The brilliant career of conductor Carlos Kleiber could have been even more memorable, says Harvey Sachs, had the man been able to tolerate even the smallest error. Time management is perhaps a conductor’s most important skill, and while Kleiber was adored by his musicians, his tendency to pounce on minutiae often made it difficult for performances to gel in a larger sense. “His maniacal perfectionism and the sense of desolating frustration that overwhelmed him when his goals were not met must have had something to do with his increasing isolation.”
Tag: 07.25.04
The Bouquet Tosser
John Karls is an audience member of the most devoted sort. Not only does he regularly shell out upwards of $200 for the most expensive seats in the house at countless ballet and opera performances, he scrapes up a few extra dollars every night for a top-shelf bouquet, which he will then heave in the direction of whichever performer pleases him most. “He has attended upward of 2,500 performances and tossed some 750 bouquets in a career spanning more than half a century… Mr. Karls uses a two-handed toss not unlike that of a hammer thrower… The real issue is wind resistance: the cellophane wrap can cause significant drag and can make a bouquet do what Mr. Karls calls a ‘dying duck’ over the orchestra pit.”
Plenty Of Cash, But Lots Of Tough Decisions
“When the New Jersey State Council on the Arts convenes its annual meeting in Trenton on Tuesday, the highlight will be the awarding of annual grants — expected to be somewhere around $22 million, or some $6 million more than last year. Thanks to last year’s passage of a hotel-motel occupancy fee, the arts council has a dedicated funding source that brings its 2005 budget to $22.68 million — the largest state appropriation in the history of the agency. The infusion of money will allow the arts council to pump millions more into the state’s museums, theaters, dance companies and performing arts centers. [But] that doesn’t mean everyone will be happy.”
Cellist Wanted: Must Be Perfect In Every Way
There is no ensemble more tightly connected than a string quartet, so when a major quartet loses one of its members, as Canada’s St. Lawrence String Quartet did two years ago, finding a replacement who is both musically and personally compatible with the rest of the group can be a nearly impossible task. The St. Lawrence thought they’d found their new cellist, only to discover after a year that the match wasn’t quite made in heaven. Now, the group is trying to fill the hole again, and American cellist Chris Costanza is “[fitting] in as naturally as if he had been playing with the others since the beginning.”
Government Putting Avant-Garde Architects On Notice
The wholesale renovation of Chicago’s historic Soldier Field (home of the NFL’s Bears) has been roundly panned by football fans and architecture critics alike since it was completed last year, and now, the federal government has weighed in with its own verdict on the ultra-modernist redesign, stripping the stadium of its place on the list of National Historic Landmarks. The decision “sent a message that resounds far beyond Chicago’s aesthetically mangled lakefront football stadium: The government will react — and strongly — if avant-garde architects and arrogant politicians sack the nation’s most extraordinary places.”
Royal Albert Hall Loses It Pipes
“Its 9,990 pipes were designed to resonate to the ends of the Empire and have been painstakingly restored in a three-year, £1.7 million project – but Britain’s largest organ fell silent last night. Royal Albert Hall bosses confirmed today that the mighty instrument, known as The Voice of Jupiter, suffered an electrical fault before an evening BBC Proms performance. Technicians were today bidding to determine the cause of the mystery problem, which set in following a successful afternoon recital.”
Why Critics Shouldn’t Be Cheerleaders
A few former board members of the now-defunct Florida Philharmonic are still furious with local critic Lawrence Johnson for several articles he wrote pointedly criticizing the organization’s management and board. In fact, a recent letter to the editor of Johnson’s paper accuses the critic of actually having contributed to the orchestra’s demise by pointing out failings rather than rallying the public to support the floundering ensemble. Johnson isn’t buying it: “Overpraising mediocrity subverts that [critical] duty and serves only to reward lazy or inept artistic leadership. When the third-rate is praised to the skies, there’s zero incentive for those organizations to ever strive to improve.”
Ruminating On An Institution’s Demise
Ruminator Books, a Twin Cities institution and a nationally known indie bookseller, is closing its doors forever this week, but the man who has steered it for its entire 34-year life insists that he isn’t despairing. In fact, David Unowsky admits that it wasn’t competition from big chain bookstores that drove the store into insolvency, but a series of business mistakes and good ideas implemented at the wrong time. “One of his problems was running a 21st-century bookstore on 30-year-old ideals.”
The Secret Identity of O
When the erotic novel The Story of O was first published under a pseudonym a half-century ago, it scandalized French, British, and American society alike with its explicit but beautifully written descriptions of bondage and sexual violence. The identity of its author was much speculated upon, and many were convinced that it had to be a man. It wasn’t, and the woman behind the book that revolutionized erotic literature wrote it for her lover on a dare, never intending for it to see the light of day.
Plenty Of Words Between The Notes
Musicians who spend their careers in the pit of an opera house or theater are something of a different breed than those who get to solo in front of thousands or take repeated bows as members of a symphony orchestra. For one thing, the players in the New York Philharmonic aren’t generally found reading novels during the performance to stave off boredom…