Category: music

The Scottish Arts Council has come under fire for its funding intentions. But not much noticed was a decision to remove funding for two organizations that have been essential to the cause of new music in Scotland. How does this serve the cause of Scottish culture?

Chorus members of the English National Opera have voted to strike next week, forcing the company to cancel performances of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.” Cancellation of the epic choral-opera will cost the company more than £50,000 in box office income, plus thousands more in wages for front-of-house and production staff. The chorus voted unanimously for five strike actions throughout the season in protest at plans to make one third of them redundant when the Coliseum closes for refurbishment in June.”

The Cleveland Orchestra recently returned from its first domestic tour under new music director Franz Welser-Möst, and while the organization is calling the tour a smashing success, the critics appear to be taking a different view of the ensemble that many have considered to be America’s best orchestra in recent years. Welser-Möst was fairly unknown when Cleveland chose him to succeed Christoph von Dohnanyi, and many arts writers appear to be unconvinced of his talents. While the tour garnered its share of praise, there were also stern reprimands from critics in New York, Boston, and London. Perhaps even more ominous is the fact that the orchestra’s hometown critic seems to agree with the skeptics.

“Last March, Grant Dexter cheerfully stepped into the mess that is the North American recording industry to launch MapleMusic Recordings, an independent Toronto record label built on Dexter’s successful music e-commerce portal, MapleMusic.com. At the time, Dexter declared that the label would promote great Canadian pop music to Canadians, and treat artists fairly, spending reasonable time and money developing their music – and their markets.” The music industry was amused at Dexter’s efforts. Now, they’re amazed, after Maple successfully launched two top singers into the upper echelons of recording success in its first year alone.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, trying to dig out from under a massive deficit, announced its plans for next season this week, and while there will be no ticket price hikes, there won’t be much in the way of innovation or excitement either, says John van Rhein. “Like [Chicago] Lyric Opera, the CSO has had to forgo expensive operatic, as well as choral, projects until the bottom line gets stronger. The Symphony Center Presents vocal series has been suspended indefinitely. There are pockets of repertory adventure in the course of the 113th season, but a lot more that suggests the very thing music director Daniel Barenboim says he deplores — ‘falling into conventional solutions and programs when the financial situation is difficult.'”

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is rolling back ticket prices to 1998 levels, and offering a new package of discounts and ticket deals in an effort to get more people into their hall for the coming season. Aside from being simply cheaper, the new ticket plans give subscribers more options to tailor the concert schedule to their own life, a strategy more and more orchestras are adopting. The PSO is running at a deficit, and is also searching for both a music director and a new chief executive.

The Toronto Symphony touts next season’s programming as “balanced.” “You might think that an orchestra that’s all ours would aim to be reflect where it lives; and that ‘balanced’ would imply some kind of symphonic variations on the old rhyme about something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. But at the TSO next year, the old and the borrowed trump everything else. The new is hardly there, and as for the blue – well, that would describe the mood of anyone scanning the new schedule for music created in Canada.”

The early music movement changed the way we listened to msuci of the Baroque and earlier. “As audiences, we have already got used to the idea that the music of Monteverdi or Bach is normally played and sung with pure tone, without the use of steady vibrato, a minute fluctuation of pitch intended to make the sound more intense. With the aid of period orchestras we are gradually accustoming ourselves to the same sound for Haydn and Mozart — even, on occasion, for Beethoven. But surely here, on the threshold of the Romantic era, pure tone must be questionable.” Should we ban vibrato in Brahms and Schumann and…?

The success of 23-year-old Norah Jones, singing a traditional mix of jazz, has piqued recording company interest. “Older listeners are gravitating to the authentic, organic sound of Norah’s records. She speaks to a huge group of people that the music business has forgotten and declared irrelevant. The latest sales statistics confirm the relevance of that neglected group. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, consumers 45 years and older now constitute a quarter of the record market and are the fastest-growing group of music buyers.”

The New Jersey Symphony has pulled off a deal to buy 30 priceless string instruments – including 12 Stradivari violins – for $18 million. It “is believed by experts to be the first time in history that any ensemble has purchased so many instruments from Italy’s Golden Age at one time – and that includes during the lifetime of Antonio Stradivari himself. Details of the deal are to be released at a press conference in Newark on Wednesday.”