Category: music

La Scala’s reopening gets high marks from opening night attendees. “The uncontested stars of the evening were La Scala’s fully restored, resplendent auditorium and its brand-new, technologically advanced stage. Uncontested inside the theater, at any rate. Outside, amid the thousands of bystanders, there were vociferous protests against the expenditure of public funds on a cultural operation at a time of high unemployment and government cutbacks.”

The sale of an important Rachmaninoff manuscript was halted this week. “The annotated manuscript of his famous Second Symphony was due to be sold at Sotheby’s in London, with an estimated price of £300,000-£500,000. But it was withdrawn just before the sale after Rachmaninov’s estate claimed to be the true owners. It was found in a cellar in Switzerland after being lost for almost a century.”

“One cannot ignore the woes of three national companies, or their common origin. Devolution, the 1997 mantra of victorious New Labour, has reverted large parts of the island to a dreary provincialism where parish pump functionaries lord it over public entertainments. Anti-elitism, the lip service that Labour rulers pay to their grass roots, has fostered a class war against high culture. And the disavowing of responsibility that is the hallmark of this governmenthas allowed successive culture secretaries and arts council chairmen to escape Scot-free – in the Caledonian sense – for demolishing two generations’ worth of artistic growth in the very regions where it was most needed.”

Crossover classical dominates best-seller classical charts these days. But is it good for classical music? Or is it greasing the skids of decline? “Crossover is an imprecise term, covering classical pieces performed in a pop way, pop songs performed in a classical way, orchestral film soundtracks such as Howard Shore’s scores for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and easy-on-the-ear compilations with names like Classical Chillout Gold. Every one of the 20 biggest classical sellers of 2003 was crossover to some extent.”

Berlin’s cultural groups are struggling to stay alive. Now, “following the Berlin Senate’s decision this past summer to cut subsidies, the Berliner Symphoniker, the smallest of the city’s eight official orchestras, is looking to start anew — as Germany’s first private orchestra. In doing so, the director is hoping to return to solvency and set an example for Germany’s other struggling cultural institutions.”

The Grammy nominations are out In the classical categories, conductor René Jacobs and composers John Adams and Jennifer Higdon are among the most-cited. Jazz nominees include saxophonist Branford Marsalis, drummer Roy Haynes, and pianist Bill Charlap.

New instant communications technology links audiences in one part of the world with those in another. At Carnegie Hall “it was a simulcast music exchange in which 450 students in New York and 200 more in New Delhi listened to music together, chatted with one another and danced, with the help of a 22-foot-wide movie screen and some good speakers.”

“The holiday offered downtown Christmas shoppers a look at the theatre’s newly painted facade, decorated for the occasion with red roses and green foliage. The 18th-century theatre was commissioned in 1773 by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, then ruler of Milan. Large video screens were set up in Milan’s elegant passageway, the Galleria, opposite La Scala, inside the city’s San Vittore prison, and other places around town.”

“Socially, the occasion was not quite as illustrious as the theatre authorities had hoped. They had invited the Queen and presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac, among others. Instead they got King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, and the president of Switzerland.”