Category: music

Conductor Riccardo Muti is said to be so depressed by the debacle he’s involved in at La Scala theatre that “he may give up music altogether, his wife was quoted as saying yesterday. Cristina Mazzavillani told an interviewer: ‘I really don’t know if he still has the will to work’.”

Two major British orchestral figures have engaged in a public argument. “John Summers, chief executive of the Hallé, accused Clive Gillinson, managing director of the LSO, of portraying orchestras as a ‘bunch of complainers’, when in fact ‘government support for what we do has never, in recent times, been more sympathetic’.”

Joshua Kosman wasn’t impressed with the bitter condemnations and whiny tone of conductor James Levine and composer Charles Wuorinen in last Sunday’s New York Times concerning the failure of serialism and other complex forms of new music to engage the public. “Audiences couldn’t care less. Wuorinen’s music and that of other similarly oriented composers has yet to make a dent in the culture at large, or in the consciousness of music lovers. Hence the bitterness, the self-pity, the snarling at the listeners for whose benefit all this scribbling is ostensibly being undertaken.”

Budapest has a brilliant new concert hall, and it was built in a novel way, writes Norman Lebrecht. “What the Hungarians have done is tear up the rulebook and build a hall on the never-never. A patch of industrialised riverbank beside the faux-bourgeois national theatre (opened in 2002) was turned over to a local developer who, with cash from Hungarian expats in Canada, knocked up the new Palace of Arts – 1,700-seat concert hall, art gallery, small theatre – for a mere 31.3 billion Forints. That, by my reckoning, is about £87 million, or rather less than it is costing to restore London’s main concert hall to a semblance of its original inadequacy.”

Where can you find the top student opera theater program in the U.S.? Juilliard? Curtis? Not according to the annual competition sponsored by the National Opera Association. For the second year in a row, Philadelphia-based Temple University has taken top honors, a major boost for a program that sometimes struggles for national recognition.

As he prepares to take the reins of the Montreal Symphony in 2006, conductor Kent Nagano is giving indications of the direction he plans to take the orchestra, with the announcement of an annual composers’ competition which will distribute cash prizes to three winning works of new music. “The arrival of the mystery maestro, along with his pianist wife, Mari Kodama, who lives in Paris, is likely to have a tonic effect on the MSO, which has been mired this season in protracted contract negotiations.”

The Eagles haven’t released a new album in 25 years, but they still pac arena, and their Greatest Hits has sold 28 million copies – the most of any recording in history. “It’s almost as if what the band stands for has become more important than what it actually does. Somehow, quietly and gradually, the Eagles became America’s band, representing the nation’s aesthetic and sense of self in ways Bruce Springsteen or Lee Greenwood never could. It’s not patriotism, exactly — you’d be hard-pressed to find the words “America” or “U.S.A.” in their lyrics — but it speaks to the American identity on an almost subliminal level, evoking a psychic landscape far more immediate than the iconic purple mountains and amber waves of grain.”

One of Japan’s top orchestras is restructuring and offering new contracts to players. “The two new contracts will have members choose between a fixed-term employment system and an annual contract system based on performance evaluation. This is the first time that a Japanese professional orchestra has decided to adopt a performance-based wage system comparable to that used by private-sector companies.”

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 has again topped UK listeners’ list of favorite music in the annual Classic FM survey. “The concerto, which was used in the classic romance Brief Encounter, has now topped the Hall of Fame countdown for five years running. Vaughan Williams’ A Lark Ascending came second, while Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A was third.”

The China Philharmonic Orchestra is only four years old, but already it is touring the world. “The 106-strong orchestra was founded in 2000 through a revamp of an old Beijing radio orchestra. Supporters say that the orchestra’s success is heralding a renaissance in classical music in China. Around 240 million Chinese children now learn the piano and the Pearl River Piano Group is now the second largest instrument manufacturer in the world.”