Category: music

Putting a chorus, a children’s choir and a full complement of orchestra and soloists at his disposal, the Salzburg Festival expected very big things of its commission from Philip Glass. The result is Glass’s Fifth Symphony, and many are saying it’s his best work yet. – Los Angeles Times

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation has awarded $250,000 to a young Singaporean violinist to further her career. The award is the first of the bank’s Youth Excellence Initiatives. “To aspirants, she will show that there will be support if you have the talent.” – The Straits Times (Singapore)

Despite recent artistic success, the Scottish Opera will have to pare back the second half of its season because of ongoing financial difficulties. “The winter shutdown is a repeat of last year when the company was forced to stop productions due to a crippling financial crisis.” – The Scotsman

For ten years the Bolshoi Theatre has been waiting for crucial renovations to begin, and they’ve been repeatedly postponed. Now the construction finally has a start date. – CBC

After seeing its plans for a new home languish for lack of funding, the Canadian Opera Company gets a private investor who has promised $20 million to help the build a new opera house in Toronto. – CBC

An “important announcement” at London’s South Bank today proposes to offer an acoustic fix for the concert hall there. But the promises have dragged on for years, and critic Norman Lebrecht doesn’t expect much. “To the left, Tate Modern heaves. To the right, the Millennium Wheel attracts day-long queues. In the middle, the nation’s foremost concert hall moulders.” – The Telegraph (UK)

In September, 1.4 billion songs were downloaded on the internet using Napster. Yet the recording companies still haven’t figured out that the genie is out of the bottle for good. To try to cut down advance downloads, some of the major labels have been restricting music critics’ access to advance copies (but the music slips out anyway). – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

The Big Break – it’s what performers live for. It’s what makes their careers. But what about those very talented musicians whose Big Break never comes? What are the forces that conspire to be that Big Break? – Philadelphia Inquirer

The organ has fallen greatly out of favor in recent years. But several prominent new instruments are in the works in Britain. Can the organ find new audiences as a concert instrument? – The Telegraph (UK)

• “The music is rich and emotionally charged, betraying varied influences from Mussorgsky to Britten and Ravel, and carries enormous atmospheric power.” – The Guardian
• “A triumph beyond what even its most optimistic boosters could have predicted. – San Francisco Chronicle
• “For a first opera Heggie has done much right. His bitter-sweet music puts him in the line of happy-to-please American opera composers such as Menotti and Barber, which will not delight hardline critics, but he knows how to tell a story, how to hold the audience’s interest and rouse its emotions.” – Financial Times
• “This retelling is really a shrewd, highly marketable product: a love story with unlikely protagonists. It was composer Jake Heggie’s music and playwright Terrence McNally’s libretto, however, that accounted for its uproarious success with the opening-night audience.” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution