Category: music

The Houston Symphony musicians have fired another public shot at their management, warning that if proposed cuts to the orchestra’s schedule and compensation package are implemented, it would mean the effective end of a major orchestral presence in the nation’s fourth-largest city: “The success of any campaign for the sustenance of this orchestra depends not in part, but entirely on the ongoing preservation of the symphony’s artistic stature.”

The Houston Symphony’s management and musicians appear to be moving ever closer to a work stoppage, at least if the shots being exchanged in the pages of the local paper are any measure. Music critic Charles Ward has had about enough of the negotiations by press release – he worries that the musicians may be twisting numbers, and that the management doesn’t seem to know a whole heck of a lot about classical music.

Ten years ago, the musicians of the BBC Scottish Symphony and the Scottish Opera were ambushed by the announcement that the managements of the two organizations had agreed to merge, and to form a single orchestra to do the work of two. What followed was years of legal battles, terse negotiations, and – astonishingly – unprecedented success for each of the two distinct orchestras. These days, to eliminate either of the two would be unthinkable, and most observers agree that it should never have been considered in the first place.

The struggle of American conductors to be taken seriously in America is well-documented, but what about British-born maestros looking for work at home? Meet Donald Runnicles: orchestras and critics in Europe and North America rave about him, and yet few British orchestras have ever worked under him. A crash course may be in order, however, as Runnicles is widely rumored to be a finalist to succeed Leonard Slatkin at the head of the BBC Symphony.

Nicholas Maw’s much-hyped new opera based on the Holocaust novel Sophie’s Choice is one of the hottest tickets on the London scene, but critical reaction has been less than stellar. “Sophie’s Choice ultimately… founders on gaping disparities between subject, score and production. It raises issues that take us into territory where music and theatre struggle to cope.”

So what exactly is wrong with Nicholas Maw’s adaptation of Sophie’s Choice? What isn’t? “The opera’s novel-like narrative plays badly onstage. None of the three main characters – the refugee Sophie, her charismatic but mentally ill Brooklyn boyfriend Nathan, and the bystanding narrator Stingo – has a strong entrance. Character expositions are antitheatrical, dispersed rather than concentrated. The first two acts don’t end so much as they stop. Scene after scene lacks a context that might infuse the mundane hi-how-are-you moments in the libretto with significance.”

This week, as conductor Sakari Oramo, in his New York Philharmonic debut, was wowing a Lincoln Center crowd with Nielsen’s 4th Symphony, a cell phone went off in the balcony, breaking the breathless silence that follows the second movement. Such an event is, of course, all too common these days, but Oramo’s reaction was not: he refused to continue the performance until silence had been fully restored. Justin Davidson wishes more conductors were possessed of such temerity.

“Once again this year there was much gnashing of teeth throughout the music business about the ongoing ‘demise’ of classical recording. But… while classical Goliaths like BMG, Decca and Philips have cut back on the number of releases, this has had the positive result of halting much wasteful duplication of repertory. The fact remains that 2002 still brought plenty of important and interesting classical releases, many of them from smaller independent companiesthat are now the shining hope of a battered industry.”

John Adams has been commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write an opera about the deveopment of the atom bomb. “It involves what I call American mythology. That was what drew me to the `Nixon in China’ story as well. I grew up in the late 1950s and ’60s, the worst part of the cold war, and these images are planted in my consciousness.”

The Calgary Philharmonic, which shut down this winter because of money problems, has proposed cutting its season and musicians’ salaries to survive. But it also needs $1.5 million. “I must make it very clear. Our next step is to secure funding to implement this plan. Without funded support, we will not be able to return to the stage.’ The CPO suspended operations Oct. 15 when it filed for bankruptcy protection in an attempt to restructure its way out of a $1.2-million deficit, dwindling ticket sales and falling corporate donations.”