Category: music

That is, entrepreneurship. Why? “Most composition programs are built along the business model of South Park‘s underpants gnomes [collect underpants + ? = profit].”

“Britten to Fischer-Dieskau, 1961: ‘Please forgive me writing to such a busy man as yourself — you can be sure that if I did not feel very strongly I should not be troubling you! … I am writing what I think will be one of my most important works. It is a full-scale Requiem Mass for chorus and orchestra … Peter Pears has agreed to sing the tenor part, and with great temerity I am asking you whether you would sing the baritone.'”

“The women in Cairo’s Egyptian Blind Girls Chamber Orchestra first learn the songs by reading sheet music in braille. Since it is impossible to read braille and play an instrument at the same time, the musicians must memorize every note of every song. Pacing is also critical because the musicians cannot see the conductor. He merely claps three times to start each song.”

“New York likes to think of itself as being the classical music capital of the world. Yet every so often it falls off the flight path of certain eminent musicians. Cecilia Bartoli, Carlos Kleiber, Birgit Nilsson and Brigitte Fassbaender are just a few of the great artists who have skipped New York for long stretches. The same goes for the superb Nina Stemme, widely considered the world’s reigning dramatic soprano.”

Jonathan Dove’s new “church opera” came about because he took a trip to the Arctic – and decided to make art out of climate change. “I thought Adam and Eve could make a journey down the nave of Salisbury Cathedral that lasted 45 minutes. … It would cover the time between them being banished from the Garden of Eden and actually walking out of the gate. It would go through their different emotions, remembering how wonderful Eden was and the things they’d lost, but also offering some hope for the future.”

“The Los Angeles Philharmonic will launch its first international radio broadcast partnership with England’s largest classical music station. The agreement with Classic FM announced Friday includes a 14-part concert series of recorded concerts under the name ‘Live with the L.A. Phil,’ broadcast Fridays starting June 1.”

In a culture with its own centuries-old, very strong and very different classical music traditions, European art music had only a tenuous toehold in the subcontinent. This situation is slowly but surely changing, with an increase in students and great improvements in teaching, notably in and around Delhi.

“Composer Gordon Kerry and librettist Louis Nowra describe Midnight Son as ‘An opera inspired by a true story’. That story is infamous: the murky, tragic tale of Maria Korp, her suburban Don Giovanni of a husband, Joe, and his murder-intent mistress, Tania Herman. Worse cases occur in opera, but perhaps not with quite the same disturbingly still-warm immediacy.”

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, some exciting musicians have emerged from Prague and Brno, led by mezzo Magdalena Kozena, the Pavel Haas Quartet, and (more recently) the terrific Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704. And that’s just the first generation.

The 68-year-old Briton is currently “principal conductor at Lyric Opera of Chicago after having been one of the longest-serving chief conductors of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.” The MSO has lacked a chief conductor for three years, following the early and sudden departure of Oleg Caetani.