Category: music

A backlash is developing against recording companies’ anti-piracy measures. “Some at Sony BMG candidly say that copy-protection software, particularly a program which has since been discontinued, but which was embedded in a number of discs, such as the latest Burt Bacharach CD At This Time and Ray Charles’s Friendship, has been a massive blunder at the worst possible time of year.”

The head of the Music Publishers Association wants to escalate its war on illegal downloading. He says the group does “not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can ‘throw in some jail time I think we’ll be a little more effective’.”

After much conjecture about it, La Scala’s opening night went off as a success, and English conductor Daniel Harding proved himself. Thursday’s headline in the Italian daily La Repubblica read, “Harding, the Boy Maestro, Opens the Era for the New Scala.” And in Corriere della Sera, the headline was, “Harding Conquers La Scala.”

“For more than a decade, French rap has been the voice of the banlieues, the poor suburbs, and it has long been full of warnings of violence to come in those areas. Last week, 200 politicians backed a petition by MP François Grosdidier calling for legal action against several hip hop musicians for their aggressive lyrics.”

John Rutter has written many a Christmas carol and he knows they’re not “serious” music. But. “The carol repertoire is the richest and most varied collection of folk art: a wonderful historical ragbag of doggerel, some inspired poetry, much memorable melody and a few of those irritating ditties that lodge unwanted in the brain.”

The Grammy nominees have been announced, and conductor Mariss Jansons, pianist Martha Argerich, and the Emerson String Quartet lead the pack of nominees in the classical categories. In the contemporary music category, composer Osvaldo Golijov’s 11-song cycle, “Ayre,” competes with works by William Bolcom, Ned Rorem, Peter Boyer, and Carlos Franzetti.

Daniel Harding had a lot on his shoulders last night at La Scala, as seemingly the entire opera world waited to see whether the boyish conductor and his vision of Mozart’s Idomeneo could make Milan forget all about Riccardo Muti and his dramatic exit last spring. Apparently, he did. “After two curtain calls, Harding joined the cast on stage for 12-minute ovation. Members of the audience praised him for his ‘energy and verve’. The president of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who was present, said: ‘I saw it with new eyes’.” However, some Muti loyalists remain quite upset with what they see as La Scala’s move away from serious, cutting-edge opera, and with the treatment accorded Muti, whom La Scala managers painted as a dictator.

The Houston Symphony has an unusual new partner for its holiday concerts: Lakewood Church, arguably the world’s most famous mega-church, seating 16,000, its services seen across the U.S. on television each week. “To Lakewood, the symphony offers cachet and a high-quality orchestra. To the symphony, Lakewood offers a large untapped audience and an extraordinary marketing machine… The church and the symphony readily admit that their usual audiences don’t overlap much, [but] Lakewood has far more to offer the symphony than just an audience. Symphony management can also learn something from Lakewood about branding… And it’s possible that further collaboration could provide a huge new outlet for the symphony’s work. The two organizations are eyeing a long-term relationship.”

Bowing to the bottom line, Glimmerglass Opera has asked the creators of a new work coming next summer to take “whore” out of the title. The company says it is also scrapping a production of the 17th-century work “Giasone,” by Francesco Cavalli, in favor of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance.”

Thirty-year-old conductor Daniel Harding is fronting this year’s opening night at La Scala. “Silvio Berlusconi’s tottering government is threatening to cut subsidies by 30 percent in a rage of scorched-earth legislation ahead of next year’s election. This could be La Scala’s last glamour night for a while and the designer-suit claques won’t let it pass without ructions. No pressure, but our boy – who posed beneath gleaming chandeliers in a Manchester United shirt for Gazzetto della Sport – will need to play a blinder if he is to avoid backlash from off-pitch dramas.”