February 15, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | | Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| Quote of the Week | | Art must take reality by surprise. --Francoise Sagan |
| | Yannick & Philly to Record on DG |  Last summer, Deutsche Grammophon signed Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to a long-term agreement. Yesterday, the orchestra announced that his first project for the label would be a recording in Verizon Hall of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, set to be issued in the fall. The iconic work, in its centennial year, was premiered in 1922 in the U.S. by none other than the Philadelphia Orchestra, under then music director Leopold Stokowski. The collaborators also made the first American recording of the piece, in 1930. This marks the orchestra's first major-label project since 1997, also with DG. These days, very few U.S. orchestras record for major labels. It's worth noting that DG also signed Gustavo Dudamel very early in his relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. MA.com subscribers read the full story |
Indy Symphony Names New CEO |  Gary Ginstling, general manager of the Cleveland Orchestra, is to be the new CEO of the Indianapolis Symphony, starting March 18. Former CEO Simon Crookall left suddenly a year ago after seven years in the job, the last few of which had been somewhat rocky. Ginstling is by all accounts a solid orchestra man, his four years in Cleveland spent managing Severance Hall and the Blossom Music Center, and overseeing operations, electronic media, touring, education, and artistic planning. The orchestra recently announced a vastly expanded audience, and Ginstling is given much of the credit. He would appear to be the right person to bring Indianapolis back to fiscal health after several years of major upheaval, including the abrupt firing of former Music Director Mario Venzago just weeks before for the opening of the 2009-10 season (Krzysztof Urbanski is the current music director) and the prospect of making the orchestra part-time. |
| | | Teachers at U.K. Music School Charged with Sex Abuse |  Manchester's Chetham's School of Music is caught in an explosion of allegations of sex abuse. Reports in the media seem to have encouraged increasing numbers of students to come forward with their own stories of teachers who abused them in the past. On Feb. 8, Michael Brewer, the former director of music at the school, was found guilty of "indecent assault" of a former pupil, who committed suicide after testifying against him. The Guardian now reports that five women have come forward with allegations of sex abuse during the 1970s by the late Ryszard Bakst, a piano teacher at Chetham and at the Royal Manchester College of Music. All claim to have made complaints to the school, to no avail. exposure. |
| |  David Lloyd, a leading tenor with the New York City Opera in the 1950s and the longtime general director of the now defunct Lake George Opera Festival, died on Feb. 8 in New York City. He was 92. Mr. Lloyd, né David Lloyd Jenkins, was a graduate of Minneapolis College of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. Among his major credits was singing the title role of Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring at its U.S. premiere, at the composer's behest. At the peak of his career, Mr. Lloyd was featured on the cover of Musical America magazine. The March 1959 issue contained this description of him. "Take any season's schedules of major American musical organizations--symphony orchestras, festivals, opera companies, oratorio societies and recital series--chances are that the name of David Lloyd would turn up as a guest artist more than once...." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| Bolshoi May Sue Disgruntled Star |  The New York Times has been covering the continuous flow of bad blood at the Bolshoi Ballet in a manner somewhat uncharacteristic of the Grey Lady's usual, conservative approach to such personality-driven scandals. The latest installment has the company's administration threatening a lawsuit against dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who is 39 and apparently quite sure of his immortal stardom. A longtime thorn in the company's side, and one frequently passed over for higher positions, Tsiskaridze was among the first to be questioned about the attack on Artistic Director Sergei Filin. He is also known to be in a "longstanding feud" with the Bolshoi Theater's General Director Anatoly Iksanov. Iksanov tells The Times that, although by law the dancer could stay with the company as long as he wishes, Tsiskaridze should exit voluntarily. |
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| Berlin's Lutosławski Tribute kicks off with Dvořák |  From Berlin Times by Rebecca Schmid The Berlin Philharmonic is celebrating the centenary of Lutosławski with several concerts this month. The first of the series on February 7-featuring his Concert for Orchestra-opened appropriately with Anne-Sophie Mutter, who premiered one of his most important works, Chain Two, in 1988. In an interview I conducted two years ago, the violinist recalled how seeing the score triggered a passion for contemporary music which she continues to nurture. Her appearance at the Philharmonie alongside guest conductor Manfred Honeck took an unrelated historic twist with a performance of Dvořák's Romance in F-minor, although the Czech composer's innovative integration of folk music can be seen to have foreshadowed composers such as Bartok and Lutosławski. The last violinist to perform this work with the Philharmonic is Carl Flesch, in 1909. As Mutter also explained to me, she considers herself a kind of 'great-grandchild' of the legendary violinist given that Flesch taught her mentor Aida Stücki. |
| Dad, May I Borrow the Car? |  To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear Law and Disorder: May we borrow music for an orchestral performance from another organization that purchased this music, but is currently not using it? |
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From Ask Edna by Edna Landau In my first column of this year, I listed among my New Year's resolutions "try to go to at least one concert a month that offers music unfamiliar to me, preferably new music." Little did I know then how rewarding that would prove to be. On January 10, I received a press release announcing "A Contemporary Evening for Ralph"at Merkin Concert Hall in New York on February 4. I learned that some of the finest new music groups to be heard anywhere were joining together to pay tribute to Ralph Kaminsky, who died at the age of 85 one year ago and who was perhaps one of the greatest advocates of new music that the contemporary music world has ever known. Those groups included the JACK Quartet, Either/Or, Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and members of Alarm Will Sound. It promised to be an extraordinary evening and indeed it was. The groups, all of whom donated their services, seemed to be as delighted to all be performing in the same concert as the audience was to hear them. The hall was full and many people were seen embracing one another. Who was this man, I wondered, who brought all of these new music performers and aficionados together? Read the full story |
| The Philharmonic Spans the World |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark The Warm European Touch Andris Nelsons is one of the hottest young conductors around. Hailing from Riga, Latvia, he has been music director of the Birmingham Symphony since 2008 and made a splash in March 2011 at Carnegie Hall, substituting on a day's notice for James Levine in a Boston Symphony performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. He has conducted Turandot and Queen of Spades at the Met in recent years, but he only made his New York Philharmonic debut last season. The orchestra wasted no time in re-engaging him, and last week he led a comfortable program of works by Dvorák, Brahms, and Bartók. There wasn't a harsh sound to be heard from an orchestra renowned for its assertive style in the not always felicitous acoustic of Avery Fisher Hall. The results, to my ears, were soothing but understated. |
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