Category: music

“The Handel and Haydn Society, which claims to be America’s oldest continuously performing arts organization, turns 200 this year. Once an amateur oratorio society dedicated to performing new music — the American premieres of Verdi’s Requiem (in 1878) and Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” (1879), among much else — alongside the old, its orchestra and chorus have been among the country’s most prominent early-music ensembles since 1986, when it moved to playing with period instruments.”

“Designed by the Belgian instrument maker Chris Maene, the Barenboim has straight parallel strings instead of the diagonal-crossed ones of a contemporary piano. The wooden soundboard veins go in different directions. The bridges, ribs and bracings are specially-designed and the hammers and strings (yellow brass rather than red brass) have been repositioned.”

David Pickard is “bound to face challenges. The BBC licence fee is due for a rethink next year; any changes to the funding model can scarcely not affect the Proms. At Glyndebourne, he presided over an institution that receives public funding only for educationwork and touring – the opera festival relies entirely on private money. He will now need to apply the diplomatic skills honed dealing with sponsors, donors and patrons to fighting the Proms’ corner in the boardrooms of the BBC.”

“The problem for women is that our role in popular music was codified long ago. And it was codified, in part, by the early music press. In the effort to prove the burgeoning rock scene of the sixties a worthy subject of critical inquiry, rock needed to be established as both serious and authentic. One result of these arguments—the Rolling Stones vs. Muddy Waters, Motown vs. Stax, Bob Dylan vs. the world—was that women came out on the losing side, as frivolous and phony.”

“New York is great. Opera is great. They deserve each other. So what can we do to get them together? Who can show us how it’s done? We need to ask the Germans, as a recent opera-intensive visit to their country confirmed.”

Barenboim was inspired to experiment with the design after playing Franz Liszt’s restored grand piano during a trip to Siena, Italy in September 2011. “The warmth and tonal characteristics of the traditional straight-strung instruments is so different from the homogenous tone produced by the modern piano across its entire range,” he said.

“Several times during the concert, inmates burst into boisterous, spontaneous applause. And at concert’s end, the prisoners gave the players a standing ovation.”

“After just five years our students now play as regulars or ‘deps’ – or stand-ins – in pretty much all of the main North American period instrument orchestras, as well as in Europe and in their own new groups. Will it one day reach saturation point? I don’t know. But we certainly haven’t come close to that yet.”

“Accustomed to hearing opera at the Met, where the average attendee is more likely than not on Medicare, I was bewildered at the number of kids—high schoolers barely over Platée’s recommended minimum age of 14—crowding the auditorium.”