Category: music

“The idea that opera can only work in its original form is a dangerously small step from saying that Italian or German opera can only be done well by Italians or Germans. Operas are enriched by the breadth of styles that perform them and a variety of approaches is beneficial overall. There’s no one way to enjoy opera, and we should celebrate this inherent diversity. Now is not the time to make it narrower. That’s not accessibility, that’s elitism.” – BachTrack

Mark Wigglesworth wants to make “opera accessible to all” and “all”, by definition, includes riff-raff. He sees this as the ENO’s mission. “Accessibility,” he writes, “is not really about the price of a ticket. For accessibility to be meaningful and long lasting it has to come from the work itself… When Mozart wanted to write for ‘the people’ he did so in their native German. He trusted that if more people understood the piece, more would enjoy it.” – The Guardian (UK)

It was designed by Kahn for the 1976 Bicentennial and lived in Pittsburgh. But it’s been in disrepair for years and its elderly owner has been trying to unload it. In 2017, cellist Yo Yo Ma wrote an impassioned plea to save it, and the challenge was picked up by Pahokee, an economically-depressed small town in Florida, which plans to restore it and use it as an attraction. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pocatello school district had been struggling to provide instruction for the 400 students enrolled in orchestra programs, and proposed changes that would have made it even worse. Parents protested and the school district made changes. – Idaho State-Journal

“I saw ‘A New Hope’ with both the NSO and the BSO in September and found that the experience confirmed something I had started to suspect: As a classical music critic, I was clueless. That is: While I liked John Williams’s music just fine when I first saw the film at age 12, by the time I had attained legal adulthood, laden with a cargo of acquired snobbery about the superiority of Western civilization, I had learned, and bravely parroted, that ‘film music’ was somehow beneath me.”  – Washington Post

“The cultural secretary’s office admitted that the [earlier report] relied on information in a public government database that, in effect, converted the guest performers’ fees [between] American dollars to Mexican pesos twice, vastly inflating the totals in some cases.” Some observers are suggesting that the charge against Prieto, music director of the Louisiana Philharmonic as well as of Mexico’s flagship orchestra, was being pushed by musicians unhappy with his leadership. — The New Orleans Advocate

Eventually, the centuries-old string instruments for which this Italian city is famous will become too fragile to play. “So that future generations won’t miss out on hearing [them], three sound engineers are producing the ‘Stradivarius Sound Bank’ — a database storing all the possible tones that four instruments selected from the Museo del Violino’s collection can produce.” But the mics are extremely sensitive … — The New York Times

A look into the backstory of a quartet that became two rare things: a star classical percussion group and a genuinely hip chamber ensemble. — Ludwig van Toronto

“A contract between management and musicians expired Tuesday night as they continue to debate whether shrinking the BSO’s season from 52 weeks to 40 weeks a year is the best path forward. The development is unlikely to have any immediate, public effects. … The dispute, however, is seen as a threat to the orchestra’s continued role as one of the nation’s preeminent orchestras.” — Baltimore Business Journal

The British harpsichordist and conductor, who currently leads the Academy of Ancient Music (from which he recently announced his departure) and begins a stint as artistic partner at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra next season, succeeds Nicholas McGegan at the helm of the San Francisco period-instrument band at the start of the 2020-21 season. — San Francisco Chronicle