Category: music

Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter has been chosen the winner of the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. “Ms. Fliter was among about 450 pianists nominated in a poll of music professionals and was chosen from a final handful by six judges from the music world who stealthily heard her perform in Washington and Tokyo as well as on privately made live recordings.”

Conductor Wolfgang Sawalisch is canceling concerts because of health concerns. “I cannot say if and when I will be strong enough to fly to America and to see you again. So I take the possibility now to thank you once again for the great collaboration in the past: The concerts in the Academy and in the new hall, the exciting travels to the most different parts of the world. The experiences remain always in my heart.”

Whether New York is really losing its primacy as the undisputed American center of the arts is quite debatable. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the heart of the American orchestral organism is beating strongly 3,000 miles southwest of the Big Apple. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has achieved that rarest of confluences in recent years – a first-rate ensemble, a finely tuned promotional operation, a top-flight music director, and an outstanding and inviting concert hall. Perhaps more importantly, the LA Phil’s success may provide a blueprint for America’s more staid and stagnant orchestras (one of which resides in New York) to overhaul their own product.

Musicians and orchestras love to pay lip service to the concept of promoting new music, but increasingly, composers are facing a world in which their services are viewed as optional. “Something fundamental has changed in the music marketplace: Where once patrons consisted of people outside the music business – church leaders, emperors, members of the bourgeoisie, impresarios – today they are almost always from within. The world of classical music is becoming self-absorbed, for it is the musician himself who commissions new music with the flickering hope of selling it as a commodity to consumers. Consumers, in turn, are becoming too obsessed with iPods, the Internet and video-on-demand to bother with live concert performances.”

Is this the year music kiosks take off with the public? Lots of big players are getting in to them. But there is also a great deal of skepticism as to whether kiosks actually fulfill any consumer demand.

Details are continuing to emerge in the sordid tale of Pinchas Zukerman’s abrupt “sabbatical” from Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, and the divisive and outspoken Zukerman appears to have left behind a divided orchestra. “While it’s not unusual for orchestra musicians to have varying opinions about their leader, some longtime NACO musicians say they’ve become polarized in a way they have never been before… The kind of reasonable debate musicians used to have about conductors has become difficult.” Furthermore, some within the NACO are openly acknowledging that the orchestra’s artistic standard has diminished under a conductor they see as authoritarian and uninterested in expanding his artistic horizons.

Orchestras across the country are scrambling to attract new audiences with such gimmicks as video screens, loquacious conductors, and hot young soloists, but much of the experimentation is in the trial-and-error realm, since there isn’t a lot of evidence concerning what works and what doesn’t. The Detroit Symphony launched a new series this season aimed at cultivating demographics it doesn’t currently see much of, but Mark Stryker says the idea will need a lot of tweaking before it yields dividends. Moreover, its possible that orchestras are barking up the wrong tree with the idea that younger audiences want less substance and more flash.

Critics have long complained about a supposed “homogenization” of orchestral sound, an abandonment of the distinct traditions that used to characterize each city’s unique orchestra. Some of the griping is overblown, but some stereotypes are rooted in truth. “North American orchestras still tend to show off their wind soloists at the expense of ensemble sound, a situation made more obvious by the players’ polyglot origins and training… Orchestras used to have a much more localized identity, which helped give them a more individual personality.” Of course, the nationalization of the audition process has also resulted in a surfeit of great orchestras, where many of the “distinctive” ensembles of the past used to be quite mediocre due to a lack of top-notch musicians outside the major urban centers.

Mozart could certainly be said to be overexposed, especially in central Europe, where his visage graces everything from concert programs to chocolate wrappers. Many of his most famous compositions long ago entered the dreaded realm of Muzak, and the film adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus didn’t exactly paint a flattering portrait. And yet, somehow, Mozart’s life and music continue to captivate audiences and musicians in an almost completely unique way.

When the Nashville Symphony opens its new $120 million concert hall this fall, the celebration will be clearly designed to draw in more than just your average fan of Beethoven and Brahms. In country music’s undisputed capital city, outreach is a must for a classical orchestra, and Nashville’s opening concert at the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center will feature, among other guests, jazz/bluegrass banjo legend Bela Fleck and crossover bassist extraordinaire Edgar Meyer. Conductor Leonard Slatkin will lead the gala, as the orchestra is between music directors following the death of longtime leader Kenneth Schermerhorn last year.