Category: music

Sales of CDs dropped seven percent in 2005, but downloads more than doubled. “Sales stood at 602.2 million during the year, down from 650.8 million in 2004, report analysts Nielsen Soundscan. Downloaded music reached 332.7 million for 2005, an increase of 148% on the previous year. More than 95% of music is sold in CD format, with Mariah Carey and 50 Cent proving the year’s biggest sellers.”

The English National Opera could scarcely be having a worse holiday season, what with the recent resignations of its artistic director and chairman, and the continued browbeatings the company is taking in the British press. Now, music director designate Oleg Caetani has apparently been relieved of the post he was to take up next month. “Sources say that the reason for Caetani’s pre-emptive ejection was the lack of time he could commit to the company – an issue that had caused concern among observers from his appointment in March this year after a 14-month search.”

“Members of the union Bectu, who work in the technical, managerial and administrative departments at the Coliseum, the English National Opera’s London home, have voted by a massive majority – 94.6 per cent of those who voted – in favour of industrial action over its pay claim [against the beleagured opera company.] While there are no operas, only ballets, on stage until late January, strikes would hit rehearsals for new productions as well as the resumption of operatic performances [in] February.”

The trombone is one of those much-maligned instruments, like the bassoon or the viola, which plays a crucial role in the orchestra and yet seems to provoke more snickers than applause. The slide looks silly, the sound is frequently used for comic relief, and a recent episode of the UK’s popular TV series, Doctor Who, featured a campy but sinister lineup of deadly trombone-wielding Santas. “One sometimes detects among trombonists a sense that the world is doing them down.”

Daniel Barenboim is fueling speculation that he will soon be named La Scala’s next music director, succeeding the ousted Riccardo Muti. Barenboim will be leaving the directorship of the Chicago Symphony next summer, leaving him available for the post in Milan. “In May, the governors appointed a Frenchman, Stephané Lissner, a friend of Barenboim, as general manager and artistic director. It was he who lured Barenboim, 63, back to La Scala, where he last performed 30 years ago. And, in what was seen by insiders as a possible pointer to the future, agreed to his being the first musician to use Muti’s old dressing room.”

“Any year in which John Coltrane supplants Jamie Cullum as a topic of conversation is a very good year indeed. For once, the jazz art at its highest and the jazz business at its most lucrative have been completely in step, a reaffirmation of the music’s core values at a time when they’re far too often compromised for public consumption.”

“The BSO is playing better, and more consistently, than it has in years. Levine is not presenting much more contemporary repertoire than Seiji Ozawa did, but he apparently enjoys a more challenging kind of music, and he is programming it in a more systematic way.”

The Dallas Symphony has a new way of selling tickets. Patrons pay a monthly “retainer”. The plan “allows patrons to pay a monthly fee in exchange for the best available seat at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center – generally seats that went unsold or were returned by subscribers.”

“There is more of it here than in any other city in the world. Not only is more going on here than in London or Berlin, but one of the great attractions of over-the-top Tokyo is that it makes everything feel different. Tokyo is chock-full of concert halls and, better yet, concert halls full of listeners. Where other musical capitals consider themselves lucky to have two or three important large venues for concerts and opera, Tokyo and its outskirts boast 10, plus many more medium- and smaller-sized halls. The city is also home to about a dozen symphony orchestras.”

There may not be a tougher gig in the American orchestral scene at the moment than music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. And yet somehow, David Robertson, the young American conductor better known in Europe than in his home country, has already begun to transform the SLSO’s fortunes in only a few months on the job. “By opening night, he had already motivated the most miserable musicians in any major American orchestra (at least to hear them publicly complain); turned on teenagers as well as dowagers; and begun reaching deep into a racially divided community.”