July 6, 2012  |
| | | Thought of the Day | | If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
--Johannes Brahms
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| Quote of the Week | | Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it. --Mason Cooley
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| | Paavo Järvi Named Chief Conductor, NHK Symphony Orchestra | | 
Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra will have a new chief conductor in the 2015-16 season, and presumably by that time he will have moved on from some of his current duties. Paavo Järvi is now music director of the Orchestre de Paris and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and music director laureate of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Järvi has something of a high profile in Japan, having toured there regularly with one or another of his orchestras. In June he traveled with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony to Sapporo, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Tokyo. His relationship with NHK dates to 2002; as music director he will lead the group eight weeks a year, not including tours and recordings. Järvi succeeds Vladimir Ashkenazy, in the job from 2004-07, now holding the title conductor laureate. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Miami City Ballet Executive Director Fired | | Just as the upset over founding Artistic Director Edward Villella's early departure was settling, the Miami City Ballet announced the sudden dismissal of Executive Director Nicholas Goldsborough, hired last fall. Goldsborough had a reputation as a skilled fund-raiser and administrator, but apparently he wasn't skilled enough, because the organization is now in a "cash crisis" and he is out of a job, as of June 30. He was informed of the news via email June 28, from Board President Jim Eroncig; Goldsborough remains unavailable for comment. MCB's budget for 2011-12 is $14.2 million. According to The Miami Herald the company is running a $2 million deficit. Furloughs and staff cuts are being announced fast and furiously. Marketing Director Bill Miller was told when he came to work last week that his job had been eliminated. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| | | EMI Classics Names (Another) New A&R Chief | | Jean-Philippe Rolland has been appointed A&R president of EMI Classics, a promotion from his job as production and recording director at EMI and Virgin Classics. He assumed his new post as of July 1, succeeding Andrew Cornall, in the job since January 2011. Cornall, who succeeded Stephen Johns, will stay on as a consultant. Rolland's appointment--to a job that Cornall reports has become increasingly administrative--marks EMI Classics' third A&R chief in just two years. The sale of EMI to Universal Music is anticipated to be approved by the European Union by the end of the year. Rolland, who will be based in both Paris and London, joined the company in 1997; previously he was executive producer and tour director of Ecole Nationale du Cirque Annie Fratellini. |
A Musical Jewel on the Emerald Isle | | 
LONDON--Of the many skills that go into running a successful music festival- a knack for programming, contacts, financial acumen, an ability to stay calm under fire, and sheer determination-- the one of which West Cork Chamber Music Festival Director Francis Humphrys should be proudest is programming. It is not just a matter of what and who he programs but how he presents the mix. Any one concert is likely to have three or four separate groups of performers, so the ear stays alert and has little chance of becoming bored. The nine-day festival got off to a rousing start on Jun. 29; violinist Tanja Becker-Bender climbed the Everest of Paganini's 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, turning in a brilliant and immensely concentrated performance, somehow leaving herself enough energy to toss off a Bach prelude as an encore. Amazingly, she had wanted to play all 24 Caprices straight through without a break but Humphrys imposed a short intermission, fearing for his audience's stamina. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| |  WASHINGTON--American soprano Evelyn Lear, whose star rose in Europe singing some of the most difficult contemporary roles before returning to the United States, died July 1 in a nursing home in Sandy Spring, Md. She was 86 and had been ailing for months after suffering a mild stroke. Lear and her late husband Thomas Stewart, the acclaimed bass-baritone, retired in the Maryland suburbs near Washington after singing together for decades around the world. Overlooked by U.S. opera houses in the 1950s, the pair set out for Europe after winning Fulbright fellowships to study in Germany. Lear won fame in Vienna by singing the title character in Alban Berg's Lulu in the early 1960s. She learned the role in just three weeks. Evelyn Shulman was born Jan. 8, 1926, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and studied piano in her teens. She attended Hunter College, New York University, and Juilliard, where she met Stewart. Lear found her true passion was singing, but U.S. opera houses at the time were more interested in attracting European artists. Now leaders in U.S. opera are lauding her versatility, beauty, musicality, and commanding stage presence. