Category: music

Last week the president of the Winnipeg Symphony suggested in a newspaper interview that outgoing music director Bramwell Tovey had spent the orchestra into the ground and that it would take years to dig out. Tovey threatened to sue, and now the WSO official has apologized. – CBC

John Adams has become one of America’s most popular, widely performers and accomplished composers. “Outgrowing the hypnotic drone of minimalism, he has taken on the classical tradition and annexed its august forms. It’s native bravado, not arrogance, which makes Adams measure himself against Verdi or compare his own dramaturgy with Shakespeare’s. – The Observer (UK)

There’s been so much talk recently about who will be the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, Kurt Masur, the NYP’s current leader has been a bit forgotten. That’s a mistake. The 72-year-old Mr. Masur, who has done so much to restore the orchestra to a lofty international standard of performance since taking it over in 1991, is to remain in place for two more seasons. – New York Times

Einojuhani Rautavaara – not exactly a name that rolls trippingly from the tongue. But the Finnish composer is rated by some as “one of the greatest living composers” working today. The Philadelphia commissioned a new symphony and premiered it in Helsinki last week. It got a polite, but not ecstatic reception. – Philadelphia Inquirer

String quartets are volatile organisms. Both music and personalities are magnified in relationships between members. Is it a marriage? A partnership? There’s no place to hide in a magnified and distorted existence. – Chicago Tribune

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is one of the top competitions in the world. But last year the Clibun launched a second competition – one for older, amateur pianists. The level proved to be very high, and the second edition of the competition is about to get underway. – Dallas Morning News

“The list of the tenor’s accomplishments — as singer, conductor, opera Intendant (in Washington, D.C., and, starting this summer, in Los Angeles) and restaurateur — is unrivaled in today’s opera world; and for a vocalist who, officially, turns 60 this year, his longevity is nothing less than astonishing.” – San Francisco Examiner

They’re performing “La Traviata” this weekend in Paris – in the actual locations where Verdi set them – the Italian Embassy in Paris, the Queen’s hamlet in Versailles, the Petit Palais, near the Champs Elysees and the Isle St. Louis, an island of 17th-century town houses in the middle of the Seine. The project involves 500 musicians, five satellites, 31 cameras, 400 projectors and 10 audio and video studios, not to mention $20 million, and it will be broadcast live to a potential audience of 1.5 billion in 125 countries. – Variety