Category: music

The three opening galas in late October for Los Angeles’ new Disney Hall are the hot ticket of the season. “The first night is virtually sold out. Sure, the performing arts community is feeling pressure to attend the Disney galas — it can’t be easy to send regrets. ‘I wouldn’t want to be sitting home those nights. I’d feel so left out!’ But mostly the events are selling themselves, say organizers, who hope to net $7 million.”

Carnegie Hall’s new Zankell Hall has the potential to change New York’s music scene. But there’s one rather large problem (as practically every critic who’s written about the place has mentioned): the rumble of subway noise. “The problem is doubly frustrating because Zankel’s intermediate size and clear acoustics favor music in the quiet to moderately loud dynamic ranges, and that’s when the noise is most audible, especially on the auditorium’s right side.”

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber is teaming up with Elton John to record a “classical” version of John’s “Your Song.” “I got the number of Elton’s manager and asked whether he would come on this disc with me. I thought that would be it, but to my surprise he said he would love to do it – as long as it was in E flat major.”

Carnegie Hall is “trying to turn left and turn right simultaneously. It wants to bring in a downtown-ish clientele while acquiring a stable base of Philharmonic subscribers. This urge to absorb everything typifies the modus operandi of Sanford Weill, the chairman of the Carnegie board, who is also the outgoing chief executive of Citigroup. Weill made his name in the financial world by engineering a series of spectacular mergers; he ingeniously erased the distinction between brokering and banking by combining Salomon, Smith Barney and Citibank under one roof. He now wishes to apply the philosophy of synergy to New York’s artistic life. The sort of logic that brought us AOL Time Warner is creating Philharmonic Carnegie Zankel.”

Sixteen-year-old “New Zealander Hayley Westenra has beaten the first-week sales set by artists like Pavarotti, Charlotte Church and Russell Watson with her UK release, Pure. Pure has shot straight to number eight in the UK pop chart and to the top spot in the UK classical charts.”

“Seoul has witnessed the opera wars of 2003, a war waged mostly by over-the-top outdoor productions such as “Aida” and “Turandot,” financially and logistically ambitious campaigns designed to shock and awe audiences into submission. But an indoor opera has finally returned fire, a production boasting nudity, orgies, and violence with artistic credibility to boot.”

A giant open-air “Aida” lumbers in to Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium. “The main stage covers about 6,200 square metres, upon which stands a 40-metre-high pyramid and an 18-metre Sphinx. The 20-ton pyramid is equipped with 800 small tires at the bottom so that it could revolve freely. On the two sides of the main stage also stand two 18-metre-high pharaohs and 10 18-metre-high Egyptian temple pillars. And off the stage there are 40 4-metre-high Sphinxes. The ending scene will be a spectacle with thousands of butterflies flying into the sky, with 400 torches kindled.”

The recording industry isn’t solidly against file-sharing. Indeed smaller labels benefit from file-trading. “File sharing, these owners say, helps their small companies compete against conglomerates with deeper pockets for advertising and greater access to radio programmers. ‘Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends. Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it’.”

A dozen years ago the Detropit Symphony was destitute, a once-proud institution reduced to penury. But “the $60-million Max M. Fisher Music Center, which opens Oct. 11, puts an exclamation point on what experts say is one of the most improbable turnarounds in the history of U.S. orchestras. The DSO pulled itself up by its financial bootstraps, rebuilt its neighborhood, forged innovative civic partnerships and reinvented itself as a model 21st-Century arts institution. The DSO has woven itself deep enough into the fabric of the city that nearly everyone has a stake in its future.”

Hmnnnnn. There’s a new winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition. And he plays well enough. But where is the next Murray Perahia? “Cool competence” doesn’t exactly get us running for our credit cards…