Category: music

“It’s hard to imagine classical music creating such a stir in any country except Russia. But even in Moscow things are changing. The new Russians flaunting their wealth in indescribably expensive watering holes have little interest in high culture. Gergiev’s achievement was to make attendance at the Tchaikovsky seem socially essential, even to them.”

“Mikhail Arkadyev, the outgoing conductor of Vladivostok’s Pacific Symphony Orchestra, said he was told his contract would not be renewed after he spoke out against his professional trade union joining a new political movement widely thought to be part of Mr Putin’s campaign to regain the Russian presidency next year.”

“What now? Is there a sufficiently large audience for new and unfamiliar operas to keep NYCO afloat? Should the company instead turn back the clock and stick to “Carmen” and “La Bohème”? Or is there yet another road to solvency for City Opera?”

Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, and Arvo Pärt were among the luminaries appearing in Strasbourg “to draw attention to the continuing struggle of two former oil magnates, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and Platon A. Lebedev, and, organizers said, other Russian political prisoners.”

Anthony Tommasini: “We have had folk opera, jazz opera and rock opera. … But of all such efforts, mixing opera with the Broadway musical might seem by far the most natural combination. Then why are so many efforts to crisscross that divide so bad?”

“The writer at the centre of a row over a cancelled community opera that sparked accusations of homophobia is considering legal action against the local council, even after Opera North announced in a dramatic U-turn that it would go ahead with the production.”

According to Nielsen SoundScan’s midyear sales report, which was released on Wednesday, 155.5 million albums were sold in the United States in the first six months of 2011, up 1 percent from the 153.9 million albums sold at the same time last year.

“Variable 4 is the brainchild of composer James Bulley and erstwhile computer scientist Daniel Jones. The pair met when they were shortlisted for the New Cross Art Prize in 2008 … This led them to the idea of a sound art installation where the music played was composed by contemporaneous weather conditions.”

“It says something about the state of architecture today that the most alluring opera house built anywhere in the world in decades is in a generic new business district at the outer edge of this city, has no resident company and a second-rate program.”

“There are lots of theories. Maybe [he] was tired. He might have been devastated by the death of his beloved mother. Or perhaps it was his health, or shifts in art or politics. His detractors insinuated that he had simply grown rich and lazy. All we know for sure is that he stopped.”