Category: music

The recording industry has launched another round of lawsuits against digital downloaders. “The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry said it was launching 2,100 legal cases and extending the action to five new countries in Europe, Asia and, for the first time, South America. It said file-sharers in Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, Hong Kong and Singapore faced prosecution for the first time.”

Because they lose discs. “The survey found 25% of people prefer to listen to music via their PC or MP3 player rather than a hi-fi. And 35% of those questioned by ICM opted for storing their entire music collection in MP3 format rather than CD or cassette. The figures show the average person owns 126 albums but 37 have had to be replaced for various reasons.”

The Chicago Symphony launches a new multimedia program. “Designed by Gerard McBurney, a British music historian and BBC program host, the introduction deftly mixed vintage photos projected onto a huge overhead screen, excerpts from Strauss’ letters, commentary from his contemporaries and short excerpts from the tone poem itself. The pacing was seamless, the information on Strauss and his era coming in easily digestible but never watered-down nuggets. When the CSO played the entire work straight through after intermission, the large audience couldn’t help but feel like newly minted connoisseurs.”

At 87, Felix Resnick is the oldest musician in the Detroit Symphony. At 23, Gina DiBello is the youngest. “Resnick began his tenure in 1943 during Franklin Roosevelt’s third term, and allowing for the two years the DSO was dormant from 1949 to 1951, his 61 seasons represent the longest active streak in any major American orchestra. DiBello, meanwhile, joined in September. She is one of just a handful of players each year to land a job in a top orchestra while still in their early 20s.”

“Giacinto Scelsi would have been a hundred this year. Given his mystica propensities, it might be better to say that he is a hundred, although he was observed to have died in 1988. Live performances of this composer’s works remain rare; Michael Tilson Thomas, in San Francisco, is the only American conductor who programs them. It is far easier to get to know the music on recordings, by way of the Accord, CPO, Kairos, and Mode labels. Scelsi’s methods were strange, but he had a command of narrative which no ghostwriter could have provided.”

“For the first time in nearly two decades, since the 1987 ‘Moonstruck’ and its rhapsodic scene from ‘La Bohème,’ a movie is being filmed at the Metropolitan Opera. The rarity is a result of the Met’s busy schedule as well as of the general absence of opera from movies and most of popular culture. But the filming is emblematic of the Met’s future reign, in the person of Peter Gelb, who made his mark in the classical recording industry partly with crossover projects and movie soundtracks.”

Marc Shulgold has some misgivings about Denver’s new opera house. It’s a cold space, for one. “Acoustically, the Ellie is quite nice. But then, great pains were taken to create a natural, unamplified space for singers. Still, this was not the vibrant, room-filling sound we had expected. From downstairs, the singing and talking during Carmen often faded away if the performers didn’t project out to the house or put some oomph in their delivery.”

Washington’s National Symphony provides a portrait of itself with a release of historical recordings showcasing its 75-year history. The discs take the group from its formative years under Hans Kindler and Howard Mitchell through the tenures of Antal Dorati, Mstislav Rostropovich and its current music director, Leonard Slatkin.

“American vocal training has long been bruited as the best in the world and is supposed to be better than ever. Yet there has been no commensurate rise in great new talents. One clear measure of the problem is the system’s inability to deal effectively with large voices and talents like Ms. Wilson’s. It seems to favor lighter, flexible voices that can perform a wide range of material accurately, rather than the powerful, thrilling, concert-hall-filling voices on which live opera ultimately relies for its survival.”

The New Zealand Symphony has had a mixed year. It recorded the sound track for Peter Jackson’s “King Kong”, but then Jackson decided to junk the music and start over elsewhere. The orchestra became an autonomous Crown corporation and has greater freedom, but also a $915,000 deficit.