Category: music

Norman Lebrecht is asked to narrate a performance of Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw”. “To study an orchestral masterpiece of this magnitude is pure pleasure, physical as much as intellectual. To perform it in a public concert hall is a privilege that beggars description, a moment where we are humbled by the materials we handle. I cannot remember everything. The seven minutes of Survivor pass like a flash and the reward of applause seems undeserved. I want to do it again, to do it better, to do it justice.”

The UK’s Radio 3 is playing the complete works of Anton Webern in one session. “No amount of historical importance and peer endorsement will persuade anyone to love Webern. Nor will the copious amounts of ink spilt by the theorists who’ve shown just how beautifully ingenious his music is, as full of mirror-forms and symmetries as the rock crystals Webern loved to collect on his Alpine walks. But in any case, I suspect Radio 3 controller Roger Wright doesn’t want to lecture us. He just wants us to love Webern’s music as it deserves. That will be a tough call…”

Composer Michael Tippett’s music went out of fashion after he died in 1998. But “the fact is that, at his best, Tippett is a highly individual composer and a hugely important figure in 20th-century British music. His interest in the culture of other countries and his endless fascination with literature and the workings of the mind helped to keep him looking some 15 years younger than his true age. Rather than compare him to Britten, we should celebrate the fact that the two composers had such utterly contrasting minds.”

Canadian composer R. Murray Schaefer is recreating one of his most famous pieces The Enchanted Forest, staged in actual wilderness. “The work follows the search for an abducted child by her companions and their encounters with a White Stag, a Wolf, a Marshhawk, a Shapeshifter and other forest denizens and deities on 12 different stages in the forest, the audience migrating through the trees from one to another.”

Opera San Jose (California) took a risk in expanding its operations last year, and it’s proved a success. “It was a financial balancing act. The company moved from the 520-seat Montgomery to the 1,100-seat California, adding $1.6 million to its $2.8 million budget. It still produced four operas, but dropped the number of performances of each from 15 to eight or, for ‘Carmen,” nine. It also increased ticket prices by an average of $27 — and sold more tickets than expected.”

Warner is setting up a new label that will produce music in electronic form only. “New and niche musicians will be signed to the “e-label” without the pressures or costs of recording, manufacturing and distributing full albums. Warner chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr described the move as ‘revolutionary’.”

Daniel Barenboim’s orchestra made up of young Israelis and Arabs offers some hope for peace. “In a week that had seen the occupied territories once again hitting global headlines, as 8,000 Jewish settlers finally withdrew from appropriated land in the Gaza strip, the arrival in the West Bank city of an orchestra that was founded to promote the principles of peace and reconciliation seemed to offer some faint hope of normality and harmony. The town’s ‘cultural palace’, built last year, was full to bursting, its capacity of 800 boosted by at least another 300 people sitting in the aisles and standing at the back of the hall, and the concert was broadcast live on television in Israel and through much of Europe.” But can music make a lasting difference?

“Like a summer earthquake, Millennium Park has tilted the playing field of Chicago-area classical music festivals, and Ravinia is clearly feeling the shock waves. The city of Chicago’s stunning $475-million cultural playground and outdoor recreation center — home to the Grant Park Music Festival since its opening in July 2004 — has been pulling in capacity crowds to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion for most of the Grant Park Orchestra’s 30 concerts this season. At the same time, Ravinia continues to grapple with a decline in pavilion ticket sales to the 22 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts it presented.”

Chigao’s Grant Park Festival has had a great summer, with solid crowds. “The rush to become a member of the Grant Park Music Festival, which guarantees access to 2,000 of the pavilion’s 4,000 fixed seats, began last season. In 2004, the festival stopped taking memberships six weeks before the Pritzker Pavilion opened, fearing they couldn’t accommodate so many new members. This summer, the festival sold out its basic and premium memberships, priced at $60 and $150 per person respectively. With 3,764 members, 30 percent more than 2004, it stopped taking new members in mid-June.”

The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus is traveling with the orchestra in Europe to festivals this month. But costs for the chorus’s travel aren’t covered by the hosting organizations. “Not even bread will be supplied to the 152 choristers – of the total personnel of 165 – who will travel this month” and so fundraising is required…