Category: music

The Russian government hs established a set of grants designed to provide incentive for the nation’s top musicians to keep their talents in country, rather than seeking out higher-paying positions in Europe and America. The average Russian orchestra musician currently makes around US$120 a month. The grants, which will be doled out to seven musical organizations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, will be used principally to increase those salaries to as much as $1400 a month. The money is a welcome relief for cash-strapped orchestras and conservatories, but many fear the fix may be temporary.

Poet Toni Morrison and composer Richard Danielpour have been commissioned to write a new opera by the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Detroit’s Michigan Opera Theater and the Cincinnati Opera. Working title for the piece is “Margaret Garner”, “the name of a pre-Civil War Kentucky slave. Forced to be the mistress of a plantation owner, Garner escaped with her children, but, when captured, attempted to murder them and herself rather than return to slavery.” The premiere will be February 2006.

The Houston Symphony and its musicians are locked in a contract dispute that threatens the future of the orchestra. The orchestra is carrying a big deficit, and management proposes cuts in musicians and musician salaries. The musicians, not surprisingly, have a different idea. How did the situation deteriorate to the point of work stoppages and accusations?

As the Houston Symphony Society continues to battle with its musicians over a plan to make up deficits by cutting orchestra personnel, slashing salaries, and cutting weeks from the season, the musicians have picked up some unexpected support from the executive director of the orchestra’s summer facility. In an editorial, David Gottlieb describes the orchestra’s board as being far too enamored of its own role in the organization, and writes that “the musicians have done all that has been asked of them, and they’ve asked for the opportunity to do more… To suggest that the musicians have been intransigent or uncooperative is absurd, insulting and not supported by the facts.”

Just over a decade ago, no one in America would have dared mount a festival of music by Soviet composers who were compelled to write inane Socialist Realist glorifications of Josef Stalin and the Party. The backlash would have been tremendous. Now, with the Soviet Union more than ten years dead, its history is more easily examined without the bluster of American righteousness, and Vladimir Ashkenazy is seizing the moment. Ashkenazy is at Carnegie Hall this week, mounting a festival of music dedicated to works composed under duress by Soviet composers.

A new study of the European music market indicates that a significant reduction of the Value Added Tax (VAT), which EU countries append to the price of goods for sale, would go a long way towards reducing the price of CDs and could dramatically expand how much music European consumers purchase. The VAT is unlike the American sales tax in that the rate of the tax varies with the type of item being sold. “VAT on sound recordings is set between 16% and 25% while other cultural products, including magazines and entrance to zoos, starts from 5%.”

A few weeks ago San Francisco Opera made some big cuts in its budget and schedule. SFO director Pamela Rosenberg says the cuts are an indication of the company’s deire to rethink how it does opera. “The road to long-term vitality is not an easy one, but it provides a necessary opportunity to re-examine many aspects of how we do business, including how we might proceed more effectively and more efficiently.”

Philippe Herreweghe is a leader of the period instrument movement. But the conductor wonders about the use of tradional symphony orchesras. “Must we go on with these traditional orchestras? The ancient music movement is very strong. First they played Baroque music, and the attitude of the traditional orchestras was to say ‘OK, it’s not serious music. Let them do it, but they are not good enough to play real music.’ But later, we played Mozart and Beethoven. We play Brahms, Schumann and Bruckner, and we noticed that there was an interest from the public and the press. And now, when there is a concert of Schubert symphonies on gut strings here in Antwerp, it attracts a full audience with young people, but when some local orchestras play the same symphonies of Schubert or Haydn in a traditional way the hall is half empty.”

Raymond Gubbay is the kind of populist promoter who draws contempt from more traditional arts managers. “His success is based on providing what he has accepted is middle-brow populist material.” But his shows consistently sell, and he prides himself on finding entertaining ways to present music and opera.

Big recording companies have petitioned the Australian federal court to “allow their computer experts to scan all computers at the University of Melbourne for sound files and email accounts, so they can gather evidence of claimed widespread breaches of copyright.”