Category: music

Western music was once welcomed in the Arab world. No longer. “The fact that Beethoven’s Ninth is singled out for condemnation points to the reason why Western music is so mistrusted. It speaks of freedom, and the brotherhood of all men regardless of race or creed. This can’t be music to the ears of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, who would like to see Israel wiped off the face of the map.”

The San Francisco Symphony and its musicians have reached an agreement on a new contract. “The 103 musicians have been working without a contract since Nov. 26. Last week the musicians threatened to call off the China tour — the orchestra’s first ever to the mainland — but by week’s end there had been enough progress that they agreed to let the tour go forward as planned.”

This week, the renowned Boys Choir of Harlem might lose its home. “After occupying space in a public school on Madison Avenue and 127th Street rent-free for the last 13 years, the nonprofit is facing eviction Tuesday unless its leaders and city officials come up with a last-minute resolution. The situation has angered and alarmed parents who say their children have thrived in the program, and has deeply upset the young choralists, who have taken to the streets with signs protesting the looming displacement.”

UK orchestras are debating their own survival. “We are at the tail end of a very, very long cycle of decline. This is really the critical point of whether they can engage with new technologies and make new technologies work for the art that they present – or whether they go out of business.”

Glasgow’s City Halls have been under renovation for four years. “The main concert hall is now a comfortable auditorium with an acoustic even better than before. Indeed, it is easily among the finest in the UK. The main beneficiary is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which has moved into the building and will use the hall as its base.”

“Finding the right conductor is one of the hardest yet most critical things an orchestra can do. As someone once observed, God himself would not be too impressive a candidate… The problem is analogous to love affairs, when initial attraction and subsequent passion are followed by a discovery of long-term incompatibility. As one veteran Toronto Symphony player has observed, ‘we go out on a date with these guys once or twice and are expected to get married to them.'” Moreover, the list of duties assumed by a conductor once the title of ‘music director’ is bestowed has lengthened considerably in recent decades, meaning that orchestras are no longer looking merely for an outstanding musician. “More than catalysts, they almost need to be Messiahs.”

The San Francisco Symphony and its musicians are deep in negotiations for a new contract, and tensions have recently exploded into press and public. But an agreement struck this weekend insures that next month’s SFS tour of China will go ahead as scheduled, regardless of the status of the larger negotiations.

Ever since Sir Simon Rattle took up the reins of the Berlin Philharmonic, the critical press has been rife with discussion of his impact on the ensemble that many call the world’s greatest orchestra. Rattle and his band are in New York this month, and David Patrick Stearns says there is no doubt that this is a changed orchestra. “Berlin Philharmonic concerts under [longtime chief conductor Claudio] Abbado were the ultimate deluxe experience. The orchestra’s gold-plated sound seemed like such an end in itself that even minor fissures in the glistening facade – such as missed notes – felt like a betrayal. Now, the Berlin Philharmonic feels like an intense meeting of many well-defined voices, all of them luminescent and intensely colored.”

Orchestra musicians can seem like the ultimate team players, sitting on stage in their matching tuxedos, moving in harmony in the service of the music. But in reality, musicians have a long history of ugly problems – alcoholism, drug abuse, severe workplace bullying, hearing loss, performance anxiety and more. “The problems are so serious that this weekend the Association of British Orchestras launches the Healthy Orchestra Charter, creating a code of practice to help tackle or prevent the afflictions.”

Thousands gathered on Friday in Salzburg, Austria, for the culmination of the worldwide celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Vienna Philharmonic performed, with Riccardo Muti on the podium and mezzo Cecilia Bartoli standing in for the hastily dismissed Renee Fleming. “There is much around Salzburg at the moment that smacks of unabashed exploitation of a composer whose relationship with it was, to put it mildly, ambivalent. But these concerts seemed to be genuine efforts to do right by the essence of Mozart.”