Category: music

Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a youth ensemble comprised of equal numbers of jews and arabs. “This orchestra cannot perform in Jerusalem, for fear of disruption, or worse, from one set of extremists or another. This orchestra has never performed in any of the countries from which its members are drawn. Last year there was a single, heavily guarded, performance in Rabat in Morocco – the only one to date in an Arab city. Security for these youngsters, as they make their way to and from their homes, is such a problem that on occasion the Spanish government has even provided diplomatic passports. And – most chillingly of all – the concert programme contains no names.”

Composer John Adams is at work on a new opera – “Doctor Atomic” – about scientist Robert Oppenheimer and the race to create the first atomic bomb. “I really thought I would never write a grand opera again: it’s so much damn hard work. But it just seemed, as in Nixon and Klinghoffer, such a potent theme with an incredible story that I could really sink my teeth into.”

The story is told that the CD was designed to have the capacity to hold Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Here’s something light years beyond: “all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas plus scores compressed into a single CD-ROM selling for $29.98, newly released by Newport Classic. Watch your DVD player or computer swallow it up, and you’re good for 10 hours of music. Buying the recordings on compact disc (on which they’re also available) and the scores as hard copies would cost around $150.”

“Vance George, whose sensitive but painstaking leadership has forged the San Francisco Symphony Chorus into one of the nation’s leading ensembles, will step down as chorus director at the end of the 2005-06 season.”

Why is there so little classical music available on commercial download services? “This is a missed opportunity and it shows the difficulty the downloading revolution has in coping with classical music’s enormous back catalogue and the stream of new releases.”

It won’t be long before music charts that only count CD sales will be obsolete. Napster has announced it is starting a top downloads chart to rank music popularity. “The Napster Online Music Chart will count down the top 20 tunes based on sales as well as songs that have been streamed (listened to online but not bought for permanent download) in a show that goes out Sundays at 7pm.”

Salvatore Sciarrino is premiering a piece for 130 saxophones in Edinburgh. Sciarrino, 57, is “Italy’s most prominent contemporary composer, a man obsessed with the limits of sound, with creating pieces in a mysterious region where music, silence, and noise meet. He’s written works that transform instrumental ensembles into gigantic aviaries by making flutes and violins sound like nightingales and swans, and piano pieces that are so quiet they would be drowned out by the merest foot-shuffle in the audience. It sounds like a world of avant-garde extremism, but there’s a sensuality to Sciarrino’s music that makes it uniquely seductive.”

“A record-breaking 25,000 tickets were bought for performances by top musicians, firmly cementing the event’s reputation as one of Europe’s leading jazz music festivals. The increase in ticket sales marked a rise of almost 2,000 over those snapped up in 2003. This translated to a record-breaking turnover of a half a million pounds for the event, now Britain’s largest and most prestigious jazz festival.”

Pianist Alfred Brendel has given his last live-broadcast performance. It was at a Proms concert in London. The 73-year-old pianist played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto – which he first played at the 1973 Proms.

Gavin Borchert is tired of the deafening roar of doom and gloom about the state of classical music. “The audience is graying. Soon they’ll be dead, taking classical music with them unless they’re replaced, runs the conventional wisdom. But is this anything new? Why the panic? Was there some distant golden age when America’s concert halls were filled with teenagers? Isn’t classical music–or any art–something one grows into? Art rewards an attention span–it’s a game for adults. But the classical establishment would rather buckle under to our society’s market-driven credo: If white males aged 15 to 29 don’t want it, nobody gets it.”