When the dust settles from Simon Rattle’s blitz on British media – the latest roseate sample can be read here – will London get a new concert hall?
Let’s face the realities.
1 London needs a concert hall with good acoustics. No question.
2 No politician will promise one in an election year – there is no surer way to lose an election than by pledging a concert hall at the expense of public libraries, public health and public safety.
3 No elected politician will offer one after an election, either. The money isn’t there.
4 That leaves private money. An Emirates concert hall? An HSBC tax-dodgers hall? More questions here than answers. There is no moral solution.
5 London has the highest per–square-inch real estate value in Europe. There is no more expensive place to build a concert hall.
6 If by some miracle a clean-handed dotcom billionaire offered £500 million for a new hall, where would it be built?
7 Rattle’s allies – and the Mayor of London – are eyeing Olympopolis, the former 2012 Olympic village, far to the east of the city. But there’s no likely audience living anywhere near the site at present, and there won’t be one for the next 20 years.
8 So a new hall remains hot air, a Rattle-fuelled balloon that cannot get off the ground.
9 But London needs a new hall, every music lover knows that.
10 It will take more than a Rattle-dazzle to get one.
Bob Simon, the veteran CBS war correspondent who was killed last week in a Manhattan car smash, will be given a private send-off from the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday. Bob, 73, was an avid opera-goer. Family and close friends will remember him at the place he loved best.
More than 100 artists have launched a new cultural boycott of Israel, declaring that ‘we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government.’
Most are the usual anti-Zionist fanatics, led by Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Miriam Margolyes and Mike Leigh. No classical musician of international rank has joined (though some may yet do so).
What is interesting is the appearance in the list of Penny Woolcock, director of the defining film of John Adams opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. From its inception, all involved in making this opera have maintained that it took an even-handed position on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ms Woolcock has now declared her bias: she is anti-Israel and her work on the opera was motivated by a one-eyed hatred of the Jewish state.
Always ahead of the beat, the Irish airline has new storage arrangements for musical instruments, for a small add-one fee (as per usual). Courtesy of The Drone.
The Chicago arts world is in shock after the sudden death on Friday afternoon of the president and CEO of Lyric Opera, Kenneth Pigott.
A board member of the Lyric since 1998 and president/ceo for the past three years, Pigott was managing partner of Vaduz Partners, a private investment company specializing in IT. He was 71.
Anthony Freud, Lyric’s general director, said:
We are shocked and deeply saddened to learn and to share the news of the death of Ken Pigott, president and CEO of Lyric Opera. In the few hours since his passing, we have only begun to grasp the depth and breadth of this unimaginable loss. Ken was a truly unique man. He was a visionary whose wisdom and passion transformed the lives of everyone at Lyric, and at the many organizations with which he was associated. He is irreplaceable.
All of us at Lyric Opera extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Jane, and to their family.
An Italian TV Christmas campaign for a supermarket chain proved so effective they kept it running into January. It features Cecilia Bartoli singing a Cimarosa aria. Decca will make sure they don’t keep her waiting at checkout.
It was in August 2005 that the levees burst and the Louisiana Philharmonic was driven from the Orpheum in New Orleans. This September it will return with Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. But why has it taken 10 years?
Then ask why two vindictive members of Arts Council England wanted to close ENO down, and why the Times newspaper today calls in an editorial for its director, John Berry, to be dismissed.
It seems witch-hunts have been revived in 21st century England.
The conductor, about to start a low-key US tour with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, has been talking for the first time to our pal Elijah Ho about his rough treatment by the orchestra that made his name.
Sample:
I still live in Montreal. My wife, Chantal, is from there, and we still have an apartment there. Of course, I miss a lot of the musicians in Montreal. What happened there, you know, I made one mistake: I never answered the attacks from the union. One has to understand the context. When they signed the contract, I was completely on the side of these people. I even was wearing a shirt to help them to get more money, and I was quite close to the premier ministre, and so on.
When I read the result of the contract that was signed by the lady – who was completely ignorant of music, who took over the position of director of the orchestra – I was completely appalled, because these people were starting to think they were so good they didn’t have to work, and they didn’t need to rehearse.
We’re hearing that South Korean media have come in general praise for an MBC television shockumentary that depicted Myung Whun Chung, music director of the Seoul Philharmonic, as a gold-digging imposition on the suffering taxpayer.
Few have spoken out in support of the embattled maestro. An interview that I gave to the programme was selectively distorted.
For the record, let me repeat what I said:
There are two ways of assessing a conductor’s fee: by past reputation, or present achievement. Certain maestros have been able to command $80,000 a night in Japan on the strength of name alone, but most are now dead.
Myung Whun Chung has to be assessed on the basis of achievement. He has given the Seoul Philharmonic a world status it never had before. He won it a 10-CD contract with Deutsche Grammophon, a commitment greater than any orchestra in the world, the envy of the Berlin Philharmonic. If he goes, the orchestra will revert to obscurity. Now, put a price on that.
None of this was used in the programme. Needless to add, I hope Chung prevails.
UPDATE: The media war has spread abroad. Musical America is carrying a banner headline: ‘Myung Whun Chung cheated the Seoul Philharmonic’. Don’t they check their sources?
UPDATE2: A correspondent writes: Your interview was one of the few included in the show that gave ‘somewhat’ positive spin on Chung. There were quite a few interviews included (mostly with korean officials, media people, etc) which negated the whole show against chung.
Friends of Mariss Jansons say he may quit the Bavarian Radio orchestra over the city’s backtracking on its promise to build a new concert hall.
It has emerged that BR were not consulted by the authorities before the decision was taken, although the Munich Philharmonic was. Boih Jansons and his orchestra are taking this snub to heart.
In an interview with Die Zeit, Jansons was asked about Munich and its musical reputation. He said: ‘I’ve been ashamed of it for years.’
