Category: music

The plan to fire the entire 34-member chorus of Scottish Opera has been revised after the chorus members’ union struck a deal with the company under which twenty singers will be able to keep their positions for at least nine months. The cost-cutting plan imposed on the company by the Scottish Executive has faced fierce opposition from all sides, but the new labor agreement represents the first direct backpedaling by those in charge.

Look at the classical music charts these days, and you aren’t likely to find Bach. Crossover rules now. “It’s easy to see all this as merely a matter of marketing or cynical exploitation. But there seems to be something deeper involved, a breaking down of barriers that has classical musicians moving into what used to be pop territory and pop musicians nibbling around the edges of the classical pie. The world of music is changing, and the result may be something the Three Bs would hardly recognize.”

“Here is how to build a concert hall in London. First, locate a site and allocate a reasonable amount of time – between one decade and three, on average – to secure the necessary consents and cash from the appropriate authorities, elected and self-appointed. Then go ahead and build, knowing that the outcome will have been disabled from the start by all the pen-pushers and do-gooders who had their say before a sod was turned. When the finished hall turns out to be a camel designed by committee, acoustically opaque and incurably malodorous, dedicate the next decade or three to getting consents and cash for its improvement which, you may be sure, will be impaired by the selfsame meddlers who undermined it in the first place, or by their descendants.”

The great Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals have been noticed in recent years as much for their off-stage controversies as they have been for their musical offerings. Isn’t it time for a little stability?

Any opera buff can tell you the legendary story of the night that Pavarotti was booed off the stage at La Scala after he cracked a high note. But a new DVD release of that very performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” is mysteriously missing the infamous mishap. The record company EMI has, in fact, patched the offending moment with a better take. Why? Simply because they can – after all, “live performances can [now] be edited as easily as studio work.”

Hot on the heels of the Philadelphia Orchestra management’s nearly unprecedented decision to speak publicly about the usually secret world of labor negotiations, the Cleveland Orchestra’s leadership has held a meeting with reporters to outline the financial position they are taking in negotiations with their own musicians. Cleveland’s ticket sales have dropped in recent years, and deficits have become the rule rather than the exception. Still, while the negotiations might be contentious, no one seems to be anticipating a strike, which has been expressed as a very real possibility by both sides in Philadelphia.

“Until recently, aspiring DJ’s had to rely on a combination of osmosis and experimentation: you’d take mental notes at nightclubs, then you’d retreat to your room and keep practicing until you got the hang of it. Now, more and more people are learning how to DJ in classrooms. The turntable may be the most important musical instrument of the current era — it’s certainly the most ubiquitous — so it’s only fitting that turntable conservatories are starting to emerge.”

Why are so many national anthems so horrendous from a musical standpoint. More importantly, why do so many sound the same (stilted and overly formal) and so few reflect the cultural heritage of the country they celebrate? “Even the recent anthems of the post-colonial nations are mostly pompous dirges. Ironically, a 19th-century European flavour was seen as having the correct seriousness for a new country. Like other symbols of state, such as uniforms and titles, the main idea seemed to be to boost the mystique and authority of the state. Creativity and enjoyment took a back seat.”

Justin Davidson comes away from ArtsJournal’s online conversation between music critics on ideas and music impressed with the diversity of the landscape. “Over a discussion that meandered through Brahms and Wagner, early medieval polyphony, Sonic Youth, Bjork, Mozart and the evils of 12-tone Modernism, a picture has emerged of a musical world in which each composer – each piece, even – must create its own context from scratch. There are no rules, no lingua franca, no constraints within which an artist might find freedom. The scaffolding of prevailing ideas has fallen away.”

The managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra has been appointed as the next chief executive of New York’s Carnegie Hall. Clive Gillinson “has run the LSO for 20 years. Before that, he played as a cellist with the orchestra for 14 years.” He will not start his new job until July 2005, which will allow him to preside over the LSO’s centenery next season.