Category: music

“Artistic administrator” is not exactly a glamorous title, but most major orchestras would have trouble functioning without one. So it was a notable event this week when three of the top US orchestras announced what amounted to an administrative carousel. “Chad Smith, the artistic administrator of the New York Philharmonic, will become vice president for artistic planning of the Los Angeles Philharmonic… Matías Tarnopolsky, currently senior director of artistic planning at the Chicago Symphony, will replace Smith in New York. Smith returns to the L.A. Philharmonic less than a year after he left the orchestra for New York.”

“All you have to do is consult the list of gold-medal winners from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s opera course to know that this programme is the real deal. Bryn Terfel scooped it in 1989; this year’s winner, Anna Stéphany, has already made her mark by winning the highly regarded Kathleen Ferrier Award. In between, the number of distinguished graduates from recent years is more than impressive.”

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which has been hit in recent years by deficits and a national scandal involving financier Herbert Axelrod’s sale to the orchestra of a collection of valuable string instruments, has announced a surplus for the 2004-05 season, and increases in ticket revenue and donor giving. “But the orchestra is not clear of its primary threat: a debt load of about $19 million, composed of a $3.6 million line of credit it has not paid down in three years, and the balance owed on bonds and notes payable to creditors for the instruments. The orchestra restructured its debt to pay interest only for nine months last season, saving about $780,000 in cash… In all, the orchestra has made headway, but the financial report showed a seesaw of good and bad news.”

“Musicians for the Radio City Music Hall’s famous Christmas Spectacular went on strike Wednesday and announced they had the support of other unions at the landmark [New York] theater.” With the annual show scheduled to open tonight, the strike was timed to cause maximum disruption. Nonetheless, the success of the strike may hinge on whether the show’s other unionized workers – the stagehands and the famous dancers known as The Rockettes – honor the picket line. Radio City is planning to go ahead with a prerecorded soundtrack, and the stagehands have yet to commit to a sympathy strike. The Rockettes announced that they would not cross the picket line, but Radio City says they have a no-strike clause in their contract, and are expected to perform.

A rare violin once owned by 19th-century virtuoso and composer Nicolo Paganini was bought at auction Tuesday by the Moscow-based Violin Art Foundation, which plans to loan it out to the winner of its prestigious annual competition. The Foundation paid just over $1 million for the instrument, which was made in 1720 by the Italian master Carlo Bergonzi. The sale price was a record for a Bergonzi violin.

“Recording has directed performance style into a search for greater precision and perfection, with a consequent loss of spontaneity and warmth. Various expressive devices once common in the early twentieth century have been almost outlawed: “portamento” (sliding from one note to another on a stringed instrument); playing the piano with the hands not quite together (Philip calls this dislocation); arpeggiating chords (not playing all the notes of the chord at the same time but one after another), and flexibility of tempo.”

“Based out of Vancouver, CBC Radio 3 will operate as a 24-hour music station that plays independent Canadian artists across all genres, from rock and hip-hop to electronica and alt-country. ‘This is an unprecedented opportunity to get a lot of Canadian artists on radio, not just in Canada, but also exported to the United States’.”

As a child Rupert Christiansen spent countless hours in the music collections of public libraries, exploring and listening. “Could a 10-year-old budding maestro – or opera critic – enjoy the same adventure today? Only if he or she was the winner in a postcode lottery. Decent public music collections have become increasingly hard to find in a library structure which has replaced its old mission of humanising and educating in favour of providing value-free dissemination of information. I see the logic in this, but feel impelled to defend my own culture’s corner.”

“You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It’s like winter driving in Finland – if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It’s the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse.”

“For decades now, the pattern has gone more like this: An opera company, spurred on either by a particular dramatic idea or some generalized sense of wanting to do what’s right, commissions a new work from a composer of greater or lesser renown. An initial run is scheduled, perhaps followed (especially if there are co-commissioners) by a second production elsewhere. The world premiere comes off with lots of fanfare, and for a week or two, all eyes are on the company giving the premiere. Critics fly in from throughout the United States and Europe and proffer their opinions. Then the run ends and the opera is never heard again.” But there are signs this pattern is changing…