Category: music

The Philadelphia Orchestra has been looking for a new music director for three years, with still no one in sight. “My fear is that the search is at an impasse. And now that Riccardo Muti has turned down the New York Philharmonic, I fear that the competition for that small group of star conductors is likely to be even more fierce.” Philadelphia music critics debate the choices. – Philadelphia Inquirer

As “popular” music has fragmented into myriad genres, styles and sub-categories, the once catch-all category of “world music” has morphed to include almost anything. Faced with the competing problems of categorisation, musical correctness and success, the Womad team – Womad stands for World of Music Arts and Dance – have decided to broaden the definitions.” – The Guardian

Over the past decade, Vilar has given gifts totaling $33 million to New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Other donations and pledges worldwide include $5.6 million to restore the Seventh Avenue facade of Carnegie Hall, $6 million to the Salzburg Festival, $10 million to London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and underwriting for major productions by the Kirov (Maryinsky) Opera and Ballet Company.” – Los Angeles Times

• Upstate New York’s summer opera company Glimmerglass is celebrating its 25th season. In 1987 it built the 914-seat Busch Opera House, the first new American opera house since the Metropolitan opened at Lincoln Center in 1966. “In 1996, Glimmerglass’s artistic director, Paul Kellogg, was also appointed general and artistic director of the New York City Opera (NYCO), and the two companies began sharing productions, a development that financially stabilized Glimmerglass while artistically invigorating the City Opera.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

American internet investor and opera lover Alberto Vilar has donated $2 million to Milan’s La Scala – the largest private non-European donation in the opera house’s history. “He is now waging a sort of one-man campaign to bring U.S.-style arts patronage to Europe at a time when governments are scaling back their arts spending.” – Yahoo! News (Reuters)

Director Graham Vick was disappointed last week when his “Don Giovanni” at Glyndebourne failed to provoke demonstrations of disapproval. He is, after all, in the business of trying to shock. “No, this time the overall reaction was one of provocation fatigue: the seen-that, used-the-T-shirt, thrown-away-the-mug sense of déjà vu that marked the fag end of Peter Jonas’s PowerHouse regime at English National Opera in the late 1980s.” – The Sunday Times (UK)

“Friday is the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. The classical music business treats big, round-number anniversaries of births and deaths as pretty much equivalent. And because Bach is Bach and because this anniversary coincides with the year 2000, it is likely to be the biggest classical music anniversary that any of us will live to experience. Indeed, the celebration has long begun.” – Los Angeles Times

“He has been, in popular estimation, both the great avatar of conservative polyphony and one of the foundational geniuses of modernity. Those he influenced make the strangest of bedfellows: Mendelssohn and Schoenberg, Mozart and Chopin, Glenn Gould and Keith Jarrett.” – Washington Post

Is the larger world ready to appreciate the late great Sergiu Celibidache? “Little did anybody at that time know to what extent Celibidache lacked a cordial relationship with the real world. At one point, he wanted to fire the entire Berlin Philharmonic. He demanded extravagant amounts of rehearsal time, declined to perform with American orchestras until a 1984 engagement with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and, most curious of all, refused to record.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“The Italian tenor died nearly 80 years ago. But the music that fills the Enrico Caruso Museum in a small New York City house endures around the world, too – and still stirs controversy.” – Chicago Sun-Times