Category: music

“Three consecutive years of operating at a deficit will require the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to look at major cost-cutting despite a $1.8 million gift from an anonymous donor that will erase the deficits for the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years.”

The European Union has given its assent to a merger of music giants BMG and Sony. “The tie-up of the Japanese firm with the music arm of German media group Bertelsmann reduces the number of music majors from five to four.” The deal renews speculation that other mergers might be in the works. “EMI has twice failed to merge with Warner Music over the past four years.”

The famed Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory is crumbling. “With increased usage, a fundamental problem has been aggravated: underground rivers have weakened the foundations of the building, and they have cracked. A few months ago, the conservatory had to close some of the Great Hall’s balconies, as there was a danger of sections collapsing into the orchestra. Then there are the water pipes and electrical wiring…”

Maybe one way to cut down on CD piracy would be charging less for CDs with heavy copy-protection. CDs that can be copied or that play on more devices would cost more…

At the end of this summer’s Proms, Leonard Slatkin steps down as chief conductor. “It has been known for almost two years that Slatkin was going to leave, but no announcement has been made about his successor. The BBC is being cautious, aware of the fact that, with the appointment of Slatkin in 2000, it has been a case of married in haste, repent at leisure.”

Two opera productions in Berlin trade heavily in gratuitous sex and violence. Okay, so the theatres were full, even if the critical reception was outrage. But this is a fad that will pass. “Indeed, the quest for this kind of spectacle cannot last, if only because scandal is not a renewable resource. Whatever remaining taboos exist in the opera house can be broken only so many times before this approach becomes a parody of itself. That process may already have begun.”

“At stake is the very future of the orchestra. Negotiation rhetoric? No. The fact is, we have until Sept. 19, when our current five-year contract expires, to determine whether our path continues the preeminence of the orchestra or leads to extinction.”

“In their current proposal, management is demanding a 10 percent reduction in funding for the musicians, even though compensation for the orchestra is already among the lowest of our peers. To achieve this drastic reduction, musicians have been offered a Hobson’s choice: reduce salaries by 10 percent, potentially driving away our great younger players, or reduce our ranks, threatening the lushness that is a hallmark of the Philadelphia Sound. They also propose to slash our pensions by as much as 50 percent, and charaterized as a “waste” their legal obligation to provide pensions to working musicians over age 701/2. These proposals are the equivalent of selling Renoirs to fix a hole in the Art Museum’s roof.”

Why did such an amazing orchestra emerge in Cleveland? “From this once notoriously no-hope city has emerged one of the wonders of the world: an orchestra that displays none of the overt – or extrovert – characteristics of its US siblings, an orchestra whose sound – under current music director Franz Welser-Most, pictured – is so balanced, so luminous, so brilliantly pure, unanimous and gleaming that, at its best, it’s almost miraculous.”

“Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies have known each other for almost half a century since they were friends at the Royal College of Music in Manchester – members of an illustrious group of students that included the composer Alexander Goehr and the pianist John Ogdon.” But 35 years ago they had a falling out, and haven’t spoken since. Now they meet again.