Category: music

“When you go to an NSO concert, you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes, you get very good playing. Other times, you hear unpardonable sloppiness, sections drowning each other out in a soup of sound that you don’t expect from professionals. It’s curious that an orchestra with so much talent is still able and, in some sense even willing, to sound like such a mess. There are three places to look for the problem — and its solution.”

“Tributes to what he has achieved during his eight years at the helm have been conspicuous by their absence so far, and it seems unlikely that there will be the kind of fond farewell that many conductors receive when their tenures with an orchestra come to an end.”

“The unprecedented accessibility and apparent indelibility of reviews on the internet necessitate, I believe, a change in the way they are written and read. Foremost in my mind here are not the tender sensibilities of composers or even the damage a gratuitously negative review can do to a career, but rather the integrity and relevance of music criticism itself.”

“All-night negotiations over a new contract for musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra ended Thursday morning after the session failed to produce a tentative agreement. Concerts will continue uninterrupted as negotiators ponder their next moves. … While no agreement was reached, some parameters of a deal appeared to be falling into place.”

Ms. Bass, a well-known arts philanthropist who is currently a vice chairwoman of the boards of both Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera, was selected to step in following the end of the brief and contentious tenure of Ronald Perelman.

“Good luck working out if you still have a right to use the music if Apple goes out of business. I’d have a hard time working it out, and I’ve been a copyright lawyer specializing in high-tech issues for 25 years.”

Zachary Woolfe: “It’s time – long past time – for Mr. Levine to make a transition to an emeritus role. Maybe then, with a fresh perspective to set alongside that of Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, the company can reverse the ‘artistic retrenchment’ that Alex Ross rightly observes this season.”

“However, whilst metadata and audio quality have been the burning issues for classical journalists and listeners, it’s the economics of streaming that has been alarming certain independent specialist classical record companies. In fact, as far as they are concerned, streaming poses unique and far greater problems for the classical industry than it does for the pop world.”

“According to a statement by the [Bruckner Orchestra Linz in Austria], the 71-year-old conductor was rushed to the hospital after making an awkward turn on the podium, tearing his patellar tendon, which connects the kneecap to the shinbone. He underwent successful surgery.”

“The acquisition marks a big change for Pandora, which has previously generated revenue almost entirely from advertising and subscriptions to its online radio stations, which count roughly 80 million listeners a month. Ticketfly last year sold 16 million passes to more than 90,000 live events, generating more than $500 million in sales, the companies said.”