Category: music

The Seattle Symphony has decided not to appeal a court ruling ordering it to settle a lawsuit brought by its recently dismissed concertmaster through arbitration. Violinist Ilkka Talvi, who recently turned up the heat on the orchestra by launching a blog and using it to air much of the ensemble’s dirty laundry, claims that he was capriciously dismissed by Seattle music director Gerard Schwarz, and further argues that a clause in his contract does not allow him to be fired so long as Schwarz remains in charge.

A US court has ruled that a recording company was wrong to release old recordings. “New York’s highest court said Naxos was wrong to release classical recordings by Yehudi Menuhin and others – even though they were out of copyright. The court said such recordings were still covered by common law. The victorious Capitol label, which owns the rights, said the decision had enormous importance.”

“The Pied Piper of the ongoing revival of Baroque operas, William Christie is not a man to be disobeyed. If we are now familiar with countless rarities by Handel, as well as long-forgotten gems by Monteverdi, Purcell and the French masters Lully, Charpentier and Rameau, it’s largely because of Mr. Christie’s passion for music written between, roughly, 1600 and 1750, and his ability to sniff out buried musical gold as unerringly as a pig finds truffles.”

Starbucks has had big success selling music in its 4000+ US stores. Building on that success, the coffee retailer is introducing its first album by a little-known band, a next step in building a major music business.

Seoul is going to build an opera house, and is looking to Copenhagen’s new theatre for inspiration. The project will cost $247 million. “Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak, just back from a tour of Europe, said Monday the Opera House in Copenhagen, Denmark, seemed to make the best benchmark for Seoul in terms of location and characteristics. Seoul City will select an architect in an international contest, with construction slated to start early next year.”

What is it about Wagner’s Ring cycle that provokes such passionate fans? “Not surprisingly, hard-core classical music addicts who travel the world in search of their next Ring fix have dubbed themselves Ringheads. Think Deadheads, the devotees of the Grateful Dead — minus the preshow, herb-laden party in the parking lot.”

“Historically, until recently the harpist might well have been the only woman in a symphony orchestra. Orchestras had been an all-male preserve except for one, lone instrument – the harp. Played by the lady harpist. From the days when Marie Antoinette and her kind sat around in salons and plucked in a gracious, ladylike way, the harp has usually been seen as a feminine instrument. Which is limiting.”

How does the English National Opera get away with portraying Brünnhilde as a suicide bomber? “We confuse medium and message. In other words, more bluntly, if something – be it a person or an art form – is posh, it can play with as much fire as it likes, and if it isn’t, it can’t even play with matches. As Twilight of the Gods shows, this scheme obtains regardless of the gravitas the subject is actually accorded. If you’d seen a suicide bomber used this flippantly on Holby City, there’d have been resignations by now.”

Composer Steven Stucky has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for music. “Born in 1949, Stucky has long been associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he currently serves as Consulting Composer for New Music. He also sits on the faculty of Cornell University. He is published by Theodore Presser. As a conductor, Stucky appears frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and with Ensemble X, a contemporary music group he founded in 1997.”

“The escalating artistic arms race between London’s two rival opera houses, Covent Garden and the Coliseum, reached a new level of threat this weekend. Both venues are in the middle of staging block-busting versions of Richard Wagner’s epic and expensive Ring cycle, but audiences at the Coliseum last night were left reeling from more than the music after the English National Opera mounted a violent coup de thétre. In what will come to be regarded by opera fans as a moment of bizarre heresy – or of creative triumph – Brunnhilde, the leading character in the ENO’s new production of Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods, was portrayed as a suicide bomber.”