“Charles Mackerras’s career has belatedly been recognised as great, but not because, like some jet-setting conductors, he set out to accumulate all music’s most glittering prizes – his CV is surprisingly short of those defining music directorships at Covent Garden or La Scala, or chief conductor posts in Berlin, Chicago or London. Rather, his 60-year career has been characterised by a combination of musicological awareness, meticulous preparation and highly charged performance.”
Tag: 08.20.04
Study: Music Lessons Boost IQ
A new study shows that children who study music score higher on IQ tests. The University of Toronto study also tested students who studied drama and found an increased IQ but not as big an improvement as in those who studied music.
A Detente Orchestra That Can’t Play At Home
Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a youth ensemble comprised of equal numbers of jews and arabs. “This orchestra cannot perform in Jerusalem, for fear of disruption, or worse, from one set of extremists or another. This orchestra has never performed in any of the countries from which its members are drawn. Last year there was a single, heavily guarded, performance in Rabat in Morocco – the only one to date in an Arab city. Security for these youngsters, as they make their way to and from their homes, is such a problem that on occasion the Spanish government has even provided diplomatic passports. And – most chillingly of all – the concert programme contains no names.”
Will Rowling Write Peter Pan Sequel?
Trustees of the estate of JM Barrie have asked three of the UK’s top children’s book authors to take a try at writing a sequel to “Peter Pan” as the story’s 100th anniversary approaches. The trustees aim to commission a new story which will “share the same enchanting characters as the original, the same longevity, and be just as valid in a hundred years as the original is today”.
Baker: Parthenon Marbles – Send ‘Em Back
Kenneth Baker weighs in on repatriating the Parthenon Marbles to Greece: Few object when courts ordain the return of art treasures and other property confiscated from European Jews by the Nazis. But people seem to feel the ethical force of arguments for repatriation of valuable plunder less when they involve greater spans of time and differences in culture. After Tony Blair’s mortifying alliance with the “coalition of the willing,” an agreement to return to their origin the greatest surviving remnants of Greek classicism would go a long way to restore Britain’s international prestige.”
Broadway’s Golden Age?
Was there really such a thing as a Golden Age of Broadway? A filmmaker goes in search of the answer.
US Arts Funding Still Wobbly
It’s been three years of cuts in arts funding at the state and local level in America. So are things about to get better? A look around the country doesn’t give much reason for optimism.
Zagat On Broadway, 2004
“Perhaps there are no earth-shattering revelations in the recently released summer edition of the 2004 Zagat Survey New York City Theater Guide, covering 62 Broadway and Off-Broadway productions as reviewed by 15,760 theatregoers. Still, the public opinion poll, conceived as a consumer guide to theatre, does offer some interesting insights about the habits of audience members besides their ratings of plays and musicals.”
A Persistence Of Beauty
“A lot of art, especially of the past, has set out to be beautiful; a lot of art, especially of the present, has set out to be ugly. Or, if not ugly, then at least workaday in its surface sheen, for fear that too much beauty might distract from whatever hard truths the film or painting or composition wishes to tell us. And yet there has been a kind of semi-guilty underground cult of beauty that has persisted through our ugly times.”
Regis: Mr. TV – The Record Holder
TV personality Regis Philben set a record this week: “The boisterous co-host of ‘Live with Regis and Kelly’ was officially recognized as the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ champion for ‘Most Hours on Camera,’ reaching 15,188 hours at a taping. For those without a calculator, that’s like working 90 weeks solid – no breaks. Hugh Downs held the previous record: 10,511 hours, set in 1997.”