April 5, 2013   |
| | | Thought of the Day | | Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
--John Barrymore
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| Quote of the Week | | If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. --Marcus Tullius Cicero |
| | Seiji Is Still in the Game |  Seiji Ozawa is determined to continue teaching. In a press conference earlier this week in Tokyo, the 77-year-old maestro said he wanted to use the time he "has been given by God" to nurture young artists. Ozawa has been away from the podium for several years, with very brief intermittences. He underwent surgery for cancer of the esophagus in 2010 and for a back ailment--some reports say a hernia--a year later. "I have been lucky. It was a serious illness," Ozawa told reporters. But, he says, he is coming back. Slowly. In July, he will conduct 24 members of the Ozawa International Chamber Music in Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. Agence France-Presse reports he plans a "full-scale comeback" in August at his Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Japan. |
Disconnect in the Twin Cities |  In St. Paul-Minneapolis, MN, there is a serious disconnect between music making and bricks and mortar. The orchestras in both cities are locked out; both will miss their 2012-13 seasons, neither is making any progress toward a settlement. Perhaps they will also miss 2013-14. Yet in both cities, the halls that house the two groups are either being refurbished at great expense ($50 million for Orchestra Hall in Mpls.) or, in the case of St. Paul, undergoing new construction. Yesterday it emerged that the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts is planning to demolish its 306-seat McKnight Theater and build in its stead a new, $79 million, 1,100-seat concert hall to serve as home to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Teardown begins in summer. Go figure. |
| | | | |  Franz Welser-Möst, 52, collapsed at the interval on March 31 after conducting the first act of Parsifal at Vienna Staatsoper, of which he is music director. The cause was back pain,"a severe attack of lumbago," according to BBC News. French media reported it was his fourth opera in five days. He was rushed to the hospital, but allowed to return home later. Rehearsal conductor James Pearson stepped in. Welser-Möst, Musical America's 2003 Conductor of the Year, was scheduled to conduct Wozzeck on April 2 and Parsifal again on April 4. Dennis Russell Davies and Adam Fischer stepped in for him. Meanwhile, he has cancelled his concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra next week. |
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| Violetta Goes to a Strip Joint |  Live classical music is everywhere: chamber music at the local pub; huge, avant-garde orchestral pieces in armories and abandoned factories; symphonic and choral flash mobs in train stations and food courts. But here's a new one: opera in a strip club. "If you hate opera, you'll love this," reads the promotion for Emotionworks. "Verdi will roll in his grave." Director Julie Edwardson, a former roster member at Opera Australia, is staging La Traviata at The Men's Gallery--what The Age identifies as "a table dancing venue"--in Melbourne.
Edwardson has a passion, she says, for "opera at the lowest level,'' and so has cut the pieces down to an hour ("no boring bits") and is staging them in pubs, "lawn bowling clubs," and now, a strip joint. She even uses erotic dancers to perform (clothed) alongside the singers.
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| About That Titanic Violin-- |  Late last month, the Associated Press reported a violin found seven years ago in an attic in Bridlington, UK, had been proven "beyond a doubt" to belong to Titanic ensemble leader Wallace Hartley and to have been with him when the vessel sank. UK auction house Henry Aldridge & Son, which plans to sell it off, claimed its authenticity after "seven years and thousands of pounds determining the water-stained violin's origins, consulting numerous experts including government forensic scientists and Oxford University." It was found, they went on, along with its leather case, which is initialed "W.H.H." Not true, say at least two historians. Nigel Hampson, curator at the Titanic in Lancashire Museum in Colne, has called the claim "the worst form of manipulation." "This violin clearly is a Wallace Hartley instrument--but to claim that it is the violin that he had with him on the Titanic is preposterous." MA.com subscribers read the full story |
| New Artist of the Month: Avi Avital |  BERLIN -- It's not often that the mandolin takes centerstage in the classical concert hall, but don't tell Avi Avital that. The Israeli native, 34, has performed about 70 world premieres, 13 of which were concertos. He has played in such venues as Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and Lucerne's KKL. His debut album last year featured J.S. Bach concertos with the Potsdam Chamber Academy in his own transcriptions. But expressing himself outside the classical box is also essential to Avital. On a visit to New York last year, he performed Ligeti in Alice Tully Hall and Balkan music at a tiny bar in Brooklyn in the same week. Having played in a rock band in high school, he misses the immediate interaction with an audience that can respond freely. "I hope to bring something of that [audience] freedom back to the classical concert hall." |
| Requiem Aeternam |  From Berlin Times by Rebecca Schmid The Festtage of the Staatsoper Berlin, founded by Daniel Barenboim in 1996, is not officially an Easter Festival. But while the Berlin Philharmonic left the Philharmonie for some mountain air (taking up residence for the first time this year in Baden-Baden), the maestro-- between conducting the first full cycle of the Cassiers/Bagnoli Ring production, which has unfolded between the German capital and Milan since 2010-- presided over ensembles of both the Staatsoper and La Scala in two different Requiem masses. The pianist and conductor, currently music director of both opera houses, opened Mozart's Requiem on April 1 with W.A.'s last piano concerto, KV 595. The Staatskapelle's rich, warm, strings lent the music great strength--particularly in forte passages--while gentler nuances could have been more florid and secretive. Still, the balance with the piano was ideal in the opening Allegro. Barenboim brings a wonderful spontaneity to his performances--even if there were a couple of smudges on the keyboard--and he masters the Staatskapelle's full-bodied sound with a firm but giving hand. The final Allegro movement, which opens deceptively with a variation of the chirping song Komm, lieber Mai, attained a mysterious quality that provided a captivating bridge to the Requiem, where Mozart could no longer take refuge in the childlike playfulness that masks a complex spectrum of emotions in other late works. |
| Independent Contractors or Employees: What's In A Name? |  To submit a question to GG Arts Law write to LawAndDisorder@MusicalAmerica.com Dear Law and Disorder: I hire musicians to perform, with me. Are they employees or independent contractors? I do not deduct taxes from what I pay them. Should I also make them sign a contract stating that they are independent contractors? Read the full story |
| |  From Why I Left Muncie by Sedgwick Clark Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic--America's hottest orchestra/conductor team--breezed through New York last week for a pair of sold-out concerts they had just performed in LA, London, Lucerne, and Paris. Dudamel is a bona fide star. Now 32, he draws a younger-than-usual audience, and cheers erupted when he walked to the podium. But nothing in his demeanor indicates that this acclaim has gone to his head; he even appears bashful about it. True to his El Sistema upbringing, his commitment to music education is unwavering, and nothing in the American publicity mill will deter it. His conducting style is understated, with minimal gestures, and when the performance ends he walks through the orchestra to single out important soloists and entire choirs. He's one of the gang, and he respects each and every one of them. He's got the goods, and what's happening on that other coast should be followed with great interest by the faltering music business. He loves contemporary and 20th-century music, and all the works he conducted in New York fit that bill. Indeed, the first of the Lincoln Center concerts (3/27) was the local premiere of a single, extraordinarily ambitious work: John Adams's oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2011-12). Many consider Adams a great composer, an opinion I wish I could share. His new work, lasting over two and a half hours, stretched the limits of boredom as few performances I can recall - not since Carlo Maria Giulini led this same orchestra in a full-hour, headache-inducing distention of Beethoven's Eroica at Carnegie Hall 34 years ago. Read the full story |
| Latest Roster Changes |  Musical America is helping presenters keep up with its advertisers! Managers whose rosters appear in the 2013 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." |
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