Category: music

Another Van Cliburn piano competition is in the books, and John von Rhein gathers his impressions: “Among this year’s medalists, there was general agreement about who deserved the gold. Bespectacled and skinny, Russia’s Alexander Kobrin, 25, looks like a nerdy bookworm in need of a “Queer Eye” makeover. But he capped off his successes earlier in the finals with a Rachmaninoff “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” that was as thrilling as only a native son with superior pianistic chops can make it. Unlike some of his peers, he didn’t have to emote at the keyboard, because the emotion was invested in the music.”

In decades past you wouldn’t have exactly touted top pianists for their glamorous fashion sense. That’s changed, as exhibited at the just-concluded Van Cliburn Competition. “You couldn’t help notice the snazzy, slinky gowns a lot of the women were wearing, and the big smiles and confident strides as they walked out onstage. In a noticeable change from the 2001 Cliburn, these were emphatically pianists groomed for the video age.”

Into the desolate landscape of classical music recording, a new boutique recording label finds a niche… and maybe some success? Norman Lebrecht sees an opening.

Los Angeles has a jazz scene. Really, it does. But you have to know how to look for it, and be ready to accept that it may not be a carbon copy of New Orleans or Chicago. “Contrary to popular grousing, there is jazz to be had in Los Angeles — and we’re not just talking about high-profile clubs such as the Jazz Bakery or this weekend’s Playboy Jazz Festival. The experience may come wrapped in a way we’re not accustomed to, or it might take some seeking. The bad rap about L.A., from performers to listeners, is this: ‘People don’t come out.’ Or, ‘It’s too over their heads.’ But the jazz issue is deeper and more complex: It’s an issue of sprawl, of competing distractions.”

Why did the English national Opera’s director of marketing boo his company’s departing music director at the end of a performance this week? Ian McKay said he had been angered by a newspaper article in which Mr Daniel had spoken about the ENO’s future.”I believed [the interview] damaged the company’s reputation,” he said.

It takes more than a good match between orchestra and conductor to make a truly successful long-term partnership – the audience has to buy into the pairing as well. And nowhere has that symbiotic relationship between musicians, maestro, and the public been more in evidence than Detroit, where music director Neeme Järvi is preparing to conduct the final concerts of his tenure.

When Paul Daniel, the outgoing music director of the English National Opera, conducted his last performance recently, he was sent out the door with a standing ovation, thunderous applause… and one incredibly persistent man booing him from a private box. The booing, as it turns out, was coming from the ENO’s own director of marketing, who was offended by Daniel’s recent criticism of some ENO management figures. In the wake of the incident, some members of the audience have called for the marketing director to be fired.

Europe’s oldest boys choir school has fallen on hard times. “For centuries, parents brought their 9- to 14-year-old boys to the choir and its music school, known as the Escolania of Montserrat, then part company for most of the next 11 months. But in recent years, fewer parents in Catalonia, this northeastern region of Spain, have been willing to send their children away for so long. When only 8 students were admitted last year from a pool of 20, the fewest number of candidates in recent decades, it was clear the future of the school, which dates to at least the 13th century, was at stake.”

In North America, folk music has traditionally been the purview of the political left, the stripped-down performance of protest representing a quaint, if frequently ineffective, method of protest against the powerful. But in Israel, it is the far right which has embraced folk music, using it to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to pull Jewish “settlers” out of the Gaza Strip. As in most folk music, subtlety is cast aside, and the message is clear: this land is our land.

Hidden for 300 years in a shoebox, a long forgotten Bach aria has been rediscovered. ‘The work, for a soprano and harpsichord, was written in October 1713 as a birthday present for Bach’s patron, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar.”