Category: music

The Russian conductor takes up the post at the beginning of the 2021-22 season, at which time he’ll step down from his current position at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, where he will have spent a successful 15 years. Petrenko succeeds Charles Dutoit, who resigned this year following accusations of sexual harassment and assault.

Massey Hall has been the best room in Canada for 124 years. Doesn’t that mean anything? Playing in that room, looking out across the floor, to the two balconies that are so close you can almost touch them, the over-lacquered red walls and black poles? This room stands in witness and testament to all the greats who have performed on its stage.

Since entering the pop-music world, the judgments I would have made when I was in classical music about pop, I increasingly understand why they would have been irrelevant. And it’s made me appreciate that most classical music isn’t about the technical shit either. Pop includes a lot of what is called “extra-musical information.” The lyrics, that’s not music, that’s words representing outside ideas. The artwork, the music videos—all this stuff that’s not the music, but that is used to create the product. But it turns out that’s true in classical music. There’s no Mahler No. 9 without knowing his daughter died.

“Truly great works build a bridge not only between the concerns of their time and a longer historical struggle, but also between the performer’s feelings and the common well of human sentiment. The most consequential protest songs get referenced again and again for a reason: their power, both felt and understood, never dies.”

Germany, of course, is walking a tightrope of history. “As Germany struggles with increasing attacks on Jews and Israel is under pressure for killings of protesters along its border with Gaza, a growing clash over B.D.S. is spilling over into the cultural scene. It has divided art and music festivals that aim to foster cultural dialogue, and even sparked a feud between the mayor of Munich and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.”

Colette Maze says people should stay loose and keep moving – and that “on the piano, there’s a kind of gymnastics.”

“James Taylor was 22 when he bought 175 acres of woods with the proceeds from his first record deal. On a stormy June afternoon nearly half a century later, Carly Simon, his ex-wife; their children, Sally Taylor and Ben Taylor; Ben’s partner, Sophie Hiller, and their friends, the musicians John Forté and David Saw, were gathered in the rambling house that has grown up like a wagon wheel around the original structure, with hallways that hopscotch over rooms and staircases in odd places.”

Anne Tomlinson has been at the helm for 22 years, taking the chorus numbers from 100 to 450 and from three ensembles to six. Though she’s firm with the kids at rehearsal, “it is quite clear that plenty of fun is being had. The fun, however, is in the execution of the craft. And craft is elevated above all else.”

Anthony Tommasini: “For 80 years, New York audiences — and critics, including me — have felt as much affection for the Frick’s music room as the artists who have performed there, even ones of international renown. It truly is the closest thing to a 19th-century music salon this city has to offer. But the beloved room is, sadly, now on borrowed time.”

When you want to perform Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Gruppen” in the Tate Modern, and you really, really, don’t want the three orchestras to fall out of sync, you have to take rather a lot of meetings. The three conductors: “Pencils in hand, they laid out their scores on a table and mimicked their orchestras’ parts in a cacophony of hummed notes, whoops, grunts, bleats and birdlike sounds — and every once in a while, in unison, a triumphant’Bang!'”