Category: music

Is Simon Rattle’s honeymoon as director of the Berlin Philharmonic over? He’s been attacked by a leading critic. “The article, entitled “Simon von Rattle” compared the conductor to the dictatorial Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Phil’s last director but one, and described Sir Simon’s music-making with the orchestra as “uninspiring”, “insubstantial” and “transparent”.”

“The odds are that the new production of La Bohème, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, will be the last time that Scottish Opera performs as a full-scale, year-round national organisation. The crisis has a long, bitter history. Nobody has ever doubted that Scottish Opera has been pitifully under-funded for the job it is required to do, but all attempts to rationalise its operations have foundered.”

Several months ago the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony fired music director Martin Fischer-Dieskau. But an uprising among the orchestra’s supporters won a commitment to re-hire him. After months of negotiations, though, the orchestra has decided not to rehire him. “Negotiations between Fischer-Dieskau, the symphony board and management fell apart over the weekend, with the symphony eventually deciding Tuesday evening that it could not meet with the Berlin-based conductor’s demands, which reportedly included full artistic leadership of the symphony.”

“When Apple launched its online music store in the US on 28 April 2003, few could have predicted the impact it would have. But a year later, iTunes has helped transform the fortunes of the flagging global music industry, selling about 70 million songs and proving, once and for all, that there is a market for paid-for music online.”

Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, arguably the nation’s top conservatory, has raised the $35 million it set as a goal in its latest fund drive several months ahead of schedule. The money will be distributed to several parts of the institution, but the bulk will go the the school’s endowment, which – at $127 million – is larger than that of all but a few major American orchestras, and is a huge boon for a school which does not charge tuition to its 161 students.

“Online services account for just a small fraction of overall music sales, but they’re growing rapidly. And the new choices they give consumers threaten to remix the recording industry’s traditional revenue streams, pumping up the volume of singles and subscriptions and turning down album sales… The shift to online shopping could be lucrative for the music industry if the flexibility and convenience lead people to spend more on tunes than they do today. But some industry executives and analysts fear the opposite result, with music lovers buying a few 99-cent singles instead of $15 CDs.”

Looking forward to attending the Canadian Opera Company’s forthcoming Ring cycle? You might want to see about a home equity loan: the COC announced its ticketing policy for the cycle this week, and patrons learned that they can expect to pay CAN$1700 for prime seats, and as much as CAN$2200 for certain VIP tickets. The cheapest ticket is CAN$300 for the full cycle. And having the money is no guarantee of getting in the door, since the company is giving ticket priority to its donors. The COC cycle commences in the fall of 2006.

The task of matching a conductor to an orchestra is far more complex than merely identifying a high level of skill in each. Orchestras, as well as conductors, often have distinct personalities, and a conductor who goes over fabulously in, say, Cleveland, may not get such a warm reception in Boston or Chicago. So when the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra announced David Robertson as its next music director, the real question wasn’t whether either party had the necessary skills for top-notch performances, but whether this would be a match of musical personalities. The SLSO played New York with its music director-designate this week, and Bernard Holland found the new marriage promising.

A Stradivarius cello known as the “General Kyd” has been stolen from a private home in the Los Angeles area. The instrument, which is owned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and played by its principal cellist, Peter Stumpf, dates from 1684 and is valued at $3.5 million. Police are being cagey about the circumstances surrounding the theft, refusing to identify the specific house from which the cello was taken, but stating that there was no immediate sign of a break-in at the residence.

Karl Jenkins is a former jingle-writer and rock musican. Now he’s a popular classical composer. “The wealth of these influences make him a hard composer to define, and he wearies of critics’ insistence on putting him in boxes. So let’s say that he’s a new sort of world composer: one whose music is fêted in Kazakhstan and cherished in Japan for its healing properties.”