Category: music

With Pittsburgh Ballet opting for recorded music, and touring shows like the Rockettes doing the same, finding work for Pittsburgh-area freelance musicians is becoming tougher…

Budapest’s new concert hall is part of a $153 million Palace of Fine Arts, and the Cleveland Orchestra took it for a test drive. “It is a state-of-the-art building, splashily modern without being ostentatious, with all sorts of pastel colors to catch the eye. The lobbies are sweeping spaces made airy by tall windows that provide stunning views of the Danube and the new National Theatre – itself an architectural dazzler – just across the plaza.”

If classical music in general and symphony orchestras in particular are in such dire financial trouble, wonders Frank Oteri, why are expensive new concert halls being built for them?

Last month composer Arvo Pärt turned 70. Pärt “has caught on because of the luminous beauty of his sound. It seems to come from somewhere beyond our normal experience and expectations. It haunts the ear. But just about every tribute to him I’ve read lately begins defensively, explaining that musical simplicity does not necessarily equal triviality. No, we are reminded, Arvo Pärt is not New Age. He isn’t a Minimalist, as such. He’s neither this nor that. We need no such reminders. Maybe he’s not to everyone’s taste, but he’s loved and admired by a following that is wide and that breaks through categories.”

Britain’s symphony orchestras have been thrown into crisis, as the government says orchestras have failed to pay their share of National Insurance assessments and now owe £33 million. The debt could force several major orchestras to fold. “Since a change in working laws in 1998, freelance singers and musicians have been classed as employees for NI purposes, but self-employed for tax purposes. The issue affects ever major orchestra and smaller orchestra in this country and would have huge effects upon how they operate.”

UK orchestras’ insurance bill would cripple orchestras if not shut them down. “In the case of the Philharmonia Orchestra, for instance, it could mean an extra £500,000 tax a year, plus arrears backdated to 2000. In the case of the London Symphony Orchestra, the back-payments would amount to £8m.”

Luis Leguia couldn’t find a cello he liked. “So he invented one himself using an unlikely material — carbon fiber. And now he designs, manufactures, and sells carbon fiber cellos, violins, and violas through Luis and Clark Carbon Fiber Instruments, a company that he started five years ago and runs out of his home. Carbon fiber, strong but flexible, is strands of carbon tightly woven and set in resin. He has sold 100 cellos, 12 violins, and 20 violas.”

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ is one of the composer’s best-known works. It’s spooky, the theme for countless scary movies. “Turns out Halloween’s soundtrack also has been cloaking its true form: The Toccata and Fugue probably was not written by Bach and almost certainly wasn’t written for the organ. In music circles, that assertion is as scary as it gets. It’s not every day such a famous work gets shaken to its foundations. However, scholarly consensus is building that the baroque master did not write his most well-known organ work.”

“Programming decisions are crucial for orchestras, and the preferences of the subscribers they hope to attract can be difficult to gauge. Symphony orchestras may have been invented in the steam age, but there is a technological revolution going on behind the scenes that will change the way they do business.” Increasingly, orchestras are integrating new technologies into their ticket sales and marketing departments, and the sales information generated is poised to have a huge impact on what we hear in future orchestral seasons. “It’s to do with market segmentation, and shaping concerts programs in a way that will appeal to people with different musical interests and levels of knowledge.”

It’s opera’s most predictable typecasting: every African-American baritone will eventually be asked to sing the role of Porgy in George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. The racially explicit casting was Gershwin’s firm instruction, but it does tend to point up how infrequently black baritones are asked to sing any role other than Porgy. For Gordon Hawkins, a 46-year-old baritone who has sung the role many times, the struggle is in finding a way to define Porgy as a man, rather than as a vaguely racist caricature. “He aims for nuance, some way to measure the man, not the facade… His Porgy has to have fire and flesh, he says. He’s not the beaten-down cripple that some find demeaning.”