Category: music

This weekend’s British premiere of composer Judith Weir’s newest work, “woman.life.song,” is an unusual event in the world of classical music – the piece was conceived and written by women, and is based entirely on women’s life issues. The song-cycle is a collaborative effort among Weir, soprano Jessye Norman, the writers Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, and Jungian psychoanalyst and mythologist Clarissa Pinkola Estes. – The Guardian

Maybe “people are copying music because they feel somewhat disenfranchised with the options they have at their disposal in the digital space. It’s up to the content industry to create value in the digital arena and they’ve made phenomenal steps in that direction.” – Salon

Who shops at a classical music store? There are “the Toscanini freaks and the Riccardo Muti-Walks-on-Water squad, who will pay anything – anything – to own a CD of their hero doing the stick-waving equivalent of singing in the shower.” Some are “a little less than erudite. Many come in search of ‘The Fat Guy’ (Luciano Pavarotti), ‘The Blind Guy’ (Andrea Bocelli) or ‘The English Kid’ (Charlotte Church, who’s Welsh, not English, by the way).” There was one confused man who came in looking for “WOCTAKOBNY” (or Shostakovich – in Cyrillic lettering.) – Baltimore Sun

• UNESCO, the UN’s cultural and educational agency, is coordinating a $250 million international effort to rebuild Moscow’s 19^th-century Bolshoi Theatre, which is crumbling and close to collapse due to years of neglect. Theatres from around the world have already rallied around the cause by sending in contributions equal to one night’s earnings. – NPR  [Real audio file]

“Deeper than George Gershwin, more disciplined than Charles Ives, more accessible than Elliott Carter, more prolific than Leonard Bernstein, more varied than Samuel Barber,” Aaron Copland was the giant of 20th Century American music. He would have been 100 this year, yet no one seems to be paying attention. Why is that? – Chicago Tribune

Surely Leonard Bernstein is the most-promoted of all dead-conductors. A new Sony project gathers up all of his recordings for another grand compilation. – New York Times

Maybe it’s not so surprising Riccardo Muti turned down the NY Philharmonic music director job. He’s never seemed comfortable in the US. “He came from a world where music directors inhabit Olympian heights. He was visibly uncomfortable with the schmoozing expected of American music directors. He used to wince a lot.” – Dallas Morning News

“The Muti episode must have sent a shudder through these ensembles. By refusing the offer to take over the Philharmonic, Muti sent a clear message that a great orchestra today cannot wave a handsome contract in a maestro’s face and expect that he or she will simply sign on the dotted line.” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Marin Alsop is leaving as music director of the Colorado Symphony. Replacing her will be difficult – The Colorado, based in Denver has an unusual arrangement where the music director shares artistic decisions with the player. – Denver Post

Van Cliburn is 66 and making still another comeback, with a concert at Tanglewood. “Mr. Cliburn gives the impression of being utterly content now and not too inclined to excavate the past afresh. He lets on at one point, as if revealing a deep family secret, that he’s thinking about performing Bach again, the E minor Partita, maybe, and he floats a program for a scheduled Chopin recital in Boston that is so preposterously long that it sounds like a fantasy of a young pianist in the first flush of success – as if, no matter how stressful the stage may have been all those years, it is still the locus of his imagination.” – New York Times