Tag: 02.22.07

It’s been 45 years since Lorin Maazel last stood atop the podium at the Metropolitan Opera, but the New York Philharmonic’s music director will be returning to the Met next season, leading five performances of Wagner’s “Walküre.” Maazel was approached after music director James Levine, a well-regarded Wagnerian, declined to conduct the production because of scheduling conflicts.

The classical music world is often criticized for ignoring contemporary music in favor of the tried-and-true warhorses, and music schools frequently view new music as a curiosity rather than something to be taught seriously. But at Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory, the Contemporary Music Ensemble is the group that the top students clamor to join, and several highly successful professional new music ensembles have emerged from its ranks over the past decade.

The city of Miami Beach has approved a $15 million request by the New World Symphony, which trains young musicians for professional jobs. The money will make up 10% of the cost of the orchestra’s planned new concert hall, to be designed by Frank Gehry. $105 million has already been raised, and the NWS hopes to get another $30 million from the county government.

“Ioan Holender, the powerful and sometimes controversial Intendant (chief executive) of the Vienna State Opera, announced today that he will step down from his position when his current contract expires in August 2010… The 71-year-old Holender has been chief executive at the Vienna State Opera since 1988.”

“As the music industry struggles to come to terms with collapsing sales, diverging international markets and the internet-fuelled emergence of highly personalised and parochial buying patterns, is the era of the global musical superstar drawing to an end?”