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| New Artist of the Month: Yunpeng Wang |  NEW YORK--If there was a single trait that helped baritone Yunpeng Wang sweep up three awards last month at Plácido Domingo's Operalia Competition in Beijing--more than his smooth, flexible technique or his prowess in a variety of vocal styles--it was his ability to pick up the phone and respond at a moment's notice. Two years ago, as a student at China's Central Conservatory, he got a call to audition unofficially for the president of the Manhattan School of Music. Wang arrived at the end of a dinner that night and sang two songs. Marjorie Merryman, MSM's vice-president of academics and performance, offered him a scholarship on the spot. Later, fresh from playing Guglielmo in MSM's staging of Così fan tutte last December, Wang got a call from the production's conductor Israel Gursky, who was also serving as a pianist for Operalia. Domingo, Wang learned, was personally auditioning competitors. Could he meet at the maestro's convenience? Wang got the call at 6pm. He sang for Domingo backstage at the Metropolitan Opera three hours later. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Eugenia Zukerman's Tanglewood Vlog |  | | Keith Lockhart, Conductor |
When Keith Lockhart became the 20th conductor of the Boston Pops he not only kept the great Pops traditions established by his predecessors John Williams and Arthur Fiedler, but he also introduced many varied new innovations such as the JazzFest and EdgeFest series, as well as concert performances of great Broadway shows. Lockhart is a passionate spokesman for the the arts and arts education, and one of the most popular personalities in the world of music. |
| Claus Guth's Forest-bound Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper; Musikfestspiele Potsdam's new Pleasure Garden |  From Berlin Times by Rebecca Schmid Few operas in history have gripped the human psyche to the same extent as Don Giovanni. Pushkin, Kierkegaard, and Bernard Shaw count among the literary figures to have written their own account of the daemonic seducer since Mozart and Da Ponte staged their 'drama giocoso,' a tragi-comedy, in Prague. Since the 19th century, some champions of the work have further added to the opera's moral ambiguity by excluding the final sextet, "Questo é il fin di chi fa mal/e de' perfidi la morte/alla vita è sempre ugual" (this is the end for evildoers/death and life are the same for the villainous) after Don Giovanni is sent to hell. Meanwhile, his female conquests have been increasingly interpreted as consenting perpetrators of his sexual games rather than just victims and continue to provide stage directors with ample fodder. Robert Carsen, in his new production for La Scala last December, sets the Commendatore's murder by Don Giovanni in the chambers of Donna Anna (Anna Netrebko), leaving her white slip covered in blood as she holds her father's dead body on the same bed where she frolicked with the murderer. In the final scene, the accursed aristocrat reemerges from hell puffing on a cigarette while his avengers descend into infernal smoke. Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Read the full story |
| Gilbert's 360 Armory Spectacular; Alec Baldwin's Class Act | 
From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark Live mannequins greeted audience members as they ascended the steps of the Park Avenue Armory for the New York Philharmonic's genuine season finale under Alan Gilbert. A few steps further, under a set of bleachers, stood a group of powder-wigged ladies in white floor-length dresses. I stared at one, and her eyes followed me as I passed into the concert arena: creepy, like a white-face mime at Columbus Circle or a smoking caryatid in Jean Cocteau's film Beauty and the Beast. They were, we learned later, the chorus in the First Act finale of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Across Central Park, away from the orchestra's staid subscription series at Lincoln Center, Gilbert could cut loose and astonish us in music for multiple orchestras by Gabrieli, Boulez, Mozart, Stockhausen, and Ives. Two evenings dominated by a pair of postwar modernist classics heard only once before in New York had sold out the Armory's 1,400 seats far in advance, and standees ringed the catwalks on each side of the arena. All the performances bespoke meticulous rehearsal. Even when precision inevitably suffered from the cavernous acoustic and football-field separation of orchestras and singers, one thoroughly appreciated the care in preparation. Read the full story
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| Latest Roster Changes | |  Musical America is helping presenters keep up with its advertisers! Managers whose rosters appear in the 2012 edition of the Musical America Directory should write to listings@musicalamerica.com with the names of artists and attractions that have been either added or removed, and please be sure to indicate "added" or "removed."
NEW THIS WEEK Dover Quartet (formerly the Old City String Quartet), added, Melvin Kaplan, Inc. Fine Arts Quartet, added, Melvin Kaplan, Inc. Meccorre Quartet, added, Melvin Kaplan, Inc. New Orford String Quartet, added, Melvin Kaplan, Inc. Schumann, Christian, conductor, removed, Artistainternational Temple Church Choir, added, Hazard Chase Valentovič, Peter, conductor, added, Artistainternational
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