Category: music

Music Director Karim Wasfi: “We’ve moved forward a lot since 2008. I’m now able to struggle with artistic quality – getting the music right – rather than logistics or mere survival. … Now, the orchestra has expanded to 90 members. We’ve put on very fine performances of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and Grieg’s piano concerto, Wagner, Brahms and specially commissioned works by Iraqi composers.” (Yes, bombs are still a problem.)

Stephen Hough: “The influences that shape new musical trends are diffuse, complex, and impossible to codify, but if one person can be credited as being the fountainhead of modern music it is Franz Liszt … in three, totally different stylistic directions. Whether we like his own compositions or not, we cannot avoid contact with Liszt if we have contact with music from the late-19th or 20th centuries.”

“Great music is now constantly becoming available in ways that force us to reconsider what we’re hearing, and how we listen. For half a century, musicians and fans have congregated along two poles: the album and the single. The problem is, we still haven’t devised a language to describe the increasingly vibrant area between the two poles of the studio album and the hit single.”

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra made a new conditional offer late Wednesday to striking musicians that could narrow the financial gap between the two sides and lead to the end of a bitter 15-week-old strike.

“‘I am convinced that we will come to an agreement, even though we are still working out details,’ Katharina Wagner, the festival co-director, told the German newspaper Die Welt. ‘Wenders has always understood music as a central element in his work. … He knows what he is talking about and what he is getting into’.”

“Education secretary Michael Gove’s decision to declare music students ineligible for the new English baccalaureate certificate sends the message that music education is another luxury we can live without. As does cutting the £82.5m a year in funding specifically aimed at providing music education – not to mention the news that one in four councils have already issued redundancies for music teachers.”

“While Wednesday marked the first time management had publicly announced a $36-million financial package, the accusatory language exchanged between the two sides and the contingency wrinkle left questions about whether progress was being made. No contract talks are currently scheduled.”

After several decades being ridiculed as a national embarrassment, folk music is flying. Its big names, such as Seth Lakeman and the Unthanks, enjoy major label status, while its profile has been raised ever higher by the commercial success of crossover acts Mumford & Sons — recently nominated for a Grammy Award — and Laura Marling, who last year even topped NME’s celebrated “Cool List”.

“Juilliard said on Wednesday that it had appointed Alan Gilbert, who is in his second season as the Philharmonic’s music director, to the post of director of conducting and orchestral studies. It is the first time, Julliard officials say, that the same person will have both jobs.”