Category: music

In 1872, the U.S. had begun to establish itself as a world power, and much of the country was edging away from the wild frontier mentality. With the desire for greater global respect came a desire for high culture, something most Americans hadn’t had a lot of time for previously. So when the city of Boston invited a group of European composers to bring their music (and their considerable) reputations to American shores, it was a big deal. A concert hall seating 100,000 was erected, and the star of the show, Johan Strauss, Jr., was treated like royalty as he led an eye-popping 20,000-piece orchestra, assisted by more than 100 assistant conductors. To Strauss, it was a gross excess antithetical to music’s nature. To America, it was only the beginning…

A long-lost work by Vivaldi discovered by an Australian researcher gets its premiere. “It is rare that a university music department can boast a research breakthrough of world importance. Those headlines usually go to the doctors, scientists and engineers. But new Federal Government research guidelines limiting research in the humanities mean the 35-minute work unearthed by Melbourne University’s Janice Stockigt at a German university in May could be the last Australian discovery of its kind.”

Recording industry people are still pondering the phenomenal demand (1.4 million downloads) for the BBC’s free downloads of Beethoven. “Everyone in the industry was astounded at the result. So astounded, that they have been left on the back foot. No one doubts now that a huge appetite exists in the marketplace for classical music delivered straight to your computer or on to your iPod. But how best to assuage that appetite? The BBC downloads may have been free but if a commercial label got even 10 per cent of that response it would still be a huge leap for downloading. Forward-thinking record-company executives are already talking about using free downloads as a method to tempt new classical buyers in the future.”

The Pittsburgh Symphony may end its fiscal year with a deficit of a half million dollars, with the promise of much more red ink to come next season, when the musicians will be due a $17,000 salary increase. Such money woes, combined with falling ticket sales, have convinced one of the city’s daily newspapers that it might be time for the PSO to throw in the towel and stop trying to compete with other major American orchestras. “The harsh reality is that a metropolitan area barely ranked among the top 25 in population does not have pockets deep enough to support [an orchestra] the way New York and Chicago support theirs.”

“Attendance at Detroit Symphony Orchestra classical concerts inched forward last year by 2% and income from the orchestra’s classical series leapt 7.6% — victories in an environment in which many orchestras have seen attendance and income drop. Income from all DSO concerts combined in 2004-05 — classical, jazz, pops, children’s series and special events — rose 6%. A small increase in ticket prices was partially responsible for the uptick. The revenue increases are a critical step in the DSO’s drive to balance its budget for the second straight year after running up an accumulated deficit of $2 million. With three weeks left in its fiscal year, the DSO has met goals for earned income and expenses. But contributed income from individuals and businesses remains a question mark.”

Washington State’s Everett Symphony Orchestra is losing its music director and another staff conductor as well, after both submitted letters of resignation to the board saying that they could not support “the direction that the current leadership is imposing on the organization.” If anyone at the ESO understands what direction Paul-Elliott Cobbs is referring to, they aren’t talking, but assistant conductor Ron Friesen’s letter said that the symphony leadership “no longer fosters trust, respect, and support.”

A Rabbi has urged a boycott of a production of John Adams’ opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Edinburgh Festival. “The work has evoked anger ever since it first appeared in 1991, and its subject has made it almost unperformable in the US and Israel, where charges of anti-semitism, naivety and of giving a voice to terrorism have been levelled at it.”

Of course there was Marin Alsop’s controversial appointment as msuci director of the Baltimore Symphony. In addition “this month Simone Young becomes music director of the Hamburg State Opera; Susanna Mälkki, a familiar conductor of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, is about to become the new music director of L’Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris; and Emmanuelle Haim’s reputation as a leading interpreter of the baroque repertoire blossoms by the week.”

“In recent months there’s been an explosion on the Internet of what used to be called tape trading. This is not the illegal copying of commercially available music that is being fought by the major record companies. This is the free, generally legal exchange of fan-made concert tapes, radio broadcasts and material that was never officially released — by the Dead and just about anybody else. It’s a world that is growing daily at an exponential rate — and has its foundation in the community of tapers and traders that initially coalesced around and was nurtured by Garcia and the Grateful Dead.”

A Melbourne musicologist has found a piece by Vivaldi written in 1754. The find is being described as the biggest Vivaldi find in 75 years. “The work is an 11-movement Dixit Dominus based on Psalm 109 for choir and orchestra, intended to be played in church. But Dr Janice Stockigt suspects that because of a lack of additional notation on the score, this might be its first performance ever.”