After 32 years onstage, pianist Alicia de Larrocha is beginning her long goodbye from performing. “Time has not left her unscathed. At Lincoln Center she looked frail, even tentative, when she made her way centre-stage. She seemed instantly rejuvenated, however, when she touched the keyboard. Larrocha never was a dazzling technician and certainly cannot be one now. It hardly matters.”
Tag: 08.18.03
Iraq’s New Burst Of Creativity
“Out of the ashes of war and dictatorship, a new spirit of creativity and intellectual exchange is tentatively coming to life in scattered corners of the Iraqi capital, from the newly revived academy to the downtown alley that hosts a weekly book fair and informal literary gathering every Friday morning. The venues may be shabby and damaged, but the buzz of ideas is infectious and freewheeling, so much so that it’s easy to forget how recently any form of artistic or literary dissent in this country was grounds for instant imprisonment or worse.”
On The Fringes Of New York
“This year the festival is offering more than 200 different productions in 20 locations — to call them all theaters would be to stretch the definition of theater — and to judge from the number of invitations, both polite and pleading, that I’ve received lately, the commercial aspirations of Fringe show producers are accelerated. A lot more of the shows have press agents these days. And in terms of content, the camp, irreverence and cheerful potty mouth of its glam graduate are reproduced in healthy doses.”
Could NY Phil’s Lincoln Center Obligations Derail Carnegie Merger?
The Carnegie Hall/New York Philharmonic merger deal is encountering some expensive resistance from Lincoln Center. “The Philharmonic’s lease at Avery Fisher Hall runs through 2011 and provides Lincoln Center with $2.5 million to $3 million a year. To cover potential losses from the orchestra’s planned departure in 2006, Lincoln Center is seeking damages on several fronts. Most controversially perhaps, said the official involved in the discussions, Lincoln Center now maintains that the Philharmonic must help cover the expense of creating a new orchestra, which could cost more than $100 million. Lincoln Center executives deny this, however.”
Life After The Almeida
It’s been a year since Jonathan Kent left the Almeida Theatre, after a 12 year run leading the place. “The Almeida has become his international calling card. “It’s astonishing, he says – Kent’s favourite word is ‘astonishing’, closely followed by “extraordinary”, both adding to the animated panache of his conversation – ‘I’ve only discovered, on leaving it, that the Almeida is as well known abroad as the RSC or the National. ‘I don’t miss it. I can’t imagine a more golden period and it was absolutely the making of me, but you have to move on. I felt I’d done everything I wanted to do there.”
Album Sales Hit Record Level In UK
Deflating the recording industry’s claims that downloading is killing their business, recording sales in the UK have scored a record high. “After a dip in the first quarter of the year, sales hit a new peak of 228.3m at the end of June, almost 3% up on last year. The figure published yesterday by the British Phonographic Industry marks the fifth consecutive year that album sales have topped 200m.”
Lower Prices And They Will Buy
“For years record buyers have complained that CDs are overpriced and the music industry has responded by saying, as politely as possible, put up or shut up. Now, panicked by the pirates, they’ve finally been compelled to slash prices to a reasonable level and sales have reached an all-time high. Profits are down but that’s what happens when you stop charging £16.99 for an item that costs 50p to manufacture.”
Novice Creates Brass Fest
Geoff Collinson is a French Horn player in Melbourne who had an idea to stage an international brass festival. With no experience running an organization, a tiny budget, and an artistic director who lives across the world in Switzerland, he managed to pull it all together.
Why Doesn’t Classical Music Appeal? (Don’t We Get It?)
“While today’s iconoclastic visual artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are hotly debated among art aficionados, in the world of music, contemporary classical composers inhabit a dissonant ghetto all their own. Few people listen to them, few critics review them and few people understand them. Western classical music as a whole makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s total music market (contemporary works aren’t broken out separately). In 2002, classical-album sales were down 17 percent. Orchestras rarely feature contemporary works.”
Disney Hall – Sounding Good
“Disney Hall will finally open this fall—16 tortured years after the late Lillian Disney, Walt’s widow, instigated the project with a $50 million gift. The ultimate verdict on its acoustics will come from music critics after the gala first concert on Oct. 23. But if the building does sound as good as it looks—and early reports are enthusiastic—it will be a masterpiece, even greater than the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which made Gehry an international star in 1997.”