionics of wannabe pop stars in Hollywood than be entertained by Madonna, Coldplay, John Legend and U2 at the [Office Supply Retailer] Center in downtown Los Angeles.”

“For these relative unheards fronting large jazz bands, a Grammy, while nice, probably won’t transform a career. A few extra commissions might come through, a hall might get booked a little more easily. But there will be no need for Ray-Bans and floppy hats, or checking into hotel rooms under assumed names.”

Miles Davis has always sold well. But there are so many boxed sets that feature outtakes and performances not meant to be heard. What’s the point? “There’s something intimate, even creepy, about listening to the vast quantity of recordings on these boxes; many of the tracks are out-takes – never intended for the market. And they seem to have become more obsessive, more microscopic.”

Norman Lebrecht wonders why, amid “the universal mush of Mozart’s 250th birthday, few are bothering to contemplate the 150th anniversary of Schumann’s death, an event that changed the course of music.”

William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience won the Grammy Awards for best classical album, best choral performance, and best classical contemporary composition at the Grammys. Here’s a complete list of classical Grammy winners…