Category: music

The Berlioz bicentennial has hardly made a dent in the standing of France’s greatest composer. “The diplomatic contagion of French ambivalence has encouraged the rest of the musical world to treat Berlioz as an objet trouve, an acquired taste instead of an established one. Two centuries after his birth, Berlioz is not espoused by concertgoers with the confidence they attach to Brahms, whose revelations were minor by comparison. The bicentennial year is ending without a perceptible improvement in Berlioz appreciation. The innate pettiness of France has condemned its greatest composer to perpetual disavowal, his bones to a peripheral tomb.”

A glittering assortment of international luminaries attended this weekend’s reopening of Vencie’s La Fenice opera house, eight years after it burned down. “To Venetians and opera lovers throughout the world, the 18th century theater represents the soul of this unique lagoon city, and its resurrection from the ashes – Fenice means phoenix – was cause for celebration across Italy. Fans lined up throughout the day to admire the newly polished marble facade, with the Fenice symbol, a gilded phoenix, hanging in the entranceway.”

Jan Herman wonders about the scale of American culture that would allow broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera go off the air. The Met needs $7 million to fund the broadcasts. “In major league baseball, $7 million would not pay the salary of a decent pitcher. The six stars of ‘Friends’ make $1 million each per half-hour episode. Compare this to the absolute top fee for a singer at the Met, Amercia’s most prestigious opera house: $15,000 per performance. No one, no matter how big, not even Placido Domingo, makes more. Mere bagatelle or pittance indeed. What does all this signify? Many things, of course. But one of them is that “given America’s wealth, talent, and educational resources, it could be the Athens of the modern world, but is fast losing that chance” and opting instead to be its Rome.”

Orchestra musicians aren’t always the best judge of the conductors who make them sound best, observes John Rockwell. “Whereas critics tend to prize creative excitement, profundity of interpretation and charisma, orchestra musicians — while hardly forswearing such virtues, at least in principle — often seem to base their decisions about a conductor on his rehearsal efficiency and lack of pretension. There can be no doubt that Mr. Maazel is a fabulous technician. A lot of us agree that the orchestra has rarely if ever played better; it gleams. And no doubt his rehearsals run like clockwork. The controversy has to do with his interpretive skills, or depth, or vision. And the concern is that for all the pride orchestral players take in their music-making, efficiency trumps inspiration when they come to pick a music director.”

For 64 years the Metropolitan Opera has been broadcast on radio every saturday afternoon while the company was in season. But this season may be the last. The broadcasts have “been a cultural lifeline for generations of listeners, both those who live in places far removed from any opera company and those who may live just a subway ride from Lincoln Center but can’t afford to attend. They are carried by some 365 stations in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, South America, 27 European countries, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, reaching, according to the opera company’s most recent survey, an estimated total of more than 11 million. The Met has been unable to obtain a new sponsor to pick up the annual $7 million cost of the broadcasts.”

The wood used by the old master Italian violin makers was special – the product of a mini ice age in Europe. “Trees grow slower in colder weather, producing denser wood for that season. So, narrower tree rings grow in cold weather than rings grown in warmer seasons. Narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood’s density, the researchers said. The change in climate therefore made a difference to the violins’ tone and brilliance, they said.”

Two years ago, the smart money in the orchestral world said that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra would be lucky to exist in 2004, and that even if it survived, its downward spiral of debt and disorganization would cost it its place in the top ranks of American orchestras. Since that dismal time, the SLSO has scrambled back from the fiscal precipice, shored up its organization, and, this week, hired one of the most celebrated young conductors of his generation, David Robertson, as music director. With Robertson on board, the orchestra is convinced that it will shortly complete one of the great comebacks in industry history.

The Washington Post may have dubbed it a “show concert,” but the audience in Washington, D.C. was clearly moved by the music-making of the Iraqi National Symphony in its American debut this week. “The mournful strains of the balaban (a distant cousin of the oboe) and the haunting screech of the oud (the forerunner of the lute), [made] a captivating premiere at the Kennedy Center,” says Alec Russell, and the Post failed to make mention of the hundreds of Iraqi expatriates who lined up all morning in the snow just to get tickets, or the rousing ovation of the (mostly) non-partisan crowd.

The Pittsburgh Opera, which has been looking for ways to trim its budget, is announcing that it will cut back the number of productions it mounts next season from five to four, and will replace the fifth opera with something called a “special production.” The company says that the cutback will give it much-needed financial breathing room, and stresses that it isn’t in anything approaching dire fiscal straits.

A long-forgotten 42-second piece of music by Elgar is being recorded by the Hallé orchestra in the BBC’s Manchester studios. It’s “thought to have been the world premiere of a composition Elgar completed more than 80 years ago.”