Category: music

Seventeen-year-old vilinist Nicola Benedetti has a hit. Her self-titled new album has landed at No. 2 on the classical charts after only a week on sale. “It is the highest ever position in the classical chart for a debut violinist in the first week of sales. In the popular charts, the album has achieved a position in the top 75 – also a record-breaking first week of sales for a classical violinist.”

“Half a century ago, and before, individuals of vision – conductors, composers, entrepreneurs, even critics – heroically shaped the course of America’s musical high culture. In more recent times, the fate of classical music in the US has been governed by the market place. The indulged and uninquisitive American electorate is paralleled by classical music audiences that ask for little and give little back. A tangible acuity of knowing attention still found in Berlin or Budapest is no longer much encountered in New York.”

Warner Music reports reduced losses as declining CD sales are made up for by online downloading. “The New York-based recording company reported a loss of $18 million for the fiscal second quarter ended March 31. That compares with the prior year’s $45 million loss. The company didn’t provide a per-share figure. Revenue grew 4.4 percent to $767 million from $735 million. Recorded Music revenue expanded 4.9 percent to $621 million, ‘led by digital sales mostly offset by declines in physical sales, the company said.”

Multitasking is essential in today’s classical music world, where music directors are expected to be fundraisers and cheerleaders as well as conductors, and composers can’t even get a foot in the door without a finely honed set of self-marketing skills. But recently, composer/conductor Loren Maazel has been raising eyebrows with his own version of the musical multitask: spending his own money to get his own opera produced by one of the top companies in the world. “The London papers report that the Maazel project has caused bitter infighting at all levels of the company… Gifted composers would line up to write a commissioned work for Covent Garden. But Mr. Maazel has bought his way to the top without having paid his dues as a composer.”

The competition among young up-and-coming classical singers is intense, occasionally brutal, and fiercely New York-centric. So what’s a young singer supposed to do to get a bit of attention? One increasingly popular route to success is to take part in the dozens of high-profile competitions held around the world. “For those who are prepared and mature enough to handle the pressure, and who are granted a bit of luck, competitions can indeed launch a career. Young singers receive coaching from famous musicians while making valuable contacts. [But] to be sure, competitions are notoriously unpredictable.”

Ask any orchestra musician to name the biggest problem in their industry, and you’ll likely hear, “not enough good conductors.” But like the weather, everyone talks about the lack of conducting talent on the international scene, but nobody does anything about it. Except maybe Leonard Slatkin, whose five-year-old National Conducting Institute brings together talented young baton-twirlers to learn not only the finer musical points of the job, but also the diplomatic skills necessary to succeed in orchestral music’s most difficult and multi-faceted profession.

Less than five years ago, it didn’t seem too big of a stretch to suggest that the future of the Canadian orchestra was no future at all, with the cash-strapped and internally roiling Edmonton Symphony serving as the poster child for all that was wrong with the industry. These days, Edmonton has a dynamic new music director (who, incidentally, refuses to allow anyone to call him “Maestro”,) a much-improved bottom line, and a growing national profile, highlighted this week by a visit to Canada’s capital city.

Two Melbourne opera companies have called off a planned merger. “Independent opera companies Melbourne City Opera and the Melbourne Opera Company announced plans in December to merge under the new name VicOpera. The new company appeared destined to benefit from a State Government funding boost, but the merger has been scrapped.”

“For Tamar Muskal, an Israeli-American composer, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians goes beyond politics. It is music, it is poetry, it is the lone voice, speaking of pain and dreams… Ms. Muskal, who is Jewish and grew up in Israel, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, said that at 39 she realized that pain is pain, no matter who does the suffering.” Her latest composition attempts to reconcile the pain of both Israelis and Palestinians in a single work, combining music and texts from two cultures locked in seemingly permanent conflict.

A new contemporary music award in the UK aims at being the “Turner Prize” of music. But what seems to be competing is an odd collection of sounds rather than music. “I can’t help wondering where the music is in all these projects. And without music per se, it’s hard to see how the New Music Awards can claim to reward work which has “new British music at its heart”. Of course, a list consisting almost entirely of installations and “sound sculptures” neatly evades the ticklish question of what actually constitutes the “heart” of British music.”