Category: music

“Even Mahler’s bucolic idylls were conditioned by his busy life. The resorts where he went were fashionable and increasingly crowded. Good rail connections linked them to the major centers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, making them ‘microcosms of the very cities from which the composer so often claimed to take refuge.’ The experience was more like Davos than Caspar David Friedrich. Mahler’s love of nature was predicated on his separation from it.”

“The symphony spent most of the year in violation of federal labor rules, failing to make offers to individual musicians as required. More broadly, management has failed to raise enough money or present enough new programming to stanch the bleeding, which is now $1.3 million a year.”

The new centre, which could open in September 2023, aims to have “the same transformative effect on public engagement with music that Tate Modern brought about for contemporary art”. It will deliver “world-class acoustics” and have “education and accessibility at its core”.

‘Barneys, the department store with, arguably, the most extravagant Christmas windows in New York City, if not the country … has four over-the-top installations, each with their own musical compositions. Hannis Brown is the composer for two of those installations.” (audio)

“The Copyright Royalty Board on Wednesday ruled that online radio companies will have to pay 17 cents per 100 plays of songs through 2020. That’s a notable increase over the current rate of 14 cents per 100 streams. The new rates take effect Jan. 1.”

Pandora is no longer a newcomer that needs help—it’s a music industry giant that should pay a fair price to artists.

“A new concert hall for London would cost £278m and should be built near St Paul’s Cathedral on the site of the Museum of London, a six-month feasibility study has concluded. … [The venue] would be home to the London Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of Sir Simon Rattle.”

“Discipline in preparation makes you free on stage. “Haitink was very free in rehearsals, and, for me at least, that was not the easiest way to play. I like a little bit more structure in the preparation. … Not all the great orchestras are always in great shape. You need to bring them there sometimes.”

“Symphony managements and boards appear reluctant to acknowledge the basic fairness of reversing the draconian cuts that many musicians agreed to in the depths of the crisis. The concessions now seem to be viewed as permanent.”