Category: music

“Five years have passed since the LSO began secret negotiations to bring the Liverpool-born conductor back to his homeland after his 16 sometimes turbulent years at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic, and more than two since his appointment as the LSO’s music director was announced. Who would blame the orchestra for making a big fuss about his first concerts in his new job?”

The story of Mozart’s starling might have died with the composer had it not been for one page in his pocket notebook. Directly beneath an entry recording the amount paid for Star are scribbled two lines of music. The first is a theme from Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major; the second is a near variation on it — different in only two minor details. This second was the song the composer overheard the bird singing in a shop. The similarity wouldn’t be remarkable, except for the fact that the concerto wasn’t officially premiered until some time later.

“It has been busily pioneering new angles of engagement and outreach, even as it holds the line against broader artistic changes sweeping the jazz world. At a time when canon-busting is nearly the national consensus, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s founding artistic director, Wynton Marsalis, maintains that jazz is a classical music with a fixed roster of heroes, and a nonnegotiable rhythmic foundation.” Says Marsalis, “We are a music that is constantly asked to abandon its own identity to become another thing. Why? What’s wrong with our identity?”

One source says, “the management felt it could not tolerate a situation where the conductor refuses to attend a schedule event he is contractually obliged to attend. He also skipped a number of rehearsals.” The conductor himself, Brian Schembri, thundered, “Never in my life [have I] been treated so basely and disrespectfully by persons in authority who were supposed to support me in the job they themselves engaged me to do, that is to develop the orchestra to the levels that, by common consent, were hardly imaginable before.”

The arts often lose when budgets tighten, but even a little coordination by—and representation in—city government can help. “Offices of arts and culture are really about curating relationships and opportunities, and seeing all of the ways a municipality can partner. In order for that to happen, you have to have folks in the room who are specifically thinking about that as an issue area.”

“Twenty years ago, the idea of composing a piece of music using the power of the mind was unimaginable,” said Gernot Müller-Putz of the Graz University of Technology, a co-author of the study. “Now, we can do it.”

BBC Music Magazine took a poll of 172 prominent singers, including the likes of Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, and Bryn Terfel. You’ve almost certainly heard of the top choice, but it may surprise you (meaning it’s not by Verdi, Puccini, or Wagner); it got more than twice as many votes as the runner-up. (What made us happy is that Peter Grimes made the top five.)

As she tells the BBC, “I don’t want to hear my voice. It is in the past. When I’m teaching young singers and hearing beautiful young fresh voices, I don’t want to put my voice next to theirs.”

“The orchestra’s librarians are responsible for obtaining the scores for each program, for making sure all of the markings are the same in all the parts, for putting the music on the stands before each performance, and for being physically present at each show in case of emergencies – even on tour. It takes about 100 hours, says Elizabeth Schnobrick, the National Symphony Orchestra’s principal librarian, to prepare the music for a single subscription program.”

“The deal, announced Thursday in a news release, calls for no wage increases in the first year of the contract and 2 percent base wage increases in the second and third years. The [orchestra management] also agrees to additional contributions to offset increases in health care costs.”