Category: music

The Bamberg Symphony stages a conducting competition, but not just any conducting competition. “In Bamberg, the entire city searched along with the orchestra for a person with charisma, an ear for music and a clear beat, with unmistakable body language and a feel for the orchestra as a social system. Such an unruly concert as that which was performed on the closing evening of the competition to such an enthusiastic audience at the same time is probably only conceivable in such an environment, where almost 10 percent of the population has a subscription to the local symphony orchestra and the musical ensemble is visibly supported by the city as a collective.”

Chicago Opera Theatre was founded 30 years ago as n alternative to the Chicago Lyric Opera. But “with the appointment five years ago of former Glyndebourne chief Brian Dickie as general director, it has begun to offer productions with musical and theatrical qualities worthy of international attention. In its first season in the new, acoustically splendid, Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater, Chicago Opera fulfils its new promise with the much-belated Chicago premiere of Benjamin Britten’s 1973 Death in Venice.”

“The FBI is investigating the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s high-profile purchase last year of Stradivarius violins and other rare instruments from Herbert Axelrod, the philanthropist who fled to Cuba in April after his indictment on federal tax fraud charges… At issue in the NJSO deal is whether Axelrod inflated the value of the stringed instruments… to make himself eligible for a large tax write-off. Axelrod, 76, claimed the strings were worth $50 million, a figure that has since been roundly questioned by violin dealers and appraisers. Axelrod ultimately agreed to sell the collection to the New Jersey orchestra for $18 million.”

Why can’t classical musicians hold on to their priceless instruments? “In January, violinist Gidon Kremer left his $3-million Guarneri del Gesu violin on an Amtrak train. In 1999, New York police helped Yo-Yo Ma recover his $2.5-million Stradivarius cello after he left it in a New York taxi. And two years later, cellist Lynn Harrell also left his $4-million Stradivarius in a taxi, when he got out at his New York apartment.” Throw in the recent theft of L.A. Phil cellist Peter Stumpf’s $3.5 million cello, which he left overnight on his front doorstep, and the question has to be asked: are we really supposed to feel sympathy for such forgetful musicians?

A fleet of hot air balloons hovering over the UK city of Birmingham awakened residents this week with a specially designed “musical landscape… Although the music devised by sleep psychologists was designed to stimulate sweet dreams, balloon pilots watched residents run out into the street to observe the fleet hovering just a few hundred feet above them. The early morning stunt marked the launch of Birmingham’s bid for a share in a £15 million Arts Council fund for promoting cultural events, backed by Fierce!, an international festival of live art.”

How real is the threat to orchestral music that critics and pundits are always writing about? Real but not dire, says Henry Fogel, former Chicago Symphony chief and current head of the American Symphony Orchestra League. Fogel points out that, of the various art forms used as popular entertainment, only concert music has remained unchanged in its presentation since the days of Brahms and Beethoven. That’s a problem, since modern audiences have come to expect innovative presentation in theaters and museums, and orchestras are perceived as stodgy and boring as a result. Fogel also cites the lack of music education in schools as a factor in the form’s decline, calling the current system of American arts education “a disaster.”

The president of the Charleston (SC) Symphony Orchestra is upset with a local critic who has been speculating in print that the CSO is “reportedly on the verge of collapse.” Ted Halkyard would like to know who, exactly, is reporting such a rumor to the critic, since the critic himself never contacted the orchestra to inquire into its financial situation. Halkyard insists that the CSO is regaining its financial footing after a cash crisis in the summer of 2003 threatened its future.

“With subjects such as television reality shows providing fodder for contemporary opera, why not sports? Martin Smolka’s Nagano, an opera in three periods plus overtime, relates the Czechs’ victory at the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998, having come near but never achieving the gold four times in 50 years.”

Why did Raymond Gubbay’s Savoy Opera fail so quickly? “Gubbay was selling the Savoy Opera as unexceptional everyday West End fare, without the ‘snobbery’ and ‘elitism’ that supposedly put “ordinary” folk off. But what came across, I think, was an unfortunate impression of mediocrity. And Joe Public never wants to pay good money for that. Precisely the opposite, in fact.”

Richard Dorment vows never again to set foot in the English National Opera. “When the curtain finally fell, I did something I’ve never done in a lifetime of opera going – joined in booing the director Phyllida Lloyd when she came on stage to take her bow. The sound came out involuntarily, an expression of pure hatred directed at a person who had so wantonly done violence to a beloved work of art. Had I a rotten tomato to hand, it would have given me great pleasure to throw it.”